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Novelist boards Masque-mobile in search for readers
By JEAN HELLER © St. Petersburg Times, published December 9, 1998 "What I'm shooting for here, obviously, is the subtle, elegant look," says Walter Satterthwait, an Indian Rocks Beach novelist of considerable renown, who is about to launch a nationwide tour in search of even more renown. Satterthwait (pronounced just the way it is spelled) plans to spend the next six months crisscrossing the country in search of a wider audience for Masquerade, his critically acclaimed mystery set in 1923 Paris, featuring Philip Beaumont and Jane Turner, Pinkerton agents retained to solve a double murder in a locked hotel room. The cast includes Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. "I'd like to see my books become a little better known," Satterthwait said. "They do well in Germany and France. They're well reviewed here in the States, and I believe that most people who've read them have liked them. I think it would be awfully nice if more people read them." To that end, Satterthwait will kick off his Masque-mobile tour Sunday with a bon voyage party and book signing at Haslam's in downtown St. Petersburg at 3 p.m. The 18-year-old Winnebago, fresh from a mechanical overhaul, a thorough cleaning and its exterior redecoration will be along, too. For the ride, so to speak. Understand, this is no high-budget marketing plan devised by Satterthwait's New York publisher, St. Martin's Press. It was entirely the author's idea -- and entirely his expense, too. "There are just too many mystery writers out there for publishers to promote them all," Satterthwait said. "To be fair to St. Martin's . . . they have in the past kicked in some promotional money for an occasional tour. But even if something like this were to occur to their publicity department -- which I doubt -- they'd balk, I think, at subsidizing it." Therefore, he is paying for the Winnebago, its high-tech communications system and six months' worth of life on the road out of the advance Masquerade obtained from its German publisher. If that means living on a shoestring, it isn't anything new for Satterthwait, who generally finds temporary quarters abroad while he is writing. He claims to know where and how to live on as little as $2,000 a year. "I started going overseas because it was the only way, given the kind of advances I was getting then, for me to write on a full-time basis," he said. "Writing a novel while you've got a day job is . . . incredibly difficult. So I would pick a place, Greece, Thailand, Kenya, that was cheap, but that had the additional benefit of being beautiful." Satterthwait, 52, began writing when he was 12, but he spent nearly a quarter of a century tending and managing bars until he was making enough money from his writing to sustain life. The luxury of turning his back on his day job came just eight years ago. "All I ever wanted to be was a writer, primarily, I suspect, because a writer didn't need to wear a tie or use an alarm clock," he said. "Thirty or 40 years ago, back when I was in high school, a terrific teacher, Duke Schirmer, encouraged me to keep at it. "Duke and I are still in contact, and about two years ago, I forgave him."
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T. PETERSBURG -- The 1980 motor home is 32 feet long. The name of the owner's latest mystery novel is splashed along the side in hard-to-miss 10-inch letters, right in front of an enormous copy of the book's dust jacket. The spare tire cover in back displays the book's bar code and ID number 3 feet wide.
