Woot.

Back from the ABC studios where I was interviewed for Triple J -- it'll be up as a podcast for those of you who were either asleep or not in Australia (which is most of you): http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/ is their website, and I'll put up a link when they send it to me.

I just discovered that Michael Chabon's Yiddish Policemen's Union won the Nebula as Best SF novel of the year. As Maddy would say, Woot!

Congratulations to everyone else who won -- the complete list of winners and nominees is here (and I'm thrilled that Guillermo got the script Nebula for Pan's Labyrinth, just as I'm sorry that Stephen Moffat didn't get it for Blink, and that Gene Wolfe didn't get it for Memorare -- which you can read at http://www.sfsite.com/fsf/fiction/gw01.htm, and which I really, really hope gets the Hugo) (Gene Wolfe has never won a Hugo award. I'm just saying.)

I'm slowly catching up with things I've promised people, one thing at a time. Todd Klein asked if I would do the signed Todd-lettered print after the Alan Moore one, and there was no way I could say no. Then I kept him waiting on tenterhooks until I had an idea, and then I made him tenterhook longer while I worked on it, but eventually I finished something called Before You Read This, which begins

Before you read this familiarise yourself
with the text. Note the position of the escape hatches,
the candles that will light in the event of a forced landing
to show you the way out. The author will make an announcement.

and goes on from there. I'm looking forward to seeing whether it works when read aloud. Todd's got the work-in-progress version of the print up at

http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1095.

Which I mention here as the first printing of the Alan Moore print sold out in three days. (You can get a second printing at http://kleinletters.com/BuyStuffTop.html).

Since you're travelling I'm willing to bet this message will get lost in the shuffle, but here goes.

So I'm reading the excellent "Lonely Werewolf Girl" which I'm loving, more than "Good Fairies of New York" I think, but I have a bone to pick. Once I started keeping track, I've counted six typos in the first 233 pages. Maybe this seems like a small number of typos but I find it five typos too many! Don't people get paid specifically to ensure that doesn't happen?! It's driving me bonkers...

Anyway, not meant to be any slight against this wonderful, whimsical, punk rock, wolfy book, but seriously; what's up with that?

-J.

Speaking as someone currently proofreading The Graveyard Book, who is only certain of one thing: that typos will lurk and creep and scuttle on the edges of the text and, despite my best efforts, jump out and wave furiously at everyone as soon as I'm done, all I can do is sympathise. But you know, the magic of the internet is that Martin Millar, author of both the above books, has his own blog. It's at http://martin-millar.blogspot.com/ and he has his own website at http://www.martinmillar.com/, where not only can you ask him what's up with the typos, but if you give him a list of them, he can pass them on to his publishers and then they won't be typos in the next edition. Such is the magic of the internet. (Also, you can buy signed books directly from the author at http://www.lonelywerewolfgirl.co.uk/. Which is very nice of him.)

...

Dear Mr. Gaiman,

These are some very simple questions: Do you ever listen to music when you work on something or does it distract you? Have you ever been influenced by a song or peice of music to write a scene?

And last but not least: What are you listening to these days?

Thank you much,

John

Yes, I often write with music on. It doesn't distract me. Anything that makes me more comfortable and keeps me writing is good. And occasionally I'll reread something I've written and know what I was listening to when I wrote it. (I think it's a good bet that Iggy Pop's song Passenger was on repeat a lot when I wrote Sandman 5, for example.) As for what I'm listening to these days, It's mostly up at http://www.last.fm/user/neilhimself/. Here are a couple of Last.fm widgets that might or might not work -- one of songs that seem to have been played more than other songs in the last month, and the other the Last.Fm "My Radio Station", of songs it knows I enjoy...

Arthur C Clarke (and the closing of many tabs)

Maddy and I ran into Powells when we got back from Laika today. Laika had given Maddy a Powells gift card, and I love that place. Next to Arthur C Clarke's books was a note saying that he had died today.

I met Sir Arthur C Clarke in 1985, when he was in the UK to promote the film of 2010. He was staying in Brown's Hotel in London, where the doormen wore top hats and the hotel interior didn't seem to have changed in a hundred years. I interviewed him for Space Voyager magazine, but all I remember is that he was very kind and polite, and a vague surprise in discovering that he had a West Country burr in his voice. He seemed like someone from a past era, in that elderly wood-and-leather hotel, frail and elderly 22 years ago, but he was someone who had showed me the future, and who was living, very happily, in the future.

I grew up reading Clarke -- books like A Fall of Moondust and The Deep Range were books I'd read and loved before I turned ten -- but the story that made the deepest impression on me was a short story, 'The Nine Billion Names of God'.

There's a wonderful interview with Terry Pratchett in the Guardian. I would have loved to have been in the room with Terry when he read the final line, though -- "Good Luck to you, you sweet man." I remember the noise Terry made when I told him that a gentleman who had been his minder at a convention had described Terry to me as "a jolly old elf". I don't think that teeth actually ground together but it was a jolly good noise all the same, and he said several things that were not at all elf-like.

Remember http://www.matchitforpratchett.org/.

...

The Dave McKean Vertigo Tarot deck is being reissued, along with the Rachel Pollack book that accompanied it -- details at http://www.dccomics.com/dcdirect/?dcd=3403. You can see the cards at http://www.elsewhere.org/tarot/vertigo/

...

The Daily Star in the UK has actually reproduced the Angelina Jolie naked-but-for-gold-drips scene in Beowulf with a real live model, at http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/32553/Daily-Star-babe-Claire-s-Jolie-good/

Claire, 23, certainly had the Midas touch as she revealed her own golden globes...

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It was the Best World Book Day Ever.


...
A much better article on the Freeway Bee accident from the Sacramento Bee. (It's their newspaper's name.)

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Neil,

I know you said you weren't doing the last.fm friend thing, but is there any way you could? Reason I ask is because it's the only way I can see your playlist and be able to listen to your music through my living room entertainment center (the media center software I'm using will only allow me to choose 'Friends' and then streams their radio station; i can't surf by username alone).

Just curious, but I understand if you don't want to open that Pandora's Box! :-D

I changed my mind, and now, to make life easier for all, I automatically friend everyone on Last FM who asks. http://www.last.fm/user/neilhimself
is the ID -- http://www.last.fm/music/Neil+Gaiman is where you can find stuff by me to stream or download.

Nearly there

I've uploaded much of the DreamHaven audio CDs to Last.FM, at http://www.last.fm/music/Neil+Gaiman. Some of the tracks are downloadable, others are playable but not downloadable, and of course you can buy the actual CDs from DreamHaven's online shop at www.neilgaiman.net . (Currently trying to figure out why Telling Tales keeps coming up as Unknown Album, but I'm sure it'll get fixed, sooner or later.)

Chapter 8 of The Graveyard Book is nearly written. He's got about 20 feet left to walk.

Normally when I finish a book, it's over. Maybe there are more stories, but it's done. I get letters from kids asking why I don't do another Coraline book, and maybe she's at school and the Other Mother could be pretending to be her teacher and... but I can't really imagine writing another Coraline book. It's done.

The Graveyard Book on the other hand, seems to be generating other stories in my head. I guess I'm really interested in what happens to Bod next. Interesting. I suppose it's understandable -- my model was The Jungle Book, and there was The Second Jungle Book. (Although The Graveyard Book also reminds me in odd ways of Kim. And I always wanted to know what happened to Kim next.)

...

This made me smile:

Dear Neil,

I am just wondering if the Birthday Thing voting will include superdelegates? Perhaps other famous authors, some bigwigs at Harper Collins, etc. I mean, you wouldn't want to leave voting to the people, would you?

Thanks!

I'm happy to watch democracy in action here. It's one person-who-clicks, one vote.

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Hi Neil,

I hope all is going well with the new book, I am looking forward to reading it immensely when it is published.

I would be interested to know if you have kept any of the original art from The Sandman over the years. I know that the artists sell their work on after DC have finished with it and wondered if you requested certain pages or covers or were gifted them by artists, if so which page or pages do you cherish most.

Best Regards

Paul

I don't have much -- off the top of my head (and I'm sure to leave something important out) a couple of Dave McKean covers, a page from Colleen Doran's lovely Facade, a Shawn MacManus page from Three Septembers and a January, a Jill Thompson Brief Lives page, the double page of the amazing Michael Zulli sea serpent, the final Death and Dream spread from the Kindly Ones, and the first page of the last issue. I have a lovely Mike Dringenberg Sandman painting he did as an advert for a signing at Night Flight in Utah. A Jay Muth Dream pin-up. A Moebius Death I bought from a gallery. And, apart from an amazing page by Michael Zulli that was a test for the pencils effect of The Wake (which I should talk to DC about reproducing in the last of the Absolute Sandman volumes) I think that's about it.

And I treasure them all.

...

It's Valentine's Day tomorrow. If you're stuck for a present, you could always get this for the object of your affection...



...

What kind of book is The Graveyard Book? What type of audience is it for? Older? Younger? I know you're not finished with it yet, but will it be a novella a la Stardust or a novel a la American Gods?

It will be about twice the length of Coraline -- a novel, not a novella.

It's eight stories, each more or less complete in itself, each different in tone, each story set about two years after the one that precedes it, that placed side by side make one big story. Or I hope they do.

I think it's "all ages", whatever that means. It's a book I wish I'd had as a kid, and had always imagined as a children's book, but the reaction from the adults who've read it so far is scarily enthusiastic, and I'm not making any compromises in it. (Having said that, nobody has read any further than chapter six, except me, and Lorraine when she was typing it.)

Here's a youTube video of me reading Chapter Four in San Jose last year. You can make up your own mind.