In our last installment I'd brought us all up to date through the Houston leg of the book tour and swore to myself I wouldn't get behind again. Yeah, right. Here it is another month later and I realize this blog has become like my journal, something I know I should be working on daily but somehow manage to leave until the time is right, and we all know the time is never right to just write. So now I'm sitting in my hotel in San Francisco trying to remember my book signing at the BEA (that's Book Expo America for the uninitiates) in New York City, and my memory is as distant as the West Coast from the East. This is what I remember, a few impressions. New York was grueling, physically. I'd forgotten how demanding the city is on your body; even flagging down a taxi can be taxing, especially at 5pm on a rainy Friday afternoon. You guessed it. No taxis anywhere, just a long slog through the west side from the Jacob Javitz Center, where my book signing was, to Penn Station, and from there winding hallways, steep stairwells, even steeper, non-functioning escalators to get from the green to the purple to the orange, or vice-versa, and end up at Grand Central Station (where we desperately needed to use the "ladies" at the Oyster Bar) and then another 5-block trudge in the rain to our hotel in Murray Hill. I remember the pain in my right heel like a hot nail being driven through the bone. Sometimes the pain just stopped me from moving, and then I had to hobble along for awhile until I worked the metaphorical nail out and could walk normally again. And those were the good times. Not really. Other than just being out of shape from sitting in airports and in front of a computer for too many months w/ no exercise (and we won't talk about those delicious hand-made corn tortillas you get force-fed in San Antonio, where I've been on sabbatical and leave this last year), New York was great great fun. Very productive, signed over 70 copies of my book at the BEA signing, met lots of people, attended a terrific Writers Digest conference and learned how to "pitch" a book to an agent in 60 seconds (literally!), and attended the Lammys (that's the Lambda Literary Awards, again, for the uninitates). Gloria and I hung out with Norma Cantu and Elvia, who happened to be in NYC the same week that we were, and got a chance to catch "Doubt" on Broadway, and to walk around Greenwich Village with our dear friend and amazing artist, Lisa Mellenger, where I got to visit the Oscar Wilde Bookshop for the first (see how much of an initiate I am?) time and gloat over the great review "Desert Blood" got in Go NYC! a free dyke publication that they just happened to be carrying at the Oscar Wilde. So, have I left anything out? I'm sure I have, but I've got to rush, now, and go pick up Gloria who's arriving at the Oakland airport in less than hour. More later. I promise. If I don't forget, or simply wait too long for the right moment.