I'm just back from playing native guide with Ellie Lang and Harry Turtledove who are in town for the Southern Festival of Books. Ellie is the publicist at Del Ray Books and Harry is well known for his alternate history series of science fiction, including Guns of the South. Ellie and I had only met once, a long time ago when I was working at Tor Books, but we have so many mutual friends that it was just like getting together with an old friend when we met up for a drink on Friday night. Today, we decided to squire Harry around to some bookstores so he could sign his works, and I promised to show them the Parthenon and Music Row. The visual you need to keep in mind is that Ellie is maybe 5 feet tall and possibly 80 pounds soaking wet, whereas Harry is a very tall, strapping man with large features and a jutting beard. I felt like we represented the Three Stages of Evolution or something as we strolled around town.
Doing a mini-tour of Nashville involved starting out at the Pancake Pantry for breakfast, famous as a country-music-star-sighting location and heavenly pancakes. We all dutifully ordered them, ate too much, saw no stars, and carried on towards Green Hills so Harry could sign books at David-Kidd. I bought one of Sparkle Hayter's books for a friend of mine who loves women mystery writers and is always getting me the greatest books. At last, I know of one she doesn't know about so I'll be sending that off to her tomorrow. Meanwhile, Harry gleefully found more copies of his books on the shelves and sat down to autograph those. Afterwards, we quickly buzzed through Centennial Park where the out of towners were impressed (I'm sure that look on their faces was impression!) by the full scale copy of the Athens Parthenon. I failed to explain Nashville is known as the Athens of the South since I rarely remember it myself. Ellie trekked through the ticky tacky shops of Music Row, squealing in delight as she searched for the perfect salt shakers and boxes of GooGoo Clusters to take home to New York. Harry was suspiciously good at finding the most horrendously tacky thing in each shop.
While discussing education and uses of degrees, Harry mentioned that he had his doctorate in Byzantine History. Talk about unemployable! No wonder he decided to become a writer.
I dropped them off at their hotel, promised to see Ellie in either California or New York, and zoomed home so that I could resume packing. And here I am, having packed a whole two boxes, pretending I need to do an entry now while I'm fresh from the day's coffee. The truth is, I'm utterly unable to summon the willpower to pack dishes when I feel so awake for a change. I want to use my brain for something other than determining fares or arguing with hotels or convincing clients they ought to pick a hemisphere, at least, before they come into my office asking for help with a vacation. I had a really good time talking to the effervescent Ellie and the laconically sharp Harry. I miss being surrounded by intellectuals and artists and witty, amusing people. I have a feeling the next three weeks are going to seem like molasses as I hurry up and wait for the move to happen.
Time to read other people's diaries, I think.
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