Once I'd finished all my interviews for the day, I went up to my hotel room and did a long interview over the phone with a nice lady from Publisher's Weekly. "So, you're going to be signing copies of The Wolves in the Walls at Book Expo," she told me.
"I am?" I said. "Will they be real copies or just tasters?" And she thought it was funny that I didn't know, and I found it rather funny too, and we went on to do an enjoyable interview. So it looks like there will be advance copies of Wolves in the Walls at Book Expo America at the end of May, and I'll have to decide what I'm going to draw in them. I've got to the point where I can do a Coraline rat pretty fast, but I'm not sure I'll ever be able to draw wolves at speed. Maybe a jam-pot. There are jam-pots in Wolves after all. I bet I could draw jam-pots like nobody's business.
Wolves by the way isn't a new novel, as I've seen it mistakenly listed. It's a graphic novel/picture book, 62 pages of my words and Dave McKean's pictures, for kids of all ages. It's not a sequel to The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish although it shares a character. Sort of. This is the cover, from Bloomsbury's site.
Anyway. A long day over.
Before I came to Portugal, I thought that what Brazilians spoke was Portuguese and sounded Portuguese. I was wrong, I've now realised. It sounds Brazilian. Portuguese people talking Portuguese sound as if they're talking Russian.
Right.
A "which layer of Dante's Hell do you belong in?" test just arrived in my in-box from Jonathan Carroll, who no longer keeps up the White Apples journal, over at http://www.whiteapples.com/journal.html, but there's lots of cool new material from Jonathan over at his own jonathancarroll.com website (for which, incidentally, I did the introduction).
Lots of really nice, and several really touching e-mails coming in, via the FAQ line, or through Julia Bannon, from people who found that their sites started getting serious hits after being mentioned here.
I really need more time on my hands, or more of you to suggest strange-but-cool web places. Nothing exciting to report right now, except I was heartbroken to discover that Twinkies contain real food and will not last forever.
And I should mention that, of all the unlikely places I've been, Sintra is one of them.
The Coraline audio book just got the Parent's Choice Silver Medal for spring 2003: details here.
American Gods has been nominated for the French Prix Imaginales, which will be awarded on may 17th. It's up against stiff competition...
Ange, La mort d�Ayesha, Bragelonne
Clive Barker, Abarat� Albin Michel
Jean-Louis Fetjaine, Le pas de Merlin, Belfond
Neil Gaiman, American Gods, Au Diable Vauvert
Martha Wells, Le feu primordial, L�Atalante
And I've been sent a copy of the DVD of A Short Film About John Bolton to take on my travels around Europe.
Lots of people sending me messages telling me they really want to know about the Jack Benny radio shows, many of them coming up with original ways to scream in e-mail, so when I get some time I'll try and finish the thing I was writing about them.
There. Now I have to go downstairs to be interviewed again (this is the fourth interview today. Or the fifth. I've lost count).
On the subject of ebooks:
I recently purchased the ebook version of Smoke and Mirrors and I'm enjoying it very much. But there is something that strikes me as a bit odd when I was shopping for your books in ebook form: the pricing is all screwy. (see http://tinyurl.com/al95 for the current pricing).
I buy digital versions of books I own so that when I travel on the train I won't have to schlep around the heavy print edition. Convenience mainly.
So, $5 - $6 for an ebook version sounds ok to me.
Yet Coraline costs $11 while American Gods costs only $7. What? You can fit 6 Coralines between the covers of American Gods, yet I'm supposed to pay *more* money for it?
I realize this stuff is not in your hands, but you have to admit, that's not exactly a proper pricing scheme is it?
On a brighter note, I'm looking forward to your appearance here in New York in September. It's a shame you can't sign ebooks. :) (though as my luck would have it, I'll be turned away again, and take home the pre-signed copy. . . . . which will force me to make another comic about it, so others can share my pain).
-Aaron
Actually, for once I understand the rationale on the pricing. E-books are priced a little under the price of the physical book. Coraline's only out in a $15 hardback right now, so it's an $11 e-book. In August it'll come out in paperback, so it'll be repriced as much cheaper e-book. It does make sense, of a sort.
...
Really sleepy, so you won't get the story of my day in Lisbon, although it was really interesting, nor my thoughts on the connection between Michael Moorcock's city of peace, Tanelorn, and the architects-of-air LEVITY installation, nor even a description of the meals eaten today.
This website is maintained by Authors on the Web, and I notice they've cut and pasted the RSS page they did for this blog for the RSS page they've now done for William Gibson's webpages, which they also maintain. Unfortunately they cut and pasted a bit too efficiently as they left in the code for the aggregator for this blog in the instructions for Bill Gibson's. So if you're hoping for Bill right now and you're reading me, all I can do is apologise. You can tell us apart pretty easily, what with him being a tall thin Texan living in Canada, and me being a nowhere near as tall or even remotely as thin Englishman living in the US, currently in Portugal. (This has been a public service announcement.)
Neil,
Not sure if you know about this, but Apple is announcing (finally) their
download-based music service. Jobs said that they're not just having music,
but spoken-word stuff as well.
Given that the artists are being paid for this, and that they've got some
sort of Digital Rights Management built in, do you think that the unabridged
reading of American Gods might be released this way?
Hope you're having fun in Europa,
-Bill
You know, that's a really good idea. I've passed it on to the powers that be at Harper Collins. I love the idea of being able to download the American Gods Audio for the iPod -- spoken word audio is great on the iPod, and it doesn't need to take up a lot of room. Listened to several old Jack Benny shows (well, they can't exactly make any new ones, and these were 1947, which is on the late side for Benny) on the iPod on the way from Amsterdam to Lisbon. (I keep meaning to write something for this journal on why I like Jack Benny radio shows, but the things that people are screaming for come first, and it keeps getting put off.)
I was very excited to hear you were coming the to New York is Book Country thing (where, last year, I met Bret Easton Ellis). OK, so here's the problem, I just looked up the schedule and I found out the event is taking place on Saturday. Pain of Pain, agony of agonies! I am an Orthodox Jew, and therefore (as I think you know) cannot attend any event on the sabbath, now i'm not sure how many of your fans have this problem, but i can think of at least 3 others (my Girlfriend and two big friends, all Neil-Converts of mine) so i must ask (finally he gets to the point!) is there any other event you will be doing in NY that will not interfere with my religous observance and if the answer is no (here comes the impossible) is there a chance that the 4 of us could arrange a special meeting (maybe that Sat. night) with your esteemed Writenerness?
much thanks, tinged with sadness,
Menachem Luchins
Well, the good news is that I'm talking with Harper Collins about doing a signing for The Wolves in the Walls, possibly an event for Little Lit 3 as well (here's the website for Little Lit 2), in August of this year, so "NEW YORK IS BOOK COUNTRY" won't be my only New York event this year (details at http://www.nyisbookcountry.com/content/gaiman.asp -- which seems to be the first place where you can see the front cover of SANDMAN:ENDLESS NIGHTS, very small).
(Incidentally, tickets to the NYIBC event are $20 each, and are already on sale at their website, so if you want to be there you should probably order your ticket early.) (And I note with amusement that tickets to see me are $10 cheaper than tickets to see "To Be Determined" who will be speaking at 1:30. It's always humbling when an anonymous person who hasn't even been picked yet is more expensive to see than you are.)
The bad news for Menachem is we've been toying with having the Wolves signing on a Saturday, because the last New York Signing was a complete Barnes and Noble shambles and they sent about 400 very upset people away when they closed, and Saturday seemed like a really good day to do everyone so no-one has to be sent away. And everyone will be happy. (Except, of course, shabbes-observing Jews, who won't be there.) I'll talk to the Harper Collins people and see what we come up with. You almost definitely won't get a special meeting with just the four of you, because when I get to New York my time is spoken for by the minute, and even my friends get rumpled and grumpy because I didn't manage to spend any time with them either, but I'll look into the possibility of doing a Saturday-after-sunset event of some kind (or an event on another day entirely). You may be disappointed, you may not, but I can assure you that we'll certainly explore all alternatives before committing ourselves. (Argh. I've started sounding like a politician and talking about myself in the plural. The end is nigh.)
Here's the info on public events in Portugal:
Signings will be at the BD Forum, on May 1, 2 and 3, at 17h30 every day. "Coraline" will be very much in evidence, as will "The Last
Temptation" (with Michael Zulli's drawings), these being the two books
released at this show by Presen�a and Devir, respectively. On Saturday, May
3, there will be a conference tentatively scheduled for 15h00 (subject to
confirmation on site), on the subject of writing for comics.
The official website for the comics event is at www.bdforumlisboa.com, for
more info.
I guess you'll be giving a fair amount of interviews on your tour through Europe, so this might be a good time to ask this. What's your favorite kind of interview and why? You've been on both sides of the table countless times; what can interviewers do to get a good interview out of you (or anyone)?
The worst interviews are ones where people come with lists of questions, and it doesn't matter what your answer was to question 1, they will then ask question 2. (There's nothing wrong with having a list of questions, for when you go blank or hit a brick wall. But they should be an aid, not the interview.) The best interviews are the ones where both of you forget that anyone's being interviewed, and you're just having a really interesting conversation with someone you didn't know half an hour ago.
It's best to tape interviews. It's not cheating. (It's very weird reading interviews done from notes or shorthand: it's like reading a reconstituted interview -- it may be what you said, but it's never how you said it).
HI Neil! I just talked to the Coraline publishers here in Spain, and they informed me they've made an agreement with Norma (who publish your comics) for a signing for May 6th at 6 p.m. in the Norma store:
Norma Comics Barcelona
Passeig de Sant Joan, 7 y 9
08010 Barcelona
Telephone: 93 244 84 23
Fax: 93 265 23 10
The people at the store said however that it's not 100% confirmed, though.
Thought people would like to know.
And from Denmark, I got an e-mail to let me know I'll be doing a signing at Fantask in Copenhagen -- details at http://www.fantask.dk/article.asp?id=377 -- as far as I can tell it's 3-5 pm on the 13th of May. Thanks to Henrik for lobbying to make it happen.
Dear Neil,
Speaking of "Instructions," and since you were with Brian Froud recently, I was wondering if you (or he) ever figured out what has happened to the illustrated poster he did for the poem? Will it ever be available to your readers?
Safe travels,
Robert
I asked Brian and Wendy about it, and they believe it'll be coming out to coincide with San Diego Comic-con this year, as we're all three of us guests there, and that Brian and I will be signing some for charity -- maybe doing a CBLDF signed edition before the commercially available one comes out. They think.
...
I'm in Portugal, in Lisbon.
I've just discovered that I can get onto the web, through Compuserve, with my computer, which means I have hundreds of unread e-mails, and that people who badly and urgently need things from me can now wail wanly at me for them.
Hi Neil,
Strangely, you didn't mention that you were asked to sing the rat
song from 'Coraline' at the Fantasy Fair Q&A session today. Possibly
because, and I quote, "This is the weirdest thing I've ever been
asked". But you did a great job - properly clammy voice and everything.
Thanks for coming back to the Netherlands!
Katrien Rutten
You're welcome. I very cleverly didn't mention it, because if I mention it then every reading I do across Europe someone will ask me to sing the whole Coraline rat song, and probably be disappointed when I refuse. But yes, I was asked to sing the rat song, and I did. If Henry Selick actually makes the Coraline movie I think me and Stephin Merritt and Daniel Handler should do the rat songs. We could be the creepiest rats in the world.
So... next stop Portugal. If there's a hiatus in these reports, it means I'm having trouble getting online and the hotel computer is nookless.
Today at Elf Festival there were lots more people in leather jackets and fewer maidens with flowing gowns and pointy ears, but it was still fun -- actually I enjoyed it more than yesterday: at one reading I did " Instructions" and " Boys and Girls Together", my two fairytale poems, because I could find them from the web and print them out on the hotel nook computer, and now, looking at the Endicott coffee house, where I got them, I realise I could have read "Locks" as well... When I got to the end of "Instructions" the wind came up and howled and rattled the tent, and it felt quite marvellous. Managed to do two day's worth of question and answer sessions, and never repeat myself once.
"If teenage girls put on elf ears," I said today, back in the VIP room, pondering the unfairness of it all, "no matter how gawky they think of themselves in real life, they become beautiful. Whereas if I put on elf ears, I would look like a dissipated Vulcan."
And everyone looked at me and mentally sized me up for elf ears, and agreed.
Need to buy a belt tomorrow in the airport. The good thing about the meningitis was it meant that over February and March I lost about 15 pounds. But now none of my trousers fit around the waist, and I spent this weekend hitching them up, and hitching them up, and hitching them up, like a six-year old.
Lots of people wanted things signed but the lines were too long to do everyone in the half-hour segments they gave me. If you were one of the unlucky ones, I'll be in Brussels on the 20th of May, signing at Le Tropisme.
So the Elf Festival is in a castle in Holland, somewhere near Utrecht. It's a terrific castle, which looks like it was designed by Mad King Ludwig's younger brother Relatively Sane Prince Beppo. It's a 19th century fantasia built on the site of, and incorporating, the ruins of an old castle. In the grounds are tents, and in the tents are people, many of whom are wearing cool clothes and elf ears, and artists and authors. I suspect in the sun it would be gorgeous, but it was grey, and it rained, and people's boots churned the ground to mud. On arrival, I did a couple of interviews, and took advantage of a little downtime to pull out my computer and finish the introduction for Alan Moore's Voice of the Fire.
Then there was an interview over lunch. Lunch consisted of chocolate and cheese. The two most common foodstuffs in Holland seem to be chocolate and cheese. I bet if they have those illustrated posters of food pyramids in Dutch schools, half of the pyramid is probably chocolate, and the rest is almost certainly cheese.
I did two half hour readings-and-answering-questions (hoping I could be heard, over the sound of the drums from the drum and dance tent over the way, and the patter of the rain on the tent), and after each talk I did a half hour signing, which was not long enough for all the people there, but I did the best I could not to disappoint too many people, and then in the late afternoon I went to a bookshop in Utrecht and signed some more.
Then I went back to the castle, found Brian and Wendy Froud and we went into Amsterdam to dinner to talk about the film. Ate a lot (it was a lovely dinner and actually there was no chocolate or cheese involved at any point, except for the huge cheese display in the glass case as you walked into the restaurant). We talked a lot. I told them many of the ideas I was most nervous about and they liked them, which was a relief, as Brian will have to make them into reality one day.
Tomorrow is another round of signings and readings and questions. Today, I read bits from CORALINE. Tomorrow I may read something else. Or not. We'll see. Goodnight.
Yesterday was all interviews with journalists, followed by the signing in Rotterdam for a couple of hundred very nice people. After the signing the store gave me a present -- a bottle of green ink, an inkwell, and a glass-nibbed pen. Today the sun has stopped shining -- it looks grey and chilly out -- and I am off to the Elf Festival for most of the day, with a signing in Utrecht this afternoon. Am still standing, walking, smiling and signing. Actually, it being early morning, I'm still blinking sleepily and looking slightly rumpled. But you know what I mean.
The less said about the two 1997 stealth signings in the
Netherlands, the better, you said.
Aw. I suppose, if it makes for a happier memory, you could think of it
as a very exclusive signing session, not unlike the famous
Prince afterparty in het Paard in The Hague, which more people now claim to
have attended than could ever fit into the tiny venue.
"Neil Gaiman in the Hague in '97? I was there, dude!" Like that.
Here's my version:
You did a signing at the Haagse Strip Shop (comics store in the Hague),
which, as far as I can tell, was advertised by a teeny poster in the
shop window and nowhere else. I remember walking past that poster on the
way to work and doing a truly classic doubletake.
When I showed up for the signing there were three people in the shop.
Well, four, including me: the owner of the shop, me, another fan, and
you, looking somewhat forlorn behind a little table. The other fan had
her picture taken with you and I chatted with you for about half an hour,
about stuff we'd both read (you hadn't been able to get your hands on
The Mirror of Kong Ho either, but of course by now it's online) and
comics that you had a cameo part in (I can't remember which comic it was
that featured a sort of super-spy Gaiman, dressed in trademark black,
looking around for a disguise and deciding on another outfit that just
happened to be completely black as well...). And a great time was had by,
well, me.
But, you know, this time the line will probably go on forever, and
that's great, because I want your publishers to send you on more tours like
this, for one thing, and because you're a damn good author and deserve
proper recognition, for another.
See you on Sunday,
Katrien Rutten, The Netherlands
All very true -- and I didn't know that Kung Ho was out on the web. The comic in question is Eddie Campbell's Bacchus. Eddie said it was inspired by me arriving in Brisbane, showering and changing clothes into clothes exactly the same as the ones I'd changed out of...
Dear Mr Gaiman,
A genuine question! I have the Green Man collection (edited by Terri
Windling and Ellen Datlow) with your poem, Going Wodwo, in it. I was
wondering if that poem was free verse or some specific form... Also,
whether or not it's a specific form, do you happen to know a good site or
book with reference to more obscure poetry forms? Thanks!
~Ella
I'm not sure you could call it free verse, as it has a very tight rhythmic and line structure, but it's not a classical verse form either.
The best book I've ever read on poetic forms is very small and odd and filled with examples and has been out of print for about 120 years, and is about 4000 miles away, so I can't even check the title for you. A quick search on google for poetry sestina villanelle gave a lot of online poetry sites (including a number of college courses online) -- this one looked pretty solid, as a good place to start.
Slept on the plane, which on the one hand was a very good thing, as I needed it, and I wasn't trashed on landing, and on the other hand was a very bad thing as I didn't get any writing done.
Met at airport by Kristal, the publicist from Luitingh, my publishers. Then I bought a cell phone that I can, at least in theory, use across Europe, and I bought shampoo, ditto, then back to the hotel where I did a couple of interviews, very different from each other. Interviews are really fun in the early stages of a tour, as you get to find out what you think about things when you're asked. They only get odd toward the end of the tour, when you find people asking you the same questions and you just give them the same answers. (I sort of hope that moving from country to country will ensure a variety of questions.)
I'm typing this in the hotel's "internet nook" (I'm not only in the same hotel I was in in 1997, but in the same room, which can cause some peculiar moments of temporal drift).
I managed to get the hotel computer to spit out a few of the FAQ questions, but most of the ones I meant to get to are on my notebook computer.
Inquiring minds want to know: what colour combination of Mini did you
order? (I thought the gunmetal grey with a white roof was pretty
snazzy.)
Black. (I was a bit put out when they asked which black I wanted. The whole point of picking black is no-one needs to ask you which black you want. But I picked the metallic black. With a black roof.)
Several people have asked for more info on the Lisbon signing, and I'm trying to find it out.
And tomorrow night is the Rotterdam signing, followed by the Saturday and Sunday at Elf Festival. I'm not really sure how to do a half-hour talk -- it's a bit short for a reading, so I may just do Question and Answers. (The two half-hour talks and two half hour signings replace the hour long talk and hour long signing of previous years. I'm willing to bet that it'll be an hour each a day again next year...) And a signing on Saturday late afternoon as well. Details at the WHERE'S NEIL area of the site.
Really looking forward to meeting as many people as possible at the various signings and suchlike. (The less said about the two 1997 stealth signings in the Netherlands, the better.)
And as a final note, GMZoe has made an astoundingly impressive index to the many unlikely subjects covered in the two years of this weblog...
You get things in his index like:
Muppets
-Gonzo: 11/29/02
-See also Jerry Juhl
"Murder Mysteries"
-Audio: 11/22/01, 11/27/01, 1/31/02
-Brief: 6/11/01
-Comic: 1/31/02, 5/07/02
-Movie: 5/11/01, 11/30/01
-Paradise Falls: 10/24/02
-Reviews: 7/25/02, 7/30/02
Music License: 2/04/03
Music:
-See Indivdual Artists, including: Abba, Tori Amos, Apples In Stereo, Black Box Recorder, Blur, Boiled In Lead, Lorraine Bowen, David Bowie, Kate Bush, Cats Laughing, Elvis Costello, Flash Girls, Future Bible Heroes, Thea Gilmore, Richard Goldman, Gothic Archies, Gourds, Hamell On Trial, I Am Kloot, Neil Innes, Kilburn And The High Roads, Lampchop, Langley Schools Project, Tom Lehrer, Maddy And Me, Magnetic Fields, Nina Nordenstam, One Ring Zero, Pachelbel, Pink Floyd, Pixies, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Rhino Records, Nino Rota, St. Saens, Sixths, Patti Smith, Stephen Sondheim, Carl Stalling Project, Steeleye Span, Al Stewart, Nigel Stonier, Elaine Stritch, Strokes, They Might Be Giants, Those Darn Accordians, Uncut, Suzanne Vega, Velvet Underground, Jim White
It's at http://members.aol.com/ngaimanvb/neil/index.html and is a very strange document in its own right.
Goodnight. (Now I go up to my hotel room, phone home and then write.)
And there, it turns out the official sockmonkeybook site has just gone live at sock monkeys (200 out of 1,863) so before leaving for the airport I thought I'd mention that. The complete set of Sock Monkeys laid out like that is quite impressive.
I also realised that the WHERE'S NEIL section info on the tour isn't terribly helpful -- no addresses, contact numbers, times for signings etc., so I've asked my agents to try and get me a full list which I'll post as it comes in. And perhaps I'll see you in Holland, Portugal, Spain, Poland, Denmark, Italy or France.
So yesterday I did all the things I'd put off until I could get in to Minneapolis, including get my hair cut, test-drive and order a Mini, and go into DreamHaven books on Lake Street to sign some books for them (including the Arne Svenson book of photos of Sock Monkeys for which I wrote a sort of poem) to put up on the Neilgaiman.net website they do.
I also handed over the Nebula -- The Lynlake DreamHaven has a showcase containing all the awards American Gods has won, mostly because I had always wondered what a Hugo looked like, what a Nebula looked like, and suspected that if I'd wondered then other people had too, and they'd probably give more people more pleasure being seen than they would on my mantel.
Took Maddy with and we did it all together, as I'll now not see her for a month. Sigh. Woke up this morning bright and early in the spring sunshine, followed immediately by a pang of despair at actually getting everything I have to get done before I leave for Europe done today, and a moment of missing everyone without actually having left yet. I fly out at 8.00 tonight, and will be gone for a month.
So, I'm home again. It is a lot like the home I left, except that Lovesacs have sprouted like some particularly bizarre variety of giant puffball in several rooms. (Which reminds me: here is a whole page of Fun Things You Can Do With Giant Puffballs. Oh, those wacky mycologists. Not to mention zany. This autumn I will fail, as I fail every year, to persuade anyone else to eat giant puffballs, but perhaps I can show the family this web page, and we can Make Snowmen out of them.)
Yesterday I pottered around the place a bit, looked at all the fruit trees and garden things, went out to the cabin to write and came home an hour early, accidentally, because the clock on the computer was still on Eastern Time.
Updated the iPod firmware and put 400 Jack Benny shows onto it, along with everything else that was on there already, which should get me across Europe safely.
Trying to get all the writing I owe people finished before I get off the plane in Holland on Thursday (although today I also need to head to Hair Police to get a haircut, for my hair looks like that of a sheep dog and I can no longer see through the fringe, and do several other things, including, if I can, sign the 1100 signature sheets for a novella in the UK I've agreed to write an introduction to, which were waiting for me here). (Still wondering how "sign a few signature pages" became 1100 of the things, really don't have the time to do it, and have decided that once the current crop of introductions are done, then I'm not going to do any more for a very long time.)
And today's song is Thea Gilmore's "When Did You Get So Safe?" (You can hear a clip of it on her website.)
Not just a fine song, but a sensible thing for artists to ask themselves, on a regular basis...
...
Not a question, just a comment on a nice synchronicity you provided me today:
At dinner recently, I've been reading a few pages each day of "The Encyclopedia of Fantasy," by John Clute and John Grant. Last night, I left off two-thirds of the way through the page that begins with EMBLETON, RON(ALD SYDNEY).
This evening, just before dinner, I was catching up with your journal, which I hadn't looked at since Friday. Over the weekend, you had responded to a note that linked the Honda ad, Caractacus Potts's breakfast-making machine in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and the children's game Mouse Trap, to Rube Goldberg, by responding that the English had their equivalent of Goldberg in William Heath Robinson, of whom I'd never before heard.
A short while later, at the dinner table, I started in on the next unread entry in the Encyclopedia-EMMET, ROWLAND-another unknown to me. Here are the first two paragraphs:
"UK artist and inventor. A fine cartoonist, he was also a draughtsman and engineer. He became known for his succession of large, incredibly intricate "Gothic-Kinetic" inventions. Unlike William Heath ROBINSON, who merely drew his eccentric contraptions, RE regularly created three-dimensional working models.
"The amazing success of his Far Tottering and Oyster Creek Railway at the Festival of Britain in 1951 led to many more commissions, including permanent constructions like "The Rhythmical Time Fountain" at Nottingham, UK, and models built for CHITTY CHITTY BANG BANG (1968)..."
How useful! Thanks...
I wish I liked the Encyclopedia of Fantasy more, but I really don't. (I love the Clute-Nichols Encyclopedia of SF). And I don't despite having written the R.A. Lafferty and the Diana Wynne Jones entries, and even though my birth and death dates in it are given as 1960-FRANKENSTEIN MOVIES which is rather cool actually. But I feel like there's a wonderful book mostly by John Clute on the Theory of Fantasy in there, in a sort of do-it-yourself hypertext, as you go from articles with names like THINNING and WAINSCOTS, but that that book should have been published first and separately, and the factual entries could have been better. It's the kind of book that made me hope, while reading it, for the next edition, but I fear that the economics of publishing and the scale of putting something like that together make a real next edition almost impossible.
A google finds us a lovely page about Rowland Emmett (two Ts -- the credits for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang were a typo) (1906-1990): British author/artist/engineer of "Gothic-Kinetic" sculptures which actually operated, as opposed to William Heath Robinson (UK) and Rube Goldberg (USA) who only drew such imaginative inventions; also various children's books.
I particularly loved the two Emmett quotes:
'It is a well known fact that all inventors get their first ideas on the back of an envelope. I take slight exception to this, I use the front so that I can include the stamp and then the design is already half done.' -- Rowland Emett
"The first principle in science is to invent something nice to look at and then decide what it can do." -- Rowland Emett
and also
Hi Neil,
All this talk about Rube Goldberg and Heath Robinson, and that excellent Honda ad, makes me think of some perhaps less widely publicized things that people who like physical contraptions might enjoy -
Arthur Ganson's sculptures are better seen in person than in video (he's got a permanent exhibit at the MIT museum in Cambridge, MA, and I highly recommend it) but you can find video on his website at www.arthurganson.com. I was completely enthralled when I first saw it, and I still am.
I wish I could see the originals -- kinetic sculptures that seem closer to Dave McKean's photographs of impossible things....
Just before stumbling to bed after a 17 hour drive home (with Holly, who decided not to get off at the airport and fly home, and just ride along and be company, as my co-driver) I checked my e-mail and got the news about the BSFA awards Coraline won for best short fiction -- and was thrilled. Locus Online: News Log, April 2003, p6 is the news, Chris Bell accepted the award on my behalf and tells me it's beautiful. So that was a fine Easter.
House is still standing, despite mysterious basement flooding due to pump failure. Cats are nocturnal and thus happy to see me. Will post when awake soon, I promise.
I scribbled down some notes toward a speech, and then missed all the thank yous out accidentally, but I did not say "Fuck I got a Nebula". I made a proper speech. I was given the Nebula award for best novel by the Science Fiction Writers of America and I made a proper speech, and Mike and Holly were there, and life is good.
(Holly just read that over my shoulder. "You did actually say 'Fuck I got a Nebula' you know," she said.)
I just checked Locus Online -- there's a report, a photograph of the Nebula winners, all that. You can even see my more-or-less-not-much-of-a-tan.
Out of here and back on the road at the crack of a bit after dawn tomorrow, and I see that Jonathan Carroll has helpfully sent me a link to Roadfood.com...
Tonight we ate at Morimoto's. Not quite Roadfood...
...
i am writing an essay on the influence of the fairy tale in your work, with specific reference to Snow Glass Apples an wondered if you would be kind enough to give me a quote on the influence of the fairy tale on your work, Please.
You should be able to find lots of quotes by me if you search for "snow glass apples" on this site (and failing that, just do a google search for "Snow glass apples" gaiman interview and read whatever you find...) Best of luck.
The newspaper article you linked to about the new Honda ad had a significant oversight that I'm surprised you didn't mention. They say: "The idea for the advert derived partly from the old children's game Mouse Trap, and from the wacky engineering of Caractacus Potts's breakfast-making machine in the Sixties film Chitty Chitty Bang Bang." But both of those were clearly derived from the marvelous early-20th-century cartoons of Rube Goldberg. Examples of these may be seen at: http://www.rube-goldberg.com/html/gallery.htm
Up to a point, yes, and in America, yes. But... what the Americans describe as a "Rube Goldberg device" the English would refer to as a "Heath Robinson" device. And, being English, I think I can say that the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang breakfast machine was just as clearly ripping off William Heath Robinson, specifically some of Heath Robinson's illustrations for The Incredible Adventures of Professor Branestawm (his pancake-making machine is a wonder).
Luckily there's a Heath Robinson site on the Internet as well -- W Heath Robinson's Art, although I can't see the pancake-making machine illustration there. Still, there are lots of Heath Robinson illustrations I wasn't familiar with, including this one: http://www.btinternet.com/~a.ghinn/sensible.htm, which doesn't have an invention in it, but is a wonderful example of a perfect collaboration between a writer and an artist...
Charles Fort would have liked the Rube-Goldberg-Heath-Robinson phenomenon. In steam engine time the world brings forth steam engines, while in odd inventor cartoonist time the world brings forth odd inventor cartoonists.
...
Drove all day. Had lunch at "Pedro's SOUTH OF THE BORDER", one of those strange American places that are like nothing else on Earth... it's situated South of the Border between North Carolina and South Carolina. So of course it's a giant Mexican-themed tacky-strange place, straight out of American Gods. Here's the Roadside America commentary: http://www.roadsideamerica.com/attract/SCDILsob.html
(There is a lifesize Rube Goldberg machine at the House on the Rock, by the way, talking of American Gods and strange places of America.)
Am now in tonight's Hotel, and am currently down one daughter, because they broke the door on the plane she was on when they closed it, so she's not here, and my son will get her when she lands and bring her back here, while I sleep.
... and lots and lots of you wrote to tell me how to use the Adobe Acrobat Text select tool. (Thanks to all of you. Now I know.) But by now it's probably easier just to give the Locus link to the full Hugo nominee list here: http://www.locusmag.com/2003/News/News04Log4.html.
Meanwhile, over at the The Dreaming -- http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/ Lucy Anne posts that the official RSS feed for Livejournal people (most of whom have already signed up for one or two rss feeds that don't work) is http://www.livejournal.com/users/officialgaiman/. It does seem to be working. Tell any Livejournal people who are wondering why I haven't posted anything in a while that that's the one to sign up to....
and so to bed.
I am in a motel Somewhere in South Carolina (I'm not trying to be obscure -- when I started getting sleepy I took the next exit and the first motel, and have no idea where it is, other than somewhere along 95), and will spend all tomorrow driving North, to rendezvous with the kids by evening.
Anyway, I'm just posting to say that Coraline has been nominated for a Hugo Award (I'd post all the nominees and things but the announcement was sent to me as a PDF file, and I can't simply cut and paste from it, and the information doesn't seem to be up at Locus Online yet, although it probably will be by the time you read this.) Coraline is nominated for best Novella (which it is, by wordcount, under Hugo rules -- it's a bit over 30,000 words long.)
And, while driving, and listening first to a reading of The Jungle Book, then to some Jorge Luis Borges Lectures, and then to several episodes of Round the Horne, I found the plot for the short-short story about audiobooks I promised I'd write for http://www.audiobookstoday.com/. (And I just noticed, checking to see if I'd got the URL right, that they've recently posted a very long and chatty interview with me there.)
There.
Sleep now. Sleep good.
Just FYI: it seems that people are confusing Neil's attendance at the Book Expo in LA in May with the LA Times Book Fair in April. They are two separate functions, and from what I can tell Neil will only be appearing at the May Book Expo, as he won't even be in the States that weekend. But the Book Fair next week is still worth attending, even without Neil.
--Rachel
: )
You're right -- I should have picked that up.
The one I'm at is Book Expo America: http://www.bookexpoamerica.com/
The one I'm NOT at, because I'll be in portugal or somewhere, is http://www.latimes.com/extras/festivalofbooks/. There.
Thanks to you, Julia, Blogger, & anyone else for the permalinks!
For months my wife and I have been sending back and forth cut-&-pasted gems from the journal, but today I cd simply send a link for the first time. What a marvelous world.
Emilio
You know, most of the time, this journal is, in my head, mostly my way of a) getting my fingers working before I settle down to write, b) spreading interesting things I find or people send me and c) letting my friends know I'm still alive. And then I get a message like that and suddenly feel like I'm performing a valuable social function. Not one I could actually explain, mind you.
There are a few links I wanted to put down here before I hit the road....
Firstly, there's the CORALINE website at Mousecircus.com. I heard from the Coraline webmistress that the hits dropped precipitously as soon as we took the link off the front page of neilgaiman.com, in addition to which there are tens of thousands of you out there who probably weren't reading this when Coraline was launched and don't know that there's a strange site with haunting Stephin Merritt music and odd games, and scuttling things that you can click on. It also has disturbing screensavers, scary rat songs, FAQ answers and so forth. Mousecircus.com is all flash animation, so it may take a little time to load for those of you on slow connections.
If anyone has not seen this:
Hi Neil,
This has little to do with writing. Just a neat thing on the web. It made me suddenly very proud of my little Honda:
http://home.attbi.com/~bernhard36/honda-ad.html
or read the Daily Telegraph article on it: http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F04%2F13%2Fnhonda13.xml (The short version: it's not a trick, not computer enhanced. They just shot it 650 times until it worked.)
then they probably ought to. Despite the lack of the airbag. Genuinely cool.
And finally, http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,937951,00.html is a really interesting article about how the mobile phone is replacing the computer in Japan.
(I don't think we're far away from the point where pretty much anything electronic you hold in your hand will be a phone, whether it's a stun-gun, a video/still camera, an MP3 player, PDA, a file storage device or a TV remote. Someone recently sent me a link to a site which allows your iPod and your phone to come in on the same set of earphones, which turn off the iPod when the phone rings, and I found myself wondering how long an iPod won't be a phone, or a phone won't be an iPod. It seems like a point of almost inevitable convergence.)
...
Neil,
I know you mentioned today that you would be appearing at the Los Angeles Book Festival, but I can't seem to find anything written (or speak to anyone living or dead) who can confirm your attendance at the event (it on Saturday and Sunday, 26-27 April). When exactly will you be appearing and at which booth will you be reading "Wolves in the Walls?"
Cheers,
Jason Lacob
Lions Gate Television
Los Angeles, CA
Well, I won't be reading at a booth. I believe I'll get a room, and a stage, and a screen for slides. I don't know, but I can make a quick phone call and find out...
Right. Peggy Burns at DC Comics says that on Saturday afternoon, May 31st, at 4:30-5:15 pm I do the "author spotlight" in room 406A at the LA Convention Centre. She says I'll be doing a Harper Collins signing on that same Saturday 1-2pm, table 31. Other than that, I think it's lots and lots of book related events, for most of which I need to be in at least two places at the same time. (I'm at the expo as a guest of both DC Comics and Harper Collins, and in addition I'm nominated for several awards which are being given at the Expo, by different organisations, normally at the same times. I'll have my agent, the v. wonderful Merrilee Heifetz with me as a sort of combination chaperone, organiser, minder and negotiator, in order to move me from where I'm meant to be to where I'm meant to be after that, or even at the same time as that.)
There's a marvellous photo and explanation here of the phenomenon of Solar Tadpoles, which is something I'd sort of missed until now. Scientists, we are told, now believe the tadpoles are superheated magnetic voids in the plasma. I, on the other hand, believe that they are the infallible early warning system of an upcoming plague of Solar Frogs. This is why scientists are scientists, and why my daughters look suspiciously at me whenever I try to explain the universe to them.
We now have an official RSS feed -- all information available here: http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/rss.asp. And if we don't have permalinks right now, we'll have them any moment.
Thanks to Sunil at authorsontheweb, and to the nice people at Blogger for helping drag this blog kicking and screaming into 2003 and to Julia Bannon, webmistress supreme.
Round two of the road trip starts tomorrow morning, as I pack everything and drive North. Expect posting to get a little spotty...
Charles Vess got his Locus article from me on what it's like working with artists.
Dear Neil
Will you be doing a signing at the Los Angeles Book fair or in the surrounding area?
Monica
I'm sure I will, yes. Your best bet is to keep an eye on the Book Expo website, or to e-mail the organisers and find out when I'm scheduled to be where. Seeing that DC Comics and Harper Collins are both bringing me in, I'm sure I'll have to do a signing for each of them.
I'll be doing a 40 minute talk, which should be fun -- one thing I want to do is read WOLVES IN THE WALLS with Dave McKean's images as slides behind me...
...
And I can unofficially announce here that CRAZY HAIR will be coming out from Harper Childrens, and that Dave McKean will be painting it. With luck, in 2004....
Dear Mr Gaiman
I just get the program from the french festival Etonnants Voyageurs, which will be in St Malo (not very far from Broceliande) from 7 to 9 in june, and apparently your presence is annonced.
Just one question : are you really coming ?
(hope yes hope yes)
Christophe Duchet
No, I'm afraid not. I'm leaving France on the 23rd of May -- I have to go to the Los Angeles Book Expo America at the end of May, and on the dates you list I'm in Chicago, doing something for the Humanities Festival. Not sure how the Etonnants Voyageurs would have me announced as coming, but it's definitely an error.
Hi Neil--
I'm lucky enough to work in the book industry, and lucky enough to live in the Philadelphia area where the Nebula awards are being held this weekend, in a year you happen to be nominated. I am also lucky enough to have a great Harper rep who was able to get me tickets to the awards banquet Saturday night. My question is, will you be there? I was not able to attend BEA last year, nor will I be attending this year in LA, which is unfortunate as that Saturday is "Graphic Novel Day" and you are giving a presentation/lecture. Your signings in the Philly area seem few and far between, and the last time I checked with my rep you had yet to make a commitment. I have been a huge fan for about 5 years or so now, it all started when a friend of mine I worked with lent me the Sandman series. Anyway, I hope to meet you one day, if not at the awards (it WOULD be a great excuse to visit the Philly area....)
Thanks for reading, and I hope you respond,
Regina
I hadn't planned to be there, but it now looks like I'm going to be in Philadephia on Saturday anyway, as Holly has decided she wants a final look at Bryn Mawr. Being in the area, I expect I'll be at the Nebulas, partly because my agent has pointed out very firmly that if I'm at the Nebulas then she won't have to wear a posh frock just in case she has to accept an award on my behalf, and partly because Harry Harrison is going to be there, and I've not seen Harry for over a decade, and mostly because I've never had a novel nominated for a Nebula before, and probably never will again, so win or lose it'll be good to be there and hear its name called out.
Fascinating Guardian article on the way that school history textbooks are being rewritten, to embrace the concept of European Union. Now kids are getting a revisionist history with a kinder, gentler past in it, one that the people who were living there probably wouldn't have recognised.
Soysal has examined how textbooks for children aged 11 to 14 have taught European history over three decades. She has found some startling changes since the Eighties.
The Vikings have gone from being depicted as pillaging aggressors to skilful, peace-loving traders. In early editions of From Cavemen to Vikings (A and C Black), the Vikings are referred to as 'fierce raiders [who] began to attack our coasts'. But in its 1994 edition, they are described as 'Danes [who] besides being farmers, were much better at trading than Saxons. The Danes and Saxons settled down together and Saxon England became one rich and peaceful kingdom.'
I think it's a lovely way to teach history, missing out all the slaughter and pillage and burning and going straight to the positive warm fuzzy stuff, and I am looking forward to the next round of textbooks.
"People in England and Europe did not get real holidays back then, so the Crusades were started as a way of getting some sunshine and exercise and to help people meet their Islamic counterparts in places like Jerusalem, for multicultural dialogue and a change of air."
"It was forbidden for Christians to lend money for interest, which meant that many Jews became moneylenders. This made them them tremendously popular and respected community members all across Europe."
"In 1588 the Spanish decided to go and visit England, in order to expand England's trading horizons, and a whole Armada of trading vessels set out on a visit. The English were so excited, they lit bonfires and gathered on the South Coast to welcome their Spanish Visitors. They even sent ships out to meet them. Unfortunately, the silly old British weather was against the Spanish, and most of their ships were wrecked and lost before they could land, which left the English very disappointed indeed."
...
Hi Neil,
Perhaps this should be directed to Julia Bannon, but I was wondering if I could suggest a page with an "In the works" list somewhere that basically gives us a checklist of things to be released. I know Wolves in the Walls is coming, as is the Neverwhere US DVD sometime in autumn, and 1602... it's just keeping track of the when's that becomes tricky. Thanks so much for listening!
Aloha, Fran
Good idea.
Currently, it's a safe bet that 95% of everything I've done in the last few years will be out between August and October 2003, making it look as if I'm suddenly all over the place.
This in from Mark Askwith:
Just so I am not just known for elf panties...
Here's a Neilish thing!
http://www.washington.historylink.org/output.cfm?file_id=5136
And it's a marvellous strange account of an epidemic of "pitting" that led many to start speculating about radioactive particles, or even a tiny meteorite storm in the Seattle area in 1954.
Of course, despite any efforts on my part to whitewash his reputation, Mark will forever be known for elfpanties, which reminds me that someone helpfully sent a link to the Reverend Jen's current home on the web, at www.revjen.com. There is nowhere else that you'll read things like "In my essay Teletubbies- A Reason to Live, I list many of the reasons why I have embraced the Teletubby phenomenon wholeheartedly..." or get a simple, at a glance chart to how to tell different brands of Troll apart (although as Jen stresses, it's not the brand of Troll but how much you love them that matters). It's a lovely site -- Zen Kitsch.
Right. Back to essay for the Charles Vess edited Locus Graphic Novels Supplement.
Today's Cool Trivia Moment -- from http://members.aol.com/gulfhigh2/words16.html concerns the origins of Lobster Newburg. Who was Newburg? What was Newburg? Ah, there's the rub...
Lobster Newburg. According to Dictionary of Words and Phrases by William and Mary Morris, the term is named for Ben Wenberg, a West Indies ship captain who came up with this dish by adding the ingredient cayenne to his famous recipe at Delmonico's Hotel. As the story goes, Mr. Wenberg had a falling out with the hotel owner, who, as revenge, reversed the first three letters of a dish which had previously been called Lobster Wenberg; hence, "Lobster Newberg."
A while back you mentioned that you were talking to A&E Home Video was going to release Neverwhere on DVD here in the US. Has there been any progress on that release?
Yup -- it's probably happening in the autumn. I'll be recording the commentary for it fairly soon.
As soon as I heard mention of Blackie The Unfortunate Guinea Pig and his Viking Funeral, I had to know more. Unfortunately, several Google site searches have turned up nothing--of course, given your past statements that Google periodically loses portions of your journal, it could be out there but unfound. Could you please either tell us the story or tell us where the story can be found?
~ Kass Fireborn
I don't think I've ever told that story here. At the end of it, Blackie, and Holly's dead hamster Roly, head off down the flooded river in a flaming cardboard box. Ah well, one day.
Hi Neil!
I look forward to meeting you at the "New York is Book Country" event in September. I caught your last angel tour, but never had the chance to actually talk to you.
I have a general question about meeting fans. If I do get to talk to you, I fear that I will become a blubbering idiot and barely able to speak. (I tried to meet Tori at several shows this spring but didn't get a chance, I know it would be the same with her.) I'm sure that after I walk away I will think of a brilliant (or at least semi-intelligent) question to ask you. But at the critical moment, it will be "um.. i love your work... um..."
What advice can you give us so that while in your presence we can keep our heads on straight? Or do you mind the blubbering when we lose them? I know you have commented at length before about your reactions to various praises from fans, but not quite addressing this issue.
Thank you so much for this journal! It means a lot to us little people.
Kate
I'm not sure it's entirely healthy to start thinking of yourself as one of the little people, Kate. Unless, of course, you actually are one of the little people (possibly one of Martin Millar's Good Fairies of New York -- and here's a three page webcomic about them, if you've not read the book).
Anyway, the main thing to do is not to worry about it too much.
The people who faint or start crying are well in the minority, but I don't mind, and I pick them up from the floor or give them a hug and tend to assume that it all got a little much for them -- which I suspect normally has much more to do with getting to the front of a line they've been standing in for hours, rather than the overwhelmingness of me. (I know me, and can assure you I am very unoverwhelming in person. Am also not scary.) And I'd take a heartfelt "I like your books" over a hundred clever prepared statements. Also, while you may be convinced that you made an idiot of yourself, I'll just remember the nice person with the green hair who couldn't remember how to spell his or her name...
I wrote up a thing on April the 11th 2001, prior to the American Gods tour, at http://www.neilgaiman.com/archive/2001_04_01_archive.asp (oh what I wouldn't give for permalinks) which is advice for people going to signings.
And I was going to put it in as a link, but having noticed a fair number of people recently sending me things I've recently put up links to, and the weirdness of the archives, it may be more sensible just to repost it for everyone's benefit... so:
1) It can be a good idea to call the store first and find out if they have any specific ground rules. Some do, some don�t. Will they be handing out numbers? Will you have to buy a copy of American Gods from them in hardback to get prime place in the line or will it be first come first served? What about books you bought somewhere else? Can you bring your ferret?
2) Get there reasonably early if you can. I�ll always try and make sure that anyone in line during the posted signing times gets stuff signed. At evening signings I�ll always stay and make sure everyone goes away happy, but on this tour there will be several places where I�ll need to go from a signing to another signing, so don�t cut it fine.
3) You may own everything I�ve ever written. I�m very grateful. I�m probably not going to sign it all, so you had better simply pick out your favourite thing and bring that along.
4) As a rule, I tend to tell stores I�ll sign 3 things people bring with them � plus any copies of the new book you buy (if you have six brothers or sisters and buy one each, I�ll sign them all). But stores may have their own policies � and we may wind up changing the rules as we go in order to make sure that everyone gets stuff signed.
5) Eat first. I�m not kidding. If it�s a night-time signing of the kind that can go on for a long time, bring sandwiches or something to nibble (some signings with numbers handed out may make it possible for you to go out and eat and come back. Or you may be first in line. But plan for a worst case scenario of several hours of standing and shuffling your way slowly around a store). (If it�s a daytime signing somewhere that a line may snake out of a store into the hot sun, bring something to drink. I always feel guilty when people pass out.)
6) You may be in that line for a while, so talk to the people around you. You never know, you could make a new friend. I�ve signed books for kids whose parents met in signing lines (although to the best of my knowledge none of them were actually conceived there). And while we�re on the subject, bring something to read while waiting. Or buy something to read � you�ll be in a book shop, after all.
7) Don�t worry. You won�t say anything stupid. It�ll be fine. My heart tends to go out to people who�ve stood in line for hours trying to think of the single brilliant witty erudite thing that they can say when they get to the front of the line, and when it finally happens they put their books in front of me and go blank, or make a complete mess of whatever they were trying to say. If you have anything you want to ask or say, just ask, or say it, and if you get a blank look from me it�s probably because I�m slightly brain dead after signing several thousand things that day.
8) The only people who ever get short shrift from me are the people who turn up with tape recorders who try and tape interviews during signings. I won�t do them � it�s unfair on the other people in the line, and unfair on me (and I was as curt with the guy from the LA Times who tried it as I am to people who decide on the spur of the moment to try and tape something for their college paper). If you want to do an interview, ask the bookstore who you should talk to in order to set it up.
9) Take things out of plastic bags before you reach me. Firstly, it speeds things up. Secondly, I once ripped the back off a $200 comic taking it out of a plastic bag, when the back of the comic caught on the tape. The person who owned it was very sweet about it, but tears glistened in his eyes as I signed, and I could hear him wailing softly as he walked away.
10) Yes, I�ll happily personalize the stuff I sign, to you, or to friends. If it�s a birthday or wedding present, tell me.
11) Remember your name. Know how to spell it, even under pressure, such as being asked.
[If you have a nice simple name, like Bob or Dave or Jennifer, don't be surprised if I ask you how to spell it. I've encountered too many Bhob's, Daev's and even, once, a Jeniffer to take any spelling for granted.]
12) No, I probably won�t do a drawing for you, because there are 300 people behind you, and if I had to draw for everyone we�d be finishing at 4.00am � on the other hand, if you�re prepared to wait patiently until the end, I may do it then, if my hand still works.
13) If it means a lot to you, yes, I�ll sign your lunchbox/skin/guitar/leather jacket/wings � but if it�s something strange you may want to make sure you have a pen that writes on strange surfaces legibly. I'll have lots of pens, but they may not write on feathers.
14) At the start of the tour the answer to �Doesn�t your hand hurt?� Is �No.�
By the end of the tour, it�s probably going to be �Yes.�
15) Yes, you can take my picture, and yes, of course you can be in the photo, that�s the point isn�t it? There�s always someone near the front of the line who will take your photo.
16) I do my best to read all the letters I�m given and not lose all the presents I�m given. Sometimes I�ll read letters on the plane to the next place. But given the sheer volume of letters and gifts, you probably won�t get a reply, unless you do. (On one previous tour I tried to write postcards to everyone who gave me something at the last stop on postcards at the next hotel. Never again.) If you�re after a reply or to have me read something, you�re much better off not giving it to me on a tour. Post it to me care of DreamHaven books in Minneapolis.
(And although things people give me get posted back, on the last tour FedEx lost one box of notes and gifts, and on the tour before that hotel staff lost or stole another box. So smaller things I can put into a suitcase are going to be more popular than four-foot high paintings done on slabs of beechwood.)
17) No, I probably won�t have dinner/a beer/sushi with you after the signing. If it�s a daytime signing I�ll be on my way to the next signing; and if it�s an evening signing I�ll be heading back to my hotel room because I�ll be getting up at six a.m. to fly to the next city. If there actually is any spare time on the tour it�ll�ve been given to journalists, and if there�s any time on top of that old friends will have started e-mailing me two or three months before the tour started to say �You�ll be in the Paphlagonian Barnes and Noble on the 23rd. That�s just a short yak-hop from my yurt. We must get together,� and would have got themselves put on the schedule. (Still, it never hurts to ask.)
18) If you can�t read what I wrote, just ask me. After a couple of hours of signing my handwriting can get pretty weird.
19) If I sign it in silver or gold, give it a minute or so to dry before putting it back in its bag or closing the cover, otherwise you�ll soon have a gold or silver smudge and nothing more.
If I think of anything else, I'll mention it as I go -- or expand this one...
The only thing I'd add, is that if it's me signing at a store, it'll go on till everyone's done; but if I'm doing a signing at a book festival or similar they often allocate a period of time to signing, with a real cut-off when the time's up, so the further up the line you are, the more chance you have of getting something signed.
More information will be posted as it comes in (and I'll copy this entry to WHERE'S NEIL) but what I've managed to find out about the tour so far is as follows, cut and pasted in from various e-mails, (I've removed Interviews, Flights, Dinners, and Hotels):
European Tour 23rd April to 23rd May 2003
Friday, April 25th
7:00pm to 9:00pm Signings and a lecture at bookstore Donner, Rotterdam
Saturday, April 26th
ELF FANTASY
12.30pm-1.00pm Lecture
1:00-1:30 Signing
1:30 to 2:30pm Free time
2:30 to 3:00pm Lecture
3:00 to 3:30pm Signings
3:45pm Departure for Utrecht
4:15 to 5:15pm Signings at bookstore Broese in Utrecht
Sunday, April 27th
We will be at the Fair the whole day
09.00 Departure for Haarzuilens (Elf Fantasy Fair)
12.30-1:00pm . Lecture
1:00-1:30pm Signings
1:30 to 2:30pm Free time
2:30 to 3:00pm Lecture
3:00pm to 3:30pm Signings
FRIDAY 2 MAY
LISBON. PORTUGAL
6.00 - 8.00 p.m. - CORALINE signing session at BD Forum
There may be more than this in Portugal (I've cut out lots of interviews) -- it's not all in yet.
Sunday 4 May -
departure to Barcelona
Monday 5th May
Interviews
Tuesday 6th May
Interviews
(Doesn't look there are any signings organised yet for Spain)
Wednesday 7th May
Fly to Poland
8th May Thursday
All day spent in Warsaw.
5:30-7:00pm - booksigning in EMPIK Gigastore
9th May Friday
A trip to Cracow
5:6:00pm booksigning in EMPIK Megastore-Krak��w
7:00pm to 9:00pma literature evening in "Klub po Jaszczurami"
10th May Saturday
Coming back to Warsaw
11.00am-5:30 a convention (GaimanCon) it will revolve around his books
and graphic novels.
11th May Sunday
Fly to Denmark
Monday 12th May
Interviews
Tuesday 13th May
Interviews
(Again, apparantly no signings set)
Wednesday 14th May
Copenhagen - Venice then to Bologna
Thursday 15th May
h.3 p.m. Santa Lucia (University building)
- Gaiman will be the guest at Bologna University with Prof. Emy Beseghi. Students of three courses (Foreign Languages, Communications and Educational sciences) will attend.
Friday 16th May
h.10 a.m. Sala Borsa Palazzo dei Notai
- Gaiman will meet young adult students who have already read his book at school in the main historical building of Bologna.
In the afternoon a car will bring him to Torino
Saturday 17th May
TORINO FESTIVAL
Sunday 18th May
Torino - Paris
Monday 19th May
Afternoon in Lille
� Signings in Lille : Bookstore � Le Furet du nord �
Tuesday 20 May :
Belgium
� Signings in Brussels : Bookstore � Tropisme �
� Wednesday 21 May
Day in Paris
Bookstore Chantelivre 11 :00
Bookstore Le Chat P�tre Librairie, 3:30pm
Bookstore Fnac Saint-Lazare ,5:00pm
� Thursday 22 May
Colmar
� Signings in FNAC � Colmar
Friday 23rd May
Fly Home!
Hi Neil!
This might be a funny thing to say, but apparently you're wrong about where you'll be on April 26th. a bookstore in Utrecht (in The Netherlands, just to clarify that) called Broese has posted quite a few notices saying that you'll be there from 1600 till 1700 to sign my, er, people's books.
So, either they are full of crapola or you will indeed not be at the Elf Fantasy Fair on the 26th of April, at least not the full day.
Hmmm.... I tried to figure it out from http://www.elffantasy.nl/fairauteurs.html but failed, leaving me with nothing but mysteries -- do I have two half hour readings and two half hour signings each day, and then will I be spirited off to sign my way across the Netherlands? And is my nose really that big?
I'll try and find out.
There. Big long journal entry done, filled with interesting links and what-have-you, and then my finger slipped onto the wrong key and the whole thing vanished.
Last time that happened I never got back to the post that I'd lost, and those questions remain unanswered to this day, so this time I'll do it all again....
this is probably not a faq. however, being a well versed scholar of lore and gods and practices, as well as being a companion to hunting animals, i wonder what your take on this is: tonight i discovered that my cats had brought in a woodpecker - one that i have seen in the last few weeks, and who had begun pecking at my bedroom window in the last few days. it apparently tried to get away, and died behind a small bookshelf. we discovered just now, beautiful, unbroken, and were left with the dilemma of disposal. what is the proper action for a hapless human to take? i thought of preserving it, passing it on to my mother, who teaches high school science to under priveliged, low iq students. they all live in housing projects. how many have seen a woodpecker? my boyfriend shot me down before the proposal was out my mouth. "you are not keeping a festering corpse in the freezer with our food!" at first i argued, feeling that because my domesticated cats killed for sport, the bird's life should be put to some greater purpose. but then i began to think that i had no right to deny the creature rest and decomposition. then the question - do you leave it on the ground, where the cats or other animals might eat it's body, do you put it in the trees, where it's living kin may encounter it? there is no right answer, i know, in this conflicted, separated world we have created to live in. but i wonder, still, what would be most appropriate, what would it want? any thoughts? i don't know how bird's treat their dead (only that they pass judgment over their storytellers).
I once handed a red-tailed hawk with a broken neck over to the local Department of Natural Resources, not to mention kept Blackie The Unfortunate Guinea Pig in the freezer until he could be given a full Viking Funeral, but am not an expert on these matters. Luckily, this journal has managed over the years to accumulate its own corps of experts, and Sharon Stiteler is the official bird lady of neilgaiman.com. (In the journal entry of 3 Dec 2001 you'll find her showing me, Maddy and myassistantlorraine around the Minneapolis Raptor Centre.) So I asked Sharon...
Sorry for the loss of your woodpecker. It's hard to know what is the right
thing to do in that situation and at the same time it's an incredible
experience seeing the details and beauty of a bird up close in your hand.
The best thing overall would be to put the dead bird back out in the wild
somewhere discreet. When you go into some nature centers you will sometimes
read "Take only pictures, leave only footprints". The reason is that
something you take no matter how trivial or small it may seem to you is
something that could be used by a living creature. The woodpecker corpse
could be valuable nourishment to a variety of creatures: raccoons, possums,
crows, even hawks and owls will often eat something that has already been
killed. Also many types of insects will devour the corpse and in turn those
insects can be valuable nourishment to many passing migrating songbirds now.
Birds think in an entirely different way than we do and death is a daily
part of their survival. If another of this woodpeckers species sees it
dead, it will not cause psychological harm, if anything it will serve as a
reminder that if one is to survive day to day in the wild, one must always
be on their guard.
As for giving the woodpecker to your mother who is a teacher, that is a good
idea too, but sometimes it can take awhile to get the proper permits. In
the United States we have the Migratory Species Act which basically says
that a person cannot have any part (living or dead) of a native North
American bird species--not feathers, body parts, eggs, or nests without
permits from the state and federal government. Even if you just find these
items on the ground, legally you are supposed to leave them there unless you
have the permits. Now, U. S. Fish and Wildlife is careful when enforcing
this Act--otherwise they would be hauling in third graders all across the
country, but it is a useful tool for prosecuting poachers. Since it is
illegal to have the woodpecker corpse without the permits it would be
difficult to find someone to mount the woodpecker for display. Museums and
nature centers often have these permits on hand and usually are happy to
take corpses of birds and use them as educational skins.
Some wildlife rehabbers--especially raptor rehabbers love to get intact
corpses because they can be used to help other injured birds through a
process called imping. Most birds molt their feathers (drop old feathers
and grow in new ones) once a year. If a bird is injured immediately after a
molt and loses valuable flight feathers, it has to stay with a rehabber
until the following year to grow in new feathers. Imping is the implanting
of feathers from a bird that has died and implanting them into a live bird.
I hope this helps,
Sharon
(the bird lady)
And because that was such good advice, I put up a link to http://www.wildbirdstore.net/, where you can get lots more bird advice, pictures, stories and video clips from Sharon. Not to mention buy birdfood and things.
And then, because it is the single funniest audiovisual clip featuring one of my friends in the whole world, I should point out that if you go to http://www.wildbirdstore.net/kare11.html and go down to the bottom of the page, THE MOUSE INCIDENT is waiting for you. You'll like The Mouse Incident.
Dear Neil -
You gave a nice plug to the Author Yellow Pages site recently, and I went off all excited to see if it listed any of the author sites I'm associated with, and whether I could add them if not. And discovered that you have to pay for a listing - or at least, we lesser mortals do. So my FAQ is a rather cheeky "did you or your publisher pay to be listed on this site?"
I'm rather assuming not, and feeling a familiar irritation with listings sites which use free data to build up their site, and then try to charge for inclusion (and pretend to be a full directory, when actually their usefulness depends on how many people are prepared to pay...). But maybe I'm getting ahead of myself, here...
Thanks for all the other links, though - there's always something worth following through in your diary!
Jean
Sorry about that -- if I'd clicked around a bit more I'm sure I would have realised it was a pay-to-list site, and wouldn't have put it up. But I was dazzled by their listing this site above Jeffrey Archer's, and I failed to inspect further. No, I didn't pay for neilgaiman.com to be listed, but it's perfectly possible that Harpercollins (who own and run neilgaiman.com) did -- or more likely, got a bulk rate for a bunch of their author websites. Sigh.
Hello,
>From the information on the website of the Elf Fantasy Fair, I gather that Neil will be there both days, 26 and 27 April. Is this correct? I'd really hate to come on the wrong day and miss it...
Greetings,
Wendy Westerduin
It's on my schedule as both days, although I don't know what I'm doing when.
A lot of people wanting to know about the San Diego Comic-Con. Yes, I'll definitely be there. No, I don't have a program of events, but I can assure you all that if it's like any previous Comic-Con I'll be running madly from panel to signing to panel to reading to panel to signing to presentation to CBLDF event to panel again for most of the convention. If you want to be absolutely certain of getting to see/talk/get something signed, it's worth my pointing out that Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Members always get special events and so on at San Diego. The last time I was a G of H, in 1999, I read what was written at that point of Coraline, and all of The Wolves in the Walls, to about 30 people at the CBLDF members event, and did a special CBLDF members only signing.
Lots of cool stuff to read up at http://www.cbldf.org/. Their latest news story is about an American Hero. Who happens to be a librarian...
An article from the Straits Times in Singapore on the history of Iraq, sent to me I think because it talks about the Sandman book Fables and Reflections (and the Ramadan story) at Paradise lost - APRIL 14, 2003.
And this deserves to be put up in full...
The Fore, Kuru, anthropology and cannibalism!
You may or may not have been told this by others, but, well, you haven't posted anything about it, so I figured, why not send it in. This is in reference to your original post about cannibalism, of course, and the mention you made about a certain mysterious neurological disease.
The disease in question is/was called Kuru. The people who had it are called the Fore, and they lived, of course, in New Guinea. Point of interest: if you hear anything really strange as far as cultural practices/believefs go, chances are it is probably linked in some way to New Guinea. Including things like the idea that semen is not somethign the body gets baturally, and so it has to be passed along from older males to young boys by ritual insemination (One of the tribes in question there would be The Sambia, about which a lot has been published). But I'm getting distracted!
The Fore. What happened with them was kind of complicated.
basically, it went like this. Someone got the first case of Kuru, and died terribly from it. That village blamed sorcery from another village, and they went to war, and lots of young men got killed (well, a significant anount, anyway. Warfare in new guinea isn't waged in quite the same way, but some people died). Women and young children kept getting it, and so there were more accusations of sorcery, and so on. When people in other villages got it, the same accusations were made, and so on. And so on top of the peole dying of Kuru, lots of young, healthy Fore men were being killed in the wars. Since the Fore weren't an especially lage group to start with, this meant that their tribe was on its way to being wiped out!
Step in a medical researcher type, a Dr. Gadjusek. He starts investigating the Foreand Kuru. He realizes the disease affecte the central nervous system, and causes it to basically decay. Symptoms, for the record include a lack of fine muscle control and coordination, so that movements appear jerky and twitchy, as well as difficulty swallowing. Another doctor sees his work and notes the resemblance between this disease and scapies in sheep (and also makes Kuru the same *kind* of disease as Mad Cow. Grr *moooo* Grr). They do all kinds of crazy tests to try and figure out how people catch it. Eventually, they identify kuru as a brain effecting slow virus.
Enter a pair of anthropologists, Robert and Shirley Glass. They discover that the Fore claim to be cannibals, but that only women and children (the main victims of Kuru) participate! Once the link is made, the Fore are convinced to stop this practice, and Kuru ceases being such a problem. Gadjusek goes on to win a nobel prize!
But the story doens't quite end there. I don't remember all the details, and I don't have access to the notes from my Medical Anthropology class, so I'm nameless and sourceless at the moment.
First off, let me say this. In the early days of anthropology, there were lots of claims of cannibalism. Generally it si the sort of thing that is attributed to the people in the next village, sort of thing. But sometimes, people would claim to do it because it got interest from the researchers. It seems the Fore were one of these groups. Later anthropologist (or at least, different ones) have shown that the Glasses were, basically, lied to. Which is kind of an anti-climax to the story, I know. The funerary rites did involve brain *handling*, but not consumption. The virus is passed from the brain fluids, so handling was still enough to pass it along, it for example, the women didn't wash their hands before eating, or were wiping at their eyes, or noses, or the faces of their children, and so on...
And there is a half decent page that explains this stuff (or the medical parts of it, anyway, but leaves out most of the anthropology) here: http://www.xviral.co.uk/disease/kuru.htm
Anyway, um, that's all. Hope you find this interesting to read, at least ^-^
-Heather H
Fascinating... thanks.
I also found this http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic1248.htm which is useful for currently working doctors
I missed the fuss over the concept of googlewashing as laid out in this article about the redefinition of "the second superpower" over at The Register. What fascinates me about that article, and some of the ones I've seen since, is the horror at the idea that Google can be manipulated, that its algorithms, like the peace of God, passeth all understanding. Not to mention move in a mysterious way its wonders to perform. It's a search engine; of course it can be manipulated. (Also, it loses large chunks of this site from time to time. Just thought I'd mention that.)
On the other hand, I was surprised to learn that you can buy yourself a BAFTA nomination, according to this Telegraph article. This seems to be, according to people who approve of the practice, quoted in the article, because a) the BAFTA tastes are just too far from the mainstream, so they need to pay money to get the stuff that people actually watch on the shortlist (eg "I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here," and b) because the BAFTA tastes are so boring and middle of the road, if the TV stations didn't pay to have shows on the shortlist, the exciting, edgy stuff wouldn't get a look-in (nothing cited to back this up, unless you think that "I'm a Celebrity..." or "Dr Zhivago" are edgy, dangerous TV. (BAFTAs are the UK equivalent of the Oscars and the Emmys.)
Had a quiet Sunday, mostly spent working on the next draft of The Fermata, a film-script I'm writing for Robert Zemeckis. It's one of the only times I've ever enjoyed the "Hollywood Process", mainly because Bob and I seem to be treating The Fermata as a voyage of discovery. I'll write a draft, give it to him, work with him on it, and his comments will always surprise me, and take the next draft off in another direction, one that I hadn't imagined -- and never what I'd imagine as Hollywood directions, either. Often they'll make it pricklier, stranger, more unlike other things that are out there. I really hope he makes the film, just because it has several of the oddest sequences I've ever written, along with some very funny dialogue and some really weird sex.
Hi Neil,
This is not a question but a reaction to your Diogenes post, I believe, as quite every of my greece-talking professors over the years told me the same story, the Diogenes actually wandered around "looking for a man" not necessarilly an honest one, and is why he wandered around like that in Athenes and most of the country but never set foot in Sparta...
Even though every student here knows that the educational system in France is getting very bad, I'd like to know if you're sure about you're story or not.
Damien, Paris.
It sounds like your teachers were making, or repeating, a joke they'd heard, and possibly no longer realised was a joke, although the original quote is certainly open to interpretation. The way the story is told in English, he was looking for a honest man. Let's see -- instant web references would be http://www.artmagick.com/paintings/painting1343.aspx, with a wonderful painting by Waterhouse of Diogenes in his tub, and at http://www.rheged.freeserve.co.uk/diogenesdish.html we find a really fascinating collection of Diogenes anecdotes. We learn that,
Belief that virtue was better in action than in theory made him plunged himself into a life of austerity and dedicated his time to protest against what he believed, a corrupt society. He is said to have gone about Athens carrying a blazing lantern in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man - but never finding one. He often claimed that the gods had given men an easy life but that it had been spoiled by their seeking after honey, cheese cakes and unguents.
(I love the idea of the gods sitting grumbling about men eating cheesecake) not to mention
At a banquet once the guests threw bones at him as if he were a dog. On his way out he cocked his leg against them. Instead of anointing his head with oil, he anointed his feet, explaining that the perfumes from his head were lost in the air but those from his feet mounted to his nose. When asked why people give money to beggars but not to philosophers, he replied that it is because they think they might well end up one day as beggars but will never become philosophers.
But if you go to the original quote, you learn that that he lit a candle/lantern in the daytime and said "I am looking for a man". He then goes on to chide lots of male humans for not being men. See http://www.molloy.edu/academic/philosophy/sophia/ancient_lit/
diogenes_life.htm.
On the other hand, if you aren't interested in Diogenes or the ins and outs of Greek Philosophy, you could just click on this link to find out how to properly fold a cat for storage in a sweater drawer.
Right. Tea break's over. Back on my head.
Dear Neil:
National Geographic also has an article on cannibalism. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/
2003/04/0410_030410_cannibal.html
Sarah
PS - Our kitten, has Grown Up. He ate the fish out of my fish tank. I'm inexplicably proud, and am considering putting bigger fish in for him to eat.
You know, someone sent in a marvellous odd and funny obituary for their goldfish recently, which, like so many things that come in, didn't get posted because there isn't really the space to post everything, or the time. (It did get read though: everything gets read.) Ah well...
The National Geographic article sums up some of the pros and cons of the cannibalism case, but I found my interest yanked by this article which claims that Neanderthals looked too weird to interbreed with homo sapiens. It seemed a dodgy argument to me: I've seen much weirder-looking men than the photo reconstruction of a Neanderthal sitting opposite me on trains over the years. R. A. Lafferty would have gone for the "They didn't die out. They just shaved," theory, so I shall as well.
I think I may actually have a tan. It's been a very long time since I had a tan. Currently it's at no-longer-fish-belly-pale-but-not-actually-dark-enough-to-get-the-extra-frisking-at-airport-security level. I head back home in less than a week, so we'll see what colour I am by then.
Now reading Alan Moore's VOICE OF THE FIRE, which I've not read since 1996, to write an introduction. I'd forgotten how good it is. (I'd also forgotten Alan had sent me my copy -- I opened the book and laughed out loud, to discover that Alan had written "To Neil -- a friend, a massive talent and a classic beauty -- love Alan". With luck people will find the book and inscription after I'm dead, and fail to see the humour in it.
And while I'm away, Maddy and I have reversed roles: she's reading to me every night. Currently, Louis Sachar's SIDEWAYS STORIES FROM WAYSIDE SCHOOL, which are made to be read aloud, and are truly funny, especially read by an 8 year old.
...
Greetings and Salutations!
Regarding your short story in McSweeny's Thrilling Tales:
Diogenes Club? As in "The Greek Interpreter" and our introduction to Mycroft Holmes?
Or is it a reference to some place or piece of knowledge which you and Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle share, in which case would you tell us? Please?
I was startled to notice the name when I read the story, and was hoping someone else would ask about it, and that you'd mention it in your journal, but I haven't seen it, so I guess I have to ask, else it will gnaw at the back of my mind as only unfulfilled curiousity can.
Thank you!
Michelle
P.S. Your journal is a delight, thank you so much for taking the time and making the effort, it is truly appreciated.
You're welcome. I'm pleased people enjoy it.
While the club in "Closing Time" shares a name with Mycroft's club (which was just there for people who noticed, but not as any key to the story) both clubs are named after Diogenes of Sinope -- there's a mini biography of him here although it omits the most commonly told story about him, that he went around with a lantern, "looking for an honest man". Hence Nora's comment, in the story.
Author Yellow Pages looks like a really good idea: a place to find out about the webpages of authors. And a place that the authors among you can submit their own websites. And they plug this one, which is nice.
...
Interesting article on cannibalism over at CNN.com, at http://www.cnn.com/2003/HEALTH/04/10/prions.cannibalism.ap/index.html. I would have thought the fact we have such a deep and basic cannibalism taboo could also be a hint that it was widespread and didn't work. I was about to plug The Ghost Disease: and 12 other stories of detective work in the literary field, by Howell and Ford, which has one of the most fascinating articles on Kuuru, the Ghost Disease, I've read, but it seems to be very out of print.
(There was a mysterious neurological disease that only seemed to affect women and children in a certain area. It was thought to be hereditary, but then they realised that women from other areas of the island who married in would also get it. Finally, they realised that there was ritual cannibalism at funeral feasts -- and that women and children were honoured by being given brain to eat. There.)
...
The odd thing about this week is that every time I've hit a deadline another one that I'd forgotten about leaps out, like Springheeled Jack from an alleyway, screaming "Hah! You thought you were so clever, but what about ME?" So I don't seem to be any further along than I was this time last week, despite having finished several introductions, a movie script and the first third of 1602 #5...
Over at the Bloomsbury website they have a preview of The Wolves In the Walls -- they've got the cover up, and a little description. And if you click on Coraline, over on the left-hand-side of the screen you can see the UK paperback Coraline cover.
Let's see ... tomorrow night there is a Tori Tribute Show 2003 in Chapel Hill NC, being a benefit for Rainn -- details here. I gave them one of the lovely STARDUST art prints that San Diego Comic Con did as a gift for retailers in about 1996 (you can see a tiny detail from the bottom of it, the self-portrait of Charles Vess & me, on the Tori Tribute site) for them to use to raise money.
...
According to http://www.news24.com/News24/Finance/Companies/0,,2-8-24_1346143,00.html, Richard Branson's Virgin Airlines have offered to take over the retiring Concorde fleet. It looks like a publicity stunt, but I'd like it to happen. I've only ever flown Concorde once (after the airmiles person on the other end of the phone said "Given all the rule-busting you'll have to do, if you use miles to go to Europe, that's 200,000 miles. You might as well go by Concorde." And I said, "Er, I can use airmiles for Concorde?" "Oh, sure. They got a code-sharing deal with Air France. You want to do that?" and I said "Oh yes,") and I would hate to see the Concordes stop flying, not for what they are, but for what they represent. The time I rode Concorde (it's smaller inside than you imagine; the tiny windows make it seem bigger than it is in photographs) it felt like riding in someone else's future - travelling fast enough and high enough to see the curvature of the Earth, while still being very aware that the plane I was travelling in was only a little younger than I was, like an aging Tomorrowland Ride built in the early Sixties.
I think I'll miss the Concordes mostly because they felt like a step on the road that would have given us tourist shuttles to lunar hotels, which doesn't seem to be the road we're walking any longer.
...
Free Comicbook Day has a website at http://www.freecomicbookday.com/ -- poke around the website to find out what's being given away, how to find a comic store at which you can get your free comics, and so on.
If there's a young person you know who wants bookplates (or just a way to show the world which books are his or hers) head over to myhomelibrary.org and see what they've got. (And there's no age check. So the bookplates could be for you, too....) Anyway, if you want a choice of Quentin Blake bookplates, or Raymond Briggs or Posy Simmonds or, well, there are hundreds in different sizes by hundreds of different artists, you click on the thumbnails, print out the bookplate, and stick it into your book.
It's the pet project of British Children's Laureate Anne Fine. Check it out at http://www.myhomelibrary.org/ (and I found the link to myhomelibrary.org at http://www.wordpool.co.uk/, a great site dedicated to raising the profile of children's fiction).
something and someone worth knowing about.
And - in addition - he writes poetry that rocks.
http://www.vitaminq.blogspot.com/
Hmm. What a great blog -- filled with the kind of trivia that makes you feel faintly proud when you did know something, and like you've learned something when you didn't. The Reverend E. Cobham Brewer would have been proud.
...would you mind if we used your poem 'Vampire Sestina', from Smoke and Mirrors as an example of a sestina in an article about poetic forms for our school literary magazine? We don't get much form poetry, and we haven't had a sestina in at least four years. If you'd like, we could send you a copy of the magazine, although we can't decide whether this qualifies as 'threatening behavior'.... No, I don't mind. Run a copyright notice, and say it's used by permission.
Dear Mr. Gaiman,
This isn't really a question, so please feel free to disregard it. Several weeks ago, you posted a link to the Washington Post's review of "the worst novel in the English language." I thought you might like to know that Robert Burrows' book, The Great American Parade, is now free to download on www.lulu.com. You can get your very own copy and see just how terrible it is.
Thanks. I think.
Speaking of the Gorgons, were Stheno and Euryale really immortal? I mean, why those two but not Medusa? Maybe nobody ever tried cutting off their heads.
There's a lovely site at http://www.theoi.com/Pontos/Gorgones.html with a host of classical references, and the story of Medusa is at http://www.loggia.com/myth/medusa.html. In the story the way it is now, Medusa was a beautiful young woman who made the mistake of comparing her beauty to that of the Goddess Athene (and I think we can assume that the comparison wasn't "Oh, the Goddess Athene is so much more beautiful than I am,") and was transformed into a Gorgon. Stheno and Euryale were Gorgons already, and were used to it. And Athene was irritated, because Medusa had gone from being a girl with a nice head of hair, to the most beautiful Gorgon there had ever been...
And I was sent a horrified link to http://www.commondreams.org/views02/1123-01.htm, an article which points out that
Welcome to the new millennium of war toys. Gone are cartoonishly idealistic action figures, soft plastic guns and the model jet fighters of yore. They have been replaced by bazookas with explosive noises, exacting copies of long-range sniper rifles, a "peacekeeper" battle station complete with tripod-mounted cannon and counterterrorism advisers as action figures.
High-tech and perhaps a bit too highly realistic, this toy fare is creating ripples among concerned parents and peaceniks alike.
"War toys have been around forever, but the problem here is the change in focus. Before such toys were more in line with the ideas of self-defence," said Eric Garris, who is webmaster of the California-based antiwar.com, which has started a campaign about against the Forward Command Post toy.
"This is not just another war toy -- it's a total paradigm shift in the war toy industry. It's setting up the young people for this new kind of war, where soldiers come into your house and take it over when they need to."
with a nice illustration of a destroyed house from which the soldiers are sniping or peacekeeping or something. And I looked at it and felt rather approving. I mean, it looks a lot less fun and clean and pleasant than the "idealistic action figures" and I can't believe that's a bad thing. You would not want these soldiers to come to your house and set up a command post there...
And I keep thinking of the Saki short story, "The Toys of Peace", which you can read (it's not long) at http://www.blackmask.com/olbooks/saki3dex.htm. Go and read it, if you haven't. It's about war toys, and children, and was written almost a hundred years ago, and is no less relevant or true now than when it was written. And, like so much of Saki, it's very funny.
(And I should point out that H.H. Monro, who wrote under the name of Saki, was killed in the first World War. He'd claimed to be younger than he was, to join up. His last words, before the German sniper shot him, were "Put that bloody cigarette out!")
The Bram Stoker Awards final ballot is up at Locus Online: News Log, April 2003 and Coraline is nominated twice -- for Long Fiction and for Work For Younger Readers. I already have two Stoker Awards (Harlan tells me they should be called Ushers, after the House of, but awards are odd things and names stick to them or they don't), so am happy just to have been nominated.
You can listen to the audio play that Larry Santoro wrote and directed, that was performed at the last World Horror Convention, of Gene Wolfe's haunting story "The Tree Is My Hat" at http://www.phaseshift.com/tree/ until May 6th 2003. Gahan Wilson is the host, and the actors are P.D. Cacek, Liz Mandville Greeson, Gary Simmers, Steve Scholz and John Librizzi. And me.
Californian fans of the Magnetic Fields or the Future Bible Heroes probably know this already, but just in case you don't, the Future Bible Heroes are playing live in LA (tomorrow) and San Francisco (Friday).
Thursday, April 10, 2003
Los Angeles, California
The Troubadour
310 276 6168
www.troubadour.com
Friday, April 11, 2003
San Francisco, California
Bimbo's 365 Club
415 474 0365
www.bimbos365club.com
I saw them live in Minneapolis during the World Fantasy Con, and they were quite marvellous -- songs created in studios were reimagined for the stage most audaciously and well.
Dear Mr. Gaiman,
Do you ever grow tired of people telling you how much they appreciate/love/worship/have built a shrine to your work? I ask this because I get positively giddy whenever someone likes something I've read (I'm still on a cloud from my mark of II-i from Cambridge University's Summer School). However, just after graduating high school, I was selected as one of a hundred students to attend a weekend round-table discussion with various famous authors, painters, actors, etc. Arthur Golden, author of 'Memoirs of a Geisha' was there and I told him I very much enjoyed his book (I actually thought it was just okay, but I felt it was polite to say something a little nicer than that) and then he went up on the podium to discuss being an author and said how much he HATED being told how much people liked his book! I was personally shocked.
Since I adore you writing, and wanted to be one of the millions to tell you so, I wanted to know if this is common among authors or if he was being a (insert_nasty_word_here).
Thank you!
--Sarah Glazer
P.S. I've put this question to the FAQ about a thousand times and I will continue to do so because I'm dying to know the answer: Do you have a favourite mythological creature or character or being?
Let's take things in order
1) Getting up in public and saying how much you hate it when people tell you they liked your work, especially in a situation where people have (possibly because they meant it, possibly because of social politeness) just been telling you they liked your work, is rude. And it's foolish. The action of telling a writer or artist or musician you liked their work is a way of trying to give something back for the pleasure they gave you -- it's like clapping or cheering at the end of a performance. If you, as an artist, can't truly cope with, or dislike and have to say so, being told by people they enjoyed something you did, you shouldn't put yourself in situations where it's likely to happen.
(It's useful to bear in mind that only someone with no social skills of any kind would go up to an author and say, "Hey. Neil Gaiman. You wrote Neverwhere, right?"
"Er, yes."
"It sucked, man. Sucked so bad I couldn't finish it. London Below, London Above, it's just bullshit. I could write better stuff than that out of my ass, man."
So why an author would expect people to say anything other than "I like your work," or even "I've never read your work, but I have a friend who loves it," or "I'd never heard of you but after hearing you talk I'm looking forward to reading something you've written," I can't imagine.)
2) Yes, personally I like it when people tell me they enjoyed something I made, and no I don't get tired of it. This is because a) I'm human and b) writing is a solitary sort of thing to do, and until I get some feedback, I have no idea of whether or not something worked.
Having said that, there are gradations of being told that people enjoyed my work that move in and out of my own comfort zone. Let me demonstrate:
"Oh man, I loved Sandman."
"I'm pleased. Thank you." (Well within my comfort zone)
"No, I'm telling you man, it was the most amazing piece of literature ever written by anyone. You are a genuine fricken' genius."
"Er, thanks. I enjoyed writing it." (Slightly beyond my comfort zone, but as long as they feel that way, I'm not going to argue.)
"I tell you, when, like the Earth is about to blow up, if like aliens came by and they could only save one person, man, I think it should be you, you're so wonderful. I mean, you're the best writer there has ever been or will ever be."
"You're um much too kind. Er." (Way out beyond the edges of my comfort zone and heading for Alpha Centauri.)
But mostly saying thank you, and meaning it, gets an author through almost all of those situations.
I've written a lot of things, and they've gone on to have lives of their own, and nobody's meant to like everything I've written. (I don't like everything I've written: I never set out to write something that's not going to work, but sometimes there's a bigger gulf between what you hoped to make and what you ended up making than at other times. It's like making clay pots at school.) I don't expect anyone's tastes to be the same as mine.
3) I don't think I do have a favourite mythological character or creature or entity, which is probably why I didn't answer. When I was about eight I read Anthony Boucher's "THE COMPLEAT WEREWOLF" and decided then and there that that was what I was going to do when I grew up, because I couldn't think of a single thing cooler than being a werewolf, and that probably lasted until I wrote the Sandman story "The Hunt".
I remain very fond of Stheno and Euryale, the two immortal gorgons, still missing their mortal sister Medusa. I think I enjoyed writing their scenes and dialogue in The Kindly Ones as much as anything I've written, and would love to go back to them one day, maybe from another direction.
Just finished a long "Mirror Mask" revision phone call with Dave Mckean. They're well into casting, and he's storyboarded almost all of it. I was meant to just be making notes toward the next revision but often wound up just saying "Hang on a sec'" and then typing the sort of dialogue we needed, certain I'd not remember why a line needed to be changed and to what when I came back to it tomorrow. At one point I had a character wittering on about the concept of deja nu -- the feeling that not only have you been through these events before but that last time round you weren't actually wearing anything. I have no idea where that came from, other than the lateness of the hour, and doubt it will survive the next revision, so I record it here for a bemused posterity.
Over at Jill Thompson's site is a preview of her book At Death's Door -- it's a manga style retelling of some of Season of Mists, mostly from Death's point of view, along with a strange and wonderful story of Jill's about what Death, Delirium and Despair were doing while the dead were coming back. It's lovely stuff, very Jill, funny, odd, delightful.
You can also learn on her site about the Scary Godmother Animated Special, which will be showing in Canada in October.
I've just started to realise how many things have deadlines around the middle of next week, and am a bit worried. If I journal a bit less for a few weeks, it'll be because I'm trying not to bring editors to the point of actual cardiac arrest.
The second half of the Alan Moore interview is up at Ninth Art - Snake Charmer: An interview with Alan Moore, Part Two and it's terrific.
I started rereading Voice of the Fire today, because I have to write an introduction to it. Normally an introduction just says what you're reading, tries to put into some kind of context, tells you that the author is a pleasant enough fellow, and points you on your way.
The trouble with Voice of the Fire is I've met too many people who read the first 20 pages and gave up, so I think the introduction is going to have to be a sort of set of suggested narrative strategies for travellers visiting the strange and unfamiliar land that is Northhampton over the last 3000 years...
Links from Jonathan Carroll arrive without comment. They just turn up in e-mail, and I always click on them with a slight nervousness, as I never know what I'll get. Today it was The Brick Testament, at http://www.thereverend.com/brick_testament/: bible stories in Lego. With warnings of nudity for those bible stories with small naked Lego characters in them.
Hi Neil
As a pedantic scientist, I feel the need to correct a small error in your last post yesterday... the Guardian article was penned by Matt Ridley, who is a famous Oxford-educated science writer, not, as you stated, by Mark Ridley, who is a famous Oxford-educated evolutionary biologist. Mark and Matt are often mistaken for each other, but are different creatures entirely.
Finally, was slightly puzzled by your comment on suspension of disbelief being more important in non-fiction... from my own perspective I disagree, as scientists are trained to treat everything they read (work-related, anyway) as complete hogwash until convinced otherwise, which probably goes a long way to explaining our argumentative natures, but is a necessary strategy in a world overrun with bad science.
I don't often get time to read stuff outside of the scientific literature, but when I do your stories always entertain me. Thanks for that.
Simon
Never ever post late at night after a long day of Disney. You get your Ridleys confused, for a start, and make a twit of yourself. Mea culpa.
I suppose what I meant about suspension of disbelief and non-fiction is something that, for me applies to all forms of non-fiction. A literary critic who begins a book by announcing that something is "a Baskerville hound -- important for not barking in the night-time" has just confused two Sherlock Holmes stories (the Hound of the Baskervilles and, if memory serves, "Silver Blaze") and has also cast into doubt, for me at least, anything else such a literary critic might have to say. (I'd be quite forgiving if it was a scientist making that kind of error.)
Anyone who's ever had the experience of reading a news story in a newspaper written by a journalist who had managed to get both the wrong end of the stick and most of the key facts and names wrong knows that you can look at newspapers with a jaundiced eye for a while after that.
The kind of big dumb mistake (like, er, confusing Mark Ridley and Matt Ridley) that somehow invalidates the rest of the points the writer makes, no matter how valid and sensible they were.
It's the same phenomenon I'll get in fiction when something small isn't right. There's an otherwise marvellous novel in which a time traveller arrives in 18th century London and asks for a specific street, and is told "it's a few blocks over that way" which tells us that the writer is American, and, for those people who know and live in London (a city in which the concept of a city block has yet to arrive in the 21st century) it can throw you out of the story.
Regarding the blog on Sunday, April 06, 2003
How about the fragile X comment: "an easily identified genetic cause of terrible mental retardation"? From what I've read in the papers, fragile X girls _might_ be slower than average. Boys are more affected, but still, "terrible mental retardation"?
Veera Luhtala
According to the National Fragile X Foundation at http://www.fragilex.org/html/what.htm Fragile X syndrome is a hereditary condition which causes a wide range of mental impairment, from mild learning disabilities to severe mental retardation.
In regards to your comment about Mark Ridley's article about sci-fi, I think he's almost got a point if looked at from the point of view of the mass market. Almost because his evidence is good but his conclusions are wrong. Most people's exposure to sci-fi in text form began and ended with the some Crichton novel - xenophobic, paranoid, afraid of the future. What movies do people go see? 2001 (computer goes insane), The Matrix (computers go insane), The Terminator (computers go insane), Event Horizon (we go to outer space and go insane), Attack of the Clones (George Lucas goes insane), Aliens (travel to space at the behest of an evil corporation, meet exciting alien species, get eaten by them). Even movies in which nobody goes insane or gets eaten have a distinctly anti-technology bent (Gattaca). But this says less about screen writers than it does about the kinds of projects Hollywood will green-light. I'm not sure if this means the market is afraid of the future and Hollywood is giving people what they want, or if it means that Hollywood is afraid of technology. Well, we know Hollywood is afraid of technology. Either way, no one's making "The Demolished Man", or even "The Songs of Distant Earth" into a movie.
Although they did make The Bicentennial Man into a movie, even though one might wish that they hadn't...
I wouldn't have minded "the future is often depicted as a place where a technical fix has gone wrong, where androids stalk a devastated urban landscape..." It was that "always" that got me. A lot of written SF is hopeful, a lot of TV SF is hopeful, a fair amount of movie SF is ultimately hopeful. And a lot of scientists I've run into in the last twenty years will talk about the SF that got them fired up when younger and propelled into SF careers.
Personally, I think sloppy science writers (and I'm not talking about Mr Ridley here) have more to blame for people being worried about genetically modified stuff than novelists or screenwriters. People don't go and see Jurassic Park and come out going "No, these scientists are meddling with raw stuff of life itself! How can they think that bringing back Dinosaurs is going to end happily? I shall write to my Member of Parliament or Congressman and ensure that such dangers do occur in actuality," whereas they do read article about genetically modified pollen from corn killing off monarch caterpillars on the nearby milkweed, and worry, even if the study doesn't actually record if any caterpillars died...
Anyway, I thought the Ridley article was interesting and made some excellent points. I also thought he made some stupid ones in the middle. There.
And on to something much more important.... The two last words on people flirting while dressed as Funny Animals.
I recently spent a weekend at Disney with my friend who plays several costumed characters. The majority of the characters she plays are male so she is encouraged to flirt with the female park visitors, which she finds terribly amusing, especially when their boyfriends get defensive! So just remember ladies the next time Pooh or Mickey grabs your butt or gives you a hug or a kiss it's more likely a Michelle than a Michael bestowing the affection.
cheers,
Kathryn
and
Hi Neil,
With all the talk of Disney you might want to check out an article on the excellent Mark Evanier's POV Online about the guys inside the suits. Mark's site is an excellent mine of information.
http://www.povonline.com/cols/COL309.htm
Best wishes,
John Innes
Publisher, Sight & Sound
London, UK
Holly, seven years ago, aged around ten, on our previous trip to Walt Disney World, Stopped Believing in the autograph thing because she kept running into Goofy. And she got him to sign her autograph book twice.
And the signatures were very different. She kept comparing them. And she stopped believing, just like that.
and finally....
A late addition to the cartoon character flirting thing... I met Kelly 9 years ago while we were working as Tom & Jerry on the Irish Sea Ferry route.
Now we've two kids and a mortgage: cartoon flirting has a happy ending!
...
Several people have written to tell me that the GRIMBLE books are readable online. I'm going to check with the copyright holder before I post the URL (or at least, ask his daughter to ask him). If he's happy for them to be up I'll post the link. If not, I won't.
...
Hi Neil,
Seeing as you seem to be bombarded with questions about what it's like/ what it takes/ how it feels to be a writer, I thought your readers might be interested in this article I found called "How to be a Writer" by Lorrie Moore, someone who apparantly won the Associated Writing Programs Award for best short fiction.
http://www.katharsis.org/lorriemoore.htm
It's funny, honest, and occasionally horribly accurate.
Torie Atkinson
Lovely. "Later on in life you will learn that writers are merely open, helpless texts with no real understanding of what they have written and therefore must half-believe anything and everything that is said of them," made me nod, and smile.
It can be very dangerous to offer opinions on subjects you don't know anything about. I'm reading http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/opinion an article by Mark Ridley about why, scientifically, we've never had it so good, and I'm thinking, ah, finally an article that my SF writer friends would, on the whole, agree with (most SF writers being such because they rather like the future, and think it's a good, or at least an interesting place, and that the sorting out of some problems just makes others that are fun to write about), and then I got to the bit where I learned who to blame for people being scared of the future and thinking that things have only got worse since 1903...
"Novelists and screen writers have a lot to answer for. How many movies have you seen set in the future in which you thought - what a nice place to live? Thought not.
The future is always depicted as a place where a technical fix has gone wrong, where androids stalk a devastated urban landscape. I have recently noticed a lot of people suddenly worrying about nanotechnology. Could Michael Crichton's "Prey" have anything to do with this?"
Oh, right. I thought. An idiot.
Which may have been an unfair reaction, but is one that is perfectly justifiable. And, because suspension of disbelief is much more important in non-fiction than it is in fiction, my suspension of disbelief for the entire article went out the window.
Interesting article forwarded to me by Bob Morales, Michael Medved on Captain America on National Review Online. I suppose it's because Medved made his name as a film critic (not the kind that writes interestingly about films to leave you yearning to go back and see it again, but the kind that makes fun of Plan 9 From Outer Space and Robot Monster) that he assumes that no-one's actually writing the comics he's talking about, or that Bob Morales's agenda and politics are the same as John Ney Reiber's (neither of whom are mentioned in the article).
Hi Neil
On Saturday the Independent had a feature on Diana Wynne Jones that managed to mention JK Rowling hardly at all:
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/books/interviews/
story.jsp?story=393990
Best wishes
Tom
I noticed, and was thrilled.
Not a FAQ, but those of your readers who are also interested in Tori Amos can see a list of her favorite books (including American Gods,
of course) in the San Jos� Mercury News book section:
http://www.bayarea.com/mld/mercurynews/entertainment/
books/5550873.htm
Diana in San Jos�
Tash likes stories with scary ladies in them, eh? I shall remember that.
...
Spent the day at Disney-MGM, mostly so that Maddy could ride the Tower of Terror, which she (and Holly and I) did, three and a half times. (The halfth time was the first, and the car broke down as it was about to move forward into the twilight-zoney bit, and nice men had to come and get us out and lead us down a back elevator and start us over again).
Now back in hotel room for an hour to unwind, do e-mail, and nap, before going back for the Fantasmic show.
...
And a final e-mail from Will Shetterly...
Emma and I are selling a few things on ebay. Two of them might be of
interest to your web log readers: a "Return of Pansy Smith and Violet
Jones" Flash Girls CD and a Gregg Press hardcover of Delany's
DRIFTGLASS. The full list is at:
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&
userid=elbnws&include=0&since=-1&sort=3&rows=25
But if this seems like the tip of the wedge into turning your blog into
"Neil "Great Deal!" Gaiman's Guide to Awesome Internet Auctions!", feel
free to ignore this, honest. Will.
Really, I'm only posting this because I'm trapped in a hotel room with two girls who happen, coincidentally, to be singing more or less random lines from "Post-Mortem on Our Love" while jumping on each other and shouting things like "It's 'on our love', not 'of our love', Daddy, you wrote the song, tell her!"
Maddy wanted to go to Seaworld, so we spent today at Seaworld Orlando, which was something that would never have occurred to me on my own.
Poking around the Seaworld website before we left, this morning, I noticed they did a thing where you a) paid a bit more and b) got a six hour tour, including getting to meet penguins, go backstage and visit the manatee hospital, get preferential seating at all the shows, lunch, skip all the lines and have a tour guide.
Now, in my experience, giant amusement parks work best if you have someone on your team with the kind of mind and approach to life that generals, war gamers and top tacticians are famous for. Someone who's prepared spend hours, weeks before, to figure out what attractions you'll hit, in what sequence, when the lines are longest, how to avoid trouble. The kind of person who'll write the day's agenda down on bits of paper and give a copy to each member of the party.
Neither Holly not Maddy is that kind of person, and as for me, har-bloody-har, I could not organise my way out of a wet paper bag, so the idea of a guided tour immediately became a very attractive one. We're only here for a couple of days, so I plonked down a credit card...
And it was marvellous. Close encounters with penguins, dolphins, stingrays; we watched the feeding of some injured baby manatees; the shows we saw -- the Shamu killer whale show, and the Sealion and Otter show -- were delightful. The rides were fun. Even the lunch was edible. And when we were almost done, having seen and done everything, Maddy pleaded with our guide, and we were whisked back for a second go on the Journey to Atlantis watercoaster ("and got soaked for the second time," said Maddy, leaning over my shoulder while I write this in the hotel room).
It was a long day, but it was made very pleasant indeed by having someone else know when we were meant to be where. And we just enjoyed ourselves and learned things and fed fish to sealions and dolphins and fed squid to stingrays, and it was good.
Tomorrow, things will probably get rather more Disney.
Hi! I have a thing where I really like to hear authors and especially poets reading their own work. You probably won't be coming to do a reading near me (Princeton, NJ) anytime soon, and I have (alas) no money, as poor high school students without jobs tend to. Consequently, I was wondering if you knew of anyplace online off the top of your head where I could find a soundclip of decent quality of you reading something you've written. I know that you're transplanted from England, but your writing feels very American in my head, and I'd like to fix that. Thanks a lot!
Well, over at Dreamhavenbooks.com's website, you can pick up WARNING: CONTAINS LANGUAGE, a double CD of me reading stuff. And pretty much anywhere you can get the HarperCollins3 CD set of me reading CORALINE, and you can hear me reading some of it over at the mousecircus.com site. A new CD of me reading short stuff will be out this year. And on this website there's some audio over at http://www.neilgaiman.com/audio/audio.asp -- and pretty soon we should get the readings that used to be up at the scifi.com website up over there as well.
I've reached Walt Disney World with two young ladies (aged respectively 8 and 17) and the 17 year old is trying to sleep and the 8 year old wants to know how she can keep herself amused while waiting for a room service fruit plate and hot chocolate to be delivered. And there are lots of FAQ thingies waiting (I've actually posted a few replies over in the FAQ section), several more universities (I've now officially lost count), a few more high schools and high school teachers wanting to be considered...
And then there are the flirting Disney characters...
For example:
dear neil-
i also had a strange experience at disney world. my younger sister & i (she was 19 & i was 21) went to have our pictures taken with eeyore. while my sister was taking the picture of me, eeyorekept grabbing me. he even put his hand on my butt. i then took a picture of my sister with him. afterwords she said he had done the same thing to her. it is no wonder that small children cry when they see those costume characters. they are definately twisted.
Not to mention...
Dale of the Rescue Rangers was definantly flirting with me when my family went to Disney World. We were having dinner in that rotating resturant, I forget what it's called. Anyway, characters were visiting all the tables and hugging people. I got multiple hugs from Dale. My whole family noticed.
Kate
and here's one from inside the costume...
Well, I guess it makes some kind of sense that there is a former Disney "Cast Member" that played Mickey Mouse in a previous life and happens to be a die hard fan of your work. By the way, by previous life I do mean more than a decade ago when I was in college. For the record, I flirted shamelessly as Mickey, the kind of subtle flirting you can get away with when you are not allowed to speak, which was the only way to make the process somewhat bearable. As bad as that may sound Mickey is never the worse. Pooh, on the other hand, is the biggest flirt of all.
By the way, if you post this please do not post any identifying info. Even though the list is probably longer than people think, there are only so many people that have played Mickey over time and I could get in some serious legal trouble.
So hopefully this clarifies/intensifies the Mickey flirting inquiry.
Have a great weekend and enjoy Disney,
{please don't post my name}
and, finally, one that has rather less to do with Disney. Unless they decide to introduce the Schrodinger's Cat character (I suppose there would be a 50/50 chance the person inside the costume is Dead...)
Neil,
I present to you the Interactive Schroedinger's Cat, quite possibly the best explanation I've ever encountered.
http://www.phobe.com/s_cat/s_cat.html
Enjoy.
Sincerely,
August C. Bourr�
http://www.vestige.org
It really is interactive, too. And cute.
This isn't exactly a FAQ, since it's not really a question at all, but I don't know where else to send it. I just wanted to let you know, that I too have been (possibly) flirted with by Mickey Mouse at Walt Disney World. I had just graduated from high school at the time. When I finally got to the front of the line to get a picture and autograph with Mickey, I got the distinct impression that I was being flirted with. It was extremely bizarre. Then I read what had been written in my autograph book, and it said, "You're so cute. Love, Mickey Mouse." Very strange experience. Not as strange as Santa Claus saying, "Looks like Santa gets his present this year," but still very strange.
As unusual as it may seem to some, perhaps Mickey Mouse is a big flirt.
-Laura
I knew it!
Neil -
In light of your essay about books and gender, I'm curious about how you would perceive gender reaction to your writing. Do you find that in your extensive interaction with your readers, through signings, appearances, and emails, that you seem to attract either gender (females dresses as cartoon rodent flagship cornerstones notwithstanding) more regularly as an author? Additionally, has it varied by book, and if so, how much does the readership on a particular book fall into agreeing with the gender of that book, as you would denote it? I ask, primarily, because in my own contact with Neil Gaiman readers, which is clearly going to be from an infinitely more limited perspective than yours, I have found that while I initially thought your work something I would recommend to my fellow grown-up Douglas Adams graduates (decidedly more likely to be male), as I begin to introduce students to your work, I find that young females particularly relate to it.
Just curious,
Jason Sherry
The only way I can tell stuff like that is from signings, really, which I think must be a pretty good sampling of, at least, people who would go to signings. The gender balance is about 50/50, and has been for many many years. The age range is a lot harder to call. Ten years ago I knew at a glance if someone was a fan, or there to get a book signed for a son or daughter (or grandson, or granddaughter) too far away to get to the signing. These days I simply don't know any more (partly because readers who found me when they were young are in many cases now respected members of their communities, and partly because the books are more likely to be read by people over 50 than the graphic novels would have been). If you were to randomly throw a ball into a crowd at my signing it would be rather more likely to hit someone under, say, 35 than over, but beyond that there's not a lot I can point to that the people have in common. Except they're surprisingly nice. (Not surprisingly to me, I expect it, but surprising to bookshop staff, whose eyes grow wide before the signing starts because there are green-haired punks and cool tattoos and pretty gothladies in great clothes in lines next to men in suits with briefcases and matronly ladies with glints in their eyes and people with small children and they started lining up at dawn or whatever, and I don't know what the staff expect but they tend to come up to me at the end and say "Your fans were all so nice!" as if riots or bloodshed would have been the normal order of events...)
Please please please I'm doing a project about you for school and I cannot find ANY information about your childhood, adolescence, or basically anything about your personal life. I can't just talk about your career, it has to include your background, inspirations, influences, etc. Please help!
Well, there are many hundreds of interviews out there, but the best and quickest source for much of that stuff is the Dreaming website, at www.holycow.com/dreaming, where Puck and Lucy Anne have assembled an incredible resource of all that kind of thing. I did a quick look for the page to point you to, and it looks like the link at the site is broken right now, so I found a google cache of the relevant page.
Some of the works mentioned are linked to from the article. Others aren't -- but look in your school library. Many schools have the various Gale Research volumes, Something about the Author and the rest of them.
The google cache refernce is here: http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:4rl8x-
WDkJEC:www.holycow.com/dreaming/discuss/963378934,21890,.asp
+gale%27s+st+james+authors&hl=en&ie=UTF-8
Howdy,
Perhaps it's just because I finally got my copy of _World's End_ in hardcover, but I read this article on the BBC and thought of you (and the "Hob's Leviathan" story):
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2910849.stm
So they went from "Giant Squid" to a "Colossal Squid." I wonder what they'll do when they find the next bigger squid down there.
-- Ed
Me too...
...
A few days of Disney World/Orlando for me and the girls start tomorrow night. My thanks to everyone who offered to show us around, feed us, dress like scary clowns and amuse us while we were waiting in lines etc.
The oddest Disney experience I ever had was for the launch of Big Entertainment, about a decade ago. They flew me and my wife in (that it was January and minus 40 back home, and had been for a couple of weeks, was a huge factor in our agreeing to go), along with Mickey Spillane and Leonard Nimoy, for the announcement of the line, and a photo-op. Disney had a Mickey Mouse on hand, and after the group photo Mickey Mouse and I posed together for some photos.
Afterwards I said to my wife, "I think Mickey Mouse was flirting with me."
"Oh... Did he say anything?"
"Nope. They aren't allowed to say anything. It was a girl in there, though. I think."
"Well, if it didn't say anything, did it do anything?"
"Nope. I mean, the person's inside a six-foot high mouse-costume, representing wholesomeness and the Disney Brand Identity."
"Well, how do you know you were being flirted with?"
"I don't. I just sort of suspect it."
And she probably gave me a look at that point.
I tried to explain the concept of Schrodinger's Cat to Holly today, over the phone, making rather a mess of it on the way, with regard to her going, until the form comes back from the university she applied-to-but-does-not-know-which-one-that-was, to Bryn Mawr and Smith. It might have been easier if, instead of comparing her choice of university to mythical cats in quantum boxes, I'd just pointed to how you can never be certain if you were actually being flirted with by Mickey Mouse. There are, as they used to say at the end of horror movies, some things man was not meant to know...
Several people have asked me to post that http://www.livejournal.com/users/neil_gaiman_rss/ is working fine as an RSS feed of this journal, while the Gaimanblog one at http://www.livejournal.com/users/gaimanblog/ hasn't put anything up for several days. So, right, that's all posted.
Back to chapter 5 of 1602 (it's a comic I'm writing for Marvel, which Andy Kubert is drawing), which seems to have developed weird correspondences with current events. Actually, that's not true: the plot of 1602 has stayed pretty steady since I started writing it, at the beginning of last year. It's just current events have decided to get in on the act, which I would have sworn would be impossible when I plotted it.
Hey... here's this thing off www.blogcritic.com about Sandman #50:
http://www.blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/22/234355.php
Thousands have probably sent you this but if they didn't here it is.
Hmm... I suppose I should throw a question in to make it faqworthy...
so... how do other people's interpretations of your work hit you?
I know that when people interpret stuff I do it fascinates me to sense how other people perceive my creation... but then all that is still fairly novel to me... we'll see how I feel about that when I'm out of my first decade of proactive creativity.
-Kari
I suppose I tend to put things into two categories, reviews and critical works, and I'm interested in reviews when it comes to finding out how something is being generally received, but as soon as I have an idea of what they're saying, I lose interest. Good pieces of criticism, the kind that make you want to go back and read something you thought you knew again, I love, whether they're pro or con -- but they are far and few.
When I was a younger, and I was getting my first reviews, a good one would make my day, a bad one would blight it. And then I started to realise that reviewers said such different (and directly opposite) things, I could safely ignore them all. As I said in this journal when the first two American Gods reviews came in, one saying it was a wonderful road novel let down by the bits in the little Wisconsin town, and one saying that the bits in the Wisconsin town were perfect and the novel only lost its focus when it hit the road, if you listened to them, you'd go mad.
Hello Neil,
I've been trying to open the March archive of your blog, but haven't been having any luck. Would you be so kind as to repost the link to the "books for troops" site from several days ago? I'm going to propose that my writing group put together a care package of morsels from Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's. Thanks.
Paul of the Science Museum
The March Archives seem to have hit the Blogger Archive Bug, and aren't accessible by clicking from the archive page right now.
But they still exist -- you can get to them through:
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal_archives/2003_03_01_archive.asp
which will have the link for books for soldiers...
A note for Shalene about meeting Harlan Ellison - I went to a signing many years ago in Virginia, and even though it was fairly early in the morining, and my friends were a bit nervous about the meeting, when we finally made it through the line he was quite charming, and signed several things for my friends. It says something that I remember, after all this time, how nice he was to us.
Oh good.
Four more universities since the last posting (though I think one or two are duplicates).
and finally,
Hi Neil
Just read 'Closing Time' in McSweeney's and whilst you may not consider it one of your best,I quite enjoyed (In fact I read it twice to make sure I understood it!)
One thing still confuses me though - when the writer first meets the three boys he goes on to say that the three of them fished out the pieces of the magazine from the ditch. Am I missing something or should that have been four - the writer plus the three boys?
If I've missed the point please tell me and I'll try again!
Best wishes
John Potten
Glad you liked it. And no, that wasn't a strange, deep, meaningful Wolfean clue, that was a typo that wasn't picked up, but which I hope will be corrected by the time the story is collected.
Since you are so approachable with your legions, I was wondering if you have found that other writers are that cool, or are there some who must be avoided at all costs? The reason that I ask is I have an opportunity to hear Harlan Ellison next week, and would hate to approach him, book and pen in hand, only to have him jam my favorite nib into my eye. (I don't think that would actually happen, but it's nice to get some gossip on other writers).
Best,
Shalene Shimer
Harlan certainly has a contentious reputation, but in my experience, as a friend of his and as a fellow guest at conventions, if you're polite to him he will be a perfect gentleman back. If you try and provoke a reaction from him, you may get one, or he may simply decide to ignore you for evermore. But good manners will get you a very long way with Harlan.
I'm trying to think of any "authors to be avoided at all costs" I've run into over the years, and I'm not really coming up with anyone. Mostly, we're a pretty nice bunch.
...
We're up to 64 universities at present, unless i've miscounted, and more universities and courses are still flooding in...
The mail today included several letters from literary organisations letting me know that Coraline was shortlisted for some awards, a new Bunny of the Month Club Bunny (two-faced, this one, like Janus, with little pink dungarees, and red eyes on one face and blue on the other), the paperback cover for Coraline, the new mass-market paperback cover for Stardust, several Brenda Kahn CDs, and my own personal copy of the four-song demo that my assistant Lorraine's band Folk Underground did for the St. Patrick's day gig at First Avenue. (She's given the few they had left over to Dreamhaven's Official Neil Gaiman Online Store, which I mention for any curious Flash Girls fans who wonder what it sounds like when Lorraine plays with boys instead.) There was also the galleys of THE WOLVES IN THE WALLS, which is way out beyond gorgeous. It's quite perfect, and absolutely unlike anything I imagined it looking like as I wrote it, which is the fun and the charm of working with Dave McKean.
It will be out in the summer, along with an awful lot of other stuff.
...
An e-mail in from Patrick Marcel in France, letting me know that Neverwhere is on the list of the 200 most important books published in France in the last ten years. He translated it, so he has reason to be proud.
We're currently at 57 universities (and a high school course teaching Smoke and Mirrors).
...
Hi Neil,
While recently in Dublin, I came upon a poster for what was apparently a production of "The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish." Now, of course I was quite excited to rather randomly find a Neil Gaiman-related activity while wandering from pub-to-pub in a foreign country while slightly inebriated, and I immediately made plans to attend a showing the next day, if possible. At that point, however, my rather skeptical friend pointed out the portion of the poster that specified that the show was for 5-to-10 year olds. As images of being a 22-year old, leather jacket-wearing, childless American male conspicuously seated in a kindergarten-sized chair in the back of a room filled with young children and suspicious parents whispering about me in Irish brogue flitted through my mind, I gradually gave up on attending the show, and instead settled on taking a picture in front of the poster.
So I turn to you for judgement, Neil. Should I have just sucked it up and gone to the show, as I originally wanted to? Or did I wisely choose on the side of discretion by letting this particular opportunity pass? Your opinion would be most appreciated.
Many thanks for all the words.
Nick
There's a newspaper review of it, which I posted here some time in the last couple of weeks, and it looked terrific from the review. I think you should have gone, but mostly because I'd love to have heard what it was like.
It can be very interesting, being a rare adult at children's events, anyway. I remember how odd it was, researching Mr Punch, and being the only adult at Punch and Judy shows...
We're currently at 50 universities (49 in the US and one in Germany). So you know. Make that 51, another just came in. (I'd better think of somewhere that I can put all your e-mails about University courses in Sandman or Violent Cases or Smoke and Mirrors or whatever, because they'll make for an impossibly large post if I try and put them up here...)
Hi Neil,
What should I name my band?
Dave
I'm afraid this website can no longer, sight unseen, name kittens or bands. The service has been discontinued due to complaints from spouses and bandmates.
...
I wrote a song today for Chris Ewen (Future Bible Heroes). Actually I've been jotting down lines for it for weeks, but today I assembled them, with a sort of lapidary care, to make them fit the rather unpredictable piece of music which Chris originally gave me to use on A SHORT FILM ABOUT JOHN BOLTON. The song is for Chris's upcoming album of songs with lyrics not by Stephin Merritt for once, but by the likes of Kelly Link and Peter Straub and, well, me. There's something about the idea of having something I wrote sung by Claudia Gonson that makes me nervous, but it's a good sort of nervous. And the Future Bible Heroes have a new EP coming out, called The Lonely Robot, and a website with lots of photos on it. And here's a link to this Onion piece on why you should buy Eternal Youth, their last CD (in the photo Chris is in the middle; Claudia's on the right -- and is the girl -- and Stephin's on the left).
Because the music/lyric relationship is sort of unusual, I phoned Chris and sang it to him over the phone. He did not laugh, which probably puts him on the fast track to sainthood.
Hello. If there is a fequently asked question involving the date of my birthday, then I'd like to inform everyone that it's today. Happy Birthday me!!!
Sarah
It won't work, you know. I'll never just post something like that.
...
We're at 14 universities so far this morning, although I may have counted the late and VERY lamented Frank McConnell's UCSB class twice. Which would be only appropraite where Frank is concerned.
the dream project is an online magazine featuring lust art and animation
based on the dream life of real people. artists from all over the planet
are
mapping out the countryside of the dream world, offering glimpses into
our intricate nighttime landscape.
issue 1 begins to unlock the mysteries through the dreams and art of
neil gaiman, rick veitch, jesse reklaw, ben black, carsten bradley, and
many more...
you're invited to poke around and look behind the curtains at
http://www.thedreamproject.org
warmly,
olga nunes.
dreamer.
Olga's animated a dream I recounted on this journal there.
Dear Mr Gaiman, hello Neil
*how does one address a "critically acclaimed and award winning author"? ;)*
My question *although maybe not that frequently asked* is this:
How far are we (readers) allowed to go in interpreting works of literature, or taking something personal from them?
This could be all the way from: "ooooh that was a really cool book, i could really relate to the protagonist, she�s just like me"
to: "I think this is meant as a metaphor for pre-war germany, and isn�t a story about a guy on drugs, really"
In other words: in trying to interpret something, don�t some of us readers come up with interpretations that the writer didn�t mean at all,
and making ourselves look ridiculous..?
Or are you all (writers) that clever and is the depth in literature almost infinite...
Thank you for your charming journal, and thanks to you and Dave McKean for Mr Punch.
Ichixa
Er, as far as I'm concerned, you can go all the way. Of course the depth in literature is almost infinite, but that has as much to do with the person reading as the person writing.
Or to put it another way, if you are pointing out one of the things a story is about, then you are very probably right; if you are pointing out the only thing a story is about you are very probably wrong -- even if you're the author. And either way, you aren't making yourself look ridiculous, whether you're seeing things in a poem or story or a song that the author originally intended or didn't intend isn't always the point. We have minds that make connections; that's one of the wonderful things about being us.
Mark Askwith (who tells me he was at an event recently where the lady behind the bar saw his nametag and said "Are you the Mark Askwith who knows Neil Gaiman, then?" proving that there are readers of this journal thing everywhere,) sends me http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/top100.html. A perfect April Fool is one that people are still talking about thirty years later...
Living in America, one occasionally hears about the orange and yellow alert levels, normally accompanied by suggestions that one should also buy duct tape and water. I'd wondered what a Red Alert meant. Luckily, this article explains what a Red Alert means, at least in New Jersey: A red alert would also tear away virtually all personal freedoms to move about and associate.
...
And my favourite quote of the day is from Steve Brust, in an interview over at Quantum Muse:
QM: Does most of the S/F and Fantasy world take itself too seriously or not seriously enough?
SKZB: How seriously you take yourself, at least as a writer, is exactly how seriously you have to take yourself in order to turn out your best book. Some need to believe they are writing literature for the ages, or else they get sloppy. Others need to believe they are writing throw-away crap, otherwise they freeze up and can't do the work. As for the fans, well, I once heard an interviewer ask Jerry Garcia how he felt about all of these Deadheads putting all of their time, energy, and money into the Grateful Dead. He said, "Where do you think my time, energy, and money goes?" That's about how I feel. I put a lot of effort into this stuff, and it would be really small and silly of me to be upset or contemptuous because other people put effort into digging out what I've put in there. It is very gratifying. It pleases the hell out of me
Holly points out that in the entry about her blindly posting one envelope (which she did, today) I've probably confused everyone by saying application when I meant something else, I've already forgotten exactly what, probably acceptance letter. So, the letter she sent off was the one saying yes, she'll be going there thank you kindly and here's a cheque to be going along with.
Another not-a-FAQ, but the Japan Times had something nice to say about Coraline.
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ek20030320pk.htm
and
Hi, Neil...
Thank you for the link to the etymology dictionary...I made the following serendipitous discovery about my favorite word:
serendipity - 1754, from the fairy tale "The Three Princes of Serendip," by Horace Walpole (1717-92), whose heroes "were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things they were not in quest of." From Serendip, an old name for Ceylon (modern Sri Lanka), from Ar. Sarandib. Serendipity formed c.1950.
The origins of the word immediately brought to mind what it is I have come to love about your work. I wish you and all of your stories to come the blessings of Serendip.
Allyson
Which put a huge grin on my face.
Greetings, my name is Matthew and I am currently in my second year of York University in Thornhill, Ontario. I am almost taking a Creative Writing course in which I have discovered a major weakness of mine in terms of writing.
It is called description of setting. To put it simply, I have difficulty describing geography -- be it a city, or a place of any kind that exists in the real world. I'm told though that research helps one around this problem.
Now here is my question (I'll put some asterixes around them to emphasize its importance):
*(1) When researching a place of any kind in real life, where would one, as a beginning writer, even begin?
I would appreciate an answer to this very much -- it is somewhat of a perplexion to me because lack of setting description really adds less depth to my stories. Thank you.
The easiest thing is to go there, and take a notebook, and jot down things that strike you. Tape recorders, if you can conquer the embarassment of talking to yourself in a public place, can be terrific for that. And note the things that make you feel something. Sometimes one detail will stick with you. Write it down, or remember it.
Then, if you want colour and background, use it, and don't dwell on it. A sodden teddy bear, face down in the grass, in the little section of a cemetery called BABYLAND may be all you ever need to mention...
You can take for granted that people know more or less what a street, a shop, a beach, a sky, an oak tree look like. Tell them what makes this one different.
Find authors you like and see how they do it. They'll all do it differently, but you can still learn.
Not a question, just a link I thought you (and others) might enjoy: "Around the World in the 1890s: Photographs from
the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896"
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/wtc/wtchome.html
What great photos.
And keep the university things coming in. (And remember, if you're reading this on a livejournal feed, if you post replies in the comments, I don't see them. So please use the FAQ form at Neilgaiman.com)
you said today in the blog (Tuesday the first) that Sam Delaney invented the Graphic Novel. I alwasy that that Will Eisner invented it, and the term Graphic Novel, when he wrote Contract With God. considering that i wrote an A- paper for college on the subject and used that as a premise, i am a bit horrified that i'm wrong and what will happen if my Proff. finds out, could you please explain?
I didn't mean that Chip Delany invented the graphic novel. Just that he's created some very cool ones in his day, more or less as an afterthought.
Will certainly came up with the term graphic novel, although I think he mentioned to me once that other people had come up with it independently before he did. ( A Contract With God certainly wasn't the first graphic novel, I'm afraid, or even the first graphic short story collection -- which it is -- but I believe it was the first book to be marketed with the words A Graphic Novel on the book jacket. Does that help, or just make things more confusing?)
Hey Neil--
Just a quick not to let anyone on the blog know - Paul Zindel died on March 27th in New York City of cancer.
He was from my hometown (Tottenville, Staten Island) and taught locally as well, and throughout his career he always kept in touch with the kids of the neigborhood, who, along with his own unique childhood, were such an inspiration to him. To me also.
I only met the man once, and he shook my hand with both of his -hat's the kind of person he was. A student of mine grimly told me of his passing, all the while clutching a young adult book Mr. Zindel had recently written. Paul actually dedicated the book to him and a few of his grammar school friends. That was the kind of man he was, also.
His was a very unique voice, and I will miss it.
I met him at ALA last year -- he was the recipient of the Margaret Edwards award, for a lifetime of writing for young adults, and he made a speech and told us about his life, and I thought he was funny and very nice. His family were really proud of him as well: they glowed, and he glowed because they glowed.
Thanks for letting me know...
...
I heard that you are going to be at some kind of convention in Chicago within the next month (today's 03/31/03), but I didn't see anything listed under the "where's Neil" section. Is this true and if so, could I get some more info on it?
followed by
Wow! I feel stupid! I submited a question yesterday about a convention I had heard about in Chicago... well, I just re-read the message I had recieved about it and instead of saying April, like I thought, it says August. So... I'll just wait for posted info at a closer date. Sorry about that!
Not a problem. I won't be in Chicago in August at a convention, though - I do, at most, one big summer convention a year, and this year it's San Diego. On the other hand I will be making an appearance in Chicago in June, connected to the Chicago Humanities Festival, and will possibly be back there in OCtober or November to do something at the Festival proper, and I'll post the info on that here when I have it.
Dear Neil,
I had a similar problem as Holly when trying to choose which University I would go to. I was stuck trying to pick between Nottingham and York. I eventually decided to settle the problem by going to the Uni with the least iron content, because if a big magnetic meteor ever hurtles towards the Earth then you don't want to be in a place with a lot of iron. Or Manchester.
Matt
Right. I'll remember that....
Neil,
I am currently studying John Keats in graduate school and upon reading a poem immediately thought of you. So (as I cannot go through the book and decide for myself because I lent it to my cousin) I was wondering...Are you referencing "To Autumn" in the title for Season of Mists?
Sort of. Although I always misremember it as beginning, "Season of mists and mellow frightfulness...", which somewhat colours the poem in ways Keats might not have intended.
This one came in from someone with an MTV staff e-mail, and it feels like it's being asked for a reason. Where has Neil's work (Sandman or otherwise) been taught at a university level, to your knowledge? Thank you...
Is that something I should keep track of? I tend not to, I'm afraid (and on the whole universities, wisely, don't warn the author when they're teaching his works. Live authors are always a potential source of embarrassment, because they can say "No, it's not about that at all." Philip K. Dick became the best beloved SF writer of many academics when he was no longer writing, or indeed, living).
Anyway, if anyone has taught or been taught my stuff (Sandman or otherwise) at university level, send in the details on the FAQ line, and I'll post a list here.
...
There's a Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales review here at the Toronto Star and there's one at the New York Times, which doesn't seem to be coming up properly for me, so it's:
McSWEENEY'S MAMMOTH TREASURY OF THRILLING TALES
Edited by Michael Chabon.
Vintage, paper, $13.95.
''As late as about 1950,'' Michael Chabon writes in his introduction, short fiction meant stories with plots -- ''the ghost story; the horror story'' -- and not the ones we run across today, ''plotless and sparkling with epiphanic dew.'' Sick of his own epiphanies, Chabon invited category brand names like Elmore Leonard and Stephen King to break bread with Nick Hornby and others not known for hatching science fiction, mystery or adventure plots. The result is an uneven, somewhat gentrified ''Treasury,'' the self-consciousness of the exercise making it more fun in parts than as a whole. Michael Crichton writes pitch-perfect noir, but his loner-detective tale doesn't add up to much. Aimee Bender misfires with her cozy, as does Sherman Alexie with his zombie cannibals. There are thrills, though. Rick Moody's mournful, postapocalyptic thriller about a drug that lets people relive memories -- and alter the remembered events -- manages to feel personal while recycling Philip K. Dick. Chabon blends alternate history with Jules Verne to gripping effect. Karen Joy Fowler's and Neil Gaiman's acute tales skirt the edge of the supernatural. And Dave Eggers's story about tourists climbing Kilimanjaro seems suspiciously short on plot, but long on character and place, which anywhere else would be a compliment. Matthew Flamm
Dear Mr. Gaiman,
I'm the one who interviewed Alan for Ninth Art. However, I'm not the one
who put that ridiculous copyright notice on it.
First of all, I'd like to thank you for linking to my article. We've
already seen a dramatic rise in hits since you posted it, and it really
means a lot.
9A maintains a policy of "Ideolgical Freeware," which is sort of like the
Linux open-source model as applied to journalism. It's a concept I'm
totally on board with. By default, all Ninth Art pieces are "Freeware,"
unless the author of the piece wishes to retain the rights.
The notice was put there due to a miscommunication between Ninth Art's
editors and myself, but it's been fixed. I honestly don't know why the
notice appeared. I'm sorry that it made me come across like Captain
Copyright. That was never my intention.
Thank you again,
Frank Beaton
You're very welcome. I'm looking foward to the next installment of the interview -- let me know when it goes up and I'll post it here.
Several of you have written to point out that visors and palm pilots and I expect the next generation of phones will happily read etexts in all formats, and that I shouldn't faff around with getting the Gemstar eBook usable. I suppose really it's just because I have the eBook, it was a gift, and whether I keep it or pass it on, it would be better if it was working and useful.
I finished the afterword for Steve Brust today, and phoned him and read it to him and even though he was barely awake he laughed in all the right places.
And I went for a walk on a beach and saw several thousand dead jellyfish (actually, they may not have been dead. You can't really tell with a jellyfish. Sometimes waves would carry them back off the sand out to sea, and they'd bob off to keep jellyfish appointments) and played David Bowie records I'd loved when I was thirteen on my iPod, and, because the beach was perfectly deserted, I sang along very loudly, put scenes for the next issue of 1602 together in my head, and was perfectly, indescribably happy.
Let's see. Today is preeminent SF author, chronicler of our times, academic, and creator of graphic novels Samuel R. Delany's birthday, which means that by some strange coincidence it's also my friend Chip Delany's birthday. Happy birthday, Chip.
And on the subject of friends...
Sorry, you may have thousands of people sending you this, but
Diana Wynne Jones wonders if her own wizardry influenced J. K. Rowling, in the Times: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,923-623182,00.html
There again, last time I thought thousands of people would be telling you something and so didn't myself, it was that the fire on Brighton's modern pier actually started on the ghost train, which is why the train is no longer there.
I also had a question: when writing Neverwhere, did you come across any interesting books on the history of the Tube? I have acquired some curiosity about it since starting to use it every day, but there are a lot of books out there and many are probably dull, and I would trust your recommendation above those of most other people.
Thanks for the daily thoughts, always entertaining.
Paul
My favourite book on the world beneath London is called LONDON UNDER LONDON, and it has stuff on the Tube in it. It's still in print, after many editions, and one day I shall tell the story of how the brass bed got into the sewers. Beyond that, there were several stodgy books on the history of the Tube (many of which I bought from the London Transport shop) which all appear to be out of print. On the other hand I notice several books on the abandoned and disused underground stations are now up on Amazon.co.uk that I would have killed for in 1993...
Lovely interview with Diana Wynne Jones, although it's obvious that one off-handed reply by her has been made the lead paragraph and theme of the article, which is a pity, although if it tells readers who like J.K. Rowling that Diana was doing it first and, to my mind, better, then that can't be a bad thing.
Lovely part one of an interview with Alan Moore at http://www.ninthart.com/display.php?article=532. I was fascinated by the copyright notice at the bottom of the interview, which seemed to me to be a way of having your ideological cake and eating it too "Please note that while Ninth Art generally endorses the principle of Ideological Freeware, the author of this article wishes to reserve all rights, and the article may not be reproduced without the author's express written permission."
Hmm. Please note that while Neilgaiman.com vigorously endorses the principle of copyright, the author of this journal is perfectly happy for people to borrow, reprint, put up on their blogs, livejournals or moveable type wossnames, copy things into diaries or commonplace books, or even print out and stick to fridge doors anything on this journal that strikes your fancy. You can do anything except make money from it, really, and even if you managed to do that in an amusing and indirect sort of way I can't imagine I'd grumble.
I think that everything would be simpler if the governments of the world agreed to use Food-Eating Battle Monkeys! to solve their problems. It reduces the names to food eating battle monkeys and tells you who wins. America beats Iraq, but I'm afraid France beats America. Peter Arnett (a Coconut Eating Librarian Monkey) beats NBC (a Plankton Eating Robot Monkey). I could have got Holly to have entered Bryn Mawr (a money-eating giant monkey) vs Smith (a fire-eating disco monkey).
Good night.
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