In which Seanan spends the day working at Orbit, visits a circle of hell, and encounters bloggers.

[seanan_mcguire]

Monday dawned bright and (very, very) early, since DongWon had asked that I be at Orbit at nine a.m. to do some recording. Now, Orbit is located near Grand Central Station, which is very much Properly In Manhattan. I was staying in Jersey City, which is very much not Properly In Manhattan. It is, in fact, in a different state. As a California girl, this causes me a certain amount of existential confusion every time I need to go from one to the other very quickly, since I know, deep down in my soul, that it takes at least eight hours to go from one state to another. Such is the eternal divide between the East and West Coasts.

Since I needed to get to Orbit by nine, I got up at seven. This means that, on some level, I got up at four. There is a reason I occasionally demand love and caffeine from my editors. I am comfortable enough with Manhattan at this point that I was able to get myself to the office with a minimum of trouble (barring a brief "walking the wrong way up 6th Avenue" incident, and really, that could have happened to anyone), which is good, since I was carrying my laptop. Yes, the big orange one. Yes, the one that weighs as much as one of the cats. Why?

Because I was having dinner with The Agent and a few more of her clients that evening, which meant there was no way I was getting back to Jersey City. And if I was going to be at Orbit all day, I was damn well going to get some serious work done.

I beat DongWon to the office by almost twenty minutes, and was detained by security until he arrived. I am never letting him forget this. Never ever ever never. But! He did eventually show up, and we were able to get into the office, finally, where there were greetings and huggings, and presentations of really fancy chocolate (from me to the office, not from the office to me). I had time to inhale one doughnut and drink a bottle of Diet Dr Pepper, and then it was off to the recording studio, where a very nice engineer explained how a recording booth worked. Thanks, nice engineer! Nobody had bothered to tell him that I have three studio albums out. Sorry, nice engineer.

My first task: recording the audio book edition of "Apocalypse Scenario." Super-fun! I managed not to get too into it, but wow was I glad to have done voice work before. It was nice and smooth and lovely. I followed it with two different podcast recordings, all done in the same wee room. Everything was professional and well-orchestrated, and before I knew it, it was all over, and I was being settled at the only open desk in the office.

Cue working. Type type type. Type type type. I was supposed to have lunch with some friends who were also in New York for BEA; when they didn't answer their phones, I had lunch with DongWon and Devi (another Orbit editor) instead. We went to a seafood restaurant, where I ate mussels and potatoes and hot fudge sundae, om nom. DongWon had to run before we finished eating, leaving Davi and I to talk about him behind his back. Ha ha, DongWon. Ha, ha.

Back to the office; more working; more whining at my computer. I actually had to borrow copies of Feed and Deadline to use as reference material, since otherwise, I wouldn't have been able to verify the continuity of what I was writing. This is why it's good to write at your publisher's. They'll always have copies of the books you need on hand.

Eventually, the day ended. Poof. And I, being the sensible girl that I am, loaded up my tote bag with my laptop and all the books I had managed to collect over the course of the day and went hieing off to downtown to meet up with The Agent for dinner. She had directed me to a library, in an alley, in an unfamiliar part of the city. I assume this is because she wants to see whether I will survive being eaten by a Grue. I found the library, and felt very smug about it, right until I went inside, went down to the floor where the YA author event I was meeting her at was being held, and discovered that I had, in fact, descended to a very unpleasant and specialized CIRCLE OF HELL.

Seriously. What seemed like several hundred people (and may have been just fifty, I don't know, it was a CIRCLE OF HELL) were crammed into an itty-bitty space, creating an immense amount of heat and noise. And somewhere in all that chaos was my agent. I sought. I strove. I gave up.

Spotting a woman with a Diet Dr Pepper, I begged to know where it had come from, and damn near wept when informed that she had brought it with her. Then I discovered, much to my surprise, that she was actually a book blogger I know through her reviews. And then she took me to the secret cluster of book bloggers hiding from the heat near the elevators. Yay! Much joy and chatter and hugging followed, lasting until The Agent appeared, her new client Claire in tow, to whisk me away to a less hellish locale.

Did I attack the first gas station we passed like it was the Promised Land, coming away with a sack of Diet Dr Pepper? Yes. Yes, I did.

We had dinner at a lovely place near Waverly Place (still no wizards), where we ate bread and cheese and I had fish and eventually went downstairs and was horribly sick due to a fish bone sticking in my throat. Since I had not retained dinner, The Agent bought me a cupcake. Happy times. Claire was awesome, but I was tired, and BEA was the next morning, so I returned to New Jersey and slept. FOREVER.

Next: BEA and DAW. It's acronym day!

Comments

[spectralbovine.livejournal.com]

I admire your ability to describe in a concise fashion what it would take me tens of thousands of words to capture.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Time constraints keep me brief.

[starletfallen.livejournal.com]

It is, in fact, in a different state. As a California girl, this causes me a certain amount of existential confusion every time I need to go from one to the other very quickly, since I know, deep down in my soul, that it takes at least eight hours to go from one state to another. Such is the eternal divide between the East and West Coasts.

Having grown up on the West Coast, I had a similar problem when, while living on Long Island, one of my roommates gleefully announced we were going to go meet up with some friends in Pennsylvania. TWO WHOLE STATES AWAY. And we were making a day trip out of it. We didn't even have to leave before sunrise! It was deeply unnerving, let me tell you.

[kengr]

It helps if you've grown up or lived near the border. From Spokane, driving to Idaho was no big deal. Living in Portland, especially at my current location, I could *walk* across the border and back in a few hours.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Word.

[archangelbeth]

I grew up mostly in central Texas, and am now living in New England. The way states are jam-packed together up here, like counties, still boggles me, even after 20 years. (I am slowly becoming used to the way that there are little windy-twindy roads that look like you're at the back end of beyond, and then, suddenly, you're going through the center of some little town! It's like... trees, trees, trees, OH LOOK TOWN HALL! trees, trees trees.)

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Seconding the whole confusion about going to different states thing on the East Coast. I remember one trip we took and hit like three different states all the way through in one day. They're so tiny! It doesn't feel like they're proper states. States are supposed to be HUGE MASSIVE THINGS that take forever to drive across.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yes!

[alicetheowl.livejournal.com]

It is, indeed, a very different point of view to grow up on the East Coast. I live in Schenectady, in New York state. It takes less time to drive to Boston than to NYC. For that matter, I could make a day trip of all of the New England states from where I live, and still get home before dark.

But then, I'm regularly boggled by the idea of needing a passport in Europe if one wishes to drive more than a few hours, so I guess it's all relative.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yeah, pretty much. We set our standards according to our environments.

[oreouk.livejournal.com]

Most of that 'needing a passport to drive more than a few hours' thing in mainland Europe has diminished. In the EU they have taken away the border checkpoints (or rather, stopped manning them). It's probably still a good idea to *have* your passport with you, but it's not necessary (unless you are travelling into/out of the UK, where we still have the passport checks).

All of this makes driving to a German filkcon a lot easier than is used to be, since our route goes through France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany (IIRC - it does depend which way we go). Nowadays the most obvious way of telling you have moved from one country to another (if you blink and miss the border signs) is the quality of the road surface (particularly when moving out of France).

[kengr]

My sympathies on the circle of hell event.

In other news, while out and about yesterday, I bought the last shelf copy of Deadline at the Barnes & Noble in Lloyd Center here in Portland. If there were other copies, they were hiding.

I'm only halfway thru it at the moment. But I will note that the last line of chapter 9 confirms you as a member in good standing of the group known as Evil Authors.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Woo!

[paradisacorbasi.livejournal.com]

Awww, see the nice part about living on the East coast? You can jump states! Plural! In a matter of minutes or hours!

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

True!

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

This is really only useful if on the run from The Law

[wendyzski.livejournal.com]

And somewhere on the internet, a book blogger is telling the tale of how she temporarily captured the wild Seanan with a DDP lure, and there will be hopeful baby bloggers lurking on street corners in the heat with luscious cool cans dripping with condensation in hopes of repeating her adventure....

Or perhaps I'm still feverish..

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

That is a hysterical image.

[pacalissanctum.livejournal.com]

I am not from the West Coast but I do live in Texas now so when people from the East Coast I know mention that they went several states away for a daytrip, it messes with my mind.

P.S. I am not usually one for zombies but I was intrigued by the shorts you posted and got Deadline and I *love* it.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Awesome! Glad to hear. :)

[vincentursus.livejournal.com]

I am reminded of the line about how to an American, a 100 years is a vast span of time, but to a European, a 100 miles is a vast distance.

Is a sack of Diet Dr. Pepper awkward? Whenever I walk away with moderate quantities of carbonated beverage (more than moderate quantities are unfeasible to carry) I worry that they will erupt when I open them.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

It isn't, but only because the sacks tend to empty so very quickly.

[laurenthemself]

I hope your throat's okay after the fish bone, that sounds very nasty indeed.

Oh, and on account of my country only having six states (plus territories), my mind always boggles at any descriptions of interstate travel that takes less than several hours (by car or PT, anyway).

On the other hand, when I went to Tasmania, the flight was almost literally a take-off and then a landing, it was so short.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

It's fine. I was scratchy for a little bit, but it's healed up.

Australia having such massive states seems natural to me. You had a lot of country to fill, and I'd have gotten bored after five or six.

OT: "Pandemic flu advert revealed by Department of Health"

[keristor.livejournal.com]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13665149

Just sayin' *g*.

Re: OT: "Pandemic flu advert revealed by Department of Health"

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

The "ooo ooo we got this through freedom of information AREN'T WE CLEVER" tone of the article is a bit obnoxious, but it's a lovely advert.

[azurelunatic]

At least the security at your publisher is much more poorly armed than security at the CDC.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

True!

[biomekanic.livejournal.com]

As someone who grew up on the East coast and had 5 different routes to take between home and college, the lack of choice out West (in this case Portland, OR) drives me insane.

But yeah, environment can really alter things.

Driving from where I grew up to Baltimore was a 40 mile trip, one of those "once a year" type of things. When I lived in Denver that was a one way trip to work because I couldn't afford a 7 figure house in that neighborhood.

Funny enough, here in Portland we have friends who are reluctant to visit because it's a whopping 15 mile trip. Then again, given how screwed up the routes and roads are... I don't always blame them.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Heh.

Fair enough.

[ravenclawed.livejournal.com]

I'm glad to hear you're okay after the fish tried to take its revenge.

I'm 94% of the way through Deadline (no idea what page and I forget what chapter). If I had to give a one-word review right now, I'd say it's unputdownable. That's a word, right?

ETA: Forgot to mention that I went on a roadtrip last summer. Great Plains to upstate NY. Two days, seven states. Nearly endless cornfields in Every. Single. One. I was so thankful for the sight of vineyards when we got into NY.

[seanan-mcguire.livejournal.com]

Yay, vineyards!