On my first book tour, I wore high heels. 

For a gal who spends most of her days in bare feet, wearing high-heeled shoes is the ultimate torture.  But it was my first big book, and I wanted to look the part of the “successful”? author, so I decided to go all out with an expensive knit skirt suit and nylons and high heels.  In aching feet, I trudged through airport after airport, looking like – well, like a California realtor.  I came home with blisters.  I promptly shoved the suit and heels in my closet and climbed back into my blue jeans.

As the years went by, and I headed out on successive book tours, I began to shed the business attire.  First to go were the nylons and the high heels, replaced with comfortable, if clunky, black walking shoes.  I ditched the knit skirt suit and instead wore black slacks.  I love black because it goes with everything.  Plus, it hides grease stains, a big plus if you’re as addicted to French fries as I am.

I started paying attention to what other authors were wearing.  I noticed that most male thriller writers were wearing leather and black turtlenecks.  I noticed that the female authors were adopting the black leather look as well.  I was briefly possessed by leather envy, so I bought myself a leather jacket — a stupid affectation, since my tours are usually in September, and I ended up sweltering in my jacket while trying so hard to look cool.

So I ditched the leather jacket.

The ordeals of airport security eventually forced me to leave the clunky walking shoes behind, in favor of slip-on shoes.  Too often I’d come out of security screening and find nowhere to sit.  It felt undignified to plop down on the floor and tie my shoes, so I’d end up performing a stork dance as I struggled to pull on my shoes while hanging onto purse, reading materials, and laptop. I don’t know how elderly passengers with bad knees and hips manage. 

The “author look” has certainly changed over the years.  Tom Wolfe, in his elegant white suits, is now the exception, not the rule.  Authors, in short, have become slobs.  They show up for book events unshaven and rumpled, in tattered blue jeans and tee shirts.  They’re artists, and the public almost expects them to look unconventional.  Nowadays, when an author wears a business suit to a booksigning, you can be pretty sure he’s either:

1) written a business book or

2) on his first book tour, and still under the impression that he should look as elegant as Tom Wolfe. 

Let’s take a look at what I’m wearing for this, my twelfth tour.

 – Blue jeans.  Ten years ago, I wouldn’t have dared to wear them on tour.  But then I noticed that Stephen King lives in blue jeans when he’s on tour.   And all those rich, high-powered computer geeks wear them everywhere as well.  If jeans are good enough for them, then they’re good enough for me.

– A travel blazer from the mail-order company Travelsmith, because it has lots of zippered pockets in which to stuff airline tickets, reading glasses, peanuts, you name it.

– Mule-style boat shoes.  To whisk through airline security.

– White cotton shirts.  Because they’re comfortable and can be used to dress up or dress down.  The downside: they get wrinkly. But that’s what hotel room ironing boards are for.  Or you can accept the wrinkles and just adopt the always fashionable “rumpled author look.”

– And, of course, enough underwear. I hear that some authors consider this almost an optional item.  Instead, they simply locate the closest department store or Victoria’s Secret and buy new underwear while on the road.  And either dispose of, or mail home, their dirty laundry.

I’ve pared down my travel wardrobe to fit into a single carry-on bag because one thing I’ve learned after eleven book tours is to never, ever check in your luggage at the airport.  Since you’re in a different city every day, your suitcase will never catch up with you. 

Besides clothing and toiletries, what else do I pack?

– Bookmarks, to give away at signing events.

– A roll of “Signed by Author” stickers, to slap onto book covers when I see my books in airport stores.

– A simple wind-up alarm clock.  Because I’m too stupid to figure out how to use those clock radios in the Hilton Hotels chain.  (Does anyone know how to set the alarm on those things?)

– Electronic gear (Blackberry charger, computer charger, laptop, camera.)

Although I seem to pack less and less clothing every year, my suitcase is heavier than ever because of all the gizmos.  Other authors also seem to be lugging along more electronics while paring down their wardrobes. 

This trend could point the way to the new “author look”.  Naked, but with Blackberries fully charged.

I got word Wednesday afternoon that after its first week on sale, the paperback edition of THE BONE GARDEN will be #11 on the August 17 New York Times mass-market fiction bestseller list.  (It will be #12 on the Publishers Weekly bestseller list.)  It’s a really tough list at the moment.  Look at the big names who are also on the list: Grisham, James Patterson, Sandra Brown, Nicholas Sparks, Catherine Coulter, Faye Kellerman, Daniel Silva, and Janet Evanovich.  So … whew! 

That’s the rate I was able to sign books.  I had no idea I was that fast.

A few days, I blogged about getting stuck in an airport en route to Chicago.  The reason I flew to Chicago was to visit the warehouse of Levy, a national book distributor in Romeoville, IL, that supplies mass market books to a huge number of retail outlets.  But because of storms in the Chicago area, my flight was cancelled (after an 8-hour delay) and I ended up stuck overnight in Portland Maine.  But the next day, by some miracle, I managed to fly out and got to my destination about nineteen hours late.  I went straight from O’Hare to the Levy warehouse, where I was greeted with this sign:

I was then ushered into the cafeteria, where I was confronted with a table covered with books to be autographed.

1500 copies of a single title.  That’s what you’re seeing in this photo.  And that was just a quarter of the books waiting to be signed. The man in the photo is Jerry Wujcik from Random House sales. I’m sorry he’s so hard to see in this photo because he looks exactly like Harrison Ford.  Trust me, he does.

I sat down and got to work.  With the assistance of some great guys from Levy, who kept the books moving, we got a mini-assembly line going.  (The guys kept muttering under their breath, in Spanish: “Wow, she’s fast.”)  In about six hours, I was able to sign 6,000 paperback copies of four of my backlist titles: THE SINNER, BODY DOUBLE, VANISH, and THE MEPHISTO CLUB.  These will be distributed to varous retailers.

People always ask me if I ever get writer’s cramp, and the truth is, I never have.  Not even during this marathon signing session.  I managed to keep going, at a rate of one book every 3.8 seconds, but I admit that my signature began to deteriorate.  By the end of it, it was looking pretty wormy.  But I guarantee that if you pick up a paperback with an autograph sticker on it, I did indeed sign it.  Even if it’s the sloppiest signature you ever saw.

When the signing was all over, here’s what the finished product looked like in the warehouse: 6,000 copies boxed for shipment.  And that’s my super-efficient team standing with me:

Why fly all the way to Chicago to sign books?  The answer is clear: readers love signed books.

I don’t have the hard facts here, but one person in the book industry told me that an autographed book sells five times faster than an unsigned book.  That alone makes a trip to a distributor a very worthwhile visit indeed!

I happen to be one of those authors who absolutely loves being on book tour. I’ve been on eleven of them (whoa, that many?) and I’m gearing up for my twelfth tour, to promote THE KEEPSAKE. And for the most part they all went smoothly — well, except for the awful morning of September 11, 2001, when I was on the way to the airport and heard, on the driver’s radio, that all flights had been shut down. All I wanted to do was get home and be with my family, but I ended up stranded in Seattle for a week.

Aside from national emergencies, though, I’ve found book tours to be largely pleasant if hectic affairs, with only the occasional travel glitch. But at the moment, I’m sitting in an airport waiting to board a flight that is already seven hours delayed, thanks to thunderstorms in Chicago. I know that this is just one of those Acts of God that no one can predict or control. Lord knows, my publisher’s travel agent has worked heroically over the past few hours to get me to my destination.

But there’s no arguing with the weather.

It seems to me, a frequent traveler, that these airline fiascos seem to be happening more and more often. Planes are crowded and flights are overbooked. The seven-hour delay, the ten-hour delay, the cancelled flights, are now so frequent and routine that a multi-connection airline trip requires the same mental preparation required to charge into battle. I now expect something to go wrong. I expect to miss my connections. I try to get into my destination city the night before rather than the day of. (And even then, as with this trip, I may not make it to my appointment.) I expect to go hungry (pack granola bars!) and arrive exhausted, if at all.

I never, ever check my baggage. Because the airlines will lose it. They see my battered suitcase come rolling by on the conveyor belt and say, “ah ha! Let’s misplace that one again!”

I still love going on book tour. What I don’t love is U.S. air travel. I long for a good, reliable train network that can whisk me from coast to coast. I long for the days when I (on obsessive-compulsive about being on time) could count on arriving as expected. I long for some predictability in travel. It just ain’t gonna happen. Not these days.

So I take a deep breath and just try to be Zen about it. The reward for all the stress is the chance to meet wonderful readers and booksellers. I’d travel to Timbuktu to meet them.

I just hope they’ll understand if I don’t show up as scheduled.

I’m probably stuck in an airport.

I have quite a few KEEPSAKE bookmarks to give away, so if you’d like one or two or even a dozen autographed bookmarks, just send a self-addressed, stamped business-size envelope to:

Tess Gerritsen, PO Box G, Camden, ME  04843.

(For quantities of more than six, two stamps will be needed.)

If you’re a bookstore or library and want larger quantities for your patrons, email me your address.  I’d be happy to send you some!

I’ll be traveling for the next few weeks, so will be blogging only intermittently. The big news is: I’m headed off to my first book tour in Finland, and can’t wait to see that beautiful country.

And in answer to several queries about just what the heck Hadrian’s Wall is all about …

It’s an impressive vestige of the Roman occupation of Britain.  While most of the wall has been taken down, the stones cannibalized to build other structures since then, there are still a number of ruins that attest to the highly advanced architectural skills of the Romans.  As an archaeology buff, of course I had to hunt it down!

After wrapping up at Harrogate, where I met up with my wonderful UK team from Transworld Publishers (below),

 it was time for some sightseeing.  My husband and I, along with my literary agent Meg Ruley, headed off in search of Hadrian’s Wall.  First we pulled into the little town of Alston in the gorgeous Pennines, where we spent two nights at a country inn called Lovelady Shield.  Every Sunday, the inn serves an exquisite eight-course dinner.  Here we are, Meg and I, feeling happy and well-fed.

Our one and only goal during our trip north was to visit Hadrian’s Wall. 

We had no idea how difficult it would be to find it.

 
The first place we headed for was the ancient site of Vindolanda, where over a hundred samples of writing from the Roman Britain era were discovered.  They were little “postcards” written on thin slices of wood, and preserved by the oxygen-poor mud of the site.  These writing samples give us very human and intimate peeks into the lives of real people.  There’s a note from a woman to her sister, asking her to please come for her birthday party.  In another note, a man implores his brother to please send cash as soon as possible, as he’s in dire need of it.  Also found in the mud were leather shoes, so well-preserved they might have just been discarded by their owners.  The exhibit was astonishing and immensely moving, and I could have spent a week there.

 
But it was time to move on.  We still hadn’t seen the wall.

 
Next we went to the Roman fort at Chesters, where a diagram of the site showed the wall being present right there in front of us.  But where was it?  We thought we spied a small bit of it, half-buried in the grass – but no!  It couldn’t be that unimpressive, could it? 
We drove on to the Roman town of Corbridge, and along the way, we kept seeing signs pointing to Hadrian’s Wall.  Invariably, these signs seemed to point to … nothing. 

 
We began to wonder if the wall was a fraud, something devised by the British tourism agency to fool visitors into coming north.  Meg started calling our journey “Where’s Wall-do?” and “The Emperor’s New Wall.”

 
At last, defeated, we headed toward Newcastle to turn in our rental car and climb on the train back to London.  But we needed gas, so we stopped at a little town to fill our tank.  In exasperation, we asked the gas station clerk if the wall happened to be anywhere nearby.   Oh yes, she told us. 

A few minutes later – we finally found it.

Mission accomplished!

And finally — a photo I couldn’t resist sharing.  It was taken at the castle in Knaresborough, where we encountered the official ”keeper of the ravens,” with her young charge.  This raven is only about six weeks old, and it sleeps in the keeper’s bedroom along with her other ravens.

I’m sitting in Heathrow waiting for my flight home, and am still thinking about the highlights of what turned out to be a wonderful conference. I haven’t yet blogged about the events in which I participated, so here’s what happened.

On Friday, I was part of a panel on religious symbolism. When I first heard they’d placed me on this panel, I was puzzled because I don’t think of my books as having a lot of religious themes, but there I was, sitting onstage with Ann Perry, Chris Kuzneski, and a French author named Michel Benoit. Our moderator, Natasha Cooper, was most curious about our reactions to Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, wondering why we thought it was so popular.

Which happens to be a really interesting question. Ann Perry hadn’t read the book, so she didn’t comment. Michel Benoit thought the book’s success had to do with spectacularly good marketing. I’ve heard a number of writers speak of the book with disdain, criticizing its writing, its themes, its factual and geographic inaccuracies. But when I read the book, I was just looking to have a good time.

And I did have fun.

I was on a plane home from Paris when I cracked open the galley. About halfway through the book, I had to get up to use the restroom, and as I got out of my seat, I suddenly caught sight of the passenger sitting right behind me. He was wearing what looked like Opus Dei robes. I kid you not — he was dressed exactly like the villains in the novel, and I was spooked. That little event alone made reading the book a pretty memorable experience.

I think the reason for the book’s success was its connection with women. It is a feminist, subversive novel that tells women that, yes, they may indeed have had a role in the foundation of the church. It made devout Christians feel a bit naughty reading it, and that was a big part of its success.

On Sunday, I was scheduled to be the last author featured on the program. I was supposed to be interviewed onstage by a radio personality, so I had no need to prepare a speech. I love these sorts of presentations — no stress, just smile and answer questions.

The interviewer never showed up. We still don’t know what happened to him. Would I have a problem with that? they asked me. Could I just go onstage solo and talk for an hour to a packed room?

Luckily, I never seem to run out of things to say when it comes to the writing business. So I walked onstage and just started talking. About why I write crime novels. About where the ideas come from. About the cool things I’ve learned while doing my research.

Later I was asked how I could do that — just get up before an audience and fill an hour without notes. And my only answer to that is: longevity in the business. It’s the same advice I give to newly published authors who are discouraged by how few people line up to buy their books. Or to authors who freeze in front of a bookstore crowd because they’ve run out of things to say. You have to write enough books, collect enough war stories, and with time, you’ll collect both stories and readers. These things don’t happen overnight. You just have to survive long enough in the business.

So if you’re starting out as a published author, keep track of the things that happen to you. The weird anecdotes, the creepy fans, the fun facts you turn up in your research. When you talk to an audience, take note of what makes your audience laugh or lean forward in their chairs — and file those remarks away for future use, because you’ll know they’re proven crowd-pleasers. After five books or ten books, you’ll have amassed a large array of war stories. You’ll know about how long each story takes to tell. You’ll have a series of set pieces that you can trot out when you need to fill time.

You’ll never be at a loss for words.

I’m writing this from the absolutely lovely resort town of Harrogate in the UK, where I arrived on Thursday evening. I’m attending the Crime Writing Festival, which is being held at the Crown Hotel.

The hotel is filled with writers, fans and editors from around the world. In fact, one of the first authors I met (on the train up from London) was Johan Theorin, a Swedish author whose books are starting to make a big splash here in the UK.

(As you can see, Johan and I share a love for great beers.)

One of the great aspects of this festival is that each presentation receives the festival’s full attention — there are no simultaneous panels or programs, so that one doesn’t have to sit onstage and look out at a half-empty auditorium. And the panels have been fascinating, although I must confess that it’s taken me a few days to tune in to the various UK accents, which to this American’s ear are sometimes incomprehensible. I found French novelist Michel Benoit’s strong French accent easier to understand than some of the English I’m hearing around here!

Some of the memorable moments that I can recall off the top of my head:

On opening night, panel moderator Natasha Cooper asked each of the panelists onstage: “What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I could almost see the panelists squirming in their chairs as they tried to decide whether to tell the truth.

Friday, on the “True Lies” program, a panel of authors who are also real police officers or attorneys (Nigel McCrery, Charlie Owen, John Connor and Frances Fyfield) described some of the weird real-life cases they’ve experienced. And Charlie Owen, I think it was, spoke of the man who had been in the midst of picking his nose when he had a car accident which drove his finger straight up his nostril and into his brain, killing him. “A case of fatal nose-picking”, as she put it.

Today, a much-anticipated panel called “Bloody Women” played to a packed house. Chelsea Cain, Val McDermid, Simon Beckett and Mark Billingham discussed whether women can get away with more explicit violence in their novels than can men. Because emotions (and opinions) are strong on this topic, we were all expecting male vs. female arguments to break out, but in fact they were all quite civilized. No controversy after all, which led someone to say, “So what’s the argument going to be next year? Big vs small?” Mark Billingham responded with: “Big vs. small what?”

And moderator Stuart MacBride’s hilarious answer: “Mark, come with me into the men’s room and I’ll demonstrate.”

I’m leaving for the UK, to attend the Harrogate Crime Writing Festival.  I hope to be blogging from the road, so here’s hoping I can manage to find enough wi-fi coverage to use my new laptop.  I’m looking forward to catching up with some writing pals, including Joe Finder, Jeffrey Deaver and Simon Kernick, plus get the chance to meet some writers I’ve never met before, including the mysterious Andy McNab.

 While I’m gone, you can also check out my blogpost on Murderati, which will appear next Tuesday, the 15th.

I’ve missed you all.  I’ve missed the community here, and the chance to dish about the industry.  It’s been a few months (has it?) since I really sat down and wrote a post.  I mean, a real post that wasn’t about selling my latest book or announcing promotional stuff, which I guess is the real purpose of an author’s blog, a purpose that I never stuck to because I always had other things I wanted to talk about.  And even though I enjoyed the vacation, there many, many times when something startling would happen, or I’d hear a conversation, and I’d think, “gosh, I’d really like to blog about that!” 

But I didn’t.

I’m still a little leery about wading into these waters again.  I’m worried that I’ll once again stick my foot in my mouth and offend someone.  But I’ve come to the conclusion that there’s a certain subsegment of people out there who’ll be offended if I say the sky is blue, and sometimes you just have to ignore those people and speak your mind.  Those people will be offended no matter what you say.  Life is too short to care what they think.  (Yeah, and please keep reminding me of this.)

I was also lured back into blogging by all the emails I’ve received over the past few months.  And then I heard the somewhat startling news that I landed on the 100 top female bloggers list.  Which I didn’t even know existed until someone sent me the link to it.

So I guess despite all the gaffes I’ve made here (and will certainly make in the future), I must be striking some notes that people are identifying with.

My business of writing gem for this week is actually stolen from the June 23 issue of Publishers Weekly, a column called “Authors & Writers By the Numbers.”  Some stats:

Total number of authors and writers, 2005: 185,276

Median income for full-time authors: $50,800

Median income for all authors: $38,000

Median income for male authors: $47,300

Median income for female authors: $33,300

Percent of authors who are minorities: 10.8%

Source: National Endowment for the Arts study, 1990-2005

You know what?  I have a really, really hard time believing some of these statistics.

That median income surprises me, especially after I saw the Novelists Ink survey in which a large percentage of multi-published novelists can’t earn a living on their writing.  I’m also very skeptical of the number of minority authors.  Whenever I attend a writer’s conference, I find that I’m one of very few minorities in attendance.  I’m also surprised to find that male authors out-earn female authors, because I’ve always thought that female authors outsell male authors.

So these statistics surprise me. 

Finally, there’s this statistic:

Highest ranking city in authors per capita:  Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Okay, that I believe.