Dark Days Tour Day 1: Books & Co. in Dayton

The demon eyes... we've got 'em!

So I had an absolute blast on my first day of the Dark Days tour! The morning was a bit hectic as I rushed to get my kids to daycare before heading to the airport, but once I was on the plane, it was smooth sailing... er, flying.

Made a quick stop in Detroit, where I grabbed a late lunch and looked for Dan Wells, who was going to be on the next flight with me. I spied someone in a cowboy hat who was carrying around an oddly decorative donut (of the butt persuasion, not the edible kind... really, did I just say 'butt persuasion'????). I was too chicken to say anything, though. He sat next to me on the flight and was brave enough to ask if I was Jill Hathaway. We chatted for a bit and then settled down to read. (I'm reading and loving THE NIGHT SHE DISAPPEARED by April Henry!) Seems like we hardly got up in the air before we were going back down again.

The drive into Dayton was exciting. Our driver had been escorting Carrie Fisher around the previous day and let us look at his signed copy of WISHFUL DRINKING (which I definitely need to pick up now). We checked into the hotel and had a few hours to laze around and watch How I Met Your Mother work on IMPORTANT WRITERLY STUFF before heading out to the signing.

Books & Co. was seriously the gorgeous-est bookstore I've ever been in! It's huge and open with these big windows and a cute little cafe. We got to chat with some bloggers before getting down to business. (If you were there, send me a link to your recap and I'll post it here!) Jenny from Supernatural Snark was there to tweet and take pictures, but it was funny because she had a Kindle or something and couldn't figure out how to tweet from it.

We had a great little Q&A. I'll admit, I was a bit nervous and tended to answer quickly and hand the mic off to Dan or Kim. (Hahaha, I forgot to mention the reason for Dan's donut. He broke his tailbone (ouch!!!) and had to stand the whole time, so it was like he was In Charge. Which I'm fine with. Double parentheses! High five!!) Then we signed books and took pictures and had a grand ol' time.

Had a great dinner across the street at a place called Brio. Talked about the weird things we have to google for our job--for example, what decaying corpses smell like. Ick! On the cab ride back to the hotel, we compared the breakfast places in our various hometowns (IHOP vs. Denny's vs. Village Inn vs. Waffle House).  Haha, such highbrow discussion!

Can't wait to go to Anderson's in Chicago tonight! Hope you can make it out if you live in the area!