Sarah is on a business trip for two weeks right now, and right when she comes back I'm going on a business trip of my own. My business trip is to St. Louis, by all accounts a fine city with an impressive arch, for a dinner with some publishing people, and I'm thrilled about it. Sarah's business trip is to China.

CHINA!

She called me last night and she said, "What are you doing?" and I said, "Sitting in my boxers by myself drinking Pinot Grigio and watching the Cubs. What are you up to?"

"I just ate duck with one of the most famous photographers in China and now I'm walking through the Forbidden City."

So yeah. Fortunately we aren't competitive.

In other news, the prepublication advanced reading copies for Looking for Alaska have come out, and they look great. I haven't read any of the actual words inside the book yet, because it's too late for me to change anything, and I don't want to find things I want to change. Plus, I have already read the book seventy or eighty times, and also I wrote it, so reading it at this point seems sort of superfluous. I have flipped through it, however, and I like the font and the layout and everything.

But most importantly, I'm pleased with the author photo. Writing the book was, to quote Donny Rumsfeld, a long hard slog and everything, but it was easier than a drunk Tara Reid compared to the author photo. For the first shoot, the very talented photographer in question took me up onto the roof of a building, so we could have a cool background.

Which we did, but unfortunately I looked like I had a pistol poking my kidneys in every shot, because A. I'm generally not good at having my picture taken, and B. I was on the roof of a seven-story building. A lot of people think fearing heights is irrational, but in point of fact it makes perfect sense, as I will illustrate in this logical syllogism:

Falling seven stories is generally fatal, unless you are a cat, which I am not. Dying, as a rule, is not a desirable outcome. ERGO, one is well-advised to fear heights.

So we did a second photo shoot, and this time Sarah came along to keep me calm, and also to pick out my shirts. Now, I don't approve of those codependent romantic relationships where one person dresses the other person, but the plain fact of the matter is that Sarah knows a thing or two about how to dress, whereas pretty much the only thing I've ever known about fashion is that no matter how good you think your chest hair looks, you should always wear a shirt to work.

So I hope you buy the book, and I hope you like it, but I really hope you like the author photo, because I poured my heart and soul into it.