San Francisco is no place for an RV. Not with the likes of Bradford Street in Bernal Heights which boasts a frankly ridiculous 41% gradient, or the famously winding Lombard Street with its killer switchbacks, so we left the rig in Millbrae and took BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) instead.

Quick and easy, it took us first through San Francisco to Berkeley on the eastern shore of the Bay. The city features heavily in The Grapevine as it’s where Abby Gomersall was studying and where she worked a part-time waitressing job on Shattuck Avenue. Lou makes a trip here on the trail of a suspect in Abby’s disappearance.

Berkeley is also partly where Alex grew up and where she attended University of California, so a familiar destination for us. This time it meant a quick trip to the Barmes & Noble in Emeryville where we chatted to bookseller Elinor and signed some copies of the book.

Back on BART, we crossed under the Bay and got off at Powell in search of kilt socks. San Francisco might not seem the obvious place to look for such a thing but Wm Glen & Son on Sutter Street stocks all things kilts and whisky and had just what I needed. From there we headed to the historic Ferry Building and visited Book Passage where we dutifully signed copies and chatted to the booksellers.

We sneaked time for a late lunch at Hog Island looking out across the bay. It was delicious and a perfect setting, but also fatal. By the time we’d had our fill and made our way to the cable car stop at Drumm, we were running out of time to make it to Books Inc on Van Ness before it closed.

The trolley hauled us slowly up the steep and scenic mile-long incline, passing through Chinatown and Nob Hill, but then kicking us out too far from the bookstore for us to get there in time. It wouldn’t have been a problem if we’d been in an RV…

Sadly however, our mobile home from home had to be delivered back to the rental company. The rig had served us well, and both it and us had survived relatively unscathed. There had been the occasional bit of dicing with death, a wing mirror incident, parking nightmares and the after-effects of the earthquake but all in all, it had been a blast. Just not a blast that we’re in a hurry to repeat any time soon.

It turned out that writing about an RV is infinitely easier than living in one, but where’s the fun in always taking the easy route in life?

If you’re tempted to follow in our tracks, here’s some RV advice that may be useful.

1. Always use someone else’s shower and toilet wherever possible.

2. Tie the bloody cupboard doors shut or the banging will drive you crazy.

3. Find two spaces together in the far corner of a parking lot and use both of them.

4. Take wider turns than you would in a car. An RV is huge.

5. Limit the amount of daily driving and maximise the amount of time parked up.

6. Take time to pull over and enjoy the views.

7. Have a beer. It helps. NB not while or before driving.

8. Your wing mirrors are your best friends. Use them constantly.

9. Let other vehicles pass you. Don’t be too Scottish about it.

10. Let your passenger help when reversing into tight spots. Even if it’s annoying. Or they are. Or both.

This trip had started for me in Providence, Rhode Island, amid the mayhem of the World Cup, and extended through Los Angeles, the Grapevine, San Luis Obispo, Santa Cruz, Berkeley, San Francisco and San Jose. We’d travelled by trains, planes, automobiles, boats, trolley cars, metro systems, Ubers and a big old RV.

And it still wasn’t over. Still to come, Chicago and Boston.

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Day five dawned suitably gloomy. It was cloudy and cold, and as Scottish as you could have wished for. This part of the coast south of San Francisco suffers from what the locals call June Gloom and means it’s regularly overcast and much colder than elsewhere in the state. Even somewhere like San Mateo, just 13 miles away can be hot with glorious sunshine while Half Moon Bay is doing a fair impression of a damp day in Largs.

So it proved. Burlingame was toasty. We hit the Barnes & Noble where bookseller Audrey turned out to be an aspiring writer with plans to go travelling in an RV, and she was easily persuaded that The Grapevine was the book for her.

Bella at Barnes & Noble in San Mateo was equally keen and got straight to work ordering in copies, as did Ayla at B&N in Redwood City. Amanda in the fabulous indie Fireside Books & More was a bundle of bookish energy and wanted to set up an in-store author event.

We moved on to Palo Alto where we met possibly our most enthusiastic booksellers yet – the party crowd at Books Inc. Lance Gabriel (resplendent in a kilt!), Beverley, Alice and Rachel were having a ball.

It was a great day on the road and all the hard miles in the RV all felt worth it to get the chance to talk to people who loved books, ours included, and were itching to spread the word to readers. There was a real sense of community spirit and a welcome reminder that the book world is pretty great.

Back at Half Moon Bay, Alex decided the day’s missionary work wasn’t over and took a couple of books to our RV neighbours who were sitting out watching the World Cup on TV (apparently, it’s still going on). Not surprisingly they ate up the premise of a mom in the family RV searching for her missing teenage daughter. Mr RV Neighbour was a retired cop as well as an RV enthusiast and was happy to answer any research questions we had in the future – result! Not lonely that but he helped us flush out our grey and black waste tanks, a job I’d been dreading. We’ve withheld their names for now because one of us (not me) wants them to say this is okay.

After all that, a 35-minute drive back north to Millbrae for the night felt like a piece of cake. Tomorrow, the streets of San Francisco!

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Day four began strangely even by the standards of this trip. The bathroom was mysteriously locked, thankfully with no one inside it, but still not exactly convenient. Not only that, but the power was off despite the RV being hooked up to shore power. It took some time, but we finally figured out the culprit for both was a sizeable earthquake north of San Francisco. It had shaken the RV enough to jam the door lock and trigger the circuit breakers. Thankfully no other damage had been done, and no one had been hurt. Inevitably, the quake had wakened Alex and I’d slept through it.

The whole palaver of fixing things set us back though, and the clock was ticking. Day three had been publication day so very much a big deal. Day four however was centred around something bigger – Scotland v Brazil. It was my only red line in the schedule. Bookshops and booksellers were secondary to me being in front of a television, preferably in a bar, by 3 in the afternoon in Half Moon Bay, just a 50 mile drive up Big Sur.

First, we had plans to see redwoods as part of research for book two in the series. We headed to Cathedral Redwoods high in the Santa Cruz Mountains, a twisting climb that did nothing for my pre-match nerves. The trees were magnificent though; towering giants reaching for the sun, surrounded by springy trampolines of fallen branches.

Back on the road, we followed the coast north to Half Moon Bay. The drive was spectacular with plunging cliffs, crashing waves and golden sandy beaches. Time was short but the urge to pull over and take photographs was irresistible. The view was fabulous and it came with a bonus shot of a few hundred pelicans huddled together at the ocean’s edge a quarter mile or so back down the road. These incredible creatures are a staple of the Californian coast and seeing them take to the air is a joy.

So anyway, yes we got there in time for the Scotland match. Let’s not talk about it. Ever again.

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Publication Day!

This book’s writing journey sometimes felt as long and torturous as the drive through the Grapevine pass. There were a thousand arguments, a few hundred heated debates, and at least four “why don’t you just write the f’n book?”s. But on publication day they’d faded like morning mist on the Californian coast and the sun was shining.

Seeing the book live in the wild and all over social media was joyous. Thanks to everyone who made this happen!

Alex began the celebrations by making a California, road-life, soul connection with Madeleine, the store manager at Flying Flags RV Park, the upscale site we were staying at on Avila Beach. It resulted in Madeleine calling her manager to order books for the site and promising to “sell the hell out of them” to her customers.

After that, we did a big round of social media, said goodbye to Boris (seen above) and set out on a two and a half hour, 150-mile drive to our next stop, a scheduled book signing at Lynnette Smick’s fabulous witchy bookstore Untamed Fire in Sand City. Halfway there, ploughing our way up the 101, an email from our film manager threatened to change our plans. She wanted to know if we were still in town (ie Los Angeles) and available for a meeting with several TV producers. The thought of turning the RV around and doing all that drive again was not exactly appealing, but the meeting definitely was. We hastily made plans to ask someone if they knew the way to San Jose and fly from there to LA and back the same day. After a round of emails, better sense prevailed and a zoom meeting was planned instead. Exciting!

Staying on plan meant we could hit our signing at Untamed Fire, which is everything a California metaphysical story should be. After a great chat with Lynnette and her customers (one very experienced RVer who had some excellent pro tips!), we floated out on the good vibes and got back on the road, driving another hour on the coast road to Santa Cruz, our final stop of the day at Pleasure Point RV Park. We hooked up, called an Uber and headed to Capitola Beach to celebrate publication day with food and fizz at an outside table looking over the ocean and a handful of kids surfing a sand hill on the beach. California, man!

After that – and proving that one margarita isn’t enough and two is too many – sleep came easy.

Lynette at Untamed Fire will ship signed copies of The Grapevine to US locations!

Address: 490 Orange Ave Unit D, Sand City, CA 93955

Phone: (831) 582-1724

Day One:
The premise was simple. Our book, The Grapevine, is about a mom driving across California in the family RV in search of her missing teenage daughter. So we’d do the same, except for the missing daughter bit, and instead we’d visit bookshops to promote the novel and the places featured in it.

Our route would take us from SoCal to NoCal, from Los Angeles to San Francisco, and it began in a parking lot 15 minutes from the airport. That was where we were to be united with our companion for the week, a 26-feet Class C motorhome.

It was big. Like too big to drive and not big enough to live in. But we were going to have to do both whether we liked it or not.

The staff member at Roadsurfers ran through a host of instructions on filling up with water, hooking up to shore power, using the generator, how not to drain the battery and a host of other things that I didn’t listen to but nodded at what was hopefully the appropriate times. All I could think of was steering 5 tonnes of metal on the wrong side of the road.

Taking a deep breath (a phrase I really have to learn to use less often when writing), I edged the RV into the LA traffic and hoped for the best. Or, at the very least, not the worst.

I was immediately aware of taking up the entire lane with the width of the rig, leaving little room for manoeuvre or error. However the lane wasn’t going to get any wider and the RV wasn’t going to get any smaller, so all I could was keep the thing between the lines.

First stop was Pages in Manhattan Beach, just 15 minutes from the airport and a nice, easy test run for what lay ahead. That was the plan. Manhattan’s narrow streets and even narrower parking bays proved to be a nightmare. Sorry, Pages: A Bookstore, maybe next time. It wasn’t you, it was us.

Instead, we got on the 405 north, the busiest highway in California (and therefore quite possibly the world) and headed, painstakingly slowly towards Santa Clarita. The slow pace might have been a bonus but for everyone else’s impatience and cars diving into the lane wasn’t what I needed. Let’s just say some people were treated to a few Scottish phrases they hadn’t heard before.

In Santa Clarita, we achieved a bookstore visit by taking up two spaces in the parking lot. The store manager was happy to see us and we left them a copy of The Grapevine to encourage them to spread the word. Suitably encouraged we pressed on north to Castaic Lake which plays a prominent role in the book, falling into the category of I Could Tell You But I’d Have To Kill You.

Next stop, the Grapevine. The 40-mile stretch of undulating hills and killer turns that give our book its name. We’d driven this road many times, but this one was very different. Partly because of its relation to the novel, but mainly because we drove it in a freaking RV. The traffic was ridiculously bad, the ear-popping climbs and the dizzying dips were hard work, and we got nowhere fast. On a clear day, the heart of Grapevine to LA might take an hour and a half – this time it took five long hours. The first thing you’re supposed to do when you arrive at a campsite is to hook up to water and electricity. The first thing I did was crack open a beer.

It had been a very long and tiring day, seven hours in all since we hit the road, but the pain of that was eased by a stunning desert sunset, the sound of crickets, the appearance of a dazzling meteor scorching through the night sky, and a second beer.

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Day Two:

Day two dawned desert hot and blindingly sunny. The drive to Bakersfield was much easier than the tests of the previous day and it took just 40 minutes to get to the Barnes & Noble where booksellers Sandra and Rosie loved that a large chunk of the book was set there and said they’d push it to their customers. Job done, we pushed on to the little town of Buttonwillow for a quick visit before taking the 5 and the 99 towards Avila Beach and San Luis Obispo. It was a 120-mile trip that started easy on quiet roads through oil fields populated by thousands of mini derricks pecking at the earth, but then became an endurance test of steep climbs, nosebleed descents and startling bends.

It turned out to be worth it though as the view from the site on Avila Beach was stunning. We backed in, hooked up, opened a couple of beers (recurring theme) and looked out on the vista that our protagonist Lou did as she parked on the same spot.

From Avila, Lou went into San Luis Obispo to investigate the action on Higuera Street, we so did the same, accompanied by our newly-arrived guides for this part of the adventure Siegrid Richenbach, her brother John and his wife Kim. We toured Bubblegum Alley, marvelled at the giant canopies of the ficus trees, and ticked off bars that Lou visited on the trail of a seemingly sinister predator. We also popped into Barnes & Noble where manager Brian was excited to hear about the book and set up plans to promote it.

It had been another long day, but a rewarding one. We fell asleep to the sounds of crashing waves and the constant attention-seeking of a noisy sea-lion that we’d christened Boris. Life on the road was pretty good after all.

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