still coughing in san diego
Nov. 6th, 2007 12:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerWorld Fantasy was fantastic - seems like a million years ago! I was pretty low-energy because of my cold, so I missed all the parties, but at least I got to have quiet quality time with lots of old friends from all over who came together at WFC, including Sharon Shinn (St Louis), Guy Kay (Toronto), Caroline Stevermer (Mpls), Lisa Tuttle (Scotland), and a host of other notables I hope I didn't infect with anything other than banter. It's amazing to me that these are now names to conjure with; we were all puppies together not so long ago. I must say I do like the folks who are puppies now. Good people all around; a fine family to belong to.
I was blown away by a panel featuring Betty Ballantine, founder - with late husband Ian - of Bantam Books and then of Ballantine, the original publishers of LOTR and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. When the moderator was taking questions, I stood up and thanked her for creating my entire generation of fantasists. There's no question but that we would not exist without the inspiration those books provided, both aesthetically and practically. I mean, there we were, young and impressionable - first they give us Tolkien & James Branch Cabell & E.R. Eddison et al . . . and then Peter S. Beagle & Joy Chant, so we know this stuff isn't just written by Dead Guys . . . . Tom Doherty, who had been her sales manager, was also very impressive about the biz. It was an amazing slice of history; I hope someone else has written the panel up somewhere more thoroughly than I ever will.
I hated to leave on Saturday afternoon, but needs must. A dandy flight to San Diego, though long, and me looking like a preppie Frito Bandito with a plaid handkerchief tied over my mouth & nose to keep the moist air in and my coughs from infecting the entire plane. Arrived about 2 am my time, long wait for luggage, then Stroms kindly picked me up & stuck me in their guest room. Yale & I rehearsed the next morning (while they prepared for their 10-yr-old's birthday party that afternoon - and you think I have a complicated life!) - then another friend (Lynette Allen, faboo woman who founded the San Diego Jewish Film Fest) picked me up and took me to the JCC in La Jolla, where Yale & I did a 20-minute Golden Dreydl show. Shall I be honest? It was a train wreck: we were outdoors in a courtyard reverberating with kids playing on the jungle gym (or whatever they call it nowadays), and they didn't even have a mike for me - produced one at the last minute, but it was a POS mike and no one in the audience could hear us. Too bad, as I was brilliant; the audience worked its magic, and I found reserves I only suspected I had. Yale's fiddling was lost on the wind. Then I sat at a long table with all the other authors, signing books when the occasion arose, and trading war stories. One woman, who writes for teens, said she'd gotten an indoor slot, but her talk was attended only by a handful bored 6-year olds: "A lesson in humility," she said wryly, and it sure can be! But, like WFC, these things are at the very least a great chance to hang with other writers and compare notes. And some very nice people came by the table. And books were sold, and the temperature dropped as the courtyard fell into shadow, and eventually I was released to go and have some truly fine tea with my old Clarion students, Shweta & Katie, and their husband & roommate respectively, and a fabulous freshmun named Kate whom I met at my reading in SF this summer. We had a grand old gossip about the Campion family, and then Delia phoned to tell me that Gene Wolfe had won the World Fantasy Award for best novel (and a good thing, too! I would have felt ridiculous if I had won when he was on the ballot), and then she took my breath away with the news that Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling had won Best Anthology for Salon Fantastique (containing Delia's brilliant "La Feé Verte") - and that Terri had essentially dedicated her share of the award to us, for being an inspiration or somesuch. Meaning that Delia was sitting on the train to NYC with one butt-ugly statue to lug home. But, as everyone told me when I won mine for Thomas the Rhymer, it looks just like Jacques Cousteau if you put a sock on its head. That![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
t_windling. When people refer to "the soul of generosity" they are usually being rhetorical. But in her case, it is the literal truth.
Let's see; where were we? Ah - last night, a cough-filled extravaganza involving many excellent hotel pillows, which leads to today. Today I went to the JCC pre-school and entertained 2 groups of 4-year-olds with an age-appropriate version of The Golden Dreydl involving recorded music, a large peacock puppet, and small children spinning like tops. Two 30-minute shows in a row with no break - though the kids were fabulous, and sat nicely with legs "criss-cross: applesauce!", poor darlings. I also taught them all to say: - Get it? - Got it! - Good! Just when I thought I was done, they brought in the 3-year-olds. OK. I was getting paid handsomely, so if they wanted to throw in a bonus group, what else did I have to do? These kids were great, though. I'd forgotten how new they were here on earth. Everything interested them. I have much love for them, and hope I didn't scare them with the demons too much.
Then I went out to the Book Fair, and was delighted to find Jo Walton's Farthing there! It's very cool, Jo, as there was apparently a 20-person Reading Committee who chooses the books they'll carry each year. Somebody in San Diego loves you.
Then I went to lunch to hear Nathan Englander speak. He's very good - reminds me of people I love, very passionate & spontaneous & erudite - a bit like Tony Kushner - but omigod, he reads his own prose like one of those awful college poetry people - a weird singsong cadence that has nothing to do with the actual text. Is this an Iowa Workshop thing?
Then I gave up and came back to my room to collapse, and here you find me to this very hour.
So now here I am sitting in my lovely hotel room, eating sushi and listening to an archived program of my favorite radio show, WNYC's John Schaefer's New Sounds (check out Kálmán Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band! and hey - David Byrne's The Knee Plays has finally been reissued!!) - I keep forgetting one can do that nowadays. Nice world we live in. Ahhhh! the aspirin must be kicking in.
See ya in Kalamazoo.
I was blown away by a panel featuring Betty Ballantine, founder - with late husband Ian - of Bantam Books and then of Ballantine, the original publishers of LOTR and the Ballantine Adult Fantasy line. When the moderator was taking questions, I stood up and thanked her for creating my entire generation of fantasists. There's no question but that we would not exist without the inspiration those books provided, both aesthetically and practically. I mean, there we were, young and impressionable - first they give us Tolkien & James Branch Cabell & E.R. Eddison et al . . . and then Peter S. Beagle & Joy Chant, so we know this stuff isn't just written by Dead Guys . . . . Tom Doherty, who had been her sales manager, was also very impressive about the biz. It was an amazing slice of history; I hope someone else has written the panel up somewhere more thoroughly than I ever will.
I hated to leave on Saturday afternoon, but needs must. A dandy flight to San Diego, though long, and me looking like a preppie Frito Bandito with a plaid handkerchief tied over my mouth & nose to keep the moist air in and my coughs from infecting the entire plane. Arrived about 2 am my time, long wait for luggage, then Stroms kindly picked me up & stuck me in their guest room. Yale & I rehearsed the next morning (while they prepared for their 10-yr-old's birthday party that afternoon - and you think I have a complicated life!) - then another friend (Lynette Allen, faboo woman who founded the San Diego Jewish Film Fest) picked me up and took me to the JCC in La Jolla, where Yale & I did a 20-minute Golden Dreydl show. Shall I be honest? It was a train wreck: we were outdoors in a courtyard reverberating with kids playing on the jungle gym (or whatever they call it nowadays), and they didn't even have a mike for me - produced one at the last minute, but it was a POS mike and no one in the audience could hear us. Too bad, as I was brilliant; the audience worked its magic, and I found reserves I only suspected I had. Yale's fiddling was lost on the wind. Then I sat at a long table with all the other authors, signing books when the occasion arose, and trading war stories. One woman, who writes for teens, said she'd gotten an indoor slot, but her talk was attended only by a handful bored 6-year olds: "A lesson in humility," she said wryly, and it sure can be! But, like WFC, these things are at the very least a great chance to hang with other writers and compare notes. And some very nice people came by the table. And books were sold, and the temperature dropped as the courtyard fell into shadow, and eventually I was released to go and have some truly fine tea with my old Clarion students, Shweta & Katie, and their husband & roommate respectively, and a fabulous freshmun named Kate whom I met at my reading in SF this summer. We had a grand old gossip about the Campion family, and then Delia phoned to tell me that Gene Wolfe had won the World Fantasy Award for best novel (and a good thing, too! I would have felt ridiculous if I had won when he was on the ballot), and then she took my breath away with the news that Ellen Datlow & Terri Windling had won Best Anthology for Salon Fantastique (containing Delia's brilliant "La Feé Verte") - and that Terri had essentially dedicated her share of the award to us, for being an inspiration or somesuch. Meaning that Delia was sitting on the train to NYC with one butt-ugly statue to lug home. But, as everyone told me when I won mine for Thomas the Rhymer, it looks just like Jacques Cousteau if you put a sock on its head. That
t_windling. When people refer to "the soul of generosity" they are usually being rhetorical. But in her case, it is the literal truth.Let's see; where were we? Ah - last night, a cough-filled extravaganza involving many excellent hotel pillows, which leads to today. Today I went to the JCC pre-school and entertained 2 groups of 4-year-olds with an age-appropriate version of The Golden Dreydl involving recorded music, a large peacock puppet, and small children spinning like tops. Two 30-minute shows in a row with no break - though the kids were fabulous, and sat nicely with legs "criss-cross: applesauce!", poor darlings. I also taught them all to say: - Get it? - Got it! - Good! Just when I thought I was done, they brought in the 3-year-olds. OK. I was getting paid handsomely, so if they wanted to throw in a bonus group, what else did I have to do? These kids were great, though. I'd forgotten how new they were here on earth. Everything interested them. I have much love for them, and hope I didn't scare them with the demons too much.
Then I went out to the Book Fair, and was delighted to find Jo Walton's Farthing there! It's very cool, Jo, as there was apparently a 20-person Reading Committee who chooses the books they'll carry each year. Somebody in San Diego loves you.
Then I went to lunch to hear Nathan Englander speak. He's very good - reminds me of people I love, very passionate & spontaneous & erudite - a bit like Tony Kushner - but omigod, he reads his own prose like one of those awful college poetry people - a weird singsong cadence that has nothing to do with the actual text. Is this an Iowa Workshop thing?
Then I gave up and came back to my room to collapse, and here you find me to this very hour.
So now here I am sitting in my lovely hotel room, eating sushi and listening to an archived program of my favorite radio show, WNYC's John Schaefer's New Sounds (check out Kálmán Balogh Gypsy Cimbalom Band! and hey - David Byrne's The Knee Plays has finally been reissued!!) - I keep forgetting one can do that nowadays. Nice world we live in. Ahhhh! the aspirin must be kicking in.
See ya in Kalamazoo.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Funny you should mention Joy Chant...
Date: 2007-11-06 05:46 am (UTC)And our two extra copies of Tea with the Black Dragon, at that. And, uh, a few more books. They left with at least one paper bag each.
It was absolutely splendid to see you! I'm so very glad you had the time for tea.
-Shweta
Re: Funny you should mention Joy Chant...
Date: 2007-11-14 07:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 07:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 07:50 am (UTC)World Fantasy will be in my neck of the woods in 2009. WooHoo! Since that is one of the cons I can't travel too. I've already bought my membership. And yes, I've asked to be on the committed.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 07:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 08:13 am (UTC)Get well soon!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-06 11:52 am (UTC)That's like one of those very weird anonymous valentines!
Thanks for spotting it.
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 07:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 01:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 07:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 02:30 am (UTC)OH. MY. GOD.
Whoosh.
I continue to be incredibly bummed that we missed it.
ps: Seems like everyone's got some kind of illin' or other. Feel better!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-07 02:49 am (UTC)Something every child needs in his/her education. Your mention of Danny Kaye at your reading made me swoon!
no subject
Date: 2007-11-14 07:26 pm (UTC)