Friday – October 27th - (Written in the Vancouver Airport, retro-posted from Cranbrook)
The joys of wireless. Flaky wireless. No luck logging in to the YVR network – connection keeps dropping out completely and it’s too much trouble to lug all my junk elsewhere to see if I can find a better location. As usual, traveling with a lot of stuff, one of the many reasons these book tours are so stressful. Though I will be able to pick up stock from SNP (thank goodness), I still have 50+ books from Orca and Annick stuffed in my main suitcase. Orca bookmarks (not a whole whack, I must confess – there are limits and SNP has plenty – as long as each child gets something, I’ll be happy). Then, there’s the big artist portfolio stuffed full of display materials and samples – books, cover images, notebooks, etc. Elsewhere in the baggage I’ve tucked away my character cards and the Carnillo jewels. And speaking of Carnillo, the intensity of the unhappy emails from readers waiting for book #3 is increasing. I try to be polite, but its hard when the readers are anything but. So, sorry to everyone who is waiting for book three. This is what happens when you start reading the work of an author who writes multiple series. I don’t suppose it helps you to know that readers of the OTHER series are reasonably happy at the moment with new books out in the Jo historical series and the Tarragon Island series.

The StableMates readers are just a bit more patient, perhaps because there are seven books in the series and they quite often make the leap over to the TI and Jo books without a lot of trouble….at which point finding another author to read is not a bad idea. A StableMates reader who sent a lengthy email last week did want to know when Jessa was going to make her way to Japan… With all this pressure, the most sensible thing to do was, obviously, to start another series, or two. Happily, these new projects are humming along just beautifully, though this is not likely to be anything more than aggravating to those waiting so patiently to find out what happens to Dominique in The Curse of the Festerworlds. Stay tuned.

Oh, the reference above to YVR and flaky wireless and book tours was just sort of dropped in there – but, yes, I’m on the road again, this time to the Kootenays courtesy of the Kootenays Library Federation. After popping into Winlaw to visit with Diane and Jim of Sono Nis Press for a couple of days, I’ll be tootling all over the place during a weeklong road trip in the mountains. My fingers are crossed that we don’t have a terrible snowfall (like they seem to be having in Colorado) because bad weather would make it very difficult to get from gig to gig.