Book Expo

Manhattan is a gas, that’s all I can say. The bars are fun, the women are beautiful and there’s enough energy on the street to put Exxon out of business.

It’s fun to just walk the sidewalks and take it all in. People of every description, all going in different directions. And contrary to popular myth, nearly all of them are very nice; not just the fellow tourists, but the locals as well. Some of the streets at Times Square are blocked off to traffic, so people just pull up a chair and chat, or take pictures, or watch the people who are watching them. Street musicians add their own vibe and pretty soon the better musicians draw a crowd. CDs are only fifteen bucks, but I go the cheap way and just put a couple of bucks in the open guitar case.

Like any good convention, this one is huge, and there’s never enough time to walk all the aisles.

BEA
Though some go to New York for the theater, or the fashion, or the museums, I went for an affair named BEA, Book Expo America. Everyone is there, from huge publishing companies like Random House to small publishers like Wolfgang. It’s an opportunity for me to talk with my distributor about our plans for late 2010 and the spring of 2011.

I also met a charming Irish fella from the U.K. who wants to buy some of our overstock, and a German woman with an interest in buying the “rights” to some of our books. When you sell the rights you actually sell the right to publish the book, usually in another market and in a different language.

Harleys in New York, and cops and more cops – all of which makes the place feel very safe.

Time Flies

After three days in New York, I jumped on a plane Friday morning and made the non-stop flight west to Minnesota. Travel is a little like a drug. I want more and more until it’s suddenly all too much and what I really desire is the company of good friends and the feel of familiar landscape.

Free concerts, right there on the street, complete with little kids and tourists of every description, all drawn by the magic of the music.

The nice thing about a window seat is the window, and the fact that you can fall asleep while leaning on the inside of the cabin, instead of accidentally slumping over onto some stranger’s shoulder.