Slipping Between the Storms

By M.J. Rose

I write this from onboard the Atria Mystery Bus Tour now. Liza Marklund, John Connolly, William Kent Krueger, and I have been on the road since Thursday night and are just at the halfway point in our journey.

M.J. Rose is the bestselling author of 11 novels. Her latest release is The Book of Lost Fragrances.

Tours conjure romantic images of exploring and investigating and discovering new sights, sounds, tastes, smells. But this isn’t that kind of tour.

We don’t get to see the towns or cities we visit. We don’t even really see what’s outside our windows because the bus is wrapped with a skin of our book covers so the view is diffused and subdued. Even when it’s not raining, which it is, now.

What we do is drive to a bookstore, disembark, go inside, speak for 40 minutes or so, answer questions, sign books, and then step back on the bus. We get lunch on the bus while we drive to the next store,where we rinse and repeat, then get back on the bus, drive for a while more, have dinner on the bus, and then eventually get to a hotel, where we sleep overnight, and then in the morning drive to the next store and do it all over again. Some stretches between stores are two hours. Some six. It’s a lot of road.

Sort of like being in a pneumatic tube that’s gone from NYC to Madison, Connecticut, to Framingham, Massachusetts, to Brattleboro, Vermont…  You get the idea.

My bus mates are not only fabulous writers but wonderful traveling companions. Writers are by nature loners so we are good at giving each other space on the bus. But when we feel like talking the conversations are fabulous.

We’re all so different. John is Irish, Liza is Swedish, and Kent is a self-professed hayseed, while I’m a born and bred New Yorker.

But what we share is a passion for writing, reading, and for the purpose we’re on this bus — to spend time with readers and booksellers. They feed us. They sustain us. And they inspire us.

It’s the booksellers and readers that make the wheels go round.

As I write this, the bus is heading south and west from Buffalo to Dayton. Weather reports tell us that south and west of Dayton tornados have already claimed five lives.  To the west and north of Dayton are severe thunderstorms. Both sets of conditions are alarming.

Kinda like the book business right now.

Kent said, “God willing, we’ll tread the eye of the needle.”

How long will the storms rage? What damage will they do? What will the landscape look like after dust from the DOJ suit and its resulting ramifications have settled down?

“Writers are always both a part of, and apart from, the society in which they live and work, so we’re wed to being in the eye of storms,” said my fellow traveler the passionate and very funny John Connolly. “But without writers there is no publishing industry. All we can say or be sure of is that in the aftermath of the collision of these two forces in publishing there will still be writers. Like rats and cockroaches, we endure.”

And so will readers.

As Liza said, “In the middle of a storm you have to put your feet down and stay grounded. Storms pass — they always do.”

And from the passions we are encountering on our road trip, we’re sure when these storms pass writers and readers will still be standing. And the glue that binds them to each other — booksellers will still be standing too.

 And that’s the one view we are getting to see from the bus tour.

M.J. Rose is the international bestselling author of 11 novels: Lip Service, In Fidelity, Flesh Tones, Sheet Music, Lying in Bed, The Halo Effect, The Delilah Complex, The Venus Fix, The Reincarnationist, The Memorist, and The Hypnotist. She is on tour promoting her new title, The Book of Lost Fragrances: A Novel of Suspense.

From April 12 - 19, Rose and her companions on Atria’s Great Mystery Bus Tour —  Liza Marlund (Last Will), John Connolly (Burning Soul), William Kent Krueger (Northwest Angle) — traveled to 12 cities, from New York to Missouri, with stops at 10 indie bookstores and two Barnes & Noble locations.