You know how things always take longer than you expect, and the results are never precisely what you’d thought they’d be? Thus was our trip home from the Midwest. We left later than expected, traveled through rain, ice, snow, and frigid temperatures, only to arrive in New York City a day and a half later than we’d planned, in rain that changed to ice and snow as we unpacked, in even colder temperatures. And now, it’s even colder than that. Brrr!
But we’re back in New York, finally, safely ensconced in the cozy SFScope offices, and digging out from under three weeks’ accumulation of mail. As you may have noticed by the time of this post, we’re still running a little late. But things should smooth out in the next day or three, and all the news you’ve come to expect from us will still be here, fast and accurate.
It was a good, though tiring (and at times, trying) trip through six states (we drove through New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia in order to get to our temporary base of operations in Ohio. From there, we day-tripped to stores in the state, as well as in Indiana and Kentucky). In addition to a slew of great signings for my non-genre book The Presidential Book of Lists, I gave several talks on the subject, and we met up with a handful of sf people: Lon Prater made a quick cameo appearance at my signing at Wright State University, and then joined us (along with his girlfriend) for dinner. John Scalzi showed up at my signing at Jay & Mary’s Book Center (which store he’d recommended) to say hi and also to sign mounds of his own books that had been mail-ordered, and Larry Smith and Sally Kobee came to my signing at Ohio State University, and then gave us a wonderful tour of their incredible home. I’ll be detailing more of the signing tour on my personal blog in the next few days, if you’re interested.
Also, on the tour, we visited the homes of two former Presidents of the United States, the graves of two Presidents, and the graves of three Vice Presidents (can’t take a trip like that without enjoying a little of the fascinating local history). I’ll be talking more about those visits on my Presidential blog soon.
While we were on the road, I continued to receive e-mail, and I’m sure you noticed the news continued to flow. But if you e-mailed me, you probably didn’t get a response. There was a problem with the e-mail server, which allowed me to get the mail, but not to send any e-mail. Now that I’m back in New York, I’ll be responding to all the messages that required response. I’m sorry for the delay.
You may also soon find the popular comment feature restored to SFScope. We disconnected it a while back because of the volume of spam comments coming in (on the order of 100 for every one real comment), but I hope to have it back up and running in the near future.
Thanks to the Washington Centerville Public Library, whose WiFi access enabled me to be online and keep SFScope up to date, and also to Books and Company, whose WiFi access later at night (up until midnight) allowed me to make the tweaks and corrections I needed to when the average person is off line and in bed.
I leave you with pictures of me with Lon (left) and with John (right)—sorry we didn’t get a picture with Larry and Sally—and with my thanks for your continuing support of SFScope. I hope your holidays are happy, comfortable, and (for those of you in the northeast like me) a little warmer than this.
And now, back to the news!