Eagle has landed, and two people and one very tired puppy clambered out of the car and gratefully fell into our very own beds.

The word “book tour” has this exotic ring to it, and I admit there’s a lot about book tours that is fun.  But let me tell you about our trip.  Usually we make it from Seattle to Tucson, seventeen hundred miles, give or take, in three long days–Seattle to Ashland, Ashland to Bakersfield, and Bakersfield to Tucson.  These are no-time-off-for-good-behavior straight-driving days with what one of our friends refers to as our butterfly net stops at various Burger Kings along the way.  That means that we go through the drive-up window in such a hurry that they have to toss the food out the in window as we go past, and we catch it with a butterfly net.

It’s not really that bad, but close.  We get on the road to drive, and that’s what we do–point A to point B to point C.  Get her done!!

This trip was different.  It took one day under two weeks, and it wasn’t straight driving by any means.  In that time we stayed in 9 hotels, did eleven appearances, did one cover photo shoot–complete with SIX costume changes, saw a lot of fans, and drove 2159 miles.  Seventy four of those miles came about when I left a pair of prescription glasses in the room at Irvine and had to go back from Manhattan Beach the next day to retrieve them.

Bella was her usual charming self.  She had no accidents or deliberates along the way until we came home and then went out to dinner without her that night.  That was definitely DELIBERATE!!!!

We came home to find the house construction almost completely finished; the garden flowering and in good repair; and the fish in the fish pond thriving.  Our kitchen cabinets were painted in our absence.  That means they had to be emptied and all the contents stacked on the dining room table.  All those items had been put back in some cabinet or other before we arrived home.  Right this moment, Bill is in the kitchen, rattling the pots and pans and trying to figure out exactly where things are.

In other words, all is well on this end.

I also came home to a mountain of work–copy editing, galley editing, and bunches of snail mail correspondence that it is impossible to handle on the road.

So we’re busy.  We’re catching our breath.  Now, if I could just remember what was happening in the book I was writing before we left Tucson, all really would be well.