For the last three months, I've been trying to hawk my new novel Q Road in the midwest and beyond, and in case you haven't read it, recommended it to four friends, suggested your local library purchase it, and demanded your favorite bookstores carry it, shame on you!

In these last several months, I have been on college campuses and in bookstores and anywhere they'll have me, trying with leg power to make up for not getting a New York Times book review. If I had gotten a New York Times review, I would at this point be lounging around on the couch with one cat on my stomach and the other on my feet, reading Little Lulu comics and eating bonbons, musing about my next book. If the NYTBR features a book, then so does everybody else, and selling would have taken care of itself.

To make up for not having such a review, I have figured I must individually meet every single person who would have otherwise read the glowing review, and I must impress them favorably, by being clever or making candy for them or helping their children with math homework. And since the NYTBR has something like a zillion subscribers, my job has been fairly difficult. The good news is that to sell out my book I don't have to talk a zillion people into buying it, just 18,000 which is the number of copies they printed. After that, then I will put my feet up and crack open the comics and chocolates.

So at first I was planning on getting people all over the country to buy my book, but gas is expensive, and there are a lot of regions where I've nowhere to sleep, and so many cities have those confusing one-way streets downtown. Lately, then, I've been focusing on Michigan and nearby regions. But even that much driving is starting to hurt my back and considering the gas mileage my Chevy truck gets, I'm going to hone in (like a laser beam) on Kalamazoo--I am taking out a classified ad suggesting that the only way for Kalamazooans to show true love of their God, their country and especially their county is to buy copies of Q Road for their loved ones.

After all, there are something like a hundred eighty thousand people here in the greater Kalamazoo area, and if just one out of ten of those men women & children buy a copy of the book, then I will be all set. Unfortunately, it's too late to change my name to Bonielle Steele.

The Reviewers:
Bless them when they are kind. Curse them when they are unkind. Don't believe them by any means. As rural novelist Carolyn Chute told me, "Even when the reviewers like our books, they like them for the wrong reasons."

"Wild, confused, disjointed and improbable..." Said the Examiner. The Examiner said that not of my book but of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights. In anticipation of getting rotten reviews, I bought the book Rotten Reviews & Rejections, which documents some of the bad reviews that good books have gotten over the years. Of course I would have been thrilled to receive a review as bad as the one for Gulliver's Travels, which one reviewer said was, "Evidence of a diseased mind and lacerated heart."

The following are some excerpts from review I've been parading about:

A thoughtful, well-paced, deeply moral (though not moralizing) novel full of hard lessons and the wisdom gained from them across generations. -Publisher's Weekly

The vivid, varied cast and palpable sense of connection to the soil give (Q Road) a stern grandeur. -Kirkus Reviews

The finale of the novel is as satisfying as a good harvest. -Dana Schwartz, Reading Divas

And then there is the mixed review. Consider this nice sentence from the L.A. Times:

The broad tableau of aluminum siding versus pig manure is rendered here with delicate, exacting strokes.

This sentence, however, is followed by a less flattering one, and if you want to read that sentence, you'll have to search out and find it yourself. All I can say is that the reviewer must have been unaware that I study martial arts and that I travel great distances without hesitation. Fortunately folks at the Rocky Mountain News in Colorado are more sensible and have chosen Q Road as one of the best debut novels of 2002.

Campbell's spare, evocative prose is pure artistry, but her unusual characters and her unique way of linking the continuity of time with the land's inhabitants prove her a writer to watch. - Joan Hinkemeyer, Rocky Mountain News

And there is a special place in my heart for Lucia Perillo. This poet, who is the recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant (and therefore must be a genius) saw fit to give my book a positive thousand word review in the Chicago Tribune and compares me favorably to Charles Dickens and Thomas Wolfe. And then there's David Dodd Lee, who, despite being delirious with mononucleosis, read my book and wrote a generous review on Amazon-dot-com:

I can remember nothing in the last couple of years that is both stirring and still steeped in mystery. This book glows with the land-bound energy of thousands of lives, and not a wooly bear or black eyed susan can do anything if not reverberate against the template of all that human despair and exhilaration in the name of survival. -D.D.L.

Promotional Materials
Because I am an American and because I want to interest fellow Americans in my book, I knew there should be stuff associated with my book. Stuff is not only physical evidence of one's importance, but stuff can also distract folks from some more difficult questions. When I'm asked a difficult question, such as, "What's this book about?" I can just hand the questioner a pack of matches featuring a curious graphic and all the pertinent information about Q Road, including the ISBN. (If you want a matchbook, write to me and I'll send you one, ditto for the Q Road postcards.)

The most important promotional material was created by Kraftbrau Brewery in the form of Q Brew lager beer, the label of which looks like the cover of my book. (Peter Brakeman designed the label.) My joy at seeing everyone drinking the beer at my book release party was enough to overcome the discomfort and embarrassment of my body breaking out in red spots like mosquito bites. Yes, in fact, every part of my body, including the palms of my hands became covered with spots the day before my book release party, which was also my fortieth birthday. Hives, somebody said, nerves. A late summer virus, said my doctor, looks like (but isn't) Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. The fifth disease, said another, but only children get that. The sixth disease, perhaps. The spots subsided over the course of the following two weeks. Oh, and of course there have been a few difficulties with bottles of my beer appearing in bookstores which are not licensed to sell, serve or even display alcoholic beverages.

We're still working out the details for the Rachel Crane action figures, but I'll keep you posted.

Things go wrong
I'm doing something like sixty readings and signings at bookstores, campuses, and once at a café, and so far several of these events have gone smoothly. Sometimes, though, the timing is off: the big Chicago Tribune review appeared five days after I read at a bookstore in that city. In Allegan, Michigan, the reporter interviewed me the day of the reading, which meant the article ran the following week. At some stores my name was in the computer two different ways, Bonnie Campbell for the novel and Bonnie Jo Campbell for the short stories, so they were unaware that I had a book of short stories, which they could have also sold. In a tony suburb outside Minneapolis, I went to a reading and nobody came. No one. Not a single soul apart from my kindhearted friend Susan, who had driven me there. The booksellers told me that it was probably because I was competing with the new fall line up on NBC. The new season of Friends was beginning, he said, perhaps a bit too wistfully.

Perhaps you've long been wondering whether you can judge a book by its cover. Well, whether or not you can, people do, and booksellers have been telling me that my wood grain cover is not an easy sell. When I told my editor Sarah, she responded that, yes, the New York people had reached the same conclusion. As much as I like the primitive artwork, as much as it accommodates a beer label, apparently the cover of my book was a bad marketing choice. The big Q on the cover might scream "take me out of the library" (and at the Portage Michigan library, sources tell me there were 49 people on the waiting list for my book at one point), but it is apparently not screaming "buy me, buy me, even at the expense of your child's othodontia."

And my voice. Have I mentioned my voice? I used to have a nice tone, was some months ago even a fair singer, but now I sound like an old chainsmoking alocholic whore. I may never again in my karate class be able to kee-aye from my center of my being. Oh, and speaking of my karate class, my body may never recover from slacking off and missing so much class. I am afraid that now I'm at risk of being beaten up by any old chainsmoking alcoholic whore who comes along.

And have any of you noticed all these other Qs that have been popping up on books. I can't blame Q: The Autobiography of Quincy Jones or "Q, James Bond's Gadget Master: The Biography of Desmond Llewelyn because they were already in existence, but why Sue Grafton suddenly felt the need to finish Q is for Quarry, I don't know. And in the Tribune, I just read about a scary thing, some kind of Q Diet and Exercise Plan.

There are a number of people I would like to thank:
First let me thank my hosts. In the beginning of my tour, when Scribner sent me to their chosen cities and to the Great Lakes Booksellers Association conference, they would pay for expenses, and I kept them low because I wanted the Scribner gang to like me, and since then I have kept my expenses low for more practical reasons. So all along I have stayed with friends, and friends of friends, and relatives of friends. And friends of relatives. I have stayed in several incredible houses, have had my own lovely bathroom several times, which is more than I can say for staying at home, and in all my time at other people's houses, I have not had to scoop out a litter box.

On the road, I've affirmed something I have long suspected. Other people's houses are lots cleaner than mine. They cleaned for your visit, you might suggest, but I know better. The kind of clean I found in other people's houses was a deep down clean, not a hastily applied clean. So I want to thank my cousin Sonia for allowing me to sleep in her house that is only a little bit cleaner than mine, and thank you especially Carolyn Chute, whose house in Maine is as messy and cluttered as my own. Also, thank you Carolyn, for feeding me moose pie.

Thank you Elizabeth McCracken for buying me dinner and wine in Iowa City. Thank you Paul Ingram at Prairie Lights, for the free copy of Observatory Mansions. Thank you Becky Barnes for the lipstick! Thank you everyone for the beds, the food, the companionship, the tote bag (Athena's), the pens and cups of coffee. And, oh god, Rachael Perry, thank you so much for keeping up my website-I would offer to come clean your house for you, but, it already is a lot cleaner than mine. And thank you to those of you who got me paying gigs! In truth, I am now indebted to everyone. I owe big all my pals who supported my book, who attended my readings, who drummed up local interest when I came to town. Those of you who bought my books, ordered them online or at bookstores, or even from me at a discounted rate. Thank you to all of you who have submitted online reviews here and there! I am so much in debt that I can never hope to repay those debts. This is why I can only write a book every three years-because it takes me three years to either repay my debts to all of you or else forget how indebted I am.

Words of Wisdom:
Writer and ghostwriter (ooh, scary) Will Allison let me stay in his home in Indianapolis and even let me near his baby Hazel (I didn't tell him about my September rash), and there he related to me some study he'd heard about happiness and wealth. Turns out that when you get rich, you temporarily become happier, but then you sink back to your initial level of happiness. But if you've ever been rich and then become poor, your happiness may be irretrievable. In other words, when it comes to riches, you've got lots more to lose than you have to gain. I don't know if he was suggesting this was a metaphor for success in publishing, but his kid sure was cute.

I didn't used to be manic depressive, but selling my new book has made me that way. I get all up up up for radio or newspaper interviews, up up up about some little bit of success or some new plan to increase sales, and then when I get home exhausted, I realize how futile it is, how nobody reads anymore and that the only thing that makes people read is a NYT book review, then I go down down down. Whenever I'm asked why writers write, I always say that the compulsion to write is some kind of mental illness-why else would we want to write when other activities are more fun, more rewarding? Why would we write even in those times when we've nothing to say? Though I hate to make rash generalizations nearly as much as I hate having general rashes, I'd have to say it makes perfect sense to me that many writers are nuts.

So I'll leave you with this one final thought: A copy of Q Road would make an excellent Xmas gift for anyone you really honestly care about, and strategically purchasing a copy for the right person could possibly prevent war with Iraq-after all, it's a book about neighbors getting along. And don't mistakenly buy any of those other Q Books or mistakenly try the (though mistakenly buying another Road book, such as Tobacco Road or On the Road might work out okay). And avoid that Q diet, whatever that is. And if you buy a gift copy of Q Road and you can't get hold of me to sign it, go ahead and sign my name yourself-you have my permission. Cheers!

Letters & News (Aug-Dec 2002)
My dear dog Re-bar has gone the way of all mortal creatures. Judy the veterinarian kindheartedly helped end his life in the front seat of my truck so I could hold his foot and pat his head amidst familiar smells, and then I took him for a funeral drive. My brothers Tom and Mike and I dug the hole at Susanna's farm-actually we dug three holes since in the first we hit a drain pipe, and in the second some old cement somebody had dumped. Loring Janes played his National steel guitar for us all the while and sang songs of death. I carried Rebar's body to the grave and I curled him into the bottom of the four foot deep hole in his blanket of autumn colors, and we all said farewell, and we all cried and drank wine from the bottle (Frank Bowers's homemade elderberry) and then we all covered the grave, and so has ended his sixteen years of life on this earth.

As for new life, the kitchen chicken was born while Susanna was out of town, the only survivor of a nest of eggs abandoned by a young hen. The kitchen chicken lives in a cage near the telephone, and he has just begun to crow quietly. If you know anyone who would like to own a pet rooster, please do get in touch, as Susanna's pet roosters are big bullies to the little fellow. Also new: David Magson bought a new Cadillac, a '96 gray-green Sedan de Ville to replace his '90 Coupe de Ville. It's terrifying to drive the new car with all those digital messages appearing on the dashboard. Darling Christopher wants folks to know that not only is there a pair of Carolina wrens apparently wintering here, but one or two yellow bellied sap suckers as well. Oh, and a half dozen wild turkeys feed under our hedge each morning.

Heidi Bell writes in an email: We did finally cook a chicken today, our belated Thanksgiving meal. It turned out pretty well-tasty, though the dark meat wasn't done all the way to the bone because I was afraid the breast meat would get dry. We need a few more tries I think to really get it right. Strangely, though I feel I've cooked a lot, usually it's been for only a few people, and I've never cooked a whole chicken before. It was unnervingly like handling a baby, and I found myself talking to it as I rinsed and stuffed it. The stuffing was good. Who knew it was so easy to make? And to think of all the credit I've been giving my mom all these years. Just kidding. Carla Vissers responds: I love that image of you handling your plucked chicken corpse like a baby, cradling its little missing head. It reminds me of the time Eric and I watched Martha Stewart on TV lovingly rub a turkey down with oil and spices-it was the closest thing to moving porn that Eric's ever seen (as far as I know...). He wouldn't let me change the channel until she was completely finished.

From Rebecca Barnes: I just attended a book signing/meet-the-author thing at the book store in Madison, CT. It was to meet Laurent de Brunhoff-of Babar fame! This is the son of Jean de Brunhoff who began the series in the early 1930s. I would guess Laurent is about 70 and he couldn't be cuter. His new book is called Yoga for Elephants-he's been doing Yoga for 25 years and he spoke to our rather small group about his childhood, his father, his second wife (American, they have a home in nearby Middletown, CT) and then he demonstrated some Yoga poses. I bought the new book and also brought several older ones from home for him to sign. One was an anthology (a really nice hardcover I picked up somewhere, used) that he had never seen, which included photos of his family and previous homes. He was very charmed by it and in addition to inscribing his name as he had been doing (for the others... those less special than I,) for me he sketched a little elephant next to his name !! I nearly asked him to marry me... I swooned... By the way, I hope you appreciate that not only did I order your book from Amazon but I also special ordered it from a store in Old Saybrook. I was trying to create a buzz.

From Gina Betcher: I am thinking of writing a kind of editorial for Bark Magazine. It has to do with my dog's uncropped ears, how she often resembles another breed (I'm always asked, to my horror, 'is that a pit bull?'), and how unnatural the cosmetic correction is to the breed (the ears rarely come out bone up), and how blind and dumb we humans are to correct a boxer's most natural _expression: quizzical. I think I'm still a little hot under the collar over the issue, but in my heart I'm clear. From Ingrid Hawkinson: Gina & I went to Toronto to see The Who. We had a blast & Gina bought a dozen eggs & some French Canadian orange juice. We had to declare them when we went through customs. The customs guy said, You mean to tell me you drove all the way to Toronto. You bought orange juice. You bought eggs. And now you're driving back. We said yeah, and he let us through.

From Becky Busby in Massachusetts: I'd like to pass on a few of my own sit-com moments. One happened this past summer. The weather here sucked big-time, very hot and muggy, mostly 90s, with faint rumblings of thunder but never any rain, like the sky was constipated-constantly farting but never pooping. (You can always depend on a Busby for a scatological figure of speech.) On one of the rare days when I felt energetic enough to jog a couple of miles early in the morning, I went to the woods with the smoothest trails----unfortunately, also the buggiest area. My legs were shrouded in sweat pants, and I'd bathed my arms liberally with nasty insect repellent, but from the start I was dive-bombed by loudly buzzing carniverous bugs all around my head and face, flying even behind my eyeglasses (My eyes! My livelihood!) And getting trapped in my wildly frizzy hair, buzzing right on my scalp for endless seconds. When I was running fast, the attacks were somewhat controllable, but when I had to slow down for a rough patch of trail, I was reduced to twirling the two unused dog leashes above my head like a helicopter rotor to fight off the attacks. Of course this was a great arm exercise, but when my right arm gave out, I resorted to my left arm, which is much less coordinated. So there I was, walking as fast as I could, gasping pitifully, and slapping myself with dog leashes all over my face, neck, and shoulders. I felt like I belonged in early Christian times, which I would have been lauded for self-flagellation.

The other sit-com experience is sort of continuous. I have to explain first that I spend a lot of time in bed, not just for sleep and sex. My bed is, preferably, the place where I eat, read, floss, cuddle with animals-just about anything you can do lying down, I do it in bed. (In the immortal words of Jerri Hall, Mick Jagger's ex, "I've always looked better lying down.") Anyway, our cats are addicted to these silly Pounce treats, which Uncle Terry first told me about, by the way. And I keep the Pounce in my bedside drawer, so every time I open the drawer to get floss or whatever, the cats gather round and mew for their treats. I toss a few here, a few there, and enjoy seeing the cats pounce upon the Pounce-they really do that. Unfortunately, they don't always find all the treats. The other part of the bed thing is that I routinely wear ear plugs every night, due to husband-related noise events. Frequently the ear plugs fall out, and I grope around under the covers looking for them. You can see where this is going. Yes, I woke up in the wee hours one morning with Pounce treats stuck firmly inside my ear canals, and I hate to admit it, but it has happened more than once.

From Melissa Fraterrigo: I'm a little disorganized now and I have the bruises to prove it! I moved to Erie, PA last week and have spent the past few days trying to squeeze furniture up the spiral staircase that leads to my bedroom. I suppose I initially felt very romantic about a staircase to my bed, but 20+ bruises later, I just want to live on one level! I'm nervous about teaching although very excited to be out of crazy Utah. From Lisa Lenzo in Saugatuck, Michigan: The Kelly circus was pretty interesting-it's been in business since 1938, and they use elephants to set up the tent. An elephant frisked me with her trunk-looking for cotton candy or some other treat, her trainer said. And I was very pleased to hear an explanation of why a baby elephant wrapped its trunk around my arm and nearly pulled me off my feet, years ago. I thought she was probably being playful, but it never occurred to me that my arm and hand are the closest thing I have to a trunk. The trainer said that elephants play with each other by grasping and releasing each other's trunks.

From Jesse Green: Work is crazed. The election season is in full swing so I'm madly dodging the slings and arrows of what passes for political discourse in our psuedo-democracy (Bush II, presiding). I now have a high zoot dual processor server and broadband Internet access at home so I'm all set to free my inner geek. At least in my 'spare time' when I'm not changing diapers and rescuing the cat's tail from my son. Attempting to date. What a nightmare. If my ex were not physically abusive, a pathological liar and mentally ill, I'd just remarry her to avoid the horrors of dating. Been considering a mail order bride. Any thoughts? Thailand or Russia? Maybe I ought to take a survey.

From Margie Coles: I'm in Portugal, on vacation with a new sweetie Neal, and finally enjoying sunshine after much rain in Spain. And that is no joke!! Spain was fun (I could communicate also, which was a big plus) but I have really enjoyed Portugal. Both of us fell in love with Lisbon. I love all of the tiled sidewalks and the beautifully painted blue and yellow tile work on the sides of buildings. We went to a Fado-perfomance/dinner last night before we left Lisbon, and that was quite an experience as well. Today we are in the Algarve, and we followed the advice of fellow Seattlelite Rick Steves and headed straight to a tiny fishing town-turned-beach-resort called Salema, very near Sagres (the end of the earth in the time of Columbus). Hopefully, we will be able to enjoy sunshine (we nearly drowned in Spain) and aa dip in the ocean. But our European frolic is about to end. We return to Barcelona, and then back to Seattle early next week.

I've been working a lot in Florida during the past few months, on a consulting gig with Office Depot which is headquartered in Delray Beach near Miami. I'm working in a semi-formal partnership with a friend of mine and the work has been very demanding but quite fun. We both worked at a company doing content management consulting-and the company went under. So we've teamed up and so far it has worked well. Right now, my partner-in-crime, Rita, is in Florida waiting to see if the project we've been working on will get funded. The outcome will determine, as well, whether ongoing work with OD gets funded as well! The project is large, and the red tape to get it approved is enormous. If all goes well, we'll continue to do a lot of traveling and be gainfully employed in a very tough economy.

From Anne Sjostrom: A couple weekends ago I drove up to northern WY to see Medicine Wheel-a Native American site that is at least 300+ years old and possibly a few 1000 years old. Despite the winds and long drive, it was great to get out of town for a few days.

Assorted thoughts from Alicia Conroy in Minneapolis: classes end Dec. 13, then just a few days to grade final papers and I'm done. I'm going to Colorado with Chris for Xmas to see his brother's family (one of his half-dozen brothers) I exaggerate, actually it's 5 boys and 4 girls, including Chris, who is busily and gainfully employed this week. We've got to work on his timing. He's unemployed all freakin' summer, then putting in long days the week of my birthday! Murphy's Law or Alicia's Luck, I'm not sure which. I'm trying to be a Bigger Person (psychologically-I'm trying desperately to be a smaller person, inch-wise).... At Thanksgiving, Mom will feed me one of her made-up dinner concoctions Lately her solution is to throw cumin in everything. I like cumin, in its place ....on Netscape's news highlights: in Morocco, doctor's reattached the penis of a boy that had been bitten off by a donkey . . . no explanation as to how that happened.

From my neighbor Lynn Meredith: Do you by any chance want a kitten? There is one, oh, probably 3-4 months old, and it's pretty obvious who his Daddy is-he looks identical to the big gray one that hangs around. There are about 6-7 around that age, and they all look different. A few are long-haired-they don't seem to do as good as the short-haired ones. A couple calicos, some really sweet ones1 I have got homes for about 4 of them, but the people don't want them until after Christmas. The nursing home is turning out to be the place I go to find homes for them. They have one I took there about 3 years ago and he is doin great! It's mostly the nurses and administrators who are taking them. I'm so glad. Right now, and this is between us, I have them back in the back-room. I was so worried about them getting cold, I've got two electric blankets and the kerosene heater goin and it's not too bad out there. They all huddle together and look pretty comfy. Mike was dead set against it, till he saw a couple of the kittens and won't admit it, but he likes them. As long as they don't burn our house down!

Send news and notes to The Letter Parade, Bonnie Jo Enterprises, PO Box 52, Comstock MI 49041.