I completely forgot that Neil Gaiman was in the Bay Area signing books this week, else I would have gone to see him speak.
However, seeing kwc's post about his recent signing at Cody's Books in Berkeley did prompt me to go searching through my pre-blogspot archives for my notes on his talk at Kepler's Books in Menlo Park in 2001. I won't bother to repost the 2001 entry (because my writing style has apparently changed a lot over the last four years) but I will summarize the notes in the extended entry.
Neil Gaiman, Kepler's Books, Menlo Park, June 26, 2001
Somewhere between 250 and 300 people were in attendance.
He started off by reading a chapter from American Gods about Shadow and his dead wife. Gaiman was going to read a chapter about the Bay Area, but decided to save that chapter for the reading at Cody's the next day. Following the reading was a Q & A session.
Gaiman began the Q & A session by saying that Kepler's has always had the most interesting questions out of all of the stops on his tour, and that last time in Kepler's it was "How did you meet Jon Singer?" (Which started out by people asking him how he met Dave McKean, Tori Amos and Terry Pratchett).
**How did you meet Jon Singer?**
Gaiman: How long have you been waiting to ask that question?
Question-Asker: Uh... one and a half years?
Gaiman: No! Two and a half years. That's a long time.
Gaiman then goes on to explain who Jon Singer is and how he still comes by his house occassionally to dig up more clay.
**What are the lyrics to "I am an English Coastline?"**
That's the most bizarre question ever asked. Next question.
**Do you know when you start writing what the theme of the book will be?**
No, not really. Gaiman starts with an idea, or a scene in his head, and he builds around that. How American Gods started was that he had an scene of 2 people in an airplane, one man offering the other a job, and it sat in his head for months, until one day, he decided to spend a few days in Reyjavik, Norway. Apparently, Neil didn't realize that in Norway, during June, the sun doesn't really set, and he couldn't really sleep. He wrote out a 2 page letter to his publisher with a brief outline of what's going to happen in the book, and when he got back from his trip he found it they liked the idea, and they had already gotten a cover done for the book. Life is surreal.
**About being British**
In the States, because of his accent, Neil gets "You're not from around here, are you?" But in Brittain, his home country, he recently went on a trip there and stayed in a hotel. At the hotel, because living in America has dulled his accent, the hotel concierge recognized him as being non-British. Neil asked for some directions to a place and the concierge said "Well, you just take the bus." The concierge then proceeded to explain what a bus and bus stop was, while describing the shape and color of the bus (It's red, it's got two levels, it looks like a cigar on wheels) as if Neil didn't know what a bus was. In Neil's mind as this was going on was a voice screaming "I'm British! I've lived in England for years, I know what a bus is!"
**About Signings**
Neil told a story about how because not all areas get an appearance by him for a book tour, Neil will often receive a box (or many boxes) of title pages from the publishers and have to sign them. After seeing him sign dozens of pages, his daughter comes up to him and asks what he is doing. Neil explains, and she takes one of the pages and says "Is that supposed to be Neil Gaiman? It looks more like Nel Gurgle". She asked if she could help sign some books for him as well and says that she can sign Nel Gurgle as well as he can. Neil then explained to his daughter that it wouldn't be right for her to sign the books because they were expecting Daddy's signature on them.
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