Just a heads up to any aspiring writers reading this… especially those of you who don’t make it a practice to visit the Appearances page on my website.

I will be one of the instructors at the Clarion Workshop in San Diego next summer.

If you don’t know what Clarion is, or do know but would like more information, there’s a website at http://clarion.ucsd.edu/ Right now it still features the info about the 2009 version of the workshop, but they will be updating it for 2010 soon.

Clarion is very competitive, and not everyone who applies will be accepted, but if you’re serious about wanting to write SF and fantasy, give it a shot. It’s a great program, and an astonishing number of professional writers have come out of Clarion and Clarion West over the decades.

I get a regular stream of emails from beginning writers with questions on all aspects of writing and selling their work, most of which I don’t have the time to answer. (Though my website does include a FAQ). Come to Clarion, and you get all those questions (and many more) answered. Though you may not like the answers…

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Back home again from Montreal. A lot of catching up to do, a lot of stuff to not-blog about. I’ll get to all that later, once I’ve found my desk again beneath this mountain of mail.

It was a C- worldcon, IMNSHO, but I still had a good time, as I usually do at worldcon.

Next year in Melbourne!

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Montreal is a lovely city with many fine restaurants.

The con… well, there have been problems. Major meltdown at the party hotel last night resulted in the hotel management at the Delta descending on the SFWA suite and throwing most of the world’s leading SF and fantasy authors out of their hotel for… wait for it now… talking too loudly. A few of us refused to leave and continued the party in whispers. Here’s to Connie Willis, James Patrick Kelly, John Kessel, and the rest of the small company of Those Who Would Not Be Expelled.

Lots of bad juju at the Delta, which does not seem to have realized that being the party hotel entailed crowded rooms and noise. Hours-long wait for the elevator to the party floor, the 28th. Yes, elevator, singular. They have a whole bank of elevators, but fans were only allowed to use one, the rest being reserved for “real guests.” (The words are the Delta’s).

The BWB party is in the Delta tonight, 28th floor. Here’s hoping we don’t see the same problems.

If Dany has been cast, it is news to me.

Lovely wake for Charlie Brown in the Intercontinental. It doesn’t seem like worldcon without him. If there is an afterlife, I bet he’s found the best party by now.

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I’ve received my preliminary schedule from Anticipation, next month’s Montreal worldcon.

Here’s what it looks like at the moment:

THURSDAY AUG 6
12:30 pm panel: Werewolves of Brigadoon

FRIDAY AUG 7
3:30 pm panel: Writing a Series

SUNDAY AUG 9
12:30 pm panel: Writing for a Living
4:00 pm autographing

MONDAY AUG 10
3:00 pm reading

Aside from these “official” appearances, of course, I will also be doing the usual worldcon stuff — hanging around the hotel bar, hitting the parties at night, attending the Hugo Awards ceremony and the Hugo Losers Party, trying some of this fabled Montreal cuisine. I expect the Brotherhood Without Banners will be throwing one or two of their fabled bashes, and I’ll be at those as well.

See you all in Montreal!

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We’re back in Helsinki for one last night. Tomorrow at the crack of dawn (which cracks very very early here in Finland) we’re off again. Parris returns to Ireland, and I head home to the cats, the green chile, and A DANCE WITH DRAGONS. We’ll meet again in Montreal. Ah, the jet set life…

Estonia was great, and Turku was fun as well. I hope to write more about all these places once I’m home.

Thanks for all my Finnish friends, new and old, for making this is a wonderful trip. Finncon rocks.

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So we’re here in Helsinki, me from Santa Fe and Phipps by way of Ireland. Grey skies and rain, but the people are warm and friendly. Yesterday we visited Sveaborg, the great island fortress that I’ve written two stories about. “Gibraltar of the North,” it was dubbed by John Quincy Adams. I can only conclude that JQA had never actually seen the Gibraltar of the south, since the resemblence between the two is nonexistent. Sveaborg is pretty cool in its own right, however, and I’m glad to have seen it.

The con proper starts tomorrow. Some come to Finncon if you can. It’s free!

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I am closing down book sales for a while, since I leave for Finland on July 5. Reopen in late July or August. If there’s a signed book you want, please wait till then.

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