American Gods Blog, Post 54

So, today brought an envelope, and in it, the finished book cover for American Gods. It's lovely. Big lightning bolt on the cover, gold letters, and the back cover is covered with wonderful blurbs, many of them melted down from ones already posted here. Also photo of me, with smoke in background and messy hair. Author delighted. Finished books should arrive on the 31st of May. Author excited.

Also e-mail today saying American Gods has been sold to Czechoslavakia and to France, which gives us the first two foreign sales.

The most interesting American Gods call was from the editor of the e-book edition of American Gods, which will be published at the same time as the novel, asking about what kind of things we can add to the e-book: I suggested that we add this journal...

And because none of that is very interesting, I thought I'd put up a link to some wonderful photos... here. For anyone who, like me, tends to think of the past in sepia tones...

American Gods Blog, Post 37

Off to the UK for a few days to see some people and listen to some music. Am in an airport, and have just discovered that the modem was inadvertantly removed from my computer, so I'll a) be offline for a few days and b) have to disappoint all the people I'd promised I'd finally tell the story of the day I got the jacket photo taken -- I was planning to write it on the plane and post it this weekend. You may have to wait until next week. (No, it's not a cruel joke by an evil author -- and I'm mostly grumpy right now as I'm going to have to lug a notebook computer and bag around England for four days and it'll be about as useful as hauling a paving stone). (Well, I also have a speech to write and a few other things, but really on the road it's an e-mail machine.)

American Gods Blog, Post 33

Oops. Thursday's not Mardi. Mardi is Tue's Day. Tew (also known as Tyr) is an almost forgotten god of war and justice, and a much nicer guy than Odin. His hand was bitten off by Fenris Wolf.

I'm off for a few days, taking my son to see the various colleges that have accepted him, to see which one he wants to attend.

And a photocopy of the American Gods book cover arrived this morning. And it has the photo of me, large on the back, which was going to be my cue to tell you all the story of the photo day, but I'm running for a plane, so you are just going to have to be patient a little longer.

American Gods Blog, Post 13

So the post today brought a copy of American Gods -- a book, and a cover -- from the UK. It's the Hodder uncorrected proof, and it is lovely. I was completely thrilled, mostly I think by the bookness of it. I also really liked the back cover copy, although it doesn't bear a whole lot of resemblance to the book it describes, having been written from my original outline and not from the text. So some of the facts are off, but the mood and the pitch and the tone are just right.

You can see the cover image at http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/0747274231.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg Although they've now put a lot more silver on my name, and distressed the title letters, and the whole looks smashing.

All of a sudden, it's starting to feel like something very real -- a book, not just something I've been writing for a few years.

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.)