Greetings from Chattanooga, Tennessee! I’ve just returned to my hotel room after a delightful dinner with Jeff Strand and his wife, Lynne Hansen. For those who don’t know who Jeff Strand is, he is the master of a fairly obscure genre, called horror/comedy. I write in an equally obscure genre that I call science-fiction/political-comedy, so it was only natural that we meet. I’d be hard-pressed to say who is my all-time favorite author, but there is no one I’ve read more than Jeff Strand—17 books in all! If you haven’t read anything by Jeff Strand, I highly recommend you give him a shot. There are times I’ve read his books all tense, peeking through my fingers, and then the next thing you know I’m laughing so hard tears stream down my face.
After dinner we had a book exchange. I gave him a signed copy of Hits, Heathens, and Hippos: Stories from an Agent, Activist, and Adventurer, and he gave me a signed copy of Clowns vs Spiders. I read the Kindle version of Clowns vs Spiders when it first came out, and it’s absolutely hilarious. When I get home, Jeff’s novel will get an honored position on my bookshelf between my signed Kurt Vonnegut and signed Hillary Clinton books.
Tomorrow, I perform Around the World in 50 Minutes at Southern Adventist University and then head back to Montana.