Sandman Audio Day

Today is the day that the first adaptation of Sandman is released. 

It's the first three graphic novels, PRELUDES AND NOCTURNES, THE DOLL'S HOUSE and DREAM COUNTRY, released, as  full-cast audio drama, on Audible. The adaptation was written and directed by audio genius Dirk Maggs, and only it's taken 28 years to happen -- since Dirk first pitched Sandman to BBC Radio 4 in 1992. (They said no.)

For years, blind and partially sighted people, or people who for whatever reason couldn't read comics but wanted to still get access to the stories, have asked me if there would ever be an audiobook of the Sandman books. It took a long time, but this is the closest we could come to giving the world the original graphic novels, bumps and all. You don't have the art, alas, but I hope that the performances and the music give you something that translates it to another place.

It should be out now on all the English-language versions of Audible. There should be versions in other languages coming relatively soon.

(It will be out in a few months on CD -- https://www.brilliancepublishing.com/title/50614/alt  -- and I like that they begin their entry: This content is not for kids. It is for mature audiences only. Just like the original graphic novels, this audio adaptation contains explicit language and graphic violence, as well as strong sexual content and themes. Discretion is advised.) 

Sandman was always "For Mature Readers" and this is no different.

Here's an interview with me (and an extract from "The Sound of Her Wings") at the EW site: https://ew.com/books/neil-gaiman-sandman-audible-adaptation-netflix-show/

So many talented actors and voices are involved. 

I'm the narrator -- often reading descriptions of places or characters I wrote in the original scripts long ago for artists to draw, which Dirk has cunningly snuck into the script.

There are hundreds of characters in these eleven hours, brought to you by 68 actors (well, 67 actors and me):

Labels: Audible, Sandman

Sandman Audio Adaptation

In 9 days, on the 15th of July, Audible will release the first of the SANDMAN audio adaptations. These are, well, full cast audiobooks of the first three SANDMAN graphic novels: Dirk Maggs gave me the role of the narrator, and I gave him the original scripts, so often what I'm saying as narrator is what I asked the artists to draw, over thirty years ago.

These are very straightforward adaptations. For the upcoming Netflix TV series, we're starting from now, and doing it as if it was being written, for the first time, in 2020. The audio adaptations are much closer to the original graphic novels, each episode being a comic in the original. Eleven hours of drama. The cast is amazing. The production and the music are glorious. I'm not sure about the narrator, but everything else is sparkling and exciting. I hope you all enjoy it...

For people who need it in a more tangible form, it will also be for sale as CDs.

Click on this, and you will hear James McAvoy as Morpheus...

Labels: Sandman

Remembering Earl Cameron (1917-2020)

I'm taking a Social Media Holiday right now. It seems to be helping. But I couldn't let this pass...

In 1996 we filmed the original Neverwhere television series (which I wrote for Lenny Henry's company Crucial Films who made it for the BBC). One of the most inspiring moments for me was when Earl Cameron came in and auditioned to play the Abbot of the Black Friars. He was a legend back then, 25 years ago. Watching him audition at an age when most people were already long into retirement was an honour and a treat. He got the part, not because he was a legend, not because he was an icon, but because he was so good, and his interpretation of the character became, for me, definitive. It was the one I put into the novel.

Earl had been a trailblazer as a performer on film and on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He had come to the UK from Bermuda during the Second World War, as a sailor, and had stayed, and become an actor. He was one of the first UK actors to "break the colour bar", one of the first black actors in Doctor Who, a mainstay of cinema and television, always acting with grace and moral authority. Now we were fortunate enough to have him and his compassion and his gentle humour, acting away in monkish robes in muddy cellars, chilly vaults, and deserted churches, all over London.

In 2017, BBC Radio 4 (in the shape of Dirk Maggs and Heather Larmour) did a glorious audio adaptation of Anansi Boys, and it did my heart so much good to see Earl Cameron over 20 years on, and to catch up and to reminisce about the Neverwhere cold and the mud. He played a dragon in Anansi Boys. He was 100 years old then. (That's us, in the studio hallway, in the photo above. It was taken by Dirk.)

He died, yesterday, aged 102, nearly 103. The world is a lesser place without him in it. 

Labels: earl cameron, legend, Neverwhere