Hey folks. Things are going well. Fall From Grace topped the Edmonton Journal Bestseller List for the second week in a row. It's also the third week it's been on the list and it's never been lower than Number 3. And hopefully it will rise on the bestseller list in Pittsburgh because the Post-Gazette gave it a solid review.

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/11110/1140432-148-0.stm

Also, at the end of the week, I'll be heading out for a week long book tour, first hitting Los Angeles for the LA Times Book Fair and then through major centres in Western Canada. I'll post details in a couple of days in case you wanna be like a Deadhead and follow me around.

A few days, I did a photo shoot for a local alt-weekly to promote Fall From Grace. Here's the story from that, along with the photo. Take a look at the jeans and the dumpster in the background. While the photog and Gayleen Froese (another Edmonton mystery novelist and the "dead body" in the shot) set things up, I happened to glance in the dumpster and saw the jeans. So I jumped in and dug them out. Freaked out the photog a bit but heck, you gotta do what you gotta do.

http://www.seemagazine.com/article/arts/books/river-city-mysteries-part-ii-5472/

Here are some photos from my first launch last week.

The second local launch went. A good crowd, more books sold and signed.

And today was fun. I spent the morning trying to set a photo shoot with a local alt-weekly, See. We finally got it worked out and we all headed downtown to meet. The plan was for me and another local mystery writer, Gayleen Froese to be part of the shoot. We both have mystery novels out recently. Once we met up (I was late because of the wonderful Edmonton transit system, that is loaded with sarcasm), we found a nice dirty spot in a back alley. It was supposed to be a crime scene, so Gayleen, being a trooper, laid on the dirty cement, allowed the photog to draw a chalk line around here, and then stayed there on the ground (did I say it was dirty. Come on this is Edmonton in the spring, it's pretty disgusting) to be the corpse. While they were setting up, I looked in one of the dumpsters and saw a pair of jeans and a "wife-beater" shirt. Figured they would be perfect for the shot, I dumpster-dived and fished them out. The photog put them next to Gayleen. Then I went down on one knee, grabbed a magnifying glass, and picked up a piece of garbage with a pair of tweezers, and tried to look like a hardened detective. It was fun, but man it was kind of cold. Gayleen must have been freezing because she stayed on the hard concrete for about 15 minutes. Hope the photo turns out and when I get a copy, I'll post it here.

Today is the second local launch of my novel Fall From Grace. I had a more private launch on Tuesday, April 5, and it was fantastic. I had many friends and family members come to the event, probably about 80 people, many of whom bought books. It was a wonderful touching event. My second launch is a more public event but still there will be friends who couldn't make it to the first event. And having people who don't know me there, who will come because of all the recent local media. Lots of great local coverage lately, including some really solid reviews from local TV and radio. Don't have links because the bits aren't up yet.

Don't know how the book is doing in the US, seems to be doing recently in Kindle and Amazon standings but it's only been the first week of release. Got a Western Canadian tour coming up with some media planned there so that should help Canadian sales.