OK, so I am in New York for the first time in my life. What did I do with myself? First of all I had to catch up with La Gringa and find my out to her delightfully book-filled apartment in Astoria. This is near Queens, so I keep thinking to myself that I ought to be eating refried beans, but I had other priorities this evening. I had a party to go to, in the Australian Consulate.

Yes, really; my good pals Trevor and Deb and Jonathan had arranged a splendid bash and invited a whole load of New York literati. There was free Aussie wine. And it was all paid for by the Australian Government, as part of their drive to export fine Aussie speculative fiction to America. Nobody tell John Howard, OK. Although hopefully his days of being able to be outraged and able do something about it are almost over.

It was a good evening. I met lots of good folks, many of whom I already new well, and others for the first time. I discovered that Australia really does have Cultural Attaches. I got to talk to Margot Lanagan. Garth Nix apologized profusely for the failure of the Australian rugby team to beat England. And afterwards I got dragged off to an Italian restaurant by Ellen Datlow, which was very impressive, though even here they don’t do zabaglione. Italian restaurants are not what they were.

Tomorrow I get to play tourist and go shopping in New York. I already have the subway sussed. I have Spidey Sense when it comes to cities.