From the distant past

Before this blog ever existed, I inhabited other places you could only get to by modem. First Compuserve, then Genie, and then the Well, and answered questions and so on in each place, and hung around. I've no idea if there are any archives anywhere of the Compuserve stuff or the Genie topics, but The Well is still there, I'm glad to say, and every few years I go back and am interviewed and hang around the inkwell.vue area for a few weeks. It's a wonderful place, and accessible to anyone from the web: http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/

So, in context of the current Fragile Things interview, which has only just begun, I found myself reading a post from the 20th of June 2000, written while I was writing American Gods. Which I am reposting a bit of here because a) there's lots more cool stuff like this on the various Well topics I did (here's the first, the second, the third, -- and b) if ever a story was meant to be on this blog, it's this one.


...last week Maddy woke me up early in the morning.

"Daddy," she said, "There's a bat on the kitchen window."

"Grumphle," I said and went back to sleep.

Soon, she woke me up again. "I did a drawing of the bat on the kitchen
window," she said, and showed me her drawing. For a five year old
she's a very good artist. It was a schematic of the kitchen windows,
showing a bat on one of the windows.

"Very nice dear," I said. Then I went back to sleep.

When I went downstairs...

We have, instead of dangling fly papers, transparent strips of gluey
clear plastic, about six inches long and an inch high, stuck to the
windows on the ground floor. When they accumulate enough flies, you
peel them off the window and throw them away.

There was a bat stuck to one. He was facing out into the room. "I
think he's dead," said my assistant Lorraine.

I peeled the plastic off the window. The bat hissed at me.

"Nope," I said. "He's fine. Just stuck."

The question then became, how does one get a bat (skin and fur) off a
fly-strip. Luckily, I bethought me of the Bram Stoker award. After the
door had fallen off (see earler in this topic) I had bought some citrus
solvent to take the old glue to reglue the door on.

So I dripped citrus solvent onto the grumpy bat, edging him off the
plastic with a twig, until a lemon-scented sticky bat crawled onto a
newspaper. Which I put on the top of a high woodpile, and watched the
bat crawl into the logs. With any luck he was as right as rain the
following night...


Of course, if it was now, I'd scan in Maddy's bat drawing to go with it. (I wonder if it's anywhere findable.)

PS. A small, half-puzzled plug for the first corporate publisher blog I've seen that truly doesn't suck: http://olivereader.com/. Technically I suppose they're actually one of my publishers, but that's not why I'm plugging them. I think it's because it's now something I can point publishers at when I say "you could always do a blog..."

PPS: From Dan Guy and the Webelf, the silliest of fun website toys: http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/clouds/dynamic_term_cloud.php
The new toy! Shows the top twenty terms from each month, growing and shrinking dynamically over time.
Give those two time and they really will make the Blog Post Magic Eightball.

American Gods Blog, Post 75

Dianna Graf (a very nice Tasmanian lady who used to have fuchsia hair and
work as a fairy but currently doesn't) posted this on the Well today,
apropos of me coming to Australia to sign books...

Are the bookshops supposed to wait for the publisher to
contact them? Or are they supposed to contact the publisher first to
express interest? i debated this with my local friendly bookstore owner
yesterday and i hope i have convinced him to just take the plunge and
make the call rather than wait

And this was what I wrote in reply...

Dianna -- well, obviously any bookstore can sit back and wait for the
publisher to contact them.

But if the publisher has the budget to send me to (say) five cities,
and they've received enquiries from five cities, then a bookstore in
the sixth city may sit by the phone for a long time.

And it may be that the publisher might phone a different store in that
city. Or that another store in the same city has already phoned to
ask.

Publishers like to send authors to places that they know are
enthusiastic and interested. Unless your store owner is the *only*
bookstore in a city you know I *have* to go to then it's much smarter
for him to call the publisher...

I got some fanmail today grumbling about evil Harper Collins not
sending me to the US southeast on my tour; but I'm pretty sure that if
stores from the southeast -- from Florida say -- had made a noise about
how much they wanted me, I'd be signing there.

I'm going to be signing in Seattle mostly because Duane at the University
bookstore made sure that Harper Collins knew that he wanted me for this
signing two years ago, kept after them, pointed out how many books
he'd sold on my last signings there, and he'd book an auditorium for me
to speak and sign in... And so HarperCollins said yes. I'm going to San
Diego because the guys at Mysterious Galaxy were so keen on getting me
there, that, at a point where I wasn't going to go there, they offered
to fly me in to do a signing on their own dime, and the enthusiasm they
showed meant that Harper rejigged the schedule to send me.

I'd add to that that there are only so many places you can go on a tour,
and so many weeks on a tour, so you're never going to please everyone. And
just asking and being enthusiastic doesn't mean that a store will
definitely get a signing -- but it certainly increases the chances of me
turning up and sitting and defacing books...

I said here a while ago I'd post the advice to stores I wrote for Andy Heidel (who was
the publicist at Harper before Jack Womack) to send out to stores for the
Stardust tour in 1998. I cunningly wrote it in the third person so people
would think Andy wrote it. I don't think I fooled a soul.

(Anyway, I went and found it on the hard disk. Incidentally, if you're
planning to come to a signing, I already wrote a list of helpful things like this
for people attending the signings. It's in the archives.)
...........................................................................
.......................

So you're hosting a Neil Gaiman signing...

Here are our suggestions for the Neil Gaiman signing tour. Many of them are
self-evident, but you never know...

Before the event:

Neil will sign books for any members of the staff who need them signed, and
any books that people have bought and left to be signed or phone-ordered,
before the reading and the signing.

Neil will use his own pen for signing most articles, but even so, have some
black felt tips, some silver and/or gold pens (thin felt-pen type), and a
Sharpie or so on hand. You never know what he'll need to sign.

The Reading:

Neil will do a 15-30 minute reading first, followed by a short Q & A
session. (He‚ll do a longer reading in those stores which are organising
events in auditoriums). Please do your best to ensure that there is space
enough that all attendees can hear the reading.

If your store needs to have a microphone for the reading, please have one.

The Signing:

We strongly suggest that if you‚re expecting a signing of over than 150
people that you issue numbers to the attendees. Blocks of numbers can then
be called to queue up as needed (ie. "Now signing for 75 and below...".

In the past this has proved the most successful way to run large signings,
as it allows those with higher numbers to browse the store (and, in the
case of a really big signing, even to go and get something to eat) while
waiting for their block of numbers to be called.

It helps prevent a stampede after the reading, keeps people good-tempered,
and allows you to sell merchandise to the people in your store for the
signing.

(Some stores would also use the numbers for a raffle, as well as for
gathering names and addresses for mailings.)

Some common questions:

Can people take photos of Neil?

Sure.

Are there going to be limits on what can be signed?

Common sense is the watchword on this. Normally Neil will sign 3 items that
people bring, along with anything of his they buy in your store for the
signing. If 600 people show up however, that might well be cut to one item
plus what they buy, or something like that. It depends on how many people
show up, and how much time there is, and when your store closes.

He will also try to sign for everyone there for the signing.

If the line is short enough, people with extra things they want signed can
go round again. If the line is long, then they can't.

Will he personalise books?

Gladly.

Does he want little post-it notes with people's names written on
them, then?

No, he figures asking people their names is an automatic icebreaker. But he
does want things out of plastic bags before he signs them.

How long will he sign for anyway?

As long as it takes. He'd like to take a break every 90 minutes or so, for
the bathroom, to snack, to flex his hand, or just to spend 5 minutes not
signing anything. Check if he needs a break, but don't push it if he says
no.

Does he want someone with him at the signing table?

There should be someone around there to keep an eye on the line, to make
sure it keeps moving, and that if someone seems to be trying to make Neil
read their novel, look at their whole art portfolio, or discuss philosophy, to
move in and say "Sorry, there are lots of people waiting..."

By the way, no interviews during signings. Every now and then a journalist
or would-be journalist decides that the middle of a signing is the best
place to turn up and try to do an interview. It's not.

Incidentally, Neil says that if the Mad Fan with the Gun shows up he would
very much like it if a member of staff would take the bullet; but he
appreciates that this is a lot to ask.

Is that likely?

Not at all. It was a joke. Actually, on the whole, Neil's fans are
remarkably nice.

Would he like anything special to eat or drink?

Clearly Canadian (one of the berry flavours) to drink; no real preferences
as to snack food, but Neil still says nice things about the stores on the
last tour who had sushi rolls there to nibble on.

After the signing:

Neil's fans often give him gifts. Whoever is looking after him will
probably take care of posting them back to him; if not, he'll give you an
address to send them to.

After the signing is over, is the time to get shop stock signed, if there's
enough time, and he can still hold a pen. Reasonable quantities of stuff,
anyway.

.....

(I picked Clearly Canadian -- a bottled, fizzy, sweet water --
because I figured it was really easy to find, and it's not caffeinated,
which can be useful if you really have to sleep as soon as you'll get back
to the hotel at midnight, and have to be out of the hotel by 5:30am. I was
wrong -- there are lots of parts of the States where Clearly
Canadian is impossible to find, and there were indomitable booksellers
who worked miracles, or were broken hearted because they hadn't managed to
work miracles, to get me some sugary fizzy water. I didn't have the heart
to tell them that ginger ale would have been fine. I think on the current
version of the thing that Jack Womack actually did rewrite himself, it just
says something like fizzy water.)

And -- pretty obviously -- the above were guidelines for stores. They are
free to -- and can -- set their own rules about how the signing runs, what
gets signed and so on. If you have any queries, phone the store. If the
person answering the phone doesn't have a clue, ask to talk to someone who
does.

.........................................................................

And talking about Stardust, I saw the Harper Perennial edition
today, and it made me very happy. The mass market edition was kind of
unfortunate -- it tried very hard to look like a generic fantasy book,
which it really isn't. The trade paperback edition looks like a fairy tale
for adults -- the cover is a photograph of a wood, with something strange and glittery happening on it. It looks cool. More to the point, it looks appropriate.

American Gods Blog, Post 20

So I've spent the last two days doing the UK (Headline Books) galleys of American Gods. (Galleys are the output pages of what will be typeset to form the book that will be on sale. They are unbound, at this stage -- 500 numbered sheets of paper.) It was a strange and gently maddening experience as I got to discover how inconsistent I am when I write.

Aging AND ageing, 10:00 am AND 10:00am AND 10:00 a.m., jeweller and jeweler... and so on. And while I didn't mind my favourite version being in there I found it most trying that I hadn't been consistent. So I reminded myself that a something or other consistency is the hobgoblin of tiny minds and went back to the galleys.

I am getting faster, though.

And I was pleasantly suprised that the book seemed to hold my interest as a reader for the umpteenth time through it. Normally about this point in the equation I cannot even look at it again.

(There was one edition of one of my books, quite some years ago, where the galleys arrived for a paperback edition, and I looked at them and said "They had better be right, for I don't think I can read past page one without screaming". And for all I know, they were.)

So some time in the next few weeks it'll be time to do the US galleys. But for now the UK galleys have been inspected, corrected, several pages have been rescued from a swimming pool and dried out (it was windy), and I found a postal service place to UPS them -- all 7lbs of paper -- back to London.

The lady who ran the postal place was somewhat woozy. She spoke like Tracy Ullmann's Ruby Romaine character, and had a great deal of trouble focussing on things, like small print, or quite large print, or solid objects. She said she'd been an exotic dancer until her back got bad, but that was some years ago now. She told me it would cost $95 dollars to send the galleys to London. I said that she was looking at the wrong page, and that I was not trying to
import anything to the US collect. She moved the book around and squinted a lot. I asked if I could help, and took the book, and found the cost of sending the package and the price and everything. I gave it back to her. She decided that I had the wrong page. She phoned head office. They told her the price code. It was the one that I'd found for her. She came back to tell me
about it. An ant started sauntering across the counter top. She kept hitting it ("I know they're all god's creature's but that's a goddamn bug on my counter") and kept missing it, her fist always slamming down just behind where it had been. It wasn't walking that fast. Then the ant vanished entirely. She looked around for it, muttering, "Where the hell did it go?" I
picked it off her forearm, and dropped it into the bin. She told me that she'd be able to focus a lot better after her pharmaceutical break.

And I left her the galleys, hoping against hope that they will actually arrive at the offices of Headline Books on Monday, and that she won't absent-mindedly have sent them to India or somewhere.

Which reminds me...

Currently there's no real mechanism for sending questions about American Gods here yet. So if any of you do have questions for me about American Gods, go and take a look at the Well's inkwell.vue area (http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/). You can e-mail Linda or Jon or any of the guys who run the inkwell (there's a link to them at the bottom of that first page) and they'll post the questions on the inkwell topic -- 104 -- and I'll answer them there and here.

And the US part of the signing tour is more or less decided. I'll post it as soon as it's set in stone. It'll be June 19th -29th. Then there will be a UK tour in early July and a short Canadian tour in late July.

...

And the first American Gods proof has surfaced on Ebay. It's one of the UK proofs, so it has a nice cover and isn't missing the final chapter. But I was saddened to see that it's "unread" -- there aren't many of these proofs (they're few enough that Headline is having to say "no" to people who want them now), and the whole point of sending them out is so that people -- booksellers or journalists -- can read them, not so that they can make a quick buck off them.

American Gods Blog, Post 5

A little over a year ago, I was asked to do a thing over at The Well's inkwell.vue area. I had a topic and people could ask questions, and it just quietly became a sort of combination of occasional diary and place I could mention things. It was only meant to go for a few months, but these things sometimes have a life of their own, and it's become the topic that hasn't died. Or rather it has just died, as, with over 1900 postings in it, they've frozen the topic and started a new one, Countdown to American Gods. It's at http://engaged.well.com/engaged/engaged.cgi?c=inkwell.vue&f=0&t=104

And I just went in and posted a little blurb about the book, and the covers and such. Once I'd finished typing it, it struck me that it would probably serve as a pretty good journal entry for here, as well. So here you are. Me introducing American Gods.

It's a big fat book about America, and about a man called Shadow, and
the job he is offered when he gets out of prison. It's kind of a
thriller, I suppose, if you can have mythic thrillers. I suppose it could be
considered SF or fantasy or horror, depending on where you stand, and
I'd not argue with anyone who considered it such. My former publisher,
Lou Aronica, read it and said it was a slipstream novel, using Bruce
Sterling's term for (as I understood it) books that give you the same
buzz you got as a kid from genre stuff but that aren't published as
genre.

The US cover shows a road and a lightning bolt. The UK cover shows a
motel sign, a telegraph pole, and a lightning bolt.

This is not actually an example of parallel evolution. Scarily, the US
cover for American Gods was designed before I started writing the book, over two years ago, and the cover was simply based on a two or three page letter to the publisher about the kind of book I thought I'd write next. I'd called the book American
Gods in the letter as a kind of placeholder name, until I came up with something better, and then they sent me a cover mock-up, and it looked so definite I never had the heart to even try to come up with another title. And the image they'd sent me really did look like the cover of the book I was writing.

When they'd read the first half of the book, the UK publishers,
Headline, called and said they hadn't a clue what to put on the cover.
So I sent them a photocopy of the US cover, and they took the lightning
bolt idea and added a wonderful motel sign (for the 'Stardust Motel'
which must have amused somebody).

We're four months away from publication here, at a point in the
process that's usually a lot further down the road (we're compressing
the usual 8 months-plus between handing in a manuscript and publication
into about half the time.)

Then again, my scary children's novel CORALINE was handed in in June 2000, and won't reach bookshops until May 2002. (Although Harper Audio may release an audio version of it in December 2001/January 2002.)