Back from the book tour

I have just returned from a fourteen-day book tour to promote Gauntlet. I was on radio, TV, and in what feels like at least 100 book stores. I was extensively tutored by my publicist, Antoinette Kuritz, but even after that it was difficult appearing on television, and I don’t think I’ll ever really get used to it. But we started with a bang: right off the bat my publisher announced the incredible news that the entire first printing SOLD OUT BEFORE THE RELEASE. She was scrambling madly to get the second printing to the distributor while I was on tour. I, meanwhile, was telling everyone in sight that the books I was signing were now LIMITED EDITION!!!

From there, the trip just got more interesting. It feels like we hit every book store in San Diego, to start, though I’ve been told we didn’t make 1/10 of them. I DID get into the famous Mysterious Galaxy, a cult bookstore in the SD area, which was exciting. The employees there were amazing. We also ended up in Las Vegas, Reno, Olympia, and Seattle (Washington). I spent more money than I want to think about on cab fares and Starbucks, and spent too much time in my editor’s tiny car, fighting for space amidst the books, manuscripts, bookmarks, posters and lord knows what else rolling around in there. I ended up staying in hotel rooms that ranged from $200 a night to $14 night, and living mostly on coffee. Well, coffee and In-n-Out, which is something I’m told they only have in California. In Reno we met with one of Glass House’s consultants for dinner. We ended up in a wonderful restaurant where dinner was cooked beside our table by a crew of pyromaniacs — everything was dipped in one liquor or other, and set on fire. It was awesome. It was also a bit scary. Kind of like being on tour.

I have to say that I was treated with great courtesy and respect by the managers and event coordinators at all the stores. It was also pretty amazing to see Gauntlet on store shelves, and to see people buying the book. People who had already purchased the book came back to the bookstores to have me autograph it for them. The compliments were universally good. Overall I came away from it feeling pretty damn good about myself.

We are going to be continuing these tours, but one city at a time, over extended weekends, so that I am not away from my family or my day job for too long. We start with a trip to the London Book Fair next month. As I spent a number of years as a student there, I am greatly looking forward to this.

It was exhausting, but it was a blast. And now I’m back in the real world, which is a bit sad.

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Life imitates art

On March 24, 2009 there was a cross-border drug bust much like what I describe in Gauntlet. This was a good example of a coordinated effort between the police in Washington and the Canadian RCMP in BC.  The problem? Large amounts of highly potent BC marijuana were being sent across the border to Washington and Idaho, with cocaine, ecstasy, and American guns coming back into British Columbia.  The smugglers used small, low flying helicopters and transporting the goods in the middle of the night, when cameras and the eyes of border guards have more trouble seeing such things. To be honest, it’s a mystery that the smugglers weren’t killed while flying in such a dangerous manner.

To be honest again, it’s a wonder that these men were caught at all. There’s far too much smuggling going on across that border, with no one the wiser. The cooperation between American and Canadian police was absolutely perfect on this case. But it’s the outcome of the bust that’s most interesting; the various police agencies involved decided to bust the operation in the state of Washington, rather than at its point of origin in BC. There are many very good reasons for this. In Washington, these criminals will get a mandatory minimum sentence of ten years in a Federal Penitentiary. Their actual sentences will probably (hopefully) be even longer. In British Columbia on the other hand, for reasons that still escape me, the individuals involved would probably receive three or four years, with parole eligibility after1/3 of their sentence had been served. This for people who were bringing guns and lethal drugs into our beautiful province, and providing them to our children. This for the people who are at the base of our growing crime levels, for the people who are selling the guns that kill people every day on the streets of Vancouver. This for the people who are helping to create a society that I quail at sending my children into. It’s a legal system that confuses most of the citizens in BC, who are continually calling for tougher sentences for criminals, starting from the bottom up.

Although I’m glad that this bust happened, I hope that it’s just the beginning. I have gone on record many times to say that the Canada/USA border is porous as Swiss cheese, and on its way to becoming every bit as problematic as the Mexico/USA border. The Canadian border is 4000 miles long, and only has 3000 border police monitoring it. It’s not nearly enough. The social problems that this creating in Canada, and in the city of Vancouver in particular, with guns, drive-by shootings, and gangland executions are disturbingly similar to the problems many people are starting to see in Mexico. Both the Canadian and American governments need to look at this bust, see how it was coordinated, and work hard to make sure it happens more and more often.

Read about it at the Vancouver Sun.

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