Remembering Maggie Estep

I ought to be writing, and instead I'm heading to the blog, because I just learned that Maggie Estep is dead. She died of a heart attack. She was 50.

I'd known about Maggie, poet and writer and performer, for years, because the amazing Kelly Sue De Connick worked for her, and Kelly Sue was my friend and she used to tell me that I would like Maggie, and that Maggie would like me; but nothing ever happened until this year, when I started visiting Hudson, in upstate New York, and Maggie and I got to meet. (I think she wanted to meet Lola my dog even more than she wanted to meet me. The first time, she brough Lola a dog treat.) Kelly Sue was right -- we really, really liked each other. We were old friends from the moment we met. One of the things I was really looking forward to about moving to that part of the world was spending real time getting to know Maggie properly. On her blog in September, the night we finally got to talk, she said,

After discovering that Neil Gaiman is married to that gorgeous force-of-nature Amanda Palmer, I FINALLY (after Kelly Sue had urged me to do so for twelve years) read some of Neil’s books. 

Neil bleeds.  Which is to say, he is my kind of writer.   Also, I discovered, he is my kind of human.   The kind of person you feel you’ve known since the beginning of time — and hope to know till its end.

And that was exactly how I felt too. I just didn't expect that the end would be so soon.

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I haven't mentioned that on March 9th I'll be in San Jose, CA at the Cinequest Film Festival. They will give me their Maverick Spirit Award, and there will be conversation and Q&A, and probably I'll read something too. It's 90 minutes on the afternoon of the 9th, at the San Jose theatre, and you can read all about it, and get ticket info here.

There. Now I have mentioned it. If you are in the Bay Area, or going to Cinequest, I may see you there...

Labels: absent friends, Cinequest, Maggie Estep

IMPORTANT: Tickets and shows and life and death...

The photos above are of Amanda and her friend -- and then, pretty soon,  our friend -- Becca Rosenthal. (It was Becca who told Amanda that she ought to marry me, the night before I proposed and we got engaged.) Becca was smart and funny, an excellent writer, and had amazing taste in music and art. She acted in my film STATUESQUE (that's the costume fitting she's getting, in the bottom photo).

She wanted to be a librarian.

She was overjoyed when she got hired by her local library. One of her last emails to me said when can i hope to see you around boston again? i would like very much to give you a great big hug. and it will hopefully be the hug of a Real Librarian.

I never got the hug. She died, suddenly, shortly before I moved to Cambridge. 

And now, with the blessing of her parents, we're raising money for a fund, in Becca's name, at Smith College.

To honor Becca’s memory, and to redirect extreme grief into something positive and productive, Amanda, Neil and other friends of Becca’s are spearheading this benefit for this fund in Becca’s name. It is for the benefit of students working in the Archives or the Rare Book Room, where Becca spent so much of her time being the hipster librarian they all knew she would one day actually become (and get paid to do). Annual income from this fund shall be used to provide internships for students enrolled in library special collections concentrations (including but not exclusive to the Archives and Book Studies concentrations) and/or to provide general internship and research funds for student work in special collections.

And by we, I mean, Amanda, me, Brian Viglione, Jason Webley, Emilyn Brodsky, and more of us. Becca's friends.  We're doing an evening of stuff. I'll read stories, show Statuesque, Amanda and Brian will make music, all sorts of wonderful  things will happen.  It's a one night only show, inspired by a librarian who isn't with us any more.

“A Tribute to Rebecca Rosenthal: A Night of Music, Art & Remembering, presented by Amanda Palmer, Neil Gaiman, Brian Viglione and other friends of Becca’s” will take place at the Somerville Theatre, 55 Davis Square, for one show only on Monday evening, October 7th at 7:00PM. Reserved seat tickets are $25.00 (plus $1.00 facility fee) with a limited number of Gold Circle seats available at $100.00 (plus $1.00 facility fee) that include an after-show meet and greet plus an original, limited edition art poster signed by the participating performers. All proceeds are to benefit the Rebecca Samay Rosenthal ’07 Memorial Special Collections Fund at Smith College.

If you are going to be in the Boston area on October the 7th, you should come. The details are at http://us1.campaign-archive2.com/?u=bc31868377c214862493bdd83&id=6cfd53754b. The tickets go onsale at https://www.vendini.com/ticket-software.html?t=tix&e=a4e51df651ed159d57c8ee040f26e44d at 10:00 am Eastern US time this Saturday.

(If you cannot be there, but you would like to donate to the Becca fund, you can find all the information you need here: https://sites.google.com/site/beccascholarship2/home/how-to-donate)


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This blog feels like it's about tickets and shows. So...

My friends Michael McQuilken and Adina Verson are in their excellently reviewed show at the Amsterdam Fringe, Machine Makes Man. If you're in Amsterdam, go and see it. Here's the link: http://www.amsterdamfringefestival.nl/fringe/programma-2013/fringe-2013/best-of-fringe/machine-makes-man.aspx

Jethro Compton brings the Bunker Trilogy: Morgana and Agamemnon from Edinburgh to London for a month. It was the only drama I was gutted about missing when I was in Edinburgh. It's now in London, and I'm going to do my best to see it before I return to the US. If you are London you should do likewise. Southwark Playhouse: http://southwarkplayhouse.co.uk/the-little/the-bunker-morgana-and-agamemnon/ for info.

Saturday the 14th of September, if you are in the London area, you should come and see me as the Voice of the Book, along with the all star amazing original radio cast (AND MITCH BENN AS ZAPHOD BEEBLEBROX) and extra special guest star Miss Polly Adams as the Dish of the Day. It's the opening night of the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Live tour, and we would love to see you there. (The tour will have lots of other Voice of the Books, but none of them will be me.) Stalls and dress circle and most of the upper circle are already sold out. https://uk.patronbase.com/_Hackney/Sections/Choose?prod_id=HHG&perf_id=1

October 7th it's the Becca Event above, in Boston.

October 15th, it's the FORTUNATELY, THE MILK live reading at Westminster Central Hall. It sold out 2,000 tickets in a couple of days.  They just released a final 100 tickets -- hurry if you want them:  http://www.timeout.com/london/things-to-do/neil-gaiman-and-special-guests-fortunately-the-milk

November 23rd in the Town Hall, NYC, it's the first NYC Evening with Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer, to celebrate the release of the CD and LP of the original Evening With Neil and Amanda West Coast tour. Tickets are almost gone.  It's the 50th Anniversary of Dr Who too, and I'm sorry about that. It will be alluded to. Without spoilers.

There.

The sun finally came out here yesterday, after 5 days of mist. This is from the last day of the mist:

Labels: absent friends, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., Becca Darling, Mist, Shows, tickets

Iain Banks. With or without the M.

I should be blogging about The Ocean at the End of the Lane, because it comes out in 9 days and the reviews and articles are starting, and right this minute I should be doing the writing I have to finish before I hit the road.

But I just learned that Iain Banks is dead, and I'm alone in this house, and I cope with things by writing about them.

I met Iain in late 1983 or early 1984. It was a Macmillan/Futura Books presentation to their sales force, and to a handful of journalists. I was one of the journalists. Editor Richard Evans told me that he was proud that they had found The Wasp Factory on the slush pile -- it was an unsolicited manuscript. Iain was almost 30, and he got up and told stories about writing books, and sending them in to publishers, and how they came back, and how this one didn't come back. "You ask me what's The Wasp Factory about?" he said. "It's about 180 pages." He was brilliant and funny and smart.

He fitted right in. He was one of us, whatever that meant. He wrote really good books: The Wasp Factory, Walking on Glass and The Bridge all existed on the uneasy intersection of SF, Fantasy and mainstream literature (after those three he started drawing clearer distinctions between his SF and his mainstream work, not least by becoming Iain M. Banks in his SF). His work was mordant, surreal, and fiercely intelligent. In person, he was funny and cheerful and always easy to talk to. He became a convention bar friend, because we saw each other at conventions, and we would settle down in the bar and catch up. (A true story: In 1987 I was at a small party at the Brighton WorldCon in the wee hours, at which it was discovered that some jewellery belonging to the sleeping owner of the suite had been stolen. The police were called. A few minutes after the police arrived, so did Iain, on the balcony of the Metropole hotel: he'd been climbing the building from the outside. The police had to be persuaded that this was a respectable author who liked climbing things from the outside and not an inept cat burglar returning to the scene of his crime.)

We were never good friends, mostly because we were never in the right places long enough. We were pleased to see each other. We ate together. We talked. We liked each other's work. We always figured we'd have more time.

The last time I saw Iain was in Edinburgh, in August 2011. Amanda and I had taken a big house for the duration of the festival, and on the night that she did a gig in Glasgow, I invited over a bunch of writers and a bunch of  actors and comedians who really liked writers. Because Iain was coming over and he had written Raw Spirit, a book about going around Scotland to find the perfect dram of whisky, I bought the most special and fancy bottle of whisky I could for the night, especially for him.

He arrived with a large bottle of red wine. "I don't really drink whisky any more," he admitted. "Not since the book." The ridiculously fancy bottle of whisky was tasted by everyone except Iain.

It was a fine and glorious night. There were fireworks, which didn't go off as expected, and the best conversation, and I was looking forward to repeating it this year.

In April I heard Iain had terminal cancer.

I didn't write to him. I froze. And then, a week later, with no warning, my friend Bob Morales died, and I was upset that I hadn't replied to Bob's last email, from a week or so before. So I replied to Bob's last email, although I knew he'd never read it. And then I wrote to Iain. I told him how much I'd loved knowing him, how much I'd enjoyed being his friend, even if we only saw each other in the flesh every few years.

I finished,

I think you're a brilliant and an honest writer, and much more importantly, because I've known lots of brilliant writers who were absolute arses, I think you're a really good bloke, and I've loved knowing you.

And he wrote back and said good, comforting, sensible things. Goodbyes are few enough, and we take them where we can.

I hoped that he'd get better. Or that he'd have time. He didn't. Hearing of his death hit me hard.

If you've never read any of his books, read one of his books. Then read another. Even the bad ones were good, and the good ones were astonishing.

Labels: absent friends, Iain Banks, Iain M Banks

I am not a number...

Still in England. Had a day where I managed to see a lot of the people I needed to, mostly by throwing all the social meetings I wanted to make with friends under a bus. Plans for the Ireland/Scotland/England bit of the Graveyard Book tour are now in place, for a start. Not sure whether I talk about the other three things, but they were fun.

Todd Klein has announced the on sale date for the prints he did -- he points out that the Alan Moore ones sold out in three days, so if you're interested, it's there for you -- http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1305

I was sent a link to the list of SFX Magazine's compiled-from-lists-sent-in-by-the-public top 100 SF writers. I spent most of it with my eye running down from 100 going "He's better than me. He's a lot better than me. She's much better than me. What's he doing down there, he's better than that..." but it was nice to come in at #3 anyway -- and when they let me know SFX assured me that I was already at #3 by a good margin when I linked to the survey on this blog, so I hadn't skewed it, which always my fear.

Labels: absent friends, bigger on the inside, sfx, Todd Klein, tour