Carol Cassella is the author of HEALER and OXYGEN, a National Bestseller. You may also include her website www.carolcassella.com. She will be part of our Chuckanut Radio Hour on Thursday, September 10, 6:30pm at the Leopold's Crystal Ballroom.
Ah, the book tour! Coffee delivered to my hotel room and billed to the publisher.
The exhilaration of seeing pretty piles of my words stamped out on crisp white pages bound up in their artsy cover. Bookstore owners who welcome me with flattering introductions, total strangers who ask for my autograph on their newly purchased novel. Reviews. Sales figures. It is totally terrifying! Well, not the morning coffee, but all the rest of it. The last time I remember actually wanting to be a public figure to any degree was when I walked down a platform of shoved-together cafeteria tables with a Reynolds Wrap crown on my head. I was the winner of the summer camp beauty pageant, seven years old and incapable of thinking people might not like the way my brain interpreted the world. Alas, the next few decades wiped out that protective bubble, and I confess I often reassure my friends that they can not like my book and still like me. Because I am not my book. But I am indeed it's parent, and you, my reader, are its guardian. Think about it--little black squiggles I use to describe a character that your imagination dresses and vocalizes and animates in a completely unique way, specific to your own experiences and emotional life. If we're talking novels, you might live in that shared world for days--years if you are a Harry Potter fan. Plays, movies, operas, paintings: none requires quite as much participation by their audience.
A book is the exchange of stories between a writer and reader. The exchange of ideas--the meeting places and the disagreeing places, and all the gray areas in between. And it is the gray areas of a book, contentious as they might be, that I love the most, and which I believe fiction unfolds more magnificently than any other art form. But how can I hear your half of the argument without meeting you? All sales pressure from the industry aside, it is the conversation between us, the author and reader and bookseller, that is the true heart and soul of a book tour. We are the critical knot in the circular path a novel takes from my unique concept, through production and distribution, to it's eventual translation in your unique mind.
So please turn out for touring authors. Bring your questions and your admiration and your justified disagreement. Bring your kids, so they realize that books are created by people who are just like them, and often just as confused about the world grown ups inhabit. And on behalf of Village Books, Bellingham's gem of a gathering place where everyone's words matter, bring your wallet; not necessarily to buy my book, but to buy any book. Or a book light. Or a book mark. Or batteries for your digital reader. Turn out and keep the conversation and the bookstore alive.
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