Jay Lake: Writer

[personal] Leap day mumblings and miscellaneous updatery

I do a fair amount of event work — master of ceremonies, charity auctioneer, and whatnot. Plus the occasional bit of improv comedy. Plus tons of convention panels. One important lesson I’ve learned over the years of being on stage or behind the podium is never try compete for attention with a cattle auctioneer. (Trust me on this.) No one can possibly be as loud, snappy or entertaining as someone who does that professionally.

Another important lesson I’ve learned in that situation is never try to compete for attention with a clown on a unicycle in a strait-jacket. (Trust me on this, too.) After he came on, I lost the audience completely.

Last night, I added a third rule. Never compete for attention with puppets. (Really, really, trust me on this.)

Luckily, Mary Robinette Kowal is so utterly charming that even when she is destroying you socially and crippling your book sales with a totally unfair comedic puppet show you can only be amused and enchanted. And we did have a good time being hosted by the terrific booksellers at the airport Powell’s. the_child and most of the rest of my family were there, which was terrific. Some friends even turned up. And we did sell some books.

In other news, the_child and I head out to Seattle this afternoon for Mark Bourne’s funeral tomorrow morning. I’ve got the eulogy in a full and nearly final draft. This is one of the toughest things I have ever written. My profound thanks to everyone who has contributed stories, information and time to review it.

In other, other news, somewhere in the next few days Calamity of So Long a Life (Sunspin volume one) will soon be tottering to a close. For obvious reasons I’ve been a bit distracted from my focus on that goal these past few days. So I’ll miss my self-imposed deadline of, well, today, by two or three days. It’s in a good cause, however.

I still haven’t had a chance to decompress and process my feelings even from the new cancer information of the past few weeks, let alone the deaths of Mark and Kathryn. I sort of wonder if I’m going to have a screaming meltdown at the Rainforest Writers Village this weekend. (Hopefully in the privacy of my own cabin, if so.)

Off to be busy. Happy Leap Day, everyone.

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Photo © 2012, B. Lake

This work by B. Lake is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

Tags: Books, Calamity, Cancer, Child, Conventions, family, health, Personal, Photos, Seattle, Sunspin, Travel, Writing

Posted: 6:46 am Wed February 29 2012 |

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• Laurie Mann

  February 29th, 2012 at 7:07 am

  Love Mary’s puppet work (which I’d never seen before Renovation). So, you’re right, it’s hard to compete with.

  I knew Kathryn pretty well, at least from Worldcon to Worldcon. I’m not sure I ever met Mark (it looks like he didn’t do many non-Northwest cons and I have only done a few Northwest cons). He seemed like a very interesting person, and I’m sorry for your loss.

  Reply

  • Jay

    February 29th, 2012 at 8:32 am

    Thank you.

    Reply

• Cora

  February 29th, 2012 at 6:42 pm

  I just realized that I didn’t do this before, so please accept my belated sympathies for the loss of your friends.

  Reply

  • Jay

    February 29th, 2012 at 8:54 pm

    Thank you, Cora.

    Reply

• Nancy

  March 1st, 2012 at 10:17 am

  Jay, I laughed out loud. The look on your face says volumes! Thanks for the belly laugh.
  –Nancy

  Reply

  • Jay

    March 1st, 2012 at 4:42 pm

    

    Reply

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