Brazeeeeeel....

Maddy and I are off to Brazil in a few minutes. Well, we're off to New York where we change planes. But basically, we're off to Brazil together. She has the disarming smile. I have the unlikely facial hair. We're like Green Arrow and Speedy, only without the boxing glove arrows, the costumes, the similarity of gender and... okay, not really a good analogy, but what the hell, we're hitting the road. Or we will if the car turns up.

...

It turned up. We're now in JFK in the airline lounge. Soon we will get on a plane that will take us to São Paulo. I have bought Maddy every possible magazine a 13 year old girl could want, not to mention a bunch of books. I will carry on writing stories in longhand on the plane. Or sleeping. I could sleep.

...

Want a badge made out of my thumbprint and signature? Or Tanith Lee's lip-print and initials? Details at http://www.freewebs.com/grikmeer-match-it/ although the eBay links don't seem to be active yet.

Also we are all very proud of the former web elf.

a momentary break from galleys

This just in from our resident webgoblin about neilgaiman.com:

When I'm not spoiling milk or making maids cry, I like to make
improvements to this site. Here are the last few that I can remember,
of which you may not previously have been aware:

* Introductions, as they are posted, are being archived in a new Introductions
section.
* The Where's Neil? feed now includes automatic reminders that pop up in your
feed reader one week before the event date.
* The What's New box on the front page now automatically displays all new, or updated pages on the site. It even has its own feed to which you may subscribe.
* There is a new version of the iGoogle countdown gadget for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK which ticks down the
seconds in real-time just like the one on this site.

Report all errors to
me, if you please; I'm off to pose for that Froud fellow again.

There. (For those of you who missed it, the webgoblin replaced the webelf, who retired, although is still currently working away in the background organising and labelling the early days of this blog, when she is not making music.)

I was wondering if I could sent some pictures of a neat skull I got as a gift, to authenticate, or at least verify the signature. It was bought online & supposedly signed by Mr. Gaiman at Waterstones in Bath, UK, in 2003. I'm sure he signs all sorts of weird things at shows & conventions, but I'm curious to see if this was really signed by him. It would be really great if it's real. Please email me when you can, or to where I can send images of the skull. Thanks!

I don't think I authenticate skulls online. But I did sign at Waterstones in Bath in 2003. And if you go to http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1230 you'll see a blog entry by Todd Klein about signing the print he did, with a picture of a signature of mine, and if it looks anything at all like that, it's probably mine. I mean, I don't think there's a hot trade in forged signed-by-Neil-Gaiman skulls out there...

Which reminds me: this Monqee will be auctioned for a good cause at the end of July...

Hi,

I am searching for a recording of that truly sublime production of Sweeney Todd starring Adrian Lester. I was googling it and i saw your reference to it. My mum and I went to see it when i was 10 and it was the most beautiful thing i'd ever seen or heard. In particular we loved the 'Joanna' song and both of us have been singing it ever since! Did you have any luck in finding it?

Thank you
Ama

I didn't, although I learned that it was broadcast on Radio 3, and was offered a cassette by someone working at a shop specialising in things like that, but never followed it up.

Bet you thought I was dead

The best thing about going off and writing, and not having a phone or internets and things, just a tiny rented cottage, pen and paper and stories in your head, is that everything gets sort of simple and I remember why I do this writing thing and why I love it.

When I got stuck, I'd change notebooks and write an introduction or something similar that someone was waiting for. Then I'd go back to the story. I never turned on the computer, except once to check a detail.

Oddly enough the story that seemed the lesser of the two (most of the chapters of The Graveyard Book are also stories), which is called "The Friend" was easy and comfortable to write, while the one I was excited about, "The Hounds of God" (which I may retitle either "Miss Lupescu" or "The Ghoul Gate" on the next draft, or I may not) was sort of odd and lumpy and is going to need a lot of repainting and moving of heavy furniture when it gets typed up. Still, it has some really good bits in, and I love the ghouls, particularly the Bishop of Bath and Wells and the Duke of Westminster.

I'm on page 98 of the book, and including "The Witch's Headstone" I think I'm actually half way through the book right now. Although some of the final chapter-stories are going to be long ones.
I'm writing a poem that runs through the next chapter, a P.L. Travers-like fantasia called "Danse Macabre", which I think is going to be chapter 5, after the already-written "The Witch's Headstone". Then I'm not sure. Then it's a chapter called "Every Man Jack". Then the last chapter, probably.

Probably more than you really wanted to know, but I'm an author who's been writing a book, and mostly it's what my head is filled with, and it's interesting if you're me.

(Most of the spare bits of head are filled with something that may eventually be called Lyonnesse.)

The worst thing about going off to write for a bit is returning to civilisation and finding several thousand emails needing to be read, work mail, personal mail, Blog FAQ mail.... I'm not sure I'll ever catch up.

Thanks so much to the webelf for having fun and posting links in my absence. It looks like she enjoyed herself, and she put stuff up I probably wouldn't have thought of, so that was good, and I am grateful. (I'm still trying to figure out where she got the Holly picture from, mind you.) Amused that she found, and hustled for votes for the blog awards (even more amused when I discovered that I was also nominated as Hottest Daddy Blogger [?]).

I think I've solved a mystery no one even knew was mysterious. The web elf is your wife, isn't she? Don't forget my no-prize if I'm right!

I think only Marvel can give out no-prizes. But no, you are wrong. The web elf is the web elf. I think she looks like Dave Sim's Regency Elf, only more webby, but I could be wrong, and often am.

Hello,I would like to ask you if you are planning to write comic-book series like "Sandman"?Regards - Paweł Deptuch, POLAND

No, I already did that.

Right now I don't think I'll ever do another 2000 page comic story, but as I said, I've been wrong before...

NEIL,

I'm trying to find my place in writing, and I am leaning towards the Screenplay format. Since you write in almost every format, Which is easier?

1. writing a comic

2. wirting a movie

3. writing a novel

Signed,Bob Castle.

I think it depends on which one I'm not doing at the time. When you aren't doing it, the other ones are always easier, and the kind of thing that you're writing is much too hard.

...

We've now overhauled http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories/partiesstory, the "How To Talk to Girls at Parties" main page, and it now has a bit more explanation of what it is, links to the text version and the audio version of the story, and links to the other Hugo nominated short stories.

http://www.nippon2007.us/hugo_nominees.php has all of the Hugo nominees up, and links to all but one of the novellas, novelettes and stories, and even one of the novels.

There's a small and valid-up-to-a-point controversy going on about not enough women being nominated for Hugos this year. (For example, this from Bookslut.) (The up-to-a point bit for me is where it's implied by some commentators that the Hugo nominations are imposed from outside, rather than simply voted for by fans and readers who are eligible to vote. They're the Hugos, you get to vote for them as a member or supporting member of the WorldCon, and if you want to see something on the list next year, vote for it. Tell your friends to vote for it. Look at the 2004 Nomination details: in 2004 it only took about 25 votes, sometimes less, to get anything shorter than a novel on the list.)

...

An interview in connection with the PEN World Voices Festival next week in New York -- http://www.wildriverreview.com/worldvoices-neilgaiman.php.

Beware the March of Ideas

I'm in Cologne, in Germany, in a hotel that seems to have been built
inside a giant water tower, and am paying an astonishing amount for
internet access. I don't have flu so far, and have had no travel
disasters.

There's a reading and a signing tomorrow -- details at:

http://www.litcologne.de/va/160307/gaimankoester.php

Dear Neil,Today I wandered into an EMPiK bookstore and picked
up a paper informing about you booksigning in Kraków and Warsaw. (for
wchich I can't wait, by the way.)There was an article about you, and
it said that you're "linked to Poland" because your grandparents came
from Lodz. It that true, or did they completely make it up?I live in
Lodz, so you can pretty much imagine my amazement.Love from,Sylwia
G

My paternal great-grandfather was thrown out of Lodz, where the family
owned a department store, for being the black sheep of the family. I'm
not certain whether my grandfather was born there or born in Belgium
on the way to England. (I do know my grandfather never had a passport,
and was, until he died, considered a "stateless person", which is the
kind of thing I would have put into Mr Punch if I'd known it
then.)

Hey Neil:After some investigative work, I determined that (1) a while
ago, you said that the reason you don't have a LibraryThing account is
that you don't have the time and (2) recently, you have been blogging
about how you are entering your book collection into a database. So I
said to myself, wouldn't it be sweet if Neil were to put his library
on LibraryThing? Because even if he doesn't have time to tag most of
those books, we could still see what he owns. Which would be beyond
sweetness.

That's definitely the plan. Tim offered me a LibraryThing account or two
ages ago, and when everything's on a database I'm looking forward to
importing it to LibraryThing and getting it up there.

This isn't a question, I just thought I'd let you know that on
one of [adult swim]'s commercials last night, in which they bemoaned
the death of Captain America and exclaimed how Stan Lee would never do
something so stupid an attempt to be "deep and meaningful", they
attached a "P.S. Neil Gaiman already has deep and meaningful covered".
Or it said something like that. All right, hope you have a lovely
day!

And they show Futurama. (People have asked if I'm jealous of
Alan Moore for being on The Simpsons, and I'm not. If he were
a head in a jar in Futurama, on the other hand...)


Hi Neil,I read this blog nearly daily and have no idea how I
missed info on "M is for Magic" and "Interworld." What are these
books? Are the stories in "...Magic" found in your other collections
or are they new?And have no clue about "Interworld." Please help out a
longtime fan. Cheers,Greg Trax

Interworld is a novel I wrote with Michael Reaves in about
1998. We wrote it because we had an idea for an animated series, and
we kept explaining it to TV people who got confused, so we wrote a
treatment, which seemed to confuse them even more, so we wrote a novel
-- a sort of transdimensional romp. (First mentioned on this blog at
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2002/01/handed-in-narrative-draft-of-ramayana.asp.)

You can see the cover up at http://www.jamesjean.com/illustrations/interworld.html

M is for Magic is for school libraries and such. Most of the
stories in it have been collected, although some of them aren't easy
to find (like http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories/blackbirdstory)
and there's one story that's never been collected ("How to Sell the
Ponti Bridge" from 1984) and a new one, "The Witch's Headstone" that
will appear first in the Dann/ Dozois WIZARDS collection.

...


I now have a corporate website! I've always wanted a corporate
website. When I was a small boy and adults would ask what I'd like for
my birthday I would sigh and say "Can I have a corporate website?" and
they would explain, in that irritating way that adults had, that I
wasn't a corporation and the interwebs had not yet been invented and
frankly they were still reeling from culture shock from the arrival of
transistor radios and what the hell was wrong with a tub of silly
putty and a Whizzer and Chips Annual anyway, and no, I couldn't have a
catapult either, you can put someone's eye out with one of those.

Most of the content isn't there yet, but it's evolving http://www.blankcorporation.com/
for the curious. And it wasn't written by me either, but is just the
sort of thing I wanted it to be.


...

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Bees-How-Keep-Them/dp/0395883245

Hello-- Sue Hubbell's book is a wonderful first book for new
beekeepers -- or for people who think they might want to keep bees.
Sue has a deep empathy for bees and approaches relating to them with
such grace, She therefore often does things differently from the bee
textbooks or procedures of the commercial bee keepers. She
demonstrates a humane and bee-centric approach to beekeeping.

As new beekeepers, Sue's perspective was the most valuable thing we
gleaned from all the books we read on keeping bees. Her love and deep
appreciation for bees left a lasting impression on us and in how we
relate to our bees. And it is a fun read for "arm chair" beekeepers as
well.

Our local bee club (www.pugetsoundbees.org) has
"beginner" bee keeping classes before each meeting. The instructor
looks out at the room with a few beginners amid scores of veteran
beekeepers and dutifully asks "Are there any beginners here tonight?"
and invariably the entire assembly raises their hands.
Good luck -- it is so much fun!

I read the Hubbell book on the plane, and loved it.

clouds of witness and word

The Webelf wanted clouds made from the years of content on this journal. Dan Guy leapt to her assistance -- Robin to her Batman, Kato to her Green Hornet, Etta Candy to her Wonder Woman. Now you can see the results of his cloud-making work over at:

http://neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/clouds/example-words.php
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/clouds/term_cloud.html

And you will learn odd things about the blog. (I know I did.)

(The full version, including an extra 200,000 words of Questions and comments not by me is at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/clouds/word_cloud.html , but seems less informative the the other two.)

Thanks Elf. Thanks Dan Guy.

And they also tell the story of

Cool Stuff and Things

The other thing the Webelf has been working on for a while is this: It's the area of the site that was formerly known as Exclusive, and is now Cool Stuff & Things http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/. And it went live today. It ought to change content when you refresh it...

(It's Cool Stuff & Things because that fits into the same area as Exclusive Material used to.)

The Webelf did a great job -- and it's the direction we're taking the site right now, more visually interesting and making it easier to find things and also allowing magical randomness to show people fun things they might otherwise not see. Address applause or grumbles to her.

It also looks like we're going to have some fun and unique Stardust movie material up here very soon.

The Mystery Aide has gone back to start setting up an LA office, to which people will be able to send things, thus taking the strain off DreamHaven Books (who don't really mind acting as a maildrop but sometimes I don't pick up mail from there for months). All should be revealed next week.

My 2 year old son loves "Crazy Hair" (thank you), the poem and real crazy hair. I know a book was in the works with art by Dave McKean, any word on a release date?
Thanks for your time!
Eric!

I'm not quite sure when it will be released, but I can tell you that Dave McKean delivered the final double page spread today.... which means the book is now in the production line-up. It looks like this:

(Click on the picture to be able to see it at a reasonable size.)

The moment I know the release date for Crazy Hair, I'll post it here.

...

I'd vaguely noticed the "Overheard in..." phenomenon over the last year or so, where those of us who enjoy earwigging send in to websites the best or strangest things we've overheard on the streets or off them, and recently googled to see how many there were out there. I discovered that there are plenty of them, of variable quality. Minneapolis is one of my favourites. Here are a few of the better ones...

http://www.overheardinnewyork.com/
http://www.overheardinminneapolis.com/
http://www.overheardinpittsburgh.com/
http://www.overheardinlondon.co.uk/
http://www.overheardintheoffice.com/
http://www.overheardindublin.com/ (a bit less scribbled-in-the -notebook than the rest of them)
http://overheardinphilly.blogspot.com/ (now up for sale, for those Philadelphians who want it to continue)
http://www.overheardinathens.com/ (not the one in Greece).