realthog

Proofs (in the form of PDFs ready for me to print out and read) will be arriving tomorrow for Bogus Science.

This is always a nerve-racking time with a new book, I find, because it's really the first opportunity I get to look at the text objectively. In theory that opportunity came earlier, when I was polishing the text preparatory to delivering it to the publisher, but of course that was soon after I'd written it: it was all too easy to read not so much the words that were actually there in front of me but the thoughts I'd been intending to express when I set those words down. Now I'll be seeing everything cold, and it'll be revealed to me in a stark, icy light quite how ghastly it all is.

Whatever, since my first warning of the proofs' arrival came this afternoon, and since the corrections are wanted a bit quickish, there's a certain level of ungentlemanly panic going on at Snarl Towers right at the moment.

To add to the sense of rabbits staring into headlights, I've also said that, before the end of what was already looking to be a busy month, I'll write 1500 hellishly witty words -- or at least words filled with a witlike substitute -- about pal Ian Watson for a convention program book. Plus there's a huge ghosting/editing job to finish off, and stuff to get ready for BookExpo America in a fortnight's time. And, oh yes, a couple of anthology editors have very flatteringly asked if . . .

This might be about the right moment for y'all to express sympathies to Pam for everything she's going to have to put up with over the next few weeks. I'm sure she'd be touchingly grateful for this small gesture.

Current Music: Rochberg - String Quartet #3

This morning I've spent some considerable while tussling with both the Virgin Atlantic and British Airways sites (for price comparison) in order to book tickets for Pam and myself to go to the UK for Fantasycon in Nottingham in September, staying en route with friends in Reading. I'm now sitting here with sweat pouring off me, and this is before I've even had time to tackle my morning mayhem on the famous Heart-Healthy Exercise Machine (Doris).

Many of the reasons for the complication of the process are perfectly reasonable ones, but one of them -- which I recognize applies to relatively few people, but still must turn up fairly often -- leads me to want to bang a few fatcat executive heads against the wall.

I live in the US. As a UK citizen, I retain a UK bank account for occasional use -- as when traveling to the UK, duh. It would suit me, on this occasion, to pay our plane fares out of that UK account, which recently received some juicy royalties.

Both Virgin and BA seem never to have conceived such possibility, and have rendered it impossible to effect a transaction like this.

Two or three trips ago I phoned up Virgin Atlantic in a similar situation, and discovered that, even when dealing with human beings rather than a website, nothing could be done to let me pay out of my UK account. I asked if this were a matter of law. The very helpful lady at Virgin was pretty certain it wasn't. So I asked if she had any idea why this effective prohibition existed. She said she was as baffled as I was, and that I was far from the first person to ask her.

This morning, I discovered that British Airways split their booking site into two, one for US and one for UK customers. A cunning lightbulb lit up my study! I got all the way through the booking to the end, where I discovered that the site refused to believe that my UK bank account could have anything other than a UK billing address for me. I had to start all over again with the US section, which of course refused to accept payment from a UK bank account . . .

My, was I cheerful by this time. Pam joined the cats cowering under the spare bed. Having bought the tickets I then had to arrange for a transfer of funds to my US account from my UK one. Another fiddly procedure. There was snarling, and even oathery.

Oh, well . . .

The big surprise was that British Airways proved cheaper than Virgin Atlantic -- even after I'd volunteered to pay an extra 82 bucks or so as a contribution to a UN agency dedicated to reducing carbon emissions. Usually it's the other way round, and by quite a wide margin. The saving wasn't huge -- about $150 -- but, looked at another way, that's approaching 10%. While Virgin's in-flight service and general efficiency isn't bad, BA's -- at least the last time I flew with them -- is even better, so it really wasn't hard to make a choice.

Current Music: Irma Thomas: Simply Grand

So tomorrow it's back to hospital (a different hospital, in fact, but when you're staring at the ceiling blearily they all look much the same) to have a bit more surgery done.

This time it's nothing so baroque or flamboyant as on my last excursion: merely a matter of having arterial stents ("kissing stents" is the rather charming technical term) emplaced in both legs via a puncture in my groin area; as a special bonus, they shave my groin for free!*

As far as I can understand, the experience should be roughly the same as for the angiogram I underwent a few months ago, and I ought to be back home by evening. I get the impression that for the next few days I may be of use for not much else but looking pitiful and occasionally drooling in an earnest manner -- two activities for which I have a pronounced talent. If I'm up to it, I'll do some research reading for Bogus Science; if the residual anaesthetic is still making my mind wander, I guess my reading matter will be . . . less demanding. To be honest, I have my fingers crossed I should be able to carry on work as usual: there's a lot to be done.

Recovery should be fast thereafter. My hope is to get across to Nottingham, UK, for Fantasycon in mid-September, where there's the possibility I can do something to assist my novel The Dragons of Manhattan, currently in severe danger of being "orphaned" owing to circumstances beyond its publisher's control (major illness, something that's of course far more important than the fate of any novel . . . yet I have to think about the novel too). If I do make it across, this'll necessarily be -- for reasons of both expense and time -- a down-and-dirty trip, just there and back, with none of the bopping around to see friends/rellies that's usually a major part of such ventures.

Of course, another lure of Fantasycon is that it'd be nice to be there in person for the British Fantasy Awards ceremony, just to witness first-hand my failing to pick up a BFA for the anthology New Writings in the Fantastic. I've managed to miss the vast majority of awards ceremonies in which I've had an interest, so . . .

* As they did preparatory to angiogramming me. My innocent fantasies of this act being performed by a Barbarella-style delight were shattered cruelly when the nurse in question appeared at my bedside, complete with his nautical swagger and his bulging, tat-adorned biceps. All that was missing was the can of spinach.

Current Music: the sound of English wickets falling

Earlier this year, Pam and I went to Nottingham, UK, for Fantasycon, the annual convention of the British Fantasy Society. The main motivation was that Chris Teague of Pendragon Press (

pendragonpress) wanted to launch my anthology New Writings in the Fantastic there, and I'd promised him that, if he did so, we'd cross the Atlantic for the launch. Hearing we were planning to be there, our dear friend Ellen Datlow (

ellen_datlow) asked if I could accept on her behalf this year's Karl Edward Wagner Award (for lifetime achievement/contribution in the field of fantasy literature), which she'd won -- and no one more deservingly, I should add.

Last night, as pals Barbara and Randy (a.k.a.

randeroo) Dannenfelser were celebrating Hogmanay with us, in particular with a three-litre bottle of excellent Belgian lambic beer that Randy had managed to win in a raffle, I got an e-mail from Martin Roberts of the British Fantasy Society. He has just posted the video of the incompetent little performance to which I subjected the assembled throng when accepting the award for Ellen, and you can, if masochistic, see it here: http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&VideoID=25100515. It is not advised for children, the elderly, the frail, or any viewers of a nervous disposition . . . Perhaps you might not want the servants to watch it, either.

Current Mood: coy
Current Location: ici
Current Music: Rokia Traore - Wanita

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