Blog about SAAPM and baby photo

I'm in Lexington MA with Amanda today, in readiness for tomorrow morning's reenactment of the first shot fired in the American Revolutionary War (Amanda has been giving me a history lesson and a walk around). (Also she is in the New York Times today. And you can buy the Performs the Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele EP they talk about here.)

I did the Columbia University event at Symphony Space on Thursday Night. I was interviewed by Paul Levitz. He asked questions I'd never been asked before, about the business of comics, about what I did over the years that was different from the way other creators had done things. It was really enjoyable for both of us.

On Friday I recorded my part for the American Gods audiobook. I narrated the "Coming to America" sections, and did all the Author's Notes. (This is the production you can be in too. And you should listen to some of the auditions and vote for people, too. Over 800 people had sent in their auditions last time I checked.)

Yesterday I saw my old friend and Magnetic Field Claudia Gonson, and her baby Eve. Claudia took a photograph of the two of us, and it makes me very happy, so I'm putting it up here.

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I've been really remiss -- April is over half done and I haven't mentioned this...

April is Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

Every two minutes, someone in the U.S. is sexually assaulted. (I don't know what the statistics are internationally. Probably very similar.)

RAINN, the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network - http://www.rainn.org, is one of the organisations doing something about this. They have a free, confidential helpline - the National Sexual Assault Hotline, the phone number which is 1.800.656.HOPE

In April, up until April 30th, any tax deductible donation made to RAINN will be matched, up to $30,000.

You can donate over at donate.rainn.org.

(And yes, I'm donating. Your purchase of Blueberry Girl still supports RAINN too. And if you donate over $250, RAINN will send you a get a free signed poster from Neverwear.net, while stocks last.)

(Obviously, if there's another support group that you prefer, you should donate money to them... That last redundant sentence was brought to you by the people on Twitter who told me off for supporting RAINN last year, as opposed to their preferred charity.)

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Lots of articles, and requests for me to comment, about the slew of articles that came out about Playtone taking American Gods to HBO. I'm not sure where the news came from or who put it out, and I don't actually think things are at a point yet where I'm ready to comment on it, other than to say that everything's looking really promising so far.

Longer blog soon. Promise.

Labels: American Gods, Blueberry Girl, Eve Gonson, paul levitz, Rainn

Zoe, part two

So far, a profoundly odd day. I slept up in the attic bedroom with Zoe, much to the irritation of my dog. The above was the view when I woke up, captured on Nexus 1 camera (as was the accidental video, below). Weirdly, no allergy symptoms at all. Normally I have to wash my hands after touching her, or my eyes itch and swell and go red. No problems at all today. And I lay in bed with her while she did that kneading-dough thing that contented cats do, and checked my email and learned that a TV series I've been working on for 12 years has just come together, and then the phone rang and I was offered a film to write and direct, and it all seemed very unreal and unlikely and far away.

I'll sleep with her again tonight. Olga (her other person - here's what she writes about Zoe) flies in tomorrow, and the attic bedroom is Olga's that night.

Zoe can't eat or drink - the tumour blocks the oesophagus, and she throws up everything, even water - and we're hydrating her subcutaneously. On Monday, Lorraine and I take her to the vet (edit; no we don't; the vet comes here, which will be much less traumatic for her), who will put her to sleep, which is a euphemism, and we stay with her to the end.

Thank you all for your kind and sensible messages. They mean a lot.

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Something small that made me smile:

Did you know that people over at the Amazon Blueberry Girl page have started writing their reviews in Blueberry Girl meter?

I didn't, but I looked, and they have, I particularly liked Mariana Chaffee's.

It is good to make art in odd places.

Labels: Blueberry Girl, Cat Vomit, Cats, I miss the days when I used to make sure that there would be at least one amusing or interesting label

Your Instructions, should you choose to accept them...

When Blueberry Girl was published, and, much to our relief, people loved it, many of us had the same idea at the same time... my poem "Instructions", wouldn't that be rather wonderful illustrated by Charles?

I asked Charles what he thought, and he liked the idea, and Elise Howard, our editor, liked the idea too. We'd made, in Blueberry Girl, a picture book aimed not really at kids at all (although lots of kids seem to love it) but at mums and mothers to be, and daughters, and despite Borders initially refusing to stock or sell it, it had still made the NYT list, and, more importantly, it had made people happy. Could we do something like that aimed at everyone? And could we do it in less than the three years it took Charles to do Blueberry Girl?

I wasn't sure. I did know that the problem wasn't mine, though. It was Charles's. And Charles Vess is a remarkable man, and an amazing artist...

Over at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/447 Charles tells the story of how he evolved the main character (boy? girl?) and shows the evolution of some pages from pencils to finished art.

There are more pictures up at Irene Gallo's blog, http://igallo.blogspot.com/2009/08/charles-vess-at-work-on-neil-gaimans.html.

And here's one posted by me...

The deep well you walk past leads to Winter's realm;

there is another land at the bottom of it.

If you turn around here, you can walk back, safely;

you will lose no face. I will think no less of you.

It won't be out until 2010 -- Charles is still drawing madly, and painting like a wild thing.

Labels: Blueberry Girl, Charles Vess, how books happen, Instructions

The Religion of Dolphins...

I slept for the better part of 13 hours last night, and now feel remarkably human compared to any other point in the last ten days. Actually-rested is good. Maddy and I cancelled one leg of Maddy's Spring Break Adventure, although we still plan to go off tomorrow for a couple of days in the sun for the second leg.

Picked up my copy of New Scientist over breakfast this morning (which, along with Fortean Times, is my favourite publication) and found myself puzzling over an article that began

That a complex mind is required for religion may explain why faith is unique to humans.

Which left me amazed and potentially delighted that journalists at New Scientist had succeeded in interspecies communication to the point of being certain that dolphins and whales have no belief in things deeper than themselves, that ants do not imagine a supreme colony at the centre of everything, and that my cats only believe in what they can see, smell, hunt and rub up against (except for Pod, of course, who when much younger would react in horror, with full fur-up, to invisible things), and that there are no Buddhist Pigs, Monkeys or whatever-the-hell Sandy was.

If you've already answered this and I've somehow missed it, please accept my apologies for being boring and repetive. However, I read your blog daily and don't remember it being addressed.

Why oh why is it impossible to find a copy of Blueberry Girl?

Our local independent got ONE copy in and it came damaged. Their distributor says it will be 3 weeks until they can send more. Our brick and mortar Barnes & Noble took our order and then e-mailed us back that they cannot fill it. Amazon says the book's shipping time is 2-3 weeks.

I finally found a copy at Powell's which claims it will ship in 1-3 days, but I imagine other folks are running into this problem. Normally, I'd just have my independent order it and wait, but I have a tiny girl's 4 week birthday to celebrate.

Thanks for any light you can shed!

-KNK

I spoke to Elise Howard, my editor at HarperChildrens, who apologises to everyone who found Blueberry Girl hard to get. The demand for the book caught everyone slightly by surprise (it came in at #3 on the New York Times list on its first week out), and all-colour books take longer to reprint than simple black and white printing books, so even though they knew well in advance of publication that they had underprinted, they still had to wait for the books to be printed and come in. 

(They overprint colour covers, as they take longer, which is why The Graveyard Books out there have stick-on Newbery Medals, not pre-printed ones).

Harpers speeded up the reprint process though, and they got reprints in today and have already shipped them out to Amazon and elsewhere, and have a third printing due in on the 30th. Amazon have it up right now as ready to ship (along with some very baffled reviews).

Books of Wonder have copies of Blueberry Girl for sale signed by Charles Vess (they would have been signed by both of us, but that didn't happen for obvious reasons).

Neil,
First, my condolences on the passing of your father. Having lost my mother about four years ago, I uderstand your loss. Sorry you won't be in San Diego in July. Loed your appearance on the Colbert Report. The main reason for this post has nothing to do with your work. I am currently rereading the Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle. As I'm reading the book, I am not hear Alan Arkin as the voice of Schemdrick the Magician as he did in the movie, Yesterday, I realized I was hearing you as Schemdrick. Just thought you'd like to know.
Eduard

And in my head, Schmendrick sounds a lot like Peter S. Beagle. Which reminds me: There is a new Peter Beagle short story collection out. I've twittered about it, but forgot to mention it on the blog. Peter is one of those writers who just seems to be getting better and better, and his short stories are delights. Here's the link to buy a copy, get it personalised etc.

...

I had promised HarperChildrens that if The Graveyard Book made five weeks back at #1 on the NYT list, I would get them all cupcakes. It was there for 6 weeks, and last week they were seriously cupcaked. This week it dropped to #2, which means I don't have to come up with something Better Than Cupcakes for a while.

Labels: Better than cupcakes, Blueberry Girl, Peter S Beagle

A Day.

A long, strange day. In the taxi downtown this morning I learned that there had been a sudden death in the family, and I went down to the sunshine of Union Square to phone people, and sort logistical things out, and breathe. Several people suggested that I cancel the signing, and I even thought about it for a moment, and realised that I couldn't: there were hundreds of people lined up outside Books of Wonder, and it gave me something to focus on. So I went and did the reading and Q&A, and Charles did his slide show, and apart from reading Blueberry Girl itself, where I found myself getting a bit shaky, everything was wonderful, and for the next six or seven hours I found that the rhythms of the signing, and the incredible niceness of the flow of people, made everything proper and bearable and good.

So this is a thank you, to everyone at the New York signing, all the people in the lines, all the staff, even the ones who gave up and went home. All of you, from me. You helped a lot. You probably didn't know it. But you did.

Labels: Blueberry Girl, books of wonder, songs, thanks

This is a Prayer For A Blueberry Girl...

A video, put together by Brady Hall, using one of the readings I did during the Graveyard Book reading tour (I'll ask him which one), and the Charles Vess art from the book (out in ten days or less).



Over on Mousecircus.com, at the Blueberry Girl page, you can read the thing I wrote to explain what this book is.

But because not everyone is going to head over there, it says:

Hello.

You're probably wondering what kind of book this is.

This is the kind of book that comes about when a friend phones you and says, "I'll be having a baby in a month. Would you write her a poem? A sort of prayer, maybe? We call her the Blueberry. . . ." And you think, Yes, actually. I would.

I wrote the poem. When the baby was born, they stopped calling her the Blueberry and started calling her Natashya, but they pinned up the handwritten Blueberry girl poem beside her bed.

I kept a copy at my house, taped to a filing cabinet. And when friends read it, they said things like "Please, can I have a copy for my friend who is going to be giving birth to a daughter?" and I wound up copying it out for people, over and over.
I wasn't going to let it be published, not ever. It was private, and written for one person, even if I did seem to be spending more and more of my time handwriting or printing out nice copies for mothers-to-be and for babies.

Then artist Charles Vess (whom I had collaborated with on Stardust) read it.
And somehow, it all became simple. I made a few phone calls. We decided to make some donations to some charities. And Charles began to draw, and then to paint, taking the poem as a starting point and then making something universal and beautiful.

On his blog he said, "Taking Neil's lovely poetic meditation on the inherent joys of a mother-daughter relationship and developing a compelling narrative impulse without robbing the poem of its highly symbolic nature was an interesting conceptual journey." Which I think is Charles for "It wasn't easy to make that poem into a picture book.” He did an astonishing job, but I still worried. I stopped worrying the day the assistant editor at HarperChildrens, who was herself pregnant, called me to let me know that she'd got the artwork in, and read it, and then started crying in the office.

It's a book for mothers and for mothers-to-be. It's a book for anyone who has, or is, a daughter. It's a prayer and a poem, and now it's a beautiful book.

I hope you enjoy it. I'm really proud of it. And I hope this means I don't have to copy it out any longer….

Neil

Labels: Blueberry Girl, Tori Amos

Death, Tentacles and Pip.

Bet you thought I was dead. Well, unless you were looking at the Twitter feed down the side of the blog, and even then I might have been Dead but Still Twittering. It could happen and probably does.

But I am not dead. I am not even sick.  I am home, got home yesterday afternoon, six weeks of mad peregrinations are over, and, because I was asleep by nine last night, I am wide awake at six am, so I grabbed my computer, and am now blogging in bed in the dark.

(Cabal the Dog was very pleased to see me. He's 90% better after his operation -- he still has about ten days until he's allowed to go up and down stairs [so I am still sleeping on makeshift downstairs bed]  but he is allowed to run, and he has -- for the first time ever -- an appetite, like a normal dog, and has thus put on several pounds. He looks more like a white German Shepherd Dog and less like a big white greyhound.

And I was pleased to see him. Here is a smily picture of us saying hello...

So when last heard of, I was blogging in a little hotel in the Highlands&Islands, off on a mysterious errand. (The best bit was throwing chips to the seagulls in a little Scottish harbour.)

Then I drove to Inverness and I flew from there to London, where I saw Holly, sat in the hotel library and wrote, saw friends, had some meetings about films and TV and books, ate more fish and chips, drank tea, and finally, given the choice between seeing Dave McKean for the first time since Hallowe'en and going to the UK Watchmen premiere, I had a lovely dinner with Dave, and caught up with friends who'd been to the premiere afterwards. Their feedback left me a bit more interested in seeing it, though.

(Also, my friend Duncan Jones showed me his upcoming film Moon, and I will blog about it soon. It is a solid science fiction film like they don't make any more.)

Let's see. The Newbery Award for The Graveyard Book continues to do good things. Bookshops are getting their copies with the gold medal on the cover, it's selling like (I'd say hot cakes, but I've honestly never seen people going "are these cakes hot? Then I will buy all of them!" in real life) and it's being reviewed in places that hadn't reviewed it before it was an award-winner:

The San Francisco Chronicle,

Gaiman's ghost story is not just about the thrills and chills, although there are plenty. The book is in fact literary and layered. Gaiman gives reassurance that even sinister circumstance cannot squelch our human capacity to grow and change for the better. So as in all worthy coming-of-age stories, the ending turns out to be a new beginning.

The Chicago Tribune,

...combines realistic dialogue and fantasy possibilities to tell a story that's not about sensationalized violence but about life's potential for happiness. Take time for this one, as it's quite remarkable; many adult readers, no children attached, have found it quite a compelling read.

The New York Times made it an Editor's Choice, but not The Boston Globe, in the first example of Thumper's "if you can't say something nice about someone don't say anything" motto book-reviewing I can remember. The entire review is:

I found the book ghastly, literally and metaphorically, and since Gaiman is a writer whose inventive genius I respect, I'll pass on without further comment.

...which just left me wondering how something can be metaphorically ghastly. ("It was ghastly -- and I mean that metaphorically!") and concluding that Liz Rosenberg is probably trying to use metaphorically as the opposite of literally, whereas what she actually meant was that it was ghastly in several senses of the word (ie. filled with dead things and ghosts and she didn't like it one little bit). Ah well. I hope she likes the next thing, whatever that is.

Which reminds me, the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book is, I am told, being printed and should be on its way into the world soon. (Preorder info here.)

Here's a short story from it. The stories are all short and all very different, and an Amanda dies in all of them. This one was a fairy-tale. It starts at about 2:19.

(You can see the photo Amanda is holding up here. And if you want to know what the event looked like from the front, photos, and more photos. Also, a review of her Sugar Club gig. I am tousle-haired. Who knew?)

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Right. Now on to CORALINE...

It was predicted that it would be the #3 film this weekend. But by the end of the weekend, we were actually #2. Champagne would have been drunk if we weren't losing most of our 3D screens to the Jonas Bros on Friday.

Okay. Coraline tab-closing time:

Here's a great article on Coraline computer modellers, whose modelly creations were then made using 3D printers, saving about four man-years in face sculpting. (Is it still CGI when you press a button and it becomes real?). An interview with me and Henry Selick.

More on Detroit Zoo Snow Globes. An article on Phil Knight and Advertising Coraline.

A review I enjoyed. The reviews from Christianity Today, Catholic News Service, and the Episcopal Life are all sane and positive, although we are all waiting for the Capalert review. (Then again, they thought The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe was well dodgy.)

The New Yorker reviews Coraline. Mike Baker draws a new very old book cover for it. Here's the Coraline Sweater knitting pattern pdf. 

Irene Gallo has started collecting links to Coraline design and animation work on her blog (http://igallo.blogspot.com/). And Chris Turnham's design work at  http://christurnham.blogspot.com/ is wonderful. Stef Choi just put some art up at http://stefchoi.blogspot.com/(Again, I'd love to see an ART OF CORALINE book. Steve Jones was limited in his Coraline Film Companion to the art and information that Laika would give him. Now that no-one's actually in the mad final stages of making a film, it would be marvellous to gather together the entire concept art process.)

...

There were many glorious things on the kitchen table waiting for me. I'll try and take a photo. My copy of The Lifted Brow was waiting for me. So was my copy of the DVD of American Scary. (The first ten minutes is up at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukvJYs4Kq_k)

I've talked about Julie Schwartz here a few times. Read this. It's wonderful, in all senses of the word.

March 1-7th is Will Eisner Week. As we learn at http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000386.shtml

Will Eisner Week is intended as an ongoing celebration that will promote graphic novel literacy, free speech awareness, and the legacy of Eisner himself to a broad audience. This first annual celebration is themed "The Spirit of A Legend," examining Will Eisner's seminal Spirit comic, as well as the spirit inherent in his work that has inspired generations of comic readers and artists. This theme will be explored at events in Minneapolis at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, in Savannah at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and in New York City.
In addition to events, a variety of academic papers and group activity assignments are available on WillEisnerWeek.com.

And last of all...

On Saturday March 7th, at Books of Wonder in Manhattan, Charles Vess and I are doing a signing. The event starts at 1:00pm. I'll read Blueberry Girl (it isn't very long. Maybe I'll read it twice, or verrrry sloooowly) and Charles will have art on display and prints for sale, and we'll do a Blueberry Girl Q&A, and it should be fun. I was worried that there wouldn't be enough space, but Peter at Books of Wonder reassured me that they've moved into a new shop since last I was there, and hosted J.K. Rowling, so they will have no problem coping with numbers of people who will turn up. So, hurrah, turn up. They'll be donating a percentage of the profits to RAINN, because I originally wrote Blueberry Girl for Tori and her as-yet-unborn-daughter, and that seemed like the right thing to do.

(Click on the poster to make it bigger.) (An early Blueberry Girl review, from a young girl and her mum.)

(Worth mentioning that Please note that you are welcome to bring one book from home to be signed for each book you purchase on the day of the event is a mistake. It may be true for Charles, but it's not true for me. Current plans are that I'll sign three things per person, and if the numbers of people get too big, that may have to go down.)

And this has been a long enough blog that I shall stop here and resume later.

Labels: art of Coraline, bigger on the inside, Blueberry Girl, Dog, dog photograph, Reviews of Coraline Movie, The Graveyard Book, Thumper, words and what they mean

The Perils of Advertising

Working Dog Holiday ends today. I will carry the dog downstairs one more time. And then off to the airport, where I will give dog and car to a friend who will drive both of them back to the land of ice and snow, while I begin two and a half weeks of perambulation in support of the Coraline movie.

The first Coraline trailer I've really liked. (It's up at YouTube in HD and is very cool.)



I don't know if you've heard this directly, but I know two people who, while being Gaiman fans, said independently of each other said, "I'm sick of this Coraline hype. Enough already."

While I'm eager to see the picture, I can understand what they perceive as advertising bombardments, be it billboards, web ads, commercials and so on.

I'm sure you would like as many people as possible to see the movie, do you think it's been "a bit much" with all the Coraline stuff out there?

Not really. It's a film without a big name star, handmade in Portland by a first time studio: it's not a film that the world is holding its breath for -- mostly, the world doesn't really even know it exists. The filmmakers have one crack at getting people in to see it on its first week of release, and only one, because, while it will undoubtedly go on to live forever on DVD format (and whatever comes after that), possibly even go on to Nightmare Before Christmas-like longevity, the perception of whether it was a success or a failure is mostly all about how it does when it goes out there on Feb 6th.

I'm proud of what Henry and his astonishing team did, and want as many people to see it as possible.

The reviews will help, but I'm not sure that reviews make as big a difference as simply advertising and letting people know something's out there. (Princess Mononoke was an eye-opener for me in that regard. In its first year it had the top positive review score on Rotten Tomatoes. Didn't get people in to see it.) Word of mouth and "buzz" are difficult, probably impossible to manipulate. So you advertise, and you put the word out to where people who see films congregate. 

I was sent the "tracking" for the film the other day, where the various studios and agencies find out what groups are planning right now to go and see what films, and if your friends are males under the age of 25, then all the Coraline promotion is working. Two weeks ago it was ranking very low on the list of films that that group wanted to see. Over the last few days it's spiralled up.

It's hard to promote a film that's as much for adults as it is for kids, easy for something like this to bomb -- or to be perceived as having bombed, which is not the same thing. The advertising is out there for another couple of weeks, and it'll probably get more pervasive as we get closer to the 6th of February, and will not please your friends. And the run up to Coraline will take over this blog more or less completely, I expect, because it's all I'll be doing. And then, after Feb 6th, it will all trail off, and the advertising will die away completely, and it will fade from the blog with occasional splashes of mention if the film does something interesting, or if I go somewhere to help  promote it.

(Which reminds me: Jameson Dublin Film Festival. I'll be there on February the 15th, when they will be screening Coraline. And, for anyone in Dublin -- or indeed, in Ireland -- who missed the signing last year, I will be doing a reading and signing in Chapters in Parnell Street on Feb the 17th at 5pm. Perhaps with an as-yet-unnamed Special Musical Guest.)

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I read This Blog of Cheryl Morgan's. Thought "That's bizarre. I mean no-one would actually DO that." Then read around and realised that, yes, there are people who are interpreting the laws to get lead out of products aimed at children as meaning that they have to be kept away from book, with all that printing in it. It's mad and silly, but here's an American Library Association letter explaining that, yes, it's true, and what you can do about it. 

http://dintywrites.blogspot.com/2009/01/scary-library-shit.html

...



Lovely early BLUEBERRY GIRL reviews starting to come in:

Publishers Weekly

In a magical blessing for unconventional girls, Gaiman (The Graveyard Book) addresses the "ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind," asking them to shelter and guide an infant girl as she grows. "Help her to help herself,/ help her to stand,/ help her to lose and to find./ Teach her we're only as big as our dreams./ Show her that fortune is blind." Sinuous, rococo lines-the flowing hair, drooping boughs, winding paths that inspired the pre-Raphaelites-spread their tendrils throughout Vess's (The Ladies of Grace Adieu) full-bleed spreads, potent mixtures of the charms of Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish and Cecily Barker's flower fairies. An Art Nouveau-ish font in a blueberry color compounds the sense of fantasy. On each page a different girl-short, tall, white, brown, younger, older-runs or jumps or swims, accompanied by animals meant to guard and protect her. Fans of Gaiman and Vess will pounce on this creation; so too will readers who seek for their daughters affirmation that sidesteps traditional spiritual conventions. All ages. (Mar.)


Kirkus Reviews

A rich and beautiful prayer for a girl. "Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind, / This is a prayer for a blueberry girl." Three women in flowing robes-the appropriately mythological Maiden, Mother and Crone-float in the sky over a small, dancing child trailed by numerous birds of the air. Free her from "nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty," let her run and dance and grow, teach her and help her find her own truth. The verse is lovely, sinuous and sweetly rhyming, piling on blessings. Vess's precise line-and-color illustrations fill each spread with velvet colors and the iconography of myths and fairy tales, a good match to fantasist Gaiman's words. Plants, animals, sun and meadow appear in elegantly drawn detail, their realism tempered by floating trees and magical flowers. The girl transforms from stanza to stanza and spread to spread, blond or burnished, child or nearly teen. There is nothing cute or cloying here, just beauty, balance and joy. (Picture book. 4-8)

The only Blueberry Girl event will be on Saturday March 7th, at Books of Wonder in New York. Me and Charles Vess, signing books for anyone who comes by, along with a display of the original paintings, a Q&A, and so on. If you're in New York, we'd love to see you -- more details as I get them.

And the next post will probably be all coffee. You lot are amazing. 

....

Nearly forgot: 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jan/22/1000-novels-fiction-fantasy-introduction Is the introduction page to the Guardian's list of SF, Horror and Fantasy novels that you should read, along with mini-articles recommending other books by Roz Kaveney, Mike Moorcock, Susanna Clarke and others. It's a great list -- and you can have fun arguing over who shouldn't be on it and who was left out.

Labels: Advertising and its drawbacks, Blueberry Girl, Coraline movie, Dublin, Yes you could use the internet to figure out who I'm appearing with in Ireland but really now wouldn't that be cheating?

Danse Macabre for banjos and clarinet...

So Maddy is sick, and is fast asleep on the other end of the sofa, so I put on Shock Treatment on DVD -- it's been ages since I've seen it (I'm not sure I've actually seen it since it was on in London's West End in about 1981), although I've had the CD (and before that, the LP) for many years, grabbed a computer and thought I should start to catch up on my blogging. I'm way behind on everything (email? returning phone calls? blogging? I'm backlogged on all of them. Let us not even mention anything new I'm meant to be writing). I'm keeping more or less current with the proofreading of Graveyard Book in the various editions, though, and I'm hugely proud of having done the Graveyard Book audio over the last few days.

(Yesterday morning before the reading started I also did an NPR interview about Anansi Boys for the Bryant Park Book Club [you can read the discussion so far here] as a sort of warm up.)

The reading was, in some ways, the hardest I've ever done. I always forget how exhausting doing an audio book is -- sitting in the same position and reading 75,000 words, and getting every word right. The concentration involved is ridiculous. I do them once a year, and admire all the voice actors who do them day after day, reading books they didn't even write! It was hard, and longand somewhere in Chapter Seven I was scared my voice would give out entirely, and then I got to Chapter Eight and it felt like I was flying and could do it forever. (When I finished, I went back and did the very first four pages again, and nailed them.)

Director Michael Conroy flew in from New York. (He replaced the amazing Rick Harris, who recently retired.) He was a fine director -- picked me up on places I flubbed, let me go when I was doing well. We started talking about what kind of music we'd like on it. "The Saint Saens Danse Macabre," I said, "...as long as it isn't a version we've heard before."

By which I meant not a standard orchestral version, or a piano version. Not the Jonathan Creek version either. We started talking about takes on the Danse Macabre that might be odd and interesting, how we should go and find a string quartet version, or a version that's just double basses or accordions, or the danse macabre arranged for banjo and clarinet... and about how hard it would be to find versions like that.

And then we started to wonder whether if I mention it on this blog, we could actually get submissions...

So that's our current plan. No-one's going to get rich from something that's the chapter intro music on an audio book, I'm afraid. And it won't be a competition, more of an easy way for anyone from anywhere in the world to send in audition samples -- and we need to figure out how to do it, and what the technical specs would be. But that's the plan. If you play the Danse Macabre on the musical saw, this may be the opportunity you've been waiting for...

More information as we figure it out.

...

http://www.observer.com/2008/why-jane-friedman-suddenly-not-ceo-harpercollins

thoughts?

There seems to be a little more information at http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2008/06/jane_friedman_shoved_out_the_d.html and http://www.latimes.com/features/books/la-et-friedman6-2008jun06,0,6511196.story

Honestly, I was shocked and a bit saddened.

Back in early 2002 I was ready to leave Harper Collins, when my then-editor left; Jane Friedman talked me into staying, promised a lot and then delivered on all of her promises. (There were things I wanted that were against Harper Collins policy, like having a trade paperback and a mass market paperback of the same book out at the same time.) I got to spend real time with her last year in Beijing, at the Book Fair, and she really impressed me with her understanding of publishing, of where publishing was going. She's very funny, very practical, ferociously smart. I don't think that Harpers would have been so supportive of the monstrous thing that http://www.neilgaiman.com/ has grown into without Jane -- nor would it have been as easy to push through the free online American Gods a few months ago.

I like Jane -- she's larger than life, and I like larger than life people. I'm glad I was at what turned out to be her farewell party at the Fox lot (even if I did spend much of my time reminding Matt Groening that I really need to be a head in a jar on Futurama) -- and I hope she winds up somewhere that's as challenging for her and as interesting as CEO of Harper Collins.

Hi,

What are your thoughts on the idea of age ratings on books? I personally think it's potentially off putting to children who want to read outside of their "age range".

I saw a discussion about it on BBC Breakfast this morning.

Cheers,

Sarah

I think it's deeply stupid. You can get all the information about who a book is aimed at across to a book buyer with typefaces and design. Putting more or less compulsory coloured bands on books saying what age the reader is expected to be seems like something that's just going to stop people -- of all ages -- reading books. Exclusive, not inclusive.

As far as I know, Bloomsbury, my UK children's publisher, has simply decided not to play, and won't be banding. (Bloomsbury are also doing one edition of The Graveyard Book for adults and another edition for children, and none of us have any idea what age group it's aimed at. People who like reading about a boy who was brought up in a graveayard, I suppose, of whatever age.)

There's a web site http://www.notoagebanding.org/ where a number of authors, illustrators, academics, librarians and editors have pointed out how deeply twerpish the banding is. I signed up for it with enthusiasm, endorsing the following statement:

We are writers, illustrators, librarians, teachers, publishers and booksellers. Some of the undersigned writers and illustrators have a measure of control over what appears on the covers of their books; others have less.

But we are all agreed that the proposal to put an age-guidance figure on books for children is ill-conceived, damaging to the interests of young readers, and highly unlikely, despite the claims made by those publishers promoting the scheme, to make the slightest difference to sales.

We take this step to disavow publicly any connection with such age-guidance figures, and to state our passionately-held conviction that everything about a book should seek to welcome readers in and not keep them out.

Neil--

When you first posted links and photos on your blog about "Blueberry Girl", your collaboration with Charles Vess,I was thrilled. Now, a bit after a month since it was supposed to be published, I haven't see hide nor hair of it. Was it published in late April, or pushed back?

Thanks so much,

~Madeline

It definitely hasn't been published yet. I looked around, and it looks to me like Blueberry Girl is going to be released in February 2009. (You can see pictures from it at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/185)

Labels: banding books, Blueberry Girl, Danse Macabre, jane friedman, twerps

Still alive (not the song)

I'm off on the edge of the world with almost no internet connection. It's raining, and my hair has gone peculiarly curly. I've got a sore throat of the kind I get when I've been travelling too much for too long, and have slept for much of the last 48 hours, like I do when I get a sore throat and it's time to sleep it off. I just drove to civilisation where I bought lemons, honey and ginger. And, for some reason that made sense when I bought it, but which now seems increasingly distant, celery. And am now internet cafeing.

I'm working on The Graveyard Book.

Jason Webley's new CD The Cost of Living, is mostly playing in the background while I'm working, and his song from that, Almost Time to Go is sometimes on repeat (Here's the first minute from his website.) Up there with the wonderful strangeness of the Amanda Palmer-Jason Webley Elephant Elephant by Evelyn Evelyn. (http://www.jasonwebley.com/music_elephant.html but it is sold out, alas.) He's having a sale -- http://www.jasonwebley.com/index.html -- until the end of December.

Also listening to the new Thea Gilmore CD, but seeing it's not released yet there's not much point in linking to it. But she's started a Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/user/TheaGilmore), with, so far, one video of her playing a song on her sofa on it. (Also nice picture taken by Thea's husband-and-producer-and-terrific-songwriter-in-his-own-write Nigel Stonier of Thea and me before Beowulf premiere on her myspace blog.)

Here's a summary of what's going on in the Writers' Strike right now.

Charles Vess has just finished the wraparound cover for BLUEBERRY GIRL...




and finally...

I wrote to you earlier to advise that there was far too much fun being had reviewing Bic pens on Amazon (http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B000JTOYLS/ref=cm_rdp_product). There seems to be even more fun too muchly had reviewing Tuscan milk by a factor of approximately 25 (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00032G1S0/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top).
What intrigues me most though is through this page, I now know that if I ever need Uranium Ore, a JL421 Badonkadonk Land Cruiser/Tank, or simply a Fresh Whole Rabbit, Amazon will be my first stop.


To which I can add nothing.

Labels: Blueberry Girl, Evelyn Evelyn, Jason Webley, Milk, Pens, Thea Gilmore, why celery?

Blueberry Girls

I took Maddy and her friends to the Mall of America today -- they had unspecified preeteenage things to buy and I needed to visit the Apple store to get Final Cut Studio -- stopping only to pick up my friend Les Klinger from his hotel and drag him along. Not content with having annotated all the Sherlock Holmes stories, he's spent the last few years annotating Dracula, and told me all about it while we ate lunch. The two thirteen year olds and one almost thirteen year old went shopping happily, and returned with several bags, including a bag with the Victoria's Secret logo. ("You really don't have to look like that, dad. We only bought sweatpants there.")

Then I dropped Les off at his hotel and spent too short a time with several old friends, including the Sherlockian Michael Whelan, the Roden family and Michael "Langdale Pike" Dirda, the best-read man in America. Then went home. Installed Final Cut Studio...

Charles Vess talks about BLUEBERRY GIRL, our book for mothers and daughters, and he shows some pictures -- pencils and finished art -- over at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/185. It's a poem I wrote for Tori's daughter Tash, before she was born, and Charles is making it magical. The plan is to donate a percentage of the royalties to RAINN . We announced it a long time ago (in this post) but it's taken a while -- Charles has had so much on his plate, and the paintings have taken him so much longer to do than he expected. But they are astoundingly beautiful.

Talking about raising money for good causes, I got this astonishingly heartening email from Beth at Black Phoenix Alchemy lab...

I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know how the charity drive is doing. =) In the first five days that the Stardust and Good Omens scents were live, we generated $1500.00 for the Orangutan Foundation UK, and $5370.00 for the CBLDF. That brings us to a current total of $15,300.00 for the CBLDF to date!

Which, given the costs of the upcoming Gordon Lee trial (there's an excellent interview with Charles Brownstein about it at http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/118336212712690.htm), is a very good thing indeed. Diamond distributors have asked to be able to put a couple of the scents in their catalogue, which Evan Dorkin amusingly interprets as a sign of the oncoming apocalypse. Personally, I think that a better indication of the apocalypse is an entire article on Canadian Comics that manages not to mention Dave Sim or Cerebus. Bizarre. (Incidentally, for those of you who missed it the first time around, I believe Dave's offer at the end of http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/08/lewis-and-clarke-not-to-mention-snuff.asp still stands. Over two thousand people got free comics from him by simply writing in and asking, and I hope that many of them came back and bought the Cerebus collections...)

Labels: Black Phoenix Alchemy and Scents, Blueberry Girl, CBLDF, Cerebus, Dracula, Les Klinger

American Gods Blog, Post 72

So I spent today, as I will spend tomorrow, working on writing a circus. Something I've always wanted to do, which is why I'm currently writing it. (The young lady who runs the circus in question spent a year or so not taking no for an answer from me, and her persistance seems to have paid off. I spent most of today saying things to her like "Can you do this...?" and "What about this...?" and at one point phoning an expert and getting a hasty lecture on the fluorescent qualities of laser beams for something I started wondering about.)

Seeing I plugged a lot of other people's stuff yesterday, I thought I'd point out that The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish makes a really cool Fathers Day present. (Yay! to Amazon.com for featuring it on their kids page.)

And yay! to Morrow for getting out the American Gods newsletter.

Incidentally, if you've received the newsletter with the extract from American Gods in it, I should point out that in that extract, in the phrase "the titter skin-crawling horror" the word "titter" should be "utter", and for that matter that the sentence "He practiced coin tricks from a book lie found in the wasteland of the prison library; and lie worked out;" reads better if you replace the word "lie" with the word "he".

(I hope when they put up the www.americangods.com/excerpt page that they'll put it up from a clean text.)

....

More reviews today -- an enthusiastic one from the Barnes and Noble Explorations magazine, a nice mention from the NY Post, and one from Booklist, where the reviewer, who had loved Neverwhere and Stardust, hated it -- the kind of complete and entire hate where the reviewer doesn't even stop to point out the things he liked about the book, if there were any. He just seemed to wish it was another book entirely, a kind of "this is spinach and I don't like spinach" review: I think Coraline (which comes out next May) will be to his taste.

...

Also brought home several boxes of books, notebooks and such from the office, to compile a sort of core of references I used writing American Gods for NeilGaiman.com. It'll be incomplete, but a good place to start. (The single most useful reference work was probably A Dictionary of Northern Mythology, by Rudolf Simek.)

And I copy-edited a poster of my poem INSTRUCTIONS with art by Brian and Wendy Froud, which will be coming out this summer in a signed, limited edition, as a benefit for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. I think it's going to be popular, on the basis that my assistant and my daughter have both extracted a promise from me that they can get one when they come out, from the proof knocking around the office.

(if it's sucessful, we might do a poem I wrote for my goddaughter, as a benefit for RAINN...)

....

Ah, the Chapter One excerpt is up at www.americangods.com/excerpt.html (they left off the html on the newsletter). It's kind of odd -- all the italics have fallen out as well. I'll see if we can get a cleaner copy up...

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, Blueberry Girl, book reviews, Brian and Wendy Froud, circuses, Coraline, Instructions, Neverwhere, Stardust, The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish