Burbles

Chapter 7 of The Graveyard Book still isn't done, but that's fine. It's going really well. I think when it's finished this chapter will be twice as long as any of the other stories in the book. It ties them all together, too, to make a set of short stories into a novel.

Yesterday I reached the moment I'd been dreading for years, where you learn why the things that happened in the first chapter happened (which I hadn't known when I wrote them. I knew that they had happened, but not why) and as I started to write it, I realised that it was pretty obvious, so I wrote it, and learned a lot. This was an enormous relief. It does not always work out this way.

Chapter 6 is all typed and tidied and there's no evidence from what you'd read that it was a nightmare to write and that I had no idea what was happening paragraph to paragraph, or felt like I was making it up as I went along (a terrible thing for an author to feel).

Right. Here are three blogs you could be reading while I'm being mostly absent:

Hi Neil,

Someone has had the brilliant idea of setting up a blog to help reunite people with their lost cameras/memory cards/films by posting a couple of photos from said lost items. The blog is here: http://ifoundyourcamera.blogspot.com/

I think this is a great idea deserving of wide circulation (I know I'd be very upset if I lost my camera and delighted if it were returned, more for the photos than the camera itself). If you also like it, would you mind passing it on to your readership please?


Thanks! Regards, Camilla Brokking

and this one broke my heart...

Dear Neil,


I found a blog that was strange and sad and beautiful. A vegan veterinary technician records all the animals that she euthanizes.


http://whatikilledtoday.blogspot.com/


I think you should read it.


-Alex

and I found this a few months ago and meant to post it, and lost it again, and now Mistress Mousey says...


Kurt found this website. I've been shaking my head in shame while laughing
for pretty much the last 15 minutes straight.

http://quotation-marks.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Hope you're well. Can't wait to see how the Graveyard Book turns out. :D

Hugs,
michelle

...

Hi, Neil--

I've seen on your blog that you're a big fan of Joe Hill, too. We sent an advance copy of his new comic, LOCKE & KEY, to your attention. Hope you like it--the artist is Gabriel Rodriguez, the BEOWULF artist, too, and its just an amazing read.

We also put together a trailer for the comic that we're going to send around soon:

http://charliefoxtrotfilms.com/tom/

We're trying to push this book in a big way. Joe deserves it. It's such an assured and enthralling first issue.

Chris

I really enjoyed it, although I wished it had been double the length, or had come with a black and white preview of the next issue or something. I fear that I'm losing the periodical comics buzz, and have been conditioned to want graphic novel sized chunks of story. I no longer go "I CANNOT WAIT UNTIL NEXT ISSUE!". Now I go, "And then what?" But it was a great start...


I just finished Steinbeck's Journal of a Novel and Working Days, which were amazing texts on the art of writing and a writers' struggles. In reading your journal it occurred to me that the updates on your progress through the Graveyard book and similar past entries could make for an interesting compilation reminiscent of these two books. Is this something you'd ever consider?

Oddly enough, I got an email a few weeks ago from a publisher wanting to know if they could make a book up from this blog. I imagine that it would be possible to go excavating the million and sixty-eight thousand words (according to the always fascinating http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/clouds/words/) and dig out enough stuff for a book or two, perhaps much in the way that the old http://quotableneil.blogspot.com/ did. But it'll have to wait until I have a bit more time to even think about it.

Meanwhile...

I understand that Hill House are sending out all the copies of the limited edition of ANANSI BOYS, and have a dedicated email address to confirm people's postal addresses -- details at http://hillhousepublishers.com/hh-update-28dec07-01.htm
and Lisa Snellings wants me to tell the world she has a sale on at http://stores.ebay.com/Poppet-Art-by-Lisa-Snellings-Clark

Next post: is Dr Who actually a Fennec Fox? You be the judge...

mystery tabs...

I just opened up the blogger tab, and found this sitting there:

My sleeping is all messed up. Fell asleep at 6.00pm and slept until 7.15pm and now wide awake at gone midnight. Argh. Going to try to sleep.

If you join up at http://www.playbill.com/club/offers/ you can get into the New Victory Theater's WOLVES IN THE WALLS production at a substantial discount.

I assume I wrote it because the probability that elves crept in late last night and left half-finished blog entries is a very small one indeed. I think I was asleep within a few minutes of posting it, if I didn't actually start blogging in my sleep.

I was interviewed yesterday, then napped, then had a wonderful sushi dinner with the people from UIP. So far today I've been interviewed about seven times, but the interviews have been longer and more in depth and the questions are different.

I'll close a few tabs....

Beckett for Babies: of course! I hope that someone will actually publish this.

Someone tries to sell Belgium on eBay. Again, of course! Next time, perhaps they'll succeed.

Jeff Vandemeer's enormous book sale. 819 books still available.

Cory Doctorow on giving away free e-books. I think he's mostly right, and even where I'm unconvinced his research is useful and exhaustive.

There's a meteor in Peru that may be emitting noxious fumes. I have seen enough bad movies to know that the local scientist who told the state press agency that a fallen meteorite did not present any danger unless it hit some structure on impact."None of the meteorites that fall in Peru and make perforations of varied sizes are harmful for people, unless they fall on a house," he said, and denies the reality of noxious fumes will get his comeuppance somewhere in the middle of the second act, about the point where the things start crawling out of the crater.

Stephen Fry is blogging. About smartphones right now, but wait long enough and he'll be writing about his cat just like everyone else. (For those of you who were about to run to the Ask Neil form, I've been away from home for over a month. I have no idea how my cats are.)

[Edit to add I see the Stephen Fry link is down, or has been replaced by some kind of dodgy page. Trust it'll be back soon.]

There's a second Beowulf trailer up at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/beowulf/
which feels more like the film probably does than the first trailer did. Lots of bits of footage in it I'd not seen.

Okay. People have come to take me downstairs for the next round of interviews. Back on my head...