Yesterday was busy and spent mostly in San Francisco. It started off at the Fungus Festival in the Ferry Building where Kevin and I got to indulge in more fabulous good food – in particular mushroom ice cream. Yes, candy caps can be used in just about anything that would be good with a butterscotch or maple syrup flavor. Yum!

From there is was on to Borderlands where I picked up a number of books, including Jeff Ford’s The Drowned Life and Kathy Sedia’s The Alchemy of Stone. Ellen Klages was doing a reading of her new novel, White Sands, Red Menace, which is a sequel to Green Glass Sea and sounds to be utterly awesome. The chapter that Ellen read was all about the Kix Atomic Bomb Ring. I confess to having had no idea what a spinthariscope was before. Now I want one.

We had a few hours to kill, which was spent happily with Ellen and Madelaine Robbins in the local Irish pub and then a Thai restaurant. After that it was off to Writers with Drinks. The first thing I should note about this is that the size of the crowd is utterly awesome. By the time we got there it was not just standing room only, it was hard to squeeze anyone else in. Huge credit to Charlie Anders for creating such a successful event.

This month’s theme was “Writers in Drag”, by which Charlie meant writing outside of your usual genre. The evening began with Jaime Cortez who had a fun take on the Snow White story. Stephen Elliott read some poetry with a very flat delivery. Michelle Tea couldn’t make it (abducted by aliens, I presume). Annalee Newitz is working on a science fiction novel. And finally, the headline acts…

Nalo was fabulous. She read parts of a piece of gay erotica, which went down very well with the San Francisco crowd. By the time she had finished (very deliberately before the climax (pun intended)) I was starting to feel sorry for Austin Grossman. I needn’t have, he was brilliant. Now I guess I have to go and buy his book.

Next month’s Writers with Drinks will feature the fabulous cheeseographer, Jay Lake. The date is December 13th. See you there?

Finally the sfnal part of the crowd detached itself and found a very nice coffee bar (thank you, Debbie Notkin). All in all, it was a very successful day. Today, we need to run some errands, but I’m planning to spend much of it vegging out in front of yesterday’s rugby, and cooking.