sleepless in edinburgh and manchester

Yesterday is all a bit of a blur. This is, I suspect, mostly because I set my alarm for an hour too early this morning and didn't notice until I went out into the hotel lobby to stumble out into the day and realised that it was only a quarter to eight, not a quarter to nine, which meant I'd had about four hours sleep, not about five. I hope I can sleep on a plane or in a car between here and Manchester tonight.

Lovely interviews, lovely event, lovely signing (except possibly for the young lady who fainted in the signing line, and even she popped up at the end to let me know she was feeling better), and lovely incredibly late night dinner afterwards.

...

Stopped there and stumbled off into the day. Went to The Main Street Trading Company in St Boswells, Scottish Borders, and talked to about forty ten year olds, and did a very small signing. The shop -- a sort of dream bookshop and small town cafe -- is quite beautiful, and it was a wonderful break in between all the giant events to just chat to some children, answer questions, and, later, have a bowl of butternut squash soup. (I also suspect the shop of being peculiarly magic: you might claim that it's coincidence that Nick Sweeting from Improbable Theatre Company was in the shop visiting his parents when I was signing, and that I had almost popped in to see him on Monday in London but ran out of time, but it's a magnificently unlikely coincidence.)

I slept in the car back to Edinburgh, slept on the plane to Manchester.

Manchester was great. I got to be the first author up on that stage to have an opening band -- two of them, in fact, as Paul & Storm and Jonathan Coulton played a very short concert -- one song each -- for the people there. And I finished signing some hours later, and walked to the Jonathan Coulton gig in time for the final encore, "Creepy Doll" where I recited the second voice, overacted as requested, and played tambourine.

What is it with the tambourine thing anyway? I manage to spend an entire life, joyfully tambourineless, and now I have played it on stage in front of people twice in a month. Do I look like someone who would be happier holding a tambourine?

Saw Leah Moore and John Reppion, and then Paul & Storm and Mr Coulton. Paul filmed me for a strangely silly secret project of theirs.

Also, hurrah for 24 hour room service, even if they had run out of everything except irish stew.

So. Bed now, for another night of not-enough-sleep, then I get up and fly to Dublin.

Nearly forgot, Chip Kidd wants suggestions: http://www.goodisdead.com/index.php?/journal/entry/mr_sandman_bring_me_a_dream/

Labels: breakfastry, Edinburgh, Jonathan Coulton, manchester, Paul and Storm

The Tour Begins To Loom...

Lots of tour and signing questions starting to come in. But first...

Hi Neil,
Hopefully this email comes after you're dug out of the deluge of other mails. I was recently in Minneapolis and sorry to see that Dreamhaven is downsizing/moving/firing all their employees. If you know yet, what does this mean for them running your commercial site? I terribly liked being able to visit and pickup signed copies or buy something and leave it for when you were next in town.
Thanks,
Kyle

I don't honestly know. I haven't spoken to Greg Ketter about what he'll be doing with Neilgaiman.net in the new, one-man Dreamhaven. I'll certainly still sign stuff when I stop by, but I'm not entirely clear what he'll be stocking at this point. If it looks like neilgaiman.net isn't going to work through DreamHaven in the future, then I'll have to figure something else out. Either way. I'll keep everyone informed through the blog as soon as I know what's happening.

Dear Neil,
I was just wondering if you ever found out what was going on as regards a signing on the Manchester stop of your tour? You mentioned it might be somewhere other than the talk? I was just wondering as I hadn't seen it mentioned on Manchester's website. Anyway, look forward to hearing (and possibly meeting, if there is a signing) you in Manchester!
All the best,
James

I think that the plan to have a talk and a separate signing was wisely abandoned, and as far as I can tell, http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/martinharriscentre/mhceventspage.php?eventid=598
is the event -- reading and Q&A and signing and all. This at the instigation of my friend Geoff Ryman, who was teaching at Manchester, who then went off to teach in San Diego for six months.

The tragedy of that evening is that Paul & Storm and Jonathan Coulton will also be playing at Manchester University that night -- their doors open at 7:30. I suspect that with military precision and planning it might be possible for someone to see me talk and read and then get off and catch most of P&S and all of Mr Coulton, given that we're both at the University, and, if I've read the web site maps right, doing our stuff within about 500 feet of each other.)

(The good news is that Jonathan Coulton and P&S will be playing The Shepherds Bush Empire on Oct 30th -- the day before I'm doing the London reading, so there shouldn't be any conflict there.)

hi neil!
My girlfriend and i are going to your talk/reading/q and a in Edinburgh and it says you will sign copies of The Graveyard Book i presume this means they will be available there? also would it be totally inappropriate to ask you to sign anything else? i realise there will be a lot of hopefuls there and i wouldn't want to delay anything.
Thanks!

No, it's not inappropriate to ask me to sign something else. (Here's the link to Fidra's blog, with lots of information.)

For the UK this time, the rules are going to be pretty much as laid out in http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/05/so-youre-going-to-signing.asp. (The only modification is sometimes I reserve the right to not pose for photographs, now that everyone has an image-capturing device or two on them. You can take any photos you like of me scribbling, you can take photos of you next to me, if you're lucky I'll try and look up when it's time for the flash to go off, but stopping to pose doesn't add a long time to each signing, if you multiply it by hundreds of people, it can add a few hours to the signing line.) But I'll cheerfully sign in the UK, mostly because it's only in London that I ever have to worry about more than 300 people showing up.

For the US tour (NOT the National Book Festival, but everything from New York to St Paul, and I'll repost it all here in easily copyable form as soon as I get all the data) the plan is to make them more of An Evening With Neil Gaiman than a signing, mostly because the numbers at the signings had just got too big to cope with easily, often 700 -1200 people, and it's no fun for anyone when I finish signing every night at one or two in the morning. So each stop will get a complete chapter/story from The Graveyard Book (except for LA and Boulder, who will split Chapter 7), and a long Q&A and talk, and we'll do something more like the event two years ago at Cody's (captured forever by Fora TV). Signed books will be available, but I'll have signed them and doodled in them that afternoon...

Labels: DreamHaven, Jonathan Coulton, manchester, signing FAQs