Starstruck

I'd been counting down the days and finally, it came: The Day When Neil Gaiman Came to Campus.

There was a conversation and Q&A session at noon in the Old Cafeteria building that I was fortunate enough to catch the last five minutes of (get me on prepositional phrases and I'll remind you we don't speak Latin, pedant!) I made my way over to the merchandise table at the same time as he was heading out of the room. As he was squeezing his way through the throngs of people, we ended up within two inches of each other. He looked down at me and said, "Hello."

In that moment, I could have died happy.

Okay, a bit of an exaggeration, but I was ecstatic either way. In case you didn't know, Neil Gaiman is a world-famous author of many novels, short stories, poems, screenplays and of course, The Sandman comic book/graphic novel series that launched him into stardom. His most recent novel, Anansi Boys, is currently being considered for the Campus Reading Program. I have been a fan of Mr. Gaiman since I first picked up the first of the Sandman books, "Preludes and Nocturnes." I was fascinated by the fact that he took mythology, religion, the occult and mixed it flawlessly into everyday life to the point where you believe all of this magic to be true. He also used canon characters from the comic universe, such as John Constantine from the Hellblazer series, characters from Swamp Thing and old-school villians like Scarecrow and the Joker from Batman, and intertwined them all into the Sandman mythos to create his own distinct universe. This distinct blending of fantasy, horror, reality and wit is what has made him famous the world over.

And, as Professor Lilly has also testified, he's also quite handsome.

At 6:30pm, a friend and I made our way to the Student Union, to await the reading at 7:30pm. It seems we arrived at precisely the right time, because we managed to snag two seats right in the front, close enough to see him clearly and angled enough to not have our view impeded by the podium. Our seats were also optimal for getting our books signed relatively quickly, as the signing desk was directly in front of us.

When the reading officially began, Mr. Gaiman surprised and delighted us all when he revealed he'd be using us as guinea pigs. That is to say, he would be reading two unpublished pieces, one of which had never before been read aloud. The first piece, entitled "Orange," was strange and hilarious, and unique in that the whole story was written as a set of answers, with the questions omitted. The story's narrator was a young girl named Jemimah, who recounted the odd tale of a sister and a tanning experiment gone awry. The second piece was a chapter from his currently unfinished children's book, The Graveyard Book. The book depicts the story of a young baby, who's left orphaned by a terrifying killer, and somehow makes his way to a graveyard, where he is then brought up among the dead, as the only live boy in the cemetery.

Said Neil, "When I wrote the first chapter of this book, it was honestly the scariest thing I had ever written....there was a man with large knife...and I thought to myself, 'Well, there I've got my next childrens book!'"

Besides his creative writing talent, Neil also has a gift for reading his work aloud. His pauses, voice changes, and emphases adds illustrates every bit of humor and spookiness in his tales. It doesn't hurt that he also has a very nice British accent.

Because his second story took a very long time to read, there was only time for a few questions afterward, so he could get to the autographing, since he had a 6am flight to catch in the morning. He provided information on the upcoming movie of his novel Stardust which stars Michelle Pfeiffer, Robert DeNiro and Claire Danes, and his screenplay of Beowulf, which will feature Angelina Jolie as the voice of Grendel's mother, as well as the much-anticipated Good Omens movie. Speaking of good omens, he also said that he and Terry Pratchett, author of the Discworld series, are "almost, kind of considering talking about possibly thinking about writing something about what [the Good Omens characters] are up to now, maybe." Good Omens was co-written during the beginning of the end of Neil's journalism career and the beginning of Terry's professional writing career.

"This was," remarked Neil, "before we knew it would sell millions of copies all over the world, and be published in forty languages and pick up awards, and before we knew that young women would write pornography about the two lead characters."

That last bit is true, by the way. Looking up "Aziraphale/Crowley" in Google will find you many NSFW (not safe for work) websites.

Once it finally came to the book signing (imagine a hundred geeks tenderly petting their copies of whatever novel they liked best), there was a flash flood of people. Not quite pushing and shoving (though I didn't stay the whole time so who knows), but a very hungry mob wanting this man to sign our things. I myself asked him to sign my copy of Good Omens and Stardust, and I also gave him a gift of a star-shaped glass jar filled with tiny paper stars, which I had assembled during my re-reading of Stardust. I believe he said it was beautiful (that could just be my mind) and I hope it might inspire him someday for who knows what.

All in all, it was an experience to behold and I for one am incredibly happy I was a part of it.