Sunday, October 24, 2010

Road Trip #1

I’m back home in Indiana after a one-week promotional trip to Seattle and the Puget Sound Area. You can believe my tax accountant will have fun with all of these receipts come February 2011. It was a great week for a new author: two book signings, with many books sold and an invigorating discussion after a reading.

I’ve been back in the work force for most of a year now, but out in Seattle my weaver friend Lucinda has been having a struggle. So, knowing she is an avid distance driver, I hired her to pilot two road trips around the Puget Sound region posting flyers for my signing events and leaving postcards at libraries, bookstores and cafés. This was a triple-win situation: Lucinda and I got to spend quality time together, she made cash, and I made big strides marketing YU to a book-loving part of the country.

There were many highlights worth a mention, especially on Trip 1.

My low-carb lifestyle commitment kindasorta went out the window on this day, since our first stop was the Blackbird Bakery in Winslow, WA on Bainbridge Island. Lucinda and I needed breakfast, so we savored two tarts: chanterelles with caramelized onions and gruyére for me, figs with the onions and gruyére for Lucinda. She got a double-chocolate cookie for the road (which we split later as dessert for our in-car lunch), and I took a “Downtowner” pastry -- sort of a croissant rolled differently and baked in vanilla sugar, making a hard glaze. Apparently this is the commuter rush’s choice every morning, hence the name.

Poulsbo, WA is much cuter than I had imagined. It is a small fishing village that loves its Scandie-Viking heritage. Port Townsend, while much larger, was more dour, since on a cool, overcast, late October Monday the summer tourist trade was seriously winding down. A hot dog shack on a corner – Dogs Afoot-- with shabby but colorful wooden picnic seating, was celebrating its last day of the season by giving away all of its food, chips and drinks included. Lucinda and I had the best, spiciest andouille hot dogs I have ever tasted. Toasted bun and quality condiments, including homemade sauerkraut.

Whidbey Island is a long, narrow landmass with several small communities tapping the water table. As we neared the town of Langley, we began seeing signs advertising a wine tasting in Bayview Corner, whatever that was. Turns out Bayview Corner was once an agricultural crossroads with a big general store. It is now a complex of stores and galleries around a food co-op, which includes a tasting room for three local wineries (three on one island?!). It had already been a long day on the road, so Lucinda and I went in for a sip or three. The Red Mystique and Chardonnay of Ott & Murphy Winery were startling in their goodness. Further startling us was that in our chatting with the two ladies in the tasting room (one of them being Diane Kaufman Ott of said winery), it turned out they and I had mutual friends in Bloomington! Small world, it is.

I had introduced myself to booksellers and librarians all along the way, but in the venerable Moonraker bookstore in Langley, the longtime proprietress shocked me by putting in a purchase order for YU as I stood there. I nearly burst into tears.

More on the marketing week in the next post.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

New Favorite Poem

Of Worms, Streams, and Mossy Robes

I change into the woods. Moss robes
my shoulders; my branches exhale air.
Crows walk on my grassy back. I am
emerald blades beneath their feet.

As soil, I shiver with the quivering of worms,
tunnel with them in ochre clay, taste
moist salty depths. Then I suffer coats
of gravel, to revel in road's hard rise --

its caroming through dense green
toward sun-flung orbs. I learn
to tremble with lake's yearning
for the touch of her fingerling streams,

feel wisps of fog caress her banks.
As a cloud, I drop my face to lap
at my likeness in water. As the moon,
I shimmer the lake, shiver to chants

of frogs. Soon, as owls in the treetops,
I will throb with fervor for the feast.

--Joanne Uppendahl
from her book, "She Who Gathers Stones"
available at Amazon.com

Friday, October 1, 2010

All That and a Hot Fudge Sundae

I think I have become what I want to be when I grow up. I am an author, starting today my book is published and on the shelves of bookstores, I had my first book signing event tonight.

It only took fifty-one years.

The event was in the best independent bookstore in my university-centered home town; I have fantasized for decades about having a book I had written sit on their shelves, displayed in their window. Now it is there: YU: A ROSS LAMOS MYSTERY.

Friends came from the community radio station where I volunteer, the Tibetan Buddhist temple where I practice, even my high school English teacher showed up and bought two copies.

The Courthouse Square was full of people -- it was a First Friday Gallery Walk, always a happening in this culture-happy little city, and a gorgeous early autumn night to boot. Plus, Indiana University plays Michigan tomorrow, so there were extra Michiganites in view. People walked in. The tray of fruit and cheese I brought was heartily enjoyed. Two friends from different spheres of my life turned out to know each other from yet another sphere, which they share without me -- a fine moment in a small town. The bookstore cat barfed on the carpet. I discovered the bookseller had graduated high school from BHS South the year after me, and had had the same English teacher.

I sold eleven books. That seems like a fine start to a career.

A highlight, I have to admit, was my mother's involvement. Pardon me, my Significant Mother. That's how she's identified in the book's dedication, and she has adopted the title with pride. At 83 she's still a pistol, regardless of the the two hearing aids, two titanium knees, Lifeline pendant, and cane. When we realized that the poster for the signing was only going to stay on the glass door recessed far away from the sidewalk, Mom pulled it down and stood outside holding it up against her chest. She people-watched and announced the signing of her daughter's first novel, right inside here, to anyone who paused to stare.

I think she had as much fun as I did.

One friend urged me to have a glass of champagne after packing up the rest of my books. I agreed, but what I actually did was even better. Arriving home, I immediately got out of my nice outfit and napped for an hour. And then Mom and I went to Dairy Queen. After launching a career as a popular author, a big hot-fudge sundae is the perfect punctuation.

Now here's the postscript. All my life, I have been identified as "Marge Blewett's daughter," because my Significant Mother has always been a pistol, through fifty years and more involvement at the IU School of Journalism. Today (she told me), during the day, Mom walked into the IU J-School newsroom, and a young man saw her and said, "Hey, are you Joy Laughter's mom? When's her book signing?"

I like to died.