Lakeshore

I'm in California. Off to dinner shortly with some folks, all day meeting in Pleasanton tomorrow, then straight back to OAK for the flight home.

3,300 words after work this afternoon on a new project which is itself a subproject of another project. Oh, the tangled web we weave. It's nice to be writing.

I should be working on a new novel right now, but my New Model process stuff has my brain in a bit of a fuzz. I'm giving myself another month of bye and cranking out short fiction to work the muscles. Writing avoidance by writing, as I've said before. Nice habit if you can catch it.

Unknown levels of wit and erudition today and tomorrow. Y'all play nice while I'm gone.

Sunday, lasirenadolce and I cruised home in the Genre car from Crescent City, CA. We followed this route up the coast to Newport, before we cut over to the 5, where traffic was deeply abysmal. We made better time behind the RVs on the two lanes of US-101 than we did on the Interstate.

As any time when I am travelling and Not In a Hurry, there were plentiful stops for photography and general messing about. Highlights were probably Tranny Man, the Prehistoric Gardens and Sea Lion Caves.

Now that I finally have all the pictures uploaded to Flickr (set here) I can post some highlights.

In Smith River, California, we came across ( this little honey )

That's the Ship Ashore Gift Shop. It's a ship. Ashore. The boat's so big it shows up in the aerial/satellite view on Google maps.

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A little ways up the road, we saw ( another boat-as-building. )

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Shortly after that, we were completely distracted in Brookings, OR, by ( Tranny Man! )

Note the 1970s porn star hair and moustache. It took us a while to regain our self-control.

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We then visited the Mary D. Hume, ( an extremely retired historic ship. )

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The bridge connecting Gold Beach and Wedderburn has some ( quite pretty architectural detail. )

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After that, we made it to the Prehistoric Gardens, which I'm pretty sure is frankwu's ( spiritual home. )

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Then it was a visit to Sea Lion Caves, which is really ( pretty cool. )

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Finally, a little something for garyomaha and kevin_standlee, ( coz they're that way. ).

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lasirenadolce has some way better pictures than mine. Check out her Flickr here. I did manage to geocode most of my photos on Flickr, for whatever that's worth. Later this week I'll make more photo posts about Crescent City and the redwoods, using photos from both of us.

At the airport in Portland, waiting for the plane. Uploading the photos from California with an eye to a travelog, see the Flickr set here (once they're uploaded, I mean, not quite yet). Have to crank on a novella Real Soon Now. Groovy photo of me here.

frankwu announces that Exquisite Corpuscle has finally found a home at Fairwood Press. tbclone47 with his perspective on the news.

I will be closing the LOLJay contest voting poll tonight. Hurry over and stuff the ballot for your favorite contender.

I'll be working in Omaha this week, so expect limited wit and erudition.

After a wonderful time in Crescent City the past few days, we had a terrific drive up the coast today, with stops at locations such as the Prehistoric Gardens and the Sea Lion Caves. (If only there was a World's Largest Ball of Twine on the Oregon coast...) I'll make a real travelog tomorrow, right now I'm in turn-and-churn mode, as we got home about two hours later than planned, due to truly dreadful traffic on I-5 between Albany and Portland, and I have to get up in six hours to fly to Omaha. Did get in a quality dinner with the_child, and we taught each other a simple card trick from a book she got.

Omaha tomorrow, then straight to Seattle for Foolscap Friday afternoon. Expect continued light blogging. Meanwhile, to entertain you, ( here's a picture lasirenadolce took of me in the redwood groves along Howland Hill Road )

I'm thinking this might be my new author photo.

Saturday morning in Crescent City. Had a lovely day at the North Coast Redwoods Writers' Conference yesterday. We had a great panel on biography in fiction, which I will podcast soon. I also read "The Dying Dream of Water," a short story from Original Destiny, Manifest Sin which originally appeared in Flytrap. (Speaking of that sort of thing, I got a nice fan letter today off "Tom Edison & His Telegraphic Harpoon" in the current issue of Weird Tales — it's also from Original Destiny, Manifest Sin.)

Had a story sale yesterday, which I'll announce details of once contract stuff is cleared. Today I'm leading a couple of sessions on how to know if you've succeeded as a writer. I'll probably podcast that eventually, too. We've got another group panel this afternoon, then tonight there's a wrap party for the conference. Home tomorrow by the slow road, up the coast on 101 from Crescent City to Newport, at least, maybe further if time permits.

Meanwhile, ( here's a couple of pics from yesterday. )More to come, time and bandwidth permitting.

I have to be at the conference in an hour or so. We took advantage of the morning to drive through the redwoods along a very windy gravel road, including a stop at Stout Grove for a brief hike and some pics. lasirenadolce will have the photographic evidence later.

After our grand morning out, we went to Perlita's for lunch. We'd eaten dinner there last night, and we were so impressed that we went back. This may be the best Mexican food I've eaten on the West Coast. The carne asada is reasonable, but the carnitas were made of awesome.

Off to the North Coast Redwoods Writers' Conference shortly.

Yesterday lasirenadolce and I drove the Genre car from Portland to Crescent City. We made it pretty much as a speed run, as we had a 7 pm dinner date. On arriving, we discovered our dinner date was in Eureka, CA. Hilarity ensued, along with the best Mexican dinner I've had in a long time.

Our hotel doesn't have any Internet connection, and my Sprint EVDO doesn't work here, so we did some war driving last night in order to secure an email check. This morning we're at a coffee house briefly. I don't have to be at the conference until late afternoon, so we're off to the redwoods for a while, via a back road I know of from a prior trip. Hopefully we'll get some good photos, though truthfull I find redwoods hard to photograph.

Y'all play nice wile I'm gone.

After I knock off my day job workday, lasirenadolce and I are off to Crescent City, CA today in the Genre car. Convertible through redwood country, woo hoo! I am a presenter at the North Coast Redwoods Writers' Conference there.

I'm back Sunday night, whereupon I am tearing off to Omaha for the week. Back from Omaha Friday, flying straight to Seattle for Foolscap. Won't be home, really, until the night of Sunday the 23rd. Expect intermittent blogging with scattered wit and erudition.

Meanwhile, don't forget to vote in the LOLJay poll.

ETA: Here's a snippet on the area, known as the Redwood Empire. Also, Crescent City is the site of the most recent tsunami fatalities in the continental United States, in 1964, slightly before my birth.

What he said.

Man, I had fun.

Well, Alcatraz was a blast. Full report later, with photos, suffice to say it was too cool and too much fun. I'm now in the SFO airport waiting for my flight and wishing I'd gotten less sun.

If you're USAnian, Happy Fourth. The rest of y'all world citizens move along, nothing to see here. Me, maybe I'll see fireworks from the air.

Um, Westercon is over. It was pretty amazing. I feel like I toasted the world. Or perhaps the world toasted me. We eventually auctioned off the Toast costume, raising $51 for the Petry Scholarship fund in the process.

( Another toast cutie )

After a series of conversations here at Westercon 60, I am now slated to be the Writer GoH for RustyCon in 2009. Watch for me there.

In other news, today I am going with lasirenadolce, frankwu, danjite, khaybee, SIM, JT, dinogrl, and dave_gallaher to an insider tour of Alcatraz. One of the fen here at Westercon is a park ranger there, and he is taking us in on his day off. That gentleman is a Hero of the Revolution. Watch for some cool photos here later.

Then off to the airport and home tonight to resume Real Life tomorrow.

See also diannarodgers's regular feature, Thinking Error Tuesday. This week's installment is a shout out to my story "Jack's House".

Yesterday was a relatively light day. Only one piece of formal programming, the improv story telling panel with Kevin Andrew Murphy and Tad Williams. Otherwise it was a day of meetings and socializing and recovering from the Madness that Was Sunday. Had a very nice dinner last night with casacorona and jlassen, along with Jason Williams. I then executed Toastmasterly duties as partier-in-chief.

Also, we got the ( Toast badged and took it on tour )

Finally, SCI FI Wire has an interview with me about Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon ].

Wow. Yesterday was a hard burn. I think I pulled a Crazy Ivan. Nearly non-stop programming, including emceeing the Masquerade. We had more Toast of course, and various other kinds of mayhem. I hurt this morning, in a number of places.

Westercon has very kindly given me a light day today to recover before my toastly duties tomorrow.

Best moment of the day yesterday: I offered Larry Niven a "I Ain't Jay Lake" ribbon for his badge, asking him, "Here, would you like to not be me?"

He said, "No thanks, I prefer to keep my options open."

Morning has broken and I can't glue it back together. The Big Funny is stashed here in my room. I gave out about 25 TOAST ribbons last night as well as some assorted buttons. Just finished researching my speaker notes for the Meet the Guests tonight.

All in all, I think it's a Con.

Speaking of Cons, lasirenadolce has some posts with photos about JayCon and the ensuing Tiki karaoke madness, here, here and here.

Also, the suite she is a half suite in fact, so no room party methinks.

In here at Westercon, after a day of serious erranding with danjite and khaybee. We had a nice visit at the Locus offices, including a lovely lunch with Charles, Amelia and Tim at Italian Colors. Various bookstore stops. Dinner with casacorona, including a bit of business on Escapement (nee Stemwinder) and possible future projects. I'm chilling in the room for a while before my Official Toastmaster Meeting with various Con personages at 9 pm, then the Vintacon party.