Ficlets

Dig this. This is one shot of the interior of Dark Carnival bookstore, in Berkeley, where just about every square foot of the place not devoted to actual walking is not just covered but layered with books. It was absolutely amazing to me; it was a deleriously delightful mess, or, as someone at the store said to me, “You can tell this store is run by guys.” Yes. Yes, you can.

Yesterday was a day of interesting contrasts. I had two appearances scheduled, and they realy couldn’t have been more different. The first one was at Google – yes, the people who run those crazy search engines – and it was what you might have expected an appearance there would be like: I stood up in front of a crowd of Googleites (all of whom had copies of The Last Colony – thanks, Google) and talked about thinks like the online medium, copyrights, why printed books aren’t going anywhere soon, and so on and so forth. You’ll get to see this appearance, actually, because Google will be putting the video up at some point in the reasonably near future. It was all very high-tech, up to and including the Google employees video conferencing in to the talk from various Google offices across the country.

By contrast, the appearance at Dark Carnival could not have been more low-tech: It was me, sitting in a creaky leather chair, signing books and just chatting with whomever came in to have their books signed. A bunch of friends also came by and I caught up with them while doing the signing. After three days of running around the Bay area, it was a really excellent, informal way to unwind and see people while still performing my duties as a touring author.

Now, I wouldn’t say I enjoyed one of these appearances more than the other: They were both a lot of fun. What it points out to me is something I’m very happy about, which is that the stops on this book tour are each very different animals. I’m happy about it because if every stop on the tour had me doing the exact thing, I think I would get very bored, very quickly. So far there’s been lots of variation, and it’s been keeping me happy. And a happy author is an author you’ll actually want to come see. Sullen authors are no fun.

What’s making me happy today: I have the day off. My LA appearance is tomorrow, and today I get to see old friends (I grew up in LA) and catch up on my sleeping. Yay! Sleep!