A fun book tour to San Antonio and Houston and Katy (which is a suburb of Houston, although Houston’s suburbs have now spread beyond imagination). My escort, the charming and helpful Mary Ann Knoweth said ‘I tell people that this out here was once all farmland and they look at me as if I were crazy or I were 200 years old’.  The cities spread and spread and spread.

It was farmland — ricelands, grazing lands. Now all subdivisions and big-box stores, corporate headquarters for BP and Exxon etc. etc. Far away on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico, there are one or two lighthouses.

The also kind and also helpful publicity guy at Harper-Collins, Ben Bruton, booked me into places that would take pets so Rita got to come with me. She was in pet heaven.