Oh to Be In England etc etc

In the UK for Eastercon. It's nice to be home (and amazing how comfortingly home it still feels after 16 years away).

I noticed that Terry Moore's STRANGERS IN PARADISE won the GLAAD award for Best Comic -- congratulations. Somewhere I have the beautiful GLAAD award that Sandman took for the same thing, about a decade ago. And then I read the small print of the Awards Press Release and realised with pleasure that STARDUST took the award for Outstanding Film (Wide Release) -- I was very pleased for Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman (and Robert De Niro), but wish that I'd known that it was happening. I called Matthew and Jane and told them. I wonder who accepted the award -- someone at Paramount? It says on the press release the awards ceremony will be telecast on Bravo, so I'll set the TIVO and find out.

The Eastercon is at a hotel near Heathrow, and because I took Silverjet in to the UK (this is the second time I've flown them, and I'm really impressed. The tickets are much cheaper than regular business class, every seat on the plane is business class, and you don't have to worry about checking in for an international flight many hours beforehand, as they have their own little check-in-lounges at the airports. I hesitate in plugging them because right now it's easy to get seat and to change flights) I landed in Luton, where I was picked up by a Taxi from the convention, which was a nice surprise (especially when I saw the lines of stopped traffic outside Heathrow).

I had a bath and then slept some more.

The con is, I am told, pretty full, but there are still memberships and day memberships.

I'm doing a signing on Saturday at 4.00, and my Guest of Honour speech/reading is Sunday at 2.00pm. There's another signing "on scooters" I am assured, on Sunday night at 8:15.

As a sort of general thing at the con, if you see me and I don't seem to be doing anything, and you have something with you you want signed, and you sidle over and mutter "It's for Norman" (if your name happens to be Norman) then I'll probably scribble on it for you.

Right. About to wander out into the world to see old friends and make new ones.

I have noticed that you look identically cool-writery in all your photos. I would like to know how this is done, please. When I'm in family photos whoever's taking it looks at the camera screen and gets a little frown and then they say "we'll just do that one again." I'll say sorry and then they say "That's alright, dear, you can't help it." and they take four or five and then just give up and email whichever one had my eyes most open and my mouth most closed.

Is there some trick?

Yes. You don't let anyone put the photos of you with your eyes shut, or with a goofy grin, or looking like you just dropped something, or drooling, on the back of a book or in a newspaper. Then people think that you always look like that.

Hey Neil,

I love your audio books. Listening to you reading is like having my Dad read me a bedtime story. Will you be reading The Graveyard Book and if so when will it be available?

Looking forward to it...

Thanks

Claire
I'll record it within the next month or so and it should be out in September when the book comes out.

I'm also planning to collect together all the live readings of chapters from the Graveyard Book as well... maybe make them downloadable or watchable from http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff.

So probably a thousand people have asked by now, but what does coffee which has been partially digested by a civet cat taste like? I've never quite been willing to shell out the extra money to find out. Is it worth it?

It was a perfectly nice, fairly mild, not-at-all acidic coffee -- with an astonishing caffeine kick to it. But I'm a tea drinker, not a coffee drinker, and while I could probably describe different teas in ways that might communicate things to other tea drinkers, when it comes to coffee it was a very nice, not-bitter, not-acid, cup of coffee, and someone else will have to describe the underlying notes of cinnamon and vanilla and red wine in civet-coffee, for it will not be me.

A miscellania of things to click on

On the subject of all things Terry Pratchett, there is a North American Discworld convention in "Phoenix, Arizona over Labor Day Weekend, 2009 (Sept 4-7, and maybe September 3 as well)" -- details at http://www.nadwcon.org/.

(Terry's also noted that while Matchitforpratchett is unofficial, this link isn't: https://www.committedgiving.uk.net/art/public/donor.aspx?id=cc)

A first review of The Dangerous Alphabet, the odd alphabet book by Gris Grimly and me, at http://editoon.com/sandbox/?p=849.

You can watch Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman collecting an award for Stardust at the Empire Awards. (It took Best SF/Fantasy film, beating some very worthy contenders, so worthy that neither Jane nor Matthew had thought to even jot down an acceptance speech.)

Susanna Clarke's short story Mrs Mabb can be listened to for the next 6 days via http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_play.shtml click on Tuesday.

I really loved the New Yorker article on Jamy Ian Swiss and magic (Jamy was my coin magic adviser on American Gods -- see http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/03/american-gods-blog-post-10.html). It doesn't seem to be online, but you can hear Adam Gopnik talking about it at http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/03/17/080317on_audio_gopnik

--again, just trying to close some tabs before I head off to the UK in the morning, for Eastercon (http://www.orbital2008.org/). Hope I get to see you there...

...

Apologies to everyone who wrote from the Portland area asking if I would be doing a signing and if not would I sign just for you. Nope. Maybe next time (as it was I spent a couple of hours signing for all the hundreds of modelmakers, animators, costumers, carpenters and other wonder-workers at Laika. Mostly people's books and Coraline posters, but a few odd things including a naked Miss Forcible).

Gallivant's travels

It was fun.

(I'll do a slightly dessicated version here, because I'm in the lounge at Narita and don't have long before my plane boards now...)

I was brought in for the Ad Congress -- I gave a talk about the imagination and why it is a good thing, and then, on Saturday morning, did a reading of the complete first chapter of The Graveyard Book, an interview and a signing for about 200 people (it was only meant to be for the first 100 in the line -- some of whom started lining up at midnight -- but I added in about an extra 45 minutes signing at the end). Then to Manila -- on the way I read the finalists for the Philippine Graphic/Fiction Awards, and was really impressed by the quality of the prose stories. Fully Booked runs the awards, and on Saturday morning I found myself sitting in Fully Booked while stacks of copies of Expeditions were put in front of me to sign. These were the two collections (prose and comics) of winners and runners-up from the first Award, last year. Many interviews followed, and a mass press conference. And then, in the afternoon, I had the odd experience of being a magician's assistant (for local magician Erik Mana) and awards presenter, in front of a large crowd (and despite the rain), and I announced the thing we're adding to the awards for next year (a short films category), and at one point I dragged Mike up on stage with me (when I was asked about being a children's author and having children), and I sort of promised I'd come back for the third round, and that I'd do a signing if I did...

(I loved the whole trip but it was made much more fun by having a son with me.)

Then dinner with the winners and judges from this year and last year's competition.

Back to the hotel, and up at 5.00am to leave Manila. And now I'm here.

Expect postings to decrease between here and Xmas. I have a book to finish, and I'm done gallivanting, I hope...

Horse races and horse trading

It's an electronics not working kind of a day. My voice mail isn't working, for example. Meanwhile, right now I'm waiting for an Internet tech support man to ring back. I told him that the internet was slow, and he sounded very doubtful and suggested that I do a speed test. I did. It's running at 6K, which was about half of what I'd guessed...

Anyway. Just a quick, happy post to say that Fragile Things was just nominated for the Edge Hill Prize for the short story.

According the web site (http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/Faculties/HMSAS/English/CreativeWriting/NWShortStory.htm)


The Edge Hill Prize is an exciting new award for excellence in the short story.

It will be bestowed annually by Edge Hill University on the writer who, in the opinion of the judges, is the author of the best collection published the previous year from a writer born or based in the UK or Ireland.

The winner in the inaugural year will receive a cheque for £5000 at an award ceremony at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester on 20th July 2007.

We are pleased to announce this year’s shortlist:

* Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things (Headline Review)
* Jackie Kay, Wish I Was Here (Picador)
* Nicholas Royle, Mortality (Serpent's Tail)
* Colm Tòibìn, Mothers and Sons (Picador)
* Tamar Yellin, Kafka in Bronteland (Toby Press)

All the authors on the shortlist have been invited to read at the 2007 Short Story Conference at Edge Hill University on 21st July.

It's a really diverse bunch of nominees, and I'm thrilled that Fragile Things made it onto the list. I think people mostly think I'm exaggerating when I tell them that for me the fun is in being nominated for awards, not in winning, but overall that's true. (There have been exceptions. I loved winning the Hugo for American Gods, mind, because it was so unexpected, and I loved winning the World Fantasy Award for Sandman 19, because it was a recognition for the medium). I guess it's because I've been an awards judge and have watched what happens (all too often, everyone's second choice wins, because everyone can agree on that), and because the gap between win and lose is so small. I like being nominated -- it makes me feel like I've hit an award-nominated level of quality, and that feels good. Beyond that, it's a horse race and the end result of the horse race doesn't matter. I realise that there aren't a lot of people who feel like this about awards, and I'm also aware that it's easy for me to say, because I've already got my fair share of awards and more, so talking about not caring about the actual winning can sound, frankly, smug. But it's still how I feel.

And this is a good award: there's not enough attention paid to short stories. They're seen as trivial, or not as good as novels. They have that whiff of unreality about them that means that people who only write short stories are always being asked when they will be writing a real book. I've not seen another award given to single author collection regardless of genre.

I wish I could be in the UK for the announcement and to take part in the reading, but I'll be doing Stardust stuff in preparation for the San Diego Comic-Con on the following Wednesday, which means I'll be in the wrong country that week.

Okay. The tech support man phoned back (he said I should phone another tech support line instead). Now I can take the dog for a run.

American Gods Blog, Post 18

Hey. I'm nominated for a Nebula, for best screenplay. Isn't that fun?

http://www.sfwa.org/awards/

(I'm not sure that my part in Mononoke was screenplay-worthy, and if it did get it, Jack Fletcher, the English language voice director, deserves as much of it as I do. But still, it's always fun to be nominated for things.)