The Joyride of a First Book Tour

Jewels, Ghouls, and People who'll Eat You Alive

Photo credit: Inprint.

I’ve been thinking about this post for a while, swinging between a sweet, anodyne diary and baring all.

I never understood writers who posted that they were tired after a book tour, ready to return home, back to writing. But I realized how much energy it takes to navigate social relations, how much energy and skill you need. I am particularly low in that corner. Perhaps I need to supplement with more methyl-folate. Usually, after half an hour with friends, I’m ready to go home. For about ten years at least, I’ve just been more and more solitary, in my dark cave, with no social interactions, barely even coming out to events in my town. I’d been looking after two ailing parents, who died one after another, struggling with finances, raising kids, until I was hardly a social person, let alone a writer.

It was really nice to start going to events, reading books again, seeing people. It’s joyful to interact with people. I also felt so much guilt, if I couldn’t make it to an event, if I couldn’t show up for a writer, and that’s probably a lot of where the stress comes in, that you could fail at any moment because you don’t have capacity.

I’m not going to touch on an important aspect of this book launch, when it happened, in the middle of the daily bombing and killing of Palestinians in Gaza, because I don’t have the language to articulate that part.

I was overwhelmed by everyone who read my book. Is there a greater joy? For years, I had written novels and put them away, and no one wanted to read them. It’s hard to be a writer when no one was reading what you write. But I was suddenly experiencing the opposite. I felt so much joy and I was so grateful and humbled. And then, there were countless people who showed up to be a conversation partner, to host me, to invite me, to share on social media. My conversation partner at my book launch had an accident and ended up in the emergency room, but still came, in a crutch! As a chronic complainer, I didn’t have the language to say how incredible that feels, when people went out of their way to support me, people I admired and respected so much for their own writing and scholarship. I’m not going to name them, just as I’m not going to name anyone in the negative stuff that follows.

My former college professor hosted me at Kelly Writer’s House, and we talked with the blue light of evening in the window behind us. It's a beautiful house, and they had a grand reception, and my books for sale. I went to read at Berkeley, and had discussants talk about my book, and the audience was room full of people in South Asian Studies, history, women’s studies.

This book led to so many celebrations with friends, so many invitations, panels, attention and respect for my work that I would never have received without publication. Sometimes I realize that I owe everything, this experience that I am having now, to my editor Kurt Baumeister, who picked my book out of a slush pile, and connected with it every step of the way.

I suppose what I’ve learned is that most of us [I] have this idea that we’re all the same people, with the same values, and behavior, and it’s shocking to discover the opposite. I am so used to being alone that such encounters feel violating in a deep way.

First, there was a writer who asked me to read their manuscript, then edit, then blurb, whom I helped in every way, who then came to my book launch and started selling their book to everyone who came to the event, and also told me my book was bad and began to argue with me. Yikes!

Another writer I met recently invited me to read at an event, and since then I felt indebted. This person then started to bully me and possess me, as if they owned me, asking me to do things, do events with them, and getting angry every time I refused, so I would say sorry in a fright. At a friend’s book event, they started handing out their own flier and then pointing with a finger, forced me to introduce them. Also, this writer kept saying that I should invite them to every event I did, including my book launch! Now that I think about it, while I was editing my manuscript, this writer kept calling and fighting. As a fairly passive and timid person, I had no defense. I taught their book, invited them to a radio show, did an interview, thinking that I had repaid some debt. Also, my husband always says not to judge people, and he always explains away people’s actions. I think most of us think that we shouldn’t talk about negative things and awful people because that takes away attention from our own projects and from the people we should affirm, help, etc. But now I’ve changed my philosophy. I’ve talked to people who have shared the same “friends” and suffered similarly, but because we don’t gossip, we’ve never found out. I think gossip is self-preservation. Beware of writers who use you and who have no empathy. To borrow a friend’s expression without their permission, they will eat you alive!

Also, I just took people at their word. If someone said to do an event, if someone committed, if someone said yes, there will be so many people. I’ve been mislaid again and again, and now I realize that when people say things that doesn’t affect them, they don’t really mean it. You expect a level of professionalism and decency from everyone, and then you’re shocked.

Lastly, there are the writers who think so lowly of you, who will make you read everything they write, ask you for help in life, and still think you are an awful writer and tell you. When my novel was going to be published, I went for a walk with a “friend” who said four times that my novel was awful, and then, when I talked about blurbs, went on to mention the names of writers, all women, whose writing they despised. Later, when I was at AWP, this writer showed up and sidled into conversation with the people I had met recently. Another thing I learned, how people sidle into conversation, how expert people are at playing the game! Anyway, this person also said that people are currency, and not to share your currency.

Then a friend read my book and had a dinner party for me, with gluten-free pie.

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