Tulsa!

I'm in Tulsa tonight, guests of the honorable Tulsa Ink Slingers Writers' Group, who flew me out here to hang out with them today.

And it's so freakin' cool.

Mark, Heather and Allen, Travis and Heather have a great thing going every other Saturday. If you live in the area and want a terrific group of people to share your writing with, you owe it to yourself to stop in.

Also, in the interest of full disclosure, they're putting me up here:

The Cherokee Casino, where I found an enormous room reserved in my name, four stories above the pinging and ponging of slot machines and absolutely silent. My biggest challenge is to decide which in-house restaurant I'm going to have dinner in. Will it be McGill's? Cabin Creek Smokehouse? The Wild Potato Buffet ("named after one of the seven clans of the Cherokee tribe")?

Friends, this is living.

Oh yeah, and I did a book signing today too at the Barnes and Noble here in town and hung out with Community Relations Manager Jeff Martin, who remarked afterward, "We don't have a lot of famous writers in this area. In fact, our most famous writer came by your table while you were signing." Of course, I was all, "Who was it?" And Jeff says, "S.E. Hinton. She lives right up the road." Yes, the S.E. Hinton, the legend, author of the second bestselling YA title of all time, just walking through B&N, past my little table, on a quiet Saturday afternoon. And then Jeff goes on to blow me away with a list of all the famous writers who have wandered through his store over the last year or so, from Michael Chabon to Neil Gaiman, along with the super-famous authors who drop by for the biannual Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers Festival, at which point I realize that...

Tulsa is the literary capital of America!

How come it took me so long to realize this?

Why did I forget the camera cord to upload pictures of my awesome hotel suite?

Where am I going to have dinner tonight?

The answers to these and other questions when I return to PA.