J.G. Ballard and the way the future was

When I was a boy, I loved J. G. Ballard.  And when I was a teenager I loved J.G. Ballard. And as an adult I loved J.G. Ballard.   Different books, though, in each time -- as a boy I read and loved his disaster books, in which the world drowned or was blown away or slowly turned into crystal, and his Vermilion Sands short stories (particularly one called "The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D"). As a teen I took weird cool challenging Ballard out of the library (I loved Concrete Island most of all, a Robinsonade about a man in a road accident stranded on the centre island in a busy motorway). As a young man I loved Empire of the Sun -- but I never stopped loving the old books, even as I discovered the new.

And somewhere around 1985, my friend Kathy Acker took me to a party/book launch/some kind of event somewhere in London and I met William Burroughs and Jim Ballard, stood there and chatted  as they reminisced about London in the 1960s. I don't know what or who I had been expecting, but Jim Ballard, then, and whenever I met him after that, was terrifying in his ordinariness, like the protagonists of his high-rises and drowned worlds, like the man on the motorway island. 

As the years continued, I remained fascinated with Ballard, and with the strange way that Ballard's most outre work from the late 60s and early 70s, odd un-stories with titles like "Why I Want To Fuck Ronald Reagan", or books like Crash, on the sexual fetishism of car crashes and beautiful women who die in them, seemed to have somehow predicted the future that we were in, the world of postReagan image control and the psychofallout of a dead Diana, better than any of the SF writers who thought they really were predicting the future.

And I found myself hesitating on writing this one, as if, if I didn't write something for my blog, I would keep him alive just a little bit longer.

The photo is by Miriam Berkley, from about 1991.

...

Over at Cat Mihos's Neverwear she threw open a competition for people to suggest t-shirts, and the results she got back are, frankly, amazing, and not easy to judge. If you would like to weigh in or vote for anything you would like to wear, head over to http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2009/04/in-which-we-judge-another-contest.html. (And if you ever wondered what my mail looks like, she's started photographing it.)

And a quick one: Just heard from HarperChildrens that my audiobook of The Graveyard Book has been chosen as one of the three nominees for Audiobook of the year. It's already been nominated for two Audio Awards -- you can read the full list at http://www.audiopub.org/2009Finalistspressrelease.pdf and to have it picked as a potential audio book of the year put a smile on my face nothing could shift. http://www.audiopub.org/2009ABOTY_DAPfinalistsrelease_final.pdf

This is what they said about it:

The Graveyard Book
By Neil Gaiman
Read by the author
Published by HarperAudio
Also a Finalist in the Thriller/Suspense and Children’s Titles for Ages 8-12 categories.

The Graveyard Book leaped into immortality with its Newbery Medal win, but the audiobook adds the author’s haunting performance, which strikes the perfect balance between a professional reader and the heart and soul of the author. Bela Fleck’s eerie and whimsical original musical composition for the audiobook sets the tone and punctuates the production. Gaiman’s unabashed enthusiasm for the audiobook format found expression throughout his book tour and on his website. Gaiman’s and HarperAudio’s efforts have clearly won new fans through these recorded readings and effective social media marketing.

Which is astonishingly nice. I've said it before, but it remains true, I feel happier when people like the audiobooks I've recorded than I think I am about anything else. It's one of the few awards I take personally.

And, truth to tell, and while it's-always-nice-to-be-nominated-and-all-that, I would love to win an Audie award. I won one for SNOW GLASS APPLES/MURDER MYSTERIES (which was packaged as TWO PLAYS FOR VOICES) but that wasn't me reading, just my adaptations of my stories. I have many pewter nomination medals, and would like to get one big glass slab for reading. Probably, in truth, because I feel much more vulnerable about the readings than I ever do with the written words. And because Audiobooks have a special place in my heart - like an endangered species that's come back from the brink and is now thriving. 

...

And a reminder that Detective Comics #853 is coming out to comic shops this Wednesday, the second part of my two part last Batman story. The first six pages (and the two different covers) can be seen at http://comics.ign.com/articles/973/973059p1.html .Here's page 1...

And no. It's not Death.

...

The Who Killed Amanda Palmer Book went on sale this morning, but it sounds like there were some problems with the robustness of the website you could order it from, so I'm going to hold off on tweeting or blogging it until tomorrow, by which time I should be able to send people there without it immediately crashing and wasting everyone's time. If you wish to find the link yourself in the meantime, you are very welcome to.

But for now, here's a link to the anniversary issue of Mythic Delirium, a poetry publication in which I have a poem. It was inspired by the same strange event that made Amanda write her "Trout Heart Replica" song. I was going to call my poem "Trout Heart Replica" but when I told her that she said, "You can't. That's what I called my song, and I got there first." And she had. (The illustration in the first 350 issues is hand-coloured.)

...

And finally, we went into the basement today and pulled out a bunch of comics for Len Wein. Len is a) one of the nicest people in comics and b) one of the writers who inspired me and made me want to write comics when I was a bit younger than I am now. Len's house was destroyed by fire, and while much of what he owned was irreplaceable, he's trying to replace his comics -- his copies of the ones he owned: If you have duplicates or, like me, just think your copies of those comics would be happier with Len, you can find details at:  http://www.povonline.com/weinproject.htm

Labels: Audie Awards, J.G. Ballard, Killing Batman - it's like killing Amanda Palmer, Len Wein, Neverwear tee shirts, trout

Amazonfail Sunday

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Labels: Amazon foolishness, cat mihos, Neverwear tee shirts

A small fit of madness, or a good idea. Not sure.

Right. I'm trying to get caught up on things, so first of all, just a few hasty links:

Steve Bissette (one of three authors of the book about me and the stuff I wrote) is running a small competition for bookshops at http://srbissette.com/?p=2101

The Graveyard Book has made it onto another few Best of the Year lists: http://www.briankeene.com/?p=887,
http://www.bartsbookshelf.co.uk/2008/10/19/the-graveyard-book-by-neil-gaiman/
Boing Boing Holiday Gift Guide list #1 (Books for younger people)
Boing Boing Holiday Gift Guide list #2 (Fiction) [Which reminds me -- Damien Walter did a great interview with Cory Doctorow at http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/nov/25/cory-doctorow-little-brother]

http://www.animationarchive.org/2008/11/more-on-our-coraline-suitcase.html has the best list so far of mysterious Coraline boxes. (There appear to be eleven of them in the wild so far. Thirty nine have not yet been sent, or reported. I'm enjoying this.)

...

Reading Steve Bissette's blog post gave me an idea...

Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab just sent me an extra couple of sets of their Graveyard Book scents. (Eau de Ghoul seems extremely popular on their forum.) (And the very final handful of signed Snow Glass Apples booklets and vials can still be had before the Holidays -- for now -- at the CBLDF shop site.) I have a large pile of lovely two-sided Graveyard Book posters (one side Dave McKean's cover, one side Chris Riddell's cover) that Bloomsbury did.

And I thought, I should DO something with this stuff...

So what I'm going to do is this:

First I'm going to sign a bunch of posters -- probably about 50. Then I'm going to give them and the BPAL Graveyard Book scents to the wonderful Cat Mihos. And I'm going to tell her that we're running something that isn't exactly a competition, but is sort of smaller and more informal and a bit more easy-going. It's this:

From here until the end of the year (and further out than that, if the stuff holds out), if you do something effective to help get other people reading The Graveyard Book, tell Cat, and she'll send you a signed poster.

(Something effective in this case would include persuading your bookshop or library to do a Graveyard Book display, and taking a photo of it and sending it to Cat, teaching it in your school, reviewing it for your local paper or doing something equally as imaginative.)

If you do something Awesome and Amazing to get other people reading The Graveyard Book (for example, talking your whole town or city into having one of those months where everyone in the town reads the same book, and it's The Book In Question...) then you get a signed Graveyard Book poster and you get one of the BPAL Graveyard Book scent collections. And she'll probably throw in one of the Graveyard Book Neverwear tee shirts as well.

(Like this one.)

Possibly even give you a Kendra Stout Graveyard Mousepad.

(Like this one)

Send email, photos, cuttings from your local paper, proof that it was you and you alone who talked Oprah or Richard-and-Judy into doing The Graveyard Book on their TV book clubs, etc., to Cat Mihos, Furrytiger@Gmail.com . Do not send them to me. I will not have the swag. I will not be handing it out. I'm merely going to set this thing in motion and sign fifty posters -- twenty five on the McKean side, the other twenty five on the Riddell side.

Cat's decision is final. She'll blog the things she gets in as she goes along at the Neverwear Blog (http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/). And then every now and then I'll do a round up here.

How does that sound?

Labels: Best Of, cat mihos, Neverwear tee shirts, steve bissette, strange ideas, The Graveyard Book

Q: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships? A: No.

Hi Neil,

Go on, show us a picture. You know you want to ;-)

David

Here's a cameraphone pic I took for curious friends. It was taken yesterday, just after the doctor left, still a bit stunned. (In the strange way of these things, my doctor was just driving past, and called to see if I was around and could offer encouragement on his novel, just after the incident occurred. So I had a doctor there in minutes.)

Today I look much less stunned, the nose is even bigger, and there's emu oil and germoline on the cut to stop it scabbing and help with scarring. Opinions around here are divided on whether or not I'll have panda-eyes for New York. Opinions are also divided on whether I should try and cover the bruising up with make-up for the interviews on Friday, or whether I should use latex and a small bottle of Kensington Gore to make it look more interesting (my heart goes with the latter, my head for the former).

I drove Maddy to school this morning. She has an extremely cool crescent-shaped scar next to her eye, from when, as a small child, she ran into the corner of a table. She said,

"Will you get a scar?"

"Maybe."

"I like my scar. You know, I get people I've known since kindergarten asking me about it, these days, as if they've just noticed it."

"Really? What do you tell them."

"What you told me to tell people who asked."

I racked my brains. Nothing. "What was that?"

"I tell them I got it in a swordfight."

"Oh. Good."

Dear Neil

What is it like to live in a world where one can call up some famous movie producer (or was it a director) and chat? Is it nice? Or is it a little bit lonely sometimes? Or am I just being presumptuous?

Thanks for your time.

Ian


Not presumptuous, but it's just sort of irrelevant, at least the famousness bit. Friends are friends and people you work with are people you work with. If you're working with them it takes about 20 seconds to get over the feeling of, "Oh my god I'm in a room talking to X!" and to get on with whatever it is you're meant to be doing (if it's work). If they're your friends you only become aware of the famousness thing when someone else says "Excuse me, was that X?" or asks for an autograph or something.

I wouldn't phone up a famous film director or producer to chat. But I might phone a friend, who produced or directed, and was famous, to chat. Big difference.

I'm lucky in that I'm not a celebrity, and I'm not really famous. I'm well known for what I do among the sort of people who like what I do, and I wouldn't want to be more famous. And famous is, for pretty much all of the people I know who are, a side-effect or by-product of doing what they do, which is pretty much always what they love doing, and it's not a particularly desirable by-product at that.

(Not necessarily a bad one either -- you can do good things with it. Gillian Anderson's used hers to help push National Doodle Day -- a neurofibromatosis fund-raiser that raises money from celebrity doodles. http://doodledayusa.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=134 has doodles by lots of interesting people that will go up on eBay in a month. Although the ones I like best are from the less famous and the more draw-y, like Sergio Aragones, Gahan Wilson, and Kendra Stout (who did the "scary trousers" t- shirt, and just did a mouse pad for Cat Mihos's Neverwear.net) and Fred Hembeck. Also there are two by me.)

Lonely, when it happens and wherever in the world it happens, is lonely, and that has nothing to do with famousness (except as a sort of an occasional by-product of, Because I do what I do I'm sitting in a hotel-room in a country where I don't know anyone a long way from my family and friends. And authors don't have it bad compared to, say, stand-up comedians or truck drivers). But then, I'm also the kind of person who daydreams about booking a passenger cabin on a merchant ship and going off around the world for six months writing a book.

Dear Neil,

I have just discovered that brightly colored bubbles are available, and go by the name Zubbles (http://www.zubbles.com/index.asp). Considering the story you read in Helena last year, I thought you might want to know, although since the website has a 2005 copyright date, maybe you already do.

Speaking of the story, I'm really looking forward to "Orange," and the rest of The Starry Rift. It comes out right before my birthday, and it seems fitting that I could get it a year after I got to hear you read "Orange," which was a one-day-late birthday present from my parents (who bought the tickets) and my best friend. (She drove us from Missoula to Helena, even though she'd only seen Mirrormask and knew nothing else about you! She loves Stardust now, and she liked Good Omens, too.)

- anna

It's mortifying to discover you're the kind of SF writer who can imagine something futuristic after it's been invented, isn't it? Soon I shall imagine the "air-plane" -- a fixed-wing heavier than air flying machine!

This just came in from Jonathan Strahan, editor of The Starry Rift:

I've set up a website at www.thestarryrift.com which contains
information about the book, downloads of the cover art, short interviews
with some of you (they'll appear one a day over the coming week or so), and
as much relevant stuff as I can muster.

I've also arranged a chance for readers to win some copies of the book.
Thanks to Viking, I'm giving away a copy of The Starry Rift to the first
five readers who email me at thestarryrift@gmail.com and tell me the name of
the last science fiction novel they loved and why. The details are at
http://thestarryrift.com/win/

...

Dear Mr. Gaiman,

I was wondering if the techno-masters behind your website might be able to turn the countdown for the upcoming American release of The Graveyard Book, which appears on your homepage, into one of those iGoogle "gadget" thingies. That way I can put it on my 'iGoogle' homepage next the "gadget" I have for Frank Miller's "The Spirit" movie.

Most Sincerely, Daniel Crandall

I forwarded it to Dan Guy, the webgoblin, and he sent back, within a couple of minutes:

Here's an off-the-shelf countdown clock for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. I may try to create a most customized one as well.

Click here for the igoogle GRAVEYARD gadget.

Labels: doodles, Neverwear tee shirts, photo of me having just been bonked in the face by a pipe propelled by a dog, the perils of famousness

Slow Fade

I have to get unstuck on The Graveyard Book, so I am in the process of going off on my own to somewhere far away that probably doesn't have any internet connection. (Well, it may have dial-up. But I don't know that I can get dial-up working on this computer.) After 19 hours of travel I'm half way there.

Meanwhile, I'm trying to figure out why my iPod has decided that all the old TV shows, Movies and even a solitary downloaded iTunes music video I've put on it are suddenly actually songs.

...

And before I vanish I am putting up a link to Cat Mihos's Neverwear site -- for she has a new T shirt (it's the most-requested shirt, the "I Believe" speech from American Gods) and a pre-Xmas sale on the existing two... http://www.neverwear.net/store/

Labels: Neverwear tee shirts, Vanishing authors

And now a word for those we sponsor....

Last night I wrote a thirty second scary story. Actually I wrote a 90 second REALLY scary story, then chipped at it, hacked and deleted and rephrased until it was thirty seconds long. Afterwards I wished I'd saved the 200 word version.

This morning I went to the local NPR radio station and recorded it -- we cut out another sentence, and I slowed down a hair -- for an NPR Hallowe'en special...

....


I believe that the curious can see the whole, uncut, me getting an award at Scream 2007 thing at

Neil Gaiman Receives Hell's Dildo - Scream 2007

Posted Today

Neil Gaiman accepts "Hell's Dildo" at the 2007 Scream Awards.

It cuts off before I welcome Roger Avary and Ray Winstone to the podium to introduce Beowulf, but if it hadn't you would have seen Roger wearing his "Scary Trousers" tee shirt in front of a billion people.

(Cat Mihos blogs about the awards at http://furrytiger.blogspot.com/2007/10/birthday-girl-scream-awards-dream-life.html. Lovely photos, but my Big Pupil Thing means redeye all the way...)

I should mention that the amazing Cat's Neverwear site is over at http://www.neverwear.net/ and you can get your Kendra Stout "Scary Trousers" or your Dagmara Matuszak "Anansi Boys" tee shirts there. (I suggested that Cat should do a tee shirt with the full "I believe" speech from American Gods on it next...)

Which reminds me -- I've now finally seen the bound insides of the Hill House ANANSI BOYS (you can see pictures at http://hillhousepublishers.com/hh-update-22oct07-01.htm) and they are astonishingly beautiful. Hill House are still trying to get straight answers out of the Polish printer about when he's actually going to have the books bound and delivered to the US -- he's made too many promises to them that haven't come through -- but it looks like it's getting closer and closer to being a reality.

...

Ross Douthat replies to my post of the other day at http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/dumbledore_is_gay_ii_1.php

...

This is more of a marmite locating datalet then a question.

There is a large and rather unusual store near Cincinnati, OH called Jungle Jims.

Along with Jim's collection of large animatronic singing creatures, there is a decently size section of foods from England in the international part of the store.

They have a website at junglejims.com at which you can view some off the strangeness under the attractions section.

Marmite, of course, is there and also Hobnobs and various and sundry other foods of interest.

I feel like I'm writing a pamphlet for a tourist attraction now, so I'll stop.

Whenever I drive across America -- which isn't often -- I try and stop in at Jungle Jim's on the way back. And not just for the UK food, but for the amazing variety of world food. It's an amazing place. Would that all supermarkets could have that magic.

...

I just heard about the event chronicled in http://117hudson.blogspot.com/2007/10/show-must-go-on.html
We were lucky in that the actor who was hurt was the only one who was sort of understudied (as one of the wolves had also played Lucy's brother in an earlier production) so they reconfigured the second half for seven people instead of eight to do the wolf party...


...
Mr. Gaiman,

I checked to see if you've mentioned it yet this year, and saw that you hadn't-- would you mind taking a second to remind your fans who haven't already signed up that National Novel Writing Month begins in a week?

I'm a first-timer, but a lot of your journal entries recently have really inspired me to sit down and write, and NaNoWriMo is a great way to combine your advice and a great community. Figured I'd send in reminder in case there are others who feel the same way I do. Thanks!


-Laurie

I can do even better than that. I can point people to http://www.nanowrimo.org/
And I can finish my Letter Of Encouragement to the troops...

Labels: anansi boys, cat mihos, hill house, Marmite, Neverwear tee shirts, Roger Avary, Spike Awards, the kind of post in which I don't do anything cute in the labels, wolves in the walls

Maddy Gaiman TV!

The very first episode of Maddy Gaiman TV from Comic-Con! And if you happen to be in the area... visit booth #1033 for NeverWear Neil Gaiman merchandise, official tee shirt of Miss Maddy Gaiman.



Regards,
The Official Web Elf

Labels: Maddy Gaiman TV, Neverwear tee shirts

One of those long posts that goes all over the place...

Sooner or later, Stardust will have come out, and no-one will be interviewing me about it, and I won't be linking to things about it, and I'll have a life back again, and this won't be the *Stardust movie blog guest starring Me and the San Diego Comic-Con*. But that's what it seems to be tending to turn into right now, for which I apologise.

There are a lot of Stardust preview screenings happening currently around the US. (I think on the sensible assumption that the word of mouth is good from people who've seen it, and that we need a lot more of it.) I'm not going to post them all (I don't find out about most of them) but if you google "free stardust screening" or "stardust preview" or similar you'll find them -- here's one on Thursday in Boston, for example, along with competitions, like this one for free tickets in Canada. Then there's a bunch of extremely strange things I didn't even know about before I started googling just now, like Stardust make-up, and Stardust Jimmy Choo shoes...

(Heidi MacDonald sent me a "review" of the Stardust poster, which I thought was wonderfully silly. It's at http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/114557.html.)

(Here are some Stardust dead princes watching the action. From left to right: Sextus, Tertius, Primus, Secundus, and I can't for the life of me remember whether Julian Rhind-Tutt and David Walliams are Quartus and Quintus or the other way around. Sorry. I checked the IMDB thingie and it was quite useless. It didn't list either of them, but it still has someone listed who, I assume, simply told them she was in it to pad her resume.)

Comicon is nearly here, hurray! I was browsing through the schedule and must say I expected to see Maddy's name in this panel listing. Would she consider doing this sort of thing in the future? She seems to have fun when talking about her Dad!

Sunday, July 29

12:00-1:00 My Dad Makes Comics!— What does a comics career look like from a kid's eye view? Find out with Sky and Winter McCloud, daughters of Scott McCloud (Making Comics); Alexa Kitchen (Drawing Comics is Easy (Except When it's Hard)), daughter of Denis Kitchen; and Brennan Wagner and Amanda Wagner, son and daughter of Matt Wagner (Grendel, Mage) discuss what it’s like living with dad, the cartoonist. Room 5AB

Maddy was meant to be on that panel, and was looking forward to it, but she has to walk down the red carpet for Stardust later that afternoon, and we can't be in both places at once.

She bought a dress yesterday. It has accessories. She's just had her hair cut. I have no doubt that she will outshine me, and I will be so proud.

...

There's a very sweet UGO interview with me up at http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=17568&sectionId=2 although it has the kind of little transcription mistakes that it's all too easy to make on a phone interview. I didn't actually say that the protagonist in The Fermata was "masticating" on naked women, for example, and I think I was talking about Tales of the Norsemen, not the Lensmen...

...

Cat Mihos has come off tour with Tool to help me survive San Diego. She'll be helping move me around and dealing with all the people who want time with me, and being cruel but fair. (She wants me to tell the whole wide world that she really really really needs a Batgirl costume. Does anyone out there make Batgirl costumes?) As I type this she and Charles Brownstein are busily trying to sort out the logistics of signings at the CBLDF booth on Thursday and Friday.

Hello Neil, I have read your bit about attack dog fans at comicon and dissapointed as I may be, I have decided not to molest,pester, or otherwise stock you at comicon on Friday. If you should perhaps detect me breaking this promise, I will be the wide eyed blonde crying profusely, dressed in black leather....

Sigh. I think people may have taken what I said the wrong way. What I meant was, it's work for me. I don't get to go to San Diego Comic-Con to enjoy the con. I have a bodyguard/crowd handler with me at all times, just to allow me to get from place to place on time. It used to be Kevin Starr and is now Pam Noles (for whom this is the best time of the year in the whole wide world and who offers amazingly important advice for anyone going to the con in this blog entry so read it). I'm not there on holiday and I'm not attending the convention to do things and go to panels (which may be part of my frustration); I'm working. I love meeting people, but it's been 15 years since I was able to really enjoy a San Diego Comic-Con, because there are too many people there.

I don't have "attack dog fans". I have lots of nice readers and there will be an enormous number of people who are coming to San Diego to see me and to see the other Guests and panels, and that's a good thing. I'm not asking people to leave me alone, or not to say hello or whatever. I like it when they do. (Yesterday I happily mentioned on this blog that I'll sign stuff when I can, and suggested that people not drag around copies of Absolute Sandman because it is heavy.)

I'll be working around the clock every day, doing panels, signings, interviews, meetings, promoting the CBLDF and so on. It's an unmissable experience. But -- and this was the point I was making to the Hollywood Reporter question -- it's not something I'd ever do for fun. There's a reason why I've limited doing the full five day Guest of Honour bit to every four or five years: it's exhausting. The last time I did it, in 2003, I wrote, on the Sunday,

Yesterday was fun, although the schedule was slightly punishing, and around 5:30pm I wound up with a clear-cut choice between attending a dinner, two receptions and a meeting before I did the CBLDF late night reading, or going to my hotel room to sleep for a couple of hours. Holly and Pam Noles, who is moving me from place to place at this thing, ganged up on me (it didn't take much) and I went off and slept, before going down to the end of the CBLDF Auction (the Quilt Michelle Made went for $2600) and doing the late night reading.

...and that's mostly what the latter half of that con is like in my memory. A blur of signings and trying to be in two places at once. I don't doubt that this will be very similar.

In previous years I'd take the train there, so I'd get some work done, and take the train home, so I could decompress and spend three days each way not talking to anyone and just watching the world pass by. This time I can't do that -- immediately after the con I fly to the UK to do a Beowulf presentation...

I was perusing some comic-con stuff and noticed under vendors, it said "Neverwhere--Neil Gaiman Merchandise." Just curious as to what this merchandise this might be? Thank you for all the helpful info, too. The Comic-con schedule is a bit overwhelming, so seeing it broken down like that was useful! Good luck this weekend!

It's actually Neverwear, a pun I ought to be more embarrassed about than I am, and it's Cat's project. There will be two tee shirts on sale at the con, an Anansi Boys one, with art from the upcoming (apparently coming sooner than later now) Hill House edition by Dagmara Matuszak, and the Scary Trousers tee shirt with art by Kendra Stout. I may even have a picture of the latter by the time I'm ready to post this.

I've now got more signing information -- this just came in from Charles Brownstein:

The CBLDF will host two very limited members' only signings at its booth. Because these signings are on the show floor we can only accommodate a very small amount of people.

Signing tickets will be offered as a thank you to anyone signing up for new or renewal membership at the Con. Tickets will entitle the bearer to one signature from Neil. People signing up for membership at $100 or better will also receive a set of Black Phoenix Perfume Imps from the Anansi Boys & American Gods collections, while supplies last. Card carrying members with a current membership card (expiration date 7/31/2007 - 7/31/2008) can get a ticket by making any donation to the Fund.

Signings will be:

Thursday 6:00pm
Friday 6:00pm

Please do not line up more than 15 minutes prior to the signing. Because this will occur on the show floor, starting the line up as close to the starting time of the signing will ensure everyone's safety on the floor. Please do not line up if you don't have a ticket. While we'd like to accommodate everyone, we need to strictly limit tickets to ensure that the floor is safe for all attendees and other exhibitors.

Tickets will be available at the CBLDF booth (1831) at the START of each day, on the day that the signing occurs.

...

(And I think I'm now allowed to say that there will be something cool and Coraline related at 7:00pm on Saturday and that you can get tickets for it from the Focus Pictures booth. (Could this be anything to do with the five minutes of Coraline they mention in the Variety blog will be screened at Comic-con ? I can neither confirm nor deny this. But given how hard I'm hinting, if I were you I'd have suspicions.)

...

There's a sneak peek at Beowulf in the LA Times, with quotes from me and Steve Starkey at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-beowulf25jul25,1,4436117.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews
...

And finally this came in on the FAQ line. A story of great oddness, in a small sweet kind of way. And it was prefaced with the statement:

I'm getting married in the...

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/28/30_28mysterybride.html

Labels: Beowulf, more Stardust mostly, Neverwear tee shirts, shoes????