Hello? Hello? Hello? Is that Dr Watson?

clear, highs minus 9

Beautiful day. We're back home which always feels terrific. Had a great time in Toronto, though. Such fun to see the fabulous Arthur Conan Doyle collection at the Toronto Reference Library. A woman named Peggy showed us around. They have, among lots of other things, an illustrated copy of the VERY first Holmes short story ever. Only 26 in the world! As a Holmes nerd this was unbelievable!

Actually, I know I can tell you this and it will go no further, I had a crush on Dr. Watson. Am I the only one? Surely not.

John Brady, the other mystery writer at the library event, was brilliant. Lots of terrific questions too, like whether we'd started out with the intention of writing a series, or if that just happened. And if it was intentional, what decisions did we make about character, setting, etc, that played into the series idea.

LOVE the hotel - the SoHo Met (no, sadly, they don't give me a free room for mentioning them, though actually the publisher McArthur pays anyway).

Had a lovely train trip down to TO and a horrible one back. Both on Via First, but on the way back our seats had no window, little leg room and the man behind us talked non-stop, either to the poor woman beside him or into his cell phone.

I was plugged into the iPod for most of the trip (Hey there Delilah, what's it like in New York city, dah, dah, dah...) and doing the final fine-tuning on book 4 (sent it to London and NY this afternoon - yay), but Michael reported it was most annoying to listen to this man droning on.

I was also guilty of that, spending about 20 minutes on a call to St Martin's Minotaur publisher Andy Martin and my editor there Hope Dellon. We seemed to go through a tunnel everytime Andy spoke, so I spent a lot of time yelling, 'Sorry, pardon, excuse me? What was that?' Not very interesting to the people around me and probably not very amusing for Andy either. Now, remind me again, is it a good idea to annoy the publisher, or not?

Fun call though, which I might be able to tell you about one day soon.

Which reminds me - we're getting close to the March 4th release of The Cruelest Month in the US. If any of you have contacts with your local media and can get the book reviewed in your paper, that would be wonderful. The big challenge, even for a third book, is spreading the word. And anything you can do to help would be so appreciated.

Must be off. Poor Maggie's leg isn't any better. Now I'm getting worried. Michael says I catastrophize things, and he's right. Happily, nothing I've ever been afraid of has actually happened. So that's good news for Maggie.

We're taking her in for a scan Monday morning. I'm sure she'll be fine.

Be well, and thanks for all your support.