Rachel Simon's Blog

And then came the snow.

It first arrived over the weekend, as a rumor I didn’t hear. I was on the San Francisco leg of my pre-sale book tour, eating dinner with booksellers, attending a packed town hall meeting, and ocean-gazing with new friends. But the people at Grand Central, my publisher, heard the rumor. At the home office in New York and in the cities remaining on my tour, they crossed their fingers, hoping it was just talk.

By Sunday, though, when I was in flight to the Midwest, the rumor had assumed form: on weather maps it revealed itself to be an enormous white wave, rising up from the lower border of Texas, gathering force as it swept north and east across Oklahoma and Missouri, and reaching full power in the very states where my pre-sale tour was taking me – Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan – before splashing, with diminished ferocity, across the remainder of the country.

I didn’t know it then, but the people who were in charge of my pre-sale tour suddenly became amateur meteorologists. Would the storm really be severe enough to lay waste to our plans? No, please, let it not be true. After all, getting a dozen booksellers from different stores to commit to spending three or four house at a specific restaurant on a specific day and time with a sales rep they know and an author they don’t know but whose book they were being encouraged to read—all that is hard enough. But doing it in eight cities, including soon-to-be-snowed-in Lansing, Chicago, and Milwaukee, had taken an extraordinary amount of orchestration. Altering plans would mean skipping whole cities, as there was almost certainly no way to get so many people together again so soon. On the other hand, if they kept the dinners as scheduled, I might spend the meal in an airport chair as snow mountained up on a runway, and as the booksellers waded through hip-high drifts to reach a restaurant that locked its doors for the duration. So they watched the weather, and made calls, and watched more weather, and texted, and watched again.

Sunday night was when I first heard, in an email message from someone at Grand Central. She said she looked forward to seeing me in Chicago on Wednesday, unless the snow changed our plans. I had just gotten to my first city in the Midwest, Ann Arbor, and was skimming my email at the kitchen table in my friend Carol’s house. “Snow?” I said out loud. “What snow?” Immediately, her fiancé, Randy, looked up the weather. Sure enough, there was the creeping white monster, along with the direst of warnings. “You might have to cancel part of your trip,” Randy said. “I hope not,” I said, and decided that, until I was told to do so, I would not give it any more thought.

But Grand Central did. Monday afternoon, the powers that be convened, pooled their weather warnings, and made their decision: they would cut the Chicago and Milwaukee legs of the trip. I would still go onto the Lansing dinner on Tuesday, but then I would stay in the Radisson Hotel, entertaining myself as the snow fell, until the roads had cleared.

When I got the news on Monday, I was, as I mentioned in my last blog, in my editor’s hotel room in Ann Arbor. She’d just flown there from New York to attend dinner with people from Borders corporate headquarters, but she’d have to fly back right after dessert, since the storm was going to hit Michigan on Tuesday. I fully understood the need to cancel, and was relieved to know that I wouldn’t have to battle a blizzard to get to Chicago and Milwaukee. Yet I’d already spent a fabulous week on the road, and was so exhilarated by the meals, book talk, insights I was getting into publishing, walks in the cities, visits with friends, meetings with people in the disability community, and serendipitous encounters with strangers, that I was totally ready to go go go – despite a week of too little sleep, too many carbs, more unanswered email than I’ve ever faced in my life, and a husband back in Delaware I dearly longed to hold. So for a few moments I stood there, letting disappointment eclipse my common sense, asking silly questions like, “Can’t I come back next week?” My editor kindly but firmly said no, this was it, those cities were off the schedule. I’m embarrassed that it took me a good ten minutes to accept this fact – though I know my difficulty was directly connected to the extent of the fun I’d been having.

But I’m a big believer in being flexible. So when the new plan finally took root in my mind, I knew it was right and good, and that I’d have a great time no matter what.

And I did, right from the start.

On Tuesday, as the snow began, shutting down airports, drifting into Milwaukee, stopping traffic on Lake Shore Drive in Chicago, a car arrived at my hotel in Ann Arbor to whisk me down the highway to Lansing. The storm had not yet reached Michigan, but as the driver pulled onto the road and I asked if he was concerned, he said, “No. I grew up in Russia. I am afraid of nothing.” His accent was pronounced, and his confidence – and sense of humor, and lively personality – infectious. At sixty-one, having spent half his life here and half in Russia, Yuri was brimming with stories and jokes and charming asides. It didn’t hurt that he was intrigued by what I do for a living – and I was equally intrigued by him. Nor did it hurt that we’re both Jewish. The drive passed swiftly as we chatted away.

“If you’re using Carey Car service when you leave for the airport on Thursday,” he said, as he brought my bags into the Lansing Radisson, “ask for me.”

I checked in and unpacked in my room, looking out the window. The sun was setting but there was no snow yet. Fortunately, the restaurant was a block away, so I knew I’d get there easily. But I also knew, because the sales rep had told me, that the storm was due to start during the meal, and in fact this had prompted a few booksellers, those who worked as far away as Grand Rapids, to cancel. I stared down into my suitcase. Of course I’d brought no boots, just sneakers and a little pair of flat, black shoes.

But I forgot about all this when I got to Troppo, the restaurant. Again, the meal was set up in a private room. Again, there was a special menu. Again, the sales rep was outgoing, welcoming, and completely likeable. (I’d met him before; he was at the first author dinner I’d attended, two weeks before, at the kick-off event for the pre-sale tour, held in Washington, DC.) And incredibly, he told me that very few of the booksellers had canceled, and he’d been able to find replacements for those who had. His bonds with his accounts were just so solid, and the booksellers so trusting of his recommendations and enthusiasm, they stayed committed to the dinner, even knowing that the storm would arrive during our entrees.

The booksellers arrived, from Schuler Books, Partners, and Emery Pratt. They all knew each other – in fact, two were engaged to each other, and two were a mother and daughter. They clearly enjoyed being together, so the room was quickly full of conversation and laughter. A few of them were also writers – one was even working on a novel.

After I talked about The Story of Beautiful Girl, the discussion moved in a different direction than at the other meals. They asked me about the writing process – and then about the editing process. Almost no one asks about that, even though it’s such a significant step in the journey from manuscript to book. They listened with great interest.

When the trays of dessert arrived – large, sumptuous servings of treats so enticing they barely seemed real – everyone dug in. (Well, almost everyone; I don’t eat sweets, and another bookseller had a similar limitation.) Then dinner transformed into something that felt like a party. We shifted from a table-wide conversation to small groups, with booksellers talking about their own lives and interests. Even though we all knew the storm was upon us, no one was in a hurry to leave.

(I later discovered that one of the booksellers blogged about the dinner. You can read his post, on Partners Book Blog, here.)

By the time everyone finally left, the snow was falling hard. I walked with the sales rep to his car, my little black shoes sloshing through the snow. It was beautiful outside, though the wind slapped hard against our bodies. We shook hands over a dinner that might not have happened, but instead, thanks to the strength of his relationships, was a memorable pleasure for all. Full and happy, I scythed through the wind down the block to my hotel.

And then, for the first time in a week, I had a long conversation with my husband.

And a long night’s sleep.

And a leisurely breakfast, and light lunch.

And a long call with my father. And another with my friend Anne. And another with my friend Marilyn.

And a quiet, solitary day, when I didn’t take a walk or put on dress clothes or apply mascara. I just answered as many of those emails as I could and watched the snow fall outside my window.

All the disappointment about the missed dinners faded. Instead, I was just pleased to be in that very moment, connecting with people by phone and computer. Yes, I was stranded in a hotel in a storm in Lansing. But I felt far from alone.

Finally, at eight thirty, I headed down to the hotel restaurant for dinner. I hadn’t been out all day and let’s just say no one would mistake me for someone who was on a pre-sale book tour, or had even written a book. To use a word that my driver Yuri would know, I looked pretty much like a schlump.

I walked into the restaurant. A cluster of women was standing about, and until a waitress appeared, I didn’t understand that most of the women were customers who had just finished their meal. But one of them, a dark-haired woman in a red sweater, was waiting to be seated.

The waitress grabbed two menus, started making small talk to the red-sweatered woman and me, and began walking toward a table. I realized that, in the confusion of coming upon us with so many others around, she’d assumed we were dining companions.

I said, “We’re not together.”

The waitress said, “You’re not?”

“No,” the red-sweatered woman said. “I’m alone.”

“So am I,” I said. And then I said, “But if you’d like to eat with someone, I’ll be happy to join you.”

“Okay,” the woman said.

And so, in the time it took for us to walk over to a table, we’d become dining companions after all. Her name was Joleen, and she was staying in the hotel because there was an ice cream and fast food conference going on, and since she was planning to open an ice cream stand this summer, she was in the middle of getting the necessary certification. I told her why I was there, and she smiled and said she was the mother of several children, including three she’d adopted from foster care, and some of them had special needs. This was not the only overlap in our lives, we discovered as we talked. Our philosophy of life was similar, as was our diet; not only did we both order off the menu, but we ordered the exact same things: herbal tea, salad with oil and vinegar, pasta with sauteed vegetables.

How do I keep finding kindred spirits on this trip? Is it just due to the openness many of us have when we travel? Or is there something else at play – the same mysterious something that made the writing of The Story of Beautiful Girl go so smoothly and easily?

Joleen and I parted with a hug, and I thought that was the end of my Lansing adventure.

But the next morning, I took advantage of my unexpected time to meet up with the friend of a friend. Originally my schedule had seemed far too packed for me to see Mary Jane Doerr, who has known my friend Denise since childhood. But when I reached Michigan, Denise sent an email, reminding me about Mary, and when the snow gave me the gift of time, I followed up.

Mary is a writer whose book, Bay View, An American Idea, is a history of Bay View, a Chautauqua community in Northern Michigan. Mary is also a ski instructor who teaches at a place that provides instruction to, among others, children with disabilities.

In mid-morning, Mary arrived at my hotel with Monica, a fellow ski instructor. For a few tea-fueled hours, we talked about writing and skiing. Then I remembered that Denise had urged me to visit the Michigan State Capitol, an architectural jewel built in 1879 and located right down the street from my hotel. So I asked Mary and Monica if they’d be my guides, and they quickly said yes.

We drove over in the snow, made our way inside, walked around ornate corridors, across a glass floor, and into the grand rotunda. I looked up, up, up into the dizzying heights of the glass dome, where every hope, including true equality and justice for all, seems possible. And for a moment I felt like one of the characters in my book, who walks into the Pennsylvania State Capitol at a critical moment in her life, and looks up into the same kind of dome.

And there, admiring the beauty and craft all around me, and the generosity of my new friends, I felt that the snow hadn’t been a monster after all. It had given me at least as much as it had taken away.

An hour later, I zipped up my suitcase, elevatored to the lobby, and saw my driver waiting for me. It was Yuri, who I had indeed requested. We shook hands, I got in his sedan, and as we drove onto the streets of Lansing toward the highway, and the airport, and my flight to Denver, he said, in his Russian accent, “When I got there, I asked for you, and they said you’d already checked out! And I knew you hadn’t done that so I walked all around, looking for you. Where is my Rachel? Where is my Rachel?” He laughed and glanced at me in the rear view mirror. “And now,” he said, “here you are.”

We drove down the road into the bright afternoon, talking away. My life was back on schedule. My tour was back on track. But because I’d been forced to pause, the universe had served me a tray of the most delectable treats. I doubt I’ll ever decide whether the universe is run by luck or whim or the same mysterious something that creates novels out of nothing. What matters is that I hadn’t held myself back. I had tasted every treat that came my way, and I had found every one delicious.

Tags: book tour, books, pre-sale tour, publishing, The Story of Beautiful Girl, writing life

This entry was posted on Friday, February 4th, 2011 at 3:33 am and is filed under Rachel's adventures on the road, Uncategorized, Writing and publishing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.