How I discovered I had slipped into a parallel universe

Here's things that people would probably like to know...

This is the poster for TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS Reading Event at the Carnegie Hall (and it lists the other gigs too. I think there may still be a handful of Barbican tickets available on July 4^th and 5^th, I'm pretty sure the Warfield is Sold Out, although they may release a few closer to the date, and right now Usher Hall in Edinburgh, which was the last concert to go on sale, still has plenty of seats, and even has some in the Stalls).

Please feel free to spread it around...

If you can't afford to come, or feel like chancing your luck, there is a Facebook competition where you can win tickets, at the William Morrow Facebook page:

William Morrow

Enter for your chance to win one of five pairs of tickets to see Neil Gaiman live at Carnegie Hall with FourPlay String Quartet on June 27th! Prize package includes a meet & greet and photo opp with Neil himself.

More details, and to enter: http://a.pgtb.me/5W9dcb

(And, of course, you can order tickets for the Carnegie Hall on June 27^th via http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2014/6/27/0800/PM/Neil-Gaiman-The-Truth-is-a-Cave-in-the-Black-Mountains/ - click through and you can decide where you would like to sit.)

...

The biggest publication news of recent weeks is that Hayley Campbell's book THE ART OF NEIL GAIMAN is out. You can learn who Hayley Campbell is, and all about the book and how it came to be, in this delicious Comic Beat interview. It's filled with glorious details. I like the bit about me and kids and Alan Moore and kids and Custard Creams vs. Bourbon biscuits best. Here she explains the interviewing process:

He would give me all the answers I wanted plus loads of things that were entirely irrelevant because it was just me and him talking in a room and we do that all the time. It was a weird interview to do. I only noticed this was happening when I had to transcribe 17 hours of it back in London, and sat there listening to us trying to save a bumblebee who’d got caught in the fireplace. For half an hour. ‘Ooh he’s got soot on him. Look at his giant cardigan. Shall we put him outside on a flower?‘
Honestly I think I have to burn the tapes.

(Useful Warning. DO NOT CLICK ON THELINK AND READ HAYLEY'S INTERVIEW IF YOU ARE EASILY OFFENDED BY SWEARING OR BY ANY DISCUSSION OF THE GREAT WALL OF VAGINA.)

I read the book a few months ago, and really liked it, as much as it's possible to like something where one is too embarrassed properly to relax and enjoy it. I was reading it to approve the text, but I loved the text and spent most of my time trying to fix the dates on the picture captions.

Hayley is a really funny writer. She's observant and interested. I'm really looking forward to her novel, when she writes it, and am also a little bit scared.

Salon has some hitherto unseen drawings by me (and a couple by Jill Thompson) up at http://www.salon.com/2014/05/20/the_fantastic_world_of_neil_gaiman_take_a_peek_into_the_authors_personal_archive/

And you can go and check it out at Amazon.com, where the poor guy whose entire reason for living seems to be giving everything on Amazon a one star review has already given it one star review. http://amzn.to/1vxTAYK

Hayley's going to be taking over the role of interviewer from her father, ace illustrator Eddie Campbell, for the Barbican and Edinburgh TRUTH IS A CAVE gigs on July 4^th and 5^th.

…

There's a really sweet little photo spread and interview in Boston Common magazine about Amanda and me in which they list us as one of Boston's most Stylish Couples. 

Quite when I slipped into this parallel dimension in which I can be described as “stylish” without anyone in earshot actually sniggering, I do not know. But I am going to make the most of it while I'm here.

Labels: Eddie Campbell, fourplay, Hayley Campbell, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, what style is

What are you doing on June the 27th and other vital questions

I'm back on social media from today. And my last class at Bard until Autumn is tomorrow night. I owe the world a big post on life and the things that go with it.

But first, this one is important:

There are many peculiar places in the world, places that can hold your mind and your soul tightly and will not let them go. Some of those places are exotic and unusual, some are mundane. The strangest of all of them, at least for me, is the Isle of Skye, off the west coast of Scotland. I know I am not alone in this. There are people who discover Skye and will not leave, and even for those of us who do leave, the misty island haunts us and holds us in its own way. It is where I am happiest and where I am most alone.

Otta F. Swire wrote books about the Hebrides and about Skye in particular, and she filled her books with strange and arcane knowledge. (Did you know May the 3^rd was the day that the Devil was cast out of Heaven, and thus the day on which it is unpardonable to commit a crime? I learned that in her book on the myths of the Hebrides.) And in one of her books, she mentioned the cave in the black Cuillins, where you could go, if you were brave, and get gold, with no cost, but each visit you paid to the cave would make you more evil, would eat your soul.

And that cave, and its promise, began to haunt me.

I took several true stories (or stories that are said to be true, which is almost the same thing), and set them in a world that was almost, but not quite, ours, and told a story of revenge and of travel, of desire for gold and of secrets. Two men, one very small, are travelling west to find a cave said to be filled with gold.

 I wrote most of the tale on the Isle of Skye. When it was done it was published in an anthology called STORIES, and it won the Shirley Jackson Award for best Novelette, and the Locus Award for Best Novelette, and I was very proud of it, my story.

Before it was published, I was set to appear on the stage of the Sydney Opera House, and was asked if I could do something with Australian string quartet FourPlay (they are the rock band of string quartets, an amazing, versatile bunch with a cult following): perhaps something with art that could be projected onto the stage. I listened to FourPlay's music, and, possibly once I heard their take on the Doctor Who theme and the Simpsons Theme, and a cover of Cry Me A River I liked nearly as much as Julie London's (and I like that so very much), I knew wanted to work with them.

I thought about “The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains”: it would take about seventy minutes to read. I wondered what it would would happen if a string quartet created a moody and glorious soundtrack, as I told the story, as if it were a movie? And what if Scottish artist Eddie Campbell, the man who drew Alan Moore's FROM HELL, writer and artist of ALEC, my favourite comic, created illustrations for this most Scottish of my stories and projected them above me while I read?

I was scared, going out onto the stage of the Sydney Opera House, but the experience was amazing: the story was received with a standing ovation, and we followed it with an interview (artist Eddie Campbell was the interviewer) and a poem, also with FourPlay.

Six months later, we performed it again, with more paintings by Eddie, in Hobart, Tasmania, in front of 3,000 people, in a huge shed at a Festival, and again, they loved it; again, a standing ovation.

Now, we had a problem. The only people who had ever seen the show were in Australia. It seemed unfair, somehow. We needed an excuse to travel, to bring the FourPlay string quartet across the world (pop culture literate and brilliant musicians, they are: I fell in love with their work before I ever knew them). 

Fortunately, Eddie Campbell had taken his paintings, and done many more, and then laid out the text into something halfway between an illustrated story and a graphic novel, and Harper Collins were publishing it in the US and Headline publishing it in the UK. 

Mysterious promoter Jordan Verzar, who had put me and FourPlay together in the first place, saw his chance and struck, rather like an amiable Australian cobra, and before we knew it, everything was happening.

So we are doing the smallest tour in the world for this. 

If you want to see me performing THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS, with the amazing FourPlay string quartet, and see Eddie Campbell's art projected, the words and the music and the images combining in your head to make a movie that only you will ever experience in that way, a night with special guests, I wouldn't be surprised, and also surprises (including things nobody has every heard read), then the only places you can see it are San Francisco, at the Warfield, New York's Carnegie Hall on June 27th, then in London at The Barbican (two nights) and it ends in Edinburgh, in Usher Hall on July 6th. And then we'll be done.

Right now, the Warfield on June 25th is already SOLD OUT.

BUT the Carnegie Hall is by far the biggest venue we are doing, and there are still many seats available at the Carnegie Hall on June 27. (The Dress Circle's just sold out, though.)

If you've read down this far and you're interested in seeing a unique and amazing evening, and you are anywhere in the US, the Carnegie Hall is the one to come to (unless you want to fly to the UK). New York is nice in June.

The Carnegie Hall night will have special guests. It will be the only place I'm also going to read the whole of the new HANSEL AND GRETEL before it's published. There will be a LOT of signed books there, even if we can't work out a signing (we're trying to but logistics are hard). And it's going to be a night to remember...

The two Barbican concerts on July 4th and 5th are almost sold out (they have just released some seats, so there are a few seats left).

Usher Hall in Edinburgh was only just added, and tickets only just went on sale. There are lots of seats there, and  very much hope the Scots are kind to my Scottish tale.

Do come. I know it may seem odd, an author and a string quartet. But trust me, you do not want to miss it.

...

I wanted to put in a huge plug here for the anti-bullying website, Bystander Revolution. They've done some amazing interviews with people, and have advice. Here are their films talking to me.

..........

On Saturday, if you are in the UK, you can get a free copy of STARDUST with your Guardian newspaper, if you buy it from Sainsbury's. This is a good thing if you like Stardust and read the Guardian. More info at this link, along with a way to win one of the limited edition beautiful special copies of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE. http://www.theguardian.com/books/competition/2014/apr/26/neil-gaiman-competition

Labels: Carnegie Hall, fourplay, Hansel and Gretel, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

How does a Badger get to Carnegie Hall?

Last year I was asked if I wanted to be my favourite literary character for an exhibition at the Oxford Storytelling Museum. I chose Badger, from The Wind In The Willows, for my own reasons.

After I had had my photo taken as a Badger, by eminent photographer Cambridge Jones,  Philip Pullman stopped by for tea, and it wasn't until much later I realised that I was still made up as a badger when we spoke. (You can hear us talk about it, and many other things, on this "in conversation" at the Oxford Playhouse.)

If you want to know what my reasons for being a Badger were, or who Mr Pullman was dressed as in his photograph, you will need to visit the 26 Characters Exhibition at the Storytelling Museum, in Oxford, between the 5th of April and the 2nd of November, where you can learn about all of us, and see me as Badger, Terry Pratchett as William Brown (from Just William) and the rest of us. All the information you could need about it is at http://www.storymuseum.org.uk/26Characters

...

Today the Audie Award nominations for Best Audiobook were announced: I was thrilled to see that my reading of The Ocean at the End of the Lane is nominated for two awards (Fiction and Narration by the Author or Authors), delighted that Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman's The Fall of the Kings, in which I perform, and which is part of the Neil Gaiman Presents line was nominated for two awards (Audio Drama and Multi-Voiced Performance) and I was cock-a-hoop when I saw that John Hodgman was nominated for Solo Narration - Male for Robert Sheckley's Dimension of Miracles, another of the Neil Gaiman Presents books, and one I'm really proud of having brought into the world...

But, oddly, the one that put the biggest smile on my face was learning that I was nominated for an Audie Award as the narrator of someone else's book: The Dark, by Lemony Snicket is nominated for best children's book up to the age 8. I don't read other people's audio books, and I always say no when asked, but, unfortunately, Mister Snicket knows exactly where the bodies are buried, and he has photographs and mummified hands for souvenirs. Also, the book was very short: six minutes, altogether.

I have won Audie Awards over the years, and been nominated for more, so I do not mind whether I win or lose, but hell, it's fun to be nominated.

...

Just a reminder: I'm really not doing Social Media currently. Even the little blitz of posts of links to ticket info on performances of THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS this morning was automated -- I plugged them into WhoSay the night before, which then sent them to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Google + as the tickets went on sale.

You can find out where I'll be and what I'm doing at Where's Neil: http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/ and it's worth checking back on it, as things get added.

For those of you who missed it:

June 25th, I'm onstage with THE TRUTH IS A CAVE at the Warfield - with the amazing FourPlay string quartet, and pictures by (and, in person) Eddie Campbell.

Location: San Francisco, CA
Wednesday, 8:00-10:00pm

Showtime: 8:00 PM
Doors open: 7:00 PM
Ages: All Ages

TICKETS:
http://www.axs.com/events/248155/neil-gaiman-tickets
Advanced Ticket Prices*: $40.00
Day of Show*: $42.00
* Service and handling fees are added to the price of each ticket

WHERE:
The Warfield
982 Market Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

While on June 27th we do it again onstage at the Carnegie Hall in New York:

Location: New York, NY
Friday, 8:00-10:00pm

WHERE:
Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage
Carnegie Hall
881 7th Ave
New York, NY 10019

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

Ticket prices from $39-$129.

Then we go to London and do it there on July 4th and 5th... http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?id=16044

Let's see. I should answer a question. It's been ages:

hey!
our name is Ina and Simen we go on Gausel skole.Her school Harvi a literacy project and we have been asked to ask a writer about this: what did you read when you were 11-12 years old?
please reply instantly.

With Kind Regards Ina and Simen :-)

I read anything I could get my hands on. At that age I was particularly obsessed with Michael Moorcock and Harlan Ellison, Ursula K. LeGuin, Roger Zelazny and Samuel R Delany, but I would read anything, and I did.

Labels: Audie Awards, badger, Practice Practice Practice, The Dark, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains, Where I am and where I will be

EARLY WARNING USA... (and an exclusive cover reveal)

You may have noticed that I'm going to be reading THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS, accompanied by the FourPlay String Quartet and the paintings of Eddie Campbell, this summer. I've already announced the London dates here, at the Barbican, on the 4th and 5th of July: http://www.barbican.org.uk/music/event-detail.asp?ID=16044. (UK people: there are still tickets, although they are going fast.)

You can see some extracts from the original performance of it, commissioned by and performed at the Sydney Opera House, at this link: http://play.sydneyoperahouse.com/index.php/media/1152-neil-gaiman-the-truth-is-a-cave-in-the-black-mountains.html

Tomorrow, the US dates, in New York and San Francisco venues will be announced and go on sale. They will be at the end of June. The concert halls have asked us not to announce anything much ahead of time, but I'll put it up here tomorrow morning, and I'll do a timed announcement or two that'll go out to everyone on Twitter/Tumblr/Facebook and even Google+, for 11 am New York time and 10 am San Francisco time.

So this is just to alert those of you who want good seats to know that you may want to be by your computers or phones tomorrow morning.

In June, Harper Collins will also be releasing THE TRUTH IS A CAVE as a book in its own right: Eddie has done many, many more illustrations to accompany it turning it into something that's almost a graphic novel. And the cover will look like this.

Labels: Exclusive cover, fourplay, I don't know what all the cloak and dagger is for really, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

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

I took my love to Hobart in the rain

Arrived in Hobart yesterday afternoon, and shortly after was reunited with Amanda.

We saw Amanda's Lexington friend (and, these days, my friend) Ron Nordin, and my Tasmanian friends (and, these days, Amanda's friends) Dianna and Mark for a drink.

They all drank wonderful things like honey martinis with honeycomb in them while I drank English Breakfast tea in the hope that it might keep me awake. Then Amanda and I went off and had the first meal together we'd had since we've been married, while I tried to stay awake and enjoy it all properly.

I woke at 6 am to the patter of rain on the hotel roof with a new wife fast asleep beside me, and I was amazingly happy. I let her sleep until I decided, a couple of hours later, that unless I had breakfast the world would end, and then I woke her.

Went for a walk together. I love Hobart. First came here in '98, for an Australian National Convention, and decided it was one of the fine, secret places of the Earth. And I'm still convinced that this is true. I came back in 2008, and loved it again. We got back to the hotel to hear Amanda being interviewed on Triple-J, and dedicating The Magnetic Fields song "The Book of Love" to me, because it was played, by Daniel Handler, at our wedding.

I know. It's all sort of sweet and a bit melty over here in my blog-land right now. It'll go back to normal soon enough, I expect.

Tonight Amanda plays a secret midnight practice gig as a rehearsal for her new Australian band (it's at the Brisbane Hotel. You didn't hear it from me), and she's invited me along to do something onstage, but I suspect that if I've been up since 6 am, I may not feel like performing or even feel like being awake at midnight. We'll see.

Tomorrow both Amanda and I play at the Mona Foma Main Stage (it's on the other side of the white building in the photo). I go on at 8 pm to read THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS, with FourPlay accompanying me, and Eddie Campbell paintings (and, I hope, Eddie Campbell there too, but am not yet certain about Eddie: he's coming from flooded Brisbane, after all).

Amanda goes on at 9:30pm.

We get to grab a couple of days of honeymoon, then to Melbourne for a couple of days to see friends, and then on to Sydney for a concert.

Amanda's playing Sydney Opera House Main Stage on the 26th of January, and she's decided she wants other people up on the stage, for guest spots, and, because I loved playing the Opera House last year, I've agreed to be one of them.

Not sure what I'll do yet -- either some "Best Of..." moments, or something completely new.

Either way, it's bound to be an extremely unlikely evening. Details and ticket info at http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/amanda_palmer_goes_down_under.aspx

Then I go home to the snow and to the dogs.

Amanda goes to work, once I've gone, and will play gigs in Brisbane, Melbourne, Byron Bay, Adelaide (at the Fringe, as herself and, with Jason Webley, an Evelyn Evelyn show), Perth, Canberra, Newcastle and, in New Zealand, Wellington, Christchurch, Auckland. http://www.amandapalmer.net/afp/upcoming-shows/

Hang on. I'll cut & Paste from an interview at The Vine.

01-26 Sydney, Australia - Sydney Opera House [w/Neil Gaiman]

02-01 Canberra, Australia - James O. Fairfax Theatre

02-04 Perth, Australia - Fly By Night

02-10 Byron Bay, Australia - Great Northern

02-12 Brisbane, Australia - The Old Museum

02-17-18 Wellington, New Zealand - Webstock

02-19 Wellington, New Zealand - Bodega

02-22 Christchurch, New Zealand - Al's Bar

02-23 Auckland, New Zealand - Kings Arms Tavern

02-26 Melbourne, Australia - The Forum Theatre

03-02-03 Adelaide, Australia - Adelaide Fringe Festival

(If you are in Australia and you are sad that I am not with her, your best bet is to make her feel very happy and loved. Then she will decide to come to Australia to live whenever it gets cold in the USA, and I'll come here with her.)

...

Interesting article over at Locus Online by Graham Sleight, and an extract from an interview they did with me about ebooks at http://www.locusmag.com/Perspectives/2011/01/neil-gaiman-on-ebooks/

And there is a huge backlog of questions to answer on the FAQ line. I'll try and do some of them next blog.

Also, I'm writing a story about Lettie Hempstock. Who may be distantly related to Daisy Hempstock in Stardust and Liza Hempstock in The Graveyard Book.

Right. Off to rehearse with a string quartet. (You can buy their version of The Doctor Who theme over at http://shop.fourplay.com.au/Catgut.php)

Labels: amanda palmer, Is Tasmania Secretly Cool?, Sydney Opera House, Tasmania, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

The Truth is a Reading In The Sydney Opera House

If you're wondering what the reading at the Sydney Opera House of "The Truth Is A Cave In The Black Mountains", with the FourPlay String Quartet, and Eddie Campbell art, was actually like, here's an "Edited Highlights". Five minutes out of 90 minutes (the story was followed by an interview by Eddie and "In Relig Oran"), courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald.

http://media.smh.com.au/entertainment/at-the-house/world-first-neil-gaiman-reading-1776641.html

(There are spoilers in there. If you want to read the story it's in STORIES and is up online at http://www.fiftytwostories.com/?p=1338)

I hope that one day the whole thing may be available.

Labels: Sydney Opera House, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains

Amazingly gratified...

The Locus Awards were given out this weekend. They're the SF/Fantasy awards with the largest voting base, the readership of Locus, the monthly news magazine of the field:

http://www.locusmag.com/News/2010/04/locus-awards-finalists.html is the complete list of winners and nominees. I was surprised and thrilled to discover that my short story from SONGS OF THE DYING EARTH won best short story.

This is what I asked Gardner Dozois to read out at the awards ceremony.

We, the people who make Fantasy and SF, live in houses other people built.

They were giants, the men and the women who made the houses we inhabit. They started with a barren place and they built Speculative Fiction, always leaving the building unfinished so the people who came by after they were gone could put on another room, or another storey. Clark Ashton Smith dug the foundations of Dying Earth stories, and Jack Vance came along and built something high and glorious on it, as he made so much that was high and glorious.

Being invited to build a storey on Jack Vance's structure was an honour for me, just as I am certain it was an honour for the other authors who accepted the challenge. I see this Locus award as being as much an award for Jack Vance as it is for my tale.

I'm enormously grateful to George R R Martin and Gardner Dozois for extending the invitation, and for nagging, nagging, always nagging. The demanding emails. The threatening phone calls. The strangled cries in the night. The time my dog went missing with no clue as to his whereabouts but for a cheery note in Gardner's handwriting suggesting that if I ever wanted to see the pooch again I just had to please, just finish the damn story, what was I trying to do, give them both heart attacks? These men are fine editors who take their jobs seriously.

I am grateful to them, and to the Locus voters, and to Locus magazine. And most of all, thank you a thousand times to Jack Vance.

(I also recorded a small video talk about Roger Zelazny for his SF Hall of Fame induction. Which I may put up here at some point.)

Oh! And for those of you who want to read my story "The Truth Is A Cave in the Black Mountains", currently only out in STORIES, it's also online on the rather wonderful 52 Stories Website. One Free Story a Week. You can read it at http://www.fiftytwostories.com/?p=1338 and follow the site at: http://www.fiftytwostories.com/

Right. Back to words...

Labels: Jack Vance, Locus awards, The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains