Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Well, I seem to be the first one back from the signing in Berkeley.

I got there a full three hours early, thanks to some unexpected
changes in my schedule earlier today. This allowed me to be the first
person at the reading, and thus to have the choicest seat in the house.
*rah*
Not knowing if and when other Well folk would show up, I took to
introducing myself within my immediate presence. This kicked into high
gear when a woman, in jest, looked at me and said "I'm tired, amuse
me."
This is not the thing to say to an actor unless you mean it.
I was in performance mode for the rest of the evening.
Eventually Linda/Castle gathered from my theatrics that I must be me,
and introduced herself and her S/O. Soon, Madman joined our ranks, and
the astoundingly tressed Miss Mousey came by to say hello, as did
Trev/Walker.

Speaking of Miss Mousey, she had the honor of introducing Neil and
gave a short speech that was incredibly well written and spoken. I
wanted to applaud for her as much as for Neil's arrival.

Neil was... to say the least... charming, delightful, funny, and
wonderful. He read the San Francisco/Easter chapter and dealt
effortlessly with crying children and a sound system that was
constantly on the verge of a feedback loop.

I actually got to ask the second question, which was about how much he
knew about Shadow when he started writing AG (specifically, if he knew
Shadow's true name, as per some of the discussions on his website),
and am not sure if I was surprised at his answer or not (he didn't know
it at first).

The Well contingent hung together for the signing, and ended up being
almost last in line since we had such great seats for the reading. All
things have their price, i suppose. Meeting Neil as a group made things
quite a bit easier and less stressful. We almost had a small party,
actually, which seemed to disconcert the person who was with
Neil...overseeing the signing and trying to keep the line moving.

Still, I got my three copies of AG signed, and was startled to
discover that the copies I had Cody's put aside for me were also signed
first editions. (I was so startled I managed to convince myself that I
had somehow grabbed them at random). So, Neil graciously signed them
all again! The one with a doodle of Wednesday's eyes in it, he signed
to me.. which was a happy accident.

Afterwards, the Mob from 104 hung out, chatted, ate and departed... a
very satisfying conclusion to an exceptional evening.

Dan
  

    
Dan--Wow!  It sounds like you guys had a ball!  Next time, I'm coming
to Cody's ;-)

Glad to hear Himself is still on his feet.

DanGuy--Xander is beautiful!  Thanks for the pics!

Rani--Welcome!

Mary (back to St. Hildegard...feh!)
  

    
Dan--- sounds like you all had a blast!  Cody's it is the next time
around!

Suzanne

PS: welcome Rani

PSS: DanGuy... do like the 3rd "thinkin'" photo of Xander, quite
adorable he is!
  

    
!!!NO SPOILERS, I PROMISE!!!!

Do you know what I love best about "American Gods"? The tiny little
"aha!" moments I experience. 

I attended the reading Neil gave at the World Trade Center Borders on
June 19. He read much of the first chapter and let me tell
you...hearing it read aloud and reading it silently is quite different.
For one thing, I pictured a character like "Low Key" as a "Loki" in my
head because of how Neil read it. I would have missed that had I not
been looking for it when I finally sat down with my own copy. 

I've also found my interest in mythology renewed. Each time I come
across a new legend or god I don't know, I do an Internet search to
learn more. How wonderful is that? Has anyone else done the same thing?

Jade Walker
  

    <hidden>
  

    
Still twiddlin' my thumbs. Still waiting for book to arrive. *grrrrrr*
(It may be a good thing that it's not here yet, really -- I've working
late every evening so having the book right now would just spell
certain doom for my sleep schedule... *sigh* Maybe it'll get here this
weekend.)

And thank you all so much for posting your signing stories -- makes me
feel like I'm right there. ^_- And you lucky lucky people who can be
coherent at the event. (Michelle - You introduced Neil at Cody's?
Woohoo!)

Dan Guy - Yay baby pictures! Xander does look like a very thoughtful
little one. 

Blythe - I've got W:CL in my stereo, and I'm listening to Chivalry
too! All this signing/reading talk has driven me to leaving that CD in,
on that track, for about 3 days now. ^_^; (And I love your signing
story! It *is* so sweet.)

Welcome to Rebecca and Rani! (If I missed anyone, my apologies...
catching up on a hundred posts and things slip... -_-;)

Neil - Congratulations on becoming a NY Times Bestselling Author! And
on finding the apostrophe on the Libretto... does it have a Japanese
keyboard? Cos that's where the apostrophe on my Sony VAIO is. *slaps
herself for not figuring this out sooner* And please do take care of
yourself!

-- Mimi
  

    
Found a nifty review--can't remember if it's been mentioned before.

http://archives.seattletimes.nwsource.com:80/cgi-bin/texis/web/vortex/display?
slug=gaiman22&date=20010622
  

    
Okay, so I'm *so* happy that my favorite story-teller is now,
officially, not just an author but a New York Times Best-Selling Author
(I can't wait until I'm one of those kind...).  Woohoo! 
Congratulations, Neil.  I wonder how many more people are going to
discover Neil now, and I half-envy them all; oh, to have not yet read
Neil, and to be astounded all over again....

And also congratulations to Neil for finding the apostrophe key... it
says a lot that both excited you (even if not in equal measures).

Danguy- Great pictures, and huge grin over the Dawson's Creek meets
American Gods aside.  Of course, I hope no executives read it, and get
ideas (though I doubt Neil would take them up on it, so it wouldn't be
horrible, probably).  And then I also wonder how a season of American
Gods would work on television... was basically written over a
television season, no?  Winter to spring, about...

JadeWalker- Missed you at the WTC signing.  Who were you?  I was the
guy up front, black hair, blue eyes (that said "Hi, Neil," when Neil
said "My name is Neil Gaiman, and I'm a mythology junkie... does that
help?  If not, my sister's boyfriend asked the pumpkin question).

Rebecca- welcome to you, too; guess I missed it last week.  Sorry...
can I get you something?  Rani liked the cider...

-Will, who's laptop is running well, even though his printer disk is
too scratched to go, and who's writing a lot, again.
  

    
Congrats, Neil!
  

    
Congratulations, Neil!!!!

Debbie & I are doing the happy dance for you!
  

    
Shoot--keep meaning to say--I'm listening to Chivalry , too.  Finally
got a copy of the CD at Stars, and bought a CD player to listen to it
on, 'cause mine had died.
  

    
I'm sorry I missed the reading! It sounds like it was fun, and I would have
liked to have met other Well-people. Alas, I'm still in recovery from my
tubal ligation on Tuesday, so I was in no condition to attend. ow.
  

    
Dan, you might want to hide response 255; it's chock full o' spoilers.

Robynne, best wishes on speedy recovery. (I had one of those many years
back.)
  

    
A good thing is that Neil signs in bookstores that are near to Amoeba
Records, so you can go down the street and browse and buy a $7 laserdisk of
Truly, Madly, Deeply, while the line queues on and on and on and on and on.

I've seen Neil look tireder so he must have got even better at faking it.
Still I don't believe he noticed I got a haircut in between the Booksmith
and Cody's.  Too much to keep track of.  I missed the reading part of
Cody's, because of phoning Neil at 6:30 and waiting for the voicemail to be
returned and it's an hour to get to Cody's from the city on BART even with a
cab.  Upstairs at Cody's was closed and guarded by guards lest the whole
floor collapse tragically.  Neil's voice wafted down over a loudspeaker, but
got rather lost among the stacks of books and conversations.

Then during the standing-in-line period I met miss-mousey's fine mice and
satanic lupin, and more folks from this topic than I can mention without
stupidly forgetting names but they were all very nice.

A day of standing around and getting a haircut culminated in being able to
repack all the books Neil had to still sign _after he got back to his hotel
after midnight_, which was good because it got me a lift with Neil's radio
pal Amacker and her boyfriend who were opening the books cartons and
flapping them.  Then we all tiptoed away to leave Neil to his twenty minutes
of sleep.

It was lovely seeing Neil eventually, and all I can add for everyone to pass
along to your friends is: if you love Neil, do consider bringing fewer than
eight books to his signings!

Also I saw pictures of Mike's graduation and am still trying to figure out
if Mike was standing on a box or if Neil was standing in a ditch--

And Maddy is as big now as Holly was when I first met her.  I remarked this
to Neil when I was flipping through the pictures, and he said, "Yes, she's
seven."  Exactly the age.  Good god.
  

    
Elise -- Good point; hadn't even thought about that.  Duly hidden.
  

    
Martha- Wow!


I'm sure there are a few people here who are jealous of those of us
who got to attend a signing....I'm jealous of everyone who got to meet
Well people. Really wishing I could have been at Cody's.
  

    
Don't be jealous!  Yes, it is good to have a friend like Neil; but it is
good to have friends you see more than twice a year while they're
sleepwalking.  Treasure those friends.
  

    

Wish you could have been there, too, Erynn!

Dan did such a good job of describing it all that I don't have much to add
other than I don't know how Neil does it.  There must have been 500 people
in line waiting to have their many books signed, and everyone got their
turn.  I was astounded that Neil knew who I was when I walked up just by
virtue of the fact that evidently I am the only person on the tour so far
to have purchased an audio version of the book to be signed, and based on
my enthusiastic post upon hearing that it was narrated by George Guidall,
said, when I walked up, "Oh, you must be Linda."

He's a cutie, and he's funny, and smart, and amazing, and so nice and easy
to talk to I could easily have carried on for hours.  He makes each person
feel special even though you know he's got to be exhausted and his hand
has to be worn out from signing.  

It was a terrific time, made even better by getting to meet so many folks
from this topic.
  

    

slipped by Martha.
  

    
e-mail from Kathy Li:

Justin-- I'll be at Mysterious Galaxy, and yes, you have to purchase
a copy of AG to get a number to be in the line.  The last time Neil
signed with them, the store overflowed and some people couldn't even
hear the reading, standing outside.  They have, however, since moved
to a larger locale so (fingers crossed), it won't happen this time.

As for stuff never going on in San Diego, I know what you mean, but
I suddenly seem to be in the midst of an embarrassment of riches.  Just
as I wonder what the heck I'll do with myself after the signing and
Comic-Con (I'll be there, too), I hear that Dorothy Dunnett's going to
be signing in my podunk little town :-) in September.
  

    

It's nice to have a friend like Neil: nice, considerate, fun... come to
think of it, I DO have a few friends like that. I wouldn't mind adding Neil
to the list, but I understand he's a bit busy.
I'm also glad to have had the chance to meet some other nice, fun people at
the signing, and I hope to get a chance to hang out with them again
sometime. I'll let y'all know when our housewarming party is, how's that.
  

    

3 slips! I was directly responding to Martha's post.
  

    

And we will all go and see <stagewalker>'s next production!
  

    
E-mail from Rebecca that I don't think has been posted yet, sorry:

I've finished The Book as of last night.  I can still feel my head being
rearranged.  I've been sending rather frantic emails to a
recent-Neil-convert-friend of mine in D.C. (I baited the hook with
Neverwhere, she loves London) about AG, and how she is going to have to
get her own copy (She still HAS the aforementioned book-bait...proof of
its seductive powers.  Thankfully I am planning to move to D.C. soon, or
else I'd never see it again.)...particularly since mine is now
****signed****** (which phenomenon still leaves me in a terrible fangirl
state--thanks to everyone who posted their great fanperson moments...now
I feel a little better).

Adriana--do watch out with that candling stuff, I've heard it's a bit
risky.  I'm glad some of the tips are working though, as that's such a
torturous state, rather like having one's head in a bucket.  Of Jell-O.

Shawn, I'm still snorting about the Texas drivers.  Have you ever been
to Rome?  Or, better, Egypt, where those little marks on the road are
solely for decoration?  I'm not sure that the driving in either of those
places is fueled by deep primitive rage, though.  They seem to view it
as more of a hobby.  Even the folks driving donkey carts.  Very
egalitarian life-risking.

Hi Rani, I'm quite quite new here myself--aren't they nice
here?--although too poor to join, as yet.  Soon, soon...

And IS there a link to email those fools at CNN, or will I have to scout
around some more on their deplorable site to find one?  It was a good
article...until...

Happy Wednesday (sorry),
Rebecca
  

    

E-mail from Kathy Li:

Martha--You got a $7 ld of TRULY MADLY DEEPLY?  Wow.  BTW, if you like
TMD, highly recommend you try and find "Living With Dinosaurs," an
earlier piece that Minghella wrote for Henson (prior to THE STORYTELLER)
which also stars Juliet Stevenson and Michael Maloney, where they play a
married couple with a ten year old son whose stuffed toy dinosaur ("Dog")
talks to him ala Calvin & Hobbes when no one else is around.  It plays
like a sequel to TMD.  I've always thought that Minghella would have been
great to direct NEVERWHERE. [Just as I think that Eamonn Walker would
make a great Marquis de Carabas.]

Apologies for length.  15 years on the 'net and I can't get out of the
habit of writing blow-by-blows of signings.

Just got back from the San Diego/Mysterious Galaxy signing.  It's a
beautiful, clear, sunny Southern California day, and the crowd was in the
100 range, as far as I can guesstimate.  Relatively small for Neil. :-) 
Got there an hour early, and there were still chairs, so chatted with
people and had a grand time waiting.

Unfortunately, Neil had to catch a train back to L.A., so he was on a
tight schedule, and decided to shorten the reading and the Q&A.  The
reading was Sam's "I believe..." scene, and it worked beautifully. Only
once did Neil make an aside to explain the "life is a cabernet" as a
reference to a bumper sticker previous in the story, so that we would
know it wasn't *his* joke.

To compress the Q&A, he decided to do a quick FAQ precis, which was
generally listing all the information on the movie projects.  Sandman:
still in production hell may it rot there forever.  Death: 1st draft
done, working on the second draft after the signing tour in August. Books
of Magic, well, Tim Hunter's no longer British, 12, and gawky with round
glasses.  And studying magic.  He's now American and 16, and probably
still has glasses, but not so round.  Terry Pratchett--no, wait--backup. 
Start over: Terry GILLIAM (very different person!) has finished the
second draft of GOOD OMENS and is trying to figure out how to get the
footnotes in.  [Yes. Neil is tired, now.]

Don't remember all of the Q&A, but some of the stuff mentioned was no,
he's not coming to San Diego Comic-Con. :-)  He only comes once every
five years (Jackie Estrada interjected, that it used to be every THREE
years).  And he began to describe why Comic-Con is harder work than a
signing: because it's 30,000+ people [we broke 48,000 last year] who all
want to chat with Neil (but will settle for a signature).  But that's the
bad part.  The good part is that he takes the train to get there from the
midwest, so he gets a vacation.  He's incommunicado--nobody can find him
and he gets tons of time to write.

He mentioned CORALINE and how it's the story of a little girl who goes
through a door to another world where things are almost (but not quite)
the same, and she meets the counterparts of her parents.  Only they're
very pale, and have long thin fingers and black hair, and big black
buttons for eyes.  He also mentioned that Selick (NIGHTMARE BEFORE
CHRISTMAS) is adapting it for film.

He mentioned THE WOLVES IN THE WALLS, which he wrote three years ago and
gave to Dave McKean, who's drawn 8 illustrations for it in a completely
different, FUNNY style, and that he only has 40 more to go to finish the
book, and no clear block of time, yet.  It's about a little girl who
thinks there are wolves in the walls, but her parents tell her no it's
mice or rats, and, of coruse, she's right.  And one night the wolves come
out and watch television and eat jam on toast--those things that wolves
do.

Sorry.  Can't remember much more of the Q&A.

Then, we all stood up, folded our folding chairs and stacked them against
the walls, while the storekeepers rolled their display shelves back to
where they properly belonged, and everybody shuffled outside, and began
asking "what number are you?" and "where are the 30s?" in order to get
into line properly.  Then, by tens, people were called into the store,
like waiting for a plane.

Naturally, I got the double-time heartbeat and cottage-cheese brain, like
everybody else, but I managed to hold it together enough to get my pens
out and I forced (well, just asked, actually) Neil to sign my copy of AG
with a 1930's Waterman #3 I have that has a flexible nib [he liked it],
while I stammered at him that I'm reading Herodatus's HISTORIES and that
it's cool.  I then handed him the 1945 grey Parker 51 and 1930's Waterman
Lady Patricia Ink-Vue (with a semi-flex nib) and a Waterman converter in
a little plastic baggie. He thanked me and gave me a hug, and he showed
me his Sheaffer prototype. My fountain pen geekdom cup overflowed but
*good*.  I had one of those HAPPY brain meltdowns.

Then, my friend Tamara kindly let me linger while she got her AG and a
t-shirt signed, and then we went out into the sunshine and out to Ni-Ban
to have lunch, where I suddenly felt the urge for sushi. <grin>.  An hour
later, I went back to the store to pick up a book I'd forgotten I wanted
t buy, and the line was still going, but at least nobody was outside the
store, and one hopes and assumes that Neil made it to his train on time.