Took the family on a fun weekend trip to Seattle by Amtrak.  This is the view from my train window.

Down here teaching at the North Coast Writers Conference and I managed to squeeze in some hiking while I was here.  This is Stout Grove near Crescent City, California.

Hiking Eagle Creek, Oregon with friend and fellow writer, Michael Totten. 

Happy New Year!

I had two book signings in the past month, but unfortunately I was so focused on, you know, the signing, that I failed to get any pictures.  But here’s one that writer J. Steven York took Saturday, May 15 when I signed books at North by Northwest Books in Lincoln City, Oregon.  I was joined by Kris Rusch and Chris York, both good friends and great writers:

I’m the one in the middle, just in case you were wondering.

I now have in my hands the author copies of my first book, The Last Great Getaway of the Water Balloon Boys.  I can’t tell you what a great feeling this is.  What a beautiful hardback book.  As a former owner of a used bookstore, and one who’s sold a number of antiquarian books, I gotta tell you it’s a real pleasure to open this one up and see the words “First Edition” there on the copyright page.  I would have been fine with my first book being a paperback original, but it gives me an extra thrill for it to be a hardcover.

And if you’ve pre-ordered it, you too can hold it your hands . . . in about five days.

The author copies for my other collection, The Dinosaur Diaries and Other Tales Across Space and Time, arrived in the mail the other day.  Very happy to hold this one in my hands — eighteen of my best stories which originally appeared in magazines like Ellery Queen, Asimov’s, Analog, and Realms of Fantasy.

I also saw that Amazon just discounted the price $5.  If you haven’t ordered yours, you should do so today!