Lots of lovely letters from people about where and how they found authors for free whose work they then went on to buy, although I was vaguely hoping someone would write a letter saying, "If you're so fond of Free, then why don't you write a book for free, that you don't get any royalties on, that could be given away or sold incredibly cheaply, just to encourage people to read? Yeah, what about that then, smartarse?" But nobody has.
Which is actually a pity, because if they did I could point out that I did just that -- the writing the book bit anyway -- last year. It's a short book called Odd and the Frost Giants, and it's published by Bloomsbury Books in the UK and Ireland for the 2008 World Book Day, which is this coming Thursday, the 6th of March.
"13 million school children in the UK will receive a World Book Day £1 Book Token which can be exchanged for a World Book Day £1 Book, throughout March, from over 3,000 participating bookshops and book retailers across the UK and Republic of Ireland. The £1 Token can also be put towards any book or audio book costing £2.99 or more. The World Book Day £1 Book Token is sponsored by National Book Tokens and redemptions are funded by bookshops across the country."
Again, it's books as dandelion seeds, and not all of them are going to find soil. Some of those 13 million kids will destroy their books, some leave them behind, some not even care enough to participate. But some of the kids will go and choose a book of their own, find something they wouldn't have discovered otherwise, maybe find out that reading and owning books of your own is something you can do for pleasure, and... maybe... it'll help ensure that there are still readers of books -- and bookshops -- a hundred years from now.
(I just googled to see if there were any reviews of Odd yet. None from newspapers that I could see, but
Lots of people wrote to tell me that the chest X-Ray was needed for the Tuberculosis test. Nobody explained why the chest X-Ray has to be carried to the US in hand-baggage (it's one of the rules, or it was in 1992). I asked at immigration when I arrived in the US if anyone was going to look at it, and was told that no, nobody ever ever looked at the chest X-rays in hand-baggage. Ever? Ever, said the man.
...
If your dog suddenly discovers and goes for a cat (no longer in a tree) when you're standing on a sheet of what was ice-melt that has just refrozen into sheet ice, and you make a sudden and ill-advised move in an attempt to stop the cat being chased (and to stop the dog losing an eye -- Princess takes her fights seriously) and go down rather heavily on your ankle, you wind up oddly happy if an hour or so later you're just limping and icing it. It could have been a hundred times worse, as my doctor (who happened to be nearby) pointed out.
Princess is back inside the house, Cabal has a scratch under his eye.
And Dave McKean sent over nine sketches for nine different covers to The Graveyard Book -- all of them really impressive. I'll find out from him if he minds me putting them up here (once the final one has been decided upon, anyway). It would be interesting to show people how a book cover gets decided on. (I was also thrilled that Dave wrote after finishing it and said he thought it was a much stronger book than Coraline.)
Hi Neil, I was considering your new book Odd and the Frost Giants. Before I started working in my current job I would have thought 'Odd' an amusing name for a character because of its meaning in the English language.
However, I now work for a company that employs a lot of Norwegians and there is many a person named Odd amongst them, including the wonderfully named Odd Erik Stangeland.
What made you choose 'Odd' for your character? (Incidently I did a quick search for Odd and found that its etymological meaning could be from Old Norse {oddr}, meaning 'point of a sword (weapon)' - I wonder how it came to mean what it does in modern english...) Regards Cameron Aberdeen, Scotland
As you say. Actually the book begins,
There was a boy called Odd, and there was nothing strange or unusual about that, not in that time or place. Odd meant the tip of a blade, and it was a lucky name.
He was odd though. At least, the other villagers thought so. But if there was one thing that he wasn't, it was lucky.
His father had been killed during a sea-raid, two years before, when Odd was ten. It was not unknown for people to get killed in sea-raids, but his father wasn't killed by a Scotsman, dying in glory in the heat of battle as a Viking should. He had jumped overboard to rescue one of the stocky little ponies that they took with them on their raids as pack animals.
and how I found it? Before I started writing, I called my favourite Norwegian, Iselin Evensen (last seen on this blog taking me to a tomb in Oslo I think), and she put several lists of old Norse names and nicknames and what they meant and suchlike together for me, and Odd jumped out from the list and started waving.
According to http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=odd points of weapons were triangles, and the three-sided-ness gave us the concept of odd versus even, and from there we probably got odd versus normal...
Squirrel billingsgate? From whence cometh the reference, please an thank you? (I Googled it, and know that Billingsgate is a section of London, and there is or was a fishmarket there. But, I'm not sure what that has to do with Squirrels being 1)so greedy they'll eat anything put anywhere, and 2) Squirrels being unjustly detained in woodchuck traps.) Regards, Siri
The fish market of Billingsgate was famous for the salty and interesting language of the people who worked there, who all swore like, um, fishwives. According to the 1811 Grose Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,
billingsgate language
Foul language, or abuse. Billingsgate is the market where the fishwomen assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes, they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a little on the left hand.
Where will I buy Odd and The Frost Giants since I live in the US? Will there be a distributor here? How long do I have to wait? Also, how long do I have to wait for The Graveyard Book? I'm aching to read new Gaiman.
Thank you, Mr. Neil.
Siri
You're welcome. Let's see... I don't know if Odd and the Frost Giantswill be published in the US. No plans for it at present, anyway.
As to how you'd get a copy if you aren't in the UK, I'd suggest either get someone in the UK to buy one for you, or simply order one from an online retailer. You'll be paying postage but it's still a 14,500 word book for $2 (that's about half the length of CORALINE) so it's not going to set you back much.
If you decide to use Amazon.co.uk -- which anyone with an Amazon account in any other country can use -- you want to use this link to the one pound copy of the book. They have -- and do not use -- another link up to a discounted twenty-five pound version of the book -- which is, I assume, and unless I hear otherwise, some kind of Amazon screw-up, although possibly they're discounting packs of 25 copies. [edit to add, guess confirmed. That's what it is -- a pack of 25 for retailers.]
Now I've finished writing Odd..., I've an essay on Jeff Smith's Bone to do and an introduction to a book about Frank McConnell, then I'm back full-time onto The Graveyard Book until it's done. Will probably fall off the earth in December to finish it.
I think The Graveyard Book will come out in about a year. Maybe a little less.
Odd had imagined that the side of salmon would feed him for a week or more. But bears and foxes and eagles all, he discovered, eat salmon, and feeding them was the least he could do to thank them for seeing him home. They ate until the fish was all gone, but only Odd and the eagle seemed satisfied with their portions. The fox and the bear both looked like they were still hungry.
“We'll find more food tomorrow,” said Odd. “Sleep now.”
The animals stared at him. He walked over to the straw mattress, and climbed onto it. It didn't smell like his father at all, he realised, as he sat down on it, as he placed the crutch carefully against the wall, to pull himself up when he woke. It just smelled like straw. Odd closed his eyes, and he was asleep.
Dreams of darkness, of flashes, of moments, nothing he could hold onto, nothing that comforted him. And then into the dream a booming gloomy voice that said,
“It wasn't my fault.”
And a higher voice, bitterly amused, that said, “Oh, right. I told you not to go pushing that tree down. You just didn't listen.”
“I was hungry. I could smell the honey. You don't know what it was like, smelling that honey. It was better than mead. Better than roasted goose.” And then, the gloomy voice, so bass it made Odd's stomach vibrate, changed its tone. “And you, of all people, don't need to go blaming people. It's because of you we're in this mess.”
“I thought we had a deal. I thought we weren't going to keep harping on about a trivial little mistake...”
“You call this trivial?”
And then a third voice, high and raw, which screeched, “Silence.”
There was silence. Odd rolled over. There was a glow from the fire-embers, enough to see the inside of the hut, enough to confirm to Odd that there were not another three people in there with him. It was just him and the fox and the bear and the eagle...
I wonder if they eat people, thought Odd. Whatever they are.
He sat up in the bed, leaned against the wall. The bear and the eagle both ignored him. The fox darted him a green-eyed glance.
“You were talking,” said Odd.
The animals looked at Odd and at each other. If they did not actually say “Who? Us?” it was there in their expressions, in the way they held themselves.
“Somebody was talking,” said Odd. “And it wasn't me. There isn't anyone else in here. That means it was you lot. And there's no point in arguing.”
“We weren't arguing,” said the bear. “Because we can't talk.” Then it said, “Oops.”
The fox and the eagle glared at the bear, who put a paw over his eyes and looked ashamed of himself.
Odd sighed. “Which one of you wants to explain what's going on?” he said.
“Nothing,” said the fox, brightly. “Just a few talking animals. Nothing to worry about. Happens every day. We'll be out of your hair first thing in the morning.”
The eagle fixed Odd with its one good eye. Then it turned to the fox. “Tell!”
The 30 Second scary story will be broadcast on the 27th of October on Weekend America. If you don't get NPR you should be able to listen to it -- and many other things -- at http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/.
I finished the first typed draft of Odd and the Frost Giants tonight. It's 14,000 words long, more or less, which makes it (I think) a novelette. I've sent it to a few people to read, and tomorrow I'll read it myself, and scribble on the printouts and change things, and wonder if it works or not, and try and make it work better.
Someone sent me a link to a film that was meant to be H.P. Lovecraft talking in 1933, which just made me want to take everyone involved in creating it aside and show them interview films from that period, and make them really listen to the kind of questions that were asked back then and the way that they were answered. You can date interviews in seconds, in the same way you can date old commercials, or old TV shows. (I watched the first couple of episodes of The Tomorrow People with Maddy recently. We were a couple of minutes in when she said "This is the Seventies, right?") It was a good idea, but the joy of faking period stuff has to be getting the tone of voice and the tiny details right, because they make everything else work.
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.)
The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.
You don't live there always when you write. Mostly it's a long hard walk. Sometimes it's a trudge through fog and you're scared you've lost your way and can't remember why you set out in the first place.
But sometimes you fly, and that pays for everything.
No, it's not quite finished, but I don't mind right now, and I suspect that I can persuade my publisher to wait another couple of days. It's alive, and a real book, even if it's a short one and I cannot wait to get back to it.
....
The Hype Machine is a wonderful music discovery engine and internet music channel, and I've loved using it ever since I learned it on the Fabulist. Now, as you learn from the latest Fabulist posting, it's going to take 10,000 of us leaving the Hype machine window open to launch the new version of Hype Machine. They have about 1800 people right now, so if you wouldn't mind going to http://hypem.com/new and not closing the window I'd be very grateful. Thank you.
And I am still posting links to things instead of writing interesting things in the blog, because I am still somewhere in the hell that's either Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 of THIS DAMNED BOOK which seems determined to be longer than it was meant to be. (You're not a novel, I tell it. You're not even a novella. You're a novelette. And you're due in on Monday. But the story merely laughs and stretches ominously and I have no idea what this bloody pool is doing in the middle of the forest.)
Not a lot to report. I flew Virgin to Tokyo -- I had fond memories of Virgin Upper Class from about a decade ago, when I flew once it to LA and found it spacious and pleasant and really nice. It's nowhere near as good as it was back then, but the seats turn into all-the-way-flat beds, and that on its own is wonderful.
Less impressed when I realised, when I got off the plane, that one of the bottles of Talisker I'd bought in duty free as presents for my Japanese hosts (given the Skye connection with Stardust it seemed appropriate) was no longer in the duty free bag. I hope whoever wound up with it enjoys it.
I worked on Odd and the Frost Giants on the plane, typing up stuff that was handwritten. Odd is a slim book I'm writing -- a novelette, I guess -- that will be published for World Book Day 2008.
(I lost the notebook [left it on the plane from China to Amsterdam, en route to Budapest] that had the next chapter handwritten in it. So, having no other option, I'll shrug and write it again. Mostly it was just the fox talking and the bear interrupting anyway.)
Arrived in Tokyo and had the smoothest experience walking through any airport I've ever had -- passport, baggage, everything was simply ready as I got there, and I was out of the airport before the plane was even meant to land.
I was introduced to my people at UIP Japan, and put in a car with my driver and my security person (I have a security person here) while the UIP people followed in a minibus. And then I got to the hotel...
If you ever saw the film ANNIE, the bit where she arrives at the Warbucks Estate and is introduced to everyone while walking through the building, that was what it was like arriving in my hotel. I tumbled out of the car and was swept inside a tide of people, hotel people and UIP people, into the hotel, led by the general manager while shaking hands with er... everyone, or that was how it seemed... and soon found myself in the most beautiful hotel room I think I've ever been in (and I have been in many lovely hotel rooms around the world), with a view over Tokyo that's astonishing. The hotel has only been open for about two weeks, and it still has that new-carpet smell. The hotel room doesn't feel like anyone's stayed in here before. I was shown how to work things, and I needed to be shown -- it's the HAL 2000 of hotel rooms, with all sorts of strange technological innovations hidden away. The toilet seats that rise to greet you when you nervously open an unmarked door to see what's in there are the least of it.
(Having a panda on my lap was better than this hotel room. But as hotel rooms go, it's the best. It has an old telescope too, for looking at the stars, or at the scenery, or something.)
I checked the schedule -- the 43 interviews I was doing in two days has shrunk to a slightly more manageable 37. The Kadokawa event on Friday night should be enormously fun, presuming that I can still remember by then a) who I am and b) how to sign my name.
Today I get to recover, but plan instead to go out to Studio Ghibli and pay my respects there, something I've wanted to do since they first invited me, when I was working on Princess Mononoke, all those years ago.
