Long commutes and international customs make for an early morning. I woke up at 3:00am so that Alicia could drive me to the airport in time for my 6:27am flight. Luckily made it through security with no hitches. I expected to see Fiona, a fellow winner in the seat ahead of me, but she’d switched and now an older Filipino was sitting there. Spent much of the flight wondering if Fiona could be a man’s name…

I arrived at LAX and somehow managing to bypass our escorts. After rescuing my bags from the carousel, I wandered around the airport for a little while until I spotted Emily and our photographer (both Canadians, yay!). They asked me to pose for pictures, which I did reluctantly, blushing furiously the whole time.

Fiona has also missed our escort, but had left a detailed description of herself that was simplicity itself: she looked like Ellen Degeneres. Apparently, this is not as specific a description as one might think. I asked about twenty women if they were Fiona before we finally found her.

Then it was off to the hotel, where we met Joni Lebacqui and Peter, the WotF Forum admin. Joni showed us around and gushed about the book trailer (I can’t wait!). The awards ceremony is being held in the room where they had the very first Academy Awards (Tim Powers informed us that “Wings” won Best Picture). I didn’t realize that Joni had “snuck” us in, so I tried to sneak in Don and Gary and was stopped by security, but when I told him we were winners and I was just showing them the room, he backed right off. All of the hotel staff have been so welcoming, I’m in very real danger of being spoiled for all future hotel stays.

I had dinner with Fiona, and invited her to Spec24, our local writing group. We talked a lot about writing in general, and though she doesn’t really have a speculative fiction background, we had a great talk about genre and writing in general. I can’t wait to read her story!

Our welcome meeting was at 7pm. Joni and John Goodwin, President of Galaxy Press spoke to us a little about the kind of support we can expect to receive, and they made it clear that they are available to help in whatever capacity we might need. They’re going to book radio and TV interviews, as well as book signings and setting up press releases. Later, Tim Powers said that this was probably the biggest release any of our books would ever get. I don’t think he was joking.

Next up were Tim and KD Wentworth and they talked a lot about craft which was golden, but they didn’t want to overwhelm us, so we quickly broke for dinner… and then I brought THING to WotF! That’s right, we played a game of Thing. We all had a great time, and promised to play it again later when we all knew each other a little better.

Anyways, I’m signing off for the night. If you guys have anything you’d like me to ask, or any questions, just leave them in the comments and I’ll be sure to respond!

Tags: Workshop, Writers of the Future