Happy post-holidays & pre-New Year

Greetings from the "slowest week of the year" - as a pal recently reminded me. Driving back and forth from LA during the holi-daze, we racked up 800 miles on the old odometer (certainly we'd have preferred driving a Prius).

But more importantly, we provided our full line of illustrated books to Burbank's best comic book store - House of Secrets (1930 West Olive Avenue Burbank, CA 91506).

There we met owner Paul and manager Eric and enjoyed the lovely view of thousands of comics, old and new. We heard the store will benefit from a quick remodel that will soon devote more shelf space to children's books, so we were glad that our timing was just right!

Meanwhile we drove a frisbee toss away to drop off a case of our newest book at the nerve center of DKE Toys. Though we missed seeing the impresario Dov Kelemer, we did admire the endless cardboard mountains of vinyl toys and collectibles, such as colorful line up of Darth Vader helmets in various states of heady expression. These were a handful of representatives of a past gallery tour, aka The Vader Project.

Unfortunately couldn't stay in the valley long enough to redeem his generous invitation to attend a Korean cuisine theme Christmas Eve party (our stomachs are still wistful at the mere possibility of partaking). But we had more appointments to keep and relatives to meet.

We divvied up and delivered one of our last cartons of the aforementioned The Year of the Rabbit. But we're already expecting our 2nd printing to arrive any day now.

The first was soaked up by Barnes and Noble as they will imminently trot out a month long "Chinese New Year" book promotion nationwide in their +700 stores, starting next week.

So, it would be great if you'd be kind dears and spread the word to family and friends and complete strangers to check out the 6th story in our Tales from the Chinese Zodiac series at a nearby B&N, local bookstore, and elsewhere.