Category Archives: The Orphanmaster

I must say that I haven’t taken full advantage of my so far  4 hours in Seattle. Pike’s Place, Pioneer Square, the Space Needle and the Original Starbucks have all gone unobserved by me. I felt I should save my steam for tonight’s dinner meeting with a bouquet of  lovely area booksellers, since I am finding that I have to really step up to match their wit, erudition and passion. Plus it’s too cold to go outside without a coat, and I didn’t bring a coat.

So I am preparing myself by lounging around, reading a mystery by a fellow Penguin author, drinking a latte from a more recent Starbucks incarnation and wallowing in the bottomless tub this very decent hotel has seen fit to install in my room.

It has felt like the supreme indulgence to blab on about The Orphanmaster for the last four days to people who seem to want to know about it. I hope that our conversations — mine with the booksellers, that it — will help them remember the novel when the June pub date rolls around. Put a copy in your window, please!

Anyway, tomorrow is the return to NY, husband, dog and cabin. I hear the magnolia petals withered to brown in the frost one night. One thing about New York, though, is that’s where The Savage Girl lives, and I can’t wait to see her again.

A blimp is hovering over my hotel as I write this. It seems to be shadowless, and all the boys and girls in red shirts playing endless games of basketball in the playground across from my window don’t look up. Maybe only I can see it?

Dinner last night with a crew of bookstore owners and Viking’s local sales rep. Everyone passionate about selling books — I hope about selling my book! Whereever I go, book people have the long knives out for Amazon, not surprisingly. And yet these guys reiterated their belief that despite the e-world,  print is not going away, nor are independent book stores.

Speaking of long knives, I visited the Long Beach Aquarium today and among other marvels saw the sea lion show, with the 500 pound creatures jumping, diving, barking their heads off. I was interested to see one minder exhaust his bucket of snack fish chunks and turn the pail upside down to pour the leftover blood into the throat of the nearest pinniped.

There, I got that noun in a sentence.

California Sea Lion

Hanging out in Long Beach, awaiting dinner with booksellers in L.A.

Walked down Ocean Avenue in the midday western sunlight. Were I a perfumer, what the French call Le Nez, I would say the air here has an aroma that mixes tropical leaves, hashish and barbeque. Delicious, but I’m not going to dab it on for dinner.

Saw a man riding a bike while carrying a bike. Bikes are big here, so are old people out for a salt air cure.

I saw health care vans picking up cripples under towering palms.

There’s an uneasy amalgamation of homeless zombies (attracted by the sun) and babyfaced managers in shirtsleeves (ditto).

If I lived on the west coast I wouldn’t write, I’d just brine in the sunshine.

I am in San Francisco, where I just attended the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association spring gathering — had the pleasure of talking with book store people and signing galleys for them for a couple of hours.

I have not heard so many people so enthused about books since grad school (aside from the very small nucleus of editors/agents I know). Everyone was hugging galleys to their chests and racing around shmoozing with the writers there as though their lives depended on it. Which I guess they do, since these guys make their living selling books.

But it’s not just about the selling. They seem genuinely revved up about what’s coming down the pike, what’s coming up next season, who’s writing what, who’s doing the publishing. It’s a lot to handle for someone accustomed to the hush and nonattention of Cabinworld.

A lot of great feedback from people who had read Orphanmaster and people who couldn’t wait to read it. Apparently book people are pumped to have it in their stores. It’s so exciting.

Wichita, Wichita. Which sounds a lot like Witika, Witika.

Speaking at a conference of independent booksellers today in Wichita, Kansas, courtesy of Viking, I explored the idea of nonfiction vs. fiction and shared just a few of the amazing facts people will find when they read The Orphanmaster.

Fact: the Orphanmaster was a real function, whose purpose was to protect the interests of children whose parents had been lost at sea, died of disease or killed by indians. And there were a lot of them.

Fact: Records show a man named Antony Angola, an African giant, was convicted of murder and saved miraculously from certain death when the ropes to hang him broke.

Fact: Dutch women enjoyed more freedom than anywhere else in the world, whether it came to inheriting property, representing themselves in court, or having egalitarian marriages. Many were she-merchants.

Fact: A sport called Pulling the Goose involved riding your horse pell mell towards a line from which was suspended a bird greased with bear fat, by its feet, the aim being to grab the bird by the neck as you went by…

As I wrote the book, the relationships became more important — Blandine, spunky, beautiful, moral, intelligent, and Drummond, the sensitive stud. It became a romance wrapped around a murder mystery, with the two central characters falling in love as they raced to capture the first serial killer in America.

But I never mentioned the world Witika. I wonder why not. Too scary?

The Witika