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Monday, September 6: One last bit of business and then I was free to
be a fan again for what little remained of the con. I had lunch
with Chris Roberson, a fine new writer and the publisher of Monkeybrain
Books. I had sold him a Lucifer Jones story - I love the title:
"The Island of Annoyed Souls" - for an anthology he
was editing, and we talked about his bringing the three Lucifer
Jones books back into print as trade paperbacks. I don't know
what will come of it - he's the newest of the new publishers,
and he's just getting established -- but it's nice to know Lucifer
still has fans. He's my favorite of all my characters, and he'd
been in mothballs for eleven year due to lack of interest. Then,
suddenly, he's in Argosy and Chris' anthology
and Adventure Tales, and I imagine Monkeybrain
or someone else will reissue the books in the next year or three.
Lord knows I've written more important stuff, lots of it -- but
if I could only write one thing for the rest of my life, it'd
be Lucifer Jones stories. I just love them, and I'm grateful
that there are once again some editors who feel the same.
And that ended my business for the con.
I met Carol and Bill and Cokie Cavin, and we took a ducks tour,
an amphibious bus (same thing as last year's hippo tour in Toronto).
Our driver had honed his routine, and we got a groan-inducing
pun or a joke with long whiskers on it every fifteen seconds
for the whole two-hour tour.
Then we went back to the Sheraton and met
my Listserv members for dinner -- Bob Faw, John Teehan and his
lady, Adrienne Gormley, Guy and Rosy Lillian, a number of others
- and wound up where we'd started: at Marche, which can accommodate
a group like that on two seconds' notice. Carol came up to the
CFG suite for an hour or two, then went to the room to pack and
turn in early. I hit the few remaining parties, wandered down
to the con suite for an hour, then back to CFG, where John Hertz
had stopped by, and visited with him until maybe 5:30 AM.
Tuesday,
September 7: Carol
figured that I'd had about twenty hours sleep in the last five
nights, so she very thoughtfully went out, bought some blueberry
muffins, and brought them and coffee back to the room before
waking me. We checked out, met Jeff Calhoun, took a shuttle to
the airport, were joined by Mary Martin and Debbie Oakes, and
flew home.
I found 1778 e-mails waiting for me. After
I'd painstakingly eliminated the spam, one piece at a time, there
were 114 left.
I just love the way technology has simplified
my life.
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