Blog Title: AlmaNews

'Tis that time...

If you're following this blog, you might gather I've just finished wrapping lots of Christmas presents.

A LOT of them are books.

Go thou and do likewise. Buy books for the holidays. Give the gift that keeps giving.

If you want signed bookplates to go with any of mine that you might purchase, the lines for plates-in-time-for-Christmas are open for requests until December 15 - mailing anything after that and expecting it to get places gets awfully under the wire-ish after that date.

Of course, feel free to request signed bookplates IN GENERAL. Just be aware - if you want one for Christmas, ask before the 15th.

Comments screened in case anyone wishes to leave contact info there - alternatively just email me directly at anghara at vaxer dot net.

Christmas present wrapping with feline assistance, 2008 edition

Me: [takes out paraphernalia - roll of wrapping paper and assorted other wrapping paper, scissors, tape, pen, etc.]

Cats [coming running]: "OOOOH! ooooh1 something's going on! What's happening?"

Cat 1 sits in the middle of Assorted Other Wrapping Paper and gives me an interested stare: "You may continue."

Me: [Removes cat from wrapping paper, unfolds paper to cut to size, cat steps on paper, remove cat from paper, rinse and repeat several times. Paper finally cut]

Cat 2 [sticking his head under tape as I break off a piece to tape down the wrapping]: "OOOoooh. That looks like fun. HEY! You tried to take off my whiskers!!!"

Me: "So keep your whiskers out of the way of my tape!"

Cat 2 gives me injured look.

Remove Cat 1 from plastic bag housing a present. Extract present. Cat 1 returns to bag. I allow Cat 1's bottom to continue sticking out of said bag, tail twitching.

Cat1 {muffled]: "But it's empty. It wasn't empty just now. What happened to the stuff that was inside this? Oh well. Never mind. Empty bag. POUNCE!" [Cat 1 is now chasing empty bag across floor]

Me: [pick up another present, somewhat scented]

Cat 2: "What is it?" [sticks snout into package. Sneezes. Backs away.] 'You're GIVING that to someone? You're making someone take that?... You're MEAN!" [gives me injured look, stalks away to a couple of safe paces apart and then sits down again, supervising]

Cat 1: [chasing bag chasing bag chasing bag ducking head out of bag to look back at Cat 2]: "Did I miss something?"

Cat 2 comes and sits on wrapping paper again.

Remove cat.

Cat 1 leaves bag and knocks over a stack of books.

Pick up book to wrap.

Cat 1 bats at my hand. "But those were mine!"

Cat 2 [peering over my wrist]: "When are you wrapping up any of the INTERESTING stuff?"

Cat 1 [peering over my other wrist]: "Oh! Is that for ME?"

Remove cats from immediate vicinity so that I have room to, well, swing a cat. Attempt to cut some more wrapping paper, but as soon as I unroll an adequate amount Cat 1 comes and sits on it. Remove cat from wrapping paper. Cat 2 is batting at the half-open scissors. Remove cat's vulnerable paw pads from between scissor blades. Honestly, sometimes it's like living with a pair of two-year-olds.

Try to tape down wrapping paper over awkwardly-shaped present.

Cat 1 [sticking snout into affair]: "Can I be of assistance?"

Cat 2 [from behind me, inquisitive mrrorowr]: "Is that for me?"

Remove cat from top of wrapped present to stick on a gift label. Cat looks affronted.

Roll of wrapping paper gets finished. Cat 1 bunny-bats it with back feet, wrestling with it. Cat 2 pounces from behind the armchair in a sneak attack. I use the opportunity to gather up debris and take it away.

Cats stop activity and look at me mournfully.

Cat 1: "You DONE already?"

Cat 2: "But we were just starting to have fun...

Me [sigh]: "More tomorrow."

Cat [losing interest]: "Ooooh! Look! Squirrel! Kill!"

So much for peace on earth.

More later.

Writerly meme

The matociquala/autopope/rolanni pro-writer career path meme:

Current Status as of this morning:
On a break. One Big Novel completed this year, I have the next in the back of my brain and even some bits and bobs of it written, but nothing coherent yet. It probably won't be begun properly until January.

Age when I decided I wanted to be a writer: I don't REMEMBER. I think I always knew I wanted to write. I don't think that I ever decided I "wanted to be a writer", that being-a-writer thing kind of decided it wanted to be me. Age when I knew I wanted to ba a full-time published author, that this was the life and the lifestyle I wanted, was probably when I heard Lynne Reed Banks tell us about that life when I was 15 and she came to my school for an author visit. I watched her talk about it with her eyes shining and I knew, I *knew*, that I wanted to do this when I grew up...

Age when I wrote my first story: Again, I don't remember. Age at which I wrote my first poem is five. I know my stories were winning prizes by the time I was 12. But I've always scribbled. Define "story"...

Age when I got my hands on a typewriter: very young. My grandfather's, originally - and if it wasn't a Royale it was close to it. Then my dad's, a more modern Olivetti. Then finally my dad gave me my own, a funky sweet little Olivetti which typed in cursive - which was great but it was a toy more than a serious instrument, really. I really came into my own with a computer - before that my writing was mostly long-hand, and transcribed later any which way it could be...

Age when I first submitted a short story to a magazine: nine, I think

Thickness of file of rejection slips prior to first story sale: I didn't know I was supposed to count 'em [grin]. Let's just say, for the record, LOTS.

Age when I sold my first short story: professionally, in my twenties sometime. EARLY twenties.I have the magazine it came out in, I could go look, but let's say... 22, 23, thereabout.

Age when I killed my first market: I don't murder markets. Hasn't happened yet.

Approximate number of short stories/novelettes/novellas sold for cash money: I don't really write SHORT all that often, actually. Maybe 20 or so all told.

Age when I first sold a poem: I was a teenager. Don't remember exactly.
Poems sold: more than a hundred

Age when I wrote my first novel: first complete one, not surviving to this day, really bad - about 11 (that's in ENGLISH. I probably did something of the sort in my own language before I 'learned' English, which would make it something like 8 or so...) First DECENT one, still surviving, in longhand, in PENCIL, in three hard-cover notebooks - 15.

Age when I sold a first novel: 36
Novels written between age 6 and age 36: eight
Age when I wrote the first novel I sold: 36
Age when that novel was published: 36
Total number of novels written (discounting juvenilia, counting collaborations, counting fixups): 17
Books sold: 10 (one short story collection, one non-fiction autobiography, eight novels)
Books published or delivered and in the pipeline (including novellas published as independent books): 10
Number of titles in print: 8
Number of titles fallen out of print: 2

Age when I became a full-time novelist: 36
Age when I returned to the day-job because of economic implosion: not yet
Age now: 45

Breaking news -

New essay up at Storytellersunplugged.

Feel free to leave commentary there or here.

Last thoughts on redwoods

We were talking about the trip, rdeck and I, over lunch today, and I said, you know what, I don't really remember seeing that many kids on this journey through teh sequoias. Young twenty-something adults, yes, but not kids, not really. rdeck pointed out that in fact it IS the middle of the school year and said kids might well be stuck in classrooms - but although that makes perfect sense I won't let it get in the way of a good blog post, because I have another theory.

The redwood groves are the places where the grown-ups go to become children again. To recapture the sense of awe and of wonder and of sheer fundamental *faith* that gets eroded by the twisted and cynical real world on a daily basis. There was a poem etched into a display board near one of the big trees - and although it seemed more intent, as and of itself, to make sure things rhymed properly than to achieve a sense of real poetical vision, I can't take issue with the sentiments. The final two lines go something like this: "So, traveller, sink upon your knees/ God stands before you in these trees."

I know, speaking for myself, that I walked into the presence of the great redwoods with humility and astonished delight. Another theory that rdeck advanced was that the sheer size differential might also play a part in the regression to childhood purity of emotion, in the sense of the Bee Gees lyrics ("When I was small... and Christmas trees were tall...") You DO feel young, and awed, and deferential. You can't help it, not when you're standing underneath something whose tip is scratching the sky and is utterly beyond your power to actually resolve with your physical eyes, not when your hand is laid, tiny and almost insignificant, on the skin of a creature which had been standing there for a thousand years before you were born. These are the ancients, revere them.

All I know is that there were times in these past couple of weeks when I was a child all over again, renewed and refreshed and confirmed in my innocence while being filled to the brim with a sense of gentle power, and heartbreaking beauty, and slow beneficent wisdom.

I came home with more than four hundred photos - but the more enduring kind will always be the ones that I took with my heart, and keep close in my memories.

From the Train

rdeck *woke me up* this morning out of a sound sleep which involved a large amount of water inundating a place I was at and then, in the aftermath, me and other members of my family retrieving objects which floated upon these waters as flotsam and jetsam – and included armchairs and spoons. Eh. Maybe it was just as well he woke me up, actually. Things were getting bizarre out there in Dreamland.

The Internet connectivity was iffy again in the morning (I actually whined about it to the hotel as we checked out. There really is no excuse for that in a hotel of that caliber) so we gathered ourselves up and went downstairs for a quick and dirty mini-breakfast (coffee and toast, really) and then went back up to the room, consolidated our bags and baggies as best we could, and departed. We had one of the worst, most sullen taxi drivers I’ve ever shared a taxi with; he behaved as though we were kind of imposing on him by hiring his cab. He was, as best I can tell from a conversation I overheard with another driver, Russian; possibly he was one of the last Romanovs and driving such hoi polloi as ourselves was so utterly beneath him. He even gave rdeck the hairy eyeball when he was asked to actually lift our bags onto the sidewalk as he took them out of the trunk of the cab.

But anyway.

We had lunch at the little restaurant attached to the Portland railway station – which is an extraordinary place, with fabulous food and friendly straff, where we had had a great experience at least once before to the point of actually looking forward to returning there. It’s so utterly not a railway station fast-food greasy spoon type place – I would even go so far as to call it gourmet, with good quality ingredients prepared in appetising and ingenuous ways. Today’s dessert, a crème-brulee PIE, if you don’t mind, with amaretto cherry liquerur on top, was quite superb. And once again we were left with a sense of loking forward to going back there sometime.

Afterwards, we waited for a while in Portland station – where we were entertained by a trio of young kids, two girls (a Bohemian brunette with an artistically twisted scarf in her hair and a fragile-looking blonde) and a young man, who sat in a huddle and played guitars and sang the sweetest, most haunting melodies in high and nicely harmonising voices. I thanked them, after, for brightening my day – and obviously brightened *theirs*, because they GLOWED at the words. They lined up, later, to board the same train as us but I lost sight of them. I hope they continued to make music as the train rolled into sunset, and then night.

We screeched to a halt in Seattle about half an hour ago, and then lurched out of there – they tell us we will hit our own stop on schedule, and then it’s a cab ride back home at last.

I tell you – I am suddenly excruciatigly bone-tired, and I am longing to come in under my own roof, fuss with my cats if they will have any of me after my two-week absence, and crawl into my own bed. It’s been a lovely trip on so many levels and on so many ways… but I’m coming home tonight. And I can’t wait.

(WRITTEN on the moving train, somewhere between Everett and Mount Vernon.To be posted at such time as Internet connection permits.)

...And we're done.

Orycon, over.

Let me encapsulate, in as few words as I can.

Was on panels. Attended other panels as audience member. The panels in question ranged from meh to pretty damned good, as panels at conventions do. There were a couple of highlights in there - like the panel on YA where I introduced myself with the YA trilogy and a member of the audience brought up my "first book", and she meant "Jin Shei", and she came up to me after and said that she and her entire family had loved the book and that she had given it to multiple people as presents and all like that and then, at the end of a whole different panel, she and her friend came up to me in the corridor bearing multiple copies of my books in their hands and asked if I wouldn't mind signing them right then because they were leaving the next morning and would miss my signing slot; or the bookseller from the dealers' room who came up to me at breakfast today to tell me that she had "made the mistake of cracking open 'Spellspam' the night before", and that she could not put it down (VERY good when a bookseller tells you this, it means that the books will get recommended to buyers...); like saying things on this panel or that one and watching audience heads nodding vigorously as the words left my lips (always good when the audience likes what you have to say, they'll meander down to the dealers' room eventually and with a little luck they will encounter there the bookseller who waxed enthusiastic about my books...). Then the social aspect of it - the meals with friends, the shared laughter, the in-jokes, the plans to see each other at the next convention or at this one the next year.

But it's done. They're dismantling stuff downstairs. Sometime between now and 11 AM tomorrow I need to re-pack everything to manageable proportions, and then we shall make our way to the train station, and then onto the train, and then we will be home again.

And we have no plans to go anywhere else until February.

I might give myself a few days or weeks off for good behaviour - sort out the photos I took on this trip, this and that. But after that, I have another book to write, and after that another, and then, next year, it's off around the mulberry bush again. But first it's down time, a rest, what remains of November, Christmas, New Year's, and a long laid back January.

Home tomorrow. I think I am about ready for that now. I can't wait.

At Orycon

Slept for nearly thirteen hours last night. I must have been more socked than I thought.

Anyway - since I don't believe that I've done so before - this is where you can find me for the next couple or three days:

Friday November 21

3 PM - Reading (probably from Cybermage, my new one, coming out in February) - Salem


Saturday November 22

10 AM - Writing Quality Work for Young Adults - Medford - Alma Alexander, S. Danelle Perry, Brenda Cooper, John C. Bunnell, Laura Anne Hill

3 PM - Writing Critique Group - Sunstone - Alma Alexander and Dianna Rodgers

4 pm - The Tolkien Effect: Does every rock and tree need its own language? - Medford - Rebecca Neason, Sara Mueller, J.C.Hendee, Alma Alexander

5 PM - Third spear carrier on the left: writing minor characters - Portland - Judith COnly, Sara Mueller, Alma Alexander, Leah Cutter, David Goldman


Sunday November 23

11 AM - Pros at cons - Salon A - Margaret Organ Kean, Barb Hendee, Alma Alexander, Tom Whitmore

1:30 PM - Signing - Autograph table 2


And then there's things to tie up in Portland, after that.

And then, home on the train (no more driving for a while! Yay!)

Anyway. Off the computer now. Have to get ready to go out and meed bjcooper for breakfast.

Hello, Portland

We here. We tired. We did well... right until we got thrown noggin first into rush hour traffic in downtown Portland... in the dark... in the rain. I had to circle the block twice in order to get to the place where I could leave the rental car, but I got it there only about five minutes later than I said I would on the rental agreement. So, the Camry is safely in the hands of its rightful owners and I don't have any driving to do for a while. Hallelujah.

Today... was a challenge. I used every wiper speed the car had. Before we left our hotel we had a 4 AM mini-storm that actually *woke me up*, driving against the windows in a frenzy of rain and wind; after that, the weather turned on a dime, from bright sunshine to heavily overcast and foggy to drizzly to driving rain to wind that shoved me sideways on the road on open bridges where the gale came howling in from the sea. While on a short driving break, eating chicken harvest soup and Stollen bread in a roadside cafe in Florence, OR, we overheard some fellow travellers complain of having been hit by HAIL. At least we missed that.

We drove up the 101 almost all the way and that road is the biggest chameleon I've ever driven. It switches without warning from narrow country road to urban street with stop lights to double-lane carriageway to divided freeway-like highway, there and back again, you simply never knew what was going to hit you next and with what speed limit. But my GOD it is spectacular, and the Oregon coastline is fantastic. I stopped once or twice to take some pictures in a howling gale and we shall see how that turned out.

Then just after Lincoln City we turned on to Route 18, and that took us pretty much all the way into Portland.

I'm tired. I really am. I drove three hundred miles today. My powers of concentration are shredded and flapping in the Oregon ocean gale; I am about ready to go grab a bite to eat, take a long shower to wash off the dust of the road, and collapse into bed.

Tomorrow, Orycon. See some of you there, perhaps.

G'night.

On the Avenue

We departed our Internetless motel bright and early - or dark and early, anyway - and drove off into foggy drizzle. The entrance to the Avenue of the Giants was only a handful of miles up the road and we found it without difficulty... and crossed some sort of permeable barrier into a land of pure magic.

If other people left their hearts in San Francisco... I have left a part of my soul in the land of the big trees.

In the beginning they were still big enough to dwarf anything I'd ever seen before, but that quickly changed, and they grew ever bigger, broader, wider, more magical, with faces etched into ancient bark.

Our first stop, only a little way into the Avenue, was the "Living Chimney Tree". This astonishing creature was completely gutted on the inside by a ferocious fire, and you can now go into a "room" inside the tree, some 12 feet across, and look straight up into open sky - the thing is completely hollow.

The tree is hale and hearty and obviously still living because there are green needles on it outside.

The fire happened in *1914*. The Great War was still raging at the time that this giant burned. Women were still wearing long skirts and long hair and button-up boots. NINETEEN FOURTEEN. For nearly a century this tree has stood here, living, breathing, its heart ripped out by fire.

I cried.

We went on. We stopped for breakfast eventually in a place called the Avenue Cafe, on the opposite side of the road to which a little house stands surrounded and dwarfed by no less than six giant sequoias. (The Cafe, by the by, while we're still on things cullinary, serves quite the best pancakes I've had in a VERY long time. Just for the record.) Fed and caffeinated, we drove on.

And I whimpered all the way.

The road winds throught groves of gigantic trees, some of which stand RIGHT next to the road, if you reached out your arm out of the window of the car you could touch them. Traffic was light to non existent, we had the place largely to ourselves and it was the most heartstoppingly beautiful, amazing place I have ever ever ever ever ever seen. I have hundreds of photographs of trees - but they have one thing in common, and that is that they consistently fail to pick up on the SCALE of these things. Because you're taking pictures of, well, trees - and on a photograph they look very much like, well, TREES - but when you're standing underneath one, looking straight up a trunk that goes on forever and gasping at the unbelievable beauty of it all, it's quite a different feeling.

I told rdeck that the what I got from these trees was a sense of royal and dreamy detachment. They gaze down upon us and sigh - We are here. We have always been here. Touch us, mayflies, and then vanish while we endure, we live, we go on. We go on.

I cried, more than once.

Someone along the way circled one particular spot on the map we had of the Avenue, and said, "If you stop nowhere else, stop here." The place was called Founder's Grove, in honour of the founders of the redwood national parks. And so we saw the sign for Founder's Grove, and dutifully turned in.

And I cried.

The Founder's Tree is huge and stately and dominates the entrance of the nature trail. But a little beyond, lying on its side after it fell back in 1991, is a tree called the Dyerville Giant. It is... impossible to take in. This tree's exposed rootball is THREE TIMES MY HEIGHT. I walked along the length of it that remains, fully one hundred and fifty paces, and at the end of this the tree, lying sideways, was STILL above my head - broader, even at this point, than I was tall. And that was not the end of the tree, which went on for two thirds again as long off into the forest.

I cannot even imagine this giant as it must have looked when it was still upright. Nor can I imagine the sound of thunder it must have made when it fell. Or the shaking of the earth as it was pulled out from it, and stretched its length out upon it. One felt as though some sacrifice was necessary, as though there should be a shrine where one could kneel and offer up dreams in little redwood caskets and pray for life and love and immortality. Because this... this is a fallen god of ancient times. There is no other way to describe it.

We spent more time than we meant to in Founder's Grove, because we couldn't tear ourselves apart from it. But the day was waning, and we needed to get a move on.

"We could leave the Avenue and go back on the 101," rdeck suggested.

"No," I said firmly, and I was driving so I had the final say. "So long as this thing continues, we're on it."

Further on, nearly at the end of the Avenue, we came upon the Immortal Tree. This tree has survived two lighning strikes (its height has been noticeably diminished by these), a flood (there is a fish affixed to it to mark the high-water mark of the great flood, and it's QUITE considerably above my head) and man (there is a mark where people tried to hew the thing with axes, and failed miserably in the attempt). It survived all of this, and it's huge, and hale, and hearty.

I went up to it, and I stroked its bark, and I kissed it.

"Live long, and prosper," I whispered into a crack of its weathered 'skin'.

And I cried. Again.

Another grove or three or four, some with more of the grandpappy old trees that had us both so enthralled, and the Avenue came to an end. We left it reluctantly; I saw a car swing in from the 101 on its way south down the Avenue, and I sighed.

"I envy them," I said.

Back on the 101, we were making good time... but we couldn't let go of the trees.

A little further along the way we spied another "scenic alternative", so we turned onto that. Somewhere along the way a sign said simply, "Big Tree". No more, no less.

So we swung in to see.

My giddy aunt. They weren't kidding. No statistics for this one - no height or circumference or diameter or anything - but it's, um, BIG. *REALLY* big. Gawpingly big. Huge.

We visited it, made offerings to it in our hearts, and drove on.

The detour delivered us back to 101 in relatively short order, after more groves of redwoods on the way, and then we stopped AGAIN - just outside Klamath - to take a Redwood Ride. They have this little cable car thing set up, and you climb into a gondola and are carted up this steep slope - halfway up the redwoods, and you're a VERY long way off the ground - to a viewpoint at the top. Unfortunately the viewpoint was a sad loss because we were yet again socked in with fog - but the ride was spectacular, both up and down, and the views of redwoods in the mist were gorgeous.

We saw a few more trees here and there on the way up the 101 from there, but they were getting smaller and scarcer. I bid them farewell, with a devotion that will remain undying, with love and awe and humility. A part of me will always remain here in these groves, drifting in the dreamy shadows, stepping softly on needle-covered soft springy ground.

I will never forget the redwood groves.

We swung down to the spectacular coast, and eventually crossed from California into Oregon. Currently ensconced in a hotel in Gold Beach, in a room with an ocean view and a little pot-bellied gas stove in the room - and a bed so high that it feels like it belongs in a princess-and-the-pea fairy story.

TOmorrow, we hit the road and go straight to Portland. It's a little more of the coastline, just a little more, and then it's highways all the way in.

See you on the other side.

One day late - this was Monday, November 18...

Monday November 18


The fog that crept in while we were having dinner the night before was still with us when we woke this morning. Pretty solidly, it looked like when I peered through the windows.

“Eh, it’ll burn off by ten o’clock,” the ever-optimistic rdeck said, with conviction. “Besides, the windows are all fogged in anyway, so it probably isn’t as bad as you think.”

Eh. In order. It didn’t burn off by ten (our B&B landlady suggested 11 AM as an alternative but as it happens she was wrong too – more on that later), and while the windows of our room WERE in fact a little misted up – well – so was the outside.

Well. We busied ourselves with breakfast around 9, and took off for a final walk down to Fort Bragg downtown at about 10, and the back street we were on was quiet an empty. A sign tacked on a lamp-post informed us that it was forbidden to ride bicycles, skateboards or horses on the sidewalk; we didn’t see anyone breaking the law, although I was really holding out for a bronco.

In front of the First Baptist Church, a hopscotch grid was chalked on the pavement – the first time I’ve seen one in oh, a gazillion years. The wave of nostalgia was completely unexpected. I was just – so – well, I was so SEVEN YEARS OLD again. It took an effort of will not to stick my hair into pigtails and start hopping. A little further on the pavement someone had chalked the words THINGS WE ARE THANKFUL FOR and surrounding them – sometimes in heartstoppingly painstaking childish handwriting – were the responses to that. They were… fantastic. Here’s just a selection:

Christmas
My Baby Brother
Stars
The Harvest
Jesus
Meeting Friendly Christians
Fall Colors
Veterans
Sun and rain
Hippies (no, I am not kidding. It said that.)
Water
Voting

This is a cool and interesting place.

We dropped in on the very nice local bookstore, Cheshire Books, which promptly set up a small display of my paraphernalia in the shop which was very nice of them. On our way back– and I was cameraless, alas – we chanced on a building straight out of a Wild West Hollywood movie with a sign that said no more than “Golden West”. It was painted up front, but that had been done some time ago and someone should have been thinking about a fresh coat about five years back – but the sides, visible from above the lower neighbouring house on one side and the alley on the other, were chronically dilapidated. The windows showed a range of eclectic coverings meant to do duty as curtains; at least two were bed sheets in a previous life, one was intriguing but unidentifiable from the street, and one was a crochet afghan. It honestly looked like a home for down-on-their-luck ladies of the night.

A little further up the street a storefront bore a pair of signs that were the most perfect example of irony I have ever seen. The one above said simply, “Bait”. Well, you might argue, this is a seaside town, people fish, ergo, bait. But just below it there was a sign advertising the lottery, with a come-hither announcement that the jackpot was now something in the order of $70 million.

Bait, eh..?

Back up to our own lodgings, from which we had already checked out, and we paused to look at the house directly across the street from the place we had stayed in.

“It looks a little iffy,” rdeck suggested.

Iffy didn’t begin to cover it. One of the panes of the upstairs window was frankly missing; the roof was in a parlous state; the siding was three different colours where it had weathered differently and/or fallen off altogether; and something appeared to be grievously wrong with the foundation at one end, resulting in a perilously sagging porch and a downstairs window that kind of drooped at an odd angle. The house looked like it had suffered a major stroke and that nobody had managed to get to it in time for the damage not to be kind of permanent.

But it was now close to noon and we had places to go. So we loaded up the chariot and pressed on.

Into the fog.

Which got thicker and more drifty and more fabulous the further we went. We paused at one seaside view stop and I took some pictures of the angry choppy pewter-coloured ocean under the blanket of fog, rocks and foam and seagulls all soft and formless through fog. The road sometimes wholly disappeared into fog ahead of us, just dived in, only reappearing as I literally crashed the fogline, disappearing into another bank a few hundred yards ahead. It was WILD.

We stopped at another outlook and the coast was fantastic – great crashing breakers, cormorants perched on drenched crags, spray, mist, white foam on dark sand, and a handful of ravens flitting through it all cawing ominously. I took a picture of one of them, the one which posed in the spirit of human-avian cooperation until I was practically next to it before squawking when I got a shade too familiar and spreading huge black wings and rising into the drifting mist. It was all very Edgar Allan Poe.

The road twisted and turned and twisted. I began to really respect their signs – when they indicated a curve on the road and said max speed was 15MPH, they bloody well meant it. But the problem was that I couldn’t fathom why one curve had a warning sign and a mileage limit on it while another – just around the corner – was allowed to sneak up on you unawares. We developed a game of it – “That’s a fifteen!” – “That’s no twenty!” – “What, twenty five? We can do that in our sleep!” – “WHOA! Ten?!?” But after a while I was really starting to look forward to a straight road. Just a little bit of straight road. Please.

We meandered and twisted away from the coast after a while, and the fog magically vanished leaving us in bright sunshine. In that interval we chanced on a redwood grove picnic area and went for a stroll. We were the only people there; we might have been the last people on the earth, just us and the trees. We saw our first real old-growth redwood, and I wept at it – we stood rapt and listened to the silence of the redwood cathedral while green light filtered down from the treetops somewhere unimaginably high above us. I took pictures. Lots of pictures. LOOOOOTS of pictures. Have to download some of these puppies soon.

Onwards, but we were losing the day and the light by now, and we were also getting returns of the patchy fog every so often. We stopped to do stuff like drive the car through a drive-through tree (yes! I DID IT!) and then stop off to admire something called a Grandfather Tree with a circumference of FIFTY FIVE FEET. Go away and think about that for a minute. I’ll wait…

I didn’t want to miss out on any of the Avenue of the Giants stuff, and that was coming up, and the light was dying on us. So we turned off the highway in Garberville and bunked down for the night in a place called the Sherwood Forest Motel (I kid you not. I guess they figure one wood is as good as another…), had a quick meal in a nearby café (nothing like the one we had the night before…) and retired to recharge electronics and crash for the night. No Internet, though – so I am writing all this up on the evening of the 18th, and you will get to see it… whenever I get hold of the Internet for long enough to upload it to the blog.

We’re ready to start out bright and early tomorrow. Avenue of the Giants for as long as that takes – we have several scheduled stops but plan to stop elsewhere too if the mood takes us – and then after that we get as far as we can get before we break for the night. The car has to be delivered to the rental people in Portland OR before 5:30 on the 20th. We have two days to get from here to Portland.

Piece of cake.

Next report, after the Redwood Encounter Day.

"That meal deserves a full blog entry"

So said rdeck as we returned to our lodgings from the fabulous restaurant where we had just had dinner.

So let me tell you about the meal.

rdeck had roasted portabello mushrooms in roasted garlic gravy. with a side of mashed potatoes. I had the pork chop, with roasted apples and onions and gouda rosti potatoes.

We both cleaned our plates.

rdeck was left shaking his head an muttering, "I GOTTA figure out how to do mushrooms like that." My porkchop kind of parted at the touch of a knife with no pressure exerted at all - and those potatoes were melt-in-the-mouth heaven.

Then we had the candy cap mushroom creme brulee for dessert.

We ordered one to share. In retrospect that was probably a mistake. We practically FOUGHT over it.
If it had been eaten by forks instead of spoons there might have been a nasty accident to report. As it was all I can tell you that we cleaned out the creme brulee pot. And I mean *cleaned*. This stuff is to die for.

I had a glass of Gewurtztraminer grape wine juice - not wine, JUICE - from this place, which, if you have the chance to get, you should grab with both hands because it was ambrosia. I regretted not ordering a bottle of the stuff and drinking it all down.

Then we walked home, in sea-mist, and the air smelled cool and briny and full of the promise of the sea. Streetlights looked adrift, haloed, casting odd soft shadows with no real substance onto the ground.

This place... is magic.

*Seriously*.

And tomorrow we go on to see the granddaddy redwoods, up in the Avenue of the Giants. It just get better...

Off to read a little in our magnificent brass bed, and then it's sleep-time. TOmorrow, another day awaits.

Out of the City and into the Woods....

So. Couple of days' worth of catchup.

Drove out of SF in the early morning light, and Golden Gate shone like a pearl. And I drove across it. I feel so... grown up.

We drove out on US 101 and hit Sebastopol rather earlier than I thought we would after a few false starts (our rental's GPS unit occasionally has trouble telling its right from its left...) and we had a nice meal in a brand-new restaurant which had literally opened only three days before while waiting for the author event at Copperfield's Books to start. At around half past two, after lunch and some meandering around Sebastopol's main street (which is GREAT, and extremely eclectic) we came back to the bookshop and I did my reading and signed some stock, and then we had dinner with a friend who had come to see me there. Then we crashed at the local Holiday Inn.

This morning, after the hotel's nice breakfast, we lit out on US 101 until we hit Route 128, and then went west on that.

I think I'm in love.

We drove first through rolling hills and vineyards which were turning jewel shades of garnet and ruby and gold, along this twisty hilly road that the GPS was having real trouble with and eventually decided "This road is straight" and flattened out all the curves on the screen [grin]. Then the vineyards turned into hills, and then the hills turned into... woods.

This is what Heaven looks like. The greengold light of the redwood trees, and the cathedral silences of the groves and the trees that go on forever and reach into the sky. There's a reverence here. This is my country, my kind of land, and I just drove and smiled and smiled and drove and transported myself into a state of zen rapture.

And then we hit the sea.

Spectacular coastline around Mendocino - we drove through Mendocino itself and eventually arrived into Fort Bragg, where we checked into a cute little B&B and are now waiting for a restaurant which was recommended to us to open for dinner.

Weather still good.

First encounter with redwoods accomplished. And I know now I was right to love and revere these trees sight unseen.

Am happy.

See you all later.

FIRST!!!

First in-the-wild review of the final Worldweavers volume!

And it's a good 'un!

Available for pre-order here/, or at your favourite indie store. Remember, let me know in good time and I'll send you a signed bookplate which you can slip into someone's stocking as a promissory present-to-come in February...

Making choices

It was drive out of SF tonight and get to Sebastopol (which by all accounts is less than 2 hours from here) and crash there, or crash near the airport tonight and drive out in the morning. In one sense, it was no choice at all when you grasp the fact that the drive out of SF involves crossing the Presidio park and then the Golden Gate. Why waste that on pitch dark when you can see it all in glorious technicolour in the morning?...

So here we are, ensconced in a hotel close to the airport (VERY close, the airplanes sound like they're taking off directly over us) and we shall make our way to the road out of the city tomorrow morning after a good night's sleep and a cup of coffee. We should get to Sebastopol in plenty of good time and we can tool around there for a bit before the reading - and then we'll find a place to sleep, and be on our merry redwood way on Monday morning. At least that's the current plan.

Following the end of the previous post - we left the WiFi place to walk to what sounded like something fairly close by, two blocks over and two down. But the street we had started on was level. The street two blocks over was a vicious hill. rdeck had a bit of a time getting down it, and didn't really have the opportunity to enjoy the view across the street which was a lovely sunny park into which the warm day had lured what looked like hundreds of babes in bikini tops... Anyway, we made it to our little restaurant, had a bite to eat, enjoyed the spectacle of a couple of gay guys swanning down the street dressed respectively in full bridal regalia (a good-looking layered confection of an off-the-shoulder white gown with long fitted sleeves which must have been hotter than hell to be stuck in out there in the hot sunlight...) and a full crinoline of a rainbow skirt over a skinny rainbow singlet, met a bunch of great dogs (San Francisco has some WONDERFUL dogs!) and barely made it back in time for the reading. Which went well, complete with Ripley the cat in the audience. Well, okay, he slept through most of it but he was in attendance, anyway... And in the aftermath, signed a bunch of books, and accepted an offer of a ride to the airport by brooksmoses which was greatly appreciated. Finding Hertz at the airport proved to be a slightly bigger puzzle but we did it and then swanned out in our white Camry to conquer California. I wanted to go somewhere, the car decided to take us somewhere else, suffice it to say we are in a nearby hotel with the Internets so it's all good. And it looks like the car knows what it was about, anyway, because the map shows that we can just drive on down the road and join the 280 a little ways down the line without having to backtrack any, which if correct will make me very happy tomorrow morning.

See you in Sebastopol.

Still in San Francisco...

Randomnesses.

* Spent most of the day yesterday visiting with a SF friend whom we first met *before we got married*, at the party where rdeck and I first met each other in person - this was now a decade ago, and all I could clearly remember about this woman was that she had dark hair - and that was the only thing that was actually likely to have -you know - CHANGED over the past decade. Well, yes, she was a little greyer - but it wasn't hard to recognise her at all. She and her husband live on Telegraph Hill - so we got to watch the sun set and turn Berkeley gold from her balcony, and we saw and heard the famous Telegraph Hill parrots - they weren't exactly photographically cooperative but hey we SAW them. So there. And then they helped us plot out the rest of the trip. We got a secret password to a nice restaurant in Fort Bragg where we are to go and eat, and tell the owner that our friends sent us. They also told us where to go and see redwoods which aren't obscured by tourists and where it's possible to have a quiet and personal encounter with the big trees. That's all for next week, though.

*This morning, checked out of the Hotel Majestic and took a cab with all our impedimenta out to Borderlands Books on Valencia, where we left said impedimenta in Alan's care and sailed off down the street to explore. I am writing this epistle on a tiny rickety table in perilous proximity to rdeck's orange and carrot juice (which was made right there in front of me and contains FOUR large carrots...) in a cafe called Javalencia. Which has WiFi. Civilised city. Hello, world - I am connected...

*Our cab driver told us that this was the hottest November that he can remember in 36 years which is how long he has lived here. "Whether that is a cause for concern," he said, "remains to be seen..."

*There's a night club across the street from Borderlands Books called "Amnesia". That is presumably where you go when you leave the other neighbourhood nightclub, called "Delirium"...

*The famous Ripley was not yet in residence but I was promised that I could meet him a little later. From his pictures, which I've seen online in several places, it is going to be an interesting experience for someone used to a fluffpuff like Boboko. Whom I will of course start missing fearfully as soon as I see another cat...

* This place is FULL of funky architecture. I've had to restrain myself severely from taking SCADS of photographs, just because something catches my eye. Because EVERYTHING is catching my eye,

* I didn't make it Berkeley this time. Again. I swear, next time I get here I have to basically plan to go there FIRST...

Off to finish my latte. God, I'm such a Yuppie.

Hope to see a few friends at the reading later.

And then it's bye bye City on the Bay, hello Northern California, HELLO Big Trees.

More later.

Got photos to take.

I suppose I should have a SF icon

And I might, just as soon as I download some pictures I took today. But right now I is a tired little bunny.

I left the hotel after breakfast for a lightning round of bookstores in San Francisco - the young lady at the front desk of the hotel obligingly took my list and rendered it on a map for me so I could plan a round trip that took in as many stores as I could. Well, I visited Barnes & Noble, a plethora of indies ranging from the funky to the astonishing, and in the process I WALKED AROUND SAN FRANCISCO. By the time I crawled back up Van Ness Avenue on the way back to the hotel I knew I would miss at least one more bookstore but by this stage I was counting blocks and praying for no more hills because just one more itty bitty one would have probably had me sitting down at the foot of it and asking someone to carry me.

I made it. It was a beautiful day. I met a lot of people. But I is TIRED.

We went out to a very pleasant dinner with swan_tower and her husband to a nice little Italian restaurant. Which was five blocks down and two across from the hotel.

We walked it. I, after a day of walking, managed yet another fourteen SF blocks. And let me just remind y'all, for those who might have forgotten the significance of this, that rdeck *walked the hills of San Francisco*.

Bed now. Am TIRED.

A-travellin'

A few minor things.

1. I have a new favourite airline, I think. From the funky purple lighting to the tongue-in-cheek version of the classic pre-flight briefing spiel ("for the 0.999% of you who have never seen a seatbelt, they work like this...") they have a sense of whimsy. This appeals to me.

2. It took almost an hour less to fly from Seattle to San Francisco than it took to get from Bellingham to Seattle on the airporter shuttle bus. Just sayin'.

3. San Francisco has a very odd relationship with clouds. They hang halfway between the streets and the air and refract light in strange ways. This is pretty cool. Also, the city likes square architecture. A lot.

4. Our hotel is a little off the beaten path, which is a problem we will have to tackle tomorrow morning, but otherwise it is... astonishing. The building dates from 1902, was once the permanent residence of Olivia de Havilland, and our room boasts a real honest to goodness four poster bed. Yes, Virginia, there will be pictures.

5. Just went for a walk around a couple of blocks. Discovered that every street in SF is uphill. Wheeze, gasp.

More tomorrow. Signing off.

This is what it means

From matociquala:
“I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

“It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one and another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

“Armistice Day has become Veterans’ Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans’ day is not.

“So I will throw Veterans’ Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don’t want to throw away any sacred things.”

--Breakfast of Champions, Kurt Vonnegut, 1973

This is for all those out there who still think that any war anywhere is anything vaguely resembling a good idea.

Remember the day when God spoke to man, and that sound was the silence of guns.

Buy a book

Start here.

There's buy-a-book GROUP on Facebook now.

As a lifelong reader, I've kind of been following this credo all my life. I tend to accumulate books at a semi-frightening rate, all the more so now that I know so many writers and I find myself buying books with names I recognise on the cover, names of friends and colleagues.

So, for me, it isn't really something to START doing - but I figured, it was in the air, it would do no harm to spread the vibe. Love the story. Dive between the covers, get lost in a new world. And if you liked what you read, let the author know. Seriously.

I was going to do this in a separate post but this seems as good a time as any - well, hey - I'll sweeten the pot a little. Anyone who buys one of MY books for the next four weeks, let me know and let me have a mailing address (I'll lock comments on this, for the purpose of making this as easy as possible) and I'll pop a signed bookplate in the mail to you. A personalised signed bookplate, if you let me know what you want written.

But buy a book. Any book. Go read. It's addictive...

Thank you for your music Mama Africa

May there be song whereever you go.

Mission Accomplished

Farewell, and thank you.

This is just SO COOL

I think I might cry. I am not sure why. Things like this do that to me.

Hey, CALIFORNIA!

I'm going to be in the Borderlands Bookstore in San Francisco at 3 PM on November 15, and I'll be in Copperfield's Books in Sebastopol at 3 PM on November 16th, reading from various works, signing books, mingling.

Anyone within shouting distance, PLEASE come and say hi! I'd love to see you!

Anyone living in the area (SF, in particular) who wants to, perhaps, get together for a coffee or something, email me for my cell number.

Hope to see some of you there!

The twenty first century indeed

The President-Elect has a website, and a blog.

Talk about hitting the ground running.

Oh, and in the meantime... go visit this place one more time, while this is still up. I LOVE what they've done with it.

And I'll get off the election plateau by the weekend and start doing more constructive things next week. Promise.