Greetings from a surprisingly sunny and cheerful afternoon in Portland, Oregon! My manfriend is taking a few days out of his vacation time to attend a nerd convention, and I'm using the opportunity to get as much writing done as humanly possible during the day, then meeting up with him and an assorted cast of old friends (he lived in Portland for ten years) for dinner and drinks in the evenings. Our hotel is super crazy awesome… I wish I could tell you where it is, but I'm pretty sure that's high up on the list of How To Get Stalked Top Tips and I'd get berated for being so foolish.
Speaking of nerd conventions, the first afternoon we were here (I haven't been back to Portland for a proper visit in four years) we were bumming around a sunken brick courtyard area, sort of a displaced Out of Town News type scene, if you know Cmambridge's Harvard Square at all. There were shenanigans galore going down in this square! Young people prancing around in colorful wigs and weird clothes, playing a game that combined spin the bottle and red rover and involved a LOT of hugging and spirited yelling. Naturally we got comfortable and gawked ad nauseum. I said, "Jesus, I knew it was nutty in this city, but I didn't remember it being this freaky!" We later found there was an anime convention going on down the street. Sigh of relief. I'm all for Portland flying its freak flag high, but thank goodness that wasn't typical.
An awesomely handy thing for my evil conjoined erotica writing twin (Cara McKenna) is that she's writing a follow-up to a story whose characters are all from this town, so she gets to walk around in their natural habitat while she brainstorms the nasty things they're going to get up to with each other. Everywhere we look, it's like, "Oh, that guy on the bike could be Rich!" Or "That chick would definitely be friends with Margie" or "I bet Evan would eat lunch there." Pretty cool.
I'm in the hotel lobby right now, waiting for my room to be cleaned before I head back up so Cara can pound away some more on this little Bluetooth keyboard. I'll say it again—love love loving the iPad as a mobile writing device. Perfect for me. Tomorrow I get kicked out at eleven or so when we have to check out of the hotel, so I'll be walking all around the city while I wait for the programmer mafia to release my manfriend from his convention. The only place I MUST go (upon threat of death, should I fail) is Powell's Books. I'm also in the market for a new pair of pants (excitement!) and maybe a cool piece of jewelry as a souvenir. Praying for another sunny, cool day like this one. After that it's back to cougar country for a couple more days.
Okay, room's probably clean now. Back to the writing trenches.
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