Signed at A Thirsty Mind in Lakeway on Friday, and a good crowd turned out. See first photo below. I yammered on for about an hour, and they all pretended to pay attention. Pam and Anita are good hosts.

Saturday, I signed at The Bookshop in Marble Falls, and lots of friends came to see me. (Thanks Martha, Howard, Katherine, Charlie, Sam, Virginia, Jan, Susan, Sunny, Alex, and Alex’s brother whose name I made a point of asking and I’m pretty sure is Chris but my memory sucks and I should write these things down and Susan please correct me if I'm wrong.) Dortha and Diane are also good hosts. Here’s the funny part: Diane said that there were two books waiting for me to sign, and the two female customers attached their business cards to the books, because they knew I’d get a laugh out of it. And when I saw the cards, I did. That’s the because the two ladies are lawyers, one for the NRA Institute of Legislative Action and one for the Texas State Rifle Association. Glad they have a sense of humor.

By the way, if you’re wondering what happened after the previous post, I bought a refurbished Mac from the Apple Store. No rebates, just a good price right from the start. Hope the damn thing works.

I had great signings on Friday and Saturday, and I’ll tell you about them soon, but first I wanted to vent a little about a completely different subject.

The minutia of keeping up with modern life can really drive you (and by “you” I mean “me”) nuts sometimes--enough to make me want to take a hammer to something breakable.

Here’s what makes me bring this up: I have a very old Macintosh and want to buy a new one. The baseline model, sure, but it still costs nearly a grand. When someone wants to spend that kind of money, the retail industry should make it as easy as possible, right?

Well, they’re morons, and they don’t.

I started by visiting the Apple store, and the computer I want costs $999. So I checked MacMall and saw the same one for $919, if I buy before the end of day today. Okay, fine, and I start the process.

Ah, wait, there’s some fine print. The computer is really $994, and you have to mail in a form for a $75 rebate. Okay, I can do that. So I put the computer in the cart and then I see that I can get a FREE Hewlett Packard printer if I bundle it with the computer. Well, it’s not truly free--again, I have to mail in for a rebate. Not just one form, but two, one to HP and one to MacMall. That’s three forms now, and all three forms are two pages long. They require photocopying UPC codes and jumping through some other annoying little hoops. There are deadlines and disclaimers and all sorts of crap. But, in the end, the printer is free (except for the headache I’m already getting).

I sigh with impatience, but I’m stubborn and will complete their stupid little forms. So I add the printer to my cart--but there’s a problem. The mail-in rebate clearly shows up under my computer, but NOT under my printer. It’s as if the mail-in rebates don’t exist for the printer, and I don’t want to simply trust that that’s a typo, because that’s the kind of trust that bites you in the ass later. We’ve all been there, I think.

So I call the MacMall 800 number, and guess what? The person who answers is not a native speaker of English. Big surprise, right? I don’t think of myself as a bigot, but if your company largely serves American consumers, wouldn’t it be best to have support staff who can speak English in a manner I can understand? He speaks quickly, and I catch every fourth or fifth word.

His name--no kidding--was Babar, and I ignore whatever he just said (or asked) and tell him what the problem is. He says it’s a typo on the web page. (I THINK that’s what he said.) I start to say something else, and he interrupts and begins to tell me that he’ll e-mail the rebate forms and all will be fine. However, I happen to have a pet peeve about people interrupting, so I chastise him properly (without being rude--I promise) and tell him that I already have the rebate forms, and ask him to SWEAR that the mail-in rebate is a REAL offer, and that I won’t get screwed later. He assures me that all is okay.

By now, though, I’m not a big fan of MacMall, so I call the Apple Store and get a genuine English speaker on the phone. Things are looking good. So I tell this guy that I’d prefer to buy directly from Apple, but the price is $80 less at MacMall. And the guy actually admits that he has never heard of MacMall. See, he’s new on the job. (Working at Apple and never having heard of MacMall would be like working at Barnes & Noble and never having heard of Amazon. Even a guy like me has heard of MacMall a thousand times over.) Anyway, this guy says he’ll check with a supervisor and see if they can lower the price. Puts me on hold for an eternity. Finally comes back and says he can’t do it.

Fine. I’ll go back to MacMall, even though they are apparently in league with the devil.

So I go back to my MacMall cart and proceed to check out. It asks me to create an account, or to log in to an existing account. Once upon a time, long ago, I bought something from MacMall, and maybe I created an account then, but the password is lost in the wind years ago, and besides, I KNOW that I have a new e-mail address since then, so I might as well create a new account. I try to do that, but it gives me an error message--one that the non-English speaker wrote, apparently, because it makes little sense. The gist, I think, is that my password is incorrect, which makes me assume that they DO still have my account on file. So I click the link that says: Forgot your password?

And my computer promptly freezes up.

Son of a #$#%$!!!

Last week, I met a photographer, five other authors, and a couple of staffers from the Austin Chronicle for a photoshoot at a neighborhood grocery store in Austin. They needed a shot for the cover of their Summer Reading issue, and I was lucky enough to be included. I don’t want to violate any copyrights, so I’ll provide links instead.

The cover shot is here:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/binary/6664/cover_big.jpg

From left to right, we’ve got: a genuine cashier named Zach; Dominic Smith; Amanda Eyre Ward; Joe O’Connell; Darryl Wimberley; me; Owen Egerton.

The review of Gun Shy is here:

http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/review?oid=oid:492040

Can anyone tell me why I chose the particular book I’m reading in the shot (besides the fact that it’s a great read)?

I’ve got some other good news coming, but I don’t want to share it yet, for fear of jinxing it. But I will say that I wrote a column that’s going to appear in a national publication that comes out once a week. Has nothing to do with my books--just something else I wanted to write about--and I’m thrilled that it got accepted. Will let you know the pub date (and the pub) soon.

And one last mention: If you’re going to be near Lakeway tomorrow or Marble Falls on Saturday, come see me. Details on those signings are listed below, and on my Web site. If you have to ask where Lakeway and Marble Falls are, that means you probably won’t be near either of them.

How could I forget that I'll be at A Thirsty Mind bookstore this Friday? Time: 4:30.

They can set you up with a signed copy of Gun Shy via mail, too, if you're interested.

http://www.athirstymind.com/
Phone: (512) 608-9100

On Friday afternoon, I caught a flight to Lubbock, because it’s just beyond the limit for driving versus flying. If it were one hour closer by car, I would’ve driven, but it’s not, and I don’t have the power to alter geography with my mind. I can move pencils, though.

Picked up my rental car from Avis, and had a chat with a very nice lady named Patti, which reminded me why West Texas is known for having such friendly people. Something else about West Texas towns: the traffic is almost nonexistent. Seriously, it’s about the same as driving through Austin in the middle of the night. Except there are fewer methamphetamine dealers.

Stopped at my motel (Motel 6, of course, where I remembered to unplug the phone), then proceeded to my seven o’clock signing at Barnes & Noble. A loyal reader named Grover showed up with his girlfriend and another friend in tow (thanks for keeping me company, guys), but other than that, it was pretty slow. (However, it was a pleasure to meet Terry Handley, the lovely CRM.)

Had dinner with a gentleman who is an assistant district attorney for Lubbock County. He’s been kind enough to answer some of my legal questions in the past, so I bought him a plate of Mexican food. I got the better end of that deal.

Drove to Midland the next morning, needing to arrive by 11:30 to be on a radio show out of Big Spring. It’s hosted by Melanie Gambrell, wildlife rehabilitator extraordinaire, who is always very gracious and enthusiastic about the books. The question was, where would I call from? I didn’t want to call in from my cell phone, because those connections sometimes suck. So I decided to go to the Midland library. Certainly, they’d welcome a visiting author and allow him to use a phone in a quiet room...right? The short answer: no. Didn’t even ask me about my books. Was it my poor hygiene? So I hustled over to the B&N and used a phone there, which worked out perfectly. Enjoyed talking to Melanie and Bob, who were promoting my signing in a big way. Very cool. Melanie and her husband Randy showed up at the signing, along with several friends, and it turned out very well. (A big thank-you to Joyce, the lovely CRM.)

Then it was back home. Traveler’s tip: If you ever want to have an airport to yourself, travel from Midland on a Saturday afternoon. The place was a ghost town.

This Saturday, June 16, I’ll be signing at The Bookshop in Marble Falls at 1:00. If you want a signed book--for you, or for that somebody special--just contact The Bookshop and they’ll arrange it.

http://www.thebookshoptexas.com/