The greatest killer to my pocketbook over August was the Book Festival. I love the Book Festival: two big tents of books (children’s and everyone else’s), writing workshops, and OMG IS THAT NEIL GAIMAN?!

Yes, yes it was.

Last year I met Terry Pratchett. This year there’s a list, and in order of appearance it was Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman (TOGETHER!), Alexander McCall Smith, and Mark Millar. They were all incredibly sweet people. But let’s handle that individually!

Ian Rankin and Neil Gaiman spoke together, and were ridiculous amounts of fun. They enjoyed the BSL signer a little too much, and because of that I now know how to sign “balls” in BSL. But there’s a far better recap of their speech here that you should read if you want to know exactly what went on. I’ll fast-forward to the signing, shall I?

I was really quite nervous to meet Ian Rankin, especially as I’m miserable with small talk. I shouldn’t have worried—we had a very nice chat about the uni (and how, when he was there, one of my supervisors was a “hot up-and-coming lecturer”!), and when I told him I also want to write fiction, he was very encouraging. If I ever find him in one of the local pubs, I think I must buy him a pint.

I at least had some small-talk chatter to fall back on with Neil Gaiman, as I follow his Twitter. However, I had a minor freak-out when he took a look at my name (written on a sticky note to make signing books faster) and pronounced it CORRECTLY. This is a rather huge deal for me, as on a mission trip once I was called “Elsie” and “Elsa”, and once spent a semester of Spanish being called “Ellis”—and that was after my friend tried to correct the professor! Neil Gaiman was, of course, already known to be on the ‘awesome’ list, but when I told him this story his scoffing at such moronitude only raised him further.

I initially planned to see Alexander McCall Smith because my mum loves him, and I was interested in hearing him speak, as he’s local too. However, Mr. Smith wins the “most awesome author” award for this year. If you peak at the picture above, you’ll see that the name in the books is not mine. When I went to his signing, I informed him how it kills my mother that I get to go to the Book Festival (and see him) and she can’t. He paused, then told me to ring her on my mobile, and he’d say hello. Made my mother’s day—and mine, too!

Mark Millar is cool. I mean this with all the gravitas a slang word can hold. I know many people I would call “a cool guy” or “pretty cool”, but Mark Millar is cool. If Terry Pratchett’s Monks of Cool weren’t rather dated, I would suspect that Mark Millar inspired them. How cool is Mark Millar? He invited everyone at the talk and signing to the pub afterwards (alas, I couldn’t go).  He had a proper chat with every single person at the signing. He didn’t swear because there were kids in the audience, but he made sure to see how the signer signed “eviscerate”. While we’re at it, here’s a pic of the wonderful signer, whose presence was most excellent:

Anyway, where was I? Ah yes – Mark Millar is so cool that he knows Damon Lindelof. He wore a suit, and drank wine through the whole thing. That’s how cool Mark Millar is. And like Ian Rankin, he encouraged me to give up my day job and just get into the entertainment biz.

Of course, if I gave up my day job, I wouldn’t be able to have a nifty title for my blog, and then where would we be?

Tags: authors,books,comics,fandom,festival
Categories: Arts, comics, creative writing
No Comments »