here, there, everywhere (but not really in Chicago)

I keep unintentionally neglecting the blog because I have been a whirlwind of travel lately and spent most of last week not knowing what time it was.

I went to Naperville, Illinois for a fantastic bookstore event, and then spent a day running around various nearby Illinois locations for Fox Valley Reads which was a wonderful community reading event and I had a lot of fun babbling about all things circusy.

So I was near Chicago but not actually in Chicago. I don’t think I can fairly say I’ve been to Chicago, and I very much want to go back to visit properly. I wanted to see that giant shiny coffee bean-looking thing.

But while I was not in Chicago there was a Miraculous Event!

If you have been reading the blog for a long while or a little while or at all, you have probably noticed that I write teeny stories called flax-golden tales and that I write them based on fantastical photographs by Carey Farrell.

Carey and I have known each other through the wonderment that is the internet for over a decade, but we had never ever met in person before last week outside Chicago.

Proof! We are both real people! With glasses!

Of course, she could have been a book-induced hallucination that manifested in photographic form, but I think she’s probably a real person and a lovely one at that and I am delighted that she is both real and my friend.

From not-Chicago I headed to actual Portland, Oregon, a city I had long thought mythical and I’m still convinced it might be, since during my two days there I sat in at least three different shiny red vinyl armchairs and also had dinner with Katherine Dunn. Not at the same time. I was in the mythical Land of Port for the Wordstock festival which was very fun and somewhere they now have quite a few photos of me draped across one of the aforementioned shiny red chairs.

Then I was back in Boston for a little over 24 hours including a field trip to New Hampshire to procure a rather fantastic pumpkin (I will take a picture of it when I get home) because it is October, after all, though now the pumpkin is patiently waiting to become a jack-o-lantern while I am in New York for a few days for reasons various and sundry.

This weekend I will be back in Boston for a bit and then off to London for a dark and decadent Hallowe’en evening with Audrey Niffenegger at The Prince Charles Cinema.

And then it will be November. Strange how that happens.

For now I am going to have a cappuccino and run off to enjoy the beautiful fall weather in Manhattan while it’s still here.