Cosine: Connie Willis and I; Barbara Hambly; Karen Jordan making origami for the masses in the art show room; Gang autographing: Sasha Miller, Connie Willis, John Stith, Barbara Hambly, Wil McCarthy; Capacity 162: boxes and shelves of books and an autographed photo of Liv Tyler
During idle moments I would wonder what to call my bookselling business. Everything Must Go really was taken already by Steely Dan. You Like Books, We Got Books or Books We Got occasionally burst from my lips as prospects passed by. I finally decided the ideal name was the sign the hotel management had already thoughtfully provided me: Capacity 162.Much as I hated to part with some books, there are rewards in being a bookseller as well as a patron. Connie Willis picked up some Merrill Year's Best and Boucher and Mills Best of F&SF collections, which she says are the stories she keeps returning to, as well as a Haunting of Hill House. I not only helped Barbara Hambly locate a book for a friend, but gifted her with the original New Voices anthology, with an Effinger story she didn't think she'd ever seen before.
It was also nice to see a fan overjoyed to discover the Roy Tackett collection I published for the 1997 Worldcon. Or another ecstatic over finding a paperback of Sarban's The Sound of His Horn, a book he'd always heard about but never seen. Or to see another idly browsing through the boxes of books, then suddenly plunge like a bass striking at a dry fly, on spotting a first edition hardcover of Silverlock...library binding and markings to be sure, but still a volume no one at that convention had ever seen. I was happy to accept the first price he offered me and I'm sure we both got a great deal.
I, of course, am making out like a bandit.
