Because of Michael Zadoorian, historic Route 66 may have not one, but two opportunities for high-profile publicity.
Zadoorian’s novel “The Leisure Seeker” was published last week. The story of an ailing elderly couple from Detroit driving down Route 66 for a final vacation together (review here) is entertaining and poignant enough that one could easily see the book end up on the bestseller list. The fact “The Leisure Seeker” has the marketing might of a major publisher (HarperCollins) behind it doesn’t hurt, either.
Also, “The Leisure Seeker” was optioned for film, nine months before publication, by noted producer Jeffrey Sharp 
of Sharp Independent Films. So there’s always the possibility of seeing John and Ella’s Mother Road journey on the silver screen.
I conducted a phone interview this week with Zadoorian, who was speaking from an office during a snowy day in Warren, Mich., a suburb of his native Detroit. The following is an edited transcript:
Q: Why did you decide to do a Route 66 trip?
A: I guess I’d always been fascinated with Route 66. I do believe I took the trip once or twice when I was a child, on camping trips with my mother and father out west. We didn’t take it all the way, unfortunately, but we did take small stretches of it.
Growing up in Detroit, the car culture is instilled in all of us here; we’re all kind of nuts about cars in our own way. For me, I think that’s why Route 66 tugs at my imagination. I was always fascinated with that and road culture in general. Once I knew where I wanted (John and Ella) to go, I realized that Route 66 would be a perfect choice. In a lot of ways, the road is sort of a mirror for the two characters. It worked out well, and it made it a lot more fun to write, too.
Q: When you did your Route 66 trip, did anything about the journey surprise you?
A: There were a lot of things that surprised me. I had been wanting to do the trip for ages, and so had my wife. I was one of those trips that my wife and I had always meant to take. I had the Route 66 books; there’s so much lore about the road.
When I took the trip, I had written a couple of drafts of the book. There’s so many books and photographs about Route 66 that I was actually able to write a facsimile about the journey before I went on it. But I knew at a certain point I would have to actually take the trip. Happily, it turned out to be the excuse my wife and I had been looking for for the past 10 years.
It was great. Once we actually got on the road, there was so much about the buildings and the sky and even the rubble of it … there’s a lot of incredible ruins along the way. Being from Detroit, one learns to appreciate ruins (laughs). All the history … you could really feel the history of it. When we were done, I really felt that we’d had a real American adventure. It was so very cool.
Q: Do you have anything that was your favorite on the route?
A: Gosh … I did love the Wigwam Village in Holbrook (in Arizona). That was so fun. And we ate all kinds of great food.
And it’s all kind of reflected in the book, but I’ve always had a thing for the fiberglass giants. There’s something about those things that speak to me … I don’t know why. We have stuff like that in Michigan, too. In the book, Ella mentions her fascination with the gigantic icons, and she mentions a photograph of her and her daughter next to the Paul Bunyan in Michigan. That photo actually exists; I have one of my mother and sister next to the Paul Bunyan. I wasn’t even born yet. I just love that stuff.
Q: As a man, was it difficult to write the book from the perspective of a female character?
A: I really didn’t feel like it was hard … it felt very natural for me.
As a child and as an adult, I always listened to my mother. I guess I took a lot of the cues from there. I had been doing research on the book for a long time, and people I work with and friends would sometimes compare things that our mothers had said and did. All of that came in handy when I was writing the book.
If I had written it from John’s point of view, it obviously would have been a completely different book, especially since he’s got Alzheimer’s.
Q: You say Ella is based on your mother. Is it from the whole cloth, or is Ella a mix of different people?
A: It definitely is (a composite). I did start from my mother’s point of view. But after a while, the more you work on something, the more the character takes on their own history and their own personality. It’s difficult to write something based only on one person. You want a book to take its own kind of course.
Q: I was startled to learn that you had sold the film rights even before the book’s publication.
A: It was kind of an unusual thing. At the moment, it’s been optioned; there is no guarantee that it’s going to be made into a film. But the person who optioned the film is a really good independent film producer … really nice films such as “Boys Don’t Cry,” “You Can Count on Me,” “Proof.” So he’s got some credentials. He recently started an affiliate with HarperCollins where he basically gets first look at all their properties. He can pick and choose as he sees fit. The woman who was to be my editor was so enthusiastic about the book that she put it into his hands. He read it over a weekend, and everybody decided at the same time to make a book offer and a film option. The film option got folded into my publishing contract. If I wasn’t the first person to have that done, I was one of the first.
Q: It’s been a number of months since the film option was announced. Have you heard anything since?
A: I know the producers were at Sundance, and I’m sure they mentioned the book. But I don’t think they say anything unless there’s something really solid happening. I do think they’re working on it very avidly. But I’m pretty much just the book guy; it just came out, and I’m caught up in all that right now.
I know there’s been some interest in a film. But you know Hollywood … unless papers have been signed, you never know what’s going to happen. But I wouldn’t be surprised if something comes of this.