False or True...

So this evening I finished a short story, at least in handwriting. Tomorrow I'll type it and it'll be done. In the meantime, it's like one of those cats in boxes, neither alive nor dead. It's about being fifteen in 1976, among other things, and it's called "How to Talk to Girls At Parties" (a title the elder of my daughters finds hilarious). It's sort of hard to describe, and I didn't know how it was going to end until I got there, which is the best and the worst kind of writing. The best, because when you get there and then you do know it's like being the first reader; the worst because, well, what if you don't, or there isn't an ending waiting, or the only end that's there isn't any good? But this time, at least, there was an end and I think it was the right one. Still, it's not typed into a solid second draft and done with, and I'm not yet relieved or elated. Just a bit anxious to see what it will look like when I print it out, and nervous what the editor will make of it. It's proper SF though, more or less, sort of, maybe.

And Fred the Unlucky Black Cat is sleeping on the end of my bed tonight, which he only does when he's miserable and in pain (which is to say, in normal circumstances he's out prowling the night killing probably innocent little beasties). Some beast has bitten or clawed him beside the nose, and I cleaned it off this evening and will get him to the vet tomorrow morning as it looks (and smells) pretty evil.

I hope the Livejournal RSS problem will be solved tomorrow...

Meanwhile a couple of true or false questions have come in...

Rather important for your New York fans. I heard a rumour at the local comic book shop today that there were tickets being sold ($7) for the book signing at the Barnes & Noble on 17th street (Sept 20) and that you had posted a link on the blog. I jumped on my laptop like a lion and skimmed your blog to the point where I had last read it several times, but saw no mention of this. Could you please re-post the link or at least confirm or deny this?

Thank you,
Casey

I think your local comic shop were pulling your leg, teasing, jesting or otherwise toying with your innocence and good nature, and honestly the fact that you couldn't find any evidence of this on the blog should have been a dead giveaway. But I'll post it up here just in case they're telling lots of people this, and not just you. So no, it's not true.

All the information on the various signings as it comes in is going up over at WHERE'S NEIL. This is the link to the US ANANSI BOYS tour entry: http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/2005_08_01_archive.asp#112302364738102144 and it gets modified and updated on a pretty much daily basis. If you're planning to come to one of the signings then bookmark it and use it to check.

Is this true? (from http://www.houseoftomorrow.com/):April 30, 2005 > Work on Coraline Begins Stephin Merritt has started work on a musical adaptation of the children's book Coraline by Neil Gaiman. The projected finish date for this is fall 2006. It will be presented at St. Ann's Warehouse, in Brooklyn, New York, as well as several other theaters around the country.Posted by CG

It's completely true. I'm a huge fan of Stephin Merritt's work, so I'm really excited. (And Stephin's Coraline play will be a completely different entity to the Henry Selick Coraline movie.)

...

Long conversation this morning with Kelly Jones at Harper Collins, this site's webmistress, about the upcoming redesign. It's amazing how much stuff there is at neilgaiman.com that I'd completely forgotten about, and we want to try and make it easier to find.

Which reminds me of a nice article about this blog (and the website) from an Indian newspaper -- it's good to see it's being used as a resource, but mostly it just makes me happy that the world continues, more or less, to shrink.

And while we're sorting out the LiveJournal problems, one question has been answered by Livejournal's Krissy -- The official number of subscribers to your feed is reflected on http://www.livejournal.com/syn/ -- so that's 11,215 at the moment. The number that's reflected on your userinfo is truncated for performance reasons.

So as soon as it starts working again, 11,215 people will be cursing me for filling their friends pages with a mess of previously undelivered posts. Sorry.