Neil Gaiman's Journal

For several months e-mails to DC Comics would randomly not get there. There seemed to be no unifying factor -- I'd send them from different e-mail accounts, to different editors and to other staffers, at different times. Some of the e-mails would simply never get there. Recently Dave McKean sent a cover sketch to me and to the DC folk and copied it to me. I got it, they didn't. This was way beyond bizarre, and very discouraging. I mean, if all of the e-mails didn't get through, one wouldn't care, but randomly not knowing why an e-mail would arrive at the other end or not... it made one want to bang one's head against a wall. And AOLTimeWarner's computer people were no help at all.

Tonight, an editor at DC copied me on an e-mail she'd received from their computer people (about why an email took a very long time to get to her) that may go some way to explaining the problem....

And I quote:

I've been informed that the reason why there was a delay in the delivery of this message was because one of several keywords were found within the message. In particular, the word "SANDMAN" was found several times. This has been a telltale sign of one or more computer viruses, so the message was set aside to be investigated by a WB security person.

I'd be willing to bet that every message I sent them that didn't get through had the word SANDMAN in it. And that instead of reviewing them, the emails were simply automatically deleted as probable viruses. SANDMAN.... found several times... dead giveaway really....

Amused sigh. Good night.