Mobile phone confusion

I thought I’d throw a travel question open to readers of the blog. During the upcoming month on the road Marianne and I will need to keep in touch as best we can. I also want to be easily contactable for people in the US, especially when I’m in LA for WorldCon. The best option seems to be to get mobile phones for both Marianne and I. Marianne has an old junker phone here, and I don’t use one at all. I’m thinking about getting a couple cheap mobile phones here, taking them along to the US and getting new SIM cards once we’re there. The other option would simply be to wait until we got there and then buy two cheap phones. Not sure about the best course of action, but I’d love some recommendations.

The Jack Vance Treasury

This afternoon Terry Dowling and I delivered the final manuscript for The Jack Vance Treasury to Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press. I’m really pleased with the final book. The stories are strong, the cover art I’ve seen looks lovely and George Martin did a terrific introduction. I’m hoping to see galleys soon, and with a little luck the book’ll be out not too long after Christmas.

Tripping

Slowly, inexorably, the focus of this not terribly often updated blog is going to turn towards the upcoming trip to the US. The family and I leave nice cool wintry Perth on Tuesday 15 August and head East. We’ll be stopping in Sydney for a night, staying at with Garth and Anna, and getting to spend some time with the whole family for the first time (which should be way cool). We then fly on to San Francisco.

We’ve done a car rental thing, and are crashing with still more friends. This should be fun too, because we never really get to see both AARon and Kirsten much, though sadly their daughter will be off Disney-ing. Marianne and the girls will only be in SF for three days, leaving Saturday, so we’ll be seeing CHARLES, heading up to LocusHQ, and catching up with as many of Marianne’s friends as possible. My suspicion is that we will go here at least once.

When Marianne and the girls fly off I’ll be heading up to stay at LocusHQ for some guy-time with CHARLES. Much work will be done, serious conversation about science fiction and the future of Locus, maybe some scotch, cd shopping, gadget one-upmanship, and a good meal or two. Should be fun. I’m definitely hoping to catch up with Karen and Bob and Jeremy and Jason while I’m in Oakland.

And then on Tuesday 22 August we all fly down to LA for this. We’ll be staying here, which is pretty much across the road from this. I’m doing some kind of panel stuff, but I don’t know what yet. Mainly, I’m going to be sharing a room with the other Musketeers, inducting a new member into the International Society of Manly Men Drinking Little Pink Drinks, and seeing as many friends as possible. I fear the number of books I will be carrying away from that place.

Once the convention’s all done, I fly out for New York on Monday 28 August. I’m not sure of the exact timing of the next chunk of the trip, but it goes something like this. Spend a few days in Staten Island, go up to the Catskills with the family for a few days (maybe a week, I don’t know), then back to Staten Island, then over to Manhattan for a few days (we’ve got a hotel there), then back to Staten Island for Marianne’s birthday. Then, on Sunday 10 September we begin the horror run home, doing Newark – LA – Sydney – Perth pretty much non-stop, getting home on Tuesday 12 September sometime around noon.

I will post contact details here as soon as I have them. We’re going to work something out about mobile phones for when we’re in the US, and I’ll have the laptop with me so email should be a pretty much constantly reliable way of getting in touch. Certainly, I need to work the whole time, or I’ll fall impossibly far behind on things. Normally I’d plan to work on the plane, but I’m not sure that’ll work with the girls there. I’m hoping to get a good chunk of reading done on the east coast of the US, which will mean I need to get the writing stuff done before then, which mostly means the intro to The New Space Opera (we’ve pretty much finished The Vance Treasury).