In which your correspondent admits to not knowing very much at all

For years people have been writing from the UK to ask when a Region 2 version of Neverwhere would be out, and I've pointed out that actually the US one is Region Zero, so they can just buy that.

I recently got a query on the FAQ line about the new BBC reissue of Neverwhere on DVD, and whether there would be anything new and cool on there. Since this was the first I'd heard of it, I asked Lenny Henry. It was the first he'd heard about it. I checked Amazon.co.uk, and it's coming out at the end of April. I was sort of hoping that if the BBC ever released it then we could put extra footage back into it, fix a few things that still really bothered me, do a commentary track with some of the actors and the producer that was more than just me in a room eight years after I'd last seen it, sort of busking desperately...

...but given that it's coming out in seven weeks, I think all those things are now pipe dreams. (Not even sure if it'll be my commentary track from the US DVD on there, or nothing at all).

Still, it will be out in the UK, legitimately. Here's the cover that's up on Amazon -- I don't know if it's a real cover or a placeholder.



[Edit to add, I thought I'd put up a Neverwhere DVD cover that I actually like here as well. Interestingly, it uses some of the same stills. It's the Japanese cover, and it's a bit small:]

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 78

Spent a good part of yesterday trying to compile a bibliography of Books Consulted for American Gods for the not-yet-online neilgaiman.com -- a sort of astonishingly incomplete bibliography, because otherwise I would have had to try and catalogue half a library, so I'm trying just to list the books in the boxes I'd put in the boot of the car (that's the trunk, for americans) when I drove down to Florida to work on the novel, and the ones I tried to make sure were on the shelves in the cabin as I wrote the rest of the book... and the ones I filled my suitcase with when I went to spend two weeks writing in Las Vegas (an anecdote, it occurs to me, that I've not mentioned yet on this blogger. Oh well. Feel free to ask me about it if you are at one of the Q & A sessions between the reading and the signing.) I got down a lot of the myth and folklore books. Lots of mini-capsule reviews.Cannot for the life of me find the box of books on confidence tricks or coin magic.

.....

http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jun01/fansf.htm has a review of American Gods up... (the version up earlier was an early draft of the review posted in error).

....

Spent a couple of hours today in the basement, pulling out foreign editions of books for neilgaiman.com. I'm not sure whether I was more amazed by the stuff I didn't know I had -- "Chivalry" and "Snow, Glass, Apples" in Japanese. A box of first editions of Angels and Visitations. A Large Print edition of Stardust. A folder of short stories and poems I wrote in my teens (didn't have the heart to burn them, but the idea of anyone ever actually reading them... ow!) -- or the stuff I knew I had but couldn't find -- The German Hardback of Good Omens, for example -- or the stuff I should have had but had never been sent -- like the swedish editions of Neverwhere, or the Spanish Smoke and Mirrors and Stardust.

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 69

Spoke to my friend Kelli Bickman about her book, What I thought I Saw. Kelli is an artist and a photographer. Currently she's the MTV featured artist for Spring/Summer 2001 -- you can read about her and see her art here and her paintings here (click on the little lightbulbs to move around) -- and some of her editorial/illustration work for magazines at here.

What I thought I Saw is a book of photos she took in London in 1996, on location of Neverwhere, the TV series, and of people behind the scenes, and in New York. Mostly people buy it because I wrote the introduction and it's got Neverwhere in it, then write to Kelli asking when her next book of art/photos is coming out, completely forgetting about me, as she's good.

She's moving out of New York soon. What I thought I Saw is almost sold out. Kelli has several boxes filled with copies though, and is very keen to get rid of them (as all her life's possessions have to be loaded onto a truck soon and driven thousands of miles) and wanted to know if I had any brilliant ideas. I'll try and come up with something. In the meantime I thought I'd put something up here with some links telling people to order copies.

I should probably warn you that there's some nudity in there. (But, as DreamHaven gleefully pointed out when they solicited it, not of me.)

Kelli's mum, the redoubtable Connie Bickman, has a new book out. Connie's a photojournalist, and the book is called Tribe of Women. Gorgeous photos of women around the world, wonderful text.

And while I'm plugging stuff, let me point out that you should buy Eddie Campbell's ALEC: HOW TO BE AN ARTIST. You need this book very badly. Go and look at Eddie's website...