Journal

Thursday, March 27, 2008

Life on Martian

I stopped daydreaming about being a famous rock and roll star about thirty years ago, when I stopped being in a band. And it's not a daydream that's ever come back. But I spent the night with friends in Cornwall and got to stay at http://martianengineering.com/residential.html (in the bedroom on the top right of the photos, oddly enough), which is the part of the studio that visiting bands stay when they record music, and I found myself wishing that I was a band so that I could come and stay here for three or four weeks and use all the cool buttons and switches and jaccuzzis and everything.

I suppose I could always come and stay anyway, but it wouldn't be the same.


Hey Neil,

I love your audio books. Listening to you reading is like having my Dad read me a bedtime story. Will you be reading The Graveyard Book and if so when will it be available?

Looking forward to it...

Thanks

Claire


Definitely. I'm really looking forward to reading it out loud. In a studio. (Daydreams for a moment about a world in which audio books sell in the hundreds of thousands and I get to come to Martian Engineering for three days with a director... Nope. It'll be at K.N.O.W. in Minneapolis, or in Harper Collins's studio in New York.) It will be out in the US and the UK to coincide with publication (30 Sept in the US, around Hallowe'en in the UK).


Dear Neil,

I am a huge fan of audiobooks (due to some vision problems) and I think you're the single best narrator I've heard -- and the only author reading his own work with a real talent for it. I want to thank you, first of all, for the accessibility of your work to those of us who listen instead of read. But I also really want to know how you learned to read so well. Is it something you're just good at, or did you learn to do it?


As I once said here, I think I owe most of it to Miss Webster, my elocution teacher when I was a boy, who cured my nine-year-old lisp within a few months and then over the next six years took me to LAMDA Gold Medal in "speaking of verse and prose"; and the rest to reading to my kids every night when they were growing up.

And I love doing it.

(Alan Moore's much better than I am, but no-one's dragged him into studios to do audio books, which is a pity. I'd love to hear an Alan audiobook of "The Voice of the Fire".)

To Mr. Gaiman,

My English teacher says that all good sci-fi exists to comment on society and its problems. As an author and a reader of science fiction, do you agree with this?


Not unless you change the words "all good" to "some". It's one of the many things that SF can do, and it's one of the many things that good SF can do. But there are lots of other things it does, including simply tell good stories (a valid end in itself).

Hi Neil

Where (if possible) could I find your podcasted interview about the Ramayana? Just curious.

-Paul


as soon as the Brtish Library puts it up (to coincide with their Ramayana exhibition, I expect) I'll link to it here.

Hi. I'm eighteen years old and entering college. I've wanted to be a writer as long as I can remember, and I was wondering if you could recommend any specific classes to take in college that could help me grow and develop into a successful author? Hi Neil - congratulations on being included in Weird Tales magazine's list of the 85 weirdest storytellers of all time!

http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/the-85-weirdest/


ps. You're not nearly as weird as Cirque du Soleil - they scare me. A lot.

best,

Kathleen

When I get home, I will tell Maddy. It will make her happy to know her dad is officially weird, rather than just, you know, informally.


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