Journal

Friday, August 31, 2001

AMERICAN GODS BLOG, POST 169

Personally, I think the German Smoke & Mirrors cover (the book is now called The Queen of Knives, I think, after the poem) -- visible at http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/3453177983.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg is really fun. I suspect it'll disappoint a lot of German readers looking for something, um, spicy, though. (The Hungarian cover of Smoke & Mirrors made the content look pretty risque too.)

Had fun tonight doing an hour of live radio on Wisconsin's Spectrum West, talking mostly about writing, with the redoubtable Jack Beaver ("This is my fifth career," he said. "And I only got into it because I wrote a poem." But then volunteers Jessica and Katie needed to be taught how to answer the studio phones, and so I never found out just how the poem figured in Jack's career structure.) My favourite call-in question was from a lady who had just got out of prison and thought the prison stuff in American Gods rang truer to life than any movie she'd seen, and wanted to know about research.

Made a giant list of everything I was committed to doing over the next 6 months. Then made a list of all the books I want to write, trying to leave nothing out. I think Neverwhere 2 (It's a novel called The Seven Sisters) may have to wait a while before being written, as I realised I only knew a little bit of the story, which means that the novel after Coraline will probably be either WALL (The Jenny Kertin novel) or ANANSI BOYS.