Neil Gaiman's Journal

Several people have written to ask if Mike Carey is going to be writing a Sandman book or comic, and no, he's not. It'll be a Sandman Presents: book, which is the umbrella title that all the spin-offs and so on shade under, until, like Mike's Lucifer, they take off on their own, without needing an umbrella, as it were. He and John Bolton are doing a book about Lyta Hall and the Furies.

Finished an overdue short story yesterday, and realised, as I finished it, that the beats and the theme and even a couple of the images were very similar to those in another story I'd written, five years ago, and another I'd written five years before that. It's funny: you don't start out going "Ah, now I shall repeat myself." You start out to tell a new story newly.

I suspect that the times that you do repeat yourself are because you didn't get it right the first time, but you know there was something there. It's probably why W. S. Gilbert kept going back to the magic lozenge story.

The next short story collection is probably going to consist entirely of first person narratives. Unreliable people, telling unreliable stories. (Which may mean that I'll have to hide any third person short stories in the introduction.)

I've gone off to write for a week. When I left it was in the low 90s F (around 33 C). Now there is a winter storm warning in the midwest -- 80% chance of serious snow tomorrow. I'm now glad I was talked out of hauling the lemon tree, jasmine and so out out of the kitchen, where they've lived all winter, and into the garden...