Here’s wishing a Merry Christmas and Joyous Yule to all my friends and readers.

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I can’t believe that it has been almost a month since I last posted here. Sometimes the days and weeks do really seem to fly past in a blur.

For me, it’s been a month of bad news and good news, some serious, some trivial.

Good News. The Jets. The Jets don’t have half the talent the Giants have, but they seem to be playing twice as well. Coaching is everything in the NFL, and it seems the Jets finally have a good one in Eric Mangini. Let’s see if he can keep it up in the last four games.

Bad News. The Giants. Oy. What can I say? Can they think of any more ways to lose games? Tiki Barber is a great, great player, and I love Jeremy Shockey’s fire, and the defense has some studs on it as well (when they are not all injured)… but Eli has been maddeningly erratic, and the team’s lack of discipline is shocking. Coughlin has to get the blame for that. They should have hired Charlie Weis to replace Fassel. Unless the G-Men turn it around soon, though, they may be looking for a coach again at season’s end.

Good news. Home renovations. The house is finally coming together, and it will be very nice once we get moved back in.

Bad news. Home renovations. It was supposed to be done in early November. Then by Thanksgiving. Then by early December. Then by Christmas. It’s still not done, and I don’t think it will be done by Christmas either. Cardinal rules of home remodeling: everything takes longer and costs twice as much, the disruption and annoyance levels are always much higher than you anticipated. Parris and I are still living across the street in my office, with the cats. We haven’t killed each other yet, which can only be a testament to our love for one another. I have been tempted to behead the cats a few times.

Good news. Thanksgiving. One of my favorite holidays of the year. We went out to the gorgeous new house Carl built for Melinda and had a great turkey dinner cooked in their vast and splendid new kitchen. Great turkey, and Melinda made one of her justly-famous apple pies (my favorite dessert, I’m just an all American boy). Good turkey, good wine, good company, nothing beats Thanksgiving with friends (except maybe Thanksgiving with friends, family, and mashed rutabagas).

Bad news. Christmas. My least favorite holiday of the year, and it is already bearing down on us like a freight train. Sorry, I have no Xmas spirit. Bah, humbug. Every year, for decades now, Christmas finds me stressed out like nobody’s business, trying to complete some script, story, or novel that I have promised to someone “by the end of the year,” sweating blood over my computer, and forgetting about the Dread Day until it is almost too late. I used to do all my Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve. These days I do most of it by catalog, but I still manage to wait so long that I always end up paying extra for the SuperDuper Priority Overnight Shipping for Idiots Who Didn’t Shop Until the Last Minute. And then I have to WRAP the presents. I am the world’s worst present-wrapper. I am usually wrapping presents at three in the morning Xmas day, to have them ready before Parris wakes up. Some year, I know, Christmas stress is going to give me a major coronary. I just hope it’s not this year. I can’t possibly die this year, I have far too much to do.

Good news. The election. Hey, hot damn, we threw the rascals out! A lot of the rascals, anyway. I am not naive enough to think the utopia will now ensue, but it certainly felt good to win one for a change, and the Senate will certainly be better off without Rick Santorum and George Allen.

Bad news. The election. Okay, we didn’t manage to throw ALL the rascals out. Heather Wilson snuck back into the House, dammit, and Joe Lieberman, the Democrat-Who-Walks-like-a-Republican, got back in as well.

Good news. Work. I’ve been home for this past month — no cons, no tours, no awards dinners — and that has enabled me to be much more productive than in the months preceding. The new WILD CARDS book is almost done (some great stuff in there too) and should be finished by the end of the year. Gardner Dozois, Daniel Abraham, and I finished the novel-length expansion of SHADOW TWIN, and sold it in both the US and the UK (just last week, in fact). I’ve inked a couple of exciting new subrights deals that I expect to be announcing very soon (watch my news page)… and we may be close to a couple of other subrights deals that I won’t be announcing, because I am not allowed to talk about ’em yet. The comic book adaption of THE SWORN SWORD is finally underway, and several other cool comics projects are in the works, but I can’t talk about them just yet either. The month has been a blur of work, in other works.

Bad news. Work. None of the projects I wrapped up was A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. Work has been going well, yes, but not especially on DANCE. I am not going to be able to finish it by the end of the year as I had hoped. I know this will disappoint all of you. Many of you will write me sympathetic and supportive emails (and I do appreciate those, even if I don’t have the time to reply). A few of you will write me nasty, intemperate emails about how I’m doing this all just to screw my readers. Sigh. My editors, agents, and publishers will be even more disappointed than my readers, but no one will be as disappointed as me. Believe that or not. All I can say is that I HAVE gotten several other obligations off my plate, that my contractor swears in blood that the home renovations will be finished soon so I can have my office back again, that I’m working on DANCE and I will continue to work on it. What I will no longer due, however, is announce any more dates by which I hope to finish and deliver the book. All that those estimates ever seem to do is ratchet up my stress levels and get me more grief. I hope it won’t be taking much longer… I have almost two months at home before my next scheduled trip, to Boston and NYC in February, and one thing that has become very clear to me is that the more I travel, the less I get written. (And speaking of Boston and NYC, do I perchance have any fans out there in New Haven, Connecticut?) I have even thought about cancelling my annual trip to Boston and New York, though I am reluctant to take that step, since that is usually the only time of the year that I get to see my family in New Jersey.

So that’s the latest. What can I say?

Only this.

Go Jets. Go Giants. Go Dragons.

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Well, this is interesting.

Out of the blue, I have received an email from PayPal informing me that they have reconsidered my case and unlocked my account. (Yes, it’s true. I went in right away and got my forty bucks).

My emails to them produced no results, my phone call only frustration, but suddenly PayPal thinks I’m cool again. What’s happened here, I wonder? I have not sent them any of the proofs of identity they wanted, the passports and birth certificates and such. I have not made any further appeals, not written any more emails, not made any more phone calls. All I did was post here.

The only thing I can think is that YOU happened. All of you reading this, and especially those who wrote or called or withdrew your funds or closed your accounts or made your voice heard somehow. There’s no other explanation that I can see. This is a testament to the power of the blogosphere, I think.

Viva Live Journal.

Thanks. You guys are great, and I am humbled and astonished.

(Oh, and a lot of you made your voices heard in the nation’s ballot boxes yesterday as well. Thanks for that too.)

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This has nothing to do with my books, or indeed any of the subjects that most of you guys are interesting in hearing about, but I feel a need to vent.

About a month ago, I discovered to my puzzlement and annoyance that my account at PayPal had been locked. I had no idea why. I’ve had a PayPal account for years, and never had a problem. In all that time, I was only involved in one dispute, and that was a case where I was the one filing the complaint. Besides, that was three years ago, at least. I use PayPal mainly for buying toy knights on ebay (these days, many sellers will accept only PayPal, money orders, or cashier’s checks, and the latter two are just too much trouble), and for collecting payment when readers buy signed copies of my old books off my website. It’s a convenient service, well worth the fees, and I’ve never had a problem with it.

Till now.

This turned out to be a big problem, though. My account was locked, with no explanation. I can’t get into it, can’t use it to pay, can’t accept payments, can’t access the money I have in the account. Why? I emailed PayPal’s “Account Review Department,” as instructed, to find out what had happened and get the account unlocked. My first two emails went unanswered. The third time proved to be the charm, and finally got me a reply. It said, in part:

“PayPal is a regulated financial services company required under law to
assess its customers against certain lists of individuals and entities
which have had sanctions imposed against them. Where a potential match is
identified, PayPal’s policy is to lock the account and request further
identifying documentation. The decision to lock your account has been taken
solely by PayPal in line with its compliance policy.”

This made no bloody sense to me, so I decided to phone PayPal and try and talk to an actual human being. That’s not easy either, in this world we live in. I found the number, phoned, negotiated the usual infuriating Voice Mail maze of “press 1 for this, press 2 for that,” and finally reached a customer “service” representative. She, of course, was no help whatsoever. She looked up my account and told me the same stuff that was in the email I’d received. In fact, I think she was reading from the email. When I asked her questions, she had no answers. So finally I asked to speak to a supervisor.

He, at least, gave me some meaningful information. Despite the hokeydoke in the letter about “the decision… has been taken solely by PayPal,” the source of my trouble is actually the federal government. The reason my account was locked was because my name has turned up on a list out of the U.S. Treasury Department. Specifically, something called the “Office of Foreign Assets Control.”

Why the hell I would be on this list, I have no idea. I have no “foreign assets” that I know of, aside from a long-moribund bank account in Poland from the days before the Berlin Wall went down, when the Poles could only pay you in soft zlotys that you had to go to Poland to spend. Or maybe it’s because I have used PayPal to pay for toy soldiers from sellers in Germany, Australia, and the UK, or to accept payment for books from a dozen different foreign countries. Or… if you will allow me a moment of paranoia here… maybe someone in the Treasury Department didn’t like some of the political views I’ve posted here, or my opinions about the TSA and the War on Terror.

Whatever the reason, I’m on the OFAC list, and unlike Santa’s list, this one is just for the naughty, so PayPal has locked the accounts of everyone whose name appears there.

The most infuriating thing of all is that I have MONEY in that PayPal account. Money which PayPal flatly refuses to disburse to me.

“Can I close the account and withdraw my funds?” I asked them. “No,” the supervisor said, “the account is locked.” I accused him of stealing my funds, which he denied. They’re still my funds, he insisted. It’s just that they won’t let me withdraw them, or use them to pay anyone, because, after all, the account is “locked.” (How much you want to bet that after some period of “inactivity,” they will start taking fees out of the account?) I did luck out in one respect, I suppose. At the moment, there’s only about fifty bucks in that PayPal account. That hasn’t always been the case. There have been times in the past when I’ve had as much as thousand bucks floating in my PayPal account. Believe me, if you think I’m honked off now, imagine how pissed I’d be if they were robbing me of a thousand bucks instead of fifty.

How do unlock the account? All I have to do is furnish PayPal with several different proofs of my identity. They already have a credit card number and a bank account number, mind you, but that’s not sufficient, now they want copies of my passport, my birth certificate, and a utility bill.

A service like PayPal is supposed to make my life easier, to enable me to buy and sell with a click of my mouse, to spare me annoying trips to the bank to buy money orders and cashier’s checks, to allow me to receive small payments from readers abroad who want signed copies of my books. CONVENIENCE is the reason I use PayPal. I don’t have the time, the energy, or the inclination to jump through their hoops.

Right now I’m trying to finish A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, working on a breakdown of the contents and art required for THE WORLD OF ICE AND FIRE, editing the new Wild Cards book INSIDE STRAIGHT and writing my own story for same, beating out an outline for a comics project with John J. Miller, trying to stay on top of the various Ice & Fire spinoffs from Subterranean Press, Fantasy Flight Games, Testor’s, DBPro, Avatar Comics, and several other licenses, dealing with the aftermath of the Byron Preiss bankruptcy auction, trying to extricate my RPG rights from the collapse of Guardians of Order, living through major home renovations. I do NOT have the time to take on PayPal and the U.S. Treasury as well.

So there you go. For the foreseeable future, my PayPal account will remain locked, I’m afraid. If you want to buy a signed book, you’ll need to mail me a check or money order. And I guess I won’t be bidding on nearly as many knights on ebay, since so many sellers “prefer PayPal.”

If any of you are PayPal users, however, and are accustomed to allowing a significant amount of money to sit around in your account… take it out. Take it out NOW. Your name could turn up on a list as easily as mine did, and then, like me, you’ll find yourself cut off from your money with no right of appeal.

I say it’s spinach, and I say to hell with it.

End of rant.

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My last major trip of the year finally came to close yesterday, when Parris and I flew home from New York City. I’d spent almost a month on the road, partly for pleasure, partly for business, doing signings in five midwestern cities to help promote my YA book, THE ICE DRAGON, and the paperback release of A FEAST FOR CROWS.

Started out by flying into Chicago, where I attended the Old Toy Soldier Show in Schaumburg (the world’s best toy soldier show, and always great fun, when I can find the time to attend it) and spent way too much money on toy knights, picking up some beautiful old Courtenay, Ping, and Vertunni figures (if you don’t know what those are, you obviously haven’t been reading the Knights page of my website), some beautiful new miniatures by Brian Rodden, a great new siege tower from King & Country, and various other choice collectibles. I also signed and read at the Border’s down in Water Tower Place on the Magnificent Mile, and enjoyed dinner at the Greek Isles with some of the local members of the Brotherhood Without Banners. I never miss a chance to eat at the Greek Isles. Opaa! Opaa! (That’s Greek for “the cheese is on fire!”)

After the toy soldier show, it was off to Dubuque, Iowa for another ICE DRAGON signing and a couple of days visiting my old haunts. The original story that was the basis of the YA was written in Dubuque during the winter of 1978-79, so it seemed only proper to include the city on my tour. Given my feelings about the TSA and airport “security,” I decided to get a rental car and drive to the rest of my midwestern appearances. Not much slower than flying, given how short most of the hops were, and far more pleasant. The car had GPS and I had my ipod, so the short drive to Iowa was fast and fun. I had a nice signing at a small independent bookstore, the River Lights, and also had the time to poke around the city. It was the first time I had returned to Dubuque since moving away in 1979, and all in all the city had not changed nearly as much as I feared. My old house was still standing, as was the college (Clarke) where I once taught journalism, and the old Julien Hotel where my ex-wife and I once held Dubuqon, the city’s first (and last) SF convention. The pizza at Marco’s is still pretty good (for the midwest), and the Fenelon Place Elevator was still there, though now it only runs in summer. On the other hand, all the old movie theaters are gone, and there’s now an ugly four-lane highway cutting off downtown from the Mississippi, not to mention a huge and hideous fake “riverboat” casino. I did like the new river museum, however. Across the river, East Dubuque remains as sleazy as ever, but the chili at Mulgrew’s was not nearly as hot as I remembered… which may have more to do with me living in New Mexico for the last couple of decades than with the recipe.

After three days in Iowa, it was off to Indianapolis and a signing at Barnes and Noble in Carmel. I did not want to have to contend with Chicago traffic again, so I headed south out of Dubuque and followed the river road down to I-74. That had to be the nicest drive of the trip. Autumn was just coming in, the days were warm and sunny, the trees were turning, and the little river towns along the banks of the Mississippi remained unchanged from the last time I passed this way, twenty-odd years ago. I had another good event in Indianapolis, reading from THE ICE DRAGON and signing a lot of books. My hotel was right across the street from the Hoosier Dome, and when I realized that the Colts were playing my Jets that very Sunday I had a brief moment of excitement, thinking I might be able to snag a ticket and see Chad take on Peyton… but alas, the game was being played in New Jersey, at the Meadowlands. I did, however, ride up to Auburn, Indiana with my friend C.D. Doyle to check out the Auburn/ Cord/ Duesenberg Museum there, which proved to be well worth the trip. Room after room after room of gorgeous vintage automobiles, each more impressive than the last. Most of them were Auburns, Cords, and Dueseys, of course, but they also have a ’55 T-bird, a Jaguar XKE, a gullwing Mercedes 300SL, a Shelby Cobra, a classic Ferrari, and a lot of other vehicles that made me drool. If you ever find yourself driving down the interstate past Auburn, take the time to pull off and have a look at the musuem, it’s well worth it. As for me, I think I want my next car to be a Cord.

After Indy, it was on to Cincinnati, where I did a reading and a signing at Joseph Beth. The good folks at Joe Beth always get a big turnout for their events, and this one was no exception. I spent a couple of extra days in Cincinnati, long enough to spend some time with Denise and Steve Leigh, catch the first day of the Tall Stacks riverboat festival (real boats, not tawdry jokes like the “riverboat” casinos you see permanently moored all up and down the river, most of them no more than concrete barges, lacking even an engine) and take a cruise, enjoy some ribs in Montgomery, visit with Bob Hornung and with Tom and Carin Meier, and see the latest batch of Night’s Watch figures that Tom is sculpting for the miniatures game forthcoming from Testor’s. Spectacular work, as always. Tom also has a terrific 54mm version of Loras Tyrell in the works.

Then it was back west again, to Archon in St. Louis… well, Collinsville, Illinois, actually, but close enough. I was Archon’s very first GOH back in 1977, and this year was the 30th Archon, so I had to be there. It has grown into quite a large con over the past thirty years, from 300 people in 1977 to about 2700 this year, and these days the con draws more costumers and gamers than it does readers, but the parties are always fun, and the St. Louis fans have always gone the extra mile to welcome guests and take good care of them. Unfortunately, the mood at the con turned somber on Friday when the word reached Collinsville that Wilson (Bob) Tucker had died. Tucker lived most of life in the area and had been a huge part of many of the past Archons, leading endless “smoooothes” and welcoming hundreds of newcomers to fandom. There was never a more friendly or accessible pro, or one more beloved in midwestern fandom, so his loss was deeply felt. Nor was Tucker the only ghost roaming the halls of the Holiday Inn this year. I also missed Dan Patterson, a good friend and talented artist who was a fixture at Archon until his death, and always threw the best party at the convention. We’ve lost too many good people of late, sad to say.

I did have a good signing, I’m pleased to say. Some of you may have heard the story of what happened at my last bookstore event in St. Louis back in 1996, during the GAME OF THRONES tour, when I was scheduled to sign in downtown St. Louis while Ray Bradbury and Ray Harryhausen were signing in Collinsville, thirty minutes away. That one did not work out well, but I did much better this time in Brentwood… maybe because I wasn’t up against the Two Rays.

Parris was supposed to join me at Archon, flying in on Friday from New Mexico, but she sprained her ankle packing for the trip and postponed her departure a day… and then, on Saturday, she got a flat tire on the way to airport and missed her flight, so it was Sunday before she finally reached St. Louis, and by the time she reached the hotel the con was over and there was nothing for her to do but grab a burger and some shoestring fries at Steak ‘N Shake, crash, and fly out with me the next morning for New York City and the Quill Awards.

Having already lost the Hugo Award and the British Fantasy Award, A FEAST FOR CROWS made it three-for-three by losing the Quill. This time I was beaten by Diana Gabaldon and A BREATH OF SNOW AND ASHES. Ms. Gabaldon was gracious enough to say that FEAST should have won when she got up to accept her award, which was very kind of her. Despite losing, it was a swell evening. The event was black tie, held in the American Museum of Natural History, beneath a stupendous full-size blue whale, and Lewis Black opened the festivities that telling us all that we should enjoy the dinner before the awards, since most of us would be losers before the evening was out. (A man after my own heart, Lewis Black). Also, Parris looked especially gorgeous in her new dress. MSNBC will be telecasting an edited version of the awards later this month, which may or may not include a shot or two of me.

The rest of our stay in NYC was great as well. I got to eat real pizza several times, saw my agents and caught up, and had some very productive meetings with editors from Bantam, Tor/ Starscape, DC Comics, Marvel Comics, Random House Comics. I did a drop-by signing at both of the Fifth Avenue B&Ns (if anyone there in the Apple is looking for a signed book, those two stores have plenty), saw my family in Jersey, and on Sunday, thanks to my brother-in-law Gerard, Parris and I got to attend the Jets game at the Meadowlands and chant J-E-T-S JETS JETS JETS along with Fireman Ed as Chad tossed a couple of touchdown strikes to Laverneous and defeated the Dolphins (the defense did almost give the game away at the end, but never mind).

So… it was a long trip, but a good one. I covered a lot of miles, had a lot of fun, signed a lot of books, but I’m glad to be home. I’ve done an awful lot of travel since A FEAST FOR CROWS came out, and while I have enjoyed it, it does wear me out as well, and I have always found it impossible to get any writing down while on the road. There’s nothing else on my schedule until February, however, so for the rest of the year I will be right here, shackled to the computer and pounding the keys. I have half a dozen different projects on my plate, but the big one is A DANCE WITH DRAGONS, and I am going to be pushing hard on that in the weeks and months to come, in hopes of wrapping it up by the end of the year.

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My friend Janice Gelb sent me this great link from The Onion.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/52915

Can this be Bizarro George?

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NFL football returns in a couple of hours, so life will have meaning again.

I will watch tonight’s game between the Steelers and Dolphins, of course, since it’s the season opener, but I really don’t have a horse in that contest. I’m saving my real energy for the weekend, when the Giants and the Jets take the field for the first time.

Big Blue and Gang Green are my guys. Yeah, both of them. Sometimes people ask me how I can possibly root for them both, since they’re rivals and all. All I can say is that I am very, very old. When I was growing up in Jersey, the G-Men were the only NYC team, so of course I cheered for them. Later, when the Jets came along, they were in an entirely different league and never played the Giants, so I started cheering for them too… especially after they got that Namath guy. I do have a crisis once every three years when they play each other, but I can deal with that. My dream is to live long enough to see a Subway Superbowl.

This year the Giants are expected to be a Superbowl contender, and the Jets are expected to vie for the first pick in next year’s draft. Two years ago the Jets were a Superbowl contender and the Giants were contending for the first pick in the draft. See, it’s good to have two teams. Every weekend, I have two chances at happiness. If both teams win, I’m thrilled. If one wins and one loses, I am heartened by the victory. It’s only when both of them lose that I tell Parris that life is meaningless and there is no joy in Mudville.

As for predicting what the season will be like… somehow I think the Jets are going to be better than anyone expects, but I’m not sure that the Giants are going to be as good. The Giants have always seemed to have their best seasons when everyone expects them to stink. When the experts pick them to win, somehow they usually tank.

But maybe not. So much depends on Eli. We’ll see how the first game goes, when they face the mighty Colts in the Manning Bowl.

Are you ready for some football?

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Worldcon is over, but I’m still here, logging on from the business center in the bowels of the Anaheim Hilton. I’m lingering for a few days post-con to Do Meetings with my film agents and other Hollywood folk.

It was a good con, and as usual the Brotherhood Without Banners had the best parties at the convention. The Human Chess Match was a hoot and a half as well, and Daniel had me really worried for a while there.

I did lose the Hugo, alas. Indeed, I finished an ignonimous fifth out of five. Win some, lose some and all that. The award went to SPIN by Robert Charles Wilson, a really terrific novel and a very worthy winner. Losing doesn’t sting nearly as much when you’re beaten by a book that good, so I am pretty philosophical about all this (unlike, say, Philadelphia in 2001). No need for condolences, folks, really.

I got to pass out plenty of Hugo Loser ribbons too. This year marked the 30th anniversary of the Hugo Losers Party, and we wanted to celebrate the occasion. The first one was held in my room at the 1976 worldcon in Kansas City, Big Mac… still the best and most innovative of modern worldcons.

All in all, I was pretty pleased with the Hugo results. It was particularly gratifying to see rockets go to Donato Giancola, David Hartwell, and Peter S. Beagle (though I would have loved to see Beagle tie with Howard Waldrop, since they both deserved Hugos).

Lots more to report on, but this business center time is expensive, so I’ll save all that until I get home.

I fly back to New Mexico tomorrow, and it’s back to work the day after.

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