Ioway or the highway

The Iowa gig was fun. The first thing was just a general talk about writing. They set up a big canopy over the FOREVER WAR statue (I sent a picture to LiveJournal a couple of weeks ago) and I chatted and Gay fed me questions for awhile, and the audience asked some later. There were maybe fifty people in the audience, but then it doubled or more when a sudden rain shower started.

(There was an outdoor part of the Book Festival; bookstores and publishers with tables full of books. Most of them were covered by canopies, and the ones who weren’t did have plastic to cover up their wares, but it took some fast work!)

The second was a joint discussion inside the library, supposedly about Science in Science Fiction, but the other writer who shared the podium, Cara Lockwood, was not a science fiction writer. She writes teen adventures, so we broadened the scope of the discussion a bit. It seemed successful, standing room only, I guess seventy or eighty people.

The local independent book store, Prairie Lights, hosted a wine-and-cheese reception in the afternoon. Pretty crowded mill ‘n’ swill, but we found a little table and enjoyed talking with the buyer of the store, Paul Ingram (a friend from our old Iowa days in the seventies) and Greg Prickman, the librarian who invited us to the festival.

Getting here was almost 24 hours of pure hassle. Plane late out of Gainesville and Atlanta, and so we had to spend the night in Chicago. In the airport standing in line for hours. Got to bed at a motel after midnight and had to get up at 04:30 to stand in line for security and then catch a dawn flight to Iowa. Doubt that I slept an hour; too rattled.

Finally got to Iowa City a day late but just in time for a quick shower and a bite and then go talk.

Next morning now. Wrote for a couple of hours at a coffee house downtown. We’re going out to breakfast with Alan Koslow from Des Moines and then off to the airport excruciation again. We’ll supposedly get back to Gainesville a little before midnight. I do have a book to read. Three, actually.

Joe

(We couldn't resist a tee shirt from a booth at the festival . . . it has a squiggly line being written by a pen and the inscription "Oh, the humanities!")