 Naomi Epel is the happy face greeting many a touring author in San Francisco.. |
Stepping into the greeting area at San Francisco International Airport, Thomas Lynch spots a petite, smiling woman holding a copy of his book. It's been years, but he recognizes the face from previous encounters it's Naomi Epel, his guide, protector and best friend for the next two days.
"Well, hello," Lynch says, taking her outstretched hand. It is nearly noon on a summer Sunday, and Lynch has just flown in from Detroit to promote his latest book, Booking Passage: We Irish and Americans (Norton). Possessed of effervescence almost too big for her five-foot-two-inches, yet projecting an aura of calm, Epel is a comforting sight for an author on the last leg of a multicity book tour. It is part of what makes the 54-year-old literary escort one of the best in her field.
Publishers hire escorts to accompany authors during their promotional tours, with a typical gig lasting for a day or two, until the writer moves on to the next city. More than a driver who makes sure the author gets to media and bookstore bookings on time, the escort sees to the client's human needs—food, bathroom breaks, a well-timed word of reassurance when an interview goes poorly or no one shows up for a reading. The job is a balancing act: to be confident, without having too much ego; to show an appreciation for the author's work without fawning. In any major media market, there are a few such escorts on which authors and publicists rely.
"After something like six book tours you get to know all the escorts," says Ruth Reichl, who recently toured for Garlic and Sapphires: The Secret Life of a Critic in Disguise (Penguin Press). "I cannot overstate the difference between the good ones and the bad ones." She says she likes Epel because she is fun and protective and "she'll eat anything."
Media trainer and publicist Kim Dower has used Epel's services in her publicity work and on her own book tour for Life Is a Series of Presentations (Fireside, 2004). "Most of the West Coast cities are the last on the list, so you get authors at the end of the tour," says Dower. "If you want a cheerleader, that's Naomi. Her smile is contagious and that, and her warm personality, gets you through that very long day."
As they leave the airport parking lot in Epel's cobalt-blue convertible, Lynch, recalling what he learned about Epel during his tour for The Undertaking: Life Studies in the Dismal Trade (Norton, 1997), inquires of her writing. Before becoming a media escort more than 15 years ago, Epel, led workshops in Berkeley with people who wanted to understand their dreams and tap into their creativity. The workshops led to a radio program called Dream Talk. When authors asked about her life, they found the dream work particularly interesting, and many would discuss their own dreams with her. Eventually, she compiled interviews with authors (Isabel Allende, Maya Angelou, Stephen King among them) talking about their dreams in Writers Dreaming, published by Crown in 1993. Then Epel put together flashcards and a booklet with a series of writing prompts in The Observation Deck: A Tool Kit for Writers for Chronicle Books in 1998.
During the 1990s she also built her escort business. She got into the field after a friend introduced her to literary escort Joyce Cole, who was looking for drivers. Epel liked the work, so when Cole moved out of town, Epel went out on her own.
Escorts handle anywhere from 200 to 600 authors a year and usually hire freelancers to help with the load.Epel employs about a dozen drivers and can book up to 10 jobs in a day.
Media escort fees range from about $20 an hour to about $40 an hour, depending on location and experience. Escorts also sometimes charge by the day or half day.
Among publicists and escorts the names of a few legends in the business emerge: Bill Young in Chicago and Kathi Kamen Goldmark in San Francisco. Goldmark stopped escorting in 2000 to take a job at Harper San Francisco and has since become the producer of NPR's West Coast Live.
Among the professionals who successfully transfer into escorting, she says, are mothers, mental health workers and kindergarten teachers. "You spend a lot of the day asking people if they have to go to the bathroom or if they need a snack," she says.
On the way to Lynch's reading at Book Passage in Corte Madera, Epel takes a slight detour off of the Golden Gate Bridge and onto a road with a fabulous view of the San Francisco Bay. She and Lynch talk about books and politics and their connections to Detroit (Lynch lives near there, Epel grew up in the city).
The reading for Booking Passage, a memoir about Lynch's family in the U.S. and in Ireland, where he inherited his ancestral home, goes well. Although he's an American, time spent in Ireland has flavored his speech with something less than a brogue but more than a lilt and it clearly engages the 30 people in the audience. To honor the female companionship Lynch has enjoyed driving around with Epel, he reads from a chapter called "The Sisters Godhelpus" about the death of his sister's dog, which is much funnier than it sounds. In the car, Epel praises his performance and they briefly discuss the following day's schedule. When Lynch lapses into Yeats, Epel beams.
By the time the author and escort reunite the next morning, it's clear that some sort of us-against-the-world camaraderie has sprouted between them. On the way to the local NPR station where Lynch is to be interviewed, there's more poetry and tales of Lynch getting published by Gordon Lish on a blind submission.
Not every author is as congenial company as Lynch.Epel won't name names—her business depends on discretion—but she'll tell tales. There's the self-help guru who preached that people should not dominate others, but kept asking Epel to perform chores like writing a thank you note in her stead or picking up such incidentals as a flashlight, a stool softener and cider vinegar.
And then there was the children's book author who would call her at home in the middle of the night and try to engage her in phone sex. "I told him that it would hurt too much to fall in love with a married man," Epel says, proving she's learned a thing or two from years of dealing with author vanity.She once filled in for Bill Young at the last minute during BookExpo America in Chicago. The author was Bill Maher, whom Epel did not recognize at the time. They got past the ego-bruising moment and ended up in the VIP room at a party hosted by Chicago Bulls' star Dennis Rodman. Epel, who is single, politically active and a self-described liberal, says her favorite authors to work with span the political and literary spectrums. Eric Schlosser, David Attenborough, Pat Buchanan, Kazuo Ishiguro, Helen Gurley Brown, Liz Smith, Karen Armstrong, Larry Flint, Casper Weinberg, Ruth Reichl and Johnny Cochran, she says, were all delightful in their own way.
As for Lynch, the final stop on his Bay Area trip is lunch with a reporter. Before the interview, he takes a walk alone on the waterfront. While he's gone, Epel handles a glitch with the reservation and mollifies the testy journalist, who snaps at her even though it is his last-minute schedule change that caused the problem. She delivers Lynch to the interview without him even knowing anything was amiss. She makes herself scarce until it is time to collect the author and take him to the airport. Standing at the curbside drop-off—after two days in the trenches together—only a hug would do to say good-bye.
