cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Book Festival Day one of the book festival. Snore. I admittedly only went to one program today, but it was pathetic. Oh sure, there were plenty of people there and it was well-organized and all. But the authors they had up there were mostly ridiculous. One guy, who was lavishly introduced, went on for 10 minutes or so talking about the creative process and his passion for his subject. It turns out that what he wrote was about a 14 page piece in a non-fiction anthology about a road in centr@l Virginia, published by a University press in soft-cover only. Fucking get real. The other two speakers were similarly unimpressive. Nice enough people, but they hadn't really done any serious writing. Why the fuck were they on stage? I had high hopes for the audience that were also dashed. It was a lot of bookish retired-looking people. Rosy-cheeked, middle-aged women with short grey hair and tote bags and dangly earrings. None of them were really writers, either. They were the sort of people who probably belong to some 'writers group' and pass around their terrible short stories to each other and have never published anything and beg you for your literary agent's phone number until you are forced to run away. I had hoped for some decent professional networking but the whole event was filled with people who are basically just fucking around. I heard from Gr@nt St0ddard today. Men's J0urnal just gave a green light to him doing a feature article about me. This will basically be an excuse for Grant and I to hang out and fart around and drink for 3 days. I told him that he can either come along with me for a few days when I canoe the entire J@mes River in May, or we can meet up in NYC when I do the pigeons for the new book. We might also spend a few days in New Orleans instead. My hope is that he'll opt for NYC, because that would just be a lot of fun. Gr@nt wrote for Nerve M@gazine in NYC for many years before moving to Canada and I'm sure he still knows a ton of people. If I was going to make a list of the top 10 people I'd want to run around NYC with for 3 days, he would be on it. I still can't seem to get my April schedule together on account of knowing that I won't get my money for the new book until at least May. No way to pay for travel presently. 1:27 a.m. - 2011-03-17 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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