I've just realised (mostly from what questions are still coming in) that an entire post from yesterday never got in. Not Blogger's fault this time -- I suspect I wrote the whole thing, then had some computer problems and just shut everything down without noticing I had a longish entry unposted.
So I'll chunter through them quickly --
Hi Neil,
Whether you know it or not, the hot internet rumor right now is that you will take over New X-Men when Grant Morrison leaves with #154. I'm not sure how it started, but most people are pretty convinced, care to comment now so I don't have to bug you on August 8th(can't wait for that, by the way)?
Sure. It's bollocks.
The contract between Marvel and Marvels and Miracles (the company that I formed to help sort out the Miracleman rights situation) calls for me to do two projects for them. 1602 was the first. The second hasn't been completely decided yet -- although I had a conversation with Avi Arad just before San Diego that made us both pretty happy. When I'm certain what it is, there will be an announcement, and I'll try and make sure that the announcement happens more than a month before shipping...
I thought I'd clarified this for Rich Johnston's rumour column, but obviously I hadn't done it solidly enough.
Dear Neil,
Curious people want to know (or at least this curious person does), what TV channel has asked you to host their Halloween horror fest?
-fingers crossed - Please say it's not some local Minneapolis channel which I can't get in Denver....
Debby
No, it's a national cable channel. When it's definite I'll post the details.
Dear Neil:
I remember you saying a while ago that you were so fed up with the quality of Sandman scripts you were recieving that you stopped considering them altogether. I was wondering if this was still the case. Also, if you are willing to still consider scripts, do they have to be from writers who have had movies made in the past? Do you bother with amateur or fan scripts? And, finally, where would submissions of this sort be sent to?
Curious first time screenwriter,
~Jamie
Sandman movie scripts don't come to me -- they go to (and come from) Warners, who control the Sandman film rights. What you're remembering was me grumbling about the quality of scripts coming from the film's producers. Here's a review from Ain't It Cool News of the last one.
And I'm always the wrong person to send any kind of script to. Honest.
Thought you would find this amusing.
Puff pastry mistaken for explosives by French officials.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3095865.stm
Also, we received our copies of Wolves this morning. I have indeed trained my inventory gang well. I was paged immediately & handed a copy fresh off the skid.
-Borders Mole
I did find it amusing....
Tori's chef is a really nice man and excellent cook named Duncan Pickford. (He gave me the ginger-and-honey drink recipe that got me through the reading of the whole of Coraline last year.) He's going to be launching a cooking and health and so on website pretty soon. For now, there's a pilot site up at Duncsdiner.com. He's got a pre-site-launch prize draw going on... check it out.
A little bit of good news on the CBLDF front, with the fight against several proposed laws, info up at http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/3213.html.... While Chuck Rozanski's terrific impromptu speech after becoming the first (but not, I hope, the last) retailer to be awarded the CBLDF's "DEFENDER OF LIBERTY" award is up at http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/news/105957992591614.htm.
Have the Neverwhere DVDs been pushed back a month or so, or am I hallucinating again? When I preorderd them from aande.com last month, I could have sworn it said "Will ship on [some date in late July], one month before retail availability," but now it says "Will ship on August 11, one month before retail availability." What's up?
Misty Smith
I think they're now shipping at the beginning of September.
Hi Neil,
I've been dying to read your graphic novels for years now. I just couldn't choose which ones to start off with. I finally went to the library and checked out everything, but was always missing the starting issue; Preludes and Nocturnes. Do I need to read the Sandman series in order? Or am I being very anal about reading them in order? I read DreamHunters and loved it. The Sandman series has attracted me for years, but because I am more of a reader of words, I went out and bought my own copies of Coraline, American Gods, and Good Omens. I am most fascinated by Coraline and your upcoming Wolves book. Perhaps I am a newbie to existance of you, but I'd really like to know how you progressed from such 'mature' material to the same sorts of 'mature' material but for a more innocent or on the cusp of being less innocent audience? I am a big fan of Francesca Lia Block as well as Lemony Snicket. And now, you have a place on my bookshelf next to them for years to come. (This is meant as a compliment by the way.)
Oh and I most enjoyed your entries about Holly's college decision. That's just beyond words what she did. I think it was fantastic how she chose.
Anyways, I shall immerse myself in Coraline now.
:)
-Dee (Los Angeles)
You can probably start reading Sandman anywhere except the end -- I'd not start with The Kindly Ones or The Wake. I'm still figuring out what I'm doing in Preludes, so, while it contains a lot of important stuff, and several good stories, Sandman doesn't really feel entirely like Sandman until the second book, The Doll's House, anyway.
In many ways the new Sandman book, Endless Nights, is a good place to start, even if you don't know who all these people are yet, and even though it will be a different book if you go back to it after you've read the other ten books...
Neil --
I was just reshelving our copy of American Gods, and thought I'd share a small bit of a story with you. My wife and I read American Gods together immediately after it came out. She and I were travelling through Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan at the time. When we realized how much of the book took place in our vacation spots (with a climax not too far from our home town of Lawrence, Kansas,) the mantra of our trip became "Let's do what Shadow did!"
Shadow made an excellent tour guide, I believe. If nothing else, I owe him (and you) for introducing me to Culver's butterburgers. My vegetarian wife does not appreciate the wonderful greasiness, but I'm a fan.
So . . . your novel has become an indelible part of our marital history. I just thought you might like to know.
Yours,
Randy Johnson
P.S.: Now that I think about it, my first serious girlfriend and I bonded over Sandman. I'd buy two copies each month - one for me, and one to mail off to her. What is it with you and my love life?
No idea, but I'm pleased I've been able to help it along. I love the idea of using American Gods as a travel book. I'd love to know how many people turn up at The House on the Rock wondering if it's going to be as odd as the one in the book, and finding it even odder....
And a few final oddments:
Does this news story mean that the Secret Service will in future be investigating High School productions of Sondheim's Assassins?
Hey pal -- feelin' blue?
Don't know what to do?
Hey, pal --
I mean you--
Yeah.
C'mere and kill a president.
No job? Cupboard bare?
One room, no one there?
Hey, pal, don't despair --
You wanna shoot a president?
C'mon and shoot a president...
There's an excellent informal Dave McKean site here at http://dreamline.nu/updates/
Jill Thompson is doing some commissions (and selling her Death Manga pages) at http://www.comicbookpros.com/thompson/commissions.html
And you can read Jeff Zaleski's Publishers Weekly article here, at least for a while. The photo of me is from the MirrorMask set, having stumbled back downstairs from the impromptu haircut.
After I finished the Saturday night reading at the Comic-Con, someone came up up to me and asked if they could buy the manuscript for "The Problem of Susan" in exchange for a donation to the CBLDF. I said sure, a hefty cheque was written and handed to the CBLDF people, and I signed and handed over the manuscript.
"What a good idea," I thought. So I signed almost all the rest of the things I read, and a couple of things I hadn't got around to, (I set aside "Blueberry Girl"; she's not for auction) and gave them to Charles Brownstein, and told him to make money for a good cause with them.
One was sold the following day at the CBLDF panel. There's another up for auction on eBay right now: eBay Seller List: cbldf. You'll find some other cool things there as well, including a signed (by Alan Moore) copy of Miracleman #1.
Which reminds me....
for your readers info, the second Alan Moore book, "The Extraordinary Works Of Alan Moore" is now out. For those with long memories, you had a librarian in your attic on February 23, 2002 (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal_archives/2002_02_01_archive.asp#10047174) to find material for the book
link to publisher's listing: http://www.twomorrows.com/books/moore.html
-S
George gave me a copy when he saw me at the San Diego Comic-con. I posted it back, so haven't read very much of it yet. I talked to Alan about it today -- he loved the two page story I wrote about him, which Mark Buckingham drew (really delightfully. He's ace, our Bucky) and Todd Klein lettered. The second page of the comic is about the pond in Alan's back garden. "Did you know I actually have a pond in my back garden?" he asked. And I didn't. But that being true, we decided that the rest of it was probably true as well.
I did read enough to learn that the book has a matched pair of incredibly funny and brutal introduction and afterwords by, respectively, Amber and Leah Moore, who are a) terrific writers and b) write about the Alan that I've known for...(Um. Eighteen years. Good lord.)
I all-too often fail to recognise Alan in pen-portraits done by other people -- he's larger than life already, but sometimes in interviews or articles I read he suddenly turns into someone who looks like the photographs. When Frank Miller realises someone is taking a photo of him, he looks at the photographer like a mad falcon who's just focused on a tiny dot of a mouse a long way below that is just about to be dinner; and when Alan gets his photo taken he sort of looms grimly, and shadows wreathe around him, and he looks like Santa Claus's thinner, more murdererous, magical younger brother. Whereas in real life and out of photos, Frank Miller is someone who, in conversation, mostly guffaws with delight, and has the sense of fun and continuous wicked grin of a really dangerous eight-year old who has just realised that the Grown-Ups can't stop him now; and when I think of Alan, I think of the way he grins, in real life, like Maxwell the Magic Cat, the strip he used to write and draw (as Jill de Rais), and of his enthusiasms, and unfailing politeness and lack of bathroom carpeting. That's the Alan that Leah and Amber so cruelly expose to the world.
(It was a joy to see the cover of George's book -- it's a painting of Alan that Dave Mckean did in about 1987, as the cover of a book I never wrote, and it's a joy to see it updated and out in the world.)
Neil:
Menachem again, i hate to keep sending the same question, but i think maybe you're other fans could use this advice as well, for me it is for religous reasons, but for others it may just be a I-Have-To-Meet-My-Favorite-Author thing.
so, anyway, as to the question: do you have any advice for how someone can make sure that they will see you at a signing? (in this case specificaly the Aug. 8th signing) and for me particularly, so that i can leave long before sundown re: the Sabbath.
Thank you so much,
Menachem Luchins
P.S. do you know when the doors open?
Well, the signing starts at 3.00pm. I'll probably start by reading WOLVES, and answer questions, which'll take about 20-40 minutes, mostly depending on how many people are waiting and can't hear, and how tightly people are packed and stuff, and then I'll start signing.
The best advice for anyone trying to pre-plan is to talk to the store and find out how they intend to do it (there is no guarantee you will reach someone who can answer that question corractly at any given store). There is normally someone there for the signing when the store opens in the morning, but most people won't start drifting in until 1:00 or 2:00ish. Some stores hand out "numbers" for people, as with a deli line (often old Far Side calendars are used for this -- "Will December get into line now?"), some don't.
The signing is at Borders Books, on August the 8th (Friday) starting at 3.00pm:
100 Broadway (at Wall St.)
New York, NY 10006
212.964.1988
The store is located across the street from Trinity Church, and is accessible by the following subways:
1 (Fulton St.), 2,3 (Wall St.), 4,5 (Wall St.), N,R (Rector St.), J,M,Z, (Fulton St.), A,C,E (Fulton St).
And the sun sets in New York at 8.04pm on August the 8th. If you're there at midday you'll definitely be in the first wave of people and out by 5.00pm (and bear in mind it's a weekday, so lots of people who would want to be there will be working, or planning on swinging by when they get off work to see if I'm still scribbling away. And I'm sure I will be).
Did you know Coraline won the Elizabeth Burr/Worzalla Award? http://www.ifls.lib.wi.us/wla-chbkawards/burr-winners.html
Brad
Which message weirdly came in about half an hour after I'd opened the official letter telling me that CORALINE was the judges' unanimous choice. Weirdly, because the letter was dated (and postmarked) May 16th, and had sat unopened at HarperCollins for several months before being forwarded to me. So, er, yes. I did. Cool, isn't it?
Hi Neil ... not a FAQ but a BIG *Thank You*.
'Telling Tales' arrived with me in the UK this morning ... courtesy of those super folk at Dreamhaven.
All splendid stuff ... *wonderfully* read ... 'The Wedding Present' was already a favourite 'cos I hadn't missed it in print :-) and 'In The End' is a REAL surprise delight.
I hope it sells well ... then we will be sure to get more such treasures!
Thanks again for all the joy ... from me, and my wife Sue, who says you can read bedtime stories to her *ANY TIME* :-)
Colin
Which I only posted because it made me very happy indeed. (It's the first reaction from anyone to Telling Tales.) The next one is already recorded -- I did enough for about 2 and a half CDs when I recorded Telling Tales. It should have art by Michael Zulli (hurrah!) and music by Adam Stemple. It'll have "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar" on it, for a start...
Hi Neil,my name is Coraline I'm 27 and I live in Italy ,actually I'm both french and Italian...i was sure till today that my name was unique!Since my name has always been a mystery to me I'd love to know why and how you choose this name...that's mine...!
Merci!
Well, first of all I thought I made it up (I think it started as a typing error, when I was writing something to a Caroline, and I looked at it and thought it was a beautiful name. I loved the idea of being like coral -- beautiful, and underwater, and made of dead things, and strong.) Then, later, after I started writing the book, I was reading Casanova's Memoirs and met a girl called Coraline in 18th century Venice; and I realised it was a real name. I've now met two Coralines while signing books, and I've signed copies for several absent Coralines. So you are not alone. It's a French and Italian name, I believe....
...
Received an e-mail from China Mieville offering to get me a photocopy of Lucy Clifford's "Anyhow Stories", which made me very happy indeed. I've read two or three of them over the years, in Victorian fiction collections, and really want to read the rest of them.
Hi Neil,
What was the last piece of music you picked up that was really fresh, that really excited you?
Take care,
Alexandria
Thea Gilmore's Avalanche. Which arrived in the post this afternoon...
Hi Neil,
This isn't a FAQ so much as a "Hey, how about that."
Hormel Aussie Pies (a type of frozen chicken pie sold here in the States at Costco, don't know about their avaliability elsewhere) remind me strongly of Shadow's pasties in American Gods.
Just thought you should know, as until I found them I (and I'm sure others) had been craving the pasties ever since reading about them.
Love, Jen
Ah, but this being the internet age, if it's real pasties you crave, and you're on the North American continent, real pasties you can have...
You could visit Muldoons Pasty Shop, Munising Michigan, mail order available. For that matter, there's even a pasty.com (also.net and .org) -- they don't ship pasties during the hot summer season, but http://www.pasty.com/faq.html tells you all about who they are and how they came to be...
Hi Neil,
just read your little post about blogging via your mobile e-mail function... well, I have no idea what kind of handy you have, but if it can do Java, then www.blogplanet.net or http://web.vee.net/projects/azure could be just for you. I do use blogplanet from time to time, and, really, it's as simple as writing an SMS.
Oh, and thanks for the note about the Tori-Inspired calendar at RAINN. Ordered one the minute I saw it, seems like a fantastic piece of art... and for a good purpose, what more can you ask for?
May the Night bless You
Stefan Brinkmann
alias
Der NachtPoet
http://www.nachtpoet.com
Thanks for the suggestions. Blogplanet didn't want to install on the phone (a Nokia 7120) but Azure went on just fine. Next time I'm on the road I'll try and post with it -- I suspect that anything will be more successful than the "e-mail blogger" function.
You know, there's been so much going on that I forgot to mention a few things I should've. Last month's Locus Magazine was the graphic novel special, edited by Charles Vess. There are some fragments from their Alan Moore interview online -- and here's their contents list.
Locus is doing a few "Specials" now each year -- so far this year they've done the Horror and the Graphic Novel specials, with more to come (the extra length gets paid for by the publishers taking more ad space), and I'm really enjoying them. Anyway, I'd hate for comics people to miss out on that issue of Locus because someone forgot to mention it here. It's still on sale in places that Locus is sold, or by mailorder through the website.
Hi Neil,
I saw that one of the journal readers was wanting to get his hands on more of Barron Storey's work and I have a page (http://www.geocities.com/jeff.avila@sbcglobal.net/main/links/barron/barron.html) set up that shows a lot of his work and gives help finding some of it. Readers of the journal should also try www.barronstorey.com, were Barron has started to upload some stuff.
Jeff Avila
Barron Storey art is wonderful stuff. I'm so pleased there's a place to point people to, Jeff.
I understand that this is a somewhat odd question but here it goes anyway. My friend and I were at Comic Con San Diego and, while in the autograph line on friday the 18th, she had her photograph taken twice by a balding man going up and down the line of fans asking them questions and snapping photos as he went( I do beleive he was supposed to be there and not just insane), and she would very much like to know where she might find said photographs (as would I, because it would amuse me). I will understand if you do not know the where abouts of these photos, but I figured it couldn't hurt to ask. (If you need a discription to find the photos, she was wearing fishnet, pvc, and boots (all in black), multiple rings (one of which was a claw ring of particular interest to the man), black eye make-up, blue lipstick to match her eyes, and black hair, as ever.) Thank you so very much for just reading my babble and extra as much if you do find the photos.
With a smile and a nod,
Alex
You know, there's a reason why people think that my typical reader is thin, beautiful, dresses in black and probably has blue lipstick. In reality, you could probably wildly fire a machine gun into the crowd at any large signing of mine without killing more than a couple of dozen people of any gender answering to this description.
It's the photographers we have to blame. They know what they want in their shots, and what they want wears fishnet and black pvc.
So. To answer your question, the gentleman taking the photos is a photographer for Entertainment Weekly. They are doing a profile on me, to run when Sandman: Endless Nights comes out, in mid-September. I first became aware of his existence during the Vertigo Panel, when I noticed that one of the people up on the dais was not an artist or writer I was familiar with, and was instead taking photos of me from behind. "It's okay," he said, when I looked at him. "I'm from Entertainment Weekly."
I suppose, in retrospect, he could have been a brilliant imposter...
...
Today's weirdest request was from a TV movie channel who wondered if I'd host their Hallowe'en movie week. It's only when faced with trivial questions like that that I become deeply aware of what a serious and respectable business being an author is, and of one's responsibility to maintain the dignity of the profession.
"As a responsible and serious-minded author," I asked myself, "what kind of message would you be sending to the world by appearing as a cheesy horror host at Hallowe'en and introducing scary movies?"
I said yes immediately. I hope I get to climb out of a coffin at some point. I've always wanted to climb out of a coffin.
The quilt that Michelle Hyman made and gave me (and which we gave to the CBLDF for the auction) is visible at Michelle's page, along with an account of its making. The quilt is based on the single most obscure Sandman image that exists -- the Vince Locke Sandman poster that was done for Best Buy in about 1992, and never sold in to the comics market. http://www.snafu.org/michelle/squilt.htm (I'd link to the Vince pic if I knew where it was...)
You can also see the final exciting moments of the actual auction in this photo: http://www.lostchaos.com/photos/sd2003/image32.html (the person wearing blue in the background is Charles Brownstein, Head Honcho of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund). Photo by Karon Flage, features editor of the terrific Sequential Tart site.
[And, incidentally, from the same source, this photo of Julie Schwartz and Ray Bradbury makes me very happy. Not only because both gentlemen are still alive and kicking, but because, well, Julie's so obviously Julie, first a fan and an agent (actually once upon a time Ray Bradbury's editor), then an editor, and then retired into a goodwill ambassador for comics, still kvetching and grumbling and having the time of his life; meanwhile Ray smiles like an ageless cherub and somehow makes it all better.]
Tori's Lottapianos Summer Blockbuster tour has started as of yesterday, supported by Ben Folds... details at: http://www.thedent.com/tourlist02.php#summer03. (I don't think she's played "Snow Cherries" yet.... And yes, for the dozens of you who have written to remind me, I know that I said I'd write a post about the time at her place last month. Sooner or later I shall, honest.)
There's a picture of the trade paperback (ie, larger format, more respectable version) of American Gods at http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0060558121.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg (And I should mention that a lot of on-line places, and for all I know bricks and mortar bookshops, are currently selling the hardback of American Gods for less than the mass-market paperback. )
The Publisher's Weekly article by Jeff Zaleski was faxed to me this morning. He did an excellent job (although I wished he'd sent the article to me for a hasty fact-and-name-spelling-check pre-publication as I could have spared him a few letters from earnest people in the weeks to come), and he describes Endless Nights as a "comics masterpiece" in it, which "demonstrates the enormous range of the comics medium in both content and style" which made me very happy. (On the downside, I also learned from the article that I have a "slight paunch", which means, I suspect, an awful lot of a sit-ups and vegetables in my immediate future.)
Here's a small picture of the PW cover, and me with unlikely hair:
...
Lots of news and links and post-San Diego stuff accumulated by the tireless Lucy Anne over at The Dreaming website. There doesn't seem a lot of point in me reposting it all, so you should probably go to the Dreaming at www.holycow.com/dreaming and check it out...
Hey Neil,
I really love all your stuff and the blog too. I think i found a small goof in the endless nights webpage. You wrote that your birthday was November 10th, 1960 and that you are currently 43 years old. Now i have the same birthday in 1980 and i know that i'm 22 years old. Oh well, keep up the wonderful writing, and i hope to see you in Charlotte in the fall.
Jason
When I wrote it, it said 42 years old. When I handed it in to them, it said 42 years old. In the biography pages of Endless Nights, where it appears, it still says 42 years old (on the version they printed out for me, anyway). I suppose someone on the DC Comics website presumed I don't know how old I am, and fixed it, so I'm now 43. Odd, isn't it?
Incidentally, the first official use of one of the photos from the photo session in Minneapolis a few weeks ago can be seen on that bio page. The slightly unfortunate just-got-out-of-the-shower-look is a result of having dozens of different hair care products applied by the hair-and-make-up lady in an attempt to turn a sort of spontaneous hair explosion into something photographable. (Although they're the first photos of me I can remember where you can actually see what colour my eyes are. For whatever that's worth.)
There's a report on the San Diego MirrorMask panel at http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=2613 and a still here, and the proposal cover sheet image here, along with their reproduction of the Entertainment Weekly still...
Andy Kubert is interviewed at Newsarama -- there are also some very nice small images of pages from the first couple of issues of 1602, that link to much larger ones.
And the journal's Official Birdlady says:
I'm sure the media is going to put a spin on this that crows were trying to
aid the baby, but I think this is more along the lines of they were trying
to find a bigger predator to finish the job so they could eat it.
She attached a link to this Newsday article on some selfless crows, or no-so.
Sharon Stiteler
Meanwhile her husband Bill sends us this link, also to a smart crow... http://www.sciencemag.org/feature/data/crow/ And I start to worry that either the crows or the Stitelers are trying to tell us something.
Let's see...
at san diego, did you learn whether frank miller is working on anything we can expect to see any time soon?
thanks
Nope. I forgot to ask him. He and I got to share a dinner and a signing, and we were very good and chatted to the people who bought us on eBay at the dinners (for the CBLDF), and to all the people at the signings, and in all that I forgot to say "what are you working on...?" Sorry.
...
And Spy Kids 3 (in case you were wondering) felt like Rodruigez had plotted one of those 20 minute Disneyworld "put on your 3-D glasses here" attraction-films, then taken that plot and made a feature film out of it. I would have loved the mini-movie, didn't love the feature. (And I was very fond of both the first two films -- smart, lean film-making which did exactly what it set out to do.)
But I loved the technical side of it.
This is obviously a bit late -- it would have gone up earlier if I'd had web access. (Still, the day's not over yet.) It's from Charles Brownstein at the CBLDF.
Blogging For Liberty!
The 2003 Blogathon starts tomorrow at 6 AM Pacific Time. Blogathon
is a 24 hour telethon-like event where webmasters post articles /
updates to their website every 30 minutes for 24 hours straight.
Users pledge either a flat amount or an amount-per-hour, and all
proceeds go to the charity or organization of the webmasters'
choosing. This year the following supporters are sacrificing sleep
and sanity to benefit the Fund. Pay them many visits or better yet,
make a pledge and watch the results!
Joe Peacock will be writing a 24 hour novel at
http://www.mentallyincontinent.com to benefit the Fund.
Rob Callahan will also be writing a novel, his written from the last
chapter to the first at http://www.robcallahan.com
Dave Hill will be reviewing comics and talking shop at
http://www.hill-kleerup.org/blog/
Lisa Rocci will be saying her piece at http://lisarocci.blogspot.com
For more information on Blogathon visit http://www.blogathon.com (edit: actually Blogathon.org)
These folks are going the mile for free speech, so be sure to support
their efforts by checking in. Blogathon starts tomorrow at 6 AM
pacific time and concludes on Sunday at 6 AM pacific time. 24 hours
of writing is a Herculean effort, so cheer them on!
San Diego Shellshock!
The CBLDF office is up and running again following a week out at the
Comic-Con in San Diego. This show was a monster with attendance
estimates coming in with figures upwards of 80,000 people in
attendance. We'll be offering a more detailed update next week,
but for now we'd like to thank everyone who made this year's
show the best San Diego for fundraising in the history of the CBLDF.
Very special thanks go out to all of our signers; to Neil Gaiman, who
gave a spectacular evening reading on Saturday; Chuck Rozanski whose
auctioneering brought in over $17,000 at our Saturday night auction;
and all of our volunteers who gave phenomenal time and effort to make
this show a blockbuster. Watch CBLDF News next week for a full, in-
depth report and a preview of WizardWorld Chicago!
also
This isn't a question, but more of just a few sentences to inform you about something Really Good. This something is the annual Blog-a-Thon(website: www.blogathon.org), which consists of a bunch of crazy bloggers (yours truly included; website: www.bluetumbleweeds.com) staying up for twenty-four hours and blogging every half hour to raise money for a charity of their choice. It's really a very cool project, but it doesn't get nearly enough publicity, and while I don't expect you to give us money, it would be very nice and probably a bit of karma in your favor if you'd help spread the good word. I'm feeling a bit guilty, because I'm participating at a group blog, see, and a certain member was irate because she felt some of us were not trying to get more donors.
So, see, if you help out you get not only the warm fuzzy feeling of helping the needy, but also the warm fuzzy feeling of helping me.
-Kaie
and
Mr Gaiman,
You have to see this (requires Flash):
http://www.astercity.net/~tobik/pingpong.html
Cheers,
Lu�s
and
Hi Neil,
I'm hoping you'll mention a worthwhile charity project in your blog that I helped out with. A number of very talented artists - some of whom you may have run into personally contributed. These would include artists in the comics field - Tony DiTerlizzi, David Mack, Chris Moeller, and Ken Meyer Jr.. There are also a number of other wonderful artists who lent their talent (including yours truly).
We all put together a 2004 calendar for RAINN themed around your friend, the great Tori Amos. RAINN, for those unfamiliar, is the Rape, Abuse, Incest, National Network, the charity that runs the National Rape Crisis Hotline in the US (1-800-656-HOPE). RAINN is hurting for funding and unfortunately the problem of sexual abuse is still constantly in the headlines.
All of these artists volunteered their work for free to help Tori's favorite charity. 100% of proceeds on sale of this calendar go to RAINN. Tori herself endorses this project and even chose the art submissions herself.
RAINN is accepting pre-orders of the calendar now at their website. See http://www.rainn.org/calendar.html to order.
Sincerely,
David Louie
and this is one that Kevin Kelly at the Jim Henson Company asked me to put up. My daughter Holly did her summer internship last year at Henson's doing precisely this, had a great time and learned a lot ("Hey Dad. I didn't know you'd written something called MirrorMask. I just had to write coverage on it.")
Jim Henson Company Internships
Film/TV Development Intern Positions Available
Accepting resumes for Fall, Spring and Summer Interns
in our Los Angeles office
Internship Description:
Supporting the Jim Henson Company creative team in the development of fantasy genre films and television.
Duties include; reading lots of scripts & books, writing coverage, creative research, writer/director/design research, compiling artwork and pitch materials, general office support, assisting executives, coordinating materials with the Archive department, running occasional errands, etc.
We are looking for students with a great positive attitude, desire to learn, and willingness to be flexible. This is a fun, relaxed place to work with a lot of creative energy and a good mix of hard work.
Students must provide proof of college credit for the internship, and assume responsibility for transportation, and their living arrangements, etc. Four full days a week of interning is preferred. Students majoring in a communications or entertainment related field such as film, TV, screenwriting, etc., are preferred, but not required.
Please fax or e-mail a resume and cover letter stating your interest.
ATTN: MELISSA EATON (323) 802-1628 phone (323) 802-1835 fax
meaton@henson.com
I had a brilliant idea: I'd send blog entries (very short ones, mostly saying I was on a train) from the train, using the e-mail function of my mobile phone.
I really ought to investigate why the blogger entry by e-mail thingie doesn't work. (It didn't.) But I got home this morning, and I'm glad to be home, and have already eaten raspberries and blueberries and some of the last few peas from the garden, and been chewed by mosquitoes, and opened a very large box filled with mail.
And now I'm going to take Maddy to see Spy Kids 3 because she's already seen Pirates of the Caribbean.
And, because it rates a line on its own...
Happy Birthday Michael.
You're twenty.
How on earth did that happen?
Wishing I was home to celebrate, and not a couple of thousand miles away...
Johanna from the Preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com website writes to say:
Thanks for the mention! It completely made my day.
But I apologize to all your faithful blog readers -- their interest has caused my machine to fall over in a heap.
It will be back up as soon as I can get home and restart the webserver, this time with a rate-limiter.
(Just in case anyone has sent mail to you asking why they can't reach it...)
and that leads sort of logically on to...
Hello, Neil!
Your mention of MIT prompted me to finally post this question. I was one of the organisers of that event, and worked with the Comparative Media Studies group on the reading you did at MIT prior to that. Both readings were absolutely wonderful!
At the October 2001 event, you opened with a poem about your crazy hair. I was wondering if that poem has been printed or posted online anywhere. Sadly, I haven't had the chance to look for it. It was a brilliant piece of work, and I would very much love to read it.
Sincerely,
Eva Palmerton
I love doing things at MIT. Astonishingly literate people, who always laugh at my jokes. One day, I ought to go back and do something else there...
Anyway. My remarkably goofy poem CRAZY HAIR is going to be published, as an "all ages" picture book, by HarperChildrens, with art by Dave McKean. The editor and the art director from HarperChildrens flew out and met Dave and me at the con, and, assuming we hit all deadlines, it will be published in Spring of 2005. Which seems a long way away, but is apparently pushing everything as early as it can be pushed. (Dave and I both sighed: coming from comics where things are printed the moment you're done, book publishing can seem to move at a glacial pace.)
...
Hi Neil!
Not a FAQ, just a comment or three. First, about the Slate article regarding "Googleholes": what a yawn. The author insists on ignoring a very basic principle: Google is not omniscient. If you want good results, use good search terms. Don't want Apple Computers when you're looking for a bushel of Jonathans? Search on [ apple fruit ], [ apple growers ] or [ apple -computers ]. Voila, no iMacs! Don't search on [ flowers ] if you want to know how to grow tulips! Search on [ tulips "gardening tips" ]. One would think the author never bothered to read Google's help section! Sheesh.
Second, more on Google: the Googlebot doesn't count words in a file, it reads just the first 100K of a web page. If you're looking to make the archives easily Googleable, make sure your chunks are 100K or less, and link, link, link! (Googlebot has a hard time finding things if they aren't properly linked, so make sure your webmaster includes good navigation!)
Thank you, as ever, for sharing so much of yourself with your fans. I really enjoy following your blog!
--Maggie
(Google Answers Researcher missy-ga)
Thanks Maggie. I don't mind if the archives are googleable to the outside world -- it's more realising that the "search" function on this website, which is Google driven, couldn't find any words after 100K into a page. And most months of archives are longer than that... so now we've realised why Google can't find some things, we can fix it (probably we'll let the archive be week or two weekly).
Mr. G,
I sent this question through once already, but it was the day before you said that the question box wasn't working, so you may not have received it. My apologies if this is doubling up.
Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, and a local Virgin Mega Store all agree that "Telling Tales" doesn't exist. Even the best comic book store in the whole world - Midtown Comics, 40th and 7th, in Manhattan - says that it's not available until August.
So, is this a Dreamhaven exclusive, temporarily (for how long?) or permanently? Or has the whole world just gone mad?
Thanks,
Mark James Schryver
Well, it definitely exists, as I was given one at the convention (which I passed on, unopened, to Scott from Entertainment Weekly, who was shadowing me, and who, Holly assured me before she flew home, she had closed on abandoning the whole overdone 'interview with some author' concept, for the far more intriguing and commercially viable "extensive profile of some author's delightful eighteen-year-old daughter" article. So that's a relief).
DreamHaven are a small bookshop in Minneapolis, so the moment the CDs arrived from the manufacturer they put them up for sale. Telling Tales was in the Diamond catalogue in June for August shipment to Diamond accounts (eg most comic book stores). I don't really know about Amazon and B&N: I'll ask Greg Ketter from DreamHaven when I get back...
I bumped into Bob Chapman from Graphitti Designs at Comic-Con, and we're going to chat next week about him possibly doing an American Gods or a Coraline tee shirt... I rather like the idea of putting Sam's "I believe..." speech on a tee shirt, for a start. If any of you have any better ideas, feel free to send them in.
You should add a book recommendations page here and it would be even better.
I should, I should.
Dear Neil,
At the Mirrormask (I can't type a backwards 'R' on my keyboard) and Afternoon Chat panels, Dave mentioned he was looking for 3-D animators. So first: where can someone write to Dave with their interest in working on Mirrormask? And second, where can someone write to Dave just to tell him how great he is?
Thanks,
Gabriel
I can't find Dave to ask him... so instead I phoned Kevin Kelly at Hensons and he's made an e-mail account. If you're an animator or a computer artist or 3D modeller and you want to work with Dave McKean on MirrorMask from pretty much now until next April, and you're prepared to live in the UK, and work enthusiastically on something amazingly cool for not very much money at all, probably, then send an e-mail to mirrormask@henson.com and give resume details and contact info. (Kevin's just created the e-mail account, so it may not be up yet. If it bounces, just wait a few hours and re-send.) Someone will be in touch.
I don't like the new main page of your website, the links to American Gods, Stardust, Wolves in the Walls etc, look like they are crowding your writing space, they should go somewhere else, people who are interested will know where to find them, we don't need to be hit over the head.
- An opinionated, but devoted reader
It has got a bit loud over on the front page, hasn't it? It's more the fault of time than Harpercollins -- we've always had a fairly discreet link on the front page to whatever was new out right now, but normally there's only one quiet thing there -- for six months it's been Two Plays For Voices, and before that it was Coraline. Now we've got Wolves in the Walls, the American Gods and Neverwhere and Stardust reissues, the link to the DC Comics Sandman: Endless Nights site... and it's only because I'm not sure where we should link to that there isn't a 1602 link as well.
I expect it'll stay crowded and loud for the next few months, and then they'll redesign it and things will start to go away, and I'll suddenly look very lonely, writing in the dark...
Incidentally, while the listings in the Exclusive Section aren't fixed yet, the Chthulu Autobiography is still up at http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/essay07.asp and the Dave McKean essay is at http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/essay08.asp. (And, bringing it up on my screen just then, I just realised that the first line is wrong: I was actually 25 when I met Dave, and he was 22...)
I've loved watching the way that the House of Clocks website has sprung from a reading at MIT I did (with Harlan Ellison and Peter David in October 2001) of extracts from the "Walking Tour of the Shambles" book I wrote with Gene Wolfe, into a fully-functional place of astonishingly fine, mordant, and delightfully maddening clock-lore, created by dozens of diverse hands. The wonderful webmistress (clockmistress?) Johanna just dropped me a message to tell me that the Exhibits section has now started to be catalogued -- and is ready to give the guestbook a run for its money as the coolest part of the site.
Interesting article on some Googleproblems at http://slate.msn.com/id/2085668/ -- although talking to my Google Mole at Comic-Con, I think I've found out why Google has problems with this site: it only checks the first so-many words of a website, and the journal archives here are simply longer than Google checks. We may split the archives up into smaller lumps, then, in order to make them properly searchable.
And, seeing it's been ages since I've linked to one of those faintly dirty, amusing and also enlightening scientific news items, you may not yet have learned that, according to the New Scientist, masturbation may protect men from prostate cancer. ...if the finding is confirmed, future health advice from doctors may no longer be restricted to diet and exercise, it finishes, drily.
...
Anyway. Not at the con any longer. Woke from dreams this morning in which thousands and thousands of people were crashing like waves on the shore, and I was meant to sign things for all of them...
Yesterday was fun, although the schedule was slightly punishing, and around 5:30pm I wound up with a clear-cut choice between attending a dinner, two receptions and a meeting before I did the CBLDF late night reading, or going to my hotel room to sleep for a couple of hours. Holly and Pam Noles, who is moving me from place to place at this thing, ganged up on me (it didn't take much) and I went off and slept, before going down to the end of the CBLDF Auction (the Quilt Michelle Made went for $2600) and doing the late night reading.
Today is a CBLDF panel, a Dave McKean conversation and an autographing...
...
Here's the Eisner Award Keynote Speech from a couple of nights ago.
Eisner Keynote Speech 2003
Being the Eisner Keynote speaker is a huge honour. Not just because they're the Eisner Awards, our industry and our artform's Oscars and Pulitzers and Tonies, but because it's a rare opportunity to speak, without being interrupted, to thousands of people who actually create comics, who sell comics, who care about comics -- and because it's still early in the evening, and the awards have not yet been handed over, people have to pretend to listen to what I say.
I thought I'd talk about awards, and why they matter, and comics and why they matter and making art and why it matters.
I don't have anything huge and controversial to say. The last time I had anything controversial to say was ten years ago, when I told retailers not to get caught up in a speculator bubble that would, I predicted, soon pop like the Dutch Tulip Bubble. Creators, publishers and retailers were bathing, Uncle Scrooge-like, in money, and I got up and told them that there were bad times just around the corner, and what mattered was selling stories that people cared about and wanted to read.
And most of my predictions, bizarrely, came true.
Ten years on, I think it's a good time to take stock of where we are. A state of the comics nation, if you will...
And we aren't doing badly at all.
I started working professionally in comics about seventeen years ago. I was writing about comics as a journalist, whenever anyone would let me, for two or three years before that.
In my dreams, back then, I would think about a comics utopia. A future golden age.
So let's look back and remember what that comics utopia would be.
First and foremost, I wanted comics to be taken seriously.
That didn't mean that I wanted all comics to be serious. I wanted all kinds of comics. And I wanted them to be able to stand beside theatre, cinema, books, TV, Grand Opera, as a valid and unique way of telling stories. A fairly young medium, perhaps, in which a lot of great work was still to come, but a medium that shouldn't be sneered at for simply existing. A medium whose name can be used as a put-down has a long way to go.
When I was a journalist, as once upon a time I was, I would ask editors to be allowed to write about comics. Normally I'd be reprimanded, and told that I couldn't write about Watchmen, or Maus, or Dark Knight, or Love and Rockets, because something had already been written about comics within the last year -- it had recently been English comics character Desperate Dan's 40th birthday, and simply mentioning this had soaked up all the available newspaper column inches. I tried to explain that the action of acknowledging the existence of a book or a film didn't preclude interviewing authors or directors in the future, and sometimes they'd let me write something about comcis, just to shut me up, and if they ran it it would run under the heading "Wham! Bam! Pow! Comics Are Growing Up!", a headline that every editor around the globe was convinced was original and smart.
So in my utopia, if a journalist wanted to write about comics or comics creators, his or her editor would say "of course".
I wanted to explain why people should know who Alan Moore and art spiegelman were, and who the Hernandez Brothers and Frank Miller were and why people should care.
I wanted people to know who Will Eisner was.
And I wanted to live in an alternate universe, in which the cool comics stories from the past, the ones I'd read about in the fanzines but would never have a hope of actually reading, stories by Jack Cole and Bernie Krigstein and Winsor McKay and George Herriman, in which those stories were in print, and available. A world in which lots of good, long comics stories were collected. A world in which libraries stocked graphic novels. A world in which girls read comics, and in which girls made comics.
I wanted a world in which collections of comics existed and were routinely sold in places that other things were sold. Like bookshops.
I wanted a world in which superheroes existed, and did just fine, but in which there was also room for any other kind of comics one could imagine.
And, frankly, we're getting there. We may not have reached that glorious shining comic-book utopia yet,
But we're getting there. Things are different. A world in which Chris Ware's Jimmy Corrigan can take the Guardian Best First Novel award, is the kind of future I wanted. It's an alternate universe...
I read reviews of a recent movie in which the complaint in most of the media seemed to be that the film makers had dumbed down a witty and intelligent comic. Now, this has happened scores of times over the years, and it is not unique. What was unique is that people had noticed � that the journalists writing the reviews knew. That's the kind of future I wanted, when I started out.
We are, for good or ill, where we always wanted to be: just another medium. The bastard child of art and commerce has become, if not respectable, then at least no less respectable than any other.
So. Now is the time we learn that we should have been careful of what wished for...
On the one hand, we are, right now, this minute, in a golden age. There are, quite simply, more good comics available to be read than there ever have been before. More classic books, more good books of recent vintage.
Last summer, at the American Library Association, a number of comics people were invited to talk to Librarians. I was one of them. I went along, expecting to be talking to the 250 comics fans who had grown up to be librarians. I couldn't have been more wrong: the librarians were getting pressure from their reades. The librarians knew that graphic novels -- whatever they are -- were popular, and they wanted to know what they were. So they got me, and Jeff Smith, and Colleen Doran, and art spiegelman, and several other people in to tell them what we thought they should know. And the libraries have started ordering the books.
There's a potential downside, of course. Comics as an industry seems particularly prone to a peculiar sort of boom and bust. It's the place where commerce takes over from art, and we suddenly find ourselves staring at yard after yard of shelving containing lots more things kind of like what the people were buying last month, only not as good. Bad comics, bad graphic novels, drive out the good. And then, in six months, or two years, we find ourselves staring at empty shops and empty shelves.
Let's try not to let that happen again.
One way we can help avoid the next implosion is by trying to do good work. Do your best work, and then get try to get better for the one after that.
The Eisner Awards, like all awards, are flawed. But they reflect something very important, which is a striving toward excellence.
Fifty, sixty years ago, Will Eisner was an oddity and a weirdo. In a world of people who were writing or drawing comics until they could find more respectable work, who lied to their friends about what they did, people who couldn't wait to get out and make real money, make real art, Will was one of the few people convinced that this nascent mixture of words and pictures really was an art form. Other people believed it was about the quick buck. Will was certain, against much of the available evidence, that there could be well-written comics, well-drawn comics, and that the strange magic of comics that comes from combining sequential pictures and words into a story was really something powerful and unique and true.
It was true then, and it's no less true today. This is an artform in which you can make magic. Magic for kids, magic for adults. And that is what these awards are about, and notwithstanding those who like to think of comics as a cheap feeder unit for Hollywood, that's what this convention is about.
The awards that bear Will's name are about that. They're about more than patting ourselves on the back. They are more than marketing tools, more than pretty things to hang on a wall and be proud of, if you've got one, or envy or disdain if you haven't.
They represent striving for excellence. Doing it as well as you can, and doing it better.
They're about improving the medium. If you want an Eisner award, strive for excellence. If you want one, do it better, if you feel it went to the wrong man, or woman, and it should have been yours, then do it better next year, whatever it is that you do. Strive toward excellence. If the judges don't put you on the Eisner list, then fuck 'em, and let posterity be your judge. If you feel that great work by other people is going unrecognised and unrewarded, then make a noise about it. Tell everyone you know. Word of mouth is still one of the best sales tools there is.
Nobody wants a world of identikit comics. Do the comics only you can do. Tell the stories only you can tell. Do not lose sight of the fact that this is an industry that can create real art.
And in the meanwhile, do it better. And love what you do.
Too tired to think. Gave the Eisner Keynote speech -- which I'll stick up here if I remember. Did a MirrorMask presentation to what the con just told me was 5000 people, and they were really nice and enthusiastic.
If you go to the Neilgaiman.com front page you'll see it's been redesigned -- links to mousecircus, the DC Comics ENDLESS NIGHTS site, and to the new editions of American Gods, Neverwhere and Stardust. There seems to have been a slight accident and the essay on Dave McKean has vanished, along with the autobiography of Cthulhu, but I've let Julia Bannon know and I'm sure they'll be back soon.
Good night.
Survived Thursday. ("What are you going to write in your blog about today?" someone asked, and I said, "Not much. I'll probably need to sleep." And I was right...)
Sucking an Olbas Oil throat Pastille right now, in a new hotel room, in a new hotel.
...
Friday -- let's see... It's a CBLDF annual meeting all morning, followed by ( according to this website)...
12:30�2:00 Vertigo�s 10th Anniversary� From its launch, Vertigo has been comics' leader in cutting-edge comics and graphic novels for mature readers. Now celebrating its 10th anniversary, Vertigo looks to the future. Learn what's coming for Vertigo in this slide presentation with VP, executive editor Karen Berger, group editor Shelly Bond, and editor Will Dennis; writers Neil Gaiman, Grant Morrison, Brian Azzarello, Bill Willingham, Brian K. Vaughan, Mike Carey, Andy Diggle, and David Tischman; writer/artist Jill Thompson; and artists Eduardo Risso and Marcelo Frusin. Room 1AB
and then a 2:30-3:30 autographing, with Frank Miller, in the Autograph Area. I think you need tickets (free) for the signing, available from the CBLDF booth.
4:30�6:00 Henson Presents: Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean�s MirrorMask� MirrorMask, a Jim Henson Pictures production, is a new fantasy feature film in the tradition of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth scheduled for worldwide release in 2004. Renowned comic book writer and best-selling novelist Neil Gaiman and critically acclaimed multimedia artist Dave McKean created the story of an unforgettable journey through a world filled with magic, fantastic creatures, and illusion. Gaiman wrote the screenplay and McKean is directing the film using a combination of live-action and CG animation. This program offers an exclusive first look at images from the film, as well as a question-and-answer session with the creators and producers, including Gaiman, McKean, and executive producers Lisa Henson (Good Boy!) and Michael Polis (Kermit�s Swamp Years). Room 6CDEF
followed by
8:30�10:30 2003 Will Eisner Comics Industry Awards�It�s the gala ceremony for the "Oscars" of the comics industry, featuring a keynote speech by Neil Gaiman, celebrity presenters, the Manning and Clampett Award, and of course Will Eisner himself. Room 20
Let's see.. places I'll be today:
1:30-2:30 Room 1AB. I'm moderating the spotlight panel on Nalo Hopkinson, who is a really brilliant writer.
(2:20-3:30 Room 1AB is the Dave McKean spotlight panel. You'll probably want to go to it. I want to catch a bit of it before...)
3:30-4:30 I am signing at the DC Booth. Go there NOW if you want to get something signed at the signing, and get a red wrist-band from anyone at the DC booth: 2731. They won't let you get stuff signed without a wristband, and there are only so many wristbands...
5:50-7:00 in room 6B is the US premiere of "A SHORT FILM ABOUT JOHN BOLTON". And I'll answer questions, and will probably show the mini-documentary that's on the DVD as well.
This evening I'll be, with Frank Miller and Will Eisner, at the CBLDF members event at Dublin Square, at 554 4th Avenue (the event is from 8:30-11:00pm). It's free for members, and a $5 suggested donation from non-members...
And that's my Thursday.
...
For NEVERWHERE DVD info quick here... http://store.aetv.com/html/catalog/vp01.jhtml?id=70853
If any of you know how to fix LiveJournal feeds, or have any ideas how we can, the "official gaiman" one seems to have pretty much rolled over and died...
I woke up too early, so started reading Robin McKinley's forthcoming novel "SUNSHINE" in the bath. It's an astonishing piece of work. A gripping, funny, page-turning pretty much perfect work of magical literature that exists more or less at the unlikely crossroads of Chocolat, Interview With a Vampire, Misery and the tale of Beauty and the Beast. It's not quite SF, and it's not really horror, and only kind of a love story, and it's all three while still being solidly Fantastique. It also does that nice thing where the author assumes the readers are smart, and she treats us like we're smart, and we purr and get smarter and work harder for all that. It'll be nominated for awards, and win them; in the meantime I really hope, when it's published, it finds its audience, which is, potentially, huge.
The last few times I've been to the San Diego Comic-Con, the con has put me up in suites that have been more or less the size of football fields. So when my daughter Holly asked to come in, I said sure, and figured I'd put her up in an ice-hockey-rink sized corner of the suite. But I'm in a different hotel this time, and the suites here are very very small, and sort of politely suites in name only, and I'm now kicking myself for not having got Holly a hotel room of her own, back when there were hotel rooms to be found in San Diego. She flies in this afternoon, and I suspect we'll spend the rest of the convention tripping over each other. (But I was here first! I have the actual bedroom...)
I noticed in a recent post in your blog an excellent example of use of the word "bugger". How many British colloquialisms (sp?) are you holding on to despite several years of American residence?
All of them, except the ones which have come in since I left the country, which I tend to decline to use on the grounds that I will subtly get things wrong, and it'll be like the year (it was about 1976) that my grandmother decided that "groovy" and "whatever gets you through the night" were things that grandmothers said.
...
There's a Newsarama piece on WOLVES IN THE WALLS here (and it links to their interviews with me about Endless Nights and 1602.)
This just arrived from Josette at Harperchildrens:
Consider the Borders event booked. August 8 beginning at 3 PM so you can tell everyone who wants to come.
Borders #566
100 Broadway
New York, NY 10005
Phone:212.964.1988
We'll start at 3.00pm. We'll go on till we're done. I'll probably read The Wolves In The Walls and answer questions too, before settling down to sign things....
I'm here in San Diego, and am very sleepy, because they woke us up on the train coming in at 5.00am, so here are a couple of bits from the occasional trip diary I kept. Mostly I wrote -- an article and a speech and a comic and another comic, but I also ate and read. So here's a meal and a book.
...
Trip diary...
To ensure that I will always be in telephone contact, I have bought a brilliant USB port charger, which says that, to charge my cellular phone all I need to do is plug it in to the USB port.
On the train I discover that when I actually do this, all that happens is a little message comes up telling me I�ve done something that overloads the USB port�s power capacity and not to do it again. I have no phone.
Dinner on the first night: opposite me, a very beautiful black lady with her one-year-old son. The boy wears a tiny gold chain around his neck, and a very small rolex on his wrist. Next to me, (it slowly dawns on me) a slightly crazy guy in a Foghorn Leghorn tee shirt. He has the server take away his salad because, as he keeps repeating "it doesn�t like me" and then tells us he goes on cruises and trains a lot, and that this upsets his family.
He asks what I do, and I say I�m a writer.
He tells me about good writers and bad writers of his experience. He laughs at bad writers. People who can�t do cursive or who put a little extra loop on their fs or gs make him laugh. He knows some good and bad writers on television. Sam Donaldson, on TV, has good handwriting.
"How do you know?" asks the lady, who has not quite realised that the slightly crazy guy is a slightly crazy guy.
He explains that you can just tell, when you see them on the television. The worst writer he ever saw was a wrestler on TV. You just knew that he would go around and around when he did his Os. Round and around and around.
...
I finish reading Peter Straub's remarkable forthcoming book Lost Boy Lost Girl in the Tuesday afternoon, when I should have been writing, justifying the time I spent with it as Peter sent it to me, and I started reading it in April, and now it's July. Then again, it was a good time to read it. On a train.
It's a strange and wonderful webwork of a book. It arrived in five e-mails: I have no idea how long a novel it actually is. It's a murder mystery, a ghost story, a haunted house tale, a serial killer tale, while also being, in the final analysis, a magical realist examination of the webs in which family ties bind us and hold us down, and how those ties can be loosened. It's funny, and heartwarming, and genuinely scary, and unsettling all at the same time. It left me going "how the Hell does he DO that?", while wanting to force other people to read it and ask if it had the same effect on them.
Really good stuff.
...
Dear Mr.Gaiman,
I write for myself because I have no right to write for anyone else.
I don't think that You are a "leftist loon" even though I supported (and still do) the liberation on Iraqi people from Saddam's terror. I don't agree with everything You say but that's natural...I still read You're blog almost everyday and I think that fact speaks for itself.
I noticed You were very careful about Your political leanings before and during the war. However, on occasion You did slip in a few links to a few thoughtful articles here and there (Umberto Ecco's comes to mind).
And then there was the link to the Hitchens "thing" on Sunday (July 13th) which in itself was interesting but the rambling infront of it was an ad hominem attack on the man (first words desribing the man "drunken fop"!) because of his politics there-by putting the whole story that follows on uncertain ground, at least for me.
As You linked to the story - someones opinion - it leaves (to me at least) the impression that You agree with the person's opinions. It contained few arguments (if any), and quite a few statements that were false or misleading. I've read a lot of what Hitchens has written and said but I haven't encountered anything that would lead me to suggest that he warrants this sort of ad hominem attack.
I would also like to point You to an article here:
http://www.scotlandonsunday.com/thereview.cfm?id=734252003
that makes a good point about Hitches boozing and the situation of the left that is more fair and balanced. Then again...that's just my opinion.
But You were (and in my opinion still are!) a journalist, someone who should look at all sides and when linking something. Hitchens is worth more attention than a bitter post.
Hopefully, I have not been too arrogant :)
All the very best,
J�ri Saar
As You linked to the story - someones opinion - it leaves (to me at least) the impression that You agree with the person's opinions. Not at all: I've never met Hitchens and have very little opinion about him of any kind at all either way. I just enjoyed seeing one of Roz's memoirs up on the web. It wasn't a piece of journalism: it was a live journal entry by someone remembering their experiences of someone, which I read as, in the main, a rather fond remembrance.
And yes, I was a journalist. But this blog isn't a newspaper, nor is it anything more than a place where I burble, and point to things that interest me. Roz's live journal is something interesting. If Christopher Hitchens had a live journal and wrote about Roz in it, I'd link to that too, but not really for balance, just because it would be sort of fun.
I just read Blogs of War and learned that I'm not only a Loony Leftist, but am also, in all probability, Un-American to boot. In addition, right-thinking people are warned that they visit this journal at their own risk. (Of course, I'm in good company.)
Bugger. I wish I'd known how dangerous I am. I suppose now I'll never get that Green Card renewed...
Hello, Mr. Gaiman!
I just recieved in the mail the latest copy of EW. I was dismayed by the lack of quotes from you in the blurb, but at the same time delighted with the beautiful picture they printed. The mask of the Dark Queen was undeniably a beautiful work of art. Who designed the costumes for the MirrorMask? He/she is wonderfully talented.
Before I forget, I'm also attending Saturday of the Comic-Con. Are you doing any signings that day? If you are, let me know!
Your journal is so helpful and intriguing. Thank you for spending the time to work on it!
Elise, California
I think Entertainment Weekly did fairly well, considering they only had 100 words to explain what the film was, what the image was, and run half-a-quote (and mention this website).
Dave McKean designed the costumes (when he e-mailed me a picture of the Dark Queen's costume, complete with huge beetle-mandibles on one shoulder, I assumed that the whole costume would be computer generated). Robert Lever was the costume desgner and maker whose job it was to take Dave's sketches and ideas, and turn them, with the aid of a sewing machine, fabric, glue and polystyrene (in the case of the beetle parts) into things people could wear.
Signings are:
Thursday: At the DC Booth 3:30-4:30pm
Friday: CBLDF signing from 2:30-3:30 pm with Frank Miller, in the Autograph Area
Saturday: 2:00-3:00pm, Autograph Area (this is the one they've left off the Con website, either in order to keep the lines down, or just because they have hundreds of people signing and human error is going to happen).
Sunday: with Dave McKean, 3-4pm just as everyone's packing up to go home.
This should be a short question, hopefully, depending on how much I ramble from this point on.
I was wondering what the generally accepted word lengths are for different classifications of stories. Like what is a shortstory, novella, novel etc... Anyway, I know I've read it in your journal before, but I have no idea when.
If you answer this, thanks. and if not, thanks for all the great stuff you've written (or varying lengths and classifications).
If you any of you think you've read something on the journal, please, first of all, click on the search function, and go and look for it. I don't normally repeat things, figuring that people can go and look them up. (I clicked on the search function, typed "novella" and the second entry it offered was http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal_archives/
2003_02_01_archive.asp#90321442, which should be just what you're looking for...)
And I know that Googling the site still doesn't always turn things up that it should, particularly where the archives are concerned, but give it a try first...
I've come to the conclusion that I must be doing something dreadfully wrong.
After going to 3 different places trying to find the new Entertainment Weekly, I finally found myself a copy of the July 11th issue. I looked carefully through the issue 3 times and, very upsettingly, found no images or writing about Mirror Mask anywhere.
Bewildered and confused, I came home and decided I might as well try the EntertainmentWeekly.com website and would more than likely find the info I need there. Alas, after a thorough search of their site, I found nothing on Mirror Mask. I even looked for info about you in general and the last update they have involving Neil Gaiman is their review of 'American Gods'.
In a final, futile attempt I searched google.com for "mirror mask" and "entertainment weekly". This promptly returned two websites to me. The first was your online journal on neilgaiman.com. The second was your journal on livejournal.com.
I've said it once, and I'll say it again: I've come to the conclusion that I must be doing something dreadfully wrong.
Yours truly with a side of coleslaw,
Joe
Ah, the July 11th issue -- with July 11th on the cover -- cleverly is the one that goes off sale on July 11th, or it would if people remembered to pull these things. The process of trying to work out what the current issue of Entertainment Weekly is has been known to drive people to madness, particularly when you can buy three different issues of EW in three different newsstands in Minneapolis Saint Paul airport.
Anyway, you've made the same mistake that was made in my house. The copy of EW you actually want is the one with the MirrorMask "First Look" in it, which is a full-page image somewhere around page 60. At a guess it'll have a July 18th cover date on it, and officially it went on sale on Friday (the 11th).
Neil, or, er. . . Mr. Gaiman,
I was looking into the artists on Endless Nights out of curiosity, and I was wildly impressed by Barron Storey. Googled him, and found his books are out of print and a bit expensive for a college student like myself. So the question:
Is there any talk of reprinting his Marat/Sade Journal, or any of his works, because of the attention Endless Nights is attracting? Or, if this isn't a question you would have the answer to, who would I ask? This book seems like Dave McKean's short films-- something that everyone should have a copy of, and yet no one can easily acquire.
Many thanks: for stories that seem infinite and a journal that feels like afternoon tea. And hopefully for an answer to my question.
Alex groff.
I'd be thrilled if that happened -- I love my copy of the Marat/Sade journal. Let's wait until Endless Nights comes out, and people have seen -- and been blown away by -- what Barron does, and see if there are any wise or adventurous publishers out there.
Roz Kaveney hasn't finished writing her autobiography (or possibly her memoirs) although every now and again she'll send me a chapter in e-mail. Roz knows everyone, more or less. She's like Jon Singer in that respect, only in leather and female, and nothing really at all like Jon Singer now I come to think of it. (You don't know Jon Singer? Oh, just wait a little while. You will.)
Anyway, Roz's occasional chapter memoirs are astonishing things, filled with strange and sacred monsters. Maybe she'll stick her work on it to date on line at some point, or build it into a sequence of enormous interlocking web pages. Meanwhile, up on her livejournal, she tells the story of Christopher Hitchens... http://www.livejournal.com/users/rozk/23897.html.
Checked in at the incredibly useful Rotten Tomatoes site to see the roundup of reviews on er, LXG. Rather a dismal bunch of reviews, alas, but at least they all seem to take pains to separate the comic, and Alan's work, from the film.
A couple of small before-I-forget things, which will come in little before-I-get-on-the-train posts like this one...
We've not made the big announcement yet, but Mousecircus, the junior sister-site to this one, has been completely overhauled, and it now has a whole new Wolves in the Walls section. My personal favourite bits are the downloadable print-out poster-or-save-and-use-as-computer-wallpaper-or-website-logo-images, including a wonderful poster which guarantees that your computer is free of wolves (and then, in small print, doesn't).
The Wolves site also has a pig-puppet cursor, and a unique navigation mode that took me a while to figure out, so will be a doddle for any small children to use, but it may perplex adults. Anyway, go and poke around on http://www.mousecircus.com (there's flash animation and it may take a bit to load).
There will be a launch to go along with the release of The Wolves In The Walls...
I was sort of hoping that someone would correct me/ amplify on the copyright comments from yesterday... Go back to Scrivener's Error and learn from my mistakes.
(Having had to fight a legal case which involved, amongst other things, a publisher filing fraudulent copyright notices some years after the publication of the work I wrote for him, claiming on those notices to have written what I wrote, and claiming that these were valid copyright notices and I had lost my copyright because I hadn't found out about them within the the three years of the statute of limitations of copyright, I may be slightly more sensitive to the issue of losing one's copyright than most. Then again, I won the case.)
Of course, other things I forgot to mention are now nipping out of the woodwork, the most obvious of which is my part in the latest one of art spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's marvellous Little Lit collections, "It Was A Dark And Silly Night" (the book has its own website at http://www.little-lit.com/ll3.html and very cool it is too). My story was drawn by the wonderful Gahan Wilson. (It was Maddy's second favourite story in there, after the Lemony Snicket and Richard Sala Yeti tale.)
and while I didn't quite manage entirely to forget it, I didn't say anything about this book, which Luis Rodrigues writes from Portugal and from Fantastic Metropolis to tell me about:
Cheers Mr Gaiman,
I have an advance copy of the Lambshead Guide in hand and I must say this is
a beautiful, beautiful thing. The illustrations and design by John
Coulthart are impeccable, even though he's not yet finished with them.
The stories (at least those I read, including yours) are hilarious, I
heartily recommend the stuff by Stepan Chapman, Jeff Ford and Michael Cisco,
woefully under-appreciated writers if you ask me. Not that the others
aren't as good: everything is great here.
The section on past editions of the Lamsbhead Guide is another big
highlight. Mike Moorcock's disease (the Samoan Rat Fever) is great, and
perfectly laid out in flawless mock-Victorian design by John Coulthart.
Another disease, supposedly from an edition of the guide compiled by J. L.
Borges, is presented in both Spanish and English versions.
A magnificent book, thanks and congratulations for being a part of it!
All best,
Lu�s
Also in the mailbox:
Bob Garcia writes to say
Do you think you can plug the www.neilgaiman.net booth at Comic-Con on your
blogger? Nancy and I will be running it for Greg Ketter. We'll have hundreds of
TELLING TALES, and other stuff. The booth number is #1035. We'll be setup for the
Preview Night on Wednesday.
Lovely article on bestsellers in the Observer by Tim Adams, who had to read all the current bestseller list and write about them. Oddly, for someone who doesn't miss much, he doesn't mention something fairly specific, which is that this is a late summer bestseller list, consisting mostly of books which publishers published as big beach books. (There's a reason why Wilbur Smith was on the same list for the same time of year ten years ago and twenty years ago. It's not a coincidence.) It's a different kind of mix to, for example, your September-October lists, in which publishers roll out the big books that they think may take them to Christmas.
Hello -
I just have a question about 'Two Plays for Voices.' I was wondering if a text of it is either included with the Cd/tape or floating around anywhere. I'm hearing impaired, and the description of the audio is lovely, but I might have some difficulty, well, hearing it.
Thank you,
Jenn
Hi Jenn -- no, there isn't. And apart from Biting Dog Press's beautiful limited editions, with engravings by George Walker, the texts aren't available anywhere. And a quick look at Biting Dog's website ( http://www.bitingdogpress.com/Merchandise/orderpage.html) shows that their books are now out of print.
Several other people have written in and asked about getting the scripts for Two Plays in order to put on local productions of "Murder Mysteries" or "Snow, Glass, Apples" or both.
What I may do is just put them both up here on the website as exclusive materials, where they can sit alongside the Chthulhu autobiography (which I wrote when I was about 22) and the Dave McKean essay (which I didn't).
(Incidentally, someone wrote to ask when this blog would get permalinks. It's had permalinks for quite a while now -- just click on the time, after it says "posted by Neil Gaiman".)
Two things happened today. I finished watching the final set of MirrorMask online dailies. And then, about half an hour later, I got the call from DirecWay satellite people, that my upgrade to their professional level had gone through, and that for thirty dollars a month more I would now get a really fast internet connection. So I went on and set it all up... and now have magically, blindingly fast internet speeds that I really could have done with for the last six weeks, that being the only time in my life I ever needed to watch lots of internet video each day.
So... Back in the UK they finished shooting MirrorMask yesterday, had the wrap party and everything. Having said that, it's not done. The middle of the movie needs to be animated -- and there are over a dozen creatures from the animated side of things who haven't even been cast, not to mention the chicken. "3000 man-days of work ahead," said Max, who will be running the computer department, very sagely. Or 30,000. Lots of man-days of work ahead, anyway, many of them probably really woman-days.
I don't know if rough edits or footage of the animated stuff will be going up on the dailies online service, but if they do, I'll be ready for them.
Anyway -- no idea what footage or images Dave McKean will be bringing to the San Diego Comicon panel on MirrorMask, although I notice ruefully that we're on at the same time that Quentin Tarantino and friends get to do their preview panel on Kill Bill...
Let's see...
The FAQ submission box doesn't seem to be working, right now (the weekend curse) nor does the Livejournal feed (and I tried splitting the long post from yesterday into two, just in case that was causing the trouble, but it didn't change anything).
I'll be unable to post at the beginning of next week for a couple of days, as I'll be travelling and away from anything I can post with (and yes, I suppose I could set up some kind of wireless system that would work on trains, but a lot of the fun of travelling on a train across America is the quiet to work in, and to look out of the window). Then I'll be posting occasionally from the San Diego comic-con, but they'll be squeezed into any spare moments I don't need to sleep in, so expect mostly short posts along the lines of "Survived today urgh" and "the 2:30 signing has now been postponed to 3:15", then a few proper posts about interesting movie things, and then radio silence again as I ride the train home.
Over at Scrivener's Error I note that the Morris vs. Business Concepts case is having knock-on effects that are seriously worrying. That's the case that said (I'm not a lawyer, am doing this from memory and will undoubtedly make some huge goof here) that a writer whose article had been reprinted without her permission or any payment wasn't entitled to any restitution under copyright because copyrighting a magazine or anthology essentially only copyrights those articles in that sequence, it doesn't copyright that specific article, feature or story. That you should have filed a separate copyright notice on. And if you don't have a copyright notice filed, you may have moral copyright on your side, but you can't sue for damages, you can't make someone stop.
For an author, it's particularly worrying from a short story point of view: The McSweeneys Mammoth Book of Thrilling Tales only carries two copyright notices -- copyright 2002 McSweeneys, and Harlan Ellison's story is copyright 2002 The Kilimanjaro Corporation. (Some people mistakenly thought this meant Harlan's story was a reprint. Nope. It means Harlan knows his copyright stuff inside, upside down and backwards.) So unless Stephen King and Michael Crichton and Elmore Leonard and I have filed separate copyright notices on our individual stories (we might have done) they are now effectively in the public domain... Which is to say, I think, that unless he's filed a separate copyright notice, Stephen King still has his copyright in his story. He just can't do anything if you reprint it in your anthology. This is not good.
Seeing as I'm in New Zealand and can in no way make it to the auction, I was wondering if it was possible for there to be a picture of the Sandman Quilt put on the website?
I would love to see it, and so would my Mum.
Thanks muchly
Jenni
We'll see what we can do...
Not a FAQ, but you may well get buckets of email telling you this: the Clarion workshop in danger of losing its funding is Clarion East. There is also Clarion West, which is still very much a going concern. In fact, this is CW's 20th anniversary, and they've been having celebratory events all year. Even as I write, some 17 students are wrapping up their week of study with Elizabeth Hand; next week China Mieville (I can't get the accent over the first 'e', sorry) is the instructor. Clarion West has a very strong alumni community, which includes some, like Octavia Butler, who actually attended the Eastern workshop... you can have a look at their website at http://www.clarionwest.org - they're a non-profit, and they have a truly tireless cadre of fundraisers who do things like auctions, readings, and the convention Potlatch.
While I'm writing, I'd like to offer a heart-felt thank you for all your work, and especially your blog. Your willingness to share the sometimes gritty details of being a working (touring reading writing family-raising etc.) author means a great deal to me, as a model of "how it's done" I can read and relate to. There's lots of good information on how to write available, not so much on the day-to-day mechanics of the trade - so when you write about French door problems in foreign hotels, or taking your daughters with you on parts of a signing tour, it makes it all seem like a reachable goal. I'm not sure if I'm conveying what I mean very well, but the thanks is nevertheless sincere.
-Joy Ralph
You're welcome. I think if this journal has any point to it, apart from being an amazingly easy and pleasant and quick way to let people know things that are happening, it's in trying to explain the mechanics of being a writer, and of what it means to make stuff up for a living.
(Much of the most exciting stuff is very dull, by the way: yesterday was spent with superletterer Todd Klein sending me and editor Shelly Bond giant PDF files of the Delirium story from Endless Nights to proofread, decide on lettering styles -- there are about nine different fonts in this story, one for each person in it -- and balloon placement and so on. And we were doing it against deadline, and Todd was doing the impossible... and it's the sort of thing that sounds pretty dull, and that, when people read the story, they'll only really notice if we screwed it up.)
dear neil,
thank you so much for that wonderful list of when everything is coming out, but you did forget one. you never mentioned when AT DEATH'S DOOR is coming out. I know that it should be soon, but i have been given different information from different people & places.
on another note, i am looking forward to MirrorMask and hoping against hope that NEVERWHERE will be done as a feature in the US. thank you so much for all your work.
sincerely,
pepper reed
I forgot At Death's Door. I suppose because I didn't write it -- or rather that the bits of it I wrote, I wrote 14 years ago... it's Jill Thompson's lovely black and white fantasia on other things that could have been happening while Season of Mists was going on. It's not canonical, it's, well, pure Jill. And very funny.
Hi Neil --
Was reading your journal this morning about books and things you have coming out this summer, just wanted to remind you that the Moore book (The Extraordinary Works of Alan Moore) we've done is being released at San Diego with your strip. I'll be there and I do hope to meet you.
Best,
George
Right. Mark Buckingham and I did a two page comic for George Khoury's book on Alan Moore. (I had failed to notice that there were in fact two, not one, books about Alan Moore out there -- the other one is Gary Spencer Millidge's book, already out, which had to be content with a poem about an imaginary city that Alan and I once invented, which is a companion piece to "When We Went to See the End of the World".)
I also gave George the contents of the files that would have been a book on Alan Moore I was asked to write in 1987. (In the end I didn't, mostly because I thought that a book about Douglas Adams was probably enough for me to have written, and it was time to go on to my own stuff. But there was some remarkable material in the files, by the time I decided that, including Alan's first published short story, and several unpublished Watchman period interviews.) I hope he made good use of it.
Good morning!
I was just wondering if you could put together a list of everything you have coming out this summer. I'm a little confused between the Neverwhere DVD, 1602 and the Wolves in the Walls, and I think I may be missing something. I want to be sure that I can get everything!
Also, I recently gave the illustrated version of Stardust to my 8-year-old neice. She refuses to give the book up, she carries it around with her all the time. And, even though she's eight years old, every time I see her, she crawls into my lap and asks me to read it to her, since "it's not the same in my head." (Really, you should see it, it's the cutest thing in the world.) I think she's a little young for some of your other books, but I have a gift-wrapped copy of Coraline hiding in my closet for her birthday next week!
I think it's wonderful, the way that readers can grow along with your books, and, even though some of your books could be considered fairy tales, or for children, they're still so well-written that adults find themselves lost in the worlds you've created.
Thank you,
Jess
I may forget something. Let's see...
1602 part 1 and The Wolves in the Walls come out in August. So does the NEVERWHERE DVD. So, I believe, does Coraline in paperback.
September brings Sandman:Endless Nights and the Sandman: Endless Nights Special (which is a comic with the Miguelanxo Prado story in it, for retailers to use on nervous customers who aren't sure if they want to buy a big hardback book.)
Telling Tales, the new CD, just came out. (Yes, I realised too late that it has the same title as the Alan Bennett autobiographical sketches.)
Angels and Visitations's 10th anniversary edition comes out in around October, which will make people who aren't really sure that they want to pay $150 for it on eBay happy.
Neverwhere and American Gods come out in September/October in handsome trade paperback editions from Harper Perennial.
Alisa Kwitney's Sandman: King of Dreams book comes out in September as well, filled with lots of art that no-one's seen before (including the uncensored J Muth Desire painting from the Sandman trading cards) and much odd and cool stuff. I did the introduction to it.
My short story "A Study in Emerald" is published in Michael Reaves and John Pelan's "Shadows over Baker Street" in September as well.
It looks from the Amazon UK entry on the Silverberg Legends II anthology ( this is the cover) that it may come out in September 2003 as well, with the new Shadow (from "American Gods") story in it. On the other hand, I don't believe it, and suspect it's an Amazon goof, because I can't find any mention of it anywhere else. Aha -- the Del Ray newsletter says it's coming out in January 2004.
(For many years DC Comics and I have been talking about "The Compleat Death" -- a collection of both the Death graphic novels, along with Sandman 8 and Sandman 20, and the Jeff Jones story. It's just been put on the schedule for this Autumn, and I've asked if it can be moved to the spring, because there's too much stuff coming out, and it's not fair on people.)
There. I've probably left something off.
Hello Neil!
I'm hoping, once MirrorMask is released, that you might grant a wish of mine: I am insanely curious as to what a script treament would look like, and I am hoping you would share the one you did for MirrorMask. I say once it's released mainly because I would hate to have it spoiled. Is this a possibility or a pipe dream?
My second bit is just a quick thank you. Due to work situations, my husband and I live four hours apart these days. On those long weekend drives, playing "WARNING: Contains Language" helps keep me sane.
Best to you and your family.
Chandra
You're very welcome. You know, there never was a treatment of Mirrormask. I had half a plot idea, about two girls in different worlds and an undependable guide, and Dave McKean had half a plot idea, about a dark queen and a light queen and a mirrored mask that was lost, and we got together in Jim Henson's house in Hampstead and stared and scribbled, and by the point we knew more or less what it was about I skipped the whole treatment bit entirely and started writing the script, which meant that most of the things that happened were as much a surprise to us as they were to Helena. (This is probably a highly unprofessional way to write a film. On the other hand, the dailies look wonderful.)
And Entertainment Weekly comes out today with the first MirrorMask image in it.
And they finish shooting the live action part of the film today as well. (It's a wrap! Now there's just ten months of animation to go...)
I haven't seen this mentioned on your blog yet, but I may have just missed it, but I saw the Japanese translation of Coraline in large stacks fairly prominently displayed (not as prominently as the Harry Potter books, alas) in a bookstore here in Yokohama the other day.
I think the illustrations are different from the English language versions, though?
But, anyway, I just thought I'd let you know.
Thanks so much. I expect I'll see a copy soon. There are a couple of countries where the publishers decided that the Dave McKean illustrations were wrong for their people, and Japan was one of them -- although I've not seen what they came up with.
Although the UK paperback Coraline, which comes out in September, now has the Dave McKean illustrations added in, and a very strange new cover by Dave, the front of which is very bright and cheerful, and the back cover of which is dark and strange.
Incidentally, yesterday's post brought the Israeli edition of Coraline -- which does have the Dave McKean cover art and illustration.
Regarding those who had to be turned away at last year's Union Square signing - it might not be a bad idea to take a cue from Megatokyo's Fred 'Piro' Gallagher. The panels he does at Otakon tend to be mobbed, and a lot of people just don't get in. So last year they tried something new. There were two panels, one during the day and one at midnight. Anyone who waited on line but didn't get into the daytime panel got a "dead pass" which would let them cut in line for the nighttime panel. According to Piro, it worked quite well. Of course, I don't know how much control you have over where and when you sign, but it's something to think about.
Ironically enough, the NYC Borders signing is on the first day of this year's Otakon. I am incredibly sad, as I have gone to every one of your New York book signings (not that you'd remember me, but I certainly remember). This will be the first one I've ever missed (and no, I can't miss the first day of Otakon, as I've already paid and Friday is the entire reason I go to it). I bet I'm not the only one. So if you did another signing, it would be very lovely and make many otaku very happy. But I know better. So perhaps I'll draw you a picture, or write a letter.
Tempted to ask for a shout-out at the signing, which seems rather silly now that I've typed it out. But I can't bring myself to delete that last sentence.
Thank you for reading,
Kris Naudus
Brooklyn, NY
Well, normally my solution at a store signing is simply to stay until everyone's done. It means you stumble out of the signing at 1:00am every now and again, but there really aren't rainchecks you can hand out on a booksigning tour -- apart from anything else, you'll probably be in Cleveland tomorrow.
(At conventions, on the other hand, I'm not going to try. Simple arithmetic's sort of against me: there are seventy thousand people coming to this year's San Diego comic-con and at least four or five thousand of them would probably quite like me to scribble on something for them. Given the way I'm working at the con, I can do an hour a day, every day, signing. You can get through a few hundred people in an hour if you don't look up, simply sign one thing as it gets in front of you. I try not to do it like that, and will probably say hi and what's your name and no, it really is one thing each, so you'll have to decide which one of the 75 issues of Sandman you want me to sign, and that, which means that I'm unlikely to be signing for more than 200 people each day. As I learned in Pittsburgh in 92 or 93, it is quite possible for me to spend an entire convention signing for a line of people that never seems to get any shorter.)
At San Diego, except for the Sunday afternoon signing (by which time the convention's almost done, and it may not be a problem) I've tried to make it so that the autographings are before the major panels, so nobody has to miss a panel -- or leave half-way through -- in order to stand in line.
Dear Neil,
I was just wondering -
The prime colors for "The day I swapped my dad" were reds, oranges and yellows. For "the Wolves in the walls" it seems to be Greens and Browns.
was this a conscious decision on yours or dave mckean's prt, to play againt the colors for "the day I swapped my dad?"
thanks,
Avri
I think it's more a matter of trying to find the right colours for the story. I'm pretty sure that what Dave will wind up doing on Crazy Hair will be much more colourful than any of the other two books, just given what it's about. (But then, rule one of working with Dave McKean is that he will always surprise you. There aren't any other rules, except for not taking him to Japanese restaurants.)
You know, sometimes it's easier to just cut and paste. If you're going to be at San Diego, this is going to be useful for you. If not, well, it might still be useful, you never know... (Also, they've got the time of the me and Frank Miller signing right -- it's 2:30 to 3:30, not 3-4 pm, as per the San Diego schedule I posted.)
Next week is Comic-Con International: San Diego, the largest comic
book convention in the United States. The Fund is going to be
celebrating this week long tribute to comics and the popular arts
with a series of great signings, special events, and brand new
premiums to raise money for our casework. Read on!
EVENTS!
Thursday July 17:
CBLDF Members Reception at the Dublin Square
Join Frank Miller, Neil Gaiman, Will Eisner, Judd Winick, Jim
Valentino, Brian Azzarello, Jill Thompson, and a growing host of
comics celebrities in toasting the First Amendment at the Dublin
Square, San Diego's finest Irish pub. This party is free for
card-carrying CBLDF members over 21 years of age with a $5 suggested
donation for non-members. Festivities start at 8:30 and run until 11
PM. The Dublin Square is at 554 4th Avenue. Members MUST have their
2003 member card for free admission to the party. No Autographs,
please. For directions call 619-239-5818.
Dinner With Neil Gaiman, Frank Miller, and Will Eisner
Visit eBay now for your chance to bid for a seat at dinner with one
of these comics legends! On Thursday evening Gaiman, Miller, and
Eisner will be dining with CBLDF supporters at a location to be
revealed to the auction winners. Visit
http://cgi6.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewSellersOtherItems&userid=cbldf &include=0&since=-1&sort=3&rows=25
for your chance to be part of this history making evening! Auction
ends Monday July 14.
Friday July 18:
Defenders of Liberty Signing with Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman
Groundbreaking graphic novelists Frank Miller and Neil Gaiman will be
signing brand new prints that benefit the CBLDF at this soon-to-be-
legendary signing. Gaiman and Miller have been among the most active
professionals supporting the CBLDF's battles and their commitment
to the Fund continues at this signing. 2:30 to 3:30 PM, AA3.
2003 Eisner Awards and Defender of Liberty Award Presentation
Come to comics' finest evening to pay tribute to the best work of
2002 and applaud Chuck Rozanski as he accepts the 2003 Defender of
Liberty Award. Neil Gaiman will be presenting the evening's
keynote speech. Other awards will include the Manning Award,
Clampett Award, & Will Eisner Spirit of Retailing Award. Doors open
at 8:15 and the ceremony runs from 8:30 - 10:30. There is a
no-host bar, but be sure to bring valid ID!
Saturday July 19:
CBLDF Benefit Auction
The Fund's annual San Diego auction brings out our best donations
to raise funds for our casework and this year's is no exception.
Keynote items include a Sandman quilt presented to Neil Gaiman on his
42nd birthday; Rich Koslowski's cover to Busted #12; Jim
Lee's lobster bib from the Palm Restaurant in Denver; a
reproduction of the script to Big Numbers #3 signed by Alan Moore,
and much, much more.
Visit http://www.cbldf.org to view the full list of items being
auctioned. The auction starts at 7:00 and runs until 9:00 in Room 8
of the San Diego Convention Center. Auction to be emceed by Defender
of Liberty Chuck Rozanski!
The Third Angel, An Evening with Neil Gaiman
Neil Gaiman continues his San Diego reading tradition with this
third "mid-evening" reading benefiting the CBLDF. The
bestselling author will be reading new selections and old favorites,
most notably "The Problem of Susan" an unpublished story for
adults only.
This is a ticketed event. Tickets are $5 for CBLDF members and $10
for non-members. Tickets can be picked up at the CBLDF booth. Doors
open at 9:30 at Room 8 of the San Diego Convention Center.
The front two rows have been reserved for members only. These
tickets can be obtained starting on Wednesday's Preview Night.
Be sure to show a valid 2003 CBLDF Member Card to take your seat up
front. Tickets will be available at the CBLDF booth, #1233/1235.
Sunday July 20
CBLDF Panel - The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is on the front
lines of the law to protect and serve the interests of comics
retailers, creators, and publishers. Come by this one hour
information session to find out what cases the Fund is currently
working on, what troubles are on the horizon, and you can help!
Charles Brownstein, Neil Gaiman, Denis Kitchen, Louise Nemschoff,
Milton Griepp. 12:30-1:30, Room 7B
PREMIUMS & DEBUTS!
SPX 2003: A Sequential Arts Travelogue - The 2003 edition of the
SPX anthology premieres at Comic-Con! Boasting a brand new cover by
Jaime Hernandez and over 40 new stories by leading edge new talent.
This book has a cover price of $9.95 and is only available at the
CBLDF booth!
"Band - Aid" Print by Frank Miller - Frank
Miller's disturbing vision of censorship was one of the best
selling shirts in the history of the CBLDF. The shirt is now out of
print, but we've brought back the classic "Band-Aid Girl"
image on a new full color print. This limited edition print is
available for a $20 donation to the CBLDF at Comic-Con; don't
miss out!
"Sunday" Print by Neil Gaiman - The CBLDF is proud to
release this rare print of Neil Gaiman's drawing of the literary
character "Sunday." This limited edition print is one of the
only editions of Gaiman art to be made available and it can be yours
for a donation of $10 to the CBLDF!
Gaiman/Miller Uncut Print - Neil Gaiman and Frank Miller's
prints rest side by side on this very limited uncut print signed by
both authors. Never before have these two signed a singular piece,
but they're doing it now to support the CBLDF. These uncut sheets
are strictly limited to 100 pieces, one of which can be yours for a
$50 donation to the CBLDF starting Friday July 18.
All-New Beanworld print by Larry Marder - The cult classic comic
Tales of the Beanworld has delighted a generation of comics readers
and inspired a new generation of authors who look to the comic as a
signpost towards creating a more abstract, personal, yet accessible
comics language. Marder stopped publishing Beanworld stories in
1994, but he didn't stop creating. The CBLDF is proud to release
this brand new image from a Beanworld we've never seen before!
"Man With Pen in Head" by Frank Miller - The last copies
of Frank Miller's first mini-comic "Man With Pen in Head"
will be made available to CBLDF members only at Comic-Con. Limited
to 100 numbered editions and 26 lettered editions, "Man With Pen
in Head" is Miller's rarest work ever. The lettered edition
is gone, but there's still a handful of the numbered edition, so
bring your 2003 Member Card to get your hands on a copy.
Vertigo Desk Diary -- Tidemark Press is premiering their all-new 2004
Vertigo Desk Diary at San Diego and have donated copies to the CBLDF
to raise money for our casework. This beautifully produced desk
diary features images from Vertigo's distinguished decade of
producing cutting edge comics. Get your copy from the CBLDF Booth #
1233/1235. Learn more about Tidemark's products by visiting
booth 817 at Comic-Con or www.tidemarkpress.com
CBLDF BOOTH SIGNINGS
Booth # 1233/1235
Thursday
Denis Kitchen 1:30 - 2:30 PM
Fund President and cartooning great Denis Kitchen signs and sketches
to benefit the CBLDF!
Brian Azzarello 3:30 - 4:30 PM
Author of the hard-hitting literary crime-drama 100 Bullets,
Azzarello will be signing and sketching to benefit the Fund.
Friday
Greg Rucka 1 - 2 PM
Author of Wolverine, Queen & Country, and Wonder Woman, as well as
several novels, Greg Rucka is one of the field's best talents.
Meet him at the CBLDF table where he'll sign your books!
Keith DeCandido 5 - 6 PM
Author of the recently published "Gene Roddenberry's
Andromeda: Destruction of Illusions" will be signing copies of
this new book at the CBLDF table!
Saturday
Jill Thompson 12 - 1 PM
Scary Godmother and L'il Death author Jill Thompson signs and
sketches to benefit the Fund!
Rich Koslowski 1 - 2 PM
Author of Three Fingers and the Three Geeks, Rich Koslowski will be
signing copies of Busted #14 bearing his memorable cover and
sketching to benefit the CBLDF!
Jai Sen 2 - 3 PM
Author of Garlands of Moonlight and the Golden Vine will sign copies
of these exquisite graphic novels to benefit the Fund!
Jaime Hernandez 3 - 4 PM
One of the most important living graphic novelists, Jaime Hernandez
and brothers Gilbert and Mario redefined the comics with their series
Love and Rockets. Jaime has graciously provided the beautiful cover
of SPX 2003 which you can get signed at the CBLDF booth!
Sunday
Larry Marder 12 - 1 PM
Author of the cult classic comics series "Tales of the
Beanworld," Marder will be releasing an all new Beanworld print
to benefit the Fund. This is Marder's first Beanworld appearance
in 5 years, don't miss out!
Frank Miller 2 - 3:30 PM
SIGNING FOR MEMBERS ONLY
CBLDF Members will have the opportunity to meet Frank Miller at this
ticketed signing. Tickets will be available starting when doors open
on Sunday to CBLDF members only. You must present a valid 2003 CBLDF
Member Card. Unfortunately, Mr. Miller will not be able to
accommodate requests for sketches. To accommodate everyone seeking
Miller's signature, we request a limit of three signatures per
person.
The above is just the tip of the iceberg; expect even more signings
and premiums to be announced in the coming week!
A couple of notes on the above -- the Sandman quilt is an amazing thing -- it's a huge, gorgeous object that was made and given to me by Michelle-of-the-Thingies, and she told me she thought it might be best auctioned for the CBLDF, and I am acceding to her wishes. If I wasn't afraid that everyone would politely stop bidding if I started, I'd bid for it back... (and I may...)
It's the Third Angel event because there have been two previous San Diego CBLDF readings. The other two were both midnight readings. Given my schedule, this is a mid-evening reading. (At the first of the midnight readings, I got to wear my scarlet velvet waistcoat for the first-- and last -- time.)
PS -- My very-black Mini arrived today. To make up for an embarrassing mistake on the part of the Mini company, which I will not talk about here for it would just rub salt into the wound if they ever read this, I also got a very apologetic bag filled with Mini Goodies -- mug, clothes, cap (already stolen by Maddy), compass and other stuff, which was a very nice way of saying sorry.
PPS -- given the nightmare of the INS visit, I suppose I should in all fairness mention that I went to the famously scary and unhelpful Department of Motor Vehicles to get a replacement driving license this morning, to replace the expiring one that was stolen in Poland, and I walked in, filled in a form, handed it over, was eye-tested, had a photo taken, and walked and out with a new license with a fairly unscary photo of me on it, within five minutes. The people were friendly and helpful, and the only odd moment was when the man checking my form was ticking off things between it and the computer asked "So your nationality is still white?" and suspecting he meant ethnicity I said yes -- I hadn't known that one was allowed to change these things.
It looks like I'll almost definitely be doing a signing for WOLVES IN THE WALLS in New York on Friday, August the 8th 2003, at the new Borders in Lower Manhattan. I'll probably do a reading of Wolves as well.
There will not be a repeat of the nonsense that happened in Barnes and Noble Union Square last year at the Coraline signing, where 400 people got sent away, over the author's protests, in order that the store could close on time.
This is the next incarnation of the Borders in the World Trade Centre, where I kicked off the 2001 American Gods tour, which will probably mean its reading area won't be big enough to fit everyone, and people will have to listen in at overflow speakers and so on. But I'm very much looking forward to going back.
Full confirmation of this, along with times and any other details that may be relevant will go up here as soon as I have them. But for now I thought it might be a good thing to post this, so that East Coast people who want a book signed could start making plans.
Al Sarrantonio e-mailed back to say the story ("The Problem Of Susan") was accepted and he was sending a contract, and I breathed out again. So yes, if you were wondering, I still worry about short story rejection. I think that the C.S. Lewis estates and the P.L. Travers estates will view it, correctly, as a story about the nature of, and relationship that adults have with, children's fiction. (My friend Roz Kaveney is of the opinion that it's that, but also that it's Narnia slash fiction as well. You can make up your own mind, when you read it.)
http://www.allenspiegelfinearts.com/ has undergone a redesign and is now very pretty and filled with strange little boxes filled with words and images. You can order the wonder Dave McKean retrospective book Narcolepsy from there, as well, along with signed Mr Punch posters and oodles of other things.
Telling Tales, the new DreamHaven audio CD is now out. This is the cover image. You can order it from DreamHaven's online shop at http://www.neilgaiman.net/.
There's a fun article about the One Ring Zero author project at http://www.styleweekly.com/article.asp?idarticle=6710. My favourite bit is from Daniel Handler, about his radio song...
�It seems only natural that someone sulking in their room over a loved one would grow bitterer, if that�s a word,� Handler explains in an e-mail from his home in San Francisco. �Also, although there�s no mention of alcohol, I think bourbon is clearly implied, which would add to the bitterness.�
Did Handler have any idea what music would fit his words? �For some reason the lyrics made me think of the Go-Go�s, whom I don�t like, particularly,� Handler replies. �One Ring Zero, more sensibly, turned them into a sort of Go-Go�s cover band one might find in a sulky suburban youth center in Transylvania.�
Meanwhile, a lovely article about Robert Sheckley at http://www.boston.com:80/dailyglobe2/187/living/A_reading_life+.shtml. It being a small world, yesterday brought me an advance copy of ALisa Kwitney's book The Sandman: King of Dreams, which is a sort of illustrated cousin to Hy Bender's wonderful Sandman Companion. Alisa is Robert Sheckley's daughter, my former editor, and a very sharp and funny writer in her own right. Her website's here.
I'd put in a link to the Chronicle books website, but all I can find there is their Sandman postcard set. But a bit more searching and I found a picture of the cover.
...
Right.
San Diego Comic-con.
I am, according to their website, the busiest person there, and on the most panels, (which will come as a surprise to all the people who've asked but whose panels I'm not on).
This is a handy simple easy guide to where I'll be when, more or less. For the much more interesting version, and to find out what you'll be missing if you come and see me, you should go to the comic-con site.
Thurs., July 17:
1:30-2:30pm Spotlight on Nalo Hopkinson, Room 1AB (I'm interviewing Nalo.)
3:30-4:30pm, DC Booth Signing
5:30-7pm: First a screening of, then a talk and Q&A about the film I made last year, "A Short Film About John Bolton"
Friday, July 18:
12:30-2pm Vertigo Editorial Presentation/Vertigo's 10th, Room 1AB
3-4pm, CBLDF Signing, Autograph Area (me and Frank Miller signing, with a special CBLDF San Diego only print, and tickets to the signing available from the CBLDF booth)
4:30-6pm, Mirror Mask presentation (with Dave McKean, Lisa Henson and Mike Polis), Room 6CDEF
8:30pm, Eisner Awards (Keynote Speech), Room 20
Sat., July 19:
12-1:00pm, Spotlight on Neil Gaiman, Room 6A (Endless Nights, 1602, Wolves in the Walls, and a Big Announcement, or possibly not)
2:00-3:00pm, Autograph Signing, Autograph Area
9:30pm, "Son of the Last Angel Tour" CBLDF Reading, Room 8 (The previous San Diego ones were midnight readings, but I'm getting old. Will read the Susan story along with some other new stuff, and some old favourites... Tickets available from CBLDF booth all through the con.)
Sun., July 20:
12:30-1:30pm, CBLDF Panel, Room 7B
1:30-3pm, A Chat with Mr. Gaiman & Mr. McKean, Room 6A
Autograph session in the Autograph Area (with Gaiman & McKean,
3-4pm
There's sometimes a faintly Kafkaesque quality to dealing with some branches of American government -- for example, the immigration division of the department of homeland security. A year ago my Green Card expired, so I went to the INS (as it was then) in Minneapolis, and they took my Green Card away and stamped my passport, and told me that a new Green Card would arrive in a couple of months, and the stamp on my passport was all I needed. The stamp on the passport was valid for a year, and expires in a couple of weeks.
I called a helpline number a few days ago. Someone helpful answered. I explained that I didn't have a new Green Card yet. "That's because the average wait time for a new Green Card from the Nebraska Centre, who are processing your case, is fifteen months," I was told. "But they only stamped my passport for twelve months,"I said. "That's right," she said. "They only do twelve month stamps. You'll have to get another stamp. It's very routine."
I checked the Minneapolis Immigration offices website, which explained that the St Paul office was open to customers from 8.00am until 2:30 pm. I figured that, as a very routine thing, turning up around midday would be fine. (It was fine when I did it a year ago.) We strive to provide quality service to our customers, they proclaim on their website, which seemed pretty reassuring.
So I drove the hour's drive to the centre, and I walked in at midday. There was a new waiting room, with guideropes snaking around to guide the crowds, who weren't there. There were just a few doleful looking people sitting in chairs who were outnumbered by the armed security guards protecting the X-Ray machine and metal detector while striving to provide quality service to their customers. "You!" barked a security guard, at me. "What do you want?"
"Er, I've come about my Green Card," I said.
"We're closed," she said, bluntly. "Be here at 6.00am. Only the first 300 people in the line are seen each day. If you aren't here at 6.00am you won't be seen."
All the security guards seemed to think this was very funny, some English guy turning up at midday, six hours late and Mister Three Hundred and One, and actually expecting to be seen.
"Er, my Green Card expired and they put a stamp in my passport..." I said, hoping they'd say something about, oh in that case come on in, but another guard said "Card hasn't come. Stamp's expired. Right?" Obviously this was something that happens a lot.
"Right," I said.
"You better be here at 6.00 am," he said flatly. "We only see the first 300 people."
I've just spent about half an hour looking at the various official immigration websites, and am puzzled that they all state explicitly that I was meant to hang on to my original Green Card, the one that expired, although it was taken, and I was told the stamp in the passport was all I needed. And nothing I can find seems very clear on whether or not I'll soon be committing a crime by waiting hopefully for the Green Card to arrive, seeing all the forms and so forth were filled out, money was paid, two copies were attached of a really terrible photo of me looking faintly like a sheepdog (but displaying my right ear. Or possibly my left ear. Whatever the legal ear is, I was proudly displaying it in that photograph), all that...
(By the way, if anyone out there reading this happens to work at the Nebraska Service Centre, can you nudge my application along? It'll be under G, with any luck. Check the photos and you'll spot my form immediately: I'm the one that looks sort of like a sheepdog.)
....
What do you do if you find you can't write the stories you want to write? I mean say you can write REALLY good detective novels but you've always wanted to write that science Fiction story but you're just..well. Rubbish?
A Sad & Desperate Aspiritor
As a boy and as a teen and as someone in my early twenties I thought I'd be an SF writer wren I grew up, probably a hard SF writer at that. I didn't actually notice that I wasn't writing SF for some years. Probably the best thing is to write what you enjoy and worry about what box it goes in later.
On the other hand if what you enjoy writing or need to write really is SF, and you aren't writing good SF, I'd suggest going to a good SF oriented writer's workshop -- Clarion (which is, perhaps, and shamefully, going to be no more) or Viable Paradise or Milford or similar. You could read some of the better books about writing SF -- my two favourite texts would be the Reginald Bretnor edited book of essays by every SF great there ever was, pretty much, The Craft of Science Fiction and Samuel R. Delany's book of essays The Jewel-Hinged Jaw. (Both out of print, but bookfinder lists a fair number of second-hand copies of both books, many at fairly cheap prices.)
Mr. Gaiman
I read an interview of yours where you talked about your interest in theater, Do you have any thing in mind? Does theater still interest you? Would you ever direct a production or would you only write? I love your work and I feel that your writing would translate so well into theater form...the technical side maybe not so well but...I still think it would be fantastic.I am involved in the Design/tech aspect of theater and have used your stories as portfolieo projects simply because your characters are so rich and full the scream what they will look like...well to me anyway.
thank you for your time
Jennie Jefferson
Actually after years of wanting to write for the theatre, but not having a theatre-only idea, I've had a theatre-only idea that makes me really happy, that I'm excited about, that has to be live theatre by definition, and that I really want to write. With luck I'll get time to write it in the next three or four years.
...
Forgot to mention that Coraline won best children's book in the Locus awards, which was very gratifying but did not amaze me, just because Coraline's already been nominated for, and in several cases already won, awards (some of which I've remembered to list here and some of which I may well have missed) and I know that a lot of people like it.
On the other hand, the news that "October in the Chair" had won the Locus best short story award nearly made me fall off my chair.
I wrote speeches for Lisa Snellings to read out when accepting the awards, and had much too much fun writing them. I hope she didn't mind.
Full list of Locus Award winners is here. (The Locus Awards are voted on by the readers of Locus Magazine -- and as Charles N. Brown delights in pointing out, they have the largest voting turnout of any award in the field.)
Entertainment Weekly will be running the very first still from MirrorMask in their issue that comes out this Friday, the 11th of July, along with a tiny interview with me: it's a full-page image in their First Look section, of Gina McKee as the enigmatic Dark Queen, and Stephanie Leonidas as Helena, our heroine. And for those of you who are wondering quite how Dave McKean this film looks... well, you'll see on Friday. (I can't get over how fast this occurred.)
...
I think all the travel has caught up with me, and I am going to try and sleep off an after-travelling sort of a headache. But this made me grin...
Dear Neil,
I've just gotten home with a copy of Murder Mysteries and enjoyed it a great deal.
There's a line in it though that sticks with me, "People named Tinkerbell name their daughters Susan."
I'm asked quite often what I plan on naming my children, or what it's like having an odd name... and you've just given me a phrase to use that seems to sum it all up very well.
Thanks :)
Sincerely,
Genesis Eve Whitmore
And look, I'm home.
Travelling with daughters is very different to travelling on my own, I think. I mean, without daughters I would never have stopped at Iceland's Blue Lagoon yesterday, on the way to the airport. The water really is a milky blue colour, and it's hot (it's actually the run-off from a geothermal power station), and it smells faintly of sulphurous compounds, and it's half sea-water. It was a perfect sort of thing to do to take all the travelling aches away, especially on a rainy, rather chilly day, which meant that clouds of steam were always coming off the water, and it all felt a lot like Loch Ness in a movie early in the morning, except for being hot, and the blue-green algae, and the steam rooms.
Dave McKean has e-mailed me six MirrorMask photos for Entertainment Weekly from which I'm picking two and writing explanatory captions -- they'll pick the one they like and run it, along with some quotes, in a couple of weeks.
I'm about ten days behind on answering FAQ messages, have finally wrapped up the story for Al Sarrantonio (which I've decided to call "The Problem of Susan") and have to write an introduction for the US edition of Don't Panic! today and get the final draft of the Delirium story to Vertigo tonight...
does it ever depress you that there are more good books out there than you could possibly cram into one lifetime?
-benjamin
Frustrates perhaps. Not depresses. I used to have the "Desert island shelf" of books that I was going to read when I was stranded on a desert island, and it was years before I realised that the possibility that I'd be stranded on a desert island with those books was very, very small...
That's you and Mr. Zulli among the crowd in The Sandman: The Wake chapter 3, on the page where the cloth wraps itself around Morpheus's body after Matthew has given his speech, isn't it? How does it feel to have yourself drawn as a part of your stories?
- Jenni
Of course we were there. Everyone was there. You were there too....
Hello Mister Gaiman. I want to ask if this to him the current of as comics in Spain publishes his "Norma Comics". For year and means that announced "Sandman:Estacion de Nieblas" and they have been being delaying alleging it legal questions(�?). When seeing Coraline published by "Salamandra Ediciones" it asked to me if the rumors of you were certain you want that another serious publishing house but published its works.
Sorry for my english.A greeting.
Er... not quite sure I understand this one (it looks like you've used a translator program). As far as I know Norma are still enthusiastically the DC Comics' Spanish licensee for all the Sandman books. CORALINE is published by Salamandra in Spain, who are the best children's publisher in Spain.
Hi Neil! Something Silly and a question:
The following page has ALL the songs from the silly 60�s "Songs and Stories about the Justice League" LP (from where the Metamorpho song came from) for download. They�re all just as horrible as that one... no wait, they�re actually worse...
http://www.heroicimages.com/downloads.html
Now, a real question: You mentioned that a 3 hour workprint of Labyrinth existed... was it a rough edit of the movie with everything still on, or a 3 hour version was actually considered? Could you tell by what you saw? Being a Labyrinth fan, I was absolutely shocked to read this. I started daydreaming about extended-edition DVDs of the film coming through my window, flying...(impossible, I know - but to what degree? ;)
Oh, and thank you for making me drool over a future comic release like I haven�t been doing for quite some time. Can�t wait for 1602. :) It looks quite huge and magical from here...
Take care and "Bons Sonhos" ;)
-Victor, Sao Paulo - Brazil
It was a three hour work-print -- a rough edit that I rather doubt that Jim Henson had ever intended anyone else to see.
I'm certain that you'll already know this, but the third edition of "Death: The Time Of Your Life" trade reaches pg. 64 then repeats from pg. 49-64, taking up the story at pg 81. In other words pages 65-80 are nowhere. Unless I'm really missing something about the structure of the story...
Sounds like you've got a misprinted edition, with a repeated signature in it. Your retailer should replace it. (If they won't, write to Bob Wayne at DC Comics if you bought it from a comic shop, or to Rich Johnston if you got it from a book shop.) And I wrote to Rich about this one...
Hi Neil,
I find it very inconvinient that Amazon does not have a complete inventory of the Sandman series in hardcover. I prefer Amazon because not only does it give a 30% discount from the cover price, it is also one of the very few online stores that accept my particular credit card from the Philippines and who is willing deliver it to a third-party address in the U.S. I've already e-mailed customer service to ask them why they don't have the series and they directed me instead to a link on "The Quotable Sandman". You can't imagine how happy I am today to see 2 titles, "The Doll's House" and "World's End" in stock and, needless to say, I purchased it immediately. Is the hardcover Sandman series a current title or is it out-of-print? Any idea why Amazon does not have the whole series readily available? Maybe your publisher can do something about it if you send word their way.
Another question that just occurred to me to ask you is how much do you believe in the existence of all these creatures you've written about? Do you believe any of it at all? I guess answering in the positive may not be very character-building or may even be held against you next time you have to take the witness stand so I'd understand if you choose not to answer. I ask, however, because I have met perfectly sane ordinary people who after knowing them for quite some time have casually mentioned that they have seen ghosts or some other fantastic creatures. I can't say I believe them but knowing them the way I do makes me think that they're not outright liars as well.
Finally, any plans of writing a ghost or horror story or have you written one already which I don't know about?
Thanks,
Charles
To which Rich replied:
I have every Sandman hardcover in stock except for A Game of You and that should be arriving shortly. I'll contact Amazon.
And on the whole I don't believe in the existence of anything or anybody I've actually made up, except while I'm writing it, or if they turn up afterwards. I believe in everything else.
And another Amazon question....
Hi Neil,
this possibly FAQ is submitted to you by one of two adventurous Germans - I was wondering, while checking out Amazon.de on "Wolves in the Walls" whether to order the US edition or the UK edition - normally I'd go with the UK edition (preferring the British spelling, especially since I assume that you still write British to have it changed into the American spelling for the US editions). This time though, I am confused by there being not one, but two different US editions (one is about 1 Euro more expensive than the other, seems to have a different ISBN, but the same number of pages and both are listed as hardback - what is the difference??), and a bit miffed at the UK edition being 5 Euros more expensive than the cheapest US edition. The UK edition has a different page count as well. Could you please tell me what difference there is between those editions? I hope that in this case, all the illustrations are available in the UK edition as well?
As far as I know, there's no difference at all between the UK and the US editions of Wolves in the Walls. I believe they'll even be printed in the same print run. And all of the pages are pictures, so none of them will be left out.
And here's one I wish I'd known before I went to the UK...
Neil:
Thank you so much for taking the time and effort to do the journal! It's probably the closest I'll ever get to chatting with you...
After reading the June 30th entry, I wanted to pass along a URL to information about a hardware device that will allow you to use your computer's modem with a digital phone system. (It's been an absolute necessity for my computer consulting business.)
http://www.konexx.com/mobile_usb.htm
--Debra Schierbaum
We're almost home -- now on our very short stopover (just an overnighter) in Iceland. (Sorry to all of you in Iceland who wrote and asked if you could interview me while I was here, talk to me for your thesis, show me round, organise a signing, or have me give a talk to lots of interested people. Given how exhausted I am after this week, my plans are a) eat, b) sleep, c) eat again, and d) fly home. I�ll come back one day...)
I'm on my way home with the same number of daughters I started with, and they have the same number of limbs and eyes, so I'm doing all right there.
The Whisky Shop in Heathrow Terminal One had a bottle of 1954 Strathisla, the first I've seen for some years, so I bought it rather happily. I'm not a single malt person like some whisky people I know are, but that stuff makes me astonishingly happy. And it gets drunk astonishingly slowly, as well...
Can't get at e-mail right now, so if yo�'re waiting for a reply, you needs must wait until I'm home.
In the studio next door to this little production office, Stephanie Leonidas is being kidnapped by rogue monkeybirds, and rescued by good monkeybirds (all called Bob, except for one called Malcolm). She's zooming across the blue studio on wires. She's currently screaming as well: I can hear her through the walls.
Today I did the MirrorMask DVD stuff -- I was interviewed all morning, then through the afternoon I interviewed most of the crew and one of the cast (Stephanie). Then while the cast and crew had lunch (5:30 pm lunches, as they start at 12:00pm and go until very late right now) I stood in front of a blue wall, and introduced people to places that don't yet exist outside of Dave McKean's mind.
And now it's 10:00pm and I'm finished for the night, still out at the studio (so I can get on line), and my daughters have gone to Paris for the night. And I am pooped.
There are a lot of messages from you lot waiting to be answered. Sooner or later they will be. Promise.
I can barely access the internet right now -- this is me stealing ten minutes at the Hensons Camden offices, between Danny from Empire and Variety, and the phone call from Entertainment Weekly to a) let everyone know I'm still alive
and
b) post this potentially world-changing-unless-it-doesn't message from Scott McCloud (including his note at the start, because it's pure Scott and he's so thrilled)
Hi Neil --
I can tell I'm going to be typing until 5 in the morning but I don't
care! This is so much fun.
Here's the press release (just for reference of course, I don't
expect you to quote it directly or anything. :)
GOD, I LOVE THIS JOB!!!
--S
******
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
MCCLOUD PREMIERES FIRST MICROPAYMENT WEBCOMIC
From the Horse's Mouth:
"On June 30th, at 9:00 pm, West Coast time, I uploaded Part One of my
online graphic novella "The Right Number", on sale to readers all
over the world for just 25 cents.
"'The Right Number" is a project I've wanted to create for years; a
dark psychological drama about math, sex, obsession and phone
numbers. Each panel is embedded in the previous panel of this comic
-- you actually zoom through the panels to read them! But despite the
experimental format, it was the story that ultimately drove the
project forward for me. I became more deeply involved in this
character's inner life than in any comic I've written since the early
90s, and I've worked hard to ensure that the artwork matched the
intensity of the story.
"BitPass, the micropayments company I'm working with, launched at the
exact same time as The Right Number. Their founders contacted me in
November of 2002 and showed me what they were working on and I've
been consulting ever since. I'd talked to maybe a dozen companies and
individuals over the years who thought they could pull off
micropayments, but one look at what BitPass had planned and I was
convinced that if anybody could do it, they could.
"How will the ability to charge as little as a penny for webcomics
change the landscape? It's anybody's guess. But one thing's for
certain: It's going to be an interesting Summer!"
--Scott McCloud
The Right Number is available at:
http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/trn/intro.html
and
c) while I'll do the longer post about the weekend the girls and I spent with Tori as soon as I get more time at a computer terminal, she's now rehearsing with the band for the summer tour, and for the new song(s) on the Greatest Hits CD. I'm not sure whether the 'Snow Cherries From France' song is going to be on the Greatest Hits CD, but she promised me she'll definitely be playing it on the summer tour, which should satisfy those people who thought it was some kind of weird joke of mine (it's not. It's a really pretty, strange, love song)...
I will helpfully steal the summer dates from Toriamos.com and post them here...
Summer Tour Dates!
Look for Tori on tour this summer on these dates:
26 July
Marymoor Amphitheatre Redmond, WA
On Sale NOW
27 July
Cuthbert Amphitheatre Eugene, OR
On Sale NOW
29 July
Chronicle Pavilion Concord, CA
On Sale 6/8
31 July
The Joint Las Vegas, NV
On Sale 6/21
1 August
Greek Theatre Los Angeles, CA
On Sale 6/1
2 August
Open Air Theatre San Diego, CA
On Sale 6/7
4 August
Dodge Theatre Phoenix, AZ
On Sale 6/21
5 August
Anselmo Valencio Amphitheatre Tucson, AZ
On Sale 6/20
7 August
Red Rocks Denver, CO
On Sale 6/21
9 August
Northrop Auditorium Minneapolis, MN
On Sale 6/14
10 August
Auditorium Theatre - Chicago, IL
On Sale 6/14
13 August
Molson Amphitheatre Toronto, ONT
On Sale 6/20
15 August
Meadowbrook Detroit, MI
On Sale NOW
16 August
Tower City Amphitheatre Cleveland, OH
On Sale 6/7
17 August
Finger Lakes PAC Rochester, NY
19 August
Kresge Auditorium Interlochen, MI
on sale NOW
20 August
Promo West Pavilion Columbus, OH
On Sale 6/13
22 August
PNC Bank Arts Center Holmdel, NJ
on sale NOW
23 August
Jones Beach Amphitheatre Wantagh, NY
on sale NOW
24 August
Fleet Boston Pavilion Boston, MA
on sale NOW
26 August
Tweeter Center Camden, NJ
On Sale 6/7
27 August
Merriweather Post Pavilion Columbia, MD
On Sale 6/6
28 August
Verizon Wireless Amphitheatre Virginia Beach, VA
On Sale 5/31
30 August
Alltel Pavilion Raleigh, NC
On Sale 6/7
31 August
N. Charleston Coliseum - N. Charleston, SC
On Sale 6/20
1 September
Chastain Park Amphitheatre Atlanta, GA
On Sale 6/21
3 September
UCF Arena Orlando, FL
On Sale 5/31
4 September
Sound Advice Amphitheatre - West Palm Beach, FL
On Sale 7/12
And no, I don't yet know which ones I'll be going to. Given that this is going to be the last time she'll be on the road until at least 2005, I want to make as many as I can. ("Look, I'll just ride in the bus and write a book. You'll hardly even notice me. Promise.")
d) Tomorrow we do the DVD documentary thing for Mirrormask. MirrorMask. Mirror-mask. KsamrorriM....
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