Here's Tad's tour diary from April 2001. We'll post future tour diaries when we get them.

April 8th to 15th

This week is not officially part of the tour, but a huge influence on the upcoming trip, because my wife is extremely sick with pneumonia for a week, our childcare is unavailable, and I spend many days — it seems like months, actually — as a single parent. From six in the morning until ten at night I do nothing except make meals for two picky young children, top up juice, mop up spills, try to screw socks onto wiggling child feet, pull the one year old out of various death-inviting situations (sharpened pencil up the nose, head in the toilet, swan-dive off the back of the couch into sharp bureau corners, etc.), change diapers, wipe bottoms, and try not to shriek or burst into helpless tears too often in front of the kids.

When I go back to the bedroom to check on my wife, she wants to tell me all the interesting things about the course of her illness, and how bored she is wheezing and watching television all day. I want to tell her that at this point I'd gladly saw off both my ears and have to hold my sunglasses on with my hands just for the chance to spend a day in bed, even wheezing and coughing.

Despite our great love for each other, we are neither of us at optimum empathy for the other's suffering.

Anybody who thinks being a single parent, even if you're living off the dole, is somehow a lazy person's option should be forced to spend some time with a one year old and a four year old sewed to his trouser legs. It would leave your average Member of Parliament (or American congressperson) shattered, jam-stained, and weeping for rescue within hours.

April 16th

I leave California for England. I loathe flying, but I have never been so happy to get on a plane in my life. People on the flight ask me if I want something. I am even allowed to stand up and take ten or fifteen steps without hearing someone explode into shrieks or the ominous sound of things breaking.

I watch parts of many movies and TV shows on the little seat-tv, but I am somewhat dazed by fatigue and my narrow escape from parenting. As I recall, Kate Winslet was naked with some young Power Rangers and at least one Teletubby, which even to my liberal eye seems a little dodgy, but it's possible I may have dozed a bit and become confused.

I land at Heathrow and realize I have not been in the UK since 1998 — astonishing to me, since I used to live in London and consider it my other home. It seems like only yesterday that I was riding the tube, meeting friends in Soho restaurants and pubs, and whingeing constantly about the weather, but it has been three years since I've even visited.

Horror of horrors, I feel like a tourist now.

When I get to the hotel — the Waldorf, near the Strand — I discover that I am still overjoyed not to be taking care of kids. I can leave the bathroom door open without having to check every few moments to make sure my youngest isn't playing Flippy Frogman, and when my editor Tim Holman calls from the lobby to take me out for a drink, I say, "I'll be down in a minute," — and I am!

I haven't left home with the kids in under an hour for so long I can't remember when it happened last. But you see, since I'm traveling by myself, I am very unlikely to hide my own shoes under the cushions, or smear oatmeal in my hair just before stepping out the door, or fail to make it to the toilet in time and pee all down the leg of my best suit, so I actually am DOWN IN A MINUTE! Astounding.

We have drinks, during which there is much talk about the virtues of Campari and the horrors of children. So far I have been half a day back in London and have done nothing to promote my book, but I am so happy not to have peanut butter on my shirt front for a change that I give myself permission to relax and enjoy it.

April 17th

As I was leaving home in California to head to the airport, hugging my kids goodbye, my four year old son said, sniffling, his eyes wet with tears: "I'm going to miss you, Daddy. I love you. I don't want you to go on a trip. Bring me toys." So I drag myself over to the BBC store at Bush House and buy a bunch of Bob the Builder stuff before going over to see my publishers.

After meeting publicist Gaby Young, I sign many books. Not the most I've ever signed — I think I did three thousand once in a warehouse: strangely, they were Terry Pratchett's, but I signed them anyway — but a goodly number. Special engineers have to be called in to shore up the floors underneath the stacked books. Yes, I do write them long, don't I?

I do a chatroom interview with BooksOnline, and must embarrassedly admit I cannot type my answers and must dictate them instead. Although I am actually a very fast typist, I have a special keyboard at home (to fight aching wrists and shoulders) which is so unlike a normal keyboard that it took me a week to get used to typing on it, during which time I had at least a glimpse of what it must be like for a stroke victim to learn to perform ordinary motor functions again. I am now brilliantly fast once more, but only on that one particular keyboard — to return to a normal keyboard reduces me to a preschooler's skill level.

After my shamefaced admission, the technical wizards at Little, Brown cannot access the chatroom, so I would have had to dictate answers over the phone anyway. Life, as the philosophers say, is extremely lifelike.

I go out with the folks from Orbit for lunch at a Thai restaurant. They all order the same dish. Either they are not adventurous, I decide, or they are secretly all part of some UFO cult which mandates Pad Thai at all meals.

Ben from Orbit eats most of the starters, all his own food, polishes off what's left on his companions' plates, and is just beginning to snatch things from other diners' tables when we drag him out the door.

I do an enjoyable interview with Andrew Osmond from Dreamwatch (he kindly does not complain when I am a quarter hour late, because I fell into jetlagged sleep sitting upright in my hotel room) then later join book buyers from several London bookstores for dinner — Asian food again: my publishers must think we don't get the stuff in landlocked, parochial California — and much booze. We are gently, discreetly, but firmly thrown out around midnight. Walking back through Covent Garden, I have a moment of missing London fiercely. It can't be the Campari — I only had one or two, I think.

April 18th.

I set off with Richard Barker, the sales rep who handles Central London for Little, Brown, on a longish walking tour that, although Richard assures me otherwise, seems to include bookstores in Guildford and Tunbridge Wells. (Richard is a very healthy person and a very energetic walker.) In truth, although I will tease Richard about the crippling pace when I see him later, I am very happy to get out and walk around in London, since it will be one of the few chances to see much of the city on this trip, and Richard is very good company.

We return to Little, Brown in the afternoon, beneath blue skies and in mild if coolish weather. While we are inside signing some more book stock, Richard goes out for a moment to get something. When he comes back, he says offhandedly, "It's snowing outside." I assume this is metaphorical — the office is snowed under with calls, or memos, or something, and only think to ask him a few minutes later what exactly he meant.

"Snow," he says, looking at me with that expression people wear when talking to the very young or startlingly stupid. "From the sky? Frozen water?"

We go out into the last trailing flakes. I am thrilled that the Weather Gods have chosen to give me a little souvenir to remind me of British weather. It's just like going to Jurassic Park and being bitten by a tiny raptor — the back-in-England experience is now largely complete.

I do a signing at Forbidden Planet and see several old friends, then have to hurry over to meet the Little, Brown folks for a slap-up dinner at a very nice restaurant. (If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that having an author in town was, gasp, an excuse to spend a lot of publishing company money eating and drinking in nice places. But I know my publishers are far too dedicated for that, and are only selflessly forcing themselves to appear as though they are enjoying the event out of solidarity with their author.)

I think we closed this restaurant too. I dimly remember explaining the American political landscape in horrifying and vituperative detail while my publishers nodded and tried to look interested, although I think they were a bit alarmed at one point when I was so overcome I could only shake my head, froth at the corners of the mouth, and growl the name "Bush, Bush, Bush . . ." over and over.

April 19th

I get to see the rest of the sales force, most of whom I saw and even traveled with on my last tour. They are genteel, indulgent folk who laugh at many of the things I say — even some of the things I meant to be funny! — and it's a pleasure to spend some time with them again. I mention that not only did Richard walk my legs off, but he made me carry a box of my own incredibly heavy books around town. (Actually, I volunteered, because otherwise he would actually have carried two boxes himself while I walked along fancy-free.) "You're lucky he only made you carry your own books," one of the other reps suggests.

I suppose that would be a sign that you were not very popular with your publisher all right, if they brought you in on tour and then made you carry boxes of Iain Banks' or Patricia Cornwell's novels around to booksellers.

After lunch, Gaby Young and I hop on the train out of Euston to Manchester. This is taking place during the Farm Animal Disease Crisis. I watch the passing countryside carefully out the window, but see no actual creatures of any sort with hooves in mouth. I begin to suspect the whole thing is just a tabloid stitch-up, perhaps a ploy to keep Yanks like me from coming over and spoiling things for everyone with typically unreasonable demands to be waited on in retail stores and things like that.

The hotel in Manchester is very nice, although because of a mix-up with room keys and a problem with the elevator, I spend almost more time getting to my room than the length of my actual stay in Manchester. I do a reading at Waterstone's. People are very nice to me there. I sign books. I answer questions (at my usual disturbing length.) Afterward, I go back and call home to make sure the children haven't blown up the neighbors or anything, then watch a really weird Japanese movie on Channel 4 and fall asleep and into dreams that I am a massage girl in an Osaka whorehouse.

I blame jetlag. Jesus, I hope it's jetlag.

April 20th

I get back to London at mid-day and loll in my hotel room, stupefied by time-confusion, and watch most of the Man U. - Manchester City football derby. Late in the match Roy Keane runs up and boots some poor City bastard so hard in the fork of the legs that two bollock-shape lumps appear for a moment on the lad's forehead. During the replay, in which you can actually watch the slow-motion testicular journey from crutch to head, the announcer, with typical British understatement, says something like, "That really was an unacceptable challenge by Keane."

God, I love this country.

After meeting some close chums from my London days and forcing them to admire pictures of my children, I go to a British Fantasy Society open night at the Princess Louise pub, and see many old, familiar science fiction fans and writers. Of course, these are homeless people outside the tube station. Inside the pub, I see many other old friends. Drinking is engaged in, nonsense is talked, and I have a lovely time, despite my body clock somehow having been set to Ulan Bator Standard Time.

Afterward, Simon from Orbit (who presumably came along so I wouldn't do something to embarrass the publishing company, like a vicious drunken rant about the perfidious British attack on the White House in 1812) walks me out to find a cab. Simon, young and relatively healthy and un-jetlagged, is going out clubbing. I myself can't imagine doing anything more strenuous at this point than taking off my watch, but I wish him good luck and head back to the Waldorf to phone home and hear about what horrors the kids have got up to before I slide into a coma.

April 21st

After a very pleasant interview with David Matthews from Starburst — the bar and dining room are not open this hour of the morning, but we wangle a very fancy executive lounge at the hotel and feel like utter impostors, since neither of us are executives of any stripe — I set off for Birmingham. Shortly after arriving at New Street station, I'm picked up by Stan Nicholls and Anne Gay, dear friends from the SF community, who take me back to their house for an interview and a get-together with various local SF folk. It's a really nice evening. Stan and Anne are also forced to admire pictures of my children, who they say are lovely.

(But what else is anyone going to say, really? "Oh, too bad, your little boy there looks like the back end of a rhinoceros?" "Is that your kid or your dog?" I've often thought it might be fun to cut pictures of baboons out of National Geographic just to watch people try to think of something kind to say. "Oh, my, your daughter has a very . . . colorful behind, doesn't she?"

Of course, I am also the man who seriously contemplated giving his kids the Welsh names Gwatcyn and Cattwg (pronounced "Gwotkin" and "Catwoo") just to hear people talk rubbish about how much they liked interesting names for children, so I'm probably not the kind of person who should be trusted around minors in the first place.)

April 23rd

I spend the entire day today traveling around Birmingham area bookstores with Nigel Andrews. Nigel is the dad of a young family like myself, so between visits to stores — in which there are a startling amount of people working who remember the last time I came sniffing around three years ago, or even on earlier tours — he and I talk about parenting. We agree that having your kids come and jump on you yelling "Daddy, daddy!" when you get home is about the nicest thing in the world. We also agree that having peanut butter on your shirtfront all the time can get a bit depressing.

Nigel and his wife are going to have a third child. I wish them much happiness, but I secretly think they are utterly mad. (Of course, people who have only one child think my wife and I are mad to have two. And people with none think, quite rightly, that having any children at all is a psychotic attack on one's own personal privacy, sleep, and right to eat in restaurants that don't have crayons or high chairs. It's kind of like the old joke definition of a nymphomaniac — anyone who's having more sex than you are.)

In the evening I go to see my in-laws in Aldridge, on the outskirts of Greater Birminham. Well, not all my in-laws, since we have snaffled up my mother-in-law to come to California and help Deborah take care of the kids while I'm gone. (Back home in the US, my younger brother and his wife have recently had twins, a very unfair move that has largely removed my own parents from the grandparenting landscape.) While I'm sitting with the family having a jar and a good chat, my mother-in-law calls from California. It's odd to be sitting in her Birmingham, UK, living room with her family while talking to her on the phone as she's sitting in my living-room with my family back in America. Kind of like a science fiction story, except that nobody involved is an android. As far as I know.

April 24th

I leave early the next morning to fly out from the Birmingham Eurohub (which looks suspiciously like an "airport" to me, but what do I know about such things?) to Glasgow. I am met by the lovely and talented Moira Macmillan, and we have a brisk trip around some of the downtown bookstores, then I do a signing at Waterstone's. A couple of brothers with whom I have corresponded drop by. They're game designers, and are interested in the possibility of doing an Otherland game. They've just won an award for their Bob the Builder game (for those who don't know, B the B is a British kids show that's just recently started showing in the US) and kindly give me two versions, neither of which will play on anything we have at home. I must hide these so well that my son never, ever sees them until after I am dead or my existence will become a living hell: at 4 years old he is not very sympathetic about the problems of trying to run a Windows game on the Mac operating system, and is likely to take the whole thing personally.

We take the train to Edinburgh and I check into the hotel, which is almost finished — it's the renovated Scotsman Building — then have to leave almost immediately for another signing, but only after embarrassing myself by not being able to make the elevator work to get back down to the lobby. A crowd of workmen surround the elevator and much discussion ensues, until someone points out that I am pushing "G" (for ground floor) when in fact there is no ground floor for the hotel, or if it is, it isn't finished enough to have an elevator go there. The lobby is on the fourth floor, and I am on the sixth.

I am chagrined, but it seems that a modern elevator should at least inform you "There is no ground floor." Who knows, it could become as familiar a disembodied refrain in Edinburgh as "Mind the gap" is in London.

I do a reading and signing at Waterstone's, keeping staff and audience there long after they'd hoped to go home by my exceeding talkiness. Part of it is that the jetlag is finally wearing off. Of course it is, since I'm getting on a plane in the morning to go home.

April 25th

I get up sometime before dawn to catch a commuter flight down to Heathrow and get on the plane back to California. It only takes me an hour or two to make my way from Terminal One to Terminal Three, and except for stopping briefly in duty-free to shoplift some souvenirs, I am on the plane in plenty of time.

I try to watch the little seat-tv on the way back, but the marathon-run-with-heavy-suitcase across Heathrow has left me a bit bleary. I may have gotten confused between news and old sitcoms, but as far as I can tell, Dame Edna Everage has just been elected Prime Minister and has selected the cast of Friends and Postman Pat as her cabinet ministers. The nation expects great things of them all.

Farewell, UK. I miss you already. See you next time.