Around 6:10 p.m. last night, I stepped from the shower, towel wrapped around my waist, and heard a violent banging at the door. It was Gene and Gord coming to get me to head over to the Dark Delicacies signing. I stepped into the hallway, joking, as I held tightly to the towel, that I was all set to go—and the door almost shut behind me, keys still inside!

Wouldn’t that have allowed me to make a grand entrance!

After quickly tossing on some clothes, we cabbed it over to the bookstore, where I met an old friend out front:

But more conversational and attractive friends waited inside. Wandering the densely packed aisles, I had a chance to chat with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, Ellen Datlow, Maria Alexander, F. Paul Wilson, Tom Monteleone, Stephen Jones, Many Slater, Peter Atkins, Dennis Etchison, Cody Goodfellow, Rain Graves, John Skipp, Matt Schwartz, Sharan Volin, John Everson, owner Del Howison, of course, and on and on and on—so many others I’m sure I’ve left many out. There wasn’t time enough for all that needed to be said, but then, cocktail parties are like that. There’s still an entire weekend to come in which to track them down and trap them. I promise to let them keep their pelts, however.

Here I am with Maria Alexander:

Once it was all over, Gene and Gord and I headed back to the bar, where we hung out with John Sutherland for awhile and congratulated him on his book deal. But I was far too tired from jet lag and the endless day to last for long, so after looking around for Len Wein and Christine Valada, who said they’d pop by and naturally turned up a minute or two after I’d left, I went back to the room, uploaded all of my photos to date to flickr, and crashed.

Unfortunately, I woke after only four hours sleep, but now that I’ve worked on SCI FI Wire and this entry for a combined 2 1/2 hours, I’ll try to catch some more sleep so I’ll be ready for the fun day ahead.