‘Cause you never know where you will find them! And considering all the books I’ve signed recently, I sort of feel like an Easter bunny–hopping across the country and signing books wherever I go. And if you live in Wichita, you may find some of those signed books I left behind. And even if you don’t live in Wichita, there is a way for you to get your hands on one–but more of that later.

When an author travels, they love to do what is called “the drive-by.” Which means, you locate all the bookstores in a reasonably doable radius and drive by, signing the copies they have and introducing yourself to the staff. It’s a meet and greet on the fly. Thank goodness for Mapquest–which makes the process so much easier. In Wichita, Niki Burnham took shot-gun, navigating like a pro (except when we got talking and our animated conversation had us both so diverted we just about drive right past one exit), and we steered around town during our free morning, signing books. So if you live near the Borders or the Walmart on Maize Road, then you better pop in quick and get your copies. If you have a teenager who loves to read, Niki Burnham signed copies of her books as well.

Now when you do all this driving around, you are also doing it in a rental car. Now remember the rental car from Knoxville? Yeah, the really cool Mustang. Teresa Medeiros and I had a great time driving all around Knoxville in that rocking ride. So it was with my fingers crossed that I walked out into the parking lot of the Wichita airport so see what sort of car we were going to be driving around. And it was a PT Cruiser, which I thought, “Okay, cool, a nice retro sort of drive. This will be fun.” Until I couldn’t figure out how to open the door. Or figure out how to open the window–that took 24 hours, I kid you not. I think the guy at the parking garage at the hotel thought I was a big old dufus because I couldn’t get the window open to touch the keypad to open the parking arm. I had to open the door and sort of squeeze what I could of myself out the six inch opening and . . . . well, you get the picture. Or the horrible realization that it was going to take at least three attempts to turn into any parking spot–no matter how wide I turned that square-sided of brick of unturnable dimensions. And so we dubbed it the “Block O Cheese.” Because that is what driving a PT Cruiser is like. Driving a block of cheese. We didn’t dignify its unwieldy metal with a picture. It didn’t deserve the hall of fame treatment.

So Thursday evening, we drove the Cheese out to the Barnes & Noble at Bradley Fair and discovered that Wichita’s kindness extended right inside those doors, where Bob, Brad and Karina turned out the welcome mat and made Niki and I feel so very welcome! I loved meeting LJ, which with her bag of books and questions about Griffin Marlowe, and of course the questions about Pippin and Dash. Yes, I know the ending of Confessions makes the situation look dire, but come on, I watch soap operas and love those Friday afternoon endings where Erika is on life support and the machine is going Code Red. But I do admit to being a bit piqued this week when Kutner died on House. I was shocked and indignant, until my husband asked me if I had ever killed anyone off unexpectantly. It’s hard to be indignant when you’ve been guilty of the same charge.

But back to the subject at hand: Autographed Books! Now this is how nice the folks in Wichita are: Brad was so nice, he ordered in extra books for the signing, just in case there were fans out there who wanted their own copy of a signed book. He’s got nearly all my backlist in stock and signed and if you want an autographed copy, you can call the Barnes & Noble store (316) 315-0421 and order it directly from them. There is a shipping charge, but if you order more than $50 worth of books, I believe the shipping charge is dropped. I’m just saying, you could order extra copies of my book for Mother’s Day presents, or add some other books they have in stock. If you run into any problems, ask for Brad or Karina and tell them I sent you and they will fix you up. Because that is the sort of nice people they are.