Jo-Ann Mapson

Homeless Ministry

There's nothing on earth that compares to holding the first bound galley of one's own writing. Like Proust's lace doilies and Madeline cakes, all the senses engage: The unbroken binding, clean, error-free type, crisp, unread pages, and all of this inside a cover, untouched by critics! It's a golden moment, tantamount to holding your newborn before anyone's mentioned how its nose looks like Great Aunt Ora who went nuts in her fifties and had to be watched or else she'd walk into other people's houses and ask what was for dinner.

Then, nipping at the newborn's heels comes the publicity pit bull. Persephone was banished to hell for six months for eating pomegranate seeds. In my case, it was Tootsie rolls. Preparing for a book tour involves finding stretchy, black clothes that dry in an hour. Also, a quest for comfortable shoes to enclose feet swollen from overindulging in free airline peanuts and diet Coke. Then there's tiny tubes of toothpaste (I used 4 last year), deodorant that doesn't leave white streaks on the black clothes (this pretty much eliminates all deodorant), and deciding whether or not I feel like lugging my notebook computer all over Hail, Columbia, which is what my mom calls anyplace besides California. "What on earth are you doing in Hail, Columbia?" she asks when I call her from my book tour. "Lock your door. People are crazy."

But most of all, a book tour means donning a new personality. I model mine after Valaree, a high school cheerleader. If someone throws a tomato at Val, she makes gazpacho and serves it to the weird kids. I'm not very good at this because there always comes the book tour moment when I flip out in my hotel room, call home, and cry like a baby. People say, "Come on, isn't it fun traveling to new places, eating great room service food, and having crowds show up to hear you read?"

Um, it's the exact opposite of fun to travel anywhere on a 6 a.m. flight filled with cranky businessmen, or to run from the plane to do an interview with someone who hasn't read your book, has perfect hair while yours looks like a sea hag's, and keeps pronouncing your name wrong. Forget about enjoying dinner when you eat at 10 p.m. because there wasn't time to eat at the regular dinner hour, because you won't be able to digest it, and therefore won't get any sleep for the next 6 a.m. businessman-filled flight. And oh, this is the worst part: If I'm lucky, 5 people show up at my readings, and usually 3 of them are homeless and just came for the free cookies.

Writers are solitary creatures. My favorite thing in the world besides eating expensive chocolate is sitting in my office with a dog on my lap and via my typing fingers, traveling to imaginary places. I also like to eat steamed vegetables and rice at home, with my husband next to me on the couch while we watch Survivor and are thrilled we're not on the island with control freak John or that Rob guy from Boston who looks like he would carjack you even if you drove a crappy old Escort that didn't start without prayer. And I love to read, but silently, to myself, pretty much anybody's books except my own and Nicholas Sparks's. This year I'll be traveling to Texas, where the women dress great, talk slow, and are tough as cowhide. First thing, I'm taking a deodorant survey. Surely one of them will know how to avoid white streaks. Somebody tape Survivor for me, okay?

More later,
Jo-Ann

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