Just a trainee, me
Mar. 15th, 2010 09:46 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
desperanceSeems like everything I do, they are things where you never stop learning.
Saturday was all about the gigging, which means the being nervous beforehand and the desperate improvisations during and the thunderous relief afterwards. Twice over!
Blessedly I had![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
klwilliams and calendula_witch with me, for distractive and general taking-care-of-Chaz purposes. We travelled by trolley-bus and subway and BART and finally on foot, and found a hat-shop and went in and I bought a new cap for Daniel Fox, for sometimes I do just need to spend money; and then we went into Good Vibrations where Shannon may possibly have bought a present for jaylake; and then I was hailed on the streets of San Francisco, which is tolerably absurd, and that was seanan_mcguire bringing her friend Joey and cupcakes to my gig at Borderlands.
The cupcakes may have outnumbered the audience, but never mind. There are now signed copies of Dragon in Chains and Jade Man's Skin stacked up in Borderlands as well as Mysterious Galaxy, awaiting only the moment of your purchase, dear readers...
And then we mooched off to Henry's Hunan to meet up with a tableful of SF-in-SF people, including Malinda Lo, with whom I was reading that night; and there was too much food, oh noes, and much of it was yummy. And we went on to the theatre-space and I was all nervous again, and Rick Kleffel recorded a podcast with me where I did my usual inarticulate graspings after concepts that seem obvious to me internally but cannot apparently be expressed (basically, show me a microphone and I lose all my words: it's very sad), and then Malinda read and so did I and then Terry Bisson interviewed us both with extra questions from the audience, and have you noticed how I have oh-so-coolly not even mentioned that I was chatting with Stan over drinks before the gig, and that was Kim Stanley Robinson as ever was and I did not fanboy-squee at him at all, no, not even to tell him how much I loved Years of Rice and Salt which I really should have done...?
But it's all learning: how to talk and how to read and how to write, that too. Malinda has done things with the Cinderella mythos in Ash which I can totallysteal learn from.
Aaand then we went back to Shannon's and may only have drunk one more bottle of wine before we all crashed, because we had to get up at oh-my-god early to get a cab to the Ferry Building where we met up with Mark and Helen and not alas a ferry because they don't run that early (wise little ferries, still tucked up of a Sunday morning) so we took a bus instead to Vallejo, where we took a shuttle to Napa, where we were eventually allowed to board a train...
This was the Wine Train, and we ate and drank and toured a winery and again it was all learning: about food and wine, mostly, but also of course writing too. Shannon has posted pics; I might steal any or all of that day for stories later; and meanwhile I have a new title to play with ("This Is The Bridge that God Built" - I think it's SF. I think everything's SF at the moment).
Aaaand then we were back in SF and had to say goodbye to Mark and Helen, who are going off to, y'know, have a holiday. On their own. They have been kinda heroic, putting up with so very much of me; they need a break...
Shannon and Karen and I had dinner (food! wine! more!) and then I had to say goodbye to Shannon too, tho' only till Tuesday; and then Karen brought me back to her place, and I'd been gone a week and it felt like coming home.
*settles*
Saturday was all about the gigging, which means the being nervous beforehand and the desperate improvisations during and the thunderous relief afterwards. Twice over!
Blessedly I had
klwilliams and calendula_witch with me, for distractive and general taking-care-of-Chaz purposes. We travelled by trolley-bus and subway and BART and finally on foot, and found a hat-shop and went in and I bought a new cap for Daniel Fox, for sometimes I do just need to spend money; and then we went into Good Vibrations where Shannon may possibly have bought a present for jaylake; and then I was hailed on the streets of San Francisco, which is tolerably absurd, and that was seanan_mcguire bringing her friend Joey and cupcakes to my gig at Borderlands.The cupcakes may have outnumbered the audience, but never mind. There are now signed copies of Dragon in Chains and Jade Man's Skin stacked up in Borderlands as well as Mysterious Galaxy, awaiting only the moment of your purchase, dear readers...
And then we mooched off to Henry's Hunan to meet up with a tableful of SF-in-SF people, including Malinda Lo, with whom I was reading that night; and there was too much food, oh noes, and much of it was yummy. And we went on to the theatre-space and I was all nervous again, and Rick Kleffel recorded a podcast with me where I did my usual inarticulate graspings after concepts that seem obvious to me internally but cannot apparently be expressed (basically, show me a microphone and I lose all my words: it's very sad), and then Malinda read and so did I and then Terry Bisson interviewed us both with extra questions from the audience, and have you noticed how I have oh-so-coolly not even mentioned that I was chatting with Stan over drinks before the gig, and that was Kim Stanley Robinson as ever was and I did not fanboy-squee at him at all, no, not even to tell him how much I loved Years of Rice and Salt which I really should have done...?
But it's all learning: how to talk and how to read and how to write, that too. Malinda has done things with the Cinderella mythos in Ash which I can totally
Aaand then we went back to Shannon's and may only have drunk one more bottle of wine before we all crashed, because we had to get up at oh-my-god early to get a cab to the Ferry Building where we met up with Mark and Helen and not alas a ferry because they don't run that early (wise little ferries, still tucked up of a Sunday morning) so we took a bus instead to Vallejo, where we took a shuttle to Napa, where we were eventually allowed to board a train...
This was the Wine Train, and we ate and drank and toured a winery and again it was all learning: about food and wine, mostly, but also of course writing too. Shannon has posted pics; I might steal any or all of that day for stories later; and meanwhile I have a new title to play with ("This Is The Bridge that God Built" - I think it's SF. I think everything's SF at the moment).
Aaaand then we were back in SF and had to say goodbye to Mark and Helen, who are going off to, y'know, have a holiday. On their own. They have been kinda heroic, putting up with so very much of me; they need a break...
Shannon and Karen and I had dinner (food! wine! more!) and then I had to say goodbye to Shannon too, tho' only till Tuesday; and then Karen brought me back to her place, and I'd been gone a week and it felt like coming home.
*settles*