Yesterday I headed out to Naperville to see one of my favorite authors, Neil Gaiman, do a reading and sign copies of his latest book “Anansi Boys”. He was the guest of this small book store and the reading was at a local college. I got there on time, but the place was already packed when I came in.

Since it was just me, I was able to grab a seat near the front. I had never seen Gaiman before in person, nor heard his voice. I knew he was English, but he had relocated to Minnesota to be near his wife’s family. His accent is awesome, sounding a bit like Alan Rickman’s (Professor Snape). He was so comfortable on stage, talking about how his book came about (it’s the sequel to his best seller “American Gods”), making the audience laugh with his clever jokes and immediately creating an air of familiarity between him and everyone else in the room.

He then read a chapter from “Anansi Boys”, and I sat there, content as a little girl. The whole audience was under a spell, their eyes steadily watching him, laughing at the funny parts, giggling as he changed his voice to match the different characters. It came to mind that I hadn’t been read to in a very long time, probably since 2nd grade. It’s a really cheesey word to use, but it was delightful. I was sad that it was over when he finished the chapter.

I love doing the readings. The readings are the fun bits… The readings are probably the things that actually keep me going on these. If I couldn’t do the readings, I wouldn’t do the tours. I get to stand up there and read to a bunch of adults who in many cases nobody’s read to in years, since they were about five. They just squat on the floor. That’s enormously enjoyable.

- from an Onion interview on NeilGaiman.com

Afterwards, he did a little Q & A session. Some key things:

- There’s no plans right now for a Sandman movie
- “Death in Me” (I thinkt that’s what it was called), the movie featuring Sandman’s little sister Death, is being shopped around
- Neil co-wrote “Beowolf”, which is coming out in a couple years featuring the voices of Anthony Hopkins, Angelina Jolie and Crispin Glover as Grendel.
- Neil has several sequels in mind - for “Neverwhere”, “Stardust”, and a set of short stories related to “American Gods”

Once the reading and questions were done, he went upstairs to do a signing. There were easily 800 people there, but luckily they had given out numbers to people to keep order during the signing. We got to stay in the auditorium and hang out and just waited for our group of numbers to be called. I got to read the book, well, about 221 pages, before my number was called - 2 hours after the reading ended.

But it was awesome to finally meet Gaiman. I seem to have a big problem when meeting celebrities - because I was utterly dumbfounded when I was actually face to face with Gaiman. Luckily, my name was already on a post-it on the book (to make it easier for him to spell names). I finally snapped out of it and meekly said, “I’m loving the book so far!” He said something to me, and it didn’t register, so I said “Huh?” (real classy, Christine) “How far along in the book are you?”

“Oh! I’m at page 221.”

“Wow, you’re a fast reader. Well, I guess you’ve been waiting two hours so you’ve had time to read. Thank you so much for waiting, and for coming to see me!”

“Yeah! Thanks!” …and I walked away.

Real smooth, Christine.

Smooth.

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