I was down on Hawthorne with the_child and lasirenadolce, buying cheese for an impromptu dinner at the home of tillyjane with various folks from that side of the family. After a chat with the cashier about my books (prompted by my Radcon 4 t-shirt), we popped out to the sidewalk to be greeted with a hearty, "Toooooast." It was one of the Westercon attendees, walking along with some used books for resale at Powell's on Hawthorne. He stopped and told me how much he'd liked Mainspring [ Powell's | Amazon ] . We talked about Escapement and Madness of Flowers . As lasirenadolce said, if she hadn't been there she wouldn't have believed it. Some days the external validation fairy just backs a dump truck over you. In other news, I have rolled through chapter one of Escapement and editorial rewrite continues apace.