The first full day of BEA is drawing to a close and it was an eventful one. It was a real thrill to meet up with R.A. Salvatore and get a signed copy of The Orc King and to personally thank him for blurbing A Darkness Forged in Fire. He is a true gentleman.

While meandering about the show I bumped into Scott Sigler, author of the podcast sensation turned major book, Infected. Years and years ago Scott and I and Steve Nagy shared a hotel room at a con so it was nice to see how far we’d come from those humble beginnings.

I stopped by the huge S&S booth and chatted with my publisher, Louise Burke, saw Barbara Walters signing her new memoir, Audition, caught up with Random House #2 Ed Volini (he was deputy publisher at Ballantine back when I started there) and had my first and likely last salmon burger (there’s something just fundamentally wrong about that.) Saw my old boss from Del Rey days, Steve Saffel, who has written probably the definitive book on Spiderman. Also talked briefly with Del Rey’s former head, Kuo Yu Liang, who is now at Diamond Comics.

I sometimes think BEA is as much reunion as anything else. Still, business does get done.

A Hallmark moment it wasn’t, but the emotions were close to the surface as my red wheelie suitcase was rolled out to me last night by the hotel bell hops after I returned from dinner. I have clothes! And shoes! And extra boxer-briefs again! American Airlines came through and I am appreciative.

I did some noodling on the plane out yesterday and came up with some really intriguing plot points for the second book. I’ve been writing scenes and building the structure, but a few areas had eluded me. Something about being on the jet for over five hours really concentrated my thoughts and the ideas flowed. Years ago when I lived in Ottawa I suffered through a severe bout of insomnia. Unable to sleep and refusing to watch television at 2 in the morning I would hop in my car, drive to the airport and sit in the terminal and write. I think it was the knowledge that from there I could literally go anywhere in the world that sparked a lot of ideas. Of course, if I did that now I’d probably wind up on a watch list.

I got here just fine, my luggage, however, is nowhere to be found. American Airlines assure me they’re doing everything they can to find it and deliver it to my hotel so I guess there’s no reason to worry… I’m staying at the Westin Bonaventure which is the series of five silver columns featured in many movies, usually right before they’re destroyed! The good news is if I have to flee for my life I won’t have much luggage to carry with me.

I’m in the city of smog for BEA (Book Expo America) in my job as editor at Stackpole Books. This is a once a year show that is often held in New York and brings together publishers from all over the world. This gives me a chance to meet with other publishers about subrights among other things and especially to follow up my meetings when I was in London last month for the London Book Fair.

In much more wonderful news, I’ll be attending ComicCon in San Diego in July as part of Mysterious Galaxy’s first author signing event (or something like that) in conjunction with Pocket Books. I was thrilled when they contacted my publisher and asked if I could attend and naturally I am happy to comply. I think I’ll be on a panel while I’m out there, too, though what it will be I have no idea at this point. Hopefully something I have some knowledge in, but if not I’ll just wing it. Translinear whatchamacallits? Sure, sign me up.

Ok, I wasn’t exactly making vroom-vroom sounds, but having just watched a terrific Formula One race in Monaco (on television, I wasn’t actually in Monaco…unfortunately) I went for a run and found myself constantly accelerating and wanting to pass everyone out in Central Park. That’s a problem when you are no where near the fastest person out running in Central Park. Once I came to terms with that I settled in to a nice pace and consoled myself that my pit crew had clearly not put enough fuel in the tank this morning.

I’m trying to get into better shape, not Olympian, but athletic. To that end I worked out with Natalie yesterday morning in Central Park. Natalie is a professional trainer and is in phenomenal shape. I am a professional editor and writer and in ok shape. So yeah, she kicked my butt. It was wonderful. I can challenge my intellect all day long at work, but the opportunity to see what my body can accomplish just doesn’t come up that much while talking on the phone or writing emails. An added benefit is that pushing myself physically helps me connect with some of the characters in my novel.

In other news the ARCs for The Border: Exploring the US-Mexican Divide by David J. Danelo have gone out. The book pubs in August and should, I hope, get a fair amount of attention in the run up to the election. I also received the video trailer for Red, White or Yellow: The Media and the Military at War in Iraq by Charles Jones. I am very impressed with its production quality. Once we have it set up I’ll provide a link. This should be another book that gets a lot of attention as it pubs in September. And I’m happy to announce that Band of Sisters by Kirsten Holmstedt is now available as a digital download from Daily Lit. Daily Lit offers books digitally in installments, sending you a chapter a day, so in a sense they offer a serialized way to read a book. I bumped into the president of Daily Lit, Susan Danziger, at the London Book Fair last month and had a chance to talk at length about her approach and I am definitely impressed with what she’s doing. On the other hand, we had dinner one night and discovered that neither of us should ever be allowed to navigate. We walked the same section of London for probably half an hour trying to figure out where we were. The really sad part is, we were both sober.