another birthday post...

Strange things keep turning up in the right hand side of the page. (If you're reading this on a feed, you might want to click over to http://journal.neilgaiman.com/ and refresh a few times. I'm just saying...)

Hi Neil, I was just wondering, why don't you have comments turned on on the blog? I'm sure there would be tons everyday. Still, it would be fun to read other's comments and such. Just wondering. Love the new pics on the blog today. Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY BLOG! Hope your'e around for at least 7 more years.

Thanks and I love this blog (and you too!),

Jodi

Because seven years ago, when it started, things like comments were unheard of, outside of a couple of the secret blogging laboratories on the Moon, and when, a few years back, Blogger introduced them, I was happy with the way things were - mostly because I knew the volume of stuff that comes in on the FAQ line, could only imagine the volume of comments we'd get, and knew how horribly interesting a good comment place can be. (Making Light is the best example, where the original post is the tip of an iceberg, and then things get really interesting or strange -- each comment thread can be a good day's reading, filled with interesting stuff.) Which meant, I suspected, that if I turned on the comments I'd ever get any actual work done again.

Hi, Neil.

I know you watch Boing Boing and that's where I found this, but I wasn't sure if you caught the post since you're been in "The Graveyard Book."

http://community.livejournal.com/ya_fsf_con/570.html

Some authors hoping to plan a sci-fi convention that focuses on young adult. :-) Makes me all warm and fuzzy, really.

Tina @ ALA

Good to know. I think it's a great idea. (Also, I was pleased to hear that Fourth Street is returning.)

If the snow effect you're talking about is the same one I saw at 3000m in the Haute Savoie (which makes it sound more impressive than "on a skiing holiday"), then it's called diamond dust. Single ice crystals formed in very low air temperatures, like being inside a frozen cloud.

It takes something special to make a dozen lads on a booze/wintersports holiday all shut up and gawp, but that did it. On a sunny, blue-sky day too, the air just sparkled.

It sounds like a local version of that. Right now we've got an "arctic front" with 45 mph winds gusting the just-fallen snow around in blinding howls, and I'm not looking forward to dogwalking...

Hey Neil! Any chance of getting a direct link to the original post for what comes out of the oracle?


We talked about it a while ago, and then forgot. I'll ask Da Goblin. In the meantime you can always cut and paste it into the site search engine at http://neilgaiman.com/p/Search
and unless it's something unusual (I just tried it and it gave me a question mark) it should be easy to see where it came from.

[Edit to add, Da Webgoblin assures me that the link has been there for ages. You just have to find it. I asked the Oracular Orb if this was the right course of action, and it said "Lots of people think this is a stupid idea, including Lord Blackadder." The Webgoblin and I, however, will Stay The Course.]


Has the Oracle ever said anything other than "You have to actually shake it?"

I am starting to lose faith in its power.

You didn't read the instructions at http://www.neilgaiman.com/oracle, did you? I'd particularly refer you to the bit that says "don't just click on it. Shake it." If you click on it, it will say "You actually have to shake it". Only when shaken will the curtain between past and future be lifted, and only then will the oracle pronounce oracularly.

Mr. Gaiman,

First, thank you very much for your blog. It is a delight to read each day--particularly so when you describe just how much work you put into your writing.

I was wondering, though, about where you write. You have talked about your pens and paper and your ink, and I have seen many references to the small cabin in which you write, but I was wondering if your could (if you haven't already) describe the writing shack. I'm always curious about the conditions in which writing is produced, and the idea of a writing shack fascinates me. Do you always try to write in the same place? Before you had a writing shack, did you find similar places to write? Do you find that you grow attached to the place itself and that writing in other conditions (i.e. places, pens, papers) is difficult?

Thanks, again, for sharing all of this with us, and I apologize if my questions have been asked and answered elsewhere.

Cheers

Scott


While I was typing this the sun came out. I may take a few photos of the gazebo at the bottom of the garden, which is where I'm currently doing a lot of writing, mostly because it's the easiest place to write with a large white dog, and post them. The rest of the writing is occurring in the small hours of the morning on a sofa.

I can write pretty much anywhere, in truth, although I like going places I've not been before. I like travelling, in moderation, and I like being in new places, and I especially like being in new places to write.

Meanwhile, here's a ten-year-old-photograph of me in the Patagonian town they named after my kind...



...

The Mysterious Thing Post will go up tonight.

what day is it?

It's very nearly the 9th of February here.

And you know what that means?

You can't have forgotten. I mean, it's the NINTH OF FEBRUARY*...

Well, nearly.

Just saying. That's all.

...

And tonight the snow was like glitter. I had to pick Maddy and her friend up from basketball, and the snow... it was like nothing I'd ever seen before. It was an optical effect. It was glitter.

*(And because it is February, the Oracular Orb has me in it again, in a mystical fortunetelling turban.)

More Mysteries of the Oracle

The snow continues. It's been a lazy sort of blizzard, but I shovelled the path half a dozen times this afternoon. Driving was scary, school was cancelled. I took a few photos of the view from the back door but Blogger is being grumpy and won't upload them.

As many of you have seen, the Oracle (at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/8ball/) has mysteriously changed its appearance. The original shamanic and beturbanned wild-haired me will be back every February, and perhaps for special occasions, like my birthday. Other strange things will, I hope, appear in the 8-Ball for the appropriate season (will there be pumpkins in October? Little Interesting Skulls on National Little Interesting Skull Day? Snow at Christmas? Only the webelf knows for sure). (The current 8-Ball pictures a http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/ Lisa Snellings creation.)

Hi Neil,
I just finished listening to the "Fragile Things" audio book. Do you have any further plans for Mr. Smith and Mr. Alice? They're two of the most fun (yeah, I feel guilty for saying that) characters I've run across in a long while. Hope this question hasn't been asked a zillion times before but I'll bet it has.
Thanks,
Brian Ford

I definitely expect to see them again, yes. If I write more of the stories of what happened to Shadow in the UK, Mr Smith will be in the background of that. But there's at least one story with both of them in it, and I really want to write that one as I know what it's about.

I should have mentioned here that FRAGILE THINGS got nominated for an Audie Award (given for audiobooks), as best short fiction collection. Which made me happy, although slightly uncomfortable as the Audiobook I did last year that I was really happy with was Stardust. But Fragile Things has me attempting a number of accents, and it has a much wider range of, er, things in it.

(http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/audio/stardust is the Stardust page, for the curious -- you can hear the first ten minutes or so of the first chapter there. I can't see an audio page for Fragile Things on neilgaiman.com yet, but when one appears I'll mention it here.)

no matter how much, or hard, i shake my computer the oracular message is must really shake it. should i take that as my oracular message at this point?
ellen schinderman

I suppose you could try clicking on the oracular ball and dragging it back and forth very fast instead of picking up your --

No. Scrap that.

Actually I really like the idea of you shaking the computer. Keep it up. Maybe eventually something will happen...


dear neil: my mom & i are real big fans of yours! your blogs is the only one my mom allows me to read but those fangirls looked real scary!!!!!!! and that wasn;t a very nice photo of you sorry but does a girl have to wear only black and not smile to get your attention? i love you really !!!!!!! xxxPat

Thank you, Pat. I just checked with my daughters (both on the same couch I'm on, both on their computers), and Maddy says she wears mostly blues and Holly says she wears mostly greens and browns, and they both smile an awful lot, and they have my attention whenever they want it...

Good Sir,

Let us say that I have a name that while not bad, is not exactly fit to print. It is rather mumbly, and doesn't look quite right no matter how I arrange it.

Though I am fairly certain you don't use a pen name, I was wondering if you know anything about doing so.

Till again,
Whatever Me I May Be

There's nothing wrong with pen names, and there are hundreds of reasons for deciding to use one.

Pick a name you like, avoiding on the way names like Stephen King or Charles Dickens, and put it on your manuscript. Let's say you choose "Gerry Musgrave" (which I think was the name I reviewed movies for Penthouse under, as I already had film review columns in other magazines.) You just type "Gerry Musgrave" on your cover sheet, and then send a cover letter telling the editor the name you want the cheques made out to. It's that easy.

Short and Sweet:
Do you know when the other volumes of Absolute Sandman will be published? I can't find any info on them anywhere.

The next one will be out in October 2007. The third and fourth should I hope both be out in 2008.

the last last word

I thought that the last letter on libraries, censorship and suchlike was the last I was going to post up here, and that the subject was done. I was wrong. I think this is worth putting up here and although it's long, it's extremely worth reading. All the way through. Promise.

Dear Neil,

I'm sorry to send this undoubtedly self-indulgent
email to you, but I'm going to anyway...I forgive you
in advance if you have had it up the THERE with this
subject and absolve you of even the faintest hint of
obligation to read any further. :0)

That said...

I have some first hand experience in dealing with the
maelstrom that can engulf a library system when it is
targeted by a group of "concerned citizens" trying to
save children from books and the internet and ideas
and
information in general.

A decade ago, my library system had books on our
shelves with such scandalous titles as It's Perfectly
Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual
Health, Heather Has Two Mommies, and various titles on
witchcraft and other such dangerous ordnances. Several
"concerned citizens" began to check the books out and
not return them - in order to save someone else's
child from being infected by them.

At the same time, we (rather naively) introduced the
internet into our libraries thinking that it might be
A Good Thing. We did this just as we were trying to
pass an operating tax levy. The group turned its
attention from the books to the Internet and our
supposed pandering of porn to kids - though they
did not forget about the books, of course.

And, all hell broke loose. Our local group of
concerned citizens hooked up with the larger Christian
Coalition and made it their life's ambition to defeat
our operating levy - which would have crippled our
library system. They became amazingly organized
seemingly overnight with the help of the Coalition.

I walked out of our main branch one day to find
several van loads of people carrying picket signs and
descending on our building. There were many children
with the group and some of them were given picket
signs and sent out to rally cars driving by to "Honk
if you hate Library Porn" and "Unsafe for Kids". The
other picketing parents sent their kids into our
children's department for us to baby-sit for the next
several hours - while they tried to rally community
support against us. (The irony was not lost on us.)

Caught flat footed, our library system began to
scramble to try to deal with the situation. (The net
was very new to us and many of us were not as well
versed in it as we should have been.) We formed an
internal Internet Safety Task Force (belatedly, yes)
to figure out just what we, as a system, SHOULD be
doing.

One man in the group called in the local television
stations and showed up at our main branch and began
to ask children in the library about all the porn
that they were finding on our computers and asking
them to show him how to find it. When staff told him
that he could not ask the kids to do this, he
began to troll for porn himself in front of the
cameras (and kids) - going to a list of website
addresses that, as luck would have it, he had
memorized. The group was asked to leave as they were
creating a disruption.

It played out on the television news over the next
week under the usual lurid teasers with which the
local news has so much fun.

This same man began to show up at our staff building
entrances and hand out copies of porn that he had
downloaded from the net (at his house not at ours) to
staff exhorting them to resign "if they were true
Christians". He created a website and a newsletter
dedicated to the "overthrow of the library
pornographers".

Picketers began showing up at our bookmobile
locations, our other library branches, our Board of
Trustees meetings, etc. We actually had to stage a
public debate that drew several hundreds of people
where we allowed the concerned citizens and forum to
voice their concerns and tried to explain our
position. (We had come up with one by then.)


Our election yard signs began to disappear and be
replaced with "No Library Porn" signs.

We printed lots of informational materials re: our
policies of internet access (we created a children's
website for some of the computes that defaulted to
yahooligans, we filtered a few comps - but left it up
to the patron to decide if he or she wanted to use
that one (yes, even the kids), we came up with what we
think is a fair policy for public computer use (yes,
we did decide not to allow "porn" via library comps -
we basically limited nips and crotches - yes, these
were strange meetings to be in for a bunch of
librarians),we encouraged parents to go to the library
WITH their children instead of just dropping them off,
we held internet safety training sessions for patrons
of all ages, we talked and talked and talked to our
patrons. And, many people "got it".

But, some didn't...several of our staff had the gut
wrenching experience of sitting through religious
services while the pastor or priest condemned the
library and all the library staff for "not protecting
children" and told the congregation to "send them a
message, vote down the library levy."

Others of us found ourselves sitting in dentists'
chairs with our mouths propped open or wearing paper
gowns at doctors' offices and listening to these
professionals asking us why we wouldn't protect
children. This didn't just happen to those of use
holding an MLS who had had a bit of training on how to
handle such things...this happened to all of us from
the youngest pages up to the secretaries in our main
office to our elderly payroll lady.

Every single staff received a letter at our homes
telling us that if we continued to work for such a
godless organization, we would go to hell. Even our
children were questioned at school by their teachers!

It was like the world was burning...

At the same time, we came under intense scrutiny from
the larger library community. We were condemned by
some for "caving" when we gave patrons the option of
using a filtered machine and applauded by some for
finding a workable compromise. Most, I think, tucked
their heads down and were very happy that it wasn't
them...many learned from the things that we had done
wrong - and right. So did we.

And...we got through it...our levy didn't fail (and,
in fact, a few years later, we passed a 42 million
dollar bond issue to build new libraries and improve
the ones that we have). We figured out an internet
policy that works for our system and our rather rural,
small town communities - Amish patrons mingle with
soccer moms and business people, and old school
farmers, while still supporting intellectual freedom.


The Christian Coalition got distracted by something
else and our local concerned citizens group burned
itself out and drifted away.

We won ALA's Library of the Year award the next year
and for the past five years, have placed in the top
five libraries in the country for our size. We did
programs at ALA national and regional conferences so
that other libraries could learn from our experience.

And, we keep ordering replacement copies of It's
Perfectly Normal, and books about Wicca and
graphic novels and whatever else...and, yes, we did
order The Higher Power of Lucky and expect many copies
to arrive at any moment. Hell...we are even getting
the audio.

I wouldn't wish our experience on my worst enemy,
but...it does help to put things into perspective.

We are not special. We are just ordinary library
people. We are human - we falter and stand up again.
We learn and do better the next time. There are
thousands of us all over the country - all over the
world. And, we are just doing our job, because
defending intellectual freedom is just as much a part
of our job as reading to third graders and helping
people find American Gods on CD.

We will not trade our ideals for what is easy and
"practical". We will not trade them for a single
word. Our eyes are open and it takes more than an
abused scrotum to make us blink.

I thank you for your indulgence and your patience and
your kind words re: libraries and librarians in the
past. Being a librarian trumps *almost* every other
job in the world - if you ever get tired of writing (I
think that only one that trumps librarian-ing) come on
over - you'd be welcome in the cult...uh...I mean
professon. :0)

Be well!

Lynn Wiandt
Manager, Seville Community Library
Medina County District Library (Ohio)

Here is one of my favorite quotes about librianship.
It is from a novel by Larry Beinhart called "The
Librarian".

"Librarians don't make a lot of money, more than
poets,
but not so much, say, as your more successful
panhandlers, so our ideals are important to us and the
love of books and the love of knowledge and the love
of truth and free information and letting people
discover things for themselves and let them, oh, read
romance novels or detective novels, whatever they
want, and giving poor people internet access."


To which there is nothing at all that I can add.

...

Does the Magnificent Oracular 8-Ball wossname update itself for your new journal entries, or does it only contain the words you put in it at the time of its conception?
-Casey

Having no idea, I asked the 8 Ball's creator, Dan Guy, who said, Yes. There's not even any caching involved so there's no delay in new posts feeding it.

It picks a random month from the archive (plus the current month), then
a random entry, then a random sentence.

... which, for all his brilliance, goes to show how much he knows. Random indeed. Obviously, it picks the correct and necessary sentence by means as yet not understood by mere mortals...

oddments

I know what you're wondering. You're wondering, "Who is Fangirl magazine's Fangirl of the Year?" aren't you? Well, wonder no more. Simply by clicking on http://69.50.211.117/~yvigpfed/Fangirl_of_The_Year/2007_Fangirl_Of_The_Year.html you will learn the truth. (No, it's not me. Oh, you knew that already.) (But I nominated the winner, and so feel vaguely proud...)

There's a new story by Susanna Clarke on BBC7 Radio called "The Dweller in High Places". It can be heard on internet streaming at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/genres/artsdrama/aod.shtml?bbc7/bloodlines_mon - or it can be played directly in a RealAudio player from http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/shows/rpms/bbc7/bloodlines_mon.ram

The BBC usually keeps shows up for a week, so we've only got another six days to listen it...

Hullo, Neil. I know you're busy and I need to go scrape about 1/4 of an inch of ice of my car (you really didn't get any sleet up there?) so i'll make this quick. I know you already said that the whole 'Gaiman-is-writing-Silent-Hill-2' thing was just a rumor and you are, in fact, not. Is that still the case? IMDB now has you listed on the Silent Hill 2 page as a writer alongside Christophe Gans. Here's a link. http://imdb.com/title/tt0938330/ I sincerely hope that this isn't true. And if it is... Well, if anyone can fix the atrocity that was Silent Hill (no joke was intended there) it's you.Logan M. G.

IMDB is a very odd sort of thing, and it doesn't really always bear a lot of resemblance to reality. Like most of the internet, it's useful and often correct, but not actually reliable. Anyway, yes, it's up there that I'm doing it, and no, of course I'm not. The really odd bit is that, despite listing me, they also have an FAQ on that same IMDB page which says that I'm not involved and concludes,
The rumor stems from a mistranslation on a Silent Hill Fan Site, in which Gans actually said Roger Avary would be returning to write the script for Silent Hill 2 when he was finished with "his project with his friend Neil Gaiman". Gans was refering to Beowulf.

(Actually I think Mr Gans was probably referring to Black Hole. But he might have been referring to Beowulf.)

Dear Neil,I was just reading your latest post and I could not help thinking that your "Because even lousy miracles are still miracles" would make a great prompt for a story. In fact I went further and thought that possibly the whole of your marvelous divination machine could be used as a prompt generator for a writing group.Would you mind awfully if it was used that way ?Thanks for all the words. Nathalie

As long as the powers of the oracular wossname are being used only for good, I'm quite happy with it being used in any way you wish. And I checked with the Oracle itself, and it said "Which probably isn't there any more anyway" which I think speaks for itself.