For Maddy it was getting the packet of Presidential M&Ms in the Vice President's office (red, white and blue, in their own packet). "I'm glad I didn't see the president," she said. "If I had, no-one at school would have believed me. So I'm pleased I didn't." She has a spare pack of M&Ms to take back to school with her, though, so they'll believe that something happened.
The Library of Congress is missing a lot of comics. I suggested they put together a list that we can circulate to the comics community. There are bound to be people out there who would be thrilled to know that their copy of Action Comics 67 was going to the Library of Congress.
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Hi,
Neil Gaiman is one of my favorite writers next to Charles DeLint. Mr. Gaiman how do you do it? The whole writing a story. I can never finish. I don't want to end my stories they just go on and after a while I just get so frustrated. so I set it aside and well now I have 4 books in my head or outlined on paper. What can I do? Do you have any advice? My dream is to be a published writer. I don't care if my books are on the best sellers list or anything like that. I just want to get my stuff out there, so maybe someone else like myself (a bookworm and a future librarian of the Library of Congress-fingers crossed) can read it and like it or not. If you see this Mr. Gaiman I hope you have the time to respond. If not that is fine. I love your works and thank you for writing them. They have impacted my life.
Jacqueline (Aridy)
There really isn't a magic secret, I'm afraid. How do you do it? You do it. Finish those four books. Or at least finish one of them. Then start another. Write shorter things you have to finish. When they're done write other things. You'll get better as you go.If you send them to people who might publish them, sooner or later you'll get published. And then you get to read what you wrote, published, and you really get to start learning.
Mr. Gaiman,
Three sort of related questions. 1) Is the Endless Nights series going to be a full-fledged comic book ala the Sandman books or will it be more prose with pictures, ala Stardust? 2) Which format do you prefer? 3) I mentioned this new series to a friend of mine who enjoys your work but to a lesser degree than I or most of your journal readers. Her response to the Endless Nights series was "He should just let that go. Sandman was great but it's over". Do you sometimes feel this way? Thanks for your time.
1) It's a 140 page book, containing seven stories, one for each of the Endless. Six of them are strict comics. One of them, "Fifteen Portraits of Despair", with art by Barron Storey, is closer to something like Storey's Marat-Sade Journals than regular comics.
2) Whatever's most appropriate for the story
3) I certainly agree that Sandman's over. I was the one who finished it, after all, six years ago. But that doesn't mean I'm forbidden from ever telling any more stories with any of those characters in ever again, or I hope it doesn't. The stories in Endless Nights are stories I've not told before, anyway -- and I got to write for six artists I've always wanted to work with, and one artist I love working with.