It's been a while since I blogged. I'm
not entirely sure why I stopped – guilt partly. Lou Reed died, and
I was going to write a blog about Lou, but I wrote a piece for the Guardian about Lou and what his music had meant to me instead.
And then it seemed so many things had
happened, and I had not written about any of them, and catching up seemed less and less possible. I was not worried because there was Twitter and there was Tumblr and people were seeing what I was doing as I did it.
Despite an epic blast of food poisoning, I survived the World Fantasy Convention in the UK, and went to LA for a conference on magical
history, where I also I interviewed JJ Abrams and Doug Dorst about their book
S for BBC 2's Newsnight. I don't think I have a new career waiting in
TV interviewing, but it was fun and enlightening and I asked my questions as well as the BBC's:
I had a birthday, a quiet one, at home
in the Midwest, and saw my dog and my friends and warmed my hands at a bonfire.
I had a conversation at the Rubin
Museum with Laurie Anderson. We talked about Ignorance. This was
inspiring and magical.
There were the two EVENING WITH NEIL
AND AMANDA nights at the Town Hall in NYC. The first was chaos, and
Amanda loved it and I didn't, and the second was perfectly structured
and ran as planned, and I loved it and Amanda didn't. (The second was
on the 23rd of November, the 50th Anniversary
of Doctor Who: Amanda and I saw the 3D screening of The Day of the
Doctor first, and loved it, and Arthur Darvill, fresh from ONCE,
joined us on stage to hold placards that night).
I was on WBUR with Tom Ashbrook,
talking about Sandman: Overture.
Thanksgiving was spent with Amanda's friends, family and Cloud-club-mates at our place in Cambridge MA.
I gave a talk about creativity to the
C.A.V.E. Conference in Las Vegas, and spent time with Skottie Young
and Dave Gibbons and went to see LOVE with Skottie and Joe Quesada.
I went to the UK for three days: I had
a glorious time reading a letter from Kurt Vonnegut Jr at the Reading
Agency Benefit along with a star-studded cast, and then doing an
auction with fellow auctioneer Gillian Anderson and book models
Benedict Cumberbatch and Nick Cave. We raised over £11,000 for the
Reading Agency (a Good Thing).
You can read about it, and watch Benedict and Gillian in letter-reading action at http://readingagency.org.uk/adults/news/cumberbatch-cave-anderson-and-gaiman-join-together-in-praise-of-letters.html
You can read about it, and watch Benedict and Gillian in letter-reading action at http://readingagency.org.uk/adults/news/cumberbatch-cave-anderson-and-gaiman-join-together-in-praise-of-letters.html
The next night was the National Book
Awards, sponsored by Specsavers. I was nominated for three book
awards – Author of the Year (for Ocean at the End of the Lane),
Children's Book of the Year (for Fortunately the Milk) and
Audiobook of the Year. I won Audiobook of the Year, for The Ocean
at the End of the Lane. I wore a tie and everything, and was
grateful.
I had several mysterious meetings the
following day, particularly with the United Nations High Council on
Refugees, for and with whom I'm hoping to do something good in 2014,
then I came back to the US.
Straight to New York. I has been asked
by author Molly Oldfield to read Dickens' prompt copy of A CHRISTMAS
CAROL, and had agreed if I could do it with a Dickensian beard and in
Victorian Garb: I remembered seeing actor Emlyn Williams performing
an evening of Charles Dickens when I was a boy, and the clothes and
the beard were all. It happened, and was unlikely and delightful.
From
http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/charles-dickens-christmas-carol-neil-gaiman-and-molly-oldfield. You can listen to the whole event there...
The holidays were spent in the sun, with the family, and were made extra-wonderful when I learned that Ocean At The End of the Lane had been voted the UK's Book of the Year.
...
And now I'm thinking about the year to come. I'm planning a social media sabbatical for the first 6 months (I talked about it here: http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/jun/14/neil-gaiman-social-media-sabbatical). It's about writing more and talking to the world less. It's time.
I plan to blog here MUCH more, as a way of warming up my fingers and my mind, and as a way of getting important information out into the world. I'm planning to be on Tumblr and Twitter and Facebook MUCH less, although I'll make sure that posts letting people know about new blogs here keep going up, and I may nip out into the world from time to time to plug good causes.
Keep an eye on http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/ which will tell you where I'm likely to show up in person, and how to get tickets:
| Billings, Montana | ||
| Billings, Montana | ||
| Calgary, Canada | ||
| Glassboro, NJ | ||
| Syracuse, NY | ||
| New York, NY |
If you are used to hanging out with me on Tumblr or Twitter or Facebook, you are very welcome here. Same me, only with more than 140 characters. It'll be fun. Or it'll be like watching someone giving up smoking.
Labels: Book of the Year, Charles Dickens, Laurie Anderson, Lou Reed, National Book Awards, Sabbatical, The Reading Agency