Going out with a bang! And a podcast...

Shamelessly stolen from Kelley's Instagram feed

The trip to Port Townsend took exactly 24 hours. Well, okay, 24 hours and 3 minutes: we left at 1:41 pm on Monday, and got back at 1:38 pm on Tuesday. That's close enough for government work. Though it did include a stop for beer and shepherd's pie on the Seattle side of the ferry. I don't want to pretend that I worked too hard.

My last Hild event was a truly fine way to end. It was at the Port Townsend Library Learning Center, and it was SRO (though no one stood--when we ran out of chairs people sat on the floor). It reminded me very much of my first Hild event at Hugo House in November last year. The room was a bit smaller, and there was no bar, and I didn't know anyone there--but the feel was the same: celebratory, relaxed, eager to have a good time. Writers, if ever you get invited to go, do it. These readers are ready to listen and talk.

Of course, it certainly helped that afterwards we went to a lovely wine-and-food reception where I got to talk to interesting people. (And stuff my face with olives and salmon and drink more wine than was strictly necessary.)

Port Townsend itself is a nifty place. I've been there before, in summer. It's small (pop. 9,210 per Wikipedia) but it has surprisingly fine buildings: Victorian mostly, I think. Certainly it has more robust (or perhaps I mean more familiar) architecture than, say, Wenatchee, which is more than three times the size. And I just liked it better.

While we were there, the wind was strong and the water choppy, a blue-green grey with white caps, that is almost exactly the colour of Hild's eyes. If we'd had more time I would have wrapped myself up against the wind and rain and sat out on the verandah of the beach house for hours.

But we had to come home. And when we got to Seattle, we found it was a shocking 63 degrees. In December. I don't know if that's a record, but after the freezing mountain passes on the way to and from Central Washington it seemed unnatural. But it's lovely to not be cold.

A week before I left, I recorded a phone interview with Chris Wilson, host of Book Lovers' Cafe, for Port Townsend's KPTZ. You can listen to the 30-min show, which includes two reading snippets, here.

Enjoy!