That’s right. I’m the last one to chime in on the Paranormal Bender Tour. But wait! I have excuses

1. Blogging doesn’t really fit into my busy napping schedule (count ‘em two naps, three hours each, in a 36 hour period, along with 9 hours of regular sleep). I’m still not caught up.

2. My website kicked my ass for 6 hours today (you try recreating a start page and all your widgets from memory).

3. I’ve been terribly busy hating the neighbor kid and his repetitive noisemaking. It’s like he’s autistic or something, only he’s not. I wish I had a pen of hungry pigs.

Onward!

Let’s talk author tours and in particular, the PBT. We left on the 10th from the Seattle airport, not in Caitlin’s awesome Impala but a Kia Ronda which we named Impala, and got a late start because Mario kept giving the stewardesses dutch ovens or something equally terrifying. So we didn’t roll out for Sacramento until close to 11 AM. Along the way, we gathered freaky town names, invented a fruitbat religion (Oh Steve) and noted that Mt. Shasta seems to have taken a little shit nearby (or is that another mountain?). At 11 PM we rolled into the La Quinta, fresh as spring daisies, or not at all (for those math folks out there, that is indeed a 12 hour driving stretch). Exhausted, in fact. Zombified.

The 11th was a big day, though. We had to make Las Vegas in time to check-in to the Flamingo, freshen our naughty places and find the Clark County Library. It was also a 9 hour drive, where we found that Steve (the galactic fruitbat) hates douchebags–and lo there were many on the California highways–Bakersfield is so liberal that the hookers hang out at the gas stations drinking Red Bull and Smirnoff, and the Mojave is a barren wasteland of nothingness, also planes. Yes, we passed the aviation graveyard, among other things (like a ghost town called Calico, that intrigued us from afar), they sat off in the distance like ships caught in the rocks, only there weren’t any rocks and they didn’t look like ships. Damn elusive similes!
Suzanne Scott at the Clark County Library was so awesome I wanted to lick her all over like a dog. Imagine this, you’re a midlist author, who’s used to minimal fanfare and author event attendees who you’ve invited but didn’t have the bribe money to get them to be enthusiastic. Then you show up at an event so awesome, with people who seem starved for some literary culture (not that we brought that, but, well…) and how do you feel? Like a rock star, that’s how. 70 people showed up and the theater was excellent, though I’m certain I fell into some bad lighting. Vicki Petterssen (who never falls into bad lighting) emceed the event and we talked about books, horror movies and profanity and then met the folks for the signing part. Later we went to some British themed pub in the middle of the desert and got fish and chips (do not order seafood in the desert). Do. Not.

The next day was a free-for-all. Mario and I got breakfast at this diner off the strip and found an antique shop that had reclaimed shit from Vegas history (like this pimp phone) and scary monkeys and a stuffed animal that if you put your thumb on its heart it promised and promised and promised. I got a little creeped out in a Brady Bunch Hawaiian holiday tiki idol curse kind of way.

Why…here it is now…

Go ahead and touch its heart promise. It’s okay. It’ll only hurt for a second.

At some point after being cut loose by the girls, Mario and I got a bug up our asses about writing a screenplay. It started after witnessing the glory of the “Tree Girls” at the Venetian and pretty much continued for the rest of the trip. It’s peopled, plotted and completely perverse, though oddly not paranormal in the least. We’ll work it back and forth for a couple of months and see if we can sell the thing. Or act it out in the back yard or something.

Speaking of perverse, what’s going on here…

There’s just something unsettling about the angle and Marie’s hidden arm. If you meet me in person, ask, I’m working on a little spoken word performance about incest. You’ll either love it or slap me. I think that’s it. Oh…wait. Except. Did I mention the Tree Girls?

Hmm. It’s rare to catch them in the wild. I was lucky to have a little blight on me.

Next Up: San Diego and beyond!

PS. Can I take a moment to tell you all how much I hate blogging on wordpress.  It’s nearly impossible to manipulate and once you do get it looking like you want, it freaks out and erases all the spaces.  Then!  When it crossposts, it gets rid of all the photo placement options.  I never had this problem with Blogger.  Or maybe I’m just fucking exhausted and recovering from the mini-flu I caught on the road.