Random Weirdness

Just got back from a week doing school visits in California. We had a ball and sold lots of books. In fact we sold the Barnes and Noble in Roseville completely out of books, and I have to admit it was pretty cool when they said the only authors to have bigger signings there were Janet Evanovich and Stephenie Meyer. They even brought little cups of hot cocoa to the people waiting in line. How cool is that?

A few random thoughts from the road.

I don’t know about anyone else, but the perfect driving snacks for me are a combination of mini Butterfinger candy bars, corn nuts, mini Famous Amos chocolate chip cookies, and beef jerky. If I ever have to trade with natives, I am leaving the beads and trinkets at home and bringing those.

You know that thing you did in science class where you stuck one hand in hot water and the other in cold water, then put them both in room temperature water? Apparently Utah is the cold water glass. It was raining and like 57 degrees in the bay area, and everyone was acting like it was a freezer while we were walking around in shorts and basking.


Possibly the funniest book to ever be banned by a school is The Flim-Flam Fairies by Alan Katz. It starts with the tooth fairy explaining how you can get some money for your tooth, but she is quickly replaced by such nefarious fairies as the booger fairy, the dirty underwear fairy, the toenail fairy, and even the fart fairy. On the last page, the poop fairy wants to know if he is too late. I think the poop thing may have pushed it over the edge. Talking about poop is taking your chances in the grade school crowd. But I laughed my head off. (Which just goes to show that I am still stuck in the potty humor stage.)









Another fun picture book (which doesn’t include the words fart or poop) is You Can’t Go to School Naked, by Diane Billstrom. Diane is a wonderful person and friend of my parents who dropped by the store and bought books for her grandkids.



Clayton Books in Concord, California, still has to be one of the best indy bookstores ever. They showed me and my family a great time, we sold two-hundred books, and I got signed copies of A Series of Unfortunate Events, book 1, and a Bizarro pirate book. Thanks Joel and family, Vinitha, and the rest of the staff. You guys are awesome.



I completely agree that Hunger Games is great. I read it a couple of months ago and it is awesome. I am also reading the Seventh Tower series by Garth Nix, and have to say how amazing he is. I also love Neil Gaiman (congrats on winning a well deserved Newberry for The Graveyard Book, which I loved), but I was really disappointed by Stardust. One of those cases where I kept thinking how much better I liked the movie. Oh well, I have loved everything else I’ve read by him.



The greatest hot dogs in the world are Caspers in Pleasant Hill. I wish they would bring Caspers, In’N’Out, and Jack in the Box, out here to Utah. But then again, maybe they don’t come to cold water states.