13 Comments on “Traveling Home”

1. Hope you all have something to enjoy today. It’s a beautiful day here in Toronto and I got a great hug from my daughter. You?
   Informal poll: Who is planning to see The Avengers?

2. It was great seeing you at Penguicon, and I had a blast at your panels. I even had a fun interchange with Athena. Her sense of humor and fun are suitably zany, as one would expect with you as a father.

3. When I’m home, I find it easier to write fiction. As Stephen King suggests, your Muse should know exactly where to find you, and at a regularly scheduled time each day.

   So, since Tuesday 24 April, my arm being twisted through Facebook friends who demanded a sequel to “Hierarchy of Horror”, in 6 days. “Topology of Terror” reached 21,000 words (a hair over half the length of a minimum official SFWA-standard novel, while simultaneously trying to knot together a trilogy’s accumulated plot threads in Alzheimer’s War”, resulting in sentences which look quite weird to me after I type them, such as: “So,” said President Martinez, “if I connect the dots, there was a Chinese connection to physicist Richard Feynman, a mysteriously deceased hypnotist, a nude dancing bar in Altadena, California, and Sirhan Sirhan’s participation, not as the sole gunman, in the assassination of the man Robert F. Kennedy, who, but for contingency, was about to become President of the United States?”

   I am not pitching my own fiction here, but trying to connect the dots between what tephen King, Ray Bradbury, and John Scalzi tell me about how to be an overnight success. And the Feynman and Sirhan Sirhan and hypnotherapist William Joseph Bryan, Jr., [Religious Aspects of Hypnosis, 1962] hanging out in the same nudie bar anecdote was confirmed to me last night by Steve Lamb, my former and most senior ally on the Altadena Town Council., I can’t make up stuff as strange as that, try as hard as I can. Being a scientist makes more sense, in many ways. I got an equation right here to prove that…

4. Informal poll answer: I don’t plan to see The Avengers.

5. was john born with a travelin’ bone?
   but unlike the skynyrds he’s a-travelin’ home
   he’s got that old homeward-bound travelin’ jones once again

6. It’s windy here, for the second day in a row. Odd that late April is cooler than early March was…

7. Thanks again for sticking around for the very lightly attended Q&A session. When you and your family equal the number of actual session attendees, choosing to head out would have been perfectly understandable. (As a side note, it occurred to me that it only took about 6-7 questions to keep you talking for the entire 50+ minutes…)

8. Just found this neat article about the ‘Singularity University’ –

   http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/29/singularity-university-technology-future-thinkers

9. Poll answer: I want to see The Avengers, but will most likely never get around to it.

10. Poll Answer: I want to see The Avengers, but first, I am required by my 11-year-old daughter to see “Pirates.” The 10th Doctor is in it –which is one of the main reasons she wants to see it. Yes, I have done my job as a mother.

    Even more than wanting see The Avengers, I want to see Cabin in the Woods, because yes, I am a Whedonista. I also want to see “The Raven.” I’m actually afraid it’s going to be a bit disappointing, but I am going to see it out of loyalty to John Cusack who has been my Pretend Boyfriend since “The Sure Thing” (hey, I even named my son “Nick” and NOT Elliot).

11. Saw “Pirates” today (there is NO WAY to catch all the sight gags on the first viewing. Also I was the only person in the theater who laughed at the music cue as the ship sailed into London) and am eagerly awaiting “The Avengers”. But not eagerly enough to go to the midnight show–Thursday is Crazy Day at my workplace and I will be exhausted by dinnertime.

12. Thank you for coming to our convention. Always great to attend your panels and readings.

13. Lila.

    I agree on Pirates- and recommend that people should stay through the credits.