Back when we were at Gallifrey, DWNY‘s Barnaby Edwards offered to do a launch event for Who is the Doctor in New York in the Spring.

An event in NEW YORK? No hesitation there.

For Robert and myself this meant one thing… ROAD TRIP!

That’s Dr. Smith? in Boonville, New York. Boy am I glad we noticed that sign as we drove past.

Road trips with Robert are highly enjoyable. We talk almost non-stop the entire time. We talk about everything: upcoming projects, proposed projects, publishers, Doctor Who, people we know, fan gossip, sexuality, Doctor Who, his work, my work, politics, Doctor Who… The next thing we know we’ve driven from Ottawa to Poughkeepsie.

Poor Robert was knackered from the driving and slept the train ride from Poughkeepsie to New York, leaving me to fend for myself with a crazy old lady who began by informing us that Canadians “don’t know the whole truth about Obama” and then asking us “Do you have x in Canada?” X being universal health care, lakes, art galleries, the sun (in fairness she was asking if it set the same as it did over the Hudson River) and other things. She was entertaining. And she was old and had cancer so I wasn’t about to be mean.

Then we were in New York. It was my first time, by the way.

I love cities. New York is the citiest city I’ve ever been to. Needless to say I wanted to live there after 3 minutes there. Here’s me on the High Line, a wonderful urban park they’ve made out of a disused elevated train line.

Barnaby was a sensational host, showing me around all sorts of great places.

The launch event was held at a bar in Brooklyn called The Way Station.

It has a science fiction / steampunk / Doctor Who theme. It even has a TARDIS for their washroom entrance!

And of course Doctor Who themed drinks… The Tenth Doctor Sonic Screwdriver was quite tasty.

Again, like all the events I didn’t know how many people we’d get. It’s a book launch on Memorial Day Weekend (a nice day outside no less). DWNY tends to show episodes of Who during their meetings, so we suggested they show Gridlock. During that I started counting…I was well over 60 when I was distracted by something.

Our first bit of talking about the book was kind of flat. During Gridlock I realized we needed to pump it up a bit. Robert is brilliant at improv, so I just came on with huge enthusiasm and Robert picked up on it, and we started to argue on stage and suddenly things took off. Here’s us during our antics taking questions from the audience…

And here’s me trying to get the microphone away from Robert when he started talking about how he hated David Tennant…

Everybody loved it. I’ve heard British actors and writers say how incredible the enthusiasm of American fans are, but this is the first time I’ve ever seen it directed at us. It was really lovely. And the signing afterwards went brilliantly—we sold out of every single book in our consignment!

It was a wonderful day. A wonderful weekend, though far too short. Thanks to Barnaby and DWNY for being such incredible hosts, and to our friends Gina and Jason for hanging out with us while we were there! And thanks to everyone who came out. We hope you love the book!