Happy Birthday also to all the people whose birthday it is today (including the gothicest of archies, Stephin Merritt).
I think we should begin the celebration with some music*.
...
The Locus photo has prompted a deluge of questions from people. Questions like,
Were your lips bloody on purpose for the locus mag photo? They look rather red and bleeding.
and
As I was looking at the Locus spread, I noticed something odd about the photo. It may have been the light during the shoot, and some of it might have to do with my computer screen, but your lips look a bit bloody. It gave me a laugh to picture the photo shoot where they made you look all nice but missed just a little bit...
not to mention several along the lines of,
What happened at the photo shoot in your LOCUS interview? Did the photog beat you up for some inane, obviously-doesn't-read-any-Neil-Gaiman issue? Your lip's bleeding isn't it? Soon
So I went and looked at the actual photo in Locus itself, the magazine version, in which my lips look completely normal and, frankly, rather boring. Not quite sure why they look so redly wet and vampiric in the version of the photo Locus sent me to put up. It's probably one of those insoluble mysteries, like what happened to the crew of the Marie Celeste, or where I put down my mug of tea.
(I answered ten questions yesterday over at http://www.chizine.com/neil_gaiman_interview.htm and oddly enough, not one of them was about whether or not my lips were bleeding. Go figure, as Maddy loves to say.)
*Icelandic lounge music, of course.