oddments

Lots of people have written to ask if I'm doing an event in Japan. I was just given my schedule, which has 43 interviews on it over two days, but no public events or signings. I've told the people organising it that, if there is time and if I'm still standing at the end of the interview marathon, I'm very happy to do some kind of public event or signing, though. So we'll see, and I'll pass the information on as I get it.

Over at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/beowulf/ you can see the Beowulf Trailer and the TV spot. Meanwhile, over at http://www.beowulfmovie.com/ there's all sorts of new content, and at http://www.beowulfmovie.com/restricted/index.html US viewers can see a new Not-PG-13 trailer. If you can find the age and zipcode of a real American Resident, you can watch it outside the US.

I keep waiting for Mitch Benn to put up his third podcast, but he hasn't yet, so I'm going to point you all to http://www.mitchbenn.com/music-stuff where you can download a bunch of strange little Mitch Benn songs that aren't on CDs yet.

Someone wrote to ask about the various documentaries I mentioned recently -- one of them has a broadcast date -- details at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/comicsbritannia/ross-ditko.shtml

Susanna Clarke sent me this link, because, frankly, there's not enough knitting on this blog:
http://ysolda.com/wordpress/2007/08/21/coraline/

Nor have I ever posted before a link to Edward Gorey's The Trouble With Tribbles...

Where am I?

I'm in England right now, feeling a bit travel-sick (literally. It's not a clever idea to try and type in a car going from Gatwick to London) and travel-weary.

I travelled to the airport this morning in a car with Boris and Mrs Spassky in the back, which was odd as I'd put a reference to Fischer Vs. Spassky into the script for "Black Hole" a couple of days ago. Cultural references shouldn't travel in the same car as you.

Let's see. I did an event for kids yesterday afternoon, then late last night was the event for the Festival volunteers -- I was sat on a large red throne and interviewed by Death, Delirium, Destruction and Destiny, among other people. It was fun, and odd, and strangely sweet, and then I signed until nearly one in the morning. Other interesting things I did yesterday would include coffee in the hotel lounge with fellow guests Kiran Desai and Mohsin Hamid, mistaking Colin Thubron for James Lovelock, and failing to get drunk with Jonathan Ames (went to bed instead).

Ran into an old acquaintance in the baggage hall at Gatwick which was nice (and he helped magic me through customs).

How was dinner with Chuck Palahniuk?

Nice, thank you. I had the fish.

I discovered today that Chuck's teaching at Clarion West in 2008, while I'll be teaching at Clarion. (Details at http://www.boingboing.net/2007/09/09/instructor-rosters-f.html). The Clarion website is at http://theclarionfoundation.org/ and author Robert Crais made me wistful in Mantova by telling me about his Clarion in 1972, taught by Chip Delany, Gene Wolfe, Joe Haldeman, Roger Zelazny, Damon Knight and Kate Wilhelm...

Someone wrote to ask if the gigantic polaroid camera was the same kind as in this article -- http://www.making-ripples.com/2006/09/excuse_me_did_y.html -- and it looked exactly the same, yes. (The photographer, Marina Alessi, said there were three cameras in the US and two in Europe.) Someone else wrote to tell me that there's a bigger one -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/photo/essays/vanRiper/011120.htm.
I imagine the coming lack of film will doom that one as well....

Back home, Sharon Stiteler caught the bees on a coffee break, then harvested the honey. With my dog. And I am not there. Sigh.

...

If you want to see National Theatre of Scotland/Improbable production of The Wolves in the Walls ("a musical pandemonium") you can get tickets at https://secure.newvictory.org/newvictory/tickets/production.aspx?PID=86
(and read about it at http://www.newvictory.org/show.m?showID=1028522).

For all the people writing to ask me if it's also going to be showing up in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Minneapolis etc, as far as I know right now there are no plans for it to go anywhere else. Having said that, if people from local theatres see it in New York and want to bring it in, then all will change.

Hi Neil! In response to the question on Little Red Riding Hood posted a few days ago, the book by Jack Zipes called "The Trials and Tribulations of Little Red Riding Hood" (1993) has a translation of the traditional French oral folktale on which Perrault based his literary reversion :) It's a great resource. Hope all is well! - katrina

And it's by Jack Zipes. Who is my co-Keynote Speaker at the Fantasy Matters conference in Minneapolis in November. (Lots of other cool people and good writers will be there including Patrick Rothfuss and Pamela Dean.)

Details of the me-interviewing-Susanna-Clarke event in London on September 25th are at http://www.sci-fi-london.com/news/article/1185402300/6 (or http://www.sci-fi-london.com/news/article/1188643748/8).

Going to eat something now.

As Dr Johnson said...

I was meant to be on NPR's TALK OF THE NATION tomorrow. But their schedules have shifted and I'll be on the radio this afternoon -- Wednesday the 8th of August. I think that http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5
is their website. I'll be on towards the end of the second hour (the hour that some stations don't get).

John Scalzi writes wisely, as usual, over at his blog about Stardust and how he thinks it'll do:
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/2007/08/07/stardusts_chances.html
and I couldn't see anything there to disagree with.

I have no doubt at all that Stardust will do brilliantly around the world, rock out on DVD, and become one of those films that is beloved. But how it will do this weekend... ah, that's a mystery. I was fascinated by this article about success and failure -- and, more importantly, the perception of success and failure -- in movie box office:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/hollywood-where-ignoran_b_59464.html
(link via.)

I remember the first time I went to Hollywood, with Terry Pratchett, in 1992 I learned that you could frame any conversation about something you wanted to do in a plot that Hollywood Execs didn't understand or had a problem with if you referred to another movie that they'd seen. ("So why don't they...?" "Because they forget about it, um -- just like at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK." "Oh. Got it.") And it was useful for talking about the feel of things -- you simply positioned what you were talking about against or with other films.

By 1996, when I went back to Hollywood, something had changed. I remember naming a movie in one of those conversations -- talking about look and feel or about lighting or about something like that -- and having the Exec look at me as if I had something unpleasant on my shoe, and he said, simply, "But that film didn't make any money." He couldn't understand why I would even have brought it up.

...

Over on Charles Vess's blog you can see a photo of us at the end of the premiere, me in a tuxedo and him not, because he forgot his shirt studs.

The birdchick does a honey from our hives taste test over at http://www.birdchick.com/2007/08/go-see-stardust-and-little-about-our.html

Hi Neil, I was wondering if you knew what's up with Rich Horton's Fantasy: Best of the Year 2007 Edition. There are three authors touted prominently on the cover of the mass market paperback: you, Gene Wolfe, and Peter S. Beagle. Of the three of you, Beagle is the only one who actually has a story inside. What happened? Was there a story of yours that was supposed to be in it? And what about Gene Wolfe?

It was a screw-up - the publisher reused the names from the previous year, by accident. They wrote to me and apologised, and I told them that somewhere in my basement I have a handful of copies of the UK edition of THE SANDMAN BOOK OF DREAMS in paperback, which proudly lists Stephen King on the cover as having written a story, for reasons no-one was ever able to explain. That time we were lucky, and we caught it in time to pulp the print-run. But sometimes you can't.

Hi Mr G,
Can I download the clip of Maddy's interview of you? I want to hear it over and over again to boost myself. It's just inspiring to listen to a daughter interviewing her dad. It makes me want to write more too, just like you; and just like you, you write for the people important to you.
Thanks,

JPB

PS. Please say HI to Maddy for me. :)

Easy (well, easy after a quick Google anyway). It's at the Harper Collins Digital Media cafe -- http://harpercollins.iamplify.com/ -- and the direct link to the free download is http://harpercollins.iamplify.com/product_details.jsp?productId=807

As you'll ultimately be getting one of the Coraline puppets, I thought you might like to see how they're being made: http://www.maryrobinettekowal.com/journal/beginning-to-build-coraline/

That would be cool even if I wasn't getting one...

Wow. Hey! Why have you stopped putting a "stardust"/"stardust movie" label on posts that involve Stardust? (Of course the choice of labels is completely your prerogative, but it would make it a lot easier to find certain posts, and it seems like this would be an ideal time to make use of the label function - is there a particular reason you have stopped using the labels in this case?)

Ignorance, madam. Pure ignorance. Or at least, ineptitude when it comes to labelling.

Trousers

A deluge of messages, many hundreds of them, and all of them are dog-name suggestions. Some of them I've tried, but they don't seem right -- they sound wrong coming out of my mouth, or, mostly, they are terrific names but don't quite fit him, or, in a few cases, Maddy doesn't like them. (I wanted to go Arthurian, but the front runner, a Maddy pick, currently seems to be Thor.)

(Dog update. Vet today: Dog weighs 78lb and still needs to put on a little weight; is now microchipped; is also on antibiotics to deal with early stage Lyme Disease, and got all the various shots he needed. Also taken into the vet at the same time: Fred the Cat, who, with half of his face shaved and drooling thick slobber from being car-sick, looked like something from a horror movie, the sort of movie that makes you shake your head and wonder whatever happened to subtlety in horror.)

I've walked more in the last two days than I have in months.



I'm just going to go to close a bunch of tabs...

...

Scott McCloud has posted the first two parts of his on-line graphic novel "The Right Number" for free. Back when he originally posted the first part I signed up for the micropayment scheme, and gave them five dollars so I could pay Scott my 25 cents for the first part, and then, a year or so later, couldn't remember the email address, details or password when he posted the second part, so I'm glad they're both up for nothing now. It's a wonderful story. I can't wait for him to do the last part. http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/trn/intro.html
is the link.

The fabulous Fabulist has a streaming radio station option up. I've been getting so much of my new music from them it's silly, and this is a great way to find out what I like before I download, put on my iPod and buy the CD. http://www.fabulist.org/archives/2007/04/streaming_fabul.html

There's a great Michael Chabon interview over at Salon: http://www.salon.com/books/int/2007/05/04/chabon/index.html

The PEN World Voices Town Hall reading is up at http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1305/prmID/1376 -- you can listen to the whole thing or to individuals. For some reason, I've wound up with Nadine Gordimer's MP3 if you click on my name -- mine is actually at http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/2007_world_voices/home_away/Neil_Gaiman.mp3 but listen to the whole thing (http://www.pen.org/audio_archive/2007_world_voices/home_away/Town_Hall_Readings_HomeAway.mp3). It's worth it just for Steve Martin, or Kiran Desai or Salman Rushdie or... well, trust me and listen to it.

All of the PEN events should eventually be up in Audio. Keep an eye on this -- a link to the MOTH event -- http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/1340/prmID/1412. (Here's Laila Lalami's take on it: http://www.lailalalami.com/blog/archives/004691.html.) Incidentally, I got an email complaining that we had obviously all "written our stories first and then learned them". Nope. We just told them -- one rehearsal the previous afternoon, when we talked them through to the director, who gave us notes, and then on with the show.

Lucy Anne's collection of links over at http://del.icio.us/thedreaming is now so efficient I no longer feel like I have to make sure I keep the world updated with links to news articles about me and the Stardust movie and everything. I've told Lucy Anne that she can go into the old pre-labels world of this blog and tag everything from the first six years, because she has a much more sober attitude towards tagging than I do.

Hey Neil,

My wife and I had a great time at your Helena appearance and we really appreciate you coming out to Montana. So, thanks for that.

Also, I wanted to let you know that you're a special guest star on Brotherhood 2.0 today. My brother (John Green who's also with Writer's House and has a couple of YA novels out) and I have a somewhat popular video blog at Brotherhood2.com. We've stopped emailing and instant messaging and, instead, are communicating through daily video blogs for all of 2007.

Since so many of our viewers are your fans, I figured I had to include you in the project. Which, if you were wondering, is why you said "Good Morning John it's Monday May 1st" into a camera last weekend.

Sorry I didn't take the time to explain fully then, but the line was quite long and I didn't want to take too much of your (and everyone else's) time.

If you want to see the video it's up at brotherhood2.com.

Thanks,
Hank Green

And the link to the actual entry is http://www.brotherhood2.com/?p=101.

It's the kind of thing that makes me reconsider my attitudes to video blogging (mostly I don't like it, because I lose, as reader, control of the time axis of the experience. But this I liked).

Hi Neil, did you hear about this weird story?

http://www.dieselsweeties.com/blog/?p=44

http://threepanelsoul.com/view.php?date=2007-04-30

The world's becoming curiouser and curiouser by the minute.

Greetings from Fernet country,
Jan.

(Shakes head ruefully.) Then again, this in a country in which you can be sued for $65 million for losing a pair of trousers...

...


Finally, I'm enjoying John Scalzi's book tour. (I am possibly enjoying it most because I'm not on it, if you see what I mean.)