Today didn’t start out great. It started too early with a
baby screaming in the room next door, which surely must have been separated
from ours by a wall made from a used tissue box. Baby was unhappy and remained
so for a looonnng time. Then the Internet that I needed to work on my online
writing class went out in the hotel, and we were told it would still be out well
after we were gone.
But the day began to look up when we found a nearby coffee
shop that not only proved to be quite good, with a chatty, goth barista, but
where the barista/owner allowed us to bring Annabelle in. It was a little chilly, and I wasn't looking forward to sitting outside, though that's the nature of traveling with a pet.
I don’t know why more
coffee shops don’t allow pets. In most locales, it’s only a health violation if
the pet goes into the food prep area. I find most animals cleaner than lots of
people. I do realize that’s a subjective opinion, and not everyone
wants to share their coffee spot with a creature whose idea of greeting is to
sniff someone else’s butt. Annabelle is totally different, of course. She’s a
bookstore dog, meaning she’s not only uncommonly polite, she’s erudite.
It’s a long drive from San Diego to Thousand Oaks, where my
next signing was scheduled, at the Mysteries to Die For bookstore. In these
first two days, we seemed to be spending all our time driving. But that’s the
nature of book tours, and especially of Southern California — long distances
filled with lots of cars. We actually made good time considering the distance —
not too many slowdowns at all — but this ex-SoCal’er did forget what that
endless sea of cars looks like. Thankfully, it’s been a long time since I spent
considerable time muscling my way up the 405.
We made it to MTDF with a enough time to do a
little book shopping — owning a bookstore as we do, the one thing I miss is
book browsing, on actual bookshelves (as opposed to publisher and wholesaler catalogs), that is, which someone else is responsible for arranging. touring lets us do that. It also gave me time to catch up
with the customers I see when I go there, and some old friends who also
dropped by.
I love Mysteries to Die For — it’s one of my favorite
stores. I always find a nice, enthusiastic crowd waiting for me there, and I always seem to enjoy strong sales. I can also always count on seeing some old
friends. This time I got to see and spend time longtime friend Suzanne Epstein, and writers
Dale Culpepper and Pete Goodman.
Tired now, and moving a little slower, after a day that
started out pretty so-so, but turned out to be pretty great.
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