Thanks to everyone who turned out for the Booksmith event last night. Some ol’ pals from the message board came in – Patrick and Mark and Mary – and it was a hoot to have a chance to see ‘em in the flesh and say hello. Very cool as well to see JK, Kam and Chris, friends who came a long way to sit at the reading and hear me yawp.

We had little chocolates with pitchforks on ‘em, but I stupidly forgot to take a picture. I’m more or less the world’s worst blogger. Everyone knows if you didn’t take a picture of it and at least put it on TwitPic, it might as well not even have happened.

I’ll be at Book Passage in Corte Madera tonight at 7 for the last reading of the West Coast swing, and at some point in the afternoon I’m planning to float through one of my very favorite fantasy bookstores, Borderlands… a beautiful place, with sweet but freaky cats, Ripley and Ash. Maybe I’ll take some pictures of them. If I don’t see you at one place, I hope to see you at t’other.

A quick one – the merry-go-round has been spinning a little bit faster than usual today, and I don’t have much time to blog. I will be bringing the devil to Haight Street for a 7:30 Reading at Booksmith in San Francisco. Hope you can come.

And if you can’t, but have a desperate craving for a signed book, go give Powell’s a call. I signed oodles for ‘em yesterday. Also left books with scribbles and doodles in ‘em at three San Francisco-ish locations today: the big B&N in San Mateo, M is for Mystery, and the Bay Book Company in Half Moon Bay. On the way out of Half Moon Bay, drove up a big rocky stretch of Pacific Coastline and along a stretch of road called The Devil’s Slide, for its bad habit of sliding away in a torrent of mud whenever it rains. I, however, was spared.

Maybe I’ll have pictures tomorrow. Like of the Golden Gate or something. Cause the bridge just looks twice as cool with me standing in front of it.

Helluva good time in Seattle. The University Bookstore was a terrific place to read; I left ‘em with lots of signed and doodled books, and they ship everywhere, so if you’re in the market, they could scratch your itch. It was also great fun to catch up with friends Ed Brubaker and Caitlin Kittredge. If you aren’t familiar with their work, Caitlin is a rising young fantasy novelist, and Ed writes a must-read bare-knuckled comic titled Criminal (to which I recently contributed a back page essay).

I caught an early flight on the Amelia Earheart Express to Portland, Oregon – I wasn’t freaked out by the propellors, but was mildly disturbed when the flight crew had us move around, because, ha ha, the tail was too light and they were worried about throwing off the plane’s center of balance. Actually, tho, one of the most peaceful flights I’ve ever been on, and with some of the best views. It was like flying over the country in Lord of the Rings: dark wooded peaks, and deep rifts choked with cloud, and long mountain lakes that looked like knife-blades with their serrated edges.

Got on the ground, ran around to a local Borders and B&N to sign some books, and will be at Powell’s City of Books this evening to read and blither and doodle and possibly ride naked through the aisles on a shopping cart . It’s at 7:30 PM; I hope if you’re around you’ll pop on by.

Oh, and stopped at Voodoo Donuts. I resisted dining on the famous cock-and-balls -

- and I couldn’t try the infamous Pepto Bismol donut because the FDA won’t let ‘em sell it anymore. But I did have a pretty fine peanut-butter-and-Rice-Krispie donut. So it’s good times in Portland so far.

Banging this out during an hour layover in Chicago, where I passed through a long underground concourse, lined with glowing, chiming, singing, chirruping walls. On five hours sleep, this was more or less completely wonderful – like dreaming on my feet.

Awesomeness at Joseph-Beth’s in Pittsburgh. Great people, great new store. I looked up three minutes into the reading to see John fucking Scalzi sitting two rows back and to the right… a sight so upsetting and psychologically damaging, it took most of a full minute to figure out what the fuck I had been saying. Big thanks to everyone who came out for the reading, and my thanks to John for driving five hours to say hi to a friend.

I have photos from my visit to the Monroeville mall, or, as I like to think of it, Zombie Heaven. If I get a chance I’ll post ‘em (already stuck them up on Twitter). I also signed books at the big B&N out there.

University Bookstore tonight, 7PM, in Seattle.

I’ve had a lot of questions, both here, and on Twitter, about where I’m going to be and when. So I thought it couldn’t hurt to bump the schedule back up to the top of the blog. Here’s what’s left of the tour, not counting a one-day stop in Toronto, which will fall right on the heels of the trip to the UK.

HORNS • THE TOUR SCHEDULE

March 1st (Mon) – PITTSBURGH, PA • Joseph-Beth Booksellers. 7:00 PM. (with an inevitable unscheduled side trip to my personal mecca, the Monroeville Mall, where I’ll probably just wander around, you know, like all the other zombies)

March 2nd (Tues) – SEATTLE, WA • University Bookstore. 7:00 PM.

March 3rd (Wed) – PORTLAND, OR • Powell’s Books. 7:30 PM.

March 4th (Thurs) – SAN FRANCISCO, CA • Booksmith. 7:30 PM.

March 5th (Fri) – CORTE MADERA, CA • Book Passage. 7:00 PM.

March 8 (Mon) – EXETER, NH • Water Street Books. 7:00 PM.

March 9 (Tues) – SOUTH PORTLAND, ME • Borders. 7:00 PM.

March 10 (Wed) – BANGOR, ME • Borders. 6:00 PM.

THE U.K. TOUR SCHEDULE

March 15 (Mon) – BASINGSTOKE • Waterstones. 7:00 PM.

March 16th (Tues) – MILTON KEYNES • Waterstones. 1 PM (Signing only).

March 16th (Tues) – BIRMINGHAM • Waterstones, 6 PM.

March 17th (Wed) – LIVERPOOL • Waterstones, 12:30 PM (Signing only).

March 17th (Wed) – MANCHESTER • Waterstones, 7 PM.

March 18th (Thurs) – LEEDS • Waterstones, 1 PM. (Signing only).

March 18th (Thurs) – NOTTINGHAM • Waterstones, 6:30 PM.

March 20 (Sat) – LONDON • Forbidden Planet (time TBD).

And with that I’m off to board my plane for Pittsburgh. See you in Zombietown, folks.

To others, Pittsburgh is synonymous with football and steel. To me, it’s Zombietown, ’cause George Romero made all his movies there.

I don’t know if I’ll have a chance to stop at the Monroeville Mall, but I’ve got a rubber severed arm to leave in the fountain, just in case (it’s like leaving a rose, only even more romantic). But I will definitely have a chance to stop at Joseph-Beth’s bookstore, right round 7PM, and I hope you’ll be there. I plan to use the evening to prove I know how to read, and also how to write my name.

I’ll be trying to blog from the road, and of course, I will be tweeting my heart out. And if my tweets aren’t enough to entertain you, you might try this one. I mean, she seems like a pretty ordinary kid, with pretty ordinary problems, but for some reason I just feel like she’s… different…

I loved going in the Book Revue last night – if I was a Huntington, NY guy, I’d live in that joint. I left them with a low wall of signed, doodled books, and they’re more then willing to ship, so if you can’t catch me on the road, but want something with my name scribbled in it, give ‘em a call. They even ship internationally.

I had a new short story out the same day HORNS arrived in bookstores. It’s called “Twittering from the Circus of the Dead” and it appears in Christopher Golden’s anthology of zombie stories, THE NEW DEAD. Chris is signing today, along with several other contributors: Stephen Bissette, Rick Hautala, and Holly Newstein, at the Barnes & Noble in Framingham, MA, at 2 PM. I won’t be there myself… but I am planning to stop in Framingham on my way north and scribble my name in their copies of NEW DEAD. I draw a pretty good li’l zombie with his brains falling out, too. If you’re in the vicinity of Framingham, stop on by, grab a book, and tell Chris I said hi.

In other news, the good Blair Butler reviews Locke & Key: Crown of Shadows #3 in her new Fresh Ink and likes what she sees. Check it out.

And with that I’m going to wink out of existence for a couple days, but I’ll pick it up again in Pittsburgh on the 1st.

In spite of more nasty weather, we’ll be raising the devil in Huntington, NY tonight, at Book Revue, right around 7 PM. Hope to see you there.

All good at B&N last night, and I had a happy hour for myself at The Mysterious Bookshop this afternoon (a dangerous place for me to visit – it’s like sending a not-so-reformed-junkie into a crackhouse).  They’ve got signed, doodled copies of HORNS up the wazoo, and yeah, they ship.

Last note – for whatever reason my own blog has become allergic to my comments. It doesn’t post them or put them into moderation. It just disappears them; gone without a trace. At some point the problem will be corrected, but in the meantime I’m afraid I’m even more absent from the comments thread discussions than usual.

Another good night of perversion and sin at the New Canaan Public Library. If you’re in the general area, I’ll be converting more souls to the dark side this evening at the Barnes & Noble in NYC on 82^nd Street and Broadway, at 7PM. It looks like there’s going to be heavy snow, but the devil’s work must go on, weather be damned.

Note: The books for the New Canaan event were supplied by the awesome Elm Street Books. They’ve got a whole pile of doodled and signed books, and I suspect they’re willing to ship (in some cases they’ve been willing to drive books to customers who didn’t want to come out, so these are people who routinely go above and beyond). If that’s the kind of thing you’re up for, give ‘em a call.

Finally, a crazy good review appeared in The New York Times today, courtesy of Janet Maslin. Kind words were also said by Zach Handlen with the AV Club; Zach interviewed me as well, so here’s that.

Everyone’s getting sick of me saying I had a great time at the reading last night, but I did, in fact, have a great time at Odyssey Books, and I’m already looking forward to coming back for the next book. So there.

Tonight is the New Canaan Public Library at 7:30 PM and you just know that it’s going to be every single bit as fun. Elm Street Books will be providing the reading material. Elm Street is an outstanding bookstore, by the way, attached to an equally outstanding all-day breakfast joint called Rosie’s. I can’t think of a better way to spend a morning in New Canaan then stopping by for a book, then going next door to read it over a plate of huevos rancheros.

So I thought I’d add a new feature to this daily road report; I figured I’d start sharing the best question from the evening before. Or not the best, but, y’know, my personal funnest. Last night’s personal funnest question was this: “If you could be any monster, what would you be?”

My answer was Nessie, because if I was Nessie, Nessie would be real, and at the age of nine I wanted desperately for there to be something in Loch Ness. As far as I’m concerned, MonsterQuest has Ghost Hunters beat all over town.

And what about you? If you had to be one monster… ? Let me know all about it in the comments thread.

(Yes, I know, I went a little nuts with the hyperlinks. I just think hyperlinks are fun.)