Coming home

By 3 a.m. I was looking at Maryland in my rear view mirror. I had flown through the Old Line State, there just long enough to have two hot flashes. A minute later I whizzed by the Pennsylvania Welcome Center cruising north on Interstate 81. Behind me was yesterday, Knoxville and 535 miles of interstate.

First light came about 4:30 a.m. By 5 a.m. after driving all night to take advantage of cooler temperatures since the Jeep’s air-conditioning stopped working 150,000 miles ago, I left the interstate looking for a place to take a short nap. There were still six hours of road ahead. Thirty-five miles south of Wilkes-Berra high on top a mountain and well above any potential flooding, I pulled into a deserted shopping mall, turned off the engine and listened to the chirps of a few early morning birds out to get their worms. I slumped behind the wheel to catch just enough z’s to chase the cobwebs out of my head. The morning’s air was cool, dry and smelled fresh as a new front brought a clearing sky to a soggy northeast.

For the past six months while writing, editing and preparing to market my book, I have torn apart and remodeled a kitchen, repaired a roof, and torn through three layers of a bathroom floor to replace rotten joists and leaky tiles. I have employed circular and reciprocating saws, sheet rock and utility knives, chisels, drills and other instruments of destruction and not once incurred a serious injury. As I waited for the movers to put my stuff back into storage, I picked up a box and got attacked by a knife packed inside the box. It is a good thing I won’t be signing books this week, because I nearly sliced my left index finger off. It took three stitches. Geez

Throughout the night I felt my heart beat in the fresh cut on my left index finger.

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The Last Voyage of the Cosmic Muffin is being printed and I have ordered 1000 paperbacks to be sold, bartered and gifted on the book tour. The books should arrive in New York the middle of July. I’ll immediately sign them and send them out to those who have pre-ordered the books.

Now anyone can order the book through Amazon.com, Borders.com, BookSurge.com and Abebooks.com At 264 pages, the price ended up at $18.99. The advantage of ordering through www.ValeriePerez.com is that I will have books ready for autographing and immediate shipment. Other sellers will have to order books and wait 4-6 weeks and they can’t send you an autographed copy.

The hard cover is going through the pre-print quality check and should be ready for print by the end of the month. I expect to have your copies for autographing by mid-September.

During my last week in Knoxville, I contacted twenty seven bookstores in New England and Long Island to inquire about arrangements for book signings. As expected, I need to send the book. I feel like I am the only author in the world without a book. So, my wait continues. Meanwhile I’ll start contacting the bookstores down the coast.

I am without an RV. Mom and Dad’s RV was towed to the shop after a chipmunk or some other rodent gnawed through wiring. I think it will be fixed after the Fourth of July. Then I want to take it out on the road for a shake down.

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A few hours later I crossed the swollen Delaware River and I was back in New York, three more hours to Saratoga Springs. The familiar and ugly orange and pink signage of the Dunkin’ Donuts called me in for a latte and a vanilla crème donut. Both tasted delicious and further pushed a wad of cat fur that had been accumulating in my throat since Roanoke Virginia. While Phoenix and Diablo had settled down for the eighteen hour road trip, their fur flew around the car. Nothing makes a cat shed more than stress. Diablo had given up on giving me that look of total disgust and had crawled into a box deep in the bowels of the Jeep. Phoenix, the ever curious cat who would eventually figure out how to roll a window down, took to watching overpasses fly over her head. With a constant snapping of her neck, I was sure she would be paralyzed by the time I pulled into my parent’ drive way.