werewolf goldfish (werekoi? koi wolves?)*

So. Let me borrow heavily from Nous's LJ post (citing! not plagiarizing! in case any of my truly scary clever students have tracked this blog. Gods forfend.) and tell you what happened yesterday.

Philip K. Dick lived something like 9 miles from where we live. That's 40 minutes in traffic, mind you, but never mind that. Philip K. Dick lived Really Close By. And when he did, he went to this church. Pretty thing. Wooden-gothic, gorgeous windows and carvings.

And while Dick lived over there, he hung out with some young writers. Guy named Jim Blaylock, another guy named Tim Powers. You may've heard of them. As time went on, their work became inspirational to another young writer named Neil Gaiman.

So time passes, as it does, and Mr. Powers and Blaylock are teaching at a performing arts high school in the old neighborhood. And they ask a certain Mr. Gaiman--now a world famous guy--if he wouldn't mind coming and reading and talking with some of these high school students. You know. Some little event. Something small. In a church, even.

Our friend, Tira, also happens to work at this high school. Once, last winter? I think it was last winter--she asked for book recommendations, and I said American Gods. And she loved it. And read damn near everything else she could find by that Gaiman guy. So when she found out that he was going to be speaking at this little event, and she could get tickets for other folks, she told us to cancel everything we had planned that evening.

Nous and I may've met in a Vampire live action RPG, but we fell in love, among other things, through Sandman. Nous had the graphic novels, and he carted them all over to my house and left them. He thought I'd love them, and I did.  A couple years later, we got married. That was nine years ago last night.

And last night, there we were, in this little church that Philip K. Dick had attended, sitting in the same pew as Jim Blaylock and Tim Powers and Tira, some 8 feet from Neil Gaiman, listening to him read his rarities and unpublished work and talk about writing for 90 minutes.

Best. Anniversary. Ever.

*so one of the students asked, during Q&A, where he gets his ideas. As Gaiman was analogizing, he said "So we all know that werewolves are people who become wolves during the full moon. And we know that if a werewolf bites you, you become a werewolf, too. But what happens if a werewolf bites a goldfish?" What, indeed.