On the Road Again

The Overlook

By Tom Clavin

“The Overlook” appears every Wednesday at tomclavin.substack.com. An overlook is usually a place from which one can see in many if not all directions, including where one has been and where one is going. If you enjoy the column, please "like" it and let me know what you think by commenting (check out previous ones while you're at it). All support is appreciated. Don't forget to hit the ‘Subscribe’ button – it’s free!

          Because of a pandemic-required embargo on such activities, for three years I did not go on a book tour, and now I’ve just returned from the second one of 2023. The first one, in April, was for Follow Me to Hell, a tale about Leander McNelly and his rough-and-ready company of Texas Rangers, and the second tour was for The Last Outlaws, about the desperate final days of the Dalton Gang and the grizzled lawmen who pursued them.

          It had been surprising to discover during the pandemic how much I missed the book-tour experience. A tour has a fundamental challenge to it – doing a presentation is like a stand-up routine where you can keep an audience’s attention, perhaps even enthrall them, or endure a very public humiliation. Another reason for missing touring was creating a connection between the work and readers. A third reason was the most startling – a desire to perform. People who know me know I don’t ordinarily crave the spotlight, I’m not a bombastic person, and the last time I had an emotional outburst was in September 2014 when Derek Jeter hit a walk-off single in his final at-bat at Yankee Stadium. But I must confess, I missed the attention.

          It had taken a while to finally recover from Covid-19 and its descendants pulling the rug out from under me in 2020. (Yes, this happened to many writers, but they can write their own column about it.) My book Tombstone – the third in the “Frontier Lawmen” trilogy -- was being published on April 21 that year and during the winter St. Martin’s Press had arranged a national tour of 14 events in 16 days. All I did was grumble about it, the poor put-upon author. Then in March it became clear the pandemic had put the kibosh on the tour. Naively, we rescheduled it for July and I returned to grumbling. Then the tour had to be cancelled altogether and I grumbled instead about not being on the road. I really missed the bookstores and other venues in St. Louis, Washington D.C., Kansas City, Denver, Tucson, etc. The literary lockdown continued the rest of the year and beyond, with me not out there stumping for Lightning Down, published in 2021, and two books co-authored with Bob Drury, Blood and Treasure and The Last Hill, published in 2021 and 2022.

          Yes, there was a plethora of Zoom events. They were, at best, a necessary evil. I don’t like seeing my puss in the mirror let alone on a computer screen. When an event included a bunch of people with their faces in boxes I felt like Paul Lynde in “Hollywood Squares” or part of the perky opening of “The Brady Bunch.” Authors got through it, we had no other choice, but I craved the being-in-the-room interaction.

          It wasn’t always this way. There were cold sweats when many years ago I read from a novel at a local bookstore. (Fortunately for readers, my fiction career was strangled in its crib.) And unpredictable things happen that can make for anxious moments. At the Gerald Ford Museum in Grand Rapids, my first stop on my first national tour, in 2007 for Halsey’s Typhoon (Lt. Ford is a character in the book), I got up to the podium and immediately spotted in the audience a World War II Navy veteran clutching a copy. During my talk I feared at any moment he would leap up and shout, “This book is full of crap!” and that would be both the first and last event on the tour. (Thankfully, he praised the book.)

          Another reason to enjoy book tours is sometimes they include meeting other writers, particularly ones I admire who become friends. The Savannah Book Festival a few years ago gave me the trifecta of hanging out with Craig Johnson, Karl Marlantes, and S.C. Gwynne. At the South Dakota Book Festival I made the unwise decision to drink Maker’s Mark with C.J. Box. Candace Bushnell lives a few minutes away from me yet the only time I’ve met her was four years ago at the Mississippi Book Festival in Jackson.

          You might think book events are all about ego. That is true for some authors, but for me the opposite is often true. In San Francisco six years ago I was about to address an audience when a woman in the front commented on what a terrific character Jack Ryan was. Seeing my confusion, she asked, “Aren’t you Tom Clancy?” I replied, “I’m Tom Clavin.” She harrumphed and got up and left. Four years ago on a tour for Wild Bill, I was in Salt Lake City and a nice woman presented me with a t-shirt she’d made and insisted I wear it even though “Hickock” and “Calvin” were spelled wrong.

Toward the end of an 11-city tour a few years ago I was so confused by the traveling that I said, “Glad to be in Seattle” in Portland and said the next night, “Glad to be in Portland” in Seattle. At one stop a reader confided seeing on Ebay a copy of The Last Stand of Fox Company signed by both authors for $150 and a copy signed only by Bob Drury for $250.

          Gosh, I missed that! Once again, in the tour just completed, there were surprises. The town of Coffeyville, Kansas, figures prominently in The Last Outlaws and in Atlanta a couple of weeks ago, when I asked the audience for questions, a woman announced, “I was born and raised in Coffeyville.” Again, I had that dread of the tour being derailed, but she followed up with, “Reading your book made me feel like I was back home.” Out of a hundred people I spoke to in St. Louis, one woman was the great-great-granddaughter of one of the Dalton brothers and another was the great-granddaughter of the Coffeyville marshal who was killed by the Dalton Gang. With some trepidation, I asked, “Are you two okay in the same room together?”

          It can certainly be wearying dealing with planes, trains, and automobiles and the stress of airports – Atlanta is a mess while Kansas City has a great new terminal – but readers and others were so welcoming. Throne of Grace, with Bob Drury, will be published by St. Martin’s Press next May, and if there is no new calamity, I’ll be on the road again.

Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 25 books, including The Last Hill (with Bob Drury) and The Last Outlaws, which was published last month by St. Martin’s Press. Both would make enjoyable holiday gifts! Please go to your local bookstore or to Bookshop.org, Amazon.com, BN.com, or tomclavin.com to purchase a copy.