This entry was written on Sunday, July 20th, on my Handspring Visor and Stowaway folding keyboard, while I was flying back from Seattle. Due to a severe shortage of cluefulness during the past week, it was not uploaded and posted until today:

Hmmm...very odd. My Handspring Visor rebooted on me while I was writing the first version of this journal entry. Let's try this again.

So: spent the weekend in Seattle, visiting Daniel at Clarion West. Had much fun. It all went by much too fast - it felt like I'd barely arrived when I had to go back again.

I arrived Friday afternoon, somewhat later than anticipated, because my flight was delayed. Almost immediately after I arrived, Daniel had to run off to his conference with China Mieville, so I got to wander around and explore the workshop's new digs. (After many years of housing the students and Seattle University and holding classes at Seattle Central Community College, Clarion West had to move, because Seattle U decided to double their housing rates. )

The new location is a sorority house near the University of Washington campus. It's huge, with a large common area where they hold classes. The bedrooms are more spacious than ours were at Seattle U, and there are enough to spare that many students have appropraited second rooms for their use. (Daniel sleeps in one room and writes in another.) The house has a chef who prepares dinner Monday through Thursday night. It's just a few blocks away from the University Bookstore, where the readings are held.

The major downsides are the neighboring frat and boarding houses, which hold very loud parties on weekend nights. And, of course, I felt the lack of all my favorite Capitol Hill haunts from last year: can you have a real Clarion West experience without Caffe Vita and Charlie's?

Well, the current crop of students seem to be having a real Clarion West experience. Daniel's classmates were all sweet people, and let me tell them stories of what things were like "Back in my day."

After Daniel returned from his conference with China, we went out and grabbed an early dinner. We contemplated going to see Pirates of the Carribbean, but eventually we just wandered back to the house, and spent some time just hanging out and talking. (It was nice to do that. It's one of the things I've missed, while Daniel's been gone - just chatting about nothing in particular)

I was exhausted for some reason (you'd think it was me that'd been doing the writing workshop!) and I drifted off to sleep at about 10:00.

Next morning, I got on the net and attempted to figure out the Seattle bus system. We successfully got ourselves to Pike Place market and had lunch in a restaurant on the waterfront: Etta's. Yum. If you're ever in Seattle and want a splurge, go to Etta's. (It's not hugely pricy, but enough to count as going out for a special meal.) We had tuna sashimi that melted in one's mouth, and spice-rubbed grilled King salmon that was the most flavorful salmon I've ever tasted. I think I may never order salmon in a restaurant again, because I don't think it will compare.

I would've liked to stay and browse at the market longer, but we had to hustle back to the house to catch our ride to Greg Bear's party. The Bears' house is gorgeous as always. I got to see lots of familiar faces from last year. Caught the second half of a very interesting discussion of the roots of the current British hard SF/space opera "Renaissance" involving Greg Bear, China Mieville, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden. Wish I'd caught the first half: the gist of the argument seemed to be that space opera has deeper roots in the British SF tradition than most people realize, and so the current crop of British writers of intelligent space opera didn't really come out of nowhere, as some people seem to think.

Or at least, I think that was the gist. I wish I'd caught the first half of the conversation.

Rather amusing exchange involving me, Daniel, and Patrick Nielsen Hayden: Daniel had asked Patrick some question about Tor's Orb line. Patrick said that the line was doing very well, and that you might be surprised which titles were among its best sellers.
Daniel: Like what?
Patrick: Gene Wolf's _Book of the New Sun_.
Me: Oh, that's not surprising. I bought that.
Patrick: Storm Constantine's _Wraethu_.
Me: Yeah. I bought that, too.
Patrick: Lots of Jack Vance.
Me: Yup. Bought that.

Clearly, the folks at Tor Orb have got my number.

It was a fun party. Octavia Butler was there, and Vonda McIntyre, and a paleontologist whose name I've forgotten who does really cool drawings of dinosaurs. And Greg gave the class the tour of the library, and they got to admire the books and the awards. And he talked to the current crop of students about writing, which led to some lively discussion after one student asked, "Everybody tells us not to worry about what sells, and to write what we love, but when I write what I love, they tell me, 'This won't sell.' What do I do?" I'm not sure if Greg gave him a satisfying answer - I'm not sure it there is a satisfying answer- but some of the ensuing discussion was good.

After returning from the party, Daniel and I went out and found a little Boba tea shop that played horrible Christian rock and made divine peach mango smoothies and was open until midnight, and we sat and wrote for a while.

Sunday, I was hoping to get together with my fellow Clarionites Genevieve and Droog for brunch. However, Genevieve was helping out a friend who was having a baby, and the friend was still in labor. So plans never quite congealed. Daniel and I went wandering along the main student drag, and had coffee, and went to the University Bookstore and bumped into Ted Chiang and one of his Clarion classmates. Ted seemed surprised to see Daniel. "Souldn't you be shut away somewhere writing frantically?"

The University Bookstore has a pretty darn good SF section. I bought Jon Courtenay Grimwood's _Effendi_, sequel to _Pashazade_. I do hope somebody is bringing these books out in a US edition. They're good frothy fun, but still intelligent and well-written.

When we returned to the sorority house, I was immediately drawn into the common area by the sounds of somebody rocking out on an acoustic guitar. It was Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who had just restrung Leslie's guitar, and was giving it a workout. That guy can play.

We had a little guitar neep, on the relative merits of Stratocasters/Telecasters/floating bridge/fixed bridge guitars. (Like Patrick, I think that fixed bridge guitars are generally superior, but I still think that my Fender Strat sounds like God when played with the neck and middle pickups out of phase. Since I didn't have my Strat available for demonstration, I think Patrick remained justifiably skeptical.)

I played around with Leslie's guitar for a while myself, and chatted with some of Daniel's classmates. The shuttle to take me to the airport arrived all too soon.

Turned out that my shuttle driver was a science fiction fan of a sort, though. We chatted about _The Lord of the Rings_ and _Dune_ all the way to the airport.

And then I got on a plane, and here I am. Back to work tomorrow!