Living On The Road IN PLAIN SIGHT

Okay, so I’m feeling guilty about bailing out on the tour diary this year. Why am I feeling guilty? Because if you are reading this you were expecting one, especially after my breathless hyping of the thing. I’d be peeved, too.

But it's been difficult thus far to get my head above water. In addition to starting the tour in San Francisco and hitting TWENTY stores in L.A., I've been working on the last chapter of the newest Joe Pickett book and can happily announce that I finished it today. In the San Diego airport, of all places. Now, with that done, I can turn my gunsights to the diary and other catch-up work.

Unlike past years, though, I’m going to offer snapshots. This is for a couple of reasons. One, for you and me, many of the locations and experiences are the same as previous years (http://cjbox.net/diary.asp). I don’t want to bore you. Second, I think given the epic schedule and epic workload (finishing one book, revising another, trying really hard to remember what day of the week it is) I think snapshot is about the best I can do. So here goes:

SAN FRANCISCO/ SAN MATEO, JUNE 4: Debut of IN PLAIN SIGHT at the store of the man who discovered me (OPEN SEASON), Ed Kauffman, who now not only runs M for Mystery other big-time specialty stores on the Left Coast. A full house of 27 or so people. One couple drove six hours from Oregon! It was a very good crowd and they were very responsive. In addition to books for everybody, I signed 60-70 pre-orders.

Ms. Sherry Barson was great and I gave her a kiss (on the cheek) from Michael, my perfect publicist and brother of Sherry..

Great hotel with an iPod broadcast-thingy in the room so I can play my stuff real, real loud.

Great start to the tour...

THIS IS HOW I PACK FOR ONE OF THESE CRAZY DEALS: I’m a minimalist. I should be Japanese. All year, I keep thinking how I can make my luggage smaller, how I can eliminate certain items, how I can buy clothes that serve multiple purposes. The goal is simple: downsize so everything I carry doesn’t need to be checked as luggage. This solves a couple of problems. One is I don’t need to stand in line each and every morning to check bags. My experience in airports is that the later one arrives, the fewer check-in staff. Therefore, I prefer the magical self-check-in kiosks for those of us (if we’ve spent the entire year figuring out how to pack less) who have only one small suitcase that can fit in a carry-on and one “personal item,” meaning a briefcase with everything else. I do this to minimize encounters with my arch-enemies on earth, the vile, evil bureaucrats who people the reviled Transportation Service Association, or TSA. My friends, the TSA.

Here’s what I Pack:
Two white shirts, two black shirts, one beige shirt. Two pairs of new Wranglers, one pair of old Wranglers. Sports jacket. Stetson. Belt with Cheyenne Frontier Days buckle. Workout clothes. Four pair of underwear and socks. Raincoat-in-a-pocket. Jim Beam traveler. Four Cuban cigars. Three black T-shirts. One unfinished manuscript, one copy-edited manuscript. IPod with Bose Noise Reduction headphones. Palm Treo. Laptop. Alarm clock. FedEx envelopes and labels to send stuff home I’ll inevitably buy,be given, or pick up. One book to read for pleasure which will not be read. Another bound galley from an editor who has requested a blurb. Gym shoes. Tabasco sauce in case I get routed to Iowa. Comb in case my hair grows back.

SAN FRANCISCO AIRPORT Or MY FRIENDS AT THE TSA
The Newest Form of TSA Humiliation
As readers of this diary will know, I’ve been fighting an unsuccessful battle with My Friends At The TSA for several years now, and lost every round. Not only do I have to go through the standard humiliation of removing my boots, belt, jacket, hat, laptop, change, etc., etc., and allow myself to be cheerfully bossed around by workers in white shirts who have never had this much power in their lives, but daily I’m pulled into the special search line for extra searching and attention because, apparently, I meet the profile. In this case, meeting the profile means I’m traveling on a series of one way tickets from one city the the next. Therefore, I’m targeted as a terrorist by the TSA. One might think that a database existed where, say, the TSA people in San Francisco could check a computer and find out that I’d been hassled in every airport for five straight years and always checked out, but alas…

As I enter an airport now, I find myself instinctively raising my arms and spreading my feet.

So imagine my surprise to discover that the evil TSA has now come up with a brand new way to humiliate innocent air travelers: The Air-Blast Booth. I don’t know the correct name, but I enjoyed this newest form of bureaucratic dissing in San Francisco Airport, as I was, once again, pulled from the line of routine humiliation and led to a big metal phone-booth-like machine, for more epic humiliation. The TSA guy said, “Don’t be alarmed by the sounds or the air – it won’t hurt” and sent me in there. The door closed, and after a moment, a series of percussive blasts of air hit me from all sides. I’m still surprised I didn’t scream like a girl. The door opened and I staggered out. Only then did I ask what was just accomplished, and the helpful TSA guy said this new machine uses blasts of air to “sniff for explosives.”

Sniff for explosives. Me.

Meanwhile, 11 million illegal aliens waltz across the border with a wink and a nod, while 78-year-old grandma in the wheel chair must remove her support shoes before being pushed through the metal detector and I get blasts of air shot up my butt for all to see. Yes, one must ask, doesn’t it make you feel safer?

In a word: NO.

Okay, okay, onward…

LOS ANGELES: Once again with my friend, fishing companion, and Olympian-like marketing escort Ken Wilson, we climb into the Camry and never get out for two and a half days except for three signing events (Mystery Bookstore, Mysteries to Die For, Book Carnival) as well as twenty stores. Twenty stores! Guerilla Marketing at its most basic level. The kind where lunch was hot dogs in the car…

One of the highlights of LA was eating steaks with Ken and Annie and drinking up the last of his single-malt Scotch…

SAN DIEGO: Always a nice crowd at Mysterious Galaxy, one of the more comfortable stores around. My friend T. Jefferson Parker and his lovely family came from Fallbrook, and we had a nice lunch after the event and talked fishing and books…

PHOENIX: Ninety-five in the shade...

When I showed up early at Poisoned Pen to sign pre-sales there are three men there, all named John, and mentioned it was the first game in the Suns-Clippers series tonight, and I knew then it might be a light night, since Phoenix has always brought a lot of my "untraditional" readers, i.e. men who don't go to booksignings or read many books – but do watch sports.

Alas, that was the case. Even the guy I've come to look forward to who shows up every year and announced he's only read my books in his life since college (every year he walks up and says, "Now I've read four books," and "Now I've read five books" was not there to say "Now I've read six books." No doubt, he was either at the Suns game or watching on TV.

Nevertheless, there were about 20 folks. The incpomparable Barbara Peters did the live interview and readers asked good questions in a wide-ranging discussion. My wife’s Aunt Diane surprised me be being there…

DRIVING TO TUCSON: Ninety-three in the shade. Cactus, hazy mountains, mourning doves cooing at the rest stops (I want to shoot and eat them), dust devils whirling from the ground to the sky in thin yellow columns. Development, everywhere. New houses, new suburbs. This is where the action is.

For the first time ever in Tucson, it couldn’t have gone better. Despite it being American Idol night, 23 folks packed Clues Unlimited and the Q&A lasted over an hour. Christine, the owner, was thrilled because she sold out of every single hardcover and paperback she had in the store (which, by the way, is the only store I’ve ever been in where the animal running around is not a cat but a pig. Really. There wasn't a single book in stock to sign afterwards.

A very worthwhile, if surprising stop. I've never been to a town where so many people thanked me for coming. It was great…

HOUSTON: When it's ninety degrees with ninety percent humidity, you've got one melting cowpoke.

Nevertheless, the Murder By The Book event went well, as always, around 20 people (give or take, a few folks were hiding in the stacks). David Thompson and McKenna were lovely and efficient. Since the book has now been out for a few days, there were a couple of readers who bought it earlier and were very troubled by the ending (but in a good way).

David and McKenna took me to dinner at a great Mexican place. Unlike last year, I didn't try to drink all of the tequila in Houston…

MEMPHIS: Ooooh, I knew there would be nights like this.

If this was "Chuck's Excellent Tour of America," I'd consider the day a highlight of the trip thus far. Great, great hotel, wonderfully personable people (my taxi driver, Pearl, who is big, black and sixty-ish, decided to hang around the store and listen to the reading and take me back -- at no extra charge -- when it was over) and the best ribs I have EVER eaten at Rendezvous (accessible via an alley near the Holiday Inn). But since it's a book tour, well, not so much.

Alas, there were three people in the store for the event. The Davis Kidd people couldn't have been nicer or more apologetic, and they had a wonderful display of a lot of books (I signed each and every one of them), but for whatever reason, practically no one showed. Even Pearl left for a while to buy toilet paper in bulk to take home (I'm not kidding). They said they sold a lot of my books and had no doubt all the signed ones would go, but...

If you live in Memphis and you’re reading this and you didn’t show up, well YOU are the reason I likely won’t be able to come back. So there…

I HEART LEXINGTON: I do. It has become my favorite stop on the tour (so far) and will probably remain so. I love this bookstore, Joseph-Beth, and I think it's the best in the country. One has to step aside for ducks and geese to enter it, but it is surrounded by lakes and fountains, and it's always packed with people.

Bill and Suzanne Marques really outdid themselves this time, and they both claim I am their favorite author. I know they hand-sell the books like crazy, and half of the readers there (I think there were 25-30) were there because Bill and Suzanne MADE them read the books and then they got hooked. A couple had driven from as far as Louisville and Ohio. Joseph-Beth is living proof that dedicated booksellers can absolutely influence a market. Because of their enthusiasm, they said this has become one of the more popular events of the year. They encourage the staff to come by after the reading to have a burger and meet the author, so everyone gets involved.

Here was the scene:

Over the store music system, they were playing Bill Monroe (J.W. Keeley's fake name). In the little plaza where they have the events, they had tables set up with signs saying "Joe Pickett's Table," "Nate Romanowski's Table," "Arlen Scarlett's Table," and "Hank Scarlett's Table." They set up a barbecue out on the deck for cooking buffalo burgers for everyone who attended, and the severing table was the "Burg-O-Pardner." Bill and Susanne wore black cowboy hats. It was absolutely amazing.

Not only did we sell a lot of books, but I signed a ton of stock which they guaranteed would sell. This place is amazing, Bill and Susanne are amazing, and this store is unique. These folks should hold clinics on setting up a great event. I love this place…

MICHIGAN: Cold, rainy, dark. Again, I was worried about the NBA playoffs, because Michigan is Pistons country, and Detroit was playing Cleveland. When we left the hotel, Detroit was up by a comfortable ten points and…viola!…the even was well attended at Schuyler's in Okemos. The Q&A lasted nearly 45 minutes and the audience was really in good humor and asked lots of questions. I can only guess what the attendance would have been like if the Pistons weren't playing the Cavs at the same time, but I definitely wasn't disappointed. We later learned LeBron James took over the game in the fourth quarter and the Cavs whipped the Pistons, which was quite a shock…

Detroit Airport: At the Detroit Airport I once again had to go into the Sniffing Machine, because, probably, my friends at the TSA had forgotten to humilate me in a few days and needed to catch up.

MADISON: The beat goes on, although the sun has yet to come out for three days (which tends to wreak havoc on me) but Madison went well as it always seems to, with 23-25 at Booked for Murder and the wonderful Mary Gielow in charge. It's a good place. The Pfister Hotel is grand. I saw Caroline from The Apprentice in the lobby. She looked very bubbly.

For dinner, Mary invited me to dinner at her with her husband Curt as well as another author who was in town. He turned out to be Nando Parrado, one of the survivors of the ALIVE plane crash in the Andes, the guy who is all over the news and all over the magazines with his new book MIRACLE IN THE ANDES. He's pleasant, funny, extremely successful as a businessman and journalist, and despite myself I had this thought: I'm eating dinner with a cannibal. He’s just starting a whirlwind tour and is featured in TIME, NEWSWEEK, READERS DIGEST, OUTSIDE, you name it. We got along well, signed books to each other, and he told me his theory of the book publishing business since this is his first foray. Although I can't relay it in his precise words or accent, it was along the lines of, "Publishing seems to me to be alchemy. You start with a huge pot of money and by the end there is nothing left." I told him I didn't think it was quite that bad. Nevertheless, he was a fascinating guy, and told stories about being a survivor on that plane and hiking out to eventually rescue them all. And he toasted his mother, who died on the plane, who he left to the others when he went to try and find help. This, on Mothers Day. Think about that…

GOOD NEWS: IN PLAIN SIGHT is No. 12 on the hardback bestseller list at nationwide Barnes & Noble stores, and OUT OF RANGE is No. 16 on the mass market paperback list...

MILWAUKEE: The event tonight was kind of a light, with six people there at a Schwartz store although the manager, Erik is a nice guy and has read all of the books and featured IN PLAIN SIGHT as a staff pick for the chain. He hand-sells the books like crazy, so if nothing else, it was productive meeting him and signing everything he had in the store.

During the day, we hit five Milwaukee stores for drop-ins and the Borders, Schwartz, and especially B&N stores were enthusiastic. It's great to see the book on the Fathers Day table and, literally, in plain sight.

At the Milwaukee Airport, for the first time ever, I am allowed to wear my hat and boots through the metal detector, and when I mention to the security guy that he is more reasonable than most I’ve met he frowns and sends me over to extra security, again, where five men comment on my Cheyenne Frontier Days belt buckle (calling it a “plate,” a “tombstone,” and ask if anyone “out in Texas wears suspenders or just belts like that?” ) before letting me go. I can’t win.

On the way down the concourse I see T-shirts that read: “ Beer : Cheaper Than” Gas. “ I wish I had room for some.