Jordan Castillo Price's Blog, page 26
November 26, 2014
PsyCop cover reveal and a Thanksgiving snippet!
Who can forget Vic and Jacob's first Thanksgiving together? Turkey, mashed potatoes, a ghost arm, and Jacob's delightful nephew, Clayton. Not me...'cos I've recently revisited the story to prep it for audio production. We're hoping to have PsyCop 3 available in audio by Christmas. But until then, here's a sneak peek at the new cover art...and a nostalgic look back at that Thanksgiving scene.
“Uncle Jacob? Did you get to shoot anybody since last summer?”
Jacob’s nephew, Clayton, asked this with the eagerness and joy of a kid who’d just learned that school was cancelled. Clayton was in fifth grade. I have no idea how old that would make him.
“You shot someone last summer?” I muttered, smoothing my napkin on my lap to the point where I probably looked like I was playing with myself. Not exactly the impression I’d wanted to make on Jacob’s family on our first Thanksgiving together.
The muttering? Not usually my style, but I was feeling uncharacteristically mouthy. It seemed like the moment I had a thought, it made its way through my vocal cords and out my mouth before I had a chance to pat it down and make sure it wasn’t going to jab anyone. I’d been this way since I’d stopped taking Auracel and Seconal over a month ago. Here I thought I’d been mellowing all these years, when really, it had just been the drugs.
“No,” Jacob answered patiently. “I try to avoid shooting people.” And then he looked at me. “Carolyn and I walked in on an armed robbery in progress at the convenience store on California and Irving. It was a clean shot to the leg.”
Departmental policy allows us cops to decide whether to go for a lethal or a non-lethal shot when a criminal’s got an unarmed civilian at gunpoint. If Jacob had shot someone’s leg, I had no doubt it was exactly where he’d been aiming. Jacob is a Stiff, the non-psychic half of a PsyCop team. In theory, Stiffs are impossible to influence by sixth-sensory means and impervious to possession. I can’t vouch forthat, but they’re usually crack shots. The Stiffs who I know, anyway.
I’m the other half of a PsyCop team, the Psych half. Not Jacob’s team; Carolyn Brinkman was Jacob’s better half, on the job at least. I didn’t currently have a Stiff of my very own. Maurice, my first partner, retired—although I still lean on him way too much. Lisa, my second partner, was kicked off the force when they discovered that she was as psychic as Jeane Dixon. She’s off being trained for the psy end of the whole PsyCop business now, out in California. Technically she’s just a phone call away, and yet sometimes it feels like she’s on an entirely different planet. Even when she gets back, I won’t get to partner with her, since they only pair up Psychs with Stiffs.
And then there was my third partner, Roger. The bastard kidnapped me for some under-the-table drug testing, and I’d been so gullible I’d practically given him a key to my apartment. Roger was rotting in a jail cell, last I’d heard. The whole affair was pretty hush-hush. Maybe I could’ve gleaned a few more details, if I was the type to obsess about the little things, like where one’s arch-enemy is incarcerated, and whether or not he’s shown up for roll call recently. But, frankly, I’ve never found details very comforting. I think about them, and I just get overwhelmed. Roger went bye-bye, and I came out of our encounter intact. That’s all I really need to know.
Six weeks later and I was still on medical leave. I felt fine, probably due to the amount of actual blood cells coursing through my system in lieu of the drug cocktail I was accustomed to.
“Did you ever shoot anyone?” Clayton asked me, eyes sparkling.
“Sure.”
“Wow. Did you kill ’em?”
Clayton had Jacob’s phenomenal dark eyes. Or Jacob’s younger sister Barbara’s eyes. Which were Jacob’s father’s eyes, as well as the eyes of the wizened old lady at the head of the table who was about a hundred and five. She’d been giving me a look that could probably kill an elephant ever since we’d gotten there and Jacob had introduced me as his boyfriend.
I think he’d primed his family over the phone. But still. He had to go and say it out loud and rub it in. Because that’s the way Jacob is. Not that he’d be bringing a man home for Thanksgiving for any other reason. But that’s beside the point.
“Clayton Joseph,” snapped Barbara. She might have had Jacob’s eyes, but she certainly couldn’t hold a candle to his cool composure. “That is not an appropriate question for the dinner table.”
Grandma Marks glowered at me from the head of the table, her dark eyes, half-hidden in folds of wrinkled skin, threatening to pierce me right through. I’d figured she hated me because I was doing the nasty with her grandson. Maybe she had a thing against psychics. Hell, maybe both. I’m usually just lucky that way.
“Bob Martinez retired down at the mill,” Jacob’s father, Jerry, announced in a blatant attempt to change the subject. If we’d been in Chicago, where I grew up, Jerry would have been talking about a steel mill. But we were in Wisconsin, an alien land of rolling hills and cows, with signs advertising something called “fresh cheese curds” every few miles. I gathered that the mills made paper in this alien, wholesome land where Jacob had been born and bred.
“And when are you going to think about retiring, Dad?” Barbara asked. She had an accent that sounded Minnesotan to my untrained ear. I wondered if Jacob had ever had that same funny lilt. Probably once, but it’d been erased by him living over half his life in Chicago.
“Your father’s got another ten years in him, at least,” said Jacob’s mom, Shirley. Shirley wore her hair in a white, poofy halo. I suspected she’d been a blonde in her younger days. “What’s he going to do around here but get in my way?”
“Your mother plays Euchre on Tuesdays and Thursdays,” said Jerry, as if his retirement hinged around a card game.
“You have hobbies,” said Barbara. “You could fix up your woodshop and actually finish a few things.”
“Ah, I’d rather earn an honest wage than stay home and make birdhouses.”
“And you could teach Clayton all about woodworking.”
“He’s too young,” said Jerry. “He’d cut his finger off.”
“Wood is stupid,” Clayton added.
I wondered if calling wood stupid was heresy in this land of trees and paper. But Grandma didn’t fall out of her chair clutching her heart, so I figured that kids were allowed to say the first thing that popped into their minds these days. Or maybe they always had been. I must have been on my third foster home by the time I was Clayton’s age. I was probably in fourth grade, held back for being thick, stubborn, and socially retarded. But that would’ve put me at just about the age where I’d learned that my opinion was neither desired nor appreciated.
Jingle bells announced the opening of the front door—that and a massive blast of arctic air, complete with a whorl of snowflakes.
“Uncle Leon!” Clayton leapt up from the table and thundered toward the door.
I looked at the empty place setting across from me and heaved an inward sigh of relief. I’d been hoping that an actual person would fill it, that it wasn’t left open as a tribute to Grandpa Marks, or some other long-lost family member.
Leon rounded the corner of the dining room and Shirley stood up to greet him. I glanced around at the rest of the table to see if I was supposed to stand up, too. But Jacob and Jerry were still sitting. Jerry was even packing away mashed potatoes like he was trying to beat everyone else to the punch.
Uncle Leon was in his mid-to-late sixties and had the same white hair and rounded snub nose as Jacob’s mom. Shirley kissed him on the cheek and unbuttoned his thick corduroy jacket. “Jacob brought his friend with him,” she said, gesturing toward me. “This is Victor.”
She peeled Leon’s coat off him and whisked away with it just as Leon turned to shake my hand. He led with his left hand, which confused me. His bare right arm flapped at his side, with his right sleeve rolled up to his shoulder.
I half-stood, and shook his left hand in a daze.
Leon nodded his head toward his right shoulder. “Lost it at the mill in ’78. Damn thing still hurts.”
I blinked. Leon’s right sleeve wasn’t rolled up. It was pinned to the shoulder of his shirt. He didn’t have a right arm—not one made out of real flesh and blood, anyway. And I could still see his missing arm. The party’d finally gotten started. Hooray.
“Oh,” I said. “That sucks.”
“Shirley tells me you’re a PsyCop.”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
“That’s some kind of program they got going on down there,” he said. His ghost arm joined his corporeal arm in pulling out the chair across from mine. “What kind of talent you got?”
I sank back into my seat and swallowed a mouthful of dryish turkey meat I’d been talking around for the last several minutes. “Medium.”
“No shit?”
Grandma frowned harder, but Leon didn’t seem to notice. “Can I get you anything to drink?” Shirley asked me, but I mumbled that I was okay.
“That girl Jacob works with, she’s a telepath, isn’t she? Wow, a medium. How ’bout that?” Leon’s ghost hand caressed the silverware as he spoke. I wondered if I looked like a freak for staring at his salad fork while he talked to me. “So how strong are they, your impressions?”
I drained my glass of soda to wash down the turkey and wished I’d taken Shirley up on her offer of a refill. “Pretty strong.”
“What, do you hear ’em talking to you? In their own words?”
“Uh huh.”
“Holy cow, now that’s what you call a psychic. We got ourselves a Marie Saint Savon right here at the table.”
Good old Marie had died right around the time I’d been shoehorned into the police academy. She’d been the world’s most powerful medium, and no one could touch her talent. Not that I could figure why anyone would want to. I was surprised that Leon actually knew her name. Maybe it was a generational thing. She’d been big news maybe fifteen years ago, and then was quickly forgotten by almost everyone but the psychic community.
“That’s got to make your police work a little easier,” said Leon. “Huh?”
I nodded and swallowed some mashed potatoes. They were salty enough to stimulate my flagging salivary glands. A little.
“Only if you work homicide,” Jerry piped in. The whole family had been skirting around my psychic ability, but since Leon had started the ball rolling and I didn’t seem too tender about the topic, it’d become fair game.
“I do.”
“Holy shit. I didn’t know they used mediums in homicide.”
Grandma glared at Leon.
“You mean medium, like a psychic medium?” Clayton asked.
“Uh huh.”
“Wow, you see dead people?”
“That’s just in the movies,” Barbara said. “Like the telekinetics who can shoot bullets with their minds.” Metal was incredibly resistant to telekinesis, but I’d trained with one guy who could fling a mean stone. He got these splitting headaches afterward, though, so he was never one to show off with party tricks.
“I can see them,” I said.
The table went quiet. “Whoa,” said Clayton. “Like, right now?”
I avoided looking at the spot where Leon’s arm was flopping around on the table. “There aren’t any spirits here for Victor to see,” Jacob explained. We knew that to be the case because we’d called Lisa Gutierrez in Santa Barbara and asked her if there were any ghosts in Jerry and Shirley’s house, and she’d said no. Lisa’s precognitive, and if she says no, the answer is unequivocally no.
I guess she couldn’t have known about Leon’s arm. Not without us asking specifically.
“And when you see ’em,” Clayton went on, “are they all scary and gross?”
“Sometimes.”
Everyone at the table seemed to lean forward just a little. Even Jacob.
“Can you see right through them?”
“Sometimes. Or sometimes they look like regular people.”
Leon’s facial expression was open and eager, but his phantom limb was clenching and unclenching its fist, and bright red droplets had appeared all over it as if it was sweating blood. I buried my face in my glass, tilting a final droplet of soda onto my tongue.
“Can you touch ’em?” Clayton asked, his voice dropping down into a reverential whisper.
I swallowed around a hunk of turkey that’d lodged in my esophagus. Jacob slid his glass over to me, and I took it and drank it down. He’d been drinking milk. I just barely kept myself from gagging.
“You don’t want to touch ghosts,” I said.
The house around us, the very air, went quiet. Everyone strained forward to catch whatever crumbs of information I might care to scatter. Because we’re a nation that grew up on Lovecraft and Sleepy Hollow and Friday the Thirteenth, and people are dying to know if all that shit’s really real.
Curious about the audio? Check out Among the Living or Criss Cross, and listen to a sample chapter free:
Criss Cross at Audible (with or without an Audible subscription)Criss Cross at Amazon
Criss Cross iTunes
Among the Living at Audible (with or without an Audible subscription)Among the Living at Amazon
Among the Living at iTunes
What listeners are saying:
"Add me to the list of people who are loving the Psycop books in Audible versions. Although I've read the whole series, listening to the book, I pick up on little details and things I missed the first time through. The narration is great. I have also gotten my husband hooked!"
November 24, 2014
It's on the wall!
It resulted in this:
YAY, I was finally touching story again, and was able to carve off all the deadweight from my manuscript and move ahead with purpose. More importantly, that sick feeling of dread was gone. (Good riddance.)
Weirdly enough, though, I've worked this way before. Here's where I was tearing my hair out in 2009 trying to figure out how to wrap up the Channeling Morpheus series.
And here I am struggling with PsyCop in 2007...
So, I don't get it. Why did I stop this type of planning when I knew it worked?
What the heck, did I somehow not realize that I would just magically know what to type? How can you understand something so basic (writing is more than just typing, it's thinking) and then forget it? Maybe I'd moved to lengthier journaling-type planning and forgot the organizational power of the movable note.
Weird. But hooray. Now, onward.
November 19, 2014
PsyCop 1.1 Tauwetter (Thaw)
Tauwetter
(PsyCop 1.1)
Mit Sport habe ich eigentlich überhaupt nichts am Hut, egal ob es um die Cubs, Sox, Bulls, Bears oder sonst irgendwas geht, was auch nur im Entferntesten damit zu tun hat. Daher war ich ein wenig überrascht, als Jacob vorschlug, dass wir doch in die Stadt zum Eislaufen gehen könnten. Allerdings war er vermutlich noch weit mehr überrascht, dass ich seine Idee richtig gut fand.
Jacob wusste nämlich nicht, dass ich einen Winter lang Zwergen- Eishockey gespielt hatte, als ich elf war. (Eishockey an sich war mir piepegal. Ich war in den Torhüter verknallt.) Und ich hatte nicht gewusst, wie cool die Eisbahn nach Sonnenuntergang aussehen würde. Lichterketten schmückten die kahlen Bäume entlang der Michigan Avenue, und dahinter strahlte die Skyline von Chicago. Im Millennium Park war es irre kalt, aber wunderschön.
Jacob hatte bestimmt schon raus, dass ich Schlittschuh laufen kann, bevor wir überhaupt aufs Eis kamen. Einerseits ist er wirklich so klug, und andererseits bin ich ungefähr so schwer zu lesen wie eine Anzeigentafel. Trotzdem behielt er die ganze Zeit über fast nur mich im Blick, statt die Szenerie zu genießen. Ist schon ulkig, wie er mich manchmal anstarrt. Er hört auch nicht damit auf, wenn ich ihn dabei erwische. Er lächelt nur still.
Und was für ein Lächeln das ist. Mit seinen dunklen Haaren, seinen dunklen Augen und dem makellos getrimmten, verwegenen Kinnbart sieht Jacob geradezu umwerfend gut aus.
Er schaute mir beim Zubinden der Schlittschuhe zu, als würde ich gerade ihm zuliebe einen Striptease veranstalten, und half mir dann auf die Füße. Doch selbst als ich aufrecht stand, ließ er meine Hand nicht los. Es kam mir fast so vor, als wollte er mich an sich ziehen und küssen – direkt dort neben der Bank und mit jeder Menge Leute um uns herum. Lauter Heteros, hätte ich wetten mögen, zumindest zum überwiegenden Teil. Familien. Kinder.
Ich drückte kurz seine Hand und er ließ los. „Willst du jetzt mal ein bisschen Action sehen?“, fragte ich.
„Oh ja.“
Ich glitt schwungvoll auf die Eisfläche hinaus und mischte mich unter die anderen Eisläufer. Warum sagen bloß immer alle „Das ist wie mit dem Radfahren“? Der Spruch hat mir nie so ganz eingeleuchtet, weil ich schon immer ein mieser Radfahrer war, ganz gleich in welchem Alter. Aber Schlittschuhlaufen? Das hatte ich sofort wieder drauf.
Meine schwarze wollene Cabanjacke war nicht besonders aerodynamisch, aber das störte mich nicht. Ich hatte heute längere Beine als damals mit elf, und die Kufen schnitten mit einem befriedigenden Knirschen ins Eis, wenn ich mich abstieß. Ich kurvte leichtfüßig um das wackelige Pärchen in ihren zueinander passenden gelben Parkas herum, das sich gegenseitig zu stützen versuchte. Eine athletisch wirkende Schlittschuhläuferin, die in tief gebückter Haltung dahinglitt, suchte meinen Blick und lächelte. Anscheinend war sie froh, noch jemanden auf dem Eis zu sehen, der ein bisschen Tempo aufnehmen wollte. Sie sah richtig professionell aus, mit Lycra-Leggins und so. Ich hätte sie schlagen können, jede Wette.
Aber da packte mich jemand am Ellbogen, und ich drehte mich um. Da war Jacob, sexy wie die Sünde in seiner Lederjacke und dem indisch gemusterten Schal. „Vic – willst du wissen, was ich gerade denke?“, fragte er. Der Schal verdeckte zwar seinen Mund, aber ich konnte ihm das Lächeln an den Augen ansehen.
„Gibt’s davon eine jugendfreie Version?“
„Nein.“
In der Menge vor mir hatte sich eine weite Lücke gebildet, also machte ich eine rasche halbe Drehung und fuhr rückwärts weiter, um Jacob dabei zusehen zu können, wie er mich beobachtete. Hinter ihm funkelten die weißen Lichter. Die Nacht war magisch. Auf der Michigan Avenue wanderten zwar Verkehrsunfallopfer herum – die nur ich sehen konnte, und nur, wenn ich den Kopf im richtigen Winkel neigte – wie in der Nacht der lebenden Toten, aber die konnte ich ausblenden und so tun, als bestünde meine ganze Welt nur aus Jacob, Weihnachtslichtern und dem dunklen Nachthimmel.
Ich drehte mich wieder herum, um nicht etwa ein unschuldiges Schulkind anzurempeln, und ließ Jacob zu mir aufholen. Er hakte sich bei mir ein, wodurch nicht nur unser Tempo abnahm, sondern auch die Wahrscheinlichkeit, jemanden über den Haufen zu rennen. Überall liefen auch andere Paare Arm in Arm, aber weit und breit keine zwei Männer – abgesehen von einem Jugendlichen, der einen triefnäsigen kleinen Bengel hinter sich her zerrte. Seinen kleinen Bruder, dem Aussehen nach.
Ich ruckte leicht mit dem Arm, weil ich wissen wollte, ob Jacob sich von mir lösen würde. Nein.
Ach ja, warum auch nicht? Falls irgendwer sich künstlich darüber aufregen wollte, dass wir beide Arm in Arm liefen, würde Jacob denjenigen bestimmt liebend gern mit einem vernichtenden Blick zum Schweigen bringen. Und falls es zu Handgreiflichkeiten kam, konnte ich auf meinen Schlittschuhen immer noch ganz schnell die Kurve kratzen, während Jacob demjenigen Manieren beibrachte. Aber außer einem durchsichtigen Taxifahrer mit eingedrücktem Gesicht, der halb in, halb neben einem Laternenmast stand, stellte niemand auch nur Blickkontakt mit mir her. Jacob und ich liefen zusammen unter den Weihnachtslichtern eine gute Stunde lang Schlittschuh, bis ich anfing zu bibbern und Jacob mich vom Eis herunter steuerte. Er schaute mir genauso genießerisch beim Ausziehen der Schlittschuhe zu wie vorhin beim Zuschnüren.
Ohne Schlittschuhe macht das Herumschlittern auf dem Eis nicht annähernd soviel Spaß wie mit, vor allem, wenn man es nicht absichtlich tut. Auf dem Rückweg zur El geriet ich auf eine eisglatte Stelle und schoss mit wild rudernden Armen ein Stück weit darauf entlang, dann fing ich mich und kam taumelnd wieder in die Senkrechte.
„Wir können gern nochmal zurück, falls du noch nicht genug hast“, sagte Jacob.
Ich ignorierte die Bemerkung, obwohl er mich eindeutig damit triezen wollte, so wie er mich angrinste. „Ich war viel schneller als du“, sagte ich.
„Mm-hm.“
„Und ich konnte es besser.“
Ich wartete auf einen geistreichen Kommentar, aber es kam keiner. Wir blieben beide stehen und schauten uns an. Sein Blick war immer noch starr auf mich gerichtet, und er schmunzelte immer noch.
„Wa – ?“
Jacob packte mich, noch ehe ich das Wort ganz ausgesprochen hatte, und zerrte mich in die Nische vor dem Eingang eines Feinkostgeschäfts, das über Nacht geschlossen war. Er riss mich herum, drängte mich rücklings gegen den Türgriff und drückte sich mit seinem ganzen Körper an mich.
Seine Lippen schmeckten nach Winter. Sein Gesicht war kalt, sogar sein Mund, aber wie sich unsere Zungen aneinanderpressten – das war heiß. Meine Hände in den dicken Handschuhen tasteten sich zu seinem Nacken, zogen ihn an mich. Jacob löschte den Rest der Welt aus – bis auf den Türgriff, aber den konnte ich ignorieren, zumindest kurzfristig. Der ganze Abend mit ihm kam mir vor wie aus einem viel einfacheren, glücklicheren Leben gestohlen. Nur dass dieses Leben tatsächlich meins war. Ich seufzte in seinen Kuss hinein, als er widerstrebend zurückwich; er ließ sich Zeit damit, bis das unverkennbare Knirschen von Schritten auf dem gefrorenen Matsch herannahende Passanten ankündigte.
„Weißt du überhaupt, wie glücklich du mich machst?“, fragte er.
Es war gut, dass ich in der dunklen Nische seine Augen nicht richtig sehen konnte. Das wäre viel zu viel gewesen. Ich schluckte mühsam; in meiner Kehle mischte sich der metallische Geschmack von der Anstrengung des Schlittschuhlaufens mit dem kühlen Aroma von Jacobs Kuss. „Gleichfalls“, sagte ich.
Ich schob Jacob wieder auf die Straße zurück und fiel neben ihn in Schritt, wobei ich mir alle Mühe gab, nicht auf der Stelle völlig den Kopf zu verlieren. Denn die Erkenntnis, dass ich wirklich und wahrhaftig glücklich war, hatte mich getroffen wie ein Schlag. Ich rückte ein wenig dichter an Jacob heran und schob meine behandschuhte Hand unbeholfen in seine. Er drückte mir die Hand.
~Ende~
Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Ohne schriftliche Genehmigung der Autorin darf kein Teil dieses Buches in irgendeiner Weise verwendet oder vervielfältigt werden; ausgenommen sind kurze, zitierte Passagen im Rahmen von Buchbesprechungen oder literaturkritischen Artikeln.
Titel der englischen Originalausgabe: Thaw ©2007 Jordan Castillo Price
Übersetzt von Feliz Faberd
Download Tauwetter gratis in epub, mobi or PDF at jcpbooks.com
Unter den Lebenden (PsyCop 1) now available!
November 16, 2014
Research Rocks - My Time in Cop School
November 8, 2014
But I just want a list!
Get off my lawn!
No, not that. I'm annoyed with the trend to present information online as a slideshow. If I am searching for the ten cutest kittens or the twelve ways to prevent chapped lips or twenty one favorite pork loin recipes, I don't want to click through a freaking slide show! With ads every three slides! I JUST WANT MY INFO.
Yesterday one of the offending sites did offer a "show all" option, which was a relief. But usually they don't.
Rant over. Now get off my lawn.
November 7, 2014
Criss Cross Audio at Amazon, iTunes and Audible
Criss Cross at Audible (with or without an Audible subscription)
Criss Cross at Amazon
Criss Cross at iTunes
Please note: if you do not currently have a monthly subscription to Audible.com and you were thinking of getting the subscription, it would be SUPER HELPFUL if Criss Cross or Among the Living was the first book you bought once you signed up. If you buy one of my titles first, Audible will give me an incentive bonus that would help me fund the production of the rest of the series.But even if you don't want to join anything, you can get the audiobook ala carte!
Do you have your copy of Among the Living yet?
Among the Living at Audible (with or without an Audible subscription)
Among the Living at Amazon
Among the Living at iTunes
October 30, 2014
Ah, Wisconsin
Free BOOZE...when you buy BOOZE
(But you can't buy beer after 9pm, so be sure to plan ahead.)
October 12, 2014
JCP News October 2015
What's black and red and swarming all over? Check out the newsletter and see.
Other important info:
Where to find me at GRL
PsyCop audio news
PsyCop German edition news
And as always, free ebook winners :-)
October 8, 2014
PsyCop in German, coming soon! Preorders and ARCs available - Unter den Lebenden
Unter den Lebenden (PsyCop1, translated by Feliz Faber) is coming out November 18.
Are you super-eager to get your hands on it? I have a limited number of Advance Reader Copies (Vorausexemplar!) available. All I ask in return for an ARC is a fair and honest review on Amazon when the book comes out.
Send me an email at jcp.heat@gmail.com with the following for an ARC: your Amazon name (so I won't pester you to post a review if you've already done it) and your preference of a mobi or an epub.
Also, you can pre-order the ebook now!
Pre-order at Amazon.de
Pre-order at Amazon.com
Pre-order at Amazon.co.uk
September 25, 2014
The Awesomeness of Seattle
(Getting ready for our keynote with EE Ottoman, Rick Reed, me and Radclyffe)
Out of respect for folks who may not have wanted their pic online, I daubed out all the detail, but I just wanted to say hooray and look at the fantastic turnout for our keynote! We had a veritable mob show up at our University Book Store reading the night before, seriously, it was at least 60 people, standing room only, and customers coming over to see what we were doing and why we were having so much fun. (Note to self: bring more books next time.)
