string them up by their beautiful hair

Today I've been playing Amanda Palmer's song Oasis and the Bonzo Dogs' new song Beautiful People, more or less over and over, like some kind of weird A and B side. (That's a reference for the very old.)

Mr.Gaiman,

I was wondering where I might be able to find a copy of the "Snow Glass Apples" which appeared on scifi.com's "Seeing Eye Theatre" as SET has been removed from the scifi website.

Thanks,

Matthew

Interesting... and a bit mysterious. I figured I'd be able to point you to lots of places that had it up, as I did the last time someone asked. But no. It's vanished from the Scifi.com site, it's vanished from iTunes, it's vanished from Audible.com, and even the stuff you used to be able to listen to here on this site has vanished as well.

The Audie-award winning CD of Two Plays For Voices (which contains Bebe Neuwirth starring in Snow Glass Apples, Brian Dennehy starring in Murder Mysteries) is still available for as long as it stays in print (here's the Amazon link) (here's the DreamHaven link). Right now that's the only way to legitimately listen to it.

(Look, Dreamhaven have Mirrormask toys on sale.)

I'm not quite sure who the rights owner is for the online versions of Snow Glass Apples or Murder Mysteries, to be honest. Probably the SciFi channel. And if they're no longer hosting the marvellous Seeing Ear Theatre material they did I wish they'd put it up somewhere like Last FM, or at Audible, so that people could hear it...

(In a box in my basement are a hundred or so cassette copies of Two Plays for Voices that Harpers remaindered and that I bought thinking they were CDs.)

Greetings Neil,

I noticed that Amazon has put up a page for "Odd and the Frost Giants":

http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Frost-Giants-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0061671738

I just wanted to make sure that this wasn't a mistake before I cancel my order from Amazon UK.

Thanks

-Kevin

According to Harper Collins, it's a mistake on Amazon's part. It won't be coming out in the US until at least 2009.

Back in 1993 I got a book called The Essential Dracula: The Definitive Annotated Edition, with annotations by Leonard Wolf. Are you familiar with this book? How is the book that you introduced different?

thanks,

Erick

This one is better. It's been annotated by Les Klinger, who did the amazing Annotated Sherlock Holmes collections a few years back. I've read it, and have seen a few designed pages, and it's a remarkable piece of work.

...


Oh, and the "nothing rhymes with Neil Gaiman" thing. Alan Moore said that. I didn't.

But those of you who are writing in to point out that "simon" or "rhymin'" or "hymen" rhyme with Gaiman are simply wrong. Honest.

Among the ones that came in and did rhyme (and there have been about a dozen so far) this one, by Anna Lawrence, stood out...

In re 'rhymes':

There was a young author named Gaiman
Whose books were beloved of the layman
But the story turned horrider
On a trip down to Florida
When his leg was bit off by a cayman.

... I'm sorry about that, but it had to be done.

Not a problem. If we gave no-prizes, you could have one. Would you like a cassette of Two Plays for Voices? (Anna only omitted "stamen" and "daemon", two other words popular with today's poetic correspondents.)

...

I wrote the end of Chapter 8 today. Then I went back and started writing a couple of scenes from Chapter 7 I skipped while I was writing it, so the book isn't quite finished. But it sort of almost is.

Labels: Dracula, Rhyming, two plays for voices

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