Gary Kloster

I woke Sunday morning, after a few hours sleep, and stared down from my window at this.

Ah, Hollywood.  How quickly your luster fades in the hard light of morning.

Anyway, it was the last day.  Time for book signings!  We rolled out from the hotel in a very special short bus of success, cruising over to our first meeting with our adoring public.  Well, the pros had adoring public.  We had people who were willing to give us a shot at not boring them.

First stop was at Vromans, an independent bookstore in Pasadena.  The trip was fun, with Tim Powers pointing out various landmarks, and I talked writing with some of the others.  I had the joy of trying to explain what my first book was about to Schon, realizing as I did so that I was making it sound fairly incoherent and goofy.  Time to work on that pitch.  In the background, out the bus windows, great black columns of smoke were rising up.  The hills above LA, in the heat of the previous week, had decided to spend the weekend exploding in to flame.  Thousands were fleeing for their lives.  In Pasadena though, we bravely pressed on.  There were books that needed signing.

Vromans is a nice place, and the signing was well organized and went fast.  We put a lot of ink in a lot of books, and then we headed out…  Actually, no.  Turns out the very special short bus had gone missing.  After an hour or so–had I mentioned this was around lunch–it finally turned up.  We piled on and went to the next stop, a Barnes & Nobles.  Originally, the plan was to get food, then go to the signing.  After the mysterious missing bus caper, we had time to get there and run through the restaurant next door where most of the pros were finishing their lunch (they had a very special van, which hadn’t gone missing).  We grabbed caffeine and finished their leftover nachos (already the hedonistic lifestyle of an author was leaving me dizzy), and then went to the signing.

It went well too, although the layout this time wasn’t quite so good.  I was back somewhere in the cooking section.  But it was fun talking to people, and the GW and Kid 1 showed up and I got my copy of the anthology signed by everyone.  Then I drove back to the hotel with the family, and actually managed to talk to them for a little while

Then the wrap up.  Back to Author Services, where first we were fed (yay!).  After, there was a Chick Corea concert.  He’s a grammy winning Jazz pianist.  I have to admit, I don’t listen to Jazz.  But it’s always incredible to watch someone who is a genius work.  Finally there was a dramatic reading of an old Hubbard pulp story, then dessert.

After all that, there was the last hang out.  The pool was closed, so we all settled in to the lobby and talked.  It had been such a long, hectic week, there was that strange sense of time having both stretched and skipped.  It had lasted forever, and was over far too fast.  Eventually, the body gave up, and early Monday morning I staggered off to bed.