Yesterday the sun shone. I made friends with the family next door and signed their copy of The Graveyard Book and patted their dogs. "Finally," I said. "It's finally warm here in Florida!" I think I must have said it too loud. Today the world went grey and chill and it rained and rained and rained. Which still puts me in a better position than people a few hundred miles north of me, stranded on iced-in traffic jams.
I'm missing Twitter, but mostly because I really want to use it to make me exercise. I love being able to tell nearly 2 million people I'm going to go and jog, and then I have to do it. It's not the same when I tell the walls.
Let's see. On the secrets revealed, front: You can expect a little smidge of news about two of my books being adapted into two TV series very soon, with a third to follow. Real news, very soon, promise.
If you are in the UK, and you are a member of the Barbican you can buy tickets tomorrow morning for the reading of my story, THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS on the 4th and 5th of July 2014. If you aren't a member of the Barbican, you must wait until Friday morning to buy tickets.
THE TRUTH IS A CAVE... won the Locus Award for best Novelette, and the Shirley Jackson Award for best Novelette as well. Eddie Campbell is an amazing artist (and he co-hosts the evening with dry Scottishness) and the Four Play String Quartet are the most wonderful musicians.
I'll read the story, while Eddie Campbell's paintings are projected above me and the astonishing Four Play string quartet plays underscore music. We've done it twice before now, at a very sold out Sydney Opera House, where it was originally performed, and in Hobart to about 3,000 people at the MONA FOMA festival. Each time to very happy audiences.
There will be the reading of the story (and paintings and music). There will be a Q and A. There's other things that get read as well...
You can see video extracts from the Sydney Opera House performance at http://play.sydneyoperahouse.com/index.php/media/1152-neil-gaiman-the-truth-is-a-cave-in-the-black-mountains.html and at http://youtu.be/BQ65W7_eeic?t=2m44s.
Four Play did the Simpsons Theme and the Doctor Who theme that was our interval music during the last EVENING WITH... at the Town Hall. Probably you want to hear their Doctor Who theme. Here you go:
I'm missing Twitter, but mostly because I really want to use it to make me exercise. I love being able to tell nearly 2 million people I'm going to go and jog, and then I have to do it. It's not the same when I tell the walls.
Let's see. On the secrets revealed, front: You can expect a little smidge of news about two of my books being adapted into two TV series very soon, with a third to follow. Real news, very soon, promise.
If you are in the UK, and you are a member of the Barbican you can buy tickets tomorrow morning for the reading of my story, THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS on the 4th and 5th of July 2014. If you aren't a member of the Barbican, you must wait until Friday morning to buy tickets.
THE TRUTH IS A CAVE... won the Locus Award for best Novelette, and the Shirley Jackson Award for best Novelette as well. Eddie Campbell is an amazing artist (and he co-hosts the evening with dry Scottishness) and the Four Play String Quartet are the most wonderful musicians.
(Photo of the rehearsal from Eddie Campbell's blog, here.)
There will be the reading of the story (and paintings and music). There will be a Q and A. There's other things that get read as well...
You can see video extracts from the Sydney Opera House performance at http://play.sydneyoperahouse.com/index.php/media/1152-neil-gaiman-the-truth-is-a-cave-in-the-black-mountains.html and at http://youtu.be/BQ65W7_eeic?t=2m44s.
Four Play did the Simpsons Theme and the Doctor Who theme that was our interval music during the last EVENING WITH... at the Town Hall. Probably you want to hear their Doctor Who theme. Here you go:
This will be its first ever performance in Europe. Two performances, I should say, as we are doing the Friday night and then the Saturday too.
Tickets go on sale to the general public (not Barbican members) on Friday morning at 10 am UK time. If the Fortunately The Milk* reading (which wound up like this) was anything to go by, the tickets will sell fast, so do not put off buying tickets until May.
The link to click on -- and I'll try and remember to do a timed WhoSay post to remind you all, when the tickets actually go on sale to the general public on Friday, will be... http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?id=16044.
What's that you say? Wouldn't it be nice if we could also perform it somewhere like San Francisco or New York...? Hmm. Let me think about that one.
Oh. There are about 20 tickets left for the Symphony Space PRI "Selected Shorts" EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN on May 7th: http://www.selectedshorts.org/onstage/detail/8015
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Anyone who is feeling like they would like More Culture in their lives should go and check out the BBC's CULTURAL HERITAGE site: 75 people talk about 75 things -- books, songs, music, TV, films, poems, paintings (I talk about a painting). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016p5mb/profiles/creative-minds
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016p5mb/profiles/creative-minds?page=2
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I was fascinated by this article: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/school-ditches-rules-and-loses-bullies-5807957 and what it says about over-regulating children at playtime.
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Thank you so much to the The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) for choosing THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE as one of their Outstanding Audiobooks
Gaiman, as both author and narrator, immerses listeners in a modern fairy tale in which two stalwart children pit themselves against dark and relentless terrors. Through an exquisite management of pace and inflection, his voice becomes the story’s doorway just a surely as any rabbit hole or wardrobe.
http://rusa.ala.org/blog/2014/01/26/breaking-news-rusas-2014-listen-list-highlights-audiobooks-that-provide-extraordinary-listening-experiences/
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Here's a video from Upworthy taken from last year's Connecticut Forum, with Neil Degrasse Tyson and me talking about How To Be Happy: http://www.upworthy.com/wanna-see-something-brilliant-take-a-few-days-off-then-look-in-the-mirror?c=ufb1
* This book:
(Picture from here.)
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And finally, here's a fun little article on Maps (including Maps of Mythical Places) from the New Yorker blog. I'm pretty sure the stuff in it about Pauline Baynes drawing the maps in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is tosh -- she drew beautiful maps of Middle Earth as posters, but the Pauline Baynes map for Lord of the Rings came out in 1969, long after the book was published with its map in it.
Labels: Bullying, Culture, fourplay, maps and mapmakers, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains