looking at you sideways

I don't know. You turn your (still extremely jet-lagged, just in the opposite direction) back for one moment and the tabs to be closed are already breeding...

First, the big sadness: Cody's Bookshop has closed completely. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/21/codys-books-of-berke.html
I've loved doing signings and events with Cody's over the years, thought they were special and will miss them very much. It makes me glad that Kepler's is still in business,

I'm a Hachette author in the UK and much of the Commonwealth. I see that, from an Amazon-selling point of view, this might not be a good thing to be.

Here's the New York Times link.

I guess I'll start finding other places to link to when I want to point to books. Amazon is always the easiest way to link, so it tends to be the place I default to.

I got a bit puzzled last year when my name got left off the National Theatre of Scotland production of "The Wolves In The Walls" at the New Victory (it was there as writer of the book the thing was based on, but not as co-adapter or as writer of most of the extra lyrics). Still, I felt that things had swung a bit far the other way when I saw this article from Variety on The New Victory winning the National Award for Excellence...

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117987888.html?categoryid=15&cs=1&nid=2569

Here's the second part of a two part interview with Alan Moore at the Forbidden Planet blog (where you can learn what he thinks about Gordon Brown being petitioned by the public for an honour on Alan's behalf ):

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=7911

The door to Hell. It's in Darvaz in Uzbekistan.

http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/doortohell.htm

Weird Tales is blogging an entry a day on its 85 weirdest storytellers of the last 85 years.

http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/category/the-85-weirdest/page/6/

I was thrilled by Sandman, the whole thing, being on the Entertainment Weekly top 50 new classics of the last 25 years, and baffled why, when they did the entry on what the longest work on their list was, they only listed the first volume of Absolute Sandman, rather than the whole thing. And googled to make sure that my friend Marc Bernardin was still working there to ask him (not that it's anything to do with him of course) and found myself reading this:

http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/06/18/marc-bernardin-black-like-who/

I met Miriam Berkley on a plane in-- I think -- December 1987, on my first professional trip to the US, I think. She's a photographer who photographs authors -- here's an interview with her, along with some of her great author photos:

http://goodbooksguide.blogspot.com/2008/04/eyes-of-miriam-berkley.html


Hi, Mr. Neil!

Thought you might enjoy this:


http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/07672/I_Believe...


--Julia


That's cool: Turning wordclouds into art. I have to go and play with Wordle, don't I?

why do the characters in your children's book "The Dangerous Alphabet" look so very similar in appearance (hair color, eyes, clothing - even, somewhat, the shapes of their faces) to Al Columbia's beloved underground cartoon characters, "Pim and Francie"? The similarities are pretty uncanny. Are you and your illustrator very big fans of Al Columbia, or is it simply a very big co-incidence?

thank you for your time.

regards,

brent higgins

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything Al Columbia's drawn, apart from a promo piece for Big Numbers about 18 years ago, but I googled Pim and Francie, found a picture, and can't figure out what they have in common with the brother and sister in The Dangerous Alphabet apart from being male and female children, and his hair being lighter than hers. So it's a mystery to me too.

Sent some pictures of me taken for Time Out Sydney...

And here's a scan of the Entertainment Weekly photo page with my top ten on it. A photo almost unique in the history of pictures of me in magazines, for actually looking like me...


In my head Eddie Campbell whispers, "Ah. Righht. Another picture from the Neil Gaiman School of Looking at You Sideways.")
...

STOP PRESS: "The Witch's Headstone" (which will, later this year, be Chapter 4 of The Graveyard Book) won the Locus Award for best novelette. Thank you to all who voted for it, and to Gardner Dozois who accepted the award on my behalf. It's a really terrific list of winners, too.

From Locus:

Locus Awards Winners

Winners of this year's Locus Awards, voted by readers of Locus Magazine in the annual Locus Poll, were were announced this afternoon at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Seattle, at an event led by Master of Ceremonies Connie Willis.

SF NOVEL

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

FANTASY NOVEL

Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

Un Lun Dun, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

FIRST NOVEL

Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)

NOVELLA

"After the Siege", Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Jan 2007)

NOVELETTE

"The Witch's Headstone", Neil Gaiman (Wizards)

SHORT STORY

"A Small Room in Koboldtown", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)

COLLECTION

The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, Connie Willis (Subterranean)

ANTHOLOGY

The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)

NON-FICTION

Breakfast in the Ruins, Barry N. Malzberg (Baen)

ART BOOK

The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian 2006; Scholastic)

EDITOR

Ellen Datlow

MAGAZINE

F&SF

PUBLISHER

Tor

ARTIST

Charles Vess

Without fireworks

Advanced Reading Copies of The Graveyard Book have started going out. This is the first review I've spotted.

"The Witch's Headstone", Chapter Four of The Graveyard Book, is nominated for a Locus Award. http://www.locusmag.com/2008/LocusAwardsFinalists.html for the full list -- It would be an excellent reading list, incidentally: I don't think there's a book or story on the list that isn't readable, cool, or doesn't deserve to win its category.

They'll be awarded next month, on Saturday, June 21, 2008 in Seattle WA, during the Science Fiction Hall of Fame Awards Weekend. I was toastmaster for this a few years ago, and it's a wonderful event. https://secure.locusmag.com/About/2008LocusAwardsAd.html (Note that The SF Hall of Fame ceremony, inducting William Gibson, Ian & Betty Ballantine, Rod Serling, and Richard Powers at the SF Museum Saturday evening, will be ticketed separately. Also that some members of the Hall of Fame are no longer with us.)

Rebecca Fitzgibbon interviewed me when I was in Hobart a few weeks ago, and sent me a link to the article at http://www.news.com.au/mercury/story/0,22884,23670222-5006544,00.html

Right. Back to signing Todd Klein's prints (in a purple ink called "Tanzanite") -- you can see what they look like, and learn about Todd's process -- at http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1184.

Back to signing. I'll try and make the next blog post more exciting. Sorry.

“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read," says 47 year old author...

That was fun, the blog's seventh birthday. I enjoyed making the inspirational poster, and also enjoyed watching the webgoblin do all the hard work on making the survey. I also tried personally to answer all the FAQ line questions that came in yesterday -- I think I missed a couple, and two or three replies came back informing me that they'd been got by spam filters or people who didn't put in their email addresses correctly -- but I did reply to pretty much all of them.

Don't forget to vote (at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/02/birthday-thing.html). I'm enjoying watching the results so far -- not actually what I would have predicted. But there's a week to go and a lot of votes still to come in.

There's an article about Harper Collins and putting Free Books up in the New York Times -- and it says:

Neil Gaiman, the fantasy novelist, short story and comics writer, is asking readers of his blog to vote on the title they would most like to give as a gift. An electronic scan of the winning title will be offered free on the HarperCollins site later this month. Mr. Gaiman said the online effort was not so different from what has been going on for generations.

“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read,” said the English born Mr. Gaiman, 47. “I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.” Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too.

I think the point I was making wasn't so much that eventually you buy your own books, as that there's not and there has never been a simple one-to-one relationship between the books you read and way you find authors and the books you buy. It's more complicated than that, and more interesting. It's about the way that it's assumed that books have a pass-along rate, that a book will be read by more than one person. If the people who read the book like it, they might buy their own copy, or, more likely, just put the author in that place in their heads of Authors I Like. And that's a good place for an author to be.

And for those of you who are wandering in from linkage, or who read this on an RSS feed and haven't gone exploring http://www.neilgaiman.com/, there's a fair amount of free stuff up there already, much of it at http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff -- for example, http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool%20Stuff/Short%20Stories has five short stories up, (one from M is for Magic, two from Fragile Things, and two that are only up online). And there's free audio stuff as well -- a downloadable version of A Study In Emerald from Fragile Things, and the first chapter of the Stardust audiobook.

Over at Locus magazine, at https://secure.locusmag.com/2008/2008PollAndSurvey.html, you can take the Locus Poll and Survey. You're taking part in the biggest vote for SF and Fantasy there is. More people vote for Locus Awards than for the Hugos or the Nebulas... You can be one of them.

...

Hola Neil,Quick question about Absolute Sandman Vol. 3. Vertigo now has the info for it up at: http://www.dccomics.com/graphic_novels/?gn=9050. I was wondering what the "Desire story from VERTIGO: WINTER'S EDGE #3" is (different from the Bolton Desire story in Vol. 2?) and if the 10-page "Fear of Falling" is missing from this volume?

Also, if that really is the cover art, it seems to be missing out on some great Mckean artwork. Both Vols 1 and 2 featured iconic cover images from the softcover of a major story arc contained in the volume. It seems a shame not to use the striking "Brief Lives" softcover image of the portrait made from all the photographs. Thought you might know what the final version looks like.

And the Dave McKean Shorts DVD has disappeared indefinitely with no further mention. Thought you or one of your readers might know what happened, for those of us who are anxiously awaiting it.

Thanks for your time - can't wait to experience "The Graveyard Book".



Actually, the Brief Lives image was the first suggestion from the DC Comics art department, and I vetoed it, mostly because that image, which we were so proud of at the time, has been repeated by so many people ever since. Even Dave McKean's been hired to do versions of it by art departments around the world, and I've spoken to artists who were handed that cover and told to reproduce it for movie posters or CD covers. Whereas I thought that Dave's painting of Morpheus from the cover of Sandman 50 might be really beautiful if taken out of context.

No, the Desire story is the Michael Zulli-illustrated "How They Met Themselves" story, with the Rosettis and Mr Swinburne going for a winter picnic. "Fear of Falling" is in there (and Danny Vozzo fixed some colouring errors on the hair).

The last time I checked with Dave McKean on what was happening with the DVD, he said:

We had several technical problems converting all this very differently
formatted films from PAL to NTSC, and framerate changes, and editorial changes
and other pernikity changes, and we decided since we will only be doing this
once, we'd take the time to get it right, rather than rush to our initial
release date. I've just taken delivery of what I hope is the final beta version,
which means it should start to reappear on websites/Amazon/distributors lists
etc. Don't fret, it will be out in a few months.

Dear Neil,You've most likely received many such requests, but I thought I'd throw mine into the pile as well: in light of your celebratory blogday vote, I'd like to know which of your own "hideous progeny" you would most like to see distributed gratis to your (not yet, but soon to be expanded) adoring public?Of course, I don't expect you to give us an answer before the voting has finished, but I'm a curious thing and hope you're willing to share this with us all.By the way, it's a beautiful day in Southern California today. It's a breezy 73 degrees outside, and the not-so-smoggy skies as smiling down at me as I write to you. Diamond dust snow sounds lovely, but you may want to consider getting some vit. D, courtesy of the sun, soon! I think your pen-ink will thank you for it as well. :)Best,
Chrissy

Truth to tell, if I had a clear choice, I wouldn't have come up with the online survey. I would have just put up a free book.

Hi Neil!Just to let Jodi know, if she really wants to talk to other people about the posts, the officialgaiman RSS feed of this blog on livejournal (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/officialgaiman/) has a fairly active comments section. Of course, you have to have a livejournal to comment, and they'll eventually disappear, but it's still fun.
celeste

Consider it plugged.

I've mislaid the most recent request to list a bunch of music I like, but here's a link to http://www.last.fm/user/neilhimself/charts/ where everything's that been played on iTunes in the last few days is up. (No, I'm not doing Friends or Journalling at Last Fm.) It may be too much information.

And here's the link to the radio station Last FM has put together based on what I've been playing recently...

http://www.last.fm/listen/user/neilhimself/personal

(Edited because the embedded wossname didn't seem very happy.)

And finally, http://www.katebeaton.com/Site/History_Project.html is a marvellous little sequence of, er, historical comics.

Locus Winners

This year's Locus poll winners have been announced at http://www.locusmag.com/2007/06_LocusWinners.html

I wasn't at the ceremony, alas. (I thought I wasn't going to be there because I was going to be in Budapest, but actually I don't go to Budapest until Tuesday.)

Locus Awards Winners

Winners of this year's Locus Awards, voted by readers of Locus Magazine in the annual Locus Poll, were were announced this afternoon at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Seattle.

Best Science Fiction Novel

Rainbows End, Vernor Vinge (Tor)

Best Fantasy Novel

The Privilege of the Sword, Ellen Kushner (Bantam Spectra)

Best First Novel

Temeraire: His Majesty's Dragon/Throne of Jade/Black Powder, Naomi Novik (Del Rey; Voyager); as Temeraire: In the Service of the King (SFBC)

Best Young Adult Book

Wintersmith, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperTempest)

Best Novella

"Missile Gap", Charles Stross (One Million A.D.)

Best Novelette

"When Sysadmins Ruled the Earth", Cory Doctorow (Baen's Universe 8/06)

Best Short Story

"How to Talk to Girls at Parties", Neil Gaiman (Fragile Things)

Best Magazine

The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction

Best Publisher

Tor

Best Anthology

The Year's Best Science Fiction: Twenty-Third Annual Collection, Gardner Dozois, ed. (St. Martin's)

Best Collection

Fragile Things, Neil Gaiman (Morrow; Headline Review)

Best Editor

Ellen Datlow

Best Artist

John Picacio

Best Non-Fiction

James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon, Julie Phillips (St. Martin's)

Best Art Book

Cathy & Arnie Fenner, eds. Spectrum 13: The Best in Contemporary Fantastic Art (Underwood)

They told me ahead of time that I'd won for "How To Talk to Girls At Parties", and I wrote an acceptance speech for it, to be read out by Gene Wolfe. But they only told me right at the end that I'd also won for "Fragile Things".

So I wrote a speech in a hurry and this is what I said (also read out by, I hope, Gene Wolfe):

"I'm thrilled and surprised to receive this award.

Short story collections were always, for me, the heart of it all, when I was a boy and a young man and learning about what science fiction and fantasy had to offer. I discovered Bradbury and Lafferty and Tiptree, Ellison and Delany and Wolfe (please make sure they understand that I am talking about Gene Wolfe here and not, say, Bernard or Virginia). William Tenn and Henry Kuttner and Ursula K. LeGuin. John Collier. Roger Zelazny. Brian Aldiss. Theodore Sturgeon. I could keep the list going indefinitely.

They were books that made me happy, made up of stories.

If it wasn't for the ones who showed me how cool it was to make these things I wouldn't be doing it now. I want to thank them. Most of what I did right in these stories I stole from them anyway.

And Jennifer Brehl edited my book and made the cover so pretty. So I want to thank her too."

posting made hard

The internet in this house is incredibly wonky right now, but it seems to be working this minute so I'm going to do a hasty blog post while it is.

I'm home. Maddy and I have already watched two episodes of the new Dr Who series together (one this morning, one tonight), and it's really great stuff. Stronger opening episodes than either of the two previous seasons. We'll keep the third episode for tomorrow or Monday.

The Locus awards nominees have been announced -- http://www.locusmag.com/2007/04_LocusFinalists.html. The Locus awards are the SF awards that get the most voters. It's a better list than the Hugos for gender parity (8 women out of 35, rather than 1 out of 20), but still nowhere near as good as it could be.

I am thrilled that "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" made the shortlist (and equally as thrilled that it's the only short story the Hugo and Locus lists have in common).

As of today, the beehives have been carried out from the basement to the back of beyond and placed upon their breeze-blocks and boards. The birdchick (beechick?) will turn up on Tuesday with the bees. Unfortunately I won't be here -- on Tuesday I'll be out at Bryn Mawr doing a reading and a chat (http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/2007-04-19/gaiman.shtml) before heading to New York for the PEN World Voices thingummy.

(And when I finished writing that the internet went down for 3 hours, and then I fell asleep in front of the TV all jetlagged. Now awake, and with Internet, so posting it quickly while both things continue to be true.)