Just received the Programming Schedule from Barbara and Chris Roden, who are handling programming for the World Fantasy Convention – which is here in Toronto this year, starting on November 1st. (That’s an info heads-up, WFC always sells out well in advance.)

It is pretty much the only convention I try to attend every year. Even for Certified Curmudgeons there are a lot of friends and colleagues (agents, editors) who attend, making the hotel bar a lot of fun. By now I have ‘traditions’, such as a Saturday dinner group that is partly a memorial to a friend – Charles N. Brown, who created Locus magazine.

One year I watched a world series game in the bar with Jeremy Lassen of Nightshade Books. Jeremy, a ‘goodly, portly man’, in Shakespeare’s words, wore a resplendent orange and black pinstripe custom-made three-piece suit (how would that not be custom-made, I hear you asking). Yes, it was Halloween, but that wasn’t it: they are the colours of his beloved San Francisco Giants, who were playing that night. There’s a fan! Another WFC baseball memory, from the convention in San Jose, involves another hotel bar (you don’t have to comment on everything, you know!), watching my Yankees play (and win) a game, with John Berlyne, a UK agent who really did want to learn baseball. A surprising number of others came over and joined us, pretending similar interest. The final exam involved the infield fly rule. (Those following this year’s playoffs will know that not even umpires always get that right.)

In any case, I am moderating a good panel (people and topic, both) on Thursday afernoon, on ‘The Fantasy of the Wilderness’, a subject that interests me a lot. Then on Saturday afternoon at 1 the programmers have generously given me a full hour for the debut reading from River of Stars. This makes for a mini-tradition,I guess, because I did the first public reading for Under Heaven at WFC, too.

Means I have to figure out a passage … and as I have written in these journals before, reading passages are a tricky business. I don’t like spoilers (because readers don’t, either). I don’t like needing to do extensive backstory explanations. And what ‘works’ for someone at home reading is not the same as what works in a public space, listening. On the other hand, it is a book, not a play, a reading, not a theatrical performance.

Somewhere between now and then I’ll sit down and sort this out … though I often end up with three or four passages from a book that I try before settling on what feels best for touring/reading purposes.

Of course, by the time Catherine M is finished copy-editing the manuscript, I may be forced to read the recipe for dover sole with pine nuts in chapter four. (See previous post for the backstory to that joke).

Another photo? This, also from Prague. Sheer luck – we were crossing the Charles Bridge at night when …

I am quite sure that these were NOT being set off because a Canadian author was in town to sign books. Never did find out why they were being lit, though. Made for a pretty gorgeous twenty minutes. The bridge (especially at night when crowds thin a bit) is magnificent to start with …