Journal

Monday, November 03, 2008

mostly written yesterday actually

I have Taken To My Bed, like a young lady with a bad case of the vapors in a Victorian novel, although during the waking bits I'm writing Batman in bed, which young ladies in Victorian novels rarely did. It's just for today. Tomorrow I'll be up and bouncing around, and Wednesday night I'll be flying out to Las Vegas for the festival. But today is a Day Off. I'm enjoying the not going anywhere at all of it all, and the not signing, and the not even trying to stay awake.


Dear Mr.Gaiman,

For the love of God, stop whinging about being tired.

Yours Sincerely,

Cillian Kelly


Good point. The trouble is, the blog is part journal, written in real time, and when I'm on tour time for blogging normally comes out of sleep time, and tired's the thing on my mind. So it gets blogged about. Go back through the blog, over the years, and you'll find it becomes a familiar refrain during touring season. If it bothers you, probably best to stop reading the blog while I'm on tour... but take heart: touring season is almost done.

It's like the way that when a new book comes out I'll always link to the more interesting reviews and the interviews and sometimes even the bestseller lists. Pretty soon people will start writing in to let me know me that they liked the blog when it wasn't shilling for something, but now it's just become an ongoing list of reviews and mentions of placings on bestseller lists and suchlike, which only means that it is Book Publication (or, worse,Film Release) Season, and it too shall pass and then I'll go back to wittering on about cooking or bees or the perils of filing books or bitchcakes or something: the story of The Graveyard Book goes from me burbling about this thing I'm writing, and showing pictures of the handwritten version, through to publication, how it's reviewed and the interviews are part of the blog for a while, and then are swept away by the whirligig of time. Or on the whirligig of time, if we think there's any chance they'll come around again.

***

Those asterisks indicate a break while I put on a bee suit over my pajamas, and went out, with an assistant and a Hans, to move a beehive in the dark. (A sensible time to move a beehive, as all the bees have come home for the night.) (Lorraine tells the story at http://lorraineamalena.blogspot.com/2008/11/moving-hive-in-dark-one-evening.html
and she makes it funny and interesting. Also includes a handful of photographs I took of her and the dog, who helped too.)

Then Maddy and I watched the first episode of the new series of Sarah Jane Adventures. Several episodes arrived here yesterday, dropped off by my mysterious DVDealer, and as an unasked-for thank-you I gave him a copy of the Dave Gibbons book Watching The Watchmen. I'd been sent a box of them because I had a drawing in the book, a small joke I drew and gave to Dave Gibbons about 22 years ago. This tells me that Dave Gibbons is much more organised person than I am.

Watching the Watchmen is designed by Chip Kidd, who is brilliant, and who will be interviewing me at the Interview and Signing next Sunday at the 92nd St Y. (Details at http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T-LC5AE04
-- and someone wrote in to point out that while streets are named in this event, there is no mention of what city this will occur in. I expect this means that New York is The City and needs no introduction or something. But it's New York.)

***

Right. Blogging downstairs still in pajamas but now minus the beekeeping suit.

This piece on Orson Welles's WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast made a lot of sense. One of the times that reality is better than the legend, because it means that people are saner than we were told they were, and that's a good thing.

Then again, a man in Japan wants the law changed in order to allow him to marry a fictional character.

...

You can see me being interviewed by Jessa Crispin, in Chicago a few weeks ago, over on Bookslut: http://www.bookslut.com/features/2008_11_013672.php

A Graveyard Book review at The Financial Times:
a captivating piece of work, light as fresh grave dirt, haunting as the inscription on a tombstone.


Another over at The Spectator:
This is a beautifully constructed book, in which what appears to be a series of episodes in the boy’s life builds up to a structured plot with a satisfying denouement; and Bod is a charming hero, courageous, considerate and polite in the styles of many centuries. Most importantly, this is a book about growing up and about life.


More awesome than the Spectator or even the FT, comes a review from the immortal Scaryduck who even suggests his own back-of-the-book pull-quote:
18/20: Billie Piper riding a space-hopper down a cobbled street.


A nice article from MTV about Amanda Palmer & me, and then I clicked on the next link, read what Frank Miller said about his Spirit movie, and decided that given his description of it, I'd probably skip it, but am still happy that it will get a lot of people reading collections of The Spirit who would never have picked up or heard of Will Eisner's wonderful comic otherwise. (You can read about how I first encountered The Spirit in http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/01/spirit-of-seventy-five.asp).

***

Those asterisks were me sleeping, and then waking up with the sun in my face on a beautiful Novembery Election day. In a minute I'll get out of bed and, er, bounce around. Or at least take a shower, get dressed, and go downstairs to investigate the world. Last election day I was writing "Sunbird" to try and take my mind off things. This one, I'm interested, although not interested enough to, as an email from DirecTV just suggested, Watch 8 top networks at the same time on The Election Mix Channel, which in my universe is what they sentence you to an eternity of when hanging doesn't quite go far enough.

So. My movements this week...

I'm talking on Thursday Night at the Las Vegas Book Festival. Details at http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/events/2008/nov/06/3557/
Spend an evening with Neil Gaiman at the Clark County Library. Fantasy novelist and comic-book writer Gaiman has written about enough secret civilizations and alternate worlds that he probably has a pretty good idea of what to do in the event of global collapse. Hear his keynote address to open this year's Vegas Valley Book Festival, and then ask him afterward how to escape to Faerie when the stock market implodes.

For the benefit of anyone reading that in a year or so, that's a journalist trying to make a topical joke, I think.

Also, there's a signing on the Thursday as well...

The signing is happening at 1 p.m. at the 5th Street School (401 S. Fourth St). Attendees can bring one item from home and whatever is purchased on site.
If folks can't make it down, signed books will still be available at the door the night of the event.
The Vegas Valley festival also includes a comics festival on the Saturday. See http://www.lasvegasnevada.gov/Publications/16668.htm
and its links for details.

Then on Saturday night there's a CBLDF event in New York. I've never attended one like this before: actors will be performing while huge Sandman panels appearing behind them. Only a hundred tickets... http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000374.shtml has details.

This very special evening will bring two of the series most beloved stories to life with a multimedia presentation that marries comics and live theater.

Which sounds interesting, anyway. "Three Septembers and a January" and "Golden Boy" (the Prez Story) are the Sandman stories. I'll be there, and will say a few words, but mainly I'm planning to be in the audience.

Then in New York on the Sunday night it's Sandman's Twentieth Birthday party. That's the one I mentioned above, with Chip Kidd interviewing me. At the 92nd Street Y. Which is in New York. (Both of the above events are ticketed.) This week at the Y: Roseanne Barr and Neil Gaiman.

Then I go home. And I will be completely done with travelling, just in time for the wonderful weather to turn cold, and I will finally get to interact with the RoboPanda...

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