What I did in Tasmania, with photos

Sarah Tran, Allen and Unwin publicity goddess, and I got to Hobart yesterday morning and were picked up at the airport by friends Dianna and Mark and their friend Wayne, who was driving something a bit like the original batmobile. This was a car called Darlene. I didn't ask why she was called Darlene.

(L to R, Mark, Dianna, Wayne, Me, Darlene. Publicist Sarah Tran is not in the photo as she is taking it.)

Beside the hotel, we saw this -- an icebreaker known as the Orange Roughy.

This was the view from my hotel window.

Here's Mark standing outside Ellison Hawker. After the ABC radio interview I went inside and signed lots of stock for them.

From there we went to eat, racing to be done in time for the event. We'd just finished eating when we got a call saying, "Everything's running late. Many people. Tickets. Argh. Don't come down yet." So we had dessert. Then I was introduced by Professor Jonathan Dawson (who I really wanted to chat to, but it was not to be) and I read a couple of new poems and a chapter from The Graveyard Book, one I'd never read aloud before, amswered some questions. It was fun. And then I signed. Lots of amazingly nice people, and at the end the people from Ellison Hawker presented me with a bottle of Tasmanian Single Malt as a thank you.

Then up betimes, and off to the airport, to Melbourne. Where it is raining and I have spent the day being interviewed.

I want to close some tabs -- so here are some depressing playgrounds, here's me being given my Weird Tales 85 Storytellers Certificate, a YouTube Arkham Asylum fanfilm, and a terrific interview with Charles Brownstein of the CBLDF about the Gordon Lee case, which will, I think, answer a lot of questions for people.

Also, Michael Moorcock, visionary, worldmaker, author, and editor, quite possibly also the man who inspired Alan Moore to grow a beard, was made Grand Master at the Nebulas. Here's John Picacio's speech -- containing interpolations by China Mieville, Jeff Vandermeer, Alan Moore and me myself, among others.

And from Eddie Campbell (who has posted a page of pencils), I learn that about half of the Campbell-Gaiman Spirit story is up online at Scans Daily. Honestly, I wish they'd post the whole thing.If anyone's going to cry foul for a copyright violation, they'll cry foul for six and a half pages as easily as they will all ten, and all the good jokes in the Tarantino parody have been left out...

sunday morning

This just came in from my friend in Tasmania Dianna Graf (Clockwork Beehive is Dianna and Mark's company. Just in case you were wondering.)

Ooh.

I just got a message saying that tickets to your event in Hobart have completely sold out.

That was fast!

Could you perhaps mention this on your blog?

So many more people were planning to come. There are people flying in from other states and everything.

If enough people who missed out on tickets contact Ellison Hawker Bookshop quickly enough, they may be able to find you a bigger venue.

xx

Dianna

Consider it posted. I'd hate for someone to have go all the way to Tasmania for nothing (although if you did, you'd still be in Tasmania, which is pretty cool by itself. There's the museum, not to mention the extremely slim chance of seeing a thylacine...)

...

I normally avoid linking to favourite author surveys because it could skew them, but I don't think anything will affect the Tolkien and Pratchett lead over at SFX, and the results, as a snapshot of what people read and like, are fascinating.

http://www.sfx.co.uk/page/sfx?entry=vote_for_your_favourite_sf

...

When I read this book review's headline -- Nick Johnstone's Amy Amy Amy is the first assessment of the troubled rise of a remarkable talent, says Nick Johnstone I thought that The Guardian had taken book reviewing into new places by allowing the author (of an Amy Winehouse bio) to review his book himself, so lines like

He is scrupulous about acknowledging his sources as he goes along in the text, which contributes to an impression of the book being a compendium of other people's cuttings, rather than the product of his own legwork.

were as much confessional as they were descriptive. (I can't imagine I would have been as honest about my Duran Duran biography-from-cuttings.) I was enormously impressed with this new trend in reviewing, and really disappointed when I got to the bottom of the review and read "David Sinclair is the author of Wannabe: The Spice Girls Revisited (Omnibus)" and realised it was just another Guardian typo.
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A few weeks ago I was interviewed about the Ramayana by animator and film-maker Ravi Swami for the British Library. It's up as a podcast now on their site as part of the upcoming Ramayana exhibit:

http://www.bl.uk/ramayana

I can't wait to see the exhibition.
....

And, for those of you who were wondering, there's a little film of a thylacine on YouTube. Possibly the last thylacine, filmed in 1933. Look at that jaw open...