I'm proofreading the galleys of the UK edition of The Graveyard Book right now. Last night, at the exact moment I started to become convinced that these were amazingly clean galleys, there were no typos after the number of times we'd all been through the manuscript, and I should simply sign off on them and get on with my life, one character turns to another and says "Neil, I've broken the next para into five paras for clarity but if you want we can turn it back." Which was a comment from the copyeditor to me that had been written on the previous draft. After that I started squinting at the text and reading verrry slowly....
Philip Pullman in the Guardian, talking about why age banding books is such a magnificently wrongheaded idea, but also talking about what he knows when he starts a book:
When I sit down to write a book, I know several things about it: I know roughly how long it will be, I know some of the events in the story, I know a little about some of the characters, I know - without knowing quite how I'll get to it - what tone of voice I want the narrative to be cast in.
But there are several things I don't know, and one of those is who will read it. You simply can't decide who your readership will be. Nor do I want to, because declaring that it's for any group in particular means excluding every other group, and I don't want to exclude anybody. Every reader is welcome, and I want my books to say so.
Which is pretty much true for me too, and sometimes all you need to know that it'll work is the tone of voice. When that works, everything works, and when you don't have it it's the intangible that stops the thing from being magic.
(On the age banding, from what I can figure out, the subtext of all this seems to be, in the UK more and more books are being sold through supermarkets. People in supermarkets don't have to know anything about what they're selling. They just need to know where to put it on the shelves. If publishers put colour-coded age bands on the books, indicating which books are for 7+ and which for 9+ and which for 11+, then supermarkets will order more books because they won't have to think about putting them out. And after all, the shelf-stackers don't need to know anything about dish-soap to sell that, so what makes books special?)
And now some good news:
Hi Neil, I think you're already aware of this, but I wondered if you'd mind posting a follow-up to the story of Emru Townsend. I wrote to you back in April about Emru's search for a bone marrow donor and the desperate need for more people (especially non-caucasians) to get on their country's bone marrow registry. Here's the link to your original post for those who missed it:
I should remind you that there was no match in the registry for Emru when he was originally diagnosed with leukemia. I believe that this match is a direct result of Emru and Tamu's tireless awareness campaign, and of people like you helping to get the word out to as many people as possible. Thank you. And thank you to your readers, many of whom passed on the word and got themselves registered.
Emru is still a long way from being healed. He must get into remission, stay in remission, be prepared for surgery, have the surgery, resist or fight off infection, risk the donation attacking his body or his body attacking the donation, and get through the first 100 days. Plus, his anonymous donor has the option of backing out at any point and there is currently no backup.
Still, this is a crucial first step. Our friend now has a good, fighting chance.
To your readers: Don't see this as the end of the story. There are still massive shortages in the registry and many, many people are still waiting to find matching donors. Emru and Tamu have already committed themselves to continuing their awareness campaign.
Emru's story shows that this isn't a lost cause; it's a solvable problem. You can save lives just by registering and getting others to do the same.
(I have to go back into the studio on Thursday -- we only realised this morning that there were no alternate takes for the UK of sentences with words like crib, diaper and flashlight in them, so I will go and replace them with sentences containing cots and nappies and torches.)
Just got an email to tell me that a pre-eminent banjo player would really like to play the Danse Macabre, which left my jaw on the floor with delight.
And here, for the people who asked, is a photo of a dog in the woods, yesterday. He's come a long way in a little over a year. I suppose I have as well...
And this is what he looks like now... (with a very scruffy author this morning). (Photos by Holly.)
Cabal is one of the most beautiful dogs I've ever seen. What breed is he?
He is, as the farmer who gave him to me said at the time (and I doubted at the time, because I didn't know that he was white under all that) a White German Shepherd Dog (what we called an Alsatian when I was growing up in England -- the German Shepherd became known as an Alsatian in the UK during World War I in much the same way that French Fries became Freedom Fries in the US a few years back). There would be a lot more White German Shepherds around if the Nazis hadn't decided they were racially inferior and needed to be cleansed from the gene pool. Of course, the same could be said of my family.
Hi Neil,
Santa was good to me this year and gave me the latest Steven Erikson novella from PS Publishing - http://store.pspublishing.co.uk/ I just went tonight to have a look at the site and ended up with five books since they have a sale on. Any pre 2007 books in their catalogue are half price. I thought of you since you did the introduction for the Mark Chadbourn book I just got from them!
P.S. I got a t shirt from my brother I thought you would like. The logo is 'I'm only wearing black until they invent a darker colour'.
They are a wonderful publishing house, and with only a few days left I would be remiss not to point to their sale. (Here's their current catalogue.) I should dig up the thing I wrote about Pete Crowther for the World Horror Con programme book, while I'm at it...
Neil, I've got a story you might be interested in. A while back, a bar called Gandalf's in Frostburg, Maryland burned down (no one was hurt). Up the street was a local independent bookstore called Main Street Books. During the fire, one of the employees was watching, when a sheet of paper fluttered out and was found by the employee. What was it? A charred page from Good Omens. It's currently hanging up being displayed in the bookstore.
That's delightful. And, of course, appropriate.
Hey Neil
So what is up with Hill House? Back in October they posted an update PDF on the Anansi Boys but nothing on Neverwhere. Neverwhere was ordered in 2003 and suppose to come out in 2005 and we are still waiting.
Is this something that I should start to worry about or are they just too overwhelmed and not given to responding to inquires any more? I love their work and everything I have gotten is amazing, I just want the books that I order all those years ago or at least to know they care.
Also Cat was trying to help me get an answer on the MELINDA Triptych but got the same response I did. Zip.
Anyway sorry to ramble and thanks in advance,
John Mooney
To be honest, I'm really hoping that the bringing out of Anansi Boys means that things are turning around for Hill House. They've had a rough year or two, including some illness, and I really wasn't sure what was going to be happening. But the first copies of Anansi Boys are in and look like a triumph of the bookmaker's art, and should now be going out to people. I'm not sure what's happening next.
Pete Atkins at Hill House did the work on helping create the Neverwhere Author's Preferred Text some years back, and then he and Pete Schneider assembled every Neverwhere memo, outline and BBC script draft for their Neverwhere Supplementary Volume (not that it'll contain every draft of everything, for it would be very dull if it did). Like you, I'm hoping that Hill House is back in the game.
They've now got the correct phone number up on their website.
...
A few people wrote to say that it was unusual, European Butterflies in the American Midwest. And it would have been if that was where I was, but the butterflies were in Europe, as was I.
The trouble with snow is that you can't simply wander outside to walk your dog. You have to prepare. You have to bundle up, and put on gloves and big boots and all that sort of stuff. And then the dog romps and vanishes and reappears and romps again (being the same colour as the snow he vanishes easily) and you simply tromp after him, or ahead of him, or at least somewhere on the same continent as him, singing Jonathan Coulton's "Skullcrusher Mountain" to yourself while the snow settles on your hair and your face, and you can't even take proper phone-photos because the gloves are too thick, and when you do, your finger gets in the way, and you can't really see the screen either. But still, everything's white and wonderful, and even shovelling the path to the house four times a day can be fun, sort of...
Most photos wound up looking like this:
And even in the ones that didn't have fingers in, Cabal looks like an ice-weasel.
.....
Mark Buckingham just sent me his illustrations for Odd. Here's the one for Chapter Three...
(Someone wrote in wondering how we make a profit or a royalty or anything on a ten penny -- or even one pound -- book. And the answer is, we don't. World Book Day is a good cause, and we did it for nothing.)
...
And finally, a Writers' Strike video with a message for all of us. Especially adorable animals.
(If you're on an RSS feed where you can't see it, click on the link to the actual blog entry or click here.)
Hunting season -- for grouse and pheasants and suchlike -- has already started, judging from the loud banging noises. And Cabal the dog has turned into Krypto for the next five weeks...
It was raining, and the dog sat with his head in the rain waiting for it to clear up and for me to be done with writing and ready to do something -- anything -- more interesting.
(I recommend having a finished mock-up of the cover of the book that your publisher sent you, World Book Day sticker and all, knocking around, for when you feel like going to do something else. It's there to remind you that if you don't finish the book in time, the cover will go on a book of blank pages, I think.)
What's odd is that I've lived here for about 15 years, and never knew half of what was out there. Yesterday the two of us met a dozen huge wild turkeys, back by the beehives, and they ran or flew off into the trees grumbling and cackling. The day before that we encountered a mole -- "the little gentleman in the velvet jacket" as the Jacobites used to toast him -- with huge paws scrabbling velvetly through the leaf-mould, and I pulled out my phone and filmed him for a few seconds. I've seen fireflies and fireworks, discovered skeletons and mushrooms and all manner of interesting plants. I learned what walnuts smell like when they're still on the tree (a strange mixture of citrus and carpentry). I've met grouse and rabbits (Cabal chases rabbits unsuccessfully when he spots them. Sometimes he doesn't spot them. Several times I've been convinced that he had actually spotted them and was pretending not to because he wasn't sure what he'd do if ever he caught one) (He has no such compunction about chasing cats. Yesterday he shot off after poor Fred, who went straight up a tree where he relaxed and was superior). I've seen some amazing wildflowers too.
I should post some photos of him here. When we got him, he had a grey ruff around his neck, from three years of being chained up. These days he's just white all over, so much so that someone who had seen him at the beginning wanted to know if we were bleaching him. He still looks a bit like a wolf. He barks a bit, which he never used to do, to let us know that people are at the door. And he doesn't know why I'm sitting and typing when I could be off wandering the trails at the back of the house, the ones that used to be completely overgrown and forgotten. The ones I never used to walk at all.
I just went to the movies by myself for, I think, the first time in my life (if you don't count the years I spent in the 80s as a film critic), to see Hot Fuzz. (Nobody else wanted to go but me.) Which I loved, didn't think was too long, and wish it wasn't only showing in one small cinema in a 50 mile radius of my house. The delight in making it came through all the way.
Hi, Earlier this year you posted link to a podcast by Penn Jillette in which he mentions you and National Gorilla Suit day. I think that the podcast is no longer accessible. If it is, can you point me to the right place? I wanted my husband to hear it.
Hi Neil! As I'm more of a cat person, I 'feel' for your cats! Are they jealous of your new dog? ~ Cancan =)
Jealous? No. Princess is alternately furious with me and desperately affectionate, Coconut (Maddy's cat) is mostly blase but also a bit more affectionate, and Fred is plotting on ways to get revenge on the dog for having treed him yesterday evening. It's the kind of thing I could be really funny about, but the truth is it's rather worrying -- the dog is convinced he needs to protect us from Fred, and has only actually barked twice since we got him, each time inside the house to warn us that Fred was walking around outside and might get us if Dog didn't protect us,meanwhile Fred on seeing the Dog arches his back like a Halloween card cat, swells to twice his size and makes strangled yowling noises to indicate his extreme displeasure. As far as the two mostly-house cats go, I think we'll be fine at getting them more or less to tolerate each other. Fred, however is a law unto himself, and it's going to be interesting.
Not sure about that tagline. Hope they can come up with something sharper before August. (My own suggestion, "Stardust. It's not a sequel to anything," was appreciated but, probably wisely, rejected.)
A deluge of messages, many hundreds of them, and all of them are dog-name suggestions. Some of them I've tried, but they don't seem right -- they sound wrong coming out of my mouth, or, mostly, they are terrific names but don't quite fit him, or, in a few cases, Maddy doesn't like them. (I wanted to go Arthurian, but the front runner, a Maddy pick, currently seems to be Thor.)
(Dog update. Vet today: Dog weighs 78lb and still needs to put on a little weight; is now microchipped; is also on antibiotics to deal with early stage Lyme Disease, and got all the various shots he needed. Also taken into the vet at the same time: Fred the Cat, who, with half of his face shaved and drooling thick slobber from being car-sick, looked like something from a horror movie, the sort of movie that makes you shake your head and wonder whatever happened to subtlety in horror.)
I've walked more in the last two days than I have in months.
I'm just going to go to close a bunch of tabs...
...
Scott McCloud has posted the first two parts of his on-line graphic novel "The Right Number" for free. Back when he originally posted the first part I signed up for the micropayment scheme, and gave them five dollars so I could pay Scott my 25 cents for the first part, and then, a year or so later, couldn't remember the email address, details or password when he posted the second part, so I'm glad they're both up for nothing now. It's a wonderful story. I can't wait for him to do the last part. http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/trn/intro.html is the link.
The fabulous Fabulist has a streaming radio station option up. I've been getting so much of my new music from them it's silly, and this is a great way to find out what I like before I download, put on my iPod and buy the CD. http://www.fabulist.org/archives/2007/04/streaming_fabul.html
All of the PEN events should eventually be up in Audio. Keep an eye on this -- a link to the MOTH event -- http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1340/prmID/1412. (Here's Laila Lalami's take on it: http://www.lailalalami.com/blog/archives/004691.html.) Incidentally, I got an email complaining that we had obviously all "written our stories first and then learned them". Nope. We just told them -- one rehearsal the previous afternoon, when we talked them through to the director, who gave us notes, and then on with the show.
Lucy Anne's collection of links over at http://del.icio.us/thedreaming is now so efficient I no longer feel like I have to make sure I keep the world updated with links to news articles about me and the Stardust movie and everything. I've told Lucy Anne that she can go into the old pre-labels world of this blog and tag everything from the first six years, because she has a much more sober attitude towards tagging than I do.
Hey Neil,
My wife and I had a great time at your Helena appearance and we really appreciate you coming out to Montana. So, thanks for that.
Also, I wanted to let you know that you're a special guest star on Brotherhood 2.0 today. My brother (John Green who's also with Writer's House and has a couple of YA novels out) and I have a somewhat popular video blog at Brotherhood2.com. We've stopped emailing and instant messaging and, instead, are communicating through daily video blogs for all of 2007.
Since so many of our viewers are your fans, I figured I had to include you in the project. Which, if you were wondering, is why you said "Good Morning John it's Monday May 1st" into a camera last weekend.
Sorry I didn't take the time to explain fully then, but the line was quite long and I didn't want to take too much of your (and everyone else's) time.
It's the kind of thing that makes me reconsider my attitudes to video blogging (mostly I don't like it, because I lose, as reader, control of the time axis of the experience. But this I liked).
I got a call today to say that the owner of the dog I found on Monday had called the Humane Society and collected him. I was happy Dog was back with his family, but found myself rather sadder than I would have expected -- I realised I'd half hoped that maybe no-one would claim him.
The call went on to say that the dog's owner, a local farmer, who kept him chained up in the yard, and couldn't walk well so couldn't walk him, thought the dog was a nuisance, always getting out and heading onto the freeway and sooner or later he'd cause an accident, and, when the Humane Society lady mentioned that the person who found him rather liked him, he told her that if I came over and picked him up I could have him.
So I did.
The farmer said he thought the dog was a white German Shepherd. I think he's a German Shepherd labrador cross, but I'm probably wrong.
But this entry is just about the dog, who doesn't quite have a name yet, and wouldn't stay still to have his photo taken, so eventually I dragged him into the office and turned on Photobooth...
A quiet day. I had a visit from a representative from a Major Company who flew all the way to the Midwest to show me An Interesting Device, and I'll write about it as soon as I know that it's not all confidential. I was fairly impressed by what I saw of the Device and will get one of my own to play with soon.
The Dog is fine -- we called the Humane Society and he's impounded for a week (which means I couldn't go over and say hullo and take him for a walk). Fred is back from the vet. We still have three goldfish.
I nipped out to see the hives today, wearing a white shirt and white jeans bought especially for beekeeping. I felt like Negative Me. Hive 1 (AKA Kitty) is doing brilliantly, Hive 2 (AKA Olga) is a bit more problematic. I don't think I'd ever realised that hives could have personalities before, despite having read Sue Hubbell's wonderful Book of Bees. (Here's a Sue Hubbell article from Time Magazine.) Tomorrow we check the hives to see if the queens are egg-laying. This is fun.
Fred is home from the vet and I just gave him his antibiotics. Maddy is watching American Idol. All's right with the world.
Can you or someone please post pics of that "cool dog" you found? First, I'd just like to see him. Second, maybe (maybe!) someone will recognize him!
Thanks, Chris Sure. He wasn't easy to photograph, mostly because he kept moving. This was the best one I got yesterday (you can't really see the wolfy ears, but they are there)...
Fred the cat tends to get into scrapes while I'm away, and I arrived home yesterday to find him with half of his face shaved and on antibiotics, having tangled with something. Whenever he gets into fights he gets infected. Tonight he's staying with the vet as the infection got worse.
I ought to be very worried, but I'm not. I suppose by now I think he'll pull through because he always pulls through. He must be on life 15 or 16 by now: last year when I was on tour with Fragile Things, I was called about a minute before the Google Author Talk and informed that Fred had to be put down (which left me pretty shaken), but it didn't happen. He got through that, just as he gets through everything else.
Some animals are survivors.
Maddy's largest goldfish is called Moonbeam, and he's about nine years old, and has outlived every other goldfish we've ever had, and even survived an accidental case of poisoning about five years ago that killed off everyone else. He's now about a foot long. And there were five fish in that tank two weeks ago. The two smaller ones have now mysteriously gone, and Moonbeam looks astonishingly well-fed and happy, and I suspect that I need to rethink the whole Where The Goldfish Are situation.
I recorded the previously unrecorded tracks from M Is For Magic today in Minneapolis. Very different stories -- it was fun recording them though. Two from when I was very young ("How to Sell the Ponti Bridge" and "The Case of the Four And Twenty Blackbirds"), one from about Ten Years Ago ("Don't Ask Jack", which I couldn't believe I hadn't already recorded. You can see Jack here) and one story from when I was older ("The Witch's Headstone" now just out in WIZARDS:Magical Tales From the Masters of Modern Fantasy).
Like all audio recording it was fun, and then it got harder, and then I walked away quite braindead. I don't know anything else that's quite so exhausting in the same way. Still, I love doing the audiobooks. (And I just realised we need to update the information at http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/audio/)
On the way home from the recording, driving through the rain, just as I pulled off the freeway to head home, I saw a large, pale dog on the side of the sliproad. I went in a couple of seconds from a first glance thought of "Oh, he's just wandering around and knows exactly what he's doing," to, on a second glance, "He's absolutely terrified and if he isn't actually lost he's really scared of all the cars and in danger of bolting onto the freeway," .
I pulled over, crossed the road and hurried across to where he was. He backed away, skittish and nervous, then came over to me, shaking. No collar or information, just a choke chain. And big. And very wet and very muddy. With cars going past, I decided the wisest thing to do was to put him into my car while I figured out what to do. The car was the Mini. I opened the door and he clambered in. The dog took up most of the Mini that I wasn't in and a fair amount of the Mini that I was in. Big dog, small car.
I phoned my assistant Lorraine, and asked her to let the local Humane Society (really nice people with a no kill policy) know we'd be coming in soon with a dog, then I drove home, narrowly avoiding death on the way (it's amazing how much you can't see when a huge dog fills the car and your field of vision). I ran around the garden with Dog until he'd tired me out. (I really hope he'd just got lost, and his family are looking for him; it would be hard to imagine someone abandoning a dog that cool.) Then I put him into the back of a car much bigger than the Mini and took him to the Humane Society, where they fawned all over him. ("I think he's a husky-wolf cross," said the Humane lady who took him, and she could be right.)
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