September 24, 2005
Yesterday afternoon I met Theresa from Tri Star down at the Superpumper on Cave Creek Road just north of the 101. I got there early so I filled up with gas ($2.89 a gallon, 11 gallons, $33 house account, debit). Theresa showed up shortly with a truck full of Blaze Away! books hot off the press and I had to rip open a box and take a gander. Oh, that new book smell! It is beautiful! A bouncing, baby boy book, if you like homicides by the dozen and what immature boy doesn’t?!

Loaded about fifteen boxes in my Ranger, gave Theresa a big hug and told her I love her (it’s our sixth child, I mean, book together), then called Carole on my cell and warned her the books were incoming and asked her to tell Ron and Mike Melrose to be out front to help load them in. Got back to the office at about three and we unloaded all the books into the conference room and gathered around to take a closer look. A couple pages have minor gaffs, but overall it’s a thing of grace and homicidal beauty.

Kathy came down from her office at about five and we went down to El Encanto to celebrate. Carole joined us and we ordered a pitcher of margaritas and a sampler (a big dish of assorted mini-chimis, tostadas, tortas, etc. ($52 plus $10 tip, cash, I paid). Seemed a tad high (the tab) but I didn’t care because I was high myself.

Came home, watched a bit of tv, but then got in bed early and read the whole thing cover to cover. A couple of maddening typos and glitches (one date I know we fixed but somehow Quark Xpress either picked up an earlier version or it’s a phantom regurgitating saboteur). In another place an arrow got moved and is pointing to a wrong position (a scratchboard shows Wyatt and Morgan running and an arrow coming from the image box goes down to an overhead view of Allen Street and points at a building. So, they are running in a building. Oh, that’s cute!). Most people won’t notice this (except, of course, all of you!)

Every book I’ve ever done has these renegade factoids and minor-muffs, and out of the thousands of good to great stuff, if there are five that suck, well, I’ll take those odds and raise you five.

Got up today at about six and Kathy and I filled out fifty invitations to the show and mailed them off (bought 50 stamps, $23). That felt good. Picked up two of our bikes from the Flat Tire Bike Shop. Yes, that's the name and we had two flat tires (Tomcat thinks it's because of the Spanish Driveway, driving over those rough stones is giving us flats). Loaded up the bikes ($50 for fixing them. I complained to Kathy about the charge and she said what should it be and I said, "We used to fix flats for $2 at my dad's gas station," and she smirked, "Well, yes, but that was before electricity." Funny girl). Came home, unloaded the bikes, then moved Kitty Custer out to the studio. Kathy has given him a new name: “Bob’s Cat.” Ha. She’s fed up with the little turd, but I couldn’t give him the death sentence, so he’s hiding out somewhere in my labyrinth of reference materials. I hesitate to let Buddy Boze Hatkiller in, although I know he’d find the little feline and find him good. But then that's just do nature.

“There is a great deal of human nature in people.”
—Mark Twain


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