Wow, what a week it’s been! There are certain times in an author’s life when you are just so thankful you do what you do, and this week really is one of those!! I honestly do have the best job in the world, and it’s all down to the awesome people who read my books!

So my tour events began on Monday in Seattle, and what a way to kick things off! I was doing an event at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park, just north of the city. It was a joint event, alongside the fantastically lovely Robin Wasserman, whose book Frozen (which I am currently reading) is truly brilliant. We met in my hotel for dinner and a chat, then headed over to the book store together. Now usually when I travel to events I either get a taxi, or just walk. But my publisher sent a car to pick us up. It was huge, and silent, and it felt like riding in an Imperial Shuttle out of Star Wars. It even had my name on it!! So cool!

I felt like Dark Vader getting picked up for work!!

The space car whizzed us both up to the shop, which is a really cool place. There was already a small crowd waiting, including two of my most awesome fans EVER, Elise and Jillian! They were wearing Furnace shirts, and Elise had even bought me a birthday present of a Seattle mug full of chocolates (yay!) and a photo of her puppy, who is called ZEE! Yes, she named her dog after Zee in the books, which is truly the coolest thing ever!! I even had a chance to meet Zee after the show. He is so cute!!! I have never met two such dedicated, enthusiastic fans, and feel totally honoured that they love the books so much!!

Me, Elise, Jillian and Zee. HOW CUTE IS THAT DOG!!!!!!! Photo courtesy of Kristina Ebert!

Awesome Furnace Shirts (we need to make one for the puppy too)!

I wanted to take him home!!!

Also at the event was Kristina Ebert, who runs the wonderful Kristina’s World of Books blog. She was kind enough to interview me before my tour (read it here)! Kristina also wrote an article about the event, which is great!! Check it out here! It was great to meet you, Kristina!! There were loads of other amazing fans there too, and it was great to meet so many awesome people! The best thing about the event was that afterwards Robin and I just sat and chatted with everyone for ages (and played with the dog). It’s so nice to be able to do that, rather than being ushered out and on to the next event! I really did have a fantastic time! Thanks to everyone who came, and thanks too to Jennifer and the rest of the staff at Third Place!

Me, Kristina and Robin! Photo courtesy of Kristina Ebert!

On Tuesday my school visits began, and the first stop was at Kellogg Middle School in Shoreline. I absolutely love doing school events in the States because the audiences are always so enthusiastic and fun, and this was no exception! I did my talk and chatted to the students for a bit, then headed over to Eckstein Middle School for an equally brilliant afternoon of talks. You guys were all awesome, and it was so great to see so many keen readers!! There’s a report about my visit to Eckstein over on their school blog, including a link to a video where I talk about puking macaroni cheese all over myself! A huge thanks to the 500+ kids I spoke to today, plus Liz and Jay and all the staff in the libraries, and Jan who kindly drove me around!

I flew out to the Tri-Cities area on Tuesday evening, expecting to see forests and finding myself instead in the desert! It really is beautiful here, though, and the dust in the atmosphere creates the most amazing sunsets – including the most incredible sky I have ever flown through (I would have taken a picture but I worried that if I turned my phone on the plane would fall out of the sky).

And this post is getting so long that I’m going to talk about the CAVALCADE OF AWESOMENESS in the next one!!

I flew out to the States a week ago today for my Fugitives tour. Seattle was the first stop, which is cool as I’ve always wanted to visit (being a huge fan of Frasier). It’s a cool city, with way too much to ever fit into a couple of days. So I opted to be adventurous and do the least touristy thing possible… The Space Needle!

Lunch at 500ft!

Not only is it stomach-churningly high up, but the whole restaurant actually rotates, meaning that by the time I got up there the last thing I wanted to do was eat a three-course meal! But I soldiered on and managed to finish it without hurling. I was pretty relieved when I got back to solid ground, though.

After the Needle I discovered quite possibly the coolest museum ever built, which is right next door. It’s called the Experience Music Project, and it’s a museum dedicated to music, science fiction and popular culture. Yes, you heard that right. I won’t tell the story behind it here, check out its official page. But the whole building looks like some huge alien craft, and inside there is so much cool stuff!! I spent hours downstairs in their horror movie exhibition, which included awesome genuine props from some of my favourite movies!!

I'm gonna get ya!

There was also a copy of Bram Stoker’s original Dracula Manuscript, complete with his handwritten notes, which was just amazing to see. Sorry the photo isn’t great, if you used your flash they unleashed the xenomorph.

Dracula!!!

How cool is that!!!! There was also a huge Battlestar Galactica exhibition that I rushed around, and an Avatar exhibition that I didn’t get a chance to see. There was so much stuff about music too, but just not enough time!! I would recommend this place to everyone, it’s so much fun. Oh, and there was this, the weirdest thing ever, which turned your shadow into a monster. This is me:

Monster Me!

I also got a chance to make a pilgrimage over to the Lakeview Cemetery, which has a number of famous graves, including one of my heroes, Bruce Lee. He’s buried there because it’s Linda Lee’s hometown. It was a beautiful place, incredibly peaceful and moving. The inscription on his grave reads: “Your inspiration continues to guide us toward our personal liberation.” And he was such an inspirational guy. Brandon Lee is also buried there, by his side, and he has an inscription on his grave that reads: ”Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” So sad  : (

RIP Brucie

I had a good wander around the city, saw Pike Place Market and the original Starbucks, the waterfront and the ferries and some pretty cool buildings, plus I got to ride on the famous Seattle monorail too. It was an awesome weekend, thank you Seattle!

Events started on Monday, and IT WAS THE BEST WEEK OF EVENTS EVER!!!!! I’ll write about it in the next post!

They make a good cuppa!

How is this building not falling over?!

On the run!

The day has arrived, FUGITIVES IS NOW OUT!!!!!! And it’s so exciting even the cat wants to check it out! I really hope you all enjoy this one, it’s fast, furious, gory and terrifying, including a battle at the end that was one of my absolute favourite scenes to write! (I won’t say any more, because I don’t want to ruin the surprise!) If you’ve already read it, let me know what you thought over on the Lockdown Facebook page, or by email at mail@alexandergordonsmith! Or better still, if you live in Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia or New York then come along and say hi when I’m over in the States next month! The latest list of events can be found on the homepage!

I’ll be blogging during my tour, but for now…

HELL HAS BROKEN LOOSE, AND IS WALKING THE STREETS!!!!