I’m gonna have to go ahead and ask you to fix this…

by Jonathan on March 4th, 2008

I just got a dummy of a possible cover for the mass market paperback edition of Precious Blood, and, well…

(well, that was then, this is now – the final version is pretty strong!)

fly sleep eat drive read drive sleep read drive

by Jonathan on November 19th, 2007

So I’m on my book tour.

My reading on Thursday November 8th at the Astor Place Barnes & Noble was a blast – the hometown crowd was somewhat boisterous, people laughed at my jokes, the store ran out of chairs and then they almost ran out of books.

My tour began officially with a reading in Miami at the huge international Book Fair on Saturday the 10th, so the night after my B&N reading I flew down. In honour of the occasion, I flew business class on Delta. And it was a complete disaster. First Delta delayed my 6:55PM flight until 10:40PM (just shy, as I understand it, of the four hour mark, at which point they’d have had to compensate passengers for the delay), putting us into Miami at 2:30AM. Then they lost my luggage. I ended up getting to my hotel well after 3:30AM, pissy as all get out.

I spent most of Saturday rushing around preparing for my reading – made a misguided foray in search of toiletries in the broiling sun, returning to the hotel sweaty and my normally unruly hair sproinging from the humidity, got a new power cord and iPhone hook-up for my MacBook (I’d tossed the cables in my bag, and both computer and phone were dwindling rapidly), washed my clothes in the sink, then sitting on the john slowly drying them with a hairdryer that kept giving up the ghost. The cab for the fair was half an hour late, the volunteers weren’t familiar with the location of the Authors’ Lounge, we got lost trying to find the site of my reading. Long story short, I arrived in physical and intellectual disarray when the other authors on my panel were already seated and the questions about to begin.

The attendance was good, but that was mostly because two of the four writers on the panel were Florida-based – Tim Dorsey and Jeff Lindsay (who does the Dexter books). To my horror, Jeff and Tim did schtick, with Tim even whipping out props. I firmly believe that I can do schtick with the best of them, but I was beat, and sweaty and cranky. I introduced myself and did a straight reading from Precious Blood. It went pretty well – the selection I chose was a bit more intense when read out loud than it had seemed in my head when preparing it.

Back at my hotel, my bags still hadn’t arrived, and hadn’t even been located in Delta’s system – the thought of recycling my travel clothes yet again was really harshing my mellow. I was thinking I’d skip the Authors’ Party at the Raleigh Hotel, but at 9PM I decided to stop being such a wuss, showered and climbed into my clothes again, and headed over. I was just going to do a flyby, but it was a beautiful night, and the crowd was lively, and there was a DJ playing rather gorgeous minimal tribal house while two percussionists built up the texture, so I installed myself on a banquette by the DJ stand and watched the people come and go. I ended up spending much of the evening chatting with the lovely Tina Andreadis from Harper, and later with Jeff Lindsay and Christine Kling.

Despite the exhaustion, the feeling unkempt and unwashed, the desperate shopping and the frazzled reading, it really was a lovely night in Miami Beach.