I am "Number Two"
Jul. 19th, 2006 03:23 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
adelaideseanI mentioned in an earlier post my alter ego, Sean Williams, author of The Sound of the Ancestral Ship and editor of The Ethnologist's Cookbook. (We occasionally exchange emails about collaborating, but can't agree on whose name should go first. Ha ha.)
The strange thing is this: Sean emailed me the week before Conflux to say hi and to let me know about the new book. Excellent, I thought. Doppelgangers are fun, especially when they write books I wish I'd written myself.
The very next day, I received an email from another Sean Williams, he of Lawrence Real Estate fame. His email threw me for a second because I naturally assumed it was a reply from the first (or is that second?) Sean Williams. The content made no sense at all until I realised what strange coincidence had occurred. This Sean Williams had chosen to drop me a line within twenty fours hours of the other, apropos of nothing. Weird.
Coincidence and confusion reached a peak two days later when I went to check into the Conflux hotel in Canberra. I'd arranged to share a suite with the excellent Deb Biancotti. She had organised for my name to be on the room. Simple, right? That's what I thought. Turned out there was no "Biancotti & Williams" registered, but there was a "Mr & Mrs Sean Williams". Hilarity ensued--except that it wasn't me. It was another Sean Williams also checking into a suite at the same hotel, on the same day.
Tempted though I was to assume his identity, I checked in under Deb's name and went to hide under the bed.
The strange thing is this: Sean emailed me the week before Conflux to say hi and to let me know about the new book. Excellent, I thought. Doppelgangers are fun, especially when they write books I wish I'd written myself.
The very next day, I received an email from another Sean Williams, he of Lawrence Real Estate fame. His email threw me for a second because I naturally assumed it was a reply from the first (or is that second?) Sean Williams. The content made no sense at all until I realised what strange coincidence had occurred. This Sean Williams had chosen to drop me a line within twenty fours hours of the other, apropos of nothing. Weird.
Coincidence and confusion reached a peak two days later when I went to check into the Conflux hotel in Canberra. I'd arranged to share a suite with the excellent Deb Biancotti. She had organised for my name to be on the room. Simple, right? That's what I thought. Turned out there was no "Biancotti & Williams" registered, but there was a "Mr & Mrs Sean Williams". Hilarity ensued--except that it wasn't me. It was another Sean Williams also checking into a suite at the same hotel, on the same day.
Tempted though I was to assume his identity, I checked in under Deb's name and went to hide under the bed.
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Date: 2006-07-19 06:18 am (UTC)And I thought "sarah parker" was pretty common!
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Date: 2006-07-19 06:56 am (UTC)I suppose I should count my blessings. My father was David John Williams, and there were pages and pages of them in the White Pages.
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Date: 2006-07-19 06:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 07:03 am (UTC)What about this one then?
Are you coming to continuum?
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Date: 2006-07-19 10:29 am (UTC)As brilliant as the first!
Alas, no. I'm OS the following week and have some commitments here before I go. I'm sad about that. The trifecta of Conjure/Conflux/Continuum would've been wonderful to pull off. :-(
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Date: 2006-07-20 05:21 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 09:37 am (UTC)Though *why* Rydges couldn't simply follow the very explicit request to make sure your name was on "my" booking (as I requested from the very start), I can't say.
>and went to hide under the bed.
Not mine, however, for which I am grateful.
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Date: 2006-07-19 10:01 am (UTC)I was about to say: how cool to have a surname that is already a plural. But I guess mine is too. How 'bout that?
No. You weren't well, and I thought the existential whimpering might have disturbed you.
Ah, Rydges. If they didn't exist, we'd have to...well...stay somewhere else for Conflux, I guess.
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Date: 2006-07-20 05:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 11:13 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-19 11:22 am (UTC)(I am so out of touch I had to look up Dave Gorman in Wikipedia before I knew what your comment meant. Sigh.)
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Date: 2006-07-19 12:16 pm (UTC)