Victor would give up donuts for these cookies.

A week ago today Harris Gray jetted to Minneapolis and marched bravely into a book club. And they seemed to like us, we didn’t even need the flask and the frequent bathroom breaks. We talked about the first book in our VV trilogy, Vampire Vic, and tried to make murky the origins of our peculiar collaboration, all the while demonstrating why we are only comfortable writing about fat, bald, aging accountant vampires. We also ate the sweetest cookies we’ve ever seen, and in general had a blast.

Ranked right after “How does such an odd couple like you two write together?”, was the next best question: “What else do you have coming out?” This gave us the opportunity to each preemptively finger the other as the source of the unusual sex in the upcoming Java Man.

Amidst all the fraternizing and spirited discussions, and maybe a glass of wine or three, we forgot to take a picture. Except of those wonderful cookies. Marketing guru Jonathan Gunson recently highlighted another author’s ingenious connection to his readers: Hugh Howey raffled his sci-fi trilogy in an irresistible, book-themed thumb-drive. For VV, we would use those cookies…if only cookies could be encoded with baked-in, edible information, and kept fresh for more than five days.

So here’s to the master Minneapolis cookie maker, Mary. And huge thanks to our buddy Nancy for organizing and hosting the book club, and the fifteen or so ladies who made us feel so welcome. To the rest of you – we would love to sit in your living room, drink your wine, and talk books with your buds. (Oprah, are you still running a club? Put Harris Gray on your standby list, we have a very flexible schedule. And for you, only for you, one of us is going to jump up on your couch and finally take responsibility for Java Man’s dirty pages.)