The Thirteen Clocks and the wonderful birthday

It was the 9th of February 2001. I'd spent most of the previous two years writing a novel (oddly enough, a lot of it in the house I'm currently borrowing), and now I was finally going to start writing a blog. (Which for obscure reasons mostly having to do with my agent Merrilee, I tended to call my blogger, perhaps because it was, and oddly enough still is, hosted by Blogger.) It wasn't NeilGaiman.com yet - we started the journal at Americangods.com when all it contained was a countdown and a blog.

I wrote:

I first suggested we do something like this to my editor, the redoubtable Jennifer Hershey, about a year ago, while the book was still being written (a process that continued until about 3 weeks ago). She preferred to wait until the book was on the conveyor belt to actual publication, thus sparing the reading world lots of entries like "Feb 13th: wrote some stuff. It was crap." and "Feb 14th: wrote some brilliant stuff. This is going to be such a good novel. Honest it is." followed by "Feb 15th. no, it's crap" and so on. It was a bit like wrestling a bear. Some days I was on top. Most days, the bear was on top. So you missed watching an author staring in bafflement as the manuscript got longer and longer, and the deadlines flew about like dry leaves in a gale, and the book remained unfinished.

And then one day about three weeks ago it was done. And after that I spent a week cutting and trimming it. (I'd read Stephen King's On Writing on the plane home from Ireland, where I'd gone to do final rewrites and reworkings, and was fired up enough by his war on adverbs that I did a search through the manuscript for -----ly, and peered at each adverb suspiciously before letting it live or zapping it into oblivion. A lot of them survived. Still, according to the old proverb, God is better pleased with adverbs than with nouns...)

Today I wrote a letter to go in the front of a Quick and Dirty reading edition Harper will put out -- taken from the file I sent them, so it'll be filled with transatlantic spelling, odd formatting errors and the rest, but it'll be something to give to the buyers from bookstores and to people who get advance manuscripts so they can see what kind of book this is.

I have no idea what kind of book this is. Or rather, there's nothing quite like it out there that I can point to. Sooner or later some reviewer will say something silly but quotable like "If JRR Tolkien had written The Bonfire of the Vanities..." and it'll go on the paperback cover and thus put off everyone who might have enjoyed it...

The Website soon became Neilgaiman.com and looked a lot like this.

The blog looked like this.

And then by late 2002 it looked more like this:

and inside the blog looked like this:

And then in January 2006 it started looking like it does now. Which means that, really, the website these days needs a from-the-ground-up overhaul...

But you know, creaky interface and lost links and all, this blog is thirteen years old today. In Internet Years, that means it is a huge slow thing, covered in cobwebs, with a deep rumbly voice like a mountain that is trying to remember how to talk. In person years it means it has acne and has just been barmitvahed, and is dreading writing all the thank you letters to the grown-ups who slipped it envelopes with cheques in.

Probably you haven't gone looking around this website. It's been a long time since I have...

So I thought we'd give you a reason to go poking around. The webgoblin went to work, and now there are, er, clues hidden all through Neilgaiman.com. The prize will be a Google Hangout with me. (Second prize, the snappy comedian in the back of my head announces, TWO Google hangouts with me.)

Happy blogthday.

Labels: American Gods Blog, History, I feel very old suddenly, thirteen

coolth

Probably nobody except me thinks Moby and Lou Reed playing Walk on The Wild Side together is as cool as I do, but it's my blog, so here it is. (click http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/03/coolth.html to read the post in full if you're on a feed...)




Lou Reed at The Levi's®/FADER Fort from The FADER on Vimeo.

Meanwhile the former WebElf is working hard on the ancient texts from the American Gods part of this blog, making stuff from seven years ago readable as individual entries and adding labels and suchlike. catch her handiwork at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/American%20Gods%20Blog


Right. Off to Laika for round two. Next post should be photos and captions from Miss Maddy...

Labels: American Gods Blog, Cool Things and Stuff

American Gods Blog, Post 126

Got up this morning at 6.50 to head off to Norwich (an acronym, Alan Bennett once wrote in a comedic sketch, for "Knickers off ready when I come home") for an 11.00am signing. If this seems a bit of an early start to you, remember that Norwich is the only city that Lucy Ramsey ever got Terry Pratchett to a signing to late, and that she wasn’t ever going to let it happen again.

It’s 10.00 am now, and so we’re cruising through Norwich looking for breakfast...

...there, and by the magic of the new paragraph break, we had breakfast and then I did a signing in Ottakar’s of Norwich – nice people (I always say that, don’t I? Well, it’s always been true of the people at the signings, and on this tour it’s been true of all the people who run the shops. It’s not always like that – every author will tell you horror stories of irritable store staff who view the author’s presence in the store as an unaccountable intrusion. Normally in these cases they also didn’t ever bother to do anything to tell anyone you were coming to their store so you’re not just a bother, but a demoralised bother because nobody came. My last one of those -- I’d managed to forget it until I was reminded by Lucy -- was at W.H. Smith’s in Brighton in 1999.).

Was hoping for review coverage of American Gods today, and didn’t see any (most of the review coverage I saw was for children’s books, inspired by yesterday’s Carnegie Award). On the other hand, we’re in at #9 in the Independent book list; while the Times has a list of the fastest selling books, and we came in at #4 as the second fastest-selling hardback fiction book in the UK (after Tony Parsons’ new novel) which has to be a good thing, as it means we’re selling through the people in bookshops and through word of mouth.

So, now in car en route to Canterbury....

...Canterbury signing was lovely. A great one to end the UK signing tour with. Saw Dave McKean and family, and just got back to the hotel (at 2.00 a.m.).

And that was today, except that I also answered a nice e-mail from an Entertainment Weekly journalist about this journal, and failed to answer an e-mail from a New York Times journalist about this journal (tomorrow, I suppose).

Oh, and during the Q&A someone asked if I really was existing on nothing but sushi, and I had to admit that my peregrinations around the UK had been practically Sushi free. F’r example, tonight I ate – before the signing – at the Café Des Amis in Canterbury, which is Dave Mckean’s favourite Mexican restaurant. Sometimes he just goes there with his notebook and sketches or thinks, and he wound up designing and doing all the art on their menu and notecards and stuff, because he wanted it to look nice.

Labels: American Gods Blog, book reviews, Canterbury, Dave McKean, Norwich, sushi, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 125

More from the Strange STuff People E-Mail Me Department: http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-gaiman-neil.asp is an interview with me (you have to page down past the biography stuff). http://www.kiplinger.com/spending/ is -- right now anyway -- something that lists the best prices of "this week's bestselling book, CD, DVD and software." American Gods is the book (and Fatbrain is currently the best price, it says).

Did a signing in Bristol at lunchtime which was lovely. It should have been an evening signing with a reading and stuff, really. Saw Diana Wynne Jones and several other friends, albeit too briefly in every case. Biut I got to tell Diana of Maddy's addiction to WARLOCK AT THE WHEEL, finally... Then got the train back and did an AOL chat, then London Live radio, now back in the hotel.

Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to go to Norwich for a lunchtime signing, then on to Canterbury where I shall see Dave McKean and his family, which I am looking forward to.

Sunday is the Giles Brandreth radio show on LBC, and a desperate attempt to see as many people as possible. Monday is editorial meetings, sign 300+ books in the Headline offices, and, in the evening, do some filming and reading and such with Tori for some album stuff. Tuesday morning I fly home.

Wish I had some trenchant and brilliant comments to make on the media or something, but mostly I'm just pooped. People have stopped assuming I'm American though, and my daughter Holly, when I phoned home last night, said "Dad! You sound so English!" which I shall take as a compliment, although I'm not entirely sure that was how she meant it. Really, my accent is just a universal sort of case of "you aren't from round here, are you?"

Labels: American Gods Blog, aol, Bristol, Dave McKean, Diana Wynne Jones, Holly, interviews, Maddy, radio, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 124

http://authorpages.hoddersystems.com/NeilGaiman/ is the Hodder Headline website for me and the book and is an awful lot of fun at first glance.

I'm typing this in the offices of AOL.com UK where I'm just about to do an online chat -- the first online chat of this tour that I've actually got to type my own answers for, rather than talk to someone down the phone.

Labels: American Gods Blog, aol, online chats

American Gods Blog, Post 123

http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/books/2001-07-12-american-gods.htm is a fun review of American Gods....

Today was nice -- small lunchtime signing (50 people or thereabouts altogether) and so was the evening one. In between I grabbed some food and did several interviews, and after the ottakers in walsall signing we made a mad dash to get to Pebble Mill in time for a live interview, not enormously helped by having the only Taxi Driver in the midlands to whom one can say "BBC Pebble Mill, please" and whose reply is "Where's that, mate?" . Lucy Ramsey talked a lot on her mobile, and I sat in the taxi and didn't worry.We were talked in (via Lucy and her mobile) by a security guard at Pebble Mill

I am, on some things, a world class worrier, but when it comes to getting places on time, if I'm actually travelling towards them in a car or a train or a plane, I just shrug and go, I'll get there on time or I won't. Nothing I can do about it either way. And I don't worry.

So I didn't, and we made it by the skin of our teeth, and the interview was fun. And now I'm back in the hotel before midnight, which is more or less a first.

Labels: A Walking Tour of the Shambles, American Gods Blog, interviews, worrying

American Gods Blog, Post 122

Let’s see, where were we? More to the point, where am I? (Stops. Thinks. Birmingham. Right. Knew it was Birmingham.) Just on my way to do a lunchtime signing at Andromeda Books – mainly because Andromeda was the place I signed first. It was with Kim Newman, in 1985, for a book called GHASTLY BEYOND BELIEF.

Tonight is Ottakers bookshop in Walsall – not a place I’d’ve picked to do a signing, on a tour that doesn’t take in Oxford, Cambridge or Reading, – but we’ll see how it goes.

The last couple of evening signings have been fun – Leeds two nights ago, and last night in Manchester, at Waterstones. They sold tickets (₤3.00 each) and people kept coming, several hundred of them, so the event moved from Waterstones to the church next door, which meant, I was told, No Swearing. It also meant that people didn’t get any free wine, cos it was a church.

So I read the Essie Tregowan story. Toward the end people got quieter and quieter and you could hear every squeak and echo. People laughed less, though.

The people and the organisation were both terrific. I saw Ramsey and Jenny Campbell and several other friends and old acquaintances, all-too briefly in every case. Thrown out of the church at ten p.m. as that was when the burglar alarm went on by, but a final dash of speed signing did it, then to the radio.

I had a few seconds before the interview to talk to the interviewer, so I checked to see if he’d read the book, and he hadn’t, which was good to know, as I explained more than I might have otherwise. But what was meant to be a 5 minute interview turned into a half hour chat on the air, and was very enjoyable.

Then back to the hotel, where there was no food to be had, for it was gone midnight, and all I’d had to eat since breakfast was some Tesco’s sushi that someone had brought to the signing (“my girlfriend says I’m mad but...”) so Lucy and I went to an Indian restaurant next door, and when the food wasn’t what I’d ordered I shut up and ate it, because I just wanted food and sleep. And then we walked back to the hotel, went off to our rooms, and slept the sleep of the dead. Well, I did. At 7.30 Lucy rang to say that she was still stuffed from eating a huge Indian meal at 1.00am and thought she’d skip breakfast, and I decided to do the same, so lay in the bath and read several pages of Harry Stephen Keeler’s THE CHAMELEON (the second half of the sequence that begins with THE MYSTERIOUS MR. I). An astonishingly brilliant and postmodern sort of device and structure underlies both books, marred only by the fact that the mystery of the narrator’s identity is starting to become wearisome. But as unreliable narrators go, this one is certainly up there.

On the train to Birmingham I planned to work, and instead I slept.

We’re edging up the UK charts – number 19 last week, number 16 this week.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Birmingham, interviews, sushi, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 121

Oh, and a little websearching produced:

Sandboy: As happy as a sandboy is an expression which implies blissful contentment. I believe that the saying is truly Bristolian in origin. On Bathurst basin, in the City centre is the long established Ostrich Inn. The Inn is immediately adjacent to the Redcliff caves which, in their day, were a prime source of sand. Past landlords of the Inn used to send little boys i.e. Sandboys into the caves to collect sand to spread on the floor of the Inn to soak up the beer and ale droppings (much like butchers used to put sawdust on the floor of their shops). The Sandboys were paid for their efforts in beer. They were indeed happy.

Lovely signing in Leeds last night, marred only by the sad death of the sound system, so I did it unmiked (thanks to James and Juliet for all their help). Then to dinner with lots of really nice Leeds booksellers.

I lost weight on the US tour. This one, however, has such luxuries as breakfast, lunch and dinner built in, so I'm sure I'll gain it all back, and more. (sigh.)

Labels: American Gods Blog, leeds, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 120

Sorry about the FAQ thing not happening yet... it should be up soon, and once it is I'll start answering questions. Honest.

In the meantime, I'm also answering questions (or, sometimes, failing to, which I was always assured was an author's perogative) about American Gods over at readerville and at the well.

Labels: American Gods Blog, The Well

American Gods Blog, Post 119

There seemed to be a certain amount of confusion about what was actually happening at the Vancouver signing/reading so I investigated. Felicia Quon (this column's Canadian correspondent) reports:

This is from the organizer at the Virgin event in Vancouver...

The wristband guarantees that you get into the reading/q&a and that you get
to have your book signed. Wristbanded folk get in first as well. There will
be a separate lineup for those without wristbands.

So it looks like a book guarantees you a place at the reading, but that you can still get into the signing with or without one.

Labels: American Gods Blog, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 118

So the UK tour is now well underway and right now I’m happy as a sandboy (what is a sandboy? Why are they happy?) as it’s proving to be almost a holiday after the US tour.

The US tour was 90% signing, with a very few interviews.

These UK signings are – so far – proving easy: enough people at each signing to justify the signing – 60 or so at lunchtime, 150 in the evening (Manchester will be bigger). And the rest of the time is being spent doing interviews: over breakfast, over tea, in railway stations and hotel lobbies.

The difference between the US and the UK? Hmm... well, more of the copies of GOOD OMENS have been pre-signed by Terry Pratchett, so I get to do more punch lines than set up lines. More men than women – in the US it was a solid 50/50. And the lines are – I am happy to say – shorter.

This morning’s breakfast interview was with a journalist from the Scotsman – who first interviewed me when he was a young fan and I was a young comics writer over a decade ago. I got to grumble to him about the Scotsman’s attempts over the years to put together an article showing I thought that J.K.Rowling nicked Harry Potter from Tim Hunter. According to Joe from Waterstones they’ve run such an article on more than one occasion –“I think you were on the front page on a slow news day” he said. (The local METRO newspaper had an article about it when I arrived – although this was more presented as a tragedy I had survived – plucky young writer’s prize creation could have been huge but then J.K. Rowling stole his thunder sort of thing. It sort of ignored that Tim is owned lock stock and barrel by Warner bros, and that if anything I think Harry Potter has actually encouraged them to make the Books of Magic movie. But then, nobody asked me.)

Odd hotel last night – the Point Hotel in Edinburgh. It looks and feels like an elegant modernist five star sort of hotel – vast white rooms, double Jacuzzi style baths and so on – but then you start noticing that the lifts only work sporadically, the only soap in the bathroom is an empty wall-unit in the shower, that the lobby staff sent away a Taxi sent by the BBC to take Lucy Ramsey and me to Radio Scotland (the Brian Morton show. Good radio by someone literate.) because we weren’t waiting for it in the lobby, rather than calling the rooms or leaning into the bar where I was being interviewed by Scottish Book Collector (“Are you for people who collect Scottish books, or for Scots who collect books of any kind?” “Er, both really.”) and telling me the taxi was there. (The mad dash to make it to the radio station in time for the interview was the kind of thing of which heroic ballads are made.)

Which reminds me – upcoming radio appearances for people who live locally, or who like seeing whether you can find various stations on the internet:

Weds 11th July – 4.30ish GMT –
11.00pm – Andy Peebles, BBC Radio North

Thurs 12 July – 9*30pm - The Late Show BBC Radio midlands

Friday 13 July 10.00pm Gideon Coe, BBC London Live

Sunday 15th 4.00pm – Giles Brandreth, LBC

...

Saw the Entertainment Weekly photo. Not a bad picture at all, but the hair-and-make-up guy had managed to transform my normal tangle of barely kempt hair into something I don’t think I’ve ever seen on top of my head.

...

Now in Leeds in a really lovely hotel.

As far as I can establish, the UK hardback selling at 10.00 pounds (6.00 right now through Amazon.co.uk) is only for a limited time. So if you’re planning on waiting to get one, as a gift or whatever, you may want to get it now and put it away, as they’ll be climbing back to ₤17.99 soon enough. (This information, like all other information posted here about the UK edition, is liable to be utterly wrong. On the other hand, it turned out there were only a handful of trade paperbacks on sale in the UK, all through Borders in London -- they think -- and only for a couple of days.)

Right -- the phone rang, interviewer in the lobby. got to go.

Labels: American Gods Blog, author photos, Edinburgh, leeds, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 117

Wrote a blogger post today in the library of this hotel, but the computer crashed utterly and terminally just as I finished. And all the sensible things I said at the time have been entirely forgotten.

(Jetlagged author tries to remember things he said, but he can only remember mentioning that the lyric version of New Age on Tori’s “Strange Little Girls” CD is not as reported the one from the Velvet Underground's LOADED but actually the version from the Live 1969 LP, and I can only remember that because it’s playing in the background as I type this.)

I think I warned people that on some of these stops the bookshop is selling tickets to the reading – you get the cost of the ticket back from the price of the book if you buy one, although you shouldn’t need a book to get into the line. Some stores do the tickets for the reading but let anyone into the signing line, whether you have a ticket or not. And most of them won’t do any of that stuff either way and you’ll just get to the bookshop, be read to or not depending mostly on whether it’s a lunch or evening signing, and shuffle along a line that will move much too slowly until everyone’s done.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Tori Amos, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 116

So, I was definitely wrong about the whole hardback/trade paperback thing on American Gods, as people turned up at the signing at Forbidden Planet today with copies of American Gods in trade paperback they'd bought at Borders. Lucy Ramsey couldn't explain it and went off to investigate (on a saturday afternoon, bless her).

Not sure why Borders would be selling 10 pound paperbacks when everyone else is selling 10 pound hardbacks -- and slightly concerned that, as the ISBN is different, any copies sold through Borders won't show up on any bestseller lists, which would be a pity.

Several people came -- for the signing at Forbidden Planet -- from France, Spain, Sweden and Finland (there were many Brazilians and New Zealanders there too, and many other French, Dutch, Spanish etc people there, but none of them had come specially). I felt faintly guilty for not doing something more exciting than just signing books, since they'd come such a long way...

(A strange sweet moment that sat in the middle of a 4 hour signing like a haiku, as a young lady tentatively put out one hand to touch my hand while I signed, I think just to reassure herself that I was real.)

The Daily Telegraph had a photographer at the signing. People kept asking him to take photos of them with their cameras, so he'd put down his massive telephoto thing and use people's little disposables to snap us together. It made me smile.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Best Of, photos, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 115

Entertainment Weekly reviews's out! And I hear the House on the Rock photo is good.

Not impressed by the review though -- shallow reading, and the reviewer seemed to have missed a number of things (eg. Messrs Stone, Wood, Town et al aren't gods of any kind -- that's made about as clear in the text as anything can be) and he manages not only to give away the end but to demonstrate that he hasn't understood it either. Lots of nice quotes of the kind one can stick on a dust-jacket, and the ranking on Amazon's soared since it came out, which means it's done its job of telling people the book's out there.

GRADE: C-

Labels: American Gods Blog, book reviews

American Gods Blog, Post 114

And incidentally, there's a fun interview up at http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/jul01/gaiman2.htm

Labels: American Gods Blog, interviews

American Gods Blog, Post 113

Finally understood the whole Uk hardback-paperback thing.

1) There's a UK hardback. It costs 17.99, but is currently discounted to ten pounds with a money back guarantee.

2) There's a trade paperback. it costs ten pounds but is only for australia and New Zealand.

There.

Labels: American Gods Blog

American Gods Blog, Post 112

Interviews are funny things. Yesterday morning, in the hotel library, waiting for my room to be ready, I listened to the singer from the Cardigans, Nina, being interviewed at the chair next to mine. She was a nice Swedish lady. Some people wanted to talk about the music, and she did okay on those interviews.

Some were less prepared.

Like the Australian celebrity journalist with his appalling list of questions.

"So -- what DON'T your fans know about you?"

“Well, my private life. But it is private.”

“Come on love. Give us something. A secret. Something nobody knows. Come on.”

"...Er... I have a wart between my toes...?"

"Can't you get it frozen off?"

"Well, nobody can see it. It's between my toes."

"Do you have to wear larger shoes then?"

"No." (Embarrassed pause.) “I wear pointy shoes.”

“That wasn’t much of a secret really, was it.” The lady from the Cardigans shrugged apologetically. The reporter looked down at his list of questions... “So what’s the craziest thing a fan’s ever done?”

“They are very nice.”

“Crazy. Come on, one of your fans must be a little bit crazy...”

And so on, and on, and on.

At least most of my interviewers know who I am. (Except for the radio interviewer today. But then, it’s always a pleasant surprise when radio interviewers have read anything. I knew one who admitted to putting slips of paper into a book when the author was coming to the interview – three slips, one near the beginning, one in the middle, one near the end. It made it look as if he’d not only read the book, but he’d found important things he wanted to talk about. I doubt a single author was fooled.)

Today was interviews, launch party, dinner, and back to hotel by 12:30 am.... tomorrow, a signing at Forbidden Planet in Oxford Street. Starts at 1:00pm...

The interviews (and the interviewers) were good. Not a warty-toe question in the lot of them. Very different. My favourite was Nick Hasted who interviewed me for UNCUT, in something that felt a lot less like an interview and more like part of a conversation Nick and I have been having, an hour or so at a time every 2 years, for 6 or 7 years.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Best Of, interviews, UNCUT

American Gods Blog, Post 111

Just did the oddest radio show; suddenly found myself having to have opinions about Pyramid Selling, Legalizing Heroin, Foxhunting, Bullfighting and Right vs left wing libertarianism. Occasional nods to me being an author were made, by the host, after checking his press release -- "Neil, it says here you wrote Good Omens, with Terry Pratchett, a novel about the end of the world. Now if the world really were ending do we think that we'd start looting, or just be peaceful" etc. V. odd...

Ate more conveyor belt sushi for lunch, but I think that's it for me and conveyor belt sushi. (But surely, you must be sick of sushi by now? chorus the multitudes who have been reading this blogger. Er, no, not yet, says author.)

Labels: American Gods Blog, radio, sushi

American Gods Blog, Post 110

So I am here in my hotel.

Very very tired -- got off plane at gatwick 8:30 am, met by Lucy Ramsey (Headline publicist), train to London, taxi to hotel, lunch with publisher, interview with Daily Telegraph, Interview and photosession with SFX magazine (both interviewers forgiving of long pauses. Hope photographer equally as forgiving of dissolute and unkempt and unshaven and (because room not ready) unshowered sort of look.

Then in taxi to British Fantasy Society open night. I signed some books and gave a short talk on the book and talked so more people and then Lucy rounded me up, took me back to the hotel (around 9:40pm), I went to conveyor belt sushi bar in hotel and ate sushi, then came down to hotel library and sent this, and now I'm on my way to bed...

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the interview I sat and listened to here in the hotel library waiting for the room to be ready. Tomorrow starts very soon...

....

Julie Washington's piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer is now online....

Also getting a number of complaints from people about neilgaiman.com crashing their browsers. Suggest you e-mail the details to the authors on the webpeople (their details are on the bottom right of the front page). Of course, if it's crashing your browsers you won't be able to read that or, I imagine, read this.

And on that note I shall go to bed. Goodnight.

Labels: American Gods Blog, sushi, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 109

A Very happy 4th of July to all our readers.

And while my family bustles about setting up the barbecue etc, I'm just about to fly to the UK for round two.

Warren James from the Hour 25 radio show e-mailed to tell me the interview he did with me is online at
www.hour25online.com . (link now fixed.)

See you in England...

Labels: American Gods Blog, interviews