Tesla Coils, A Stardust Cover, A Sinister Photograph of Beautiful Women, and a small and unfortunate murder.

I'm home, after ten days in New York and Boston and Cape Cod. I've left Maddy behind in New York, where she is doing an internship before going off to college. Then I left Amanda behind in Boston, where she  is packing before she goes to France and Italy to do interviews about her new album before she flies to San Francisco for her art show and Kickstarter-backer concert.

It's a beautiful night. I'm told it was evilly hot while I was away, but it's glorious now, a night filled with fireflies, somewhat spoiled by Lola dashing off into the darkness while walking through a cornfield, and returning in triumph with a young raccoon she had just caught and killed.

Barnes and Noble have once more started to sell the Sandman graphic novels (along with the other DC Comics graphic novels they'd stopped selling) in their brick and mortar stores, so I am happy to link to them once again. I doubt either boycott actually did anything, but mine made me feel marginally empowered. Anyway, they are selling copies of STORIES, the anthology I edited with Al Sarrantonio, in hardback, for $2.99. (It contains my story "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and many other wonderful stories by wonderful authors, and it won the Shirley Jackson award and the Locus award for Best Anthology.) I'm not sure how long they'll be selling them at that price.

Here's the video (via the Open Spark project "Your Music Played By Lightning") of the 8in8 song Nikola Tesla, words by yours truly, played on enormous Tesla Coils. It is impossible to describe the glorious nerdy rush of pride I felt looking at (and listening to) this.

Here's a fan-made-video of the song with lots of cardboard in it, and fewer giant electronic zaps...

There were many wonderful things on the kitchen table waiting for me, but my favourite was the mock-up of the new edition of Stardust.

There hasn't been a hardback of the prose-only version Stardust in print in the US for about 13 years. I'm not sure why not. Jennifer Brehl, my editor at William Morrow, talked to me about what I wanted to see in a book. I told her I wanted it to look and feel like something from 90 years ago, like the books I treasured as a kid that I found in the school library (the ones I'd buy for a penny in the school library sales, and loved ever after). Bless her, she got it. She took all my blathering and went off and has started making it into a book. 

She's commissioned Charles Vess (with permission from DC Comics) to do a frontispiece, an illustration and chapter headings for the new book.

The cover will look a lot like this.

And Charles just sent me a finished, painted illustration for it:

It will be really beautiful. There's a regular edition and there will also be a signed limited very fancy and quite expensive edition (Amazon's is the only link for the fancy edition I can see so far).

Here's an Indiebound link to the regular edition. A Barnes and Noble link to the regular edition.

...

Something else that was waiting for me when I got home was an envelope of photos from Lomo. I love my LCA+. I love the strange greens it produces when I use Agfa films. I love having forgotten what photographs I took, and then the delight of seeing them and of finding out what happened.

This is my favourite photo from the envelope, I think because it's faintly sinister: artist Cassandra Long and (coincidentally but delightfully) Lomography's online chief, Alexandra Klasinski, at Amanda's Brooklyn end-of-Kickstarter celebration party.

And finally, a thank you to Dan Guy, Webgoblin of this parish, who has taken blogger and this template and made it do things it was never meant to do, which should actually allow you to share it places across the web, in the way that people today like to do. (If you want to share it somewhere else, drop him a line at http://neilgaiman.com/feedback/ and ask...)

Labels: 8in8, B and N, Cassandra Long, Charles Vess, lomography, Stardust, Tesla

Life, and other Spoilers

I got up astonishingly early this morning to take Maddy to State for Violin (solo and duet), then I spent much of the rest of the day doing Dad duty -- taxiing, taking photos and suchlike -- as Maddy went to Prom. It all seems alien and weird to me, Prom and such, like something people made up in films that doesn't actually happen in real life. (It definitely didn't happen in my life: the nearest we ever got to it was the Sixth Form Disco, during the course of which I discovered that any music I liked could actually clear a dance floor in seconds.) But it means much to her, and is such an American symbol...

I'm in a strange, reflective mood: my youngest child is so very grown-up. She and I went to pick up the final bits of stuff for her Prom in Bridal shops this morning, and I found myself pondering life and adulthood and marriage and suchlike, and wondering whatever happened to the little girl who woke up from a nightmare and told me there were wolves living in the walls of her room.

Which meant that when I was sent this Because the Origami video, this evening, I got slightly more sniffly than I might otherwise. But it's a beautiful film.

Because the Origami - 8in8 from Ben Jacobson on Vimeo.

(It's also generating intense and passionate discussion over on Facebook.)


....

It's a week until my episode of Doctor Who airs. Saturday, May the 14th, at 6:30pm.

I'm excited. I'm also very aware that Spoilers can ruin some or all of the fun of an episode. I don't like them, myself.

Last season I knew everything that happened in Doctor Who, was sent a script for each episode as it was completed. Then my episode was moved. For this season I chatted to Steven Moffat for twenty minutes about what he wanted to do with the arc, what he wanted me to slip in to my episode, what was changed between this season and the one the original one was meant to be in, and then I went away and wrote.

It's great. I can watch as a viewer, with my family and friends, and not know what's coming next.

But for the curious...

The BBC has put up a page of links to stuff about my episode. There's the "Next Time" Trailer. There are two minute-long sections of story. There's an introduction, in which Arthur and Karen talk about the next episode, and I can be seen reading a bit of script. And there's a trailer for the next Doctor Who Confidential.

If you're not interested, or you are very interested but want to keep yourself Spoiler Free, click away now. I'll put a bunch of space between this sentence and the next thing, where there will be a slightly spoilery image, and the name that the episode is called.













And look, the next thing isn't anything to do with Doctor Who. It's a photo I took this evening of my dog, to give you a chance to click away from this page, and in case your eye does that thing where it just sort of wanders down...


Last chance to leave...

Okay. You're on your own. We're in Spoiler territory now. This is the Trailer:

People have asked if I am the voice that's heard in the episode. I am not. It is the voice of the wonderful Michael Sheen.

This is the first of the previews. It's from the first few minutes of the show and doesn't give much away at all...





The second preview doesn't currently have an embed option I can find. It's at http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/videos/p00gszls and the story is well underway by the time this bit happens. It is Very Spoilery in the sense of telling you stuff that you would otherwise know only by watching the episode.

Here is the Introduction, in which Karen Gillan says I am clever, and I read a bit of script. It's not very spoilery.



The page I got all these links from is here... http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/dw/news/bulletin_110507_02

This last, from the Blogtor Who site, is the Doctor Who Confidential trailer from this week. When I went to Cardiff last year I was followed everywhere by the Confidential team, which was brilliant as it meant I was allowed to poke around in crannies and wander all over and generally do things that writers are (very wisely) discouraged from doing (as recorded in this blog entry). It's long enough ago that I have no idea what was actually filmed or said, and will be watching it next week when it airs very nervously, hoping my hair doesn't do anything particularly unlikely while people are looking. And yes, Spoilers.

Labels: 8in8, Maddy, spoilers

The Opinions of a Pencil-necked Weasel-thief...

I'm now home, to Spring and dogs. Had a wonderful time with Ben Folds, Damian Kulash from OKGo and Amanda Palmer making the #8in8 project, which as of 3 days ago has raised over $21,000 for Berklee City Music, bringing access to music to inner city kids in Boston. Given that the minimum donation is $1, I think we've got a lot of people downloading the 8in8 music, and it is doing good things, and for that I thank you all.

If you haven't checked it out, here's a player for the songs and a link to the website. (The one I sing on is the last song, The Problem With Saints, but they're all wonderful, and Amanda, Ben and Damian sing on the other five.)



Here's one of the many wonderful videos people have made for the songs. This one is gloriously funny.




Also a huge thank you from me to all of you who donated to RAINN, who met and exceeded their fundraising goals in April, and told me that the signed posters from Neverwear were a really popular donation incentive. (This is a good thing to know for future such fundraisers.)

...

SEMI-POLITICAL BIT

Lots of my readers are Republicans, just as lots of my readers are Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Liberals, Greens, Democrats, and supporters of political parties that Americans can't quite understand, like LibDems and Tories and Monster Raving Loony Party such. I'm not a particularly political animal -- if there was a party whose main platform was being nice to people, freedom of speech and supporting libraries I'd sign up for it, but mostly I try and vote, when I vote, which is in the UK by postal ballot, for the person whose politics I dislike the least, and who does the most good for the area s/he represents. Beyond that, I work hard for things like the CBLDF, alongside people of all political hues and stripes for the common goal (in this case, supporting the First Amendment for people who make, sell, publish or read comics).

So it was with a certain amount of surprise I discovered this morning that I'm on the majority leader of the Minnesota Republicans's Hate List. His name is Matt Dean, and he has a thing about my neck.

This surprised me. Until this morning I didn't know that Matt Dean existed. I had never thought about his neck.

Matt Dean, on the other hand, has been giving a lot of thought to me. During a debate on cutting money for the arts, we learn that,

Dean said that Gaiman, "who I hate," was a "pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota."

(He was referring to the events of this - http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/05/political-football-in-teacup.html. Read it first.)

I've had reporters phoning me up all morning, wanting to know what I thought about this. (Although not ones from the Star Tribune, interestingly. Although there's a great Star Tribune Blog about it.)

What I think is,

1) It's funny. Sad that this is the kind of thing that elected officials say in public, but still funny. It's the kind of thing that you expect to hear at school from fourteen-year old bullies, before they tell you that they'll be seeing you by the lockers with their friends, not what you expect to see from an adult.

2) It's kind of nice to make someone's Hate List. It reminds me of Nixon's Enemies List. If a man is known by his enemies, I think my stock just went up a little.

3) I like "pencil-necked weasel". It has "pencil" in it. Pencils are good things. You can draw or write things with pencils. I think it's what you call someone when you're worried that using a long word like "intellectual" may have too many syllables. It's not something that people who have serious, important things to say call other people.

4) I don't like being called a thief. I'm pretty sure that I know what thieves are and do. In this case, Matt Dean's claiming that I "stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota". (I'm not sure where the $45K number comes from. I just checked: I actually received $33, 600 from the Minnesota Library System for a talk that was then broadcast and is still up [look down to second section].)

I do not know whether this man is calling me "a thief" because:

A) I charged more than he's comfortable with for a talk, or

B) People happily pay me a lot of money to come and give talks, or

C) He thinks I gave the talk wearing a stripy sweater to an audience of people who were there at gunpoint and afterwards took their wallets, or

D) He's against the principles of the Free Market, and feels that governments should regulate how much people are paid to talk in public.

But for whatever reason, it seems kind of weird, and is a lie. (Yes, I gave the money to charities - a sexual abuse one and a library/author one, long ago, when the cheque came in, well before this ever became a political football. But that seems completely irrelevant to this: I don't like the idea that a politician is telling people that charging a market wage for their services is stealing.)

5) I think that Minnesota has things it can be proud of - quality of life things, that make it really good to live in this part of the world. The things that have kept me out here for twenty years. One of the biggest things is it has really good Public Radio and a thriving, active, involved arts scene. It makes me sad to see people trying to crush or even diminish these as part of their political agenda.

And also I think that if you're a Republican in Minnesota, and you read my books or my blog, you could do worse than tell Matt Dean what you think of this kind of bullying schoolyard nonsense from someone who's meant to be representing you. Honestly, it makes you all look bad. Here's a page with his details. It has an email address, his office address, and it even has a photograph*.

* (I would not be human if I didn't admit that I looked at his neck in the photograph, to see if it was as mighty and bull-like as I felt he had implied, and that I might have been just a tiny bit disappointed.)

...



I display my neck, pencilly or not, to the world in this picture.

It's from Allan Amato's ILLUMINATE PARKINSON'S Kickstarter. He's raising money for a travelling photographic show and book that will then go on to raise money and awareness for Parkinson's Disease. I signed up to support it, as well as having my photo taken. You should check it out.

Labels: 8in8, Illuminate Parkinsons, Rainn, School Bullies in Power, The Problem With Saints

SUPERGROUP MADNESS!

As I type this I'm about an hour away from going on stage at Berklee College in Boston as part of the world's least super supergroup. It's me, Amanda Palmer, Ben Folds and Damian Kulash from OK Go. We're like the Inferior 5 of supergroups. We started existing yesterday at 4 pm, stopped working and named ourselves at about 4 am, having, in the meantime, written and recorded six songs. Tonight we do Our Gig, and then there remains the angry break-up, the bitter recriminations, the bile-filled Rolling Stone article, the VH1 Behind The Music Special, the sad descent into cocaine hell, our tragic but cleaned-up comeback and triumphant mega-tour followed by the night all of our hits will be sung by a succession of hopefuls soon to have their own dreams rudely shattered on American Idol...

Er.

Actually, it had a lot more in common with Roger Corman, who, when asked why he'd made the original film of Little Shop of Horrors, explained, "We were going to play tennis but it was raining that weekend." Amanda suggested we do something interesting, Ben said why not make 8 songs in 8 hours? and Damian and I were seduced and sucked in by their madness. Honestly, if they jumped off a bridge, we'd probably jump off too.

Here's a picture of us done last night by artist Cassandra Long - the four principals and Sean Slade, our producer.

Well, we set out to record 8 songs in 8 hours, actually recorded six songs in six hours, with help, suggestions, kibbitzing, and suchlike from the good folk and dangerous insomniacs of Twitter.

I had expected that my job would be REALLY EASY. All I had to do was write lyrics. I knew I could write the lyrics for songs in less than 8 hours... I didn't have to write songs, play an instrument or even sing.

It wasn't easy. It was always fun, though, even when it was hard. And by 3 am when I realised that I'd written some lyrics for a song that had to be sung by someone with an English accent, I just said sod it, and did my best to channel John Reed (you probably don't know who John Reed was, but he was my hero when I was eleven, and the mainstay of the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company) and to talk in tune, like Rex Harrison, rather than go "OmigodIaminarecordingstudioandIhavetoactuallysingnowwithBenFoldsplayingpianothisisincrediblystressfulargh"

I just swallowed my nerves and did it.

The songs are a mixture of funny and sad and odd. I found myself trying to write Amanda-ish songs for Amanda, Ben Foldsish for Ben, Damiany for Damian, and, er, I don't know, a sort of Tom Lehrer-W.S. Gilbert for me.

This is how I looked at the end of it, as we listened to what we'd done. (Photo by Ben Folds.)

We wished we'd had more time. But I think we were pleased, and surprised, by how real it sounded, even if we all had things we wanted fixed. (In my case, placeholder lyrics that had crept into the real songs.)

Then we went to sleep for three and half hours. Our supergroup, which we called 8in8, after the hashtag we'd been using, and because the only other suggestion was B.A.N.D. after our initials, had by that point its first album up for sale on Bandcamp. We got up on stage at the ReThink Music conference and talked about what we'd done and why and played the audience bits of each song, and explained it. Oh, and we gave it a title, which is explained in this article from the Boston Phoenix Blog. Also, because we were very tired.

Here's the panel from this morning. We were very sleepy.

Watch live streaming video from rethinkmusic at livestream.com

Since then, we have slept for half an hour. We are still very sleepy.

You can go and listen to it at http://music.amandapalmer.net/album/nighty-night. You can download it - minimum payment a dollar, it goes to charity, and your money will bring good things to the children of Boston.

The goal was to do something more fun than going out to dinner together and catching a panel, and we did that, and also to show people that creativity isn't always a matter of magic and inspiration. Mostly it's a matter of work. Of doing it. And I hope we did that too. There were songs that didn't make it, things that never gelled, but with all that, the best part of it was when when stumbled away from the studio, six songs that hadn't existed before existed now.

Huge thanks to the people of Twitter who suggested (whether they knew it or not) that we write about Nikola Tesla, Because the Origami, One Tiny Thing Out Of Place, A Squirrel Suicide, and Joan of Arc, and thank you to the lady with the mirror we saw on the way to the studio, shouting at herself in the glass, who made us want to write a song about mirrors.

Labels: 8in8, Actually the songs are sort of fun, John Reed, My Sad Descent Into Hell, Rex Harrison, RIP Poly Styrene