publicity trip

Ok so I had the flu and I was supposed to fly from Toronto to Montreal for the day and do a full day's work being interviewed by all the media and give a talk to 100 Chapter's book store employees. We are gearing up for my new book which is coming out on Oct.7th. (Don't forget you are coming to my launch. See my website for details.) However, there is a rub. I have the flu. So I call my publicity agent and tell her I'm as sick as a dog and have a temperature. She says suck it up and get on the plane. ( I would have done the same thing.)

So my 'handler' greets me in Montreal, then rushes me at breakneck speed to the wrong place for the Montreal Gazette interview. The reporter is at another location. Finally he figures it out and we are late. Once the interview starts he interrupts and says sorry we are late for our next appointment at the Holiday Inn where I am to give a promotional talk about my new book. We get there and no one is there. Not one person is in the 200 chairs. Why? Because the publisher has sent me on the wrong day. It was the next day. I am only in Montreal for the day. I have no overnight stuff--not even a lipstick. Ok so I suck that up along with my flu, buy a toothbrush and go to a hotel.

I should have mentioned earlier that I bought an enormously expensive outfit for the launch-- totally unaffordable. My friend gave me a big lecture on how a designer pantsuit would hide 'all of my sins'. That was such a terrible thing to say to a over 60 ex-catholic school girl that I rushed to stretch my plastic and buy this plain black boring pantsuit that was designed by someone named Sara Pucini who I have never heard of.

I wore it to Montreal-- as a dry run for my upcoming launch. I should have known there would be trouble when I had to get my husband up at 4:00 a.m when I was leaving Toronto to try and figure out how the belt of the pants snapped on. It was like an Escher drawing. After twenty minutes of fuss, my husband said it was impossible to figure out, and ugly to boot and then went back to bed.

I got to the hotel and tried to unzip the complex jacket that had one of those zippers that unzip from either end. ( Those are always trouble.) Well I had a major wardrobe malfunction. The zipper was stuck. I was all alone in a hotel room, with no suitcase and I couldn't get the jacket off. Finally I had no choice but to sleep in the black wool jacket. The next morning it was wrinkled, and had small white pills all over it from the cheap Holiday Inn sheets. Of course I had no deodorant, and if I did have some couldn't have put it on since I couldn't get my jacket off. I couldn't shower or do my hair in my jacket either.

I had to show up for the hundreds of book employees in my wrinkled, lint covered outfit and stringy hair. Beating them to the punch I had to say, "If you are going to whisper to the person next to you--'she looks like she slept in that outfit'-- you are right I did."

From that talk I had to go to a TV show where they put new makeup on top of yesterday's cracked tired sunken eyes. This image was then sent all over Canada to promote my my book called After The Falls. It was in some ways totally appropriate since I looked like I had just been thrown over The Falls, most likely by Sara Pucini, then somehow floated down the St. Lawrence Seaway and washed up in Montreal. It was a true representation of me, the protagonist --After the Falls.

The good part- The flu was nothing.
lesson learned- Never believe in publicists or designer clothes.