Bill and I flew from Seattle to New York City yesterday in order to attend Thrillerfest.<\/p>\n
From the time I was a little girl growing up in Bisbee, Arizona\u2014the proverbial ‘girl from a small mining town in the West’\u2014I heard the siren call of New York City. \u00a0I wanted to be a writer, and NYC was the heart of the publishing industry. \u00a0Was then; still is.<\/p>\n
I didn\u2019t necessarily want to LIVE in NYC, but I wanted to go there and experience it. I wanted to feel like one of the insiders. During my first trip to NYC, in the late sixties, I was awestruck by the canyons of buildings; by the hustle and the bustle of the people on the street; by the traffic; by the noise; by the shows. In other words, by just about everything. All of that, however, was long before I first put finger to keyboard on the long journey to becoming a writer.<\/p>\n
But now, I are one\u2014a writer that is, and that\u2019s how I came to New York yesterday, as one of the cadre of writers doing conference events and appearances for Thrillerfest.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, as we prepared to land at JFK Airport, the pilot warned us that it might be a little bumpy, and it was, but the tarmac outside the windows of the plane was dry as dust. \u00a0By the time we were well inside the airport, a cloudburst hit, and when the luggage finally turned up on the carousel, it was wet. \u00a0Later, when we went outside to get into our shuttle, there were puddles of water standing at the curbs, but by then the rain itself was long gone. We rode into the city with that iconic cityscape backlit by a shimmering golden sunset. \u00a0It was breathtakingly beautiful.<\/p>\n
The ride was smooth. Our limo driver, clearly a professional, was also an expert in handling the traffic issues. \u00a0I found myself baffled by the rules for merging and traveling through packed intersections, and I can\u2019t for the life of me understand why so many places allow double parking. \u00a0All the better reason to leave our in-city driving to someone who understands the local rules and customs of the road.<\/p>\n
Today, at noon, I did an outdoor event at the Bryant Park Reading Room for the New York Public Library. \u00a0It was hot and muggy under a canopy in the park with just enough of a breeze to keep the panelists from keeling over but not enough to keep us from losing our makeup. \u00a0It was a Q and A sort of presentation with several of us relating the trails and trials that brought us to writerdom.<\/p>\n
Afterwards there was time for signing and that, for me, turned out to be the best part. \u00a0An African American woman who had been sitting in the far back came up to my section of \\ tables. \u00a0She said that her name was Josephine. She had been walking past and just happened to see that I was there. \u00a0Since she\u2019s read all my books, she stayed on to listen, and she wanted to know if I would mind if she took a selfie. I didn\u2019t mind although, at 84 degrees with 54 percent humidity, I knew my hair was a mess. We took the photo and she went on her way.<\/p>\n
What I\u2019m kicking myself about now is that I didn\u2019t ask to take a selfie in return so I could post it here. \u00a0The problem is, I am a woman of a certain age. The whole concept of selfies is somewhere well outside my wheelhouse.<\/p>\n
With any kind of luck, however, I\u2019ll remember to do better for the remainder of the weekend. \u00a0Some of my literary heroes will be here, and I\u2019m looking forward to meeting them.<\/p>\n
Yes, this is indeed a \u201cwonderful town.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Bill and I flew from Seattle to New York City yesterday in order to attend Thrillerfest. From the time I was a little girl growing up in Bisbee, Arizona\u2014the proverbial ‘girl from a small mining town in the West’\u2014I heard the siren call of New York City. \u00a0I wanted to be a writer, and NYC […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[6,165],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1419","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tour-2","category-traveling"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3nsBA-mT","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1419"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1420,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1419\/revisions\/1420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jajance.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}