Greetings loyal airmen, well the store signing at the Barnes & Noble in Manchester, NH, went off extremely well this past Tues. evening, Nov. 11th.

The store Events Manager is Karen Creed and she is one of the nicest people your old Air Chief has ever had the good fortune of meeting.  Karen went out of her way to make me feel welcome and had everything ready to go when I arrived.   My participation was part of a high school fundraiser hosted by the football team of Raymond High School, where my brother-in-law, Norman Cormier is the coach.  Which is why you see a few football jerseys in my audience above.  To start everything off, they had me do a reading.  I chose the prologue from WITCHFIRE and seemed to muddle through okay.  Although I have to confess, its a whole lot easier writing those words than it is standing up in front of people and reading them aloud.  Swear and cuss words never seem so awkward on the printed page, but when you are verbalizing SH*T and BI**H aloud, well that's a whole other thing.  Ha.  Still, we managed to push through.

                                            Your old Air Chief and Events Manager Karen Creed

Once the reading was all wrapped up, I, and all the books Karen had ordered for the signing, were carried to the front entrance of the store and set up anew.  Of course it was helpful to have a half dozen strong football players along for that task.  Took them all of five minutes to get this moved and ready.  Once there, I then spent the next two hours greeting Barnes & Nobles customers coming into the store, as well as saying so-long to those leaving. I like to be an equal opportunity greeter.  Ha.  Karen had gotten in twenty copies of BROTHER BONES, WITCHIFRE, CAPTAIN HAZZARD # 3 (CURSE OF THE RED MAGGOT) and # 4 (CAVEMEN OF NEW YORK) plus the PHANTOM CHRONICLES anthology from Moonstone Books with my story in it.  Ergo, a full 100 copies of my writings.  Wow!! I have never seen so many of my books together like this.  It was both daunting and humbling.  And of course it was now my job to sell them all.  Ha.  Not likely.  Although, in all honesty, we did move quite a few, which was awesome as I got to meet and chat with so many truly wonderful people.  All of them readers.  In other words, my kind of people.  I got to promote the gospel of pulps and maybe made a few new converts while I was there.  Time will tell.

At the end of my visit, Karen invited me to return in Jan. when she will be hosting a writers forum specifically for local teachers groups.  She became very excited when I informed her of my thirty five years of writing comic books and the lectures I've given to teaching groups in the past.  That done, she had me autograph a good portion of the unsold copies and we bid each other farewell.  My first ever bookstore signing had been a tremendous success and on a personal note, just tons of fun.  Writing is a lonely task, so the opportunity to get out and meet fans is the icing on this cake.

Speaking of such, don't forget this coming Sunday, loyal airmen.  Your old Air Chief is going to be one of  dozens of wonderful comic book creators all appearing at the one day Portsmouth Comic Show in the Best Western Motel located on the Porstmouth Traffic Circle.  Show is from 10 AM to 3 PM.  I really hope lots of you loyal airmen will make the tirp down, or up, as the case may be.  This is going to be a truly great show.

On other fronts, the past few days has seen an electrical evolution here at Hanger 27.  Valerie and I are planning on spending the last two weeks of the year out in Ft.Collins, CO. with our son, Alan, and his family.  Realizing I would still need to be connected to do my editing chores for Airship 27 Prod. Valerie made the decision to get a wireless account for our laptop PC.  So as of now, we are wired to the world.  Very cool.  Meaning, I'll most likely be writing several of these log entries from Colorado and able to wish you all timely seasons greetings.  Too cool.  What with this being done, I decided it was high time I got with the program and agreed at long last to go and get a cell phone.   Your Air Chief is old fashion in many things and I never completely bought into the fact that people have to be connected every single minute of the day to the point of carrying a telephone with them.  There seems to be an inflated concept of self-worth that comes with such a toy.  People thinking they are so important that others want to contact them all the time.  Believe me, I've never had that mistaken illusion.  Ha.  Yet, in the coming months I am planning on doing some serious traveling to various conventions, including the big Comic Con in New York City come the start of Feb. 09.    I realized the logistics of this trip would be tricky as I'm traveling with one group of people and staying with another group.  Coordinating this trip could be a real hassle and worst scenario, leave your old Air Chief stranded in the Big Apple without a ride home.  A cell phone of my own was the obvious solution and so I bit the bullet.

Thank God I've got teenage granddaughters who can show me how to use it!!!  I tried reading the accompanying manual and all I did was get a headache, yet Kristi (who turned 17 yesterday) simply picked up my little new gizmo and instantly began using it, added names and phones and showing me how it all functions.  It truly is their world now, all these fancy new marvels we've come to take for granted.  Simply amazing.

And there you have it, loyal airmen.  Thanks as always for stopping by and have a great week.
Ron – Over & Out.