Wednesday, June 26, 2002

Just got in to my hotel room, dead of night--and guess who was on my flight, and then just ahead of me checking in? My opposite number, Jim Cramer, who is also on a breakneck book tour. It was a funny meeting--kind of like two dogs sniffing each other--we'd each heard of the other. he has a higher profile than I do, but he's all business--check out the Amazon book summary to get an idea of his schtick. I kept thinking, "aha...this would be where my business audience went in LA..." and had the sudden uncharitable thought that if I could take him in a fight, I could yardarm him and in a Dungeons and Dragons universe I would then get all his media for the next day. Bwahahahahah.

Luckily that feeling passed and we made conversation--it's nice talking to another author on a similar tour and there are similarities--he's on his first book, he takes shots at himself in a book that is about his reactions to the Net craze and he has his picture on the cover of his book as well, though his visage is a tad more stark than my own smiling dog bone look.

Anyway, we were both bushed, so we made a date to talk later--but it was a neat camraderie, to see someone else who has to go to bed at 2am and get up for a 5:30am interview. And at the end of the day I don't know if those business-types would have been all that happy had they been herded over to my reading--they'd hear about aesthetics, onanism and how to make a blowgun from a Sharpie rather than tax advice.