Late night mystery post...

Hullo everyone. I took a week off from Blogging, then didn't have a second during the whirlwind of the last few days.

As a result of which I have dozens of open tabs and dozens of letters to the FAQ line that I've marked as things I should answer. I'm not going to try and do them all now (Maddy told me that I'm taking her to school at 6:30 am, as she's got her first period of Driver's Ed). But there are a few things I should say before I sleep...

The first one is to congratulate Henry Selick and all the Coraline team (and Laika, and Focus) on the wonderful way they are being recognised by Awards. Yesterday, for example, we learned that Coraline is nominated for a Golden Globe award.

There's a great website at http://awards.filminfocus.com/#/coraline/awards which is a bit out of date right now. My favourite of the recent awards is that the Alliance of Women Journalists gave Coraline their Best Animated Character award, although the biggest honour is Coraline being on the American Film Institute's list of the ten most important films released in 2009.

I went to Atlanta. It was foggy and thunderstormy and I signed for 1,050 people. (Here's the Atlanta paper blog on the event. And Little Shop of Stories said Thank You so very nicely.)

I went to Winnipeg. It was cold outside and I signed for 869 people. Here's the Winnipeg Newspaper article. Just behind me, in the grey shirt, is the wonderful Elyse Marshall, publicist from HarperChildren's, who looked after me on the Graveyard Book Tour and who can now run a huge signing in her sleep, which is great, because it means I don't have to worry about any details or disasters. I just do my job and sign and meet everyone.

(How bad can it get? Well, there was the time Terry Pratchett and I were signing in, er, I think it was Leeds, when the people who worked at the shop saw all the people who had turned up for the signing and got scared enough that they locked themselves in the staff room at the back, leaving Terry and me to climb onto tables and shout at people until they formed some kind of a line. The staff didn't come out again until the people had all gone.)

Strangest moment in Winnipeg was getting back to the hotel room at 1:30 am to notice that, beside my bed, a framed photo of my children had mysteriously appeared. I assumed that this was a cool thing the hotel had done. Elyse, on the other hand, was convinced it was the action of a crazed stalker, and insisted I deadbolt and security chain my hotel room, and was enormously relieved, a few hours later, when she knocked on my door and I removed the chain and was obviously still alive.



Before we left the hotel I took the photo out of the frame and left a thank-you note in its place.



Flew back to Minneapolis. I stopped off at DreamHaven on the way back from the airport this afternoon, and signed more stock for Greg (http://neilgaiman.net/). Theoretically enough to see him through Xmas.

Several people wrote asking me to express my outrage at HarperCollins joining several other publishers in delaying the release of books on the Kindle or e-book format to some months after the hardback comes out, as detailed at http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/11/harpercollins-now-also-thumbing-nose-at-e-book-industry-with-dig/ but after I read the article I couldn't manage any outrage at all, no more than I could manage for people who demand that paperback books come out at the same time as hardbacks. It seemed a legitimate way to publish, anyway.

And, for those of you who want to learn exactly how an author should not respond to an Amazon One-Star review, we present an author who begins by pretending she's not the author, just someone defending a good book, then, when outed as the author, claims she's part of a noble group standing up against an evil one-star reviewer, and then informs everyone on the Amazon Comments thread that she's reported them all to the FBI. The Amazon Thread is here. Teresa Nielsen Hayden comments on it at Making Light, here. (Via Cleolinda's twitter.)

And yes, it's a horrible car crash, and I post it here not because it's funny in an Oh God Make It Stop kind of way, but because, if any of you are ever tempted to respond to bad reviews or internet trolls etc, it's a salutary reminder of why some things are better written in anger and deleted in the morning. (Also, if you're an American Games company, don't sue a British blogger in the Australian courts for a bad review.)

Oops. I have started blogging. I will stop now, and sleep for a little while.

...

Before I go: Sky has a website for the Ten Minute Tales series, which includes Statuesque, my film starring Bill Nighy (which goes out in the UK on Christmas Day) : http://sky1.sky.com/10-minute-tales. I wish I could have been at the screening in London on Sunday, more so when I saw my old friend Paterson Joseph stars in one of the films.

Labels: a mystery without any resolution yet, author mistakes, decatur, Henry Selick's Coraline, The Graveyard Book Halloween Party Competition, winnipeg

A bit sad. But it ends with Toast.

I went to Boston and spent Thanksgiving with Amanda and her family. It was wonderful. I spent any spare moments reading comics for a book I am guest editing next year. (This is a photo of us on the pavement outside her house.)

Now I'm home. Typing a blog entry, listening to TV Smith's Live CD.

...

The saddest moment of the trip was lunchtime today, and a call from Roz Kaveney to let me know that our friend Rob Holdstock had died, of an e.coli infection. He was only 61. When I stumbled into the world of SF and Fantasy, over 25 years ago, as a young journalist, Rob, already a successful and award-winning author, was absolutely friendly, welcoming and encouraging. A big, affable man, with a knack for putting people at their ease, he was always one of the Good Things about the British SF world. His book Mythago Wood was one of my favourite novels of the 1980s. I saw him less and less since I've lived in the US; like too many UK friends, I'd see him mostly at publishing parties and book launches. He died too early. My condolences to Sarah, his partner.

...

Two NPR pieces I should point people to. One is my guest-spot on "Morning Edition", talking about, and interviewing people about, Audio Books, at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120769925.

The other is "On The Media" , at http://www.onthemedia.org/episodes/2009/11/27. I'm one of several people talking about the future of the book (or The Future of The Book).

Big congratulations to Henry Selick, to all at Laika and to Focus for the Coraline Film, which won the Children's Feature Film award at the BAFTAs last night (http://www.bafta.org/awards/childrens).

...

Tickets to the 14th Dec Decatur GA Little Shop of Stories event - reading, Q&A and signing - are available from tomorrow: details at http://littleshopofstories.blogspot.com/2009/11/details-of-neil-gaiman-event.html (basically, from Monday Nov 30th, you can pick up the tickets in Person; from Monday Dec 7th, you can reserve tickets over the phone.)

Here are the details for the Winnipeg event on Dec 15th: http://www.mcnallyrobinson.com/editorial-1349/Master-Storyteller-Neil-Gaiman-Visits-on-December-15

...

The Green Goddess restaurant in New Orleans gets reviewed in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. Note that they do not tell you that if you oh-so-casually ask for the Meze of Destruction, they will make a fuss of you and bring you Something Nice, for this is something you would only learn here.

...

And finally, over at http://twitpic.com/rhg4t, @heydeletethat does portraits of me and Amanda. On Toast. I mean, that's art on Toast.

Labels: Henry Selick's Coraline, NPR, Rob Holdstock, thanksgiving, toast, TV Smith

friday night and all's quiet

Let's see:

It's a bit quiet. Maddy and Holly and their mum are in the UK for a few weeks, Amanda's in Boston preparing to head off to Russia, and I'm home quite alone if you don't count a large white dog, working very late into the night trying to finish things for people before I go to Worldcon.

I just went to Amazon to buy a DVD of Coraline (studios are, alas, notoriously stingy with things like that -- I've got one and that seems to be all that's coming) and noticed that there's a wonderful Henry Selick article up on their blog -- forthright and funny. It's at http://www.armchaircommentary.com/2009/07/coraline-director-henry-selick-on-his-latest-film.html

It's filled with genuine insider stuff, including this, which made me smile:

I’ve always thought of Neil Gaiman as the cat in Coraline. He’s very wise, dryly humorous, and superior in a cat-like way. He has a great voice and I considered early on having him voice the cat. In re-setting the story in the U.S., I felt I needed more ethnic range in the characters leading me to the marvelous Keith David. Sorry, Neil.

(I did the cat on the audio book. It was enough.)

I wanted to start keeping bees, but my dad, whose yard I would have to use, says that keeping bees is too stinky. My grandfather says they don't smell at all (his father kept bees). As a person currently keeping bees, can you tell me if they/their hives smell bad?

Healthy hives smell like honey, mostly, when they're opened: a thick, deep, sweet smell. (They don't smell like anything when they aren't opened.)

The only occasion you're going to get a bad-smelling hive is if it's diseased or dead; and the same is true of people.

Had a quick look at the belljar-of-honey photo's as well. Looks like it needs an airvent hole on the top....

Didn't spot it in your photo, nor read about the signing hand being full of glass-splinters.

Cheers,
Renate

I don't think it does. The bees climb and fly in from the open bell-bottom (there's a hole in the wood beneath them), and leave the same way.

Neil, I think the foundations strips in the BELL JAR were glued in PERPENDICULAR to the jar in the original photos you shared. Glue the edge of each foundation piece onto the inside of the jar.

This may make no difference at all (IANABK), but just an observation of a difference between your jar and the one that inspired you.

...Eric

Yup. I know. We'll see what they do. My assumption is that the little bits of foundation are there to give them some wax and a starting point and the idea, and, seeing it's wild comb, they will do what they want anyway, like bees mostly do, but really, it was for ease of gluing. But if I get back from Worldcon in Montreal and nothing's happened, I'll do it the other way. Photos will be posted, whatever happens.

Also, to put the bell-jar back into the dark and to stop it getting blown away or stolen by passing wood-trolls, I put a broodbox around it (the one in the photo here).

Hello Mr. Gaiman, you posted about the "pre-paid Neverwhere from the now-as-far-as-I-can-gather extremely defunct Hill House" and stated "You should have received an email from Harpers letting you know this edition was on the way". I pre-paid for it and I have not received an e-mail from Harpers. I'm sure others have not been e-mailed as well. Can you post something about how we can contact them about it. I did not know about this until you posted about it and I and others I'm sure don't want to miss this. Thank you so much for getting this book to happen and please continue to help all of us finally get it. Thanks again.

There may well be people who didn't get the email (I know some of Hill House's email addresses were long out of date). If you prepaid for a limited Neverwhere (and some of you may have done so as far back as November 2003) and you want to make sure that you're on the list, write to Jennifer.Brehl@HarperCollins.com. Jennifer is my editor at William Morrow, and the person organising this: be nice to her, she's a hardworking, fulltime editor who has taken this on as an extra task, helping to discharge Hill House's karmic debt, and if she doesn't get back to you immediately, she will soon.

Glad to hear that people who payed for the Hill House Neverwhere will be getting a book after all. I am writing to inquire if anything was being done for booksellers that had taken orders for the Hill House subscription. My understanding is that they'd pre-payed HH just as individuals had, but the one I'd ordered mine from (shocklines.com) hadn't heard anything about the Harper Collins edition. I've already been given a refund for my copy, but I feel really sorry for the store which is just out the money. Thanks for all you do.

If they prepaid for the book, they should get in touch with Jennifer, whether they are stores or individuals. She'll let them know what's happening (I assume they'll simply get their books, just as individual customers would have done).

...

A few small ones: I'm still not sure how to get the balance of personal to not-personal right in this blog, at present. For the curious, the lovely Ms Palmer talks about our relationship over in The Skinny.

The Batman story I did, collected as WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE CAPED CRUSADER was reviewed in the New York Times today, along with books by Darwyn Cooke and David Mazzuchelli. And that I can blithely type that shows how astonishingly far comics have come in the last twenty years.

I had a long conversation with Christina Amoroso at Entertainment Weekly last month about Vampires in popular culture, from Varney the Vampire until now: she's managed somehow to make it a 400 word interview over at http://shelf-life.ew.com/2009/07/31/neil-gaiman-why-vampires-should-go-back-underground/

(And note that I'm not saying there's anything bad about vampires, quite the opposite. Just that in a world in which a dozen people immediately write to me on Twitter to point out that I've got it wrong, as they are all writing Vampire stories, in which Vampires are now everywhere, is a world in which High Vampire Season is coming to an end). You shouldn't be glutted with vampires: they should be a spice, not a food group.

And finally, it looks like the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab limited edition Sunbird scent and booklet went live, and has not quite sold out yet, so I shall link to it here. It smells like deserts and woodsmoke and spices and resins, warm where Snow Glass Apples was cold. Like all the BPAL scents of my stuff, it is a benefit for the CBLDF.

Edit to add: I just noticed, there's a couple of "imp" assortments at the CBLDF site, that even BPAL doesn't sell, for those who want to try out the scents. An American Gods/Anansi Boys set, and a Graveyard Book assortment.

Labels: a belljar, BPAL, Henry Selick's Coraline, hill house, Sunbird scent, vampires, What Bees Smell Like

All the Colours of Hell

For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, emails from my agent that forward jpgs from Germany always turn up with the colours inverted. This one -- an inversion of the upcoming German Paperback cover -- made me smile:

...ah yes, I thought. That's the sequel, all right. CORALINE APOCALYPSE.

And I just got a note from a happy Henry Selick to say that Coraline is now the second highest grossing stop-motion film ever (Chicken Run is the first), and I am proud of him.

...

Why are the Absolute Sandman volumes so expensive? I can't even afford half of one!

They aren't that expensive. Well, they are, but that's because you pay for what you get: you're getting 600+ pages of full colour comics, newly coloured, and new material, bound to last, on good quality paper, hardback and cased. They're a hundred dollars each (they were half that through Amazon on release, and can still be found for around $60 if you poke around online.) Paying full price it'll cost you $400 for the set. (That's about $240 on Amazon "new and used"). They weigh about seven and a half pounds each.

(Absolute Death is $62 from Amazon on preorder right now.)

There are ten Sandman Books out in paperback, which will cost you, at full price, a hair under $200 -- and which are still in print, and can be found much more cheaply. The printing, paper and colour isn't as good, and they tend to discolour with the years. But it's the same story. 

(To put the Absolute Sandman's into context, Dave McKean and Heston Blumenthal's Big Fat Duck Cookbook is a hair under $200.)

Hi Neil,

Is your Luminato reading already sold out? I wanted to take my son, but every time I try to buy tickets through ticketmaster, it tells me that the seats I want aren't available.

Thanks. Howard

I haven't heard anything from Luminato, but got this just before yours:

Hi Neil,

I tried and tried to got tickets to your reading at Luminato in Toronto. The presale code didn't work, calling in with the code got me nowhere. So, like an idiot, I figured it must not work for anybody and that I would be safe.
I wasn't. They were sold out by 10:02 yesterday, according to Ticketmaster.
Will you be doing a reading or even a signing anywhere else while you're here? Or, is there anyway to get Luminato tickets elsewhere, or even attend the signing without a ticket (I'd love to see the reading, but that doesn't seem possible)?

Thanks,
Amanda

..so it looks like the 500 seats sold out in two minutes, I'm afraid. I don't know if I'm doing any other public events at Luminato. (I think I'm doing some school events.) I'll post what I find out.

Labels: Henry Selick's Coraline

by way of preamble...

A couple of days ago the front page at CBC (Canadian Broadcasting) website announced that it had interviews and reviews about Tim Burton's Coraline. Which I saw moments before I saw a piece on the Chicago Tribune print edition front page announcing its reviews of Tim Burton's Coraline. And my hackles started rising.

The hackles were, I should point out, not on my behalf, but for Henry Selick, who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas: he worked on the story with the screenwriter, Caroline Thompson (another person whose contribution tends to be forgotten), and the songwriter, Danny Elfman, to turn Tim's character sketches and poem into a film script, then he spent years in a warehouse in San Francisco overseeing people moving dolls around a frame at a time, with Tim off making fine movies; and, then, a couple of weeks before the film came out, the title was changed to Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas. Which tends to mean that people assume that Tim made the film and if they even notice Henry was involved as director, they assume it was in some strange kind of junior role. (Nope, he was the director. He grew Tim's poem and character sketches into a movie. Tim produced it.)  

It was irritating when people started asking me why the advertising said "From the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas", and wasn't it some kind of a sneaky attempt to make people think that it was by Tim Burton?, and I would sigh, and say no, it was a sneaky attempt to make people think it was directed by the person who directed The Nightmare Before Christmas. (And given that people were saying this about trailers that made a point of saying Henry's name, I had little patience with it.)

So I was already not impressed with the CBC website or the Chicago Tribune, and then someone sent me a link to an online newspaper in which the reviewer's first paragraph explained Tim Burton's career and then went on to explain, in an extremely dim sort of way, why Coraline was a Tim Burton film, and I twittered about it. And then watched the delighted twitterverse pile onto the poor gentleman in the comments page with surprise, realising that this power must only be used for good. 

(There are a lot more people reading this blog than are following me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/neilhimself. But still, deploying 22,000 people at once is an amazing thing.) (Not as good as Stephen Fry, of course. For he is the awesome god-emperor of Twitter. Also he sent me a direct message to say how much he liked Coraline.)

Some people thought I was grumpy about me not getting credit for Coraline. I'm not grumpy -- and believe me, I am getting more credit than authors of original books ever usually get. I was grumpy on Henry's behalf.

Which is mostly a preamble to give context to Randy Milholland's lovely cartoon at  http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02092009.shtml

Lots of emails saying things like

Hi Neil,

Just wanted to know if you'd seen this:

http://www.somethingpositive.net/sp02092009.shtml

Does it still freak you out to be such a public... object sometimes? I imagine it must be like those Serious Shakespearean Actors in Holywood with Star Wars, Star Trek or X-Men action figures made out of their image... Or is it just flattering?! :)

Fay

If Bill Hader ever does his impression of me on SNL, as opposed to doing it at NY Comic Con, I will worry about having become a public object. Something like Randy's cartoon, or getting a namecheck in Dog Eat Doug is more like being waved at by those in our clan.

Dear Neil,

My name is Gabriel Miranda.I love your work, and am really excited for Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? which I'll be picking up Wednesday.I saw Coraline opening day and loved it, even though there were slight differences with the film and your novel.I'm 18 and an aspiring writer myself.You are one of my biggest influences and I hope one day I can achieve your level of success.I was wondering if you could send me a prop from Coraline.I know that probably sounds really bad, but I would just like to have a piece of that film for the rest of my life.If you could send me something or have Laika send me something it would be greatly appreciated and I would be very humbled.Thank you for your time Neil and I wish you the best of luck.Please get back to me soon.

Best wishes,
Gabriel Miranda

I'm sorry guys. I can't get you props from the film, or Coraline boxes, or, well, anything. I only have a Coraline puppet, and she is mine. Right now there's an eBay auction going on to benefit the Starlight Foundation -- you can see everything up at http://toysrevil.blogspot.com/2009/02/coraline-movie-ebay-auctions-to-benefit.html and go to the auction at EBay's Starlight Foundation store.

I just came across this amazing video of Amanda Palmer covering Radiohead's 'Creep' in the back of a London cab. With a broken ankle. And thought you and your fans might enjoy it.

http://www.blackcabsessions.com/sessions.php?id=1225319732&sort=chronological

That's delightful, and when I get some time I will waste some of it on the rest of the Black Cab videos they have up. Which reminded me of

Dear Neil,

My friends and I want to come up to Dublin for either the screening of 'Coraline' or your book signing next week. Can you please help make our decision easier?! Will you be doing a signing after the film screening?

Thanks,

Rebecca and Co.

No signing after the Dublin Film Festival CORALINE screening, although I will be doing a Q&A. As much signing as possible at the Chapters signing-and-singing on the 17th. (I will be signing. Not singing.)

...

I'm enjoying twitter, probably too much, but it doesn't do nuance very well. I wanted to let people know that they have another 2 weeks to watch Coraline in 3D before the Jonas Bros 3D movie comes out and takes over the screens (you do know that? If you want to see it in 3D or see again, you need to do it fast), and people thought I was plugging the Jonas Bros. I tried to let people know that copies of Batman 686 may go fast, and they should get stores to set it aside if they wanted it, and people thought I was pushing it (no, just trying to make sure I didn't get people asking why I didn't let them know it was coming out and might sell fast). (It's out today.[Edit to add, I mean tomorrow. I thought today was Wednesday.] It may go fast. You have been warned.)

...
And a final note --
Just a tip for readers: Searching "Coraline" and your zip code on Google only gives theaters showing the 2D version. You have to specifically search for "Coraline 3D" and the zip code to find it. I went many miles away to see what I thought was the only version available to me in my city before I figured this out. I hope to see it in 3D tonight.
Peachy,
Donovan

And sure enough, he's right.

Labels: Dog eat Doug, Henry Selick's Coraline, something positive, the dangers of Twitter, Tim Burton's Coraline