Notes from New Sodom

... rantings, ravings and ramblings of strange fiction writer, THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!!

Friday, October 28, 2005

Say, Do Any Of You Guys Know The Madison?

Barrum bum bum bum!
Barrum bum bum bum!

Well, it's only a few days now before I head off to the States for the World Fantasy Convention in Madison, Wisconsin... and I am really rather excited now, to say the least. Hell, even before I catch my plane at the godawful time of 9:00 on Monday morning, I've got a weekend of fun ahead of me. A mate from my programming conversion course at Paisley University is getting married today (probably as I type this) so I'll be heading off to the reception tonight to say a very big congratulations to Mr and Mrs Colin Devon. Hoorah. Then tomorrow, during the day, I'm playing native guide to my interviewer from that PH-UK chat, Dubs, who's coming up to Glasgow for the first time to see the sights; I foresee much discussion on post-rock and weird fiction... and possibly many cocktails. In the evening, heh, I'm gonna try and drag him along to my mate Ange's Halloween PIRATE PARTY! Arrrrrrr! By Jack Sparrow's spitoon, there be fun to be had fer every man-jack of us! Grog and matelotage, I say! Grog and matelotage! I may even write me a little ditty on the theme of cabin boys, me hearties. Arrrrr!

Barrum bum bum bum!
Barrum bum bum bum!

Sunday, I suspect will largely be spent recovering meself till I'm in a fit state to get me packing done and catch me plane on Monday morning. Why, I hear ye say, that be days before World Fantasy! Well, the extra super fabulous cool thing is I got me a two-day stop-over in New York with some high-flown businessy stuff (and possibly a bit of less high-flown drinkingy stuff) with me editor, Jim Minz, and other Important People at Del Rey and elsewhere in the book biz. I have, of course, been wandering around for weeks being oh-so-casual (aye, right) about doing "yeeees... lunch in New York... you know the type of thing". Tigger-quotient on the increase again.

Barrum bum bum bum!
Barrum bum bum bum!

Then there's the con itself which I'm really looking forward to. It'll be great to see the two Jeffs again, messrs VanderMeer and Ford, but also, there's a ton of folks I've come to sorta kinda know in that mutual blog-reading/commenting way over the last year or so who I'm really looking forward to either meeting for the first time or meeting properly. I was so busy (or drunk) at WhirledCon that the few times I did hook up with someone I'd been wanting to meet I either didn't get much more than 5 minutes to talk to them (nowhere near enough to get past that initial slightly awkward "yeah... hi... I really like wht you're doing..." stage) or I wasn't really in a fit state to do other than grin and sway (I mean, have you seen the photograph of me standing beside China Mieville at the Macmillan party? Did I post it? Man, a greater contrast has never been seen; it's like a Cockney Henry Rollins looking suave, buff and eminently cool beside some Scottish jakie who's wandered in off the street to ask for "ten pence fer a cup of tea"... and is about to fall over). Anyhoo, folks like the Infernokrusher crowd -- the Davids Moles and Schwartz, Meghan McCarron and... ah, crap, I'm not gonna list names cause then I'll leave someone out and bump into them and feel all weird about having left them out of this blog entry and frankly I have the memory of a goldfish so I'd be here all day trying to list exactly who I wanna have a drinkee with. I will say, though, having just finished Magic For Beginners I do really, really wanna thank Kelly Link for autographing my copy at WorldCon (and ask her what the hell she was doing -- in a good way -- in the bafflingly wonderful "Lull"). And I really really really wanna meet Lucius Shepard. He read my book. He liked it. I wet myself. The man's a fuckin nazi-swatting, two-trains-riding, intricately-eloquent-sentence-writing veritable god of SF.

Barrum bum bum bum!
Barrum bum bum bum!

So, all in all, I think the next couple of weeks are going to be FUN with a capital F for Fucking, U for Uh-huh! and N for Niiiiiiiice. Right now, in the cage elevator of my heart, Tim Curry's high heel is tapping to the rhythm of anticip... ation.

Barrum bum bum bum!
Barrum bum bum bum!

Ya know? I'm just waiting for that elevator door to slide open with a sudden rattle and clang and the lusciously lascivious Near Future to whirl around and arch an eyebrow at this lil ole hick from the sticks.

Barrum bum bum bum!
Barrum!


Oh yeah.

4 Comments:

Blogger Christopher Barzak said...

you make me laugh :)

have a good time!

5:27 pm  
Blogger Jason Erik Lundberg said...

Have fun at WFC! I went a couple of years ago, and it's a phenomenal convention. Wish I was going this year, but I'm still recovering from my trip to Singapore.

3:11 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Well, I guess having a celt as your guide invariably means that you're gonna get drunk. White Russians and Absinth? Hal, you sure know how to keep a man entertained. Just glad my 'laid-back vitriol' didn't cause any issues. Heh.

Thanks for having me, and have a great time in t'States, ya hear?!

Ta much.

5:47 pm  
Blogger paul f cockburn said...

Have a great time; if you do decide to get yourself thrown out of the US of A, make sure it's on primetime TV!

1:08 pm  

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