Last night I had the opportunity to go and see John Scalzi at one of our local libraries. He is on a book tour for his newest book – The Shattering Peace – from his Old Man’s War series. I am a big fan of his and so when I heard that he was coming to Boise I had to go. I was able to secure a ticket. They were free but they needed people to register. As the day approached the library started sending out emails asking me (and I would assume everyone else that registered for the event) to let them know if I wasn’t coming, because they had a wait list of people wanting to come to the event. Regretfully for those people I was not giving up my ticket.
The night came and I headed to the Library! (yes in Boise they put an exclamation mark at the end, I like it, it adds fun to saying Library!), and when I got there I was surpirsed to find only 3 other people there already in line to get in. I was expecting more. Then as the time got closer there still weren’t that many people. Joh Scalzi was dropped off and looked at us and asked, “Am I at the right place?”, and we all said, “Yes.” He went in and the rest of us continued to wait in line. About 15 minutes before it was to start there still weren’t more than about 20 people there. I was surprised since the thing online said the room sat 130 people and they had a wait list. But I was in and grabbed a seat toward the front center. I immediately went up the Mr. Scalzi and asked him if I could take a picture with him and Moral the Traveling Wombat. He said of course, and here is the picture. The classic on top of head, but this time he is looking upward to figure out what is on his head.
I bought a couple books, the new one and “When the Moon Hits Your Eye”, and sat down and chatted with the people around me. I saw another physics teacher from BSU there and we said hello.
Then Mr. Scalzi got started. He asked us if we wanted him to read from his new book OR from the book he was working on that would come out next year. The crowd, and myself, all agreed that we wanted to hear the new stuff, which he said he had just written the previous weekend. We were all swore to secrecy so I can’t tell you what it was about, but I can tell you that it was very funny. It did have quite a bit of language (something like 17 or 18 F-bombs in the 20 minutes he read), but in all honestly I would have been surprised if there wasn’t any foul language. With the way things started in the book I am sure that I will pick it up or at least borrow it from the library once it comes out.
Then he did a questions and answers time and was funny and also gave some great advice to people looking for writing advice. Then it was time for signing. I stood in line with everyone else. I chatted with the physics teacher from BSU, whose name I can’t remember at the moment but might be Emily. When I finally got up to Mr. Scalzi I thanked him for the enjoyable time, and then when he signed one of the books he wrote: “To Michael, yours in wombattery” That was pretty awesome.
I have been quite blessed since being here in Idaho to see a number of artists that I may or may not have been able to see while in AZ. This is mostly because of the area being so much smaller. It is easier to get just about anywhere since most things are about 20 minutes away from where I live. When I was in AZ it could easily be a 40-60 minute drive to get somewhere to see something like this and as a result I often wouldn’t do it due to time. So, again a good thing about being in Boise.