My class went for Neil's talk-cum-book signing at Cineleisure with our teacher who REALLY likes him and it was really cool although cinileisure was kinda 'flooded' so we still had a good time =)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: sophia,

just wanted to say a great big thanks to Gaiman for coming down to our tiny little island... have a good rest after the mass production of signatures session for the past 2 days... i'm so happy to be able to get my books imprinted with ur name. but, take care of ur hands, we still wanna read more perculiarly fantastic stories of urs~!!!

I love everybody who came to these signings. I love you all. I told people five years ago, then two years ago, then three months ago, that Neil Gaiman is bigger than they expected. They originally scheduled the signings for HALF AN HOUR thinking he was a nobody. I was in the books trade for five years, fighting like hell to bring in Sandman which none of the top brass believed in.

I love you all.

I was right, they were wrong, I am brilliant, and I LOVE YOU ALL. I ran around Kinokuniya crowing 'I told you so I told you so I told you so!!!' and then jumped in at the very tail end of the 500-strong queue and I love Neil and I really loooove you all.

(If you are wondering why the arrangements were such a mess and the library talk came right in the middle of the signing, it's because nobody listened to ME or any of the other MANY comics fans who knew better.HAHAHAHAHAHA)

gasp. gloating is fun.

I love you all!!

I'm totally amazed how dense some people can get. All the signs where out there that this was going to be big, bigger than anything any bookstore in Singapore has ever experienced.
Anyway, it was quite depressing to wake up and find that there weren't any book signings to queue up for.
I had a great time at this signing, except for the very last one at Borders where the staff did stupid things:

1) Refused to let us sit, they were like the floor nazis or something, everytime the building security saw us sitting they would shout: "No sitting!!!" Come on !!! I actually complained to some of the people but they just said "Can't do anything."

2) Refused to put up a barrier. This made the queue cutting seriously blatant. Again, a "Can't help it." I actually started to queue 2 hours before Neil arrived, and right in front of me were 2 guys, which ballooned over the next 2 hrs to a big group of 10. There was this woman who arrived 1 hour after me, and had the cheek to tell her friends who were in front of me: "I'll just leave my bag here and go off with my friend, just call me when the queue starts moving". This shouldn't have mattered so much, but the bookstore started cutting the number of items signed per person to 2 (from the original 3) each halfway throught the big group of 10, so i got the short end of the stick because a lot of people were really inconsiderate, and seriously the fact that everyone thought it was right pisses me off immensely.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: eit,

Having gotten that off my chest, I really think we should do this sometime soon again. Maybe we can get Dave here too hahaha ...

haha... *pat pat* well done. I was at the borders one.. joined the queue only at 4, and i was already very far away from the signing table. Found that the entire structure of the event was messy n a little haywire. Guess they didn't expect a queue all the way to the other side of Borders. Didn't think that the signing should have been done at the entrance of Borders... then again, i'm not sure where else they can set up the table w/o blocking anything else.

Sometimes, they just gotta figure out who are THE bigger shots in the literary industry.

My brother was actually one of the helpers roped in by British council for the signing when they started to get an inkling Neil MAY draw a larger crowd than expected (me bro's the weird-looking bloke with blond streaks and striped pants running around taking photos of cosplayers). They called him up and asked him if he could put in a couple of hours of work per session. He promptly told them to expect to pay him for at least 10-12 hours of work. heh. think he earned more from Neil Gaiman's three days than the whole of WOMAD.

Borders actually had very little idea who Neil Gaiman is (have you seen the state of their comics section?). Kino and of course Comics Connection had a far better idea, therefore a more organised queue... even then Kino's boss bet with my pal and colleague in Kino that his event wouldn't beat Fann Wong's (!!) who drew about 300 stupid aunty gawkers. The initial idea was that people should get proper queue numbers so that they could leave for the library talk, and return in proper order, but the boss pooh-poohed the idea.

My colleague collected a very nice sum, thank you. Fann Wong!!

On a funny note, while I was in Kino an auntie stood there gawking at Neil with great perplexity for about five minutes, taking in the massive queue, then asked the guard, "Who's this? Actor ah? Singer?"

"No, he's an author."
Even more perplexed. "Author? So?"
Jeg the guard, not knowing how to respond to this, didn't respond.
"Wrote a lot of books ah?" she persisted.
"Yes," Jeg said.
"Tom Clancy is it?"
"No, Neil Gaiman."
"Not Tom Clancy? I thought only Tom Clancy wrote a lot of books?"

She persisted for a good long time in wanting to know why Neil was not Tom Clancy. To the aunty world, if you're not an actor, singer, or Tom Clancy, you don't get fans lining up for you. (Tom Clancy's a prick, by the by, but Jeffrey Archer's worse, so at least she didn't pick Archer.)

Also saw a little bimbo chick in Borders declaring into her phone that Neil DIAMOND was there.

Just one of many ways someone can be ridiculously famous and somehow totally unknown.