LONGPEN IN LONDON

Bloglike Posting from Margaret Atwood

Here we are, back from London, where things did not go exactly as planned, though we did manage to extract the hot potato from the fire. Let's just say that in astrological terms Mercury was retrograde, which hits communications, and it sure hit us!

We and our equipment arrived all right, despite some airplane delays. Our team went to Excel on Friday to set up. There was trouble finding Fiber Optics line. That lost a day.

Our team was at Excel at 8:30 am the next morning, and set up, connecting with New York and Guelph and signing transatlantically after midnight. All was well.

All remained well the next day - we signed at the Fair itself in the morning, a little later than planned, with the signer turning out perfect signatures, as in Guelph and Ottawa previously. We went off to lunch well content. Our team had trouble getting into the room in time (previous group went overtime), so they were rushed. Connection was established with Guelph and New York. Then, 1/2 hour before show time, we were cut off from Guelph. Aargh!

What we weren't told, by anybody - none of the hi-tech gurus at Excel, Guelph, anywhere - was that no one had ever tried doing what we were doing - uninterrupted transatlantic connection of that order, for that long. So no one knew. Or maybe a few people knew, but they weren't the ones we were in contact with.

Turns out the Internet isn't a highway. It's a pinball machine. When you send an e-mail - it's short, not much info - it goes right through if there's low traffic. If there's high traffic, it gets put in a corral and held until a portal opens up. You info can go zizzing around over the world, looking for an open door. So what happened to our connection? Somebody closed a door. It was that simple.

How do we solve it? Also simple. We get a dedicated line of the kind long-distance surgeons use. It is guaranteed not to fail. It would have been useful to have known that before London! But we know it now.

After some sweat-making delays, during which Matthew lost five pounds and Margaret fell back on her camp counselor techniques, read stories, and told tales (about the helicopter, failed 70 times before it worked, and the sewing machine, invented in 1818, failed to sew anything, then fell apart), we established video with New York, interacted with customers, and signed their books with the machine in London, with them watching via video. The books were then FedExed to McNally Robinson in New York.

The Bad News: We had a foul few hours. The last time I felt like that was going over a mountainous road in the dark with huge washouts we couldn't see. Churn-making. Knuckle-whitening.

The Good News: We got great coverage, on the whole. I've asked our office sum it up for us - they've been gathering wads of it off the Net. In short: The press that was actually there and saw the thing go was 90% positive. Some people who were not there are still confused as to what the item actually is. We took a few whacks - some of which we would have taken anyway, because it's Moi, and people will always take a whack or two, and it's fun to see the great and supposedly dignified looking really, really hung out on the washing line, flapping around in the breeze.

There is a huge amount of e-mail pouring in from other sectors. There is high interest from countries that have trouble getting authors to visit them. Bookstores located in remotish areas also got the point. We've had manufacturers offering their services, marketers ditto, other inventors who would like to work with us, It will take a while to sort through all of this. We continue to get many suggestions about other applications.

The folks in London were terrific during our foul few hours. They saw something Blitz-like in our predicament - they rushed around with figurative bandages & cups of tea. Special thanks to cameraman Peter Meakin, who just plunged in way beyond the call of duty. And to you, and you, and you… so many who were helpful and positive.

Best of all - We Kept Our Nerve. As good Canadians, we know white water canoeing when we see it. You just have to keep moving faster than the water.

Thank you for your support, all of you - and special thanks to those who hung in there at the actual event. In particular, Nigel Newton was brilliant, Lennie Goodings was stalwart, and Kim McArthur was enthusiastic. She claims she would have sung, if asked. Matt Gibson, Jim Darling, and Lisa Steinbrecher were the tech team under fire, and did splendidly under adverse conditions. Graeme Gibson held the line. Fiona McMorrough and her staff were spectacular.

Denise Donlon and Phoebe Larmore steadied the nerves in New York, where John Wiltshire was stationed, and where Sarah McNally was terrific; Doug Minett, Michael de Pencier and Jack Rabinovitch had the hardest job, because we couldn't connect with Guelph at all when we needed to, so Milos Popovic from our team had the most disappointing day of all. Also he had just had surgery. Now that's dedication.

The Very Good News: It wasn't our stuff that didn't work. It was the Internet Pinball Machine.

We can confirm that we will be at BookExpo America, May 19-21, and at BookExpo Canada in June.