Yes, once again, it’s been a very, very long time since my last blog!  After europe, there came much catching up!

 

I would like to thank all of those who came to see me there!  The people in Stuttgart, Bratislava, and Brno were fantastic!  It is always terrific being in Germany, where I have family and my publisher, Panini, was able to arrange matters at the last moment.  In Bratislava, Istrocon expected 4000 people --- an increase over the previous year --- but ended up with over 6000, apparently much because of me!  I compliment the fans over there for being exceptionally polite and appreciative to a visitor who couldn’t speak a word of their language.

 

The signing in Brno was also tremendous, with a line literally wrapping around the block and not slowing until we ended nearly four hours later!  My thanks to my Czech publisher, Fantom!  The only downside was the theft of my computer, but Fantom did its best to make up for one person’s heinous act.

 

While in europe, I managed to go to Vienna, which is only an hour from Bratislava.  A beautiful city with so much history!  This is not to sell any of the other cities I saw short!  My only regret was that I was nowhere long enough to really see much.

 

For the first month and a half back, I had to do a lot of rebuilding on my new computer, an almost exact model of my MacBook Pro that was stolen...save that, since I needed to buy one immediately, was purchased at a terrific Apple store in Bratislava’s chief shopping center.  I have a few extra keys, but other than that it is as good as the other.

 

Obviously, I fell far behind my e-mail, so please forgive me.  In addition to catching up for that reason, there were health situations in the family, including a death.  Projects had to be put together from files that for some reason did not always work.  I lost quite a bit of some things where the back ups proved corrupted (I will never use this brand of rewritable CDs again!).  Fortunately, my publishers were all very understanding.

 

This entry is getting long, so I think that the listing of recent releases will go on to another!