West Hollywood Book Fair

Went to the West Hollywood Book Fair today. It was basically a few square miles of tents with book vendors, author signings, and panel discussions. I didn’t see any spec fic authors, which was a drag, though supposedly Neil Gaiman was there, but he left before I even arrived (indeed, before I even heard about it). Bill Maher was there, but not speaking, only signing. I hadn’t even heard of any of the other authors, who were mostly chick lit or mystery writers. I did sign up with the Writer’s Guild to receive email bulletins about upcoming events (supposedly they’ve signed up Charlie Kaufman for a rare public appearance in a few weeks), so that was worthwhile. I also picked up a book for $1, an anthology of stories that appeared in Galaxy magazine that includes an essay by each author about how they wrote their story.

Supposedly the Book Fair included a “giant” cake. When I asked how big it was, one of my friends said, “Six feet by four feet. Don’t ask me how I know that, but I’m sure. Maybe I dreamed it,” and then, “Wow, six feet is really tall for a cake.” I said, “Assuming those dimensions are correct, I’m sure it must be six feet long by four feet wide. Who ever heard of a six foot tall cake?” My other friend suggested that maybe it was one of those big cakes like the ones strippers come out of at birthday parties, in which case it could very well be six feet tall. I’ve never seen one of those stripper-style cakes in real life and, intrigued at the prospect, decided to check it out. We somehow got the idea that the cake unveiling was at 5:00, and hung around for an hour just for that, then went looking for the cake. The cake was hidden inside an enormous, cordoned-off red velvet tent, which seemed promising. But then we realized that the cake unveiling wasn’t until 6:15. Unwilling to wait around another hour, my friend surreptitiously reached past the cordon and pulled the tent flap aside. The cake inside was six feet long by four feet wide and all of about six inches tall. Do you call that “giant”? What a frickin’ ripoff.