In advance of my long drive from Raleigh, NC to the
Historical Novel Society’s 2007 conference in Albany, NY, I phoned several
independent booksellers that I wanted to meet and asked if I could drop by when
I was in the area. This provided me the opportunity to meet some wonderful store owners for the first time. Murphy’s Law, all my scheduled arrivals
were delayed by traffic, but each storeowner was accommodating, flexible, and
pleasant.

Carl my significant other/redcoat came with me on the trip
to help with driving, transporting books, etc. Without his help, the journey
would have been quite a beast.

In June 2006 during my first trip to Colonial Williamsburg,
I’d met Robert Hill, the retail manager at the visitor center bookstore, so it
was my pleasure to return to the bookstore and shake his hand again. Book sales
at the visitor center don’t follow "the rules." With few exceptions,
customers are transient. Promotions in the local paper about upcoming author visits
are largely ineffective because most visitors don’t return to the area often.
What can an author do to increase chances of having a successful booksigning,
given those constraints? The bookstore sees seasonal traffic peaks in July
(summer vacation) and at the year-end holidays. In addition, more books are
sold at the end of the day, when visitors have finished their tour of the
colonial city and cap it off by a trip to the visitor center. So go with the
flow and schedule an appearance when the crowd peaks. Also, visitors love
seeing authors in colonial clothing; love seeing soldiers in uniform with
weapons that can kill, maim, stab, injure, or otherwise incapacitate; love
seeing cute kids in colonial clothing or uniforms. Can do, can do, can do.

A major traffic accident in Richmond, VA blocked my
scheduled meeting Wednesday afternoon with Lelia Taylor, store manager of
Creatures ‘n Crooks bookstore, so we rescheduled for Sunday afternoon on my
return trip. Late Wednesday afternoon, after I’d left Colonial Williamsburg and
reached my motel in Yorktown, I contacted author Ed Cline. Ed and I had met
last June while he was selling his books just outside the Williamsburg visitor
center, and we corresponded via email. Author Mary Sharratt (whom I also met
last June in Williamsburg while she was on book tour) interviewed Ed and me for
the May 2007 issue of the Historical Novels Review. Ed was kind enough to give
me a tour of the Yorktown waterfront and fill me in on some local history. For
example, most of the buildings along the waterfront are less than four years
old. In 2003, Hurricane Isabel (which came through Raleigh) pretty much leveled
the waterfront, and it’s been almost completely rebuilt.

From the waterfront, the York River is so wide it looks like a bay. It smells
like the ocean when the tide comes in but is freshwater enough to keep out
sharks and other ocean predators.

Naturally, no trip to Yorktown would be complete for a
Revolutionary War reenactor without a visit to the Yorktown Battlefield. I’ll
have to return during broad daylight and have a better look because we arrived
there at dusk. Still, the redoubts were quite visible, even in the gloom, and
the flattened, cannon bombardment area from Washington’s army created the
perfect spot for a substantial ground fog to settle in. I didn’t find it hard
to imagine the place haunted.

Thanks to Robert Hill and Ed Cline for their time.