Long Island, NY signing

We left our New Haven hotel early in the morning, caught a train into Manhattan, and checked into the next hotel. Another couple of HELLHOLE chapters edited on the way, a good slice of NY pizza for a late lunch, then a quick workout in the small hotel gym. (And a quick burst of doing “travelers’ laundry” with detergent in the sink, rinse in the bathtub, and hanging clothes on the towel racks).

Then back to Penn Station to catch a train on the Long Island Railroad out to Huntington, NY for our evening signing at the Book Revue. This store is a well-known stop for touring authors, and as we ate a dinner of pretzels and granola bars in the bookstore coffee shop, we looked at photos of other well known authors framed on the walls — William F. Buckley, Alan Alda, Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton, Garrison Keillor, and many others.

Our agent John Silbersack came out for the signing and we had a chance to talk with him in the back room while waiting for the event. On the skylight overhead we heard the pounding of a downpour, and people came running in to the event drenched. But that didn’t dampen the size or the mood of the crowd. We gave our talk and answered many questions, and we especially pleased to hear from a soldier returning from Iraq who had taken our Dune books with him and had shared them with his buddies out in the desert. My friend Heather Eir also came to visit, but our time was short, and we had to get back to the train station, back to Manhattan, to catch some sleep for this morning’s trip to Princeton.