I’m writing this on Wednesday, June third. Credible Threat went on sale nationwide yesterday, except, as one of my fans reported, in the Barnes and Noble in Chico, California. I have no idea what went wrong there, and I hope the oversight is soon corrected. But Instead of being off on tour and staying in a hotel somewhere, I’m sitting here in my family room, barefoot, and with my laptop on my … well … lap.

There was a pause between starting writing the blog and finishing it. In between and because it’s Wednesday, my editor sent me news this afternoon that my loyal DTR paperback readers put Sins of the Fathers on the NYTimes Bestsellers list at # 10. Thank you, thank you, thank you. As my mother would say, “Whoever you are, you KNOW who you are!”

But back to the blog as written. It’s been chilly this morning, so the fireplace is still on, but the sun’s out now. That means I should be able to do outside steps this afternoon. Yesterday when it was time to go outside, there was a downpour. In other words, all of yesterday’s 10,000 steps were inside steps rather than outside steps, and for the record, inside steps take longer. Yesterday’s steps and today’s, however, were both done OFS. Translated into English that means they were all done in “one-fell-swoop.” OFS, like LOL, is abbreviated mother/daughter text speak. By the way, since my daughter is a single mom, her tens usually turn out to be seventeens or twenties.

So what did I do to celebrate pub day yesterday? For the first time since June of 1985 I did NOT do a live event. I wasn’t on an airplane flying somewhere, and I spent the night in my own bed rather than in a hotel. As for the rest of the day? A lot of it was spent dealing with technical issues, and once again, as Bill has done countless times over the past nearly 35 years, he saved my bacon.

In the early years, the wheels would come off my creative bus whenever it was time to print a 350-page manuscript. Doing that with a Daisy-wheel printer and countless paper jams was always a logistical nightmare. It was a huge relief when things changed enough that I could load a manuscript into an email and ship it off without having to deal with the whole printer/paper mess.

Bill created my website originally, but it is now managed by Kathy, the IT gal he brought on board. When I first started out sending emailed book announcements prior to pub dates, I did it all myself. When the list got too big, AOL black-listed me for being a spammer. Bill worked our way out of that disaster which initially prevented us from sending emails to anybody. Eventually Kathy fixed the spammer issue by finding the Vertical Response work-around for sending out mass mailings.

Unfortunately, yesterday when we needed her, Kathy was nowhere to be found. She actually has a day job, so when it came to set up for the virtual book talk with Poisoned Pen, Bill and I were on our own. The two of us are compatible most of the time, but when faced with some kind of technical complication, the divisions between his engineering background and my liberal arts leanings become painfully obvious. He reads and follows all directions to the letter. I simply want things to work! Period!

Yesterday our plan was to use Skype for the talk. That turned out to be an utter failure. In the process I have now created an unusable Skype account which is going to cost us three bucks a month for the foreseeable future. At some point, while I’m still doing social distancing, I’m going to get on the phone and try to turn that sucker OFF. After two hours of tooth-grinding misery we decided to go with Zoom which resulted in another another two hours of computer/iPad/Wifi wrangling. When we finally managed to win through, we were still speaking, barely, but we were both way beyond being terse!

Last night I did my first ever virtual book talk, interviewed by Barbara Peters. She spoke from her store in Scottsdale, Arizona, while I broadcast from the dining room of our home in Bellevue, Washington. I may have been wearing my book-tour St. John’s jacket from the waist up, but from the waist down it was a pair of worn jeans and equally sketchy pair of Skechers. I love speaking to living/breathing audiences. Speaking for a camera scares me to death. As Barbara pointed out in the talk, we both thrive on live audiences and gain energy from their responses. So, yes, I was nervous, and it probably showed. If you’re interested in judging for yourself, here’s a link to the live chat: Facebook Live Chat

In the meantime, happy reading everybody. When I stopped writing at this point earlier today, I fully intended to work on autographing the stack of book mark requests multiplying on our kitchen counter. That didn’t occur, but I just happen to have the right word for that. Unfortunately it also turns out to be a song: Mañana.

Enjoy the ear worm, everybody. I just couldn’t help myself.