He's calling it his "Last U.S. Signing Tour," but novelist Neil Gaiman assured the crowd Monday night at Bloomington Jefferson High School that this doesn't mean he'll never tour again. It means, he said, that he's unlikely to do readings and signings again, because the signings can go on and on and on.
"Last night [in Ann Arbor, Mich.] I finished signing at three in the morning," he said. By the time he was done, "Everything hurt. My brain hurt. I could no longer spell common names, like 'Dave.' "
Everything Gaiman said drew warmth and laughter and applause from the devoted audience in Bloomington. Gaiman is a Brit who now lives in western Wisconsin, and Bloomington, after all, was practically home. An "American Gods" miniseries is in the works, Gaiman said, and the room clapped. "The Graveyard Book" is being turned into a movie. More enthusiastic applause. "My dog is hanging around back stage," he said, and the crowd pretty much wanted, as one, to go back stage and pet Lola. (His other dog, Cabal, died in January, he told the crowd, and the crowd nearly wept.)
Gaiman spoke to a capacity crowd at an event sponsored by Barnes & Noble Galleria and meant to promote his new novel, "The Ocean at the End of the Lane." Before reading, he asked for a show of hands--how many have read the book? About half of the people in the audience had--which meant that half had not.
("The Ocean at the End of the Lane" is a lovely, mysterious book about a man who goes back to his childhood home and begins to remember the odd things that happened when he was 7. Here's the Star Tribune review.)
So Gaiman read an early scene, in which the 7-year-old protagonist faces his disappointments (burned toast, a missing comic book) sadly and stoicly, juxtaposed against the larger problems of the adult world (missing car, dead body).
The book, Gaiman said, came about by accident. "It's the first time I ever wrote a book by accident," he said. "Normally, I write books on purpose." But Gaiman was in Florida, writing an episode of "Dr. Who," and his wife, musician Amanda Palmer, was in Australia, cutting an album. "I missed my wife," he said simply. "I thought, I know what I'll do--I'll write her a short story."
Palmer doesn't much like fantasy, Gaiman said; she likes books with feeling. "I haven't done a lot of feelings, because I'm English, and I'm male." But he sat down to write the short story ... and it turned into novelette ... which turned into a novella ... which turned into a novel.
