Thursday, April 18, 2002
I'm having less trouble getting back into the novel than I'd expected. 1,024 wds. today. Usually, though, nothing disrupts my writing like a trip, especially a trip to a convention.
Anyway, on to the rest of the con report. I have to confess I'm a little indifferent about finishing this. As Mia Wallace said to Vincent Vega in Pulp Fiction, "It's been built up way too much," and I doubt my account of the bizarre events that attended the end of Sunday can possibly convey the weirdness of the whole incident.
Let's see. Sunday. I awoke feeling well, the effects of Saturday's sudden illness seemingly past. Maybe it was only a hangover after all. Maybe it was the crappy tapwater at the hotel. Maybe it was stress. I think I had another of those dreadful "bagel" things for breakfast. Next time I do a con, I believe I'll carry my breakfast with me. Wait. No, I didn't have one of the "bagel" things. I was late getting out of the hotel room and had a 12:30 lunch appointment with my Roc editor, Laura Anne Gilman, so I skipped breakfast. My appetite was still a bit iffy, but I managed to get down half a roast-beef sandwich, a few French fries, and a lot of water. We talked about the con, sales of Threshold (which are going well), and such like. She gave me a copy of the new Roc anthology, The Darker Side, John Pelan's follow-up to his 1998 Darkside: Horror for the Next Millennium. It includes my short story, "Still Water," as well as new material by Poppy, Brian Hodge, Peter Crowther, Tim Lebbon, Jessica Amanda Salmonson, and lots of other folks. The anthology will be in stores in early May. After lunch, I went to the dealers' room and signed, literally, hundreds of copies of In the Garden of Poisonous Flowers and Tales of Pain and Wonder. A little later, we went to the closing ceremonies, where Neil gloated over winning the purple three-eared, eight-legged, bug-eyed bunny rabbit in the art auction (it should have been mine, of course). While the convention proper ended here, with Charlie Grant receiving his Toastmaster award, many of the writers were scheduled for a 6 p.m. offsite signing at the After-Words bookshop in downtown Chicago.
Just after closing ceremonies ended, Neil's acting assitant Gwenda Bond ("Bond, Gwenda Bond.") asked me (well, it was slightly stronger than an asking, but whatever, the wounds of coercion will heal) if Jennifer and I would accompany Neil for dinner, as she had to head back to Kentucky. We were promised sushi and noodles for our troubles, and since I had no other plans, I agreed. I wandered off towards the bar (only to discover it closed) and Neil wandered off to sign signature pages for Steve Jones (the same set I'd signed on Friday). I hope you guys like parentheticals. I seem stuck on them this afternoon.
There was an enormous amount of confusion about exactly how we were to be transported from the Radisson at O'Hare to the bookshop where the signing was being held. Plans seemed to change every fifteen minutes or so. But finally Neil and I were squeezed into a very small car (my height renders most cars "very small") and driven downtown. Neil talked about the night he and Poppy had cobra wine in New Orleans, and I marveled at the city and wondered aloud and at length why the hell we'd been stuck way out in the boonies when there was actual civilization only a half hour from the airport. We arrived at After-Words and, much to Neil's relief, there was virtually no one waiting to have books signed. I think that Neil had just about reached his signing limit for the weekend. I know I certainly had, and I'd signed probably 1/10th what he'd signed. Apparently, the After-Words affair had been poorly advertised and Neil hadn't mentioned it in his online journal (probably because no one bothered to tell him about it until after he got to the convention). We were asked if we'd like some foul-smelling catered Thai food (we declined) and then were sat at a table far in the back of the store, apparently so we couldn't talk to anyone else. Neil signed for a dozen or so folks, and I signed about six copies of Tales of Pain and Wonder. The bookstore had that collection, as well as copies of From Weird and Distant Shores and In the Garden of Poisonsous Flowers, but not a single copy of Threshold. There were wooden pillars with bits of authorial wisdom scrawled upon them, including "Good prose is like a windowpane." I looked at it and remarked to Jennifer that no, "Good prose is like a pane of stained glass."
The signing ended at eight o'clock, and we gathered outside on the sidewalk for the drive to the sushi restaurant — me, Neil, Jennifer, Ed Bryant, and "Tiffany" (name changed to protect the guilty). "Tiffany" is a blonde drummer for a local ABBA cover band. Well, she is in this story, at least. She works at one of the local bookstores and wanted to take Neil to dinner as thanks for his having signed. She was wearing a Spooky Kitten t-shirt. We were told that the restaurant was in Arlington Heights, a Chicago suburb just west of O'Hare. There was some trouble getting to her car, which had been parked in an adjacent public garage, and we had to walk around the block to find an unlocked door. "Tiffany" drives a Ford Escort station wagon; I sat up front (leg room) and Neil, Ed, and Jennifer packed themselves painfully into the backseat. Leaving the garage, "Tiffany" discovered she didn't have the money to get out of the parking deck, which we should have taken as a warning sign and run. But we are trusting souls.
For the next half hour or so, as the sun set, "Tiffany" drove aimlessly about downtown Chicago, looking for an entrance onto I-90. We crossed the Chicago River repeatedly. We saw some truly scary neighborhoods. In the backseat, Neil and Ed talked shop, unaware of the travails that lay ahead. "Tiffany" finally discovered an entrance ramp onto the interstate and soon we were racing at a disquieting 85 mph towards Arlington Heights and the promised sushi. But as we passed the last of downtown, we left the interstate and "Tiffany" began to mumble about how her friend had given her bad directions. At this point, I have to confess it all becomes a bit fuzzy. We raced along a series of backroads, county highways, and the city began to give way to suburbs and small patches of farmland. There were cows. Pretty soon, there were only cows. We passed Diamond Lake and Neil remarked, a bit nervously, "Diamond Lake. What a pretty name," but his tone made it plain that what he was really thinking was, Where the bollocks are we?
Though I did not know it at the time, behind me, Neil, Jennifer, and Ed were discussing, in fearful whispers, the possibility that "Tiffany" might be taking us all out in the woods to do us in, and there wouldn't even be any sushi beforehand. We rushed past strip malls and honky tonks and dark trees. Plainly, we'd reached the sort of place where people do not eat sushi. Things continued on this way for about another hour and a half, until about 10 p.m. Occassionally, Neil would politely, if nervously, inquire if we were almost to the restaurant, and "Tiffany" would say something noncommital, "Maybe," or "That's possible," or "We're making progress." That sort of thing. Finally, with the city lights far to the southeast behind us, and "Tiffany" convinced we were headed south, though I could tell from the position of the moon and Venus that we were clearly heading northwest (shades of Flight 19), I asked, "So, we know where we are, right?" She made a confused, garumphing sort of sound as we bounced over a railroad track at 75 mph, muttered something about killing her friend (the one who gave her bad directions) with a tire iron, and screeched into the parking lot of a convenience store. Neil was, I think, trying to "talk her down" at this point. He indicated that we'd reached a point where we needed to determine three things: 1) where we were; 2) where Arlington Heights might be relative to where we were; and 3) how long it would take to get back to the hotel at O'Hare. Me, I just wanted out of that damned car.
Of course, by this time, we were all either starving or carsick (or both). Neil and Ed grabbed handfuls of junk food (including a dubious looking turkey sandwich wrapped in plastic) and cans of Red Bull, while "Tiffany" and Jennifer looked over a road map with the bald and very muscular man working behind the convenience store's counter. "You're not anywhere near Arlington Heights!" the man exclaimed unhelpfully. "Hell, you're way up here," and he pointed to a spot a few inches off the map, on the counter. "You guys are behind the cheddar curtain now!" Slowly, the horror sunk in. "Tiffany" had driven us all the way to Wisconson. We were, in fact, more than halfway to Milwaukee. I shook my head and went to take a piss.
Fifteen minutes later, we were back in the car, following the bald convenience store attendant's directions east, back to I-94, which would carry us back down to O'Hare and Rosemont. Scary Kitten Girl, certain now that she would forever be known as the crazy chick who'd kidnapped Neil and Caitlin and Ed and spirited them off to Wisconsin, continued to drive at alarming speeds. Neil, concerned that, in her agitated state, she might pass out and steer us into a tree, forced her to drink a can of Red Bull, while lecturing us on the dietary habits of rickshaw drivers. Ed Bryant discovered that the turkey sandwich had expired in February and, so, no one ate it. Back on the interstate, we passed a cop at 90 mph and Ed finally suggested, ever so tactfully, that perhaps she should slow down. Which she did. For about thirty seconds, at which point a large pick-up truck passed us and she sped up again. I'm pretty sure my fingerprints are indeliably imbedded in the vinyl of her dash.
And just when it seemed the evening could reach no new heights of surreality, Neil began to sing "Denton" from Shock Treatment. I looked over my shoulder and he was grinning somewhat disconcertingly. "Are you singing what I think you're singing?" asked I and "I didn't know anyone else knew about Shock Treatment" said Neil and continued singing, running through most of the songs from the film as "Tiffany" drove blissfully past the hotel. While she turned around to try again, Neil regaled us with tales of an obscure mid-'80s film called The Return Captain of Invincible and how he'd met Richard O'Brien. About 11 p.m., we were finally deposited back at the hotel. I think I might have kissed the parking lot. There may yet be gravel between my teeth. There's a little more, but that's the worst of it.
Moral: Never accept offers of free sushi from cute, navigationally-impaired girls from Chicago who wear Scary Kitten t-shirts. Resist.
I was supposed to meet with a curator at the Field Museum on Monday morning to examine mosasaur specimens, but the unexpected jaunt to Wisconsin, and the con in general, had me entirely too wiped out. I begged off, promising to make the Field next time I'm in town. Jennifer and I got up Monday morning and drove straight back to Birmingham, eleven hours or so, stopping only for gas and to wolf down a few Krystals somewhere near Nashville. And that was my WHC 2002 experience. I'm sure I've forgotten loads and loads and loads of fascinating stuff, such as "Mulch Madness," but it all pales in comparison to the ride with Scary Kitten Girl, and I suspect you'll live without ever hearing it.
On to other things . . .
The winner of the Name a Character contest is (drum roll) Carol Murray, who suggested Eponine Chattox. How could I resist? I will insert Eponine into a forthcoming story and Carol gets some goodies, though offhand, I can't recall what. The runner up, who doesn't get squat, is Jason Erik Lundberg, for Eulalia Bone. Thanks to everyone for the names. It was a hard choice, truly.
Now I think I shall go and lie on my face.
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