Neil Gaiman's Journal: The Ocean At The End of the Lane

Showing posts with label The Ocean At The End of the Lane. Show all posts

Thursday, January 06, 2022

Letting the cat out...

So, let's see.

I was the castaway on Desert Island Discs. This probably doesn't mean anything to anyone who isn't from the UK. (You can hear it at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00120cb.)

The Ocean at the End of the Lane opened at the Duke of York's Theatre in St Martin's Lane, with a press night on Nov 4th. I saw it (my father-in-law Jack was there as my family guest) and marvelled at how something I thought was as good as it could be when I saw it at the Dorfman Theatre had somehow managed to become bigger and better and more powerful.

It's collected a slew of five star and four star reviews, and a bunch of award nominations.

If you're in or near London, you should see it. It's special. https://www.oceanwestend.com/

It's on until May 14th 2022, when we lose the theatre to another show, and Ocean goes on tour around the UK.

(Remember, every day they release a limited number of £25 Rush tickets at https://www.todaytix.com/london/shows/21527-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane)

In October and November I was working on Good Omens 2 and on Anansi Boys, each on a different side of Edinburgh. Both astonishing casts and crew. Anansi Boys is shooting in one of the biggest studios there is. You won't believe Brixton...

I'm back in New Zealand currently to be with a small boy and his mother. (I got very lucky in the MIQ lottery.) I've been able to showrun remotely, because technology is amazing these days and lets you do that, but it's definitely easier to do while I'm in Scotland, and easier on everyone else to have me there.

Which reminds me... There's a piece of Good Omens news I've been keeping close to my chest, but I think as we prepare to go back to shooting, it's time to let this particular Cat out of the bag:

When I first started planning Good Omens 2, I thought it would be a good idea to have what I started referring to as "minisodes" -- stories that begin and end within a larger episode, ones that dive into history. And I thought it would be fun to invite some other people to write the minisodes. We have three of them.

We've announced that I'm co-writing the show with John Finnemore. We haven't told you that John has also written a solo-story set in biblical times, though. He has. It's thoughtful and funny and wise.

We haven't told you that novelist and screenwriter Cat Clarke wrote a story set in Victorian times in Edinburgh, have we? She did...

I asked Cat if she wanted to say something about it, and she replied,

‘When Neil kindly invited me to join Good Omens 2, I bit his hand off. (Terribly sorry about that, Neil. Hope you’re managing to type OK?) It’s been an absolute joy to play in the glorious sandbox that Neil and Terry created. I can’t wait for the world to see our favourite angel and demon get into a wee bit of a pickle in Edinburgh.’

And there's one other minisode, written by two people working together: Jeremy Dyson and Andy Nyman. Jeremy is a writer (and one of the members of the League of Gentlemen -- he was portrayed by one Michael Sheen in the League of Gentlemen movie) and Andy's a writer, a worker of strange miracles and an actor. They are best known as a collaborative team for writing Ghost Stories, as a play and a film. Their story is set in London during the blitz.

They sent me a message too: ‘We’ve had such a great time writing for Good Omens 2. It’s been a true privilege to be allowed to dive into Aziraphale and Crowley’s lives. We hope we’ve been able to bring laughs, magic and a few scares to this wonderful world.’

...

Sandman on Netflix is doing brilliantly. I can't wait for everyone else to see what I've been seeing.

And from 28th of April until the 26th of May, hitherto unknown strains of Covid permitting, I'll be on an American Tour, doing most of the cancelled and postponed Evenings With Neil Gaiman from 2020 and 2021. Details at https://www.neilgaiman.com/where/ and links to tickets on each entry. (Madison WI has already sold out.)

...

And I didn't get to write a New Year's Wish, because I've been sole parent for Ash while Amanda is away at a lovely Yoga and Hiking retreat in the South Island, and there wasn't the time to write one and stay up with a small boy to welcome in the New Year. Perhaps I'll write a belated one, perhaps not... (This blog is being brought to you by an iPad and Scooby Doo and Mystery Incorporated.)

Labels: Andy Nyman, Back on Tour, Cat Clarke, Jeremy Dyson, Letting the Cat, Minisodes, the Andy and the Jeremy out, The Ocean At The End of the Lane

Sunday, December 15, 2019

Ocean at the End of the Night

The press night of the National Theatre production of Ocean at the End of the Lane was wonderful. Also, emotionally gruelling. I sat between two women who both cried a lot, and a reviewer next to them who was doing fine until tears started splashing on his notebook. It's not that it's sad, exactly, more that it can hit you right in the feels...

The reviews are five star and four star. They say things like

Is Neil Gaiman’s “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” a story of childhood for adults or an adult view of the world for children? As director Katy Rudd’s astonishingly theatrical production of Joel Horwood’s adaptation resoundingly proves, the answer is: Both. Although wisely recommended for audiences above the age of twelve – the age of the central character – this captivating piece of theater, now premiering at the National Theater in London, is as scary as it is splendid and as moving as it is, in every sense, magical. (Variety)

and

I don’t know why but I assumed this stage adaptation of a 2013 fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman – award-winning but not, I think, widely known – was a contractual obligation Christmas show, something to ensure the building could open its doors to families (at least those with children aged 12 and over) during the holiday period.

Far from it. As one decade gives way to the next, what we have here is the NT’s successor to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – something of that order and wow-factor. The similarities with Mark Haddon’s novel are striking: the protagonist is an alienated boy drawn into a hurtling adventure cum psychological maelstrom; yet The Ocean at the End of the Lane is still a different kettle of fish, enfolding us inside a much more discombobulating narrative labyrinth. (Daily Telegraph)

And it's all true.

This is far and away my favourite of any of the adaptations of my stuff people have made. I just wish more people were going to be able to see it. The Dorfman is an intimate theatre, and the run ends on January 25th.

Labels: National Theatre, The Ocean At The End of the Lane

Thursday, November 28, 2019

An Ocean of Story

It was three years ago that I went for my first meeting at the National Theatre, with Mel Kenyon, my redoubtable Theatrical Agent. I met Katy Rudd and Joel Horwood in an office at the back of the action. Katy was a director, Joel a writer. They wanted to adapt my novel The Ocean at the End of the Lane. They wanted to make it a play.

I really liked them, and they seemed to have responded to the right sort of things in the book.

I said yes.

(Saying yes also meant that I soon had to say no to something else that the National Theatre wanted to do. Something much bigger, and probably more of a crowd pleaser. They couldn't do both, and they knew they couldn't. But I have a special love for Ocean: it's smaller and more delicate. Sooner or later the big crowd pleaser would happen anyway. Ocean was small and personal.)

Six months later, there was a “proof of concept workshop” at the National Theatre studios beside the Old Vic. I saw a flapping canvas puppet. Actors said words. There wasn't a script yet, but there was a point of view. I told them what I liked, what I didn't. They were the same things that Joel and Katy liked and didn't.

A year after that, more or less, there was a semi-acted read through of the script, put on for me and for the National Theatre. It had potential, wasn't there yet, but was enough of a thing that I said yes to it continuing (I could have stopped it there) and the National Theatre powers that be said Yes to putting it on at the National.

And a year after that, a table read. Many of the cast had been with the production since that first workshop. I had a few big notes, but found it intensely moving. I managed not to cry at the end.

And two days ago I was in a rehearsal room in the National Theatre, watching a run-through of the whole play, with sound cues, puppetry, and drama. I was holding my breath, hoping it would work. And as it came to an end, with a tear streaming down my cheek (I flicked it away discreetly, a gesture I've only ever seen in films before now) I was thrilled with what Katy and Joel have built.
They've built it with remarkable actors and with technicians and with craftspeople and lighting designers and the best of the talent that the National Theatre has. They've built it with Jherek Bischoff's music.

They've built it with love, and with an understanding of what the book's about, which taught them what you can lose to fit the book into something the size of a play and what you have to keep.
They've built it with the three ladies of the Hempstock family, with Ursula Monkton in all her forms, with Hunger Birds, with real theatrical magic.

(Movement/Choreographer Steven Hoggett (Left) and Director Katy Rudd (seated). I first worked with Steven with the National Theatre of Scotland's 2006 version of The Wolves in the Walls.)

The production has almost sold out already: it's already lots of people's favourite of my books, and the word on the street is good. It's also at the Dorfman, the smallest of the National Theatre's venues, which fits about 350 people a night. The show runs from previews on December 3^rd until January 25^th. There are still a few tickets, but not many.

The opening night is December 11^th, the day before the UK General Election. I wonder what the mood will be in the theatre that night. I hope the critics like it, but mostly I hope the people who go to the theatre like it.

On December the 18^th, Sir Lenny Henry will be interviewing me about Ocean at the End of the Lane, play and book, on the big Olivier Stage at the National. Tickets are £31/£26 for Students and Under 18s, and the ticket price includes a pre-signed copy of the illustrated edition of Ocean at the End of the Lane. (Which normally go for £20 except I believe they've now all sold out.) And you can also buy just a ticket without the book, for those of you going as families, or who already have the book.

Here's the link: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/neil-gaiman-on-the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane

And if you want to look for the last few tickets, https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane/dates-listing

…

It's Thanksgiving in the US now. It feels odd to not be sweating in a tiny kitchen, cooking huge turkeys and a whole salmon or two and making the stuffed mushrooms for a host of family and friends. Instead I'm off on my own for the first time since the Autumn of 2016, to try and caught up on writing.

I miss my family, but it feels very good to be concentrating on what needs to be written. I'm lucky having Amanda there, who encouraged me to go and write.

I'm thankful there are people out there who read what I write and who like what I make. I'm very lucky, and I know it.

(And I blew out a tyre on a country road a long way from anywhere last night, in a rented car. The What3words app was invaluable in letting the roadside assistance I was put through to know where I was. Huge thumbs up from me, and thank you What3words.)

Labels: National Theatre, The Ocean At The End of the Lane

Monday, September 09, 2019

A long catch up (and go and see Amanda Palmer's show)

I stopped blogging in April when my friend Gene Wolfe died. I wanted to write a blog about Gene, who he was, how we were friends, and it just made me too sad.

So I stopped writing that blog, and then felt bad writing about the other things that have happened, like Good Omens coming out as a TV series when I hadn't yet written about Gene.

I miss him still, and kept wanting to send him postcards over the last few months, just as I usually did when I travelled. And then I remember I can't send Gene things any longer.

So Gene went, before I could show him the TV adaptation we made of Good Omens, which had been a book he loved.

It came out on Prime Video May 31st, and people loved it. It broke several records for Amazon, in the US and the UK and around the world, which made me happy. We got three Emmy Nominations, and already started being nominated for and winning awards. Everyone wants us to make some more, and while Terry Pratchett and I had long ago plotted out a whole novel's worth of More, I'm still figuring out whether or not and if so how it could happen.

Then it was announced that Netflix had won the bidding war to be the company that brought Sandman to television. I'm Very Involved in making it -- I'll be cowriting the pilot episode, and working closely with Exec Producer David Goyer and Showrunner Allan Heinberg to make sure it's always Sandman, the one that people who read and loved the comics will recognise and love.

Meanwhile, I had stopped being a Good Omens showrunner, and started becoming a writer who stayed at home and looked after a small boy and also wrote, while his wife went off on tour.

And then we crossed the ocean, and are now based in the UK until the end of the year and are doing the same thing again.

I'm at home, Amanda is (mostly) on tour.

I get Ash dressed in the correct school uniform (PE or Formal) and onto the bus (we always go straight up to the top floor of the bus and he always tells me the rules of traffic lights), and I take him to school.

Occasionally I'll be doing things in public this year, and I'll try and announce them here:

The National Theatre's adaptation of The Ocean at the End of the Lane begins on Dec 3rd and runs until the 25th of January:

It's recommended for people aged 12 and over. Tickets are available here: https://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/shows/the-ocean-at-the-end-of-the-lane

And in one of those nice coincidences that make it look like I actually know what I'm doing, this year also brings the illustrated edition of The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Elise Hurst is an Australian illustrator who passed me some of her work to look at after an event, and I was immediately impressed. Her work looks (or can look) like mid-20th century children's book illustration, but with a strange edge to it that seemed perfect for Ocean.

She and I will be in conversation on the 14th of November: here's the details, and how to get tickets -- https://membership.theguardian.com/event/an-evening-with-neil-gaiman-and-elise-hurst-69018926467

Here's a photo Amanda took of me telling a children's story that won't be published for about a year, at an event in Camden for her Patrons (from Patreon). Douglas Mackinnon, director of Good Omens, made it black and white and haunting. Ash is the one looking up at me at the front...

....

If you are in the UK, or Germany or Austria (Graz!), Paris or Prague, Luxembourg, Ireland or Denmark, I wanted to urge you to go and see Amanda in concert on this tour. (https://nointermission.amandapalmer.net/) The show list: http://amandapalmer.net/shows/

This is a very special show. It's about life and otherwise. It contains a friend's illness and death. It contains three abortions (one on health grounds) and a Christmas Day miscarriage. It contains the arrival of Ash.

It's called There Will Be No Intermission. And normally, there's an intermission, because it's a long night.

It's important, it's beautiful, it's powerful, and it's even funny.

Labels: amanda palmer, Ash, Gene Wolfe, Good Omens, sandman tv, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, There WIll be No Intermission

Thursday, April 10, 2014

gal·li·mau·fry (noun) 1. a confused jumble or medley of things.

I taught my first class at Bard on Tuesday night. It was slightly nerve wracking, but the 14 people who are listening to me burble about writing and fantasy seem very nice and relatively forgiving, and I'm looking forward to doing it again tomorrow night. Only, I hope, saying different things.

The Evening With Art Spiegelman and Me at Bard was wonderful. It was sold out, and became mostly an interview, with me asking Art things, although I read the first few pages of the version of Hansel and Gretel I've written that Lorenzo Mattotti has illustrated, which was rather wonderful. (You can see one of the marvelous Mattotti illustrations on the screen behind us in this photo by Gideon Lester.)

There aren't any more events in New York this year that there are tickets for, except for THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS at Carnegie Hall. (At which I think I will also do the first reading of the whole of Hansel and Gretel as well.) Lots of people are asking if there will be a signing there... and I'm definitely considering it. The Ocean at the End of the Lane will have just come out in paperback, and The Truth is a Cave In The Black Mountains graphic novel will just have come out.... It's definitely possible.

Tickets and information at http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2014/6/27/0800/PM/Neil-Gaiman-The-Truth-is-a-Cave-in-the-Black-Mountains/

(And Where's Neil will tell you everywhere else I'll be until July, including San Francisco, London, Edinburgh, Barcelona and Madrid: http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/.)

Right now I'm in San Diego, just for the day, in order to see Amanda, who is out here where it is warm and she is working on her book. I'm not sure that spending a whole day flying out, and a day flying back, in order to spend a day together, makes the best sense, but I missed her and she missed me and I quite enjoy writing on planes...

The new house in the woods is wonderful, and I'm enjoying getting to know the whole new world of the Hudson Valley. And the old house back in the Midwest is still there, and it still has my books on the shelves and my art on the walls and my bed, and I suspect I'm going to wind up dividing my time between both places, as much as I succeed in living in any one place. I have a wife who also seems determined to have a bi-locational existence, only with Melbourne, Australia and New York City as her two places that she spends her life. We'll figure it out. As long as I get a desk to write at, and a view of trees, I'm happy.

Today, The Ocean at the End of the Lane came out in paperback in the UK. There's a moving version of the poster, which you can see here (needs Flash): http://www.teainteractive.com/clients/ocean/

And here are the Ocean posters that do not move, and I am extremely happy because I don't think I've ever had books that were posters before. They leave me faintly nervous: I hope that the kind of people who would like the book will find it, and that people who would simply not enjoy it do not succumb to the blandishments of advertising. (Goes and checks Amazon.co.uk to see if people are still enjoying it now it's out in paperback...) (And then puts up the Waterstones link, on noticing their name on the poster. Hello Waterstones!)

Let's see. I'll probably forget a few things I meant to mention here. I interviewed Stoya in the Oyster Magazine (she is seen here being Death at a Dr Sketchy's).

Biting Dog Press are releasing a limited print in June of 500 copies of my "8 Rules For Writing".

You can't buy them retail -- they will be going directly to bookshops -- but Dave of Biting Dog is releasing 50 of them to the public directly as incentives to fund his daughter Kayla's Elephant Sanctuary Volunteer Trip: details at http://www.bitingdogpress.com/Merchandise/orderpage.html.

I'm speaking in Syracuse, NY on April the 29th, as part of the Rosamund Gifford Lecture series. I will talk, and I will read, and it will be interesting. Details at http://www.dailyorange.com/2014/04/author-of-coraline-to-speak-at-crouse-hinds-theater-this-month/

I was thrilled to see that James Herbert will have a horror writing prize named after him. Jim is much missed, and this can only help to make sure that his name remains in people's minds.

Locus, the Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy field, does an annual poll and survey: you have another five days to make your votes heard, and to tell them who you are. The poll closes on April 15th: http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2014/PollAndSurvey.html

A photo Amanda took of me last night. She calls it "Schrödinger's Door."

This blog post, forwarded to me by artist-genius Lisa Snellings, about the knock-on effects that my story "Harlequin Valentine" had, broke my heart and opened it wide: http://www.grinsekatz.com/harlequin-valentine

Finally, congratulations to Stephen Colbert on becoming the next David Letterman. I loved my time on the Colbert Report, rumpled funeral suit attire and all, but liked the man Colbert much more than the persona Colbert (and loved that he broke character while interviewing me). I'm really hoping that the Late Night show will be hosted by the man. (In case you missed it, here's the video of the interview from 2009.)

The Colbert Report
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Colbert Report on Facebook

Labels: 8 Rules for Writing, Advertising and its drawbacks, bard, Carnegie Hall, It's pretty but is it art spiegelman, lisa snellings, Locus poll, Lorenzo Mattotti, Stoya, The Ocean At The End of the Lane

Thursday, April 03, 2014

Two New UK Book Covers, and a Small Philosophical Thought

Bloomsbury just sent me the cover for their paperback of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK. It is coming out in the UK on June 5th, 2014. I love the cover, and was impressed by the Children's Book of the Year tag, as I had forgotten. (It's been a mad year. There are too many things to remember.)

And seeing I am posting that, I also thought I should post this:

...which is a photo I stole from Sam Eades's Twitter Feed. (So I think we can safely assume the aquamarine nail-varnished thumbnail is Sam's.) Sam was the publicist at Headline all through Ocean. She's amazing -- cheerful, sensible, a delight to be around, and the kind of person who can come up with a mad idea like getting a road named after a book and just make it happen while being on a signing tour like no other, and still getting the author fed.

(She's just left Headline for Pan MacMillan, and she will make authors there very happy and I miss her already.)

It's the UK paperback cover of THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE. The paperback comes out in a week.

And it was only when I looked at them both, I realised I've got two books coming out in the UK with, actually and honestly, "Book of the Year" on the cover. And I thought, I'll probably never have that again. It's really unusual for me to have two books out, one for adults and one for all ages, in the same span of time. And lightning doesn't strike twice. For a moment I started feeling glum, finding myself worrying about backlashes and things that probably don't ever happen again and the nature of time and life...

And then I thought, I should remember what Stephen King told me, something I put into the Make Good Art talk and book. I should enjoy this.

So, contrary to my vaguely worried nature, I am doing my very best to enjoy it. Book of the Year, twice, for two books. That's pretty good, isn't it?

...

It's Art Spiegelman Week. Not only will Art and I find ourselves in conversation at Bard tomorrow night, but there is more Spiegelmanny wonderfulness in New York this weekend, some of it accompanied by Ditch artist Joost Swarte. You can read all about it here, at the Drawn and Quarterly blog: http://drawnandquarterly.blogspot.com/2014/03/its-art-spiegelman-week-in-new-york.html

The coolest bit of all might be this Sunday Morning, when you get to see a stained glass mural...

Sunday, April 6th: PRIVATE VIEWING & BREAKFAST WITH ART SPIEGELMAN
Manhattan, NY: A rare chance to join Art Spiegelman (class of '65) for coffee, carbs, and juice as he gives a personal guided tour of the 50' x 8' two-sided glass mural he designed for the school. Secrets-literally-behind the window will be revealed!

And he'll have special guest Joost Swarte on hand, showing slides of his own stained glass windows in the Netherlands!

The tour begins Sunday, April 6th, at 10:30 am, at the High School of Art and Design cafeteria, 5th floor. That's 245 East 56th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.Get your tickets here now! Tickets are $20, but $15 for those of you with a MoCCA pass, and free for current A&D students! Proceeds go to the Alumni Association to benefit the students of Art and Design.

...

St Mark's Bookshop in New York has slowly become one of my favourite bookshops around, I think because it's so well curated. I never walk in there and think "So many books are being published. Why don't people just stop making new books and read the ones that are already out there?" which I sometimes find myself thinking on walking into huge chain bookshops. Instead I just walk around going "I didn't know that existed. I'll have that, and that, and that, and I'll get that for a friend...".

They are doing an Indiegogo fundraiser to help crowdfund their move. Support it, if you can. (I'm going to donate a hand-annotated book or two to their rewards.) https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/st-mark-s-bookshop-on-the-move

...

Reminder: the Symphony Space "Selected Shorts" evening has sold out.

The only remaining event on the East Coast this year is the Carnegie Hall TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS reading, with the FourPlay String Quartet and Eddie Campbell paintings and all, on June 27th. It's happening at the same time that THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is coming out in the US in paperback. (Amazing things will be happening on that that night: trust me. This is the big one...)

Tickets at http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2014/6/27/0800/PM/Neil-Gaiman-The-Truth-is-a-Cave-in-the-Black-Mountains/

Labels: Book of the Year, Carnegie Hall, Fortunately the Milk, It's pretty but is it art spiegelman, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, What does Book Of The Year mean anyway?, What Stephen King said

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Actual NEWS. Also some hints of News yet to come. Also, rain.

Yesterday the sun shone. I made friends with the family next door and signed their copy of The Graveyard Book and patted their dogs. "Finally," I said. "It's finally warm here in Florida!" I think I must have said it too loud. Today the world went grey and chill and it rained and rained and rained. Which still puts me in a better position than people a few hundred miles north of me, stranded on iced-in traffic jams.

I'm missing Twitter, but mostly because I really want to use it to make me exercise. I love being able to tell nearly 2 million people I'm going to go and jog, and then I have to do it. It's not the same when I tell the walls.

Let's see. On the secrets revealed, front: You can expect a little smidge of news about two of my books being adapted into two TV series very soon, with a third to follow. Real news, very soon, promise.

If you are in the UK, and you are a member of the Barbican you can buy tickets tomorrow morning for the reading of my story, THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS on the 4th and 5th of July 2014. If you aren't a member of the Barbican, you must wait until Friday morning to buy tickets.

THE TRUTH IS A CAVE... won the Locus Award for best Novelette, and the Shirley Jackson Award for best Novelette as well. Eddie Campbell is an amazing artist (and he co-hosts the evening with dry Scottishness) and the Four Play String Quartet are the most wonderful musicians.

I'll read the story, while Eddie Campbell's paintings are projected above me and the astonishing Four Play string quartet plays underscore music. We've done it twice before now, at a very sold out Sydney Opera House, where it was originally performed, and in Hobart to about 3,000 people at the MONA FOMA festival. Each time to very happy audiences.

(Photo of the rehearsal from Eddie Campbell's blog, here.)

There will be the reading of the story (and paintings and music). There will be a Q and A. There's other things that get read as well...

You can see video extracts from the Sydney Opera House performance at http://play.sydneyoperahouse.com/index.php/media/1152-neil-gaiman-the-truth-is-a-cave-in-the-black-mountains.html and at http://youtu.be/BQ65W7_eeic?t=2m44s.

Four Play did the Simpsons Theme and the Doctor Who theme that was our interval music during the last EVENING WITH... at the Town Hall. Probably you want to hear their Doctor Who theme. Here you go:

This will be its first ever performance in Europe. Two performances, I should say, as we are doing the Friday night and then the Saturday too.

Tickets go on sale to the general public (not Barbican members) on Friday morning at 10 am UK time. If the Fortunately The Milk* reading (which wound up like this) was anything to go by, the tickets will sell fast, so do not put off buying tickets until May.

The link to click on -- and I'll try and remember to do a timed WhoSay post to remind you all, when the tickets actually go on sale to the general public on Friday, will be... http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?id=16044.

Created and performed for a sell out crowd at Sydney Opera House’s world-renowned Graphic Festival, then repeated a year later for cutting edge festival Mona Foma in Tasmania, this haunting tale of adventure, revenge and treasure, told as a hybrid between a storyteller, an artist and a string quartet comes by popular demand to London for these two performances only.

Tickets on sale to the public at 10am Friday 31 January

What's that you say? Wouldn't it be nice if we could also perform it somewhere like San Francisco or New York...? Hmm. Let me think about that one.

Oh. There are about 20 tickets left for the Symphony Space PRI "Selected Shorts" EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN on May 7th: http://www.selectedshorts.org/onstage/detail/8015

....

Anyone who is feeling like they would like More Culture in their lives should go and check out the BBC's CULTURAL HERITAGE site: 75 people talk about 75 things -- books, songs, music, TV, films, poems, paintings (I talk about a painting). http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016p5mb/profiles/creative-minds
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016p5mb/profiles/creative-minds?page=2

...

I was fascinated by this article: http://tvnz.co.nz/national-news/school-ditches-rules-and-loses-bullies-5807957 and what it says about over-regulating children at playtime.

...

Thank you so much to the The Reference and User Services Association (RUSA) for choosing THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE as one of their Outstanding Audiobooks

Gaiman, as both author and narrator, immerses listeners in a modern fairy tale in which two stalwart children pit themselves against dark and relentless terrors. Through an exquisite management of pace and inflection, his voice becomes the story’s doorway just a surely as any rabbit hole or wardrobe.

http://rusa.ala.org/blog/2014/01/26/breaking-news-rusas-2014-listen-list-highlights-audiobooks-that-provide-extraordinary-listening-experiences/

...

Here's a video from Upworthy taken from last year's Connecticut Forum, with Neil Degrasse Tyson and me talking about How To Be Happy: http://www.upworthy.com/wanna-see-something-brilliant-take-a-few-days-off-then-look-in-the-mirror?c=ufb1

* This book:

(Picture from here.)

...

And finally, here's a fun little article on Maps (including Maps of Mythical Places) from the New Yorker blog. I'm pretty sure the stuff in it about Pauline Baynes drawing the maps in The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings is tosh -- she drew beautiful maps of Middle Earth as posters, but the Pauline Baynes map for Lord of the Rings came out in 1969, long after the book was published with its map in it.

Labels: Bullying, Culture, fourplay, maps and mapmakers, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

Friday, January 24, 2014

Secrets and Books

I am tumbling like a comet through Los Angeles on my way to Seattle on my way back to the Florida Treasure Coast, where I was feeling very comfortably anonymous until I got a message from the director of the local book festival asking me if I'd like to come and do stuff, as she'd noticed me out jogging while she was walking her dog.

In my head, if I have a beard and am wearing jogging clothes I am invisible and nobody will ever notice that I am me. This is apparently not quite as true in the world outside my head.

I've done lots of things in the not-much-time since I've been here. Meetings about Things I Can't Yet Talk About with People I Can't Yet Tell You About, mostly, although this morning I also recorded a lot of narration for the WAYWARD MANOR game (see photo above [from here]. That is what I am doing in the photo). Things have progressed since the last time I saw Wayward Manor material: The Odd Gentlemen showed me what it's going to look like, and it's looking really good. I signed 200 posters for them, for people who preordered the packages at http://www.whohauntsneil.com/.

In all this, I've been assisted by the noble and long-suffering Cat Mihos, and if you get a card from me, it's because she cares.

I'll be up before dawn to fly to Seattle, go to a friend's birthday, and then take a red-eye and fly overnight back to Florida, where I will return to being a solitary hermit, writing Sandman and myths.

...

I just read my favourite graphic novel in a very, very long time. It was an advance copy of a book called KILL MY MOTHER, it's by Jules Feiffer, and it's his tribute to the work of the great Will Eisner (Feiffer was once Eisner's assistant) and to classic movies of the kind they don't make any more. The dialogue is wonderful, the plot enormously satisfying. I've been a fan of Feiffer's pretty much as long as I've been able to read, and it makes me strangely happy that, at the age of 84, he's done something remarkable, ambitious and very different. Here's an article about the book from Publishers Weekly. It won't be out until much later in the year, and I will link to it then.

...

If you are in the US, or have an American address, The OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is being discounted this weekend ONLY - it's at 50% off, $7.99, on Nook, on Kindle, at the Apple iBookstore and on Google Play.

...

I've talked a little in interviews about Henry Kuttner's HOGBEN FAMILY stories, which were, in different ways, inspirational both for THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE and for Alan Moore's BOJEFFRIES SAGA. (Here is a Bojeffries page by the inimitable Steve Parkhouse.)

A new edition of The Bojeffries Saga is coming out from Top Shelf in February. (Click on the link for more information.)

The first and only ever complete collection of the Hogben Stories, THE HOGBEN CHRONICLES, is out from Borderland Press RIGHT NOW, in a fancy signed limited edition. Henry Kuttner is dead,

alass, so it is signed by me (I wrote the introduction) and F. Paul Wilson and Pierce Watters (who edited it). Information on how to order it at http://borderlandspress.com/hbc.html.

Let's see. What else was I meaning to blog about, here? Oh. Right. Yes.

Worldbuilders, Pat Rothfuss's charity to help Heifer International. He's put up a post listing all the things that he has in the auction by Terry Pratchett and by me. I gave him one of the sold out limited edition Dave McKean-designed copies of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE, and a copy of the Dagmara Matuszak-drawn MELINDA. He has also managed to obtain other things - even the 1984 DURAN DURAN biography I wrote.

Some of these things are up for auction (here's the Auction Listing for DURAN DURAN), some in the lottery and you could win them for a $10 donation.

They are up to about $375,000 so far. If they make it to $500, 000 I have told them I will record and post a video of me reading GREEN EGGS AND HAM.

And I will.

...

PS -- CONGRATULATIONS to all at R. J. Julia Bookstore in Madison CT. I'll be doing a signing there this year. This is why.

PPS -- if you are in the South of England, you might want to pay a visit to Tunbridge Wells Museum before March 30th, and see the Dave McKean exhibition. There's information about it at http://www.anke.tw/anke/2014/01/are-comic-books-art.html. Lots of original Dave McKean art. In a proper museum. And, am very glad to say, he didn't even have to die first.

Did you know Dave got his first computer in 1995? It tells you all about it on the Apple site. Although it doesn't include the bit about me having to convince him first that it was okay to get a modem and it didn't mean that electronic art thieves would come down the telephone line and take all his art away. (Do you have any idea how proud I am that Dave is their 1995 thingummy? I am so proud...)

Labels: completely abandons the idea of writing lots of labels and goes to bed instead, Dave McKean, Jules Feiffer, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, worldbuilders

Monday, August 05, 2013

I bet you thought I was dead...

I'm not really sure what it says about the last month and a half that the last actual blog post was the day before THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE was published, June the 17th. Mostly it probably says that when I had any down time I was too tired to blog.

So I will do a brief recap of what happened.

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE was published. It went to #2 in the UK (beaten by Dan Brown) and to #1 in the US. It's still on both bestseller lists, six weeks later. (I think it's now at #7 in the US.)

The reviews have been fantastic. Ones that made me particularly happy would include the New York Times review

“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet,” Neil Gaiman writes in his slim, dark dream of a new novel, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.” “But they are never lost for good.” Who we used to be sometimes seems like a faint shadow of who we are now, but Gaiman helps us remember the wonder and terror and powerlessness that owned us as children.(...)Gaiman is especially accomplished in navigating the cruel, uncertain dreamscape of childhood.
There is a moment, toward the end of this novel, when the narrator drops into the duck pond (or ocean, as the Hempstocks call it), and his mind melts and achieves a kind of transcendent understanding: “I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”
Which replicates the experience I have whenever reading one of Gaiman’s books. His mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown.

And A.S. Byatt reviewing it in the Guardian (!), and, well, hundreds of reviews, actually, and I've lost all the links now. But people, on the whole, have liked it.

There have been lots of interviews with me. In some of them I say the same things, and in some I say different things. For example, here's the Financial Times asking rapid-fire questions.

I went on a tour. Sometimes I was on a bus, and sometimes I wasn't. I didn't get a lot of sleep, and I signed many many thousands of books for many thousands of really astonishingly nice and patient people.

(Photo by the invaluable Cat Mihos.)

I'll grab some accounts from people's blogs (thank you, denizens of Twitter for pointing me at some good ones): Here's an account of the Symphony Space evening, when I was interviewed by Erin Morgenstern. Here's a beautiful account of the Chicago signing, from someone standing next to me making it all work. And here's another, with photo of lovely people who ran the event too.

After Portland, I went ot Seattle and had a magical break in order to teach 18 of the smartest writers I've ever encountered how to... well, I'm not sure what I taught them how to, actually. Mostly I learned from them. But they were students at Clarion West: I inherited them from Elizabeth Hand, and I passed them on to Joe Hill, and I think they all have a great future ahead of them. (Over 700 writers applied for the 18 places.)

You can see some of them (and me) if you click on this link, then go to extreme right of the third row: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/interactive/2013/aug/03/selfies-celebrity-instagram-twitter-photography

Then I went back on the road. It turns into a bit of blur again immediately, because a plane tragically crashed in San Francisco on landing, which threw all plans into disarray closed off a runway and meant that the following day I didn't get to Ann Arbor until two hours after the signing was meant to have started, and everyone was really nice...

My bag was lost and spent 4 days following me around the country.

The tour finished in Lexington, when John Scalzi introduced me and interrogated me while a rock band played loudly next door: Look, here is me in a Cyberman head backstage with Scalzi. And then it finished properly in Cambridge two days after that. And then it finished later that week at Comic-Con in San Diego.

By the time of Comic-Con I was VERY tired indeed.

Entertainment Weekly took a photo of me there. I looked like this:

I presented Eisners, avoided being snogged by my co-presenter Jonathan Ross (as a follow up to this 2007 moment)(Mr Ross kissed John Barrowman instead), although I made up for it by kissing Chip Kidd instead when he came up to collect Chris Ware's final Eisner Award. I was on a great Sandman panel with Sam Kieth, J. H, Williams III, Dave McKean, Todd Klein and Shelly Bond. I was on panels about Jack Kirby and Will Eisner, and there was a Spotlight panel, where I was interviewed (and, unsurprisingly, embarrassed) by Jonathan Ross:

I went home. My wife came off tour. I picked her up at the airport with a handmade sign.

We went to the Newport Folk Festival. We painted a mural on an unborn baby's wall.

We both recovered a bit more.

Yesterday, I started writing again.

Today I flew to Canada for the start of the next leg of the tour. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. All sold out, I'm afraid.

Next week I go to the Netherlands and sign in Rotterdam and Utrecht (Details on WHERE'S NEIL), and will be at the Lowlands Festival at 17:30 on Saturday afternoon. Then round two of the UK, and on to the Edinburgh Book Festival. The Edinburgh Book Festival events are sold out...

If you are in the South of England, and free on the evening of the 18th of August, come to Portsmouth and watch me do an EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN and a book signing in the Guildhall. That afternoon, there will be a naming ceremony as a small road by the Canoe Lake becomes "The Ocean at the End of the" Lane. It points at the Atlantic Ocean -- or at least at the English Channel... (Details here.) If you think I'm delighted by this, you'd be right, but a lot of the delight has to do with all of my Portsmouth Relatives Who Have All Moved To Exotic Places Like Harrow coming back for the day to watch me beam delightedly at the lane-naming, and to tell me that my grandparents would have been proud.

Baffled, undoubtedly, but proud nonetheless.

Labels: San Diego Comic Con, signing as much as I can, The naming of lanes, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, Touring

Monday, June 17, 2013

Publication Day! Links! Tired Neil!

I've been stumbling across the UK, although mostly in and out of the BBC. I spent a day at the Guardian offices, editing their book website. (Here's a video: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/video/2013/jun/17/neil-gaiman-guardian-books-video).

My favourite thing was talking about Richard Dadd's painting, The Fairy Feller's Master Stroke, with Mark Lawson for Radio 4's Cultural Exchange. Check it all out at http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016p5mb/profiles/neil-gaiman
(The BBC have put up some wonderful stuff to go with it, ranging from Angela Carter to Freddie Mercury.)

You can also just click here:

One reason I picked the Dadd was that I'd just been spending time at the Tate in company with the painting, for Intelligent Life magazine.