Great time in London

Carolyn and I had a wonderful day today at Fanshawe College in London, Ontario, a two-hour drive from our home in Mississauga. I gave two readings and talks there.

The first one, at 2:00 p.m., was mostly for the Fanshawe faculty and students; the second one was open to the public, and co-sponsored by the London Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada.

At the first reading, I read the scene from Mindscan in which the new version of Jake wakes up, seeing in full colour for the first time. At the second reading, I read my short story "The Eagle Has Landed" from Mike Resnick's DAW anthology I, Alien, and a bit from my upcoming novel Rollback.

Before the first reading, we were taken to lunch at Saffron, the wonderful restaurant run by students in culinary studies at Fanshawe, and then a photography student there took me off to a studio to take an official portrait of me to hang in the College's gallery of visiting writers -- cool!

About 200 people came to my first event, and it went very well. We then headed off to the North London Chapters superstore, where I signed stock (of which they had lots) and set up a signing there for Rollback, for Saturday, May 12, at 3:00 p.m.

Then it was back to Saffron for a cocktail party in my honour and a private dinner with members of the Royal Astronomical Society -- and we all went outside to see the stunning sight of Venus and a quite-prominently-visble naked-eye Mercury in the western sky.

Starting at 8:00 p.m., I did my second reading of the day. We only had about 60 people in the audience, but they were very appreciative, and asked lots of good questions. At 10:00 p.m. Carolyn and I hit the road for the drive back to Toronto. Unfortunately we had to drive through a snow storm for part of it.

At both the afternoon and evening events, the Fanshawe College bookstore was on hand, and my books sold very well indeed.

All in all -- except for the drive home -- an absolutely terrific day! Many thanks to Fanshawe, the London Arts Council, and the Canada Council for the Arts for sponsoring my readings (and for having the cheque ready)! Our wonderful host for the day was Ingrid Hutchinson-Young of the Language and Liberal Studies Department. She treated us like visiting royalty, and we had a fabulous time.

But now -- sleep. I have to be at the airport tomorrow (Friday) morning at 8:30 a.m. for a trip that will take me to Calgary for the annual social of IFWA, the writers' group there, and then to Victoria for the British Columbia Book Fair; Tor and H.B. Fenn (Tor's Canadian distributor) are kindly sending me there so that I can pitch Rollback to B.C. booksellers.

The Robert J. Sawyer Web Site