June 2, 2008 – Announcements: Looks like I’m heading to Texas in the Fall – been invited to the San Antonio Book Festival, and the Austin Book Festival, and to Dallas as well. I love Texas – last year on book tour 1,100 people showed up to see me at the Fort Worth Book Festival. I will never fully recover from the shock of walking into that auditorium and seeing all those people. I still think they were giving away iPhones.
  They don’t do anything on a small scale there, and I am honored to be one of a small number of authors chosen. Random House is considered sending me to San Francisco, Milwaukee, Omaha, Boston and Chicago, as well as some other places for the publication of “Izzy and Lenore; Two Dogs, An Unexpected Journey, and Me.”
  All my books are important to me, obviously, but this one, dealing with Izzy’s leading me to Hospice work, and my challenging winter, is special to me.
  I write about Hospice, and also the great impact Lenore had on my life when I needed it. I’ve often written, sometimes warily, about the emotional impact dogs can have on humans, but last year I really lived that, and this book is about that, and I’m proud of it.
  It’s one thing to write about it, another to live it. And the Hospice work with Izzy has been among the more powerful experiences of my life.