Forward movement, again

I worked the new stuff in and am now through to chapter 6 of New World for Old. Brendan is overjoyed at his exile. He can now do as he wants, he thinks...but that is quickly cut down when he learns he's overstayed his visa and that presents a problem that needs to be handled before any plans can be made. It winds up being a lot more complicated than that, but that's all for later in the book.

What matters is breaking through the logjam. For now. His brother, Eamonn, gets busted by the Army but Brendan learns it's for being part of a weapons smuggling operation. Initially, it was going to be arms from Libya, but then I remembered Qaddafi's people were pissed off at the IRA in 1973, so I may shift it to Poland. That's who you get Semtex from...the explosive. But it's not what was used in the bomb that Brendan was caught in. It's far too stable.

I'm in the office the rest of the week to assist in the run-up to the NY Antiquarian Book Fair, handling EU and UK dealers who cannot remember from one fair to the next how Customs works. Of course, things are a lot nastier, now, thanks to Brexit. Before that stupid move, we could use the UK as a safe route for transporting books into the US for book fairs. Now we have to deal with a half-dozen different countries' regulations and paperwork, and none of it's easy.

Brexit has also killed some major antiques fairs in the UK, because it's so much hassle and expense to ship items for display in and out it's not worth the time or money. Masterpiece has been canceled, this year, and that was a major fair. But without the EU dealers, it dropped to 40% of what it was and no one wanted to bother.

It's the same in Hong Kong. China messed it up and killed the China in Print Fair. It was a lovely, high-quality book fair in the perfect venue, but no one wants to deal with the new requirements to get it going, again, after Covid. So...stupidity reigns supreme.