Last year, at a reading in Chicago, I read a poem called Blueberry Girl, as a favour to a very nice couple who had paid a ridiculous amount of money to the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund in order to have dinner with me.
I was surprised the following morning to find that helpful people had forwarded to me lots of web correspondence from other people who were very disgruntled that this hadn't been taped for their benefit and wasn't available on the Web.
Now, for my own reasons, I didn't want the poem out on the web: I wrote it for a friend at her request, it was hers, and I liked the idea that if I read it at a reading it would be, in some way, special.
So, since then, before I've read it, on those occasions I have, I've made a request: would people bootlegging the reading please mind turning off their tape recorders for this bit. And each time I've heard the satisfying chunk-chunk-chunk across the hall of tape recorders being switched off. And then I've read the poem.
Which may be either trusting or foolish of me, or both. But so far no-one's e-mailed me to tell me that copies of Blueberry Girl are wandering around. And my personal belief that, on the whole, if you treat people like grown-ups they will, on the whole, act like grown-ups, and nice grown-ups at that, has been upheld.
Something I was reminded of this morning, as I learned that the person responsible for posting the stuff I was grousing about yesterday sent in an incredibly grown-up apology about it, and promised not to do it again. So thanks for that, Luciano. Apology accepted. (And taking a hint from my own posting on curiosity I have decided not to try and find out who he is or how he got the stories, and to let it all lie.)
..
With luck the FAQ thing should be working by the end of the week. Or so I am assured.
When I get a moment, I'll try and post a sort of wrap-up retrospective of the tour. I realised that most of the strangest, oddest, most fun or most interesting moments went unrecorded on the blogger because I was writing the entries on the run. Like the strange moment in Vancouver Airport where I looked at shelf after shelf of recently published bestsellers in mass market paperback, and realised they were all, without exception, black, red and gold, and, in an effort to stand out, they all looked identical.
One answer, by the way to a number of Frequently Asked Questions, which all begin with "Where can I get a copy of..." is DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis. On the web at www.dreamhavenbooks.com -- they are very good people who always try to have more or less everything of mine in stock, if it's in print, and often if it's not.
(On the other hand, currently, the only answer to where to get a legitimate copy of the BBC Neverwhere seems to order it from Amazon.co.uk -- it's at http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004CSV2 and then, if you're in the US, get a PAL to NTSC transfer made so you can watch it.)
...
Spoke to my editor at Harper Collins. (Interested to hear that American Gods has started creeping back up the New York Times list again...) We spoke about the mass market paperback of American Gods -- one of those easy short conversations that worlds probably hinge upon.
Me: So what are we doing for the cover of the mass market paperback of American Gods?
Jennifer: Well, we like the hardcover, so it'll be the same image, just reconfigured a bit for paperback.
Me: Should we make the lightning stand out a bit more?
Jennifer: Maybe. I'll see what the design people say.
Me: Okay.
So there you go. You now know as much as I do. As long as it's not black, red and gold, I'll be happy.