Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
First and formost thank you Mimi, Michele, JaNell, Mary, Adriana,
Angelina, Suzanne, Linda, and everyone who was so lovely as to offer
kind wishes in my direction.
 
Rocky thanks for the candle. <hugs> I needed it.

Linda, thank you for the advice, I'm still working out my ways around
the Well.

Ok, got the colonoscopy,...it bit,...hurt, and am awaiting test
results. Nothing that I wasn't prepared for, my Mothher has been
dealing with this for almost 32 years. 
I much would have been at the signing and think in the back of my head
that I should have been. 
I did get AG as a "Get Well" present and am almost finished. I was so
pleased to see Margret's name in the acknowledgements. I'm chomping at
the bit to finish and get to talk about it at long last.

Jinxie who felt warm wishes all day yesterday 
  

    
Can't wait to see some of you (well, at least Jen) tomorrow in Dayton.

Excited all the way to my fingers and toes.

Angelina.
  

    
Angelina-don't you want to see me if I make it that far?
  

    
Well, time to depart Michigan in the general direction of Lexington.
I'm pretty easy to spot, 6'7" with short blond hair, so if you see me,
say "hi". :)
  

    
Justin, I think those pages have what are called "deckle edges".

Janell - Electromyelogram, huh? Yeah, they're no fun at all. It wasn't even
what they euphemistically call "the discomfort" that got me; it was the
incredible sense of wrongness that the sensation of Somebody Other Than Me
sending impulses through my muscles produced. Made my top ten list for
Medical Procedures I'd Like Not To Need Again instantly.

Yo, Neil!  Am halfway through AG. Damnfine book. Tasty! Vast readerly
gratitude waves are traveling through the ether towards you. From
multiple directions, I'm sure. (And I just passed a mention of hodags
this afternoon, and was treated to happy/weird memoried of Rhinelander
visits as a teenager; thank you for jogging the memory. Plus I have to
remember to call my Dad and ask him exactly what town he and Shadow [not
your Shadow; my neighbor when I was a kid] and I were in when he said a
certain thing about the history of Wisconsin I wanted to tell you.)

Jouni - Dreamhaven, when I was there yesterday, had AG, right next to a
pile of the Flash Girls' new CD, and not far from a nice little display
of Martha Soukup's collection of short fiction.  I know for a fact that 
they do international mailorder business, because I used to work there 
packing those shipments. (If you order from them, please tell 'em Elise
said hi to Elizabeth, OK? I've got a joke going with her where people 
from far away say hi from me if they shop at the store, and it's gotten 
even funnier lately, as she moved next door. It's kind of a variation on
the theme where a person will sometimes travel hundreds or thousands of
miles to a convention, and then go out to dinner with somebody who lives
down the block -- and usually only see when they are both hundreds or
thousands of miles from home.  People is weird, y'know?.)

Am trying to decide whether to go get my hair bleached paperwhite again,
or go for the Delirium effect....
  

    

Delirium is rainbows, Elise?  I vote for that!

JaNell - Cam is your husband?  Which one he be in these photos?
  

    
E-mail from Margret:

Mary-  Thanks for mentioning the line numbers.  I had my friend reserve
some copies for us, so I get to be #42, which is almost as fun as being
#4.  Now I probably should head to bed since I have to catch a plane in
the morning.

See ya!

Margret
  

    
JaNell- I'm glad you're having a better day:)

Jinx- I hope the test results turn out okay. Warm wishes from me as
well.

Squeaks- I'm with you on reading slow. I'm having a hard time not
reading AG quickly...but I try to read the good books slow so that I
don't miss anything. 
BTW, how's the music stuff goin? 


I get to see Neil Sunday! I'm so excited! Weee! I wish I could see all
of you guys too...someday, someday.
  

    
I am in my pyjamas, home from teh BN signing in Skokie, and all good
things happened!

okay, except for the part where I discovered taped 2 hrs of telemundo
instead of Invisible Man and Farscape (and it was Ben browder's script
too, dammit!).

But I had the BEST time! I got yummy food with Mary and her friend
Debbie (who is now, like, my new best friend) who lives all of 4 or 5
blocks from me, and then I got my number for the signing, and then they
raffled stuff off and I won a shirt! 

It was totally random, and I was in shock. 'cause I never ever win
things. Okay, based on merit maybe--and even then, almost never ever
EVER, but I won a shirt! It is just the niftiest shirt! It has
"American Gods" across the front, with "neil gaiman" beneath it, and
some runes, and on the back is says "The Storm Is Coming."

And then Neil came out and was charming and didn't juggle but instead
read one of the Chicago bits, and then he answered many questions (FYI:
fave hardboiled short story is one of Woody Allen's. I forgot to write
it down, but I think it's either "Mr Big" or "Whote of Mensa" and
second is Chandler's "The Little Sister" because of an anecdate
involving the script of the movie of the book, Jack Warner, a dead
chauffeur, and Chandler's reply to Jack Warner...) and then he signed
about 200 people's books and toys and stuff for many many hours. And
there were grannies and goths, and everyone inbetween and everyone at
the store was just lovely and faboo.

Mary, Debbie, and I played with  Chinese yo-yos and were distracting
to many.

It was so wonderful! I got to have a story read to me, and got to see
unca neil, and I met many lovely fellow fans, and I got my picture
taken with neil (which is the one thing in almost a decade of signings
I had never ever actually done before), and I got my AG and Quotable
signed, and we folded chairs and everything was perfect and wonderful
and I had the best time ever.

I give hugs to 115ers (and 104ers) and wave to unca neil, and go off
to my rest (tho I may listen to the new Flash Girls cd and read the
rest of chapter 11 before I sleep...)
  

    
Wow, Neil, you're old enough to be Uncle Neil now.

Anyone over the age of five calls me Aunt Martha, I'll smack 'em.
  

    
Hello Again to all of you! I don't expect you remember me, I'd just
started posting a bit in March, but then my last quarter of college hit
and I've been gone since. But now I'm graduated with the ever-useful,
but never-regretable BA in English.  

Forgive me if this has already been asked [i spent a couple hours
scanning the previous posts from 104 and this one and I'm sure I missed
stuff]  Is anyone here gonna be at the Seattle signing?  Let me know
if so, it'd be cool to meet someone from here!

So, I went to pick up American Gods on the 19th and found a stack of
books with stickers on them that said they were "Signed by the Author"
except they weren't. I thought, well, that's fine, he'll just sign it
for me. But then the corners were sort of bashed in so I went to look
for another stack. 

I found a somewhat hidden pile of books underneath a table and they
were first editions! I couldn't resist. These ones were signed and I
dug through the entire stack until I found one in which Neil had drawn
an angel.  Very cool.  So I'll just have other stuff signed instead. 

Again Hello to everyone, but let me add:

Im jealous (but of course happy for) those of you who got to see the
Bottom Line show

Dan Guy-Congrats on the baby! 

Angelina-That was a very brave and cool thing you did to your hair. It
got me thinking...that Death must sometimes change her hair and I
sketched a little picture of her with a shaved head. :)

and of course

NEIL! - If you happen to check this out before Monday, I hope the tour
is going well for you and I can't wait to see you in Seattle!  

--Blythe, who is off to read more American Gods before bed. And to
brainstorm a question to ask Neil at the signing, that isn't "So what's
the deal with the Sandman movie?"
  

    
Linda- Yes, Cam is my husband. A pic of him stuffing his face, lower
right hand corner, curly hair, is at
http://chad-c.dyndns.org/cupcake-2.html. He's in the foreground.

See y'all in Lex!
  

    
Finished the book.  Wow.  Now to bed, happily exhausted.

Yum.
  

    
Martha: you can blame Jan Fennick for the "unca" part of "unca neil".
Approximately 9 years ago, she passed it on to me, and it stuck...
  

    
        Reading happily away on the signed American Gods I got at Powell's
yesterday.  Good stuff.
        Martha, is it permissible for those who are actually your nieces and
nephews to call you Aunt Martha, or does your policy extend to them as
well?  Incidentally, I read your story "The Spinner" to one of my
girlfriends recently as a bedtime story.  I chose it after flipping
through the book and deciding that none of them were very good bedtime
stories.  Indeed, "The Spinner" isn't either.  I probably should have
read her "Good Girl, Bad Dog" which is at least funny is a really
screwed-up way.  As it was I had to read her Neil's poem to cheer her
up again.  This is not to knock your work, which you know I love.  Just
that it doesn't make good bedtime stories.  Think of it as one of the
few things you have in common with Stephen King.
  

    
My nieces and nephews all happen to be under the age of 5.  But mostly they
just call me Martha.  Or Matha.

Now I know there are cheerful stories in that book.  "Dog's Life" is
cheerful with a happy ending.  And "Jones and the Stray" is a children's
story with a happy ending.  And, um, "Alita in the Air" is--a children's
story, at least.
  

    
        You're right, I should've done "Jones and the Stray".  "Dog's Life"
was a little too long for the circumstances or I would've read that. 
"Alita in the Air" is nothing to inflict on someone who will shortly be
at the mercy of their own subconscious.  It gave _me_ the
heebie-jeebies.
  

    
If it has a dog in it, you're pretty safe that I won't do anything too nasty
to the pooch.
  

    
I wish I had kids to read "Alita in the Air" to....
  

    
Linda - I was surprised, too. I didn't realize that THAT was the
Barnes and Noble that had given you crap...

Suzanne - it's odd... one would think that in dating a certified
massage therapist I'd be getting free massage all the time, but I'm
usually the one giving *her* a massage... hrm...

Mary - oy... thanks for mentioning reserving books... I've got my
Amazon copy and my first edition, but I need to get two more copies for
my girlfriend's other boyfriend and one of my own "ex"'s.... I'd
better call and reserve those copies today...

Dan Guy - Great fanboy story... I wonder what I'll do on Wednesday...
MY first Neil signing...

Well, finished AG this morning... I can echo the "wow" and state that
it takes a great deal of willpower to not start making all sorts of
observations about it... I wonder when it would be considered kosher to
discuss the book here without being afraid of spoilers?

As it is, my brain is all twisty and introspective and altered as it
usually is after reading a work of Neil's.
  

    
Martha - It could be worse. You could be named a 'den mother' - or
worse yet... 'SOCCER MOM!' Not that I find either of these offensive
(any more), but they're much worse than 'aunt'. :)

DanGuy - So, a friend of mine just had twins! And another is
expecting... twins... Is it just the season for a multitude of happy
healthy babies right now or what? (when's yours due, Jouni?)

Dan W - re: Wednesday, first thing you're going to do is remember to
breathe... :) 

squeaks, who in true 'den mother/soccer mom' fashion is off to help
put together the party tonight, loaded with sandwiches and chips for
'the boys' who I know will have forgotten to get something to eat
first. ;P
  

    
Hey, Y'all!
Just got back from the Lex signing a few hours ago... it was
wonderful, and I can barely walk 'cause my feet are so sore from
standing. Heard Neil, saw Neil, and confused Neil. Saw people I knew,
and new people. 
Am considering writing a book on the whole thingee phenomenon.
  

    
Squeaks - Whatever happened to "earth mother"?  

Blythe - You lucky girl..first editions too. Bravo!

Erynn - I hear you, it's been a struggle not to rip through AG, it's
so damn good!  
  

    
Hellos to everyone.

I had a wonderful time at the signing in Dayton yesterday.  It was
very sureal...and I had valid fears of passing out.  I hope that I
didn't go too fangirl on ya, Neil.  I enjoyed the reading very much
(Neil had read a huge chunk of the first chapter of American Gods.) and
was very surprised at the American accents...

I was so embarrassed at the number of copies of American Gods I had
bought as presents for people that I had a couple of my friends who
were just along for the ride go through the line to get them signed. 
Ack.  I guess that was kind of silly of me, but I did have 5 extra
copies...(and now no money to speak of)  :)

I'm sorry that I didn't see anybody from the Well.  I hope that you
had as good of a time as I did.
  

    
Blythe--I in part inspired a bald death?  You couldn't have made me
happier if you tried!

I think I will write a little more on the signing when I have a spare
moment...

Angelina.