Journal

Thursday, March 13, 2003
your mention of miyazaki and howl's moving castle (squeee, fangirly goodness, pardon me while i spontaneously combust...!!!) ...ahem... that mention prompts me to ask a question i've been wondering about for some time. i once took an online 'neil gaiman purity test' and one of the questions was 'do you know what the connection is between neil gaiman and diana wynne jones?' assuming the answer wasn't 'i really like both their works,' i don't know - and i have always wondered. can you fill me in?

I'm not sure which one they meant, to be honest. I dedicated Books of Magic to Diana (and three other witches), she dedicated Hexwood to me, whereupon I wrote a poem about it which you may be able to find by searching for her name on the search function (as I put up on this blogger a while ago). She put me, as me, on a panel at the convention in Deep Secrets, and gave a breakfasty thing that had happened to both of us to a character in the same book (I was the one who ate the breakfast in question. Not a morning person). I got her a griffin for her birthday last year. My family flew on a plane to Minneapolis with Diana once, and I got to experience her famous travel jinx at first hand. Diana told me a couple of years ago that I was the first adult who wasn't either a teacher or a children's librarian to tell her, back in 1984 or 85, that I loved her books, which still makes me happy. I started reading The Magicians of Caprona to Maddy tonight. Pick any answer or none.

More info on Mr Miyazaki's film of Howl's Moving Castle at http://nausicaa.net/miyazaki/howl/


And the best Diana Wynne Jones website seems to be http://www.leemac.freeserve.co.uk/ at which she answers questions and is generally spiffing.