According to most notions I’ve come to understand, writing and publishing a book has a certain sense of romance.
After spending a good chunk of 18 months writing my first book, I’m not as sure.
Certainly, my book will not be hailed as the next Great American Novel. There are no steamy love scenes, no gripping mysteries and no twists of fate.
Rather, The Northwest Wine Guide: A Buyer’s Handbook is meant to aid wine lovers as they search for their favorite wines amid the hundreds of wineries that dot the Pacific Northwest landscape.
The book began innocently enough, became a journey, then finally transformed into an odyssey that allowed me to sample some 4,000 Northwest wines and log at least four times as many miles on my Subaru.
My bride, Melissa, and I occasionally dreamed of writing a book. Perhaps a murder mystery (set in Washington wine country, of course). Maybe something else. She’d already had a taste of the business, contributing to the 13th edition of Best Places Northwest, the bestselling book that celebrates top spots in the Pacific Northwest.
Sasquatch Books, the Seattle-based publisher of the Best Places series, at one time published a guide to wines of Washington and Oregon, with the last edition printed in 1997. It was time for a new book.
So Sasquatch called Heidi Yorkshire, then the wine columnist for The Oregonian and author of Wine Savvy and Simply Wine. Heidi wasn’t interested. She prefers to self-publish and also thought the Sasquatch book would take more time than she could devote.
“Call Andy Perdue,” she told Gary Luke, who runs Sasquatch. “He doesn’t know any better.”
Call me he did. Our conversation went like this:
“How would you like to write a book on the wines of Washington and Oregon?” Luke asked.
“Sure,” I said. “But I’ll only do it if I can include British Columbia and Idaho.”
Heidi was right: Not only didn’t I understand how much work I had in front of me, but I also unwittingly added to my burden.
So in August 2001, I began planning, researching and writing. I had the lofty goal of visiting each of the 397 wineries in my database. I’d already tasted extensively at perhaps 25 percent of them, so I figured I could just write about those off the top of my head (hah!).
If I was to keep the book at 85,000 words, that gave me about 200 words to write about each winery and review up to four of its wines. What I didn’t plan for was that more wineries would open for business as I was writing. A lot more. In fact, by the time I turned in the manuscript, there were nearly 100 new wineries in my database.
Through the first six months, I kept to my goal of visiting every winery. I could research five or six Yamhill County wineries on a good day. My weekends were spent in the Yakima Valley. And I crossed the border so many times going to B.C.’s Okanagan Valley, I’ve worn out my welcome with the U.S. Customs agents.
I gave up the idea of getting to every winery and focused on tasting as many wines at one sitting as possible. One day, it was all the wines of the Umpqua Valley at Abacela Vineyards in Roseburg, Ore. The next, it was everything in the Rogue and Applegate Valleys at Weisinger’s.
As the deadline loomed, I became even more determined. In the last 10 days of September, I researched and wrote up the last 50 wineries, putting 1,500 miles on the car and practically wearing out the keyboard on my PowerBook.
The sense of relief I felt when I turned in the manuscript was tempered by pangs of regret (Could I have done more? Could I have been better organized? Am I a fraud?). I got the edited and formatted book back in the middle of winter and put off going over it until the last moment, dreading the anguish of reading it and wondering if anyone besides my mother would buy a copy.
But as I went through the proofs, I surprised myself. This didn’t turn out too badly. I finally turned to Melissa and said, “Hey, I’m a pretty good writer!” She just laughed.
In early May, it finally became real. I went to Amazon.com and typed in my name. There was the book. I could pre-order it for $10.47. I was tempted.
So was my mom. She ordered three copies, as did Sheri Thomas, my fifth-grade teacher who first got me fired up to read good literature. My aunt ordered five.
I was on a roll. My book was ranked No. 2,456,711 on Amazon and it hadn’t even hit the bookstores yet.
Watch out, Tom Clancy.
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