Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books

Saturday was a pretty good day at the LATFoB. The weather was gorgeous and the place was packed with people, and I wandered around looking at the booths and the books. I met Libba Bray for the first time and learned of her butter sculpture of me, talked with Barry Goldblatt about kids and geeks (not necessarily one and the same), signed books at the Mysterious Galaxy booth alongside Les Klinger, and met both Richard Kadrey and Kami Garcia (who took the picture above), both of whom were very cool folks. In the afternoon I hung about with my friend Sumana, whom I had not seen for a while, and she and I had seafood and walked to the ocean in Santa Monica.

Then it was off to a festival party at the LA Public Library, where I got to fanboy Susan Orlean and hung out with Lev Grossman, Matt Ruff, Amber Benson, and a friend of Lev’s whose name escapes my brain this early in the morning but who kept goading me to steal a large cartoon cat from the children’s books room of the library, because she was delightfully wicked that way. For the official record, I resisted. For now.

Then I came back to the hotel, lost consciousness and then it was Sunday. Funny how that happens.

Today: A 10am panel on world building with Lev, Charles Yu and Frank Beddor, and a 3pm panel on how geeks rock with Maureen Johnson, Pamela Ribon and Amber. Signings after both. If you’re in LA, I’ll see you there. If you’re not in LA, you’ll just have to wish you were there.

19 Comments on “Saturday at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books”

  1. Took me a minute to grasp the wardrobe selection. Then it hit me – Red Shirt! Of course! Sma-a-a-rt :)

  2. Is there no photograph of Ms. Bray’s butter sculpture available? I’m not sure I believe such an outlandish thing exists without photographic evidence.

  3. You may have signed something for my friend Mark, a tall, jocular fellow with unruly reddish hair and an English accent. I just hope it wasn’t a body part. And if it was, I hope it was one of *his* body parts.

  4. Somebody needs to get you a big, blinking neon sign that says “Scalzi’s Here!” instead of that cheesy little sign.

  5. I fumbled my Saving Throw vs. Babble, Marko. You’ve have been proud of me, the way I sweated and stammered. The comedy double-take Scalzi pulled and deeply dubious “Where do I know you from” was amusing, though. Apparently, I’m memorable even when but 80 pixels across. It’s the beard.

  6. Would you like to come to the Tucson Festival of Books next March 9-10? We have the best book festival under the sun and the fourth largest in the nation after LA, Miami and Chicago. Everyone says it’s the best organized, and we’re really nice and Dan and I both read “Whatever” daily.

    Sheila

  7. “Well, it’s more about Abe Froman, the Sausage King of Chicago, actually.”

    Yeah, yeah. We’re on to these subliminal messages with the veneer of being about something else.

  8. Man, I love that t-shirt. I’m rarely envious of other peoples’ clothing, but this is different. It’s *Abe Froman* for god’s sake. I seethe with envy. I will console myself by simply being happy that it exists and someone is very happy with it.

  9. Hey, I saw you at both panels today! The cosmogenesis one with the more literary-type dudes and the geek pride one with the not-quite-geeky-enough ladies. You were the most entertaining panelist of each, of course.

  10. Mysterious Galaxy is such a great bookstore. For such a small bookstore they get a lot of great authors to do signings.

    Hope to see you at the store in San Diego soon.

  11. The image is a little different, but I’ve seen Abe Froman t-shirts at the website Last Exit to Nowhere. (I’d enter the site address itself, but I figure it’d probably wind up in the spam queue.) I’ve wasted entirely too much money there, but I do love my Overlook Hotel and Weyland-Yutani shirts.

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