| A Moment of Jen | |||
posted by Jen at 4/20/2002 11:41:00 AM Yay! Oh, and greetings from Washington, DC, where my tour is OVAH! I had my last reading last night at the Barnes & Noble in Bethesda, which featured what I think was my biggest, most enthusiastic turnout yet. It was so cool to meet so many women and men who loved the book and felt that it was telling parts of their own story (although that's still weird, because there's a part of my brain that's convinced that the only story GIB tells is my own, only amplified. This tour has taught me that it is not so). It was a really wonderful night, because of the crowd, and because the store had a ton of books on hand and said they were selling well, and because lots of people bought more than one copy (whoo-hoo!), and also because my husband came down for the reading, and I finally got to see him again! I've had a wonderful time on the road, and I've met so many great people, and I've been in so many airports, and....well, it's probably a good thing that they're sending me home now. The stuff that would have rolled off my back when the tour began is now starting to feel very personal. For example, yesterday, doing drop-ins, my very cool escort and I visited what's been described as DC's pre-eminent independent bookstore, where they had two copies of my book. I signed them, and asked to meet the manager. "I'm on the phone," he said brusquely. I waited. He returned. "Hi!" I said. "I'm the author of this book, and I live in Philadelphia, which is pretty close to DC, and it's easy for me to get here, so I'm wondering if you're planning on getting more copies...." He looked at me like I was something nasty he'd just peeled off the sole of his shoe. "If I sell these, I might," he allowed. "Well," I babbled, "it's on the Washington Post best-seller list, and it's a Booksense bestseller..." (Booksense, by the way, is the organization of independent bookstores, so having a book on the Booksense list -- and having it be a Booksense pick, which GIB was -- is generally regarded as a good thing). Now the bookstore manager was looking at me as if I was something nasty he'd peeled off the sole of his shoe that had, regrettably, started talking. "We'll see," he said. Maybe I'm paranoid, but I felt like I could read his mind, and his haughty expression. We are a literary bookstore, he seemed to say, and we have no need for smut such as yours. If it's smut you want, we've got some first edition Henry Miller around here somewhere. Which I know was one of the risks of calling my book GOOD IN BED, and having a cover with naked legs and cheesecake. There'd be a handful of readers -- and, alas, bookstore managers -- so put off by the title and cover that they wouldn't bother to dip inside and be impressed with the scintillating prose, the poignant observations, the starred review from Publisher's Weekly. Note to bookstore managers, and readers -- you can't always judge a book by its cover. So if you're in the DC area, and happen to stop by the city's pre-eminent independent bookstore (I won't name it, but you can probably figure out what it is), feel free to stop by and ask if they've got copies...and when they'll be getting more. Finally, a big, heartfelt THANK YOU to everyone who came to the readings, everyone who sent me email, everyone who bought the book. Thank you so much....and please know that I'm working very hard on the next one, and I hope you'll all like that, too. But right now, Adam and I are going to see the baby elephants at the zoo! | # Thursday, April 18, 2002 posted by Jen at 4/18/2002 06:39:00 PM There comes a time on every vacation, road trip, and every book tour, when it's time to go home. And, dear readers, for me that time is now. I miss my husband. I miss my dog. I'm down to my last pair of clean underwear, and I am so ready to just crawl into my own bed and sleep for about a week. So what's been going on? Well, first we had the Bitter Writer at the reading in Phoenix. There are versions of the Bitter Writer everywhere, at just about every reading I've done. Bitter Writer is usually a guy, which is why the lady Bitter Writer threw me off the scent a little bit. Bitter Writer does not care who you are or what you've written. Bitter Writer is most assuredly not going to buy a copy of your book. All Bitter Writer wants to do is hear, in-depth, the story of how you got published, and compare it (unfavorably, angrily, and often at length) to his or her own spate of rejection from the elitist scumbag pigs in New York City. Things last night started off just fine. It was a joint event with John Searles. I chatted, and read, and he chatted, and read, and then it was time to take questions. The first one was a lead-in to our Bitter Writer. "Both of you write for magazines," said an audience member. "Do you have to be well-connected to find an agent?" Short answer: no, you don't. The way I found my agent was by getting a book called Literary Agents: A Writer's Introduction and basically going through it alphabetically, sending query letters to likely-sounding agencies until I had some nibbles (and about twenty thanks-but-no-thanks rejection letters). Bitter Writer raised her hand. "So your agent read your whole book?" I was puzzled. "Yes, of course," I said. "Agents don't really take fiction writers on until they've seen the whole manuscript." "Well, you were lucky," she spat. "You were lucky someone wanted to read your whole book, and not just a query letter." "No, no," I said, "I wrote the query letters first, and then they wanted to see the book...." Bitter Writer was not interested. Bitter Writer was, in fact, staring at me with cold, flat disbelief. Lucky, her gaze said. You were just plain lucky, and I am not. Which was slightly painful because, in my sleep-deprived and occasionally deluded state, I like to think that I wrote a half-decent book, and that's how I got an agent, and got published, and that while luck may have had something to do with it, skill and lots of hard work did, too. I figured the night couldn't get any worse until a woman in the back row raised her hand. "You keep talking about babies, and staying home, and thinking about names," she said. "What I want to know is, are you pregnant?" Okay, what are you, my Mom? And, good God, do I look pregnant? Wait, don't answer that. Don't even go there! Ugh. After the reading, I was signing books when a guy who hadn't even been at the reading walked up. "Can you tell me how you got your agent?" he asked. Well, I thought, I just spent five minutes discussing it. But instead, I plastered a pleasasnt smile on my face and told him. "Well, I got this book called A Writer's Guide to Literary Agents..." "Yeah, yeah, I've got that, too," said the guy, obviously expecting more in-depth detail. Or maybe just my agent's phone number. So I did the only decent, respectable thing. I sent him over to John Searles. And then there was Thursday. The wakeup call! The mad dash to the crowded airport! The two-hour flight to Houston spent with half of Mr. Businessman's USA Today waving in my face! First stop: a B&N. I go over to the Bestseller aisle, where GOOD IN BED has been happily reposing this past week. No copies. I look at Escort Lady, who shrugs. One of the store workers was running around looking for it, checking upstairs, checking in back, finally, after ten minutes of thumb-twiddling, checking in with her manager. "GOOD AND BAD? Is that like "When Bad things Happen to Good People?" he asks. No, I say, it's GOOD IN BED. B-E-D. BED. "GOOD AND BAD," he says. It's "GOOD IN BED," I say, loudly, pointing to the bestseller chart. "This book. Right here." "Oh," he says, completely unconcerned. "We're out of it." ARGH! Okay. Must breathe deeply. Think happy thoughts. Get ready to do a reading in an hour and a half. I finished IN HER SHOES, so I got that going for me. And GOOD IN BED continues to inch its way up the USA TODAY bestseller list (I'm number 60. Right behind THE ADVENTURES OF SUPER DIAPER BABY. Look out, Super Diaper Baby, 'cause I'm gaining on ya! | # Wednesday, April 17, 2002 posted by Jen at 4/17/2002 03:13:00 PM If it's Wednesday, I must be in Phoenix! (Another indication -- there's a cactus outside of my window. You just don't get that in Philadelphia. Mummers, yes. Cacti, not so much). We're entering the home stretch of the tour, and of the latest draft of IN HER SHOES, which has been keeping me busy as I bounce around the West Coast, laptop and overstuffed suitcase in tow. Tonight I'm at Changing Hands. Tomorrow I'm in Houston. Friday I'm at the Barnes & Noble in Bethesda. And then on Saturday, after two weeks on the road, I get to go home. Yay home! So now I'm going to get back to work (the end is near. There's light at the end of the tunnel. Or maybe just carpal tunnel syndrom at the end of the tunnel. Whichever). With any luck I'll be done in time to hang out by the pool for a bit and read more Kavalier & Clay (I'm on a Michael Chabon binge....finished Wonder Boys last week. It was even better than the movie!) More later, perhaps. Especially if I get home in time to see The Amazing Race. | # Monday, April 15, 2002 posted by Jen at 4/15/2002 11:44:00 AM Greetings from Los Angeles, where we have much to report, starting with my first celebrity sighting: Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson, outside of the Coffee Bean in Larchmont. They were all dressed up, with kids in tow, and I tried not to gawk, but probably wound up gawking. It was very cool....and it also trumps my mother, who saw Anne Meara, Jerry Stiller, Ben Stiller, and Ben Stiller's pregnant wife at the Chateau Marmont during her last visit (and, I guarantee, wound up gawking even more than I did). The weird news of the day -- they're giving away audio versions of GOOD IN BED on this website for long-distance truckers. No kidding. Yay, truckers! So. Fabulous reading on Friday night in Austin. Lots of people who all laughed in the right places, which is pretty much all I ever ask of anyone. That, and good Mexican food. Saturday morning wake-up call at 4:30 a.m.. Ugh. I got to the airport by 5:20, flew to Los Angeles, got here at 8:30, went directly to my hotel room, ignored 150-page FedEx from agent containing pages of IN HER SHOES, and crashed. Then woke up and did drop-ins. All the California bookstores have lots and lots of copies. Not sure whether this is a good sign, or a sign that Hollywood and its denizens are roundly rejecting me. Then I did a writers' workshop at Vroman's, which is a huge, fabulous bookstore in Pasadena. I read there last spring when the hardcover came out, and it was such a treat to come back. There were forty people there (my brother Jake was like, "Is that a lot?" I told him that it absolutely was). The theme of the workshop dealt with real life and fiction -- that is, how you take the raw material of your own dysfunctional family, unhappy love life, and low self esteem, and transmute it into funny, vibrant prose. And not get sued. My short answer -- lots and lots of drafts, so that there's time for the characters to evolve from real life into fictional creations. That way, the guy who starts off as your miserable bastard of an ex can move farther and farther away from real life, and closer and closer to Satan himself. When you move away from your own life, things get funnier, sadder, more interesting, and, paradoxically, more true. Go figure. The reading went really well. And then I had dinner with some friends and my brother and his wife-to-be, and had Sunday brunch at my brother and his wife-to-be's apartment in Hancock Park, which is by far the nicest, least LA-feeling neighborhood I've seen out here. Then went back to the hotel room and applied myself to the 150-page FedEx, which is what I'm doing now. If you're in the area and want to see me tonight, I'm at Dutton's in Brentwood. Be there....I promise I'll be brief, so we can all go home and watch The Bachelor. | # |
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