Benjamin Rosenbaum and I are deep in Clarion teaching, which is pretty all-consuming, and if you’re waiting on something from me, you’re probably going to need to wait a little longer — we’re working very long days and just carving out enough time for sleeping is a bit of a challenge! But it should get easier after today — Monday and Tuesday we had evening events both days, and we don’t have those Wednesday or Thursday.
On the other hand, the evening events have been great. Yesterday, Ben and I did our Clarion instructor reading, and while reading on Zoom is not my favorite thing (everyone very politely has their mics off, which makes for a weirdly ‘dead’ reading experience — I was trying to read something funny, a Wild Cards story in progress, and I have no idea whether it actually was funny…), we did have a nice big crowd in the Zoom, and people seemed to like the readings. Ben read from his novel, _The Unraveling_, and I read two poems (“Kith and Kin” and “The Shed”, along with a Bertie Wooster pastiche…)
And Monday night, I got to interview Annalee Newitz at Women and Children First (https://www.facebook.com/womenandchildrenfirstbooks), about their wonderful new novel, _The Terraformers_. There was much signing of the book afterwards, and handing it off into the hands of happy Annalee fans.
Super-fun, and I am just a little regretful that I’ve decided to skip ReaderCon (in service of having a quiet and restorative July at home for a change), because if I went, I’d get to spend more time with Annalee…
We just have to seduce Annalee back to Chicago somehow. I did take them to dinner at Ethiopian Diamond, and we had ice cream at Jeni’s afterwards, so they got a little taste of the deliciousness that Chicago has to offer…there’s so much more, though. 
(Oh, and W&CF kindly got in copies of Bodies in Motion and The Stars Change; I’ve signed their stock, so if any Chicago folks would like a signed copy of either or both, please do swing by their store!)
