And so to World Fantasy Convention in Corpus Christi, which was a blast.
First, that Corpus. It's my hobby whenever in the USA to get out and WALK places. This does seem to unnerve and frighten people, but they do recall after a while that it is neither illegal nor harmful. Anyway, body of Christ, and there were all these dead fish washed up on the shore. Lots of 'em. Red tide. The seafront at Corpus Christi is pristine and manicured, and deserted but for the teams of litter-pluckers marching in strict formation, flicking nano-specks of dust into billowing plastic garbage bags. Two blocks back from the seafront the pavement is crumbling and small trees are growing through the concrete. With all this symbolism going on before the convention had even started I could see why people would want to stay in their cars.
But a delight, seeing so many friends again, and meeting new ones! Mucho appreciation to artist John Picacio for unbeatable Texan hospitality, to Peter for pool-shots, and all the boys and girls in Doc Crokkett's Blues Bar, plus Tamela for skanky dancing, whatever skanky means. (Look, I collect new words while I'm in the U.S.) Is it something arrestable? She did it, officer, not me.
And it was from the magnificent bar-bound Gay and Joe Haldeman that I learned the Spanish bullfighter's toast, with which I bored everyone for the next three weeks. Goes like this (and Gay can even recite it in Spanish): "Here's to Lying, Stealing, Cheating and Drinking. If you must lie, lie to save a friend; if you must steal, then steal another's heart; and if you must cheat, cheat death; and if you must drink, then drink with me." Ola! Which must be the most life-affirming toast I ever heard, and why I like going to conventions. But it did summon to mind the equally pessimistic Scottish "Crosland" toast: "Here's tai us; Who's like us? Gey few; And they're all dead." Where gey = very, and best recited while parting your kilt so as to warm the buttocks over a peat fire, all the while turning a gimlet but doomy eye up toward the top corner of the room, as if crowds of Caledonian ghosts do hang there in the smoke.
Ach, maybe it's all to do with climatic differences.
Anyway, someone was toasting too frequently at one of the publishing parties. My drinkin' pal the indefatigable Lou Anders from Bookface.com, as a cautionary measure against the high Texan wind had lashed himself to the bar. He was later spotted seen trying to escape the hotel via the escalator. Unable to negotiate the step-off he tumbled and seemed to get his beard enmeshed in the moving stair mechanism. There he remained, with the escalator running-board slapping rhythmically at his chin like a tiny fist. Quickly on the scene I managed to disengage beard from mechanism, though quite a lot of it had already been plucked in this dangerous mix-up. With the help of a couple of cheerful part-goers I managed to spoon Lou into his room and bed, softly closing the door on the fellow as he continued to speak oracles.
The convention was really too much fun in one big bottle and I was glad to go and sorry to leave, but when I did it was to San Antonio, discovering there, quite by accident, the Alamo. Reader, I went. And because I met so many wonderful Texans at the convention, I'm not going to say a word against it.
Much more fun was dinner in Austin with Michael and Linda Moorcock, Rick Klaw and Brandy, and my host John. Michael signed for me a copy of the Mojo Press edition of Behold The Man. I read this book when I was sixteen. Influential. Some of its concerns probably found their way into my novel Requiem, for which (and by co-incidence, since this was before I'd ever met him) Michael Moorcock had penned a cover-quote. I love that circularity! I also loved the fact that this restaurant had a piano at which Captain Beefheart had played, and a skanky (hey, this surely isn't right!) young waitress ribbing me for my English accent.
All right, the Alamo. You knew I would have to speak on this subject. Had I not seen, aged about nine, a Hollywood film in which John Wayne (or was it Richard Widmark?) plugged about three hundred sallow-cheeked Mexicans, I would have spent more time mugging up the history. Actually, memory has blurred somewhat - I thought they were fighting Apaches in the film but seems it was the Mexican army. You have to appreciate that it was a Saturday afternoon and my father kept switching channels to get the horse-racing results. John Wayne (or Richard Widmark) wore a recently-dead animal of some kind on his head, for reasons which were never made clear.
So I entered the Alamo, which at that time of day had very few other visitors, and found myself in a courtyard where I was passionately harangued by a gentleman in a scarlet waistcoat and blue bowtie. He had a microphone, and he was earnestly explaining the complicated circumstances of the battle, perspiring heavily as history was laid bare. I looked around at the empty courtyard and realised I was an audience of one observing a performance of one. I nodded appropriately, gasped here and there, shook my head in wonderment and so on but I couldn't seem to grasp the who, why and what, fearing all the while that this chap was at any moment going to pass round the coonskin hat.
I was joined presently by a trio of Hell's Angels, Texas chapter. To my astonishment as they listened to the amplified history lesson, they began weeping, all three of them. One of them looked at me meaningfully, whereupon I felt obliged to recite the doleful 'Crosland' toast (see above). After I was done one of them embraced me fiercely while the other two stood with heads bowed.
I shan't go there again in a hurry.
Meanwhile back home the new novel proceeds steadily. Though I have a new title, I'll continue to refer to it here as Seven Sisters, and see if the new cognomen beds in. Titles are strange things. They either suggest themselves early, and convincingly, or you are reduced to writing long and banal lists, a task which gets more and more dispiriting and unlikely to deliver. Anyway, I have what I want. If you are very well behaved I might eventually reveal it on these pages.
And last time my report of my daughter Ella, four-year-old enemy of hubris, pleased many, so here's another. I have at the side of my workdesk a flipchart I use an aide-memoire in that I rapidly scrawl notes to myself so as not to break the supposed flow, things which I can fix later. (Such as: Moron! They didn't have cellphones in the seventeenth century! Or whatever.) Anyway this chart rapidly fills up with scribble. Ella comes to see me in my study at the end of the working day. I work at the top of the house and after two flights of stairs she's huffing and puffing. The other day she came into my study and peered hard at all this scribble on the chart. "Dad, did you write all this by yourself?"
"Well, yes."
"That's >very< good."
GJ
