Entries Tagged 'black magic insurance agency' ↓

I had a blast tonight.

If you’ve found yourself here late in the night of Nov. 20th or early morning Nov. 21st, it’s likely because you found yourself involved in my little after-hours texting thing.

Thanks again for playing along.

For fun – I’ll try to post a few stats here on after-hour participation, if I have them.

Today is launch day for a book I’ve been quite excited to read — written by friend (and editor!) Jedediah Berry (seen looking entirely the wrong direction in this photo):

There are a number of reasons why this promises to be a most excellent book, not the least of which is: the lead character is a bicyclist who rides with his umbrella! While Jed lives in Northampton, this book was obviously written for bikey, rainy Portland.

Hannah Tinti, author of The Good Thief said:

“Jedediah Berry knows magic. The Manual of Detection combines the intricacy and thoughtfulness of Borges and Kafka with the page-turning excitement of a detective thriller. . . . It made me laugh, thrill, think, and wonder.”

This book might be extremely important reading in case you accidentally find yourself a detective in a complex mystery. (no affiliation!)

There is a great website for the book (www.manualofdetection.com) built by the same guy who does a ton of great websites for books -  Jefferson Rabb.

A publisher who did not publish the book,  the curiously named ‘Small Beer Press‘ – is hosting a mystery contest to win signed copies of the book. I’ll be picking mine up tonight at Powell’s Books (I’m going to see TC Boyle read – see you there?). Here’s The Manual of Detection at Powell’s.

Best of luck, Jed!

In case you can’t read it, it says:

Together, we can

Cure Confusion

wtf? I think you mean ’spread’, not ‘cure’. This seems more like an ad that the Black Magic Insurance Agency would run rather than a health insurance provider.

The agency had its first serious meeting in three years:

Keep your schedules open and your ears to the ground.

I was about as green as they get going into BEA and so it was a sensory-overload experience for me – the good kind, the 4-year-old-at-the-chocolate-factory kind, with a little bit of rabbit hole thrown in. Pretty much the first thing I did, after meeting my publisher in person (Gavin Grant! Kelly Link! Jedediah Berry!) for the first time was go sign books. It turns out, that in the cattle-to-the-slaughter lineup thing they do for authors (30 authors signing at once with their queues going out like tentacles, in 30 minute increments) I was stationed in the immediate vicinity of Judy Blume, Neil Gaimon and Brooke Shields. Holeee crap. Who’s this Parzybok character? The good thing about that is that my much shorter queue tentacle got spillage from these more popular attractions.
It also helped that Publisher’s Weekly did an article on the game/scavenger hunt that the Black Magic Insurance Agency (BMIA Staff: um, just me this time) put together among the small presses for the event which had a cover shot of my book. And so I had a healthy signing and it was a blast meeting people and giving them a copy  of the galley.

The scavenger hunt? It was super fun to plan – with a text-messaging, satellite component. Watch this space for more on that in the future. However, it was pretty sparsely attended. I didn’t really take into account that people were already working pretty hard at the event – their feet were tired, their brains were overtaxed. I wracked up the largest walking day since I’ve owned a pedometer.  A lot of people pulled a clue, said what a great idea it was, and then slogged on with their 900 pounds of books in tow. Next year I’m going to hire myself out as a book caddy as an act of compassion. At any rate, I’m looking forward to getting back to BMIA’s roots -ie:  doing a walking game in Portland somewhere.

Among the many highlights of the show, one of them was getting books signed by other authors. I can vouch for John Scalzi’s claim that he stood in his own line (here’s a blurry cell-phone pic). I ran into Kelly Link in the lines and she introduced me to John and also to Sean Stewart. I am now the proud owner of one of the (relatively) few copies of Zoe’s Tale and Cathy’s Key out there… Awesome. I’m amazed at the publishing work that went into Cathy’s Key – with a pouch full of clues on the inside. So cool.

At any rate – BEA was awesome fun.

There was a thunderstorm in Portland tonight – a very rare occurrence. The kids slept through it, even when the thunder made the house rattle. So much for animal instinct. How is it that they can sleep through a house-rattling boom but wake up when I creak by their door on tip toes?

I’ve always wanted to photograph lightning. Tonight I finally got a few pics – 4 with lightning in them, to be exact, out of the ~1100 photos I snapped.

I took them all from my front porch – not the most spectacular view of the sky, what with criss-crossing telephone wires, etc. There’s no award winning shots here, but I’m mighty proud all the same. Click to see these at a larger size.

This last picture is an in-progress shot of a Black Magic Insurance project I’m working on – yes, that’s a gbp machine gone ominous.