Good Omens, Cheap Seats, and the Memorial

I haven't blogged for a long time, but right now I'm on a train, and it feels like a good time to catch up. Thismorning I was interviewed by Charlie Russell for his documentary on Terry Pratchett. (Charlie made the previous BBC Terry Pratchett documentaries, Living With Alzheimer's, Choosing to Die, and Facing Extinction.)

We did it in a Chinese restaurant in Gerrard Street, because Terry and I had first met in a Chinese restaurant, in February 1985. It was easy and pleasant, and then suddenly it wasn't. I was talking about the last time I'd seen Terry, and what we said, and I found myself crying uncontrollably, unable to talk. And then I pulled it together, and we carried on.

 "Look,this is really unprofessional,” said Charlie, when the interview was all over, “and I haven't said it before to anyone I've interviewed, but would you like a hug?” And I said that, yes, I would.

 I'm still a bit shaken. It's as if all the emotion that I'd kept under control for the public Terry memorial, for the public Terry, the other night, erupted when I talked about the private people that were us.

 The memorial the other night was beautiful. I wore my mourning frock coat that Kambriel made for me, and I went out that afternoon and bought a white shirt and a black tie. (Actually, I bought four shirts, which, given how often I wear white shirts, should take me easily to the end of my lifetime.)

I read the introduction to A Slip of the Keyboard, which I'd written for Terry while he was alive. I got sad at the end but that was fine. And I held it together just fine when Rob, Terry's amazing right-hand man, presented me with a big black author's hat Terry had left me. I couldn't put it on, though. I wasn't ready for that. (I tried it on later, in the dressing room. I looked, to my mind, like a rabbinical cowboy assassin. Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

At the end of the evening, Rob announced upcoming things, and one of the things he announced was GOOD OMENS on the screen, written by me. (There was a little confusion in the way that it was reported, by the way: because Rob had been talking earlier about the letters found in the safe that Terry had left us, people assumed that me writing was something Terry asked me to do from beyond the grave. Actually, it was more of a last request while he was still alive. (“I would very much like this to happen, and I know, Neil, that you're very very busy, but no one else could ever do it with the passion that we share for the old girl. I wish I could be more involved and I will help in any way I can,” he wrote, once I said yes.)

I've been working on the Good Omens scripts for much of the last year, wishing that he was still here and could help, even if it was just to take a phone call. It's hard when I get stuck, and want to ask his advice. It's harder when I come up with something clever or funny that's new and I want to call him up and read it to him, and make him laugh or hear him point out something I'd missed. We were always each other's first audiences for Good Omens. That was the point. Neither of us had any idea whether or not we'd be able to sell this odd book or not, when we were writing it, but we knew that we could make the other one laugh. Anyway. I'm now 72% of the way through the Good Omens scripts, and the end is in sight.

My goal is to finish it before the publication day of THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS, my book of selected non-fiction, which comes out in the US and the UK on May 31^st. There are two different covers. The US one shows me sitting looking thoughtful in a crumbling theatre, the UK shows me with my hair all blowing in the wind and gears exploding from the back of my head. Both of these seem pretty accurate, especially the exploding gears.

(US Amazon link: http://bit.ly/VfCheapSeats, B&N link and review: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/blog/sci-fi-fantasy/the-view-from-the-cheap-seats-offers-a-revealing-look-into-the-corners-of-neil-gaimans-mind/ and IndieBound independent bookshop link: http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062262264)

I was, and still am, nervous about putting a book of non-fiction out into the world. I'm not scared of putting out fiction, but there's part of me that wonders if I have any right to burble in public about what I believe and hope and care about, that wonders if anyone is going to be interested in essays on books that (in a few cases) it seems like nobody cares about but me, or on the state of comics in 1993, or on how to write a review a book you find, when the deadline comes, you've mislaid. But the few early reviews seem really kind, and the handful of people I sent it to said lovely things about it (and all of them wrote to me to assure me that they had actually read it as well, and liked it as much as they said they did). There will be one event for the book launch, in the UK, which we will stream, so it will be an afternoon or later morning web-event in the US.

 I recorded the audio book while we were staying in Santa Fe. I'd never recorded a non-fiction audio book before, and wasn't sure what to do when I hit the interviews I did with Stephen King and Lou Reed, so I did my best.

 We spent the end of the winter in Santa Fe. It is a beautiful little city, and Amanda has family there, which was why we were there and not somewhere else, and I have friends. (I'd have lunch with George R R Martin. “It says on line that I'm in town to write your book for you,” I'd tell him, sighing. He thought it was much funnier than I did.)

 We went to Meow Wolf, which is a former bowling alley in Santa Fe, which contains a house in California in which an event has caused ructions in space and time that lead into other dimensions. It's a mad and glorious mashup of art, story, and Disneyland, and if you are in the SouthWest of America, you should go.

 Ash has grown. He's seven months old today. He's the sweetest, nicest baby. He smiles and is funny. I'm in London this week, and I miss him.

Our friend Prune, who is French, said that he was like “the baby they would show you in a shop, if you wanted to buy a baby.” 

"You mean, the display model?" 

"Exactly. The Display model baby."

I love him so much. He likes music, and stories, and he likes books too.  

Here is a photo of him liking a book. (The Chu's Day board book was a gift from my agent, who was amused that I had not thought to give him any of my own books. So she did.)

He likes it when I pretend to sneeze. 

And here's a video of him a couple of weeks ago, wearing his cardigan that Delia Sherman knitted him.

Labels: Ash, Chu's Day Board Book, Memorial, Terry Pratchett, The View From the Cheap Seats

The Facts of Death

It is not a wise or a sensible thing to do, to fly from the US to the UK, getting in late on the Tuesday night, and flying back early on the Thursday morning, in order to go to a funeral on the Wednesday, but sometimes you do the wrong thing because it's the only right thing you can do, and because you have to say goodbye to a friend properly, and that was true this week.

We didn't always look like this. 24 years ago, on tour for Good Omens, we looked more like this:

It's a bookshop signing photo, which is a nice change. Back then, every newspaper interview we did they'd drive us to a graveyard. I'm not 100% certain why. But in ancient crumbling newspaper picture archives, there should be a host of photos of Terry and me holding Good Omens and looking not very scary at all.

It accompanies this:  http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/1991_Gaiman_Pratchett.html --  an interview with us both from 1991, in Locus Magazine, from back when we were very young and prone to finishing each other's sentences.

BBC Radio 4 is going to repeat GOOD OMENS as a tribute to Terry: it starts Monday the 6th, at 22:30 UK time. Details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04knt4h If you missed it, you can listen to it from anywhere in the world, using the internet, or an app (if you have only a phone/tablet).

And Terry's death makes me think of Douglas Adams' death (I missed the memorial: it was the first day that planes were flying again after 9/11, and I gave my seat on the plane up so that someone could get home). 

On March 3rd I was in the UK to deliver the Douglas Adams Memorial Lecture, to help Save the Rhinos. You can watch the talk I gave here:

(The blog title is borrowed from a poem Terry wrote for an anthology called NOW WE ARE SICK, which I edited with Steve Jones in 1985. His poem began...


They don’t teach you the facts of death,

Your Mum and Dad. They give you pets.

We had a dog which went astray.

Got laminated to the motorway.

I cried. We had to post him to the vet’s.



You have to work it out yourself,

This dying thing. Death’s always due.

A goldfish swimming on a stall,

Two weeks later: cotton wool,

And sent to meet its Maker down the loo.)

Labels: Douglas Adams, Flights, Good Omens, Save the Rhinos, Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett

I woke up and my email was all condolences from friends, and requests for statements from journalists, and I knew it had happened. I'd been warned.

Thirty years and a month ago, a beginning author met a young journalist in a Chinese Restaurant, and the two men became friends, and they wrote a book, and they managed to stay friends despite everything. Last night, the author died.

There was nobody like him. I was fortunate to have written a book with him, when we were younger, which taught me so much.

This was the last thing I wrote about Terry. I knew his death was coming and it made it no easier:

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/sep/24/terry-pratchett-angry-not-jolly-neil-gaiman

I'll miss you, Terry.

I'm not up to writing anything yet. Maybe one day.

Labels: Good Omens, Terry Pratchett, The End of an Era

Tangled like ivy

I am writing this in Amanda's kitchen in Boston. There is ivy growing over the windows (in the bathroom the ivy has actual grown through the windows and grown into the shower in a magical mixup of indoors and outdoors) and all the light is very green.

I've been making a list of important things to blog, and then forgetting to do it, mostly because nothing has been more important than grabbing a handful of days with my wife, and when I've had downtime I've been making up things and writing them down and not blogging.

But the blog is calling to me...

I will try and get the most important things down here today.

...

I joined Google+ and decided that I didn't want another public platform yet.

I like Twitter. I tolerate Facebook. Google+ seemed (for me) like an awkward mash-up of the two. I found the continual stream of notifications telling me that another 500 people I did not know had put me into circles and that lots of other people I didn't know had mentioned me really irritating and distracting, and I couldn't turn them off or easily find the signal in the noise (or find my friends in the flood of people putting me into circles), and when I grumbled about it mildly (agreeing with Warren Ellis that I couldn't find friends I'd actually want to put in circles among the thousands of people who I was being told were putting me in circles) a couple of hundred people explained to me that I was Doing It Wrong.

It was the "You're Doing It Wrong" messages that were my personal tipping point. As far as I'm concerned, the mark of a good social network is that it either does what it was made to do easily and cleanly, or it's bendy enough that you can make it do what you want. And being told "you're trying to use it like Facebook but really it's like Twitter!" just made me strangely nostalgic for Twitter. And as Twitter was still there, I cancelled my Google+ account, feeling at this point that I didn't need another time sink, another place to check, another distraction from work or from life.

(If you cancel your Google+ account, Google+ will then start helpfully emailing you notifications every time someone puts you in a circle or mentions you, even if you had all of the "Email notifications" options previously turned off. This is fixable when you discover the "unsubscribe" option at the bottom of the emails that wasn't visible when they came in on your phone, but you shouldn't have to unsubscribe from something you didn't subscribe to.)

Anyway, I wish Google+ all the best. I'll probably check it out again in a year or so, if I'm still on the Internet, or sooner than that if they make things so I can't blog without it. And it may well be an excellent Social Network eventually. It's still in Beta, after all, and most users aren't going to get a huge instant flood of followers (circlers?).

So that's a social network I said goodbye to.

I said hello to Turntable.fm, however, a service (currently US only, alas) that lets you make a room, or join a room, and DJ in it. You and four other people can DJ at a time, sharing music you've taken from Turntable's extensive databases or uploaded. I loved DJing, especially once I decided that there should be more spoken-word stuff out there, and that people might like it, and created http://turntable.fm/neilhimselfs_house_of_poetry and have slipped in there from time to time and just played poetry, and been delighted as other people DJ poetry too.

...

The Nerdist Podcast was released:

This is the link to the entry with the http://www.nerdist.com/2011/07/nerdist-podcast-106-neil-gaiman/

Chris and I talk about Craig Ferguson and late night chat shows. We talk about Doctor Who. We talk about John Hodgman and his unique worldview and his scary moustache. And at the end we talk about writing and how to write. It's really good, I think.

Also...

WITS at the Fizgerald Theatre was broadcast: Here it is, if you did not hear it:



Lots of links to videos of bits that didn't make it to broadcast up at http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/wits/

...

Last Sunday I drove down to Madison to make an unannounced and I hope relatively unexpected appearance at the Discworld Convention. I got to talk with Terry Pratchett for almost two hours on a stage about GOOD OMENS. This was really an excuse for me to spend time with Terry before, during and after the panel, but that also meant that the conversation and the limited time we had together made the Good Omens panel much more "real" (in every sense) than normal panels. We weren't pulling out well-honed anecdotes or trying to make the audience happy. We were just two old friends chatting about something we made over twenty years ago, and reminding each other of bits of things that had happened that we'd forgotten. Also we sang They Might Be Giants' song "Shoehorn With Teeth" together and remembered most of the words.

Here's a picture of the panel stolen from Pat Rothfuss's blog:

And a photo of Terry, me and winged Emily Whitten (chair of the NADWcon). I am pointing to her impressive tights.



And here Terry and I surprise a few people as we walk in together for the Good Omens Panel:



(Thanks to the photographers.)

...

I am astonishingly proud of a book I wrote that Adam Rex is currently painting, intended for very young readers indeed. You can find out about it at Adam's blog http://adamrex.blogspot.com/search/label/chu. Here's the first finished picture from it, set in the Moby Diner. Our hero is in the bottom right-hand corner with his back to us.


Uh-oh. A lot of pepper in the air...

...

And finally, I just got this from J. Michael Straczynski... he's put the text up on his Facebook page, but I'm cutting and pasting it here, with his permission, so there's somewhere outside of Facebook that people can link to and learn about it and sign up for the book before they're all gone.

Over to you, Joe:

I don’t have to tell you who Harlan Ellison is, or that he wrote some of the most seminal episodes of science fiction television in the history of the form. His scripts for The Outer Limits, Star Trek, Twilight Zone and others have won countless awards and are considered landmarks of the genre.

A while back, I got wind of a top-secret project being developed by Publishing 180, the company that publishes the Babylon 5 script books, involving Harlan’s scripts for these series. (Important note: I do not own any part of P180 nor do I receive any financial remuneration of any kind from this project. My involvement here is strictly as a fan and admirer.) I now hold in my hand a preliminary copy of that book, and I wanted to give everyone a heads-up because folks, this is a doozy.

The book, entitled BRAIN MOVIES, contains Harlan’s scripts for “Soldier,” and “Demon With a Glass Hand” from THE OUTER LIMITS, “Paladin of the Lost Hour” and “Crazy as a Soup Sandwich” from the TWILIGHT ZONE, “Memo from Purgatory” from ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS, “The Face of Helen Bournouw” and Harlan’s near-legendary manifesto on how to write good science fiction, written exclusively for incoming writers on BABYLON 5. (The scripts for Paladin and Demon received the prestigious Writers Guild Award.)

In many cases, the book contains both the script and the treatment for the script, something almost never seen outside the studio. Most amazing of all, the book contains not just the shooting script for Harlan’s HITCHCOCK episode, it contains an earlier draft filled with his handwritten annotations and changes.

When an episode is broadcast, you don’t get to see the writer’s mind at work, don’t have the opportunity to experience the moment he decided to make a line of dialogue or a scene go thisway instead of thatway, how a turn of phrase was altered in just the right way at the last moment, you see only the end product. By including the draft with the handwritten annotations, you can see the creative process being enacted right before your eyes. The opportunity to see inside the writer’s mind is unspeakably rare.

Best of all, these are not re-typeset versions of the script, they are painstakingly scanned reproductions of the ORIGINAL SCRIPTS, exactly as they were written.

And for the budding science fiction writers out there, what better than having Harlan Ellison break down in his manifesto how to write effectively in the genre, how to avoid various kinds of traps and make your writing better?

The value of this book to up-and-coming writers, academics, collectors, fans, and just plain folks who love science fiction television is inestimable. This isn’t just a book of scripts, it’s an important piece of history.

When I heard that Harlan was going to include the B5 manifesto (entitled “A Terrifying List of Things Not to Do When Writing For Babylon 5”), I offered to write an introduction to the volume, entitled “Touching Magic.” That introduction is now also in the book.
Last, and maybe coolest of all, because of the presence of B5 material, they are doing a limited number of books that are DUAL AUTOGRAPHED by both myself and Harlan. With only one prior exception, this is the ONLY time that Harlan and I have autographed something together, and never before for a published book. Once those signed editions are gone...they’re gone.

Because Publishing 180 is a boutique publisher, they do not generally release information on its upcoming titles until right before publication. But this volume is so important, so extraordinary, that I asked if I could give the B5 fans out there, and the fans of Harlan Ellison who are also in that group, a heads-up on this event. This way we reduce the risk of missing the chance to get one of the double-signed editions.

The book will go on sale in a couple of weeks – I think it’s somewhere around the 20th and those already on the B5 mailing list will get the announcement automatically – but I’ll be sure to post the info here the second it goes online. If you want to be sure not to miss it, a signup page is up at www.harlanbooks.com

...

And I just realised that I did not get everything down here. There appears to be a new, currently nameless, cat living at my house. I will tell you the story next blog.

And I almost forgot, for those who made it this far - artist Steve Cleff has done a portrait of me as a benefit for the CBLDF. The auction has a few hours to go. Here is the link.

Labels: Amanda, Amanda Palmer's bathroom ivy, Chu's Day, Google+, Harlan Ellison, Terry Pratchett, the nerdist, Turntable FM, Wits

the view from the ice storm

I was home for a day or so but now I am at another airport about to fly all night, and I would rather be home, or rather be in Boston with my wife. But at least I am not driving home in the ice-storm that started as we approached the airport, like my poor assistant is. There's always that.

I'm heading to the UK, where I will do a day of interviews about my Doctor Who episode, and then go and see a sick friend, and then hide out and write for a few days.

In case anyone missed it, Terry Jones is adapting GOOD OMENS into a 4 part television series. Details at http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/monty-python-writer-adapt-neil-168792

This is a good thing, and why Terry Pratchett and I were drinking champagne last Septemberish.

I saw a bunch of press about whether there is or isn't a Sandman TV series: as far as I know, nobody has actually optioned SANDMAN as a TV series from DC Comics, who own it. Eric Kripke (of Supernatural fame) pitched his approach to DC and to me last year, and we liked it and we liked him, but it didn't feel quite right at that point, so we passed.

I think that this year the people at DC Comics (and me) will talk to a lot of people who want to make a Sandman TV series, and if we find the perfect person with the perfect way of treating the material, it'll happen. And otherwise it won't.

(Which reminds me: Matt Cheney is still blogging his way through Sandman. He's just reached A Game of You.)

NEVERWHERE is Chicago's One Book. There are a lot of wonderful Neverwhere related events, including two talks from me, a play reading, and a tour of Chicago Below. Details at http://www.chipublib.org/eventsprog/programs/oboc/11s_neverwhere/oboc_11s_greeting.php. I can't do the link as this is from my phone.

And I just saw the finished version of my Doctor Who episode. I was happy -- there were moments and even scenes I missed, but that's always the way. Mostly I was just impressed by the performances, direction and music. And effects. They spent money on this one and it shows.

Labels: chicago, sandman tv, terry jones, Terry Pratchett

Another Year

Let's see. The biggest and the best news of the day is that Terry Pratchett is now Sir Terrence of Pratchett. Hurrah. 

I shall doff my cap the next time I see him. It will be the best-doffed cap in the land.

I shall buy a cap first, specially.

...

I spent half an hour yesterday talking to a reporter who was working on the obituary of someone who is currently very much alive, even in good health, and it was, well, very odd. I'd always known that obituaries aren't just knocked up (or perhaps tossed off. Look, neither phrase sounds particularly wholesome) on the spur of the moment by some dusty but hard-working obituarist whenever someone kicks the bucket, but that they are written ahead of time, often rewritten many times over the years (The Daily Telegraph's are the best. I don't know why this is, but it's true. Here's their obituary for Eartha Kitt, and this is my favourite Telegraph obituary ever, because it contains the lines

Despite a brisk code of discipline, Singleton took a laissez-faire approach out of the classroom. Every November 5 the smallest boy in the school was sent down a tunnel to light the very core of the bonfire. None, so far as anyone can recall, was ever lost.)

But this was strange -- discussing a living person as if they were dead, talking about their influence with (I hoped) balance, such that, when they died, they quotes would paint a picture for people who knew nothing about the person of what they did and why it mattered.

...

I thought I ought to say thank you to everyone who bought a copy of The Graveyard Book this year. It's been on the New York Times bestseller list since it came out, at the end of September. I'm astonishingly grateful, and so, in this time of economic scariness, is my publisher. Thirteen weeks on the New York Times list is a very long time.

...

In Odd and the Frost Giants, a very small book I wrote, we meet a boy called Odd, in Norway, in Viking times.

I keep thinking that there are two more stories of similar length I want to tell, each with Odd in it. One where he goes to Jerusalem, on the same route they did in the Orkeyinga Saga, and set one a few years after that where he goes a great deal further East -- but I was never sure why any Vikings would go further East than Jerusalem. And then Cheryl Morgan linked to this article (and pointed out that the Vikings were smart enough to bury people with the rubbish swords), and I read:

The tests at the NPL have proved that the inferior swords were forged in northern Europe from locally worked iron. But the genuine ones were made from ingots of crucible steel, which the Vikings brought back from furnaces thousands of miles away in modern Afghanistan and Iran.

And suddenly I knew an awful lot more about Odd, and his travels, and, more particularly, what the third Odd book would be.

...

Having just read the judgment in the Fox v Warners Watchmen case over at http://bradfox.com/downloadables/watchmen_dec2408_order.pdf

I find myself moving from "those grasping Fox people" to being puzzled that Warners are even fighting the case (well, I'm not really -- Warners gave Paramount the right to distribute the movie in the rest of the world when they got the Watchmen option back from Paramount. If they lose the US too, they've paid for a big expensive movie and don't keep, well, anything). Fox had exercised an option on Watchmen, then returned the rights to the producer, reserving for themselves the right to distribute the movie, but leaving the producer the option to buy Fox out. The producer didn't buy them out, so they still own the rights to distribute it.

The bit that leaves me most puzzled about this is that in the world of movies, people are obsessive about rights, because if they aren't, things like this happen. Read the judgment -- it's in readable English.

...

Dearest Author -

What with the new Christmas jumper and other assorted black clothing, how do you manage to keep them sparkly (or at least presentable) in the presence of assorted non-black petittude (most notably Dog)?
As the owner of similar clothing/pet colour combinations, and cupboards full of just-cleaned-and-yet-still-furry garments, I'm intrigued. Are you spending an inordinate amount on laundry these days, or is there a small army of men&women-wot-do just out of shot in every photo standing ready to apply rolls of sticky-backed plastic and other anti-fluff devices to you after any pet contact? Mayhap a special fur-removing filter for the seemingly ever-present camera lenses? Hmmm. Anti-static personal force-field? Not so good for pet-snorgling that though.
Ah well, the winter nights are long and enquiring minds wander..

Pondering,
Karen L

I have family and an assistant who are very good about handing me those rolls of sticky stuff if they think I'm covered in too much white dog or cat hair.

That wasn't a very interesting answer, was it?

Trawling Youtube you can't fail to discover many interviews with writers usually on American TV. There's a positive dearth of such stuff in the UK. What does that tell us about the dumbing down of UK telly? I've yet to see an author of 'genre' fiction (sorry it's a hateful term) getting five minutes to promote a new novel. Doesn't it get you down?

Nope. I think that the US and the UK are equally bad at putting authors on TV, but then I'm not sure it does anyone any good to put authors on TV anyway. The UK occasionally comes up with a  decent South Bank Show or BBC Four "Worlds of Fantasy" series, which is more than you get in the US. The UK has Radio 4, which is always good to authors, and the US has NPR, ditto.

Anyway, the UK and the US both fall short when we remember that mystical kingdom known to us today only as "Canada", long since taken by the seas and the sands,  and that once there was Prisoners of Gravity.



(I cannot watch this. I just tried and I had to stop. The me in it is like a tadpole that's just shedding its tail. He seems really sweet; I just want to wait until he's cooked.)

Neil -
I'm know you get a ton of these requests, but I figured it was worth a shot.
Jason Webley is playing a free show in Philadelphia this Monday,1/5/09, at a small venue. Neither he nor the venue have any marketing it seems, and I don't think most of his Philly fans know about it. But they do know about you. So I was hopeful that you would link the info on your blog.
The Venue:
http://info.thesanctuaryarts.com/

and of course the Artist:
http://jasonwebley.com

cheers!

'tricia

Consider it posted. Jason is an amazing live performer.

Hi Neil, Can you offer any advice/thoughts or even threats to the would-be writers out here, who have a lot of ideas for stories, but can't decide which one to start? Thanks!

Sure. You pick one. If you're me these days you pick the one that's most overdue and causing the greatest number of people the most headaches by its lateness, but I don't advise doing that when you're just starting out. (I'm not sure that I'd advise that when you've been doing this for ages.)

...

Okay. I have to work now.

Thank you all for reading this, for writing to me, for being funny and sensible.

2008 was an odd year, with some great stuff in it, and some odd stuff in it. But I'm glad of all the fine things it brought into my life.

I'm lucky. I have good friends, and I have a fine family. I get to work with amazing people. 

And in addition to everything I said in http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/12/as-i-was-saying.html....

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be,  be wise, and that you will always be kind.

Labels: Happy New Year, Prisoners of Gravity, Terry Pratchett

A miscellania of things to click on

On the subject of all things Terry Pratchett, there is a North American Discworld convention in "Phoenix, Arizona over Labor Day Weekend, 2009 (Sept 4-7, and maybe September 3 as well)" -- details at http://www.nadwcon.org/.

(Terry's also noted that while Matchitforpratchett is unofficial, this link isn't: https://www.committedgiving.uk.net/art/public/donor.aspx?id=cc)

A first review of The Dangerous Alphabet, the odd alphabet book by Gris Grimly and me, at http://editoon.com/sandbox/?p=849.

You can watch Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman collecting an award for Stardust at the Empire Awards. (It took Best SF/Fantasy film, beating some very worthy contenders, so worthy that neither Jane nor Matthew had thought to even jot down an acceptance speech.)

Susanna Clarke's short story Mrs Mabb can be listened to for the next 6 days via http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/afternoon_play.shtml click on Tuesday.

I really loved the New Yorker article on Jamy Ian Swiss and magic (Jamy was my coin magic adviser on American Gods -- see http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/03/american-gods-blog-post-10.html). It doesn't seem to be online, but you can hear Adam Gopnik talking about it at http://www.newyorker.com/online/2008/03/17/080317on_audio_gopnik

--again, just trying to close some tabs before I head off to the UK in the morning, for Eastercon (http://www.orbital2008.org/). Hope I get to see you there...

...

Apologies to everyone who wrote from the Portland area asking if I would be doing a signing and if not would I sign just for you. Nope. Maybe next time (as it was I spent a couple of hours signing for all the hundreds of modelmakers, animators, costumers, carpenters and other wonder-workers at Laika. Mostly people's books and Coraline posters, but a few odd things including a naked Miss Forcible).

Labels: Awards, magicians, Susanna Clarke on the Radio, Terry Pratchett, the dangerous alphabet

Arthur C Clarke (and the closing of many tabs)

Maddy and I ran into Powells when we got back from Laika today. Laika had given Maddy a Powells gift card, and I love that place. Next to Arthur C Clarke's books was a note saying that he had died today.

I met Sir Arthur C Clarke in 1985, when he was in the UK to promote the film of 2010. He was staying in Brown's Hotel in London, where the doormen wore top hats and the hotel interior didn't seem to have changed in a hundred years. I interviewed him for Space Voyager magazine, but all I remember is that he was very kind and polite, and a vague surprise in discovering that he had a West Country burr in his voice. He seemed like someone from a past era, in that elderly wood-and-leather hotel, frail and elderly 22 years ago, but he was someone who had showed me the future, and who was living, very happily, in the future.

I grew up reading Clarke -- books like A Fall of Moondust and The Deep Range were books I'd read and loved before I turned ten -- but the story that made the deepest impression on me was a short story, 'The Nine Billion Names of God'.

There's a wonderful interview with Terry Pratchett in the Guardian. I would have loved to have been in the room with Terry when he read the final line, though -- "Good Luck to you, you sweet man." I remember the noise Terry made when I told him that a gentleman who had been his minder at a convention had described Terry to me as "a jolly old elf". I don't think that teeth actually ground together but it was a jolly good noise all the same, and he said several things that were not at all elf-like.

Remember http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/.

...

The Dave McKean Vertigo Tarot deck is being reissued, along with the Rachel Pollack book that accompanied it -- details at http://www.dccomics.com/dcdirect/?dcd=3403. You can see the cards at http://www.elsewhere.org/tarot/vertigo/

...

The Daily Star in the UK has actually reproduced the Angelina Jolie naked-but-for-gold-drips scene in Beowulf with a real live model, at http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/32553/Daily-Star-babe-Claire-s-Jolie-good/

Claire, 23, certainly had the Midas touch as she revealed her own golden globes...

...

It was the Best World Book Day Ever.


...
A much better article on the Freeway Bee accident from the Sacramento Bee. (It's their newspaper's name.)

...

Neil,

I know you said you weren't doing the last.fm friend thing, but is there any way you could? Reason I ask is because it's the only way I can see your playlist and be able to listen to your music through my living room entertainment center (the media center software I'm using will only allow me to choose 'Friends' and then streams their radio station; i can't surf by username alone).

Just curious, but I understand if you don't want to open that Pandora's Box! :-D

I changed my mind, and now, to make life easier for all, I automatically friend everyone on Last FM who asks. http://www.last.fm/user/neilhimself
is the ID -- http://www.last.fm/music/Neil+Gaiman is where you can find stuff by me to stream or download.

Labels: Arthur C Clarke, bees, Dave McKean, last fm, Terry Pratchett, the trouble with double meanings is they only mean one thing

running out the door

Sometimes I lose track of time -- Maddy and I are going to go to Laika in Portland for a couple of days, to visit the Coraline set. Truthfully, it's Maddy who will be doing most of the work -- they want her to interview me and Henry Selick and several of the crew. I thought I had many hours before I left. Days maybe. And suddenly I'm gazing bleary-eyed at the day as Lorraine tells me there's a car in the drive and Maddy and I leave in fifteen minutes and probably I ought to put on some socks.

Dear Neil,

Thanks for blogging the initiative to match Terry Pratchett's $1 million donation to the Alzheimer's Research Fund. In way of an update to that, there is now a website - http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/ and a Facebook group (naturally) - Matching Funds with Terry Pratchett. It might be helpful to mention these as well on your blog, if you were so inclined.


Looking forward to seeing you at Orbital.

Best wishes,

Nina

Absolutely. Consider them mentioned.

Also, I think I have slipped into a parallel universe in which everything is reversed. The Sun accurately reports everything that Terry said, while the Daily Telegraph sexes it up and tries to make it controversial.

Labels: alzheimer's research, Coraline movie, Terry Pratchett

American Gods Blog, Post 79

On the advice of Terry Pratchett, who is a wise road warrior and is the only person I know who has signed for more people, and in more countries, than me, and seeing it's going to be six weeks of living out of hand-luggage (for there may not be time to check luggage, and I can't risk losing all my socks and black tee shirts to the whims of Northwest Airlines), I decided to buy a Toshiba Libretto, for the road.

(That's a very small, full-featured notebook computer that weighs next to nothing, for the non-technically minded among us.)

I take Terry's advice on things like this. He's always right. I still have, and still (once in a blue moon) use, the Atari Portfolio he talked me into buying about 11 years ago. It runs on a cut-down DOS 2.1 -- I wrote MURDER MYSTERIES on it and THE GOLDFISH POOL & OTHER STORIES and more episodes of Sandman than I can count -- and I'd use it more except I feel faintly ashamed of being seen using such antedeluvian technology when in the company of all the cool geek people I know. They have transparent plastic things that are violently green at you, and which take photographs, order take-out, check for the nearest good sushi restaurant, download basketball scores and double as mobile phones, all at the same time. My Portfolio is only good for writing stuff and storing addresses and phone numbers. Which is all I ever use it for, not having much interest in basketball, and being a writer. I think I once managed to prove it was possible to get e-mail on it some time in 1992, and never tried again....

Sorry. Got a bit nostalgic there for a second.

So. Flash new Toshiba Libretto. It's not a palmtop, it's a subcompact notebook, which seemed closer to what I wanted. I checked the web...

They don't retail them anywhere but Japan any more. But there's a company that imports them. And the new Libretto L1 has just been released. Like, a few days ago.

I sent an e-mail to the sales guy at the company yesterday and asked if they could get me one before I left on tour. His e-mail arrived today. Absolutely. Just call and order and they'd overnight it to me.

It seemed so simple. I was thrilled. I called immediately...

Someone answered the phone.

I started to order a Libretto L1, using a corporate credit card.

If you write for Hollywood, you become a corporation whose sole asset is you and whose function consists of lending you out. (Honest. You think I could make that up?) Mine is called The Blank Corporation, because I went blank when they asked me what name I wanted it to be when they were filling in the corporate paperwork. I think the company logo is a blank sheet of paper, roughly 8" by 11". So there is a Blank Corporation credit card that I never use, and I thought, finally, I can buy something that's an honest to goodness business expense with the card.

I gave the guy on the other end of the phone the credit card number. He said they could only send it to the Card billing address. I said ow, that wasn't going to work, as that address was in LA, and I'm not, and getting the people who run the corporation in LA to authorise things might take a couple of days -- I wasn't even sure if I knew how to talk to the card issuers.... Still, not to worry. Plan B seemed straightforward enough. I put the card away (still, I think, unused), and pulled out my normal everyday not-corporate-at-all credit card.

Gave him the number of the new card. He asked for the Billing address, and I began "P.O. Box..."

"I'm sorry," he interrupted. "We don't deliver to PO Boxes."

"Not a problem," I said. "I'll give you the house address for FedEx to deliver to..."

"But it's not the billing address?"

"No, the bills go to the PO Box, but FedEx doesn't deliver to PO Boxes, so we get FedEx to deliver to..."

"I'm sorry. We can't do that. We can only send it to the billing address."

"But you've just told me you can't send it to the billing address."

"We don't deliver to PO Boxes."

"So you're saying you can't send me the computer."

"Well, yeah."

"Um. If you don't mind me asking.... Does anyone else in America import Toshiba Librettos?" I figured, if someone else did, I'd call them instead.

"Nope. Just us." He didn't seem perturbed by the question. I guessed he heard it a lot.

"So you're telling me that you won't deliver to PO Boxes, and you can't deliver to the house?"

"Well, how do we know it's your house? You could have stolen a credit card, and this could be a deserted house down the block you want us to deliver to."

"Er, yes, but it's not. It's my house."

"People do it all the time. That's why we only ship to billing addresses."

"Yes, but you won't ship to my billing address, will you? Anyway, you'll have the phone number and the PO Box number. For heaven's sake, I've ordered a thousand things and this is the first time.."

"Hey, this is $3000 of computer equipment you're trying to order! People scam for a lot less than that. You can get phone numbers easy as anything, rent PO Boxes. We don't know this isn't a stolen card."

I thought about pointing out that, for $3000 of computer equipment, I was kind of expecting someone helpful on the other end of the phone. I thought about pointing out that, if it was a brilliant credit card fraud, and the card company approved the transaction, then they won't be out any money. I thought about dusting off the Atari Portfolio and pretending it was a grand retro gesture...

Instead I said "Look, I can't be the first person ever to try and order something who had a PO Box and wanted it shipped to a house address..."

"We can only ship it to a billing address," he said. He had that one down cold. "Or you could do a wire transfer."

I said that that wasn't going to happen. I was getting testy. I've been in the US too long, I suppose -- I'm sort of used to trying to buy goods and services from people who are actively trying to sell them to you. I said there had to be a way for him to sell me a computer and could we please resolve this...

There was a long pause. And then he said, doubtfully, "I guess we could send it by the postal service. They deliver to Post office boxes, don't they?"

I assured him that they did.

And he said, yes, they could do that, he guessed. They couldn't overnight it, but I'd get it by friday, with the US postal service. I said I hoped so. He took the details, said they'd fax me a bill for me to sign and send back to them.

The fax, when it arrived, included a charge for Fedexing the package. I carefully wrote on it "If sending by Fedex please deliver to ... " and the house address, before I faxed it back, not because I was trying to be clever, but because I had a sudden presentiment of the people at the company finding themselves suddenly and unexpectedly unable to get me a little computer, "because Fedex doesn't deliver to PO Boxes".

So I leave on tour in six days. Off to do the Magnetic Fields gigs and then to start signing my way across the States, the UK and Canada. With luck, I'll be keeping up this journal, typing on planes and in cars, and posting it from hotel room phone lines.

And with a lot of luck, I'll be typing it on a Toshiba Libretto L1, and not on an Atari Portfolio. Not even as a grand retro gesture.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Best Of, computers and gadgets and things, lightweight computers, Magnetic Fields, Terry Pratchett, the blank corporation, tour