Tag Archives: writing

A St. Martin’s Princess

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Jack and I took the train to NYC, two country mice with tails tucked between their unfashionable trouser legs, big-eyed and trembling about the whiskers. St. Martin’s Press, where we were to lunch with my editor and marketing/publicity team, is in the famous Flatiron Building on Fifth Avenue.

Yeah, that’s exactly what it sounds like: cool to the edge of intimidating.

Me in the hallowed halls of Harold Ober, an office of satisfyingly dark wood bookshelves and hushed literary ambiance. Also, you can see why my hair made people wonder about the bag lady thing.

Jack pulled our wheelie like a faithful pet behind us, and I carried one of those sturdy plastic grocery bags favored by bag ladies, and we meandered in a stair-step pattern along through the flower district, up the mighty 5th, past a lot of very expensive loft apartments. New Yorkers are famous for not paying attention to the people around them, but I saw a few furtive glances cast my way. I had clothes tucked into the bag, making it bulky, and the cheerful orange face and black button eyes of a large stuffed cat peeped from the top along with a hairbrush and a few toiletries in a plastic bag. I looked like a bag lady wearing a nice blazer and trousers. Plus it was raining, so my naturally thick hair had started to frizz. People couldn’t decide if I were off my meds, or just a professional woman who couldn’t find her briefcase.

In this Clampett-esque manner we arrived, slightly wet but exuberant at having found the place, in the lobby of the esteemed Flatiron, where I prepared to produce photo ID and explain the cat. The doorman smiled at us. “And you will be the visiting author they’re expecting. 18th floor, turn right, I’ll buzz Laura that you’re here.”

Well, that was easy. He never said a word about the cat.

Upstairs Laura, the editorial assistant dancer with the beautiful build and gorgeous hair and bubbly personality, met us at the elevator door. “WENDY!” She settled us into an office and offered us “good tea or bad coffee” as we chatted until the extraordinary Nichole arrived. It’s so cool to meet in the flesh those who have had such an influence on your life in the day-to-day. We picked up Marketer Cassie and Publicist Kim (or, as I thought when meeting them, Sister Dark/Sister Light; both are gorgeous women, slender with long hair and bright, observant eyes. But Kim looks as though she were crafted from porcelain, while Cassie was carved from a strong fine-grain wood.)

Off the team traipsed to lunch at a great Indian restaurant, chosen in Jack’s honor, where we talked about query letters (there’s a wall of shame in the office where people put what Nichole aptly describes as her built-in bullshit detector to the test) and the future of big publishing houses and little bookstores, and the general glory of getting to work with words all day, their way or mine.

All through lunch, if Jack or I mentioned something we’d heard about NYC, or thought might be fun to do, somebody offered to help us do it. We didn’t contribute to the lunch fund. We were taken to the top of the building to the point end for “the best view in NYC.” (Here I distinguished myself in a Big Stone Gap way; looking down on a veritable stream of yellow, I said, “Wow, so many cabs on the street!” When I looked up, John the incredibly powerful executive whose office we had crashed, was gazing at me with paternal benevolence. I grinned. “Small town girl.” He grinned back. “Everyone says something like that.”)

Pamela and her bunny, Louise, the world’s most famous literary rabbit.

From here we were to rejoin Pamela, agent extraordinaire, some 25 blocks up the way. She’d been to lunch but had to head straight back to do agenty bits before Friday ended. Besides, it was fun to walk up–although we were offered a subway card and a cab. The whole weekend was like that: mention something, ask a question, and the mechanism started up unless you stopped it. I actually said to the girls, while back at their offices passing out small gifts to them, “Could you turn that Princess Author thing off? I’m not used to having my every whim granted.” They grinned big grins with knowing eyes. These are smart women, and they like their jobs. Unless I miss my guess, they also like people.

For someone from a small town, NYC is one big television set. Leaving that fascinating lunch with the team of SMP women who had edited, marketed and publicized Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap, we people-watched in the streets as we made our way to Pamela, but forgot the address at the last minute, so I ducked in and asked a doorman for help. He courteously hauled out his cell phone, asked me to spell Harold Ober Agency, and stepped outside to point to which building it was. I hadn’t expected people downtown to be so polite to those of us who clearly don’t belong there–remember, I had a bulky plastic bag with a cat face peeking out over my arm–but he was neither condescending nor brusque, just a nice guy helping someone who needed it.

Jack at peace in the pretty and comfortable flat provided for us. It was a lovely place to retire to after the music of taxi horns and the fun of wandering around Greenwich Village.

Pamela took us to a Lebanese restaurant of incredible courses and ambiance–again, because she’d asked “what kind of food do you like and not get very often.” Then she hand-delivered us in a taxi to the flat where we’d been offered hospitality. Saturday Pamela showed us around Greenwich Village–which Jack will be blogging about in a couple of days–and Sunday Nichole (who btw is staff kitten Owen Meany’s godmama) cooked us brunch in her flat before we headed out. Her tiny and adorable daughter exhibited finger paintings while Dad and Grandpa talked music with Jack. It was not the quintessential inner-city experience of a visiting author, but a “friends for Sunday brunch” type day. Most pleasant—and delicious. Nichole bakes her own bread and her mother makes a killer raspberry jam.

So it was fun, especially because we had friends inside the clockworks showing us how they worked, taking us places and treating us like visiting royalty. One would not want to get used to this as a lifestyle, but for three days it was most pleasant being a St Martin’s Princess.

 

The Parade of Characters

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On Wednesday of our great book extravaganza, we made our way to Winchester. The sum total of my knowledge about Winchester, VA prior to this was its historic architecture, cool pedestrian mall, and sweet little bookshop in the corner: Winchester Book Gallery.

I wandered into the Book Gallery last year during a break in some very fun ethnographic interviewing I did as a subcontractor. Sometimes I serve as a hired gun for conducting interviews about rural living in Appalachia for various universities. It’s great work if you can get it, bopping across the state staying in small motels, seeing stuff you’d never otherwise see, meeting the most incredible people and getting them to tell you interesting things about how they do business.

That’s how I discovered Winchester. And in its Book Gallery, already utterly charmed by the downtown district, I found shop owner Christine to be charming in and of herself. Such a put-you-at-your-ease type was she, when she asked, “What brings you to the bookstore?” I blurted out, “I wrote a book about bookstores and I love to visit them” while continuing my wide-eyed stare at her carefully curated collection.

“What’s your name?” she asked. When I told her, she astounded me by saying, “Oh, The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap.” It turns out that Christine is not only vivacious and charming, but on the ball. She has a google search feed that keeps up with news items about small bookshops in the States. We decided to have a book signing there once the book was launched, and that day came Wednesday past.

At 5 pm I was ensconced at a big desk covered—absolutely covered—with copies of Little Bookstore, while Jack sat beside me strumming guitar. This wasn’t a planned event, but a “come by and meet the author” kind of night. Thus began what Jack and I now call The Parade of Characters:

An older man who was—of course—an ex-pat Big Stone Gapper. He regaled us with stories of what had been done in the judge’s hunting cabin in their youth, and other tales of Old Family laundry, not laundered. We were splitting our sides laughing—and you note that I’m not using names here. This guy knows a lot. I’m surprised he’s still alive, and delighted that he comes back every August for a big ol’ party—to which we have now been invited. That will be a hoot. But I probably won’t be allowed to write about it.

Two round women, slow of speech, soft of voice. “Special needs” is a label that imposes assumptions, so let’s just say they were hoping to open a bookstore up in Maryland. They had, in fact, traveled down expressely to talk to me about this. Oh dear sweet lambs, do not go gently to the slaughter. I wanted to bundle them up in warm coats (the day was cold and they were wearing only sweatshirts) and warn them off their intended trajectory. But I also didn’t want to crush anything that was making them happy, so we chatted amiably about start-up costs and how to shelve books until their driver came to collect them. Be well, dear children, and don’t let anyone lead you astray. I still feel protective of those two.

An Alec Baldwin look-alike entered with his wife, she making a bee-line for the upstairs mystery section, he clearly killing time. When he realized an author was sitting there hawking her book, he tried politely to avoid eye contact with me. But my husband had a copy of the People Magazine article (Oct. 22 issue!) that included Little Bookstore as a “great read.” Alec saw that, picked up a book, and said, “My sister is hard to buy for. But she likes these things.” (I think he meant books.) Whatever; I sold him one.

A man walking three Labradors. (Winchester Book Gallery is dog-friendly.) “I saw the sign,” he said. “Big Stone Gap, in SW VA?” I assured him yes, and he said, “We were just there, at the June Tolliver house and the open air theatre.” A few moments more of conversation, dogs straining at the leash–apparently they had decided en masse they wanted to buy the latest J.K. Rowling–and we realized that not only had this man and his wife visited our street last month, they had parked outside the bookstore–but not come in.

“Hmmph,” I said, and the man, probably out of guilt, bought one of my books. The dogs never got their Rowling.

A lady with dreadlocks. She fell into the shop, towed by a dog that looked like a cross between a Newfoundlander and an Irish wolfhound, in a word: big. The dog came straight for Christine, who bent and wrapped her arms around it. I hoped it was a hug rather than a last resort.

“This is XNVOUFER,” she said, her head buried in his fur. “He comes in every day to get socialized to become a service dog.” XNVOUFER (I swear that’s what it sounded like) licked Christine on the head, then trotted over to browse the history section.

Last through the door came a woman wearing a puffy green jacket, followed by a man wearing a puffy black jacket and a small child of indeterminate gender wearing a puffy pink jacket (social norms suggest but do not verify, and by this point in the evening I was taking nothing for granted). They wandered around, avoiding me, until the woman accidentally bumped the table.

“Oh,” she said, finding herself cheek to cheek with an author. “What’s your book about?”

I launched into my elevator speech description: my husband and I opened a used books store and the book described that in particular but life in general, discussing how to rebuild dreams and live to the fullest without letting anyone else dictate what will work and what won’t.

“Mmm.” She stared at me a moment, then asked, “So your bookstore, it’s still operating?”