Home in Sitka. Beautiful clear blue sky. Twenty-five degrees. Four inches of icy snow on the ground. Home to warm up the house, do laundry. Pat the dog. Walk in the snow with our friends, play the mandolin at the Larkspur, Sunday at noon, read the mail and fold clothes. Jan always works harder than I do.She shoveled the deck and made a million calls reestablishing herself back in town. I lay on the couch and reestablished myself with Porter the old neighbor dog who can hold five tennis balls in his mouth at once. He is quite proud of this trick and he loves to show it to me. I could watch it all day.

I love traveling but I love coming home.

The reading in Seattle went well and the signing at Seattle Mystery was great fun. What a great store that is. Independent stores have wonderful staff; book people who do it for the love and make their stores unique community centers. What will become of them in the future I wonder? I'm not sure.

Next thing on my to-do list is to put a bunch of pictures from my trip up on this blog. Stand by for that, and look forward to the upcoming (not so true) crime edition of the johnstraley.com blog entries once I get a legal opinion from my bosses on how to manage that with my work.

Thanks for any of you who follow and please keep checking back. I promise to keep bringing back new and different stuff. And I promise to correct my typos.

Hard ice underfoot,

alder limbs against blue sky.

Here... hold my hand.

jhs Sitka, Alaska