is it o.k. for me to put a link to your web-site from mine?
also, thank you so much for your time at the signing in minneapolis. all of your fans truly appreciate the attention you give to each of us.
i was having a very yucky day, and you really cheered me up!! i thank you immensely!
-carly
You're welcome. And certainly, anyone can feel free to link to the website.
Neil,
Saw a mention of Steve Erickson in your journal - is this the same Steve Erickson who wrote Arc D'x, Rubicon Beach, etc.? I'm a big fan of you both, but based on your respective books would never have thought, "Now there's two guys who probably get along." Granted, maybe writers get along best when they're not overlapping notebooks too much -- but how do you know each other?
Bill
I've known Steve for about fourteen years now. We were introduced (or at least, caused to meet) by author Mikal Gilmore, who'd done an interview with me for Rolling Stone, and with whom I'd become friends. I'd read Steve's Days Between Stations and Tours of the Black Clock and loved them. He really liked Sandman. Every now and again, when I'm in LA, we grab food together -- not as often as I'd like. He wrote the introduction for Sandman: Dream Country, and did a long article in the LA Times Magazine in 1996 as Sandman drew to a close.
(I wonder why you'd think we wouldn't get along? He's a terrifically nice man, and an amazing author, both in his fiction and his non-fiction: I highly recommend American Nomad, his book about his relationship with the last-but-one presidential election.)
.....
It was my son Michael's 19th birthday today, and he wanted to go kayacking/canoeing, so we did, the family and some friends (including the McClouds -- Scott, Ivy, Winter and Sky). It was a pleasant sort of journey, half paddling, half drifting, listening to Maddy and Sky practise in perfect their little happy chant of "You're going to kill us all/ you're going to kill us all/ you're going to kill us all/ We're too young to die!" every time their canoe went anywhere interesting. ("We're prisoners of the pirates," they told me as I paddled alongside. "She's a queen, and I'm an architect.") I drifted off again, wondering what an architect would have to do to be captured by pirates.
The McClouds also brought with them "No!", the new They Might Be Giants CD for kids. I thought it was the most interesting TMBG stuff I'd heard in years -- it had that diamond core of utter oddness that seemed to soften after Flood. I loaded Scott and Ivy up with CDs I know they'll like - The Apples in Stereo, and Richard Goldman's Cows and Girls, and so on.
Anyway. Off to work...