I managed to get rid of my pasty New England skin by spending a little time outdoors in LA. I It was a good trip overall. I didn’t get back until very late last night so I’m trying to get through all the many emails.

LA was more mellow than I expected. The only crazy thing I heard about was the Prince party. It was a party thrown by Simon & Schuster at Prince’s house. He performed for about 120 book people. Life changing, is what I heard from the lucky people who attended. Danielle from Powell’s had the most memorable quote of the conference: “I could count the buttons on Prince’s tunic.” I didn’t get to go, or so I thought. Turns out I was invited, I just didn’t get the invitation. No life changing experiences for me!

One of my other favorite quotes I overheard while talking with Kelly Link at the Small Beer Press booth. It was an author describing her book to Gavin saying, “I wrote it as fiction because I didn’t think anybody would believe me.” I couldn’t hear the rest unfortunately. Originally I thought that the Fall would be pretty weak, but after wandering the show floor for 3 days, I see that there are a lot of good books coming. Some of the highlights are Home by Marilynne Robinson from FSG, Anathem by Neal Stephenson from Harper Collins, The Crow Road by Iain Banks from MacAdam Cage, A Mercy by Toni Morrison from Knopf, Good-Bye by Yoshihiro Tatsumi from Drawn & Quarterly, and Alinea by Grant Achatz from Ten Speed Press.

I’ll have more once I’ve decompressed. There are so many ARCs on my desk right now. I must organize!