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Normally I don't blog on Saturdays. But I thought I'd put in a plug for the Baltimore Book Festival. If you're local and were thinking of going but were put off by the torrential rains, you should give it another thought.
Yeah, there weren't a lot of festival-goers, which (forgive me) put a damper on things. But there were some great deals on books. I picked up Volume 1 of Alan Ginsburg's collected poems, a book for a friend, and a glossy art hardback on the Wyeths for three bucks apiece. Then I went over to the Daedalus tent and bought a book on the Great Wall of China for five bucks and the three-DVD documentary on Monty Python for ten. And I only put twenty minutes or so into browsing!
The Baltimore Science Fiction Society had a tent full of used SF. There were musicians and poets on the stages. And everyone I talked to was as friendly as can be.
Mostly I spent my time at the SFWA tent. We had panels and readings and raffles for free books. (Your chances for free books go WAY up when the crowd is so small.) Writers gave advice on how to get published and how to build a career. And everybody was knowledgable, helpful, and astonishingly upbeat considering how soaked-through we all were.
It was one of those times when I felt proud of my tribe.
Catherine Asaro ran the tent and was smiling and cheerful throughout. Even though a stream ran right through the tent and over her shoes. That's her -- half of her anyway -- up above, in serious danger of being electrocuted by the (unseen) microphone.
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