To begin at the beginning....

I flew to Texas on Thursday afternoon, learning an important life lesson about when to start packing. I mean, I usually pack pretty light and pretty quickly, but this time I might have been pushing it to a bit past the "last minute," hence forgetting both shoes and reading material for the plane.

The former wasn't a big problem, although spending the morning in the tropics meant being pathetically cold in my shorts, t-shit and sandals when I got to Texas. By way of remedying the latter, I bought a copy of "Anansi Boys" by Neil Gaiman from the airport bookstore, which I ended up inhaling most of on the flight over and finishing on the flight back. Good stuff. As much as I love "Sandman," his written fiction usually doesn't do much for me--I was vaguely entertained by what I read of both, but I put down both "Good Omens" and "American Gods" halfway through and never summoned up enough interest to finish either one. As best as I can tell, the reason for the disconnect is that Gaiman at his best, in the graphic novels, achieves an amazing balance between light and dark, playful aspects and atual mythic resonance on the other. By contrast, my read on nearly all of his novels I've attempted to read is that he just runs with the playful aspects, ending up reading more Pratchett-ish than Gaiman-ish, and I get kind of bored by that.

"American Gods", though, was good. Not sure how much was because of a truly different mixture of story elements and how much was because I was reading the whole thing in a single sitting without having the opportunity to lose interest, but one way or the other I enjoyed it a lot.

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Random highlights:

Going to see Hal Duncan give a reading from Vellum, voice ringing and hands shaking in his enthusiasm, was a bit like what I would imagine it might have been like to go to a reading by Jack Keroauc. If you add the exquisite strangeness of the book, the fact that the guy had clearly had a respectable amount of coffee, cigarettes and pre-Awards jitters in his system and the thick-as-sludge Scottish accent, it was really a sight to behold.

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Also went to readings by Peter Beagle and Joe Haldeman. I loved Haldeman's story, and Beagle's were kind of fun and good on account of dimly remembered childhood nostalgia for watching "the Last Unicorn."

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Met Jay Lake. We had a good chat, in which we agreed on how appallingly limiting and sexist it would be to ask women to choose between wearing bikinis and hefting high-powered futuristic weaponry. This inspiring message of empowerment was represented on his t-shirt design.

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Overall, I'm pretty so-so about panels--I mean, I'll admit to going to Austin first and foremost for the opportunity to hang out with my friends, second to go to parties and meet or reconnect with people, third to go to readings and fourth to browse the dealers' room, with panels as a distant fifth, basically a sometimes-interesting-way to while away time in the middle of the day while soaking up coffee and getting over morning grogginess and dehydration. Still, there were two I got a kick out of because of the combination of people. One featured Howard Waldrope, in exactly the regional-character form I've always heard him described in, and Paul, riffing off each other beautifully. Another one featured Tim Powers and Glen Cook arguing about absolute moral standards, which was fun in particular for anyone who's ever read Philip K. Dick's outstanding novel "Valis," in which the character of David was a thinly disguised version of Dick's friend Tim Powers as the very religious member of the trio, along with Phil Dick/HorseloverFat as the crazy, mystical heretical one and K.W. Jeter as Kevin the hilariously cynical atheist.

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Got reminded once again that Tinas are merciless in their honesty when honesty is required, but sweet and angelic in their inner essence.

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Got to not only hang out with Paul Park and Maureen McHugh, but to have them actually do an impromptu brain-storming thing with me on a story idea I mentioned, which was surreal.

Even got 600 words or so of writing done over the weekend which, while not much while I'm supposed to be Nano-ing, is better than nothing.

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Found out that, while the Tex-Mex is great, it is a bad idea to eat at Texan BBQ places. The "vegetable plate" contains nothing that was ever anything like a vegetable.

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Picked up a copy of the current issue of Flytrap, and read through some of it on the flight back when I finished "American Gods." I enjoyed most of what I read, and was absolutely blown away by "The Sun Diary" by Lavie Tidhar. He's the same guy who did the Nazi story in the first issue of Clarkesworld, and while that story was conceptually interesting and edgy, the setting didn't feel that vivid to me, whereas "The Sun Diary" was almost nothing but mood and imagery, and executed wonderfully. Seems like someone to keep an eye on.

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Came back on Sunday night, feeling very depressed about having to go back after seeing everyone for such a ridiculously short span of time. (I mean, the last little visit like this was 6 weeks long, so 3 days is a hell of a transition.) Did have the consoling thought, as I was looking out through the windows of the shuttle home from the airport at the full moon against the ocean and the palm trees, warm breezes everywhere, that at least if I have to back, I get to go back to *Miami*, which doesn't suck.