I have returned from my last of our 7 talks - Gene and I doing the keynote at Sno-Isle Libraries' All Staff Day. It went quite well despite a major handicap. We usually schedule an hour for the talk and half an hour for the signing afterwards, but due to a scheduling problem we only had seventy five minutes in all. So I had agreed to cut our talk to 45 minutes, which is pushing it but I knew we could do it. They then started us 10 minutes late. So we had to do an hour talk in 35 minutes, which isn't easy. We cut some stuff that we missed but probably no one else had any reason to notice. And inevitably our signing got shortened as well. I saw a lot of people walk away disappointed because they had to get to their next session.

Still, we did sell a lot of books & merchandise afterwards, and as always it was fun meeting our fans. And having Sara and my kids there was fun, though not really fun for her since she had to manage them and didn't get to hear a lot of my talk. Thanks to Sno-Isle for having us there!

I love speaking but I'm also glad to be done for now. I need to focus on other stuff like, well, drawing comic strips. Meanwhile I've posted our 2006 speaking & conference calendar on our home page. We are full up for the spring and summer and already talking to some folks about the fall!