Mea culpa. I went and checked with the Oracular Divination Machine, and it said "Because even lousy miracles are still miracles". I think we all need to ponder that.
Back in England I used to puzzle over my (American) wife's tendency to believe in weather forecasts, and to act on whatever information she was given, because the weather in the British Isles does whatever it's going to do with no regard to or respect for weather forecasters, and mostly what they tell you you can also learn by looking out of the window. I don't think I'll ever get used to the American system of more or less functional weather forecasting (much of which seems to consist of seeing what the weather was doing yesterday to the West of you).
If it's any consolation, I also had to do a fair amount of snow-shovelling yesterday, most of it while being harassed by Fred the cat, who seemed to think it was my fault too.
Hello Neil,
Here a question from the Netherlands (i say this now because it is very important for my question). I noticed you have posted dates and locations for an European tour, and I was wondering, and many people with me i think, why you don't come to (continental) europe more often. Is it because your comics/books are selling less? or because of some 'logistical' problems involved with the multitude of translations of your work?
Well, i would understand if you won't visit the Netherlands...But maybe you'll come over to france/belgium/germany more often? cause maybe i have the chance to pop over the border then (which i sadly don't have when you are in Hamburg.. i already checked). (oh and by the way: you should visit Holland with, or without a tour as excuse... a great little country i dare say)
sincerely, Jaap
It's time. I've done, what, four or five big European tours and events since I've been doing this blog. And they take time -- in 2003 and 2004 I spent probably a total of three months signing and talking and doing events in continental Europe and Scandinavia -- and they also take an astonishing amount of organisation, mostly because if I'm going to cross the Atlantic it makes sense to do more than one country, and often it depends, as you've guessed, on what works for the publication schedules of the publishers in each country that wants me. Getting everyone to publish Coraline at roughly the same time in 2003 was hard...
Truth to tell, the Netherlands isn't very high on the "I have to get there and sign again" list only because I've done several events and signings in the Netherlands in the last ten years, whereas there are lots of countries that have asked me to visit that I've never been to at all. (Turkey, for example, and all the Eastern European countries except Croatia, where I signed in 2003. And I've never signed in Iceland. And then there's China and Hong Kong...)
We'll see what happens later in the year when the Stardust film comes out (August in the US, October in the rest of the world) -- I may find myself visiting a number of different countries for that. But they may well be interview visits and not signings. We'll see...
...
Finally, over at http://www.gramophone.co.uk/newsMainTemplate.asp?storyID=2765&newssectionID=1 Joyce Hatto's husband has confessed, and offered the most humane version of the story possible. I'm not sure that I believe it, but, as I said yesterday when I listed it as a possibility, it makes the best story. This'll be a movie within the next few years, I have no doubt, and Jim Broadbent will probably be playing Mr Barrington-Coupe...
Labels: Joyce Hatto, signing everywhere else, snowballs, the Netherlands