Do I Actually Have or Need Diplomatic Immunity?

I'm typing this on a plane to Australia where I will hunker down and go back to being a man writing a novel, and life will turn into a long-running battle between man and blank page, between man and what happens next, between man and the people in his book who have other ideas about what they ought to be doing now.

I had a fascinating time on the road, though. I was never not exhausted: Initially I knew that all I had to do was keep going until the second weekend, and then by the time I got to that weekend plans had changed and now I was in Iceland for 36 hours, filming a mini-documentary extra for American Gods. It was wonderful: I love Iceland. But I was tired, and didn't really get to see much Iceland.

(My favourite moment was one where the director asked if I would mind being filmed in an alleyway reading American Gods. I suggested we wander into a bookshop instead, if they didn't mind, and have me look at books in there. So I did, and took the opportunity to sign as many books as I could, in the time we had, racing before the last of the February light went.)

Iceland really is beautiful. And if it wasn't for Iceland, there wouldn't be an American Gods...

I had some really fun times. The BBC radio interviews were all so different and all so much fun. My Royal Festival Hall event was a delight to do, and that lunchtime I showed up as Children's Laureate Chris Riddell's secret guest on the same stage, and I got to meet Posy Simmonds and turned immediately into a starstruck teen.

Chris stayed and drew while I spoke and was interviewed that night:

\

...

Now I'm in Melbourne, Australia and it's two days later and I'm not really sure where the last 48 hours went. I caught up on my sleep (Amanda and Ash are in Adelaide, where she's performing), started to clamber up the email mountain that was waiting for me, spent time with a sick friend, and, today, actually started to write some more of the novel.

Norse Mythology came out on February the 7th and went straight in at Number One on the US, UK and Canadian bestseller lists; in its second week it dropped to Number Two in the US, and has somehow stayed at #1 in the UK and Canada, despite a lot of bookshops running out of copies. The phenomenon of it becoming an incendiary sell-out hit has left me delighted and a bit baffled -- my books always sell, but they usually sell sanely and normally and I'm a bestselling author because they keep on selling in healthy numbers for ever.  It's not usual to see people online talking about visiting five bookshops and getting the last copy (or failing to find any) in whatever town or city they are in. People (friends, family, journalists, even Amanda) tell me that I and the publishers and the bookshops must have expected this sort of response, and I reply that if we'd expected this level of enthusiasm and sales, the publishers would have printed a lot more copies to begin with and the booksellers would all have ordered a lot more copies, and for that matter I wouldn't have taken over four years to write the book...

But then, I think it may be that this book happens to be ridiculously popular partly because it is now and this is the right time for it to have been published.

There have been lots of terrific articles about the book and a slew of amazing reviews.  I really enjoyed this article in the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/02/the-politics-of-retelling-norse-mythology/517422/ and this blog review, which I felt articulately explains what I was trying to do, https://andrewfindlaywrites.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/gaiman-norse-mythology/.

I liked this James Lovegrove review from the Financial Times: https://www.ft.com/content/42fad176-ec96-11e6-ba01-119a44939bb6

Sarah Lyall interviewed me and came to the New York event for the New York Times:  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/12/books/neil-gaiman-norse-mythology.html

Here's me talking to the New York Times Book Review Podcast: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/17/books/review/neil-gaimans-myths.html

Michael Dirda starts  his review of Norse Mythology in a way that sent my stomach lurching, and the review itself was something of a roller-coaster ride (but the kind you are glad you have taken):

https://www.washingtonpost.com/entertainment/books/neil-gaimans-suspenseful-and-surprising-norse-mythology/2017/02/13/986c0ffe-eef2-11e6-9973-c5efb7ccfb0d_story.html?utm_term=.5b6e58d98428

And I'm now realising that if I keep linking to reviews, interviews and such on either side of the Atlantic this blog will never end...

So here is the cover of a recent Australian Sunday supplement: do not let its 1977 cover date fool you.

....

On public events: If you go and look at Where's Neil  you will see the public appearances I'm doing this year.  Of the events in Spring, Seattle is sold out and so is Santa Rosa and Boston, Costa Mesa is almost sold out,  Mesa AZ is going fast, and there are... still lots and lots of tickets in San Diego.

I don't know why this is. However, if you fancy coming to see me talk and read and answer questions and such, and you can't get in to any of the other evenings, San Diego is a two hour train ride from LA and they even have wifi on the train,  andit's less than three hour's flying time from Seattle. And right now, there are seats. ("San Diego. It's not just for ComicCon.")

I have news on the only New York area event, too: it's on April 15th, at Bard College, where I am a professor. It's going to be all about American Gods, and I'm going to be interviewed by my special guest, American Gods' Executive Producer and co-showrunner Bryan Fuller. We are hoping to show you things on the big screen that night, too. After all, it will only be two weeks before the first episode of American Gods goes out.

It's free to the Bard community, $25 a ticket for the rest of the world. Info here: http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=132108

...

Which reminds me:


AMERICAN GODS now has a broadcast date: the first episode of the first season will be broadcast on Starz on April 30th in the US, and be watchable digitally too, via Starz on Amazon Prime.

Outside of the US, you can watch American Gods on Amazon Prime Video, from May 1st.

...

And my biggest news of all, even bigger and more exciting than a Number One International Bestseller, or a glorious TV series adapted from my novel launching, is this:

I've been appointed a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Refugees. I even have a certificate. (It is blue and the same size as a passport.) I'm not sure what this means in real terms: I'm going to keep doing the work I've been doing since 2013 to draw attention to refugees, to raise awareness and knowledge, and to help them.

I was disappointed to learn I won't get diplomatic immunity from parking tickets*.

Here's the Facebook Live interview announcement, in which I am interviewed by Jonathan Ross and answer questions from the people watching. The interview begins about 4 minutes and 30 seconds in.

https://www.facebook.com/UNHCR/videos/10156047439338438/





*Joke. Weak joke.  UN Goodwill Ambassadors pay their own parking tickets, air tickets, hotel bills etc.

Labels: ABBA, American Gods, chris Riddell, Iceland, New York Times Bestseller, Norse Mythology, Refugees, the mysteries of San Diego

It's been One Year...

About eighteen months ago, at a party held by ex-HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, in LA, on the Fox Lot, a nice lady named Riley Ellis came over to me, introduced herself, and explained that she had read an advance copy of The Graveyard Book and that in her educated opinion it would be at least 53 Weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. I took this, at the time, as amiable Hollywood Hyperbole indicating that she had liked it. While I'd had books on the bestseller lists -- I'd even had Number Ones -- nothing ever lasted more than 6 weeks. The books went onto the list, drifted off, then carried on quietly selling forever.

Then The Graveyard Book came out. It went onto the New York Times children's bestseller list. The children's list is only ten places long. Weeks went by. It stayed there. When it started to drift down, it won the Newbery Medal, and drifted up again. And then, in defiance of all reason, it stayed there.

I told Elise Howard, my editor at Harper Collins, that if they could keep it at #1 for four weeks, I would buy everyone at HarperChildren's cupcakes. They did. I did. (Actually, my agent, the amazing Merrilee Heifetz, paid at least 10% of the cost of the cupcakes, and did much more than 10% of the organising to make them happen.)

Somewhere in the cupcake madness Elise promised me that if The Graveyard Book managed to stay on the list for a year, she would bake me a pie. It seemed unlikely, but then...

...people kept buying it. Last week was week 51. And we had drifted down, a place here, a place there, to our lowest position on the chart. We were at number ten. Below that, you aren't on the charts any more.

And suddenly, it became very important. Firstly, 52 consecutive weeks is a lot more than 51 weeks, and secondly, PIE. Elise was going to bake one. (I am sure there are many people who edit books and also casually produce pies. Elise, for all I know, may be one of these people. I do not believe she is. I liked to think that she was someone who, if The Graveyard Book stayed on the NYT Bestseller List for a year, would need to brush up on her pie-making skills, to navigate the unfamiliar twin territories of piecrust and filling. It would be an adventure.)

I sent out a thing on Twitter, suggesting that if there was anyone who'd been putting off buying a copy of The Graveyard Book, this would be a Very Good Week to do it.

And then it was today. Wednesday, when the previews of the Times list creep out to advanced subscribers. And the whole house was on tenterhooks. I was on tenterhooks, as sat and I signed sheets of paper for the Neverwhere Limited Edition. My assistant Lorraine? Tenterhooks. Her friend Betsy, Woodsman Hans (who dug out a giant pond while I was away)? Tenterhooks all the way. The only one not on tenterhooks was Cabal, my big white dog, now back in his People Shooting Season orange cape, who couldn't figure out why we weren't taking him for a walk, and was getting frustrated with the foolishness of people.

The phone rang. Lorraine said, "It's for you."

I took the phone. "Hello," said Elise Howard, happily. "What kind of pie would you like? I was thinking rhubarb..."

The Graveyard Book had crept up to #8. (And Odd and the Frost Giants had gone onto the list at #5.)

So we did our year, and I wrote an email to Riley Ellis saying You Were Right, and she wrote back to point out, very sweetly, that she'd said 53 weeks actually.

So now Merrilee and I are plotting ways to send pie to HarperChildrens (my initial plan of finding a bakery in New York that would enthusiastically make an amazing pie big enough to feed 125 people seems to have been sunk by real life) and once again she will pay about 10% of the price of the pie and she and her assistant Jennifer will do 98% of the organising.

A year ago I was reading the first chapter of The Graveyard Book to a roomful of people in New York. I had just returned from China. I had a broken finger. My dad was still alive. Amanda and I were vague friends and project-buddies. I thought I'd written a good book, and hoped people would notice and like it, but none of the awards or recognition had happened. And now I'm planning my return to China in a few weeks, to wrap up the research for the China book. I'm writing again, and enjoying writing again...

...

Banned Books Week continues.

Several people wrote in telling me that I had it wrong in yesterday's post and that there aren't bookshops in every little American Town where kids can buy books that have been removed from their school libraries.

Actually, I knew this already.

The last time I posted here about the lack of sarcasm marks in punctuation, people wrote in to tell me that there are Ethiopian languages that actually have a written sarcasm mark, intended to show the world that the person writing means the opposite of what he says. So if anyone is translating this blog into Ethiopian, you'll need to put sarcasm marks around that bit of yesterday's post.

Ah well. To make up for it, here is a link to a sane and civil (and sarcasm-free) letter from a librarian to a concerned parent, explaining why he does not plan to remove a book from the library shelves: http://jaslarue.blogspot.com/2008/07/uncle-bobbys-wedding.html

Labels: banned books week, New York Times Bestseller, Pie mainly rhubarb but also enormous, What are tenterhooks anyway?

Beyond tea

If you can't afford to have me for tea (and at those prices, who can blame you?) it might be wiser to just bid for me playing the drums...






(I do not play drums. Even when I was in a band I did not play drums.)

It's one of an amazing bunch of things that have just gone up on ebay from the CBLDF, who appear to have released everything cool they've been sitting on this year all at once. You want a character from the Sandman 20th Anniversary poster? You want the background from the Sandman Anniversary poster? The last of the "altfanthingie" Jill Thompson tee shirts? You want the Sandman-Hellboy crossover drawn by Mike Mignola and me?


In addition to the drawing by me and Mike, there's also drawings by me and Jeff Smith, Colleen Doran, Paul Pope, Larry Marder, Jim Valentino, Amanda Conner, Darwyn Cooke, David Gianfelice, Eduardo Risso, Jeffrey Brown (I think this one may be my favourite), Kyle Baker and Nikki Cooke... You want one? You know someone who would like one for Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Mithrastide, or I'm-An-Atheist-But-I-Don't-See-Why-I-Can't-Have-A-Party-And-Presents-Day?

Then you go to this ebay link, and go shopping for the Holidays...

...

And when all of those things are done and gone and sold, M+E designs will still be there, Emma Straub and Michael Fusco, making amazingly cool posters.

Also, I got a happy call from my editor to say that The Graveyard Book is now in its seventh week on the New York Times children's list. (Two weeks at number one, then a drop to number six, and the last four weeks sitting cheerfully at number four.) I haven't wanted to say anything for fear of jinxing it, but it makes me much happier to still be at number four than it ever did to get to number one. Number One meant that I went on tour and we made a lot of noise; seven weeks later, Number Four means that people are telling each other about the book, and buying it on word of mouth, and that makes me happier than anything.)

Labels: CBLDF, m+e, New York Times Bestseller

American Gods Blog, Post 104

Someone at one of the stops put a piece of paper down on the desk in front of me. Secret advice for blogger users it said. When I opened it up, it said, write your blogger entry in notepad first. But unless I'm writing from the road, I never do. I just head over to blogger.com, enter the blogger and start typing.

I just typed an entry, hit ... some key... and everything I'd typed to that point vanished completely. So I'm doing it again.

Let's see.... first of all, ignore previous comment on the NY Times bestseller list not being out till next Sunday. That was written because I'd lost a day and thought it was sunday -- this was caused by (a) a two week long marathon tour across America (except for the south) without much sleep at a city a day and (b) buying the Sunday papers on the way home. Mock me if you wish -- you try doing a tour like that, and be happy if all you lose is a saturday.

And the list is up at:

http://www.nytimes.com/books/01/07/08/bsp/besthardfiction.html -- and thanks to Jade Walker for letting me know, over in the Well. Jade does a really good online e-zine for writers called Inscriptions -- if you write, want to write, or you just like writers, you should go and look at it...

Talking about Except for the South, there were some people who came a really long way to get their books signed on this tour. Most of them were from Texas, and many of them drove... I felt guilty and was pleased at the same time. My assistant tells me I'll be a guest at Aggiecon next year, so people won't have so far to drive...

(Which reminds me: we probably need a page of my future appearances, conventions etc somewhere at neilgaiman.com...)

Okay. Now to shave and then -- onward to DreamHaven!

Labels: American Gods Blog, blogger oddnesses, DreamHaven, New York Times Bestseller, The Well

American Gods Blog, Post 103

I'm home, and I almost got through today without signing any books. But there were some copies of Biting Dog Press's beautiful limited edition MURDER MYSTERIES to be signed waiting for me at DreamHaven, so I went there from the airport. (Link at http://www3.sympatico.ca/george.walker/gaimanbkad.html although it displayed rather oddly in Explorer for me.)

There were also two copies of Angels and Visitations to be signed, some WARNING:CONTAINS LANGUAGE sleeves. And, um, about 500 presold mail-order copies of American Gods. So my day of not siging anything rather failed to happen. Still, it's a genuine down day. And it was good to play with Maddy. The garden has erupted, there was an awful lot of waiting mail, and pretty soon I'll have a bath and go to bed and sleep like a dead person.

Starting to suspect that the Ebook REB 1100 is going to prove useless and frustrating unless Gemstar decides to allow it access to more content, and cheaper. I keep batting my head against the whole thing of price and convenience, and with access to Public Domain stuff cut off, no way of sending my own content to the thing (which would be genuinely useful), and no easily discernable way to access the kind of stuff I'd need -- most of which is out on project Gutenberg (nice people, who lost a page with some in-copyright stuff on it when I pointed it out to them.) Which is a pity, because as a delivery mechanism, it' s rather wonderful. But it's a bit like having a TV that will only play a handful of proprietory shows. Unless the content is easily available, and in quantity, and it's the content you want, then the delivery mechanism is almost beside the point.

I signed all those books last night, by the way. They were for Golden Apple and Dangerous Visions respectively, for any LA bookbuyers looking for a signed book. And I was at one point tired enough that I wrote the name of the person on the post-it note instead of my name on a copy I was just meant to sign. So I sighed and blinked and did a drawing of Mr Wednesday, hoping the person would forgive me.

The weirdest thing about the whole NY Times Bestseller thing, is that the rest of the worlld doesn't know, and won't till next Sunday -- when I shall be in the UK...

Labels: American Gods Blog, computers and gadgets and things, New York Times Bestseller, signing as much as I can

American Gods Blog, Post 99

There's nothing quite so unlikely as typing a blogger entry on a sofa in a TV studio, but that's just what I seem to be doing right now.

And for that matter, I want to make a point of saying that I am now, as of twenty minutes ago, no longer an author. Nope. Now I am officially a New York Times Bestselling Author. And I've learned where the apostrophe is on the libretto. (It's just above the 7 key.) Two good things in one day.

...there. TV over and done with, and Amacker Bullwinkle is driving me from the Tech TV studios to a dinner with Charles Brown, editor and publisher of Locus, and I'm typing a little as I go.

Amacker drives a little like a Brazilian taxi driver who took me and my editor from the Rio book fair to the airport last month. The traffic speed was maybe 40. He never drove at less than 70, nipping into tiny spaces, lurching manically from lane to lane. As soon as I was sure I wasn't going to die, it was kind of fun. Amacker would like that taxi driver. I think they went to the same driving school.

So today I signed in Booksmith's on the Haight - like the lunchtime signing at Stars Our Destination in Chicago last week, this one was also a drop-in signing that became a real one, but without a reading, which is a pity as Shadow and Wednesday walk that street in American Gods. I'll read that section - the Easter bit - tonight, I think.

It was a good signing - my third at Booksmiths. The best thing about signing at Booksmiths is this: they do a trading card of the author. I think they have a web site where all the trading cards are listed.

After the signing we drove to the Tech TV offices. My cellphone rang as I was greeting Roger, the show`s producer. I've not been answering it much on this tour - it usually rings when I'm talking to people or signing or reading or something, and I just let it ring, but this time I answered it. It was Kathy Hemming of Harper Collins.

"I`ve got a fax in front of me," she said. "You`re at number 10 on the New York Times list!"

And I phumphed and goshed and grinned like a lunatic and said thank you a lot and she said no, thank you and all things considered it was a Very Good Thing.

Then I went on Screen Savers, walking two inches above the floor. Leo, the host, had been reading this blogger and he wanted to see the Libretto, so I pulled it out, and everyone gathered around and they all wanted to know the same thing.

"$2,200," I'd say. "600mhz. No it doesn't weigh anything." and I wound up taking it onto the show. And starting this entry there...

The first time I was ever interviewed on TV was in 1987. John Lloyd (eminent UK TV producer and writer and stuff) was presenting a show called South of Watford and he interviewed Dave McKean and me about Violent Cases, in a pub called the Café Munchen (now The Conservatory, unless it's something else).

We chatted before the interview, friendly and relaxed. And then it was time to turn on the TV cameras. They were turned on, and John turned to me and asked the first question.

I froze.

I froze utterly and in every way. My mouth slowly opened and nothing came out. I forgot how to speak.

John said, "Stop rolling," to the camera people, and told me everything would be fine, and reminded me it wasn't live, and then he told them to turn on the cameras and asked me the question again.

I've never been nervous or tongue-tied on TV since, but I can't forget that time. It lurks in the back of my mind, a little adrenaline-kicker before every TV appearance.

(Sorry about that. I just fell asleep for twenty minutes. We must be nearly there...)

... and for the first time ever we're in Continued on Next Rock territory, as I'm going to have to post this so far and go to sleep. It's 1:30am and I' ve just spent an hour signing stuff back at the hotel room, after the Cody's signing... and I have to be out of here at 7.00 am and I am so tired you would not believe it, and I'm not sure I do. So I'll finish talking about Screen Savers (it's on until midafternoon on Thursday) and everything else, later.

Labels: Amacker Bullwinkle, American Gods Blog, Dave McKean, New York Times Bestseller, Screen Savers, tour, TV Interviews