coolth

Probably nobody except me thinks Moby and Lou Reed playing Walk on The Wild Side together is as cool as I do, but it's my blog, so here it is. (click http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/03/coolth.html to read the post in full if you're on a feed...)




Lou Reed at The Levi's®/FADER Fort from The FADER on Vimeo.

Meanwhile the former WebElf is working hard on the ancient texts from the American Gods part of this blog, making stuff from seven years ago readable as individual entries and adding labels and suchlike. catch her handiwork at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/American%20Gods%20Blog


Right. Off to Laika for round two. Next post should be photos and captions from Miss Maddy...

American Gods Blog, Post 89

I did a wonderful gig -- two sets -- with the Magnetic Fields. I had a busy day meeting people about the DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH animated series, and then meeting HarperCollins people and getting to learn all sorts of cool stuff about e-books and soforth...

And in 50 minutes my book is officially published.

You probably won`t get a long and sensible entry here for a few more days, until I stop moving and can think or at least type in peace.

Scott McCloud sent me his Why I`m Not Neil Gaiman cartoon, and it made me laugh very loudly. You get it for free if you donate to his website. And his website is a wonderful thing.

See you at Borders World Trade Centre tomorrow, if you`re in the NY area. The Libretto is working fine but if the bloody thing has a real apostrophe I can`t find it. So I`m using these. ```

American Gods Blog, Post 88

The Message board on neilgaiman.com should be working on Monday Morning.

Today's Mail brought a Dutch contract for American Gods (I'm always faintly pleased when the Dutch buy the rights to a book, as they all speak terrific English and import UK or US editions anyway).

Therese Littleton's review of American Gods is now up at Amazon.com ... someone else who understood it.

I'm on tour from tomorrow morning, for six weeks....

... wish me luck.

American Gods Blog, Post 87

So Neilgaiman.com went live and ate most of americangods.com. I miss the old-style front page -- I was rather hoping to see what happened to the AMERICAN GODS WILL BE PUBLISHED IN ... counter as soon as we got past midnight on monday the 18th.

So, right now, if you're reading this, you probably have this page bookmarked, because you can't get to the working bloggerjournalthing from the main site.

As the cover note says on the home page, neilgaiman.com is, right now, very much a work in progress. Given another week, everything should actually work. Over the following few weeks it'll become much prettier and better organised, I'll try to get a few more things written for it, find fun archived stuff, we'll have more links to things, all that -- but for right now what you see is more or less what you get.

The message boards look like they may be fun. Feel very free to chip in -- and to use the AMERICAN GODS TOUR section for everything from seeing if you can get a ride to a signing, to, um, meeting up at signings.

webmaster@authorsontheweb.com is the webmaster, and julia.onder@harpercollins.com is the publisher's webperson. If something seems to be broken... tell them. They will want to know. They've moved mountains to get everything up before the 19th of June...

Let's see, what else...? Oh yes. My assistant, the Fabulous Lorraine, has a new CD out. She and writer Emma Bull are a band called The Flash Girls, and they've made their first new album in about five years. (They were geographically challenged.) It's called Play Each Morning, Wild Queen, and it's very cool. (Their last album, Maurice and I, was also very cool, is still available, and has Alan Moore's song "Me and Dorothy Parker" on it.) It has a cover by Michael Zulli, and three songs by me on. Please buy it and make her independently wealthy. You can order it from DreamHaven books in Minneapolis.

American Gods Blog, Post 86

So, just as everything gets REALLY exciting, and I have a day to finish organising everything for the next 6 weeks, do several interviews including an NPR one and an online chat at excite.com tonight...

...comes the news that this blogger may have to be frozen for a couple of days, as the changeover to the still-nascent neilgaiman.com happens behind the scenes. Keep checking in here, as I'll post as soon as it goes live again (and this page will automatically take you over to its new location).

Also just discovered that the old Avon neverwhere pages are completely lost, which is a pity, as they were lot of fun.

And Powells.com have put up that journal entry that got out of hand -- you'll find me talking about it in the archives, fairly early on. It was me trying to explain the book, and it just sort of grew. it's at http://www.powells.com/features/gaiman.html

American Gods Blog, Post 85

There's a story on Inside.com about the Magnetic Fields gig on Sunday -- I've put a pile of stuff onto the Libretto. Now I need to print out everything I might want to read on Sunday night -- there are two different sets, and I'm very tempted to do two completely different readings.

I noticed today that I've suddenly and completely stopped worrying about the tour and the book and all that. It's too late: everything that is going to happen will happen, so I may as well get out there and have fun.

American Gods Blog, Post 84

Some days are instant Christmas. They put a smile on your face...

Today brought...

Tori's CD, Strange Little Girls. It's missing one track, but the other eleven are there. I knew what to expect this time, but my family are spellbound. It's just playing all the time in the background... as surprising and as wonderful the fifth time as it was the first...

The replacement Libretto. Working like a little dream -- I'm just transferring over files from my notebook, then I'll load up Word Perfect and Final Draft, and it'll be all ready for the road.

and... just as I thought the day had brought all the presents it could...

I opened an envelope to see the UK editions of American Gods.

So, first of all, I got to learn that there is indeed a huge trade paperback edition of American Gods in the UK, and a hardback. The hardback is seventeen pounds 99p, the paperback is 10 pounds. Amazon.co.uk has been erroneously listing it as hardback for 10 pounds... so if anyone out there thought that was they'd ordered, they may need to talk to Amazon, or to their local bookshop and make sure they are getting what they want.

(Incidentally, it's 500 pages long, not 352.)

The second thing I learned is that they're doing a very surprising promotion for the hardback, which caused me jaw to drop. I'm not sure I can say anything more about it until I've got an okay from Headline. It raised eyebrows and caused giggles in this house.

Normally the UK hardbacks wind up the most collectible of the editions, as they are printed in the smallest numbers. Looking at this edition, which is lovely, I suspect that may again be true, especially as people who think they've successfully ordered it may have problems getting it...

American Gods Blog, Post 83

There's a cartoon by the incredibly brilliant Gahan Wilson, from his book of the same name, in which a man stares around him at the people worshipping the signs saying "Nothing" and the cathedrals erected with the word "Nothing" on them, in glowing bright lights.

"Is Nothing sacred?" he asks.

The cover of the Hodder -Headline UK edition made me think of that.

American Gods Blog, Post 82

My daughter Holly just came charging in. "Hey Dad!" she said. "You're at 82 on Amazon.com!" She had a huge smile on her face. "That's the highest it's been so far! And it's not even out yet!"

Then her face fell. "I'm away next week," she said. "I won't be here to check for you, while you're off on tour. You could get up really high on Amazon, and you'd never know."

Someone would tell me, I assured her.

"Have you put me in your journal thing again, yet?" she asked. "You know I read it. So far you've only told about the time I made your journal entry vanish. You should say something nice about me."

She is pretty wonderful, actually. Hi, Holly.

American Gods Blog, Post 81

I got a lovely e-mail today from a friend in the UK who'd read American Gods (actually, I got quite a few lovely e-mails today from people who'd read American Gods). This was a lovely letter from someone who'd just devoured it and really enjoyed it (to the point where she seemed almost embarrassed about it -- she knew how long it had taken me to write, and how hard some of it had been to get to work, and she compared herself to someone who just finished off a huge meal that a chef had taken a long time and pains to compare.) I assured her that the main thing for me is just that people enjoy it.

This is from my reply to her:

Remember to tell people about it... I figure word of mouth is my biggest ally
on this one... Try and work it into casual conversation:

"Ooh, I'll have five of those Granny Smiths. And American Gods is a really good book."
"Of course I'd love to write an article for you on 'What the Modern Woman Really Wants'. Read American Gods. When's the deadline?"
"I'm saying that you shouldn't be charging me for a letter telling me that I have an overdraft when the account was actually well in the black. By the way, there's a brilliant book called American Gods you may want to check out."

Which, on a marginally more serious note, seeing the book will be out in five days, and some of you will actually get a chance to read it yourselves, is really my only request to any of you. If you like the book, tell people. Spread the word.

I am reminded of Geoff Ryman's lovely novel 253, which includes a woman whose job is to ride the tube train under london reading a paperback book with delight, occasionally exclaiming aloud on the brilliance and wonderfulness of the book she's reading. Cheap advertising.

American Gods Blog, Post 80

The Libretto L1 arrived today in my P.O. Box. (Express mail through the post office is astonishingly expensive, it turns out.) The Libretto L1 is an amazing, beautiful and magnificent piece of technology. It's like a children's toy: an almost full-size keyboard, a cinemascope screen, it weighs nothing and takes up almost no room.

Unfortunately, after half an hour, the screen light went off and didn't go back on again, just flickered sadly like an old-fashioned fluorescent tube trying to work. The manuals are all in Japanese, so they weren't much help, although they had drawings of smily people plugging their Librettos into things. I called technical support. They said not to worry, they'd send me a new computer.

I said, "Look, if I promise you I'm honestly not an international Libretto thief, would you please just fedex it to the house?"

"Are you... are you the Neil Gaiman who wrote Sandman?"

"Yes."

"Not a problem. You'll have it tomorrow morning."

So there. Big vote of thanks to Shane and Dave at Dynamism.com for all their help, and I'll let you all know what happens next.

(Fedex tomorrow will bring many cool things, including the new Tori Amos CD, for the booklet of which I have to find some words.)

Currently, behind the scenes on the signing tour, lots of logistical stuff is being worked out, last-minute problems are being solved, all that.

Today brought some good news about the Death movie -- with luck I'll have news I can announce before the tour starts.

American Gods Blog, Post 79

On the advice of Terry Pratchett, who is a wise road warrior and is the only person I know who has signed for more people, and in more countries, than me, and seeing it's going to be six weeks of living out of hand-luggage (for there may not be time to check luggage, and I can't risk losing all my socks and black tee shirts to the whims of Northwest Airlines), I decided to buy a Toshiba Libretto, for the road.

(That's a very small, full-featured notebook computer that weighs next to nothing, for the non-technically minded among us.)

I take Terry's advice on things like this. He's always right. I still have, and still (once in a blue moon) use, the Atari Portfolio he talked me into buying about 11 years ago. It runs on a cut-down DOS 2.1 -- I wrote MURDER MYSTERIES on it and THE GOLDFISH POOL & OTHER STORIES and more episodes of Sandman than I can count -- and I'd use it more except I feel faintly ashamed of being seen using such antedeluvian technology when in the company of all the cool geek people I know. They have transparent plastic things that are violently green at you, and which take photographs, order take-out, check for the nearest good sushi restaurant, download basketball scores and double as mobile phones, all at the same time. My Portfolio is only good for writing stuff and storing addresses and phone numbers. Which is all I ever use it for, not having much interest in basketball, and being a writer. I think I once managed to prove it was possible to get e-mail on it some time in 1992, and never tried again....

Sorry. Got a bit nostalgic there for a second.

So. Flash new Toshiba Libretto. It's not a palmtop, it's a subcompact notebook, which seemed closer to what I wanted. I checked the web...

They don't retail them anywhere but Japan any more. But there's a company that imports them. And the new Libretto L1 has just been released. Like, a few days ago.

I sent an e-mail to the sales guy at the company yesterday and asked if they could get me one before I left on tour. His e-mail arrived today. Absolutely. Just call and order and they'd overnight it to me.

It seemed so simple. I was thrilled. I called immediately...

Someone answered the phone.

I started to order a Libretto L1, using a corporate credit card.

If you write for Hollywood, you become a corporation whose sole asset is you and whose function consists of lending you out. (Honest. You think I could make that up?) Mine is called The Blank Corporation, because I went blank when they asked me what name I wanted it to be when they were filling in the corporate paperwork. I think the company logo is a blank sheet of paper, roughly 8" by 11". So there is a Blank Corporation credit card that I never use, and I thought, finally, I can buy something that's an honest to goodness business expense with the card.

I gave the guy on the other end of the phone the credit card number. He said they could only send it to the Card billing address. I said ow, that wasn't going to work, as that address was in LA, and I'm not, and getting the people who run the corporation in LA to authorise things might take a couple of days -- I wasn't even sure if I knew how to talk to the card issuers.... Still, not to worry. Plan B seemed straightforward enough. I put the card away (still, I think, unused), and pulled out my normal everyday not-corporate-at-all credit card.

Gave him the number of the new card. He asked for the Billing address, and I began "P.O. Box..."

"I'm sorry," he interrupted. "We don't deliver to PO Boxes."

"Not a problem," I said. "I'll give you the house address for FedEx to deliver to..."

"But it's not the billing address?"

"No, the bills go to the PO Box, but FedEx doesn't deliver to PO Boxes, so we get FedEx to deliver to..."

"I'm sorry. We can't do that. We can only send it to the billing address."

"But you've just told me you can't send it to the billing address."

"We don't deliver to PO Boxes."

"So you're saying you can't send me the computer."

"Well, yeah."

"Um. If you don't mind me asking.... Does anyone else in America import Toshiba Librettos?" I figured, if someone else did, I'd call them instead.

"Nope. Just us." He didn't seem perturbed by the question. I guessed he heard it a lot.

"So you're telling me that you won't deliver to PO Boxes, and you can't deliver to the house?"

"Well, how do we know it's your house? You could have stolen a credit card, and this could be a deserted house down the block you want us to deliver to."

"Er, yes, but it's not. It's my house."

"People do it all the time. That's why we only ship to billing addresses."

"Yes, but you won't ship to my billing address, will you? Anyway, you'll have the phone number and the PO Box number. For heaven's sake, I've ordered a thousand things and this is the first time.."

"Hey, this is $3000 of computer equipment you're trying to order! People scam for a lot less than that. You can get phone numbers easy as anything, rent PO Boxes. We don't know this isn't a stolen card."

I thought about pointing out that, for $3000 of computer equipment, I was kind of expecting someone helpful on the other end of the phone. I thought about pointing out that, if it was a brilliant credit card fraud, and the card company approved the transaction, then they won't be out any money. I thought about dusting off the Atari Portfolio and pretending it was a grand retro gesture...

Instead I said "Look, I can't be the first person ever to try and order something who had a PO Box and wanted it shipped to a house address..."

"We can only ship it to a billing address," he said. He had that one down cold. "Or you could do a wire transfer."

I said that that wasn't going to happen. I was getting testy. I've been in the US too long, I suppose -- I'm sort of used to trying to buy goods and services from people who are actively trying to sell them to you. I said there had to be a way for him to sell me a computer and could we please resolve this...

There was a long pause. And then he said, doubtfully, "I guess we could send it by the postal service. They deliver to Post office boxes, don't they?"

I assured him that they did.

And he said, yes, they could do that, he guessed. They couldn't overnight it, but I'd get it by friday, with the US postal service. I said I hoped so. He took the details, said they'd fax me a bill for me to sign and send back to them.

The fax, when it arrived, included a charge for Fedexing the package. I carefully wrote on it "If sending by Fedex please deliver to ... " and the house address, before I faxed it back, not because I was trying to be clever, but because I had a sudden presentiment of the people at the company finding themselves suddenly and unexpectedly unable to get me a little computer, "because Fedex doesn't deliver to PO Boxes".

So I leave on tour in six days. Off to do the Magnetic Fields gigs and then to start signing my way across the States, the UK and Canada. With luck, I'll be keeping up this journal, typing on planes and in cars, and posting it from hotel room phone lines.

And with a lot of luck, I'll be typing it on a Toshiba Libretto L1, and not on an Atari Portfolio. Not even as a grand retro gesture.

American Gods Blog, Post 77

Strangely enough, I just realised that the last two posts haven't published, although Blogger obviously thinks they did. (note added later. They have now.)

Up early this morning to put comments on a zip disk filled with photos, going off to the neilgaiman.com site people. I don't yet have much of a sense of what they're doing or putting up, but we can modify it as we go. Yes, this journal will stay alive through the tour (for a start, it may be the easiest way to let people know what's happening in case of any sudden changes), and I expect it'll stay here and we'll link to it from neilgaiman.com...

Cheryl Morgan, who does a zine called Emerald City, e-mailed me her review of American Gods, which made me very happy, not because it was a good review (which it was, in both senses, favourable and well-written) but because Cheryl had clearly read the same book that I was trying to write. (As perhaps opposed to a recent interviewer, who kicked off with "Well, I've read your book. You must really hate America, huh?")

....

To summarise yesterday's lost annotation blog -- I want to make a space on neilgaiman.com where there can be, if people have any interest in doing it, annotations of American Gods. Partly because I'm sure that people will enjoy sharing knowledge ("Actually, both the Burma Shave ads Gaiman quotes are invented, and the Largest Carousel in the World does not play the Blue Danube Waltz..."), partly to help the Casual Reader ("Czernobog, also spelled Chernobog or Tcharnobog, was a dualistic slavic winter god now remembered chiefly for his appearance as the black winged thingie who appears in 'A Night on Bald Mountain' in the original Fantasia...") and partly as a help to translators around the world, who are good people with a thankless task, but who can sometimes get the wrong end of a stick, or just not know where to look for information.

(I saw a recent edition of Stardust -- and I will not embarrass anyone by saying from which country -- where "Redcap" was annotated as "Bow Street Runner, an early policeman" and "Unseelie Court" was demonstrated to be a nonsense word derived from the three English Words "Un" "See" and "Lie"; which showed me that the translator lacked a dictionary of fairies -- for a redcap is a rather nasty goblinish fellow, with teeth, while the Unseelie Court is the Court of all creatures of Faerie who are actively antipathetic to people, all the ogres and suchlike.)

Don't know whether we'll do it with a message board, an e-mail list, or an e-mail to a central e-mail address yet. I'll probably keep half an eye on it -- not to censor it (I have no problem with the 'Gaiman clearly has no idea how the internal combustion engine actually works, as what he describes here is impossible...' type posts) but just to make sure it doesn't contain information that is simply wrong. (Such things have been known. See "unseelie" above.)

Now to post this... and to hope it publishes...

American Gods Blog, Post 76

When will I learn? Long blog about Annotations written. Pressed publish. It said it has done it... but instead it has sent it off into the space of dead words.

Lone and bereft I shall stop writing for a little and take small daughter for a walk instead.

Yes, I know. Copy it before posting or publishing. Or use a text editor. Don't just sit down and type. I know. I DO know that. Yes.

signed

will write annotation thing again tonight probably

American Gods Blog, Post 75

Dianna Graf (a very nice Tasmanian lady who used to have fuchsia hair and
work as a fairy but currently doesn't) posted this on the Well today,
apropos of me coming to Australia to sign books...

Are the bookshops supposed to wait for the publisher to
contact them? Or are they supposed to contact the publisher first to
express interest? i debated this with my local friendly bookstore owner
yesterday and i hope i have convinced him to just take the plunge and
make the call rather than wait

And this was what I wrote in reply...

Dianna -- well, obviously any bookstore can sit back and wait for the
publisher to contact them.

But if the publisher has the budget to send me to (say) five cities,
and they've received enquiries from five cities, then a bookstore in
the sixth city may sit by the phone for a long time.

And it may be that the publisher might phone a different store in that
city. Or that another store in the same city has already phoned to
ask.

Publishers like to send authors to places that they know are
enthusiastic and interested. Unless your store owner is the *only*
bookstore in a city you know I *have* to go to then it's much smarter
for him to call the publisher...

I got some fanmail today grumbling about evil Harper Collins not
sending me to the US southeast on my tour; but I'm pretty sure that if
stores from the southeast -- from Florida say -- had made a noise about
how much they wanted me, I'd be signing there.

I'm going to be signing in Seattle mostly because Duane at the University
bookstore made sure that Harper Collins knew that he wanted me for this
signing two years ago, kept after them, pointed out how many books
he'd sold on my last signings there, and he'd book an auditorium for me
to speak and sign in... And so HarperCollins said yes. I'm going to San
Diego because the guys at Mysterious Galaxy were so keen on getting me
there, that, at a point where I wasn't going to go there, they offered
to fly me in to do a signing on their own dime, and the enthusiasm they
showed meant that Harper rejigged the schedule to send me.

I'd add to that that there are only so many places you can go on a tour,
and so many weeks on a tour, so you're never going to please everyone. And
just asking and being enthusiastic doesn't mean that a store will
definitely get a signing -- but it certainly increases the chances of me
turning up and sitting and defacing books...

I said here a while ago I'd post the advice to stores I wrote for Andy Heidel (who was
the publicist at Harper before Jack Womack) to send out to stores for the
Stardust tour in 1998. I cunningly wrote it in the third person so people
would think Andy wrote it. I don't think I fooled a soul.

(Anyway, I went and found it on the hard disk. Incidentally, if you're
planning to come to a signing, I already wrote a list of helpful things like this
for people attending the signings. It's in the archives.)
...........................................................................
.......................

So you're hosting a Neil Gaiman signing...

Here are our suggestions for the Neil Gaiman signing tour. Many of them are
self-evident, but you never know...

Before the event:

Neil will sign books for any members of the staff who need them signed, and
any books that people have bought and left to be signed or phone-ordered,
before the reading and the signing.

Neil will use his own pen for signing most articles, but even so, have some
black felt tips, some silver and/or gold pens (thin felt-pen type), and a
Sharpie or so on hand. You never know what he'll need to sign.

The Reading:

Neil will do a 15-30 minute reading first, followed by a short Q & A
session. (He‚ll do a longer reading in those stores which are organising
events in auditoriums). Please do your best to ensure that there is space
enough that all attendees can hear the reading.

If your store needs to have a microphone for the reading, please have one.

The Signing:

We strongly suggest that if you‚re expecting a signing of over than 150
people that you issue numbers to the attendees. Blocks of numbers can then
be called to queue up as needed (ie. "Now signing for 75 and below...".

In the past this has proved the most successful way to run large signings,
as it allows those with higher numbers to browse the store (and, in the
case of a really big signing, even to go and get something to eat) while
waiting for their block of numbers to be called.

It helps prevent a stampede after the reading, keeps people good-tempered,
and allows you to sell merchandise to the people in your store for the
signing.

(Some stores would also use the numbers for a raffle, as well as for
gathering names and addresses for mailings.)

Some common questions:

Can people take photos of Neil?

Sure.

Are there going to be limits on what can be signed?

Common sense is the watchword on this. Normally Neil will sign 3 items that
people bring, along with anything of his they buy in your store for the
signing. If 600 people show up however, that might well be cut to one item
plus what they buy, or something like that. It depends on how many people
show up, and how much time there is, and when your store closes.

He will also try to sign for everyone there for the signing.

If the line is short enough, people with extra things they want signed can
go round again. If the line is long, then they can't.

Will he personalise books?

Gladly.

Does he want little post-it notes with people's names written on
them, then?

No, he figures asking people their names is an automatic icebreaker. But he
does want things out of plastic bags before he signs them.

How long will he sign for anyway?

As long as it takes. He'd like to take a break every 90 minutes or so, for
the bathroom, to snack, to flex his hand, or just to spend 5 minutes not
signing anything. Check if he needs a break, but don't push it if he says
no.

Does he want someone with him at the signing table?

There should be someone around there to keep an eye on the line, to make
sure it keeps moving, and that if someone seems to be trying to make Neil
read their novel, look at their whole art portfolio, or discuss philosophy, to
move in and say "Sorry, there are lots of people waiting..."

By the way, no interviews during signings. Every now and then a journalist
or would-be journalist decides that the middle of a signing is the best
place to turn up and try to do an interview. It's not.

Incidentally, Neil says that if the Mad Fan with the Gun shows up he would
very much like it if a member of staff would take the bullet; but he
appreciates that this is a lot to ask.

Is that likely?

Not at all. It was a joke. Actually, on the whole, Neil's fans are
remarkably nice.

Would he like anything special to eat or drink?

Clearly Canadian (one of the berry flavours) to drink; no real preferences
as to snack food, but Neil still says nice things about the stores on the
last tour who had sushi rolls there to nibble on.

After the signing:

Neil's fans often give him gifts. Whoever is looking after him will
probably take care of posting them back to him; if not, he'll give you an
address to send them to.

After the signing is over, is the time to get shop stock signed, if there's
enough time, and he can still hold a pen. Reasonable quantities of stuff,
anyway.

.....

(I picked Clearly Canadian -- a bottled, fizzy, sweet water --
because I figured it was really easy to find, and it's not caffeinated,
which can be useful if you really have to sleep as soon as you'll get back
to the hotel at midnight, and have to be out of the hotel by 5:30am. I was
wrong -- there are lots of parts of the States where Clearly
Canadian is impossible to find, and there were indomitable booksellers
who worked miracles, or were broken hearted because they hadn't managed to
work miracles, to get me some sugary fizzy water. I didn't have the heart
to tell them that ginger ale would have been fine. I think on the current
version of the thing that Jack Womack actually did rewrite himself, it just
says something like fizzy water.)

And -- pretty obviously -- the above were guidelines for stores. They are
free to -- and can -- set their own rules about how the signing runs, what
gets signed and so on. If you have any queries, phone the store. If the
person answering the phone doesn't have a clue, ask to talk to someone who
does.

.........................................................................

And talking about Stardust, I saw the Harper Perennial edition
today, and it made me very happy. The mass market edition was kind of
unfortunate -- it tried very hard to look like a generic fantasy book,
which it really isn't. The trade paperback edition looks like a fairy tale
for adults -- the cover is a photograph of a wood, with something strange and glittery happening on it. It looks cool. More to the point, it looks appropriate.

American Gods Blog, Post 74

Let's see... First things first. The Beverly Hills Library just realised they'd double booked the evening of the 29th. So:

Due to scheduling conflicts at the Beverly Hills Library, the second of Neil Gaiman's two Los
Angeles-area events will be taking place at the originally-announced venue:

Friday, June 29, 2001 7:00 PM (PDT)

BOOK SOUP
8818 Sunset Boulevard
West Hollywood, CA 90036
1-800-764-BOOK
.....

Also the Canadian signings at the bottom of the tour page are in Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria respectively.

And http://www.americangods.com/excerpt.html now has a real excerpt, with italics and everything.

The whole of Snow Glass Apples is now up at scifi.com -- http://www.scifi.com/set/playhouse/snowglassapples/ first and second parts...

...

Over at barnes and noble they've put up some very solid reviews, by Bill Sheehan and Sharon Bosley respectively.

"Like all such extravagant epics, American Gods is -- as Gaiman clearly acknowledges -- a vast, multi-colored metaphor that has much to say about our ongoing need for meaning and belief and about the astonishing creative power of the human imagination. The result is an elegant, important novel that illuminates our world -- and the various worlds that surround it -- with wit, style, and sympathetic intelligence, and stands as one of the benchmark achievements in a distinguished, constantly evolving career."

That's what Bill says. (He wrote a wonderful book about the fiction of Peter Straub, by the way.)

American Gods Blog, Post 73

Dropped out, with regret, from the Spanish convention in early August. I figure I'll have been on a pretty gruelling signing tour through three countries from June 17th to July 25th, with only a couple of days off, for a total of about 17 plane journeys including a transatlantic run to England and back; and that the last thing I needed immediately following that was a coach class flight to Spain, even for a con that sounds very relaxing and delightful.

So an apology to any Spanish people who were looking forward to getting things signed. Maybe next year.

American Gods Blog, Post 72

So I spent today, as I will spend tomorrow, working on writing a circus. Something I've always wanted to do, which is why I'm currently writing it. (The young lady who runs the circus in question spent a year or so not taking no for an answer from me, and her persistance seems to have paid off. I spent most of today saying things to her like "Can you do this...?" and "What about this...?" and at one point phoning an expert and getting a hasty lecture on the fluorescent qualities of laser beams for something I started wondering about.)

Seeing I plugged a lot of other people's stuff yesterday, I thought I'd point out that The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish makes a really cool Fathers Day present. (Yay! to Amazon.com for featuring it on their kids page.)

And yay! to Morrow for getting out the American Gods newsletter.

Incidentally, if you've received the newsletter with the extract from American Gods in it, I should point out that in that extract, in the phrase "the titter skin-crawling horror" the word "titter" should be "utter", and for that matter that the sentence "He practiced coin tricks from a book lie found in the wasteland of the prison library; and lie worked out;" reads better if you replace the word "lie" with the word "he".

(I hope when they put up the www.americangods.com/excerpt page that they'll put it up from a clean text.)

....

More reviews today -- an enthusiastic one from the Barnes and Noble Explorations magazine, a nice mention from the NY Post, and one from Booklist, where the reviewer, who had loved Neverwhere and Stardust, hated it -- the kind of complete and entire hate where the reviewer doesn't even stop to point out the things he liked about the book, if there were any. He just seemed to wish it was another book entirely, a kind of "this is spinach and I don't like spinach" review: I think Coraline (which comes out next May) will be to his taste.

...

Also brought home several boxes of books, notebooks and such from the office, to compile a sort of core of references I used writing American Gods for NeilGaiman.com. It'll be incomplete, but a good place to start. (The single most useful reference work was probably A Dictionary of Northern Mythology, by Rudolf Simek.)

And I copy-edited a poster of my poem INSTRUCTIONS with art by Brian and Wendy Froud, which will be coming out this summer in a signed, limited edition, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I think it's going to be popular, on the basis that my assistant and my daughter have both extracted a promise from me that they can get one when they come out, from the proof knocking around the office.

(if it's sucessful, we might do a poem I wrote for my goddaughter, as a benefit for RAINN...)

....

Ah, the Chapter One excerpt is up at www.americangods.com/excerpt.html (they left off the html on the newsletter). It's kind of odd -- all the italics have fallen out as well. I'll see if we can get a cleaner copy up...

American Gods Blog, Post 71

This morning brought the new Locus magazine, which is not the same as the online Locus, and had two reviews of American Gods, one by Gary Wolfe, which I enjoyed -- lot of very interesting points -- and one by Jonathan Strahan, which was pretty solid. Both were very positive.

I'm still very tempted to review the reviews, though.

The Writers Write website also has a review up, at
http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jun01/fansf.htm

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My comment on hoping that they didn't dig out and print all the stuff Douglas Adams didn't want published while he was alive seems to have been an unfortunate foreshadowing of events to come. See this slashdot article and its referent.

I went browsing through my hard disk and found the last will I wrote -- which reminded me that I really need to write another will that reflects things like the country I currently live in and how many kids I have -- and checked what I'd written a decade ago on the subject of unfinished stuff etc.

At some point I'll need to figure out exactly what I want done with fragments, juvenilia, unpublished stuff, and so forth (when I do I'll codicil or amend this will). In the meantime on my death all computer back up tapes, disks, and hard disks are to be placed in a bank vault, along with any personal papers, letters, poems, and so forth; they aren't to be released for at least 50 years following my death, by which time I trust I'll be decently forgotten anyway. Anything recently completed should by assessed by my literary executors on its merits.

Which is more or less how I feel ten years on. Although I do need to get my finger out on assembling the material for Dreamhaven's "B-Sides and Rarities" book and the poetry collection. (Really, all I need is a week. Just a quiet week with nothing else to do. Maybe four days...?)

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Still listening to American Gods the audio version. It's really good -- George Guidal manages an awesome array of voices, and is a magnificent reader. (I wish I could say that I''ve been listening with unmixed pride, but in fact a couple of times now I've pulled out a copy of the book and checked that a sentence was in fact that badly written, and have marked it to be fixed for the next edition.)

American Gods Blog, Post 70

There's an e-mail interview about American Gods on the Barnes and Noble site here.