There was a certain amount of confusion backstage, things we've learned (I hope) for the rest of the reading tour events, and I managed to complicate things by forgetting to eat lunch, and I signed 750 books and then went into a sort of a flatlined bloodsugar grumpy meltdown during the soundcheck. But Cat ran out and got me some food, and I ate just enough to get me cheerful again, and I don't think many of the technical issues we were frantically trying to solve remained unsolved, and I think the audience was happy and didn't know about the tech problems anyway, and I hope the experience was probably much more fun than me doing a signing for the people who were there.
And Bill Hader's special introduction went down like a dream, which made me really happy. If you come to one of the readings you'll hear it. If not, you won't.
Thanks to Barnes and Noble College, to Columbia Teachers College, to Harper Collins, to the CBLDF, and to all my friends who showed up and then didn't actually get to talk to me.
A few people wrote to say that they couldn't get The Graveyard Book at their local bookshop, or that their bookshop had told them it wasn't out. It's definitely out. It's live on Amazon. It's out there on indiebound.
I just downloaded your newest to listen to on my next business trip. And it made me wonder, does purchasing the audio book version of your new release (e.g. "The Graveyard Book") contribute to book sales calculations? Or, by purchasing the audio version am I depriving you of a sale to be counted by the NYT Best Sellers List? I hope this didn't hurt... Thanks, Tricia
I don't know, but I really don't care -- I'm really proud of the audio version of The Graveyard Book, and I love it that you downloaded it, so please do not worry. Buy it in any format you like, and do not give it a second thought.
My daughter would like us to create a Queen of Shadows costume for her this Halloween. We watched Mirrormask again (and again) to gather ideas. But it is hard to make out the fine details. Do you know of any online resources for sketches, designs, behind the scenes photos of the Queen's wardrobe?
Thanks!
Not really -- the Art of Mirrormask book that Dave McKean did should have all of that stuff in it, though.
Dear Mr.Gaiman:
I was amused by the fact that the new version of the Mouse Circus website has been designed by "Sandman Studios". Was this a conscious decision on behalf of the people responsible for the site (HarperCollins?) or just plain coincidence? Either way, it is amusing.
I really like the new site (as a user and as a web designer myself), not only does it really look good, but (most important) it's useful and well organized. Still, I will miss the Stephin Merritt background looping bit of music for the old-flash Coraline part of the site. Maybe you could get Sandman Studio (wink wink) to include it as an mp3 or something.
Cheers, Santiago Mendez
P.S: If Mr.Neil posts this, Sandman Studio will owe him (and me) one for the plug. You're welcome Sandman Studio. P.S.2: I swear I'm not a Sandman Studio employee.
It is a coincidence, I'm afraid. (Or is it?) (Yes, it is.) (Ah... but is it?) (Yes, actually.)
You're right on the Stephin Merritt loop, though. We should put it up somewhere...
...
I just stopped blogging and had a bath. And now I go to bed. Tomorrow morning to Philadelphia... And I'll put up a link to the reading tonight as soon as it goes up on the web. Or as soon as they send me the link, anyway.
And finally, I thought doing a signing tour with a broken finger was foolish, until I learned that Amanda Palmer was now going to be singing and dancing her way across the world with a broken foot. I think the dancing may have to be curtailed but was happy to see that the singing is as good as ever. Here's a shout out to me from Belfast: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hDlkMbf7uc
So -- at least in theory and I think in practice too -- this magical widget (which I found at http://harperaudio.gigya.s3.amazonaws.com/harper_v1.html will play you the whole of me reading Chapter One of The Graveyard Book. And you can hear some lovely Bela Fleck danse macabre banjo music too.
I planned to blog early this morning, but the hotel phones and internet were dead. I used my cell phone to call the front desk, where someone explained that they were upgrading their system and nothing was working. When I asked why they hadn't done it at at 3.00 am, she said that was when it had had started, and they'd be done in half an hour. (When I left the hotel, about half an hour later, she said they'd be done by 4.00pm). High tech works so well, when it works, but when it goes wrong it goes so wrong.
Saturday was wonderful and a bit daunting: I had seven lines of people to get through. The festival estimate was that I signed for about 1400 people, some of them in the rain. (The rainbow was fairly wonderful.) I was given a Panda at one point, and also heckled by someone who turned out to be my friend Brian Henson, on his way across the Mall to give a talk at the Smithsonian. The Henson exhibition goes until the 5th of October, looks marvellous, and I wish I'd been able to see it.)
The Festival officially ended at 5.00 pm, and there were still about a hundred people waiting, so I got up, picked up a pen, and scurried down the line, scribbling on opened books and apologising for not personalising things, and then we were done. It was an adventure, signing for people with a broken finger, but it definitely made me happy that this is now a reading tour...
Neil! You deserve lots of credit and general applause for taking care of the long, damp line at the National Book fair this year. I was at the tail end of the sixth line (there were seven) and plenty of folks around me were worried that you wouldn't get to them but based on my two previous encounters with you, I assured them that you would NOT let them down. I hope your hand didn't hurt too much, it had to be a bit awkward signing with that finger splint on! Thanks again - good luck on the rest of the tour!
-Jason-
...which I post because, truth to tell, I wasn't certain that I'd be able to do it all either.
Today... I got briefed on all the things that are happening. The new incarnation of the Mousecircus.com website has gone live and is filled with all sorts of wonders and marvels. (And, more importantly, no more flash animation.) (Except possibly for the Graveyard Book Sudoku.) (The Graveyard Book Screensaver is currently Mac only, because AVAST on my computer was convinced it contained a Trojan, and while it didn't, and no-one else's viruscheckers saw anything wrong, Harpers wanted to make sure that no-one with Avast would have to worry about whether there was a Trojan in the mix.)
The videos of the chapters of the Graveyard Book Chapters will go live one or two days after the reading. With luck we can get them up quickly enough that the people at the end of the tour will be completely up-to-date...
Dear Neil/Mr. Gaiman, You mentioned in your journal that perhaps you weren't "trying hard enough" to make it on the Banned Books list. You were probably joking, but I just wanted to ask what exactly you meant by "trying hard enough". Does it mean that in order to "try hard enough" you have to write about controversial things that you don't believe in? Unchallenged books are just as valuable as the ones that are; it's just a difference in subject matter. A book with "offending" material is just as important as one with material that more people accept. I just wanted to know your opinion on this. Cheers, Evelyn
Well, partly I was joking, and partly I was very serious. You know you're doing something that matters when people start trying to ban it. When the American Family Assocation and the "Concerned Mothers of America" wrote to tell us that they had blacklisted Sandman, I figured I was doing something right.
Who decides which stores will sponsor your tour appearances? Is it the publisher? I ask this because I had planned to take my wife and kids to your appearance this week at the Tivoli Theatre in Downers Grove, Illinois. However when I called for tickets, I was told by an Anderson's bookstore representative that in order to get a ticket EACH ONE OF US needed to purchase your book--and also pay $5 for each ticket.
Since I can't afford $100 and don't need four copies of your book, I've had to cut my wife and son out of Thursday's event. I looked through the rest of your appearances and it doesn't seem like buying a copy of the book is a prerequisite in any other city.
If Anderson's is trying to recoup their costs for staging this event at the Tivoli, I'd like to appeal to whomever plans your next tour to either go with a larger bookseller or ask Anderson's to find a less costly venue that would allow families in with tickets and one purchased book.
According to Harpers, there's some miscommunication somewhere -- no-one is trying to make families buy multiple copies of The Graveyard Book. That would be silly (and mean). I think this should have been sorted out with Anderson's, so if you call them again you shouldn't have any trouble getting your wife and son in.
Hi! I'm going to your reading in Philadelphia on Wednesday, and I just called the number for Border's on your website and they told me that the event starts at 5:00, not 6:00 (which is what your website says). The guy at Border's said "There are going to be a lot of disappointed people" so I thought I'd give you a heads up. Looking forward to seeing you whatever time it starts.
According to Elyse at Harpers, "6pm. Definitely 6pm. Doors open at 5pm, perhaps that's where the confusion was." And given that Borders has it up on their website as starting at 6.00pm, I would not worry...
Greetings!
I could have sworn I got an email from Author Tracker telling me that your Graveyard Book readings in the states would be broadcast on the interweb. However, now when I try to look up a link for the broadcasts, the interweb assures me that I must have dreamt the whole thing.
Did I imagine it? If not, do you have the link? I was really looking forward to my first experience with the book being you reading it...
Thanks, Nicholas
I don't think the link to that page -- which will be somewhere on mousecircus.com -- has been posted yet. I'd keep an eye on http://www.mousecircus.com/extras.aspx as a likely place, if I were you, and an eye on this journal as I'll post the actual location as soon as it's live.
Your humble webgoblin here again, one last time as promised. Now that the RoboPanda Caper has been concluded I have gone back through the previous entries and un-redacted the bits about it. Another round of thanks to all who helped make it possible.
The day was wet and rainy, but that didn't seem to dampen the spirits of any of you that I met. I was pleased to see many people sporting owl feathers in their hats and black orchids on their lapels. I gave a Neil "Scary Trousers" Gaiman neverwear.net sticker to everyone I saw with either, and if I missed you I'm terribly sorry.
In the excitement and the irregular rain, I never actually managed to take a picture of the panda's packaging, but I know others did; if you could contact me I'd love to post them.
FURTHER UPDATE: Glenda sends a link to a picture she took of me holding the panda package. Between the brown paper, the twine, and the interior full of circuitry I was just hoping that none of the agents swarming the Laura Bush tent next door would ask to x-ray it.
What I expect you're all waiting to see, though, is the video of the RoboPanda Presentation. Let me first say that I am a terrible videographer, and beg your forgiveness. Between the rain, needing to turn on the RoboPanda after it was unboxed, handing Mr. G the Official Panda Handling Kit, and having only the two arms the camera dipped down to the table quite a bit. Plus I was a little too close to get a good wide angle. Chalk it up to lessons learned. When I show up at his house with the armadillo I'll bring someone else to video it.
The RoboPana was presented to Mr. G, all sneaky-like, by Eden, who also brought excellent gluten-free cupcakes!
I assumed that you couldn't bring photo-taking things to the White House breakfast, and I was wrong, so Salman Rushdie took this photo of me and Maddy on his phone, to record the event for posterity. In the background Abraham Lincoln pretends to ignore Guys Read founder Jon Scieszka, as Jon proudly displays his Ambassador For Children's Literature medal to the world. He says he's not sure where to wear such a medal in everyday life. I ran into Brad Meltzer there and we talked about the Batman two-parter I'm writing and the fun of leaping from medium to medium, and I met Carrie Fisher and told her the story of How Carrie Fisher Probably Saved My Life -- a Tale of the 1987 Hurricane.
This is the eighth National Book Festival, an institution created by Laura Bush (a librarian before she was First Lady) and the Library of Congress. I hope that future First Ladies, of whatever political stripe, continue the tradition: it would be a pity if this were to be the last.
Now back at the hotel, where I am loading up my leather jacket pockets with pens, phones and cameras and getting ready to head back out to the Mall.
Still in Washington DC. It's still cold. It's still raining. Now lightning is flashing and thunder rumbling as well, and it just dawned on me that the White House breakfast tomorrow will be at the White House, and that I ought to do something special (apart from just dragging Maddy along to it as a combination of daughter and good luck charm) so I put my remarkably shiny boots outside the hotel door to be shined some more.
I had a day with some wonderful things in it -- after the interviews I went out to one of the Smithsonion places, and got to go backstage and learn about book and paper and art conservation, and to see rusting spaceships and sweat-stained spacesuits and raider-of-the-lost-ark-storage-warehouses. My thanks to Judy and Tegan and to Nora for showing me strange miracle things.
The schedule I got from Harpers that I posted for the tour had me talking in the Children's Tent tomorrow for an hour, from 11:45am to 12:45, but I think I'd be more likely to believe the LoC website, which gives me something closer to half an hour, from 11:45 to 12:15. The signing starts at 1:00pm. I don't know how long they'll let me keep signing for. I suspect we'll find out.
A few pictures: WIRED online have a Corinthian Tattoo up in their favourite comics tattoo article.
There are going to be film tie-in editions of Coraline out next month (the bottom one has essays on the film be me and by Henry Selick, and stills, and such):
And there's an Alternate Reality Gaming Network, which suspects me in the case of Who Killed a certain lady rockstar. But I am almost definitely not involved.
I'm in Washington DC, and it's chilly and rainy. The weather forecast for Saturday is not quite as chilly but still rainy, which may affect the Book Festival. We'll see...
Before I flew out I had a wonderful lunch at It's Greek To Me with the winners (two from Mexico, two from the UK) of a Beowulf movie competition, which had flown them to Minneapolis. The English couple told me that enough time had passed since they entered the competition that they had assumed the email from an unfamiliar address that came in telling them they had won a trip to America was Spam. And then the visiting Miss Cat told us how she had entered a competition to win Johnny Cash's guitar, and won it... and then deleted every email that came in letting her know. There's a moral in there somewhere, probably.
1) Robert Cormier 2) Peter Parnell and Justin Richardson 3) Mark Twain 4) Toni Morrison 5) Philip Pullman 6) Kevin Henkes 7) Lois Lowry 8) Chris Crutcher 9) Lauren Myracle 10) Joann Sfar
And once again, I suspect that I'm not trying hard enough. I'm probably not even in the top thousand.
I'm glad the ALA keeps track. I'm glad they still fight to stop books being banned. And I'm deeply, happily proud of Mark Twain, who is still raising hackles and tweaking noses 99 years after his death.
(Here's the ALA Poster of me, a photo Maddy disliked so much when she saw it on the wall of her school recently that she photocopied a head from another photo of me, took it to school and carefully taped it over the head of this one, much to the puzzlement of her teacher.)
I'm typing as I did when I was a teenager -- practically two fingered, with just my forefinger on my right hand and random fingers on my left. It seems to work, although it's slightly slower than normal. (The alternative is typing more or less properly, but as soon as the middle finger on the right hand gets involved, either it hurts or, more usually, because it's in its little metal case, I hit more keys than I intended to.)
I've loved Chris Riddell's artwork since I randomly picked up a copy of the Edge Chronicles in Japan, so I was wondering if his version of the Graveyard Book cover will only be available in the U.K. or will I have to pay expensive international shipping if I want to obtain a copy?
For now, the only edition with Chris's artwork in is the Bloomsbury one, which is going to be available in the UK, and, along with the US version, is already creeping onto the shelves in an export edition in places like Singapore and the Philippines (which means I've been getting some surprised and delighted queries from people in those places).
I just learned that the finger I'd thought was sprained in China is actually fractured, so I will be signing books with the middle finger of my right hand in a small blue-felt and metal finger-brace.
The management accepts no responsibilities for the legibility of the handwriting or the consistency of the signatures.
And people have been writing to ask about "I Google You" -- you can get it when you order "Who Killed Amanda Palmer" from http://whokilledamandapalmer.com/purchase/ -- you get the CD, and a download, and the extra songs...
I did the Washington Post Book World online chat this morning -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/09/09/DI2008090902030.html and then did more telephone interviews (while also signing the sheets for the Subterranean Press edition of The Graveyard Book) after which Euan Kerr from National Public Radio in Minneapolis arrived.
I've known Euan for over a decade, but in the past I've always gone to the studios of KNOW in St Paul while he interviewed me. This time (because time is ticking before the start of the tour, and there isn't any to spare on things like driving out to the Twin Cities) he came out to my house. On arrival he donned a bee suit, and headed out with the bee team (me, Stitelers, Lorraine, Cat Mihos who is in town visiting Lorraine and who, fresh from Duran Duran and the Jonas Brothers, will be tour-managing some of the upcoming tour) to harvest honey. Euan sort-of-interviewed me while we did bee stuff, occasionally sticking his microphone down among the bees to capture authentic beeish noises, then afterwards we went together to the gazebo and did a proper interview, with actual questions and answers and things, and not just barked cries of "Can somebody please hold this?" and "Ow, I just got stung through my sock."
The first interviews when a book comes out are the fun ones, because you're finding out what you think: all the questions are new to you, and you're having to figure out what the answers are, and you aren't yet repeating yourself. The hard ones will be in a month, where I'll find myself thinking Did I ever really live in a very tall house? And did my infant son really ride a tricycle around the churchyard across the lane? Are these real things, or just things I've repeated so many times they've evaporated, so now all I remember is the memory of me saying them...?
Hello! I received the e-mail about your appearance at the National Book Fest, which I'm very excited about. In this e-mail, it said that you'd be doing signings, and that I should buy a copy of the Graveyard Book for you to sign. Buuuut, if it won't be available for me to purchase until September 30th, how can I have it for you to sign on the 27th? I'm confused, which I'll admit isn't an uncommon state for me. Will there be copies available in the Book Sales tent? Don't get me wrong, I'd be immensely happy for you to sign something else that I already own, but I'd love to know how this whole Graveyard thing can work, unless you have some sort of nifty time travel device that you've been working on in your spare time.
We have a special dispensation from Harper Collins to sell copies of The Graveyard Book at the National Book Festival (because it's, well, the National Book festival). The only downside on that is I don't think that copies sold on the Saturday will count on any of the bestseller lists, which start ticking on Tuesday night. But it would be silly to be there without books, and it's only three days, and I'm glad that Harpers thought it was a good idea.
I love some of your Books including Coraline...I can't wait to see the movie. I want to ask if its not much of a trouble is How can I contact Dave McKean? I also love his Artworks and I have to say your stories and His artwork are a very good combination. I have a lot questions I would like to ask Him as well. Thank you for your time to check this out...I hope that you continue your great works and am waiting for the Graveyard Book to come out ^_^ http://www.davemckean.com/ is now almost there. It has a front page up anyway. I'm sure that as soon as it goes live it will also have contact information. So that will be how people will contact Dave in the future. (And he's signing in Paris on the 4th of October). ...
When Kitty arrived she was wearing a new tee shirt which made me smile, as on it was a drawing which I'd done earlier this year when asked by Bloomsbury for a sketch of the kind of thing I was thinking of for a Graveyard Book cover, something they could show to Chris Riddell*, which I then sent Kitty when she asked about making a Graveyard Book tee shirt for Neverwear.net, to show her the kind of thing that was in my head when I was writing it, and the kind of direction that might be nice to go.
I didn't expect it to be a t-shirt, and I didn't expect to like the t-shirt that it became, but it's lovely.
People in Wuqiao County are so knee on acrobatics that they perform strings of somersault, stack themselves up with amazing agility, fight with fists or juggle magic no matter in the streets or in the wheat fields, even at the table or on the kang (bed).
Even some children hold the bottle fully filled with oil or vinegar when going to the store or grain supply center buying oil or vinegar, without one drop spilt. On rainy days,
groups of pupils walk in the rain with umbrellas held on the nose. What’s more amazing, on the wedding night, eating cakes or drinking wine is effortless, and the bride casts the candies flying out with an empty hand while the bridegroom send cigarettes by clapping hands in the sky.
This was over at Mousecircus.com, the junior site, on the front page. I'd heard that the whole site was going to get a makeover, and finally get out of Flash animation, but it hasn't happened quite yet. This counter was sitting there, below the Dave McKean mouse orchestra drawing, telling me that the Graveyard Book would be out in six days, six hours and eleven minutes. I thought about waiting another five minutes to post, then decided to test out the "Post it in blogger" function. Which what I'm doing right now.
(It seems to work on blogger. Not on any of the RSS feeds though. It's also about 30 seconds different from the counter on the sidebar. Clicking the Get & Share button at the bottom allows you to post it anywhere you want.)
(And my apologies for the practical nature of much of the current blogging.)
I just wanted to remind people that the free Neverwhere is still out there.
You can read it online until the end of the month at this link. This is the "Browse inside" feature that didn't work very well with American gods, but which they've improved -- I thought it was faster and much more legible.
You can download a copy which will have a lifespan of 30 days from the yellow button at this location. I'd thought it was a PDF, but it's not: I had to install Adobe Digital Editions -- http://www.adobe.com/products/digitaleditions/?source=acroetd, which went on fast, and then I clicked on the yellow Download Neverwhere button on the Harpers Page, and it worked like a charm on both the Windows and on the Mac machines. I didn't bother creating an Adobe ID, and it seems to happily transfer it to other things. If you're really worried about Neverwhere going up in digital smoke after 30 days, or are a very slow reader, you can even print it out. Otherwise, this is your chance to try it for free.
(I know I should have done this when I was in China, but I rarely had both an internet connection and the time to check it out.)
And I have no doubt that Harpers will eventually want to questionaire anyone who's tried it (or tried and had trouble) just as they did with the American Gods read online experiment. In each case, everyone learns things. (I saw a rough version of the downloadable Neverwhere, where anyone wanting to read it had to give their name and address and go through several screens of providing information that would never be used by anyone and wasn't needed, and I explained that if I saw those screens I'd stop right there, so they should take them out. And after explaining that it was impossible to take them out, they took them out, for which I am extremely grateful.)
I'm getting over jet-lag and clock-lag but it's slower than normal. Woken up this morning by my assistant Lorraine. "I've put a cup of tea by your bed. The tree people are here. Do you want to get up and see them?" I think I must have conveyed somehow that I didn't, because the next thing I remember was perhaps five seconds passing and her saying, "The tree by the gazebo we cut down had white pine blister rust, but it doesn't seem to have spread. I've told them to go and look at the fungus on the apple tree." I tried to explain to her (without waking up, opening my eyes or anything) that it wasn't fungus, just some kind of fuzzy white insect-stuff, and she might have heard this, because five seconds later she said, "You were right, it was insects and we have to soap them off. Your agent's on the phone, and I'm bringing you a new cup of tea because that one must be cold by now." And the day had started.
And The Graveyard Book will be published in the US in exactly a week. If you're wondering whether to buy a copy now or later, please buy it now. It actually will make a difference -- the first week's sales matter, especially in the most crowded publication week of the year (which is this week).
Hi Neil,
Not a question, just a belated 'welcome back'. Life in the midwest has been disappointingly normal and boring without you around, but now that you're posting about nearly-naked roller skaters and cats and the true cause for execution of small trees, all is satisfyingly weird again.
I'm a little disappointed that I won't be able to make any of the tour stops for the Graveyard Book, as all of the ones in my general vicinity are in the middle of the week. I've battled and fought and wriggled and attempted to reschedule things like sleeping, eating, and breathing, but the dates and times defeat me. I'm sure there are excellent reasons for having these things not on a Friday or Saturday, but, um... what are those reasons? I'm just curious. Thanks!
It's that thing about publication week. While it would be lovely for me to do a month-long author tour, going out on Fridays and home on Sundays, the publisher wants to squeeze their events into the first week or so. That's when reporters want to write about new books, that's when it gets the most attention. That's also when the publisher hopes to sell a lot of books, because if they move books in the first week it shows up on the bestseller lists, and then more places stock it and, it's whatever the opposite of a vicious circle is. A cuddly circle?
Publication day is this Tuesday, which is why I'm signing in New York on Tuesday evening, and, because I'm on the East Coast then, I do Philadelphia next. Then I drift westward, and Seattle and Palo Alto get the Friday and Saturday spot because that's how it worked out. Los Angeles is Monday night.
And for those of you who've written in worried, no, I don't know why Amazon.com lists the paperback of The Graveyard Book as coming out Jan 1st 2020, but it's possible that their dates may not be entirely accurate, and that Harpers might publish it in paperback within the next twelve years. (Also, I know they list the Subterranean Press edition and have it with a terrific discount as their hardcover, which is a bit odd [Edit to add, ...and which you won't get if you order it. Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press says,"Amazon lists everything that has an ISBN, without regard to whether they'll receive it. I've posted to our site, and in our newsletter, and to thegraveyardbook.com that we don't expect to fill any copies for Amazon or wholesalers. I've also let Amazon know this. I'll email them again."]
Here's a list of the US and the UK stops on the Graveyard Book tour: Before the tour (and technically before the US release of the book -- although the publisher are being very nice and letting it out just this once): September 27, 2008
Library of Congress National Book Festival
Saturday, 11:45am-3:00pm
The Mall
Washington D.C.
Event: 11:45am - 12:45pm, in the Teens & Children Pavilion
The Proper US tour starts in New York on Tuesday the 30th. At each US stop, I'm going to read a chapter of The Graveyard Book. I'm going to read them in order. Other things will happen too (we're hoping for some exclusive Coraline footage, for example), and there will be a Q&A and maybe other things. The stops are going to be filmed. Each Chapter that gets read will also be put online by Harpers very soon after it's read (depends mainly on how quickly the footage can be edited and put up online). So you can follow the tour around, and get the book a chapter at a time for free...
September 30, 2008 -
Chapter 1
Graveyard Book US Tour: New York
Tuesday, 7:00pm
US Publication Day!
Teachers College at Columbia University
Horace Mann Auditorium
525 W. 120th Street
New York, NY 10027
908-991-2153
Hosted by Barnes & Noble College. Event is free and open to the public, no tickets needed. Pre-signed books will be available for purchase.
October 1, 2008 -
Chapter 2
Graveyard Book US Tour: Philadelphia
Wednesday, 6:00pm
Levitt Auditorium in the Gershman Y 401 South Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19102 215-568-7400
The venue is beautifully restored 1920s movie palace with seating for 1000. To attend this event, pre-purchase a copy of Neil Gaiman's latest - The Graveyard Book - and a $5.00 event ticket. (The wording of this is a bit odd -- let me find out if you can go with just a ticket. Neil) Autographed copies of the new book will be reserved and waiting for all ticketholders. Neil Gaiman’s presentation will be followed by a screening of the film, Stardust.
This venue seats 500.Tickets for this event cost $28.00, which includes admission to the event and a signed first edition of the Graveyard Book ($19.52 value).Tickets available only at The Booksmith, in person, or by phone, 415-863-8688 or 800-493-7323.
October 6, 2008 –
Chapter 7, part 1 (We had to split it into two because it's over two hours long)
Graveyard Book US Tour: Los Angeles
Monday, 7:00pm Lincoln Middle School 1501 California Avenue Santa Monica, CA 90403 310-260-9110 Hosted by Barnes & Noble. Event is free and open to the public, no tickets needed. Pre-signed books will be available for purchase.
October 7, 2008 -
Chapter 7, part 2
Graveyard Book US Tour: Boulder, CO
Tuesday, 6:30pm
Unity of Boulder Church, sponsored by Boulder Book Store
This venue seats 1100, and is home to the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra.Event is free and open to the public, no tickets needed.
THEN THE UK/EIRE
No full chapters, I'm afraid. But signings and Q&As and suchlike. I'll find out if we can show the Coraline trailer in the UK...
Date: Tuesday 28th October Time: 7:00pm Place: Church Hill Theatre, Edinburgh Information: An evening with Neil Gaiman in Edinburgh Capacity: 300 http://www.fidrabooks.com/events/index.shtml Website: www.fidrabooks.com
Date: Friday 31st October (Hallowe'en) Time: 6:30pm Place: Old Theatre, London School of Economics
"Tickets are priced at 8 pounds and 6 pounds (concessions), and will entitle you to 2 pounds off either edition of the book on the night. The book officially goes on sale on the 30th October, so this should be a fun one.
Tickets can be purchased in two ways: come into the shop (Blackwell, 100 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0JG), or contact us by phone on 020 7292 5100 and we will send your tickets out to you. We expect the phone lines to be very busy for the first couple of days, so bear with us!"
Website: http://www.blackwell.co.uk/ If you have any questions for now, email events.london@blackwell.co.uk with 'Gaiman' in the header.
...
I was talking to Roger Avary today (I bought him a pirated copy of Beowulf in China as a present, and called to let him know) and I asked him how the nearly-nude roller skater of Ojai was doing. (He had pointed her out to me rather proudly when I was in Ojai last year, as she skated around wearing a g-string and pasties in order to draw attention to either herself or to environmental causes or, possibly both. He said she was a town landmark.)
An hour later I got an email from him, with a link to http://www.katu.com/news/28698464.html, an article from today's paper telling me about Jen-the-nearly-nude-skater's exploits in Oregon.
And I read the line Police here told her to tone it down after construction workers complained and I think my mind might have boggled slightly.It felt like a Mad Magazine "scenes we'd like to see"as the construction workers noticed the young skating lady's near-nudity, and then called the police to complain.
Lots of tour and signing questions starting to come in. But first...
Hi Neil, Hopefully this email comes after you're dug out of the deluge of other mails. I was recently in Minneapolis and sorry to see that Dreamhaven is downsizing/moving/firing all their employees. If you know yet, what does this mean for them running your commercial site? I terribly liked being able to visit and pickup signed copies or buy something and leave it for when you were next in town. Thanks, Kyle
I don't honestly know. I haven't spoken to Greg Ketter about what he'll be doing with Neilgaiman.net in the new, one-man Dreamhaven. I'll certainly still sign stuff when I stop by, but I'm not entirely clear what he'll be stocking at this point. If it looks like neilgaiman.net isn't going to work through DreamHaven in the future, then I'll have to figure something else out. Either way. I'll keep everyone informed through the blog as soon as I know what's happening.
Dear Neil, I was just wondering if you ever found out what was going on as regards a signing on the Manchester stop of your tour? You mentioned it might be somewhere other than the talk? I was just wondering as I hadn't seen it mentioned on Manchester's website. Anyway, look forward to hearing (and possibly meeting, if there is a signing) you in Manchester! All the best, James
I think that the plan to have a talk and a separate signing was wisely abandoned, and as far as I can tell, http://www.arts.manchester.ac.uk/martinharriscentre/mhceventspage.php?eventid=598 is the event -- reading and Q&A and signing and all. This at the instigation of my friend Geoff Ryman, who was teaching at Manchester, who then went off to teach in San Diego for six months.
The tragedy of that evening is that Paul & Storm and Jonathan Coulton will also be playing at Manchester University that night -- their doors open at 7:30. I suspect that with military precision and planning it might be possible for someone to see me talk and read and then get off and catch most of P&S and all of Mr Coulton, given that we're both at the University, and, if I've read the web site maps right, doing our stuff within about 500 feet of each other.)
hi neil! My girlfriend and i are going to your talk/reading/q and a in Edinburgh and it says you will sign copies of The Graveyard Book i presume this means they will be available there? also would it be totally inappropriate to ask you to sign anything else? i realise there will be a lot of hopefuls there and i wouldn't want to delay anything. Thanks!
For the UK this time, the rules are going to be pretty much as laid out in http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/05/so-youre-going-to-signing.asp. (The only modification is sometimes I reserve the right to not pose for photographs, now that everyone has an image-capturing device or two on them. You can take any photos you like of me scribbling, you can take photos of you next to me, if you're lucky I'll try and look up when it's time for the flash to go off, but stopping to pose doesn't add a long time to each signing, if you multiply it by hundreds of people, it can add a few hours to the signing line.) But I'll cheerfully sign in the UK, mostly because it's only in London that I ever have to worry about more than 300 people showing up.
For the US tour (NOT the National Book Festival, but everything from New York to St Paul, and I'll repost it all here in easily copyable form as soon as I get all the data) the plan is to make them more of An Evening With Neil Gaiman than a signing, mostly because the numbers at the signings had just got too big to cope with easily, often 700 -1200 people, and it's no fun for anyone when I finish signing every night at one or two in the morning. So each stop will get a complete chapter/story from The Graveyard Book (except for LA and Boulder, who will split Chapter 7), and a long Q&A and talk, and we'll do something more like the event two years ago at Cody's (captured forever by Fora TV). Signed books will be available, but I'll have signed them and doodled in them that afternoon...
It's an odd thing, being away from the internet for a month. China has the "great firewall" which meant that lots of things, including the blog and blog archives parts of my website, the entirety of livejournal , and lots of random other places, simply weren't accessible. (Yes, I could have set up a proxy server, but my proxy experiences last time I was there weren't very encouraging, and mostly by the end of each day I was too tired to do more than check urgent email anyway.) So if this has been wandering around the internet in the last month and by now everyone has seen it and is tired of it, my apologies. I just read it and was delighted -- it's Robert Heinlein's form letter for his fan mail.
I smiled broadly at, " ( ) It is not just for a student's grade to depend on the willingness or capacity of a stranger to help him with his homework. I am ready to discuss this with your teacher, principal, or school board."
Hello Neil, I was just idly wondering about the location selections for the upcoming tour, what with all the churches. Just seems a weird choice. Is it for The Graveyard Book? And if so, will there be cemetery-related games, like tag or hurdles?!
There were even more churches on the Anansi Boys tour. It's more to do with auditorium size than subject matter -- if you need to seat about six hundred people, you're going to wind up in churches and university halls, because that number of people won't fit comfortably in the bookshops.
Occasionally you get a proper theatre, and that's always fun.
I've just looked over the Where's Neil information on the various appearances, and it seems a bit incomplete -- no info on how much tickets will cost for the ticketed events, for example -- so I'll get all the information and post it here.
I think this has already been posted, but Marcus Gipps from Blackwell sent me a note and I thought I'd mention the
London Talk and Signing
Friday, 6:30pm, 31st October 2008 Old Theatre London School of Economics Houghton Street, WC2A 2AE
Blackwell Charing Cross Road are very pleased to announce an exclusive London event with Neil Gaiman, to celebrate the launch of his fantastic new novel, The Graveyard Book.
Join us on the 31st October, Halloween, for a talk and signing, starting at 6.30pm.
Tickets are priced at 8 pounds and 6 pounds (concessions), and will entitle you to 2 pounds off either edition of the book on the night. The book officially goes on sale on the 30th October, so this should be a fun one.
Tickets can be purchased in two ways: come into the shop (Blackwell, 100 Charing Cross Road, London WC2H 0JG), or contact us by phone on 020 7292 5100 and we will send your tickets out to you. We expect the phone lines to be very busy for the first couple of days, so bear with us!
...and to suggest that it might not be entirely inappropriate if people wanted to come in costume, given the date and all. And that if enough people do turn up in costume, I suspect that I could talk Bloomsbury or Blackwells into making some kind of prize for the best one, as long as I didn't have to decide which it was. (But make sure that any costume is comfortable enough to sit for a couple of hours in, and won't stray into your neighbour's seat or jab them with sharp bits.)
(A slight correction to yesterday's post: Lorraine tells me that the tree in front of my gazebo was actually cut down because it was dead and they were worried it would fall on the gazebo.)
I've started looking at the mail that came in while I was away. Lots of exciting things -- I put a few of them down on the tabletop and photographed them: advanced copies of The Graveyard Book from Bloomsbury and Harper Collins, and the unabridged audio book version with me reading and lots of Bela Fleck's version of Danse Macabre on it, an early copy of Gene Wolfe's An Evil Guest (hurrah), finally my very own copy of Lucy Clifford's Anyhow Stories, Scott McCloud's introduction to Google Chrome (you can read it on the web here), the booklets for the BlackPhoenixAlchemyLab Snow Glass Apples (now sold out from BPAL, but the reviews are fascinating but not quite sold out from the CBLDF), and two foreign copies of Good Omens (one of which, I think it's Czech, has the slashiest cover of Good Omens I've seen to date):
Cool house. I'm not sure if it's really how it is or just the angle from which you shot it, but the way the panels (wooden slats?) run around the bottom of the house makes it look like it's on a circular base. Looking at it I felt life if I could just find the key and turn it, the base would turn slowly and music would play. :) Neil, what's one thing you still want in life? Something you'd like to learn to do but never find the time for, an untried genre or medium that intrigues you, an experience you'd like to have, that kind of thing. When the most you know of someone is what they've already done and where they've already been (and it's a lot more and further than you've experienced yourself) it's hard to imagine what they still daydream about.
I'd love to write an original musical. I'd love to write an original stage play. (I hesitate to say that here, because when I do my inbox fills with invitations from theatre companies to write one for them, and it's more about time than it is desire.) I'd like to write a full-length film script that was all mine and that I was happy with. I'd wanted to do a travel-non-fiction sort of book for over a decade, but I've started that process now. Beyond that, I'd like to keep learning. (That last sounds kind of dire, doesn't it? One step away from "I like long walks on the beach and then curling up in front of a log fire and listening to thunderstorms." But I really do like learning new information and skills. It makes me happy and stops me feeling old.)
Hi Neil, Welcome home/back to the blog- I hope you have enough time to recover before the Graveyard Book juggernaut begins. Thanks for sharing the "surveying of the domain" with us; looks like everything was well looked after in your absence. A link to an article from The Age about the use of your work and that of Shaun Tan and Nicki Greenberg, among other, in the classroom (of a Christian college, no less): http://www.theage.com.au/national/graphic-tales-make-novel-teaching-tools-20080920-4knb.html Cheers,Alexia
I liked the article, and hope it reaches teachers who need ammunition to be able to bring graphic novels into the classroom.
(Also, it mentions Nicki Greenberg's The Great Gatsby, which is, so far this year, the graphic novel from which I've got the most pleasure -- and which, for copyright reasons, can't be sold in the US or the UK. But it can be sold in -- and from -- Australia, New Zealand and Canada. And if you can get a copy, it's wonderful.)
So I got home yesterday at sunrise. Slept all day. Was up all night but not good for much. (This is what sunrise looks like when you get close to my house.)
Today I slept until early afternoon. Then got up and walked the dog. I got very used to using the camera as a diary while I was in China (as a back up for a notebook, and sometimes a substitute), so took the camera along on the walk.
G. K Chesterton observed that one of the best things about being away is that you get to see what you come back to with different eyes.
Found myself amazed by the size of my house, for example. There are a lot of people in China, and they live, on the whole, in much smaller places than mine. (Actually, that's probably true of most of the world: it takes a certain idiocy to want to live in an Addams Family House in the first place). But having, over the last month, met a number of families in which several generations lived in one apartment, spread over -- or squeezed into -- a couple of rooms, it seems really strange to have so much space.
I saw many vegetables growing, pumpkins even, while I was in China, where I also learned that pumpkin vine tips make a great stir-fry-vegetable (if you peel off the fuzzy stuff first). And was happy to see that I had a few pumpkins in my garden. Not many, but enough.
Was pleased to observe, on my walk, that the falling-down barn has not yet fallen down.
Astonished and delighted to see blackberries. I planted the one blackberry bush about five years ago, and people would always decide it was a weed and mow it or cut it. Finally, earlier this year, we put big metal rods up to persuade people not to mow over it, and now I'm home and, gosh, blackberries. Not as nice as the ones in my grandma's back garden, when I was a boy, mind.
Also a grape-trellis covered with grapes. Really yummy ones.
Lorraine tells me that Cabal was depressed while I was away, and he went off his food and moped. He's been extremely happy since I've been back. I have not the heart to tell him I'm going off on tour soon. (Maddy knows, but she assures me that as manager of the volleyball team she will probably not have time to really miss me. She is probably just telling me this to make me feel better.) (I just read that to her and she says, "Say 'PS Maddy will totally miss me', so they don't get any wrong ideas.")
A tree in front of my writing gazebo has been cut down, I notice. It was a sapling when the gazebo was built, but had grown and was cutting off the light.
Brightly coloured fungus on the side of trees. Tomorrow, when I walk, I may look for giant puffballs in the woods, but without enthusiasm, as they are my least favourite of the edible mushrooms. (Which reminds me -- when I was in China I was fed something called both Bamboo Pith and Bamboo Fungus, also known, less appetisingly, as the Stinkhorn. I googled and wound up learning all about the unexpected but, for ladies at least, gratifying qualities of the fresh stinkhorn. Dried and reconstituted with bamboo shoots, it would not have the same effect.)
And also, while I was gone, the remarkable Hans put in an electric fence. There have been more and more sightings of bears in this region, and we've been assured that an electric fence will keep bears out of the beehives, as long as the bears don't get to them in the first place. (Which is to say, if you have a beehive and a bear gets into it and then you put up an electric fence, the bear will cheerfully go through the fence to get to the honey.)
And because, not unreasonably, the last time I posted dog photos, many people asked for pictures of cats, and because I don't think Coconut (who was, long ago, Maddy's kitten) has ever been photographed in this blog, here are Princess (sitting) and Coconut, in the front hall, where the dog is not allowed to go.
I went to the Humane Society today and picked up their list of Things They Need, and gave it to Lorraine. She went out and bought bleach and cat food and peanut butter and so on, then went up to the Humane Society to drop the stuff off.
She returned much later carrying a cardboard box containing a calico kitten with whom she had fallen in love, and was last seen taking the kitten home to introduce to her Bengals. This is Princess glaring at the calico kitten...
And this is Lorraine's new kitten, puffed up and halloweeny in order to persuade everyone that she is in fact a very big cat indeed.
Nobody asked me to do it, but then, when Douglas asked me if I'd like to adapt Life, The Universe and Everything for radio I said no, and that was with Douglas alive and asking. (Dirk Maggs did it, and did an excellent job.) It seemed a thankless task.
I like Eoin very much, and wish him well with the book. He'll probably write a sixth Hitchhiker's book with more enthusiasm, and certainly faster, than Douglas would have done. But it won't be a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's book.
For the record, if I don't get around to writing a sequel to something while I'm alive, I'd very much rather that nobody else does it once I'm dead. It should exist in your head or in Lucien's library, or in fanfic. But that's me, and not every author feels the same way.
Hello Neil,
This is almost a dangerous question to ask you, because it is about something John Byrne has said. But as a large proponent of libraries, I was curious as to your thoughts on something he recently stated regarding trade paperbacks in libraries: "Ever since I started writing for a living, I have found myself viewing libraries somewhat differently than once I did. I think we are all in agreement that libraries are A Good Thing -- but are they A Good Thing right across the board? When we have niche products like comics, is it really a good idea for them to be available in libraries?"
I don't think it's a dangerous question, and it has a remarkably easy and straighforward answer, which is, Yes, it's a very good idea for them to be in libraries.
Hello Neil,
First off, I hope this email finds you well.
I've planned to attend the Library of Congress book festival and just wanted to know if there are any general rules of etiquette for your signings.
Is there a book limit for signing?
Can a say a few words about how much I enjoy your work in person? I promise it won't last longer than 15 nervous seconds.
Most importantly, how early should I arrive before the likely rush of other frothing fans?
These questions constantly roll in my mind. I'd hate to add extra weariness to a likely hot, humid, noisy,(yet still awesome) festival.
Thanks for coming to the southeast!
Sincerely, Dan
The book limit will depend on how many people there are, and how many people I can get through in the time I've got. It'll be announced at the signing, but it won't be more than three books, and it may well be only one.
And of course you can talk to me. Most people seem to use the signing line as an opportunity to say thank you, and most authors are pleased to hear that they've made a difference, or just to be thanked. We like it if you say hello, honest.
How early you should get there? I don't know. Each time I've signed at the LoC Book Festival it's been different. According to the website this time it's:
Teens & Children Pavilion
11:45-12:15 pm (This is a short reading from The Graveyard Book, and a Q&A).
Book Signing
1-3 pm (and it'll probably go longer if they don't need the space, but may be cut off if they don't have anywhere to move it to, or have something else planned for me at 3.00pm).
We may wind up with people who would like to be at the reading/Q&A who skip it in order to be early in the signing line. But that's if the book festival has actually told people where to line up for the signing, which they may or may not do.
Last time people were in the signing line before dawn. I don't think that would work this time, as I'm not doing a morning signing. So we'll see.
Hey Neil, I would love to know what time the Columbia University reading is taking place on September 30th. I am very excited t go but don't know what time to arrive. Thanks.
I see in "Where's Neil" that you'll be doing a signing in New York City and Philadelphia. With New Jersey right in between, why not a stop here?
Because the people who aren't on the East Coast, some of whom are travelling hundreds of miles to get to the readings, would rise up as one person in their anger at the unfairness of it all, and destroy New Jersey in their rage. Which would be sad, because there are lots of bits of New Jersey that are actually quite nice.
When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she (allegedly) attempted to get books she didn't approve of out of the public library. This is scary. Are free speech organizations like the CBLDF and the First Amendment Project going to take this issue on?
What you fight is specifics: bad laws, bad arrests and the like. People trying to ban books and comics and people trying to stop other people selling or publishing or creating comics and books and suchlike.
You don't fight "alleged attempts to get books out of a public library" ten years ago. To "take this issue on" I suspect would consist, Father Ted-like, of people walking around Sarah Palin with placards saying "Down with This sort of Thing" and "Careful Now", which would probably not result in increased freedom of speech. Although it might be funny.
Hi Neil! This Andrew Drilon (I was the creator "Lines and Spaces", the Alex Niño tribute comic which won the Philippine Graphic/Fiction Award last year). I've been making lots of short comics since then, under the banner title Kare-Kare Komiks, and they've gotten nice comments from people like Emma Bull and Warren Ellis, so I thought you might be interested:
Anyway, I'll be posting "Lines and Spaces" there tomorrow, for those who are planning to enter the contest this year (the deadline's at the end of the month), and I'm hoping you can help spread the word.
Tired and all upside-down -- I just slept through most of the day. Now I have to get dressed, or at least put on a dressing gown, and get some daylight, and take the dog-who-missed-me for a walk before the daylight goes.
For the interested, a map of my travels can be found at http://www.neilgaiman.com/extras/china/. It starts in Shanghai, wends its way slowly west to Kuqe, and then I fly east, to Urumqi, to Chengdu and to Hong Kong.
I'll try and pick out some photos from the journey to put up here, soon. In the meantime, a picture taken by a very nice Kazakh gentleman in the mountains south of Urumqi. (He got off his horse to take it.)
I think I must have left the hat in LeShan, a week later. It didn't come home with me, anyway.
My thanks to Dan the webgoblin for posting things in my long absence, and for helping make the map.
Mr. G will be home soon. It's been really fun guest-blogging in his absence. I'll post once more, after Secret Plan #1 goes down, but other than that I plan to recede back to my proper place behind the scenes. Maybe the boss will let me out again some time, when the need is dire and only goblincraft will do. Thanks to everyone for your supportive comments and emails.
In the past five weeks of guest-blogging here, I have said a few things, often in jest, here and in emails, that might have been misinterpreted or misunderstood. With that in mind, I'd like to offer the following retractions:
My book, The Very Naughty Dragon Magician, will not be coming out this spring. It will be released next fall.
The Discount Anteater does not have a drooling problem. He has typhoid.
I have the strength to recognize that I do, in fact, know how to let you go.
I did not, in fact, kill Amanda Palmer. Ben Folds did.
I am not scared for this world or for me.
Mr. G did not go to China to kidnap a panda, but to put the torch to J.K. Rowling's extensive opium fields.
I have no plans to try not to breathe. These eyes are not the eyes of the old. I did try to burden you; I did not hold these things inside. I tried to worry you.
That was, in fact, my beautiful house.
The missing persons post was not, in fact, a trailhead and it was in very poor taste to imply to the Hon brothers that it might be.
I struck that picture no more than a handful of times, nowhere near ninety.
Despite sweetly urging the original trespass, I didn't actually want you to give me my sin back; I just wanted to kiss you again.
There was no benefit of ill. I did not find that better was by evil still made better, nor that ruined love, when built anew, grows fairer than at first, more strong, far greater. I was not rebuked to my content, nor gained by ills thrice more than I had spent. If anything it was more of a loss of five times the spending.
There will, in fact, be cake. Delicious, moist, gluten-free cake.
Hmmm. I think a few of those retractions were to personal emails. And to songs I sang in the shower. Ah well.
Things I meant to do during my time here but either never got around to or otherwise failed to do:
For those of you coming to the Library of Congress National Book Festival, don't forget to wear a black carnation in your buttonhole and/or a feather in your hat! I completely forgot to order either, am not a hat person, and probably won't be wearing anything with buttons, so will be sporting neither, but I hope that the rest of you show greater initiative.
For the interested, I am planning to continue blogging at webgoblin.livejournal.com (feed), though I may take a short rest first.
Hello All! Holly here again. Just wanted to let you all know that my friend Hannah has been found.
The statement from her family follows:
At long last, we are able to confirm that Hannah has been found and is safe! She is being cared for and has been positively identified. Hallelujah!
The media has already heard and some have immediately taken the most sensationalist route possible, but please don't put much credit in what they are saying/guessing/making up. The accurate details will all come out in time.
Thank you all so much for everything that you have done to help in this effort. It has been a long two weeks for all of us since she was declared missing, and we are overjoyed that she has been found.
The boss will be home soon, no doubt with amazing tales of adventure and exciting photographs. (I hear tell that at one point he was mistaken for an archaeologist. I have this mental image of a dusty, unshaven Minnesota Gaiman uncovering ancient treasures, running from giant boulders, and battling hitherfore unimagined, hopelessly lost, Nazi sleeper-cells with a crack of his whip.)
He'll return to an improved feed and a tweaked sidebar, plus the fruits of a few Secret Projects, the last two of which won't be revealed until next year.
Donations continue to trickle in for the Staten Island Zoo Education Anteater/Armadillo Fund. With one week down and one week left to go we were about 40% of the way there. Realistically, we weren't going to make it to $4.4k without some serious in-your-face fundraising that I just wasn't willing to subject everyone to.
So I have conferred with the Zoo and we have lowered the goal to $2.2k, which means: (1) we only have $540 left to collect and (2) they will have to purchase the (less expensive) armadillo rather than the anteater.
If anyone who donated has some deep-seated fear of, or animosity towards, armadillos and don't want to see their money used on one, send me a note and I will refund your donation.
UPDATE: We have our $2.2k! (Thanks largely to a certain awesome person who knows who she is and who sent me some wonderful Italian candies once.) The Armadillo Goal has been accomplished, but we will continue to accept donations through the rest of the week in hopes of possibly reaching Discount Anteater Level. (It only has one eye, and it drools a lot, but I'm sure the kids will love it.)
I spent 9/11 taking stationery supplies to a school in the centre of the Earthquake Zone, along with some of the people from SF World, the Chinese SF magazine. I went to a temporary school, and met a little over a hundred kids: almost 300 of their friends were killed in May, by the Earthquake, and many of them had lost family members. They were the sweetest kids in the universe and I may try and do something barking mad, like seeing if this blog can adopt the school. Seeing the devastation from the Earthquake, and the incredible resilience of the people there made me marvel, and I was as sad as I've been today, and, surrounded by the kids, as happy as I've ever been.
In a previous post, the boss mentioned the earthquake and linked to some comic strips by Coco Wang. The strips are hosted on their own site now. (One of the most recent entries features the Panda Research Center, in a bit of bitter-sweet timeliness.)
As a resident of the Washington D.C. metro region, today is largely preoccupied with mournful remembrance. Flags are flying at half mast everywhere, and it's impossible to escape the constant reminders.
As the years pass, new meanings are layered on top of it, and it can be hard to try to maintain perspective. I don't know how other people deal, but I find that, on this day every year, watching this Jon Stewart clip really helps:
I hope it helped you too.
(UPDATE: Canadians, and others for whom the above clip is blocked, should try this one.)
Bill Schafer, of Subterranean Press, (whose frequent acts of generosity and honourable dealing make me want to spend all my book money on his site) writes to remind us of a limited time offer:
As many of you may know by now, Bod, the hero of Neil Gaiman's new novel, The Graveyard Book, is protected by the souls who inhabit his graveyard. We (and Neil) have offered to allow those who buy the limited edition to join Bod's protectors by having their names listed in the back of our edition. We're about to head to press with the book, so this offer must end soon. If you'd like to be one of Bod's protectors, and have your name appear in Neil's book, you must order no later than Wednesday, September 17. After that, the registry will close, and Bod's list of protectors will be complete.
Also, Dave McKean has finished setting pen to the signature pages, and completed the original sketches for the lettered edition as well. The Graveyard Book will be sent to the printer as soon as Neil can fit the signature sheets into his schedule.
I don't want to turn this blog into the Jerry Goblin Blogathon or anything, but 24 hours after the last post went up we had already raised $1,000! That's quite a feat, and nearly a fourth of the way there. As of this writing, 48 hours later, things have slowed a bit but we have raised $1,250 in total.
If those of you with blogs could be so kind as to re-blog this, wider attention should help keep the momentum up. (Oooh, and as soon as I wrote that, a mention in Pop Candy! Thanks, Whitney!)
Jacqui writes to say:
I was thinking that if the anteater is a girl, we should call it Coraline or Coraline Gaiman. It fits in with the release of the movie. Good for branding.
An excellent point! We shall have to vote on a male and a female name in order to cover all of our anteater bases.
Between this and the devil tomato, you have to wonder what unholy energeries are trapped in Mr. G's soil. Was an Old One summoned on the spot where his garden now sits? Does his house sit over a Hellmouth?
And now for your daily tab closings:
Mr. G writes to mourn: There are a couple of Birdchick blog entries in my garden, about banding and Orioles. They made me homesick. Very unfair that I can see her blog but not my own. Ah well. You could link to the Oriole and the kestrel, maybe?
Those who pre-order Who Killed Amanda Palmer will receive a code enabling them to download "I Google You" (lyrics by Mr. G).
Mr. G's story, "Bitter Grounds", is reprinted in a new anthology, The Living Dead. (And while I'm linking to anthologies featuring the boss, The Apocalypse Reader features a really great, goblin-approved line-up.)
When the RoboPanda caper went off successfully, I realized that I would be deluged with requests from people wanting to harness the awesome might of this fully operational blog audience for other, less whimsical, collaborative fundraising tasks.
And lo, it has come to pass. And this one is too amusing to resist: We can name a Mexican anteater (tamandua) after Mr. G!
The Staten Island Zoo takes animals around to NYC schools for educational programs. Their current menagerie is getting on in the years and would like to retire. With our help, the zoo can purchase a new tamandua and name it "Neil Gaiman". (Or maybe "Mister G". I dunno, we can vote on it later.)
It would take 440 of us giving $10. I think it's worth a shot. The window is open for 14 days, so that (if we succeed) the deed will be done before Mr. G gets back and he can't stop us from naming it after him.
I tried to paypal myself $10 and it wouldn't let me, so for my part I will buy the tamandua it's own Neil "Scary Trousers" Gaiman shirt.
If Mr. G was here, I know that he would be blogging about the censorship scandal ripping through Britain's poetry community, so in his absence I will do my best to channel him:
It seems that the AQA board has "removed a poem containing references to knife crime from the GCSE syllabus", which has been met with cries of censorship. That poem is "Education for Leisure" by Carol Ann Duffy, who the Guardian reports is "widely considered a front-runner to be the next poet laureate".
It was originally reported that the board had asked schools to destroy the anthology containing the poem. Later, the AQA stated that "schools were not being urged to pulp the anthology: This is not about destroying books. They are allowed to continue teaching the poem, if they wish, but they are not going to be examined on it, it said."
The plot thickens from there. The Guardian writes that:
The most recent complaint was made by Lutterworth grammar school's exams invigilator, Pat Schofield, who welcomed the board's decision and said: "I think it is absolutely horrendous - what sort of message is that to give to kids who are reading it as part of their GCSE syllabus?"
In response, two days later, Carol Ann Duffy published a new poem in the Guardian entitled "Mrs Schofield's GCSE".
In the accompanying article, quotes are given by Duffy's literary agent, Peter Strauss, and Mrs. Schofield:
Strauss said last night that the poem was not written in an attempt to spark a spat with Schofield. "Oh no, not at all. I don't speak on behalf of Carol Ann Duffy, but I wouldn't say she is angry. She just wants her words to speak for themselves. It's basically a poem about poetry, and why poetry matters."
Contacted by the Guardian last night, Schofield said she felt "a bit gobsmacked" to have a verse named after her. She described the poem as "a bit weird. But having read her other poems I found they were all a little bit weird. But that's me".
Update on the London stop of the GRAVEYARD BOOK UK tour: The London bit of the Graveyard Book tour will be run by Blackwell Charing Cross Road, and will be on Halloween, the official publication day. From 6.30 on Friday 31st October, join Neil for a talk (followed by a signing) at the Old Theatre at the London School of Economics. Tickets will go on sale shortly, and notice will be posted here when they do. If you have any questions for now, email events.london@blackwell.co.uk with 'Gaiman' in the header.
September 27th, the day of the National Book Festival, is also the first day of Baltimore Comic-Con this year. Anyone traveling in from elsewhere might consider stopping by. Or if your tastes run more towards the renaissance, the Maryland RenFest will be open that day as well.
Three weeks until the Library of Congress National Book Festival! I hope that everyone within easy commuting distance* is planning to attend. It's sure to be a fun day, just for the festival itself, plus the forecast calls for a light dusting of hijinks and shenanigans! There will be cake. I may wear a disguise.
UPDATE: Eden helpfully points out on the LJ feed that this is also an excellent opportunity to see the Jim Henson Smithsonian exhibit.
* Since it is on the Mall in D.C. there are many public transportation opportunities, including my regular standby: the $20 Bolt Bus that departs hourly between D.C. and NYC, Philadelphia, or Boston. The buses are new, clean, and have free wifi. You could take it down in the morning and then back up in the evening with a minimum of fuss.
I have received quite a few emails from people having problems with the free NEVERWHERE ebook, but have no way of knowing what percentage of the overall number of downloaders these emails represent.
With that in mind, I conduct the following unscientific poll. Please click on the option that best describes your interaction with the ebook:
Option 8: I am unwilling to install new Adobe software to read it.
See results. The Open Rights Group, of which Mr. G is a patron, is trying to reach 1,500 supporters by December. They are nearly two thirds of the way there. You can help by joining, and/or posting this widget on your site or blog:
For those outside the US who have found themselves unable to download Neverwhere, HarperCollins also offers The Neil Gaiman Reader. This is not the book of essays of the same name edited by Darrell Schweitzer, but rather a PDF containing the first few chapters each from Neverwhere, American Gods, Stardust, and Smoke & Mirrors. It also requires Adobe Digital Editions. (HarperCollins previously offered a version which worked with regular Adobe Reader. If you're on linux you can probably find it online by googling.)
There is now a Graveyard Book shirt available from NeverWear featuring artwork by Mr. G himself! Available in S, M, L, XL, XXL, and girl's baby doll sizes.
And lastly, because several of you have asked, let me go on record as saying that noneoftheseareme,norarethese. And while I'm on the subject, thesearenotthe web elf. Though this appears to be some fanfic inspired by her?
This is Holly. With dad's permission I'm posting a call for information. One of my classmates from Bryn Mawr has gone missing in New York City.
These are excerpts from the statement currently released: _________
Hannah Emily Upp, a Bryn Mawr College graduate in 2007 and a current teacher of Spanish at Thurgood Marshall Academy in Harlem has gone missing in New York City. If anyone knows anything about where she is, please let Detective Perez at the 30th Precinct in New York City know. His number is (212) 690-8842.
The last time anyone saw her was around 2pm on the afternoon of Friday, August 29th. According to her roommates she had been planning to go away for the weekend but intended to return on Saturday, perhaps Sunday at the latest. When they had neither seen nor heard from Hannah on Sunday afternoon, they began calling her but each time it went straight to voicemail.
By Monday evening they were getting frantic and so they went into her room, where they discovered her keys, her phone, and her handbag containing her wallet. Her ATM card, her subway card, and her ID (right now just her passport) were all in there. When she didn't show up for work on Tuesday (her first day of teaching), and it became apparent that she had not gone on Friday either, the police decided it was time to file a Missing Persons Report.
Everyone is desperately hoping that Hannah just got overwhelmed and took a few days off to escape, but the fact that all her stuff was found in the apartment is a mystery.
If you have any information, again, please call the Detective.
Thank you. _________
Fingers crossed Hannah's ok- but please do keep your eyes out. Thanks again!
Remember back in February when we celebrated the Journal's blogiversary by announcing that HarperCollins was going to let you read one of Mr. G's books for free online for a month? And you voted for AMERICAN GODS? And then HC asked for feedback? And the whole experiement was a smashing success on the whole?
Well, they're at it again.
Read NEVERWHERE for free, online or offline. (Those of you reblogging this, please note the corrected link as of 2:30pm Eastern today. The old one will allegedly expire and will skew the tracking statistics.)
REVISED UPDATE: In order to download and open the PDF you must have Adobe Reader 6, Adobe Reader 7, or Adobe Digital Editions installed. The default PDF reader for the Mac will not be able to open it. Linux is right out. No other work-around should be necessary. Those in need of further support are invited to email hcebsupport-us@overdrive.com.
Maybe you had some friends last time who balked at the prospect of a heavy tome like AMERICAN GODS and refused to give it a look. Well, NEVERWHERE is lighter, and the gel capsule means it goes down smooth.
Quoth the Boss:
For those people who grumbled about reading American Gods online, here's Neverwhere. You can read it online, and it's also downloadable. That's the good news.
The bad news is you don't get to keep it forever. It's yours for thirty days from download, and then the pdf file returns to its electrons. But if you've ever wondered about Neverwhere or wanted to read it for free, now is your chance. And free is free...
It is my pleasure to announce in this Journal the big unveiling of The Siegel & Shuster Society, which Mr. G is supporting, and its attempt to save the house where Superman was created. You can see all the details at their charitable website www.OrdinaryPeopleChangeTheWorld.com.
Brad Meltzer writes:
As you'll see from the list of people involved, this isn't about DC or Marvel. This isn't about competition. It’s about the comic community as a whole, pulling together for a place that launched so many of our best dreams.
There are badges you can place on your blog or attach to your email signature to help spread the word as well:
FAQ
What's this all about again? Today is the official launch of The Siegel & Shuster Society, with a celebrity charity auction that'll raise money to preserve the home of Jerry Siegel, creator of Superman. When you go to Brad Meltzer's charitable website www.OrdinaryPeopleChangeTheWorld.com, you can:
bid online for original Superman and comic book art and items by top writers and artists
buy a Siegel & Shuster Society t-shirt (designed by the legendary graphic designer Chip Kidd)
Who's involved in the auction? This is a coming together of an entire community. The full list includes: Stephen Colbert, Jim Lee, Brian Michael Bendis, Brad Meltzer, Geoff Johns, Richard Donner, Joe Quesada, Neil Gaiman, Alex Ross, Dave Gibbons, Jeph Loeb, Murphy Anderson, Ed Brubaker, John Cassaday, Gene Ha, Greg Rucka, George Perez, Michael Turner, Adam Kubert, Andy Kubert, Judd Winick, Frank Cho, Eric Powell, Tim Sale, Walt Simonson, Joe Staton, Eric Wight, Dave Mandel, Mike Mignola, Rags Morales, Bill Morrison, Ivan Reis, John Romita Jr., Jason Palmer, Amanda Conner, Geoff Darrow, Ron Garney, Renato Guedes, Heroes, Dave Johnson, Chris Bachalo, Mike Bair, Allen Bellman, Dan Brereton, Ernie Chan, Travis Charest, and Ian Churchill, YOU, and even Jerry Siegel (see below).
How did this come about? While researching his new novel, The Book of Lies, Brad Meltzer visited the boyhood home of Jerry Siegel in Cleveland, Ohio, where Superman was created. As Meltzer says, "The house where Google was founded is preserved. The garage where Hewlett Packard was founded is protected. But the house where Superman was born? I was in shock." After contacting dozens of comic book creators -- and thanks to the hard work of many in the city of Cleveland -- The Siegel & Shuster Society was created and is dedicated to commemorating and celebrating the creation of Superman in Cleveland by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. "I think sometimes people take things like this for granted because it started in cartoon form, but this is a house were modern mythology was created," Brain Michael Bendis adds. "Mythology that will never die away or disappear. There is no difference, to me, between this house and Mark Twain's house. We have to honor and exalt such creation."
What are the items in the auction? You can win a walk-on part on Heroes, VIP seats to the Colbert Report, original Superman art (go see the art!), have your name in Bendis or Brubaker or Rucka's comic, or Meltzer's next novel. There's a rare original pre-Superman movie script from Geoff Johns, signed by Richard Donner. And Joanne Siegel told Meltzer that before Jerry Siegel died, he signed six Superman t-shirts that no one ever knew existed -- and then told her that if their family ever needed money, she should sell the shirts. Instead, she donated one of them to be auctioned off here. The signature is on a Superman: Quest For Peace(!) t-shirt. C'mon, baby, it's Jerry Siegel on a Quest for Peace shirt!
What can you do? Forward the video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=25R2kcJxQuc). Go buy a Siegel & Shuster Society t-shirt. They're cool. They're designed by Chip Kidd. They can't be bought anywhere else. Bid on some of the auctions and spread the word by sharing the video, sigs, and www.OrdinaryPeopleChangeTheWorld.com auction with your facebook, myspace, and live-breathing friends.
How much is the Siegel And Shuster Foundation trying to raise? Depends on how successful we are. Phase 1 involves working on the exterior of the house: securing the roof, making sure the paint isn't rotting, doing the concrete work. That will hopefully protect the place from the outside. Joe Shuster's house (a few blocks away) was in such disrepair, it was torn down. The first goal is to collect $50,000 to deal with the outside. If we do that, then we'll go and tackle the much-needed-repairs on the inside.
Who lives there now? The house is located in one of the tougher neighborhoods of Cleveland and is currently occupied by a couple who have lived there for approximately 20 years, who have put up with all of us who have come visiting, but who don't have the money to do these repairs. Rather than kick anyone out on the street, the goal is to repair this place for them. Why? It's the right thing to do. In return, The Siegel & Shuster Society has the right to buy the house when it eventually goes up for sale.
Is there a long-term goal to make a museum? The long-term goal is still being decided, and that's why you're invited to join The Siegel & Shuster Society and help us with those plans. Meetings are held monthly in Cleveland -- when you buy a shirt, they'll have your name. But one of the dreams is that one day, buses full of students will drive from all over Ohio, from Michigan, from any nearby state, and come to the fully-restored house -- covered and decorated with children's artwork inside -- and see where one of the world's greatest dreams was born. Go to www.OrdinaryPeopleChangeTheWorld.com to make it happen.
In lieu of attempting to write something of substance tonight, I've returned to my old webgobliny ways and tinkered a bit with the machinery running behind the journal.
I've added a little feed to the sidebar entitled "Friends of the Blank Corporation" featuring the blogs of others who frequently collaborate with Mr. G. I'm not sure how long it'll stick around.
I've also temporarily enabled commenting, just as an experiment. Mr. G has good reasons for disabling them, so they'll all disappear before he gets home. It should go without saying that I expect everyone to be on their best behavior. Given that Neil has the best fans ever, in my experience, I expect the commentors to be somewhat self-policing as well.
(UPDATE: Not surprisingly, perhaps, the first comment appeared 15 seconds later and was spam. This might be a short experiment.)
FURTHER UPDATE: After the first five comments I have already had to reject one and delete another for not living up to my standards for clarity of message and wounding my pride, so I've reconsidered. Comments are currently off and will return around 6am Eastern tomorrow (Tuesday), when I will be awake and keeping an eye on them.
I can't do it. It just doesn't feel like Mr. G's blog with comments. Sorry.
And while I'm embedding videos, Mr. G wishes for me to alert you that Mitch Benn has posted a collaboration with Rick Wakeman, "Sing Like An Angel":
Geoffrey Perkins, producer of the the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, has died.
Neil writes:
I worked with Geoffrey Perkins, interviewed him, spent time with him, when I was writing Don't Panic! and never managed to hide that I was a Radio Active fan. I'm really sorry-- he was so smart, and so funny.
Phil writes to inform us that:
...the special issue of ImageTexT, the University of Florida-published journal of comics studies, on Neil's work that he so kindly linked to the CFP for a few years ago is completed and up. Anyone who feels like reading some academic criticism of Mr. Gaiman should feel free to have a look at http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v4_1/. And for people who are more generally comics fans, I recommend the archives as well - we're currently the only English-language peer reviewed journal of comics studies, and, if I may say so myself, we're pretty proud of what we've published.
