Final days to vote; I'm reading at the Spring (?) Writers festival, and Where the hell do I get Neil Gaiman tickets for the Philly reading?

I'm on my knees here one final time, asking you to vote for Three Days in New York City as your favorite small press novel, 2005. Voting ends midnight Sunday.

You'll just have to conjure up your own mental image of yours truly on her knees for now but rest assured I am not above pulling out my webcam if you guys land me anywhere in the top ten.

So in case you haven't gotten around to doing so, I promise, I'll leave you all alone after this, but here, once again, is the link.

And from the bottom of my heart, I thank you.

Also, I know I've mentioned this before and you know I'll be mentioning it again but it's the first time I've seen the press release:

Spring 2006 Poets and Writers Festival
On January 31, Philadelphia Stories joins the Community College of Philadelphia for their annual Spring 2006 Poets and Writers Festival. Our reading will be held at 5:15 on the main campus at 1700 Spring Garden Street. Readers will be: Robin Slick, who is widely published on both the web and in print. Her novel, Three Days in New York City, was recently published courtesy of Phaze/Mundania Press and is available in paperback at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Voices and Visions Bookstore. The sequel, Another Bite of the Apple, has just been completed and is currently awaiting publication in 2006. Randall Brown is a fiction editor with SmokeLong Quarterly, an MFA in Writing candidate at Vermont College, a recipient of a 2004 Pushcart nomination, and a three-time winner of Zoetrope Workshops Top Story. His work has appeared in many publications, including his story "Flies: Wet, Dry and In-Between," which appeared in the Summer issue of Philadelphia Stories. David Floyd was born in Philadelphia and currently teaches at Rutgers University-Camden and Temple University. His book-length manuscript The Sudden Architecture of the Dark was recently a finalist for the 2005 TampaReview Prize for Poetry and the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He lives in Lansdowne, PA, and can be found reading poems by Jack Gilbert; Plato's Republic, and Lauren Grodstein's collection of short stories, The Best of Animals.


So that's pretty cool.

Now. To find out where the hell to buy tickets to see Neil Gaiman at Temple University Center City Campus. Like I said, five minutes from my house, I went to the campus and the security guard looked at me like I was crazy.

"Who you want?"

"Neil Gaiman."

"Who that?"

"A writer. He's supposed to speak..."

"He not here."

"I know he's not here, he's...never mind. Can I speak to...I dunno, the librarian?"

"She on the main campus."

(Which is like three miles away and in a place where I got lost within minutes only to eventually be told the same thing (he not here) and sent back to the Center City campus five minutes from my house)

Anyway, what I did manage to find out is that Temple University is still on Christmas break and that the staff and students do not return until this coming Tuesday, so I'll let you know how I make out then.

Sigh...it would have been so much easier to go to New York on Monday and see him there.

xo