still off the clock

So. Home. Fell asleep at about 5.00 am, woke up about 11:30 am, so not back on US time yet.

Today I did some bee-things with Bill Stiteler (we put in a queen excluder today prior to splitting the Olga hive next week) then we planted a bag of overlooked hyacinths we found in the garage, and watched some Dr Who with Maddy (we're now up to Planet of the OOD). Also I walked the dog.

I've just been informed that due to a transfer credit-hour technicality I can't graduate with my college class & must get ONE CREDIT in summer school and walk next year if at all.

Neil, could you tell me anything to cheer me up? An anecdote, a song excerpt, news ("Jill Thompson and I are going to do that Delirium Miniseries we've been talking about for a while!"), anything?

Sincerely,

Nathan Henderson

I'm sorry to hear that, Nathan.

The biggest news that doesn't involve walking along a fallen tree over a river with a dog following behind me is that NPR has picked ANANSI BOYS for the Bryant Park Project book club. Details at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=90309379
and at http://www.npr.org/blogs/bryantpark/2008/05/book_clubs_new_pick_neil_gaima.html

And in other news... I thought that this was still confidential, but it's been announced on this blog and I assume it's not confidential any longer. So it's definitely news. Hurrah for PEN. Now I have to come up with a story...

Songs? Let's see -- I wrote a song for Peri Lyons' one woman show that you can hear a demo of at her myspace page. It's a 3.00am-in-a-bar song for a generation that's much more likely to be found in front of computer screens than in bars at 3.00 am.

Over at Chris Ewens' Hidden Variable website there are longish clips from lots of Hidden Variable songs two of which are mine -- I'm really proud of "Unresolving". Also, I hope Chris finds a record label for it soon.

How was that?

...

It looks like tickets for the MIT talk on the 23rd are going fast -- http://community.livejournal.com/millionyear/34688.html -- although I believe that MIT are keeping tickets back to sell on the day. (Nope. See next post.)

Over at Lurid.com, Craig Russell talks more about the adaptation he's doing of Sandman: The Dream Hunters, and you can see more of the art, along with the adaptation he's been working on for the last couple of years of Coraline. (You may or may not be able to see the embedded footage -- although it's now better than it was.)

From The Coraline Set

From The Beat, here's P Craig Russell drawing the Sandman Dream Hunters comic.



The thing I was going to write about this morning isn't getting written now though as they need me for make-up and an interview...

A good morning's mail...

On any normal day, the most exciting thing in the morning's mail would have been the limited editions of CORALINE, or the second volume of the collected Moomin comics, or even the new Lamy 2000 Fountain pen (to replace one that I must have lost somewhere along the way. I'm writing The Graveyard Book with a very antique Waterman flexnib, which makes it very pleasant to write but not the most legible manuscript you've ever seen). Not to mention the DVD screener of Sweeney Todd. And even on a slightly abnormal day, filled with amazing postal gifts and such, the most exciting thing in the mail would have been the DREAM OF
THE RAREBIT FIEND, a book of amazing hugeness and beauty that I had ordered from http://www.rarebit-fiend-book.com/ (and had been waiting for with suppressed excitement for about ten days). I put it down on the post-covered kitchen table and stood on a chair to take a photo of it. The book is enormous (that's a full-sized phone beside it) and I cannot wait to read it...

But the surprise of the postbag was this: The Art of P. Craig Russell, a Retrospective -- a lovely surprise. Introduction by Dave Sim, put together by Craig and Joe Pruett. It's a look at Craig's art and work from boyhood until today that is complete, illuminating and beautiful.

There's one chapter that's just Craig talking about Murder Mysteries, how he adapted it, what choices he made, how he broke it down, the design of the word balloons, the use of colour, and so on, that should be compulsory reading for anyone who wants to write, draw or edit comics.

If Craig had told me he was doing it (and I'm sure he did) I had managed to forget completely. Which made it the perfect surprise. (Craig's website is http://www.pcraigrussell.net/. )

And that was followed by a phone call from my agent letting me know that United Artists was the first studio to sign a deal with the Writer's Guild, and that if I wanted to write a film for them, or sell them the rights to a book, I could. Here's hoping that a lot of other studios follow.