As I write the big clock at RenovationSF says it’s five days and five hours till WorldCon.  What’s focussing my attention much more is that it’s about sixteen hours until I board a flight for Sydney. Tomorrow night I’ll dine with friends in Sydney, then on Sunday will fly on to San Francisco.  I’ll be tired and jetlagged, but  I’ll also be staying with a dear friend and preparing to see many more in the coming days.  It should be a wonderful week and a half.

Have I been preparing? Well….yes.  I have packed (looks over shoulder at suitcase on floor of office). I have also got the day job to at least the point where I can be away for a short while, most projects are fine, and the reading is only a dreadful tsunami now.  I have new business cards for Gary and I for the podcast, and I’ve also posted the last podcast before WorldCon.  All is in hand (I think).

I have also read Snuff, the new novel by Terry Pratchett. It’s a Sam Vimes novel where Vimes, Sibyll, Young Sam and Willikins retire to Sibyll’s country home for a holiday. It goes as well as Vimes in the countryside ever does and, even allowing for a slightly bumpy start, I loved it a lot. One of my favourite books of the year.  I hope to finish reading two other novels between now and WorldCon, but who knows? Till then!

The big clock on the Renovation website says that it’s seven days till WorldCon. Here things are in the kind of chaos you might expect, if you’re used to dealing with easily stressed middle-aged flyers.  For some reason I’ve evolved from the nice, easygoing relaxed flyer who could throw a few t-shirts into a bag and go into someone who needs to be sure he has the right playlist on his iPad, that all of the plugs are cords are checked, and so on and so forth.

For the most part, all of that sort of preparation is well in hand. I fly out of here at about 10.00am on Saturday, and all is looking good for that. I do need to do a little panel preparation, but I have some time for that.  Oh, my schedule, should you be interested, is:

Renovation – Programming

Makes for a busy Friday, and I am not going to be able to make the Locus party, which I’m very disappointed about, but all of those should be fun. For those interested, I’m doing a signing or a Kaffeeklatch but will be round the Locus table in the Dealer’s Room a bit (if anyone’s interested, let me know in comments and I’ll set a time when I’ll definitely be there).  Other than that, it’s all pretty much set, unless you’re free for dinner Friday.

According to the big clock at RenovationSF it’s eight days and sixteen hours till the opening ceremony in Reno. Perhaps more immediately focussing for me is that it’s four days till I fly to Sydney, then on to San Francisco. Things are about as chaotic as you’d imagine. Little meaningful work is being done, while I fiddle with packing preparation and trip confirmations. Still, I’m looking forward to it.

Thanks to Jen (thanks!), I’m reading Pratchett’s Snuff and keeping focussed. I’m late getting a new project out the gate this week, but I hope I can do that. Other than that, onwarrds.  I will try to post more meaningfully every day on the way to Reno and hopefully from there too.

Thirteen days till I fly to Sydney and I’m finally getting to focus on it, having cleared the decks. Marianne has been an enormous help, doing the bulk of the clerical work to help get more than four dozen writers payments out this week. We’ve been fortunate enough to sell Russian and Polish editions of Swords and Dark Magic and Wings of Fire, and Under My Hat payments arrived, so there was a lot to send out and I wanted to be sure it went out pre-WorldCon.  Some writers are actually in all three books, so lots of careful checking and doublechecking.

We’re going out for dinner on Friday, but Saturday will be all about getting clothes and papers sorted. I’ll start the physical packing come Monday or Tuesday. It’s my preference to leave a suitcase on the floor of my office and just toss things in there as they occur to me. This trip is going to be a real adventure. I need some downtime to de-stress, so I hope it will provide that, and it means seeing some dear friends in Sydney, San Francisco and Reno. Gary and I are going to podcast like maniacs, and I’m hoping we’ll have new t-shirts ready for that.

There’s a lot of other stuff. I’m reading a new novel I can’t really name, but am enjoying a great deal, and just got another in the email last night. Some cool stuff! More posting soon.

Unfortunately, due to technical problems, we are unable to bring you the Coode Street podcast this week. Gary was at Readercon and we had guests all lined up to go, but poor hotel wi-fi proved our undoing. We’ll be back next weekend with a new podcast.