I’m back home from my short holiday to Krakow. Had a nice final meal, and did a bit more sightseeing on our last morning there, before flying back to Shannon. We had to go via London Gatwick, and wait a few hours there for our connecting flight, so it was a LONG last day, but everything was on time and it didn’t drag too much. Still, it was nice to fall into my own bed at the end of it!

I received the following email from a guy called Tim in America, who has got wind of the fact that I will be coming to the States on tour in October:

I’m the Teacher-Librarian at a Junior High School in the state of Arizona. At the start of every school year I book talk 3 novels to each English class (we have grade 7, 8 and 9) to create a book buzz on campus right off. Last fall CIRQUE DU FREAK was a smashing success on our campus! Our school district is the largest in the state and our Library has the most copies of your novel: 20. We have a ton of the follow up books as well (more than anybody in the district too)! Last August the wait list for CIRQUE hit over 80 students long and stayed steady clear till February -- that’s astounding! Anticipation and word of mouth-peer recommendations created an awesome buzz.

The students loved CIRQUE DU FREAK. I promoted it because I loved it as well, and I recognized -- near instantly, like page 3 -- that it would be great for reluctant readers, which are what I’m all about. The cartoon vacuum cleaner, and then, the real vacuum and the real tarantula, what a sweet hook -- you hooked me! With this novel you have enticed a lot of Fremont boys to read! THANK YOU! Teen boys are hard to pair up with a book they’ll like. Don’t fret though; you’ve plenty of girl fans too!

I understand you’re visiting Arizona next October and I talked with Arizona people setting up your visit. My initial conversation with them severely disappointed me in that I think you and my students would get on so well -- I mean, you have a cult following on campus! The problem seems to be numbers. Your publisher wants you to meet 500 students minimum. Even though we’re the largest Jr. High in Arizona, we only have an auditorium that fits 450 people, but if you include teachers and book club we could nearly make the quota. You’ll miss the excitement your novels bring to our campus if you don’t visit. So PLEASE, consider requesting a visit to Fremont -- in fact, how about a pizza lunch with 10 prize draw winners before or after your talk? You have to eat at some point of the day anyway!

That last bit made me chuckle -- Tim’s obviously heard that I’m an easy man to bribe when a few slices of pizza are waved around under my nose!!! But, seriously, as I told Tim, I don’t get directly involved in the mechanics of my tour schedules. It’s a complicated process -- it costs my publishers a lot of money to bring me over, so they’re always looking to create a tour that will maximise my impact -- and because I’m never in the States more than 2 or 3 weeks, they also have to look into flight connections, how to get me from A to B, what will physically work and what won’t. In an ideal world I’d go to schools in every state that wanted me -- but the reality doesn’t work that way. The most important thing, I stressed, was not to lose his temper, to persist gently and politely, and keep trying to make his case as persuasively and temptingly as possible. Publishers, like most people in life, respond best to polite enthusiasm -- rude pushiness can sink even the best of pitches.

Once the tour is at a more advanced stage, I’ll be publishing contact details for my publisher, so that other schools, libraries and shops can "pitch" for me. I’ll also be providing more advice and info about how you should try to arrange for a visit. But the schedule is still in the VERY early stages, so please don’t write to me about it until I announce more info in a few months time. I just wanted to use this opportunity to give fans in the States advance warning that I AM coming back!!! It will be in the second half of October, and will maybe run into early November. We haven’t chosen States or cities yet, although it looks like Arizona will be on the itinerary!!

The way these things work is that my publicist will put together a rough tour schedule, based on requests that have come in to her in the past (which is why Arizona is currently being considered so early on), along with recommendations from the LittleBrown sales team and other people out in the field. Then, when we have a better idea of where I’ll be going, I’ll provide a window of opportunity for schools, libraries and stores to make a pitch and argue the case for why I should pay them a visit. I’m not sure when that will be -- you’ll need to keep an eye on the Shanville Monthly for updates, and be ready to act swiftly when I make the announcement!!!