FogCon: or, how to lose weight and influence people

So the FogCon schedule is up on their website here, which means it's official: you can skip breakfast to catch me on a panel Saturday morning, and then skip dinner to catch the same me on a different panel Saturday evening. It's okay, I'm sharper when I'm hungry.

Like this:

Saturday, 9:00-10:15 A.M.
A Sense of Displacement
California Room

Write Where You Know: If you’ve never been to Mars, how can you write about it? How does where you’ve been affect your work? Do you have to travel in order to write about far-flung actual places, even if you then transmute them into fantasy?
M: Emily Jiang, Chaz Brenchley, Cassie Alexander, Lynn Alden Kendall

and

Saturday, 8:00-9:15 P.M.
Why London? Nod Nolyhw?
California Room

What is it about England’s capital that inspires so many stories positing the existence of a second, evil twin city? Maybe it’s that there’s enough history there for two separate cities. Or that there’s enough ghosts that a second, spectral city is the only answer to affordable housing. Whatever the reason, London keeps authors coming back to build: above, below, instead and sometimes in ways we really don’t have prepositions for. But why?
M: Amy Sundberg, Alan Beatts, Chaz Brenchley, Valerie Estelle Frankel

[I kind of want "Nod Nolyhw?" on a T-shirt now. Except that the question mark should be Spanish-style, back to front and at the other end. And it might lead people to suppose that I was a London writer, which I so very am not. I just don't think they have any other Brits attending, so they felt obliged. S'okay, I can find things to say about metrocentricity'n'stuff.]

Work. I haz it.

In thirteen days from now, I shall be in mid-air, heading westward. California, here I etc.

Before then, I absolutely must have a draft of this novel. Of which I have written three quarters. So I need (a) another twenty thousand words and (b) to finish on length as well as on time. In twelve days or fewer.

So, you might think, I need no other distractions. Nothing else to do. Focus. Right?

Right.

Today, I have a difficulty of students (this being the collective noun) all afternoon and all evening: tutorials followed by a two-hour lecture on how the industry has changed/is changing/will continue to change, and how to keep yourself flexible. Eep. *is not prepared*

In the rest of this week, I have to work my way through a line-edit. And read the latest Val McDermid with intelligence, in order to have a public conversation with her at the Lit & Phil on Friday. And chase down those students who have not yet booked a tutorial before I go. And have another session with my eager photographer. And, and, and.

Somebody remind me again: what's that word, begins with N and ends with O, means "actually, I'm sorry, but I don't have time to do that"...?