View From a Hotel Window, 9/15/23: Troy, MI
Posted on September 15, 2023 Posted by John Scalzi 18 Comments

Ah, the parking lot view. Simple. Classic.
For those of you who ordered a signed copy of Starter Villain from Subterranean Press, today’s the day I sign them. All one thousand or so of them. It’s going to be a busy morning. And then I go back home, because I have an interview to do and I’d rather do it from my office than from the side of the road. Then I have a last weekend at home before all my tour travel madness begins. The life of an author is kinda wild.
Anyway, off to scribble.
— JS
Is that also a “bonus” airport runway in the back?
When you come to Dallas if they offer to take you to dinner tell them you want to go to Marianos
Looks like you just barely missed being north of Canada.
My copy of Starter Villain is, according to the computers, going to arrive on the 19th. I’m looking forward to reading it.
Will your current tour include Iowa City?
Come for the cats. Stay for the parking lots.
Remember, I’d like mine with lots of hearts and a unicorn drawing!
For some reason I thought Subterranean offices were in Burton.
Welcome to my part of the world. Stop and get some Detroit style pizza if you get a chance. My favorite is Shields in Troy.
Safe travels back to Ohio
As a point of information:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_satiation
is the subject of one of this year’s Ig Nobel awards (in Literature).
Hand cramps.
Got my shipping email this morning. Looking forward to getting my copy to read and the burrito sketch I requested to admire and contemplate.
When you post photos like this, I’m inevitably reminded of a wonderful old book called Boring Postcards USA (https://www.phaidon.com/store/photography/boring-postcards-usa-9780714843919/), which I expect you would enjoy.
The author tour stuff is exhausting (I used to go with Tammy on parts of her tour that I could drive to, or when she went overseas), but a touring writer who’s good with their fans creates fans for life.
well… there’s hoping you’ll visit every hotel in the lower 48 with a dull view and then assemble ’em into an award winning exposee on dullness
BTW: what’s with those odd, dull (there it is again) windowless building in the far background? a u-store-it? or something along the lines of a data center?
1000! Ugh! I spent 4 years as an engineer at a pharmaceutical company in the middle of a 32 year career as a physicist and on the day I started the new job I had to sign and initialize a “signature card” (an FDA thing). When my boss saw my signature he said I’d be asking for a new card within a week and he wasn’t wrong. I was signing my signature often over a hundred time a day. I ended up changing it to the initial of my first and last names followed by a squiggly line!
@Howard NYC: The buildings on the other side of the runway are hangars for small aircraft.
You are certainly a connoisseur of parking lots
@Bo Lindbergh
okay thanks… now I’ll be haunted by the image of small aircraft dangling from hangars drip drying like whenever my ex-girlfriend handwashed her unmentionables
(nobody should ever look inside my head it’s a mess)