The trip to New York was wonderful.  Sitting down to dinner with the people who have shepherded my career for more than thirty years was especially gratifying.  Among the invited guests were my first editor from Avon Books, John Douglas, as well as Carolyn Reidy who was my initial publisher at Avon Books and who is now at the helm of Simon and Schuster, the publishing home of the Ali Reynolds series.

When Avon went to HarperCollins in the nineties, so did I—along with J.P. Beaumont, Joanna Brady, and the Walkers.  So my HarperCollins people were there as well. Current editors and past editors as well as a phalanx of corporate and publicity folks from both sides were in attendance, and it meant so much to be able to tell all those folks thank you.

And the Strand awards evening was also lovely.  They gave me a gorgeous glass trophy which is being shipped home to me rather than carried in luggage.  It’s incredibly beautiful—photo to follow—but made of solid glass and, as a consequence, very heavy. It turns out our luggage was already heavy enough, thank you very much.  More on that later.

I enjoyed my participation in ThrillerFest and was glad to be a part of it, including having a chance to visit with Lisa Preston, an up and coming Washington State author whose first book, The Clincher, is due out in November.  The heroine in that one is a farrier, and a clincher is one of her horse shoeing tools.  Believe me, it’s a fun read, and in reading it you’ll learn a lot about horses and shoeing same!

We came home and found ourselves face to face—well almost—with a small miracle.  Seven years ago, when we redid the backyard and turned the leaky fishpond into one that actually held water, we went to PetsMart and bought a passel of goldfish plus one plug-ugly Koi—mottled grey with a red head.  In the beginning the koi was about the same size as all the other fish, but when he outgrew everybody else, we came to call him the Big Guy.  Last summer he was MIA all summer long.  Believing him to have fallen prey to my nemesis, the blue heron who regards our pond as an appetizer dispenser, I went so far as to write a requiem for the Big Guy at the end of the summer.  But yesterday and today, when I went down to feed the fish, there he was—bigger than ever.  We should probably rename him Sasquatch!  But I’m so grateful to have him back.  YAY!

And now for the bad news.  I have injured my right shoulder.  I can still type, and I can actually autograph books, but since I can’t lift my arm over my head—or even up to my nose–putting luggage into an overhead bin is pretty much off the table.  With Bill’s bad back, I have always been the designated luggage lifter.  In other words, he can’t do it, either.  As a consequence, after doing close to sixty book tours over the past 33 years, I’ve chosen to cancel the one for Field of Bones this fall.  I’m sorry, and I thank you in advance for your understanding.  At this point, I’m doing PT and hoping to avoid any kind of surgical procedure, but I can tell you for sure that getting old is not for sissies.

I will be signing and shipping books to the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Mostly Books in Tucson, and VJ Books in Portland.  They won’t be personalized, but they will be signed with my signature red pen.  You might want to place your order early so they have enough.

That’s all for now.