Lisa Lutz is coming to town! She's touring for her second hilarious book – CURSE OF THE SPELLMANS. It is just as good as the first, THE SPELLMAN FILES. And since FILES won an Alex Award it can be considered a teen appropriate book and Chompoblog feels fully justified in recommending them to smart teens that like their heroines imperfect and sassy.

In February Aaron and I flew down to San Francisco to spend a day with Lisa and her former employer, a private investigator company. I'm still scared to list their names and stuff -- the stories they told us of past surveillances and tailings were absolutely spell binding. They were awesome. Lisa was awesome. We had the best time with her and walked around San Francisco and drank Irish Coffees.

Here are a few pics:

Here we are at the top of Lombard Street. The twisty street with an almost view of Alcatraz.

Here's Lisa probably surveilling someone while looking for the Buena Vista, the first bar to serve Irish Coffee. I'm pointing to its large sign across the street since I'm not good at surveilling, but am good at sign reading.

And here we are on our way home, at the bookstore in the airport. I like to spend my spare time at airports putting all my friends' books face out. I hope the books I covered up aren't offended. I think Mr. Ludlum will survive.

And, NO, the PIs didn't give us the secret pass code to look up all the dirt on everyone we know. Aaron and I DID learn about how to tail someone...we even did follow someone for a bit with Lisa and used some walkie talkies. Aaron was 'on point' which is in the front and Lisa and I were behind, ready to hop in a cab or run down an alley or something...UNTIL I saw a candy store. And then I abandoned the tail. Aaron said the only thing I could tail would be the Hamburglar and even then he doubted my skills. It wasn't a real tail...just a random person we picked off the street. So I didn't jeopardize any state secrets or insurance scams or whatever. And it was a really cool candy store. I bought some mango chili gum balls and Lisa got a gummy rat (the gumballs tasted like mango vomit, though, but hopefully the rat was delish.)

I really admire (dare I type it?) Desvernine Associates, Inc. for their warmth and heart and smarts. If anyone were going to nose around in my business I'd hope it would be them.

So the San Francisco prize trip to BE A SPELLMAN FOR A DAY was a blast. Thanks to Lisa, Desvernine Assoc. and Simon & Schuster for making us feel so welcome and organizing such a fun thing!

HERE is where you can tail Lisa while she's in Seattle:

Tuesday April 1
Seattle Mystery Bookshop
12:00 PM

Wednesday April 2
University Bookstore
7:00 PM

Thursday April 3
Third Place Books
7:00 PM

Ooh and she'll be on KMPS on Wednesday!