Bits of the last days — I spent most of the flight reading _Longbourn_ (Pride and Prejudice from the POV of the servants, came out some years ago but I just ran across it now — well-written, lots of gritty detail, don’t go into it expecting a standard HEA; it’s darker than that, recommended).
Did a little crocheting (for the upcoming yarn-bombing of the tree outside my studio), and enjoyed a classic stroopwaffle, heated by the steam from my tea. Melty caramel, mmm…
I forgot to post what I’m actually scheduled to do at this convention — today from 2:30 – 4, I’ll be on a panel with Jennifer Stevenson, talking about author-owned publishing collectives; I’m hoping we can stray a little beyond that and also talk about shared world writing, and the like; we’ll see how it goes.
And tomorrow (Saturday) from 2:30 – 4, I’ll be doing a reading with Isabel Yap and Christopher Caldwell — I don’t know what I’m reading yet. Kind of tempted to read the openings to the two SF novels I’m hoping to find an agent for, and see if people can tell me which one they think I should send out, because I’ve had a really hard time figuring that out. Is that weird to do for a reading? Maybe it’s too weird. But I need help, people…
I honestly felt really overwhelmed when I got here — I wanted to talk to all the people, attend all the panels (the one on long-form editing was good, and I learned some things about the publishing industry), sleep all the hours, finish writing all the books, catch up on ALL my backlogged e-mail and tasks…I felt a little panicky. I’m only here for four days.
I clearly needed to decompress. So after a little panicking, I ended up with:
– attending one panel
– talking to friends (old and new) for a few hours
– going to bed early
– finishing Longbourne
– sleeping ten hours
And then today:
– reading in bed for a while longer (started Molly Tanzer‘s Creatures of Will and Temper — she’s here, and I hadn’t gotten around to reading anything of hers before — good!)
– hanging by the pool and having a nice long talk with Jenn Reese, whom I haven’t seen in forever, plus a bit of time with Liza Groen Trombi — they both had these cool notebook thingies by Lochby, and I may have been seduced into buying one myself — my main goal for this summer is actually to get all my files and to-do lists and such organized, because the chaos is getting to me
– swimming several laps (felt SO GOOD)
– reading some more Tanzer
And now I need to get ready and go off to my panel. If we can manage the timing, I’m hoping to interview Karen Joy Fowler after that — fingers crossed. She’s one of my favorite contemporary authors, and just a lovely human being too, and I haven’t seen her in probably a decade (I miss in-person WisCon so much), and it would be great to have an interview with her up at the SLF. We’ll see.
No writing today, I think. That’s okay. I clearly needed to sleep and swim and decompress. Maybe tomorrow.
