(no subject)
As if I didn't already have enough of authors and getting stuffed signed, I went along to an Iain Banks (note the lack of M.) signing last night for his new book. Whose name has already escaped me, but then I'd only found out about it last night - it's one of the main stream ones, hence the lack of the M.
Having seen him 2 years ago at EasterCon I knew we were in for a really good entertaining evening and I wasn't disappointed. He started off by reading a bit from the new book and whilst not sci-fi, I think I'm going to enjoy it - it's a comedy. He had to pause 2 sentances in to apologise for the swearing and to make sure there weren't any children in the room. I'm not entirely sure what he'd have done if there had been - there was a lot of swearing in the bit he read.
And then he took questions from the floor and gave many elaborate and hilariously funny answers to them. I'm not sure if this is my idea or it's something I picked up from EasterCon, but I'd liken him a lot to Billy Connolly. Tall, scottish and awesomely funny. There were a good mixture of questions about his mainstream and sci-fi work. A couple of questions were so obscure I think even he was a bit baffled by them.
The signing portion of the evening went quite quickly and he jovially chatted to people as he scrawled down dedications on the various books people handed to him. I had a brief wait as the person in front of me pointed out a typo in the new book and he had to pull out his iphone and note it down. I joked that I just had books to sign and no typos for him and he joked back that we could always make one up.
As that was that for the evening and it was still moderately early, myself and beeblebear fled in to the night and made it back in time to go to the IFIS weekly social with special guest star Phil. And there were even some students too - I guess term must be starting again soon.