Holy Thundering Sludgebuckets! THANK YOU!

The Humble Bundle went live almost ten hours ago.

It's broken all the previous Humble Bundle records for Books.  As I type this, about 7000 people have already bought the  Bundle. It's raised $133,000. And it's done something really peculiar...

The average donation (right now $18.88) is actually higher than the level we had set as our top level ($15). This means that the books we thought were going to be mid-level books are actually, much to our surprise, the top level books.

This means a few things, including some changes of plans in the week ahead to make sure that as many people as possible get as much stuff as possible...

There's a great interview with me over at The Nerdist where I talk about embarrassment and age and why I'm willing to let some of the embarrassing stuff from the basement and the attic out. (Well, out for the next 13 days, anyway.) It's at http://nerdist.com/exclusive-neil-gaiman-discusses-uncovering-rarities-for-humble-bundle/

One of the best unexpected side-effects of this has been an ask me anything on Reddit with my daughters, Holly and Maddy Gaiman. You get a great sense of their personalities. They are both very funny in very different ways. For anyone wondering, this is what they look like now.

Maddy is the author of this book. Or she was, in 2002. It's letters and poems we sent each other while I was off writing American Gods, and she was Very Young. Only 100 copies were published, and given to close friends. And now it's part of the Humble Bundle too...

So thank you, and thank you again.

If you haven't bought it yet, you can still get your rare and collectible eBooks, eComics and eWhatnots at https://www.humblebundle.com/books for the next 13 days and 14 hours. 1249 pages of  stuff. All the money goes to good causes, and you can control how much of it goes to charities, to the creators, to Humble Bundle...

(There will be more stuff in the bundle released midweek. If you've already bought the bundle you will get it all without having to pay any more.)

...

Also, things I should mention:

Miracleman #1 is out! The art by Mark Buckingham has never looked better. The story by me is, well, I'm still proud of it, after all these years. If you've wondered what the fuss was about, it's a great place to start and should be at your local comic shop.

http://marvel.com/comics/issue/50326/miracleman_by_gaiman_buckingham_2015_1

The Global Goals: On the 25th of September, the UN will officially adopt the new Global Goals. Head over to http://www.globalgoals.org and learn what they are, and what you can do to change the world for the better...

Before that, Penguin are going to be releasing the world's first Post-It Note book, to draw awareness to the global goals: I helped, a little, in making it happen: http://www.thebookseller.com/news/richard-curtis-and-neil-gaiman-michael-joseph-global-goals-curate-worlds-first-post-it-note-book-311417  Richard Curtis did all the heavy lifting.

And, in case you were wondering...

Labels: Global Goals, Holly, Humble Bundle, Maddy, Miracleman, thank you so much

My Week In Pictures

I got up particularly early this morning in order to blog, and the first piece of email was a request from Steven Moffat for me to write Production Notes for Doctor Who Monthly about my episode, so I wrote that and there was my blogging time gone.

So instead of a well-considered discussion of my last ten days, I'm going to carry on from where I left off, in pictures.

This is Liam McKean, son of Dave and Clare McKean. He is standing beside the Garden Thing, which is something strange and artistic and faintly haunting that his sister Yolanda made.

I had a wonderful day at the McKeans. We picked blackberries and apples from their orchard.

This is Clare, above, picking blackberries. It's scary and thrilling to think I've known them for quarter of a century.

Dave, below, has just finished lunch in the George in Rye. I agreed, as I left, to write a children's book called FORTUNATELY, THE MILK for him.

I accidentally left lots of things to charge telephones with in their house, so they would not forget me.

I stayed overnight with my daughter Holly (in photo with her eyes tactically closed) and her flatmate, my scary god-daughter Hayley Campbell, offspring of Eddie and Anne Campbell of Brisbane.

This is an accidentally moody black and white shot of Thea Gilmore and Nigel Stonier, at the Radio 2 studio in Manchester the next night. Thea has a really great new album out called Murphy's Heart, and you can get a taster of it over at http://www.theagilmore.net/welcome.cfm.

From there to Bristol, where I saw Diana Wynne Jones, with special surprise she-was-just-leaving-as-I-was-arriving guest Robin McKinley. (You can read Robin's account of the visit at her blog, which is http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2010/09/23/fame-sort-of/)

The last time I was there, in April, Diana was not in good shape. This time she was much more chipper and happy. She's writing another book, and has a book after that she wants to write, and she remains one of my favourite people in the world.

From one old friend to another: Terry Pratchett and I met for Sushi in Cardiff the following evening, for Mysterious Reasons That We Are Not Announcing Yet. This is a photograph of us toasting Something Unexplained with champagne.

The next day was Doctor Who. Normally writers do not have much to do on set except step on things and get in the way, but I had agreed to be interviewed by Doctor Who Confidential, so I was indulged as I did the sort of things writers love to do which are normally frowned upon.

Like sneak into the prop stores, looking for Daleks to hug. (Fortunately, I did not see any weeping angels.)

Like being interviewed by Charlie McDonnell on the TARDIS steps (http://charliemcdonnell.com/an-explanation/)

Like stealing a TARDIS and head off across the infinite vastness of Time and Space battling evil wherever it occurs...

Sorry. Did I say that out loud? I meant, take a picture of myself on the TARDIS set.

I said goodbye to Director Richard Clark and the amazing Matt Smith (who makes even my duff lines sound good) and left Cardiff on the last train, missed the last train to Heathrow so shared a cab with a Greek Doctor who had come up from Swansea and missed the last train too. A couple of hours sleep, and then I flew to Boston...

Where, on Sunday morning, I found myself working as a roadie for Evelyn Evelyn, as they performed a Super Music Friends at the Yo Gabba Gabba! concerts for an audience of mostly three year olds and their parents.

They performed "Elephant Elephant", which you can see enacted by puppets here.

I liked this photo of them in the Wang Theatre dressing room...

Then I walked over to Boston Public Library, where Karen Hesse, Jerry Spinelli, Grace Lin and I were being honoured as Literary Lights for Children. http://www.bpl.org/general/associates/literarylightschildren.htm

It was a wonderful event, filled with enthusiastic schoolkids, and followed by a signing. I spoke last, and by the time it got to me, Jerry and Karen and Grace had already said everything there was to say, so I talked about the importance of daydreaming and why you should stare out of the window sometimes or actually a lot.

My future mother-in-law, Kathy, threw an engagement party for Amanda and me on Monday evening, which was really kind of her, and fun, and I got to meet lots of Amanda's neighbours and friends and relations, and some of my cousins came in too, to even out the numbers. (Here's the last few days from Amanda's point of view at her blog.)

Yesterday I finally got to see Amanda in Steven Bogart's production of Cabaret at the ART Theatre. I'm not going to enthuse about it here, mostly because the last of the tickets sold out when the first rave reviews appeared. But it was masterful. The things I'd had a problem with during the run-through I saw a month ago had all gone away.

Cabaret was followed by Amanda's Late Night Cabaret, a free-floating event starring an astonishing performer called Meow Meow, and, after that, Amanda herself. I do not have any photos of Meow Meow crowd surfing, alas.

Here are the press comments from her webpage: if anything they're understated.

Meow Meow, accompanied by Lance Horne.

Amanda and Meow Meow duet on "Fake Plastic Trees".

They are doing the Late Night Cabaret again tonight, only more so -- tickets are cheap and available at https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pe/8419705 until 8:30 tonight, or at the door, and you might want to bring some flowers to fling Meow Meow's magnificent entrance. If you're in the Boston area, come on out. You will, as the Cheshire Cat said, see me there.

Labels: blackberrying, cabaret, Dave McKean, Diana Wynne Jones, Doctor Who, Evelyn Evelyn, Holly, liam mckean, meow meow, photo of me with talented and nice people, Robin McKinley, TARDIS theft, Thea Gilmore

Maddy might have blogged this but who knows...

Oh hello there. Neil Gaiman here. These are my two beauteous daughters. They are loads and loads of fun to hang out with. They make me smile. Have a nice day! :) :)

Labels: Holly, Maddy's lovely hair thanks to checking luggage and hair products so there

American Gods Blog, Post 125

More from the Strange STuff People E-Mail Me Department: http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-gaiman-neil.asp is an interview with me (you have to page down past the biography stuff). http://www.kiplinger.com/spending/ is -- right now anyway -- something that lists the best prices of "this week's bestselling book, CD, DVD and software." American Gods is the book (and Fatbrain is currently the best price, it says).

Did a signing in Bristol at lunchtime which was lovely. It should have been an evening signing with a reading and stuff, really. Saw Diana Wynne Jones and several other friends, albeit too briefly in every case. Biut I got to tell Diana of Maddy's addiction to WARLOCK AT THE WHEEL, finally... Then got the train back and did an AOL chat, then London Live radio, now back in the hotel.

Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to go to Norwich for a lunchtime signing, then on to Canterbury where I shall see Dave McKean and his family, which I am looking forward to.

Sunday is the Giles Brandreth radio show on LBC, and a desperate attempt to see as many people as possible. Monday is editorial meetings, sign 300+ books in the Headline offices, and, in the evening, do some filming and reading and such with Tori for some album stuff. Tuesday morning I fly home.

Wish I had some trenchant and brilliant comments to make on the media or something, but mostly I'm just pooped. People have stopped assuming I'm American though, and my daughter Holly, when I phoned home last night, said "Dad! You sound so English!" which I shall take as a compliment, although I'm not entirely sure that was how she meant it. Really, my accent is just a universal sort of case of "you aren't from round here, are you?"

Labels: American Gods Blog, aol, Bristol, Dave McKean, Diana Wynne Jones, Holly, interviews, Maddy, radio, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 100

You`re probably thinking to yourself, I wonder where he is now? That one's easy. He's typing this in a train on the way from San Diego to Los Angeles. Which means that by the time he posts this, he'll be in his room in his hotel in LA.

And you may be wondering, I wonder how he's holding up? And the answer is, Okay, all things considered. Tired on a short of sleep sort of level, tired on a cellular level, much crankier than is my - his - sod it, we're back into the first person - my usual wont.

The hotel in San Francisco didn't help.

If they can, when travel agencies book authors into hotels, they put them into good, solid, businessy hotels, or sometimes into really good hotels. There are a couple of hotels (there's one in Portland for example) that are particularly keen on touring authors, and greet you with copies of your book to sign for their library.

And if you've got the kind of author who may not be eating until back in his hotel room very late, you make sure that the hotel has overnight room service.

For reasons no-one understands, I wound up in a little tourist hotel in the Japanese district of San Francisco. It wasn't the kind of place that had overnight room service. It wasn't the kind of place where the concierge would let you know that you had had six boxes of books to sign delivered to your room. For that matter, it wasn't the kind of place where, once they'd agreed that the books existed and would be delivered to your room, they actually bothered to deliver them to your room.

Also, it was an additional 15-25 minutes away from everywhere we needed to go, and when your day is running to the minute, the hour you can lose getting to and from the hotel comes out of sleep time.

This was particularly frustrating to Ellen Fishman, who was my author escort.

I know I meant to write about Author Escorts before, and have indeed mentioned them in passing. But I should probably explain them a bit more before continuing.

In the UK, if a publisher sends an author on tour, they often send a publicity person with them. Most of the publicity people are attractive young women, and there's not one of them that won't tell you horror stories of the time that author X or celebrity Y, who they were accompanying around the country at the time, decided that the real reason the publisher had sent an attractive young lady on tour with them was for purposes of sexual relief. After a glass or two of wine at the end of a long day's signing and interviewing, they'll even name names.

In the US, when a publisher sends an author on tour, they contract out their care to an Author Escort. Every city has one agency, some have more than one. Author escorts pick you up at the airport holding a copy of your book in their hands. (It's a good thing if you look like your author photo as that's how they recognise you.) They get you to your hotel, to the radio station or the TV studios. Every doorman and parking lot attendant in the city is their crony. They know the back ways. They will make things work and deliver you to wherever you are meant to be on time, guard you at the signing, get you back to your hotel.

Ellen has looked after me each time I've gone to San Francisco. Stephen King once said if he was having a heart attack and needed someone to get him into a hospital and treated he'd want Harlan Ellison by his side. I'd want Harlan too, but only if Ellen Fishman wasn't available.

Some of them are that good. Some of them aren't. I've only had maybe two who were useless in all the time I've done signing tours.

On my last tour I asked all the author escorts who the worst people they'd ever had were. (It wasn't for me. Jonathan Carroll asked.) They all declined to answer, and then I'd tell them who the others had said (luckily my first escort had a number of opinions, and one bookstore was particularly voluble about the worst person they'd ever has sign there) and they'd say "Oh let me tell you about her," or "I had him, he was a sweetie" and then they'd give me their lists.

At the time Brett Butler made number one, but only because Jeffrey Archer hadn't toured for a while. The ones who remembered him still looked nervous when his name was mentioned.

And sooner or later I'll finish talking about author escorts, Screen Savers, and survival tips for on the road.

...

There. Now we're three signings behind on the blogger. Cody's, Mysterious Galaxy and Vromans... maybe I'll get a chance to write about them tomorrow. Right now I just want to post this and sleep.

Oh, for all the people who have come up to me and asked why I call this journal a blogger - "Is it a British thing?" - you should go to www.blogger.com and find out...

Still. I'm now in a nice hotel in LA, and Holly's here, which made me a lot less cranky than I was. She was thrilled when we opened the door to the hotel room to find lots of people had sent flowers, champagne and faxes telling us that the New York Times List thing was a good thing, and she was astonished that journal-reading people came up to her at Vromans wishing her happy birthday and congratulating her on passing her driving test. (Her license has a photo of her with an ear to ear grin on it. It's astoundingly cute.)

...

I've put in a request to the powers that be to make this journal (a) easier to read. (I want larger type dammit.) And (b) to make the links visible without having to pass the mouse over them to reveal them (which seems to defeat the purpose of them being links). I hope we can make it happen soon...

Labels: American Gods Blog, Author Escorts, Ellen Fishman, Harlan Ellison, Holly, hotel, Jonathan Carroll, Stephen King, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 97

Ahem.

This Journal would officially like to extend a Happy Sixteenth Birthday to Holly Gaiman. Who also passed her driving test today. Just wish I was there to give her a hug. (But she's coming in to LA as a birthday present so I'll see her there...)

Labels: American Gods Blog, Holly, Holly's birthday

American Gods Blog, Post 82

My daughter Holly just came charging in. "Hey Dad!" she said. "You're at 82 on Amazon.com!" She had a huge smile on her face. "That's the highest it's been so far! And it's not even out yet!"

Then her face fell. "I'm away next week," she said. "I won't be here to check for you, while you're off on tour. You could get up really high on Amazon, and you'd never know."

Someone would tell me, I assured her.

"Have you put me in your journal thing again, yet?" she asked. "You know I read it. So far you've only told about the time I made your journal entry vanish. You should say something nice about me."

She is pretty wonderful, actually. Hi, Holly.

Labels: Amazon, American Gods, American Gods Blog, Holly

American Gods Blog, Post 68

Got up this morning in a fine mood and wrote a 2,000 word blogger entry in this here journal. It was long, informative, useful and funny. I even wrote an impromptu essay on how to pronounce "Gaiman". I recommended books. I philosophised. It was one of the great Blogger entries.

I set it to post and publish and walked into the kitchen to grab something to eat. Then, like a character in a bad french farce, my daughter Holly (16 in three weeks) walked in to the office, carefully closed the on-screen window with the journal in it (but none of the other windows) -- before it had even posted, let alone published, the entry I'd just written -- and got offline. Then she wandered off, probably vaguely happy to have done something useful.

I ate, cheerfully, crossed the hall to the office, sat down at the computer, saw what had happened, and started to express my feelings.

"You shouldn't say things like that," said Holly, wandering back. "It sets a bad example."

Sigh.

Then we went and watched Mike graduate from High School. Very proud, even if I find something really weird about the spectacle of 17 year olds in caps and gowns. ("Well, you're English," said My Wife. "It's one of those things they don't have there.")

I'm going to have to repost all the useful stuff. The rest of it is going to have to wait until I have some time...

So...

One of the essays I did for online places has gone up. It's at http://go.borders.com/features/neilgaiman.xcv
The most immediate note: From the Bottom Line Club website:

SUN
JUNE 17 MAGNETIC FIELDS
Also Appearing:
Author NEIL GAIMAN
Reading From His New Book: American Gods
**General admission tickets for both shows have been sold out. You can still purchase standing room only tickets for the shows right before showtime.**
Doors Open 6PM for 7:30 Show/10PM for 10:30 Show All Seats
$20.00

(Although I probably won't read much from American Gods -- I'll do shorter things, I think.)

Labels: American Gods Blog, Holly, Magnetic Fields, Mike