And I thought, I should DO something with this stuff...
So what I'm going to do is this:
First I'm going to sign a bunch of posters -- probably about 50. Then I'm going to give them and the BPAL Graveyard Book scents to the wonderful Cat Mihos. And I'm going to tell her that we're running something that isn't exactly a competition, but is sort of smaller and more informal and a bit more easy-going. It's this:
From here until the end of the year (and further out than that, if the stuff holds out), if you do something effective to help get other people reading The Graveyard Book, tell Cat, and she'll send you a signed poster.
(Something effective in this case would include persuading your bookshop or library to do a Graveyard Book display, and taking a photo of it and sending it to Cat, teaching it in your school, reviewing it for your local paper or doing something equally as imaginative.)
If you do something Awesome and Amazing to get other people reading The Graveyard Book (for example, talking your whole town or city into having one of those months where everyone in the town reads the same book, and it's The Book In Question...) then you get a signed Graveyard Book poster and you get one of the BPAL Graveyard Book scent collections. And she'll probably throw in one of the Graveyard Book Neverwear tee shirts as well.
(Like this one.)
Possibly even give you a Kendra Stout Graveyard Mousepad.
(Like this one)
Send email, photos, cuttings from your local paper, proof that it was you and you alone who talked Oprah or Richard-and-Judy into doing The Graveyard Book on their TV book clubs, etc., to Cat Mihos, Furrytiger@Gmail.com . Do not send them to me. I will not have the swag. I will not be handing it out. I'm merely going to set this thing in motion and sign fifty posters -- twenty five on the McKean side, the other twenty five on the Riddell side.
Cat's decision is final. She'll blog the things she gets in as she goes along at the Neverwear Blog (http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/). And then every now and then I'll do a round up here.
When it comes to Thanksgiving, there is only one thing I seem to be expected to do, and that is make the cranberry jelly.
And seeing I have to sit in the kitchen for another twenty minutes, and only stop to stir or skim sometimes, I thought you might possibly need to know about cranberry jelly. It's possible. This is the internet, after all. And real cranberry jelly tastes about a million times better than stuff in tins.
I learned how to make Cranberry Jelly from a wonderful cookbook called Beat This, by Ann Hodgman. (It's more or less out of print, I think, but new and used copies abound on Amazon.)
You take a pound of fresh cranberries, two cups of water, two cups of sugar (I tend to use less, as I like it less sweet), and a pinch of salt.
Wash the cranberries, removing any soft ones.
Bring the water to a boil. Add the cranberries, the sugar and the salt.
Boil for a long time. No, longer than that. About twenty-five minutes, skimming off the pink froth when you notice it, and stirring whenever you remember.
It's done when the cranberries get thick and syrupy: I use a cup of cold water and drip some in -- when the drop holds its shape, you're good.
Then you realise you don't have a jelly mould, but remember that there's always some tupperware somewhere, so you let the cranberry jelly cool off just a little (to avoid melting the tupperware. I know it's not likely. But I worry) and then pour it in. Leave it out until it's cooled enough to refrigerate, and then put it in the fridge. The next day, fill the sink with hot water, hold the mould or the tupperware dish under water for a few seconds, then turn it upside down onto a plate. (Ann Hodgman says here, "If it spills out in a big liquidy burst and gets all over everything, you didn't cook it long enough.")
There. Finally, a useful post.
[Edit to add: yes, I do know you can add orange or lemon zest, almond flavour, a dash of booze, sundry spices, and that you can even do what Todd Klein does and add apples and oranges. But I've always believed in keeping things simple...]
A basic CBLDF membership is $25. http://www.cbldf.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=44 and there are people who really would like them as gifts. Honest. You get a membership card and everything.
And seeing I'm now recommending gifts -- Todd Klein documents the end of the story of his Alex Ross print at http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=2295 (and it's fascinating watching how something goes from not quite right to really very right), and then tells you how to order it -- or the third printing of Alan Moore's print or the second printing of my print (all signed in dark green ink) at http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=2385.
Well, it is if you love the macabrely funny, or the funnily macabre...
...
Meanwhile in another part of the forest, I'm simultaneously more impressed, and sometimes more frustrated with the G1.
No blogger app, yet? Not a problem. According to blogger you just send a text -- no content specified -- to go@blogger.com and it'll send you a code to allow you to claim your blog... so that should be simple. Except that if you send a text message from the G1 to blogger you get a message back telling you that you haven't registered and to send a text message containing the text REGISTER to go@blogger.com. And if you send a text message containing the word REGISTER you get another message back telling you to send a message containing the word REGISTER... You do this a few more time, with no change.
So you give up and log in to Blogger using the G1's browser, and discover that the ability to upload photographs to Blogger has been disabled, and then you give up.
The voice recognition software doesn't always recognise that I've even said anything, and its choices, when it does think I've spoken, aren't just mishearings, they're positively perverse:
Me: Call Mike Gaiman.
Phone: (offers me a choice between) Dial 508 0972 Dial 508 9721 Dial 508 9720
Me: Call Dad Cell Phone: (offers a choice between) Call Hilary Bevan Jones at Work Call Hilary Bevan Jones at Home
...it's not even like there's a match up between the vowels, the consonants, or the number of syllables. Mysterious.
But the things that work work so well. I'm now using it as my bedside clock-alarm and GPS. It's a great phone. I cannot wait for a Slingbox app, or a RealPlayer app so I can use it to stream BBC Radio. The Sky Map app, which shows the night sky and stars and planets and constellations of where you're standing and what you're pointing at, using the GPS system and a compass so that the screen shows what you are seeing, only with stars and planets named and constellations drawn in, is magical...
... And finally, LEEDS UNITED: A musical video by Miss Amanda Palmer.
It's cold here these days. The other night the outside thermometer said it was 7 degrees F, and the wind took it colder -- and winter has not quite started yet. Winter starts in a week, after the weekend that follows Thanksgiving, when the hunters get back into their cars and go home.
The gunshots start at first light on the weekends. I can hear them now. Bam. Bam. Bam.
The dog is now wearing his fluorescent orange cape at all times, and if I'm walking with him or alone I'll put an orange cap or a fluorescent orange knitted headthingummy on: too many people are out in the woods right now, loaded with beer and weapons, shooting loudly and enthusiastically at anything that moves that isn't orange.
We get local news stories at this time of year that range from the comic to the nightmarish and tragic about overenthusiastic hunters mistakenly shooting and killing horses, cows, goats, members of their families, each other, and, normally unintentionally, themselves. (And a few years ago, a lady inside a house, who got hit while indoors by a hunter who was outdoors (she survived).)
There was a farmer round here who took to painting the word COW in bright orange lettering on the side of his cows.
I've got NO HUNTING signs posted on my land, hoping it'll lower the odds on anyone here wandering off for a morning walk being accidentally shot, but most years I'll find one or two hides built at the edges of the land, if not on it.
So the dog looks like Krypto when we we go walking, and I look like a fluorescent orange version of Where's Wally/Waldo.
Only a week to go. Bam. Bam.
...
Hi Neil,
Love the new Coraline website. While the other girls are crazy over Twilight, I'm just as crazy for the upcoming movie! What I would really like to do is walk in the movie theatre with a Coraline t-shirt, maybe some tubesocks covered in buttons, and if I can fit all my hair into one - a blue wig, well maybe not that. Anyway do you think any merchandise will be made? I'm thinking a couple of t-shirts...one with a quote from the book on it or that G.K. Chesterton quote. Thanks for the inspiration for aspiring writers like me, making stuff up forever.
Hoo-lee-ah from Tejas.
I don't know. I'll ask.
Hello Neil. I have a question that may only be due to some basic misunderstanding on my part, but I've searched and can't seem to find an explanation anywhere. Hopefully I'm not the only one confused by this.
In Stardust, at the beginning of the book, the Fair is described as being every nine years. But Tristran leaves during one such Fair, and returns one year later for another. Doesn't he?
Nope. He leaves before the fair and returns during it.
Neil,
As much as I enjoy your blogging, I'm always pleased when Maddy guest blogs. I remember fairly clearly Maddy's blogging during your visit to the Hellboy II set. It seemed to be hinted (or maybe I'm insane) that Maddy might appear in a DVD extra somewhere. For this reason, I went out and bought the three-disc version of Hellboy II (otherwise, I probably would have bought the single-disc edition). At any rate, I haven't plowed through all of the DVD extras yet (there seem to be kind of a lot of them), but I was hoping you could let me know... is Maddy an international superstar? Did she make a cameo on the Hellboy special features, or get mentioned in the commentary or something? Or did I get my hopes up for nothing? I'm a big fan of Maddy's guest-blogging and the Maddy anecdotes, so I was looking forward to this. At any rate, you should tell Maddy she has adoring fans.
Thanks, Sandra Seaman.
I heard from Maddy that she's on the DVD being shown Wink (she was emailed this information by her friend Javier the extras director). I think the interviews with her are probably still in the Hellboy vaults.
Hello Mr. Gaiman~
An interesting thought just struck me...you know how they maintain houses of famous people eg. Bertrand Russell, Jane Austen, do you think they'll have one for you too when you die? Sorry about the morbidity...but I just found the idea quite amusing, and I do think people would flock to your house after your death. ^_^
Deborah
Oh god. Does that mean I have to tidy the place up?
Just seen this on the BBC website when they interviewed Joseph Paterson about Dr Who....
“My favourite character was the Marquis de Carabas from Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere.
"I love that character because he's so flamboyant but also darkly dangerous - and he's also 200 years old.
Paterson's an amazing actor, and I loved working with him on Neverwhere. There were a lot of things I didn't like about the BBC Neverwhere, but he was always marvellous -- he got it and ran with it (here's the first few minutes of him on screen).
Whether he'll get to be the next Doctor Who... well, I know no more than you do. But I'd give him the job in a trice, if it was mine to give.
Still playing with the G1. Starting to get more enthusiastic as I play with more and more apps -- there's a strange delight in going to Instamapper and looking at the patterns I make as I walk around, for example. Maddy keeps borrowing it to play Pacman and a game called AMAZED where you have to maneuver a ball around the screen by tipping it one way and another. I'm impressed with the bar code reader that tells me where I can buy anything cheaper locally, and would be even more impressed if it wasn't convinced I could buy Ellen Klages books at my local Walmart.
The iSkoot Skype app is fairly wonderful, iMeem is great (but the phone's okay-but-not-great speaker quality means I'll probably never actually use iMeem on the road, now I've tried it out... better sound reproduction and a speaker jack would be on my list of must-haves. Along with better battery life if you're actually using any of the things that make the G1 more than just a cell phone). Now I'm just waiting for the iris recognition software... ("Oh no! Not only have they cut my eyes out but now I can't get to my address book!")
And finally, I'm thrilled that The Graveyard Book made it into another end of year round up -- Michael Berry's in SF Chronicle:
The Graveyard Book, by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; 312 pages; $17.99; ages 12 and up) On the night a mysterious stranger kills his parents and sister, a toddler escapes from the house and finds sanctuary in a cemetery. There he is adopted by a ghostly couple, accepted by the other revenants in residence and given the name Nobody Owens, or Bod, for short. Bod's coming-of-age has its moments of wonder, terror and tenderness, and Gaiman hits exactly the right notes every time. This is a book that should be passed from brother to sister, child to parent.
It's out in English, but this version of it is it in Italian. Because everything sounds better in Italian.
A few of you have written in asking if I'd done an Alan Moore and taken my name off the film, or if I'd had a falling out with the studio, as my name isn't mentioned in this trailer, just Henry Selick's -- and no, not at all. Nobody's name except Henry's is mentioned in the trailer, and that has more to do with Focus wanting to make sure that if they invoked The Nightmare Before Xmas, people wouldn't then assume this was a Tim Burton film, and go and see it -- or stay away -- based on that. (On the international poster -- above -- you won't find my name or Henry's.) I suppose it's a marketing decision.
I chatted to Henry today, and am really looking forward to seeing a finished film -- the last twenty minutes of the thing weren't done the last time I was sent anything. And it has music...
Incidentally, the Coraline Movie edition is now out, with an essay by me in the back, and another by Henry Selick...
I've started playing with the T-mobile G1. First reactions -- I like it, mostly. It feels good in your hand. It's reasonably intuitive. (Bizarrely, when it isn't intuitive and I've had to head into manual land, the phone's software and the PDF of the manual do not always agree with each other.) I've had fun making ring tones, creating galleries. The way that your contacts list is also your Gmail contacts is mostly terrific (although it won't let me create entries that have the same email address as someone already on the list).
The things I don't like about it so far seem huge and obvious: no Blogger app (when there's a LiveJournal app and several others) seems a huge omission, seeing it's from Google; it can't read or open PDF files yet; you can send it pictures and watch them as a slideshow, but you can't save them; the built in Gmail app can't do anywhere near the things that the gmail program on my N73 can do; the camera is about the same standard as the iPhone's, which is to say, a bit meh. I like having a real keyboard but wish it was a tiny bit bigger -- I find myself typing with fingernails. Battery life is fine unless you've got Wifi on.
More reactions after it's been on the road with me and been used for a bit.
...
Hi Neil,
I just had a quick question on the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book. I have the album already (and have listened to it countless times. It's beautiful).
I was going to go and order the book, but when I went to the site, I found that the book seems to only be in packages. I was wondering if there are any plans to sell the book alone, or whether I should buy one of the packages. The extra CD could make a nice gift.
Thanks, Nate
Let's see... the book is being designed right now, then it goes off to the printers. The people who bought the package version will get theirs first. Depending on where in the world it's printed, this could be a couple of months before anyone else. Then, when copies come in from the printer, they'll go on sale -- probably in the early Spring. I think.
Neil!
I'm re-reading American Gods, and I'm at the point where Shadow first meets Sam. At the diner, Shadow reads a newspaper story saying "local farmers wanted to hang dead crows around the town to frighten the others away; ornithologists said it wouldn't work, that the living crows would simply eat the dead ones. The locals were implacable. 'When they see the corpses of their friends,' said a spokesman, 'they'll know we don't want them here.'"
Neil, I don't have Time Enough for Love here at school, but wasn't there something very similar to that in that story? Was your dead crow story a little Heinlein homage?
And OMG - just realized that Sam's last name is Black Crow, and that story was about crows. Wow. Sneaky of you.
Chris
When I'm driving through small-town America I make a point of buying local papers in towns where I stop, and reading them, preferably in local coffee shops. I read that in a small town as I went, and thought "It belongs in my book". So I put it there.
Dear Mr Gaiman, I recently finished reading M is For Magic, and I have a question about the story Chivalry. Sir Galahad was considered the holiest of Arthur's knights; so, how coul he have obtained an apple from the garden of the Hespiredes? The Hespiredes were a part of greek mythology which was actually a religeon based on monotheism. So, how could he get something that his religeon said didn't exist? I am sorry to bother you with this question, but it has sparked my interest.
- a young and curious reader
He had to travel a long way.
I don't think that the existence of mythical things would have been a problem for a mythical early Christian, of whom Galaad would have been one, or even a huge problem for real early Christians: in The Golden Legend, which was the most popular book of stories about saints, collected in the thirteenth century, Saint Nicholas (the one who became Santa Claus) went up against the Goddess Diana.
Then again, Narnia, a most monotheistic world, had, in addition to a Leonine Son of God, more than its share of nymphs (just like the Hesperides) not to mention such gods as Bacchus and Silenus (and Santa Claus again) wandering around. So I would not worry about it, were I you.
I loved the link to the Sandman Death 20th Anniversary Bookends you put up. When should they be coming out and how much of a dent will they put on my wallet, please?
According to a quick Google, http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/9960.shtml says they came out in September, and they will cost a wallet-twinging $295. (Ouch.) There are only a thousand of them.
This one has almost nothing to do with you Neil, but since his website is still in the makings I thought you could perhaps forward this to him. I was very sad (like a child whose told there won't be a Christmas this year) to learn that Dave McKean's appearance this weekend in BuenosAires was canceled. In the event's blog they posted Dave's email in which he mentioned he couldn't make it because a date was changed (which sounds reasonable). But it remained unclear if it was the date of ANIMATE (the BuenosAires event) which was changed, or if it was one of Dave's previous engagements.
Dave McKean said...
Hi Neil,
Please post this, as I certainly do feel very bad letting people down:
I agreed to go to Animate in the summer and had to organize a military operation of friends and family to take care of our son Liam during the proposed week, as he is appearing as Gavroche in Les Miserables in London and has to be accompanied to and from the theatre each day he's on, and also be available on 12 hours notice every day in case another actor drops out. We managed this, so both Clare and I could make the trip to Buenos Aires, a city we've always wanted to visit. Unfortunately, the date was changed by the organizers, and so we had to re-arrange. More importantly, it became obvious that the festival was now colliding with a variety of previous commitments falling in the latter half of November, so I decided with great sadness to withdraw this year. I hate letting people down, and I was really looking forward to the trip (though not the 24 hours travelling each way, I admit!).
Hopefully there will be another event, an animation or film festival, that will allow me to visit the city in the future. Or maybe we'll just go for a holiday, and do a signing in a bookstore.
Thanks, Dave
(I think it's worth pointing out that ten-year old Liam McKean -- owner of the original Pig Puppet -- is in Les Miserables in London. If you happen to go and see it, check if he's in your performance. Get his autograph. Mention pigs. Make his day.) And that reminds me...
Hi Neil,
I thought you might like to let people know that Dave McKean is on the BBC4 programme "Picture Book" talking about his illustations for David Almond's 'The Savage' and how he was inspired by Comic Book's art. The programme is airing (again) at 19.10 on Saturday and 3.30 on Sunday, and is also currently available on the BBC i-player. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fhnb6/comingup
Thank you again for all the stories,
Marjorie
You're welcome.
Hi,
Just read that you completed "the Dying Earth story." Huh? Is there a new collection of Dying Earth stories coming out? Is it an homage to Jack Vance's work, or what?
Did a search for "dying earth" on your website and saw no other mention of it.
In addition to the drawing by me and Mike, there's also drawings by me and Jeff Smith, Colleen Doran, Paul Pope, Larry Marder, Jim Valentino, Amanda Conner, Darwyn Cooke, David Gianfelice, Eduardo Risso, Jeffrey Brown (I think this one may be my favourite), Kyle Baker and Nikki Cooke... You want one? You know someone who would like one for Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Mithrastide, or I'm-An-Atheist-But-I-Don't-See-Why-I-Can't-Have-A-Party-And-Presents-Day?
Then you go to this ebay link, and go shopping for the Holidays...
Also, I got a happy call from my editor to say that The Graveyard Book is now in its seventh week on the New York Times children's list. (Two weeks at number one, then a drop to number six, and the last four weeks sitting cheerfully at number four.) I haven't wanted to say anything for fear of jinxing it, but it makes me much happier to still be at number four than it ever did to get to number one. Number One meant that I went on tour and we made a lot of noise; seven weeks later, Number Four means that people are telling each other about the book, and buying it on word of mouth, and that makes me happier than anything.)
There. After a few days of mostly sleeping I'm alive again, although I feel a bit like someone took a glue gun to my lungs. I just threw a whole peeled lemon, a dried cayenne pepper from the garden, some honey and hot water in a blender, and drank it all down, and I think it helped.
Nothing exciting to report, or rather, I cannot remember any of the things I'd planned to write once I had a brain again.
On the other hand, Coraline.com (and theothercoraline.com ) have both got spookier, and have strange and marvellous little films up. With keys to access... one of which I found at http://www.despoiler.org/2008/11/17/my-funny-coraline/. (Yes, I suppose I could just have called Focus and asked, but how much fun would that have been? Also I'd feel guilty about posting the info here if I did.)
Hi Neil! I'm a huge fan with 2 quick questions.
Absolute Sandman Vol 1 appears to be sold out on Amazon and Chapters / Indigo with no mention of availability. Is there going to be another printing soon or should I be desperately searching bookstores for a copy before it's gone forever?
On a related note, are there any plans to release an AbsoluteAbsolute Sandman containing all 4 volumes, with any special content?
Thanks so much! Love your books, love your blog!
I checked, and when you wrote this Absolute Sandman #1 was indeed out of stock everywhere. But before I could write to people and ask, it was already back in print and back up on Amazon. (This is the link) (I notice it's now at full price, not 37% off, like the others, which may well mean that once they sell out of the first printings of Absolutes they'll stop discounting them. Which, if you're putting off buying them for the future, might make a difference.)
(And in the half hour between my checking it was there and now it's already gone Temporarily Out Of Stock at Amazon. I assume they didn't order enough to cope with back orders.)
There are definitely no plans to ever do one 2500 page book. (I feel guilty enough watching people carrying two of the Absolutes in signing lines: a 36 lb book would just be wrong.) However, I can assure you that the Sandman and Death bookends are heavy enough to cope with holding the Absolutes in place. (I'm using mine for other books, but they're definitely working bookends, not ornaments.)
I'm sleeping a lot, coughing a bit, sleeping a bit more. During the waking bit I'm mostly listening to Radio 7 or podcasts, and the best podcasts are from The Moth, the storytelling thingummy based in New York I discovered last year shortly before I found myself on a stage telling the story of how I got home from Hamburg in 1977.
Anyway, the Moth is a marvellous thing, and needs to be supported. Tomorrow night is the annual Moth Ball. You can read all about it at https://www.themoth.org/ball . If you're in New York, you could go. It is hosted by
John Turturro
and
Garrison Keillor
and Salman Rushdie will be getting an award. It looks like a marvellous evening of storytelling. There will be wonders and things in a silent auction as well.
There's two days to go on the auction -- it ends at Nov. 19, 2008 at 11:59 PM EST. Right now you can get afternoon tea with me for a bid over $350.
I hope whoever wins it is nice.
[Edit to add: Hi Neil,
I am seriously considering bidding on the afternoon tea at the Players in Gramercy Park, and I was curious as to when this event would occur, to make sure I can attend (and not be out of the country due to work). Perhaps I'm blind, but I didn't see it indicated in the auction. Help?
Thanks, Jeff
P.S: I'm fairly confident that I'm a nice person, and can probably even get a few friends to vouch for me!
That's because the actual when-it-happens of it all is something that will get figured out between the winning bidder and me, and depend on where they are and where I am. The idea is to be able to make it work for whoever bids.]
A small happy birthday post to somebody living and somebody dead.
This is the dead person. I think this may be the funniest 8 minutes of someone staring at you and telling you about his experiences as a coal miner and novelist ever filmed.
And here, from twenty years ago, are both birthday boys. "Independent wealth. And blackmail."
I've got something that's probably only a bad cold that caught up with me after five months on the road, so I was asleep last night by about nine... and awake this morning at six.
I finished typing the Dying Earth story for Messrs Martin and Dozois, who were sitting on an otherwise completed book drumming their fingers against their tabletops in a worried manner and waiting for me to finish touring. It's an odd story but it made me happy, and, while I get to do some Jack Vance impressions (no-one but Vance can do Vance properly) I got to do me too.
(I don't think I've ever had an Alex Ross cover on anything I've done, and it was lovely to see it...)
....and, now that it's been shown full size on the back of Previews, I don't think there's any harm in putting up Andy Kubert's cover, in its original uncoloured version. (which is the one I can find on my computer.) (If anyone grumbles I'll take it down.)
...
I've been pondering the word prevaricate on and off for a number of years. I'd used it once in Sandman to mean someone not making up their minds, and Emma Bull, reading it, said "You mean procrastinate. Prevaricate means to lie." And I changed it before it saw print, realising that if she thought it was being misused, so would many other readers. Then, eighteen years later, I read an article on how to hang Rothkos which contained the sentence "Rothko was always prevaricating over how his art should be shown," said Waldemar Januszczak, art critic for the Sunday Times, and decided to research.
I think it's a word with shades of meaning, and while in the US it tends to get used simply as "to lie" (as in "All politicians prevaricate"), in the UK it's more often used as a synonym for Equivocate -- i.e. to avoid giving a straight answer... even to tergiversarate. And it's the equivocation, with its implications of putting off a decision that then shades over into meanings that aren't simply "to lie".
And after writing that I just found some people arguing with each other about that on a French/English board, as if it's a new meaning that's just come along. It isn't. The Big Oxford English Dictionary that I need a magnifying glass to read lists as Prevaricate definition #2 "To deviate from straightforwardness; to act or speak evasively; to quibble, shuffle, equivocate." And it gives examples going back to 1651. (Squints. Checks with magnifying glass. Nope, 1631.)
...
Joe Gordon asked if I could mention this excellent Vertigo Encyclopedia interview up at the FPI blog, which I do, partly because I still feel guilty for not ever reading Alex's book A Scattering of Jades, copies of which were pressed on me in proof by friends, and which, like so many books people give me, never made it off the to-be-read pile.
A few people have sent me links in to the Io9 article on How Sandman Changed the World. It's over at http://io9.com/5086663/5-ways-that-sandman-changed-the-world if you want to read it. I guess I have the same problem with it I do with a lot of Io9 stuff -- it's an article that reads like someone was assigned it, and sort of blogged it out in a bit of a hurry without any research or real thought. I don't think that Sandman actually did any of the five things he lists it as having done, and a lot of the things presented on the page as if they're facts are opinions, and dodgy ones at that. (Which sounds remarkably ungracious, considering it's a blog entry that says nice things about Sandman. If so, blame it on the author being in bed with a cold.) (And, before people write in asking about the "lost Sandman role playing supplement", and before it makes it into Wikipedia, the Mayfair Games Sandman event someone talks about in the comments is more or less entirely fictional. I think I had a chat about a potential Sandman game with Dan Greenberg, who wrote the DC Magic supplement, but it went no further and Mayfair went down soon after -- I've never before encountered the idea that the two things were linked, and no Sandman game was ever written, made, solicited or cancelled.)
On the other hand someone sent me a link to this article on children's literature at http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6403. It's a fascinating essay which I agree with parts of, disagree with parts of (I really rate A.A.Milne as a humourist, children's writer and playwright, and my five-year-old love for the Winnie The Pooh books is all-consuming), but love his journey from premise to conclusion. If we are in a golden age of children's literature, it's probably mostly because of Sturgeon's Law. There are a lot of books being written right now, after all.
Also ran into this article by Roseanne Cash on songwriting (which I suspect applies equally to writing of all kinds) which I really enjoyed: so much of the magic is made by turning up and crafting something, simply by doing the work, and it's so hard to convince people of that, and it doesn't make the magic any less for it.
It's for Skim, a graphic novel [Jillian] created with her cousin, author Mariko Tamaki. The book, published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, is one of five titles short-listed for the $25,000 G-G prize in children's literature (text), with Mariko Tamaki cited as the sole creator. If you give a writing award to a comic and ignore the art, you're being foolish, short-sighted and fundamentally failing to understand what comics are or what comics writing means.
And it's never too late to fix things.
Now, before I head off on some barking mad Jeremiad against short-sighted Canadians, I shall drink some chicken soup and go to sleep.
I've finished the BATMAN half of the story (the actual cover of which can be seen, small, on the back cover of Previews). Now onto the DETECTIVE half, in which much will be explained. Now typing out the last of a short story. Last night was a late birthday dinner, during which Maddy pointed out that when she's 26 I'll be 60.
Much lemon-and-honey and chicken soup is being drunk. And The Graveyard Book (and the P. Craig Russell Coraline Graphic Novel) are on Kirkus's 2008 Year's Best list.
I am a longtime fan and have had the pleasure of meeting you on several occasions at various NYC reading and signings over the years. I had to skip the post discussion signing this time to cover another event (Conor Oberst at Terminal 5). Therefore, since I didn't get to say it in person... Thankyou, to you and Chip for an enlightening, entertaining, and inspirational evening!
If you have a chance I would love for you to take a look at my website www.maniacpumpkincarvers.com I carve really intricate, custom pumpkins each fall.
Thanks again, Marc Evan
Those are some remarkably carved pumpkins. (Even a pig!)
Thanks Marc. We get to see what Chip was wearing in those photos, which I think is important. Posterity needs to know. (There's a wonderful description of the event up at Tor.com -- http://www.tor.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=blog&id=8526#more -- which reminds me that you can always remember how to spell fuchsia if you bear in mind that the flower was named after a German botanist named Fuchs.)
Have any of your books been translated into Chinese and if so, where can I get one for my son-in-law for for Christmas? I've searched the web with no luck and also checked in 2 bookstores in Hong Kong last week with no results. Thanks. He and my daughter are huge fans and have been at a couple of your book signings in the Twin Cities.
Yup. They're now pretty much all out in complex Chinese characters, and are in the process of coming out in simplified Chinese. Let me look...
Late last night I recorded the eulogy I wrote on the back of the LP of Who Killed Amanda Palmer and emailed it off into the void. I think Amanda and her team are going to do something with it at the live gigs but am not entirely certain what. Whatever it is, you really want to go and see Amanda Palmer live. Honest you do.
She's a wonderful performer, is assisted by the mysterious Australian dancy-performance-arty foursome The Danger Ensemble, and will be signing for everyone after each show (where you could tell her that I sent you and thus impress her with the magical power of this blog). Also she is very likely to perform "I Google You" and (perhaps more importantly) to do some Dresden Dolls songs as well as solo songs from the Who Killed Amanda Palmer CD.
The tour details and links and suchlike are all up at http://amandapalmer.net/tour but, in case you were idly wondering if she was going to be anywhere near you:
Fri Nov 14 '08 (8:30 PM) Asheville, NC The Orange Peel
Sat Nov 15 '08 (8:30 PM) Raleigh, NC Lincoln Theatre
Sun Nov 16 '08 (7:30 PM) Atlanta, GA Variety Playhouse
Tue Nov 18 '08 (6:30 PM) Washington, DC 9:30 Club
Wed Nov 19 '08 (8:00 PM) New Haven, CT Toad's Place
Fri Nov 21 '08 (7:30 PM) New York, NY Webster Hall
Sat Nov 22 '08 (8:30 PM) Philadelphia, PA Theatre of Living Arts
Boston two-night stand: Mon Nov 24 (7:30) & Tues Nov 25th '08 (7:30 PM) Boston, MA Paradise Rock Club
Sat Nov 29 '08 (8 PM) Millvale, PA Mr. Small's Theater
Sun Nov 30 '08 (TBD) Toronto, ONT Mod Club Theatre
Tue Dec 2 '08 (8:30 PM) Ferndale, MI The Magic Bag
Wed Dec 3 '08 (7:30 PM) Chicago, IL Metro
Fri Dec 5 '08 (9:00 PM) Minneapolis, MN First Avenue
Sat Dec 6 '08 (9:00 PM) Denver, CO Bluebird Theater
Sun Dec 7 '08 (10:00 PM) Aspen, CO Belly Up Aspen
Mon Dec 8 '08 (8:30 PM) Murray, UT Murray Theatre
Wed Dec 10 '08 (9:00 PM) Vancouver, BC Richard's On Richards Cabaret
Thu Dec 11 '08 (9:00 PM) Seattle, WA Showbox at the Market
Fri Dec 12 '08 (8:30 PM) Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom
Sat Dec 13 '08 (9:30 PM) Sacramento, CA Harlow's Night Club
Mon Dec 15 '08 (8:00 PM) San Francisco, CA Bimbo's 365 Club
Tue Dec 16 '08 (9:00 PM) Los Angeles, CA Henry Fonda Theatre
...
Dear Mr. Gaiman (or the man behind the curtain holding Mr. Punch's strings): I have been a big fan of your work for many years, especially your collaborations with Dave McKean. I was very pleasantly surprised when Signal To Noise was recently re-issued, as my old paperback copy was becoming more than slightly battered. If I had to pick a favourite work of the two of you collaborating, that would be it. Such a wonderful book. Okay, now that I've finished with that, I have a question: I have never heard the BBC adaption, and would very much like to -- is it still available for purchase anywhere? I've searched the internet and don't seem to be able to find it. Are there any plans to re-issue it? Hopefully yours,
Slowly coming out of a too-much-travel induced haze, a day at a time. The weather is vaguely evil -- spatters of frozen rain patter and tap against the window-glass. Am typing this in bed, and truly, it's just an enormous link-dump, higgledy piggledy with little rhyme and less reason:
http://www.tribune.ie/arts/books/article/2008/nov/09/enter-sandman (It has my favourite photo caption ever: Neil Gaiman: his relentlessly eclectic attitude has caused difficulties with fans, which made me flash back on conversations with headmasters as a boy, which all seemed to begin, "Gaiman.. it's about your attitude.")
The second of my 2000AD Future Shocks (from September 86) is up at http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=10100 I think it was the fourth comic story I'd ever written, and for quite a while it was the only one I was satisfied with. Looking it over now, I'd noodle the dialogue a bit, but it's still a nice idea.
A while ago I mentioned that I started my day by checking Locusmag.com, the online version of Locus, and got this question:
Why is locusmag.com such required reading? Caveat: I've been an sf pro for nigh unto two decades (ye gods! can it truly be 20 years?), and when I started (before this pesky internet thing existed), Locus (the magazine) was definitely where the news was. But with the growth of the web sites and blogs (and not to break my arm patting my own back, but SFScope.com, too), it seems to me that locusmag.com is sort of a backwater, occasionally posting links to items elsewhere. Their indexes of past information are great, but why do you find it the first stop to find out what's going on?
--Ian
It's mostly due to taste -- I mostly like the links they point to, their news although sparser than other places tends to be real news (I assume they learned their lesson about ever using Wikipedia as a source for anything last week), I'm of an age where when Locus says someone died it's probably someone I know or have met, and partly because it's still the online segment of an SF oriented magazine done by actual journalists with real reporting and criticism in it. SFscope (since you mentioned it) seems to reprint every press release vaguely having to do with SF or fantasy -- it's stuff to winnow through, and I don't want to winnow. There's too much winnowing to do on the web already. I assume that on most days there won't be any news on Locusmag, and I like it that way. Also, it has essays by Cory Doctorow, reprints of bits of interviews and criticism, bestseller lists (within the field and without), and links to things that mostly aren't stupid.
Incidentally, they've put the last issue of Locus up online as an experiment -- you can read the whole interview with Ursula K LeGuin, of which the online extract is merely an extract: it's up at http://issuu.com/locusmag/docs/1k45kdsx87
Authors and Cats in the Guardian: this blog gets a shout out (and then, there's the famous photo of Princess and me in the back of the illustrated STARDUST).
I am a children's librarian on our local county mock newbery committee. We have all read and loved The Graveyard Book, but are wondering if it can be included, due to Mr. Gaiman's status as a British citizen.
We have heard a recent rumor that he has become an American citizen. Is this true? If so, you'd make a large group of librarians very happy.
Sincerely, Sharon Kalman Children's Librarian Paramus, NJ Public Library
1. The Medal shall be awarded annually to the author of the most distinguished contribution to American literature for children published in English in the United States during the preceding year. There are no limitations as to the character of the book considered except that it be original work. Honor Books may be named. These shall be books that are also truly distinguished.
2. The Award is restricted to authors who are citizens or residents of the United States.
3. The committee in its deliberations is to consider only the books eligible for the award, as specified in the terms.
See point two? I'm an American resident. Do not worry.
A few people sent me the link to http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1392-carbon-copies-i-write-dead-people -- pencils made from dead people. I thought that pencils were graphite, not just any old carbon, and wonder how well you could actually write with dead people, or how much of the ash would actually go into the pencils. I do like the idea, though.
I got home half an hour after my birthday was done. Spent yesterday mostly sleeping -- at least, I remember nothing about yesterday other than the moment I looked out of the window and realised it must have been snowing for a while and I hadn't noticed, and watching Sarah Jane Adventures with Maddy, and saying the dialogue a few seconds before the characters did, with the right intonation and everything, which left her suspicious that I'd seen the episode before and left me explaining that, no, I just knew how they went.
I have oodles of links to post and tabs that need closing, but I think I'll save that for a post later tonight, and now take the dog for a walk in the snow: I realised, this morning (at the Dentist's, being fitted for a new sleep apnea mouth-thingummy) that I've been on the road since July, and that my exhaustion is my own silly fault, and that Next Year, except where unavoidable, or where already committed, I will stay in one place more or less and write.
Miriam Berkley (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/MiriamBerkley/) found some photos she took of me back when Sandman started. Sometimes it doesn't seem like twenty years since the first issue of Sandman came out. And then I see a photo of me at just-28, and it does, every minute and every year of it.
(Me, twenty years ago, wearing the first of a long line of black leather jackets.)
Ever since the Compleat Death was announced, people have been writing in wondering why it wasn't an Absolute Edition. People really like the Absolute Sandmans (and I was reading through Absolute Sandman Volume 4 last night, and being really impressed by the size and detail -- particularly on reproduction of the Michael Zulli pencils in The Wake, which are remarkable -- and I could really see why). And, because people kept writing in to me and asking about it, I started wondering why we'd have an edition that would be a different size and shape again from the Absolutes. Recently I talked to people at DC about it (especially as, following the critical and commercial success of the Absolute Sandmans, it was becoming apparent to them that it might make sense to keep these things in the same format) and, at the last possible moment, Paul Levitz came down on the side of keeping the editions consistent and keeping me -- and, I hope, you -- happier (thank you Paul). So, no Compleat Death in March. But there will be an Absolute Death later in the year...
The performance on Saturday Night was fascinating. I hadn't been to the rehearsal, so had no idea what to expect. Essentially, it was eight excellent voice actors (I'd credit them all here, but I didn't grab a programme) performing on each side of the stage while the panels appeared on a large screen. They did "Three Septembers and a January" (the Emperor Norton story) and "The Golden Boy" (The Prez story), and did them extremely well. It made me wonder what it would be like to try and do a bigger story in that format-- "The Doll's House", or "A Game of You", perhaps. Not sure that everything worked but most of it did, and the stuff that didn't work is fixable...
And on Sunday morning I slept until I woke up. Which was a wonderful, happy-making thing.
...
Argh. And that was as far as I got on this yesterday (Sunday).
So the best bit was Chip Kidd interviewing me at the 92nd St Y. Best interview ever -- partly because it was the very last thing of the tour (hurrah) and partly because Chip is a brilliant interviewer. He's funny and smart and makes a comfortable space to talk in -- I'm not sure how to explain it beyond that. If you're a TV network looking for an interviewer, you should hire Chip Kidd. (http://www.goodisdead.com/index.php?/chip_who/)
And then was a signing that went on for a very long time, but again, the knowledge that it was the last one of the tour kept me going -- and everyone was so extremely nice... but I was sort of trashed by the end, and very happy this is now over.
My Nokia N73 started randomly turning itself off last week. It now seems to have more or less given up the ghost. When I get home I'll try updating the software, but I think it's definitely New Phone time. (Hoping that the G1 that Google offered to send is waiting for me when I get home tonight...)
Let's see. I gave the talk in Las Vegas (enormously fun, especially the Q&A bit. Incidentally, for anyone who was there, I checked and the news story I mentioned occurred neither in Pittburgh nor Detroit, but in Philadelphia). Then from there I found myself whisked to a room at the top of a Casino, sitting at another table and signing more books for the people who had funded and helped the Book Festival, and for those who had sprung for an expensive ticket. It was a lot like a normal signing only nobody could hear anything over the music, so if I signed your book to Brian and it should have been to Ryan... er, sorry.
Then I spent most of the day on a plane. (I was meant to be working. Instead, in what is becoming a familiar refrain on this blog, I slept.) Last night I saw Thea Gilmore and Nigel Stonier supporting Joe Jackson (they were wonderful), and met their son Egan again: he's now bigger and blonder.
Now typing in Logan airport -- I've flown up for a family event. Hoping that everything goes according to schedule and I can make it (my cousin Scott's bar mitzvah) and get back to New York in time for the event tonight. I bet I can. It just adds a little excitement to the day.
Charlie Fletcher did the kind of interview in Scotland last week that left me worried that he wouldn't have any interview material as we'd spent the whole time chatting happily. I shouldn't have worried -- his interview is up at http://living.scotsman.com/features/Neil-Gaiman-interview-One-foot.4674238.jp, although I think he would like you to know that he didn't write the headline.
The Dangerous Alphabetconfuses the New York Times reviewer (well, she describes it as "funny, frightening and confusing all at once"). "The humor seems better aimed at older kids than the publisher’s recommended “5 and up.” Call me a goody-two-shoes, but I won’t be reading the words “Q is for Quiet (bar one muffled scream)” to my kindergartner anytime soon," she says. Still, it seems like the kind of mixed review that would let people who would like the book know it was out there...
Here's a complete version of the Manchester Creepy Doll (although I am a bit invisible, for reasons that will become obvious):
Just did a lovely signing -- only about fifty people altogether, which meant that I got to talk to everyone and draw in their books, admire their tattoos and so forth. Really pleasant.
Thank you for all who voted. Consider me retired now from the Hottest Daddy Blogger and Blogitzer categories.
A fun cartoon of Michael Chabon and me at http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/nov/06/comic-book-literature-unmasked-festival/. I like how sleepy I look and how wide-awake he looks. (It makes me a bit sad that I leave Las Vegas and then Michael arrives, and we miss each other this trip. He's one of the world's best people to chat to.)
My friend-the-Emmy-award-winning-writer Michael Reaves talks about how much he hates me on his blog. But I'm linking to the whole blog, and not just that entry (it's called "Why I Hate Neil Gaiman" and is easy to find) because it's all fascinating: Michael is battling Parkinson's Disease, and talks about that, and about other things. http://waretheblog.blogspot.com/
...and here's a tidbit that may help unravel some of why I was in China in September. I don't know if that's a final title (probably not) and the second two books are probably going to be solidly based in this blog (on the theory that of the 1,212,333 words I've written since it began, some of them might be of interest to the world. I think one may be partly about writing) and in case people were wondering, it doesn't mean I'll now write three non-fiction books; it'll probably be a non-fiction, then an adult novel, then an all-ages book, then another non-fiction book...
Michael Crichton is dead. I read and liked some of his books (mostly the pre-1980s ones), some of his movies, and the first season of ER; I don't have any real anecdotes or insight -- we chatted a few years ago at a Harper Collins party, I liked him and oh my god the man was tall. He towered above a room of authors as if we were children. Over at the Guardian Maxim Jakubowski pens a much better appreciation than that, although I knew what he meant when he said,
we once shared a lift in the Random House building in New York some 15 years ago, and I was too dumbstruck by his sheer height to even introduce myself as he had to bend over at 90 degrees to fit his frame into the elevator.
In a Minneapolis airport lounge on my way to Las Vegas, on Fireworks Night. Which seems appropriate somehow.
HELLO
Next time, pleasepleaseplease don't explain that you were moving a beehive around. I never would then have realised that you were in fact wearing a beekeeping outfit and not actually parading around town dressed as a giant bee.
Thank you!
Right. Sorry.
Dear Mr. Gaiman (or the people looking after him), I have just finished reading The Graveyard Book, which I enjoyed immensely. While reading it though, I believe I came upon a small blunder, which you might want to fix: On chapter 5, when Bod is talking to the Lady on the Grey, she says: 'He is gentle enough to bear the mightiest of you away on his broad back, and strong enough for the smallest of you as well' Surely the words gentle and strong were switched? Unless the switch has some poetical meaning that I missed. I hope this helped in some small way. The book I read was the hard cover adult version, ISBN 978-0-7475-9683-7, mistake was on page 161, if it helps any further. Thank you for making the world a bit more pleasant with your words, Yonatan
It's the idea of "the people looking after me" I like.
And that's not a typo, I'm afraid. It's what she said. You'll have to take it up with her, when you see her.
(Someone did send me a terrific list of typos in the author's edition of Neverwhere -- thanks!)
Dear Neil,
It was your mention of NaNoWriMo that finally convinced me to participate for the first time. I'm now the proud creator of 6686 words (and counting), a magical wood, a main character I despise, and a squirrel named Nimrod. I just wanted to thank you.
Now off to continue the adventure.
You're welcome.
Good morning Neil, Because today is such a monumental day in America's history I was wondering if you voted. Well actually, more specifically are you a citizen of the U.S.(and can you vote?) and what prompted you to move here from your native England? Get lots of rest!
Tricia
Nope. I'm still English and cannot vote in US elections. I can vote in the UK kind, though, and sometimes I do.
As to why I moved, it's now lost in the mists of history, but I think it was mostly because I liked the house.
Marrying Fictional Characters request:
Just in case that bloke in Japan gets the law changed I want to get in first so here goes…(takes a deep breath)
Dear Mr Gaiman please may I have Silas’s hand in marriage?
(well all of him if you don't mind, not just his hand)^_^
Thanks in anticipation,
Liz Taylor.
But if you can marry fictional characters, then... well, you can certainly marry Silas. But so can everyone else. And, well, there could be some bigamy, or trigamy or googlamy involved here. That's all I'm saying. And of course, you'd need to get his consent, not mine.
Dear Neil, while you are bouncing around, I am wondering if (given your history of also bouncing around between clean shavenness and scruffiness) you would consider giving a shout out to this site that encourages people to grow mustache in November for a good cause:
Mustaches are, after all, "one of the best things to put on your face" and sported by such mustache as Frank Zappa, Mark Twain, and G. K. Chesterton, and they get even better when worn for charity.
No. Trust me. No. There are things that no-one should ever see, and me in a moustache is one of them. I've seen it from time to time, in the mirror, when shaving off beards, and even I shiver at the memory.
Since you've often said no one noticed when Violent Cases was dropped in price, I noticed that the Coraline audio book has significantly dropped in price, from $22 to $9.95, so, Yay! -Shield
Hi Neil Being back in blighty, you can't have missed the astonishingly bizarre furore over Jonathan's radio show with Russell Brand. I just wanted to show some support for Jonathan, he's an amazingly funny man and if they take him off the air permanently, I for one will no longer listen to BBC Radio. I know he's a friend of yours so I thought you could pass that on. Cheers Helen
It was bizarre, a very small storm in a teacup blown up to monsoon level by the Daily Mail -- I found myself agreeing with Charlie Brooker in the Guardian: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/nov/03/jonathan-ross-russell-brand. They did something stupid. It shouldn't have been broadcast. They apologised to Andrew Sachs, who accepted their apologies, and publically explained that they were all performers, and he was done with it. And then the baying for blood started to get loud, the Prime Minister weighed in, and Jonathan and Russell were soon being burned in effigy. Look, I'm biased, Jonathan is my friend, and he's proved a really good friend over the years; he is also someone who always finds the comedy in going too far (see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8NxWnMhlso to watch me discover the pitfalls of presenting awards on stage with him), but watching the real news suddenly being gazumped by Jonathan -- and Andrew Sachs -- and the Satanic Slut... was just silly. (If you weren't in England or Scotland or Wales, you probably missed this, and have no idea what I'm talking about. And it's just as well.)
***
There. I got on a plane, flew to Las Vegas, got off the plane, discovered that Penn and Teller were doing a "corporate gig" in my hotel, so ate some sushi and then went in search of them. I gave Penn (who wants to keep bees) a round of honeycomb from my hives, and talked about bees and beekeeping, and they in their turn filled me in on the view backstage from Las Vegas magic world, describing an appalling magic show they had seen recently with a angry delight in eviscerating it that made their descriptions sound a hundred times better than enduring the show in question would have been. And then up to the room to write. Where I am now.
If you remember Beanworld, or even if you don't, go and read this interview with Larry Marder at http://thedailycrosshatch.com/2008/10/24/interview-larry-marder-pt-1-of-3/ (and Larry's blog is at http://larrymarder.blogspot.com/). Larry and I were friends for years, stopped being friends during the McFarlane nonsense, when he was working for Todd and not making art, and then went back to being friends again when he stopped working to Todd and started doing comics again.
I have Taken To My Bed, like a young lady with a bad case of the vapors in a Victorian novel, although during the waking bits I'm writing Batman in bed, which young ladies in Victorian novels rarely did. It's just for today. Tomorrow I'll be up and bouncing around, and Wednesday night I'll be flying out to Las Vegas for the festival. But today is a Day Off. I'm enjoying the not going anywhere at all of it all, and the not signing, and the not even trying to stay awake.
Dear Mr.Gaiman,
For the love of God, stop whinging about being tired.
Yours Sincerely,
Cillian Kelly
Good point. The trouble is, the blog is part journal, written in real time, and when I'm on tour time for blogging normally comes out of sleep time, and tired's the thing on my mind. So it gets blogged about. Go back through the blog, over the years, and you'll find it becomes a familiar refrain during touring season. If it bothers you, probably best to stop reading the blog while I'm on tour... but take heart: touring season is almost done.
It's like the way that when a new book comes out I'll always link to the more interesting reviews and the interviews and sometimes even the bestseller lists. Pretty soon people will start writing in to let me know me that they liked the blog when it wasn't shilling for something, but now it's just become an ongoing list of reviews and mentions of placings on bestseller lists and suchlike, which only means that it is Book Publication (or, worse,Film Release) Season, and it too shall pass and then I'll go back to wittering on about cooking or bees or the perils of filing books or bitchcakes or something: the story of The Graveyard Book goes from me burbling about this thing I'm writing, and showing pictures of the handwritten version, through to publication, how it's reviewed and the interviews are part of the blog for a while, and then are swept away by the whirligig of time. Or on the whirligig of time, if we think there's any chance they'll come around again.
***
Those asterisks indicate a break while I put on a bee suit over my pajamas, and went out, with an assistant and a Hans, to move a beehive in the dark. (A sensible time to move a beehive, as all the bees have come home for the night.) (Lorraine tells the story at http://lorraineamalena.blogspot.com/2008/11/moving-hive-in-dark-one-evening.html and she makes it funny and interesting. Also includes a handful of photographs I took of her and the dog, who helped too.)
Then Maddy and I watched the first episode of the new series of Sarah Jane Adventures. Several episodes arrived here yesterday, dropped off by my mysterious DVDealer, and as an unasked-for thank-you I gave him a copy of the Dave Gibbons book Watching The Watchmen. I'd been sent a box of them because I had a drawing in the book, a small joke I drew and gave to Dave Gibbons about 22 years ago. This tells me that Dave Gibbons is much more organised person than I am.
Watching the Watchmen is designed by Chip Kidd, who is brilliant, and who will be interviewing me at the Interview and Signing next Sunday at the 92nd St Y. (Details at http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T-LC5AE04 -- and someone wrote in to point out that while streets are named in this event, there is no mention of what city this will occur in. I expect this means that New York is The City and needs no introduction or something. But it's New York.)
***
Right. Blogging downstairs still in pajamas but now minus the beekeeping suit.
This piece on Orson Welles's WAR OF THE WORLDS broadcast made a lot of sense. One of the times that reality is better than the legend, because it means that people are saner than we were told they were, and that's a good thing.
This is a beautifully constructed book, in which what appears to be a series of episodes in the boy’s life builds up to a structured plot with a satisfying denouement; and Bod is a charming hero, courageous, considerate and polite in the styles of many centuries. Most importantly, this is a book about growing up and about life.
18/20: Billie Piper riding a space-hopper down a cobbled street.
A nice article from MTV about Amanda Palmer & me, and then I clicked on the next link, read what Frank Miller said about his Spirit movie, and decided that given his description of it, I'd probably skip it, but am still happy that it will get a lot of people reading collections of The Spirit who would never have picked up or heard of Will Eisner's wonderful comic otherwise. (You can read about how I first encountered The Spirit in http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/01/spirit-of-seventy-five.asp).
***
Those asterisks were me sleeping, and then waking up with the sun in my face on a beautiful Novembery Election day. In a minute I'll get out of bed and, er, bounce around. Or at least take a shower, get dressed, and go downstairs to investigate the world. Last election day I was writing "Sunbird" to try and take my mind off things. This one, I'm interested, although not interested enough to, as an email from DirecTV just suggested, Watch 8 top networks at the same time on The Election Mix Channel, which in my universe is what they sentence you to an eternity of when hanging doesn't quite go far enough.
So. My movements this week...
I'm talking on Thursday Night at the Las Vegas Book Festival. Details at http://www.lasvegasweekly.com/events/2008/nov/06/3557/ Spend an evening with Neil Gaiman at the Clark County Library. Fantasy novelist and comic-book writer Gaiman has written about enough secret civilizations and alternate worlds that he probably has a pretty good idea of what to do in the event of global collapse. Hear his keynote address to open this year's Vegas Valley Book Festival, and then ask him afterward how to escape to Faerie when the stock market implodes.
For the benefit of anyone reading that in a year or so, that's a journalist trying to make a topical joke, I think.
Also, there's a signing on the Thursday as well...
The signing is happening at 1 p.m. at the 5th Street School (401 S. Fourth St). Attendees can bring one item from home and whatever is purchased on site. If folks can't make it down, signed books will still be available at the door the night of the event.
Then on Saturday night there's a CBLDF event in New York. I've never attended one like this before: actors will be performing while huge Sandman panels appearing behind them. Only a hundred tickets... http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000374.shtml has details.
This very special evening will bring two of the series most beloved stories to life with a multimedia presentation that marries comics and live theater.
Which sounds interesting, anyway. "Three Septembers and a January" and "Golden Boy" (the Prez Story) are the Sandman stories. I'll be there, and will say a few words, but mainly I'm planning to be in the audience.
Then I go home. And I will be completely done with travelling, just in time for the wonderful weather to turn cold, and I will finally get to interact with the RoboPanda...
Home. Very tired, but happy to be back. There's a late-autumnal Indian summer, and I hope it lasts another couple of days...
Here's Creepy Doll in Manchester, from just before the second verse (when a call has gone out for any best-selling authors of scary fiction in the audience to make themselves known, and I have stumbled up onto the stage) to the end.
And here's a much less silly version of the song, without overacting author, but with added ukelele...
Just starting to come back to humanity again. Huge quantities of email waiting for me, some of which will undoubtedly get overlooked, and if you sent me a big important businessy email and I seem to have missed it, then wait a few days and send it again.
The original schedule this week was perfectly fine. It was only when we learned that Monday in Dublin was a bank holiday, and Dublin moved from Monday to Thursday that it became impossible, but none of us actually noticed, so I wound up doing the week on about 4 hours a night's sleep, and yesterday began at 6:00am with me on breakfast TV in Dublin, then I flew to the UK and was interviewed, signed boxes of books, drank tea, then did a reading. Was a bit grumpy at the reading, mostly I think due to lack of sleep. (I learned that it is not a good idea to let your cellphone ring when I'm doing a reading and tired. Nor is it a good idea to take photo after photo when the house-lights have been left up, the digital click on your camera is too loud, and I'm heading for a good bit.) I signed for many, many hours for a lot of people.
Fell asleep fully dressed on hotel bed at some point.
Today was a meeting on The Graveyard Book possible one day film, seeing friends and family, and a trip to see the last French and Saunders show at the Drury Lane, where I got to tell Dawn that I really liked her book of letters, "Dear Fatty". Which I did.
I have an almost infinite number of tabs open, and will list as many as I can, so I can close them and thus speed up this computer:
An interviewer in Wales asked me about Richard Dawkins trying to stop children reading fairy tales. Then a friend sent me a Daily Telegraph article to show that he'd gone over the top. The odd thing about the article is that the quotes from Professor Dawkins don't say what the article says he says, if you see what I mean, and the quotes themselves seem rather devoid of context, as if he was answering questions which we can't see. Odd.
At Said The Gramophone they say: If the Magnetic Fields had been asked by Said the Gramophone to write a Hallowe'en song for us to post today, they would have written Neil Gaiman's "Bloody Sunrise". But Neil Gaiman would have already written it, and submitted it, pretending to be Magnetic Fields, but in that way that you have to start by looking up before you climb. In any case, it's here now, and it's for all of you who are just putting on a zombie movie and having a fire and handing out candy to lonely little happy kids in the evening.
(Michael Hearst helped Claudia and arranged it.)
A CBLDF event on Saturday the 8th of November -- details here. Comics will be performed. I will be in the audience, and will not be performing.
Here's me on the Borders website, wearing the jacket that Jonathan Carroll gave me. I do not appear to be calling for a boycott.
An amazing review of the book in the Independent. From title onwards, The Graveyard Book wears its homage to Kipling's Mowgli stories lightly, but it treats the triumphs and terrors of growing up with equal respect and has a similar delight in storytelling. It's carefully weighted between mystery and revelation, chase and contemplation, banality and outright lunacy: a breathless cross-country abduction by night, featuring a bunch of lolloping ghouls called things such as the Duke of Westminster and the Thirty-Third President of the United States, and the hauntingly evanescent moment in which the dead leave the graveyard to dance with the living townsfolk, are cases in point. And there are at least two moments of sufficient scariness to chill the blood of even the most resilient adult.
This brief, dark, savoury adventure deserves to become a modern classic of children's writing: it has more mystery, excitement and wisdom in a single chapter than all the soap-operatic dilemmas, empty acrobatics and moral dogmatism in those thousands of pages of Potter franchise.
(Like this one.)
(Like this one)
(Like this one.)
(Like this one)
