Maddy and I are off to Brazil in a few minutes. Well, we're off to New York where we change planes. But basically, we're off to Brazil together. She has the disarming smile. I have the unlikely facial hair. We're like Green Arrow and Speedy, only without the boxing glove arrows, the costumes, the similarity of gender and... okay, not really a good analogy, but what the hell, we're hitting the road. Or we will if the car turns up.
...
It turned up. We're now in JFK in the airline lounge. Soon we will get on a plane that will take us to São Paulo. I have bought Maddy every possible magazine a 13 year old girl could want, not to mention a bunch of books. I will carry on writing stories in longhand on the plane. Or sleeping. I could sleep.
...
Want a badge made out of my thumbprint and signature? Or Tanith Lee's lip-print and initials? Details at http://www.freewebs.com/grikmeer-match-it/ although the eBay links don't seem to be active yet.
A quiet sort of day. Took Maddy to get her eyebrows waxed. ("I can do that," I told her. "We have candles." She properly ignored me.)
I went down to say hullo to the bees -- the Olga hive is busily growing two new queens, and it's nice seeing the Olga bees happily bustling around the two queen cells. With luck, one of them will leave her cell, go off on a successful mating flight and return to repopulate the hive and lead it on to glory.
See the two things that look like peanuts? Queen cells. The first one to hatch will despatch the unhatched with her stinger...
Right now, as I type this, Maddy and I are rewatching the Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways episodes of Doctor Who, because Maddy wanted to be reminded of them, due to the end of Turn Left. (And saying more would be spoilers.)
Hey Neil,
I'm not only a big fan of yours, but also Jennifer DeGuzeman's of Slave Labor Graphics fame. She posted this:
And it was very nice meeting Jennifer, who came across as utterly self-assured and said lots of sensible things she has undoubtedly forgotten. And besides, it did smell like onion rings.
Hi Neil,
I was reading Amanda (Palmer)'s blog, and she said you were working with her on her solo record, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. I'm a huge fan of Amanda, and your writing, and I was wondering what your involvement was in it.
Thanks, Corey
So far I've written the words that will turn up on the back cover of the CD, Who Killed Amanda Palmer? And I'm going to write the words for a book of photographs of Amanda Palmer having been killed.
Hi, Neil! A bunch of my geek-girl friends and I have pulled together a calendar celebrating being both female and geeky. You seem like this might be something you'd want to support--if you want to plug it on your blog, we'd be very grateful! The website is http://www.calendargeeks.com.
~Julia
Consider it posted -- mostly because I liked the outside knitting picture.
No question, Neil -- just a link that will point you to what happens when the muses take hold of an English department, and focus their will upon the lowly subject of an errant red hand truck. Enjoy! http://flagpole.com/Arts/Features/ParkHallPoesy/2008-06-18
Fun! Reminds me of some of the classic Making Light posts.
Bil Stiteler just pointed me at http://1post1der.blogspot.com/, a blog that collects blog posts from blogs that only have one entry.
Hi Neil!
I am a long time fan of your work, and I know I'm a bit behind, but I just finished reading Anansi Boys. It is an awesome read, and I found myself in awe of the subtlety of your literary skills.
I'm curious about the writing process of the characters in Anansi Boys, you being a Caucasian man and the majority of the characters are not. I am an African American woman, and in the majority of books I've read, you naturally assume the characters are Caucasian, as whenever a non-Caucasian comes into play, it is plainly stated, i.e. "He was a black guy... She was a Japanese woman," etc. I so admire how you wrote Anansi boys, because it was the exact reverse - the reader is to assume that all the characters are black, and the non-black people are pointed out. Even the minority authors I've read make a point of focusing on race, but Anansi Boys was so smooth and subtle, I was halfway through the book before I caught it. I just wanted to say thank you for telling a wonderful story, without getting caught up in the semantics of color. It has to be the first book where the main characters are black people, of different cultures, that is not placed in the "African American Fiction" section of Borders.
Could you tell a bit about your writing process for Anansi Boys, or if you have already done so on your journal, could you direct me to the post?
Hello! I have a question I couldn't find the answer to on your site or hardly anywhere else online. I have completed the third draft of a novel and got a lot of feedback saying it was good. However, I am in need of editing. Do you know how I can find good editors for hire? The reason why I want an editor is because I am concerned about being turned down for needing too much editing. I make some plural, punctuation, and some structural mistakes. I have no idea what the publishing world is like--Will a publisher turn down a manuscript with a good story, good writing, and solid arc if it had too many little errors per page?
I suspect that "too many little errors per page" means that the work is not going to be seen as "good writing". Amazing storytelling will triumph over a lot -- there was one bestselling author who wrote all her manuscripts with the shift key down -- but you need amazing storytelling to get to that point.
And that was as far as I got last night because it was then that I discovered a fully-gorged deer tick on the side of my face, and got to investigate what happens next (your doctor appears and gives you 200mg of doxycycline, which works in 87% of cases to stop Lyme Disease from happening, is what).
Have you ever had the odd feeling that a headline writer exists in an entirely different universe to the one that you live in? For example, you would expect an article headlinedI create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett to be, perhaps, about how Terry Pratchett now thinks there is a god. The subtitle, The best-selling fantasy author grew up not believing in a supreme deity - until the day the universe opened up to him as he was preparing for another spell on a chat-show would also lead you to the same conclusion, demonstrating that the headline writer simply didn't bother to read the article, which begins
There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.
Very odd, but also very Daily Mail.
I'm sure you've been asked this quite a bit, but since you're going to be in San Diego for the Clarion workshop, are you planning on doing any outside signings or even anything Comic-Con-related (since it's the same weeks you're teaching)?
Also, are there any campus related events revolving around the workshop, like bookstore signings or the like? I ask because I'm a poor grad student at UCSD and couldn't justify taking the time from my thesis research (and money I don't have) to even think about applying to Clarion, though now I'm thinking I should have at least tried.
Good luck with the workshop!
There may well be a signing at Mysterious Galaxy. Probably a couple of days before Comic Con gets going, just to keep the numbers at the signing to manageable levels. No plans at all to go to the con, although it's not impossible that I'll find myself doing a Coraline panel on the Saturday.
Dear Mr, Gaiman,
I've been happily buying up the Absolute Sandman volumes as they've been coming out. It's been a joy to re-read through the series. I used to have the series in trade form, but was always a little disappointed not only that they weren't in sequential order, but also the incredibly small Vol.3 trade. I digress.
My question to you is regarding the afterwords found in the Absolutes. I think, as a fan, I've been a little spoiled by some of the personal retrospects on your previous work, either from 1602 or Smoke & Mirrors. I was expecting more reflection on your run on Sandman, talking about why you wrote this or how you came up with that or who inspired this. I guess I found the final afterwords in the Absolutes to be a little disappointing, especially after so much material is in the books already.
Also, a part of me had hoped that the introductions in many of the TPB's would have made their way into the Absolutes, but that's a minor point.
Will always be a big fan,
Nick Piers
I didn't really think that the world needed me pontificating on Sandman. I think the work stands on its own (or I hope it does), and given that the very first afterword of all -- on The Doll's House, nineteen years ago -- said that the policy on Sandman afterwords was going to be "Never apologise, never explain" I think that either apologising or explaining would have been equally inappropriate.
If you want that kind of thing, though, The Sandman Companion, by Hy Bender, was filled with apologies and explanations both, along with lots of other things -- much of it consisted of interviews with me about just the stuff you were hoping for.
The idea of The Absolute Sandman volumes was to bring out the 2000 pages of the work as best we could, with the colours of the first 49 issues corrected and brought up to modern times, with any text corrections that had evaded us in the past corrected, with, in each volume, about a hundred pages of hitherto unpublished scripts and pencils and extra material, including never-reprinted short stories. It was never planned that I'd do an exegesis or annotation.
There are of course annotations to Sandman up at http://www.arschkrebs.de/sandman/annotations/, although reading them I always find myself going "That's true... that's accurate... that's perceptive... that's complete and utter bollocks and factually inaccurate to boot... that's well-spotted... hmm, they missed all the rest of the references there...". So perhaps I should try to persuade DC Comics to let Les Klinger do an Annotated Sandman for the 25th Anniversary...
Neil-
You mentioned in the blog recently about doing Graveyard Book movie meetings.
Since you are at the point in your career where you are essentially ensured that the film option will be purchased on anything you choose to write, do you think you have started, either consciously or unconsciously, writing with that eventuality in mind?
Do you find yourself stopping and going "Well, how would that translate to visual" or "Too much inner dialog in this scene"?
Curiously yours, and missing Cody's already. I found out while attending Rory Root's memorial at Flying Colors, so it was a bit of a double whammy.
I don't think so -- novels are novels and films are films and I suspect that if you tried to write a novel going, with each bit you wrote, "this scene needs to work as a film" you'd just wind up writing a book that read like, and was as unsatisfying as, a novelisation.
Hi Neil
Many years ago, more or less when it was made clear to me that the character of Fiddler's Green had based his appearance on that of G.K. Chesterton, I started reading Chesterton's books whenever I could find them. Needless to say, I think he is the closest a fairly obscure writer (to modern readers) can get to a National Treasure, and it's a shame that virtually all of his work is out of print. But then imagine my delight when I came across the following recently published volume:
An incredible bargain, and one that I'd urge any of your fans to get hold of if they want to read some of the best work ever written in the English language. And no, I don't work for Wordsworth Editions.
Thanks
Richard
What an enormous -- and astoundingly cheap -- book. I was just reading an interview you did with Raintaxi in which you said that you didn't think much about your audience when writing, except for age. I found this interesting because my high school English teacher drilled into my head that the audience was the most important thing to keep in mind when writing. (I once said that the audience for something I'd written was "anyone who wants to read it," and he said that was a lazy answer.) Is it still true that you don't consider the particulars of your audience? How important do you think it is for most writers to do so?
I suppose if pushed I'd have to admit that the audience I'm mostly writing for, when I'm writing, is, er, me. Or someone a lot like me, who's read a lot and likes the same kinds of thing in a story that I do.
If I'm writing a book intended for children it probably won't have any swearing or sex in it, although Anansi Boys doesn't have any swearing or sex in it, and it's an adult novel.
I think it's a good thing to decide that you want to write for an audience of nice, smart people who, if they reread a book or comic will enjoy making connections they didn't see the first time, for example, or who will work for something and take pleasure from working for it if there's something there to get (my ideal audience, I think). I think it's useful to use yourself as a sample of your audience -- I did when I was writing Sandman.
But beyond that I don't envision an audience, and I definitely don't write for an audience, or I might start second-guessing myself and writing to please an imaginary audience and not to please myself. And the only person whose taste I'm really familiar with is me.
I'm currently tutoring two young boys, ages 9 and 7, who are very reluctant readers. I've spent the past few months happily ploughing through all of your work, so I thought I'd spread the Gaimany goodness in hopes of raising interest. I've started the 9-year-old on Coraline, and read The Wolves in the Walls with the 7-year-old. After I read him the final pages today, he shut the book and flipped it over to look at the cover. He sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction.
"That's probably the second-best book I've ever read," he said quietly.
Pleased and surprised, I asked him with the first-best book he'd ever read was. After looking wistfully out the window for several moments, he shrugged and replied "I don't remember. So I guess this is pretty much the best book I've ever read."
High praise from a 7-year-old boy, so I thought I'd pass it on. He has since decided to write his own (unauthorized) sequel called The Tigers in the Walls. ("The man who wrote this book has a good imagination," he explained, "but I want to know what happens when other animals come out of the walls." I later learned that apparently tigers play bingo and order pizza while disguised in long coats and wigs.)
Thanks for the stories and for your time,
~Mia Hrabosky
You're welcome! It made me smile.
And someone has a useful correction... Hi Neil!
Just a correction, the 'Doorway to Hell' is in Darvaza, Turkmenistan. Not as 'Darvaza Uzbekistan' as reported on the various interweb memes mentioning it.
You can also see the fire pit on Google Earth/Maps.
Back in 2006 you mentioned that you were working on a project with Penn Jillette that would be a film adaptation of "The Road to Endor". Since I couldn't find any more recent mentions of it, (and I'm really hoping I'm not going to be one of those people who somehow misuse the search function and miss that in reality there is a clear and straight forward answer that would pop up immediately if only one could use search engines properly) I was wondering if this project is still happening or if it died along the way somehow.
Thanks, Nicole Cannon
No, it didn't die. We wrote the script, had a reading, did a rewrite based on that, and then had another reading of the script (with Bill Nighy as one of the leads, along with Andrew Scott and Dan Bittner, which was magic). Then we waited. Hilary Bevan Jones, who is producing it, has been producing Richard Curtis's new film, The Boat That Rocked, and that's just wrapped. I saw her in England last week, and she's about to start talking to potential directors. When there's news I'll put it up here.
And finally,
Hey Neil! You finally got the attention of Cute Overload! They totally rolled all over you talking about how their raccoon pics are way better than yours. Are you going to take that lying down?
Well, the person who originally linked from this blog to Cute Overload was the Web Elf (retired), not me.
I have friends who practice ultra-safe computing when crossing borders: examine their computers and you'll find yourself on something almost data-free, so you'd not be looking at encrypted files, you'd simply not be looking at files -- the same kinds of things that Cory Doctorow describes in Little Brother.
And I've always thought they were being, well, silly.
Authorities need a search warrant to get at a computer in your home, and reasonable suspicion that you're up to no good to search your laptop in other places (like if you're surfing bomb-making sites while using WiFi at a coffee shop).
But the rules change when you're crossing the border back into the United States. And that has raised concerns from business travelers, privacy advocates and some lawmakers about the vulnerability of the huge amounts of information people carry on their laptops and other digital devices.
The legality of the practice hinges around whether searching a laptop is the equivalent of looking in your luggage, or more like a strip search.
U.S. Courts have ruled, as recently as this spring in a case stemming from a search at LAX, that there's no need for warrants or suspicions when a person is seeking to enter the country because any "routine search" is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment. In effect, it's like luggage: anything and everything in your laptop, cellphone, BlackBerry or digital camera can be examined and copied by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents.
And also copy any songs or films from my iPod, I assume...
Which leaves me going "Yes. And customs has the right to inspect a book I'm reading, but not the right to make a copy of the book. Why would they have the right to copy my data?" It seems deeply wrong. Or like I may, at least in the world of computing, find myself joining the ranks of the friends I always thought were maybe just an eensy weensy little bit paranoid.
Hi Neil! I see you answered this person's question if you're going anywhere else here in Brazil other then Paraty.
And you also said that you have to wait and see if you will be able to do a book signing or not. Well I called Casa Azul (the institution that is organizing the FLIP event) and they said that it is up to each author if they want to have a book signig section or not after they lecture, and a book signing booth will be set up and ready for the authors who agree.
So the main thing is, since it is up to you I would like to know if you will agree on having a book signing/meet and greet, for it will be the only reason for me to travel so far, so I can meet one of my idols.
Hope to see you there!
xoxox Marie If it's up to me, then I'm sure I'll be doing a signing.
A few weeks ago I bought tickets for your night in Tulsa, OK. Today, as I went to search again for dates, I'm seeing rumors that the event has been cancelled. All traces of this event have been removed from Mammoth comic's website and Neilgaiman.com. Am I missing something here? Is the FBI reprogramming my memory? Or, quite simply, is the event cancelled. Why am I the last to know these things? Anyway, hope you're having a lovely day and I will have to send my copy of American Gods to you to be signed. It is a very special copy you know, belonged to my late best friend, Adam. Goodness, I'm rambling...good evening.
Jaclyn Long
It was definitely cancelled, I'm afraid. I'm astonished that Mammoth Comics have simply vanished any mention of it, rather than putting up information to let people know that it was cancelled, and to make it easy for any tickets to be refunded. When I was told that the event had been cancelled I was also told that they'd make sure that people knew and that it would be made easy for people to refund their tickets... [Edit to add -- Shawn from Mammoth Comics got in touch and it looks like it's a bit messier than that, and some of the mess seems to have come from the people representing me. But now I know that there's a communications breakdown, it'll get sorted.]
Sorry that it's not up as a cancelled event at the Where's Neil address, it was meant to have been. (I really, really miss the old blog system of Where's Neil. It drove everyone else mad, especially the folk running the website, but it meant that events didn't simply vanish once they'd happened, and it was easy for information to go up and hang around.)
Today I had, emergencies,houseguests, strawberries and a yellow fever vaccination, more or less in that order.(For the concerned, the baby raccoons were gone by yesterday afternoon, and I think it's a good bet that they went off with their mum. Today's cuteness quotient was filled by The Chipmunk In The Drainpipe, but I didn't take photos.)
Hey, Neil!
You're coming to Rio de Janeiro for an event in July, yeah? Is there any chance you'll do signings anywhere other than Paraty? Tickets for your lecture sold out a couple hours after they became available; you have a bazillion fans here!
I don't think so; I was asked if I'd like to do a small, invitation-only event for perhaps a hundred people in Sao Paulo after the Flip Paraty festival, and I said no -- mostly because an event for a hundred people seemed like a good way to upset a few thousand people who wouldn't be able to be there (given what happened last time I signed in Brazil -- http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2001/05/american-gods-blog-post-57.html). I said I'd love to do a big enough event that many people would be made happy, but I don't think anyone wanted to do that. So unless something changes in the next two weeks -- and I promise I'll post it here if it does -- no, it'll just be the FLIP event. (And the Desert Island Books event -- I'm reading at that as well).
And a few people have written to ask about signings at FLIP and whether I'll be signing and suchlike, and the truth is I have no idea -- I'll find out and post here what I find.
...
I've been a fan and supporter of the Guys Read website and project, which encourages young male humans to read books. I was pleased when I recently discovered that the UK has its own project - Boys into Books, which despite sounding like a ghastly attempt to transform our surplus young into reading matter, is a very sensible thing: http://www.sla.org.uk/boys-into-books-overview.php
From mid May until mid September 2007, state schools in England having at least 20 boys of this age group were able to order 20 titles from the list, which were delivered, ready jacketed, free of charge, and also two sets of three Boys into Books posters and 450 postcards.
Which is the kind of thing that I wish would spread beyond the UK, and which should be revived every few years in the UK. So I thought I'd mention that here.
...
With the help of the webgoblin, I recently upgraded my Panasonic W7 from Windows Vista to Windows XP, and it now runs like a dream. It's nice not to have to wait for words to appear once more.
Let's see... The Rogue Artists Ensemble have reworked their Mr Punch performance and will be bringing it back on the stage -- hope I can catch it this time. Lots of information up at http://broadwayworld.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=29261 -- although I suspect their previews are in July and not, as posted, in April.
Today I did the proofread on the back matter of Absolute Sandman Volume 4 (which will be out in November). The script in Absolute Sandman Volume 3 is for Sandman 50, which is (in my opinion) the least interesting Sandman script -- although Craig Russell's amazing pencils make up for it a bit. So to make up for it in Absolute Sandman Volume 4 we have the first script for The Kindly Ones and the last script of all, the one for Sandman 75, along with lots of pencils and breakdowns. (You can see a lot of the original pencils for the work that Bryan Talbot and John Ridgway did on Sandman 75, to Charles Vess' breakdowns.)
And I got a call from Vertigo editor-queen Karen Berger asking how I'd feel about another volume of Absolute Sandman, one with Endless Nights and Dream Hunters, and perhaps the Sandman Midnight Theatre story, and the story at the beginning of Dust Covers in it.... I'm not sure. I like that Sandman is one four volume book. Having said that, lots of you have written and asked about it, and Endless Nights and Mr Amano's lovely Dream Hunters are both out of print as hardbacks, and it would be nice to see that art that huge. I suppose I'd feel fine about it if we called it something other than Absolute Sandman Volume 5. Absolute Sandman Supplemental maybe?
...
And for allthepeopledoingthe SFX hundred favourite authors meme, it's Samuel R Delany, not Delaney. Just saying...
The dog startled sleeping raccoons this morning. The mother scampered off leaving two small grumble-whistly balls of cuteness.
So I took my camera, found the telephoto lens (by asking Lorraine where it was) and headed down into the woods to sit patiently while being eaten by mosquitoes, hoping for a few photos.
Lots of bad photos of the baby raccoons being blurred beneath leaves. Then I made the mistake of whistling back at them. They went "Whee-tweetle-thirrp!" and tumbled out of the leaves towards me...
..and I discovered the problem with taking photos of baby raccoons with a telephoto lens is that a telephoto lens is the last thing you want when they're snuffling around your feet trying to figure out why you sound so much like their mother.
I don't know. You turn your (still extremely jet-lagged, just in the opposite direction) back for one moment and the tabs to be closed are already breeding...
First, the big sadness: Cody's Bookshop has closed completely. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/21/codys-books-of-berke.html I've loved doing signings and events with Cody's over the years, thought they were special and will miss them very much. It makes me glad that Kepler's is still in business,
I'm a Hachette author in the UK and much of the Commonwealth. I see that, from an Amazon-selling point of view, this might not be a good thing to be.
I guess I'll start finding other places to link to when I want to point to books. Amazon is always the easiest way to link, so it tends to be the place I default to.
I got a bit puzzled last year when my name got left off the National Theatre of Scotland production of "The Wolves In The Walls" at the New Victory (it was there as writer of the book the thing was based on, but not as co-adapter or as writer of most of the extra lyrics). Still, I felt that things had swung a bit far the other way when I saw this article from Variety on The New Victory winning the National Award for Excellence...
Here's the second part of a two part interview with Alan Moore at the Forbidden Planet blog (where you can learn what he thinks about Gordon Brown being petitioned by the public for an honour on Alan's behalf ):
I was thrilled by Sandman, the whole thing, being on the Entertainment Weekly top 50 new classics of the last 25 years, and baffled why, when they did the entry on what the longest work on their list was, they only listed the first volume of Absolute Sandman, rather than the whole thing. And googled to make sure that my friend Marc Bernardin was still working there to ask him (not that it's anything to do with him of course) and found myself reading this:
I met Miriam Berkley on a plane in-- I think -- December 1987, on my first professional trip to the US, I think. She's a photographer who photographs authors -- here's an interview with her, along with some of her great author photos:
That's cool: Turning wordclouds into art. I have to go and play with Wordle, don't I?
why do the characters in your children's book "The Dangerous Alphabet" look so very similar in appearance (hair color, eyes, clothing - even, somewhat, the shapes of their faces) to Al Columbia's beloved underground cartoon characters, "Pim and Francie"? The similarities are pretty uncanny. Are you and your illustrator very big fans of Al Columbia, or is it simply a very big co-incidence?
thank you for your time.
regards,
brent higgins
I'm not sure I've ever seen anything Al Columbia's drawn, apart from a promo piece for Big Numbers about 18 years ago, but I googled Pim and Francie, found a picture, and can't figure out what they have in common with the brother and sister in The Dangerous Alphabet apart from being male and female children, and his hair being lighter than hers. So it's a mystery to me too.
And here's a scan of the Entertainment Weekly photo page with my top ten on it. A photo almost unique in the history of pictures of me in magazines, for actually looking like me...
In my head Eddie Campbell whispers, "Ah. Righht. Another picture from the Neil Gaiman School of Looking at You Sideways.") ...
STOP PRESS: "The Witch's Headstone" (which will, later this year, be Chapter 4 of The Graveyard Book) won the Locus Award for best novelette. Thank you to all who voted for it, and to Gardner Dozois who accepted the award on my behalf. It's a really terrific list of winners, too.
Winners of this year's Locus Awards, voted by readers of Locus Magazine in the annual Locus Poll, were were announced this afternoon at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Seattle, at an event led by Master of Ceremonies Connie Willis.
SF NOVEL
The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)
FANTASY NOVEL
Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)
YOUNG ADULT BOOK
Un Lun Dun, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey; Macmillan UK)
FIRST NOVEL
Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)
NOVELLA
"After the Siege", Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Jan 2007)
NOVELETTE
"The Witch's Headstone", Neil Gaiman (Wizards)
SHORT STORY
"A Small Room in Koboldtown", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)
COLLECTION
The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, Connie Willis (Subterranean)
ANTHOLOGY
The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)
On the table when I got home was a neatly stacked pile of books that had arrived while I was away, most of them things I'd bought from across the wide internet. (These make me happy. Books people send to me hoping for a blurb make me feel guilty, as the pile of stuff-people-would-like-me-to-blurb is taller than I am.) The book that made me happiest was a copy of Jules Feiffer's Explainers, published by Fantagraphics, which I actually bought rather than obtained by asking Fantagraphics for it because sometimes it's more fun that way. It's a $28.99 hardback collection of all of Feiffer's strips from 1956-1966, and should not be confused with the 1962 collection The Explainers. I was going to write about it here, and then I remembered that I'd done an introduction to Feiffer's book Tantrum, and that it was worth excavating...
There was a Jules Feiffer cartoon in the mid-sixties in which a baby, hardly old enough to walk, catalogues the grievances inflicted upon it by its parents, each indignity accompanied by a soothing "Mommy loves baby. Daddy loves baby."
"Whatever that word 'love' means --" says the baby, essaying its first steps, "I can hardly wait till I'm big enough to do it to them."
When I first discovered Jules Feiffer I was... what? Four years old? Five, maybe. This was in England, in 1964 or 1965, and the book was a hardback blue-covered edition of The Explainers, Feiffer's 1962 collection, and I read it as only a child can read a favourite book: over and over and over. I had little or no context for the assortment of losers and dreamers and lovers and dancers and bosses and mothers and children and company men, but I kept reading and rereading, trying to understand, happy with whatever comprehension I could pull from the pages, from what Feiffer described as "an endless babble of self-interest, self-loathing, self-searching and evasion.” I read and reread it, certain that if I understood it, I would have some kind of key to the adult world.
It was the first place I had ever encountered the character of Superman: there was a strip in which he "pulled a chick out of a river" and eventually married her. I'd never encountered that use of the word 'chick' before, and assumed that Superman had married a small fluffy yellow baby chicken. It made as much sense as anything else in the adult world. And it didn't matter: I understood the fundamental story -- of compromise and insecurity -- as well as I understood any of them. I read them again and again, a few drawings to a page, a few pages to each strip. And I decided that when I grew up, I wanted to do that. I wanted to tell those stories and do those drawings and have that perfect sense of pacing and the killer undercut last line.
(I never did, and I never will. But any successes I've had as a writer in the field of words-and-pictures have their roots in poring over the drawings in The Explainers, and reading the dialogue, and trying to understand the mysteries of economy and timing that were peculiarly Jules Feiffer's.)
That was over thirty years ago. In the intervening years the strips that I read back then, in The Explainers, and, later, in discovered copies of Sick, Sick, Sick and Hold Me!, have waited patiently in the back of my head, commenting on the events around me. ("Why is she doing that?" "To lose weight."/ "You're not perfection... but you do have an interesting off-beat color... and besides, it's getting dark."/ "What I wouldn't give to be a non-conformist like all those others."/ "Nobody knows it but I'm a complete work of fiction")
So. Time passed. I learned how to do joined-up writing. Feiffer continued cartooning, becoming one of the sharpest political commentators there has ever been in that form, and writing plays, and films, and prose books.
In 1980, I got a call from my friend Dave Dickson, who was working in a local bookshop. There was a new Jules Feiffer book coming out, called Tantrum. He had ordered an extra copy for me.
I had stopped reading most comics a few years earlier, limiting my comics-buying to occasional reprints of Will Eisner's 'The Spirit'. (I had no idea that Feiffer had once been Eisner's assistant.) I was no longer sure that comics could be, as I had previously supposed, a real, grown-up, medium. But it was Feiffer, and I was just about able to afford it. So I bought Tantrum and I took it home and read it.
I remember, mostly, puzzlement. There was the certainty that I was in the presence of a real story, true, but beyond that there was just perplexity. It was a real 'cartoon novel'. But it made little sense: the story of a man who willed himself back to two-years of age. I didn't really understand any of the whys or whats of the thing, and I certainly didn't understand the ending.
(Nineteen is a difficult age, and nineteen year-olds know much less than they think they do. Less than five year olds, anyway.)
I was at least bright enough to know that any gaps were mine, not Feiffer's, for every few years I went back and re-read Tantrum. I still have that copy, battered but beloved. And each time I re-read it, it made a little more sense, felt a little more right.
But with whatever perplexity I might have originally brought to Tantrum, it was still one of the few works that made me understand that comics were simply a vessel, as good or bad as the material that went into them.
And the material that goes into Tantrum is very good indeed.
I re-read Tantrum a month ago.
Now, as I write this, I'm in spitting distance of Leo's age, with two children rampaging into their teens: I know what that place is. And I have a two-year old daughter -- a single-minded, self-centred creature of utter simplicity and implacable will.
And as I read it I found myself understanding it -- even recognising it -- on a rather strange and personal level. I was understanding just why Leo stopped being 42 and began being two, appreciating the strengths that a two year old has that a 42 year old has, more or less, lost.
Leo's drives are utterly straightforward, once he's two again. He wants a piggy back. He wants to be bathed and diapered and fussed over. As a 42 year old he lived an enervated life of blandness and routine. Now he wants adventure -- but a two year old's adventure. He wants what the old folk-tale claimed women want: to have his own way.
Along the way we meet his parents, his family, and the other men-who-have-become-two-year-olds. We watch him not burn down his parents' home. We watch him save a life. We watch his quest for a piggy-back and where it leads him. The story is sexy, surreal, irresponsible and utterly plausible.
Everyone, everything in Tantrum is drawn, lettered, created, at white hot speed: one gets the impression of impatience with the world at the moment of creation -- that it would have been hard for Feiffer to have done it any faster. As if he were trying to keep up with ideas and images tumbling out of his head, trying to capture them before they escaped and were gone.
Feiffer had explored the relationship between the child and the man before, most notably in Munro, his cautionary tale of a four-year old drafted into the US army (later filmed as an Academy Award-winning short). Children populated his Feiffer strip, too -- not too-smart, little adult Peanuts children, but real kids appearing as commentators or counterpoints to the adult world. Even the kids in Clifford, Feiffer's first strip, a one-page back-up to the Spirit newspaper sections, feel like real kids (except perhaps for Seymour, who, like Leo, is young enough still to be a force of nature).
Tantrum was different. The term ‘inner child’ had scarcely been coined, when it was written, yet alone debased into the currency of stand-up, but it stands as an exploration of, and wary paean to the child inside.
When the history of the Graphic Novel (or whatever they wind up calling long stories created in words and pictures for adults, in the time when the histories are appropriate) is written, there will be a whole chapter about Tantrum, one of the first and still one of the wisest and sharpest things created in this strange publishing category, and one of the books that, along with Will Eisner's A Contract With God, began the movement that brought us such works as Maus, as Love and Rockets, as From Hell -- the works that stretch the envelope of what words and pictures were capable of, and could not have been anything but what they were, pictures and words adding up to something that could not have been a film or a novel or a play: that were intrinsically comics, with all a comics' strengths.
I am delighted that Fantagraphics have brought it back into print, and, after reading it, I have no doubt that you will be too...
Home. Very very tired. The dog is glad to see me, but the house is otherwise empty, making me half-wish I'd taken the thousand dollars and no change fee to take tomorrow's plane instead, and spent more time with family over there (Maddy comes home in a few days).
Thanks to all of you who wrote in about last night's post...
This is the third year of the Philippine Graphic/Fiction awards, sponsored by me and Fully Booked, and run by Fully Booked... and in addition to prose and comics, we've added a new category: short films.
I've left Maddy with Holly and have wandered down to Kent to see Dave McKean and family. Dave asked me to let anyone in Paris, or in France, or within easy commuting distance of Paris (these days that probably includes people in Belgium and Estonia...) know that he has a show coming up in Paris. Dave will be signing at the gallery on Wednesday... (This is where it is and how to get there)
I wound up strangely out of sorts today, after my journey down to Dave's. The toilets on many trains in the UK have ridiculously unintuitive ways to open and close doors, with mystery buttons inside the toilet to close and lock the door that are hard to find, even for the sighted. I watched a blind man head into the train toilet. He couldn't find the door to close it, said "excuse me, can some help me?" until a fat man in a suit sitting next to the toilet stopped pretending he wasn't there and pressed the close door button for him. Then I watched the fat man hurry down the aisle and past me and back into the next compartment for all the world as if he was embarrassed by what had just happened. Soon enough there came a frantic knocking on the toilet door as, obviously, the blind man couldn't get out (secret, randomly placed buttons would do it, but you have to find them first). And there was a carriage full of people between me and the toilet, so I waited for someone to get up, press the outside button and let him out. And nobody did. now the knocking started again, louder, and more panicked, and I looked out at a carriage filled with people who were pretending very hard they hadn't heard, and were all now gazing intently at their books or papers. So I got up and walked down to the toilet and let the man out, and showed him back to his seat, because it's the least I'd want if I was blind, and it's how you treat a fellow human being, and for heaven's sake. And then I went back to my seat, and everyone looked up at me and stared and smiled with relieved "thank god someone did that" smiles, and I sat down grumpy and puzzled and remain grumpy and puzzled about it still. I'm still trying to work out what on earth was going on there -- I don't think I did anything good or clever or nice. I just did what I would have thought anyone would do. Except a train filled with people didn't, and in one case actively appeared to be running away in order not to. And I puzzle over, was this a carriage filled with particularly self-centred or embarrassed people, has something fundamental changed in the years I've been away from the UK (unlikely, and I don't believe in lost Golden Ages), did those other people really somehow blindly fail to notice that there was a blind man trapped in the toilet...? I have no idea and I write it down because, as I said, it puzzles and irritates me, and if it ever turns up in a short story you'll know why.
Oh hello there. Neil Gaiman here. These are my two beauteous daughters. They are loads and loads of fun to hang out with. They make me smile. Have a nice day! :) :)
Still in England. Had a day where I managed to see a lot of the people I needed to, mostly by throwing all the social meetings I wanted to make with friends under a bus. Plans for the Ireland/Scotland/England bit of the Graveyard Book tour are now in place, for a start. Not sure whether I talk about the other three things, but they were fun.
Todd Klein has announced the on sale date for the prints he did -- he points out that the Alan Moore ones sold out in three days, so if you're interested, it's there for you -- http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1305
I was sent a link to the list of SFX Magazine's compiled-from-lists-sent-in-by-the-public top 100 SF writers. I spent most of it with my eye running down from 100 going "He's better than me. He's a lot better than me. She's much better than me. What's he doing down there, he's better than that..." but it was nice to come in at #3 anyway -- and when they let me know SFX assured me that I was already at #3 by a good margin when I linked to the survey on this blog, so I hadn't skewed it, which always my fear.
Not a big fan of the whole jet lag thing, which I normally avoid but didn't on this trip. Spent too much of yesterday making a complete mess of organising today -- at one point I'd triple-booked my today's late afternoon, and even now, having tried to sort it out, I think it'll run like a french farce. Wanted to go and see Jason Webley yesterday evening, but instead I had fish and chips with daughters and a very early night.
Maddy and Holly and I had dinner last night with The Graveyard Book producer. Maddy and I were both a bit jet-lagged -- still are. Holly now has honey-coloured hair which would render her immune to jet lag. (Well, that and the fact she now lives in England and didn't actually have to fly anywhere.)
I'm reading Samuel R. Delany's About Writing right now, because I have a very short list of books I really learned about writing from when I was a young thing who wanted to be a writer, and Delany's The Jewel-Hinged Jaw was about half of them (the other half was probably the Reginald Bretnor-edited book of essays by diverse hands, The Craft of Science Fiction). About Writing is a wonderful book that should be read by anyone who wants to be, or is already, a writer. It contains seven essays, four letters and five interviews.
I was just struck by this paragraph from one of the letters -- to someone who wishes he or she was a writer, but probably isn't. And I thought, I should put it up here for all the people who write to me convinced that they would be happy if only they were writers.
Writers are people who write. By and large, they are not happy people. They're not good at relationships. Often they're drunks. And writing -- good writing -- does not get easier and easier with practice. It gets harder and harder -- so eventually the writer must stall out into silence.The silence that waits for every writer and that, inevitably, if only with death (if we're lucky the two may happen at the same time: but they are still two, and their coincidence is rare), the writer must fall into is angst-ridden and terrifying - and often drives us mad. (In a letter to Allen Tate, the poet Hart Crane once described writing as "dancing on dynamite.") So if you're not a writer, consider yourself fortunate.
(Hey, I thought when I read that, at least I'm not a drunk.)
I just saw a press release from D3Publisher announcing that they've got the publishing rights to...Coraline (The Game)! I've only seen the press release on a trade only site currently, but it implies it will be multiformat (including handheld) and that,
"Coraline (The Game) is a surrealistic adventure game that will enthrall gamers of all ages with its moody atmosphere, engaging narrative and cast of colorful characters. The console products are being developed by Papaya Studios, and the handheld products are being developed by ART."
From that it sounds like it could be in the same kind of style as American McGee's Alice (which was superb).
I can't find anything else about it (on the publisher's or either developer's sites), so is there anything else you can tell us about this please? When we can expect to see it released? And on what platforms? Any and all information gratefully received! Thanks in advance.
I saw an early proposal for the game, which looked intriguing, but that was the last thing I heard or saw. If and when I get more I'll happily post about it on the blog. There's a few quotes about it here.
I followed the link to the UK Graveyard Book site and eagerly clicked on the signed hardcover slipcase thingy-whatsit preorder button, because I'm like that and get excited by people scribbling on my books. Unfortunately the Bloomsbury page for the book doesn't seem to have a preorder button. Do you know if it's sold out already, or if somebody at Bloomsbury just dropped the ball?
Cheers, Chris
I went over to http://www.thegraveyardbook.co.uk/ section on the books, and the preorder buttons were there -- you had to linger on the book cover for a moment for the preorder button to appear. The limited one brought up:
Which seems to be a way to have Bloomsbury email you when it's ready to preorder. I'm not sure. If you're in the UK you could also just head down to your local bookshop and give them the ISBN and have them pre-order it for you... (I'll check with Bloomsbury and see if I'm not missing something.)
Remember when the e-petition to have Alan Moore honoured went up? The Prime Minister's office has responded -- although not with the proper response, which would have been "YES! WHAT A FINE IDEA! WE SHALL MAKE HIM OFFICIAL WIZARD OF ALL ENGLAND AND SET HIM TO TURNING LEAD INTO GOLD! WITH AN OFFICIAL POINTY HAT!" But at least they don't actually rule it out.
Right. Back to the day. Too many people to see, or at least, look at blearily...
Maddy and I are going to the UK for a few days, on Graveyard Book movie matters. We just went for a father's day walk in the woods, where we were bitten by special father's day mosquitoes.
I'm confronting the hard facts of being the father of a thirteen-nearly-fourteen-year-old-daughter. For example, I learned today that we can no longer travel using carry-on luggage. We have to check luggage, something I don't like to do and avoid whenever I can, but that has become unavoidable. This is, I was told, because Maddy has liquid Hair Care products that have to come with us.
"We're going to England," I told her. "It's a country flowing with milk and honey and hair-care products. There's a Boots on every corner, or nearly, and there's definitely one in any airport we'll be flying into. Before we leave the airport I can buy you more haircare products than you can easily carry, all of them guaranteed to be just as hair-care-producty as anything you could get in WalMart."
"That's nice of you," she said firmly. "And you can get me them too if you like. But I'll have to bring my own haircare products as well."
"It's ENGLAND," I said. "Not Antarctica. Sixty million people! They wash their hair there. They put goopy stuff on it after they've washed it. There are more weird hair-care things that I don't know what they are on the shelves of Boots than there in the whole of the US. We wouldn't have to check luggage..."
I lost the argument. Everyone else seems to think I'm missing the point. Maddy's sister on the phone from the UK told me I'd lost. Even Maddy's mother does nothing more than smile. Sigh. I wish that the dog could talk. He's male. I bet he'd back me up. (Actually, if he could talk he'd just say, "You're going away? When there might be thunderstorms? You know no-one else can protect me from thunderstorms. Whoa...I forgot what we were just talking about. Can we go for a walk now?" because he's a dog.)
We'll be checking luggage. Did I mention that already?
And did you know it's the neilgaiman.com World's End message board's Seventh Birthday? (I didn't, but the lovely Amy AKA Aitapata just told me.) Congratulations to all the board people and moderators!
Dear Neil, I recently finished reading your (and John Romita Jr.'s) version of Eternals for the second time, and I was wondering (because I've already researched it and I can't find anything about it) if you'll continue it? It's an amazing comic, and I would like to know whether to expect more of it...Thank you, Jessica.
Dear Neil, I am sure you have probably answered this question before and are probably, therefore, very sick of it. But, I still must ask. I am an aspiring writer and am wondering how you stayed motivated during times of great failure. I understand what many writers mean when they say the love of the art drives them. What I am concerned with is how to deal with the inevitable denial of a piece of literature that you have invested everything in?
Write the next thing.
Maybe the world will catch up with your brilliance eventually, or maybe you'll look back in ten years and decide it wasn't that great really after all. Doesn't really matter. Times of great failure or times of great success, the problem is the same (how do you keep going?) and the solution is the same: You write the next thing.
An apologetic note to say that I've just learned that for various reasons (none of which was really anyone's fault) the Tulsa Oklahoma event on June the 28th has had to be cancelled. (And, I am assured, all tickets will be refunded.)
I definitely want to come to Tulsa -- there are Lafferty archives to see, after all, and old friends to eat with -- so I think its been more postponed than cancelled, although it'll probably be in a slightly different form when next it happens.
Got up this morning, went in to Minneapolis and recorded introductions for the Audible.com recordings of the Fritz Leiber Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Then I did the alternate bits for the UK version of The Graveyard Book, and came home.
I took some photos the other day of a pileated woodpecker on our birdfeeder, and was chuffed when the birdchick put them up on her blog: http://www.birdchick.com/2008/06/i.html
Over at the Onion AV club: Cory Doctorow interviewed, and also (in two parts) Harlan Ellison interviewed (part 1 and part 2). Both terrific reads, even if Mr Ellison does mock my accent. (Actually mocks my me-pretending-to be-Harlan-Ellison-accent.)
I've forgotten whether or not I posted the link to Anne K.G. Murphy's interview with Dave McKean at http://www.thegraveyardbook.com/
I know I haven't posted a link to the UK Graveyard Book site -- http://www.thegraveyardbook.co.uk/ because it only went live today. It has spooky music, a Chris Riddell gallery and a Dave McKean gallery. What more does anybody need?
Louis Leterrier wants to make a movie of 1602. (Might be really fun. We could fix the plot hiccups at the end for a start. The main problem would be the different companies that still have film rights to characters that Marvel doesn't have, who are needed for the story. On the other hand, as long as you've got Nick Fury and Dr Strange, you can't go too far wrong.)
And, from the Guardian, here are some better images from the Hammer and Carry On Stamps. My old friend and occasional collaborator Kim Newman did the text from the presentation pack. (You know you've finally arrived when you get to write the words for the stamps.)
i just wanted to tell you that up on the First Tuesday Bookclub website (http://www.abc.net.au/firsttuesday) there's an interview with you.
maybe you can post the link up for others to watch.
where were you sitting, it sounded like as though they had you in the middle of a busy waiting room.
The interview was done in the restaurant at the Sydney hotel I was staying at. And I thought I'd already linked to this, but obviously wasn't paying attention or forgot or something. Sorry...
The Waterstones auction happened. The J.K. Rowling Harry Potter un-prequel card went for a bit less than the $10 million that some newspapers were predicting (about $9,951,000 less), but I don't think the auction was really being run to raise money as much as to raise awareness -- of the charities and PEN and of (most importantly) the existence of the upcoming all-profits-to-charity-and-PEN 5 pound-a-pop postcard book, and I think it did that and did it well...
And the answer to my puzzled wondering of how on earth did Ms Rowling squeeze a reported 800 words onto that card? I was pushing to write a legible short story in about 300 words... was revealed. She turned it over. Fair enough. (Richard Ford also cheated and used two cards.)
As I said, you can read all the stories at http://www.waterstoneswys.com/. I've not read them all yet, but my favourite of the ones I've read so far was the Tom Stoppard "Idiomatic Farm" one. I was interested in the Atwood one when I read that,
Which it may well do, but I found it more or less unreadable and cannot tell if this is because of her handwriting or the way the LongPen reproduces it.
A reminder that I'll be in Tulsa, OK, on the 28th of June: details at http://www.mammothcomics.com/events.php It seems to be an evening containing a signing, a Q&A and a screening of Beowulf into the bargain. I'm excited to go to Tulsa, because of the R.A. Lafferty connections. And Oklahoma is a state I've never visited.
Hi Neil,
Absolute Sandman Volume 3 will be out in a few hours. Since this volume will include stories from books 5-7 of the Sandman library, I was wondering if volume 4 will include "Endless Nights." I was also hoping that “Dream Hunters” will be part of the final volume but that’s just me wishful thinking.
-Tonichi
I have volume 3 here, and it's as lovely and as heavy as the first two, and I've just been proofreading Volume 4, which comes out in November, for the 20th anniversary of Sandman. (The only way I can make that work in my head is by telling myself that it's the equivalent of a comic I read in 1975, when I was 14 and discovering fanzines and the history of comics, that had a first issue in 1955 and stopped publishing in 1963... it would have been something from a bygone age. Instead we're in this strange world where each year more Sandman graphic novels are sold than the year before, as new generations discover them.)
My main obsession right now is to make sure that the sign in the park finally says Do Not Feed the Pigeons in Hungarian, rather than, um, pidgen-Hungarian. No, Absolute Sandman 4 doesn't contain Endless Nights or Dream Hunters -- it's already over 600 pages and will weigh over seven pounds. The four Absolute Sandmans when released will be over 2400 pages long and will contain all 76 issues of Sandman (including the special) and the four or five other stories from various specials, samplers and Winters' Edges -- all except the Jeff Jones Death short story, which will need to wait until DC does The Compleat Death...
Here's a rather lovely video of Kindermarchen, the Hidden Variable song by Gregory Maguire, directed by Kimberly Butler and Elberta Gaither. (You know, if you have a record company, you should release Chris's Hidden Variable CD on it... )
I'm proofreading the galleys of the UK edition of The Graveyard Book right now. Last night, at the exact moment I started to become convinced that these were amazingly clean galleys, there were no typos after the number of times we'd all been through the manuscript, and I should simply sign off on them and get on with my life, one character turns to another and says "Neil, I've broken the next para into five paras for clarity but if you want we can turn it back." Which was a comment from the copyeditor to me that had been written on the previous draft. After that I started squinting at the text and reading verrry slowly....
Philip Pullman in the Guardian, talking about why age banding books is such a magnificently wrongheaded idea, but also talking about what he knows when he starts a book:
When I sit down to write a book, I know several things about it: I know roughly how long it will be, I know some of the events in the story, I know a little about some of the characters, I know - without knowing quite how I'll get to it - what tone of voice I want the narrative to be cast in.
But there are several things I don't know, and one of those is who will read it. You simply can't decide who your readership will be. Nor do I want to, because declaring that it's for any group in particular means excluding every other group, and I don't want to exclude anybody. Every reader is welcome, and I want my books to say so.
Which is pretty much true for me too, and sometimes all you need to know that it'll work is the tone of voice. When that works, everything works, and when you don't have it it's the intangible that stops the thing from being magic.
(On the age banding, from what I can figure out, the subtext of all this seems to be, in the UK more and more books are being sold through supermarkets. People in supermarkets don't have to know anything about what they're selling. They just need to know where to put it on the shelves. If publishers put colour-coded age bands on the books, indicating which books are for 7+ and which for 9+ and which for 11+, then supermarkets will order more books because they won't have to think about putting them out. And after all, the shelf-stackers don't need to know anything about dish-soap to sell that, so what makes books special?)
And now some good news:
Hi Neil, I think you're already aware of this, but I wondered if you'd mind posting a follow-up to the story of Emru Townsend. I wrote to you back in April about Emru's search for a bone marrow donor and the desperate need for more people (especially non-caucasians) to get on their country's bone marrow registry. Here's the link to your original post for those who missed it:
I should remind you that there was no match in the registry for Emru when he was originally diagnosed with leukemia. I believe that this match is a direct result of Emru and Tamu's tireless awareness campaign, and of people like you helping to get the word out to as many people as possible. Thank you. And thank you to your readers, many of whom passed on the word and got themselves registered.
Emru is still a long way from being healed. He must get into remission, stay in remission, be prepared for surgery, have the surgery, resist or fight off infection, risk the donation attacking his body or his body attacking the donation, and get through the first 100 days. Plus, his anonymous donor has the option of backing out at any point and there is currently no backup.
Still, this is a crucial first step. Our friend now has a good, fighting chance.
To your readers: Don't see this as the end of the story. There are still massive shortages in the registry and many, many people are still waiting to find matching donors. Emru and Tamu have already committed themselves to continuing their awareness campaign.
Emru's story shows that this isn't a lost cause; it's a solvable problem. You can save lives just by registering and getting others to do the same.
(I have to go back into the studio on Thursday -- we only realised this morning that there were no alternate takes for the UK of sentences with words like crib, diaper and flashlight in them, so I will go and replace them with sentences containing cots and nappies and torches.)
Just got an email to tell me that a pre-eminent banjo player would really like to play the Danse Macabre, which left my jaw on the floor with delight.
And here, for the people who asked, is a photo of a dog in the woods, yesterday. He's come a long way in a little over a year. I suppose I have as well...
This just in from our resident webgoblin about neilgaiman.com:
When I'm not spoiling milk or making maids cry, I like to make improvements to this site. Here are the last few that I can remember, of which you may not previously have been aware:
* Introductions, as they are posted, are being archived in a new Introductions section. * The Where's Neil? feed now includes automatic reminders that pop up in your feed reader one week before the event date. * The What's New box on the front page now automatically displays all new, or updated pages on the site. It even has its own feed to which you may subscribe. * There is a new version of the iGoogle countdown gadget for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK which ticks down the seconds in real-time just like the one on this site.
Report all errors to me, if you please; I'm off to pose for that Froud fellow again.
There. (For those of you who missed it, the webgoblin replaced the webelf, who retired, although is still currently working away in the background organising and labelling the early days of this blog, when she is not making music.)
I was wondering if I could sent some pictures of a neat skull I got as a gift, to authenticate, or at least verify the signature. It was bought online & supposedly signed by Mr. Gaiman at Waterstones in Bath, UK, in 2003. I'm sure he signs all sorts of weird things at shows & conventions, but I'm curious to see if this was really signed by him. It would be really great if it's real. Please email me when you can, or to where I can send images of the skull. Thanks!
I don't think I authenticate skulls online. But I did sign at Waterstones in Bath in 2003. And if you go to http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1230 you'll see a blog entry by Todd Klein about signing the print he did, with a picture of a signature of mine, and if it looks anything at all like that, it's probably mine. I mean, I don't think there's a hot trade in forged signed-by-Neil-Gaiman skulls out there...
I am searching for a recording of that truly sublime production of Sweeney Todd starring Adrian Lester. I was googling it and i saw your reference to it. My mum and I went to see it when i was 10 and it was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen or heard. In particular we loved the 'Joanna' song and both of us have been singing it ever since! Did you have any luck in finding it?
Thank you Ama
I didn't, although I learned that it was broadcast on Radio 3, and was offered a cassette by someone working at a shop specialising in things like that, but never followed it up.
I talked about my love for Alan Garner's books in this recent Australian interview -- http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2008/2260549.htm. It's a nice interview even though it begins with someone saying, "Neil Gaiman has been described as 'the father of the graphic novel'," which I complete in my head with "But only by people who know nothing about graphic novels and fatherhood, who don't know who Will Eisner was."
I've a rather large interest in the man, so much so that I feel cursed for not being born early enough to write my thesis on the man. Yoshitaka Amano at least appears as a silver lining.
I'd equally imagine I'm not the only Clarke fanatic in the art history community - and wonder if you mean to scan or otherwise make available the drawings you discovered?
I'd doubt any great insight into his work, any more than any other drawing of his might provide as to method, but it would be a treat for those of us who would pursue completion with fanaticism.
Which struck me as a very good idea, the putting them up on line. I had meant to get in touch with Clarke expert Nicola Gordon-Bowes when I was in Dublin last, but it never happened... So I got the Clarke drawings scanned.
This is the one that was face out when I bought it -- it's from the illustration facing page 74, If I Had a Broomstick. The finished version looks like this:
Above is the rough for the illustration on page 109 of The Year's at the Spring, showing the two mermaids (three in the finished version); and also sketches for the details on page 93 and 74.
Finished, the one on page 109 looks like this:
On the reverse of those two are these are sketches for two Clarke drawings I don't recognise -- the cottage on the left, the dancer, the bearded man and the clown on the right. (Click on them to see them larger.)
(No idea why they've uploaded blue.)
...
Dear Mr. Gaiman,
With the number of young writers who look to you for advice, I thought that they might be interested to hear about a creative writing program called "Shared Worlds" being offered this summer at Wofford College. My friend, writer Jeff VanderMeer is serving as assistant director. Jeff, along with writers Ekaterina Sedia, Tobias Buckell and a host of tabletop game designers and other creative types will lead high school students through a very "hands-on" experience in creating their own worlds, learning valuable creative writing lessons in the process. Here's a link, if you think your readers might be interested:
Talking about which, the Memorare For the Hugo sticker on the right of the page is for this story -- http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/gw01.htm -- and is there because Gene Wolfe has never, ever won the Hugo Award. And he should.
So Maddy is sick, and is fast asleep on the other end of the sofa, so I put on Shock Treatment on DVD -- it's been ages since I've seen it (I'm not sure I've actually seen it since it was on in London's West End in about 1981), although I've had the CD (and before that, the LP) for many years, grabbed a computer and thought I should start to catch up on my blogging. I'm way behind on everything (email? returning phone calls? blogging? I'm backlogged on all of them. Let us not even mention anything new I'm meant to be writing). I'm keeping more or less current with the proofreading of Graveyard Book in the various editions, though, and I'm hugely proud of having done the Graveyard Book audio over the last few days.
(Yesterday morning before the reading started I also did an NPR interview about Anansi Boys for the Bryant Park Book Club [you can read the discussion so far here] as a sort of warm up.)
The reading was, in some ways, the hardest I've ever done. I always forget how exhausting doing an audio book is -- sitting in the same position and reading 75,000 words, and getting every word right. The concentration involved is ridiculous. I do them once a year, and admire all the voice actors who do them day after day, reading books they didn't even write! It was hard, and longand somewhere in Chapter Seven I was scared my voice would give out entirely, and then I got to Chapter Eight and it felt like I was flying and could do it forever. (When I finished, I went back and did the very first four pages again, and nailed them.)
Director Michael Conroy flew in from New York. (He replaced the amazing Rick Harris, who recently retired.) He was a fine director -- picked me up on places I flubbed, let me go when I was doing well. We started talking about what kind of music we'd like on it. "The Saint Saens Danse Macabre," I said, "...as long as it isn't a version we've heard before."
By which I meant not a standard orchestral version, or a piano version. Not the Jonathan Creek version either. We started talking about takes on the Danse Macabre that might be odd and interesting, how we should go and find a string quartet version, or a version that's just double basses or accordions, or the danse macabre arranged for banjo and clarinet... and about how hard it would be to find versions like that.
And then we started to wonder whether if I mention it on this blog, we could actually get submissions...
So that's our current plan. No-one's going to get rich from something that's the chapter intro music on an audio book, I'm afraid. And it won't be a competition, more of an easy way for anyone from anywhere in the world to send in audition samples -- and we need to figure out how to do it, and what the technical specs would be. But that's the plan. If you play the Danse Macabre on the musical saw, this may be the opportunity you've been waiting for...
Back in early 2002 I was ready to leave Harper Collins, when my then-editor left; Jane Friedman talked me into staying, promised a lot and then delivered on all of her promises. (There were things I wanted that were against Harper Collins policy, like having a trade paperback and a mass market paperback of the same book out at the same time.) I got to spend real time with her last year in Beijing, at the Book Fair, and she really impressed me with her understanding of publishing, of where publishing was going. She's very funny, very practical, ferociously smart. I don't think that Harpers would have been so supportive of the monstrous thing that http://www.neilgaiman.com/ has grown into without Jane -- nor would it have been as easy to push through the free online American Gods a few months ago.
I like Jane -- she's larger than life, and I like larger than life people. I'm glad I was at what turned out to be her farewell party at the Fox lot (even if I did spend much of my time reminding Matt Groening that I really need to be a head in a jar on Futurama) -- and I hope she winds up somewhere that's as challenging for her and as interesting as CEO of Harper Collins.
Hi,
What are your thoughts on the idea of age ratings on books? I personally think it's potentially off putting to children who want to read outside of their "age range".
I saw a discussion about it on BBC Breakfast this morning.
Cheers,
Sarah
I think it's deeply stupid. You can get all the information about who a book is aimed at across to a book buyer with typefaces and design. Putting more or less compulsory coloured bands on books saying what age the reader is expected to be seems like something that's just going to stop people -- of all ages -- reading books. Exclusive, not inclusive.
As far as I know, Bloomsbury, my UK children's publisher, has simply decided not to play, and won't be banding. (Bloomsbury are also doing one edition of The Graveyard Book for adults and another edition for children, and none of us have any idea what age group it's aimed at. People who like reading about a boy who was brought up in a graveayard, I suppose, of whatever age.)
There's a web site http://www.notoagebanding.org/ where a number of authors, illustrators, academics, librarians and editors have pointed out how deeply twerpish the banding is. I signed up for it with enthusiasm, endorsing the following statement:
We are writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, publishers and booksellers. Some of the undersigned writers and illustrators have a measure of control over what appears on the covers of their books; others have less.
But we are all agreed that the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.
We take this step to disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures, and to state our passionately-held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out.
Neil--
When you first posted links and photos on your blog about "Blueberry Girl", your collaboration with Charles Vess,I was thrilled. Now, a bit after a month since it was supposed to be published, I haven't see hide nor hair of it. Was it published in late April, or pushed back?
I'm talking to Waterstones about the story card auction. It's very invitation only -- for people bidding in person on the cards and for people bidding from a distance. So if there's anyone out there who was hoping to be able to bid on my card (which I can confidently guarantee will go for less than the 5 million pounds -- ten million dollars -- that J. K. Rowling's card is predicted to go for) then let us know through the FAQ line and I'll put you in touch with the relevant people at Waterstones, who will put you in touch with the relevant people at Sotheby's. It is, after all, for a couple of good causes.
(You'll be able to read the story cards at the Waterstones site from the 11th of June.)
...
Incidentally, I just got sent the starred Kirkus review of Craig Russell's Coraline graphic novel:
CORALINE by Neil Gaiman Adapt. by P. Craig Russell Illus. by P. Craig Russell
A deliciously dark graphic adaptation of Gaiman’s modern classic is delivered with pitch-perfect accuracy and presented in a striking palette. Staying true to the original text, Russell’s adaptation follows young Coraline Jones as she discovers a strange door in her otherwise boring flat. Once over the door’s mysterious threshold, she meets her ghastly “Other Mother,” a horrid-looking beldam with sinister, button eyes, long, yellowed teeth, spindly, tapered fingers with sharp, brown nails and a wry, baleful smile. Coraline’s Other Mother intends to keep her in this horrible new world forever, and captures her real parents, prompting young Coraline to seek them out in this strange dimension. Russell, a veteran illustrator and collaborator with Gaiman, makes the novel positively jump off the page, sending shivers down its readers’ spines. Colorist Lovern Kindzierski deserves special kudos for utilizing a masterful array of hues, working in smart synchronicity with the nuances of the tale. A stellar reworking of the original text, this is sure to delight established fans and to mesmerize newcomers. (Graphic fiction. 10 & up)
Today I read chapters one, two and three of The Graveyard Book into a microphone. As always, I can never believe that the human stomach can make quite that much noise, or how easy it is to forget how to read English. I was pleased that I got to do the readings in Australia from the book that I did, especially for the ghoul voices. Practice is a good thing, always.
Dear Neil,
Why is your biography on this site so confusing?... It seems to me that somehow, the person who wrote it first decided to introduce you, then to talk about your latest achievements (it was probably 2005 back then), then to go round and round through some other works in something that almost, but not quite, resembles an approximately chronological order and in the end remembered to mention the fact that you were born somewhere, sometime in England.
And you need a haircut. (everybody seems to mention that. Why? It's not that bad.)
Shouldn't there be more info there on you? Or at least more organized?
Sincerely (maybe too much so),
Roxana
Because, like most of the things on this website, it's accreted over the years, was posted first in 2001 when the web site when live and people have updated and added to it every few years when we noticed it was out of date. The truth is I probably need to do a from-scratch bio with awards and publications and everything, and because it's not very high on my list of things to do, it hasn't happened yet. Sorry.
The Chinese Earthquake is very much on my mind these days. I was going to go back to China to do some research but have postponed it for a little, just because it seems wrong to head out there right now. These comics, little stories from the earthquakes, are heartbreaking and, sometimes, inspiring:
Home from the road. Today was quiet, all walks and bees. (While I was away Lorraine and Sharon had a Bee Adventure. Today I checked on the bees and they were all happy.)
Book Expo America was terrific but amazingly long -- my Friday began around 6.00am (getting ready for the author breakfast) and finished around 11:15pm (shortly before the end of the Audie awards, at which I was a presenter), with, on the way, a two and a half hour signing and an hour signing and a Graveyard Book meeting about how we're going to do the US tour in the autumn (the plan is to do a reading tour rather than a signing tour, closer than the Cody's event I did for Fragile Things which you can watch at Fora TV -- http://fora.tv/2006/10/02/Neil_Gaiman).
The first signing was a bit of a mess -- they'd scheduled it for the second the breakfast was meant to have ended, but it ran late and I was the last speaker and so didn't even get up to talk until after that, and they'd given out 350 tickets for an hour's signing (10.2 seconds per person ) with no real thought as to how they'd get those people through the line in that time. Which was why it was a two and a half hour signing instead of being an hour signing. The second signing, of The Dangerous Alphabet with Gris Grimly, was a lot less hectic (and we met Berkely Breathed, signing at a nearby table, and I got to be a fanboy).
I loved the breakfast -- Jon and Eoin and Judy and Sherman are the best and funniest people, and my only regret was that we didn't get any time together afterwards.
The breakfast. Left to Right: Me, Jon, Eoin, Sherman, Judy. Jon Sczieska is mostly hidden by a photographer. Also, it's pronounced Sheska.
At the end of the breakfast all 1200 people descended upon us (well, it felt like it). I signed one book before I was swept away to do my own signing...
Judy Blume and me. She was so funny and so nice and so very, very sharp.
Gris Grimly and I signed Dangerous Alphabets for people. He asked if we could trade the portraits we did of each other in the back of the book, and I had to admit that I suspected that I'd left the one I did of him in Dave McKean's studio, as I drew it there, and Dave scanned it for me and we sent it off. So I shall investigate.
Saying hello to (and exchanging Douglas Adams reminiscences with) Berkeley Breathed. I signed a book for him. He signed a book for me. I love my life
[Coincidentally, as I typed that, the phone rang. It was Berkeley Breathed trying to get an email address for me that worked, as he'd been given my old bigfoot.com address, which I've stopped using as it worked, well, barely. I just got to tell him how the person buying Bloom County collections from Forbidden Planet in 1985, that was me!]
Saturday was less stressful but just as crammed. Entertainment Weekly had asked for a photo of me for an upcoming special issue, and they sent a stylist and some clothes along. I went into this very warily: this is the third EW shoot since the blog started. The first was at the House on the Rock in 2001, and was a bit of an endurance test: I stood beside the World's Largest Carousel for several hours unable to communicate with the photographer over the noise of the music; the next was in 2003, and was again something of an endurance test: I almost bit through my tongue and the resulting image was a very good photo of somebody who didn't look like me at all secretly sucking on an ice cube to stop the bleeding.
This time it was... pleasant. Christopher McLallen was the photographer, and he was great. No clenching of teeth or whirring fans, no eternal carousel music and huge automatic drums making it too loud to talk or think. They put me in a black jacket and a black on black stripy tee shirt, and then in a pin-stripe suit that felt so Gomez Addams I found myself humming the Vic Mizzy TV theme (not the song, but the bit of incidental music where people walk up the path to the house) while the photos were taken.
I don't really ever wear suits, but if I did, I'd wear that one.
The nice lady you can see in this picture (who has had to run out every few minutes to unrumple or uncrease me) is Joey Tierney, the stylist. Just behind me, Heather the assistant is moving a light. Make-up lady Lauren Cohen made me look like me only less spotty and rumpled.
Thea Gilmore interviewed in the Guardian. (And I sigh, because though it's an article saying that she's one of the finest living singer-songwriters, it's in the women's lifestyle pages, rather than being the lead article in their music and arts pages.)
I'm sure others have pointed this out already, but ... you should have said "the perils of therianthrophy". "Lycanthropy" refers specifically to werewolves; "therianthropy" refers to all breeds of animal shapeshifter. After discovering they're still active, I'd be careful about unwittingly insulting them ...Matt
I always wonder why people get most pedantic about things they've got a bit wrong. I've done it myself, often here on this very blog.
When I was about ten my favourite article in the huge and mouldering Encyclopedia Britannica we owned (the ninth edition) was the one on Lycanthropy. (Yes, I had a favourite 1890s Britannica article when I was ten. I am now aware this is not entirely usual.) I read it over and over and even wrote what I fancied was a highly original dramatic short story set in a police station in which a woman transformed herself into a cat (or possibly vice versa, time has fuzzed the details).
So when I was ten I was the kind of child who would have taken enormous pleasure in telling you that,
LYCANTHROPY is a term used comprehensively to indicate a belief, firmly rooted among all savages, and lingering in the form of traditional superstition among peoples comparatively civilized, that men are in certain circumstances transformed temporarily or permanently into wolves and other inferior animals. In the European history of this singular belief, wolf transformations appear as by far the most prominent and most frequently recurring instances of alleged metamorphosis, and consequently in most European languages the terms expressive of the general doctrine have a special reference to the wolf. Examples of this are found in the Greek lukanthropos, Russian volkodlák, English were-wolf, German währwolf, French loup-garou. And yet general terms (e.g., Latin, versipellis; Russian, óboretne; Scandinavian, hamrammr; English, turnskin, turncoat) are sufficiently numerous to furnish some evidence that the class of animals into which metamorphosis was possible was not viewed as a restricted one. It is simply because the old English general terms have been long diverted from their original signification that the word "lycanthropy" has recently been adopted in our language in the enlarged sense in which it has been defined above.
You can read the longer and different 1911 Britannica article, which states, "Although the term lycanthropy properly speaking refers to metamorphosis into a wolf (see Werwolf), it is in practice used of transformation into any animal" at --
Judy Blume
