Neil Gaiman's Journal

There are days that are purely themselves. Today is one of them: Indian Summer at the start of October. The sun bright and warm and golden, the sky blue as a dream, the maples burning into autumn colours in shades of yellow and amber and flame, and several hundred thousand ladybirds on every south-facing surface of the house, crawling and creeping and flying, the bedroom window being pattered by the tiny beetles as they fly headfirst into it , adding a rather strange noise to wake up to this morning. It sounded like someone with a pea-shooter was aiming for my bedroom window.

Things arrived this morning: Sandman Sandglobes (about which there is little to be said, other than that they could have been much worse -- in the first sculpt they sent me the character looked astonishingly like the late Jon Pertwee, which was not really a look that Morpheus was ever known for) and Merv Pumpkinhead soft toys (really, really cool -- easily the best of the Sandman plush toys so far).

Yesterday I went to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival to watch a seven year old daughter play the violin in public. People put money into her basket. She smiled at them very sweetly, and kept on playing. It�s good to know I have a back-up plan if this writing lark falls to pieces.

It looks as if some of the cosmetic work on the site is finally happening, and new material is going up. I sort of imagined that the new journal (this is the new journal, the one I answer questions in and so on) would have a different look from the old one, but it doesn�t seem to have happened yet.

Now is the time for people with suggestions for stuff to do on the website to get them in -- maybe we could set up a suggestion box on the message board or something, he said vaguely. I know I want an audio area, and some content in the �coming soon� places.