Greetings from New York City
May. 30th, 2014 08:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
deborahjrossOne of the discoveries I've made about myself over the years is that I am a country person. I love living in a small town (the place I live has 5,000 people) and especially I love the deep silence and peace of the redwoods. Not the unrelenting shade underneath them, mind you, but a nice sunny spot from which the admire them does very nicely, and describes where my house is.
So when i learned that my novel Collaborators was named a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, I very much wanted to attend the ceremony -- not that I have any hope of winning, but that it's such an honor to have a book of mine receive this kind of recognition. And once I opened my mind to contemplate a visit to New York City, I found all kinds of other reasons to go. Family, old friends (one of whom I'm staying with), my editor at DAW...
But...but it's a big city. It's a B - I - G city. And cities and I don't get along. One of the facts of life is that the more time I spend in a rural environment, the more disused and rusty my city-skills become. Not that I ever had much. So I'm trying to overcome my intimidation and approach being here with an open mind -- it's an adventure, after all.
The first part of the adventure was taking a taxi from the airport. i could have used public transportation, but I was tired from the travel -- stopover in Denver, connecting flight delayed, ah! those cramped seats that fit no one's posture. My cab driver was from Bangladesh, and we had a lovely conversation about his home, his family (immediate family here, kids in college, rest of family back in Bangladesh), his work there (attorney, if I understood him correctly) and his hopes to return. And the cost of housing in NYC. Ended with many smiles and good wishes. Not a bad start to my adventure.
Oh, and my friend's apartment is walking distance from the Museum of Natural History. How cool is that?
So when i learned that my novel Collaborators was named a Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, I very much wanted to attend the ceremony -- not that I have any hope of winning, but that it's such an honor to have a book of mine receive this kind of recognition. And once I opened my mind to contemplate a visit to New York City, I found all kinds of other reasons to go. Family, old friends (one of whom I'm staying with), my editor at DAW...
But...but it's a big city. It's a B - I - G city. And cities and I don't get along. One of the facts of life is that the more time I spend in a rural environment, the more disused and rusty my city-skills become. Not that I ever had much. So I'm trying to overcome my intimidation and approach being here with an open mind -- it's an adventure, after all.
The first part of the adventure was taking a taxi from the airport. i could have used public transportation, but I was tired from the travel -- stopover in Denver, connecting flight delayed, ah! those cramped seats that fit no one's posture. My cab driver was from Bangladesh, and we had a lovely conversation about his home, his family (immediate family here, kids in college, rest of family back in Bangladesh), his work there (attorney, if I understood him correctly) and his hopes to return. And the cost of housing in NYC. Ended with many smiles and good wishes. Not a bad start to my adventure.
Oh, and my friend's apartment is walking distance from the Museum of Natural History. How cool is that?
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