Rumors of my death have been slightly exaggerated...

Hi guys,

Thanks to all who have posted notes of concern regarding my whereabouts here and elsewhere.  You are so kind!  I'm okay and my sister is okay.  Neither of us is great.

No, after a lovely and busy holiday weekend in San Francisco--one in which I repeatedly promised myself to hit the blog and repeatedly failed to do so--I jetted off to New York for Thrillerfest.  There, as always, I burned the candle at both ends and have paid the price.  I've been kind of under the weather for almost a week now.  If you could hear me speak right now, I sound like the illegitimate love child of Brenda Vaccaro and Harvey Fierstein.  What a shame this is a print media.  (Actually, you will get to hear my disgusting voice in a few short weeks.  I was conducting video interviews with authors while I was back east, and you'll see them start to crop up in August.  If anything, it's worse that I'm describing.  Get ready to ridicule.)

I seriously had the time of my life in New York.  I went there to spend time with my friends, and that's exactly what I did.  After 6 years, I have made some amazing friendships through this organization (ITW), and every year when I return to the conference, I make even more new friends.  Every single year I meet someone completely awesome.  Last year it was federal prosecutor/novelist Alison Leotta.  This year it was brilliant physicist/novelist Paul McEuen.  I can't wait to tell you guys more about my time in NY!  Anyone who's ever considered attending Thrillerfest but hasn't is going to be sold by the time I'm finished blogging about it.

But, please give me a few days to get my act together.  I arrived back in San Francisco early yesterday.  Instead of heading straight to my office as planned, I headed straight to my bed and slept for 18 hours.  I'm back at work today, but seriously, I could crawl back to bed right now.  It's going to take me a little while to get back up to speed.  In addition to writing about T-fest, I'm so behind on reviews it's not even funny.

Since so many of you have asked, I'll give you the short sister update.  She's still not doing very well.  She's in a fair amount of pain, and the doctors aren't sure why that is.  It's unexpected, even with the complication that she's been experiencing.  No one really wants to do more invasive surgery, but they're still not sure what's going on.  So, she's dealing with doctors and surgeons, and getting a CAT scan later this week.  Mostly the doctors just keep hoping if they wait long enough that she'll spontaneously heal, but it doesn't seem to be happening.  :-(  So, maybe send "no pain vibes" her way this week.  The good news is that little Jonah is doing well and is growing like gangbusters.

I'll be posting a lot more content in the near future.  Thanks for reading, and thanks for your patience!