From Sally:

"And now that you've accomplished your goal of blogging the book from manuscript to bookstore, will you reincarnate it as a publicity blog and take us with you on THAT journey?"

An interesting question and one I've been pondering. ABSENT FRIENDS is on the shelves and that was the planned end of this blog. It does seem a little unfinished, though, to stop at this point. Whether the book's a "success" is still to be decided, and even the definition of success is something we could discuss. So yes, I think I'll keep the blog going through November. By then the book's performance will pretty much be whatever it is -- no big surprises after that. I'll blog about the promo events, including the tour. And -- reminding me of coming into a movie half-way through and staying through part of the next showing to catch the beginning -- I'll talk a little about the process (but not the content) of the next book, which I'm writing as all this is going on.