I’m pretty sure we had this on the blog before but it’s just so darn cute.

The Sisters had another great time at the Tucson Festival of Books. Honestly, as much as we love books, reading, and communing with our tribe, what we spent most of our time doing was squealing over various dogs that walked by.

We have very finely calibrated puppy-dar. Like radar but for canines.

We saw a guy walking a giant St. Bernard named Goliath and an adorable Scottie whose name is now escaping me. I nearly lost my mind over the big one. The little one just sat there and waggled furiously.

There were a million golden retrievers, and scads of gorgeous pit bulls, and so many beautiful German Shepherds. The poodles were all fancy and one or two collies took our breath away. One especially buoyant Labrador stole our hearts when he had the time of his life frolicking away with his very own leash.

But I keep coming back to this fellow.

He ruled the festival. The boy had his very own stroller. Does he have his people under control, or what?

The Sisters are so excited about the Tucson Festival of Books. The event starts tomorrow and runs all weekend. We’ve got all the books packed and the giveaways are tucked in boxes. We’ve stalked the weather channel and things look good there – not too hot, not too cold. No precipitation expected. Breezy. Thing sound ideal. We’re hoping for an epic turn out. We’ve been really busy with all this planning, but we still found time to

locate some funny stuff to share. Here you go.

1. You can’t say they aren’t dedicated. The police in Norway seem like a very sensitive group. They found a wee goldfish swimming around in a jelly jar. Said jelly jar was located in a seat in the Nordlandshall Indoor soccer stadium. The officers couldn’t find the owner of the fishy so they took it back to the police station where they kept up the search. You read that correctly. They’re searching for the owner of an abandon  goldfish. Wonder to what lengths they’d go to for a dog or cat.

2. Heavy pockets. A man in Birmingham, Alabama has agreed to plead guilty to stealing $196,000 in quarters. It seems this happened while he was an employee at Brink’s Co, the armored car people. The story doesn’t say if this was over several years or one giant coin heist. That’s because the reporters never ask the important questions. Like what did he do with all those quarters. Did he buy his groceries from vending machines? Was he famous around town as the coin guy? Like when he showed up at the bar after work, did he buy all the rounds with change? Is he that guy that takes for ever in line in front of you because he’s counting out all those damn coins. I think I hate that guy.

3. Completely incognito. The Redding, California police conducted a high-speed chase this week in excess of 100 miles an hour with a woman driving a mini-van painted to look like the Mystery Machine from the Scooby-Doo cartoons. The woman was wanted for probation violations before the chase took place.

Wearing the Sorting Hat!

Apparently, she’s not interested in going back to jail. We can’t blame her. Not when she’s got such a sweet ride like that on the outside. We just don’t know how they’ll ever find that sneaky van again. Maybe they should call the cops in Norway.

4. We love cake! Amylynn just happens to be re-reading the Harry Potter series on tape during her drive to and from work every day. The Sisters are huge fans of JK Rowling and the series. We’re always impressed by Ms. Rowling through all her social media interactions. This past week, the library in Orkney Scotland invited her via Twitter to attend their book club where they were planning to discuss on of her Robert Galbraith’s books. A witty banter via tweet ensued. They enticed her with lemon cake. The whole thing was a silly dream of the librarian’s. Imagine how incredibly shocked he was when he looked out the window and Ms. Rowling was in the parking lot. Apparently, she chartered a plane and flew over there. Oh, Ms. Rowling. The Sister’s really, really love cake and , oh, the bakeries we could show you!

5. After a long, long week. To kick off the festival, our chapter of Romance Writers of America always has a dinner at one of our famous local steakhouses and invite the out-of-town authors. We got there early and took chairs at the bar. These are the drinks we had and we deserved every single drop. Even if Amylynn is allergic.

So My Honey had to take a five-hour CPR class at work the other day. He claims there isn’t anyone in his shop he’d want to save, but they had the class anyway.

They learned all kinds of important live saving skills including how to use an EpiPen. Several hours in when they got

This fellow looks like a Walter or maybe Edgar.

simulate jabbing the needled pen into someone’s thigh, apparently My Honey got extra zealous with his foreman. Said foreman probably should have thought about his attitude during the week prior to the training. Just sayin’.

So I asked My Honey if they had a CPR dummy to work with.

“Yeah,” he said.

“What did you name yours?” I asked. A perfectly reasonable question says me.

He gave me that look. Ava and get it a lot. It’s a look that says, what the hell are you talking about?

“I didn’t name it.”

And this is Sheila or maybe Marge.

“What do you mean you didn’t name it? You got intimate with a CPR dummy for hours and didn’t name it? Don’t you think that’s weird?”

“No,” he said with a head shake.

“Seriously?” I’m aghast. “Ava and I would have named that thing within five seconds of meeting it.”

Really. Hello, this is Roderick, my dummy. Nice to meet you Roderick. We would have created a full story involving Roderick and then ultimately breaking up with him after we couldn’t revive him.

“One woman did. Named it George.” He said this with derision.

When I got to work I questioned people. I couldn’t believe that Ava and I are anomalies. Turns out that my assistant had CPR training and she didn’t name her dummy either.

Ava and I have come to the conclusion that some people just don’t like fun. We don’t get it.

Think of the peanuts!

One of the things we wanted to do for our appearance at the Tucson Festival of Books was to have sample chapters of our latest — but not quite ready to publish — newest books. We put the covers up last week. Here are the flats – so gorgeous.

Anyway, we wanted these booklets. We had like a month to get it done. Immediately, we cleaned up our pages and contacted our favorite editor. She said she had time and we sent them right over. Then our cover artist agreed to get us stuff right away. Editing always takes longer than you plan. The artist’s entire family came down with the flu.

Everything seemed to take longer. I started pricing out the cost of printing and we almost had a heart attack.  To get 125 printed would cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $420.

So of course we decided we could put them together ourselves.

On Saturday two very sick and pitiful Sisters spent three hours printing 3,500 pages – including color covers. We tortured poor Jacob at the printing company the entire time. First off, Ava insisted on calling him Tristan for a reason I still can’t fathom. There was another fellow copying an entire text-book who spent at least an hour silently laughing and shaking his head at us. We’re pretty sure that Tristan/Jacob quit after we left.

We were delighted as hell to find a paper-folding machine at work. I bought a special stapler that will staple in the middle of the page. After work on Monday, we were going to stay and fold all 250 of them and staple them together. Then VOILA – we’d be done.

Promptly at 5:30 we hauled in a box of booklets and stood in front of the machine. There were no instructions, but a lot of dials and levers and adjustments that could be made. We tried some sample pages and it never worked out right. What it did do, however, was scare the living hell out of us. There may have been screaming. A scary roller ball grabs

It looks innocuous but it’s a Stephen King-like machine that wants to eat your fingers

the paper and whips it through the folder mechanism at approximately 95 miles per hour while simultaneously making an excessively loud BANG! noise. This is seriously not a machine you want to get your fingers or hair caught up in. Neither of the Sisters are especially trustworthy in this regard. I once got my long hair caught in a paper shredder and Ava stuck her fingers in a moving blender. There is family history of digit loss.

I went back to my office and pulled up the manual on the internet. I watched a YouTube tutorial and learned absolutely nothing. I could hear Ava in the copier room messing with the thing. You could hear the BANG all the way down the hall. Even if we could figure out how to get the fold in the right place, there was no way we’d be able to use the machine during lunch. Any one of the people in the offices surrounding the copier room would come in and kick our ass after 10 minutes of that BANGING!

Eventually we deciphered the instructions and got to work in the slowest possible assembly line ever seen. Lucy and Ethel ate a hell of a lot more chocolate than we managed to fold booklets. It was ridiculous. We’d be there forever. Ava and I decided we could fold them this slowly at home in front of the television with a LOT less BANGING!

Mine are finished. All 250 of them stapled together. Of course I can’t use my right arm anymore. Ava thinks we need to move around more, but I’m not sure what exercise prepares you for making 500 staples.

Anyway – if you’re going to be at the Tucson Festival of Books this weekend, come get a free sample of our next books. We’ll give it to you with all 10 fingers and a very sore arm.

Oh my goodness, the Quill Sisters are in bad shape. Ava has had a terrible run of what she insisted was allergies for more than a week. That’s what she always calls it – allergies. It’s a text-book case of total denial.

She damn near died at the Walmart when she went to buy Musinex and a toilet brush. That’s only part of what makes the story so funny and hopefully I’ll get her to tell it here. The incident which she is certain is in Walmart security footage somewhere had her nearly asphyxiating from a coughing fit. Two little old ladies and an ancient paramedic ran to her side, but she waved them off with the toilet brush, insisting that she didn’t need or want them to call 911.

She blames me because I wasn’t there to keep them from ministering to her, but I’m certain I wouldn’t have been much help. I’d have been laughing too hard, which inevitably would have thrown me into my own coughing fit and we would have both been dragged away in an ambulance.

Just to prove my sister’s delusional I want you to know that she didn’t buy the Musinex because it cost $15. As opposed to the co-pay for the ambulance. She did however pay for the toilet brush.

I fully admit I have a cold. Or something akin to Legionnaires disease. I’ve been running a low-grade fever, my nose is a faucet while at the same time I have crazy sinus pressure. My eyes are watering and I’ve never sneezed so much in my entire life. I’m completely exhausted and über whiney. This is all Ava’s fault.

We both felt so bad we never even got around to writing the Five Favorite Things this week. We apologize. It’ll be especially good this coming week. We promise.

We’re working fast and furiously to get everything ready for the Tucson Festival of Books. It’s a week from Saturday and it’s a very big deal. We’re pretty proud that we’ve been involved with the festival since the beginning and now it’s HUGE – last year 130,000 people showed up.

Our list of stuff to finish was really, really long and we’ve managed to mark almost every single thing off. One thing I have left to do is pack up the stuff for our displays. That involved cleaning off my desk. It’s about three feet high with the flotsam and jetsam that builds up with a family. There are boxes of books in the family room. Here’s another box of stuff by the side door. I gathered all of those things in one area and started taking everything apart to see what I had.

I missing a bunch of stuff and I have no idea where it could be.

In my luggage from New York? That seems unlikely since I used that luggage in Las Vegas in November.

Maybe in my car? I don’t think so because I’ve cleaned out Dave and what’s missing would be in a big-ish box.

Still under my desk somewhere? Must be.

Where the hell could that be? Where?

I’m mystified.

We can’t wait to show you how gorgeous our new covers are!!

This is Ava’s

And this is mine.

More info to follow soon!

If you want to see a sample and read the blurb, find us at the Tucson Festival of Books on March 12 & 13

The Sisters are fascinated by the “sport” of curling. We think we might be curling savants although truthfully we’ve never tried it.  But we really feel like this could be our calling. One of us is very, very good with a broom and the other is superb at telling at inanimate objects. Maybe you’re like many Americans and you don’t know what curling is. Here’s a brief explanation. This should tell you everything you need to know.