News-Gazette, Champaign, IL

He is accompanied by an editor, and at each airport a local driver picks them up and whisks them off to their various stops.

“It’s a very strange way of traveling,” Gaiman said. “Shooting across America like a pinball from airports to hotels to bookstores with long lines of people.”

The tour started four days ago with a book signing in New York City to promote Tuesday’s release of “American Gods.” Besides Illinois, Gaiman has stops planned in Kentucky, Ohio, Washington, California and finally Minnesota, wrapping up on July 2. A tour of the United Kingdom will follow.

Jack Womack, a publicist with Morrow, said the tour includes stops at chain book stores, stores that specialize in science fiction and fantasy books, and independent bookstores.

Gaiman was at Pages for All Ages, a locally owned bookstore in Savoy on Thursday.

Steven Bentz, events coordinator at the store, said he wrote Gaiman’s publisher last fall asking them to consider Savoy for a book signing.

Pages For All Ages focuses on local authors and authors of romance, science fiction and fantasy, Bentz said. Former U.S. Senator Paul Simon, Orson Scott Card and Nora Roberts have all visited the store.

“We work pretty hard to accommodate the authors and get good turnouts. Word gets around in the industry,” Bentz said. “Neil Gaiman is an author we’ve been seeking for some time.”

Gaiman, a native of England, moved to the United States about eight years ago. Most of his books and short stories contain fantasy elements, and he gained a large following as the creator and writer of DC Comics’ “The Sandman,” a sophisticated monthly comic about a being who is a personification of dreams and the brother of Death; there were more than 75 issues between 1989 and 1996.

Gaiman said “American Gods” is a thriller that uses mythologies to explore the Americanization of immigrants to this country.

A big part of a tour is to give him a chance to meet his fans, but his favorite thing is reading passages of his books to the audience.

For Thursday’s reading, he chose a part of the book that took place in Illinois, as the main character picks up a hitchhiker while on his way to Cairo.

After the reading, Gaiman took questions from the audience, which mostly dealt with his comic book characters and their possible adaptation into movies. But he discouraged applause at the mention of progress of those adaptations.

“With films, never clap until you come out of the cinema,” he said.

He then began autographing items for the 300 people who were at the store.

Gaiman said most people want to say hello and ask him to sign a book or comic he wrote. Occasionally people ask to have books written by other authors autographed, or dolls based on his comic characters.

One fan at Pages For All Ages asked Gaiman to sign a worn 1985 copy of “Ghastly Beyond Belief” his first book and the author told how he helped design the cover illustration.

Bill Gamauf, a night manager at Pages For All Ages, said the store sold about 150 of its 370 copies of “American Gods.” He said usually about a third of the attendees at a book signing will buy the most current book, and the store had ordered heavily because the book was so new.

Gaiman recalled a 1993 comic book convention where he started signing autographs late Saturday morning and didn’t stop until Sunday evening.