I just wanted to draw your
attention to the fact that the cover of the Hebrew edition of Stardust is
upside down
And yes, it is. We really need to fix that, put up more books, maybe even make it so you can click on the book (the right way up) and go to a bigger version.
And
Not so much a question as a request I was reading over the essay
section on the site, and specifically the essay on novels/stories and gender.
And it struck me that I would really like to read a more extended
version of your opinion on the subject. From reading, it almost looks like
the way you categorise these is by the sex of who you view the main
protagonist, but I'm pretty sure that isn't the case. So, er, it would be
nice to hear more of your thoughts on the matter.
Well, if I can find some time to expand some of those AMERICAN GODS essays I did for Diverse websites back early in the year into something coherent, I shall. The essay on stories and genders was actually a musing sort of blogger entry that got out of control. But in brief, no, it's not about the gender of the main character, at least, not in my head. It's more like the difference between writing a song in a major or a minor key. Er, that was too brief wasn't it?
I was one of the Lucky few who got to see Tori Amos at the wonderful
Union Chapel concert. A truly memorable night which is fortunate as
there was no Tour Book to remind us of it. Is there any way to get hold of
one of these or did we have
Some of these messages are coming through mysteriously truncated. But I can intuit where it was going... The Tori Tour book this year is a calendar, with the sequence of short-short-short stories I wrote at Tori's request in the front. Probably the best thing to do would be to go to the Dent forums at http://www.thedent.com/torimain.html (and follow the link to the forums) and see if any nice person going to a gig will pick you up an extra tour book.
OK, I've read through your bibliography for AG and not found exactly
what I want. What I'm really looking for is a good source of old versions
of common fairy tales... the unsanitized truly grim tales that we got
glimpses of in Sandman.
I'm not sure that I've ever encountered an all-in-one-place collection of the very earliest versions of stories. Iona and Peter Opie's The Classic Fairy Tales may be the closest thing to what you're looking for, but even then, stories have variants and they cannot cover them all.
The version of Red Riding Hood in THE DOLLS HOUSE was something I first encountered in The Great Cat Massacre by Robert Darnton. Jack Zipes edited a complete Brothers Grimm which is fascinating (and bear in mind that the Grimms bowdlerised more and added more in each subsequent edition). And Neil Phillip's Penguin Book of English Folktales is a delight. (As a rule, it is hard to go wrong with the Opies, Jack Zipes or Neil Phillip.)
On the old Neverwhere site you mention a radio drama you are working on
with David Lynch- what became of that? Should I keep holding my breath?
Nope -- it never happened, mainly due to scheduling conflicts as I recall. I put bits of the town I'd created for it into the town of Lakeside, in American Gods, although the one in the Lynch series was weirder.
And back to work...