Colorado was the last stop of the book signing tour for the year.  

Author John Brown http://johndbrown.com/ and I drove out to Denver this last Friday.  We hit every Barnes & Noble on the way down, did two signings on Saturday, and then had dinner with a bunch of really great people. The first signing went pretty well, the second was awesome.  Several of the B&Ns ordered in lots of extra books for us to sign, even if we were just doing a drive by & sign, in order to have an end cap of signed copies for Christmas sales.

I was able to meet a bunch of people that I know from blogs and forums.  I met Dravur from THR, and then at the night signing I was able to meet Justin http://multigun.wordpress.com/ , and Larry & Sandy Ashcraft, who I’ve known for like ten years on the internet, but who I’d never actually met face to face.  I was finally able to meet Farmgirl http://tractortracks.blogspot.com/ who is awesome, and her mom.  Then a bunch of Colorado bloggers from www.peoplespresscollective.org came.  And I’m probably even forgetting some people.

We ate dinner at a local place, which was good, and then crashed at the hotel, brain damaged and exhausted with low level carpal tunnel from signing so many books.  Luckily, John Brown was not stalked by any Reptoids this trip. (that we know of…)

Denver folks, I love you, but from now on I’m only driving across Wyoming in the summer.  The trip home was just spiffy. It snowed most of the way. We saw eight wrecks between Longmont and Fort Collins.  It was icy, and I discovered that the reason my Focus gets such great gas mileage is because it weighs approximately fifteen pounds, which means that it doesn’t exactly stick to ice very well, and Wyoming/Hoth style winds will shove you around a bit.  At one point I was forced to kill a Tauntaun and crawl inside to stay alive.  I think I actually drove past the Terror and the Erebus. But fifteen hours of white-knuckled terror later, we made it out of the surreal winter wonderland. (If Utah’s motto is “This is the Place!”  Then Wyoming’s motto is “Eh…close enough.”)

I do love Wyoming though. It is the Keep Off My Lawn State. Wyoming people don’t screw around. They don’t take crap off anyone, and since they live through the winter there, they are tough as nails. Wyoming is always the first state to tell the federal government to go to hell on most topics. So I love them. So no offense intended to my Wyoming readers, I just hate your howling winter death winds.

So I’m back, working from home today because we’ve already gotten a foot of snow this morning on the Oquirrh benches, and I don’t feel like driving through anymore snow. 

One little update, if you’ve ordered books or patches from me in the last few weeks, they are going out on Thursday.  I ran out of patches, but UPS says that they are on the way.  Then it is back to work on Alpha, and I will be putting out another Christmas Noun, probably later this week.