I’m writing this from the airport. We weren’t sure how long it would take for us to flag down our Uber, or get through security, so we wound up getting to our gate way earlier than expected. Better to be early than late, right?

Whether we’re interested in the super bowl or the superb owl, it’s going to be finished before we land in San Francisco tonight. Just in case it becomes impossible for me to finish this post before midnight, I’ll post it now, before we get on the 7 hour flight.

This morning, I discovered one possible reason Melissa and I struggled to get rest this weekend. At 3AM, I woke up to what sounded like an alarm. The refrigerator kept buzzing, with no easy way to silence it. It went off again around 4AM and 5AM. When we finally got up a little after 7AM, the appliance was silent as a shadow. It could have been singing the song of its people every night for our entire stay. At least it wasn’t a cat in heat, right?

We ate greasy breakfast sandwiches from Starbucks to change things up, then went packed our bags down to the dealer’s room. While Melissa setup the tables, I went to the lobby and interviewed Colin Alexander for the SPBU podcast.

With the third recording in the can, I went back to the Water Dragon table right before the dealer’s room opened. We experienced no mad rush to buy our books, but some people I spoke to on previous days appeared to buy one or both of my books.

I did my best to sell other people’s books. I asked people what they liked to read and, based on their answers, directed them towards titles that best matched their desires. Many times, people enjoyed talking with me and would say, “No, show me your book.” Many times, that translated into a sale of One for the Road.

I think this was happening at Arisia, too, but since I only had The Repossessed Ghost on the table, it wasn’t as obvious that was what was going on. People enjoyed talking with me and based on that, they were ready to take a chance on one of my stories. Since the $5 option was available, they went with that.

We sold more One for the Road than any other book on the table. At one point today, a young woman was eyeing it and I said, “You should that book.” And she did. I felt like I hit her with a Jedi mind trick, the greatest “BUY MY BOOK” I will ever pull off.

At 1PM, it was time for me to interview David Gerrold for the Live from Boskone edition of the SPBU podcast. I was nervous about this one. He was doing me a favor, and we both knew it. But he was gracious and wise, and didn’t even give me a hard time when I got tongue-twisted. This was important for SPBU, and the words left me a couple times.

With the last interview completed and saved, I went back to the table and finished out the day. Melissa and I handled the final inventory and packing of the boxes, which took a little longer than we expected or wanted. We finished packing the boxes, but there were still table clothes and banners to contend with. We needed to board our plane a little after 5, so when the dealer’s room shutdown at 3PM, Melissa and I grabbed our stuff and ran, leaving the final bits for Steven Brewer and Daniel Fliederbaum to deal with.

That pretty much brings us to now. The plane just pulled up. Boarding will begin in about 5 minutes.

Wish us luck!