HELLO
Next time, pleasepleaseplease don't explain that you were moving a beehive around. I never would then have realised that you were in fact wearing a beekeeping outfit and not actually parading around town dressed as a giant bee.
Thank you!
Right. Sorry.
Dear Mr. Gaiman (or the people looking after him),
I have just finished reading The Graveyard Book, which I enjoyed immensely.
While reading it though, I believe I came upon a small blunder, which you might want to fix:
On chapter 5, when Bod is talking to the Lady on the Grey, she says:
'He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well'
Surely the words gentle and strong were switched? Unless the switch has some poetical meaning that I missed.
I hope this helped in some small way. The book I read was the hard cover adult version, ISBN 978-0-7475-9683-7, mistake was on page 161, if it helps any further.
Thank you for making the world a bit more pleasant with your words,
Yonatan
It's the idea of "the people looking after me" I like.
And that's not a typo, I'm afraid. It's what she said. You'll have to take it up with her, when you see her.
(Someone did send me a terrific list of typos in the author's edition of Neverwhere -- thanks!)
Dear Neil,
It was your mention of NaNoWriMo that finally convinced me to participate for the first time. I'm now the proud creator of 6686 words (and counting), a magical wood, a main character I despise, and a squirrel named Nimrod. I just wanted to thank you.
Now off to continue the adventure.
You're welcome.
Good morning Neil,
Because today is such a monumental day in America's history I was wondering if you voted. Well actually, more specifically are you a citizen of the U.S.(and can you vote?) and what prompted you to move here from your native England? Get lots of rest!
Tricia
Nope. I'm still English and cannot vote in US elections. I can vote in the UK kind, though, and sometimes I do.
As to why I moved, it's now lost in the mists of history, but I think it was mostly because I liked the house.
Marrying Fictional Characters request:
Just in case that bloke in Japan gets the law changed I want to get in first so here goes…(takes a deep breath)
Dear Mr Gaiman please may I have Silas’s hand in marriage?
(well all of him if you don't mind, not just his hand)^_^
Thanks in anticipation,
Liz Taylor.
But if you can marry fictional characters, then... well, you can certainly marry Silas. But so can everyone else. And, well, there could be some bigamy, or trigamy or googlamy involved here. That's all I'm saying. And of course, you'd need to get his consent, not mine.
Dear Neil, while you are bouncing around, I am wondering if (given your history of also bouncing around between clean shavenness and scruffiness) you would consider giving a shout out to this site that encourages people to grow mustache in November for a good cause:
http://www.movember.com/
Mustaches are, after all, "one of the best things to put on your face" and sported by such mustache as Frank Zappa, Mark Twain, and G. K. Chesterton, and they get even better when worn for charity.
No. Trust me. No. There are things that no-one should ever see, and me in a moustache is one of them. I've seen it from time to time, in the mirror, when shaving off beards, and even I shiver at the memory.
Since you've often said no one noticed when Violent Cases was dropped
in price, I noticed that the Coraline audio book has significantly
dropped in price, from $22 to $9.95, so, Yay!
-Shield
Yay indeed.
It's the new "Movie tie in" edition, although it's the same book, with me reading the same story.
They still have some of the old audio CDs (with all the Dave McKean art) on Amazon, at a hefty discount, but not quite that hefty.
Also, thanks to Amazon for putting The Graveyard Book on their ten best Teen books 2008 list. I think that's the first Year's Best list it's made. (And thank you Amazon for keeping it at 40% off.)
Hi Neil
Being back in blighty, you can't have missed the astonishingly bizarre furore over Jonathan's radio show with Russell Brand. I just wanted to show some support for Jonathan, he's an amazingly funny man and if they take him off the air permanently, I for one will no longer listen to BBC Radio. I know he's a friend of yours so I thought you could pass that on.
Cheers
Helen
It was bizarre, a very small storm in a teacup blown up to monsoon level by the Daily Mail -- I found myself agreeing with Charlie Brooker in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/03/jonathan-ross-russell-brand. They did something stupid. It shouldn't have been broadcast. They apologised to Andrew Sachs, who accepted their apologies, and publically explained that they were all performers, and he was done with it. And then the baying for blood started to get loud, the Prime Minister weighed in, and Jonathan and Russell were soon being burned in effigy. Look, I'm biased, Jonathan is my friend, and he's proved a really good friend over the years; he is also someone who always finds the comedy in going too far (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8NxWnMhlso to watch me discover the pitfalls of presenting awards on stage with him), but watching the real news suddenly being gazumped by Jonathan -- and Andrew Sachs -- and the Satanic Slut... was just silly. (If you weren't in England or Scotland or Wales, you probably missed this, and have no idea what I'm talking about. And it's just as well.)
***
There. I got on a plane, flew to Las Vegas, got off the plane, discovered that Penn and Teller were doing a "corporate gig" in my hotel, so ate some sushi and then went in search of them. I gave Penn (who wants to keep bees) a round of honeycomb from my hives, and talked about bees and beekeeping, and they in their turn filled me in on the view backstage from Las Vegas magic world, describing an appalling magic show they had seen recently with a angry delight in eviscerating it that made their descriptions sound a hundred times better than enduring the show in question would have been. And then up to the room to write. Where I am now.
If you remember Beanworld, or even if you don't, go and read this interview with Larry Marder at http://thedailycrosshatch.com/2008/10/24/interview-larry-marder-pt-1-of-3/ (and Larry's blog is at http://larrymarder.blogspot.com/). Larry and I were friends for years, stopped being friends during the McFarlane nonsense, when he was working for Todd and not making art, and then went back to being friends again when he stopped working to Todd and started doing comics again.
An amazing interview with the amazing Lisa Snellings at http://www.stainlesssteeldroppings.com/?p=1016.
A review of the first issue of P. Craig Russell's lovely Sandman: The Dream Hunters at http://goodcomics.comicbookresources.com/2008/11/05/sandman-the-dream-hunters-1-review/
If you're in Las Vegas, come along to the talk tomorrow night -- details at http://lasvegascitylife.com/articles/2008/11/05/news/local_news/iq_24916214.txt
Labels: Coraline audio book, Jonathan Ross, people in love with Silas, the unbearable whiteness of beeing, why I must never wear a moustache not even for charity