Before you step into the madness, perhaps you should get some rundown on why I took this crazy trek: How I discovered Neil's work and where it took me.

          It's funny, because I was asked many times on this trip by Thingies and non-Thingies alike how I got introduced to Neil and why is it exactly I traveled all those miles to see him. It'll make sense in the end. I swear.



          It started in the middle of 1995, a year or so before I graduated high school. One of my best friends, Roz, and her brother, Dan, kept talking about this book that Dan had found in Seattle called Angels & Visitations, a collection of stories and poems by this guy named Neil Gaiman who also did a comic book. Now, for me, when I was into comics back when I was littleler, comics meant Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight and some underground thing at the time called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

          Dan said, "Oh you'll like it." But Roz, who knew me a little better, said, "You have to read this, Kari, it's so cool." But she never lent me her copy because I kept forgetting about it.

          Fast forward a year later, when I'm about to head off to college at the University of Redlands in Southern California. Roz and I are at a last poetry reading with our friends before some leave the next day and I leave 2 days later. Roz brought along her copy of A & V. I convince her to read something out of the book and she asks me to choose something. I flip through, see a couple of illustrations, check the lengths of things, and see a very short piece called "Nicholas Was..." I read over it very quickly, and start laughing.
          "What's so funny?" she asks.
          "This story, 'Nicholas Was...', it's funny. You should read it." And she did, and everyone liked it. The best part was the fact that she forgot to take the book home when she left the cafe, which meant that I got to devour it in the couple of days before I went off to California.

          Needless to say, I loved it. After the ensuing months of my freshman year and being introduced to the Internet (where I could buy stuff directly from the publisher of A & V, DreamHaven, making me very happy) I had my own copy of Angels and Visitations. Because I liked it so much, when I wasn't carrying it around in my backpack with the rest of my schoolwork I had lent it to quite a few people, putting my poor book, which I didn't realize until much later was going out of print, in a state where it was looking a little roughhoused.

          If my memory serves, I'd joined alt.fan.neil-gaiman at that point, and a couple of other groups as well. I wasn't posting much, I remember, just random things here and there.

          By the middle of my sophomore year in 1998, I think A & V was just about done with its print run, and I was very grateful to have a copy, even if it was a little rough around the edges. Literally.
          In fact, I didn't start reading The Sandman comics all the way through until right before the middle of my sophomore year, in the winter of 1997 by my neighbor upstairs, Diami, who would lend me his graphic novels until I was done and would give me another one to devour in a couple of days.

          It's so strange how things happen. A week into a new semester, at the beginning of January '98, my mother unexpectedly passed away. It was a more than difficult time, as all of my friends weren't sure how to react to me. I wasn't sure how to react to me. "Me" was someone else now, with a different reality, even with familiar objects like books (including The Kindly Ones and The Wake)around me. But you grasp what you can.

          I read the end of The Sandman run, its cycles of death and rebirth, and I'll always remember its effect on helping my grieving.

          A month after my mom passed I had a very lucky chance to see Neil read at a fundraiser for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund on the Queen Mary in Long Beach, California. Diami went with me.

          I was blown completely away. At the end I knew I could do it. Anything I wanted. There's a little more about my reactions at the end of this particular journal entry. And in this entry as well.

          The main thing was, I'd felt changed. Seeing him read in person is, truly, a special experience, something everyone should see. I have his CD Warning: Contains Language, but it's not the same as having him right in front of you, seeing his expressions. I thought, "I want to do that. And I can." It sounds corny, I know, but at the end, when I was processing everything on the ride home, I felt a little more open, as if I'd taken a deep breath and was going to let myself use my writing as my grieving process.
          When "The Wedding Present" was printed in Smoke and Mirrors, I couldn't read it for a couple of years because I would always remember that reading.

          Three years later, I finally got up the courage to read it myself, and realized how impacted I still am to this day by that story, even if it isn't my favorite.

          But I wanted Neil to sign that page. I knew, if I was ever going to meet him, that would be one of the first things I would have him sign. And he did. But there's more later on about that meeting, almost 3 and a half years after that first reading.

          At the first Q & A in Kepler's on this trip, Neil mentioned how he gets these little stories about how people are affected by his work, and how that keeps him going. I'm proud to say that I am one of those people. He keeps me writing, just as I, and many others like me, keep him writing. We all have our stories to tell. It's what makes us human.

          And with that, we're off...