Hmmm…. this would be nice.

Swancon is on this weekend. It’s nineteen years since I attended my first, back in 1986 when C.J. Cherryh was guest of honor. Although I haven’t purchased memberships to every subsequent convention, I’ve attended all of them. Twenty, counting the one coming up this weekend.

The guest of honor this year is Charles de Lint. It’s nineteen years since I first read one of his books, Yarrow. Although I don’t recall every detail of the story, I retain a great affection for the book, and fond memories of the bookstore in its pages. I’ve read 21 novels and I don’t know how many short stories of his, and feel (as readers often do) that we’ve made something of a journey together. While I’ve met most Swancon guests over the years, I have the feeling I won’t meet de Lint here. Maybe in Wisconsin. Life can be like that.

…is this daikaiju?

This morning was an alarm clock morning. Jolted out of sleep, staggered into the shower, got dressed in the office, then breakfast while dealing with email. Surfed the net for a few minutes until my ride arrived. One of the nice things about getting a ride is that we grab a coffee most mornings at a cafe across the road from my office. It’s too easy to not keep up with family, so it’s good to have a time most days when we can just chat. For those not in Perth, it’s been warm and humid lately, but it was nice today.

Got up to the office, logged on and such, and found an email from the agent that work’s spam filter had eaten. Interesting. It was about a prospective new project that I’d pretty much given up on, but which may still have some chance of getting up. I’ll keep you in the loop. Terry phoned at round 8am, and it looks like we’ll be having lunch today, which will be nice. He’s over from Sydney for Swancon, and it will be good to spend some time. Justin gets in Wednesday, and is overnighting at our place. He’s welcome, but I’ve got to arrange delivery of a bed so he has somewhere to sleep.

What else? Got a lovely email over the weekend from Rob Hood asking if I would launch daikaiju!, the anthology of giant monster tales he’s co-edited with Robin Pen at Swancon on Saturday. I’ve no idea what benefit they get from my being involved, or what I’m going to say, but it should be fun. It also gave me an excuse to pop over to Robin’s place to pick up the very cool looking book so I could check it out beforehand. It strikes me, at first glance, of being of a piece with books like All-Star Zeppelin Stories and Retro-Pulp Tales – great adventure stories that are supposed to be fun to read. I’ll let you know when I’ve read more.

I also spent some time reading on Sunday. Finished Patricia McKillip’s new novel, Od Magic, which deserves its own post, and basically tooled around. Busy week coming, though.

…are beginning to leak out. From what I hear, it sounds like the committee must be going through the advising nominees phase of things. Congrats to one and all. I’ll be interested to see a full list when it’s available.