Eagle stones

(Warning: the close-up photo at the end of the first section may not be for the sensitive.)

A few people have written in asking whether yesterday's post was a joke. No, I looked out of the window, saw what I thought for a moment was a huge owl then realised was an eagle grabbing for a squirrel who had been dining on the snow beneath the birdfeeders.

The bird looked like it had meant to grab the squirrel by the middle, but its talons were actually around the squirrel's head -- it lifted it up off the ground, the squirrel wriggled, fell out of the bird's clutches into the snow, and shot off, while the bird went to the nearest tree and glared balefully around -- which was the point I got a clear look at it, and it looked exactly like Golden Eagles I've seen in Scotland and in Zoos.

("Could it have been a red-tailed hawk?" asked the birdchick, when we called her and I took the phone from Bill and told her what I'd seen. I didn't want to say it was a golden eagle for fear of being thought odd.

"Only if it was the biggest one in the world," I said. They don't look alike.)

I grabbed a camera with a telephoto lens, and Cabal and Bill Stiteler and I headed out. We took a few pictures of me pointing, and the marks in the snow. Took a picture of a distant squirrel on a tree. Then went further into the woods. Crows were harrying something bigger than they were, but it was always hidden by treetops.

We discovered that, although the temperature was minus 2 F (minus 19 C), the purplish-coloured beehive had bees out sunning themselves. Some adventurous bees were even flying around, although they didn't fly for long before dropping in the snow and not moving any longer. I went back to a safe distance (so they didn't need to come and fly out and investigate me) and took a couple of telephoto shots of sunning bees.

I took lots of photos of the dog. I did not know that by the end of the day there would be a Tumblr site dedicated to pictures of my dog.

It was only later that evening that Bill and I got around to looking at the photos we'd taken, and we zoomed in on the squirrel on the tree, and I realised that he was actually the one who got away...


(Here's Bill's blog entry from yesterday: http://www.birdchick.com/wp/2010/01/where-eagles-arent/. Here's Sharon's entry: http://www.birdchick.com/wp/2010/01/west-bound-and-down/)

....

Dear Mr. Gaiman (Or Webgoblin, who I hope appreciates Who enough to appreciate things about Mr Gaiman's scarf),

Who knitted this scarf?? Is it warm? Did it take them long??

(For reference, I'm going on about the quite lovely TomBaker!Who scarf you appear to be wearing whilst looking for some sort of Eagle).

Overly, don't worry about the question's answers, I just wanted to express my love that my favourite author is wearing a replica of my second favourite Who's scarf. No response needed, I just wanted to give you a giant ':D'. Except there's no formatting, so it can't be giant. I'm sorry.

- Sara, in the process of knitting one of those, Brighton.

It was a gift from Ms Ally B in Montana, who contacted me on Twitter, and sent it through Neverwear. ( She said on Twitter, "I'm not a knitter, though. Learned enough to make the scarf, and then quit.")

Dear Neil,

How do you keep your fountain pens from leaking while you are traveling? I recently flew from San Francisco to New York and back, and both ways my fountain pen (a Namiki Pilot Knight collection pen) the first time I tried to use the pen after landing I ended up with ink all over my my fingers and had to take the pen completely apart and clean the ink out of all the places it wasn't supposed to be. Do you have a secret to keep this from happening, and if so, could you please share it with your readers? Thanks so much!

lindac

I long ago resigned myself to being an inky-fingered scribbler. But having said that, if I'm travelling with a pen with a soft reservoir of the kind that gets affected by changing cabin pressure, I try to remember to empty it before getting in a plane. I have some magnificently stained jacket-linings from times I forgot.

Hi Neil,

I'm a lit grad student studying Hope Mirrlees, and I've started a website (http://hopemirrlees.com) about HM and her work. I'm sending this to you in case it's of interest to you or your readers -- you've been one of Mirrlees' best of most visible champions for so long, so I thought I should let you know.

So far, I have the full text of _Madeleine_ (which is in the public domain in the US) up, along with a bunch of biographical information and links to discussions of her elsewhere on the web. There's UK-based academic working on a scholarly bio of Mirrlees, too, which is awfully exciting -- I should have an interview with her up this month at the site.

I love your site and twitter account, btw. I've been a reader of yours since -- oh god, a long time ago -- and it's a delight to have these bits of your brain floating around online.

Keep warm,
Erin

Happy to mention it. Also, because I'm not sure if I ever have here, to link to Michael Swanwick's excellent short biographical study, Hope In The Mist (with a Charles Vess illustration and an introduction by yours truly). (Now completely sold out, in hard and paperback editions.)

Neil--

I'm the writer and artist of a comic called "Love and Capes". (If you'd a copy, let me know and I'll be glad to send it to you.) The book's been collected by IDW, and I've donated it to a few local libraries and done talks and "chalk talks" at them.

My question is, with you being the Honorary Library Chair, are there programs to put graphic novelists who are decent (I think so, at least) at speaking with libraries who might be interested in having them come out for presentations.

Personally, I've had some success locally here in Cleveland, but I wouldn't mind the excuse to travel. In general, though, it'd be nice if there were some way to match writers and artists up with places that would be like to have them.

And, if there's not, you can decree such a thing into existence, right?

Thanks!

Thom Zahler

I don't know if I can decree it, but I can definitely put it out there and see if there's anyone out there who knows.

...

Finally, fascinated by an article by journalist and former UK deputy Prime Minister Roy Hattersley about the people of Iceland in the Times. I won't comment on the content except to say that his experiences of the Icelandic people have been very different to mine, and that his statement,

There are Viking tombstones in the Great Wall of China

left me fascinated, wondering if there was something I'd missed studying the Vikings and the Chinese.


Apart from not having read anything about this ever, and Vikings not having tombstones (they had cairns of stones, though) and the Vikings having either turned up a thousand years later than the Qin wall-building or chucked it in two hundred years before the Ming wall-building, it just seemed the sort of thing someone would have mentioned.

Yes, I know there were trade routes. But this seemed to be implying that there were... what? Vikings building the wall who died and were given tombstones built into the wall? An ancient Chinese wall-building consortium who travelled all the way to Norway to bring back some Viking Rocks as building materials?

I put out a call for information on Twitter and people sent me links to sites about the Tarim Mummies (who died in 3000BC and were probably a lot of things, but they weren't Vikings. Sometimes I suspect they eventually wandered north-west and became the Scots) but even historians seemed blank.

So if anyone out there knows Roy Hattersley, or is Roy Hattersley, I'd love more information. For that matter, if any of you find yourselves on a train or in a bar with Roy Hattersley, feel encouraged to sidle over to him and tell him to get in touch with me. I'd love it to be true. And I'd love for there to be some evidence.

Labels: crows, photos of me on the Great Wall, possible golden eagle, Squirrel billingsgate

Where Eagles Daren't

My friend Bill Stiteler is over at my house today. His wife, Birdchick Sharon Stiteler, is off at a Birding Thing in Atlanta.

Bill just blogged the exciting birding events of this afternoon on Sharon's blog. I'm in the photos in a VERY long scarf, which I wore because it's minus something Farenheit outside and it actually helps a bit.

I am simply going to link to what Bill said and to the photographs therein.

Frankly, I'd be surprised if he doesn't get a Pulitzer for this one.

Go and click on http://www.birdchick.com/wp/2010/01/where-eagles-arent/ for exciting birds and people and white dog action.

(It was a golden eagle, which I've not seen around this part of the world before.)

Labels: a very long scarf, birdchick, Squirrel billingsgate

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

The past tense of looming

The chipmunk was still in my drainpipe. It made noises in the night. It threw wild chipmunk parties on the other side of the wall to the headboard of my bed. Something had to be done. There was a trail of birdseed leading in to the drainpipe, left by the chipmunk. I thought, right. Best thing to do is to catch him and then move him somewhere else, and while he was out to put something in the drainpipes like a metal grille or wire-wool or something a chimpunk cannot get through.

There's a live trap in the garage I've used over the years to relocate woodchucks. I got it and put it at the base of the drainpipe. I filled a bowl with sunflower seeds as bait and put it into the trap. I went inside to answer the phone.

"Any particular reason you're trapping squirrels?" asked my assistant Lorraine as she came in.

"You mean chipmunks," I said. And then, "Oh bugger."

I went out and freed the squirrel from the trap, who ran up into a tree and shouted rude things at me in Squirrel. Things so obviously rude and personally insulting that I was just relieved I don't speak squirrel.

The chipmunk is still, of course, in my drainpipe.

I do not care, because I am off for the Beowulf junket and premiere and will not sleep in my bed for a while. Maybe by the time I get home he'll have moved.

...

More information on the Dave McKean "Luna" origami crabs at

http://jamesmclark.blogspot.com/2007/11/origami-emergency.html

a "Nice Hair" Hallowe'en treat from Miss Em -- a three page story in which her Neil character becomes... ah, but that would be telling... (I liked the way he was lured out by a cup of tea most of all...)

http://www.yinepu.net/nicehair_halloween_07.html

Hi Neil.

I was wondering if the looming writer's strike has the potential to impact any of your projects.

-Mike

Aurora, CO

More than looming. It has loomed, and I am now On Strike. I've never been On Strike before. (Mark Evanier's blog -- http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_11_02.html -- gives a lot of background and information on today's events, and http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_11_03.html#014294 adds to it.)

And yes, it impacts some of my projects. It means that the US TV network that wanted to option a book of mine to make into a TV series isn't going to be able to buy it (or anything else of mine) until the strike is done. It means that I'm not going to be able to do the rewrites and polishes on the 1999 NEVERWHERE movie script for Hensons and the Weinstein Company until the strike is done. It means that Roger Avary and I won't be able to rewrite or polish or work on BLACK HOLE. That I can't discuss or sign on to (MOVIE X) until the strike's done.

I also need to talk to the WGA and find out whether I can write a TV project for the BBC (I suspect the answer will be No, but I should ask).

It doesn't impact Beowulf, which was written in 1997 and rewritten in 2005, and Roger Avary and I will still be doing the press for it, because that's not a writing job. I don't know if it impacts Henry Selick's work (as a writer, not as a director) on Coraline or not -- probably not.

Truth to tell, I'm in a slightly better position than most WGA writers in that I can (and do) write books and things that aren't TV and films in addition to writing TV and films, so all it means is I'm now going to finish writing a book a would have finished writing anyway, and when that's done I'll raise my head above the parapet, blink, look around and figure out what I'm going to do next.

...

I was talking a few days ago about having somewhere to put photos of all the Hallowe'en costumes based on stuff I'd written, and Emily rose to the challenge:

Calling all Neil fans:

A Flickr site has been created so that you can share photos of any Neil-inspired costumes, crafts, or other creations that you have made. The photo album can be viewed here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inspiredbyneil

Instructions on how to submit your photos to the album are here:

http://www.flickr.com/people/inspiredbyneil/

We've already got a couple of submissions. Keep 'em coming!

...

Hi Neil,



Just curious, how do you see this journal of yours, especially in relation to the newly rising blog culture that we have here, as well as your growing fame-itude? It seems that when you first started, no one really knew what to write in these internet thingies, and now even dogs have blogs. Where do you see yourself on the blog spectrum? Related to this, I remember you mentioning at a talk several years ago that you wanted to limit your fame-itude by not getting your photo into books and suchlike (citing Stephen King as an example, I think). And yet I can "see" you every day in my rss feed aggregator, along with images of Maddy and odd videos here and there. So my question is, what has changed over the last few years? Your view on fame-itude? Your blogging habits? The internet?

Many thanks,

~Sushu

I've never minded author photos on books -- the Stephen King thing I would have mentioned was Steve telling me that he wished he had never done the American Express "Do You Know Me?" ad, when suddenly people knew what he looked like. It moved his face into public consciousness. (I'm glad to say I don't think I'm there yet -- and I hope I never will be.)

I guess I'm more famous than I'm comfortable with, but that's just something that is, and I don't think there's much that can be done about it. I don't think it has much to do with the blog, or with the fact that you can watch videos of me on YouTube. And I've managed to go many years without seeing myself on the blog spectrum, but if I have to be anywhere I'd like to be at the point where the indigo shades into the violet, please.

Labels: chipmunk in my drainpipe, Squirrel billingsgate, the perils of famousness, writers' strike