I have this lovely photograph of me and Bao that I originally wanted to put on the back cover of Sea Changes (that's the title of my novel) but it didn't have enough megapixels so we both got groomed and I arranged for a friend of mine who's a photographer to come over for a photo shoot.

We had a beautiful day for it. Bao and me in the Arizona Room. Sunshine and palms and succulents. The plants were easy. But my neck was a problem.

Turns out that if I hold my chin up high enough to make the wrinkles on my neck disappear, you can't see my face. So that didn't work. Then I tried positioning Bao on my lap so that you couldn't see my neck, but he promptly started planting big, wet kisses all over my face. So that didn't work, either.

After a while, I gave up on my neck. I said, Let's just do Bao and me, side by side, both of us looking at the camera. But by now, Bao was totally fed up with the whole thing. He wanted to catch the bees buzzing around the lavender. He wanted to play with his squeaky toy. He wanted a cookie. What he didn't want to do was sit still and look at the camera. Finally I said to him, Will you just please sit there and act like you love me?

Here's the photo. It's not the one we're going to use on the book cover but I love it.