An Evening of Stardust with Neil Gaiman

Last night, my boyfriend and I went to see An Evening of Stardust with Neil Gaiman, as part of the Drue Heinz Lecture Series Special Events. We weren't able to get VIP tickets when they became available, but I was able to get some decent seats and bring my best friend along (who is 8 1/2 months pregnant). I ran into a few friends while there and we managed to get signed books before they were sold out.

Listening to Neil read his own works is... fantastic. Because you can hear what the characters sound like in his head, and that's a rare glimpse from an author (outside of book tours). Apparently this wasn't a book tour for the 15th Anniversary of Stardust. Apparently it was just us and Neil didn't know what to do. So he stood in front of us and talked about how the idea for the novel came about, and how he wrote it with a fountain pen in Tori Amos's bridge house, and how somehow a movie was made from it, and apparently that movie did amazingly well around the world except for America where the publishers didn't know how to market the story. So Neil told them to market it like The Princess Bride, and they looked at him like he was crazy.

He told us about his new Doctor Who episode, of which I shall say nothing else, and he read us a new section of his new novel. We were the first to hear the section, apparently. At one point, we all lost it because he was talking about electron decay and how the electrons were the smiley ones and the neutrons were frowning and so on. I can't wait to read it. Ocean at the End of the Lane, I think it's called. Laura, my best friend, later told me that Ava was dancing around only when Neil read from his books.

When it became time for a short Q&A, Mike bolted from the middle of our row, surged past everyone's legs and reached the nearest microphone first. He always wants to ask authors questions at these events. Sure enough, he was the last one. So he said hi, told Neil that he was interesting on TurnTable.fm and should return to the site, and then asked a question that boils down to: "The type of magic and adventure in your stories and pennydreadfuls don't exist in this world. How do we find it?" People had an "Awww..." reaction to it, and Neil launched into describing this bizarre workshop and carousel. He ended the answer by saying something like, "You have to make it for yourself and others. You have to go out and find it. It won't come to you." To which everyone started applauding.

Trust my boyfriend to make the question/answer of the night. And a few people tweeted about it, apparently, of which Neil retweeted this morning, and so did I.

How about that for a bit of magic.