Journal

Thursday, January 03, 2013

Amazing Book Cover Announcements and throwing up in anniversary gutters

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My publisher, William Morrow, have just released the cover for my first adult novel in about 7 years, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It comes out in June. It looks like this:



This is how the publisher describes it:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac—as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark. It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family's lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed—within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duck pond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

And they've announced the existence of the beautiful Chip Kidd-designed Make Good Art speech book, which will be out in May. (An actual "by popular demand" book, because lots of other publishers came to my agent and asked if they could make my speech last year at UArts into a book, in time for Graduation Time this year. And we went to my normal publisher and suggested they do it, and they agreed.)



Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 from The University of the Arts (Phl) on Vimeo.

Chip is probably the finest book designer in the world. And in this book he breaks all the rules of design and makes something amazing in its own right.

Amazon run the biography of from Chu's Day on the Make Good Art Amazon page, which will undoubtedly confuse some people.


Morrow have also released The Ocean at the End of the Lane desktop wallpaper in, so far, six version, so you will not forget that it is coming out:
And…
  • A 3-D image of The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Download)
  • A 3-D image of Make Good Art (Download)

They look like this:


...

I sang the Fireball Xl5 theme, as you probably know if you've been reading this blog.

Here's the footage of that, and my new year's wish:




In other news, my second wedding anniversary last night was fun, except for the food poisoning, which meant that Amanda and I threw up in gutters a lot, and I spent this morning in the ER watching her get a saline drip. We went out for such a fancy anniversary dinner, and it was the most expensive food we've ever thrown up. Next year I think we'll just go somewhere we like.

(I read Michael Fry's The Odd Squad in the ER, because that was what I had with me. Perfect ER reading while the person down the hall is screaming and the homeless man in the wheelchair has begun to grunt, loudly and incoherently, and your wife is sleeping on a drip beneath the beautiful black Kambriel greatcoat, which seems to have found its person. Funny and sweet with a steely centre.)

I'm now on my way to Minneapolis from New York, to see my daughters and my dogs, and to take part in the pilot for a new NPR radio show.

...

REMINDER: Sydney Australia. Melbourne's sold out, but there are still tickets to come and see me in Sydney on January the 25th. It will be a long, fun evening. There may well be some music. (And if anyone from Salt & Poppet is out there, and if you still have the Australia Day Poem puppets from Melbourne and want to repeat it in Sydney, let me know.)

Tickets are onsale at http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/370024/cbf6892451/1575524295/4dd7bdf0bc/

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My current crusade is to make sure creative people have wills. Read the blog post about it, and see a sample will.