BilmBlog500

I haven't blogged in a while, but I thought I would do a post about my Barcelona trip, rather than 58 tweets. Why Barcelona? I discovered two years ago when I did the Eurocon in Dublin the week after LonCon that Eurocon isn't a great professional convention.  In Dublin, so much so that I decided to just put the bill for the whole stay as a personal expense so I could enjoy Dublin guilt free.  But, Barcelona is the heart of the Spanish publishing business, so when I saw the next Eurocon would be in Barcelona, I eyed it as a chance to see Spanish publishers on their home turf with more time to talk and learn than in the 30 minute appointments that we have in endless succession at London Book Fair.  And to visit Spanish bookstores, and with our agents for the Spanish market.  Any bar-con or schmoozing that Eurocon presented would be an add-on.  And then it turned out that Eurocon dovetailed nicely with a European tour that Brandon Sanderson had on his schedule, so ...

Usually I'm very big on trying to get things back to normal as soon as possible, which may be exactly why I'm totally pissed that the city wants to run a marathon on Sunday. Because in this case, that's not "back to normal," it's indulging the marathon over the interests of a  city that can't get where it wants to go. Buses and trains from my neighborhood into Queens are totally packed.  You've got to wait and watch 'em go buy without stopping or without room to get on.  Even Thursday night, when the subway was running somewhat, the 59th St. Bridge was still being used by thousands upon thousands of people as their best route in and out of Manhattan.  Because it is.  The alternative is waiting for at least two trains or two buses, agonizingly long waits, and you can in fact walk faster.  In fact, Brady McReynolds in my office had two "commutes" yesterday that were longer than it might have taken for him to walk 9.5 miles to/from work. So ...

The World Science Fiction Comvention is always exhilarating and exhausting for me. Bouchercon is a little different. Named for the mystery fiction critic Anthony Boucher, it is the World Fantasy of the mystery genre in that it is a heavy networking convention, a busy bar scene for the professionals, but without the membership cap, and more fans, and people who actually go to panels.  It isn't near as exhilarating for me as a WorldCon, but I also have fewer clients, so there's a little less scheduling pressure.  And while there's a strong bar scene at night, there aren't the room parties and hospitality suites that are such an important part of the scene, social and business and fannish all in one, at the major sf conventions, so it doesn't require as much after hours time. So I had clients to see and award ceremonies to attend, I was also able to use the weekend to see some of Cleveland and really, most importantly, to recharge the batteries a bit after an exhaustin...

You know from some of my other posts on these subjects that I have very passionate feelings about the direction our country is taking on matters of so-called security. These manifest themselves with particular, and sometimes and unfortunately ill-advised and untimely and misdirected passion, when a hotel in the US demands a photo ID at check-in. We don't, or at least so I thought until I was reading the NY Times about the Lake Shore Limited, need papers to travel in the country.  If we need papers to check in at a hotel, then we need papers. Beyond that...   the reasons a hotel will give for this are basically the same, that the person checking in with my credit card isn't actually me, so I am being protected by the hotel from credit card fraud and/or identity theft. I would reasonably guess that fraud is most likely to occur for a spur of the moment booking.  But certainly in my circle, most -- not all but most -- people book well in advance  And the hotel know...

Window Shopping at the Louvre So when we left off on this here , Eddie and I were collapsing in our hotel rooms after a very long day full of unexpected surprises on the way to London Book Fair. One bank I got a pretty decent night's sleep, and I had one goal for my morning in Paris before we headed off to catch the Eurostar. I wasn't in Paris if I didn't go to the Seine, which looked close enough for a round trip walk if I kept about my business. Down by the big department store and the opera house, stop at one chocolatier that's been around for 80 years then on next block see one that's been around for 90 years and realize you picked the wrong one. Down to the Louvre, walk along both banks of the Seine because I don't want anyone to think I'm slighting the left or the right bank or vice versa. Emerge near big old buildings and think "gee, I bet Benjamin Franklin visited some of these." Another bank It was a wonderful and delightful morning, i...

Things were so busy after London Book Fair, not just with work but with getting settled into a new apartment, that I never got around to sharing some pictures of Josh(ua) & Ed(die)'s Excellent Adventure getting there. So Eddie and I are just kind of flying along to London, we're kind of on the Irish leg of the trip, and I do notice that we do a turn over Ireland at a point in time when I'm pretty much expecting a straight flight until maybe you go into holding getting into Heathrow. And then a little bit later the pilot comes on with some bad news from the cockpit. So let me say, very clearly, that there are worse things when you hear about bad news from the cockpit to be told that you're getting to go to Paris. Which is what we're told. Maybe you've been hearing about this volcano in Iceland, and there's this ash cloud, and Heathrow is closed, and so we're not going there. The moment I heard this, I'm kind of excited. I've never been to...

You know how much I love our airport security regime, so here's a nice article sent my way courtesy of a tweet from Elizabeth Moon http://www.salon.com/technology/ask_the_pilot/2010/08/06/airport_security/index.html And of course it isn't just at the airport. Still have fond memories of the Washington Nationals, who let you bring in a factory-sealed water bottle but not the same bottle empty. For all the TSA lunacy, at least they let me bring an empty bottle in to fill up at water fountain and take on to plane. Why do we put up with this, people? Why do we put up with it??

Maybe I need to get out of town more. In around 33 hours actually in the Washington DC area over the weekend, I managed to see 3 plays, visit 1 B. Dalton, 4 B&Ns, 4 Borders, chow down at 2 Whole Foods and a Pizzeria Uno, do the Saturday NY Times puzzle, two from Sunday, a regular and a cryptic, read 70% of the new Violette Malan book and get started on Tanya Huff's next. I'll talk more about the plays later, but just a few idle observations. I've sung the praises of Georgetown Cupcake before, no doubt I'll do so again, they're some of the only overpriced cupcakes that at least taste really, really, really good. But what is the world coming to when I pop by their new expanded flagship location in Georgetown and see over 30 people curled around in the store waiting to buy cupcakes. It's just a cupcake. It's not worth waiting, sorry, no possible way unless it's your child's bar mitzvah and the caterer's truck with the viennese table pastries...

So here is your fearless blogger, posted nattily in front of Borders #118, Thousand Oaks, CA.  Which opened on November 18, 1995, and which on August 10, 2009 became the 200th Borders superstore visited by yours truly. 27,854 square feet, located in a former bowling alley. That sign next to me is an old-style Borders "cafe espresso" sign.  This is one of the few Borders in the country (the store on Park Avenue & 57th St. in Manhattan is another) not to have been converted into a Seattle's Best cafe, generally due to lease restrictions of one sort or another.  However, while the NYC store is a real time-warp location that maintains its ancient Borders cafe look, this store serves Seattle's Best coffee products but without the food goodies and general look and feel of the Seattle's Best cafes.  In fact, it currently serves no food at all.  So it was kind of half-retro. I celebrated this momentous occasion by purchasing two bags of Lindor truffle balls to leave f...

The past couple of years for my London Book Fair trip I'd taken Eos to London , one of the three business-class only airlines across the Atlantic that went belly-up from late 2007 thru summer 2008, Eos just a couple of weeks after I got back last year.  This year I flew business on Delta, choosing them largely because they were offering a 5PM flight back for the price other airlines charged for the 10AM return from Heathrow.  The late departures are very popular with the road warriors who can do a full day of business in London and then head home and the airlines charge accordingly (though now it looks like they're happy to take less money than you might think any time of the day or night; I'm checking American right now and finding what a year ago would have been shockingly low prices if I wanted to go back to London in June). Delta seems to have taken lessons on schedule updates from Amtrak, which has this nasty habit of pretending that a NYC to DC train won't be dela...

The one thing  I couldn't do on a car-less visit to LA was head out to the suburbs to visit bookstores.  So I decided on this visit to pursue a costly but pleasant alternative, hiring a media escort to join me for 8 hours of exploration.  What is a media escort?  When an author goes on tour, the escort is the person the publisher hires to meet an author at the airport, get an author to the hotel, to the event, to any media that might be planned in the market, and as time permits to do drive-by stock signings at stores besides the one where the event is taking place.  Ann Binney was recommended to me by Tina Anderson, the wonderful publicist at Penguin who recently, and sadly, departed after offering a lot of assistance to Charlaine Harris and other authors of mine. We agreed to meet at the Mission St. stop on the Gold Line light rail, so I started the morning walking from the Marriott to Union Station to catch the train.  I went a few blocks the other way to walk along 7th St., and...

When I visited Los Angeles two years ago for the World SF Convention in Anaheim, I was fascinated by the fact that I was able to use mass transit to Do Something.  It was a small something, but I was able to walk from my hotel by LAX down to the Metro Light Rail, take it to downtown Long Beach, and visit a new-ish Borders on the beach.  This got me to thinking what I could and could not do if I tried a future trip without renting a car, and I decided to try and see.  And the answer is that you can kind of get away with it, though the occasional cab ride or friend with car of the like is probably still extremely helpful. Flying in, I went to Burbank's Bob Hope Airport for the first time, and I am inclined to do so again. The pedestrian-friendly airport is around 3 miles from the North Hollywood stop on the Metro Red Line subway, which is not far for a backpacker, not too far for me except it's in the valley, the heat can be high, the sun high in the sky, so it's feasible but...

So that's me, looking very British I must say, taking the High Road in Layer-de-la-Haye on the English Country Walk I took during my London Book Fair trip. This was serendipity at its very best. Whenever I travel, I think it's always nice to touch base with Persons of Interest in the areas I'm visiting. When I discovered that David Wenk , the webmaster for Peter V. Brett , lived in London, I decided it might be nice to try and hook up with him on my UK trip, and then to make things more interesting I found out one of the other hats he wore was that of running English Country Walks, which is oddly enough exactly what it sounds like. You go out into the English country, and you go on a walk. I like very much to walk, and I think the country is a very nice place to visit though I wouldn't want to live there, so this sounded very enticing. Not a sure thing, since I have only so much free time on the trip. I don't know if I would have gone on the walk if London w...