Hestia Homeschool for Young Wild Women

Our Beloved Rachael  Hawkins (A former homeschooler now in college)     Rhapsody's End    writes about visiting my house, and the trip to the Diana Gabaldon signing which I had to miss because I cannot be far from a bathroom

I daresay I'm somehow being haunted by Scotland. I'm not sure how that can happen, but Scotland-related things seem to be cropping up everywhere. Or possibly it's just because of the whole Diana Gabaldon obsession lately and then tonight I turned on Sex and the City for background noise and there's this Scottish guy on it and this wedding where all the men will be wearing kilts. It's amusing, but I've heard The Kilt Question so many times, it seems, that I swear the next time I hear it I'm going to stand up and scream, regardless of company or circumstance, "Yes! It's true! Totally naked!"
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Last Monday (a week ago from when I'm writing this), I visited the Ridimans to talk. I don't remember what-all was said, really, but it was quite pleasant. I played with Shelby a little. I was quite honestly startled when she asked me to play with her. I will have to make time sometime to really play with her. We sat around the dining room table and talked about the Outlander books and I'm pretty sure Snape showed up at some point, and other things like that.

Kas once again loudly denounced Snape and Tabby said that Kas just had a thing for Dumbledore. We laughed and then I said that I also had a thing for Dumbledore. Tabby was like, "Ewww!" (Funny, that seems to be what they say to a lot of things I say. I wonder if I'm getting particularly nasty or if they're just particularly innocent.) I looked from Tabby to Mandy and back while saying, "I mean, he was just so charming. He was so charming." Mandy agreed with me.

Last Wednesday I went there again. This time, we (Kas, David, Mandy, Shelby, and I, Tabby being at church) went to the UDF down in Bellevue for ice cream. We sat outside, in the dark, overlooking the river, and talked. A lot of our conversation was about the time that the kids in my class were shocked and horrified by Kas's breastfeeding methods. (David found it really amusing and kept making jokes.)

Oh, yeah, and we went there and back in David's convertible, with Mandy and Shelby and me crammed into the backseat, and the top down, and it was really quite nice.

At some point--I have no idea how we got onto this topic--I said that I'd willingly, shall we say, sacrifice the symbolism of wearing white on my wedding day, with anyone, for a good costume. There was a moment of silence while they contemplated that, and then Mandy said, "Ewwww! What if it was some, like, old guy who smelled bad?"

I said, "Depends on how good the costume was."

Mandy was scandalized. (I was joking.)

On Saturday I went to see Diana Gabaldon in Dayton and learned a valuable lesson: these things really are more fun when, as corny as it sounds, you have someone to share it with.

Some of my famous-people-meetings mean a lot to me, but because of the way they happened. I met James Marsters by the purest, dumbest luck. I met Neil Gaiman on my birthday, when I wasn't a fan, and then became one. I met Tamora Pierce at my workplace.

And--I think I was glad I went, but I spent so much time--and, as it turned out, money--on this and then it was like, "Oh. All that and--just a signature. Oh." Well, let me describe it to you.

The drive up went very well, which means that I only got lost once, and then I only thought I was lost but really wasn't.

I've only been to this bookstore--it's called Books & Co., and I think it's a division of Books-a-Million--once before, and that was last year or sometime to see Robin McKinley. It seems like a pretty nice store, and the Robin McKinley event was a fairly small one. Fifty people, maybe. They have this raised platform in the middle of the store and everyone there could fit on the platform.

The Diana Gabaldon thing was total madness. I got there half an hour early, thinking myself quite clever, and found the platform filled and people crammed in all around it, all seating gone. I picked out copies of Anansi Boys and A Breath of Snow and Ashes and found a good place to stand where I could see the podium fairly well. (There was a table nearby with all of her books on display, including, to my disgust, mass market paperback copies of The Fiery Cross. Thinking of my own trade paperback copy, which is smeared with the results of its battles with pizza and gravity, I sent the pile of books glares often.) I got a number as soon as I realized I needed a number. I was 189.

There was a nice lady who stood next to me and we chatted a little. (She said she thought men didn't read the books because they are so big and full of detail and she didn't think men could handle it, something like that. I, thinking of my father, who regularly reads epic fantasy books the size of dictionaries, carefully said nothing at all about that except for a polite noncommital sound.) I was rather expecting the crowd to be mostly middle-aged women, as that's what my mom said the crowd was when she saw the author (eight years ago), but they were all ages, and some were men, too. Two of them were old men in kilts, one of whom brought a grocery bag full of her books.

The talk was good--funny. She said some stuff I already knew, had either read on her website or in The Outlandish Companion, which I am slowly picking my way through. She said her hotel was in Cincy (my brain screamed, "How can you be staying in my town but doing nothing in my town?!").

For future books: she said the series will last for one or two more books, depending on how long it takes her to get through the American Revolution. She is contracted to write two more Lord John books and at least one (I don't remember the number) contemporary mystery. She also has some prequel novellas planned--three in one book, I think: one about Colum and Dougal and how they took over leadership of the clan, one about Brian and Ellan and how they met and married, and one about Murtagh. (The entire audience went, "Awwww" when she said that. Except for me, who was like, "Murtagh? That guy who was in, like, the first two books?")

She said that Lord John and the Brotherhood of the Blade and the first contemporary mystery will hopefully be finished (and released?) next year.

Someone near me asked something about how she felt about creating the perfect man (Jamie), which really startled and later, when I thought about it, annoyed me. Mostly because I don't think Jamie is the perfect man. He annoys me sometimes when he keeps things from Claire or lets his temper get the better of him, or in what happened the first time he met Roger. That one rankled the worst. Anyway, Jamie isn't the perfect man--rather, he's a realistic man. I like him well enough, think he's cute sometimes, but I don'tgo for the whole "warrior" thing and hence like Roger and Lord John better, but even they aren't perfect.

Once someone asked if any of her characters were based on real people, and she said that people ask her that a lot and what they really mean is, "Is Jamie based on your husband, and does he have a brother?"

Similarly, she said that there's this group of fans in her area who periodically take her out to tea and pick her brain about the books, and once they were talking about Jack Randall. They were saying how loathsome he was, how awful and evil and etc. and Diana was sitting there thinking, "You have no idea you're talking to Jack Randall." (Meaning, he came from her brain--who else is he going to be?)

I beat myself up over which book to have her sign: my pretty copy of Lord John, or my new copy of Breath. (My specific rules are to have one hardcover book signed rather than every book I own. That way, I get one special book that will last a long time.) In the end, I did both (regretted it a little afterward), and told her that I was a writer, or trying to be, and I found her attention to detail very inspirational. She thanked me.

Then I asked for a picture, and my Technology Curse chose that moment to kick in, the camera having somehow switched itself from "capture" to "review." (I got a lot of pictures, though. I'll post the good ones when I can be bothered to put them through Photoshop and crop them and all that junk.)

Overall, it was nice, the sort of thing I wouldn't ordinarily regret, but the drive was about an hour one way, and I spent at least an hour wandering around the store between the talk and when it was my turn in line. I didn't have any food with me and the café smelled really good and the only thing I'd eaten was a chicken thigh for lunch. I saw things I would have liked to buy but couldn't afford. I found benches in corners of the store, back by the romance novels, and read a little bit of Anansi Boys. (Having already read Lord John, and not being far enough to start Breath yet.)

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• #1 Comment from mumma4evr 
  10/10/05 10:18 AM | Permalink

  I am so jealous!!!!  I would have loved to have gone with her!!!!
  Becky