My book tour page has been further spiffed up click here to check it out.You may notice that I have a retreat at the Southern Dharma Retreat Center in Hot Springs, North Carolina (near Asheville) until March 28th followed by a retreat a week later in Brooklyn (starting April 2nd). Then I have nearly a month off before heading to Europe in May.
Currently, the folks in Brooklyn are planning to fly me to their fair city. But it occurred to me that if I drove to Brooklyn from NC, I could do other gigs on the way back down South. Major cities on the route between the two include Trenton, NJ, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington DC, and Richmond, VA among others.
Anyone on that route who might like to have me come give a talk in their city should write me at spoozilla@gmail.com (Would I get more bites if I changed that email address? I never initially intended to use it for gig getting). There's nearly the whole month of April to work with. So speak up!
Part of my reason for relocating to the East Coast was the notion that if I did so, lots of places I could potentially talk at would be within driving distance. This would allow me to do what I do more cheaply and efficiently, I had hoped. But will the folks on the East Coast fail to speak up and thus prove me wrong?
I know it's the new thing these days to sit behind your laptop and deliver virtual Zen to the virtual masses. But I'm still too set in my ways to believe that's the best way to do things. I much prefer to get out there and meet people face to face. Dokusan via Skype is too much like one of those porno video chat things for me.
My tours have ended up being sort of like the punk rock tours of long ago (or, indeed the punk rock tours of today) where you pack everything you need in a van and head off for parts unknown, hoping that the people who have offered you a floor to sleep on don't have any vicious killer animals or are not themselves vicious killer animals.
I do not have an entourage to surround me as I travel. I do not have "people" to set all this up for me (though my pal Catie is helping out a lot lately). I do not have an "office" you can call up for an appointment. I do not sell myself for $50,000 a pop to the rich and brainless for private consultations.
This means I'm sometimes hard pressed to get back to everyone who writes. Be aware I'm looking for gigs where I can make some money. I ain't getting rich this way. That's for damned sure (another reason for moving away from Los Angeles). But I'm trying not to go broke doing it either. So I'm far more likely to respond to gigs that have a chance of actually paying.
People always write and say, "You could give a talk at Bob's Dog Eared Books in Bloomingfork, Louisiana!" or whatever. And that's nice. I do talks at bookstores a lot. But bookstore talks never pay. The bookstores want authors in so they get some customers to buy books from them -- and not buy books directly from the authors. So I can only afford to travel out of town to do a bookstore gig if there's some kind of paying gig in the area as well.
OK? Good. Well, I'm off to go speak at Noah Levine's place in Hollywood, Against The Stream, at 11 am today. The address is 4300 Melrose (btw Heliotrope and Vermont) Los Angeles, CA 90029. Show up! And see ya there!
