it was just meant to be some snow photos but i kept adding to it...

A handful of photos from the last two days. The first two were taken while it was snowing, the others the next day, after the snow had stopped. They tend to have a dog in them, because if I'm walking anywhere, he's off ahead, scouting for danger and potential rabbits.

 

 

 

 

 

...

Hi!

Have you seen/heard about the Coraline keys yet? I was on my way to work yesterday and walked past a boarded up building that is usually covered by posters and pretty wonderful street art.

Yesterday it was covered with keys. I looked closer and realized that the tops of they keys were buttons, and grabbed one because they were lovely looking. They were also made of metal, and had a good heft. Once I realized that they were for Coraline, I grabbed a BUNCH (there were literally at LEAST a hundred).

I can send along a picture if you like.

Just wanted to let you know! (I'm in Chicago, by the way). I also have a couple to customers at the bookshop where I work, and was especially happy to give one to the couple who bought a copy of Coraline. That was nifty.

-Lauren

So I wrote back and said, No, this was a new one on me, and yes, I'd love to see pictures.

Hi again!

Here are links to the last few keys left on the wall. Also, a photobooth picture so you can see the key up close (albeit backwards).

http://flickr.com/photos/bibliogrrl/3122751843/in/photostream/
http://flickr.com/photos/bibliogrrl/3122756337/in/photostream/
http://flickr.com/photos/bibliogrrl/3123571466/in/photostream/
http://flickr.com/photos/bibliogrrl/3123563662/in/photostream/

Hope you're not buried in too much snow up there - we keep getting waves of it here.

Thank you again for everything you do. You are one of my favorite authors to handsell at the shop where I work (and have been for years) - I'm always trying to convert new people.

Happy holidaze!

-Lauren Vega
bibliogrrl.livejournal.com

Thank you Lauren.

...

At the end of the Coraline screening, two code words turned up on the screen. I learned from http://www.sneakerfiles.com/?s=coraline&x=0&y=0 that they have to do with a limited edition of a thousand pairs of Coraline sneakers, that you win, rather than buy.

...

Dear Neil

if I click on your name in Amazon.com, I get one set of bestselling books. If I type your name and search for you I get a completely different set of bestselling books.  Why is this?

Joe

That's a bit mad, I thought. So I tried it. Clicked on my name as the author of The Graveyard Book, and got this set of books (with Absolute Sandmans 3 and 4 in the top ten), then tried typing in my name,  which gave me a whole Amazon Store of me, with no Absolute Sandmans to be seen anywhere, and a completely different bestselling order.

As to why is this... I have no idea. With luck, someone at Amazon is reading this and will write and enlighten us all.

...

Jouni Koponen's amazing prints arrived. I thought about it, and decided that I'd have enough to send out as New Year gifts, and, given that a lot of people were about to be disappointed, I could forego the copies that would go into my basement (or possibly attic) to be pulled out in the years to come as gifts to charities who need things to be auctioned. So I've sent 250 of the Jouni prints to Cat... (she blogs it at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/, 

and you can order them at http://www.neverwear.net/store/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=27)

Meanwhile, my Xmas card from Jouni arrived. And he's put it up on his blog...

http://jounikoponen.blogspot.com/2008/12/merry-x-mas-2008.html

...

When things get quiet I'll sign things. (I ought to do it while I'm on the phone. Sometimes I do.)  http://kylecassidy.livejournal.com/472660.html

is the saga of one man's autographing Odyssey.

Over on the FPI blog, I am interviewed and eat lunch. 

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=10826

Also you get a nice link to Todd Klein's wonderful prints. Todd has now sold the last of the first printing of the print we did together, and is on to the second printing. He's selling them signed (by me and by Alan Moore and Alex Ross respectively) for $20 each. Details at http://kleinletters.com/BuyStuffTop.html

...

Hi, I was sort of wondering about your thoughts of 'literary fiction' and 'genre fiction' and the mixes of both. I would classify your work as something of a mix, leaning towards the literary side.

This has actually been something of concern to me. I'm writing stories and I'm working on a novel (that hopefully I'll complete) and I've sort of been thinking about that a lot lately, about how such a work as mine would be received and looked at critically and all those sorts of things.

Thanks.

I don't worry about it. I don't think about it. It's not something I feel I need to bother with. People put the books where they want to put them, but the books don't change. As long as I have covers that make the books like they might be pleasant reading experiences, as long as people mostly find out about them from other people who liked them rather than being told they needed to read them as a chore, I'm happy. (I'm easily satisfied.)

From where I stand, worrying about how something you are writing is going to be received critically while you're writing it is a whole lot of wasted worrying: there's nothing you can do about it anyway. Why not worry about making what you're writing the best thing that it can be, which is something you can do something about?

Labels: amazon mysteries, Coraline keys, Dog, posters and prints, signing sheets of paper, snow, worrying

waking up

I'm getting over jet-lag and clock-lag but it's slower than normal. Woken up this morning by my assistant Lorraine. "I've put a cup of tea by your bed. The tree people are here. Do you want to get up and see them?" I think I must have conveyed somehow that I didn't, because the next thing I remember was perhaps five seconds passing and her saying, "The tree by the gazebo we cut down had white pine blister rust, but it doesn't seem to have spread. I've told them to go and look at the fungus on the apple tree." I tried to explain to her (without waking up, opening my eyes or anything) that it wasn't fungus, just some kind of fuzzy white insect-stuff, and she might have heard this, because five seconds later she said, "You were right, it was insects and we have to soap them off. Your agent's on the phone, and I'm bringing you a new cup of tea because that one must be cold by now." And the day had started.

The phones have begun ringing. The world knows I'm home. Tomorrow at midday Eastern Time I'm doing a Washington Post chat -- details at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/09/09/DI2008090902030.html

Tomorrow, before the tour begins, in between interviews, we harvest honey. There may even be photos (And I have an NPR interviewer showing up at the house to interview me. Who may find himself putting on a bee-suit and helping. You never know.) . I suspect the pine rust comes from the gooseberries and red-currants that grow around the gazebo.

More later. But probably not about pine rust.

And The Graveyard Book will be published in the US in exactly a week. If you're wondering whether to buy a copy now or later, please buy it now. It actually will make a difference -- the first week's sales matter, especially in the most crowded publication week of the year (which is this week).

Hi Neil,

Not a question, just a belated 'welcome back'. Life in the midwest has been disappointingly normal and boring without you around, but now that you're posting about nearly-naked roller skaters and cats and the true cause for execution of small trees, all is satisfyingly weird again.

I'm a little disappointed that I won't be able to make any of the tour stops for the Graveyard Book, as all of the ones in my general vicinity are in the middle of the week. I've battled and fought and wriggled and attempted to reschedule things like sleeping, eating, and breathing, but the dates and times defeat me. I'm sure there are excellent reasons for having these things not on a Friday or Saturday, but, um... what are those reasons? I'm just curious. Thanks!

It's that thing about publication week. While it would be lovely for me to do a month-long author tour, going out on Fridays and home on Sundays, the publisher wants to squeeze their events into the first week or so. That's when reporters want to write about new books, that's when it gets the most attention. That's also when the publisher hopes to sell a lot of books, because if they move books in the first week it shows up on the bestseller lists, and then more places stock it and, it's whatever the opposite of a vicious circle is. A cuddly circle?

Publication day is this Tuesday, which is why I'm signing in New York on Tuesday evening, and, because I'm on the East Coast then, I do Philadelphia next. Then I drift westward, and Seattle and Palo Alto get the Friday and Saturday spot because that's how it worked out. Los Angeles is Monday night.

And for those of you who've written in worried, no, I don't know why Amazon.com lists the paperback of The Graveyard Book as coming out Jan 1st 2020, but it's possible that their dates may not be entirely accurate, and that Harpers might publish it in paperback within the next twelve years. (Also, I know they list the Subterranean Press edition and have it with a terrific discount as their hardcover, which is a bit odd [Edit to add, ...and which you won't get if you order it. Bill Schafer at Subterranean Press says, "Amazon lists everything that has an ISBN, without regard to whether they'll receive it. I've posted to our site, and in our newsletter, and to thegraveyardbook.com that we don't expect to fill any copies for Amazon or wholesalers. I've also let Amazon know this. I'll email them again."]

This is the actual link to the Amazon hardback. And if I'm putting that up I should mention that it's even cheaper at Barnes and Noble online. But if you can, you should buy it somewhere local and nice, because it is A Good Thing to so do. Check out http://www.indiebound.org/ to find shops near you (and poking around on their site I found http://www.indiebound.org/kids-indie-next-list?edition=200808k which made me happy).

Labels: amazon mysteries, cuddly circles, indiebound, you still can't plant ribes in Northern New York State