life on the road
I have been home this weekend recovering from the first leg of the tour before they ship me out again tomorrow, and just wanted to wave hi to all of you I've had a chance to meet, and share some glee. :D

First, though, some non-self-centered glee: tor.com! yay! The site looks really fabulous, and chock-full of awesome content.

So the tour kicked off with the previously-mentioned launch party, which came complete with regency dancing by the fabulous Susan de Guardiola and friends, which you can see for yourself below in this, well, slightly shaky clip (taken with my tiny digital camera) that is nevertheless great fun. They did this really fabulous quadrille (a few years off the Temeraire time period, but we stretched the point, as it is very spiffy and exciting to look at).



Also, I got a shiny! elisem of lioness.net surprised me at the party with Indomitable, this amazing pendant featuring "dragonscale carnelian", which I have now been wearing to every reading, appropriately, for courage.



The dancers! They are from left to right, Mary Alice Ladd, Alan Ahles, Lynn Saltonstall, Marc Hartstein, Marci
Morimoto, Racheline Maltese, Irene Urban, and Susan de Guardiola.


Indomitable! ♥


Me with many of the shiny foreign editions.


Charles, with the gorgeous display of the entire Hard Case Crime line so far.


OMGWTFPOLARBEAR (this will probably only make sense to Lost fans, if them) with the cover of Fifty To One. Charles is of the opinion that when whoever killed the polar bear dies, he should also be stuffed, and planted at the opposite end of the hall with a rifle.


Then it was on to the Barnes & Noble at Greenwich Village, for my first-ever bookstore signing, v. exciting. My awesome publicist David Moench of Del Rey suggested reading something new, rather than an excerpt from the book, so I have been reading a short story called "Vici" (which will be appearing in a new Dragons anthology from Gardner Dozois at some point soon), and having heaps of fun with it. It's set in the Temeraire universe, but much earlier, and is the story of the taming of the first dragon in the West.

Ever since I had to read at South Street Seaport AFTER the amazing ellen_kushner (whom you all want to hear read in person if you ever get a chance, seriously), I have been determined to get better at readings. I feel like I am maybe starting to get the hang of it, the most important lesson being to have no shame and just dive in there, and try to do voices. Everyone loves voices! They keep people awake! And as no one expects an author to actually be a great performer, the bar is nice and comfortably low, and people have been very nice to me. *g*



Look, actual people! They came!


In which I attempt to look like a real author, despite wearing a t-shirt saying DO NOT TOUCH ALIEN DEVICES. You cannot read it in this, but I am also wearing an awesome pin someone made for me, saying VOTES FOR DRAGONS. Temeraire would approve! \o/


Then I hit the road, or rather Amtrak, to visit Pandemonium in Boston, where Tyler et al. made me very welcome, and gave me some aviator goggles!


I also felt bitter envy of all the teenagers gaming in the other room. Why was there no Pandemonium where I grew up? My sister, who was often forced to play Dungeons and Dragons against her will, also asks this question.

And, I had a pal there with a Flip camera, so I even have a little clip of me doing my thing:



I stayed on and spent the weekend there with friends, mostly sitting outside in an actual YARD -- do you know that people have actual land, sometimes, without a building on it, right next to their house? There are trees on it, and grass, and you can even put a table and chairs out, and if you are lucky someone will even put out a grill and make you corn on the cob and things. I am slightly suspicious of this and yet it appeals. I even got a bunch of outlining done on the Secret Garden-inspired YA.

After that, it was on to Philadelphia, D.C., and Richmond, in a mad and gleeful three-day rush. It's interesting to me how quickly you can fall into a routine, moving from one hotel to the next -- arrive, open suitcase, toiletries flung into bathroom, everything quickly has a place in the suitcase.

In Philly I got to read at the gorgeous Free Library, after spending a beautiful hot sunny afternoon sitting out writing by a fountain in a park, which I have identified as the JFK Plaza (I love Google Maps), and in D.C. I repeated the process at Dupont Circle, then bopped along to do an interview at the Fast Forward studios and then to read at the Borders at Bailey's Crossroads, where I met by far the noisiest crowd, helped along by a band of ringers planted in the audience. *g*

Afterwards I went out with the ringers to what we expected to be a nice quiet shoebox restaurant that unexpectedly had a LOUD live band in the back, sending us out into the Arlington streets peregrinating, oh, half a block to an Irish pub, where I grilled people for details about vocal training (for a story, although I am finding it tempting now for myself).

Sadly, my camera spent the whole time sitting in my suitcase in my hotel room, uselessly. :/ So if there are any of you out there who were at these readings and got any photos, I would love copies!

I did get some photos in Richmond, but, um, none of the actual reading at Leila's fabulous Creatures and Crooks bookstore. *facepalm* A friend took me around to these two gorgeous old houses -- you see, at one point there were at least two tobacco tycoons in Richmond who had excessive money and possibly an unhealthy sense of competition, because right next door to each other there are not one but two houses which were brought over from England brick by brick, Agecroft and Virginia House, both with splendid gardens which were our aim. VH was closed by the time we finished walking about the Agecroft gardens, so, er, we broke in! (This involved daringly crossing a small patch of grass and jumping down two feet from a low rock wall.)

There, I was able to capture EXOTIC FAUNA in the WILD.



I kept saying, LOOK, it is a BUNNY. My friend was unimpressed and said, "Yes. Yes, it is a bunny. We have those here!" I'm sorry, I don't understand how this is not exciting. It is a LIVE bunny! That is not a statue or CGI! It just sat there while I got close enough to take that picture without digital zoom!


A pretty sundial, and even telling accurate time, allowing for daylight savings and the difference from the London latitude it was STOLEN from.


Elizabethan doorbell.


And my one actual picture from Creatures n' Crooks, with an aviator! \o/


After the reading, having spent the very hottest part of the day tramping around Virginia in what everyone assured me was a nice, mild, not-too-hot day (I am pretty confident there was some snickering going on behind their hands as they said this), I went back to the hotel and fell over.

And then the next morning, it was onto the Amtrak Regional all the way home, a trip that was supposed to be six hours and predictably became eight, but I had a seat, my laptop, my iphone, and a bottle of water, so really it was pretty much like spending the day at home. Got about 2500 words of the other story for Gardner done, and hopefully the plane trip tomorrow will see that close to its end.

Tomorrow I am off to San Francisco! I cannot say that without hearing Eddie Izzard's voice. Town, city, of gleaming spires. People live here! ALCATRAZ.

All right, and speaking of which, I ship out at 0800 tomorrow, ungodly hour, so I will end here and dash off to finish packing. \o/