We're getting everything together for another road trip. This one is just to St. Louis for the signing, some family stuff, my birthday, a Christmas party with Megan's corporate office, plus I'll be taking in the Star Wars concert where all the theme music is played by a full orchestra. That last one should be a lot of fun. Hopefully, the signing will turn out ok as well. The last time I did one in St. Louis, my very first western had come out and I was tacked on to a signing with two other people. When I arrived, there was no mention I was there and 1 copy of my book on the table. Yes. One copy. That actually served me much better future-expectation-wise than some freak accident where my first signing would have been great.
Despite all the fun stuff going on, I'll still be working my tail feathers off writing the fourth Skinners. There's a lot going on in this one, as there was with the third. I'd hate for the series to just become "who do we kill this time around?" sort of stuff. Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of killing. I also want to keep panning out to show more of the Skinners world. Today I finally arrived on a name for a major group that will come in to play throughout the rest of the series. Even though I've had them in mind for some time (and hinted at them several times in all the other books) they never seemed completely "real" to me until I settled on a name. The only name I'm worried about right now, though, is Michelin. After my tire blew out outside of Kansas City last week, I'm skittish about running the new ones into the ground. In the immortal words of Han Solo to the Millennium Falcon, "Hear me, baby? Hold together."
