writers

So that was kind of an interesting day.

Still lots of work keeping me busy at the office, and a meeting we’d planned for tomorrow to discuss it got pushed to this afternoon. It’s good, though, in that what’s expected of me on this new project is a little clearer now, but the trickier elements still won’t be finished until December. Of course, the need to be finished by December. That’s the thing about textbooks: because of adoption cycles, when professors are picking the books for their classes (or having them picked for them), you actually have a pretty limited window of when you can publish. If you miss the fall adoption cycle, for instance, you might be better off just waiting another six months and trying for the spring. And that’s kind of tough to do, when you also have to time things up with manuscript delivery and a six-to-seven-month production schedule. This particular textbook represents brand new territory for us in a lot of ways, production-wise, so it’s going to be an interesting learning experience.

Hopefully also a relatively painless one.

I ran an errand at lunchtime that took me a little further uptown, closer to Broadway, so I decided to stop in a place I haven’t been to since March and try the same sandwich I had then, a tempeh “Reuben.” It’s not much to look at, maybe. But, again, it was tastier than any miso mustard-glazed fermented soybean cake topped with avocado, ginger sauerkraut, and spicy Russian dressing on vegan 7-grain bread has any business being. If the sandwich was cheaper, and the place was closer…well, I still don’t think I’d eat it often. It’s not that tasty. But it’s weird and healthy enough that I don’t mind trying it every now and then.

Later, I took the subway downtown to meet me father for dinner around Union Square, near where he works. We ate at Pete’s Tavern, which is allegedly where O. Henry wrote many of his most famous short stories, though I’m afraid no ironic twist endings occurred to me as I ate my bacon cheeseburger. I was mostly just talking with my father and trying to figure out why my alma mater, Penn State, was on the silent but ESPN-displaying big-screen TV in the corner. (Apparently, this was going on, whatever it is.)

And then we split up, my father going home, and me going to the nearby Barnes & Noble bookstore for a reading and signing by William Gibson. That’s him up there at top. He read a chapter from his newest book, Zero History, and then opened up the floor to some actually quite interesting Q&A. (I always cringe a little at the Q parts, but nobody was too awkward or overly fawning to be painful to watch.) I really liked when he talked about using the tools of science fiction to investigate the present, which is really the only thing he’s ever done, he said, and about how science fiction is usually pretty lousy at prediction. A smart young reader would look at Neuromancer today, he said, and in twenty pages have figured out the central mystery: where did all the cell phones go?

After the talk, he signed books for awhile — and believe me, some people asked him to sign a lot of books. Then I got the subway to Penn Station and got a train home. On which I had the lovely coda to my day of watching some guy stumble around, presumably drunk but possibly sick, and throw up a little in the corner of the car. I don’t know if that, or the jackass filming him on his iPhone, was more annoying.

At least I got a lot of reading done.

And now, I think, I shall go to bed.