Pictures here. (The pictures of Jessica Rabbit do not do her justice.)

Today was mostly boring (to you) writing track stuff. Of particular note were two readings that I attended. The first was by John Scalzi, the second was by John Ringo.

Scalzi read from his upcoming follow-up to the Android’s Dream, entitled The High Castle. He read the opening chapter, which was tremendously funny. If anything, it will top the introduction to the Android’s Dream for it’s sheer hilarity. Scalzi is quite the character when he reads aloud, making hand gestures and changing vocal pitch and accent to match the mood and emotion of the character. He did an excellent job. He did his best to answer questions afterward, and thankfully no one brought up bacon cat.

John Ringo was interesting as always, wearing a khaki kilt and taking good-natured heckling from his girlfriend who was sitting on the front row. Computer problems made his reading of the upcoming Vorpal Blade book Claws that Catch a little rough at first, but he soon found his wind and gave some details on a funny scene involving a cat smuggled onto a space ship. He digressed into a discussion on housecats and their different breeds that was entertaining before taking some questions. I later had the chance to meet John Ringo (for the second time) and got him to sign a copy of The Last Centurion for me.

I also got a chance to meet Jewel Staite, who plays Kaylee on Firefly. She is incredibly pretty in a girl-next-door sort of way, as well as being warm and funny. I got the impression that she’s the kind of girl you’d want to bring home to mom.

The last, perhaps most exciting bit of news, is that at the Tor books promotional seminar, I walked away with an advance uncorrected proof of David Drake’s last volume of The Crown of the Isles, entitled The Gods Return. The book’s release date is listed on the cover as November 2008. Yay, me! (No, I will not send it to anyone when I’m done, and no, it will not show up on eBay. Vultures!)

I’ll be swinging home tomorrow (hopefully avoiding the hurricane). My family has weathered a bit of a storm themselves while I was gone; I hope to talk about it either on Monday or Tuesday night.