An Acceptance, in rough times

Last night, starting at at 1:00 in the morning, my time, was the Nebula Awards ceremony, held by the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The first award they gave out was the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and it meant the world that it went to episode 3 of Good Omens, "Hard Times".

Exactly one year ago, Good Omens was released to the world, on Amazon's Prime Video service. Thirty years ago this month, Good Omens was published as a novel. It seems amazing that it still has so much life, and still feels so relevant to people's own lives. Especially now.

Here's the complete list of all the nominees and of the awards given out at the Nebulas last night. Congratulations to everyone nominated!

The entire proceedings existed in virtual space, via the magic of Zoom and other technological things.

This is what it looked like on my screen, just before we went live...

Here is the speech I gave. I wore a hat, because, even though Terry Pratchett loved pointing out that he was a hat person and I wasn't, not really, I thought it would have amused him.

I didn't intend to write the television adaptation of Good Omens. I did it because as he knew his own immeasurable light was dimming, Terry Pratchett wrote to me, telling me I had to do it. That no-one else had the passion for the “old girl” that the two of us had. And I was the one of us who had to make it happen, so he could see it before the lights went out.

I'm used to dealing with the problems of fictional people.  Now I found myself dealing with much harder problems, of real people and immutable budgets.  But I was even more determined to make something Terry would have been proud of. And I was part of an amazing team – Douglas Mackinnon, our director, Rob Wilkins, Chris Sussman and Simon Winstone and the folk from BBC Studios, the Amazon Studios team, and above us all the cast and the crew, who united and went over and above what anyone asked of them to tell, together, a kind of love story about protecting the world, about an angel who isn't as angelic as he ought to be, and a demon who likes people. And for them, I want to thank Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Terry and I had written a book about averting the end of the world, about the power of not going to war, about an armageddon that didn't have to happen.

When I was a boy, I was told that there was a curse, “May you live in interesting times”. And that made me sad, because I wanted to live in interesting times. I thought I did.

And now, we are all of us living in Interesting Times. The Horsepeople are riding out, as they have ridden so many times before, and the world still needs saving – from plague, from racism, from foolishness and selfishness and pain. It says in Good Omens that we have to save ourselves, because nobody else is going to sort it out for us. And we do. 

It feels almost indecent to be accepting an award while so many people are hurting, but thank you, from me and from Douglas, who took the words and made them so brilliantly come to life. This is for Terry Pratchett.

You can watch the whole ceremony at: 

https://www.facebook.com/SFWA.org/videos/996082517476423/

or at this YouTube link:

(The Good Omens bit starts around 22:30)

Labels: Good Omens, Nebula Awards, Ray Bradbury Award, speech

An extremely apologetic post

So. I did something stupid. I'm really sorry. 

The last blog I wrote, about how I had been here for almost three weeks, turned into news - and not in a good way. Man Flies 12000 Miles to Defy Lockdown sort of news. And I've managed to mess things up in Skye, which is the place I love most in the world.

So, to answer the questions I'm being asked most often right now:

What were you thinking? Why come back to the UK?

Because like so many other people, my homelife and work had been turned upside-down by the COVID-19 lockdowns. I was panicked, more than a little overwhelmed and stuck in New Zealand. I went to the UK government website (https://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice), trying to figure out what to do, and read:

I've been living in the UK since 2017, and all of my upcoming work is here - so 'you are strongly advised to return now' looked like the most important message. I waited until New Zealand was done with its strict lockdown, and took the first flight out. (And yes, the flights and airports were socially distanced, and, for the most part, deserted.)

Why go to Skye? Why not go somewhere else?

When I landed the whole of the UK was under lockdown rules.  I drove directly to my home in the UK, which is on Skye. I came straight here, and I've been in isolation here ever since.

What were you THINKING?

I wasn't, not clearly. I just wanted to go home.

Would you leave New Zealand again, knowing what you know now?

I got to chat to some local police officers yesterday, who said all things considered I should have stayed where I was safe in New Zealand, and I agreed that yes, all things considered, I should. Mostly they wanted to be sure I was all right, and had been isolating, and that I would keep isolating here until the lockdown ends, and to make sure I knew the rules. Like all the locals who have reached out to me, they've been astonishingly kind.

Since I got here Skye has had its own tragic COVID outbreak – ten deaths in a local care home. It's not set up to handle things like this, and all the local resources are needed to look after the local community. So, yes. I made a mistake. Don't do what I did. Don't come to the Highlands and Islands unless you have to.

I want to apologize to everyone on the island for creating such a fuss. I also want to thank and apologise to the local police, who had better things to do than check up on me. I'm sure I've done sillier things in my life, but this is the most foolish thing I've done in quite a while.

Labels: apologies

Where I am, what I'm doing, how I'm doing and how I got here

Hullo from Scotland, where I am in rural lockdown on my own.  I'm half a world away from Amanda and Ash, and missing both of them a lot. We check in on screens and phones twice a day, when I get up and before I sleep (which is when they go to sleep and when they get up) but it's not the same.

I was in New Zealand with them until two weeks ago, when New Zealand went from the Level 4 lockdown it had been on for the previous 5 weeks down to Level 3. I flew, masked and gloved, from empty Auckland airport to LAX, an empty international terminal with only one check in counter open -- the one for the BA flight from LAX to London. Both flights were surreal, especially the flight to London. Empty airports, mostly empty planes. It reminded me of flying a week after 9/11: everything's changed.

I landed in London about ten in the morning, got a masked car service to a friend's house. He had a spare car (bought many years ago as a birthday present for his daughter, but she had never learned to drive), with some groceries for me in a box in the back, waiting in the drive, with the key in the lock. I drove north, on empty motorways and then on empty roads, and got in about midnight, and I've been here ever since.

The journey was, as I said,  surreal. It was also emotionally hard. Amanda and I had found ourselves in a rough place immediately before I left (my fault, I'm afraid, I'd hurt her feelings very badly, and... actually beyond that it's none of anyone else's business). We agreed that we needed to give each other some space, which had been in very short supply in lockdown in New Zealand. So it was a sad sort of flight, even without the world in lockdown, and a sad sort of drive.

(You can read all about how we got to New Zealand and why we were there at all at  http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2020/03/on-beach.html. And, for the curious, the song that's currently stuck in my head is mostly Al Stewart's “Warren Gamaliel Harding”.) 

I needed to be somewhere I could talk to people in the UK while they and I were awake, not just before breakfast and after dinner. And I needed to be somewhere I could continue to isolate easily, which definitely isn't our house in Woodstock, currently at capacity with five families who have fled Manhattan and Brooklyn and Boston. 

Once the world opens up and travel gets easier Amanda and Ash and I are looking forward to being together again in Woodstock. (Yes, I've seen the newsfeed headlines saying I've moved to the UK, and even that we're divorcing. No, I haven't moved the UK, and yes, Amanda and I are still very much together, even with half a world between us.) 

Thank you to everyone who's been kind and nice and helpful, while Amanda and my problems got rather more public than either of us is comfortable with. We love each other, and we love Ash, and we will sort ourselves out, in private, which is much the best place for things like this.

It's rough for almost everyone right now – some people are crammed together and wish they weren't, some are alone and crave companionship, pretty much all of us are hurting in one way or another. So be kind. Be kind to each other, be kind to Amanda (who is getting a huge amount of undeserved internet flack for this, some of it really cruel),  and if you ever meet him (he will tell you very seriously everything he thinks about zombies, or his latest zombie-supplanting discovery, Richard Scarry's detectives), be kind to Ash.

Neil

PS: Amanda and I wrote a letter together, for the curious and for the bits of the world that is wondering what's going on, and whether they should worry about it. Feel free to send anyone who wants to know how we are and what's happening to read it.

Dear Everybody.

This has been a hard few weeks for us.  We are not getting divorced. It’s not that exciting.

We love each other very deeply. As sometimes happens during the course of a long marriage, we have hurt each other. We have lived our lives individually, and then as a couple, very publicly (and right now, too publicly).  

We have been trying to figure out how best to love each other for twelve years.  It is fair to say that this relationship has been the hardest, but also the most rewarding, collaboration of our lives. 

Living in lockdown is hard. Working on a marriage, as everyone married knows, is also hard. And we are very aware there are thousands, probably millions of people who have been dealing with their own versions of problems like ours over the last few months – and many face situations that are far worse.

We will sort out our marriage in private, which is where things like this are best sorted. We're working together to try and do this better. We care about  each other so much, and we have a small boy we love and delight in, and those are reasons enough to work together to fix things. 

So that's what's going on. It's not as much fun or as interesting as the newsfeed headlines made it seem.

For anyone who felt the urge to choose sides on this, trust us, there really aren't any sides to be  taken: we are on our side, and we're on Ash's side, and we hope you are too.

None of us know what the future is going to look and feel like, right now, and that's scary. We need to be able to have each other’s backs.  So please, if you can, have our backs, and we will do our best to have yours. 

And to the vast majority of people out there who have been kind and sane and supportive to both of us, and to each other,  thank you, we love you and appreciate it, and you, so very much.

Peace, and definitely love,

Neil and Amanda

Labels: amanda palmer, Ash, Life in lockdown, married life

A Quick Useful Blog about the Sandman Audio Project

Today, the news releases went out and now the world knows that James McAvoy is starring as Morpheus in the Audible.com adaptation of the first three volumes of Sandman, Preludes & Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country. 

And the rest of the cast is just as impressive. Look:

That's 68 remarkable actors, playing a lot more than 68 parts. And I'm narrating it...

It will be released on the 15th of July 2020.

The US preorder page (with a lot more information on it)  is at https://www.audible.com/pd/The-Sandman-Audiobook/B086WP794Z

The UK page is at https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Sandman-Audiobook/B086WQCVVG

The Canadian page is at https://www.audible.ca/pd/The-Sandman-Audiobook/B086WP9GS1

I've listened to the final mixes of about ten out of the twenty parts so far, and they are glorious and magical things. Dirk Maggs and I first approached the BBC about doing an audio adaptation of Sandman in 1992. They said no. I'm so glad they did, because if they had said yes we wouldn't have this...

Labels: Dirk Maggs, The Sandman Audio