Where’s Cheryl?

Status Report

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Today’s good news is that I have been deemed a suitable person to rent property (many thanks to my accountant, Geoff, for coming through with the requisite references).

The bad news is that I can’t move in until April 26th. However, I think I am OK for places to stay between now and then. Also it gives me time to sort out the utilities, get my broadband service moved, and go back to Darkest Somerset to pack stuff. I don’t have a lot of belongings in the UK, but a lot of what I do have is books and there’s more than I can easily transport by train. This may involve bribing someone who has a large vehicle at some point.

I’m afraid that there will not be a house-warming party. The entire ground floor of my new home could fit into the lounge/diner of our apartment in California, so there’s not really room for parties. Indeed, as the dining table will be permanently devoted to being an office desk, and be covered in computer equipment, even having friends to dinner would be difficult. Afternoon tea is about the best I can manage.

Also there is no spare bed, not enough room on the floor for a sleeping bag, and the sofa is only long enough to sleep Hobbits. Sorry.

One of the best things about the place (aside from the low rent) is that it is very fully furnished. I won’t need to buy anything, although knowing me I will start to invest in stuff like kitchen equipment. After all, if I am going to have to stay in the UK, I will need to furnish an apartment sometime in the not too distant future (hopefully next year). My first priority will be a good wok.

As for the visa situation, I have explained my problem to several immigration lawyers. None of them have yet got back to me. This does not surprise me, but neither is it very encouraging. I continue to expect that I will not be able to get back into the US without a very good reason and/or a very large sum of money to spend. What I need to do is work on generating those things.

Moving On

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Having found myself somewhere to stay for a week, I have bid a fond farewell to the Clutes and am now residing in Wiltshire for a few days. Tomorrow I am going to indulge in some retail therapy in Bath, partly because a visit to Lush sounds like a really good idea right now, and partly because I have very few clothes with me and could do with another pair of jeans. On Monday I get down to the serious business of looking for a permanent place to live.

Coming Up for Air

~ Cheryl ~ 90 Comments

Hi folks,

I am currently back in the UK and trying to sort out the various disasters that have been caused by my being unable to enter the USA. It is a long job, but I think I’m through all the important email now so here’s a status update.

1. Thank you so much for all of the messages of support.

2. Contrary to much of the speculation, this has little to do with anti-terror legislation and the like. It has been caused mainly by the fact that US immigration is the provenance of two separate government organizations — the State Department and Customs & Border Patrol — and in my case they don’t appear to have communicated very well.

3. As I result I appear to have inadvertently contravened the regulations, and therefore I will never again be able to use the visa waiver program. Nothing can be done about this.

4. The chances of my getting a visa are approximately equal to my chances of winning a lottery, because at my age, with my job skills, being able to invest a substantial amount of money in the US is the only way I am likely to get a visa. Just like any other country, the US grants visas to people who will be good for their economy, not for other reasons.

5. I would like to thank the two CBP officers who dealt with my case. They were particularly understanding, and it can’t have been easy for them to deal with someone who was in floods of tears much of the time. They are not to blame for this mess – they had no choice but to deport me.

6. Online outrage, letter writing campaigns and the like will not have any positive effect on my situation, so please don’t waste your time and energy.

7. The knock-on effect of this is unclear, but judging from the scowl and furious typing that greeted my arrival at passport control in the UK my status as an international criminal is already attached to my passport number and winging its way around the world. I don’t think this will stop me traveling in Europe, but it may mean that I am unable to visit New Zealand or Australia without a full-blown visa, which will make the Worldcon trip vastly more expensive and complicated.

8. Various people have been asking what they can do to help. As far as the US stuff goes, unless you happen to have the President’s private phone number there’s probably nothing you can do. However, I am currently homeless. I have places I can go in the short term, but I do need a long-term fix for this so recommendations as to places to live in the UK would be appreciated. The chances are I will be unable to rent anywhere in my own right. I am also going to need help with various sfnal projects that I have underway and will now be unable to run as effectively because I can’t travel, but that’s a subject for another post.

Update: I now have somewhere to stay for the next week, which is a big relief. I can now start looking at a more long-term solution.

Also please note that I don’t need money. Or rather, I need money in much larger quantities than you kind folks could possibly supply, so I’m not asking for anything other than suggestions as to where I can rent crash space.

Returned to Sender

~ Kevin Standlee ~ 70 Comments

Kevin here: Cheryl has just called me from SFO, where for reasons obscure, she has been denied entry to the USA despite doing everything by the book insofar as she knows.

(I’ll leave it to her to explain the messy details when she can and to the extent she’s willing or able to do so. I would rather not speculate and would encourage others not to do so, either.)

She apologizes to anyone who was expecting her at ICFA and elsewhere. To be honest, at this time, we don’t know if or when she’ll be in the USA again because it is notoriously difficult to correct situations like this.

Update: 20:00 PST: During the brief period where she was allowed to communicate again on the airplane before it left, Cheryl did Twitter that they’d put her on a plane and sent her back to the UK, so at least they didn’t keep her detained overnight.

In Transit

~ Cheryl

I’m closing down the main communications arrays for now. I’ll be in London tonight, and on an early-ish plane to San Francisco in the morning. In the meantime, Twitter will be the best place to find me.

Mad March Travel

~ Cheryl ~ 8 Comments

Deep breath, here we go.

On Friday (5th) I head off to Dublin for P-Con, returning on Monday (8th).

The following Wednesday (10th) I’m off to London where I’m staying with the Clutes overnight in preparation for an early morning flight to San Francisco on the Thursday (11th).

Kevin’s stuck in Portland on a training course, so I’ll need to find my own way to our sadly neglected apartment. Fortunately BART will take me most of the way, and there are cabs available at Fremont BART. Then I’ll need to get a bus to the shops as there’ll be no fresh food at home.

I was hoping to get to Nova Albion over the weekend, but Kevin has the van. Also there’s an SFSFC Board Meeting on Saturday (13th).

Kevin should be back on Sunday night (14th), so we ought to be able to make BASFA on the Monday (15th), but early Tuesday morning (16th) I’m off to Orlando for ICFA where I will finally get to present my paper on trans characters in science fiction and fantasy.

I’ll be back in the Bay Area on the following Monday (22nd). Sleep may follow.

Checking In

~ Cheryl

Sorry about the complete silence yesterday (except on Twitter). I was rather busy, and didn’t get to my hotel room until gone 23:00. I then had problems getting the hotel Internet to work, which the staff have now sorted for me.

Anyway, yesterday was fascinating, and I’m planning to pop pack to the Identity Project as soon as I have scanned the 500+ emails I have queued (most of them, of course, spam). Christine Burns did an excellent tour, and I have a good audio recording that I’ll be passing to her for possible podcasting.

I spent the evening with Roz Kaveney and as there happened to be a Trans London meeting taking place that night we went along. Possibly more about that later.

Briefly Home

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I’m back in a cold and soggy Bay Area. Apologies to BASFA folks for not making the meeting tonight, but I’m very tired and want to try to stay on Austin time, or move even further east, as I have to fly to London on Wednesday.

Sleep now.

A Day in The City

~ Cheryl

No blogging yesterday as I was up early to be in San Francisco for 10:00am and didn’t get back until about 12 hours later, by which time all I wanted to do was sleep.

I spent the intervening hours taking Zoran & Mia Živković round the sights of San Francisco. We did the usual tourist stuff: Union Square, Ferry Building, Fisherman’s Wharf, Hyde Pier, street cars, cable cars, Lombard Street, Marriott View Bar. However, it was the unplanned events that will probably leave the sharpest memories.

While we were walking down Powell to Market Street a young lady rushed past us shouting “I’m a lesbian, I’m a lesbian” at the top of her voice. I’m guessing that she was celebrating the signing of the Hate Crimes Bill, but she could just have been happy about life.

Valencia Street was in a state of chaos when we arrived. The San Francisco-based TV series, Trauma, was shooting some scenes in the small park right next to the Borderlands store. Thankfully the TV crew were very understanding about our need to get buses and people inside their security cordon and the signing event went very well.

And if that wasn’t enough, down by the 16th Street crossing someone was threatening to throw himself off a roof, do the police had a couple of blocks cordoned off. I have no idea what the final outcome of this was. Presumably it will be in the Chronicle today.

Arrived

~ Cheryl ~ 7 Comments

Travel yesterday as largely uneventful, thank goodness, so I am now safely in Sunny California where I hope the weather will stay good for a few more days so that all our foreign visitors can experience how lovely it is.

Talking of foreign visitors, tonight I get to meet Zoran and Mia Živković at SFO, and I’ll be spending Wednesday acting as tourist guide for them in San Francisco.

Tomorrow evening we’ll be at Borderlands Books from 6:30 to 8:00 for a mass signing event by WFC Members. The current guest list is as follows: David Drake, Kate Elliot, Graham Joyce, Patricia McKillip, Garth Nix, Ken Scholes, Michael Swanwick, James Anderson, Carol Berg, Marie Brennan, Gail Carriger, David B. Coe, Steven Erikson, David Farland, David Lunde, L.E. Modesitt, Jr., John Picacio, Barbara and Christopher Roden, Mark Sebanc, S.M. Stirling, Mark Van Name, Bill Willingham, Zoran Živković, Kari Sperring, Chaz Brenchley. There may be others. There will be a similar event with different people on the Monday.

Thursday through Sunday I’ll be busy at World Fantasy, and will probably be blogging quite a bit on the convention web site and at ConReporter.com. In particular don’t miss the live coverage of the World Fantasy Awards on Sunday.

And given how busy I’ll be for the next week, today needs to be spend being domesticated. I have to pack for the convention. And there is an enormous amount of mail for me, because I haven’t been here since January.

Fly-By Posting

~ Cheryl

I have managed to get online at Heathrow. There were no emergencies in the email. My gate should be opening soon, so it is offline again for many hours. Hopefully the next post will be from California.

Day Out in Bristol

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

The Write Fantastic event in Bristol today was attended by a small but very select group of people not entirely restricted to me. Indeed, there were more people in the audience than there were writers, so by normal convention rules we could have the event.

They are funny things, signings. Sometimes you get loads of people, sometimes hardly any. Writers, for very many reasons, have to have very thick skins. But we did have a lovely chat, and afterward a small group of us had a very nice late lunch at a Turkish restaurant called Öz. My apologies to Juliet for the fact that I spent a lot of time talking to Chaz and Keri about World Fantasy.

I have bought the graphic novel version of Paul Cornell & Tim Kirk’s Captain Britain & MI13: Vampire State and in view of the up-coming November celebrations insisted on showing everyone the House of Commons scene. I also picked up the latest Fables collection which I have been reading and is very good.

World Fantasy Plans

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

The next week or so is going to be fairly light on the blogging here, partly because I will be traveling, and partly because I will be busy blogging elsewhere. Here’s a rough schedule.

  • Saturday: Write Fantastic signing at Forbidden Planet in Bristol
  • Sunday: Travel to London, stay with Clutes
  • Monday: Fly to California
  • Tuesday: Recover from jet lag and answer email backlog
  • Wednesday: Tour guide for Zoran & Mia Živković in San Francisco
  • Thursday – Sunday: Convention

Kevin and I are running the web site for the convention so we’ll be doing a lot of reporting over there. That will include the live coverage of the World Fantasy Awards. However, you should also keep an eye on ConReporter.com because we can’t be everywhere and there are at least 9 other people who will be tweeting and/or blogging from the event. Also there are things that we can’t put on the official WFC web site because the convention suffers from a bad case of these guys.

Blue Meanies

Yes, I’m sorry to say that there are Blue Meanies: people for whom the very idea of wearing costumes on Halloween is anathema. Fear not, though, good people. We will sing. And we will spread joy, happiness and good old-fashioned fun throughout San José. Not to mention we’ll be talking about some very good books.

There may be a sekrit projekt or two announced as well. Stay tuned.

Saturday in Bristol

~ Cheryl ~ 3 Comments

Via the Solaris blog, I am reminded that Saturday will be Write Fantastic Day at Forbidden Planet in Bristol. The signing will feature Juliet E. McKenna, Stan Nicholls, Chaz Brenchley and Kari Sperring. I’m planning to pop along too. Festivities begin at 1:00pm.

Brief Travel Report

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

That’s my travel done again for a whole 5 days. What have I achieved?

Well, the word on BristolCon is that we would like to do it again, but there are issues to be addressed, most importantly with the hotel which may be a bit upscale for a convention. The plan is to do a full day next time, rather than just an afternoon. If anyone would like to get involved, you know who to ask.

BICS was not particularly inspiring, but I did get my signed copy of Grandville and I did get to hang out with folks like Paul Cornell, Liam Sharp, Terry Martin, Tony Lee, Barry and Dave from Geek Syndicate and so on. Unexpectedly I also had a long chat with Damien G Walter, who I hadn’t thought I would see there. Dan Boultwood was, I think, a little worse for wear (again) but he was vertical. He and Tony were judging the CosPlay. I would have liked to be a fly on the wall for that.

Grandville is fabulous. Review to come.

I’ve also been reading Jeanette Winterson’s The Stone Gods which is much better than I had expected.

And now I have a mountain of email to attend to.

Imagine a World…

~ Cheryl ~ 1 Comment

World Fantasy is now only a month away. I’m obviously very much looking forward to seeing California again (and especially to seeing Kevin), but there are lots of old friends I want to catch up with, and many new friends I want to make. One of the people I’m looking forward to meeting is Malinda Lo, whose debut novel Ash I am planning to buy. If you are interested to know why, check out this post on Nicola Griffith’s blog and listen to Malinda talk about imaging a world free of homophobia.

Boston Dinner: Thursday

~ Cheryl ~ 4 Comments

Tomorrow night around 7:00pm Frank Wu and I will be doing a “Frank and Cheryl celebrate their Hugos” dinner somewhere near the Prudential Center (‘cos that’s where I am staying). I don’t know exactly details yet, but if you are interested in coming along email or tweet me.

Kay: Bri will call you tonight. I’d love to meet you.

And no, Frank and I are not paying for everyone. Winning fan Hugos is great for the egoboo, but gets you no money. Also I’m not drinking as I have a training course to run the next day. 🙁

Home From Home

~ Cheryl ~ 2 Comments

I am now comfortably settled in to the Bay Bay Hilton in Boston, which just happens to be where I was staying when I last won a Hugo. I don’t have a whirlpool bath, but I do have a very nice room with plenty of space and a great desk. Hilton does look after me very well. (Also I got 4 nights here for a little over $650, which is absurdly good value.)

I will start working on catch-up on the email, Facebook, Worldcon report etc. soon, but I do also have a training course to give on Friday and as I’m getting paid to do that it takes priority.

More news on the dinner plans soon.