not really about anything...

Let's see -- spoke at Maddy's school yesterday, to about a hundred 13 and 14 year olds. Survived. The pear tree and the cherry trees are coming into blossom too. Tomorrow, without the glorious leadership of Bee Boss Sharon Stiteler, I get to inspect the Kitty hive and go and see how the queen is doing...

I'm currently spending most of the time in the gazebo at the bottom of the garden, alternately writing a sort of outline for something and proofreading The Graveyard Book. This is the US edition of The Graveyard Book, and now I'm taking all the corrections and fixes I did to the UK manuscript when I was in Australia and transferring 90% of them over to the US version (only 90% because I'm letting a few Americanisms that my UK editor had problems with stand -- particularly the ones my otherwise wonderful UK copy editor and I butted heads over. )(There's me at two in the morning on Skype muttering, "Look freak out can't just be a newfangled Americanism -- it's in Fanny Hill, for heaven's sake...") [For the curious, http://fiction.eserver.org/novels/fanny_hill/09.html five lines from the bottom.]

....

If you're on the upper East Coast and sad that you won't get to see me at MIT as all the tickets have sold out, you could -- and should -- down your sorrows in Cory Doctorow reading from Big Brother. If you click on http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000357.shtml you can learn all about it....

What: Cory Doctorow Benefit Reading For CBLDF

When: Sunday, May 25 at 5 PM; VIP After Party at 7 PM

Where: Comix, 353 West 14th Street, New York, NY 10014

How Much:
General Admission: $20/advance $25/day of show;
VIP Admission: $100/advance only, includes preferred seating, copy of the book, & After Party with open beer/wine/soda bar

Tickets:
General Admission tickets available at
http://comixny.com/event.aspx?eid=416&sid=1302;

VIP Admission available at
http://store.fastcommerce.com/prod_cbldf-ff80818119f1676e0119f2fbcdc91642.html


You should go.

...

I know that David Tennant's Hamlet isn't till July. And lots of people are going to be doing Dr Who in Hamlet jokes, so this is just me getting it out of the way early, to avoid the rush...

"To be, or not to be, that is the question. Weeelll.... More of A question really. Not THE question. Because, well, I mean, there are billions and billions of questions out there, and well, when I say billions, I mean, when you add in the answers, not just the questions, weeelll, you're looking at numbers that are positively astronomical and... for that matter the other question is what you lot are doing on this planet in the first place, and er, did anyone try just pushing this little red button?"

There. Thanks. Sorry about that.

...

This came in from Laurel Krahn -- I've already mentioned Fourth Street Fantasy on this blog, one of my very very first American conventions, the one at which I first discovered the joy of talking to Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden (amongst others) and failing to argue with Steve Brust:

Any chance you could mention the return of Fourth Street Fantasy Convention in your journal/blog thing? We've extended the pre-registration date from May 15th to May 31st to give us all more time to plug the convention, it also gives those who haven’t registered yet a bit more time to gather the funds together to do so.

June 20 - 22, 2008 in Minneapolis, Minnesota with Guest of Honor Elizabeth Bear.

More details at http://www.4thstreetfantasy.com/

My friend Lillian Edwards pointed me at the TechnoLlama blog, where over This, this and finally this post the entire matter of Dr Who knitting patterns is discussed to within an inch of its life.

I crochet, and I'm a Doctor Who fan, so I've been following the thing with the knitted pattern a little. I've always had a set of Lil' Endless on my mental list of things to eventually crochet, but now that you've mentioned that DC is a bit strict about things I think I might just keep them to myself instead of writing up a (free, not to be sold) pattern. What would your feelings be about crochet/knitting patterns of your characters? It's not just The Endless I have in mind, I've done a seven legged spider before, and there are several other characters or concepts that I think would make neat projects.

As long as things aren't being sold in quantity, DC Comics is incredibly unlikely to grumble about it.

I don't mind at all, as long as it's not commercial. I don't mind anything that's creative, and I especially don't mind if people ask nicely first.

(I mind, very much, things like people selling on ebay CDs with PDFs of the complete Sandman books on them.)

(Nobody is going to complain if a fan turns a Barbie into a Death -- although I heard that DC said no to one of those appearing in a book of photos of interesting Barbie dolls. Nobody is going to grumble if a fan puts up a "how to make Barbie into Death" guide online. If someone put up a how to guide, and then one day hundreds of Death Barbies turned up on eBay, I can see Warners lawyers trying to close it down...)

...

Had a conversation with Paul Levitz the other day about Gaiman's Law of Superhero Movies, which is: the closer the film is to the look and feel of what people like about the comic, the more successful it is (which is something that Warners tends singularly to miss, and Marvel tends singularly to get right) and the conversation went over to Watchmen, which had Paul explaining to me that the film is obsessive about how close it is to the comic, and me going "But they've changed the costumes. What about Nite Owl?" It'll be interesting to see whether it works or not...

the simplicity of black...

(I just discovered that there is a chipmunk living in the drainpipe that backs onto my bedroom, which explains the mysterious noises that I haven't mentioned here in case people started doing wolves in the walls jokes.)

...

You know, the main reason I've been wearing more or less the same thing for about 20 years is that I don't ever have to wonder what to wear. It makes life easy.

My assistant Lorraine just asked me what I wanted to wear to the Beowulf premieres in the UK and the US and I realised with a sort of creeping horror that I didn't know. I already wore a tuxedo-and-bow-tie to the US Stardust Premiere, and I wore a leather jacket black tee shirt and and black jeans to the UK Stardust premiere. That pretty much completely exhausts my range. I suppose I could wear a different leather jacket, or perhaps a tie instead of a bowtie with the tux, but (shakes head gloomily). I don't know. Decisions, decision. (I asked an actress friend what she was going to wear and learned that clothes designers actually lobby to have actorish people be seen wearing their clothes on the red carpet. I had to explain that it doesn't work that way for writers. I suppose I could toss a coin.)

...

I've been using Google Documents to share ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS with people who needed to see it... and just realised that none of the little corrections and fixes I've been entering -- and dutifully saving -- have been saved. Instead it seems to have taken a version of the document open in Google Documents on another computer somewhere in the house as its master text, which means the saves I've done on the downstairs computer I'm on have apparently not taken. (I've sat there going through all the old saved versions it's kept -- 121 of them and they only seem to go back and forwards between a couple of versions in which a But changes to a Still, because at a guess it's open in two different tabs somewhere on whichever computer it's on that Google is paying attention to...) Between the people who can't get in to see it and write me grumbly emails, and the way Google Documents sometimes fails to send the letters inviting people to look at it (but still lists them as now having access to the document), I think I should have paid a bit more attention to the word BETA underneath the words Google and Documents.

...

Hello Mr. Gaiman!

I just thought you might be interested to know I've carved a Jack O'Lantern of you for our dorm's pumpkin competition. I'm hoping to scrape a "Most Original" for it, but I might lose to the Andy Warhol's Marilyn Pumpkin. Ah well.

Here is a link to a picture of it I posted on facebook.

http://bgsu.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=34570514&id=20923362&op=1&view=all&subj=2200703877&aid=-1&oid=2200703877

Sorry it's not lit up, apparently they're a fire hazard. Such is dorm life.

I hope you're not weirded out by this. But really I don't know, I might not be as original as I think I am. Probably dozens of Neil O'Lanterns get made every year!

Thanks,

Katy Gehred

Probably. (Small grin.) No, I think it's just you. if more turn up I'll try to link to them here...

Neil,

We thought we'd let you know that you seem to have a bunch of knitter fans! A Knitters for Neil group has been started on the up and coming fiber arts site Ravelry.com, just thought you might get a kick out of knowing it exists. We're hoping to come up with some interesting you-inspired knits, so if you wouldn't mind letting everyone know that if they would like to join or have any ideas we can be found at http://www.ravelry.com/groups/neil-gaiman-knitters

Thanks!

Lauren

It seems like Ravelry is something you sign up for and then wait to be invited to join. But consider it plugged...

Not a question, just pointing out something your readers might find useful: you can buy british editions of books and ship them (almost) worldwide without having to pay postage at The Book Depository website (www.bookdepository.co.uk).
(I am not affiliated with this website, I just find their service useful and impressive)

Good to know, although it doesn't look like you can pre-order stuff there. Right now for Odd they send you to Amazon.co.uk, anyway.

...

I just learned that the official on-sale date of The Graveyard Book is September the 30th 2008
...

Maddy wants to know why I haven't posted a photo of her on this blog for ages, and suggests that simply by posting a recent photograph I could prove to the world that I still love her...



...

Lots of people wrote and told me I could order Marmite from Amazon.com -- and I did! It just arrived. Unfortunately two bottles (of twelve) were smashed in shipping, and I discovered that Amazon won't let you return or refund grocery items, so I don't think I'll be ordering groceries from Amazon again.

And many of you wrote and asked me to explain Marmite. And I shall. but not now.

...


Right. Back to rereading Bone.