Waiting, and Cinnamon

I'm in Florida, and I'm typing this on Wednesday night and setting it to post on Thursday because tomorrow I may not have power, or Internet. I'm slightly nervous: I bought water to drink, and just filled the bath with more water, have lots of food in tins and packets, and the house I'm in has stormproof windows. But still, if the hurricane comes and does its stuff things are going to be less than fun. And according to Snopes, the candles I bought because there were no more flashlights or batteries should be left unlit.

Um. I was impelled to get a haircut before the hurricane. I'm not sure why. It just seemed to make sense that if serious weather was coming I should be able to see out. The hairdressers had closed up shop and fled further inland, but there was a barber still working. Normally I can work with barbers to get a haircut that isn't too bad, but this time I had encountered a barber who obviously only did one haircut, and was going to give it to me no matter what I asked for. I should have shouted "PUT THOSE DOWN AND STEP AWAY FROM ME NOW" when he picked up the electric clippers as his first thing. Instead I thought "I wonder what he is going to do with those?" and then it was too late as half my hair had fallen to the tiles. So now I have the kind of haircut that means I feel like someone else whenever I pass a mirror or touch my hair. Perhaps the someone else I am now wears hats. I must find out.

As of a couple of days ago, there is a new book for sale in the US: it's the gorgeous hardback Chris Riddell illustrated edition of Odd and the Frost Giants; http://bit.ly/OddFrostRiddell Lots of Silver ink and gorgeousness. I'm very fond of the story, too.

IT IS THE MOST HANDSOME OF BOOKS. Silver ink and lots of Chris Riddell art makes it so. http://www.harpercollinschildrens.com/books/Odd-Frost-Giants/

And here is a book that won't be out until May of 2017. It's a story I wrote about 20 years ago, inspired by a Lisa Snellings carousel sculpture of a girl called Cinnamon, with pearlescent eyes, riding on a Tiger.

For the last 12 years or thereabouts, it's been available on the Audiobook The Neil Gaiman Audio Collection. Now it's finally going to be available as something you can touch and hold.

It's beautifully illustrated by Divya Srinivasan. (Divya lives in Austin, Texas. Her illustrations have appeared in the New Yorker magazine. She is the author and illustrator of the picture books Little Owl's Night, Little Owl's Day, and Octopus Alone.  You can see more of her work  at www.pupae.com.)

Right. I'm going to go to bed now, and worry, and then, I hope, take all the worry and give it to the people in my book...

Labels: chris Riddell, cinnamon, Divya Srinivasan, haircuts, hurricane, Odd and the Frost Giants, secret identities, storm warning

Bet you thought I was... oh hang on, I used that one already

I'm home (for a little bit), and, as of yesterday, down with vague travel crud - a sort of combination of somewhat-sore throat and chest and low-level headache, general ache and cold, none of which would be enough to bother me on their own, but all together have felled me - possibly just so that I can catch up on my sleep instead of getting back home and immediately trying to catch up on work. So I'm sleeping a lot and drinking lemon and honey (we have honey. See http://blog.fabulouslorraine.com/2009/09/beeing-with-boss.html for details) and slurping occasional soup.

I had a great time on the road (the most exciting bit was making my short film, the most upsetting bit was fearing my bag had been stolen while making my short film, while actually all that had happened was a helpful hotel person had put it into a hidden closet and closed the door, so the closet was hidden again). I went to Scotland and to Watford and to Berlin and Hamburg. I stayed in Imogen Heap's lovely flat in South London, and still have not met Imogen Heap. Saw an awful lot of my daughter Holly, who moved to the UK when she graduated, and who I miss.

Spent a lot of the time off the web, which was good, and something I'd been looking forward to. Wrote two longish short stories which I now have to type.

It got autumnal in the UK toward the end of our stay, and cold, wet and dark in Scotland. I had a couple of days of warm when I arrived back in the midwest, but it is now, today, officially, chilly Autumn. The trees are laden with apples, the grape-vines are covered with grapes, and the tomato plants are hung with very late tomatoes that need to be canned or salsaed or just cooked before they rot.

I landed in Minneapolis (after a massive 22 hour journey which began in Scotland), spent a night at home, saw my bees and went straight to the Midwestern Booksellers Association meeting, and was honoured with their Children's Literature Award (for The Graveyard Book). Also I chatted to a breakfast of booksellers about Odd and the Frost Giants.

I don't think I've said much about Odd here recently. It's out in the US now, in a shiny new hardback edition, with new illustrations by Brett Helquist. It's a book about using your head, I think. And about beauty. I talk about it at http://www.mousecircus.com/bookdetails.aspx?BookID=18

There's a "trailer" for it here:

and you can read the first 25 pages from it at http://browseinside.harpercollinschildrens.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061671739
(and, for those who do not have a helpful bookshop locally, the Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Frost-Giants-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0061671738).

I learned this morning that The Graveyard Book Audiobook I recorded won the UK Children's Audiobook of the Year (Dawn French won UK Audiobook of the Year for Dear Fatty, although I was disappointed that the article from the Independent doesn't mention the talented Lisa Tarbuck, who actually read the audiobook).

Strangely enough, the most frequently asked of all the questions waiting for me when I got back was What do bees smell like? Honest. So picking one of those from the pile...

Dear Mr. Gaiman,

My 5-year-old son, Avi, asked me what bees smell like. I told him that I don't know and was sad not to be able to answer such an excellent question. Today it occurred to me that you might have smelled bees. If you have, would you be willing to answer Avi's question?

Thank you for your time!

Elizabeth Israel-Davis
Portland, OR

Mostly bees, and bee-hives, smell honeyish, a thick sweet smell. If they get sick they can smell bad. But mostly they smell like honey.

Hey Neil, All Saint's Day is coming and I want to dance the macabray with my friends. Do you have any dance instructions other than "Step and turn, and walk and sway"?

Loved the book.

Jane

I think that readers of The Graveyard Book who perform their own version of the macabray will always be right. And should put video footage of themselves performing it be put up, I will try to link to it.

Which reminds me -- around this Hallowe'en many independent bookshops in the "lower 48" of the US are going to be having The Graveyard Book parties, in a bid to lure me out to sign in their shops in December. If you want to dance the macabray, or just enjoy a particularly graveyardy night, you may want to check if your local bookshop is doing one, and when.

(And if the bookshops who ARE going to be holding a Graveyard Book party want to let us know about it, then email your shop's name, the location of the party, the date and the time to webgoblin@neilgaiman.com and we will put a Master Graveyard Book Party list up here.) (Even if your party is in a location like Hawaii, Alaska, Manilla, Omsk or Edinburgh, places which do not qualify for win-a-Neil-Signing.)

Dear Neil,

I've been ogling over your bookshelves on Shelfari (of course) and noticed that you have the same bookcases that a lot of bookstores do, with the upslanted bottom shelf. I've been trying to figure out where to order these ever since I saw them in bookstores. Could you let me know where and about how much these are? Thank you!

~Karen
http://theblackletters.net

Alas. I bought them from my local bookshop when they went out of business, some years ago, and do not know where they got them from.

Mr. Gaiman,

Are you aware of this:

"Young adult writers! Detroit teacher of blind kids wants your ebooks for her Braille printer!"
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/13/young-adult-writers.html

love you, love your work,
-- Justin

I was -- Cory sent it to me -- and I'll be getting them files for the Children's books. But I'm happy to spread the word further.

Amanda, Amanda, Amanda.

I miss hearing about your books and writings.

I am tired of hearing about your girlfriend...

You know, I wasn't going to mention Amanda in this post, until you reminded me. But we just spent six weeks together, working on the film and travelling and going to each other's events, and this blog, even when it gets a bit sporadic (as it has done over the last couple of months) is mostly going to be about what's going on, and who I'm with, and what I'm doing. If I'm somewhere doing something with Amanda, she'll get mentioned. (It's probably just as bad for some of her fans, who are going "who is this Neil and why is she singing to him anyway?")

...

There will be lots of catching up on everything in the next few weeks. And now the wonderful Cat Mihos is back from looking after the Jonas Bros, I can put some attention into helping her make Neverwear.net into the website I think we both dream that it ought to be.

Olga Nunes, former webelf, designed a newNeverwear tee-shirt, with a line from Coraline suggested by a competition winner:

...

I wish that Blogger would get some apps for the android. I'm using a Mytouch as my phone right now, and while I like using it, it's frustrating how easy it is to Twitter, how hard to blog from it. I had discussions with people at Blogger when I started using the G1 about things that didn't work, which they agreed, after a short while, were actually bugs, and they suggested I try emailling things to the blog instead, which lasted one email, when it turned out that things a phone didn't think you needed to see in an email, like lots of people's email addresses, showed up in the blog version.

...

Finally, most of you probably know about the recent typhoon that hit the Philippines, and the flooding and loss of life. If you missed it, here's the BBC news, and here are some eyewitness reports http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/8276970.stm.

For right now, http://tourism-philippines.com/philippines-flood-donation-appeal has a good rundown on ways to donate, from in the Philippines and out, while a donation to https://www.wfp.org/donate/ondoy will help feed the hungry, and those who have lost their homes, in the Philippines.

Labels: amanda palmer, blogger oddnesses, Odd and the Frost Giants, Philippines, The Graveyard Book Halloween Party Competition, What Bees Smell Like

Doing a gloomy bear and other noises

The best bit of today was reading ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS aloud for the audio book. (It's short enough that I could do it in an afternoon, and it will be about 90 minutes long when it's released). I discovered that the first chapter is a bugger to read aloud -- no dialogue and great big run-on-sentences that were a delight to write for me the author and a serious pain in the buttocks to read aloud for me the reader; and I discovered that I love doing my gloomy bear voice (which is pretty much the voice I read Eeyore in, when I read the Pooh books aloud over the years), and the fox-telling-a-story-in-which-he-does-other-characters, and the Frost Giant himself, who is never quite as posh as he thinks he is.

And then I had dinner with Maddy and Holly and their mum, and I waved them goodbye. They're off to the UK now for a few weeks, and I'll see them next when I go over for the Edinburgh International Book Festival.

I noticed today the first solicitation for the upcoming Harper Collins signed, limited edition of Neverwhere. (It was here.) If you pre-paid Neverwhere from the now-as-far-as-I-can-gather extremely defunct Hill House, then you will get one of these. (You should have received an email from Harpers letting you know this edition was on the way.) It should be amazingly beautiful, is the first time that Harpers have done something like this, and will be, like the audio book, the "author's preferred text" and thus several thousand words longer than the current US edition. It also has a bunch of odd, previously stuff in the back -- my original outline for the BBC series and such.

Mr. Gaiman, first of all I love your work. Second, I was wondering if you knew about the North American Discworld Convention being held on Sept. 4-7 in Tempe, Arizona with guest of honor Terry Pratchett, and if so might you be able to attend?

It's been a while since I posted anything about http://www.nadwcon.org. No, I can't go -- I'll be in the UK, recovering from the Edinburgh LIterary Festival and preparing for a short silent movie I'll be shooting. But I wish everyone there well, and hope you don't make Terry sign too many things.

Hi Neil!

Not a question, just a fun fact. Did you know Coraline the movie is being released in Tasmania four days before it's being released anywhere else in Australia? This isn't a complaint. I just thought it was funny because, you know, it's Tasmania :)

Thanks for all your amazing work. The Graveyard Book is one of my top ten favourite books of all time.

Claire

I think Tasmania is one of the coolest and most delightful places in the world. Most of my non-Tasmanian Australian friends will confess to regarding Tasmania much as the Canadians seem to regard Newfoundland, or the Americans regard er, most of the rest of the world, as being hopelessly provincial and impossible to get to.

I am delighted that they are getting Coraline four days before the rest of Australia, and hope that this might start a flood of cinematic tourism from the rest of Australia for those four days.

Regarding Marvel's recent announcement concerning the acquisition of the rights to Marvelman -- Will you be involved in any way with the future publications and/or marketing? If so, would you and Marvel possibly consider continuing to use the name Miracleman rather than reverting to Marvelman? My personal experience with the character began in the mid-80's with the Eclipse run by Alan Moore and then you; and, regardless of the actual reasons those stories used the Miracleman name, I have always felt "Miracleman" was -- for lack of better explanation -- a classier, more appropriate, more adult designation than "Marvelman". Thanks for taking the time for this.

We'll see. And no, I think it's Marvelman, which is what it was until 1984ish when Marvel complained.

Right now I'm not entirely sure what's going to happen, and Mark Buckingham and I haven't signed anything, but I'm really hopeful that Marvel will bring Alan Moore's stories back into print, and the work I did with Mark Buckingham (Miracleman 25 was finished, ready for printing, 16 years ago. It's still in Mark Buckingham's possession, although some of the lettering balloons have gone a bit yellow.) I'm not entirely sure what Marvel's plans are for the character at this point -- obviously I'd like to finish the story I started.

Hey Neil,

You mentioned owing something of the story for "Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?" to Kurt Busiek, and previously you'd talked about cooking up a big crazy Batman story with Busiek during a long car trip. Leaping to the conclusion that WHTTCC is the road trip story, any chance you could share with us something of the shape of that early version of the tale, and how it was similar to/different from the published piece?

The central conceit in the Alfred story in the first part of WHTTCC was something that Kurt and I spun and grew thirteen years ago, almost to the day, during a drive from San Diego to Thousand Oaks to go and be there as Winter McCloud was born (we didn't know that was what we were going to Thousand Oaks for. I thought I was just going to be taking Scott and a very-pregnant Ivy out to dinner, and it wasn't until the point of the dinner where she grabbed my arm and had me start timing contractions that the evening got unusual).

I realize that perhaps more experienced fans probably line up for days just to meet you, but as a student trying to pay her way through school with a full time office job I don't think I can afford to act like a "fan". So for your upcoming appearance at Anticipation '09 in Montreal, do you have any advice as to how early I should show up to meet you? I know you don't come to Montreal often and it would mean the world to meet you.

So far, I'm glad to say, while people have on occasion turned up fairly early in the morning, I don't know of anyone who has lined up for days to meet me. Which is probably a good thing because I would simply feel guilty about it.

There are lots of events with me in at Worldcon, and a few signings. I don't know whether the signings are going to be lottery apportioned or first in line. I'll ask.

I rather hope that meeting me will be as easy as simply saying hello when you bump into me, but I might be being optimistic. We'll see. (And for those people who've written in to ask if Amanda will be there, no, I'm afraid she'll be in Russia that week doing gigs with the inimitable Jason Webley.)

(Which reminds me -- my books are being reissued in Russia any moment now with really beautiful new covers. I'll try and get some pictures of them up here soon.)

...

And finally, this NPR piece on beekeeping has a video they filmed out at our hives a couple of weeks ago. I was still in Chicago for ALA, so I wasn't there, but Sharon the Birdchick and Fabulous Lorraine had a great time.

Labels: 2009 Montreal Worldcon, audio books, hill house, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool?, Mackerelman, Neverwhere, Odd and the Frost Giants, Winter McCloud's remarkable birth

"I am prepared to offer you a deal if the book does sell..."

People say to me, Neil, you have extremely unlikely hair. Why is this?

And I say, probably it is genetic. Here is a photo of my great aunt Bertha, my grandfather, grandmother, and great aunt Dora, in 1920. Note the strangeness of the hair. My grandmother may or may not have strange hair, although she definitely has a strange hat. (You may disapprove of the cigarettes if you wish. I do not know why my grandmother is holding a cigarette -- I don't think she ever smoked. Perhaps it is my grandfather's.)

(I started a family tree at Geni.com, and invited various family members to it, and the most amazing pictures have been coming out of the woodwork. Or at least, out of my Aunt Janet's box of old photographs.)


Hi Neil,

Just wanted to let you know that the keycode "OTHERWORLD" can be used to access all of the video content thus far on the Coraline website, at least to my knowledge. You might want to post this so other people don't have to bother with the passwords (which are very cool, but somewhat cumbersome). Thanks Neil,

- Peter

That's very useful -- thanks. And there are several new videos up there as well. (I am excited. I get to see the finished film in a week.)

This from Andrew Burday:

Regarding the Australian Simpsons parody case: the judge doesn't appear to be confused about the existence of fictional characters. He's saying that a depiction of Bart Simpson is a depiction of a person as opposed to a depiction of a dog or a space alien. He is quoted as saying that the crime would be more serious "if the persons were real".

What's really frightening is the motivation the judge gives to the law in his interpretation. In the USA, the usual motivation given for suppressing child porn is to protect actual children who may be involved in producing it. Apparently that is also a motivation for the Australian law, but it obviously can't apply in this case -- again, the judge contrasts this case to one involving real children. However, the judge goes beyond that to claim that the government has a legitimate interest in suppressing material that could "fuel demand for material that does involve the abuse of children."

The scary thing about that is that almost any expression that concerns child porn without condemning it could be read as "fueling demand". (Really, so could condemnations, in that they create forbidden fruit.) This email and your blog post could be said to fuel demand for child porn by criticizing some laws against it. You and I could be prosecuted as child pornographers merely for having spoken out against this attempt to criminalize it. On this understanding of the law, the law legitimately can suppress its own opposition. So much for any democratic process.

(I have tried to keep this short, but to forestall one obvious objection: suppose you had included a link to the Simpsons parody so that readers could see for themselves what was being suppressed, or suppose that a linguistic description can count as a "depiction" under Australian law. Then your post and my email would include depictions.)

Thanks so much.

Dear Neil Gaiman,

Is "Odd and the Frost Giants" out of print? Because I wanted to put it on my Christmas wish list, and amazon.co.uk doesn't seem to be selling any more themselves; it just has links to other sellers.

Thank you for writing, I love your stories.

Emily

P.S. I was one of the too many people who got "The Graveyard Book" signed at the National Book Festival in DC, and I wanted to thank you for drawing the headstone in my copy, because I got to show the picture too my kindergarten class even though the book is a bit too old for them. (They agreed that it is "cool.") I also read them "The Wolves in the Walls" and "The Day I Swapped my Dad for Two Goldfish," which went over well, so I was wondering if "Crazy Hair" has been or is going to be published as a picture book.

Crazy Hair comes out late next year, in the US and the UK.

It looks like Odd and the Frost Giants is out of print, yes. That's part of the thing of it being a World Book Day book. Everyone did things for free so it could be a one pound book, but that only happens once.

Harpers should be publishing it in the US in 2009, and Bloomsbury will republish it in the UK eventually, although they may wait for me to write another Odd story first. (Odd in Jerusalem, perhaps. I'm pretty sure that he went there.)

Lots of people wrote to tell me about the Rebellyon -- http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2008/dec/03/dresden-dolls-roadrunner is a Guardian article about it, and here's Ms Palmer blogging about it. (Also, http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/63879023/dispatch-from-aspen-salt-lake has, about half-way down, a nice picture of Amanda and me at my kitchen table signing our way through 700 apologetic cards with a photo of a dead Amanda on the other side. Incidentally, the table was filled with other people eating breakfast, but you can't see them.)


Hello my name is Andrea bucy I have seen the movie stardust and I intend to read the book by you I was wondering if I could possible write a spinoff book that has some of the same characters and setting. But I wanted to get you permission first because if i were to get it published i don’t want someone coming after me cause i stole their ideas. I am prepared to offer you a deal if the book does sell i will offer you royalties of 60/40 50/50 or 40/60 i don’t write just for money but i realize that for some people like Jane Austen do and did go along in life and pay for many things by the money they make from their books. So i am asking you if we can maybe make a contract that says you have given me permission, only if you do give me permission, to use your ideas and work in my story and you will get credit for it.Pleas get back to me.

I'm not really sure where to start on this one. If you want to write fan fiction, you can. I don't mind. Sequels and prequels and meetings and pairings and what have you. You can put it up on the web. But you can't publish it commercially. You need to stay on the non-commercial side of the street, which means you can't sell it, not even if, like Jane Austen, you're in it for the big bucks. Otherwise bad things would happen, involving lawyers from publishers and lawyers from movie studios, and your week would be ruined. Trust me on this.

Labels: Coraline movie, Crazy Hair, hair retrospectives, naked Simpsons, Odd and the Frost Giants, oh god how many ways is this one wrong?

Born Free

Lots of lovely letters from people about where and how they found authors for free whose work they then went on to buy, although I was vaguely hoping someone would write a letter saying, "If you're so fond of Free, then why don't you write a book for free, that you don't get any royalties on, that could be given away or sold incredibly cheaply, just to encourage people to read? Yeah, what about that then, smartarse?" But nobody has.

Which is actually a pity, because if they did I could point out that I did just that -- the writing the book bit anyway -- last year. It's a short book called Odd and the Frost Giants, and it's published by Bloomsbury Books in the UK and Ireland for the 2008 World Book Day, which is this coming Thursday, the 6th of March.

And I wasn't the only one.

Basically, every kid in the UK and Eire gets a book token, and gets to decide where to spend it (they have nine books to choose from, most of them specially written for the occasion). No-one -- authors, illustrators, publishers, book-sellers, Book Tokens or schools -- makes any profit anywhere. (Except possibly for Amazon.co.uk making a healthy profit on international postage.)

"13 million school children in the UK will receive a World Book Day £1 Book
Token which can be exchanged for a World Book Day £1 Book, throughout March,
from over 3,000 participating bookshops and book retailers across the UK and
Republic of Ireland. The £1 Token can also be put towards any book or
audio book costing £2.99 or more. The World Book Day £1 Book Token is sponsored
by National Book Tokens and redemptions are funded by bookshops across the
country."

Again, it's books as dandelion seeds, and not all of them are going to find soil. Some of those 13 million kids will destroy their books, some leave them behind, some not even care enough to participate. But some of the kids will go and choose a book of their own, find something they wouldn't have discovered otherwise, maybe find out that reading and owning books of your own is something you can do for pleasure, and... maybe... it'll help ensure that there are still readers of books -- and bookshops -- a hundred years from now.

(I just googled to see if there were any reviews of Odd yet. None from newspapers that I could see, but

http://thingsmeanalot.blogspot.com/2008/03/odd-and-frost-giants-by-neil-gaiman.html

http://stuffasdreamsaremadeon.com/2008/03/01/odd-and-the-frost-giants-by-neil-gaiman-and-ttfn/

Kurt Busiek reviews it at http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Rec/rec.arts.sf.written/2008-03/msg00371.html)

...

Lots of people wrote to tell me that the chest X-Ray was needed for the Tuberculosis test. Nobody explained why the chest X-Ray has to be carried to the US in hand-baggage (it's one of the rules, or it was in 1992). I asked at immigration when I arrived in the US if anyone was going to look at it, and was told that no, nobody ever ever looked at the chest X-rays in hand-baggage. Ever? Ever, said the man.

...

If your dog suddenly discovers and goes for a cat (no longer in a tree) when you're standing on a sheet of what was ice-melt that has just refrozen into sheet ice, and you make a sudden and ill-advised move in an attempt to stop the cat being chased (and to stop the dog losing an eye -- Princess takes her fights seriously) and go down rather heavily on your ankle, you wind up oddly happy if an hour or so later you're just limping and icing it. It could have been a hundred times worse, as my doctor (who happened to be nearby) pointed out.

Princess is back inside the house, Cabal has a scratch under his eye.

And Dave McKean sent over nine sketches for nine different covers to The Graveyard Book -- all of them really impressive. I'll find out from him if he minds me putting them up here (once the final one has been decided upon, anyway). It would be interesting to show people how a book cover gets decided on. (I was also thrilled that Dave wrote after finishing it and said he thought it was a much stronger book than Coraline.)

Labels: Dave McKean, free book, my ankle hurts, Odd and the Frost Giants, world book day

words, words

Hi Neil,
I was considering your new book Odd and the Frost Giants. Before I started working in my current job I would have thought 'Odd' an amusing name for a character because of its meaning in the English language.

However, I now work for a company that employs a lot of Norwegians and there is many a person named Odd amongst them, including the wonderfully named Odd Erik Stangeland.

What made you choose 'Odd' for your character? (Incidently I did a quick search for Odd and found that its etymological meaning could be from Old Norse {oddr}, meaning 'point of a sword (weapon)' - I wonder how it came to mean what it does in modern english...)
Regards
Cameron
Aberdeen, Scotland

As you say. Actually the book begins,

There was a boy called Odd, and there was nothing strange or unusual about that, not in that time or place. Odd meant the tip of a blade, and it was a lucky name.

He was odd though. At least, the other villagers thought so. But if there was one thing that he wasn't, it was lucky.

His father had been killed during a sea-raid, two years before, when Odd was ten. It was not unknown for people to get killed in sea-raids, but his father wasn't killed by a Scotsman, dying in glory in the heat of battle as a Viking should. He had jumped overboard to rescue one of the stocky little ponies that they took with them on their raids as pack animals.

and how I found it? Before I started writing, I called my favourite Norwegian, Iselin Evensen (last seen on this blog taking me to a tomb in Oslo I think), and she put several lists of old Norse names and nicknames and what they meant and suchlike together for me, and Odd jumped out from the list and started waving.

According to http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=odd points of weapons were triangles, and the three-sided-ness gave us the concept of odd versus even, and from there we probably got odd versus normal...

Squirrel billingsgate? From whence cometh the reference, please an thank you? (I Googled it, and know that Billingsgate is a section of London, and there is or was a fishmarket there. But, I'm not sure what that has to do with Squirrels being 1)so greedy they'll eat anything put anywhere, and 2) Squirrels being unjustly detained in woodchuck traps.)
Regards, Siri

The fish market of Billingsgate was famous for the salty and interesting language of the people who worked there, who all swore like, um, fishwives. According to the 1811 Grose Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue,

billingsgate language

Foul language, or abuse. Billingsgate is the market where the fishwomen assemble to purchase fish; and where, in their dealings and disputes, they are somewhat apt to leave decency and good manners a little on the left hand.

Labels: Odd and the Frost Giants, Squirrel billingsgate

my World Book Day book

Where will I buy Odd and The Frost Giants since I live in the US? Will there be a distributor here? How long do I have to wait? Also, how long do I have to wait for The Graveyard Book? I'm aching to read new Gaiman.

Thank you, Mr. Neil.

Siri

You're welcome. Let's see... I don't know if Odd and the Frost Giants will be published in the US. No plans for it at present, anyway.

It was written for something called World Book Day in the UK, where a bunch of authors write books for nothing, and publishers publish them for nothing, and they get sold for £1 each to kids who have been given £1 Book Tokens, and the whole thing exists purely in order to get kids reading. They describe it on their website as the biggest annual event promoting the enjoyment of books and reading.

It was started by UNESCO, borrowing a custom from Catalonia, where roses and books were given as gifts on April 23rd (St George's Day, Shakespeare's birth and death day, not to mention Nobokov's birthday and Cervantes deathday).

It's a registered charity. (Here's the FAQs on the website.)

In the UK and Ireland it'll be Thursday the 6th of March 2008.

Here are this year's books: http://www.worldbookday.com/1-pound-book-details.asp

As to how you'd get a copy if you aren't in the UK, I'd suggest either get someone in the UK to buy one for you, or simply order one from an online retailer. You'll be paying postage but it's still a 14,500 word book for $2 (that's about half the length of CORALINE) so it's not going to set you back much.

If you decide to use Amazon.co.uk -- which anyone with an Amazon account in any other country can use -- you want to use this link to the one pound copy of the book. They have -- and do not use -- another link up to a discounted twenty-five pound version of the book -- which is, I assume, and unless I hear otherwise, some kind of Amazon screw-up, although possibly they're discounting packs of 25 copies. [edit to add, guess confirmed. That's what it is -- a pack of 25 for retailers.]

Now I've finished writing Odd..., I've an essay on Jeff Smith's Bone to do and an introduction to a book about Frank McConnell, then I'm back full-time onto The Graveyard Book until it's done. Will probably fall off the earth in December to finish it.

I think The Graveyard Book will come out in about a year. Maybe a little less.

Labels: Odd and the Frost Giants, The Graveyard Book

The beginning of Chapter 3 of Odd and the Frost Giants

This is how Chapter 3 of Odd and the Frost Giants begins...

Odd had imagined that the side of salmon would feed him for a week or more. But bears and foxes and eagles all, he discovered, eat salmon, and feeding them was the least he could do to thank them for seeing him home. They ate until the fish was all gone, but only Odd and the eagle seemed satisfied with their portions. The fox and the bear both looked like they were still hungry.

“We'll find more food tomorrow,” said Odd. “Sleep now.”

The animals stared at him. He walked over to the straw mattress, and climbed onto it. It didn't smell like his father at all, he realised, as he sat down on it, as he placed the crutch carefully against the wall, to pull himself up when he woke. It just smelled like straw. Odd closed his eyes, and he was asleep.

Dreams of darkness, of flashes, of moments, nothing he could hold onto, nothing that comforted him. And then into the dream a booming gloomy voice that said,

“It wasn't my fault.”

And a higher voice, bitterly amused, that said, “Oh, right. I told you not to go pushing that tree down. You just didn't listen.”

“I was hungry. I could smell the honey. You don't know what it was like, smelling that honey. It was better than mead. Better than roasted goose.” And then, the gloomy voice, so bass it made Odd's stomach vibrate, changed its tone. “And you, of all people, don't need to go blaming people. It's because of you we're in this mess.”

“I thought we had a deal. I thought we weren't going to keep harping on about a trivial little mistake...”

“You call this trivial?”

And then a third voice, high and raw, which screeched, “Silence.”

There was silence. Odd rolled over. There was a glow from the fire-embers, enough to see the inside of the hut, enough to confirm to Odd that there were not another three people in there with him. It was just him and the fox and the bear and the eagle...

I wonder if they eat people, thought Odd. Whatever they are.

He sat up in the bed, leaned against the wall. The bear and the eagle both ignored him. The fox darted him a green-eyed glance.

“You were talking,” said Odd.

The animals looked at Odd and at each other. If they did not actually say “Who? Us?” it was there in their expressions, in the way they held themselves.

“Somebody was talking,” said Odd. “And it wasn't me. There isn't anyone else in here. That means it was you lot. And there's no point in arguing.”

“We weren't arguing,” said the bear. “Because we can't talk.” Then it said, “Oops.”

The fox and the eagle glared at the bear, who put a paw over his eyes and looked ashamed of himself.

Odd sighed. “Which one of you wants to explain what's going on?” he said.

“Nothing,” said the fox, brightly. “Just a few talking animals. Nothing to worry about. Happens every day. We'll be out of your hair first thing in the morning.”

The eagle fixed Odd with its one good eye. Then it turned to the fox. “Tell!”

Labels: Odd and the Frost Giants, randomly posting a chunk of fiction for no particular reason

finished Odd

The 30 Second scary story will be broadcast on the 27th of October on Weekend America. If you don't get NPR you should be able to listen to it -- and many other things -- at http://weekendamerica.publicradio.org/.

I finished the first typed draft of Odd and the Frost Giants tonight. It's 14,000 words long, more or less, which makes it (I think) a novelette. I've sent it to a few people to read, and tomorrow I'll read it myself, and scribble on the printouts and change things, and wonder if it works or not, and try and make it work better.

Here's a link to Guillermo Del Toro and the lovely Selma Blair talking about Death: http://www.superherohype.com/news/topnews.php?id=6447

The just-as-lovely-as-Selma-Blair Colleen Doran has re-inked her chapter of A Game of You in Absolute Sandman Volume 2, and you can see what the same page looks like in the two different versions over at http://community.livejournal.com/scans_daily/4192671.html. Also Colleen put up a couple of pages of Sandman #20 pencils at http://adistantsoil.com/blog/?p=811

Someone sent me a link to a film that was meant to be H.P. Lovecraft talking in 1933, which just made me want to take everyone involved in creating it aside and show them interview films from that period, and make them really listen to the kind of questions that were asked back then and the way that they were answered. You can date interviews in seconds, in the same way you can date old commercials, or old TV shows. (I watched the first couple of episodes of The Tomorrow People with Maddy recently. We were a couple of minutes in when she said "This is the Seventies, right?") It was a good idea, but the joy of faking period stuff has to be getting the tone of voice and the tiny details right, because they make everything else work.

I clicked on the next YouTube link along, which turned out to be me talking about the Necronomicon, and why I want mine to have been signed by the author...



Right. Bed now.

Labels: Guillermo Del Toro, NPR, Odd and the Frost Giants, Selma Blair, the Devil's in the Details, the Devil's in the Necronomicon...

The view from the end of chapter 8

It was raining, and the dog sat with his head in the rain waiting for it to clear up and for me to be done with writing and ready to do something -- anything -- more interesting.

(I recommend having a finished mock-up of the cover of the book that your publisher sent you, World Book Day sticker and all, knocking around, for when you feel like going to do something else. It's there to remind you that if you don't finish the book in time, the cover will go on a book of blank pages, I think.)

Labels: cellphone photos, Dog, Odd and the Frost Giants

Why write?

The best thing about writing fiction is that moment where the story catches fire and comes to life on the page, and suddenly it all makes sense and you know what it's about and why you're doing it and what these people are saying and doing, and you get to feel like both the creator and the audience. Everything is suddenly both obvious and surprising ("but of course that's why he was doing that, and that means that...") and it's magic and wonderful and strange.

You don't live there always when you write. Mostly it's a long hard walk. Sometimes it's a trudge through fog and you're scared you've lost your way and can't remember why you set out in the first place.

But sometimes you fly, and that pays for everything.

No, it's not quite finished, but I don't mind right now, and I suspect that I can persuade my publisher to wait another couple of days. It's alive, and a real book, even if it's a short one and I cannot wait to get back to it.

....

The Hype Machine is a wonderful music discovery engine and internet music channel, and I've loved using it ever since I learned it on the Fabulist. Now, as you learn from the latest Fabulist posting, it's going to take 10,000 of us leaving the Hype machine window open to launch the new version of Hype Machine. They have about 1800 people right now, so if you wouldn't mind going to http://hypem.com/new and not closing the window I'd be very grateful. Thank you.

Labels: fabulist, Odd and the Frost Giants, the Hype machine, why write?

Every Day I Write the Book

You may want to point these out, for those of us in the UK who haven't already spotted it.

Making of Stardust (Documentary)

Time - 14:20 - 14:50 (30 minutes long)

When - Sunday 14th October on five

A behind-the-scenes look at the new film Stardust, which stars Claire Danes and Michelle Pfeiffer.

Also - Film 2007 with Jonathan Ross is at 23.05 on Tuesday 16th, on BBC, and includes reviews of Stardust...


Consider it posted. And the Daily Mirror are giving away Stardust CD Roms (do not ask me what is on them for I do not know) - details at http://www.mirror.co.uk/2007/10/12/free-stardust-cd-rom-89520-19940921/

And I am still posting links to things instead of writing interesting things in the blog, because I am still somewhere in the hell that's either Chapter 5 or Chapter 6 of THIS DAMNED BOOK which seems determined to be longer than it was meant to be. (You're not a novel, I tell it. You're not even a novella. You're a novelette. And you're due in on Monday. But the story merely laughs and stretches ominously and I have no idea what this bloody pool is doing in the middle of the forest.)

Read Josh Olsen, and know that nothing on the Internet is true. http://www.laweekly.com/news/news/the-life-and-death-of-jesse-james/17427/

And here's Laura Miller on the Charles Schulz biography.

Labels: Odd and the Frost Giants

In Japan

Not a lot to report. I flew Virgin to Tokyo -- I had fond memories of Virgin Upper Class from about a decade ago, when I flew once it to LA and found it spacious and pleasant and really nice. It's nowhere near as good as it was back then, but the seats turn into all-the-way-flat beds, and that on its own is wonderful.

Less impressed when I realised, when I got off the plane, that one of the bottles of Talisker I'd bought in duty free as presents for my Japanese hosts (given the Skye connection with Stardust it seemed appropriate) was no longer in the duty free bag. I hope whoever wound up with it enjoys it.

I worked on Odd and the Frost Giants on the plane, typing up stuff that was handwritten. Odd is a slim book I'm writing -- a novelette, I guess -- that will be published for World Book Day 2008.

(I lost the notebook [left it on the plane from China to Amsterdam, en route to Budapest] that had the next chapter handwritten in it. So, having no other option, I'll shrug and write it again. Mostly it was just the fox talking and the bear interrupting anyway.)

Arrived in Tokyo and had the smoothest experience walking through any airport I've ever had -- passport, baggage, everything was simply ready as I got there, and I was out of the airport before the plane was even meant to land.

I was introduced to my people at UIP Japan, and put in a car with my driver and my security person (I have a security person here) while the UIP people followed in a minibus. And then I got to the hotel...

If you ever saw the film ANNIE, the bit where she arrives at the Warbucks Estate and is introduced to everyone while walking through the building, that was what it was like arriving in my hotel. I tumbled out of the car and was swept inside a tide of people, hotel people and UIP people, into the hotel, led by the general manager while shaking hands with er... everyone, or that was how it seemed... and soon found myself in the most beautiful hotel room I think I've ever been in (and I have been in many lovely hotel rooms around the world), with a view over Tokyo that's astonishing. The hotel has only been open for about two weeks, and it still has that new-carpet smell. The hotel room doesn't feel like anyone's stayed in here before. I was shown how to work things, and I needed to be shown -- it's the HAL 2000 of hotel rooms, with all sorts of strange technological innovations hidden away. The toilet seats that rise to greet you when you nervously open an unmarked door to see what's in there are the least of it.

(Having a panda on my lap was better than this hotel room. But as hotel rooms go, it's the best. It has an old telescope too, for looking at the stars, or at the scenery, or something.)

I checked the schedule -- the 43 interviews I was doing in two days has shrunk to a slightly more manageable 37. The Kadokawa event on Friday night should be enormously fun, presuming that I can still remember by then a) who I am and b) how to sign my name.

Today I get to recover, but plan instead to go out to Studio Ghibli and pay my respects there, something I've wanted to do since they first invited me, when I was working on Princess Mononoke, all those years ago.

...

If I'd stayed home I could have helped with this.... http://www.birdchick.com/2007/09/rolling-bees-in-powdered-sugar.html

Labels: ANNIE, how to arrive in hotels, Japan, Odd and the Frost Giants