One of the more fascinating things that happen to you as an author with a book out is the experience of bookstore events where readers come up to you to discuss your characters. This is both immensely gratifying and surreal. For years, this was a private relationship, and now suddenly it’s like you and your characters are on a reality show. Lately, going around to readings and talking about my novel, I’ve had readers want to discuss my main character, Helen: “She’s reckless.” I’ve also heard: “She makes me angry.” And whispered: “Who in their right mind would do this?” I understand. I’m sympathetic. I shuffle my feet. After all, I’ve been living with her for years.

Ten years ago, I came across a picture of a woman photojournalist in Vietnam who wore pearl earrings. Women in that war? And why the earrings? That mystery led me to discover a whole tribe of Amazon-like women that I had never been aware of before: from Dickey Chapelle and Catherine Leroy in Vietnam to contemporary photojournalists such as Stephanie Sinclair and Margaret Moth. There were other female journalists, writers, but photographers fascinated me for one simple reason: they can’t fake it. As in the famous Robert Capa quote: “If your pictures aren’t good enough you aren’t close enough.” Maybe the same can be said for writers. We are always trying to create fiction in which the reader can get as close as possible to the characters, but sometimes that takes him or her to an uncomfortable place. How to understand the seeming recklessness of a character, her hunting out of danger?

Ten years ago, I was straight out of graduate school and sold my first novel for six figures. To promote Eating the Cheshire Cat, I was told that bookstores sold books. And by gum, The Alabama Booksmith, Lemuria, and Eddie Suttles of a Georgia Barnes & Noble hand-sold the heck out of it. I was sent on a twenty-stop book tour, put up in legendary hotels like The Peabody in Memphis, spent my days being interviewed by local TV, radio, and newspapers, and met with one blogger: you.

In the end, did I earn out my advance? No, but before the first copy of the book was sold, Scribner’s attitude was that I would. And getting me “out there” was the way to do it. So I went and reveled in every minute.

And then I fell, slowly and despite my best efforts, off the face of the literary earth. I wrote a second book and my agent couldn’t get a publisher. I poured my soul into a third book for a new agent who, after taking it on, decided she didn’t really like it, after all. Without an agent, I started a fourth book, because I am a writer, and that’s what writers do. Hallelujah, I got an offer from Sourcebooks, and then got a trusted friend to agent the deal. Now I’m ready to promote THE TURNING: What Curiosity Kills, but I am hardly going anywhere. Physically, that is. It’s 2010 and 99% of my promotion is happening online.