Why I'm so upset ...

Just to be clear, the reason I'm so upset about Bob Palmer's lie about my ability to travel to the States is that my livelihood depends on me being able to routinely do that, and if this unfounded story gets around that I couldn't make it to an American con because I'm supposedly not allowed to enter the US, that would kill me being invited to future American cons.

People who heard what Palmer was saying might say to others, "You're thinking of asking Rob Sawyer to be GoH? Oh, don't do that -- I heard he wasn't able to come to ToBeCONtinued, because they wouldn't let him across the border."

Likewise, I often do paid speaking engagements in the States (at several thousand dollars a pop), and, again, I can't have people thinking, "Oh, sure, I hear this Sawyer guy gives a good keynote, but I understand he left some conference in the lurch when it turned out at the last minute that he couldn't get across the border -- something in his past, I guess." In his haste to cover his own ass, Palmer cared not one whit about what his lie might do to my ability to make a living.

And so I have to loudly, completely, and totally quash this. As I said in this entry, "I'm a US citizen [with a] US passport. I have a US Social Security card, too; I can travel to, live in, work freely in, and even move to the United States anytime I wish, without restrictions." That is 100% true.

In the past year, I've been Guest of Honor at Apollocon in Houston, Special Guest at Dragon*Con in Atlanta, Guest of Honor at CopperCon in Phoenix, Toastmaster at Norwescon in Seattle; a presenter at the Writers of the Future, also in Seattle; given keynotes at meetings in Phoenix, Boston, and New York; and been on book tour to New York, Michigan, California, and Oregon. If any of you hear anyone repeating Palmer's lie as if it were truth, please, please, please direct them here.

Again, the truth is there are absolutely no restrictions on my ability to travel to the US.