r.e.f.

Today was the day I met Raymond E. Feist. I had known for a while that he was going to do a speaking and signing event in Borders, but hadn't really gotten that excited about it until this evening when we were waiting for it to happen. There was another author there, and they were going to have a joint discussion about the creation of fantasy fiction, and then do a signing. Ray has just released the first book in his new series (the third Riftwar), and co-incidentally the 20th annivresary edition of Magician is just about to hit the streets too. When myself and Dave got to Borders, about two hours early, there were seven copies of Magician there. We immediately bought four of them, and then debated just how unfair it would be to the other people there if we bought the other three and sold them on ebay ;-) The guys in the shop said that they were going to be fairly rare - rare enough that those seven copies were maybe the only ones they could get their hands on in total. So you can imagine how happy I am that I have one, and that I have it dedicated to me by the Master himself! When Ray finally arrived, I was overcome by the kind of buzz I've had at concerts performed by groups I've REALLY loved. It surprised me how powerful it felt, as I hadn't expected such a serious case of hero-worship when meeting him. Anyway, the talk was great. Ray is a fantastic speaker, with a lot of presence, and a very ironic wit which you only glance in his work. He surprised me by saying that his emotions bled into his work more than I had suspected... after his divorce he wrote several pages of one of his books, along the lines of "the bitch must die... the bitch must die", and when he met his new girlfriend eighteen months ago, there were several pages of "women are fantastic and great and we must love them". I'm going to see if I can track down where, if any, there bits are in the books he wrote. Could be interesting ;-) Anyway, it was a brilliant evening. I came home and must have said to Anna about a hundred times so far...
"I met Raymond Feist tonight!"