Copyright © 2005 by Blake Charlton. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, reposting, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without express written permission of the author.
From: Blake Charlton
To: My Peoples
Date: March 27, 2006
Subject: Blake in the Big Apple!
Every time I visit Manhattan I feel slightly overawed, slightly overwhelmed. Horace felt the same way about Rome.
Omitte mirari beatae fumum et opes strepitumque Romae.
A long time ago, I had to translate that in Magistra Nicoles's Latin III class. I couldn't parse it now if you held a gun to my head but somehow the words stuck with me. "Stop fussing about smoky Rome" is the best memory can do for me now.
New York, New York, center of the universe, or at least the center of our empire. Everything here is larger faster, dirtier, shinier than I'm used to. That isn't to say I unhappy, far from it. On Friday I meet with my editor. He trotted me through Tor headquarters--in the famous 'Flatiron' building. You'd recognize a picture of it. I met several editors who have been my personal heroes. I admired the original artwork of books that shaped speculative fiction.
Then I got to the book shelves and was told to point to any book I'd like to have.
Oh...really?
It was an oneiric, kid-in-a-candy-shop experience; a whole gaggle of hardbacks are now being shipped to San Francisco.
Then I walked through the office of Tom Doherty--publishing impresario and really nice guy. Then my editor and I headed to down town Tuscan restaurant and we sat to a lunch so decadent that a Jesuit priest couldn't describe it without committing a venial sin.
Then it was off into the world for a few days. Somehow I floated through Manhattan's intenerate, dimly-lit social world of bars, clubs and lounges. I caught up with old college and high school friends, I took a trip up to New Haven to have lunch with a favorite professor and chat with the premed advisors. Perhaps more important was my quest for a slice from Sally's Pizza and a burger from Louie's Lunch. Ah, New Haven, the birthplace of American comfort food, how we miss you!
Now I'm back in Manhattan, sitting in a tea parlor just south of Washing Square Park. I'm supposed to be working on a redraft of SPELLWRIGHT but really I'm nursing a pot of Irish Breakfast and writing self-absorbed emails.
Love as ever.
-blake