Existing in the pause

I was meant to be in the UK for another ten days. It was the ten days I was most looking forward to: a long-overdue trip to Scotland, to St Andrews (where I would be receiving a doctorate) and to Edinburgh and on to Skye. My friend Polly's 21st birthday party. A Masterclass in story writing I was going to teach.

I was walking in to a meeting with TV execs from around the world, along with my American Gods TV posse (the people from Fremantle Media, and Bryan Fuller and Michael Green) when Amanda texted to tell me she was on a train into London from Hornchurch, our friend Anthony was dying, and we were on a plane that was leaving in three hours from Heathrow. I explained what American Gods was to the TV people, and then I ran for it.

Somehow (well, with the aid of Clara Benn) we were packed and on that plane, in the last two seats in the back. (I am not pregnant: I took the middle seat.)

We made it to the hospital while Anthony was still conscious and more or less able to communicate. I told him about the umbrella cane I had discovered for him (I get him canes, with stories, from all over the world). He put his hand on Amanda's baby-bulge, and we talked to him about the baby's name, and he smiled.

We were in the hospital with him for two days and it seemed like a lifetime. On the third day the doctors said he could go home: he would get no better, and he was slipping away.

Amanda and I have moved next door to Laura and Anthony, moved to Amanda's old family home, as we wait.

It's the morning of day four now, a beautiful sunny fresh day. It rained in the night, and the grass was covered with webs that held the raindrops, and the morning sunlight slanted in at an angle that made everything look clean and magical and whole.

Anthony's dying fast. He communicates sometimes, if he's thirsty, or hungry, or needs to pee. He groans, and rolls, and does not want to be in his bed and does not have the strength to be anywhere else. There's nothing more. He hurts, his body is failing, and the leukemia and all that goes with it is draining him away. His wife, Laura, is being remarkable: saintly and brave and helpful and a rock for all the people around. His family and his friends are here sometimes. People are around the bed, and then they move away and talk, and then they are around the bed once more.

I keep making food, and feeding people. It helps.

Amanda is here, with me, with Anthony. So pregnant,  a beam of life and light in the darkness of the dying.

We won't be waiting long.

It doesn't feel like real time. Normally, we breathe in and we breathe out, and we never notice the beat between the breath. Right now we are living in the place between the inhalation and the exhalation, existing in the pause.

Do you want to know who Anthony is? Read this:  http://www.neilgaiman.com/Cool_Stuff/Essays/Introductions/Eight_Views_of_Mount_Fuji
It's the introduction I wrote to Anthony's book Beloved Demons, in November 2013, when his cancer was in remission. It stayed in remission for a long time, but not long enough.

It starts:

I had known Amanda Palmer for six months, and we were going on our first date. Our first date was four days long, because it was all the free time we had at the beginning of 2009 and we were giving it to each other. I had not yet met her family. I barely knew her friends.

"I want you to meet Anthony," she said.

It was January. If I'd really known who Anthony was in her life then, if I'd known how much he'd played his part in raising her, I think I would have been nervous. I wasn't nervous. I was just pleased that she wanted to introduce me to someone that she knew.

Anthony, she told me, was her next door neighbour. He had known her since she was a child.

He turned up in the restaurant: a tall, good-looking man who looked a decade younger than his age. He had a walking cane, an easy comfortable manner, and we talked all that evening. Anthony told me about the nine-year-old Amanda who had thrown snowballs at his window, and about the teenage Amanda who had come next door when she needed to vent, and about the college-age Amanda who had called him from Germany when she was lonely and knew nobody, and about rockstar Amanda (it was Anthony who had named the Dresden Dolls). He asked me about me, and I answered him as honestly as I could.

Later, Amanda told me that Anthony liked me, and had told her he thought I would make a good boyfriend for her.

I had no idea how important this was, or what Anthony's approval meant at the time...

And here is a song Amanda played for him at the end of a tour, three years ago, before she ended the tour early to help get him through that first round of chemo.

Labels: Amanda, Anthony Martignetti, Beloved Demons, Cancer, Death, Hallelulah, Leukemia

Harry Harrison

I was 23 when I met Harry Harrison, thirty years ago. We met at Seacon 84, a science fiction convention in Brighton. I asked him if I could interview him for Knave, and he said yes. We did the interview, and took photos, around the Natural History Museum, as Harry had written a novel called West of Eden, about intelligent dinosaurs.

I'd been a fan of Harry's since reading the first Stainless Steel Rat story in an ancient copy of Astounding Science Fiction I'd found as a boy. I'd loved his books and stories. I had them all.

I instantly and hugely liked the man - and his wife, Joan, of whom I said on this blog, when she died, a decade ago,

 Joan was the kind of person who made you feel, instantly, like family, if she liked you, and she liked me. When they'd talk about the famous SF people of the 40s, 50s and 60s, she was the one who'd say things like, "Well, of course his wife left him, and I couldn't blame her, it was just after that party, the one where he hit Bob Sheckley with a glass ashtray, you remember, Harry?" giving me a much more interesting and personal version of the history of the Science Fiction field than I might otherwise have had.

Harry agreed to write (for nothing, which was good as Kim and I had no money) an introduction to my first SF related book, Ghastly Beyond Belief, by me and Kim Newman - a huge boost and vote of confidence for two nervous young authors.

We stayed friends as years passed.

He was crusty, curmudgeonly, opinionated and a real delight to know. We last had quality time in 2004, when we had breakfast together in Boston.

I heard this morning that Harry had passed away.

I went looking for the original interview to post here. I could only find the last two pages, but seeing they end with Harry Harrison's advice to young writers, here they are. (If you click, they should be readable.)

Edit to add, Shield Bonnichsen just sent me the missing pages. Here's the whole interview.

Labels: Death, Harry Harrison, time

Spiderwick Green

Holly Black invited Maddy to a screening of The Spiderwick Chronicles last night, and I drove her and her friend Anna-Rose, and went in with them as one of Maddy's "plus two". (I skipped out on seeing Hannah Montana 3D last week when I did chauffeur duty, and sat in the next door Starbucks and wrote The Graveyard Book instead, and it was only when the girls came out that I learned that it had the 3D Coraline teaser before the movie.) Anyway, I really enjoyed TSC, much more than I thought I was going to from the teasers they showed at San Diego, and tried to get Maddy to review it here ("Da-aad. Just say Maddy really liked it.") and then to get Anna Rose to review it here ("Er. Just say that Anna Rose really liked it."). So no review, but Maddy and Anna Rose really liked it.

2 questions that other readers of your blog may be interested in also:

I searched your site, but saw no mention of the upcoming Sandman and Death bookends. I love most of the Sandman statues, and these look really cool, so I will probably pick them up. My question is, is this replacing the large slipcase designed to hold the 4 absolute Sandman volumes that you have mentioned in the past? If the slipcase is still planned, will it be able to contain the individual slipcases as well, or just the books?

On another note, is there any truth to the rumor of an Absolute Death collection to accompany the Sandman volumes?

Thanks for the writing, and for the blog.

-Neil




Dear Neil (good name that, correctly spelled, well done)

I think we decided that a master slipcase to hold four books already each in a slipcase was a bit redundant. (Maybe we can do a master slipcase or two for the ten Sandman Library volumes one day.) So it's just the bookends, which Mark Buckingham designed and which he and the people at DC and the sculptor have been working on for many, many months now. (Click on the photo to see it a bit bigger. Each bookend is over 8 inches tall and over six inches wide)

The DEATH volume won't be an absolute. It'll be oversized, though, in the Deluxe Edition format, and probably be called THE COMPLEAT DEATH because that's what we've been calling it for the last decade.

Dear Neil,

I just found this blog and thought of you:

http://lolthulhu.com/

You probably already know it...I'm just making sure.

Also, while I don't usually like book reviews...when I was in high-school, I knew synesthesia and the Midgard serpent. I also knew Mandelbrot (if only as "that guy who makes math into freaky pictures"). Admittedly, I've always been a little weirder than most people.


Best wishes!

K.

I've never posted Lolthulhu, have I? Despite people letting me know about it as long ago as last Hallowe'en. Well, it's up now.

And yes, I wasn't sure about the logic of the "bright high school kids all know celebrity gossip from thirty years ago" line in the review. Some things don't change. The whole point of that line was to show what sorts of things Joey didn't know. (Shrugs.)

Hey Neil...since you seem to be always open to nifty, original websites, I found one that I think is splindifferously wonderful. This guy takes drawings done by children and recreates them in photographic form. It really goes to show both the photographer's ingenuity, and more importantly, the creativity of children's minds. WONDERFUL site. I hope you like it.

http://www.yeondoojung.com/wonderland.html

Oh, and you totally need one of these. If I had money to spend, I would definitely get you one as a gift. :)

http://www.datamancer.net/keyboards/keyboards.htm


That first website is fascinating. And I really want to sit down at one of those keyboards and find out what it feels to type on them...

Over at http://outofthiseos.typepad.com/blog/2008/02/a-note-on-audio.html
my Harper Collins editor Jennifer's assistant Kate (who is also editing in her own write) talks about the pluses and minuses of audiobooks and driving, from her experiences with Neverwhere...

Right. On with the day. (I'm doing some overdue introductions right now. Then Chapter 8.)

Labels: Bookends, cool but disturbing photos of giant people, Death, Spiderwick, steampunk keyboards

Untitled Post. Well, practically.

Today I was interviewed about the mysterious device.

...

If you're in the UK on Tuesday the 25th of September, and you want to hear Ms Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, in conversation... then you should be at the Bloomsbury Theatre
15 Gordon Street
London WC1
at 7.00pm.
Everyone who's anyone will be there. I'll be there. Actually, I'll be up on the stage, being the other half of the conversation. (The half that says, "Now, Susanna, tell us...")
Put it in your diaries.

...

Hey, Neil,

I saw Stardust today and loved it (as did my mom, whom I dragged with me), but I came out with a few questions.

1) The new ending: did that come from you, or was it an invention of Jane's and Matthew's?

Er... bit of both. I suggested some events for the scene in the witch's lair, which were the kinds of things I'd assumed that we needed as far back as the first time I did a treatment for Stardust. But Matthew and Jane had reached a lot of the same places that I had because they were the sort of things you'd do in a film. (You need Septimus and the witches and Tristran and Yvaine in the same place, for example.) The happier ending was Matthew's. I'd suggested that he shoot the other one too, but really I don't think it would have worked with the film he made.

2) I don't know was a "sequencer" does, but I noticed in the credits that one J.J. Connolly was credited with being it. Would that be the same J.J. Connolly who wrote Layer Cake?

It would indeed.

3) Was Matthew Vaughn consciously intending the shots of Captain Shakespeare while during Septimus' attack on the ship to echo the shots of Buffalo Bill dancing in the mirror in The Silence of the Lambs, or was the similarity coincidental?

I think it's coincidental. Or, perhaps, imaginary.

4) Are there plans to publish the screenplay? (Or will it be included in the visual companion coming out in September?)

It's in the Visual Companion. Which was published in paperback on July the 10th, according to Amazon. http://www.amazon.com/Stardust-Visual-Companion-Stephen-Jones/dp/1845764226

5) Speaking of which: any insight on why the visual companion and the soundtrack aren't being released for another month, rather than concurrently with the film?

The Companion's been out for a while now, at least in paperback. It's a beautiful book. The hardback is listed on Amazon as not being out for a few weeks, though.

I noticed that the Stardust score is already on iTunes, not sure why it won't be out for another few weeks on CD though. (Deepdiscount has it as 28 August, Amazon as September 11th.)

...

no question. just wanted to share:

http://viralvinyl.com/IGv11qd.mov

i did this to learn After Effects for my Masters Course at Central Saint Martins.

Cool!

Dr Jon in Australia sent me this:

Hi, Neil.

You've prolly been flooded with this link already, but in case you haven't:

Death drops scythe, adopts 'softer' look

http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/death-drops-scythe-adopts-softer-look/2007/08/13/1186857383958.html

"A small religious group that worships the grim reaper and is fighting for government recognition unveiled a softer image of their Death Saint today: a woman with a porcelain face, brown, shoulder-length hair and long thin fingers."

Quite interesting, especially in light of the "adoption" of the Endless Death as a Deity-Of-Choice by some in the neopagan movement.

...

and then there's

hi neil!

maybe not all that necessary for you, but at least it's a clever idea. just wanted to pass along the link in case you hadn't seen it yet.

http://www.riteintherain.com/ Rite in the Rain Notebooks: All-Weather Writing Paper

=^.^= canton ...

You never know... I can imagine needing one of those, even though I tend to feel that spelling it "write" would have increased my desire to use their notebooks.

...

Current travel plans now have me going from Chengdu to Beijing for the Beijing International Book Fair which means I'll be in Beijing during the Hugo Awards (sigh). And I'll now be in Japan about three weeks after that. I'll put details up here as I get them of any signings or events or anything.

Labels: Death, rite in the rane, Susanna Clarke on the Stage, travel

American Gods Blog, Post 80

The Libretto L1 arrived today in my P.O. Box. (Express mail through the post office is astonishingly expensive, it turns out.) The Libretto L1 is an amazing, beautiful and magnificent piece of technology. It's like a children's toy: an almost full-size keyboard, a cinemascope screen, it weighs nothing and takes up almost no room.

Unfortunately, after half an hour, the screen light went off and didn't go back on again, just flickered sadly like an old-fashioned fluorescent tube trying to work. The manuals are all in Japanese, so they weren't much help, although they had drawings of smily people plugging their Librettos into things. I called technical support. They said not to worry, they'd send me a new computer.

I said, "Look, if I promise you I'm honestly not an international Libretto thief, would you please just fedex it to the house?"

"Are you... are you the Neil Gaiman who wrote Sandman?"

"Yes."

"Not a problem. You'll have it tomorrow morning."

So there. Big vote of thanks to Shane and Dave at Dynamism.com for all their help, and I'll let you all know what happens next.

(Fedex tomorrow will bring many cool things, including the new Tori Amos CD, for the booklet of which I have to find some words.)

Currently, behind the scenes on the signing tour, lots of logistical stuff is being worked out, last-minute problems are being solved, all that.

Today brought some good news about the Death movie -- with luck I'll have news I can announce before the tour starts.

Labels: American Gods Blog, computers and gadgets and things, Death, lightweight computers

American Gods Blog, Post 41

There. I'm home again from all the travelling, and now it's time to recharge my batteries, as I'm pretty much spent. Tonight I holed up in a small recording studio, reading short pieces (and a long one) for the next spoken word CD. More recording tomorrow night. More Avalon tomorrow. And I think I may start the second draft of DEATH as soon as that's done: it'll be more fun than waiting to see if there's a strike coming or not.

And meanwhile, let's talk about the triumvirate of KIRKUS, PUBLISHER'S WEEKLY and BOOKLIST reviews (and LIBRARY JOURNAL makes up a quartet).

Overall, I'm not sure how much influence reviews have in the real world. I've seen a publisher (Workmans) get scared by a bad review in the New York Times and more or less dump a book -- but the book itself - Good Omens - has gone on to become a perennial bestseller in paperback without them. (It's just about to be reissued in the US in a new cover.) And I don't know of any other publishers who have ever reacted to reviews at all, good or bad. (They send them to you, and I think they circulate them around in-house, and they are pleased by the good ones and try very hard to keep the bad ones from you. But they don't DO anything different when faced by bad reviews, if you see what I mean.)

More to the point, I've seen books with amazing reviews, not to mention awards and enthusiastic plaudits from enormously famous writers sell the same number of books, or less, as the ones that don't get the reviews etc.

(Are sales important? Not as such, but they're the only way authors and publishers have of keeping score and comparing things: without sales you'd not know that, for example, Neverwhere in mass-market paperback was much more successful than Stardust, although Stardust did slightly better in hardcover. I suspect that Stardust will be much happier in the forthcoming 'trade paperback', the larger format, with a cover that makes it look more like a fairy tale for adults -- which it is -- and less like a generic fantasy novel -- which it certainly isn't.)

Most reviews come out when the book comes out. This is sensible, and strongly encouraged by publishers (who warn reviewers on the slips that go out with review copies not to review the book before publication date) because otherwise people cannot read a good review and then nip immediately down to the bookstore and buy a copy of two of the book.

There are exceptions to the embargo, though. PW, Kirkus, and Booklist all print their reviews a good way before the books come out, because they are reviewing for the trade: for bookstores and for libraries and for insiders. And their reviews become the Early Word on the book. (On several occasions I've had a good Kirkus review of one of my books followed up by movie and TV people calling to get hold of it, so I assume that they read it too, as a good place to go hunting for what they call 'properties' and the rest of us call 'stories'.)

Kirkus, PW and Booklist each put a star beside books they especially like. People pay a lot of attention to the stars. (If ever you've seen the phrase "Kirkus starred review" after a quote on the back of a bookjacket, that's what it meant. )

Obviously, the reviewers don't always agree. Neverwhere got a great review in Kirkus, I remember, and a stinker in PW (which said that it just showed I was a comics writer and the book would have been okay if only it had had pictures). But since then I've been very lucky with my early reviews in all the periodicals (and/or lucky with my reviewers -- BOOKLIST names its reviewers but Kirkus and (I think) PW reviewers are anonymous, and so get to utter pronouncements like the voice of God).

So today my editor, Jennifer Hershey, phoned. She was just on her way to an international book fair in Jerusalem, but wanted to call and read me something before she left the office.

It was the Kirkus Review of American Gods.

She read it to me, then she faxed me a copy.

I'll put the whole thing down here, because this is the first official review the book has got, and by this point, I hope, you're as curious as I was. Obviously, it's copyright Kirkus reviews (although I don't think they'd mind me putting it up here). It's from the May 15th edition...
....................................

An ex-convict is the wandering knight-errant who traverses the wasteland of middle America in this ambitious, gloriously funny, and oddly heartwarming latest from the popular fantasist. (STARDUST 1999, etc.)

Released from prison after serving a three-year term, Shadow is immediately rocked by the news that his beloved wife Laura has been killed in an automobile accident. While en route to Indiana for her funeral, Shadow meets an eccentric businessman who calls himself Wednesday ( a dead giveaway if you're up to speed on your Norse mythology), and passively accepts the latter's offer of an imprecisely defined job. The story skillfully glides onto and off the plane of reality, as a series of mysterious encounters suggest to Shadow that he may not be in Indiana anymore -- or indeed, anywhere on Earth he recognises. In dreams, he's visited by a grotesque figure with the head of a buffalo and the voice of a prophet -- as well as by Laura's rather alarmingly corporeal ghost. Gaiman layers in a horde of other stories whose relationship to Shadow's adventures are only gradually made clear, while putting his sturdy protagonist through a succession of tests that echo those of Arthurian hero Sir Gawain bound by honor to surrender his life to the malevolent Green Knight, Orpheus braving the terrors of Hades to find and rescue the woman he loves, and numerous other archetypal figures out of folklore and legend. Only an ogre would reveal much more about this big novel's agreeably intricate plot. Suffice it to say that this is the book that answers the question: When people emigrate to America, what happens to the gods they leave behind?

A magical mystery tour through the mythologies of all cultures, a unique and moving love story -- and another winner for the phenomenally gifted, consummately reader-friendly Gaiman. (Author Tour.)
.................................................................

And it has a star beside it.

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, book reviews, Death

American Gods Blog, Post 31

Steve Erickson is one of my favorite authors, and he's one of those people whose opinions matter to me. We just got a blurb in from him. It's as beautifully written as anything by Steve... (Read Days Between Stations. Read Tours of the Black Clock. Read Arc d'X. Read the one about the 1996 election, the title of which I've forgotten.) [American Nomad, I think.] He says...

Oh yeah, I know this place: the four-in-the-morning Hollywood where you wake in the dark from a dream of paradise, with the sinking feeling you've been had. Piercingly observed, jaggedly poetic, ruthlessly cutting a path through graveyards of dead stars and dead money and dead feelings, this novel is the map back to dawn.

Steve Erickson

Which thrilled me, more than I can easily say.

The Death movie script has been handed in. Lots more movie stuff to do this month, before the Writers Strike starts. (Next stop, Ramayana treatment. Then The Confessions of William Henry Ireland treatment.)

But today is a sort of day off. At any rate, I went for a walk in the woods, and everything felt like Spring in a Disney nature movie, as the snow, which has been there since mid-November, has finally started to melt.

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, Death, Steve Erickson

American Gods Blog, Post 27

Another long post was just written, telling you all that I was hiding out and doing nothing else but trying to finish the Death movie script; and what happened at IAFA; and that yes, the beard went half-way through, so I look like me again; and then I wrote all about the tour and how the US signings were almost finalised and will be announced here the moment they are.

Then I said that the US tour would be June 19th to July 2nd; the UK tour July 5th to 12th; the Canadian bit from July 20th to 25th.

And I mentioned that I wasn't doing any other American Gods signing this year (although I'm meant to be in Brazil at the end of May and in Spain in August). And I talked about how I'd just had a request from an academic journal in Brazil to reprint the bit of this journal that talks about what editors do (I said yes).

And all in all it was a lot like this post, only twice as long, and really interesting. But then I put down my foot and knocked the phone cord out of the wall, and that was that.

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, Death, IAFA, signings

American Gods Blog, Post 25

Nothing exciting to report on American Gods today. I’m back writing the Death: The High Cost of Living movie, which is a) incredibly late – this is my fault, and the fault of American Gods being at least twice as long as I’d originally planned – and b) hard writing. In some ways the hardest thing I’ve had to write in an age.

The biggest problem I’m having with it is, I already wrote it once, as a comic. That was in the summer of 1992. One thing I knew that I’d do this time, was give the characters new dialogue – words you write to be read are not words you write to be spoken aloud. They do different things.

But the dialogue is really hard to write: I’ll squint, and I’ll squirm and I’ll rack my brains, and I’ll imagine, and then I’ll carefully type a line. And then, later, I’ll check, and find all too often I’ve just written the same line, often word for word, that I gave those characters in 1992.

So I’m worrying less about that, now, and more about just getting it onto the desks of the people who want to read it by the first of April.

Tonight, and until Sunday, I’ll be attending the international conference for the fantastic in the arts Wearing the kind of beard that caused friction between Bertie and Jeeves in the beginning of a Wodehouse novel ("But Jeeves, dash it, it makes me look distinguished!" "So you say, sir," etc), and was always shaved off following the return of the prize pig or the marriage of Bingo Little at the end of the last chapter, to everyone's relief.

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, beards, Death, IA

American Gods Blog, Post 22

So, I was just starting to get up to speed on the DEATH: THE HIGH COST OF LIVING script when this morning brought with it from Harper Collins the US Galleys. So I rolled up my sleeves, took out my pen (the instructions they send say pencil, but I don't have a pencil here) and started in on them. Now it's just little things, and occasionally, fixing things I was too tired to fix the last time they went through (Harper Collins hyphenates or doesn't hyphenate on a system all of their own... why, I wonder, would face up become one word faceup?) and sometimes fixing things I'm pretty sure I did fix last time around but that weren't acted upon (dammit, I like blond for boys and blonde for girls). The scary point in proofreading is that odd moment when suddenly, the marks on the paper become nothing more than marks on the paper. This is my cue to go and make a cup of tea. Normally they've fixed themselves and become marks that mean something when I get back. In this case, I decided that doing a journal entry (while the tea brews) might encourage them to head back into wordhood.

Not sure if I mentioned this before, but the Amazon.com entry for American Gods has the first draft of the jacket copy up. (It's at http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380973650) The one on the book jacket is, I think, a little more oblique.

Changing the subject, I keep thinking about the Coen brothers who proudly announced when they released the directors cut of Blood Simple that far from adding any new material, they had managed to cut several minutes from it. I keep thinking about this in context of the book, this blogger journal, and the American Gods website. There is stuff I'm very happy to have cut from the manuscript. One story stands alone (I sent it out as a Christmas card this year) but there are some oddments that I cut out because they interrupted the flow of the story, and it was just a little leaner and worked a little better without them. I can imagine in ten years' time rereading American Gods and proudly cutting out several paragraphs.

So I think I may post a few here and there. There's one lecture from a character who never really even made it into the first draft, I keep meaning to transcribe from my notes and put up. The rest of them are full scenes or bits...

Here's a little one.

“I suppose I need a library card,” he said. “And I want to know all about thunderbirds.”

The woman had him fill out a form, then she told him it would take a week until he could be issued with his card. Shadow wondered if they spent the week sending out despatches to ensure that he was not wanted in any other libraries across America for failure to return library books.

He had known a man in prison who had been imprisoned for stealing library books.

“Sounds kind of rough,” said Shadow, when the man told him why he was inside.

“Half a million dollars worth of books,” said the man, proudly. His name was Gary McGuire. “Mostly rare and antique books from libraries and universities. They found a whole storage locker filled with books from floor to ceiling. Open and shut case.”

“Why did you take them?” asked Shadow.

“I wanted them,” said Gary.

“Jesus. Half a million dollars worth of books.”

Gary flashed him a grin, lowered his voice and said, “That was just in the storage locker they found. They never found the garage in San Clemente with the really good stuff in it.”

Gary had died in prison, when what the infirmary had told him was just a malingering, feeling-lousy kind of day turned out to be a ruptured appendix. Now, here in the Lakeside library, Shadow found himself thinking about a garage in San Clemente with box after box of rare, strange and beautiful books in it rotting away, all of them browning and wilting and being eaten by mold and insects in the darkness, waiting for someone who would never come to set them free.

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, Death, Directors Cuts, Galleys