Maddy (aged 8) would like it mentioned here that she's off-school with Something That's Going Around, and she doesn't see why I should get all the sympathy, especially as she'll be back at school on Monday. She'd also like me to mention that she and I played Scrabble this afternoon.
Dear Neil,
I am writing a BA dissertation on 'Sandman,' and I was just wondering if you know whether anyone has ever written a good old-fashioned journal article or critical review about you and your work - and if they have where I could get hold of it.
There are a few other questions I'd love to ask but that'll do for now!
Hope you're feeling better.
from Lizzie, Norwich
Yes, there are and people have. A few of them can be found at The Dreaming website's Academia section -- http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/academia/, and there are a couple at http://home.bip.net/rivieran/literature/, but the majority, as far as I know, are uncollected. People give me them from time to time at signings, or tell me that they wrote them. I've been at the International Conference on the Fantastic in the Arts and heard a few presented... but there's really no central repository, I'm afraid.
I can't help wishing that there was, if only because it would give me somewhere to point people to, when they ask that question. Joe Sanders and I tried to persuade DC Comics to publish a book that Joe would edit of Sandman papers, but they felt it a little far from their core audience...
you've talked in the past about cooking Indian food. My husband and I adore it as well. Any books that you recommend? So far nothing we've made comes out quite as well as eating in a restaurant. Oh, and then there was the poppadom disaster. Just follow the instructions on the label. Hah. We ended up with burnt non fluffy poppadoms, a ruined pan and a flat that smelled like burnt food and oil. They should write a book "How to minimize Indian cooking disasters."
Cyndy
Actually the best recipes I have were downloaded from the compuserve Cooks forum in about 1991, and don't seem to be there any longer. I've a lot of Indian cookbooks, of varying degrees of usefulness, but if reproducing the restaurant experience at home is what you're after, the best one is probably this: The Curry Secret : Indian Restaurant Cookery at Home (That's an Amazon.co.uk link -- I'm sure it's available elsewhere but that's the first one I found.)
And here's a fascinating look at what books people were talking about online last year... http://allconsuming.net/2002-summary.html