One of the things I was most looking forward to doing this year was having dinner with a couple of friends. We met last year during BEA and got along fabulously, and this year was no different.

Aren’t they adorable?? Tyler works at Scholastic, and Melissa works at Fisher Price and has just completed her first novel. She’s currently searching for an agent, and I’ve so enjoyed following her progress of writing a book. You should check out her blog! She blogs at This Too….

I met them at ‘ino in the West Village. This was an amazing suggestion they had, as everything we ate was really fresh, delicious, and left me feeling like this was one of the gems I’d hoped to find in New York.

If you can’t tell from the pictures, the place is tiny.

One thing I’ve learned is that not every restaurant/city/state (I’m not sure where the law falls) will allow you to bring your own bottle of wine in to a restaurant to drink. Who knew that not all states are just like California? I KNOW! I was surprised, too.

Instead of having desert at ‘ino, we decided to go to Magnolia Bakery to get cupcakes. On our way there, we passed this sign:

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Huh. Good to know. Knowledge is power, right?

Anyway, Magnolia Bakery…oh, it was heaven! I would be in big big trouble if we had a bakery that pumped out cupcakes this fresh. I don’t have a picture of my cupcake because I ate it too fast…sowy.

I wanted to buy a shirt, but they didn’t have any in my size.

Here’s to starting the trip off with a fabulous dinner with friends!

I also did 3 publishing house tours today, so posts about those tours should be forthcoming!

So there’s this author I love whose name I can’t divulge because the last time I coughed his name, someone pointed him here and I wanted to die. I like to stalk my authors in secrecy and stealth, and I know that if I wanted to do that I probably shouldn’t have BLOGGED about him. Yeah yeah yeah blah blah blah. Anyway, he saw my post and sent me a funny little DM from Twitter, but I wanted to be swallowed up by the earth because that post wasn’t quite how I would have chosen to make an impression. Unfortunately, the earth wasn’t cooperating that day, so now I have to be all cryptic and stuff.

Anyway, the point of the story is that last night I read one of his blog posts that I wanted to comment on. But now I feel weird because he knows I love him but didn’t like his latest book, but I don’t want to come off as creepy, so what to do? The problem with that is that it’s kind of hard to become unknown once you’re known. By that I mean, if I want to comment on his post, I have to leave an email address, right? And all my email addresses have Trish in the address. I realize Trish isn’t all THAT uncommon, but if I start commenting on his blog as Trish, and he just read my blog post about how I love him but don’t like his book, he’s going going to know who I am.

See, there’s this breaking point for me when I’m a fan. Either I’m a fan and I’ll gush and tell them how much I love them, or I’m such a big huge die hard fan that I pull back and don’t say anything (which is what I’m having to do with Tana French because I love her to EPIC PROPORTIONS). I guess it’s that creep factor I’m worried about. I’d hate for an author who I totally thought was awesome to think I was a weirdo (even if that’s totally true).

So I commented on this author’s blog post last night using a different name. Fine. Not hard. But then it came to the email. What email address do I use? I don’t want to use my own email address because I don’t really want this author to know who I am. But I also don’t want to be lame and make up a fake email that ends up being real, you know? I thought about opening up yet another email account, but scrapped that for being completely freakish.

Seriously.

This stalking stuff is HARD.

Today’s review is by Lydia, who’s guest posting for the Days of Prey blog tour that’s being hosted by TLC Book Tours. This is a cool tour because John Sandford’s latest release, Storm Prey, is the 20th book in the series, so the tour has one tour host for each book, and each tour host was asked to answer the same questions. Take it away, Lydia!

Days of PREY Questionnaire

Title and series number of the book you read: INVISIBLE PREY, #17 in the Prey series with Lucas Davenport

Year published: 2007

Tell us about Lucas Davenport:

• What is Lucas doing when he first appears in the book? Set up the scene. The book opens on a suspenseful note, with the unnamed killers (depicted by “one Big, one Little”) skulking around a house they were planning to enter. Lucas Davenport appears in chapter two, drinking a Diet Coke at a bar owned by his old friend a past cop, Sloan.
• Give us a sense of time and place: It’s the beginning of summer in Minnesota, current at the time of publication.  Oppressive heat broken up by the quick summer thunderstorm.
• Lucas’s occupation or professional role? Lucas works for the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, but reports to many high level officials, including the Governor of Minnesota.
• Lucas’s personal status (single, dating, married): He is married to Weather, an attractive blonde surgeon.  They are parents to Sam, who is “almost two feet tall” and are guardians of Letty, a teenager.
• Lucas Davenport is a known clothes-horse; did you notice any special fashion references? Yes! Lucas Davenport is an observant cop as well as a GQ-esque dresser.  When we first meet Lucas, we’re told he likes “Italian suits, French ties, and English shoes.”  He may be masculine, but he knows his fashion and designers. His gun fits nicely under his linen summer jacket.

Let’s talk about the mystery:

• Avoiding spoilers, what was the crime/case being solved? While opening with a political issue of the powerful state senator being accused of having sex with a minor, the mystery takes an unexpected turn to the murder and robbery of a wealthy widow and the discovery of a missing painting.  As Lucas continues to turn over stones in these two separate cases, they become intertwined in unexpected ways.  Lucas’s sleuthing takes him out of Minnesota, in the discovery of past crimes that may be related to the current case.  With the help from Ronnie, the teenage nephew of one of the victims, Lucas learns the burglary and murder weren’t random acts, but done by someone knowledgeable of antiques.  The criminals weren’t the typical rough and tumble crowd, but those that move in a white collar circle, filled with antiques, wealth and prestige.
• Does the title of your book relate to the crime? I think “Invisible Prey” refers to the past crimes committed that weren’t linked together – the victims were unknown, therefore invisible.

Who was your favorite supporting character, good or evil? Letty, the ward of Weather and Lucas, was my favorite character.  She’s already overcome many challenges in her young life (she came in to Lucas’s life by having discovered a double hanging in a previous book) and is tough, yet not broken.  She’s intelligent and knows how to push Lucas’s buttons – and she tries to drink a beer in the house of a cop.

What was your favorite scene or quote? I like everything about the “swoopy chairs.”  Aptly named by teenage Ronnie, I find it endlessly amusing to hear the cops throughout the mystery refer to these pieces of expensive antique furniture as “swoopy chairs” – and I like to think I can imagine exactly what they look like with that meager description!

Finally, how do you envision Lucas Davenport?  If he were to be portrayed in a movie, what celebrity would play him? With the description of “tall, dark haired, with the thin white line of a scar draped across his tanned forehead, down into an eyebrow, he might have bee a thug of the leading-man sort.  He had intense blue eyes, a hawk nose and large hands and square shoulders…” I think the clear answer is Jake Gyllenhaal (though Hugh Jackman is a close second).

Thanks, Lydia, for participating in this tour and stopping by Hey Lady! The series sounds great, particularly imagining Jake Gyllenhaal as the main character!

So, uh, yeah. I’ve seen around the blogosphere that some people are all non-procrastinating and stuff and created Google forms so you can trade cell phone numbers so y’all can meet up at BEA…

*sigh*

I’m obviously not one of those people.

I’m a procrastinator, and I probably should have had that post up a week ago. Better yet, I should have gone through my contacts, figured out who’s going to BEA, and sent them an email with my cell phone number so we could meet up.

I know, blah blah blah, Charlie Brown’s teacher, blah blah blah.

All that to say, if you’re going to BEA, I want to meet up with you at some point. If you lurk on my blog and think I don’t know who you are, you’re probably wrong. Since there’s only six of you reading this thing, I can keep track of you pretty durn well.

Oh, and if you don’t know anyone but are going to BEA anyway? You can tag along with me until you meet some of the bloggers. I’ll introduce you to folks, I’ll ease your anxiety, and we’ll have fun. I know that none of what I’m saying makes a good case for the fact that I’m really and truly an introvert, but I appreciate when someone does this for me, so I’m just paying it forward.

Email me at trish at heylady dot net and I’ll send you my cell phone so we can be very 2010 and text each other instead of calling. If I don’t respond to your email, it’s ’cause I didn’t receive it. I like to answer me some emails.

This video is for Jenn (@jennIRL), and the video explains it all.

Reading from Johnny Got His Gun from Trish Collins on Vimeo.