A clever friend noted that Twitter loves aphorisms, if retweets are any measure. I think it is true, but I think aphorisms ‘work’ in all contexts not just online. They offer a hint of life-solving. Rules. The short summary sells.

That is by way of preamble to something that has bemused me for awhile. By far the most commonly quoted line of mine online seems to be one from Tigana: “There are no wrong turnings. Only paths we had not known we were meant to walk.” And the attribution (usually!)– Guy Gavriel Kay.

So, let’s put it in context. The line occurs as a thought to a sexually and emotionally worn-out young man in the middle of a night in a castle he doesn’t know, as he tries to find his way back to his room in blackness – and realizes he’s lost.

He can’t source his memory of the line for a bit, then it comes to him again and he recalls that it was said to him by a priest when he was very young. I do something a bit sly with the line and the scene, because the young man, taking turns in corridors, somehow ends up in the darkness outside the door of someone else he knows … and enters.

At risk of saddening some people – I don’t believe the line is true. It isn’t how I understand the world. I believe we can and do makes mistakes, take wrong turnings. I’m not especially a believer in predestination that way. (“Meant to take.”) In River of Stars I wrote a little about randomness, how it unsettles us, but how it can and does have such an impact on events. That, I believe.

It is a character in a book who says and believes the line about no wrong turnings (off-stage). I have written, and every novelist I know has written, many things that are not their own beliefs. If you think about it, how else would we create unpleasant figures (assuming, please, that we are not unpleasant figures!), or simply characters who voice different sides of a moral or intellectual argument (say, the debate about art and power – Crispin and Leontes – in the Mosaic, where I try to give value to two sides of a dispute)?

There is nothing startling or wrong about this quoting process. In the course of writing that dispute on art and power, perhaps I might create a phrase that resonates for someone who comes down on one side of that dispute. Perhaps a phrase on the other side works for someone else. What gives me pause is if and when such a line becomes seen or understood as the personal, real life belief of the author who created those characters.

I’m writing about this because it strikes me as another good example of how easily the work and the author can be blurred today, even more so with authors (including me) increasingly ‘present’ in the online world. I do post passages to Twitter, for example, that I like and find worth thinking about. (A Salman Rushdie quote earlier this week, as an example.)

But when lines are taken from the books, it is better (to my mind) if they are understood in context. Sometimes they might legitimately be read as the thoughts of the author, or thoughts the author would stand behind. There are many such in my novels. Others, though, need the setting and framework.

What gets interesting for me in all this is that the way we meant something to resonate or operate in a work of fiction (ironically, critically, contested, embodying a very specific worldview?) is not necessarily how it goes wide. By now, no wrong turnings has a life well beyond Tigana and the painfully confused night in which my character remembers a priest saying it to him as a child. My attitude to the predestination sentiment, or even Devin’s in the book, become irrelevant.

Makes me wonder how many phrases attributed to various novelists from their books are not their own views of the world, but are located in a very specific setting, belonging to created characters in a book we might have never read.

Interesting? I find it so. You can quote me!

I go away for four days and Toronto’s Mayor gets in more trouble (more and major) and there’s an earthquake. Data is being compiled as to possible connections…

Calgary and Kamloops hosted smooth, very nicely organized events and I enjoyed the audiences and the questions both times. I also got a chance to go south into the Okanagan’s fruit-and-wine country on Friday, and that was a treat. Not hard to see why people love it so much. Here’s the view from where we had lunch:

This sortie west is probably the end of the spring touring, though there are usually one-off events that come up and I have to sit down with the publicists and choose which festivals to accept for autumn. Feels a long way off, but they do need to firm up their guest lists, so can’t take too long on this, in fairness.

River is still on the Maclean’s list, back up to #5 last week. One website says six weeks, another says seven, I’ve lost track (is that bad of me?).

More recent good news came from Prague, where my Czech Republic editor Martin Süst (at Argo Publishers) just informed me that on Saturday Under Heaven was awarded Best Fantasy of the Year at the awards ceremony at the annual Book Fair, “Book World Prague”. His note reads, in part,

Academy is the group of authors, magazine and web editors, booksellers etc. So it´s a professional award. This was the 18th year of this award and it is the best known genre award in our country.

The translator, Richard Podany, was separately nominated in that category, and I’m very glad of that. For obvious reasons, all authors are hugely dependent on their translators into any other language: they become our ‘voice’; any honour we receive is properly to be shared with them.

One more photo for this holiday Monday. A friend sent me a snapshot of the display of some of my books at McNally Robinson in Winnipeg. You may appreciate why I like that bookstore! His (funny) caption was, ‘I lit a candle.’

I’m swinging west again Tuesday, to Calgary and then Kamloops, in the Okanagan Valley. Calgary is a library reading at the main branch on Tuesday evening. The link to register (free, but requested for admin purposes) is off this page

http://calgarypubliclibrary.com/services/programs-events?p=3405

and there is a separate link there if you follow it up, for out-of-towners without a Calgary library card to be able to also register.

This one looks like a straight reading (and probably Q&A after) so I’ll likely do the Chapter 8 passage I’ve been using.

In Kamloops I’m being interviewed on stage in the Clocktower Theatre (love the name) at the university Thursday after reading, so will offer the shorter chapter 2 bit (introducing Lin Shan) I use when a two-part event is what’s happening. Go ahead, accuse me of finally figuring out how to handle this on-the-road gig.

One of the things that amuses me about touring, and it is fairly new, is that local media do not necessarily interview authors when they arrive in town. They do interviews by telephone before we get there. But they only do them because we are coming. It makes perfect sense when explained (wait, I’m coming to that!): the intention is to promote the author’s event in town in the article, and if the interview it isn’t done ahead of time, they can’t manage that.

So, I fly to Calgary in part because the Calgary Herald will give interview coverage, but the interview took place yesterday from home. (An enjoyable conversation, reporter had such a good voice he should be on radio; plan to tell him if I see him Tuesday evening.) Same thing with Kamloops, one phone interview from here Monday, another from (of course) Calgary on Wednesday.

Yes, this is an odd business.

A really nice review in the National Post today and I have been (supremely) restrained in not teasing writer or editor on Twitter about typo in title, or plot summary error. They happen, proofreading and fact checking have become problematic, of late, in print media. Can you say budget cuts?

Here it is: http://arts.nationalpost.com/2013/05/10/book-review-river-of-stars-by-guy-gavriel-kay/

My restraint is even more luminously admirable (!) as Mark Medley, the books editor, has been teasing me about an interview we did three years ago where he claims I declared I would NEVER (sic!) go on Twitter. Sigh. It sounded like me, but I checked. What I said was:

“I have a very uneasy inner-relationship with modern marketing,” he [me, that is] says. “It’s easy to sit back and say ‘I disdain it’ when you have people (volunteering to do it for you, as Kay does), but I will not Tweet about where I’m having coffee, or what my kids are doing. I won’t do it.”

I repeated the last phrase in the interview, after he named other writers busily tweeting (Margaret Atwood, included).  I’ll stand by that, pretty much (though I may yet tweet about older son’s film work and am happy to out a certain books editor’s scandalous café habits). But the lesson, for me, of course is the old never say never, because Medley’s main point is right. I thought I’d hold out entirely. And now I find social media fascinating, worrisome, engaging, problematic, wit-filled and disturbing (add some other words of conflict, go ahead). I think it’s a tool, and a seductive toy, and an ambush.

I think my first post in this Journal, or one of them, was about the insistent, clever marketing execs at Penguin who tag-teamed me over lunch, broke me down, and got me to agree to go on Twitter directly in the period before River of Stars was due to appear. (They later did the same thing to Nicole Winstanley, the President.)

So that’s why I’m not teasing @itsmarkmedley too much … I can draw distinctions as to what really I said three years ago (and the all-caps are all-his), but the core point is valid: I might have been perfectly happy just having a publisher or Bright Weaving’s person tweeting news of the books. And I’d have missed so many opportunities to make puns online, or otherwise get myself in trouble.

What needs to happen, as I migrate from marketing phase to research and then writing stages will be something of a pulling back. The ‘toy’ part of the online world as a whole lies partly in how easy it is to access. Our work space, as writers, is also our play space. It’s, as the phrase goes these days, complicated.

I wish I could remember which ’50s American author told the sorry of his publication day, walking around midtown Manhattan and being dismayed to realize that most of the people around him were oblivious to the utter importance of the fact that it was … his publication day!

I’ve never suffered from that degree of disconnect. Might be just me (or him), might be not being in New York, or living and writing in an age where unless you write Fifty Shades of Da Vinci, any sane writer knows that a hardcover fiction release is going to engage only a small subset of the culture.

But there is a variant of the feeling that kicks in around now, a month after release. It has to do with the frenzy of the period from a month before to a month after a book comes out, within that relatively small world. It is easy to get a distorted view of what one is or does during the marketing phase for a book receiving promotional energy.

And now, as it winds down, as River of Stars moves form being the next new thing to joining all other titles waiting for the next newer thing, a shifting of mental gears starts for me.

For one thing, absent any offers from Major League Baseball, I need to start thinking about another book. (To write, not to read!) We’re exploring scripting possibilities, but my ‘accustomed toil’, in Yeats’s phrase, is still, for better or worse, writing novels, and that’s where I’ll almost surely go.

The touring isn’t over. I leave next week for Calgary and Kamloops, and for the fall I need to sit down and choose among a number of invitations in North America and overseas, from various festivals and conventions. But that stage has an extremely different feel to it, compared to the overheated mood of being ‘just out’ with a book after three years. (I wonder how different it is for the very prolific.)

The publishers are still waiting on some major reviews, and they often do come later – last time the wonderful Washington Post review by Michael Dirda ran on Father’s Day for an April release of Under Heaven. And the UK release for River of Stars is in July. I won’t be touring for it, but there will be marketing and publicity there as they explore the effect of the rebranding I’ve discussed here (in the post with the new UK cover). New editions are always being sold to and appearing in various foreign language editions, but that counts as a chronic condition, not a launch period.

In other words, I have a sense this spring morning of a phase winding down and the need to start shaping the next one. River of Stars is still on the national bestseller list at Macleans, at #6 today after 5 or 6 weeks (I’ve lost count!), with new titles by Rutherford and Le Carre near the top, and with Dan Brown and Khaled Hosseini ticketed for later this month. By the beginning of August the fall titles are starting to roll out.

Spring books do continue to sell, and publishers push their bigger titles hard at selected times of the year. Mother’s Day this week for some, Father’s Day for others, obviously a big campaign for Christmas. Soon we’ll move into another ‘next stage’ and start deciding on a cover for the paperback. The Americans have already elected to stay with the blue cover of the hardback – everyone loves it there. Canada is still to make their call: last time they went from the green horse to the black cover with silk and sword (both US and Canada used that). There are different vibes and mandates as between hardcover and paperback. (And different again later here, when Penguin Canada do their third edition, the trade paperback.)

But that, too, is something that pulls me forward to thinking about next.

Next is good. This marketing phase is, fundamentally, a strange period for any writer. It is a part of his or her ‘job’ but can too easily come to be seen as the real job, and it isn’t.

Someone had a comment on the last post, and I thought it better to reply in a full post here.

The Ottawa reading and interview were absolutely worth the drive up from Mtl, so thank you again. I should have asked this question that night, but couldn’t formulate it right. I have had a few days to percolate and would be interested in hearing your thoughts on how you reconcile your…need (is that the right word?) for using the “quarter turn” due to your preference for not assuming you (we) know what an Emperor and his wife are discussing in their bedroom in Byzantium with your love of the Dunnett books. I don’t mean to imply that one must override the other. I’m just interested in your take on the subject.

I’ve talked and written a lot about this. A few points…

My preference as a writer is not identical to my taste as a reader. When I discuss the co-opting of real lives in fiction and my concerns with it, I always note that the books I am about to name as examples will be books I admire! (It is lame and distracting to go after weak titles and authors.)

Dunnett is not the best example, actually, because with a few exceptions over many books she tends to follow the Sir Walter Scott notion (one I agree with) that in historical fiction the real figures should serve as backdrops for the playing out of the story of the author’s invented point of view ones. In particular, that means not going ‘into their heads’ (my usual ‘favourite position in bed for Henry VIII’ comment). Dunnett does do it at times (Richard Chancellor in Ringed Castle comes to mind, and she happily makes Margaret Lennox (buried in Westminster Abbey near Elizabeth I) a supreme villain, but for the most part she’s in Scott space.

Other writers I admire greatly go much, much further in giving us invented inner lives of real people. George Garrett (Death of the Fox, about Ralegh), Hilary Mantel (obviously, today), the brilliant The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, many more.

Many other authors share my concern here. A.S. Byatt, Antony Beevor, Jonathan Dee, just for starters, have written about it. There’s a trend to note here, tangled up with a sense of entitlement culture, and it tends not to be acknowledged, or to be defended as connected with ‘total artistic freedom’.

But, to directly answer Tasha’s question, I have always argued that we can hold two propositions at once (more, if we’re good!): this is a really well-done novel, and it gives me some ethical concerns. Think about “Birth of a Nation” or “Triumph of Will” in film, to take my point here.

I gave Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies the best review I think I have ever given a book in print, and do have issues along these lines (I mentioned them).

Someone had a comment on the last post, and I thought it better to reply in a full post here.

The Ottawa reading and interview were absolutely worth the drive up from Mtl, so thank you again. I should have asked this question that night, but couldn’t formulate it right. I have had a few days to percolate and would be interested in hearing your thoughts on how you reconcile your…need (is that the right word?) for using the “quarter turn” due to your preference for not assuming you (we) know what an Emperor and his wife are discussing in their bedroom in Byzantium with your love of the Dunnett books. I don’t mean to imply that one must override the other. I’m just interested in your take on the subject.

I’ve talked and written a lot about this. A few points…

My preference as a writer is not identical to my taste as a reader. When I discuss the co-opting of real lives in fiction and my concerns with it, I always note that the books I am about to name as examples will be books I admire! (It is lame and distracting to go after weak titles and authors.)

Dunnett is not the best example, actually, because with a few exceptions over many books she tends to follow the Sir Walter Scott notion (one I agree with) that in historical fiction the real figures should serve as backdrops for the playing out of the story of the author’s invented point of view ones. In particular, that means not going ‘into their heads’ (my usual ‘favourite position in bed for Henry VIII’ comment). Dunnett does do it at times (Richard Chancellor in Ringed Castle comes to mind, and she happily makes Margaret Lennox (buried in Westminster Abbey near Elizabeth I) a supreme villain, but for the most part she’s in Scott space.

Other writers I admire greatly go much, much further in giving us invented inner lives of real people. George Garrett (Death of the Fox, about Ralegh), Hilary Mantel (obviously, today), the brilliant The Blue Flower by Penelope Fitzgerald, many more.

Many other authors share my concern here. A.S. Byatt, Antony Beevor, Jonathan Dee, just for starters, have written about it. There’s a trend to note here, tangled up with a sense of entitlement culture, and it tends not to be acknowledged, or to be defended as connected with ‘total artistic freedom’.

But, to directly answer Tasha’s question, I have always argued that we can hold two propositions at once (more, if we’re good!): this is a really well-done novel, and it gives me some ethical concerns. Think about “Birth of a Nation” or “Triumph of Will” in film, to take my point here.

I gave Mantel’s Bring Up the Bodies the best review I think I have ever given a book in print, and do have issues along these lines (I mentioned them).

This week feels like a lot of to-dos to cross off, write more down, cross off. That tends to happen in a break at home during a release period. (Yes, I filed my taxes.)

The CBC ‘Next Chapter’ interview with Shelagh Rogers was exactly what I thought it would be: she’s warm, funny, really smart, likes puns (!), reads carefully, and somehow always wants to talk about some things I want to discuss in a book but no one else has asked. This time we keyed on family relationships in River of Stars, and on courage, in the widest sense. There’s a scene where a mother walks to a market town alone, trying to get help for a sick child, and for me it may be the bravest single thing done in the book. Shelagh gave me a chance to discuss that.

We chatted for about 45 minutes and it was a highlight of the media tour. It’ll air on ‘The Next Chapter’ on May 27th and then again on June 1st, and it’ll be a podcast, too, of course, for CBC.

Ottawa on Sunday night was genuinely a pleasure. First of all it is a good book town, period. Secondly, I seem to have a really solid readership base there, so it was a crowded, lively hall. I checked and a number of them had been at earlier readings years ago for Perfect Books, in a pub they booked. My considered view is that an audience with a drink or two to hand will laugh more easily – and when you want them to.

But even without much in the way of drinks Sunday, it was a terrific session. I was interviewed, after a short reading, by Neil Wilson, one of the Author’s Festival directors (a return engagement for us, we’d done this three years ago) and he gave me great questions to run with – and then in the Q&A the audience did the same.

The line was long and there was a panel starting in the same space, so the Festival people moved everyone to the basement for the signing. I made a (too predictable?) joke about none of them ever seeing the light of day again. Most stayed to get their books signed anyhow. Brave.

Tuesday was more questions, online this time, during a Q&A on Goodreads. I fielded about 70 questions or so through the morning and afternoon, typing away. I haven’t checked but am sure the field of my answers is littered with typos. My first sustained interaction on Goodreads, and it was a really generous group.

I also signed stock at two branches of Book City here in Toronto (both stores took photos, one caught me looking about as unshaven and shaggy as I get … well, I hope that is as shaggy as I get.)

River is still at #2 on the Maclean’s bestseller list which marks, best I can remember, the longest I’ve been at that high a level with any book. We’re #3 on the Canadian Bookseller’s Association list, too. I’ll slide soon: Le Carre, Hosseini, Dan Brown are all May books, and Edward Rutherford, who always hits the top levels just released his newest.

And I’m already back and forth with my editors on jacket copy for the paperback. That feels so strange (and we’ve talked about it): prepping the pb while still touring for the hardcover. But lead times are enormous in publishing these days. The good news is a wonderful slate of reviews to choose good quotes from. Do jacket and inside review quotes sell books? Old (endless?) debate. The industry still assumes they help.

Next out-of-town is in two weeks, when I fly to Calgary (May 14) and Kamloops (May 16), for readings and signings. That should do it for spring, with the possible exception of a return to New York. Come fall, a new Festival season starts but that has a different vibe from touring with a new book. We’re weighing about 7-8 invitations and balancing dates. Before that I really want to have started the research for another book.

Touring is a dying phenomenon, really. Conversations on the road underscored this for me. Despite some colleagues who hold forth on giving away books and charging for readings and t-shirts (how realistic is that, honestly, for most authors?) the migration to online marketing and PR is a reality now. Even when I do an interview with, say, Nancy Pearl in Seattle, that evening ‘lives’ far longer and reaches more widely in the televised version of it than in the actual evening encounter. In a way, some are arguing, you do the live event to create the taped one. Different world.