Some people have asked if the Mall of America signing is still on. It is, but I'm not certain it's going to be a lot of fun for anyone (see rules in link below), and it will end when the Mall closes whether everyone's done or not , so if you're in the Minneapolis Area, there will be a more friendly signing at DreamHaven in about six weeks. We've pushed the Mall event earlier, though, to try and get as many people done as we can. Details at
http://www.mallofamerica.com/events/event_detail.aspx?eventid=6256
Over at Blogger, they've managed to unscramble to the text of that last lost blog entry, so here's what I wrote on Sunday Evening, and right now it's Wednesday morning... I have to do some TV then on to Victoria.
.....................
This morning's blogger post was eaten by some weird hotel internet
problem, and I cannot remember now what was in it -- which is the
problem of blogging on the road. I know I mentioned my trip to Google
on Friday (Me: MirrorMask is being released on Friday the
30th. Entire Audience: That's today, actually) and how, in
celebration of my Neil Number One-hood as chronicled in http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/06/tales-of-neil-world.asp,
a post that Tom Galloway read out, in its entirety, and put up the
Tales of Bizarro World on the wall screen before presenting me with
the ceramic sign you can see me wearing below.
I'm going to skip over many adventures now (signing stock at Booksmith
on the Haight, Cody's, Mysterious Galaxy, then AirCal -- a very tiny
plane piloted by Cal himself-- to Burbank and a Vroman's signing, and
taking my fairy goddaughter to brunch, all of which I may get back to)
in order to mention that when I'd finished being interviewed by the
amazing Heidi McDonald today at the West Hollywood Book Festival, and
was leaving the stage, an elderly English gentleman in a stylish hat
approached me and said "You won't remember me, but..." and I, because
his voice is still unique, and he looked like himself just older, and even after about 35 years I would have known him anywhere, said, "You're Aubrey Morris, aren't you?" And he was.
His father and my grandfather, as he mentioned to me, and as I half-remembered I had once been told, were best friends, back in Portsmouth, eighty years ago. Aubrey told me he wants
to tell me all about the history of my grandfather and his generation, and the things about them that now only Aubrey knows ("I need to tell you the Dark Things," he said with enormous relish, in a voice that reminded me he'd been in Hammer horror films), and I'm putting it here in the blog as a reminder to myself to go and talk to him the next time I'm in LA, and not to put it off
until it's much too late. I also want to get him the audio play of Mr Punch...