I'm pleased to announce that Inkblots will be launching its autumn issue this Friday, as a stop on Kevin Smokler's Virtual Book Tour. And you know what? I'm really stoked about this one.

Don't get me wrong. I enjoyed the last two books, Stiff and Screening Party. But this one, Ethan Watters' Urban Tribes, is the literary equivalent of a home run for me. It's exactly the kind of book I've loved reading lately, an intelligent assessment of the weird-but-wonderful sociology of my whacked generation.

There's been a number of these books that I've really enjoyed: Free Agent Nation by Dan Pink, Bobos in Paradise by Dan Brooks, What Should I Do with My Life? by Po Bronson, and The Rise of the Creative Class by Richard Florida are all prime examples. Watters' Urban Tribes is definitely a member of the same breed, an intelligent, witty look-around-and-tell-me-what-you-see kind of book. I can't wait to get him into this "virtual studio" of mine on Friday.

I do need a little time to prep, though. I'm still in the first part of the book, and the magazine is still somewhat nebulous in places. While I work on that, why don't y'all follow the tour – today he's being critiqued (fairly sharply) by one of the webloggers who's been in my daily-clicks list forever, Meg "Megnut" Hourihan. Go on, shoo.