Book tour trials and tribulations

The Barnes & Noble parking lot in Brentwood, Calif., was nearly full. Pretty good for a weeknight.

            With anticipation, I hurried from my rental car to the front door. After several lackluster gigs, this tour stop in SoCal appeared to be promising. But as I entered the store, I was greeted by a huge poster in the foyer for a new release. A book that had nothing to do with mine.

            “On Sale Tonight at Midnight” read the placard and I realized it had happened again: I had been undone by Harry Potter.

            Several years earlier, in Traverse City, Michigan, I was scheduled to discuss my novel Castro’s Curveball. What nobody put together, including me, was Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire went on sale the same evening in August. After that, I vowed never to be upstaged by the bespectacled fantasy hero again.

            Yet here I was, several summers later, going head to head against the invincible Harry again. That is the trepidation for any author on a promotion tour. No matter how well planned, things can go sideways in a hurry. Richard Peabody’s excellent anthology What Could Possible Go Wrong chronicles what gives any writer nightmares: Questions that have nothing to do with your book, the audience member who confuses you with another writer or someone who owes them money. Or when a patron fell asleep in the front row and began to snore.

            I admit these stories and memories are again running through my mind as the appearances for my new novel, Rebel Falls, begin to come together.

            On that night at the Brentwood B&N, many of the customers carried broomsticks, and the manager was attired in a flowing black dress and witch’s hat.

            I did my best that evening, reading a short passage and regaling the crowd with story after story. But any hope of collateral sales disappeared during the question-and-answer period when the manager came on the PA system announcing, “Less than an hour until Harry Potter.” Then she tried her best to cackle.

            With that, the crowd left me and began to mill around near the front counter. The employees, who all sported witch hats or Potter-style eyeglasses, told the crowd that it needed to wait. Books wouldn’t go on sale until midnight.

“But it’s past midnight in New York,” I shouted, and my insight was seconded by another Potter fan and then another.

The fervor continued to build, with many in the crowd chanting, “Harry, Harry.”

Facing a good-natured rebellion, the manager nodded to an employee holding a retractable utility knife. He smiled and slit open the first box of Potter books to cheers from the crowd.

As the crowd surged forward, I headed for the door. My work here was done.