Italian FedEx

John is at his wit's end. His publishing house wants to issue advanced reader copies (ARC's is the lingo) in September. They've sent images of the covers, and they're a beautiful green with gold lettering. These are supposed to go to key librarians and booksellers, hopefully to start an early buzz. All John has to do is send back his response to the copy edits in a week. Usually they give the author two weeks, but because of the rush for the ARC's, they've asked him to return it this coming Friday.

This was last Thursday, the day his editor dropped the manuscript off with Fed Ex. She did the same with some other edits when we were in Edinburgh. We got the manuscript early the next day. But here in Italy, it's all, of course, more complicated. First, since the streets up here by the castle don't have names, and since there's no number on our house anyway, John gave them Anne Rinaldi's address, our landlady. What we didn't know was that because Anne's house is pretty far up the hill the Fed Ex guys complained about it a ton in the past, so they settled on a deal where any packages are dropped off at the gas station at the bottom of their hill (about 1/4 mile farther past the train station from where we are).

Friday evening we had dinner with Anne and were optimistic she would show up with the package. No luck. She told us there's no Fed Ex over the weekend in Italy, so our best hope was Monday. But the next week starts, nothing. The publishing house tracks the package. It got stuck in customs, but is now on its way. We're sure it will arrive Tuesday. No luck. John faithfully hikes out to the gas station every day hoping maybe they just forgot to call Anne. No package yesterday. The editor finally sent a PDF scan of the document so John can get started. He'll have to take notes to transfer to the actual manuscript when it arrives, but at least he can make some progress.

When we were in Como we laughed one day, while sitting in a cafe, at how long the DHL driver parked in front of us spent in his truck. It was so different from the frenetic, racing pace of UPS and FedEx drivers in the States. He stopped and had an espresso in the cafe after handing over their packages, and we wondered whether he stops and has an espresso at every bar delivery stop. Somehow I think we thought that was just an individual case.

Meanwhile, it's a week later here in Passignano, and there's still no sign of the manuscript. It would have been five times faster for John to just have gone to get the book from customs. It's going to be a loooong weekend for John. That's if it actually arrives.