My sleep patterns are still all skewed, so I was out of it by 11:30 in the evening, but wide awake at 5am. I held off getting up and disturbing people for another hour and a half, then gave in and − the urge to scribble something strongly upon me − crept into Jon's office with the laptop. I managed to get around 500 words down on a new Charlie Fox short story, plus answering my interview questions for Julian at Shots magazine, before Ruth stirred.

At 12 noon we all piled over to Mystery One, Milwaukee to meet up with owner Richard Katz and David. Despite it being a Sunday, and there being a big football game on, we had people wandering in and out all the time we were there.

After lunch we went back to Jon and Ruth's to take in a little TV and chill out before we said our reluctant goodbyes and hit the road . . . and ground to a halt on the toll route south to Chicago, laughingly called the Expressway. Who says the Americans don't do irony?

We arrived back in Chicago − after the journey from hell − at Libby Fischer Hellmann's just in time to go out and grab a movie and dinner to celebrate finishing her terrific-sounding new thriller, tentatively titled Broken Angel. Afterwards, I was finally able to get on line to send this blog and catch up on email. And there's plenty happening, it seems, with lots of new reviews, Second Shot on the Read-it-First website, a major Author of the Month feature at Heirloom Bookstore . . . Hope they continue to like it!

I thought London traffic was bad, but in Chicago it's just awful. How do people commute in this on a daily basis and not go completely round the bend? Construction is everywhere. In fact, in the end we decided they aren't mending the roads at all, they're growing those orange traffic cones. As soon as they're ripe, they'll harvest the crop and all will be well again until the next batch breaks the surface in the spring.

Monday we had a bit of a rest and recoup day at our friend, mystery author Libby Fischer Hellmann's house in the suburbs of Chicago, doing the important stuff like laundry. Then after lunch − and Libby had done an interview about her latest project, editing Chicago Blues, a wonderful anthology of short stories all either set in the city or written by authors who live there − we headed out for our evening event.

Libby and I, together with another Chicago-based writer, Shane Gericke, did a joint talk at the Homewood Public Library, hosted by librarian Anthony Auston. A small but enthusiastic turnout who were happy to buy books. I felt the discussion between the three of us worked well, particularly on the subject of violence and how far you're prepared to go in a work of fiction. (Shane, it turned out, was probably prepared to go the furthest).

To me it's the quiet deaths that are so often more affecting than outright gore. The spaces between the words, the ones where you fill in your own vision of what's happening on the page, and sleep with the light on afterwards. Just in case . . .

Rural America is another country. Today we drove down to Wheatfield, Indiana, to attend a library event − 'we' being Libby Fischer Hellmann, Shane Gericke and myself, with Andy behind the wheel. It's less than a couple of hours from Chicago, but as you get further out, into an area filled with cornfields, it seems very remote from the big city in ways you can never achieve in the UK − it's just too small for that sense of distance. We often describe where we live as the middle of nowhere, but it just doesn't measure on the same scale as the US.

Wheatfield seems to be booming with new construction and the Library is a revelation − brand new, custom built, with magnificent architecture and great facilities, including Internet access and a wonderful children's section, where Shane ended up checking his email. Branch manager Diana Kooy showed us around the place with entirely justifiable pride. Any librarian I know in the UK would give their eye-teeth to work somewhere like this. Diana took us to the local place to eat, Shnick's, and made us feel very welcome before the event began, and those attending brought food with them, too. Any weight I might have lost during the early part of this tour has returned with a vengeance, I fear!

I really enjoyed the event, and we had some interesting questions, including one from a lady called Doris. We all talked about how we got started and the unpublished novels that still lurked in our bottom drawers. She asked if we were ever tempted, now, to get them out and work on them again. All of us said no, they were part of the learning process and that time was past. Afterwards, Doris revealed that she is a painter and she, too, knows that when you've finally finished a piece of work, it is what it is, and it's a mistake to go back and try and make it something else. I'm always looking forward to the next book, in the hopes that it will be better than the last, that it will come closer to fulfilling my original vision of it.

And, as is so often the case with car journeys, we kicked around ideas − I realised where I'd been going wrong in an opening scene I'd been working on for a while, and Libby worked out the vital first sentence for her next book. Nice to know that time in traffic isn't wasted, isn't it?

Over the last year or so I've suffered from a recurring neck problem which falls under the category of 'slept funny' and I managed it at some point on Tuesday night. I mean, how do you get sleeping wrong? It's basically just lying down and doing nothing?

Ah well, all I know is that when I woke up on Wednesday morning I had an incredibly stiff neck and shoulder that I knew wasn't going to go away by itself. We were still staying with our friend Libby Fischer Hellmann on the outskirts of Chicago and, as with any big city, massage therapists are never too far away. Half an hour of having a very nice lady called Felicia dig her thumbs into my neck will, I hope, have calmed things down a little for the remainder of our stay. But I'm not looking forward to that long flight on Friday . . .

Wednesday evening was our last event with Libby, at the Cook Memorial Public Library in Libertyville, where we had a very thorough introduction from Connie Regan from the library, and yet more interesting questions from our audience, who included the best man from Shane and Jerrle Gericke's wedding, with whom he'd almost completely lost touch.

When we got back to Libby's we hastily threw our expanded luggage together and headed down to Shane and Jerrle's house for our last couple of nights. Our travelling light theory has been busted somewhat for this last leg, but we're still only on two small roly-bags. They just seem to weigh a lot more . . .

Last day of the tour and it's just starting to get to us. Andy, having driven JD Rhoades, Jon Jordan and me round Wisconsin, and Libby Fischer Hellmann, Shane Gericke and me round Illinois and Indiana, finally collapsed in a heap and needed a day of R&R. I can't say I blamed him for it. He's driven a whole host of strange cars round foreign cities without a hitch. We clocked up over 1200 miles on this last leg alone. And even with US gas now at just over $3.00 a gallon − compared to $9.00 a gallon in the UK − that's not to be sniffed at!

So, Shane Gericke took over driving for the trip to Muskego Public Library for the final event of the tour, his wife Jerrle also accompanying us. Earlier in the day Shane showed me round Naperville, where both his serial killer books are set. Who'd have thought such a pleasant small town could have so many dark secrets lurking under the surface? He also introduced me to the delightful Andersons bookstore in Naperville, who promptly ordered copies of First Drop.

Knowing how bad Chicago traffic can be, we had set off early for Muskego, and it was slow going, not helped by the sporadic rain, although it did produce a wonderful rainbow arch across the sky. Once again, our nav unit got us there with aplomb, despite a closed road and a diversion. Jon Jordan, editor and publisher of Crimespree magazine, organised the visit, and Richard Katz of Mystery One in Milwaukee was there to provide books for sale. Shane and I were introduced by librarian Penny Halle and again we had interesting questions from our audience, some of whom were in the midst of writing books of their own. I hope we gave them some encouragement to go home, sit down, and Get On With It.

Afterwards, it was a late finish. Shane hadn't quite developed his trust of the nav unit and initially refused to accept it was taking us in the right direction, but Jerrle and I talked him round in the end. It took Andy and me a while to trust that it knew where it was going. Without it, our luggage would have been weighed down with maps, and our stress levels would no doubt be considerably higher.