I am tumbling like a comet through Los Angeles on my way to Seattle on my way back to the Florida Treasure Coast, where I was feeling very comfortably anonymous until I got a message from the director of the local book festival asking me if I'd like to come and do stuff, as she'd noticed me out jogging while she was walking her dog.
In my head, if I have a beard and am wearing jogging clothes I am invisible and nobody will ever notice that I am me. This is apparently not quite as true in the world outside my head.
I've done lots of things in the not-much-time since I've been here. Meetings about Things I Can't Yet Talk About with People I Can't Yet Tell You About, mostly, although this morning I also recorded a lot of narration for the WAYWARD MANOR game (see photo above [from here]. That is what I am doing in the photo). Things have progressed since the last time I saw Wayward Manor material: The Odd Gentlemen showed me what it's going to look like, and it's looking really good. I signed 200 posters for them, for people who preordered the packages at http://www.whohauntsneil.com/.
In all this, I've been assisted by the noble and long-suffering Cat Mihos, and if you get a card from me, it's because she cares.
I'll be up before dawn to fly to Seattle, go to a friend's birthday, and then take a red-eye and fly overnight back to Florida, where I will return to being a solitary hermit, writing Sandman and myths.
...
I just read my favourite graphic novel in a very, very long time. It was an advance copy of a book called KILL MY MOTHER, it's by Jules Feiffer, and it's his tribute to the work of the great Will Eisner (Feiffer was once Eisner's assistant) and to classic movies of the kind they don't make any more. The dialogue is wonderful, the plot enormously satisfying. I've been a fan of Feiffer's pretty much as long as I've been able to read, and it makes me strangely happy that, at the age of 84, he's done something remarkable, ambitious and very different. Here's an article about the book from Publishers Weekly. It won't be out until much later in the year, and I will link to it then.
...
If you are in the US, or have an American address, The OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is being discounted this weekend ONLY - it's at 50% off, $7.99, on Nook, on Kindle, at the Apple iBookstore and on Google Play.
...
I've talked a little in interviews about Henry Kuttner's HOGBEN FAMILY stories, which were, in different ways, inspirational both for THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE and for Alan Moore's BOJEFFRIES SAGA. (Here is a Bojeffries page by the inimitable Steve Parkhouse.)
A new edition of The Bojeffries Saga is coming out from Top Shelf in February. (Click on the link for more information.)
The first and only ever complete collection of the Hogben Stories, THE HOGBEN CHRONICLES, is out from Borderland Press RIGHT NOW, in a fancy signed limited edition. Henry Kuttner is dead,
alass, so it is signed by me (I wrote the introduction) and F. Paul Wilson and Pierce Watters (who edited it). Information on how to order it at http://borderlandspress.com/hbc.html.
Let's see. What else was I meaning to blog about, here? Oh. Right. Yes.
Worldbuilders, Pat Rothfuss's charity to help Heifer International. He's put up a post listing all the things that he has in the auction by Terry Pratchett and by me. I gave him one of the sold out limited edition Dave McKean-designed copies of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE, and a copy of the Dagmara Matuszak-drawn MELINDA. He has also managed to obtain other things - even the 1984 DURAN DURAN biography I wrote.
Some of these things are up for auction (here's the Auction Listing for DURAN DURAN), some in the lottery and you could win them for a $10 donation.
They are up to about $375,000 so far. If they make it to $500, 000 I have told them I will record and post a video of me reading GREEN EGGS AND HAM.
And I will.
...
PS -- CONGRATULATIONS to all at R. J. Julia Bookstore in Madison CT. I'll be doing a signing there this year. This is why.
PPS -- if you are in the South of England, you might want to pay a visit to Tunbridge Wells Museum before March 30th, and see the Dave McKean exhibition. There's information about it at http://www.anke.tw/anke/2014/01/are-comic-books-art.html. Lots of original Dave McKean art. In a proper museum. And, am very glad to say, he didn't even have to die first.
Did you know Dave got his first computer in 1995? It tells you all about it on the Apple site. Although it doesn't include the bit about me having to convince him first that it was okay to get a modem and it didn't mean that electronic art thieves would come down the telephone line and take all his art away. (Do you have any idea how proud I am that Dave is their 1995 thingummy? I am so proud...)
Labels: completely abandons the idea of writing lots of labels and goes to bed instead, Dave McKean, Jules Feiffer, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, worldbuilders