mariness

In which the author manages to embarrass herself yet again:

The follow-up to the Patricia McKillip story: So, yesterday morning, I'm searching for coffee. Desperately searching for coffee. I find coffee. It is marvelous. Holding it in my little hands I wheel out towards the lobby when a kindly gentlemen stops me, saying he liked my poem.

"Oh, great!" I said, pleased. "I was really worried about it, since I haven't done a poetry reading in years and I knew Patricia McKillip was in the audience and that made me so nervous I thought I was going to throw up."

"Why, thank you," said another voice….

...Patricia McKillip was of course sitting right across from him, her back to me; I hadn't recognized her at all.

I flushed and managed to make matters still worse by babbling about her books, all the while thinking, great, way to completely fail this meeting with a childhood idol before slipping out and telling my sad, sad tale to a sympathetic Theodora Goss (who kindly did not note that she had also been in the audience but her presence didn't make me ill...)

*****

Aside from needing to sleep even more than expected and telling major fantasy authors that they nauseate me, and some decided wheelchair issues with the Hyatt hotel (thank you to everyone who has been helping with this, although I'm still upset that help is even necessary), it's been….well. I can't find adjectives because, still need more coffee, but I'm delighted to note that Hadley Rille Books managed to sell off all copies of Desolate Places (featuring my little story "End of Time,") especially after we explained that the book featured the award-winning camillealexa. I'm finding it difficult to put names to faces and remember people, and seeming to move between babble mode and professional mode, and also not feeling overwhelmed – as someone (I think girliejones?) noted, it seems as if every major person in fantasy is walking by you or sitting at thebar. Salutary reminder that I am a baby tadpole in a large pond.

However, I am also a baby tadpole that is delighted to note that I got both Sharon Shinn and Catherynne Valente (catvalente to sign my ebooks – so a geeky baby tadpole. It was awesome, especially since catvalente kindly did this outside of the great signing time. And I'm a baby tadpole who was actually signing books – feeling, I must admit, like a bit of an imposter while doing so.

Ok. Coffee calls. And I must answer.

I left the apartment for the last time yesterday, removing laptop and clothes and suitcases for World Fantasy Con.

I feel that I should have more to say about this. Usually when I leave a place, no matter how long or briefly I've lived there, I have some feelings, some memories, a moment of taking a last look at the place and summing things up. When I left my apartment before this one, I was crying (of course, part of that was knowing I was moving away from coldecho, which was absolutely awful, and why we don't have transporters yet so he can come and see movies with me regularly and chat about things, or for that matter, join me for dinner tonight so we can snark about stuff, I do not know.)

This time my main thought was, can I make it to the airport on time. (And yes, in plenty of time – enough to find out that no, Disney princess tiaras cannot go through the Orlando airport X-ray machines and must be taken off no matter what a three year old thinks, so, now you know – Disney princess tiaras, which is kinda surprising since I always thought they were plastic. The next mass weapon of terror. But moving on.)

I will miss a few things about that place – the lake, certainly, and the slowly moving alligators swimming back and forth, the sunsets, the balcony filled with plants that both cats took such joy in. But this is balanced by so much that I won't miss – the way the place overheated every summer afternoon, whatever the airconditioner was set on (the house has shade and trees and cinderblock so will not have that problem), the kitchen (grr, grr, grr), the stairs, and other things.

It's weird, too, to be taking a trip from one home, and return to another – I have never done this before, never left not knowing exactly what I'll return to (in this case heightened by not knowing what condition the refurbished bathroom and the new floors will be in, and not knowing if my stuff from the storage unit will be there or not.) It's a little bit of nagging greyness on the edge of my mind.

******

Anyway, here I am at World Fantasy Con, after more frustration than was strictly necessary with Southwest Airlines, including a few terrifying minutes when I thought they'd lost my wheelchair. I met up briefly with girlie_jones and Jonathan Strahan before a massive wave of fatigue flashed over me, this after I'd realized that I was already having problems following their conversation. So to bed I went. This morning I met up with a group of lovely writers from Canada and California, made it to registration, where I was swamped under a pile of books, always a good thing, and then decided to conk out for a bit.

One worry: the disabled hotel rooms are nowhere near the elevators. I've been assured by hotel staff that they can push me back to the room, if necessary, but, auugh.

*******

Meanwhile, my latest post is up on Tor.com, on The Sea Fairies.

Heading back out to the con now.

Just got off my World Fantasy nominations - right under the deadline. That wasn't fun.

Part of the problem is that, as I realized when putting together my list, most of the works I read last year weren't eligible. It isn't that I haven't been reading - although my fantasy reading has definitely slowed - but that most of the fantasy novels and collections I did read dated from 2008 or earlier, which makes me feel as if I'm being unfair both to the few books I nominated and to all those I didn't get around to reading. (I left blank spaces, because I will not nominate books I haven't read.)

The same happened in the novella category, where I nominated all of two works. But in the short story category, I had exactly the opposite problem: I had 14 stories I wanted to nominate (15 if I'd been able to nominate me, and this list easily could have been stretched to 45, without including me), and could only list 5. The non-professional, on the other hand, was surprisingly easy, and I was surprised to realize that I even knew a couple of artists to nominate.

And then we have the problem of the Lifetime Achievement Award. With all of the Oz posts, my main nominee was the brilliant fantasy artist (if terrible writer) John R. Neill, but dead people aren't eligible, so I was stuck once again trying to narrow a too long list down to just five people.

But this, combined with the SF Signal "apparently I haven't read a science fiction book published in this century" debacle has convinced me that I am going to have to get better at reading recently published material, instead of my usual, hmm, what's on the bookshelves or what's getting recommended to me this time method. I'll try to do better next year, guys.