Got up this morning, went in to Minneapolis and recorded introductions for the Audible.com recordings of the Fritz Leiber Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories. Then I did the alternate bits for the UK version of The Graveyard Book, and came home.
I took some photos the other day of a pileated woodpecker on our birdfeeder, and was chuffed when the birdchick put them up on her blog: http://www.birdchick.com/2008/06/i.html
Over at the Onion AV club: Cory Doctorow interviewed, and also (in two parts) Harlan Ellison interviewed (part 1 and part 2). Both terrific reads, even if Mr Ellison does mock my accent. (Actually mocks my me-pretending-to be-Harlan-Ellison-accent.)
I've forgotten whether or not I posted the link to Anne K.G. Murphy's interview with Dave McKean at http://www.thegraveyardbook.com/
I know I haven't posted a link to the UK Graveyard Book site -- http://www.thegraveyardbook.co.uk/ because it only went live today. It has spooky music, a Chris Riddell gallery and a Dave McKean gallery. What more does anybody need?
Louis Leterrier wants to make a movie of 1602. (Might be really fun. We could fix the plot hiccups at the end for a start. The main problem would be the different companies that still have film rights to characters that Marvel doesn't have, who are needed for the story. On the other hand, as long as you've got Nick Fury and Dr Strange, you can't go too far wrong.)
And, from the Guardian, here are some better images from the Hammer and Carry On Stamps. My old friend and occasional collaborator Kim Newman did the text from the presentation pack. (You know you've finally arrived when you get to write the words for the stamps.)
i just wanted to tell you that up on the First Tuesday Bookclub website (http://www.abc.net.au/firsttuesday) there's an interview with you.
maybe you can post the link up for others to watch.
where were you sitting, it sounded like as though they had you in the middle of a busy waiting room.
The interview was done in the restaurant at the Sydney hotel I was staying at. And I thought I'd already linked to this, but obviously wasn't paying attention or forgot or something. Sorry...
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?
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.
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.)
Today felt like a ghost day. It was warm enough that there was something that might have been a fine rain and might have been mist, and it hung over the snow, and it made the world unreal.
I wandered out with a camera and a dog to try and shoot the mist-world, and mostly I failed, because the camera was too good at compensating for the mistiness
Below is the barn. It was falling down when we moved here in August 1992. It's even older than the house -- probably about 150 years old. After fifteen years it's really falling down -- it's dangerous, and I'm probably going to have to bite the bullet and get it taken down this year. Sigh.
And Princess the cat has moved into a tree. She's up the tree right now.
I'd go out with a ladder and rescue her, except that she keeps coming down to eat and zooming back up her tree again. I'll leave finding her in the photo below as a task for the sharp-eyed. And yes, I know I need to do an update on all the cats, and I shall...
Hi Neil,
I live in the sunny UK, and am very much looking forward to EasterCon this year - my first convention, so approaching it with a mixture of trepidation and anticipation!
Any chance that you might be persuaded to fit in a preview reading of The Graveyard Book....? Not sure I can wait more than six months for a hint of it!! Perhaps it could clash with one of the bondage sessions, I wasn't intending to go to them! :-)
Cheers,
Sarah
I'm definitely doing a reading at Eastercon (and will be doing stuff every day of Eastercon, for those people who wanted to know what day I'd be there) although from checking the schedule, it looks like it's a Wolves in the Walls reading (following the Make Your Own Pig Puppet program item). The current version of the schedule is at http://www.orbital2008.org/programme.html. On Sunday afternoon I've got a 90 minute Guest of Honour spot to fill, and will probably do a reading as part of that, and really, I want to find out what some bits of The Graveyard Book sound like when you read them out loud. So I think it's extremely likely.
That's terrific. The castaway is West End Star Michael Ball (who I saw in Sondheim's Passion). (I wish that Desert Island Discs was something you could hear on demand.)
Interesting reading the comments over at Boing Boing (two recent threads here and here) -- my favourite was the one from the person who was convinced that, because there was a busy Barnes and Noble near him, reading for pleasure had never been more popular.
Russian care workers have rescued a seven-year-old “bird-boy” who can communicate only by “chirping” after his mother raised him in a virtual aviary, it has been reported.
Authorities say the neglected child was found living in a tiny two-room apartment surrounded by cages containing dozens of birds, bird feed and droppings.
Rochom was found wandering naked in the Cambodian jungle in 2007 The so-called “bird-boy” does not understand any human language and communicates instead by chirping and flapping his arms.
It's too late at night, so this is just to say that I went in to Minneapolis to to see Jonathan Coulton, in company with with Jen-the-dogsitter and Sharon-the-beesitter (although Sharon was actually and inexplicably on the Coulton Merch table). It was a delightful show -- Paul and Storm, the support act (and occasional backing vocals and badinage) were terrific and Jonathan was astonishingly good. They got a standing ovation at the end, and not just because Minnesotan audiences are nice and nobody wanted to go out into the snow.
I keep forgetting to post about Freerice, a sort of combination of it pays to Improve your Wordpower and the Hunger Site, and I really should, especially because it's more fun than solitaire when you're making a phone call and in front of a computer screen at the same time. Hundreds of people have written to tell me about it, but the first was Rachel Landau back in October, who said...
Hi, Mr. Gaiman! This website is probably far too distracting for you while you're busy writing, but could you post this link up?www.freerice.com Improve your vocabulary and save the world, all at one website!
...
Hey Neil,Been reading this blog for a long time. Always enjoy seeing how ordinary and absurd other peoples lives can be. While I love the pictures you post off the people, animals, and places that are important to you, I have noticed that you never put any up of your son. Is he camera shy like me, or do you omit him for another reason?
I think he's less keen on the limelight than his sisters. But he's certainly turned up from time to time -- I found a few pictures of him at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/Mike.html for example.
...
It looks like I'm not going to post the 3D Coraline trailer here (mostly because it was made to be seen in 3D). But the good people at Laika and Focus are putting their heads together, and a Coraline Christmas Present is Being Discussed....
Four films that would normally have expected to be cleared for release in January or February have been locked out: Disney's "Enchanted," DreamWorks' "Bee Movie," Paramount's "Stardust" and Warner's "Beowulf."
Actually, the plane wasn't to Stockholm. It was, rather counter-intuitively, to Copenhagen. Where we were driven over an enormous bridge to Sweden, and were deposited in Lund.
Which is an astonishingly pretty University town, filled with green spaces and pretty buildings. There's a John Bauer exhition in the Museum I'm going to try to get to if I get any time tomorrow that isn't interviews or signings...
(Here's a Bauer painting. I was going to put up a Kittelson picture as well , because Norwegians know what trolls look like too, but I couldn't see any of the ones I wanted in a quick scan of the web and I'm standing in a hotel lobby typing...[Edit: as many people have pointed out, that's because it's Kittelsen])
The Stardust signing and Q&A tonight is sold out, but the signing tomorrow at the Lund Town Hall at 2:30 is open to anyone, and I suspect that the mysterious event in the crypt of the Cathedral at 4:30 is likewise....
...
For those of you who are wondering (as I was) how and what my dog is doing, the Birdchick has posted some information about herself, the bees, giant puffball mushrooms, and my dog (who can be seen both investigating puffballs and being sympathetic as Sharon gets her First Bee Sting over at)
The promotional world for Stardust is starting, which has a nervous author who was convinced that no-one in the world is going to know about the movie, or that it's good, starting to breathe a sigh of relief. There are free screenings starting to get the word out, and according to Google news, if you buy stuff at French Connection you can get free tickets... http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-shoptalk0713,0,2458209.column?coll=ny-entertainment-promo
And I got a phone picture from my friend Kelli Bickman in New York letting me know that new posters have been spotted in Manhattan. They take some elements from the original poster and rearrange them...
(And Kelli says -- Neil.. S.O.S. i've recently fallen prey to a real-estate con-artist who is trying to steal my rent stabilized apartment/studio of 12 years and I don't have the resources to fight the court battle. Is there anyone out there who can help find me a pro bono real estate attorney in Manhattan (or will barter art)? or if there is anyone out there who has considered buying my work or commissioning a painting but hasn't gone the distance, now is a Very Good Time. Help me save my home and squash this con artist. A court date has been set for July 23. Thank you ten billion times for your help. kelli bickman - www.kellibickman.net I've known Kelli for about 15 years, she's a great artist and a very nice, kind person, so I'm happy to post this. Any New York lawyers who like art out there?)
Anyway, here's the International version of the original poster, which is a bit more golden than the US version.
I just realized this morning that the weekend Stardust opens is also the weekend of the Perseids meteor shower, one of the most active times for "shooting stars" of the year; so it wouldn't be unheard of at all for people to see the movie, walk out of the theater, and actually see a shooting star themselves.
Was the opening planned that way (if it was, this is an incredibly cool bit of marketing that I'm surprised I haven't seen mentioned yet), or was this just an amazing coincidence?
It's an amazing coincidence. But now I've told people, maybe it'll be a key wossname in the marketing strategy, in those parts of America where you can still see the stars.
...
It's all animal world here at the house. The last two cats came home from my assistant Lorraine's (she got a jungle kitten and decided she had too many cats in too small a house), while Fred the Unlucky Black Cat, who had vanished for several weeks, reappeared last night slightly the worse for wear -- he had an injury on his thigh that smelled like rancid cheese, which I washed with peroxide, and a new scar on his forehead, and he's now in the basement recovering and appreciating not being outside any longer. He now goes floppy whenever he gets picked up. I've gone from two and a half cats (the half being Fred outside in the garage) to six cats in a couple of weeks.
Fred's garage, which has a magnetic lock on the cat door, so only he can get in, has recently been invaded (which may be why he'd vanished, and also why he had a new leg injury). Birdseed was scattered everywhere. So the Birdchick set up a camera to find out who could be doing it, and how.
The conclusion -- not entirely unexpected -- is that a magnetically locked cat door is no obstacle to a family of determined raccoons...
