Carolyn Hunter
The T. A. Barron Podcast.

T. A. Barron
One summer, I was taking my whole family up to Alaska for a couple of weeks; camping and hiking in wonderful places like Denali National Park, Kachemak Bay, and the wilderness down in there. And our first stop was in the town of Homer, Alaska, which is so beautiful. I mean, the setting is like the fjords of Norway.

Carolyn Hunter
Where is Homer, in Alaska?

T. A. Barron
It’s right on that western coastline near the Kenai Mountains. And it’s so beautiful. Ocean and mountains come together in such a dramatic way, and there’s all manner of sea life, whales and dolphins, wonderful seabirds, and all the rest all happening at once, plus these beautiful, hilarious river otters everywhere. Well, I just had landed. We got our bags at the airport, this little, tiny, wonderful airport at Homer, and I sent the family off to the lodge because the one independent bookstore in Homer, Alaska, had heard that I was coming to town. And they pleaded with me to come by and do a little book event. So I said, okay, sure, but it has to be right at the front end of our time, because I’ll be in a sea kayak the rest of the time.

So they set it up and we arrived, and everybody else in the family went over to the lodge. But I went running over to the one taxi that was left at the airport, and he was just pulling out. And I said, Wait wait, can you just take me into town, please? I’ve got an appointment. And the guy said, okay, but hurry, there’s a big book event happening in town, and there’s this big deal author T. A. Barraccioni or something like that, and I just can’t be late. And I said, you won’t be late. And he turned around and he said, what makes you so sure? And I said, trust me, you won’t be late. So we got to the bookstore, and the store owner comes and greets me and then introduces me as T. A. not Barraccioni, but something else. And I still remember the face of that taxi driver standing toward the back with his arms crossed and a total knowing grin on his face, looking at me. He knew. It was really fun just to let it be a surprise.

Carolyn Hunter
Did he end up talking to you after the show or circle back with you at all?

T. A. Barron
Yeah, he actually gave me a lift over to the lodge, and he asked me to sign his book, which was really fun.

Carolyn Hunter
Aw! Awesome.

T. A. Barron
So, you know what? That’s the kind of story that I’ll be sharing in this episode today, and I want to back up. Before telling my favorite book tour stories, which are, in fact, crazy, funny, and all true. I’d like to just set the context by saying how much it really is humbling to have this job to share stories with people all around the world. Stories that seem to really just cross all of the boundaries that we human beings set up to separate ourselves from each other.

Carolyn Hunter
Yeah, exactly.

T. A. Barron
And it doesn’t matter when you’re in a storytelling setting, you are audience and storyteller. You are co-creating this wonderful imaginary moment. And place and characters and ideas are alive. And it doesn’t matter what language is your native tongue or your culture or religion or location. And in fact, that goes across time, too. That’s why stories from a thousand years ago or 2000 years ago are still very much alive. So, anyway, it’s always a very humbling thing to be part of that craft.

And I also feel like the job description of the wandering storyteller hasn’t changed much over all of those centuries. The wandering bard who in medieval times would come into a village, pulling his donkey and then tell some stories, sing a few songs, play on his loot, perhaps do a little juggling, whatever. Today it’s the same thing, except I’m not pulling a donkey, I’m just pulling my carry-on luggage. And unfortunately for the folks in the audience, I don’t know how to juggle. But everything else is very, very similar.

Carolyn Hunter
Yeah. And I feel like it makes this huge world so small. It makes it feel small. You come into a town that you’ve never heard of and here you are in conversation with your taxi driver because of your book and because of the connection to the story.

T. A. Barron
That’s right. That’s right. Everybody is part of that co-creation. It’s a beautiful happening.

Carolyn Hunter
Yeah. Agreed. Can you tell us some stories about your early book events when you were just starting out?

T. A. Barron
Sure. The common theme there was that too often nobody showed up. Which is also humbling in a different kind of way than I was talking about. But no, I did have a couple there where there were zero people in the bookstore. There was one where even my host took a coffee break and left, and I was sitting there by myself! So there we go, you know, but heck, it was a bookstore, so I could do a little browsing. Anyway, at the very beginning of my career, a wonderful thing did happen, which was Madeleine L’Engle, that wonderful author, offered to introduce me at a book event at a children’s bookstore in lower Manhattan called Books of Wonder.

Carolyn Hunter
Wow. Quite the honor for an author just starting out. That’s amazing.

T. A. Barron
It was a huge honor. And because Madeleine L’Engle was introducing this new guy that nobody had ever heard of, some people came.

Carolyn Hunter
Right.

T. A. Barron
But I should also tell you that just to make absolutely sure, maybe because they had heard about my events where nobody came, the bookstore offered free donuts to anybody who walked in the door.

Carolyn Hunter
That trick still works.

T. A. Barron
Yeah. No, definitely. So it was a wonderful event, actually. And that’s the event from which the marvelous fabric butterfly that’s on my ceiling here in my writing room came from. It was their window display, when I was reading from my very first book, Heartlight. And Madeleine gave a great introduction. We had a wonderful conversation, and of course, everybody cleaned up those donuts. So it was a good first event.

Now, just on the heels of that, I literally just came back to Boulder, Colorado, and the next day walked into my local favorite independent bookstore. And there on the shelf, yes siree, there was a copy of Heartlight.

Carolyn Hunter
Ahh – exciting!

T. A. Barron
I saw it there, still flush from all the adrenaline of having this wonderful event and all the excitement, and I saw at that point the store manager walking past and I said, hey, take a look. This is my book. And I pulled the copy of Heartlight off the shelf and I showed it to him proudly, like it was a newborn baby. And I said, so I just came back from my first book event back east, and lots of people came. And anyway, I wonder if you’d like me to sign this for you. And he looked at me just with a cold stare, and he said, sign the book? Why would I want you to do that? And you can imagine I was deflating like this, steadily reducing balloon down to just a tiny little dot. I said, well, I’m new at this business, but I understand that if a book is signed, then it’s easier for you to sell it. And he said, no, that’s not how it works. Let me tell you how it really works, kid. He said, when you sign that book, then when nobody buys it, I can’t send it back to the publisher. They won’t take it. So I’m stuck with it.

Carolyn Hunter
Quite the optimist there.

T. A. Barron
Right. So I will confess that after he walked off, I did pull out my pen and I just might have happened to sign that book anyway! I wasn’t going to leave any book unsigned anywhere. In fact, I have often thought at the end of my book tours, after having come home from five or six weeks of signing books, many events a day, that I literally have probably signed 10, 12 thousand copies of my books.

Carolyn Hunter
Wow.

T. A. Barron
And I come home and I realize, you know what? The rare and valuable copies now are not going to be the ones that have T. A. Barron scrawled on the title page. The rare and valuable ones, the ones that will go for a big price on eBay or whatever, are the very few I didn’t sign. There might be one or two of them out there at some place.

Carolyn Hunter
That’s hilarious.

T. A. Barron
How did I miss those?! But somewhere in Tallahassee, Florida, there’s a copy that I never got to sign.

Carolyn Hunter
So do you still visit that bookstore here in Boulder twenty years later? What happens now?

T. A. Barron
Well, I will say that the last several times I’ve done book events there, there’s probably been 300 people who’ve showed up.

Carolyn Hunter
Wow.

T. A. Barron
So it’s a different world. And I really love it. I really appreciate it. I love those folks. I really do. And their questions are so thoughtful and meaningful. It’s a fun time.

Carolyn Hunter
What a journey.

T. A. Barron
Yeah, it’s been a journey.

[Music Plays]

Carolyn Hunter
So tell us some more stories from the beginning days. Those are so fun for me.

T. A. Barron
Well, and they’re very, very present for me, too. They’re really burnt in my memory, let me tell you. I guess, first of all, I’d like to tell you a story of something that happened before I became a published author. And it was really an introduction, I guess, to this bizarre and surprising, funny, world of book events. It involves that wonderful writer, Madeleine L’Engle, who, a few years later, would introduce me when my first book was published. And you may recall that I met her in the most surprising way through a forged letter. And it was one of those things where it was very dark before the dawn, but it did dawn, and it was a wonderful meeting. And the first time we actually did talk, we met for lunch at an Indian restaurant, and we were there for 7 or 8 hours before they kicked us out because we had so much to talk about.

Carolyn Hunter
Wow.

T. A. Barron
Well, after we began to get to know each other and she understood more about my struggles to be a writer, and the fact that I had received more than 30 rejections for that first novel that I had written, and really had no reason to think I could actually do it. And yet I was so torn. Because the most fun and meaningful time of my day was that early hour or hour and a half before the day really began. When I’d get up at 4:30 or 5 and sit at my little kitchen table in the New York City apartment where I lived to write stories about the people I had met. Or the bizarre story idea I had that night, or to describe the birds at dawn in Central Park. Or to write a poem, a love poem, perhaps.

Anyway, I loved those moments. Then I went, shaved, cleaned up, got my suit on, and went to the office. So, I was very well aware that every time I left for work, I left a huge part of my heart and wanted to come back to that place. Madeleine understood that, and she really encouraged that writer in me. And there was one point where I confided in her, I really want to be a writer. I really, really want to be a writer. And she replied, looking me right in the eye, Tom, you are a writer, just not a published writer. That was a linchpin moment. And right after that, she invited me to join her on a silent retreat that she was doing at a monastery on the Hudson River called the Holy Cross Monastery.

Carolyn Hunter
How neat.

T. A. Barron
Yeah. And as you might know, the rules of a silent retreat are very simple: No talking. Ever. And so people came with all kinds of things on their mind. There were people who were struggling for whatever reason in their lives. There were people who really just needed a time away and wanted to walk soulfully in those woods around the monastery. And there were people like me who had the possibility of a creative spark that they wanted to encourage and to flame somehow.

Carolyn Hunter
And Madeleine was at this retreat as well?

T. A. Barron
Yes. And she was the host, which meant that she was the only speaker.

Carolyn Hunter
Oooh!

T. A. Barron
So every morning she would read to us from some passage in her book or some passage in the Bible or some passage of great literature that had inspired her. And then the rest of the day, silence. And the monastery was really adept at making sure that there were no interfering phone calls, no cell phones, nothing to disturb the people who were there for their silent retreat. They really treated it with that respect.

Meanwhile, I was working in a business where my partners and I had agreed we would always know how to reach each other in case it was an emergency and it had never happened. But we always left a phone number with our secretary or somebody for the weekend. So I’d leave the phone number of an inn in Vermont or wherever I happened to be going, a friend’s house. Well, this time I left the number of the Holy Cross Monastery, not thinking anything about it. It would never be used. But that was the weekend that one of my partners, who was totally focused on the business, and I will add, had not much of a sense of humor. He decided there was an emergency, and he called.

Carolyn Hunter
Oh, no.

T. A. Barron
And on the phone duty that day was a very nice man whose name was Brother Boniface. So when my partner called in a tizzy and said, is Tom Barron there? Wherever you are, I need to speak with him, brother Boniface answered very calmly, let me look at the guest list. And then he saw my name and he said, ah, yes, Thomas Barron. He is with us now. So my partner says, US? Who is Us? And Brother Boniface answered, we are the brothers of the Holy Cross. Now, my partner, not to be deterred, said, well, I don’t care who you are. I need to speak with him right now. And Brother Boniface took a deep breath and said, I am sorry, but he is on silent retreat, and he is speaking with no one but God.

Carolyn Hunter
Wow.

T. A. Barron
Apparently, at that point, according to Brother Boniface, later on he told me, there was a dial tone. Now, of course, Brother Boniface didn’t want to break my silence by telling me that somebody had called, so I had no clue that that had happened. And after the silent retreat, in which, by the way, I came up with an idea for a story that ultimately did become my first published book, Heartlight.

Carolyn Hunter
Really??

T. A. Barron
Yeah. I came up with the idea…

Carolyn Hunter
No way! Your first book was…

T. A. Barron
It was conceived right there. And as I began to process a lot of different things, the death of an old friend, the meeting of the love of my life, Currie, and the coming birth of our first child, I thought: life, death, rebirth, there is a story in this and I want to tell it. And I came up with some rough concept for what became Heartlight.

Carolyn Hunter
Wow.

T. A. Barron
Anyway, so I’m driving back down to New York City from the monastery full of thoughts, so grateful to Madeleine for inviting me to that quiet weekend. And I didn’t even check my phone messages when I came home because I thought, whatever it is I can take care of at the office, I’ll get there early. I got to the office at seven in the morning. And I walked in and the security guard of our building greeted me right away by placing his hands in front of him and saying, ah, Brother Barron, it is so lovely to see you. So, I knew, this was going to be a long day at the office.

Carolyn Hunter
Word had spread.

T. A. Barron
I guess word had spread very fast. That was the beginning of my emergence as a writer.

Carolyn Hunter
That’s beautiful. I forget who I heard this from, but something I heard that I loved was: for great creativity, you have to be unreachable to the outside world. And that fully validates that statement.

T. A. Barron
True. In fact, I think, in this day and age, where all of those intrusions have multiplied and there are so many distractions.

Carolyn Hunter
Yes.

T. A. Barron
All the time. It’s really important to be disciplined about enforcing that idea, giving yourself time, space. Whether it’s at your desk or in your kitchen or having a quiet walk outside, give yourself that space. And the first thing that happens for me is I take a deep breath, and the second is that I go more present. Also, I can hear myself, my inner self, and that’s when magic happens.

Carolyn Hunter
I completely agree.

T. A. Barron
So, Brother Boniface, I will tell you, was invited to my first book event at Books of Wonder.

Carolyn Hunter
Awww!

T. A. Barron
And I still…

Carolyn Hunter
Did he come?

T. A. Barron
Absolutely! I remember him standing there with his robes and everything and smiling. It was great to be able to speak to him, afterwards, and say how grateful I was that he had not told me about that phone call. And this is what had happened.

Carolyn Hunter
Incredible.

[Music Plays]

T. A. Barron
Often when I got into gear as a wandering bard, I did three, four, or five, sometimes, events in a single day. And I would just be at the hotel long enough to catch a quick night’s sleep, maybe get up in time to go for a quick run, but then scoot off and catch the first morning flight to Little Rock, Arkansas, wherever it happened to be, for the next day’s events. Because my attitude was, if I have to be away from my family, at home, which is the place I most love to be, then I might as well work as hard as I possibly can and reach as many people as I can. So every year, Carolyn, I would do more than 100 events a year, sometimes more than 150, often, for 27 years straight.

Carolyn Hunter
Oh, my goodness. I can’t even imagine. That’s a lot. It must have been hard to travel that much, just being away from your family for so long.

T. A. Barron
Yeah, it was. I saw a lot of airports, but I always loved being there. It was the getting there that I didn’t love so much. When I was there with the people, wherever they were, in Frankfurt, Germany, or in Modesto, California, or wherever it happened to be, it was wonderful.

Let me give you one example. One day, at the very end of a long day, I think this was my fifth, possibly my sixth, event that day. I was really tired. I was in Rhinebeck, New York, and I hadn’t eaten since a little scrap at breakfast. Well, there was a nice group of folks who had gathered for my book event at this little bookstore. And in the back was one woman who was watching me. And right after I finished speaking, before I started signing books, she walked up to the head of the line and she said, you look tired. And I said, well, guess what? I really am. It’s been a big day. And she said, well, don’t go anywhere. I’m coming right back. And I said, look, there’s 80 people here. I have a lot of books to sign up. I’m not going anywhere. She nodded and left.

I didn’t think anything more of it. And then about ten minutes later, she came back with a crockpot that was steaming, and she walked right to the front of the line. She stopped the line and said, give him a moment. Let him eat. And she handed me this crock pot. I could still feel it in my hands. It was so warm, and the aroma was fabulous. It was her homemade pumpkin stew.

Carolyn Hunter
What?!

T. A. Barron
And she handed me the spoon, and she said, you just enjoy for a moment. I just made this this morning. Now, I ate that, and it was so delicious. It was full of pumpkin, yes, but it was really full of love, and it totally restored me. I don’t know that woman’s name, but I remember her face. I remember the smell of her pumpkin stew. And most of all, I remember her great kindness.

Carolyn Hunter
What other things have people given you over the years?

T. A. Barron
So many things. But really it’s less about the things themselves than the kindness and love and generosity that they embody and actually, also how creativity inspires more creativity. I remember vividly one moment after an event in a small town in California where a woman walked up to me out of the crowd and put on my neck a wreath that had beautifully handmade leaves that she had painted. And on the underside of each leaf was a word. And she said, each leaf has a magical word that came from one of your books. And so each leaf is a blessing. They even included one of my most favorite words, mooshlovely.

Carolyn Hunter
Your books must have meant quite a lot to her.

T. A. Barron
I have that wreath right now on my lamp over my writing desk, so I’m feeling those blessings all the time. In fact, on that writing desk right now, there are all kinds of gifts that have come from readers around the world. There’s a selection of wizard staffs to start with. One from a lightning struck tree in the Vermont woods that was carved by a boy named Ben who wrote, I would love to be a wizard like Merlin. And I can tell you, I am sure that by now he is.

And there are other things, too. That desk now is crowded with crystals from people or paintings. Colorful, mysterious, haunting paintings. Amulets and pottery, wood carvings. I even have a set of painted sneakers that a fan made for me that are Merlin sneakers that have stars and moons and wonderful lightning bolts down the sides. And, oh, there are things like fabric collages that are glorious, really beautiful. One that’s right here on my wall that has Merlin standing with his wide open wings. at the end of The Wings of Merlin holding his staff and surrounded by the seven magical words. And underneath him is that last word: love, love, love. And there are so many more. There are tree sculptures. People seem to have gotten the message that I like trees a lot. There’s one that is a tree dangling with leaves, each of which is a little book review by fourth grade kids in Washington, DC. Their reviews of Tree Girl are written on each leaf. Oh, and there’s also a Merlin Fincayra board game that someone gave me, which I haven’t tried to play, but looks like it would be fun.

Carolyn Hunter
You’d probably win.

T. A. Barron
Well, I don’t know. The point is, that boy who made that game entered into the world of Fincayra.

Carolyn Hunter
Right.

T. A. Barron
So we’re both equal players in that realm. I also have lots of songs, you’d be glad to know, Carolyn. Recordings that were made by readers, inspired to write a song or a poem or a play or send me a video that they’ve made, from readers from all around the world. I even have a wall size backdrop for a school play that was based on The Merlin Saga. Yes, “Merlin: The Musical.”

Carolyn Hunter
Where was that from?

T. A. Barron
It was an elementary school in Falls Church, Virginia, that did it. And I went to see their final show, and they gave me this wonderful backdrop. It is now hanging on the wall above the stairs in our house. Creativity all around. Sometimes when people can’t come to an actual book event, they mail me things. Like, a couple of years ago, I got a box from Africa, and it contained an ebony sculpture, from someone in Guinea, of a man reading. It’s so beautiful and evocative. I’m looking at it right now. It’s about the power of stories.

Carolyn Hunter
It’s so wonderful to have the whole world, almost, in your writing room. Can you tell us some more stories about your tours around the world?

T. A. Barron
Sure. Well, you have already heard my story in an earlier podcast episode about the Druid who came up to me at the Frankfurt Book Festival.

Carolyn Hunter
Oh, yeah.

T. A. Barron
And gave me that wonderful amulet made by someone in his clan to thank me for the Merlin stories. And then remember, he’s wearing a big cape and sandals, and he swirls his cape as he turns around and walks off back toward Bavaria, where he came from. Well, that was a marvelous book tour event. But on the heels of that, while I was still in Germany, my editor invited me to come up to Heidelberg, where she lives, to do a couple of book events up there. And at one of them, a reader came up to me, and he said he really loved my books and he had something to show me. And there was a look in his gray-blue eyes that made me take him seriously. And I asked Lisette, and she said, yes, you need to see what he is going to show you.

So after the book event was all done, we met up with him and went to his home, which was up on a mountainside outside of Heidelberg. And he showed me his birds, because he had probably eight or ten different birds…

Carolyn Hunter
Wow.

T. A. Barron
That he was either healing, nursing them back to health. He was basically the parent of this family of birds. He took me around to see his birds. There was an eagle and a hawk, many other kinds of birds. But my most favorite was his owl. Huge, golden eyed owl. And by the way, the German name for owl is oo-hoo.

Carolyn Hunter
No.

T. A. Barron
Yeah. So it’s, oo-hoo, oo-hoo is the name. I love that.

Carolyn Hunter
That’s amazing.

T. A. Barron
No need to question where that word origin came from. Well, as we were standing in front of the oo-hoo, he told me, all my birds have wings. Your books give me wings.

Carolyn Hunter
Beautiful.

[Music Plays]

T. A. Barron
Let me tell you another story from a whole different continent. When I went to Japan, where the books have been very popular, in part because they have been brilliantly translated. And when a book is well translated, it truly goes to the heart of people of a different language and culture. And that’s what’s happened in Japan. Plus, they have glorious covers. Well, when I was over there, I actually met that wonderful translator, which was terrific. We had a lovely cup of tea together. And I also met a reader who came up to me and said, very seriously, your books make me feel like a fish who swallowed the ocean. Now, I still am not 100% sure what he meant by that. I think it was a good thing.

Carolyn Hunter
I think it’s a great thing.

T. A. Barron
I think maybe it’s a great thing. But I’m not sure how I’d feel if I swallowed the whole ocean. Anyway. But I’m still pondering that comment.
Now, sometime after that, I was lucky enough to go back to a wonderful part of Japan, the island of Shikoku, where I had spent several weeks after college working as a roof thatcher in a little tiny village. While I was there, I earned the name Ochoku Choi, which, roughly translated in Japanese, means Honorable Butterfingers.

There was one woman in that village. Takamoto San was so kind to me. She would always sneak me extra rice cakes because I was so much bigger than anyone else in the village. And she would let me use her family’s Japanese bath to clean off after every day because I had the job of knocking the soot and lice out of the old thatch so that we could recycle it and use it again because no one grew new thatch anymore in Japan.

So as this wondrous construction was happening and the spaces in the ceiling were filled up by layers and layers of thatch and seven different kinds of bamboo, I learned all those names of all those words of bamboo, which gives me a little handle on the Japanese language. But it wouldn’t be very useful to me if I were on the streets of Tokyo.

Carolyn Hunter
No. [Laughs]

T. A. Barron
But Takamoto San was really lovely. And at the very end, when it was time for me to leave, everyone in the village gathered round and waved to me as I walked down the trail to the once-a-week bus. It was such a marvelous parting. And I remember vividly Takamoto San looking me in the eye as she waved a white kerchief and saying, you must come back. You must. And I nodded and said, of course I will. Well, time went by, life got rolling, and you know what? Forty years went by.

So finally I’m back in Japan again. And I went back to the town. And when I got there, in front of the house where Takamoto San lived, the place where I had taken those Japanese baths, there was an elderly woman who was sweeping off the steps with a handmade broom. And I walked over to her and she at first looked at me in surprise and probably shock, thinking, who is this big, tall guy? And I took out the picture that had been taken of the two of us with her mother standing by us. And I pointed to her and said, this is you. She nodded, and I pointed to me, this young dude with a backpack standing next to her and said, this is me. And she looked at it and looked at me and she suddenly burst into tears, and so did I. It was such a moment.

Carolyn Hunter
Amazing.

T. A. Barron
It was one of those full circles. It was just so beautiful. But I wouldn’t have gotten there without the books, and I wouldn’t have had that opportunity to tell those stories in the books without the experiences like that and the kindness of people like Takamoto San.

[Music Plays]

T. A. Barron
Speaking of circles, I was invited back to my old hometown from my early childhood in Massachusetts to do a book event. It was in the public library, which used to be the elementary school when I was there. And in fact, the room where I had the book event was the old art room. And I could see on the floor in the back of the room the burn marks from the kiln where we used to make sculptures. And I had set the kiln on fire, not on purpose, but I remember that my teacher, Mrs. Ostertag, was really, really unhappy with me. I almost literally burned down our elementary school by accident. So the burn marks were still there. And here I am coming back, however many years later, and I’m doing a book talk in that same room. It was funny. It was really funny.

So at the end of the event, an old fellow who had been sitting in the front row came up to me with his cane and bright eyed, looked at me and said, you don’t recognize me, do you? And I said, no, sir. And he said, Dr. Benjamin Harris, at your service. And I realized, Dr. Harris! He was my first doctor. This is the guy who had helped me through measles and mumps. And Dr. Harris, standing right there, then 96 years old, said, you know, I was worried about you back when you had the measles, but you got past that, and since then, you’ve done all right.

Carolyn Hunter
So he had forgiven you for almost burning down the school.

T. A. Barron
Yeah, he somehow was able to get over that. He was a man of true grace. Sometimes it’s just plain bizarre to be a wandering bard and doing book events. I remember one day in Tallahassee, Florida, I had done several talks to schools and the public library, and at the very end of the day, I was invited to the local TV station, and I walked into the green room waiting to be interviewed. And suddenly I was surrounded by people who were dressed up as ghouls and goblins, and somebody who had an arrow stuck through his head, and a skeleton, and there was a rooster.

Carolyn Hunter
What?

T. A. Barron
What is going on? And I realized, it’s October 31.

Carolyn Hunter
You definitely don’t know what day it is when you’re on the road sometimes.

T. A. Barron
And all I could think was, the most scary and bizarre person they’re going to interview is not the ghoul or goblin or rooster. It’s that children’s book author. Let me give you one more wild example of how these things go and why you have to have a sense of humor if you’re bouncing around the world to tell stories.

I was at a big teacher’s convention in Chicago, and it happened to be at the moment where the last book of the Harry Potter series had just been released. And it was on everybody’s minds. It was on everybody’s lips. They were jabbering away about the excitement of having that last volume. People had waited up all night to get their copy.

Carolyn Hunter
That was me back in 6th grade.

T. A. Barron
Yeah, and it was all of these teachers too, and I mean literally thousands of them. And there was an airplane, I remember, flying overhead as I entered the hotel that was dragging a banner that said Harry Potter. And I got into the elevator in the building and I had a name tag that said Author. And I got in and there were, I don’t know, nine or ten teachers who were coming to the convention, also going in the same elevator. We started right up and somebody said, oh, Author, what kind of books do you write? And I said, well, I’ve actually just completed a whole series about a young wizard… because I had! The last book in The Merlin Saga had just come out, and it was fabulous. The looks I got in that elevator were just indescribable.

Somewhere else on that tour. A really lovely, serious thing happened where, I think it was Louisville, Kentucky. A blind man came up to me after my event at the bookstore and said he treasured a book on tape that he enjoyed. I think it was The Ancient One. So I asked him what was his favorite chapter, and he told me. So I grabbed that book and I read it aloud to him.

Carolyn Hunter
Oh, wow.

T. A. Barron
It was such a moment of sharing.

[Music Plays]

T. A. Barron
Not all book events are warm and fuzzy, though. I have already told in an episode in season one the story about an Ohio girl who came up to me and said after an event that the stories that I tell and people like me write stories about are just fairy tales, that in real life kids don’t mean squat. And I still see that cynical look in her eyes. And that was the conversation that actually inspired me to stop writing the novel I was working on and write The Hero’s Trail, which is a collection of stories about real-life kids from all kinds of diverse backgrounds who have risen to be heroic in their lives. It was then that I also founded the Barron Prize for Young Heroes.

But there were so many times when someone would say something of that kind of soulful level that I feel in those moments that it’s such a privilege to be trusted with someone’s inner struggles. And that’s part of why we do book events. That’s why we share book stories. That’s why we share art with people. Because it cracks the heart open and there can be an honest, true sharing.

Carolyn Hunter
Yes. It’s such a special connection between writer and reader, isn’t it?

T. A. Barron
Yeah, it’s really lovely and precious and meant to be respected.

Carolyn Hunter
I bet you have a million more stories like this.

T. A. Barron
Certainly more than we have time for on this podcast. I just see a flash of images. The time I was in Norway at an old country inn and did an impromptu reading in front of their fireplace. Or the time in Washington, DC when I climbed the Washington Monument, and a school group was up there who recognized me and asked me to do a reading atop the Washington Monument. Or visiting a school library in Tennessee that had become a den of dragons. I’m not kidding. Everybody, including the teacher, was all dressed out in dragon costumes, and the dragons were everywhere.

There was the time I was asked to be the keynote speaker at a huge convention of teachers and librarians. That was in Nashville, Tennessee, at the Grand Ole Opry. And they put me up in the Dolly Parton suite, which was two floors, a spiral staircase, a full bar, and a grand piano. I mean, seriously, the only thing missing from this suite was Dolly herself.

And then there was the lone girl who came up to me after a book event with her favorite copy of her most cherished book. And she had dropped it a few times, so it was barely holding together. And she had taped it with blue duct tape, so much duct tape that I couldn’t see any paper on the title page and had to sign on the duct tape. Stories like that. I just feel so lucky to be a wandering bard.

Carolyn Hunter
Twenty-seven years of book tours. Wow. It must be quite different these days. What’s that like for you?

T. A. Barron
Well, for one thing, people for the very first time are starting to bring in books that I signed for them as a kid and asking me to sign that book again over to their kid, which is something I never expected to live long enough to see. But there it is.

Carolyn Hunter
That’s amazing.

T. A. Barron
Yeah. Sometimes I’ve had the wonderful experience of people coming up to me and saying, you know, you encouraged me to write my own stories when I was a little kid, and now I’m a published author, and here’s my first book. And they’d put it in my hands. It’s happened several times now and just say thank you. And I say thank you back because it’s such a wonderful experience to be on both sides.

Carolyn Hunter
Yes. The very same thing that brought meaning to your life, you were able to help them find in their life.

T. A. Barron
It’s really gratifying. I’m so touched by those moments. Now, these days, I do remote events. For the last book, Giant, I did events right here in my writing room. And at first, I thought, this isn’t going to work because I’m not going to see those people and I’m not going to feel their energy, and it’s going to be so virtual and distant. But, you know, it was much better than that. It was really quite wonderful. It was special to welcome several hundred people into this little writing room.

Carolyn Hunter
Yeah, you don’t have to worry about space, that’s for sure.

T. A. Barron
No, and I didn’t have to travel with my carry-on bags to some remote location either. So it’s a whole new era in that realm. I still enjoy doing in-person book events, but that was lovely.

Carolyn Hunter
So even virtually, you’re still a wandering bard.

T. A. Barron
It’s true. And it’s a wonderful job. I feel grateful every single day.

T. A. Barron
To everyone out there, let me just say thank you so much for joining us for Magic & Mountains. We’ll see you next week. And in the meantime, may you have magical days.

Carolyn Hunter
We hope you enjoyed this week’s episode of Magic & Mountains: The T. A. Barron Podcast. Don’t forget to subscribe, leave a five-star review, and share this podcast with your family and friends. For more information and to find all of T. A.’s books, visit tabarron.com. Have a magical week.