Back from Boston

Oh, the day that I’ve had.

It started with the first truly nice weather we had all the time I was in Boston, yesterday’s quite pleasant evening excluded. The sun-dappled river made a lovely, if perhaps at times a bit too sun-dappled and bright, view from our exhibit booth. I spent the day selling books, more or less the same as I’d done the days before, and then started cleaning up a little before three o’clock.

Clean-up went well. We’ve started bringing only a display copy or two of most of our books — and offering free international shipping in exchange for not being able to take the copy with you. It saves us considerably on shipping, and on sending books back that might just get pulped. Today, our last day at the conference, I was selling everything left on the table, display copy or not, so in the end I definitely had fewer boxes going back (some to Kentucky, some to New York) than were delivered. Which is almost always a good thing. Our shipping carrier showed up early, while I was still boxing everything up, and then the hotel staff they sent to collect the boxes — two of the same who’d been really helpful on Wednesday night finding our books — started hovering. But I got everything boxed up and ready to go by about 3:30, and a quick cab ride later had me at the airport.

Where I proceeded to wait around for several hours. You can follow the whole sorry story on Twitter (albeit in reverse), about the ground delays and the confused announcements and the fellow passengers with whom I first sympathized and then grew to see as impatient jerks. It was a long day. I think I slept on the plane — I must have slept on the plane — but I still feel pretty tired. And, woe is me, there’s no episode of Kojak here to console me.

I did, however, learn just this morning that I was accepted for a self-directed writing residency at the Banff Centre in Alberta this fall. Heather‘s talked about it so much, I just couldn’t let her have all the fun there. But seriously, I’m looking forward to it. There’s still a lot of planning to do for it, come September, and the last thing I want to do right this minute is look at an another airline itinerary, but the Centre seems like a really great place to develop my writing, enjoy the “powerful mountain setting,” and be inspired. I’m excited and really pleased to have the opportunity. Plus, you know, getting to meet Heather before that apocalypse she keeps reading about for her graduate classes actually happens. That should be nice.

Right now, I foresee sleep in my near future. It’s Daylight Savings Time this weekend, which is an abomination upon the earth. (Except in fall when it’s a quite pleasant extra hour of sleep.) So all the more reason to turn in a little early, I suppose.

All in all, I think it was a successful conference. I won’t know until at least Monday, when I add up the tally, just how many books we sold — and some people will take our catalog or order online; we offer the discount for thirty days after a conference, too. But I think we sold more than a few, and I think my boss met with a few key authors for some good projects going forward. I didn’t get to see much of Boston, or even much of Cambridge — and both ways my flights were delayed — but I’m glad I went.