One Ordinary Day With Chris Riddell Doodles

I'm in a departure lounge, right now. First an automated message called from Delta to tell me my plane would take off on time and arrive an hour and a half late. Then it called back to tell me we were leaving an hour and a half late too, which made a little more sense.

 People have written and asked why I'm not posting about walking with my dog in the woods, and it's mostly because I haven't walked with my dog in the woods since the start of tour season, except for a couple of days in early August. I wish I had.

I borrowed Glen, next-door's working sheepdog, to go for walks with when I was in Scotland, though. He wasn't very good at going for walks. He was very aware that he ought to be working, and would shoot off home to move sheep around the moment I took I my attention off him.

I was meant to be writing when I was in Scotland. Mostly, I was recovering from the tour -- from the whole thing, from early June on. Recharging my batteries by walking and cooking things on the Aga and juicing and not really writing at all. And then I recharged and started writing once again.

2011, Seattle, "Makin' Whoopie".

So, it's been a wonderful, crazed few weeks. FORTUNATELY THE MILK came out in the US and the UK, and got some wonderful reviews (including this one, from Boing Boing), and went onto the Bestseller Lists on both sides of the Atlantic. I finished, yesterday morning, writing a Sekrit Thing that took me a month longer than I'd expected it to. I'll tell you all about it in another month, by which time it will be less sekrit.

Chris Riddell, illustrator of FORTUNATELY THE MILK in the UK has asked me to tell the world that he will be doing a signing for his wonderful Goth Girl book (but he will also sign your Fortunately The Milk!) in Brighton on the 12th of October (at 4 pm at the North St Branch of Waterstones, to be precise). Chris also sends me amazing doodles of his touring life. (Can I put some of them on my blog? I asked him. Of course, he said, they are my therapy.)

...

Important things you should know:

1) BOSTON AREA: There are still tickets for the Becca Tribute night in Boston on Monday. The Dresden Dolls reunion! Me reading New Stuff I've Not Ever Read To Paying Audiences Before! Jason Webley nips out of retirement! Emilyn Brodsky is herself! A Cast of Thousands well hundreds well lots of amazing people... It's going to be wonderful. Get your tickets now at https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=a4e51df651ed159d57c8ee040f26e44d

2) NEW YORK AREA: The Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer at the Town Hall in New York on Saturday the 23rd of November sold out very quickly, with a lot of disappointed people, so we added another night: Friday the 22nd of November. Now you can see us AND catch the 50th Anniversary Episode of Doctor Who too. (It's an all ages event but there is likely to be swearing or songs and stories not meant for children.)  You can get tickets at this ticketmaster link.)

3) EVERYWHERE IN THE WHOLE WORLD AREA: The Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer triple CD, recorded from the tour of 2011 due to the loveliness of Kickstarter supporters, will finally be released to the general public on November the 19th.   It's a different edition to the one that 3500 Kickstarter backers got. You can also order it as a double LP.

It's up for preorders now. 

And there is also stuff! you can get with the pre-order, with Cynthia Von Buhler's amazing paper cut-out of Amanda and me on it, said stuff including a teapot, a tea towel, a notebook and mugs (There is a theme here.) All of it should be delivered well in time for the holidays.

To preorder it, just go to http://amandapalmer.net

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And lastly, go and look at the TerraMar Project's website, if you haven't:  http://theterramarproject.org

The seas are our heritage, and we need to preserve and conserve them, for our children, for our planet, and for ourselves.

Labels: An Evening With Neil And Amanda., chris Riddell, dogless, stuff, teapots

IMPORTANT: Tickets and shows and life and death...

The photos above are of Amanda and her friend -- and then, pretty soon,  our friend -- Becca Rosenthal. (It was Becca who told Amanda that she ought to marry me, the night before I proposed and we got engaged.) Becca was smart and funny, an excellent writer, and had amazing taste in music and art. She acted in my film STATUESQUE (that's the costume fitting she's getting, in the bottom photo).

She wanted to be a librarian.

She was overjoyed when she got hired by her local library. One of her last emails to me said when can i hope to see you around boston again? i would like very much to give you a great big hug. and it will hopefully be the hug of a Real Librarian.

I never got the hug. She died, suddenly, shortly before I moved to Cambridge. 

And now, with the blessing of her parents, we're raising money for a fund, in Becca's name, at Smith College.

To honor Becca’s memory, and to redirect extreme grief into something positive and productive, Amanda, Neil and other friends of Becca’s are spearheading this benefit for this fund in Becca’s name. It is for the benefit of students working in the Archives or the Rare Book Room, where Becca spent so much of her time being the hipster librarian they all knew she would one day actually become (and get paid to do). Annual income from this fund shall be used to provide internships for students enrolled in library special collections concentrations (including but not exclusive to the Archives and Book Studies concentrations) and/or to provide general internship and research funds for student work in special collections.

And by we, I mean, Amanda, me, Brian Viglione, Jason Webley, Emilyn Brodsky, and more of us. Becca's friends.  We're doing an evening of stuff. I'll read stories, show Statuesque, Amanda and Brian will make music, all sorts of wonderful  things will happen.  It's a one night only show, inspired by a librarian who isn't with us any more.

“A Tribute to Rebecca Rosenthal: A Night of Music, Art & Remembering, presented by Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, Brian Viglione and other friends of Becca’s” will take place at the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, for one show only on Monday evening, October 7th at 7:00PM. Reserved seat tickets are $25.00 (plus $1.00 facility fee) with a limited number of Gold Circle seats available at $100.00 (plus $1.00 facility fee) that include an after-show meet and greet plus an original, limited edition art poster signed by the participating performers. All proceeds are to benefit the Rebecca Samay Rosenthal ’07 Memorial Special Collections Fund at Smith College.

If you are going to be in the Boston area on October the 7th, you should come. The details are at http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bc31868377c214862493bdd83&id=6cfd53754b. The tickets go onsale at https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=a4e51df651ed159d57c8ee040f26e44d at 10:00 am Eastern US time this Saturday.

(If you cannot be there, but you would like to donate to the Becca fund, you can find all the information you need here: https://sites.google.com/site/beccascholarship2/home/how-to-donate)


...

This blog feels like it's about tickets and shows. So...

My friends Michael McQuilken and Adina Verson are in their excellently reviewed show at the Amsterdam Fringe, Machine Makes Man. If you're in Amsterdam, go and see it. Here's the link: http://www.amsterdamfringefestival.nl/fringe/programma-2013/fringe-2013/best-of-fringe/machine-makes-man.aspx

Jethro Compton brings the Bunker Trilogy: Morgana and Agamemnon from Edinburgh to London for a month. It was the only drama I was gutted about missing when I was in Edinburgh. It's now in London, and I'm going to do my best to see it before I return to the US. If you are London you should do likewise. Southwark Playhouse: http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/the-little/the-bunker-morgana-and-agamemnon/ for info.

Saturday the 14th of September, if you are in the London area, you should come and see me as the Voice of the Book, along with the all star amazing original radio cast (AND MITCH BENN AS ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX) and extra special guest star Miss Polly Adams as the Dish of the Day. It's the opening night of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Live tour, and we would love to see you there. (The tour will have lots of other Voice of the Books, but none of them will be me.) Stalls and dress circle and most of the upper circle are already sold out. https://uk.patronbase.com/_Hackney/Sections/Choose?prod_id=HHG&perf_id=1

October 7th it's the Becca Event above, in Boston.

October 15th, it's the FORTUNATELY, THE MILK live reading at Westminster Central Hall. It sold out 2,000 tickets in a couple of days.  They just released a final 100 tickets -- hurry if you want them:  http://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/neil-gaiman-and-special-guests-fortunately-the-milk

November 23rd in the Town Hall, NYC, it's the first NYC Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, to celebrate the release of the CD and LP of the original Evening With Neil and Amanda West Coast tour. Tickets are almost gone.  It's the 50th Anniversary of Dr Who too, and I'm sorry about that. It will be alluded to. Without spoilers.

There.

The sun finally came out here yesterday, after 5 days of mist. This is from the last day of the mist:

Labels: absent friends, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., Becca Darling, Mist, Shows, tickets

An Evening With in Edinburgh. Also, falling asleep.

My daughter Maddy and Amanda and I are visiting Amanda's parents on the Cape for July the 4th. There will, I am assured, be fireworks later.

I have been reading Amanda the new book (ie it may still be called Lettie Hempstock's Ocean) in bed for a while now, at a few pages a night. Normally I read it until she falls asleep. Last night I started falling asleep while reading - having microdreams between words or paragraphs - so I finished reading her chapter 14 this morning.

I'm enjoying it. I hope she is. I learn so much about the words, reading them aloud, and I spot places where what I meant to write and what I actually wrote were different.

Tickets are now onsale for the AN EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN AND AMANDA PALMER we're doing in Edinburgh on August 12th. It'll be the same sort of thing we did on the West Coast tour. She'll play piano and ukulele, I'll read poems and stories (but not long ones). We'll answer questions. Odd things will happen. We took the Queen's Hall for the evening, so it didn't have to fit into the Fringe rules of only being an hour long.

You can get tickets (and choose seats) here. Don't be put off by the way the page doesn't really have me in it. They didn't use the right artwork or text. They will. http://www.thequeenshall.net/whats-on/shows/Amanda%20Palmer%20Neil%20Gaiman%202012

(This is the only show we'll do together this year. Amanda's other gigs should all be with her band.)

Labels: An Evening With Neil And Amanda.

If this is thursday then where on earth did the last week go?

A blog post written this morning, one-fingered, on Amanda's iPad, while she slept, was eaten by the iPad or the ether.

Damn.
Here's my AMAZING LA assistant Cat's blog about World Fantasy Con and what happened while I was in LA. http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/11/world-fantasy-con-late-late-show-neil.html
I'm backstage right now at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco.

Let's see..

First of all, a thousand thanks to everyone who gave anyone else a scary book, or encouraged other people to, for All Hallow's Read. Thank you!

Craig Ferguson and the Late Late Show was fun. Amanda was meant to record her bit at 4:20, my section around 5 ish, but a newly added dance number at the opening of the show meant we didn't leave until about 6:30pm... and the rest of the evening squirmed and coped as best it could...

My friend Mark Evanier served as haggis mule for the Late Late Show, and he writes entertainingly and accurately about the experience and the view from backstage at http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2011_10_31.html#021526

Left to right: Moby, Amanda Palmer, Stephin Merritt. Pay no attention to that toy pianist at the back.

The Haggis came from Macsweens via scottishfoodoverseas.com, ace haggis importers. My assistant Lorraine did all the hard work, at one point enlisting both Mark Evanier and Wil Wheaton in her secret haggis-importing clan, and sending around emails that said things like:


Hello all,

First of all, THANK YOU for be willing to accept our Haggis. And tend it. And keep it safe. True friends, indeed...

Sadly, Mark didn't copy me when he replied to Neil that he was a couple of blocks away, and Neil was in the cities at the time taping NPR and by the time I got Mark's note it was too late, the Haggis Shop is closed, the order set, and One Little Haggis is on its way from Scotland for Friday Delivery to Mr Wheaton.

If it is easier for all concerned, perhaps, Mark might acquire the Haggis from Wil, and deliver it Monday. If Wil would like to keep the Haggis and make the journey himself, well, that's just fine too. Mostly, whatever it easiest, I do not want our Haggis to disrupt lives and wreak havoc.

Again, my thanks to you,

Lorraine

Which I quote in full because I love the haggisy emails that were sent around. (Mark Evanier took delivery of the haggis in the end.)

Here's the song... 

And here's the interview...

Right. So the Wilshire Ebell Hallowe'en gig was wonderful, but chaos. We got to the theatre late, late from the Late Late Show, and the rehearsing time never happened, the costume contest and the us chatting took up much more time than we had thought, and we had to be offstage at exactly 10:30 or the tour would turn into a pumpkin, so the set list wound up becoming a peculiarly moveable feast... and it was wonderful. Nothing quite went as planned, but it felt like everyone, including us, was having the kind of evening that only ever happens once.

The scary rabbit twins in fezzes won the costume competition, with Roborina coming in second and Hester Prynne at the far left not winning, although her glowing A was often the only thing in the audience visible from the stage, so I always knew where she was. (Margaret Cho introduced us and helped with the costume competition. She is a very good thing.)


Amanda and I drove up the coast. We spent the night at the Madonna Inn (I am still trying to decide if it's a real American Gods place or not. I think probably it is) and then the next morning drove to San Francisco.

(It's now tomorrow, after the Brava show. Time to type has been tight.)

The Brava show was much tighter than the LA show. I read different things (I plan to read different things every night). We didn't have strict on-stage curfew, which meant that things could run a little long and no-one worried. The Jane Austen Argument debuted a new single, Holes, with lyrics by me and art by Mark Buckingham. (You can listen to it here.)

Amanda played me "Walk on the Wild Side" as an early birthday present, assisted by the Jane Austen Argument and Lance Horne.

And finally, for now (only because I have to stop writing this blog and sleep, despite all the things I meant to write about here) Absolute Sandman Volume 5, containing Endless Nights and Dream Hunters and more, comes out tomorrow. You can preorder it discounted at Amazon,  You can preorder it from Indiebound. (You can preorder it from Barnes and Noble, but they don't get a link until they put Sandman graphic novels back on the shelves of their shops.)

Or you can just go and buy a copy from your local comic shop.

Barnes and Noble have done something very wonderful recently, though. Last year, they recorded me reading the opening passage to James Thurber's book "The Thirteen Clocks", which is one of my favourite books. And now they've animated it. Here's a link to the Barnes and Noble blog where you can watch it.

Right. Sleep.

Labels: amanda palmer, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., Craig Ferguson, haggis smuggling, halloween traditions, Stephin Merritt, The Thirteen Clocks

All Hallows Read News, and stuff.

I'm way behind in blogging. Partly because I started playing with Tumblr (http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/), which is fun because it's novel and shiny, and because it makes a few things that are hard to do in Blogger really easy. Partly because I was off the map for a bit, doing a number of things, including spending time with Amanda at her sister's in Santa Fe, where I got to be an Uncle to her nephew Ronan who started out calling me Uncle Neil and then switched to Neilgaiman, and when last seen was resisting all Amanda's efforts to persuade him to call me Uncle Neilgaiman.

Yesterday I went to see the Chippewa Valley Roller Girls play. (They played Harbor City, in Duluth, and were honorably beaten.) My assistant Lorraine is now skating with them as Quiche Me Deadly, although yesterday she was not skating, instead she organised... well, as far as I could tell, she seemed to be organising everything. Lojo Russo played the intermission, for example. After the game, Lorraine took me over to her teammates and introduced me to them.

Photo by Ctein.

Eventually she persuaded them to give me back.

...

Right.

I'm at home, wrapping things up, and preparing for the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, and then the Evening With Neil and Amanda tour West Coast Tour that follows it.

On October the 31st, Amanda will be a musical guest (she will be forming a small and magical supergroup for the occasion), and I will be in the guest's chair talking with, Craig Ferguson. I had hopes of getting him a MacSween's vegetarian haggis. Zooey Deschanel will be the other guest. It will be fun.

And then we will careen from the Late Late Show studios over to the Wilshire Ebell for the Soundcheck and then the first of the "Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer" shows.

(There are still tickets available for the LA show as I type this - perhaps because it's on Hallowe'en, and people often have things to do on Hallowe'en. The two San Francisco shows, Portland and Vancouver sold out immediately. There are a few tickets left for Seattle on November the 9th.)

Which reminds me...

A year ago, on a plane, it occurred to me that there should be a scary book-giving part of Hallow'en, and I wrote this, here on the blog:

I was on a flight home last night, and I thought,

You know, there aren't enough traditions that involve giving books.

There's World Book Day, which grew out of Don Quixote Day/Cervantes Birthday/St George's Day in Spain, where roses and books are given, but really, we need some more instant traditions that involve the giving of books, the kind that spread all over the world.

And then I thought,

Hallowe'en's next weekend...

So:

I propose that, on Hallowe'en or during the week of Hallowe'en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they'll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they'll enjoy.

I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands -- new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe'en. Make their flesh creep...

Give a scary book.

If you don't know what kinds of books there are, or what would be appropriate for the person you're giving a book to, talk to a bookseller. They love to help, most of them. (The ones that don't tend not to be booksellers for long.) Talk to librarians. (Do not plan to give away their books though, unless they are having a library sale.)

That's it. That's my idea.

Scary book. Hallowe'en.

Who's with me?


Neil

(And for those of you who protest that, honestly, you need no excuse to give books as gifts, and you do it all the time, and it comes to you as naturally as breathing -- well, that's wonderful, and I'm glad. Think of this as your chance to spread books to people to whom you might not normally give books, or to receive books you might otherwise never read.)

And, with help from the ever-amenable Web Goblin, Dan Guy, and the former Web Elf, Olga Nunes, we made the All Hallows Read website at http://www.allhallowsread.com/. (The festival was named on Twitter.)

This year, lots of people have taken the severed head and started to run with it.

Tor.com, for example, has a great list of suggested books. Here's a great piece on the Huffington Post website, with an excellent video.

A few months ago I called Elise Howard at Harper Children's, who has been my editor there for the last decade, and spoke to her about it. She loved the idea of getting involved. She offered to print a poster, for the winning entry in an All Hallow's Read poster contest...

Artists: Enter the All Hallow’s Read poster contest, and your winning design might become the official All Hallow’s Read poster in 2012.

Your original submission should spread the word about All Hallow’s Read and encourage participation in the program. The winning poster design will be announced and featured on AllHallowsRead.com and will become a limited-edition poster to be printed and distributed to participating booksellers for All Hallow’s Read in 2012 (printing and distribution sponsored by HarperCollinsPublishers).

I thought that the poster idea was a wonderful one, and was thrilled that they were going to sponsor that when I got another message from Elise. This time with something even more fun that they were going to do for people in New York. On Tuesday...

Hi, Neil.

We’ve got everybody on board here at Harper for All Hallow’s Read and our big book drop on 10/25. In addition to encouraging readers to participate in the AHR book drop and retweeting their efforts and pictures, we’re going to drop sixty Harper titles for readers of various ages at locations around New York City. Lucky readers will find copies of The Graveyard Book and Coraline, Dark Eden by Patrick Carmen, Possess by Rachel McNeil, Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz, and Vampire Boy’s Good Night by Lisa Brown.

We’re going to create a downloadable sticker for All Hallow’s Read book drop participants to print and use, so that book finders can take up the mission, too.

Throughout the day, we’ll call out the AHR book-drop project on our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Look for your favorite Harper staffers in the #AllHallowsRead discussion on 10/25!

Elise

In addition to this book drop project, they've made some fine scary book recommendations (you can read them at http://www.allhallowsread.com/book-recommendations/ - and I did a list myself, with the help of about 1800 suggestions from Facebook, right now as a PDF on that page.

Of course, you do not need to be a publisher to do a book drop, and we now have a page on the All Hallows Read site with a Book Drop Sticker that you can print out and put in a book, which lets people know that the book is there to be taken and read.

And All Hallows Read even has its own forum, where people can exchange ideas, tips and useful ways to give scary books.

...

It feel like the end of a decade, too. Ten years ago I was an adult author who was going to publish a book called Coraline, my first children's book from a major publisher. I had two editors, Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury in the UK and Elise Howard at Harper Children's in the US. They were two of the smartest editors anyone could have. I felt comfortable with them, and safe with them, and they advised but never ordered, they supported me as an author, they were patient when they had every right to ask where the book I was meant to be writing was. One on each side of the Atlantic.

And in a matter of weeks, both of them have gone - each of them has her own imprint. Sarah is publishing Bonnier's children's imprint, Hot Key Books, in the UK, and Elise will be creating a children's line for Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

I wanted to wave them goodbye here, and to say thank you for everything they did. Their authors will be very lucky to have them, and I'll miss them.

...

Hi Neil,

This is too long to Tweet, so I was wondering, are you aware of Mark Oshiro's "Mark Reads" project and the fact he's currently doing (almost finished) American Gods?

"Mark Reads" started as "Mark Reads Twilight" and was done as a joke, but when he started blogging Harry Potter in the same vein, he realised he actually liked the series and stopped making fun of it - and he now does books that he actually hopes to enjoy and think seriously about - he does chapter by chapter reviews/reactions and tries to read completely spoiler free. The blog has had literally millions of hits and hundreds of thousands of followers.

I know you can't mention everyone who ever does a reading project of one of your books and that you must have heard everything there is to hear, but the real reason I'm writing to you about him today, though, is because of something in particular he said in today's review (chapter 18)

"that’s half the charm of American Gods. This might technically be a fantasy novel, but it rarely feels fantastic. It feels like the very best history lesson I could ask for, or perhaps a fireside story told with sincerity and heart, or maybe even a tale handed down over the centuries. It’s comforting even if it is disturbing at times, and I found myself feeling like this was all being shared with me out of respect for me as a person. It’s not often that I feel that way about a book; it’s like Gaiman is a close friend who trusts you, so he hands you this as a gesture that he thinks you’re an all right person, that he feels safe in saying that you deserve this."

I just thought that was a nice sentiment about you, and that you should be aware of it.

http://www.markreads.net

best always,

Natalie Fisher

I went over to Mark Reads and I was really impressed. It was fun, as an author, watching a reader paying attention and writing about his reactions, all the way through. There were some really smart people in the comments, too. (You can follow along as Mark reads American Gods at http://markreads.net/reviews/category/american-gods/)

...

And finally, two things: Lemony Snicket writing about money and about cake at Occupy Writers, and Elvis Costello sings one of my favourite songs from his first album, My Aim Is True, but with monsters instead of angels, and a two instead of a shoe.

Labels: All Hallow's Read, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., roller derby, The Angels No Longer Want to Wear My Red Shoes

Early Warning

I was writing in the front room, which contains a piano, when my wife put her head around the door and told me I had to write somewhere else as she needed to practice the piano. So I crept away.

She is playing Evelyn Evelyn music, in preparation for the week of Evelyn Evelyn at the Fringe. (They'll be playing at the Assembly George Square from the 17th to the 21st.) And I am blogging before I get back to work.

...

This came in this morning on the FAQ line:

I was wondering if you will be coming to North West anytime soon for any reason that would allow fans to meet you. More specifically the Portland/Vancouver area. I just recently started reading your stuff and absolutely love it.

And I thought, funny you should ask that...

I'm putting this up as an early warning, as a "Keep the Date Free" sort of a thing.

Photo from http://audramariedewittphotography.tumblr.com/

I'm Guest of Honour at World Fantasy Con in San Diego this year, just before Hallowe'en. I'm also going to be, with Amanda, in Seattle on November the 11th, for our friend Jason Webley's huge party-event-spectacular.

Amanda and I started discussing ways to get from San Diego to Seattle, and we thought it might be fun to drive, but that the journey would go by too quickly, and then one or other of us suggested the idea of having a reason to stop along the way, and I was just about to do the American Gods tour and was receiving lots of messages from people who were grumpy that the talks had all sold out and loved the idea of getting out and reading to people...

And we thought, well, we could do "An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer" (or vice versa) and stop off in smaller, nicer theatres, and just fill an evening with story-readings and with songs and with poem-readings and such. I hope that Amanda will do the songs, although I want her to read or help read a few things and she has asked if I would sing "The Problem With Saints"... We'll probably answer questions together. Amanda thinks we should write a new song during the performance in each location. I think that would either be fun or insane (I waver).

It should be a very unusual evening. I'm not sure yet whether we'll rehearse and plan and organise a show together, or whether we'll each take half of a show and change it around each night. Or, more likely, some sort of mixture of both. We have time to decide, plan and create it either way.

(The hardest thing for me to decide is whether to try and keep the things I read all on the shorter side, or whether I should read some half-hour long short stories.)

I do not know whether there will be a signing afterwards of anything - it may depend mostly on the venues and when they need to close their doors by. But we are planning to have tour tee shirts, a tour poster, and possibly even a signed limited edition print or two. Whatever we can fit into the back of a car.

(Yes, we know where we are going to be, theatre by theatre. No, we are not announcing that bit until the tickets go on-sale.)

Keep your eyes open here on the blog for the actual venue/tickets announcements. (I'm afraid tickets will probably sell out very fast in some of these theatres.)

So. The dates. I've cut and pasted (and slightly modified) this bit from Amanda's blog:

Oct 28&29 i have SOLO shows in san diego and LA....then neil & i join forces for:

Oct 31st - Halloween Night in Los Angeles, CA

Nov 3rd - BAY AREA, CA

Nov 4th - Sacramento, CA

Nov 7th - Portland, OR

Nov 8th - Seattle, WA

Nov 9th - Vancouver, BC, Canada!

the 10th is Neil's birthday and we'll probably spent it hanging out in seattle, helping Jason Webley make papier mache coffee percolators or something equally absurd for his big seattle show on the 11th.

Will we ever do this show again, or do it anywhere else? I have no idea. It depends mostly on how much we enjoy it, I suspect. And if we do enjoy it, then we might try it the next time we decide to break up a long drive, or the next time we go somewhere unusual together.

It's quite possible we won't enjoy it. Or that Amanda will be off album-making and touring for the album for most of the next two years, while I'll be novel-writing and making some other stuff, so this may be the only one of these there is.

And that's all.

Labels: An Evening With Neil And Amanda., Evelyn Evelyn, World Fantasy Con

A Late Night July the Third Post that took a while to finish

I walked the dogs just now. I could smell a heavy wild-animal-smell in the dark woods, probably a bear, at a guess. It smelled like it did a few years ago when we had a bear hanging around.

I wasn't worried: bears don't like dogs, and I don't think the dogs would go after the bear. But it was a strange moment.

There are more fireflies this year than I've ever seen here. If you walk down by the beehives at night it looks like a distant city at night, as the fireflies fill the trees and bushes and drift from one to another.

So, I'm home. Tour done, survived, and mostly enjoyed.

The worst moment was in Seattle. I was staying at the W Hotel. I accidentally sent my hotel phone number and room out into the world, via Twitter. I had meant to send them to Amanda, as the cell service wasn't great. The worst moment wasn't that bad for me (I just ignored the phone calls coming in as I talked to Amanda) but I felt really sorry for the hotel switchboard when I called in to explain what had happened. They whisked me to another room, and changed my name, which meant that when the Author Escort turned up to ask for my room and walk me up to the Seattle Town hall she was informed by the Front Desk that they had no-one of my name staying there.

I think she was troubled by this, having dropped me off at that same hotel an hour earlier from signing about 2000 books. (Probably University Book Store in Seattle still has some signed books.)

So that was the worst moment. Reassuring an author escort who thought she had wandered into the Twilight Zone.

Let's see.

So I was about to do the WITS show in St Paul last time I posted.

WITS was wonderful. I sang "The Problem With Saints" and a verse of "Maxwell's Silver Hammer". I read a poem and a bit of a book. I had fun with Josh Ritter, with Johns Munson and Moe, with Guest Hecklers Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett.

(Josh Ritter has just written a novel, by the way. It's really good.)

This is a moment from WITS with our second phone guest, MYTHBUSTER Mr Adam Savage. (Our first guest was Wil Wheaton.) He phoned in. I asked him to confirm an anecdote...



And here Josh Ritter and I are given a game to us to play by evil host John Moe. It's What Happened Next To People In Songs? I love Josh's tale of what happened to Elvis Costello's Alison...



From there I went to Seattle. I attended the Locus Awards Banquet, and was delighted to learn that I had won both the Locus Award for Best Short Story, for "The Thing About Cassandra" (this was awkward, as I had forgotten that it was on the ballot, and was completely taken aback, failed to thank the editors who waited for it and bought it and just babbled) but also the Locus Award for Best Novelette for "The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains" (I'd got it together by that point and thanked EVERYONE). Here are all the award winners... http://www.locusmag.com/News/2011/06/locus-awards-2011-winners/

I brought Tim Minchin, whose work I really like, and who, it turns out, I really like as a person too. He collected Shaun Tan's Locus Award for Best Artist (Tim did the narration for Shaun's Oscar winning short film, "The Lost Thing").

The first time I was at the Locus Awards, (it was 2006, you can read about it here at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/06/wild-ginger-and-jimi-hendrix.html and that time it was my short story "Sunbird" that I forgot was on the ballot, proving that those who do not read their old blog entries are doomed to repeat them) Connie Willis mocked me for not wearing a Hawaiian shirt. This time I packed a black-on-black Hawaiian shirt especially, and Connie's wrath was mollified.

I missed the late Charles N. Brown.

After the Locus Awards I went on to the Science Fiction Hall of Fame and inducted Harlan Ellison into the Hall of Fame. Harlan wasn't well enough to be there, alas. (CNN speculate that he's on death's door. He's not, but he wasn't well enough to show up.)

In the evening I went with author Maria Dahvana Headley (who was to interview me the next day) to Tim Minchin's gig in Seattle. If Tim plays your town, go and see him. Simple as that.

He played "White Wine In The Sun" at the end, for me, because I've posted here on my blog over the years how much I love that song, which made me curl my toes with delight.

The evening finished after the gig with Maria and Tim and I having the most amazing meal at Elemental at Gasworks. The kind of restaurant where there's no menu, you tell the people there what you don't eat, they feed you the best food you've had in years, paired with amazing wines, are funny, nice, won't tell you what you're eating or drinking, you spend the last hour there chatting with the owners (who were your cook and your waiter), the bill is half what you thought it was going to be, where they don't believe in tipping, and you walk out at 3.00 am not really sure that that just happened, just knowing it made us all very happy.

The next day was signing books in Seattle, tweeting my hotel room number (sorry W hotel, thank you for being so understanding, sorry Gail the author escort for plunging you into modern urban paranoia) and being interviewed at the Town Hall by Maria Dahvana Headley. Her book Queen of Kings, is good stuff - Cleopatra as Undead Monster-lady, a book half-way between I Claudius and Queen of the Damned. (You'd not know it from the US book cover, though, which seems aimed firmly at people who want a proper historical novel. The UK cover is good, though.)

Thank you to Molly Lewis who opened for us on the ukulele. (I noticed from a tweet from her that she would be there and tweeted back to see if she would bring her ukulele.) Thank you to Maria for interviewing me. Thank you Duane and all at University Books for making it happen.

From Seattle I flew to San Francisco.

During the WITS show in Minneapolis I'd texted back and forth with Adam Savage, thanking him for being on the show. And then mentioned that I would be in Berkeley. And then... asked if he'd like to interview me.

He said yes, which was good as I'd had no idea who would interview me, and was ready to just get up there and talk (which is fun but less surprising if you are me.)

Here is a drawing done by Justin Devine of Adam Savage interviewing me in Berkeley.




(Oddly enough, we actually are talking about Doctor Who here. Sort of.)

The opening act in Berkeley was the lovely Zoe Boekbinder, whom I had asked to come and perform a couple of days earlier as I figured it would take a long time to seat 900 people. She did an amazing job and took full advantage of the church acoustics.

I came out afterwards and hugged people/old friends, had my shoes shined by someone who had asked if she could shine them after the show (I had said yes) and took photos with people who wanted photos taken to prove they had actually seen me and not someone else.

Late night dinner was in a Thai restaurant with Adam, Zoe and Justin (who drew the sketch above).

Woken early by an automated call from Delta telling me my flight to LA was cancelled. I twittered my distress and within minutes Brianne from Harper Collins Publicity, who was masterminding the tour, saw it and booked me onto a new flight.

I got to Los Angeles. Shaved off my beard. Pre-signed books. Went to see Craig Ferguson.

I love Mark Evanier's blog. It's at http://newsfromme.com/ where Mark writes about animation, television, the news, movies, Los Angeles, plumbers, casinos, comics and Late Night Television, among other things. Unlike this blog, he separates out his blog entries by subject. I barely noticed when Craig Ferguson took over as host of the Late Late Show from whoever did it before him, but I noticed when Mark started saying that Craig was the best of the late night talk show hosts, and I watched clips that he posted, and from there it was a short step to DVRing the show, and watching it.

And being sad when this wonderful mad Doctor Who Dance opening didn't actually go out:



I was in the Bay Area for Wondercon for Doctor Who in April, for a panel hosted by the Nerdist's Chris Hardwick, who said to me, at the end of the panel, "Have you ever been on Craig Ferguson's show?" and I said "No, but I like it..." and he said "I'll ask him..."

And pretty soon an invitation came in from Craig to be on the show.

Now, back in the 90s I said no, several times, to being on David Letterman's show. I didn't feel like I had anything to say to him, not anything I was prepared to give up any level of personal privacy for.

But Craig is one of us. Whatever that means. People who like books and SF and make jokes about H. P. Lovecraft and plug Doctor Who...

And it's late night television, and I guess I've given up a certain amount of privacy in the decade of this blog.

So I said Yes. It was nominally for the American Gods Tenth Anniversary edition, but that was just because that was the next time I was in LA. We mentioned it, but I wasn't there to plug my book. I just liked the idea of chatting.

The first guest was Paris Hilton. This was the third or fourth time I've myself in the same space as Paris Hilton, and have so far not exchanged two words with her, so I have no comments to make about her.

Here's the whole of my chat with Craig. It went on so long that they wound up losing the opening monologue (it was about sharks) and the song when it was broadcast.

And to explain the end, for the puzzled, Craig offers his guests different ways to end their segment - blowing the mouth organ (this was the option that Paris Hilton chose, although I believe she felt that this had left her open to jokes) or touching the baby disco ball on Craig's table, or an awkward pause.

You will have to watch this whole clip to discover what I went for.

Wil Wheaton and his wife Anne, and Cat Mihos (my amazing LA assistant and queen of Neverwear) and I grabbed some food. From there we sped to the Saban Theatre, where Patton Oswalt and Zelda Williams were already waiting.

There was a line of people around the block - about 1300 of them, all with Will Call tickets in envelopes with their names on. I wished that I had brought Zoe Boekbinder or Molly Lewis with me to play to the crowd as they waited.

The event started an hour late, but start it did.

Here are a couple of blogs with lots of photos that will make you feel like you were actually there.

http://www.beatzo.net/blog/2011/07/a-neil-gaiman-evening/ has some great shots of the lines of people and the Saban.

While http://mcvalada.blogspot.com/2011/06/it-is-great-to-be-grownup.html has some great photos of me, of Patton, of Zelda (she came out and guest-starred during the reading from American Gods) and she also has a 21 year old photo of me in shades and a leather jacket on the blog.

The next morning I had a close encounter with Chris Hardwick and his team, and also with the Reading Is Fundamental Smart Car. (For info on Reading is Fun/damental - go to http://rif.org/)

More interviews, more meetings, a table reading of my friend Michael Reaves's movie script, and then I came home to my dogs and my daughter.

I miss Amanda, though. She's in Boston right now. It's starting to get a bit old, this not-being together-in-the-same-place thing. I'll go out to her next week for a week. Then we're together all through August in Edinburgh. But I'd like to be coming home to her.

We're planning a tour-as-a-way-of-being-together from Hallowe'en to about the twelfth of November. I'll be in San Diego for World Fantasy Con before Hallowe'en, so we'll just drive up the coast singing (in her case) and reading (in mine) wherever we come to rest.

As soon as the dates and locations are set, we'll announce them. (And yes, we will definitely be stopping in Portland. And if we can, Vancouver and/or Victoria.)


(picture taken from http://assortedhearts.tumblr.com/post/6625219185/couples-amanda-neil-assorted-hearts)

Labels: american gods tenth anniversary edition, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., Craig Ferguson, It was the awkward pause, the presence of bears, Wits