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Hi guys,

Okay, so I’m about to embark on the tour for my latest novel, ‘Savages’, and thought this might be a good time to launch a website column as well. So if you’ve never been on a book tour, you’re invited to e-participate in this one. I’ll try to update you daily, or as time and internet access allow.

The schedule for my US appearances is on the site, but the tour actually starts in Europe. So –

July 1 – We (my wife, Jean, and I) leave from LA for the UK tomorrow. I’ll be doing some talks at Cambridge University, where my son is also working for the summer. So today is a bear – I’m scrambling to finish a draft of the screenplay for Savages, which I’m doing with Oliver Stone, who’s going to direct. Co-writing a script with a five-time Oscar recipient is a little intimidating. Fortunately my friend and (so far) unindicted co-conspirator Shane Salerno is serving as consigliore. So I’m working with him, making a packing list, trying to choose the readings I’ll be doing at Cambridge (and later Oxford), need to mail off the proof pages of another manuscript . . .

Packing for a book tour is tricky. For instance, I’ll need a suit for an appearance in Milan and enough dress shirts to do the Cambridge and Oxford gigs. I’m going to try to pack a shirt a day (nine days on this first leg Cambridge-Milan-Oxford) because there won’t be any time or place to do laundry. (These are the lofty and artistic issues a writer has on his mind.) Have to take the laptop, because I need to work on this trip, and there are the other essentials for a book tour –

I-Pod – Can’t survive without it. With jetlag, insomnia is an issue, so I need Misters Springsteen, Earle, and Keen to get me through it. One of my favorite memories is looking out a hotel window at a Paris street while listening to Robert Earl Keen tunes.

Pharmaceuticals – antibiotics, cold prevention crap, sinus stuff, aspirin, Ibuprofen, hand sanitizer, band-aids (I’m really clumsy and bled copiously in hotel rooms.) On and off planes, shaking hands, little sleep (I can’t seem to sleep on planes and Ambien is just too scary) – you’re going to need the meds. It’s a given.

DVDs – Right now I’m really into French New Wave films, so I’m bringing ‘Last Year At Marienbad’ and ‘Band Of Outsiders’. (Do you know about the Criterion Collection? Great.) I might slip in a little early John Woo as well.

Books – Anything other than mine. My nightmare – my nightmare – is to be stuck on a flight with nothing to read. That’s just parachute time. My strategy lately has been to bring one big, fat epic – but I haven’t decided which one yet. I know the suspense is killing you.

Leatherman – You can’t put it in carry-on, but I always have one in checked baggage since the time I knocked my glasses off a sink in the Alexis Hotel in Seattle and had nothing to fix them with. Of course, I couldn’t see without my glasses anyway. The nice people at The Seattle Mystery Bookshop fixed them for me.

Food – Always – always – bring food on airplanes.

Okay, so here’s the plan for tomorrow. Drive up to LA, put car in long-term parking, go through the ticketing and security nightmare (I’ll wear slip-on shoes and no belt), get on direct flight from LA to London Heathrow. Meet car and driver and make the two hour drive to Cambridge. Check into room at Jesus College. Try not to fall asleep for another six or seven hours.

We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned.

You’re going to like Cambridge.

Jean is packing.

I know this doesn’t sound like much to you, but to me it’s the first line of a Ludlum novel. In fact, I’m cringing under my desk typing this while she is attempting to stuff everything she owns into a single suitcase, because that thing’s going to blow.

I know, I know – I don’t get it - ‘I’m a guy’. Yeah, most of the time I am, except last night I fell asleep on the sofa while watching ‘Bethenny Getting Married?’ and I really care about how it ends. Ostensibly with Bethenny getting married, but the ‘?’ leaves room for suspense. I hope she does get married, if that what she wants, because she seems like a nice person and it always gives me a level of comfort to watch people who are crazier than I am. So I do have my feminine side, but the packing thing I do not get. And it can only end one way – with the lady at the check-in desk looking at Jean and saying, “Maybe you could transfer some of the items into your husband’s bag?” Yeah, I have room for that micro-wave.

Me, I pack like it’s a prison break and I’m going to have to toss my bag over the wire while climbing the fence and dodging machine-gun fire. I’m always ready for the gendarmes to come knocking on the door and demand that I get on the next flight out of the country. The fact that this has only happened once (okay, twice) makes no difference to me.

Anyway, for those of you keeping score, I did finish the draft of the script last night (pre-Bethenny), and I’m about to mail off the final proof pages of the book – having roughed them up a little to make it look like I read them. (Writer Tip: Set your coffee cup on about page 150 so it leaves a ring. A slight peanut butter smear on another page is also good. Blood stains are a little over-the-top, but do what you gotta do.)

So I’m packed and ready and now I’m going to crawl down the hallway to take a shower. (Rule of Travel: Shower as late as possible. Shave as late as possible.) Then we’ll drive up to the airport so I can be there three hours early, because as bad as Jean is about packing, I’m worse about time. Pathologically early for things. (The woman didn’t know that movie screens were white before she met me.)

Later.