WisCon 33: Ellen Klages 10 am reading

I was trying to decide whether to see Ellen read at WisCon (as conceivably I _could_ hear her read in the Bay Area...) or to go to a panel on "Reinventing the Adventure" which featured Carol Emshwiller.

I'm so glad I went to the reading, as she was able to read "Time Gypsy" which is one of my favorite stores, in its entirety!



Basically she picked that since she never gets to read it this much time to read it anywhere else: "Where else do they give you more than an hour to read!?!"

Before she started, she told us that she'd had to go grab a copy of Portable Childhoods from the Tachyon table, since this is one that is a little long to have memorized:
- "Do you have a copy of my book?"
"Yes, you know, we published it!" and off she went.

There was also a bit of banter about the suggestion that she could bring the book back, signed, to the Tachyon table, with an inscription that reads "Mangled and Spine Cracked by Author"
(she had bent the spine back and then wondered if Tachyon would be upset about that). The audience seemed to agree that a book mangled by its actual author would be a pretty cool thing.

(I wonder what actually happened to that copy since i did buy a copy of portable childhoods from tachyon later in the day).

Anyway -it was really fun to hear her read "Time Gypsy" - I have the chapbook which I should get signed. I had totally forgotten that Sarah Baxter Clarke has an English accent! EK did a great job switching back and forth between the accents (of course!).

(oh and before the reading when I was hanging around near the reg table, she marched up and asked "anybody know where the Guest of Honor reading is?!?")

I also like the whole theme here of looking up to a mentor and then realizing that there is a real person behind the mentor (of course if you get a chance to actually see that person). In this case in the past they are the same age. But the two women meeting in the present would obviously be different.

SBC would no doubt have another side of herself (the professional mentorly side) that she would usually have for Carol.

I think Sarah S might enjoy these stories.