I’m going to steal a phrase from  to describe somebody, even if it does sound as girly as, I dunno, glittering vampires. Randy Ray of Eerie Books is "made of awesome." There. I said it. Yesterday’s signing down in Wylie, Texas, was so much fun! Gabrielle Faust and I both read for a bit, then signed books for a while. Yes, that means people actually came! It was great. Then we all — including my wife, Christopher Fulbright, Angeline Hawkes, Ethan Nahte, some other customers and employees — just hung out in the back of the store for hours and talked, bashed Twilight, talked some more, then Randy fed the whole group at Texas Roadhouse.

The werewolves won the first battle of Vampire vs Werewolf! At the moment, I don’t know how much money was raised, but I can announce that Robyn Lydick won the werewolf drawing. I’ll post the total raised for both teams and the vampire winner at the battle site in the next couple of days. Many, many thanks to everyone who participated in the charity "battle" and GO WEREWOLVES! The days of the furries being second class to the dirt-sleepers are over.

Eerie Books, by the way, is an incredible store. I mean, Randy has books you wouldn’t believe are still available. I’m kicking myself because I forgot to pick up the copy of Twinkle, Twinkle Killer Kane he had (yes, I have The Ninth Configuration, but still … ). Randy still has a lot of copies of both my and Gabrielle’s books in stock, so if you’ve been thinking about getting one, drop him an e-mail. Or, if you’re within 300 miles, go visit the store. You won’t regret it!

So, again, huge thanks to Randy for hosting this signing, for ordering the books we sold, giving friends a place to hang out, and for dropping a massive wad of cash feeding all of us. Oh! And his wife makes kickass werewolf cupcakes, too.

To get to Eerie Books, I drove my brand new car. On Friday I bought a 2009 Ford Focus. I traded in my 2003 Chevy Silverado. It feels kinda weird to be without my loud black truck, but the Focus got 31 mpg going to Wylie and back and it only cost me $25 to refill the tank today. Plus, I still have "Old Red," the 1971 Ford truck my father-in-law gave us a couple of months ago. He gave it to us for my oldest son, but he won’t drive it because it’s a stick. (Today, some jackass apparently let a cart hit the trunk lid of my new car and put two little dents and scratches in it. People are stupid.)