My New Year Wish

A decade ago, I wrote:

May your coming year be filled with magic and dreams and good madness. I hope you read some fine books and kiss someone who thinks you're wonderful, and don't forget to make some art -- write or draw or build or sing or live as only you can. And I hope, somewhere in the next year, you surprise yourself.

And almost half a decade ago I said,

...I hope you will have a wonderful year, that you'll dream dangerously and outrageously, that you'll make something that didn't exist before you made it, that you will be loved and that you will be liked, and that you will have people to love and to like in return. And, most importantly (because I think there should be more kindness and more wisdom in the world right now), that you will, when you need to be, be wise, and that you will always be kind.

And for this year, my wish for each of us is small and very simple.

And it's this.

I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.

Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.

So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.

Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.

Make your mistakes, next year and forever.

Labels: Happy New Year

On New Year's Eve Where I Am.

How on earth did that happen? I promised a blog tomorrow, and that was over a week ago. I wrote an essay, and I wrote a short story, and I went to Sydney and did a reading with a string quartet, but I didn't blog. And now I'm sitting backstage at Revolt in Melbourne preparing for a New Year's Eve Party- Masquerade-thing and I missed my blog. So while there is wireless, there is hope, and I am writing this.

Many exciting and wonderful things have happened in the time that I have been not-blogging. For example, I was quoted by Tom Stoppard.

My story "A Case of Death and Honey" from A Study in Sherlock and the upcoming Jonathan Strahan edited anthology Best SF and Fantasy of the Year Volume 6 was written about on the Tor.com website in a way that made me happy. Short story writing is a lot like Don Marquis's description of poetry writing as flinging rose petals into the Grand Canyon and listening for the boom. Normally there is silence, so even a little response to a short story is a good thing for an author. You can read the Tor.com piece, by Niall Alexander, at http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/12/the-adventure-of-the-devils-foot-neil-gaiman-and-the-great-detective.

The first volume of Les Klinger's remarkable four volume Annotated Sandman comes out in a couple of weeks: reserve your copies from your local comic store or bookshop now.

Here's a great article about Allegra Rosenberg, who makes Time Lord Rock in Chicago. She's sixteen, although I said she was fifteen when I introduced her from the stage when I was doing the Not My Job quiz on "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me".

And you can listen to the Wait Wait interview at http://www.npr.org/2011/12/24/144146842/author-neil-gaiman-plays-not-my-job. (You can read it there, too. But listen to it, don't read it.) I can't embed it.

However, the recent Symphony Space SELECTED SHORTS is embeddable, and I have embedded it. It has me reading "Troll Bridge" along with one of my favourite Jorge Luis Borges stories, "The Circular Ruins".

...

I was about to tell you about M. John Harrison's Viriconium sequence being available on Neil Gaiman Presents as a beautiful audiobook. I want to do a whole post about that in the next couple of days, though. So for now, go and investigate if you wish to get ahead: www.audible.com/pd?asin=B006L88VMY&source_code=NGAOR0002WS101911
...

I had a marvellous time with the FourPlay String Quartet in Sydney a few days ago. Flew home and went straight to the Melbourne City Library where Amanda and I read (me) and sang (her). We'd announced that we'd be there on Twitter just before my plane took off, and about four hundred people showed up.

Melbourne City Library is amazing. It has a piano, and librarians so nice and creative I wanted to take them on the road with me. We'd be Neil Gaiman and his posse of travelling librarians.

I love this photo of me, eyes closed, listening to Amanda play:

...

Talking about good photographs...

It's from photographer  Rasmus Rasmussen's website at http://rasmusrasmussen.com/2011/12/29/webley-palmer-and-gaiman-aka-favorite-photo-of-2011/ 

He says,

Throughout any given year I shoot thousands of photos, so when I was recently asked which one was my personal favorite of 2011, I had a difficult time answering. However, when thinking about it over a couple of days, the one above kept jumping out at me.
On 11-11-11 I documented Jason Webley‘s concert at The Moore in Seattle. That was where I caught this moment in time. Webley is talking about the virtues of love, while Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer sit together behind him, listening. 

There is a love story there, and it starts with a look of genuine happiness on Jason Webley’s face, as he looks up into the light, sharing his joy with (and for) the audience. Amanda Palmer represents that audience to me, relaxed, attentive and having a good time, and Neil Gaiman ties the story together, looking down at his wife with complete adoration and a smile that says simply: “I Love You.” 

There is enough intimacy in this photo, that I felt a little like a peeping tom as I put it through post processing, like I was crashing a private party. I actually had to remind myself that it was taken at a public event. That is why this is my favorite photo of 2011. It makes me feel like giving my wife a kiss, putting on some good music and take pleasure in the little things in life.

...

And for New Year's Messages... I have to write one for tonight in Melbourne as soon as I finish this.

It has to be as good as the ones I've written for this blog, over the years. Normally I don't stop and think. I just write what I'd want in the coming year, and hope that other people would want that too.

Someone just turned one of them into a poster:

And here's a mash-up of a couple of them, delivered from the stage in Boston, two years ago today...

Labels: annotations, fourplay, I want a posse of Travelling Librarians, In Australia they run out of 2011 early, Jason Webley, Selected Shorts, Sherlock Holmesery, Tom Stoppard, Wait Wait

Good evening Melbourne (and everywhere else)

In case you were wondering where I am - and I would not blame you if you were, for I frequently am unsure, and I keep tabs on me, -- I am in Melbourne, the one in Australia not the one in Florida. I am staying with my friends Peter Nicholls and Clare Coney, and am here with my wife, who is going to be doing all sorts of rock and roll things in Australia for the next few months.

I got here last week and promptly did an event for the Wheeler Centre, at the Atheneum Theatre, which was, despite the jet-lag, enormous fun, and even more fun because I got to spend time with Tom Stoppard, who I met back in 2007 in Brazil, and like enormously.

(Here's a photo taken in the Green Room beneath the stage, by Alison Croggan, who interviewed Tom.)



And with that done, my work here (the bits that consist of turning up on a stage, anyway) was 1/3 over. On the 28th I'll be at the Factory Theatre in Sydney for a Sold Out show, and on New Year's Eve I'll be part of Amanda's rather astonishing-looking Party. It goes from 8 pm until 2 am, features Amanda and me and Meow Meow and the Jane Austen Argument and all sorts of amazing people, and I'm planning to write something new and New Year's Evey for it. It's a small venue and is, Amanda assures me, her way of making sure that she goes to a New Year's Eve party that she loves. There are a few tickets left at http://www.revoltproductions.com/melbourneevents/byevent/NYE1

The episode of Selected Shorts in which I read TROLL BRIDGE has gone up at http://www.selectedshorts.org/onair/, with a direct link to the audio here. It's lots of fun, and there's a Jorge Luis Borges story as well.

Cat Mihos is doing something really nice over at Neverwear.net. She's giving something from the store away each day, to the person who has done something cool to deserve it. Some people are nominating themselves, some are nominating friends. You can read about it at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/

In addition, she's giving $5 off each item in the store, with the code nice-kitty.


...


It's the time of year when I like to link to this Independent article I did a few years ago.
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/neil-gaiman-hanukkah-with-bells-on-1203307.html

It begins,

I do not recall lobbying for anything, as a boy, as hard as I lobbied, with my sisters, for a Christmas tree. 

My parents objected. "We're Jewish," they said. "We don't do Christmas. We do Hanukkah instead." 

This did nothing to stop the lobbying. Anyway, Hanukkah was no substitute for Christmas. My parents, unlike my grandparents, didn't always remember to keep Hanukkah, and even when my mother remembered the festival, we children could see that a menorah and candles were not a Christmas tree. My parents kept kosher, went to shul on high holy days but that was the extent of things in our house. My grandparents were properly observant Jews. My parents were not particularly observant Jews, while we children were, quite simply, bad Jews. We knew we were bad Jews because we wanted a Christmas tree...

...

The "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me" special goes out on the 23rd of December, on NPR and on TV. I'm told that there's a lot more of me on the radio than there will be on the telly. "I think once everybody got a look at it, they realized the throne thing we put you in was a terrible mistake," explained Peter Sagal. 

...

There are two new books up at Neil Gaiman presents, and I'm thrilled about both of them.

ANITA was a book I remembered from my teenage years. It's a book about a young witch in the 1960s. It has the best grandmother in fiction in it, better even than the one in the Addams Family. It's funny and sweet and creepy and moving. There's a sample of it at http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B006L7BA6O&source_code=NGAOR0002WS101911 - Nicola Barber reads it, and I think her reading is excellent.

Spot the mysterious typo on the cover...

If you loved the audiobook we did of Keith Roberts' Pavane... I'm afraid this is nothing like that at all.

..

Oops. Out of time. You will have to wait to find out about the other book. (We are going to see The Terminativity tonight. More tomorrow.)

Labels: Anita, melbourne, Tom Stoppard

Good MOORNING Sydney!

IF YOU ARE IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA:

Tickets went on-sale for the EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN on December 28th about an hour ago. They are $35 each for the first 150 people to buy them, and then $45 thereafter. I'm appearing at the Factory Theatre.

FourPlay are the support act, and will also be playing on stage during at least one of my readings, as they did when I was at the Sydney Opera House. They are wonderful.

Use this link for information and to get tickets. It's a mirror to the Factory Theatre website, to avoid crushing it with too many people at once.


If you are not in Sydney, Australia,

here is a photo of my dog Lola, down by the gravestone by the gazebo, to make it up to you:

Labels: sydney, Whatever Lola Wants, zombie arm in the snow

It's beginning to look a lot like a Christmas Card out there

I went to Chicago on Friday and took part in the recording of the "Wait Wait Don't Tell Me... Royal Pain In The Year" 2011 Special. It airs on BBC America (TV) and on Public Radio on December the 23rd. I was the "Not my job" guest, and answered three questions. Whether or not I got any of them right, you will have to wait until the 23rd to find out.

There's a conversation between Shaun Tan and me in the Guardian right now, and it's fun. We talk about art and suchlike. In the photo above we were standing behind the Edinburgh Book Festival authors' yurt taking it in turns to point at imaginary interesting things.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/02/neil-gaiman-shaun-tan-interview

ST: I don't know about you but when someone first mentions an adaptation, I have, probably a little bit inappropriately, a feeling of weariness at revisiting that work after I'd struggled with it for so many months or years. But then the second thought is "Wow, what a great opportunity to fix up all those dodgy bits."

NG: It's so nice to hear you say that. Somebody asked me recently if I plot ahead of time. I said yes I do, but there is always so much room for surprise and definitely points where I don't know what's going to happen. They quoted somebody who had said: "All writers who say that they do not know what's going to happen are liars, would you believe someone who started an anecdote without knowing where it was going?" I thought, but I don't start an anecdote to find out what I think about something, I start an anecdote to say this interesting thing happened to me. Whereas I'll start any piece of art to find out what I think about something.

ST: Exactly.

NG: I'm going to learn something I didn't know when I began. I'm going to discover how I feel and what I think about it during the process. I will break off little bits of my head and they will become characters and things will happen and they will talk to each other.

ST: Exactly, creating a character is like impersonating another being, so that you can find out what you think about something. You really find out what your style is when you diversify – setting something in a fictional landscape, the far future or distant past. A lot of people think of style or personality in terms of things you do often, but it's not really. It's what you do under duress, or outside of yourself. I don't feel I know myself really well because – again it's that emotional thing – sometimes I feel a little embarrassed by the amount of emotion that comes out in a story. I don't realise that there's so much of it locked up or in denial and then it comes out in the process of doing this conscious dreaming exercise.

Big thumbs up on that.

Baffled, however, by this article on Kurt Vonnegut at Guardian Books, which seems as wrongheaded as an article can be.

In it we learn that a new biography of Kurt Vonnegut "undermines his warm, grandfatherly image".

"A new biography of acclaimed American author Kurt Vonnegut, beloved by fans worldwide for his work's warm humour and homespun Midwestern wisdom, has shocked many with a portrayal of a bitter, angry man prone to depression and fits of temper.

The book on Vonnegut, who died in 2007, lifts the lid on the writer's private life, revealing a man far removed from the grandfather-like public figure his millions of devotees adored."

I read this and thought, I'm going mad. Who on Earth could read a Vonnegut book and think that he was a grandfatherly bundle of warm fuzzy happiness? I mean, I read Vonnegut first as a ten year old, and it was shocking because he could joke in the face of such blackness and bleakness, and I'd never seen an author do that before. Everything was pointless, except, possibly, a few moments of love snatched from the darkness, a few moments in which we connect, or fail to.

"Warm humour and homespun Midwestern wisdom"? Bizarre. I bet it was either written from a press release, or by someone who'd never read any Vonnegut.

Signed, the man who wrote the Introduction to Vonnegut's "God Bless You Dr Kevorkian"

...

It snowed yesterday night, and today the world looks like it only looks here once a year. Fresh snow, for the first time, makes the world look like a Christmas Card.

And I thought, Oh bugger. Holidays. Gifts. I should do a useful blog about that. So...

Tomorrow is the cut off-deadline for the CBLDF's "Spirit of Giving" campaign. If you want a signed book from any one of 25 creators, order quickly: http://cbldf.org/homepage/cbldf-cyber-monday-25-amazing-graphic-novelists-personalize-your-gifts-in-the-spirit-of-giving/

It's also the last day for Amanda Palmer signed Xmas card for orders from http://postwartrade.com/ over $100, which I mention as they now have a page of stuff from the Evening With Neil and Amanda tour - a limited amount, as it's the leftover merchandise, and when it's gone it will be very gone.

It's at http://www.postwartrade.com/neil.html and consists of a T shirt, a poster, a beautiful huge arty high-end photograph, and a tote bag. All of them except the photo are the beautiful Cynthia von Buehler image above. If you buy over $100 worth Amanda will write a thank you card to you, but today is the last day of Cards. (If you missed the Xmas cards deadline, you can still buy the stuff.)

...

Over at Kitty's Neverwear site, the cool NEW thing she has for the holidays is this:



It's my Rhysling Award-nominated poem "Conjunctions", here illustrated by wonderful Finnish artist Jouni Koponen, who did the amazing "Day The Saucers Came" poster, and it is for sale at this page. (There's an article by Kitty there about the poem too.)

Lots of other amazing treasures, posters, t-shirts, prints, and suchlike, at Neverwear: http://neverwear.net/store/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=4 will show you the prints that are currently available.

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You can give Audiobooks as a gift. Honest, go and visit Neil Gaiman Presents. because you might know someone who wants to listen to Swordspoint, or Land of Laughs, or Pavane... It's the green "Give as a gift" button over on the right. And of course, they're also available in iTunes.

...

And, for person who has everything, I'm not sure that I've mentioned on this blog that Absolute Sandman Volume 5 is now out.




It contains Endless Nights, The Dream Hunters, the P. Craig Russell Dream Hunters, and strange small uncollected things that we'd forgotten about when we did the first four Absolutes that people then wrote here to remind me about.


...

On December 28th, I'll be doing An Evening With Neil Gaiman in Sydney, NSW. Special Guests, the FourPlay string quartet.

Date and venue and all information will be in the next blog. Keep the date free.

...

And finally, on Dec 31st in Melbourne, Amanda Palmer is having a mammoth musical New Year's Party and Masquerade. I'm hosting it with her, and I will be reading things, and there will be music and guests -- including The Danger Ensemble, Marieke Hardy, The Jane Austen Argument, The Bedroom Philosopher, Mikelangelo and Saint Clare, Lyndon 'Flaming Violin' Chester, Lance Horne "and another special guest so special we can't even announce her yet."

It's a limited ticket, one-off event, with regular tickets, VIP tickets (VIPs get STUFF) and all sorts of strangeness.

Tickets are at http://revoltproductions.com/melbourneevents/byevent/NYE1 If you're in Melbourne and over 18, I hope I'll see you there. It should be unlike anything else.

Labels: absolute Sandman, amanda palmer, Conjunctions, Kurt Vonnegut, Melbourne New Year's Eve, shaun tan, Wait Wait

Audiobooks: A Cautionary Tale

I was talking to an author last night. Actually, we were sending text messages to each other, something I don't do a lot of, but it was sort of fun, texting. I'm not going to identify her, or the book.

She had a novel published recently by a major publisher. I read it. I really loved it.

I thought, Why not see if I can do it as a Neil Gaiman Presents Audiobook, through ACX?

I asked if there was an audiobook. She said, "No, no audiobook."

I asked who had the rights, and whether I could do it in ACX. She was thrilled and said of course, and she'd find out if she had the rights or if her publisher did. We talked about what kind of voice narrator she'd want, and whether a male or a female narrator would suit the book best.

And then I got a message from her saying "Oh. Bizarre. I just looked online and see there is an audiobook of (the novel) which no-one ever told me about. It apparently came out in November."

I went online and looked. There was indeed an audiobook, and it had a terrible cover. And this morning brought an email from the author saying, sadly "Don't listen to the (novel) audiobook. It might be the worst thing I have ever heard."

I felt so sorry for her.

It was the same stuff that I'd been talking about in the interview that Laura Miller did for me with Salon.com
(http://www.salon.com/2011/11/23/neil_gaimans_audiobook_record_label/)

Why is there so much hesitation?

For me, the tragedy of audiobooks is that the physical limitations and impossibilities of putting out complete novels as audiobooks in the days of LPs and then pretty much in the days of cassettes, meant that the costs and the odds were always against you. Most books aren’t out as audiobooks. If you like a book, it’s probably not been done as an audiobook.

Publishers would take audio rights but then never do anything with them. ... That process is that you persuade your publisher to do an audiobook and then you have no control over who gets cast, or who reads it. You have no quality control over pronunciation or goofs or anything like that. And then your publisher brings it out and then your publisher remainders it.

That is the problem that ACX was created to solve — and for me it’s also the problem that it’s highlighting. I’m hitting it more and more. All I know is that there could be lots and lots of audiobooks out there that aren’t. For years it didn’t matter that the rights were held by people because nobody could do anything anyway. But we’re not in that world anymore.

Can you talk a bit about the importance of the right narrator, and how much that person can add to or subtract from the audiobook experience?

I remember once talking to a best selling author about audiobooks. He’d written a book that was narrated by a 20-something black male and the audiobook was read by a 50-something white female. He had no say in this and after listening to it for five minutes he stopped, feeling physically sick.

In some cases, when the author is alive and available, I cede that choice to the author. I become the production entity and I’ll cast a deciding vote if the author says it’s between three narrators he or she likes equally. If the author’s alive, I want the author happy. That’s the most important bit.

And I felt really extra sorry for my anonymous sad author, because I was SO happy about the release two days ago of Swordspoint -- mostly happy because of how amazingly happy author Ellen Kushner is. (See http://ellen-kushner.livejournal.com/tag/audiobook for proof and background.) Swordspoint's an audiobook narrated by the author, with additional soundscape and acting from such luminaries as Simon "Arthur Dent" Jones, and it's a thing of joy. She's happy, I'm happy, the people listening to it seem amazingly happy, the people at Audible.com are ridiculously happy because people are downloading it and the reviews are already coming in and they are happy reviews.

(Go and listen to the Swordspoint extract, or listen to me introducing it, or read more about it at http://www.audible.com/pd?asin=B006FJJDBW&source_code=NGAR0002WS101911)




And I don't want to turn this into a big plug for Swordspoint, or a rant against publishers wasting or not using audio rights. I think what I want to say mostly is, if you are an author, Get Involved in Your Audiobooks Early. Get your agent involved and interested. Talk about them at contract stage. Find out if you're selling the rights, and if you are selling them then find out what control you have or whether you are going to be consulted or not about who the narrator is and how the audiobook is done.

Also, make sure that your publisher has worked out a way to give you free copies (obvious if it's out on CD, much less so if you're on download-only platform).

If you're an agent, notice that we are not living a decade ago, when audiobooks were expensive bells and whistles that meant very little, that normally wouldn't be done for anything outside of major bestsellers, when abridgments were often the order of the day: we're entering a golden age, in which there is no reason that any book shouldn't be available in professionally produced audio. Unless you know that the audio rights are going to be used and used well, keep them for your author. And if they are being sold with the book, then guard your author, and make sure that she or he gets rights of approval.

I love, am thrilled with, and am getting a huge kick out of the ACX way of doing it, where authors (or rightsholders), producers and voice talent sign up and get together and make audiobooks that Audible put up. It's there for you if you're an author, an agent, a publisher with lots of rights you don't know how to exploit, a director/producer/studio engineer, or an actor, and interested. (Right now, it's US only, but they are working on that.) (Find out more at http://www.acx.com/) (End of plug.)

But this isn't an ad for ACX, either. Honestly, you can do it on your own, if you want: Find a narrator or a studio; you can release it through the web; you can give it away as a promotional item, or because you can. Or you can make sure that if your publisher is putting out an audiobook that you have a say in it, and it's the book you want it to be.

Because otherwise it might be you writing to friends telling them not to listen to the audiobook of your book. And that would be a terrible thing indeed.

Labels: ACX, audio books, Ellen Kushner, swordspoint, the mysterious way the labels for this post keep vanishing and I have to keep writing them again

The Simpsons and the Other Mother

Here's the SIMPSONS episode that I'm in. It's called THE BOOK JOB. I'm not sure how long it'll be up for.

If you're not in the US and you want to watch it, I recommend Tunnelbear (downloadable from http://www.tunnelbear.com/). It's what I use to tell the internet I'm either in the US or the UK, depending on where it would like me to be. They have a free service, but I eventually signed up for the paid one.

And, because it is good that you heard it here first, in the UK Bloomsbury are doing a special Tenth Anniversary edition of Coraline next year, illustrated by Chris Riddell. They just sent me his illustrations...



...

Also http://cbldf.org/homepage/cbldf-cyber-monday-25-amazing-graphic-novelists-personalize-your-gifts-in-the-spirit-of-giving/

Fight censorship this Cyber Monday by getting your holiday gifts from the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund! 25 of today’s most popular graphic novelists will personalize their books to the fans on your list in exchange for donations to the Fund! Best of all, every item supports the Fund’s First Amendment legal work, and a portion of each contribution is tax-deductible.



As part of the CBLDF’s Spirit of Giving holiday gift drive, donations you make on Cyber Monday will be acknowledged by The Will & Ann Eisner Family Foundation who will make a contribution of $1 for every donation and gift order placed on the CBLDF’s website. In addition, they will contribute $5 for each new, renewing or gift membership made from now until December 31!
25 legendary graphic novelists are personalizing books for the CBLDF, including some of the season’s best new gift books.

Make your holiday comics giving a cinch by choosing from books by bestselling masters including Neil Gaiman, art spiegelman, Frank Miller, Dave Gibbons, and Scott McCloud; Lit comics lions Chester Brown, Dan Clowes, Los Bros. Hernandez, Seth, and Adrian Tomine; Indy comics icons Jeff Smith, Evan Dorkin, Larry Marder, Carla Speed McNeil and Terry Moore; Superhero visionaries Ed Brubaker, Jonathan Hickman, and Paul Levitz; or Hard boiled thrill makers Robert Kirkman, Jason Aaron, Brian Azzarello, Garth Ennis, Brian K. Vaughan, and Brian Wood!

Labels: CBLDF, chris Riddell, Coraline, The Simpsons episode with me in it

On Doughnuts, Posters, and remembering Anne McCaffrey

The Simpsons episode aired in the US. I watched it with my daughter Maddy, her friends, and some of my friends. We had doughnuts (all kinds, but mostly the kind with sprinkles on them) and snacks and made it a proper TV watching party (I've always wanted to have one of those, but somehow never had before). I hadn't told the girls anything about the episode so the final twists and turns of the plot (which I am not telling here, because many of you haven't seen it yet) took them by surprise.

When the episode was done, the girls went into the kitchen and giggled a lot, while Bill Stiteler and I watched the episode again, this time with the freeze frame on, to catch the many book title jokes hidden in the episode.

The reviews for it have been wonderful, which is a testament to Exec Producer Matt Selman, writer Dan Vebber, and the crew of staff writers. And in some alternate universe where all the pink people are yellow, I like to think there's a version of me still sipping his drink on the beach at Shelbyville.

...

Rachel Abrams at Harper Childrens emailed me last week to let me know the results of the All Hallow's Read poster competition. And I am a Very Bad Person and didn't blog it (because people were writing on Twitter to let us know that not all the posters were showing on Flickr, and I wanted to wait until they were all visible. And then I got caught up in Simpsons Madness, and didn't get to it. Apologies to all of you artists waiting on tenterhooks.)

The contest is to design posters promoting All Hallow's Read. The winning poster design will become a limited-edition poster to be printed and distributed to participating booksellers for All Hallow’s Read in 2012 (printing and distribution sponsored by HarperCollinsPublishers).

And Rachel says...

We’ve put the posters to a vote and the Grand Prize Winner is…

Sksletonkey for her bewitching depiction of All Hallows Read! http://www.flickr.com/photos/69222671@N02/6311248494/



Tied at First Place are sfdavered


and Sara Koncilja


In addition to her poster being printed and distributed to book stores in 2012, the Grand Prize Winner will receive a signed copy of the limited edition poster and a “Neil Gaiman Prize Pack.” The prize pack will include a signed first edition of THE GRAVEYARD BOOK, a copy of CORALINE, and a copy of the CORALINE graphic novel.

First place winners will both receive the prize pack.

My congratulations to all the winners, and, more than that, my congratulations to everyone who took part. The posters submitted (you can see them up at http://www.flickr.com/photos/webgoblin/favorites/?view=lg -- go and look) are pretty much all wonderful. I was glad I wasn't judging the competition.

I hope that people will use (link to, spread around) all of the posters people did next October -- they really are fantastic.

Thank you SO much to everyone who took part.

...

I learned last night that Anne McCaffrey had passed away.

I met Anne for the first time as a teenager, in bed with glandular fever. A friend came over with a pile of books, because I could do nothing but read, and in the pile were books by Anne McCaffrey. I read the Dragonflight books, and The Ship Who Sang, and loved them.

I met her as a person in the late 80s, when I was a young writer, at a convention, where she was the Guest of Honour. It was a small convention, and she decided that I needed to be taken under her wing and given advice I would need in later life, which she proceeded to do. It was all good advice: how to survive American signing tours was the bit that stuck the most (she wanted me to move to Ireland, and I came close). I already liked her as a writer, and by the end of that convention I adored her as a person. Over the years I'd get occasional emails or messages from her, and they were always things where she was looking out for me -- letting me know about a foreign publisher who had money for me but no address to send it to, that kind of thing.

The last time I saw her was in 2005, when I was toastmaster at the Nebula Awards. I was as happy to see her as she was to see me.

I was heartbroken to hear that she had passed away, but then, as I was writing this, it made me foolishly happy to realise that there are actually some photos of us together. So many times, it's not until my friends are gone I realise that there weren't ever any photos...

Labels: All Hallow's Read, Anne McCaffrey, not being crushed by The Simpsons

Hey Hey We're, er, on the Simpsons.

In January, I was here:

I was given a copy of this.



And I recorded my part here, with Producer Matt Selman directing me as hard as he could.


And now, eleven months later, here we come... walkin' down the street... we get the funniest looks from... No, that's something else. Anyway, I like this shot because I am wearing a suit and tie.



If you're in the US, then the episode of The Simpsons with me in it, "The Book Job", goes out tomorrow. 8 pm or 7 Central.

If you're not in the US, then you may have a while to wait until it's on.

No, I haven't seen it yet either. I am hoping to watch it tomorrow with a daughter, her friends, and probably doughnuts.

...

I learned from Mark Evanier's blog that Les Daniels had passed away. Here's the New York Times obituary. I had Les's book "COMIX. A HISTORY OF COMIC BOOKS IN AMERICA" as a boy, and loved it and learned from it. I didn't meet Les until I was a guest at NeCon, in Providence, Rhode Island.

I really liked him, I got to thank him for COMIX, and it's good to say thank you. My obsession with Jack Benny really started when Les and I were talking about radio, and I was saying that the best radio comedies were all British, pointing to Hancock's Half Hour and the Goons and Round the Horne and The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy and Les agreed that they mostly were... but then there was the Jack Benny Show. And a few weeks later, he sent me some cassettes, so I could hear for myself. And I was both convinced and hooked. Thank you, Les.

Labels: Jack Benny and his Show, Les Daniels, not being crushed by The Simpsons, Topiary, Why is there no label about topiary already?

Home Again, Home Again, Coughetty Cough

I'm home from the tour. I'm tired and a bit sick (some sort of cold thing) but happy to be back with my dogs in my house. Already the tour is feeling a bit dreamlike and unreal. (Did Amanda really sing me a surprise Lou Reed/ Velvet Underground song in each new location? Did Amanda and John Cameron Mitchell also sing me "I'm Sticking With You" in Portland?)

\


I'm glad that I got to be with Jason Webley on the Eleventiest Night of All. This blog has brought me many good things over the years, but I'm most glad of the friendships I've made through it I wouldn't have made otherwise, and I would never have known Jason if I hadn't mentioned, here in this blog, back in the dawn of time, how much I liked a video of a song of his called "Eleven Saints".

Neil Gaiman on WhoSay

My best friend and I went to your "An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer" show in Portland on November 8th and it was incredible. The two of you inspired both of us to grow as artists and people. For that, thank you. That said, I was wondering if you could tell me the name of that incredibly creepy song you sang at the end - the one where the disturbed man tells his mother about his killing spree. And how did you find it to begin with? Was it a popular song or something obscure you stumbled onto?


It's a song called "Psycho" written by a blind American songwriter named Leon Payne about fifty years ago. I ran across it as one of the extra bonus live tracks on Elvis Costello's Almost Blue album, where he covered the version done by a man named Jack Kittel (which I eventually heard on a collection of songs that Elvis Costello had covered). When I first started going out with Amanda I would teach myself to play songs, which I would play her over the phone, and that was one of them - I think because I liked a version of it that was more lonely and plaintive and crazy and slow than the versions I'd heard.


During our drive from LA to San Francisco Jack Kittel's version came on (I'd plugged my phone with much random music on it into the car stereo), and Amanda asked if I'd like to sing "Psycho" to an audience larger than her. And, nervously, I said "maybe..."


(Which reminds me: this article on Amanda is the best thing I've read about her so far, in that it reads like an accurate portrait of the woman I married and the person I know. I missed it when it first came out. http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tools/full/150167)

I've not seen Tom Stoppard for years (July 2008 in Brazil), so was delighted to learn I'll be sharing a stage with him in Melbourne Australia on December the 16th. Not actually sharing it -- he'll be on it from 7 until 8, and I'll be on it from 9 until 10. But nearly. And if you want to see both of us talk that evening it gets cheaper.

Details at http://wheelercentre.com/calendar/event/tom-stoppard-neil-gaiman-package/

Talking of stage-sharing: I mentioned here how much I loved the panel I did with Connie Willis at World Fantasy Con in San Diego.

That panel has now been uploaded to YouTube. You can watch it in its entirely. It is Connie and me talking about craft and Where DO We Get Our Ideas and all that for an hour.

...

Let's see. What else? Absolute Sandman Volume 5 came out. And that is most definitely the last Absolute volume of Sandman unless and until I actually write some more.

Dear Neil,

First of all, thanks to you and Amanda for a wonderful concert last week. It was really, really marvelous to be there with you. I'm wondering if the recordings of the tour will be available for those of us who didn't get in on the Kickstarter eventually?
Second is this: I'm a recently declared English literature major taking an introductory course to British - or, since we also read Beowulf, Anglo-Saxon literature. Although I see you as a very modern writer, and also the type of writer many people who absolutely couldn't ever stand to be an English lit major would read books by, reading the first book of The Faerie Queen I was repeatedly reminded of Stardust, and I know you also did the screenplay for Beowulf. How do you see this type of English tradition in relation to your own writing? Is it a conscious, deliberate, or completely unintended influence? And do you have any advice for me for surviving the rest of the term (Milton, Pope, Blake)?
Carolyn

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm not sure if the physical CDs will be available beyond the Kickstarter supporters (it'll be a 3 CD pack), but the audio downloads will be available for everyone.

How do I see that tradition in relation to my own writing? I don't really think about it much: I love the poets you refer to, mostly (I never liked Alexander Pope's writing as much as I like Pope himself, or at any rate the version of Pope that I read as a boy in the James Branch Cabell Story "A Brown Woman" -- you can read it here, if you're curious). I read it all for pleasure, whether in school libraries or on my own, trying to understand how it all fitted in to the stuff that I already knew that I liked, discovering poets I liked and poets I didn't care for.

Advice for surviving it? Lord, I hate to think of good writers as people you should survive. It's why I worry when I'm told I'm being taught in schools and colleges. I'm sure that Thomas Hardy wrote good books, and wish I'd come across them on my own, and all I know is that enforced reading of Thomas Hardy at school left me with a dislike of his books that's visceral, real and undoubtedly unfair.

Will you in the near- or slightly-more-distant-future teach a writing workshop?


Perhaps. I loved teaching at Clarion, but I also walked away from Clarion with 18 people whose lives and careers I now felt part of in a way that surprised me. I might do it again one day, probably should do, but am in no hurry.

Neil,


Your post - http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/06/tommy-leprechaun-dies-organs-are-built.asp


That link that 'goes' (went) to the Missoulian is dead.... do you have a copy of that Tommy the Leprechaun story?...it was most excellent - yes, that short little man touched many lives....
I am, Phantasmagorical - Tommy gave me many pieces of 'magic'.....


Thanks,John


Oh, I met the man who murdered the man who stole his clothes - at MSP - I worked at the prison....

It's sad. So many of the old links from the blog are dead. (And many of the images have vanished as well.) But we're in luck here: I checked archive.org and it still had a link to the original story. You can read it here.

Reading that old blog entry reminded me of the existence of this, from the dawn of the Internet, and I looked on YouTube, and found it once again, and I post it here for anyone who wonders what the original 1944 Warner Brothers version of Lord of the Rings, starring Humphrey Bogart as Frodo and Peter Lorre as Gollum, actually looked like*:








*Not a true statement. For purposes of humour only. Void where prohibited.

Labels: amanda palmer, Connie Willis, Jason Webley, liking the stuff they don't force you to study, Psycho, Tom Stoppard, Tommy the Leprechaun

Birthday Wishes

The tour is over.

It was amazing, and it got better. Vancouver was fantastic. Portland was amazing. Seattle was almost as amazing as Portland, but it was the only stop on the tour I didn't do mostly new material at because we were webcasting it.

I went looking on Flickr for a photo of me last night in Seattle - Amanda surprised me on stage with her signing "Take Back Your Mink", accompanied by a small, well-choreographed burlesque troupe, and then presented me with a birthday cake. But there were no photographs of that up yet, so here is a photo someone took of me in Vancouver. Portland and Seattle were filmed. All the shows were recorded. We'll be releasing a triple CD of the tour to Kickstarter supporters, and there will also be a digital download. I don't yet know how the film of the last two gigs will be released or what it will be once it's edited.

It's my birthday today. I'm 51. There is no way I can get my head around 51.

It sounds so terrifyingly grown up. I know that I am remarkably fortunate: there are people I love who who love me, and I make my living making art that I take pleasure in making. I don't know what else I could ever ask for. So many birthday wishes coming in.

Thank you, each and every one of you. I'm very grateful.

Labels: birthdays, seattle

If this is thursday then where on earth did the last week go?

A blog post written this morning, one-fingered, on Amanda's iPad, while she slept, was eaten by the iPad or the ether.

Damn.
Here's my AMAZING LA assistant Cat's blog about World Fantasy Con and what happened while I was in LA. http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/11/world-fantasy-con-late-late-show-neil.html
I'm backstage right now at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco.

Let's see..

First of all, a thousand thanks to everyone who gave anyone else a scary book, or encouraged other people to, for All Hallow's Read. Thank you!

Craig Ferguson and the Late Late Show was fun. Amanda was meant to record her bit at 4:20, my section around 5 ish, but a newly added dance number at the opening of the show meant we didn't leave until about 6:30pm... and the rest of the evening squirmed and coped as best it could...

My friend Mark Evanier served as haggis mule for the Late Late Show, and he writes entertainingly and accurately about the experience and the view from backstage at http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2011_10_31.html#021526

Left to right: Moby, Amanda Palmer, Stephin Merritt. Pay no attention to that toy pianist at the back.

The Haggis came from Macsweens via scottishfoodoverseas.com, ace haggis importers. My assistant Lorraine did all the hard work, at one point enlisting both Mark Evanier and Wil Wheaton in her secret haggis-importing clan, and sending around emails that said things like:


Hello all,

First of all, THANK YOU for be willing to accept our Haggis. And tend it. And keep it safe. True friends, indeed...

Sadly, Mark didn't copy me when he replied to Neil that he was a couple of blocks away, and Neil was in the cities at the time taping NPR and by the time I got Mark's note it was too late, the Haggis Shop is closed, the order set, and One Little Haggis is on its way from Scotland for Friday Delivery to Mr Wheaton.

If it is easier for all concerned, perhaps, Mark might acquire the Haggis from Wil, and deliver it Monday. If Wil would like to keep the Haggis and make the journey himself, well, that's just fine too. Mostly, whatever it easiest, I do not want our Haggis to disrupt lives and wreak havoc.

Again, my thanks to you,

Lorraine

Which I quote in full because I love the haggisy emails that were sent around. (Mark Evanier took delivery of the haggis in the end.)

Here's the song... 

And here's the interview...

Right. So the Wilshire Ebell Hallowe'en gig was wonderful, but chaos. We got to the theatre late, late from the Late Late Show, and the rehearsing time never happened, the costume contest and the us chatting took up much more time than we had thought, and we had to be offstage at exactly 10:30 or the tour would turn into a pumpkin, so the set list wound up becoming a peculiarly moveable feast... and it was wonderful. Nothing quite went as planned, but it felt like everyone, including us, was having the kind of evening that only ever happens once.

The scary rabbit twins in fezzes won the costume competition, with Roborina coming in second and Hester Prynne at the far left not winning, although her glowing A was often the only thing in the audience visible from the stage, so I always knew where she was. (Margaret Cho introduced us and helped with the costume competition. She is a very good thing.)


Amanda and I drove up the coast. We spent the night at the Madonna Inn (I am still trying to decide if it's a real American Gods place or not. I think probably it is) and then the next morning drove to San Francisco.

(It's now tomorrow, after the Brava show. Time to type has been tight.)

The Brava show was much tighter than the LA show. I read different things (I plan to read different things every night). We didn't have strict on-stage curfew, which meant that things could run a little long and no-one worried. The Jane Austen Argument debuted a new single, Holes, with lyrics by me and art by Mark Buckingham. (You can listen to it here.)

Amanda played me "Walk on the Wild Side" as an early birthday present, assisted by the Jane Austen Argument and Lance Horne.

And finally, for now (only because I have to stop writing this blog and sleep, despite all the things I meant to write about here) Absolute Sandman Volume 5, containing Endless Nights and Dream Hunters and more, comes out tomorrow. You can preorder it discounted at Amazon,  You can preorder it from Indiebound. (You can preorder it from Barnes and Noble, but they don't get a link until they put Sandman graphic novels back on the shelves of their shops.)

Or you can just go and buy a copy from your local comic shop.

Barnes and Noble have done something very wonderful recently, though. Last year, they recorded me reading the opening passage to James Thurber's book "The Thirteen Clocks", which is one of my favourite books. And now they've animated it. Here's a link to the Barnes and Noble blog where you can watch it.

Right. Sleep.

Labels: amanda palmer, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., Craig Ferguson, haggis smuggling, halloween traditions, Stephin Merritt, The Thirteen Clocks

"Neil Gaiman Presents" is open for business!

This poor website's had quite a buffeting in the last 24 hours, what with the launch of All Hallows Read (the allhallowsread.com website is run off neilgaiman.com). Sorry if you've had trouble. The Webgoblin has upgraded everything, and it should be working again by now.

I just came back from Radio K.N.O.W. in St Paul, where I recorded a segment for NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED - they've started the Back Seat Book Club for kids, and picked The Graveyard Book as their lead title. Here's their article on the Book Club. More questions are still coming in, so I promised I'd answer some next week at their site.

I also recorded a couple of little things in the studio there for the introductions I've been doing to the Neil Gaiman Presents line at Audible.com.

This is something I'm really excited about. Don Katz at Audible.com knows how much I love audio books, and offered me the chance to have my own record label at Audible, getting books I loved and wanted to hear that had never been audiobooks made as audiobooks and out into the world, with the best readers I could find, using Audible's ACX platform. (The idea of ACX is that there are a lot more books out there than there are audiobooks, so ACX is a way of introducing authors and rights-holders to actor/performer/readers and producers/directors. It's very simple and sensible, and should, I hope, result in a lot more audiobooks out there in the world.)

It's been a year in the planning and now the first five books are out, with a lot more at various stages in the production process.

The first round of audiobooks consists of:

LAND OF LAUGHS by Jonathan Carroll read by Edoardo Ballerini.
YOU MUST GO AND WIN written and read by Alina Simone
PAVANE by Keith Roberts, read by Steven Crossley
 LIGHT by M. John Harrison, read by Julian Elfer
 THE MINOTAUR TAKES A CIGARETTE BREAK by Steven Sherrill, read by Holter Graham

Which is to say, one beautiful work of  magical realism about the dangers of having a favourite book, a collection of really funny essays about travel and Russia and being a musician, a collection of stories that become a moving alternate history, a strange and glorious space opera and a work of contemporary americana with a minotaur in it.

You could say "Why aren't these books all the same kind of thing?" and I would say "Because I like lots of different things. And so might you."

Coming up in the next round we will have Ellen Kushner reading SWORDSPOINT and John Hodgman reading Robert Sheckley's hilarious pre-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy galactic travel fantasia DIMENSION OF MIRACLES. And lots, lots more...

 I recorded introductions to each book, worked with Audible to acquire the rights, worked with the authors (when they were alive) to choose the readers. I'm ridiculously proud of the whole thing. (There's a lady at Audible.com named Christina Harcar who has done all the heavy lifting and I am very grateful to her, to everyone involved at Audible, and particularly to Don Katz for indulging my madness.)

If you've never tried Audible, it's amazingly easy - you can use your Amazon ID and password to log in and sign up. The full list of what "Neil Gaiman Presents" has coming out is at this link.

If you've never tried an audio book before, this might be a good time to find out if you enjoy them. They will go and live on your phone, your tablet, your computer, your iPod...

(And if you're an author or an actor or a director/producer/engineer, you can get started using ACX at http://www.acx.com/help/learn-how-neil-uses-acx/200680340.)

I don't really have a good photo of an audiobook being recorded to round this out, so here is a photo of my wife chasing a chicken.

Labels: a photo of AMANDA chasing a CHICKEN, ACX, audible.com, audio books

The Back-seat Book Club and the Egg Salad

National Public Radio's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED has started a book club for the young:

We are starting a special project at NPR aimed at our younger listeners. We're talking about all those young people who listen to NPR programs while riding in the car or sitting at the kitchen table. We'd like you to lend us your ears and your curiosity. Beginning this October, All Things Considered is rolling out The Back-Seat Book Club for kids ages 9 to 14.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/21/141473961/read-graveyard-with-our-new-back-seat-book-club

Pretty obviously, I'm thrilled that they've chosen The Graveyard Book as their first book. There's a link for young readers to ask their Graveyard Book questions, and I'll answer as many as I can on the air on All Things Considered this Friday.

(Also, I was delighted to see that The Graveyard Book has made it back onto the New York Times bestseller list.)

And there's now a very pretty Adult Edition of the book out:

Photo from Cat's excellent blog at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-skies.html.

(People who like prints, signed or otherwise, should check out the Prints page at Cat's Neverwear.net - the Molly Crabapple Desert Wind posters go up in price on November 1st).

...

I did an interview with a reporter about The Simpsons this morning. It was fun and odd to be talking about it, and here is a picture of me and an egg salad from the upcoming episode with me in it to celebrate. Am I pleased about this egg salad? Do I look pleased? Why is the title of the Simpsons episode The Book Job? Why have I blogged three times in 12 hours after not having blogged for two weeks? Will anyone ever fix the Livejournal officialgaiman syndicated feed? Why did I say the egg salad was a tuna salad on WhoSay? Is it something to do with the colour?


Neil Gaiman on WhoSay

Labels: Book clubs, Egg Salad, not being crushed by The Simpsons, NPR, The Graveyard Book