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...
"For the first time there are more mobile phones in use in Australia than there are people..." the man on the news just said, which means I'm in Sydney.
I got in this morning after 30 hours travel, determined not to sleep. I walked out to Harvey Norman and bought electrical stuff I'd forgotten to bring, most of which works, then stopped at Sushi-e for lunch (good, but overpriced). Then back to the hotel. More proofreading. Also a bath. I just met James Croll, an old school-friend who went into the Adventure Holiday trade, who moved to Sydney last year, and who is helping set up my Secret Travel Book Expedition.
"I think that if this works," he said cheerfully at the end, "We'll set up an 'In the footsteps of Neil Gaiman' expedition." (I think "If this works" probably means If I survive it. Um.)
Many people have written to point out that there is no U in Qantas, and almost as many of you have written to say that hawthorns can be bushes or trees (I knew that -- the problem is that in the text I refer to the same hawthorn as both things, and I sort of need to pick). You also have lots more examples of writers who have been in PR or publicity. But I am brain dead.
I'm fairly nervous about teaching at Clarion this year. I said no when asked for years, because I wasn't sure what I had to teach anyone about writing. Mostly I figure I'm still figuring it out myself. I finally said yes, and I still don't think I know enough to dare to actually teach anyone.
In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I'd ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering, but sooner or later you would have to walk naked down the street, that was useful...
And then I remembered. It was Harlan Ellison about a decade ago.
He said, "Hey. Gaiman. What's with the stubble? Every time I see you, you're stubbly. What is it? Some kind of English fashion statement?"
"Not really."
"Well? Don't they have razors in England for Chrissakes?"
"If you must know, I don't like shaving because I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin. So by the time I've finished shaving I've usually scraped my face a bit. So I do it as little as possible."
"Oh." He paused. "I've got that too. What you do is, you rub your stubble with hair conditioner. Leave it a couple of minutes, then wash it off. Then shave normally. Makes it really easy to shave. No scraping."
I tried it. It works like a charm. Best advice from a writer I've ever received.
..
Dear Mr. Gaiman,
are Bill Hader and Doug Jones really tall, or are you much (much) shorter than I've ever pictured?
Best wishes, J.V
Bill Hader is a few inches taller than I am, but he's normal-human-being-tall (and in the photo, Bill's closer to the camera than Doug or me, too). Doug Jones, on the other hand, is inhumanly tall -- as Abe Sapiens he towered over Hellboy, as the Silver Surfer he towered over Ben Grimm, as the faun in Pan's Labyrinth he towered over, well, a little girl, but he's absolutely ridiculously gobsmackingly tall anyway. Also astoundingly nice.
Merrilee (who is, as she has been for the last 20 years, my literary agent) has gone away, leaving me with a huge sheet of paper on which pretty much everything I've agreed to write over the next 18 months is written down in purple and white (for books or articles or stories) and green and white (for film or TV scripts).
I'm now officially forbidden from agreeing to write any more introductions, or saying "Sure, I'd love to do that, that sounds fun," without consulting her first, so she can say "YOU WHAT? ARE YOU MAD? OF COURSE NOT!" At least until the current round of stuff is done.
...
Bob Miller, who was the publisher of Hyperion, is heading over to Harper Collins [NB: one of my publishers, and also the people who pay for this website] where he wants to set up an experimental publishing unit with no or low advances and with profit sharing for an author. It could be interesting -- I was particularly fascinated by the final line of the NYT coverage:
Mr. Miller said he was considering offering both e-book and audio editions of the hardcovers at no extra cost to the consumer.
Because it seems to me that giving away an e-Book with a hardback is an excellent way to grow the e-book world, and something that a publisher could do at little or no cost. And I like the idea of essentially having bought a HEART-SHAPED BOX license rather than a copy of HEART-SHAPED BOX -- of course buying the book would give you the audio and the text, not just the object.
The Guardian and the New York Times both write about Bob Miller's arrival at Harper Collins, and between the two articles you get a fairly good picture of what's being said.
I think the Times statement that Typically, authors earn royalties of 15 percent of profits after they have paid off their advances is very dodgy. Many Authors earn royalties of 15 percent on the cost of a hardback, which goes to repay an advance until the advance is earned back, and then continues on from there. It's not 15% of profits.
Publishers can be making healthy profits on books that have not earned back their royalties.
My son Mike is home for a couple of days, and we went walking in the blazing summery sunshine, which only got weird when we were tramping through still unmelted snow, talking about this stuff, and he asked how it could work. I tried to explain simply, with pretend numbers,
Me: Let's say you get a thousand dollar advance on a book, with a ten percent royalty, and the book sells for ten dollars. The publisher has to sell a thousand books before you have earned out. But the publisher is selling the book, which it costs them a dollar to make, to the retailer, for four dollars. So they'll earn money from five hundred copies on...
Mike: So fifty-fifty profit sharing would be really smart in that case.
I was looking through your site at the word counts you posted for your books, and I wondered how you arrived at that cont? I know most word processors have a word count function--is that what you used? I've also found a formula where you count characters in a line, divide by six, then multiply the answer by how many lines are in your document. Which way did you arrive at your counts?
Waiting patiently for "The Graveyard Book," ~Karen
I just use the word counters on whatever word processing thing I'm using at the time. They may disagree a little.
In notebooks I laboriously count the words on a couple of pages, divide by two and use that as my What I'm Writing Per Page Average. Then when I type it I find out how wrong I was.
Hi Neil,
Have you seen this lovely awesome video of city lights at night made by my favorite astronaut, Don Pettit(who also happens to be married to my husband's sister)? While on the space station he figured out how to film the earth's lights without the blur of travel. It is so cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiy4zepuVE
Enjoy,
Claudia Carlson
I hadn't, and it is extremely cool.
Hi,
I'm organising one of your events in Melbourne, and just wanted to let your readers know how they can book:
Neil Gaiman 1pm May 5.
Village Roadshow Theatrette
Entry 3, State Library of Victoria
La Trobe Street, Melbourne
free (or gold coin donation)
Bookings at learning@slv.vic.gov.au or 8664 7555
Was that where I spoke last time I was in Melbourne? If it's the one I'm thinking of, it is not huge, so book to guarantee a seat. Lots of people asking why I'm not going to New Zealand or Perth or Brisbane or Canberra or Adelaide on this trip (A: Because there is only one of me and time is not infinite... Sorry. )
... This one's important...
Hi Neil,
You may remember Emru Townsend. He did this interview with you around the time you were promoting Princess Mononoke:
You may also remember his sister Tamu, who is one of the organizers for Anticipation SF, the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal where you will be guest of honor.
The reason I'm writing is that Emru is in need of a bone marrow transplant.
He has been diagnosed with leukemia and a condition called monosomy 7. Due to the monosomy 7, he has an increased risk of the leukemia coming back, no matter how successful chemotherapy may be. A bone marrow transplant is his best chance for survival. Unfortunately, his sister was not a match.
While anyone, anywhere can be a potential match, his best chance for a match comes from a donor who shares his ethnic background. As the son of two African Carribean parents, his chances are further diminished as blacks are underrepresented in bone marrow registries worldwide.
Emru is one of the nicest, coolest people I've had the good fortune to meet. He also runs fps Magazine, one of the best web sites around devoted to the art of animation.
Would you mind posting this message to get the word out and maybe get more people around the world to join the bone marrow registry?
Registration is quite simple, and usually requires a cheek swab or a small blood sample. If you end up being called in as a donor, the procedure itself is a simple, painless day surgery. Recovery involves mild discomfort in the pelvis and back for a few days. Your own bone marrow will replenish itself within six weeks.
The donation process is anonymous. You won't know if you're helping Emru or somebody else, but you will be helping to save a life. How cool is that?
For more information and links to bone marrow registries all over the world, please visit:
When I get a second I'll post about seeing The Magnetic Fields in Chicago. In the meantime, lots of tabs need to be closed here...
...
On April the 18th I'll be doing a reading and a Q&A as a benefit for the CBLDF at the New York Comic-Con. I haven't mentioned it here but people have already noticed,
Mr Gaiman,
I was really excited to hear that you'll be attending our Comic Con here in New York. then I read that it'll be a ticketed event. I'm sure it's for the Heroes fund or some other worthy cause, but surely you can do a free signing while you're there. You'e Neil freaking Gaiman, I'm sure DC would let youtake over their booth for a couple of hours. Please.
regards,
Frank
Hi Frank
I don't think it'll happen, I'm afraid. The CBLDF and the New York Con have organised the appearance as a fundraiser, and to ensure that it's successful that's going to be my one appearance (it's a lot more of an appearance than I had planned to do before the CBLDF asked me -- if they hadn't asked, I wouldn't be there at all). As you say, it's a worthy cause. (It's the same sort of thing they set up for Stephen King last year.)
Neil Gaiman, the renowned author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, and films will be presenting a live reading benefiting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at the New York Comic-Con. The appearance, a paid ticketed reading event, will be called an "An Evening With Neil Gaiman" with 100% of the proceeds going to benefit the First Amendment legal work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. "Reed Exhibitions and the New York Comic Con have always shown a passion for the First Amendment, and their continued commitment to the CBLDF is a tremendous boon to our work," says CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein. "We're thrilled to team up with them for this rare and special event."
"We're elated to be working with the CBLDF to host this incredible event," states Lance Fensterman, Show Manager for New York Comic Con. "Neil Gaiman is a huge personality, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is an incredibly influential and important organization. To have them both come together like this at New York Comic Con is a significant honor and I know this will be an enormous highlight of our weekend activity."
"An Evening With Neil Gaiman" will be Mr. Gaiman's only public appearance at New York Comic Con. It will be held on Friday, April 18, at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, and will feature a reading of material selected by Mr. Gaiman. A limited access VIP reception will take place immediately before the event. New York Comic Con, the largest popular culture event to occur on the East Coast, will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, April 18 – 20, 2008.
The book has now had 54k users and 2.3M page views. On average each user is viewing 42 pages.
Which doesn't tell us how many people have read the whole book on their screens and how many people have read one page and shaken their heads and gone away.
It'll be up for a couple more weeks...
This next just came in from Jennifer Brehl, my editor at Harpers, and someone who has been hard at work on making the book available.
Neil –
Below is a link to the survey that the HC internet team hope your will post to your blog. They are very enthusiastic about getting input from your fans to help them to improve the Browse Inside application.
The first few questions will be used for segmentation: current fans vs. new readers, print readers vs. digital readers, etc. It may be that the different groups have different reactions to this promotion and to the online reader.
At the end of this, the internet team would like to invite respondents to participate in a “Browse Inside” Advisory Panel to provide more in-depth feedback.
As you know your fans better than anyone, we’re eager to hear your opinions.
I hope that people will take the survey -- the ones who didn't like the way that Harpers did it as much as the ones who did. If you would prefer a downloadable book or a different interface or something, let them know...
I was vaguely wondering about whether to do a glossary of unusual words for The Graveyard Book, but for some reason when I read,
parents may need to be on hand to explain adjectives such as Miltonian. A glossary, rather than Gaiman's introduction, would have been a nice addition.
I found myself deciding against putting a glossary in. I thought that really, part of the fun of words is finding out what they mean. It was always one of the things I loved about books -- that they had cool new words in them. There are words I remember going and finding what they meant, puzzling over and chewing until I understood them (disembowel, for example, a word I ran into as a 7 year old in a John Brunner short story that taught me an awful lot about bodies and what's in them and what you could do to them) and words I remember discovering from fiction and understanding from context.
And it's fun as an author to throw in good words. Someone told me off for putting the word roiling in Odd and the Frost Giants[v.tr.1)to make (a liquid) muddy or cloudy by stirring up sediment. 2) To displease or disturb; vex: My roommate's off-putting habits began to roil me.v.intr. To be in a state of turbulence or agitation], as if kids would be upset by an unfamiliar word. I think I got roiling from R. A. Lafferty, as a kid, and loved it.
Nicked from George R.R. Martin's blog (grrm.livejournal.com), and as much as I love reading both of your journals, I love reading your books and your characters more. And I know that blogging is a distraction to me whether writing papers or short stories -- especially that temptation to tell people what the story's about, which somehow always makes me want to write it less...
I think she has a very valid point (writers need to write, and they need to write the thing they're doing). Beyond that, I read the rest of the rant as a thickly trowelled-on mixture poetic license and rhetorical excess to make the point that when you're blogging, you're not working (a true statement). And it's obviously true for Robin. Me, I like being an author with a blog. And one reason I don't do comments here (as I've said before) is pretty much for the reasons she outlines -- I might get sucked into it and lost forever.
But I think that suggesting that a writer stops being a writer because they blog or have a LiveJournal is silliness, and obviously easily disprovable. Different writers work in different ways. Some are sociable, some aren't. As Robin Hobb says on her FAQ
I've always preferred to work alone, not sharing my work with anyone until it goes off to an editor. That's my quirk. Many professionals attribute a lot of their success to workshops and writers' clubs.
And I think her rant and her reaction to blogging is just part of the same quirk. Blogging works for some writers and not for others. For those for whom it doesn't work, her rant is a useful exhortation not to do it.
A couple of years ago Gene Wolfe wrote two stories inspired by Lisa Snellings-Clark art. DreamHaven published them. It's a book called Strange Birds. It's a wonderful book-- the second story is one the most disturbing horror stories Gene has ever written.
Now DreamHaven have announced Strange Roads, a chapbook featuring three new stories by Peter S. Beagle, with a full-color cover and black & white interior art by Lisa Snellings-Clark. Limited to 1000 copies.
(Strange Birds, Strange Roads... I wonder what the next book title could be, and what poor foolish author will be sucked into Lisa's dark world of madness and poppets and pain.)
(It's me actually.)
...
The Children's Book Council of Australia are holding a conference (as mentioned earlier on this blog) called "All the Wild Wonders" in Melbourne this year. It'll have some fun keynote speakers (http://www.iceaustralia.com/cbca2008/speak.html) two of whom will be giving speeches that are open to the public. Those two are me and Shaun Tan. And I want to hear what Shaun has to say enough that I'm going to get up early on Saturday 3 May 2008, because his talk starts at 9.00 am. (Mine is on Sunday the 4th and starts at the same time.)
...
I'm sure a lot of people have already asked you, but I'm dying to know your stance on the Spitzer scandal. Having written about it from time to time, how do you feel about prostitution in general?
Nope, nobody's asked me (probably very wisely). I think my views on adult sex-workers are a lot like the ones expressed on Penn and Teller's Bullshit episode on Prostitution (on YouTube here) only without all the swearing.
...
And finally, from Farah Mendelsohn, an important one:
Dear Neil,
this may be old news to you, but Terry Pratchett has donated $1 million to Alzheimer's research.
Pat Cadigan has launched a "Match it for Pratchett" campaign to get fans to see if we can raise as much. The initial post is here: http://fastfwd.livejournal.com/316828.html
Any luck on recreating the best-EVER rice pudding? :D
--Denise
No, and I'm a bit grumpy about it. What I did was put some sweet rice in a bowl, then add some raw sugar, a smidge of salt and and then pour in some local milk. Then I shoved the bowl in an oven, and when I took it out a while later I had a perfect rice pudding. Thrice. The fourth time, having mentioned it on this blog, I figured I'd actually work out the amounts and immortalise it, at which point it all went wrong. It worked fine as long as I was doing it by eye, but was doomed the moment I started to try and pay attention to what I was doing. It's like one of those particles that you can know where it is or how fast it's going, but not both. I can apparently cook rice pudding well or keep track of times and quantities but not both....
One day.
Hi Neil,
Regarding the amazon discount on Absolute Sandman 3.
I place my order last week working out that the discount of 37% plus the extra 5% would be a 42%.
However, the 5% discount was applied to the already discount price so in total it was just over a 40%.
Still a bargain compared to the 10% discount that amazon.co.uk are offering. Regards
Chris
Ah. Good to know...
Hello Neil,
I know there has been a lot of hooplah about the free book. However, your diabolical plan has worked on me. I read it last weekend, then immediately went out and bought Anansi Boys.
Now I'm interested in reading Sandman next and am confused as to what to buy. The Absolute Sandman looks cool, but the $77.62 on Amazon is pretty steep for something I'm not sure I'm going to love $77.62 worth.
So, is there anything still in print that will give me a just a taste of Sandman?
Of course. The trade paperbacks are cheaper, and a way to find out if you like it. There are ten volumes in the Sandman series, along with Dream Hunters (a prose book with lovely illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano) and Endless Nights (a set of seven short stories).
I think the Absolute Sandmans are absolutely worth it, by the way. They're beautiful, each one's 600 pages long, oversized and slipcased. And the odds are good that, given the cost of production, they won't stay in print forever.
Hi Neil,
You are currently in the running for "Most Likely to be a Defrocked Pirate Living in the Wrong Century" poll on Deb Geisler's blog on Livejournal. She talks about it here:
“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read," says 47 year old author...
That was fun, the blog's seventh birthday. I enjoyed making the inspirational poster, and also enjoyed watching the webgoblin do all the hard work on making the survey. I also tried personally to answer all the FAQ line questions that came in yesterday -- I think I missed a couple, and two or three replies came back informing me that they'd been got by spam filters or people who didn't put in their email addresses correctly -- but I did reply to pretty much all of them.
Don't forget to vote (at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/02/birthday-thing.html). I'm enjoying watching the results so far -- not actually what I would have predicted. But there's a week to go and a lot of votes still to come in.
Neil Gaiman, the fantasy novelist, short story and comics writer, is asking readers of his blog to vote on the title they would most like to give as a gift. An electronic scan of the winning title will be offered free on the HarperCollins site later this month. Mr. Gaiman said the online effort was not so different from what has been going on for generations.
“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read,” said the English born Mr. Gaiman, 47. “I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.” Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too.
I think the point I was making wasn't so much that eventually you buy your own books, as that there's not and there has never been a simple one-to-one relationship between the books you read and way you find authors and the books you buy. It's more complicated than that, and more interesting. It's about the way that it's assumed that books have a pass-along rate, that a book will be read by more than one person. If the people who read the book like it, they might buy their own copy, or, more likely, just put the author in that place in their heads of Authors I Like. And that's a good place for an author to be.
Over at Locus magazine, at https://secure.locusmag.com/2008/2008PollAndSurvey.html, you can take the Locus Poll and Survey. You're taking part in the biggest vote for SF and Fantasy there is. More people vote for Locus Awards than for the Hugos or the Nebulas... You can be one of them.
...
Hola Neil,Quick question about Absolute Sandman Vol. 3. Vertigo now has the info for it up at: http://www.dccomics.com/graphic_novels/?gn=9050. I was wondering what the "Desire story from VERTIGO: WINTER'S EDGE #3" is (different from the Bolton Desire story in Vol. 2?) and if the 10-page "Fear of Falling" is missing from this volume?
Also, if that really is the cover art, it seems to be missing out on some great Mckean artwork. Both Vols 1 and 2 featured iconic cover images from the softcover of a major story arc contained in the volume. It seems a shame not to use the striking "Brief Lives" softcover image of the portrait made from all the photographs. Thought you might know what the final version looks like.
And the Dave McKean Shorts DVD has disappeared indefinitely with no further mention. Thought you or one of your readers might know what happened, for those of us who are anxiously awaiting it.
Thanks for your time - can't wait to experience "The Graveyard Book".
Actually, the Brief Lives image was the first suggestion from the DC Comics art department, and I vetoed it, mostly because that image, which we were so proud of at the time, has been repeated by so many people ever since. Even Dave McKean's been hired to do versions of it by art departments around the world, and I've spoken to artists who were handed that cover and told to reproduce it for movie posters or CD covers. Whereas I thought that Dave's painting of Morpheus from the cover of Sandman 50 might be really beautiful if taken out of context.
No, the Desire story is the Michael Zulli-illustrated "How They Met Themselves" story, with the Rosettis and Mr Swinburne going for a winter picnic. "Fear of Falling" is in there (and Danny Vozzo fixed some colouring errors on the hair).
The last time I checked with Dave McKean on what was happening with the DVD, he said:
We had several technical problems converting all this very differently formatted films from PAL to NTSC, and framerate changes, and editorial changes and other pernikity changes, and we decided since we will only be doing this once, we'd take the time to get it right, rather than rush to our initial release date. I've just taken delivery of what I hope is the final beta version, which means it should start to reappear on websites/Amazon/distributors lists etc. Don't fret, it will be out in a few months.
Dear Neil,You've most likely received many such requests, but I thought I'd throw mine into the pile as well: in light of your celebratory blogday vote, I'd like to know which of your own "hideous progeny" you would most like to see distributed gratis to your (not yet, but soon to be expanded) adoring public?Of course, I don't expect you to give us an answer before the voting has finished, but I'm a curious thing and hope you're willing to share this with us all.By the way, it's a beautiful day in Southern California today. It's a breezy 73 degrees outside, and the not-so-smoggy skies as smiling down at me as I write to you. Diamond dust snow sounds lovely, but you may want to consider getting some vit. D, courtesy of the sun, soon! I think your pen-ink will thank you for it as well. :)Best, Chrissy
Truth to tell, if I had a clear choice, I wouldn't have come up with the online survey. I would have just put up a free book.
Hi Neil!Just to let Jodi know, if she really wants to talk to other people about the posts, the officialgaiman RSS feed of this blog on livejournal (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/officialgaiman/) has a fairly active comments section. Of course, you have to have a livejournal to comment, and they'll eventually disappear, but it's still fun. celeste
Consider it plugged.
I've mislaid the most recent request to list a bunch of music I like, but here's a link to http://www.last.fm/user/neilhimself/charts/ where everything's that been played on iTunes in the last few days is up. (No, I'm not doing Friends or Journalling at Last Fm.) It may be too much information.
And here's the link to the radio station Last FM has put together based on what I've been playing recently...
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."
I'm not sure how I missed The Privilege of the Sword. It's a sequel to Swordspoint, which is one of my favourite of Ellen Kushner's novels, and thus one of my favourite books. (Ellen Kushner would be my evil twin, only she's a girl, we're not related, and I strongly suspect that if either of the two of us is evil, then it's me.) When I was in LA last week, Harlan Ellison brought out a pile of books and said "Take something to read on the plane," and when I saw there was an Ellen Kushner book I hadn't read, I grabbed it with enthusiasm. I read the first half of the book on the way to the UK, the second half just now on the way back. It's lovely -- disconcertingly it moves from a first person to third person and back, and just as disconcertingly it feels at times like a YA novel for really smart YAs, only with lashings of hot sex. Everything happens in it just as it ought. Katherine is fifteen, a well-brought-up country girl, whose mad Uncle, the Duke, is going to make her a swordsman. And he does... It's elegant and fun and delightful.
So. A report on the last few days. Right.
I had an impromptu birthday party of great wonderfulness held in the hotel and organised ("Dad, I didn't organise it, the hotel did it all, I keep telling you,") by my daughter Holly. A wonderfully random assortment of friends came out, all on no notice -- including some, like Geoff Ryman and John and Liliana Bolton, who I have not seen in years. Champagne was quaffed. (Quaffing is like drinking only you spill more towards the end.) Mitch Benn showed up at half past twelve (by which time it was no longer my birthday and it was now his daughter Greta's) and sang "Be My Doctor Who Girl" while accompanying himself on his guitar until the hotel made him stop.
The 11th was the Beowulf premiere. It was huge -- an event that dwarfed the LA version. Flames gusted from the side of the building, there was a thirty foot high TV with Vikings and drums in front of it, thousands of people, and the whole thing was enormous. I tried to sign as many autographs as I could, and was yanked away to do interviews, but did the last part of the red carpet with Holly. I knew I had finally made it when I saw myself identified as "unidentified cast member" in the online premiere photos.
Occasionally I get rather odd letters in on the FAQ line shouting at me for SELLING OUT TO MAMMON and WHY DON'T YOU WRITE NOVELS ANYMORE YOU HOLLYWOOD MOVIE SELLOUT, all the kinds of things that make me wonder why the people didn't send the letters in back in 1997 when I went off with Roger and we actually wrote Beowulf (or at least in March 2005 when we did the rewrite) and I find them as strange as I do the people asking why I no longer write comics ("But I do," I tell them. "In the last five years I wrote more comics than anything else.") It's weird being told you've sold out or gone Hollywood for work you did many years ago. Even so I found myself feeling peculiarly Hollywood at the London premiere, wearing my flash jacket and marching with Roger, Bob Zemeckis and the stars from cinema to cinema as Ray Winstone thanked people for coming and then added, cheerfully, "And I WILL kill your monstah."
(Relieved to see Beowulf's been certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Some people really like it and some people really don't, but the former outnumber the latter.)
And then up really early on the 12th, flew a couple of hours, had a business meeting, then drove into the more or less webless wilds for a day, had a day off, slept mostly, then got up at 2:30am to drive back to civilisation.
I often grumble about cell phones, but anything you can use to bring help when your car shreds a tyre on a mountain road at 6.00 am is all right in my book. Somehow I didn't even miss my plane back to London or my plane to the US.
And now I am home after 26 hours travelling. A busy three days, then off to the Philippines with Mike, then I finish The Graveyard Book...
Just did the Second Life press conference. Just before it started the nice lady from Warners excused herself to give my privacy to be interviewed. "Before you go," I said, very aware that whatever can go wrong on these things will always go very wrong, "give the dial-in info, in case I get cut off."
Because whatever can go wrong will on these things, Roger Avary, half-way across London, was the one who got cut off, without the call in number, and I was the one who wound up talk-talk-talking to make up for it.
Other than that, a nice birthday so far. Lots of interviews, and then, as I had a couple of hours down time, I had tea with my friend Derren Brown for the first time since this post, which was astonishingly pleasant (and we were surprised to discover that we both went to the same school).
norman mailer has died.
thoughts?
or no thoughts?
Just a bit saddened. I had a lovely dinner with Norman and Norris back in about 1990, at the house of Martha and John Thomases. Norman was ferociously smart, and surprised me at one point when he went off on a rant about the English and quinine and tonic water by interrupting himself when he realised I was English and being desperately keen to make sure I hadn't taken offense-- the opposite of the pugnacious image he'd acquired. I liked Harlot's Ghost and Ancient Evenings, wasn't a huge fan of a the early books that got him his reputation, and owed an enormous amount of why-Sandman-was-taken-seriously-in-the-early-years to Norman's quote on the cover of Season of Mists, for which I shall be forever grateful.
Ok, I have to ask - why did you decline to interview Nico? I'm a sorta fan of VU, and I think I'd be as interested in talking to her as I would be in talking to Lou Reed (who I think is one of the most interesting figures in modern music.) And I'd think that at that point you'd not really be in a position to decline an interview without a pretty good reason... So SPILL good sir!
Because at that point -- 1984ish -- she was a drug burnout who couldn't manage more than a sentence, and wasn't actually interviewable. And after she had wandered off into the crowd her manager looked at me and said "You aren't going to interview her then, are you?" and I said, "I'm afraid not". There's a great book called THE END aka SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO (I think) by (if memory serves) James Young about Nico at that time.
Went out to my writing cabin today for the first time in many months, having failed to notice that it was a day like an oven in the Midwest and having many optimistic but inaccurate memories about how effective the portable air-conditioning unit in there was. I cooked, but I hand-wrote about a thousand words of a short story for the BBC's Radio 4. (Who, after I agreed to do it, kept writing and pointing out that the money for a short story from the BBC is even worse than money from anywhere else and was I absolutely sure I still really wanted to write it? And of course I do.)
I took the dog with. And I stopped writing when the storm clouds rolled in and it all turned into night outside.
I just got a slightly nervous email from Evan Dorkin, who was surprised and, I think, a little worried by the response to his LJ rant about the scents in Diamond, so I wrote back and reassured him that I thought it was funny and honestly hadn't linked to it so that people would go and shout at him. This is Evan Dorkin, after all, the man behind Milk And Cheese and the Eltingville Club, and he rants really well. He's very funny.
Todd Klein is the best letterer I've ever worked with, and because I like working with him so much he's now statistically pretty much the only letterer I've ever worked with. He's a craftsman, and one of the nicest people in comics, and he was my unofficial editor on Sandman as well. He's just put up a website at http://kleinletters.com/, and if you're interested in the craft of lettering comics, or in the story of Sandman from the only other person to be there from Sandman #1 to Endless Nights... and a whole lot more besides, then you should wander over.
Just out of curiosity, how many words were Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, and American Gods respectively? I'm working on a novel and, while I don't want to modify it for word count or even aim for any word count, I certainly don't want it to fall in that ackwardly middle novella-type length that you see published so infrequently. It's amazingly hard to find word counts for published novels... Thanks. Logan
Anansi Boys is a hair under 100,000 words and Neverwhere is a few thousand words over 100,000. American Gods when originally handed in was about 200,000 words (and still is, if you get the "Author's preferred text edition" in the UK and was cut to somewhere a bit under 180,000 words. Stardust was 50,000 words. Coraline was 30,000 words. (I think that 60,000 words is probably a good minimum word count to aim for when you write an adult novel, 40,000 for a book for younger readers. But publishers go more for whether they like something than what the word count is.)
Hi Neil, I noticed on the Comic Con sneak-peek schedule that you will be on a movie panel on Thursday 7/26 and the Jack Kirby tribute panel on Sunday 7/29; will you have your own session during the convention? thanks!
Yup. I'm still waiting for final confirmation on the various other panels and presentations I'll be on, then I'll post them all here, but the solo one is:
Friday July 27th: 2-3:15 pm Spotlight on Neil Gaiman. Room 6 CDEF signing after from 3:15-4:15 pm
And talking about word counts, I notice from http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/clouds/words/ that I'm now a mere 12,000 words away from having written a million words on this blog in the last six and a half years. Blimey.
I have almost -- almost, so close I can taste it -- finished the "Danse Macabre" story, which means I'm over half way through the Graveyard Book. Now the plot starts...
Sure many have asked this, but which book are you reading in the photo with you by the tree?~Andrea the Satanic Ice Cube Diva
I am sitting under a tree reading a most wonderful bunch of essays by Sue Hubbell called Shrinking the Cat. (Here's a review I found. The book is better than the review.)
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Many, many people wrote to tell me about this new thing called Firefox and why I should use it instead of Explorer. Truth to tell, I've been using Firefox since it was Firebird, and happily plugging it. But sometimes I use Explorer. It's ever so slightly easier to blog with Explorer -- there are few bells and whistles that Firefox doesn't get from Blogger; if you have more than one Gmail account open at the same time, you're going to need two different web browsers anyway; and (this one tends to be the biggest one that stopped me becoming exclusively Firefox based, at least on the laptops) sometimes Firefox is a memory hog. I'll notice that a computer has slowed way down, go and check the CPU and find out that Firefox is using it all. I used to simply kill Firefox with a Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then reopen it later with sessions saver, but I started worrying that I was doing something wrong, so I did a search over at Firefox help, and discovered that if it's being a memory hog they suggest you kill it with a ctrl-alt-delete...
to learn that Wolves in the Walls is going to Los Angeles as well as New York, and disappointed to learn that it's not -- as The Stage says, right now Wolves is only going to the New Victory -- details of the New York run are at http://www.newvictory.org/show.m?showID=1028522.
A quiet day. I had a visit from a representative from a Major Company who flew all the way to the Midwest to show me An Interesting Device, and I'll write about it as soon as I know that it's not all confidential. I was fairly impressed by what I saw of the Device and will get one of my own to play with soon.
The Dog is fine -- we called the Humane Society and he's impounded for a week (which means I couldn't go over and say hullo and take him for a walk). Fred is back from the vet. We still have three goldfish.
I nipped out to see the hives today, wearing a white shirt and white jeans bought especially for beekeeping. I felt like Negative Me. Hive 1 (AKA Kitty) is doing brilliantly, Hive 2 (AKA Olga) is a bit more problematic. I don't think I'd ever realised that hives could have personalities before, despite having read Sue Hubbell's wonderful Book of Bees. (Here's a Sue Hubbell article from Time Magazine.) Tomorrow we check the hives to see if the queens are egg-laying. This is fun.
Fred is home from the vet and I just gave him his antibiotics. Maddy is watching American Idol. All's right with the world.
Can you or someone please post pics of that "cool dog" you found? First, I'd just like to see him. Second, maybe (maybe!) someone will recognize him!
Thanks, Chris Sure. He wasn't easy to photograph, mostly because he kept moving. This was the best one I got yesterday (you can't really see the wolfy ears, but they are there)...
The internet in this house is incredibly wonky right now, but it seems to be working this minute so I'm going to do a hasty blog post while it is.
I'm home. Maddy and I have already watched two episodes of the new Dr Who series together (one this morning, one tonight), and it's really great stuff. Stronger opening episodes than either of the two previous seasons. We'll keep the third episode for tomorrow or Monday.
I am thrilled that "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" made the shortlist (and equally as thrilled that it's the only short story the Hugo and Locus lists have in common).
As of today, the beehives have been carried out from the basement to the back of beyond and placed upon their breeze-blocks and boards. The birdchick (beechick?) will turn up on Tuesday with the bees. Unfortunately I won't be here -- on Tuesday I'll be out at Bryn Mawr doing a reading and a chat (http://www.brynmawr.edu/news/2007-04-19/gaiman.shtml) before heading to New York for the PEN World Voices thingummy.
(And when I finished writing that the internet went down for 3 hours, and then I fell asleep in front of the TV all jetlagged. Now awake, and with Internet, so posting it quickly while both things continue to be true.)
Hotels are so different, one from the next. Today I'm in a room smaller than the bed I slept in last week. (The hotel put me in there because they were out of normal rooms, and told me it was the biggest bed in London. I do not doubt that it was. It would have slept families.)
The Independent on Sunday article will, I am told, be out this week.
Please can you settle a family row and confirm that it was you that we saw at The Now Show on Thursday evening? I wanted to get your, and Marcus', autograph but the youngest was too shy and ran away first.
b.t.w. My eldest, 16, oft quotes your "kindly declines your offer of a comb" and liked the bit about hunting for weasles.
Matthew
That was me, yes. I hope that settles the family row. I was there as Mitch Benn's guest, but was thrilled to see Marcus Brigstocke (who I hadn't seen since we made A Short Film About John Bolton), and then delighted to find out that I went to school with Steve Punt ("I saw your band in the music hall," he said, as only someone who was once fourteen can say to someone who was once sixteen. "You were a legend." And then we reminisced about the school peacock and Stewart Elsey's chips.)
You should have said hullo.
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Lots of people wrote in to say that,
There are higher quality versions of the Tyger animation as well as more information on it at http://guilherme.tv/tyger/.
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Hi Neil, I'm glad your having a fun vaction after a busy signing tour, but I'm wondering if any developments on the Crazy Hair front will be made while your hanging out with Dave. I remember you describing it last October and it sounds absolutly delightful!-Rachael
It's done! He showed it to me! He's finished! It's amazing! I may have to rewrite a couple of lines to make the words and the pictures match up perfectly, but just a couple of lines, and then we will be done. Expect it out in 2008 from Harper Childrens and from Bloomsbury in the UK. It's gorgeous. (There's a picture from it at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/uploaded_images/Pgs.24,25-707551.JPG)
Hello Neil,
Longtime fan here with a comics-world-related question. Seeing as Coraline is already in production and I can't be cast, haha, I've turned my sight on to the new 'Preacher' series (yet-to-be-cast) on HBO.
Specifically I'd like to try for the character of Tulip OHare, and thought I should send of a 'screen test' where I'm reading from the comic, as well as a few shots recreating panels from the comic, along with my headshot and resume. I'm also going to try to be signed with a local casting agent for Maryland... and see if they can help as well.
My question is: 1) Should I send my information to Ennis & Dillon via Vertigo? Would they recieve it?
2) How can I be a fan and still have my request taken seriously?
Any input you have would be greatly appreciated... as I'm sure you've had experiences like this throughout your career.
Cheers! Jess Angell
Well, I've been given lots of headshots by people that I wasn't sure what I was meant to do with them over the years. To answer your questions...
1) Possibly it might get to them, but Garth and Steve aren't casting it. They won't do anything more with a head shot and DVD than shrug and wonder why you sent it to them. If you're amazingly amazing they might send it on to a producer who probably won't watch it, but you'd have to be jaw-droppingly brilliant, and even then it probably won't do anything.
2) Be an actress.
I'm serious. If you want to be in something like that, your best bet is to be an actress already. Be a good one. Take lots of parts. Do TV, movies and theatre. Be someone who, when a casting director says to a producer "I think we could get Jess Angell to play Tulip," makes the producer go "Really? Would she be interested in something like this?"
Casting is about a lot of things, and one of them is getting the thing made.
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Hullo Mr G. I recall your excellent contribution to 'AARGH' when it came out (I'm that old), and thought you might be interested in the campaign to save the veteran London bookshop Gay's The Word, survivor of the Clause 28 battles and now threatened by the general Starbucks-ing of the streets. It's always stocked a good selection of gay & lesbian-related graphic novels and comic books. Times story here:
...but it's not really threatened by the Starbucksing of the streets. It's threatened because most mainstream bookshops have really good LGBT sections now, which they didn't have before. Just as it gets harder for the specialist SF shops once the SF shelves in the big bookshops get big.
I think it's sad when the little shops go, and I wish they wouldn't, but I don't think it's a bad thing when things that were once specialised interests become more easily available in the mainstream. It means that the small shops have to figure out what they can give their customers that the bigger shops or the online world simply can't.
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Last November I mentioned Clive Barker's inspirational speech on genre as a continent, given impromptu at British Fantasycon. Someone wrote to let me know it's now up at
Thanks for signing two of my treasured Sandman hardbacks on Friday. MUCH appreciated as always. I have one more to go! I was wondering, did you watch Dr Who on Saturday night at the same time as your fellow countrymen? I'm guessing you didn't as you would rather watch it back in the US with Maddy. But if you did, what did you think? Til' next time. Tony Scudder.
I didn't. I'm waiting until I am home to watch Dr Who with Maddy. Anything else would be wrong.
Leipzig (more or less rhymes with My Pig, incidentally)
I've spent most of this tour saying "What do the locals eat here? I'll have that," which has on one occasion resulted in the arrival of a two-foot-long sausage, but has mostly been a very successful way to dine. Tonight, though, I noticed that the hotel in Leipzig contained a Japanese restaurant, and wistfully asked if anyone would mind if we had sushi. So my publishers and Gerd and I went to the Japanese restaurant, and I ordered some sushi from the menu, and soon the waitress came back and explained that the exotic things I had ordered, like yellowtail, weren't actually available. I asked for some different fish from the menu. She came back and said that she didn't actually think they had those, either. We asked if she could find out what they did have, and she said she couldn't really ask because the Sushi chef was Korean and she didn't speak his language, she would just give him the menu numbers and he would tell her if he could do it or not. So I went and peered into the sushi chef's glass case, and ordered some rather sad tuna and salmon, which was all he had in there, and I wondered whether it might not actually have been wiser to have gone to a restaurant the locals ate in after all.
Anyway. Germany's over. I had fun today at the Leipzig bookfair (and I keep mispronouncing Leipzig). Tonight was odd, but very pleasant -- a reading in the jazz-club basement of a local pub, for about fifty people at the most.
At the fair I met the delightful Meg Cabot, which I was hoping I might do ever since I noticed from her blog that she and I were more or less doing the same European tour, although she actually was the one who came and found me because she'd noticed the same thing. When I mentioned that my daughter Maddy loves Meg's books with an intense passion, Meg handed me the book she'd been reading from and signed it for Maddy, thus making me a really cool dad. I wanted to give her a book of mine, but all the nearby ones were in German, which she did not read, so I didn't. She and her husband will be in Paris of course tomorrow, at the book Salon, and so will I, and I'll try and find something by me to pass on to her as a thankyou.
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Dave McKean wrote to tell me about an exhibition he's doing, with a lot of art for sale, and I (this is the editorial I, in this case meaning that I forwarded Dave's email to the Web Elf, who did her usual bang-up job of making things happen) have posted it all at http://neilgaiman.com/journal/davemckean/ so whether you want to look online, browse, buy art over the web, or if you plan to go and see the stuff in the flesh (you'll need to be able to go to Rye though), you can click on it and decide.
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According to SFX, the London Forbidden Planet signing starts at 5.00pm on Friday the 30th of March.
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Someone sent me a link to a Russian fake Stardust poster (not even a good fake, either). I'm just glad Paramount will have a real trailer up tomorrow at http://movies.yahoo.com/ and a real poster up very very soon.
Nick Sweeting from Improbable wrote to let me know that the National Theatre of Scotland's production of THE WOLVES IN THE WALLS is going to open the New Victory's Autumn season in 2007, performances from the beginning of October. (That's in New York.) Tickets probably won't go on sale for three or four months, but I thought I'd mention it anyway. It doesn't seem to be going anywhere else in the US at this point, but I'll post the info as I get it. (And it's been years since I pointed out that you can get WOLVES screensavers and ecards and things at http://www.gaimanmckeanbooks.co.uk/wolves.htm.)
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Why am I still up and writing this? Why aren't I in bed. Anybody sensible would be in bed. It's almost two in the morning.
