Meeting the Fans
Book Tours /Douglas Preston ’78

Douglas Preston ’78 toured 12 cities in September to promote his latest bestseller,
The Wheel of Darkness, the eighth in a series of thrillers coauthored with Lincoln
Child. After his last stop, he gave PCM the inside story on life on the book-tour circuit.

THE SCHEDULE: I wake up early, catch a flight, do a radio interview, have one or two
signings and go back to the hotel for dinner. Then I get up the next morning to catch
another flight at six.

BEST LOCATIONS: New York City, Connecticut, New England, the Pacific Northwest,
Colorado and Texas. Our biggest turnout is generally in New York. And I always enjoy
going to Seattle. It’s a great book town.

TURNOUTS: In the beginning—before we were bestselling authors—nobody came to the
signings. I did one where the only person who showed up was Lincoln’s mother. And
he was at another location where the only person who came was my mother.

MOST UNUSUAL BOOK SIGNING: When I was in Italy in 2000, the government banned the Florentine-style cut of steak because of the threat of mad cow disease. A friend of mine, who is a famous butcher there, wanted to organize a protest at my book signing. We hired a hearse and had a huge “funeral” for the Italian beefsteak. There was dirgelikemusic playing and people giving weeping speeches. Of course, no one was interested in my book, but we all had a great  time.


READING ALOUD: I have a phobia about reading my own material. There are quite a few
writers who don’t like to do it. Instead I talk about how Lincoln and I do research and
how we come together as a writing team.

THE FANS: We have smart readers. Some of them know more about our books than we
do. They ask questions about our characters as if they’re real. They want to know if
Pendergast is going to fall in love with Viola or if they’ve had sex yet. Sometimes
they’ll say they hate so-and-so and want to know when we’re going to kill him off.

LAST STOP: The fire alarm went off at my latest signing at a library in Bellevue, Wash.,
so we all had to evacuate the building and go outside [see photo above]. It was a
good thing because it got me to shut up. Sometimes I talk too much.

GOING HOME: Touring throws you off your game so I like to get back to writing immediately.
I’m working on a book about a serial killer called the Monster of Florence. It will
be out next June and is an absolutely incredible story, so bizarre and so outrageous
that if I’d invented it as a novel, people would have derided it as totally implausible.
—Mary Marvin