The Other Half of the Secret

I mentioned that making Good Omens two is half of what I've been working on, and will be working on for next eighteen months, and I said I'd tell you soon enough what the other secret project I've been working on is.

It's this.

And I cannot tell you how happy I am to be making it, and making it in the way that we're making it.

Anansi Boys started in about 1996. I was working on the original Neverwhere TV series for Lenny Henry's film company, Crucial Films.

I loved a lot of what we were doing in Neverwhere. 25 years ago, it felt like we were doing something ahead of its time. 

Lenny and I went for a walk. Lenny grumbled about horror films. “You'll never get people who look like me starring in horror films,” he said. “We're the hero's friend who dies third.”

And I thought and blinked. He was right. “I'll write you a horror movie you could star in,” I told him.

I plotted one. I tried writing the first half-dozen pages of the movie, but it didn't seem to be right as a movie. And I was beginning to suspect that the story I was imagining, about two brothers whose father had been a God, wasn't really horror, either.

I borrowed Mr Nancy from the story I had not yet told and I put him, or a version of him, into AMERICAN GODS. 

In 2002 I was having lunch with my editor, and I told her the story of Anansi Boys, and said it was probably a novella. She waved her fork at me. “That is a novel,” she said, very certain. I was impressed enough with her certainty that I wrote the novel.

The creation and publishing of the novel is documented here on this very blog. Here's a useful bit, explaining its relationship to American Gods, and also explaining what Anansi Boys is:

https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/05/anansi-boys-question-of-day.asp

(For those of you who don't want to click, I talked about describing it thus:

My new novel is a scary, funny sort of story, which isn't exactly a thriller, and isn't really horror, and doesn't quite qualify as a ghost story (although it has at least one ghost in it), or a romantic comedy (although there are several romances in there, and it's certainly a comedy, except for the scary bits). If you have to classify it, it's probably a magical-horror-thriller-ghost-romantic-comedy-family-epic, although that leaves out the detective bits and much of the food. 

Which, oddly enough, is still a pretty good description.)

The book came out and was my first New York Times Number One Bestseller. 

https://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/09/theres-first-time-for-everything.html 

(This is the Ukranian cover.)

A top Hollywood director wanted to buy the rights to Anansi Boys, but when he told me that he planned to make all the characters white, I declined to sell it. It was going to be done properly or not at all.

And then, about ten years ago, two things happened at the same time. Hilary Bevan Jones, a producer who had made a short film I had directed (called Statuesque) mentioned she'd love to make Anansi Boys as a TV series, and a man named Richard Fee, who worked for a company called RED, spotted me eating noodles in a London noodle bar, waited outside so he didn't seem like a stalker, and told me how much he loved Anansi Boys and that he'd love to make it into television.

I loved the TV that RED had made, loved Hilary and her team at Endor, and, unable to decide between them, suggested that they might be willing to work together. They both thought this was a good idea. 

Work started. Somewhere around 2016 I agreed to work on it to help it get made, but we all knew that we would have to be patient as I was writing and making Good Omens. And when Good Omens was in post production we began to move forward.  Amazon had loved making Good Omens, and were blown away by the viewing figures and reaction to it, and wanted to make more things with me, so Endor and Red now had a place to make it for. We put together a fabulous team of writers -- Kara Smith and Racheal Ofori and Arvind Ethan David, not to mention Sir Lenny Henry, who came on board both as a writer and as an Executive Producer to make sure that the soul stayed in it. (I'm writing the first and the last episode). 

Douglas Mackinnon agreed to co-showrun it with me, because I knew I never wanted to be the sole showrunner of anything again and after the Good Omens experience I would trust Douglas with my life and (which actually may be more important) with my stories. We planned to shoot it all around the world...

Paul Frift had been the producer of Good Omens during the South African leg of the shoot, and was indomitable, so we were very happy when he agreed to come on board as our producer.

And then in 2020 Covid happened. The Prime Directive of making Big Budget International television suddenly became “Don't Travel and Especially Don't Travel All Around The World. We Mean It.”

Douglas came up with a Plan to bring Anansi Boys to the screen that was audacious, creative and brilliant. All we needed to make it work was the Biggest Studio in Europe and access to an awful lot of cutting edge technology. 

The biggest Studio in Europe happens to be in Leith, outside Edinburgh. 

Before Covid, the plan had been first to make Anansi Boys, then immediately to make Good Omens 2. (Good Omens 2 was going to be shot in Bathgate, outside Glasgow.) That was the plan we were working on through most of 2020. Then, in September 2020, Douglas and I got a call from Amazon. “We've got good news and complicated news for you,” they said. “The good news is we are greenlighting both Good Omens and Anansi Boys. The complicated news is... well, how do you feel about making them both at the same time?”

So...

Anansi Boys is coming.

Hang on. I want to do that again in a bigger font.

Anansi Boys is coming.

I'd loved the pilot episode of Star Trek Picard, and talked to Michael Chabon about the director, Hanelle M. Culpepper, and he gave her a rave recommendation as someone who could tell a story and stay in control of the technology. We reached out to her, sent her the scripts and the novel, and she loved the project. Hanelle is going to be our lead director, and will direct two episodes.

Hanelle, Sir Lenny Henry, Hilary Bevan Jones and Richard Fee are executive producers, as are Douglas and I.  Hanelle,  Jermain Julien and Azhur Saleem are our three directors.

We will start to announce the cast soon (it's thrilling).  (The crew are, to me, just as thrilling.)

(But I'll give you one clue: one of our cast members was on a public event with me at some point in the last five years. The first thing she said when we met backstage was that her favourite book was the audiobook of Anansi Boys, read by Lenny Henry. And when I told her that there was a part in the book I'd originally written with her in mind, she was overjoyed. So when it became a reality, she was the first person I asked, and the first to agree.)

(The Anansi Boys image above is by Michael Ralph, our amazing production designer.)

Labels: anansi boys

It's Ash's first birthday, a bare chin is revealed... (and so are the next three Robert McGinnis covers)

It was Ash's birthday on the 16th of September, and his mother and I went back to the place he was born to celebrate and to get away from cellphones and the world.

He's a delight and I've never loved him more. His favourite books are Goodnight Moon and a book called Chu's Day (I've never been prouder). His eyes really are that blue.

I'm now off writing, and I won't see them for another ten days. I'm loving the writing, loving the exercising and the quiet and the words, and missing them both, especially Ash, I miss singing to him, miss waking up early and going off and reading with him or walking with him (he can nearly walk). Miss feeding him.

Today I shaved off my beard. I also got a FedEx package containing a proof "Advance Reading Copy" of NORSE MYTHOLOGY (it'll be published on the 7th of February) and an early reading copy of Colleen Doran's beautiful graphic novel adaptation of TROLL BRIDGE (out on October 18th).

Here is a photograph of all these things at once. (Well, not the act of shaving.)

...

So, this is a very book-covery day,  because I'm going to do something fun.

For the last few months, I've been showing people I've been talking to or talking about books with or just wind up sitting next to on a plane the Robert E. McGinnis covers for Stardust, Neverwhere and Anansi Boys.

This is because I am so proud of them, and the work Todd Klein did with the lettering and the design for the books.

The American Gods cover (it already came out) is, in my head, a 1968 SF cover. (I wrote about it here: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2016/07/robert-e-mcginnis-and-secret-of-new.html. Todd Klein shows all the design work that led to it on his blog http://kleinletters.com/Blog/title-and-cover-design-for-neil-gaimans-american-gods/.)

Would you like to see the next three?

Really?

You don't have to see them. You can wait until you are in some little Indie Bookshop over the next few months, and be surprised...

I love them. The Stardust cover is an early 70s book, and is funny, like the covers I delighted in for books like William Goldman's The Princess Bride -- the lettering style was inspired by the Ballantine Adult Fantasy Line, and  the whole is intended to be sort of heartwarming.

Anansi Boys is done as a late 50s or early 60s paperback – one of those goofy comedies, with an illustration of a scene from the first chapter. (Also glad to finally get Mr Nancy on the cover of his book.) I think this one is Robert E McGinnis's masterpiece, and Todd's as well. 

 Neverwhere – when Robert McGinnis sent over this haunting cover I sent it over to Todd Klein and told him that I thought it was a 1970s gothic romance cover. He looked at the kind of covers I'd suggested, told me that they often have elegant and swirly titles and heavily serifed type, and he produced something as beautiful and haunting as the cover had been.

Ready...?

Oh, hell. Here you go. And I've just gone to Amazon to find out the publication dates so will put the links in...

(And I checked Indiebound and the books are now up there too, so Indiebound links as well.)

Anansi Boys (http://bit.ly/AnansiPulp) comes out on October 25th...  (I loved this one so much I bought the painting from Mr McGinnis.)

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062564337

Neverwhere (http://bit.ly/NeverwherePulp) is published on November 29th. I love the rats in the shadows...

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062476371

Stardust (http://bit.ly/StardustPulp) is the next one to come out -- it will be out in just six days from now on September 27th...

http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780062564344

Labels: anansi boys, Ash, beards, birthdays, colleen doran, Neverwhere, Norse Mythology, Robert E McGinnis, Stardust, Todd Klein, Troll Bridge

American Gods TV series News -- and more...

That was interesting. On Friday I recorded and put up  Green Eggs and Ham. I'd actually already recorded a reading at the beginning of January: it was nice and elegant, filmed in an oak-panelled library in Cambridge, with a blazing fire behind me. I was relatively nattily dressed and as coiffed as I get. The only problem with that video was, as we discovered on Friday, the audio track was completely inaudible, and watching someone read something that might possibly be Green Eggs and Ham but might equally be the telephone directory or just me doing whale noises did not seem like a good idea. So, when I heard that Worldbuilders had hit the $500,000 stretch goal, I went for my jog, showered, and recorded myself reading Green Eggs and Ham again, and uploaded it and forgot about it.

It's now had over 315,000 views, it's been written up all over the place, and, having looked at a few of the comments, I suspect that I would have received fewer comments about how I look like a homeless person if we'd used the original inaudible one, but ah, the whole point of hiding out and writing (at least for me) is that I get to grow a lazy tangle of beard and have no idea where in this house a hairbrush might be, I'm not even sure when I last listened to the news, and that as long as I get the words written all is well.

So far my favourite comment is from Entertainment Weekly, which says:

Don’t you wish that Neil Gaiman was your kooky uncle? He would sneak you into the circus and you’d get to hold the Biggest Amazonian Python That Ever Lived (whose name was Lucille). He’d help you put frogs in your sister’s bathtub. He’d keep secrets for you, like that time that you accidentally buried your dad’s favorite watch in the park. He would agree that pirate treasure is only good if it’s buried. To help you cement the fantasy that Gaiman is your favorite uncle, here he is reading Dr. Seuss’ Green Eggs and Ham.

Let's see: there's news, as I said in the header. AMERICAN GODS is now being developed for TV by Freemantle Media. As to where you will be able to see it, who is going to be in it, who will be writing or show-running, none of these things have yet been settled. But it already looks like it's going to be a smoother run developing it than it had at HBO, so I am very pleased.

(A few people have asked for more background on this: HBO had an option on American Gods for several years. It went through three different pilot scripts. HBO has a limited number of slots and, after a while, passed it to Cinemax, who are in the HBO family, who decided eventually they didn't want to do it, and the option expired, which unfortunately meant we couldn't work with Tom Hanks' production company Playtone any longer, as they are exclusive to HBO. However, Stefanie Berk, who had been one of the brightest stars at Playtone, had recently moved to Freemantle, and was as determined as she had been when she was at Playtone to bring American Gods to the screen. And I was impressed by her determination.)

Other TV news also came to fruition today, although I do not have anywhere to link you to, so you will have to take my word for it: Anansi Boys is going to be made into a TV miniseries in the UK, by RED, for the BBC.

Yes, I'm really thrilled about both of these things. Freemantle has the harder task, as they are going to have to open up American Gods into something bigger than the book.

Red are just going to have to make an absolutely brilliant faithful version of Anansi Boys.

...

I've been meaning to plug the The Alpha SF/F/H Workshop for Young Writers (ages 14 – 19). It will be held at the University of Pittsburgh’s Greensburg Campus July 25 – August 3, 2014, and this is their fundraising week, raising scholarships for kids who otherwise couldn't afford to go. If you donate, you get a free PDF of flash fiction by Alpha Alumni. It's a great cause...  You can investigate further at http://alpha.spellcaster.org/.

Also, Len Peralta is in the last few days of a Kickstarter to raise money for the second series of his Geek A Week cards.  Obviously, you want a set. Just as obviously, you hope he gets to his $60,000 stretch goal, because then he'll reprint the first season, which has a me card in it, and you can play his Geek a Week card game with it.

And on the subject of Kickstarters, I met Kat Robichaud at the first of the New York Town Hall  EVENING WITH NEIL AND AMANDAs, and thought she was wonderful. Really funny and grounded and nice, with an amazing voice. Also, mega Doctor Who fan. (Here's Kat and Amanda singing Delilah.)

Kat's got a Kickstarter up for her debut album: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/katrobichaud/kat-robichauds-debut-album

...

Dave McKean's illustrated edition of SMOKE AND MIRRORS went to the printer today. All the illustrations are in black and red -- here's the drawing he did for "Shoggoth's Old Peculiar".

and the one for "The Price".

According to Subterranean Press, it's long since sold out BUT they think that when all is said and done there may be an extra 20 copies for sale... http://subterraneanpress.com/news/neil_gaimans_smoke_and_mirrors_at_the_printer
As they explain, "No need to start checking now, but you might want to keep an eye out once we announce the book is shipping."

A book that there are a lot more than 20 copies of is the new hardback edition of Dave and my first book, Violent Cases. He's done an amazing job of, as an adult and experienced artist, essentially remastering the art, to get it to look, for the first time, like the original art he did, 28 years ago.

There is new material too -- here are portraits of us Dave did for the programme of the theatrical adaptation:

(I should probably apologise for the haircut.)

Violent Cases was our first graphic novel. It's, in some ways, a lot like The Ocean at the End of the Lane -- it's an adult story with a child protagonist, that's about memory and powerlessness and identity: it has Al Capone's osteopath in it, and prohibition Chicago, and parties. And like The Ocean at the End of the Lane, the most unlikely bits are all true (and Neil deGrasse Tyson explained the science behind  one of the unlikely things to me last year, during the intermission at the Connecticut Forum).

It's available here - http://bit.ly/ViolentCases -- or at indiebound or at your local comic shop.
...

I love this video.  It's a visual interpretation of some interview extracts done to establish what Americans in different parts of America actually say. I remember the first time I heard someone tell me, casually, on seeing rain falling on a sunny day, that the Devil was beating his wife...



SODA / POP / COKE from The Atlantic on Vimeo.

...

In re: your reading of Green Eggs and Ham. I have very conflicted feelings about this book (and not only because I am named Sam and this book came out when I was three and I have had to cope with this all my life). The thing about it I have the most trouble with is that along with the intended message of "don't be closed-minded", it teaches a second and much more disturbing lesson:  "no" doesn't mean "no". It teaches that "no" means "ignore, and pester and wart and nag until you get your way".  And that is a pernicious thing to teach to small children. It teaches them to nag and whine to get toys or candy or whatever the desire-of-the-moment is; when they are older, and in the worst cases, it buys into attitudes and world views that enable rape culture.  As the father of daughters, who will now and forever be put at risk by such a culture, I cannot but worry at such a book teaching such a lesson.

I  agree completely that as a father, you should absolutely definitely teach your daughters (and, if you have them, sons) that No definitely means No, that they are the final arbiters of what happens to their bodies, and that they should be able to make decisions about such things and hold to their decisions in the face of nagging, wheedling, cajoling and even threats.

I also think that, as a father, you owe it to your children, particularly small children of the reading/listening age that Green Eggs and Ham is aimed at, to encourage them to vary their diet and at least taste things they think they might not like: kids are mostly inherently conservative about what they will and won't eat (and not just kids) and encouraging them to try new and different foods and not just eat peanut butter sandwiches for six years is part of your job as a parent. The message I've always taken from Green Eggs and Ham is that, all cajoling and nonsense aside, it's worth seeing if you don't like something before deciding that you don't. Particularly in the matter of food. Because you might like something that looks unpleasant. (Also that if you are going to pester someone, you should do it in rhyme, inventively, using small words that would delight a child, and with interestingly drawn animals and modes of transportation.)

Of course, that was what I thought before I read this comic, which changes everything.

Labels: American Gods, anansi boys, beards, Dave McKean, Green Eggs and Ham, smoke and mirrors, Violent Cases

Normal Service Will Be Resumed As Soon As Possible

A few years ago, the BBC World Service did an adaptation of my novel Anansi Boys. I’m a big fan of radio drama, and a huge admirer of the director who did it, but things went a bit wrong. The biggest thing that went wrong went wrong right at the beginning, when the World Service, coping as best they could with budget cutbacks and less broadcasting time for drama, decided it would have to be an hour-long adaptation. And bad things happen when novels get cut down to an hour. So despite a really terrific cast and production and as solid a script as could be in the circumstances, I was not happy. It felt like one of those Readers' Digest condensed books.

I decided to do Anansi Boys as a TV series, and to the script myself. And no sooner had I decided to do that, when I got a call from a Hollywood Producer.

“I was on tour with [a star who shall be anonymous for now],” he said. “And I bought the paperback of Anansi Boys in an airport to read on the plane. We started reading bits of it to each other for the rest of the tour. Can we make this into a movie? Will you write the script?”

I normally say no to adapting my own stuff into film. But I wanted an Anansi Boys adaptation I could be proud of, and the radio adaption had left me wanting to go "No, this is what I meant". So I said yes.

And I set time aside to work on it. I was going to start in late March 2009.

At the beginning of March 2009, my always-healthy father died unexpectedly, of a heart attack, during a business meeting.

Oddly enough, Anansi Boys begins with Fat Charlie Nancy’s father dying of an unexpected heart attack, which sets the events of the story into motion, although his heart attack is embarrassing and funny. My dad's wasn't really either.

And for about a year, I’d open Final Draft (my scriptwriting program). I’d open the Anansi Boys script. I’d look at the three or four pages that I'd done for a bit. Write a sentence, or delete one. Then I’d close Final Draft and do something else. Write a short story. Work on a book. Blog. Anything, really. I just didn't write the Anansi Boys screenplay.

Which carried on until March this year. I went out to LA for the Oscars, as CORALINE had been nominated for Best Animated Picture. I’d even written an interview with her, animated by Travis Knight, that was shown during the Oscar ceremonies, which is, I'm pretty sure, so far the single thing I’ve written that has been seen by the most people. The Oscar ceremonies fell on the anniversary of my dad’s death. It was a very strange, sad day – made peculiarly worse because I knew I should have been enjoying it, and I wasn't.

But it marked the end of something, too. And when I went home I got to work on Anansi Boys, interrupted only by the Doctor Who script which, having bounced from season 5 to season 6 (I wrote a Very Expensive Episode. I didn’t mean to. It just happened that way, and there was not enough money left in the Season 5 budget to make it) needed to change a bit, because Season 5 is not Season 6. And, because television production schedules wait for no man, they needed it now. Meanwhile Anansi Boys was ridiculously late.

Somewhere in there I decided that I would simply stop blogging until Anansi Boys and Doctor Who were handed in. The blog would be one less thing to worry about. And that blogging again would be my incentive to finish.

The sixth draft of my Doctor Who script was handed in on the 19^th of June.

And the first draft of Anansi Boys was handed in on Monday of this week. (I think it's pretty good.)

Which means, you would think, that I ought to be blogging again now. There is a lot to blog about. Cabal-the-dog has almost recovered from his neck operation. (He just had the stitches out. I told people who asked about the five-inch long stitched up wound on the back of his neck that he'd had a gorilla-brain transplant. This was a lie.) Lola-the-surrealist-puppy is getting bigger and bouncier every day, like a little white cross between Tigger and Andre Breton. Princess the elderly cat gets grumpier, madder and older. Amanda just released an album “Amanda Palmer Performs the Popular Hits of Radiohead on her Magical Ukulele”, which has done amazingly.

It is a digital & vinyl only release, which will cost you $0.84 - the cost of Radiohead's publishing and the transaction charge, and it's, strangely, not a novelty album at all. Go and listen.

The bees are busy, the blueberries are getting ripe. Perfect blogging weather.

I should plug Coilhouse Magazine as well. I'm in issue 5.

Except that, just as the draft of Anansi Boys was handed in, the word came down from the powers behind Doctor Who that I was going to have to do another draft. The wonderful thing about books and comics is your budget is infinite: it costs the same to draw one thing as another, to write one thing as another. That’s not true of television, where a budget might stretch to prosthetics or CGI, but not both (quick! pick one! now rewrite to make it work) or you might find yourself being told that, no, we can’t make the Undersea Dancing Mermaids sequence work because the underwater cameras would blow the budget even before you factor in the mermaid tails but we already have a bird costume so could you just make all the mermaids into birds instead? And you’re sure you can, you can’t just quite figure out how...*

Truthfully, I’m not grumbling. I’m loving writing Doctor Who, and so far, each draft really has been better than the one before. But we’re now at the point where people in Cardiff are nervously drumming their desktops and checking their watches. So I’m putting blogging again off for a few more days.

Even last night, I went out with Amanda (she was making a guest appearance at a Steel Train gig), but spent most of my time backstage writing in a small green notebook, figuring out solutions.

The Seventh Draft of My Doctor Who Episode should be done in the next few days. And then I’ll start blogging again, just in time for the trip to Sydney. (The Graphic event tickets for the Opera House for the night of Saturday the 7^th have almost sold out. You should come. It will be wonderful.)

Also, no, I am not at San Diego Comic-Con this year. But the CBLDF auction is - and I donated a page of Dave McKean art from Black Orchid to it. It's one of five pages Dave gave me a long time ago, showing Black Orchid and Poison Ivy, and it's been hanging on my wall for over twenty years. (I wrote on the back of the frame to this effect, and signed it.) You can bid whether you're at San Diego or not - see the bidding rules at the bottom of the web page.

And since I am here: Things I love right now: the Vignette photo Android app on my Nexus 1.

I really will be back.

love

Neil

*I've learned over the last few months that any comment one makes about Doctor Who is analysed, pored over, interpreted, and for all I know held up to a mirror and then combined with something from the Book of Enoch, by Doctor Who folk on the internet, who then have much too much fun using it to Build Up Theories. So this is a Disclaimer, just for them: There are no mermaids or birds anywhere in my Doctor Who script. That was just me making something up as an example. Honest. Also, this footnote is not a clever double-bluff, and really there are birds and mermaids but I am trying to throw you off the scent by mentioning them and then saying that there aren't.

Labels: amanda palmer, anansi boys, bigger on the inside, blogging about the blog in a strange mirror-like pattern that leads into infinity, dog photograph

post interrupted

Let's see...

A quiet sort of day. Took Maddy to get her eyebrows waxed. ("I can do that," I told her. "We have candles." She properly ignored me.)

I went down to say hullo to the bees -- the Olga hive is busily growing two new queens, and it's nice seeing the Olga bees happily bustling around the two queen cells. With luck, one of them will leave her cell, go off on a successful mating flight and return to repopulate the hive and lead it on to glory.

See the two things that look like peanuts? Queen cells. The first one to hatch will despatch the unhatched with her stinger...

Right now, as I type this, Maddy and I are rewatching the Bad Wolf and Parting of the Ways episodes of Doctor Who, because Maddy wanted to be reminded of them, due to the end of Turn Left. (And saying more would be spoilers.)

Hey Neil,

I'm not only a big fan of yours, but also Jennifer DeGuzeman's of Slave Labor Graphics fame. She posted this:

http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/06/26/heaven-knows-im-miserable-now-3/

Also, it seems you left Holly out of her birthday post. Did you forget to say something about her?

Really, the best Holly Birthday post was http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2006/06/hmg.html.

And it was very nice meeting Jennifer, who came across as utterly self-assured and said lots of sensible things she has undoubtedly forgotten. And besides, it did smell like onion rings.

Hi Neil,

I was reading Amanda (Palmer)'s blog, and she said you were working with her on her solo record, Who Killed Amanda Palmer. I'm a huge fan of Amanda, and your writing, and I was wondering what your involvement was in it.

Thanks,

Corey

So far I've written the words that will turn up on the back cover of the CD, Who Killed Amanda Palmer? And I'm going to write the words for a book of photographs of Amanda Palmer having been killed.

Hi, Neil!
A bunch of my geek-girl friends and I have pulled together a calendar celebrating being both female and geeky. You seem like this might be something you'd want to support--if you want to plug it on your blog, we'd be very grateful! The website is http://www.calendargeeks.com.

~Julia

Consider it posted -- mostly because I liked the outside knitting picture.

No question, Neil -- just a link that will point you to what happens when the muses take hold of an English department, and focus their will upon the lowly subject of an errant red hand truck. Enjoy!
http://flagpole.com/Arts/Features/ParkHallPoesy/2008-06-18

Fun! Reminds me of some of the classic Making Light posts.

Bil Stiteler just pointed me at http://1post1der.blogspot.com/, a blog that collects blog posts from blogs that only have one entry.

Hi Neil!

I am a long time fan of your work, and I know I'm a bit behind, but I just finished reading Anansi Boys. It is an awesome read, and I found myself in awe of the subtlety of your literary skills.

I'm curious about the writing process of the characters in Anansi Boys, you being a Caucasian man and the majority of the characters are not. I am an African American woman, and in the majority of books I've read, you naturally assume the characters are Caucasian, as whenever a non-Caucasian comes into play, it is plainly stated, i.e. "He was a black guy... She was a Japanese woman," etc. I so admire how you wrote Anansi boys, because it was the exact reverse - the reader is to assume that all the characters are black, and the non-black people are pointed out. Even the minority authors I've read make a point of focusing on race, but Anansi Boys was so smooth and subtle, I was halfway through the book before I caught it. I just wanted to say thank you for telling a wonderful story, without getting caught up in the semantics of color. It has to be the first book where the main characters are black people, of different cultures, that is not placed in the "African American
Fiction" section of Borders.

Could you tell a bit about your writing process for Anansi Boys, or if you have already done so on your journal, could you direct me to the post?

Thank you, and many Blessings!

Brandi

Honestly, I think you've pretty much summed it up as well as I ever could. You can hear me talk about it at http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91303720 or read what I had to say when the book came out at http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/topics/257/Neil-Gaiman-Anansi-Boys-page01.html#post22.


Hello! I have a question I couldn't find the answer to on your site or hardly anywhere else online. I have completed the third draft of a novel and got a lot of feedback saying it was good. However, I am in need of editing. Do you know how I can find good editors for hire? The reason why I want an editor is because I am concerned about being turned down for needing too much editing. I make some plural, punctuation, and some structural mistakes. I have no idea what the publishing world is like--Will a publisher turn down a manuscript with a good story, good writing, and solid arc if it had too many little errors per page?

I suspect that "too many little errors per page" means that the work is not going to be seen as "good writing". Amazing storytelling will triumph over a lot -- there was one bestselling author who wrote all her manuscripts with the shift key down -- but you need amazing storytelling to get to that point.

And while I don't know a lot about freelance editors, I feel confident in pointing to this Miss Snark post and its links and comments: http://misssnark.blogspot.com/2006/11/finding-editor.html

...

I was reminded at Boing Boing, there is no law against taking photos or filming in public places in the US or the UK. Something that law enforcement wannabes really need to remember: http://www.bakelblog.com/nobodys_business/2008/06/cops-bully-vide.html.

And here is Guillermo Del Toro talking about The Hobbit, Hellboy 2, and Death the High Cost of Living: http://www.collider.com/entertainment/interviews/article.asp?aid=8348&tcid=1.

...

And that was as far as I got last night because it was then that I discovered a fully-gorged deer tick on the side of my face, and got to investigate what happens next (your doctor appears and gives you 200mg of doxycycline, which works in 87% of cases to stop Lyme Disease from happening, is what).

And I've forgotten what else was going to be in last night's post, except that I know it was going to finish with a link to this post -- http://davepresslersculpting.blogspot.com/2008/06/no-comicon-for-this-year.html
and congratulations to Dave and Lisa.

Labels: amanda palmer, anansi boys, bees, do you need a freelance editor, Doctor Who, Guillermo Del Toro, lyme disease and its avoidance, poetry, queen cells

electric blue

Sorry. Writing Chapter Seven, still, and doing almost nothing else. (In the book, Scarlett Perkins has just arrived at the library to look at the microfiche files of old newspapers.) It's a bit of a wrench to go back from the fountain pen to the keyboard. Just received the sad news that the writing cabin in the woods I use sometimes -- mostly to type or proofread undisturbed -- now has wireless... (damn!)

This came in a couple of weeks ago, but I've held off on answering it until I knew what was happening...

Whatever became of the annual Dave Sim/Neil Gaiman lithograph auction mentioned here: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/11/on-table.asp ? I was one of many who didn't win the first one, and I was hoping to have another crack at it...

What happened was the US Post Office.

I got the second one in a year ago, painted and collaged on it, sent it off (insured) to the CBLDF. Then we waited. It didn't arrive. And then we discovered that simply insuring something for a value doesn't really matter if the Post Office doesn't want to pay... A saga that went on for a year.

Dave Sim just sent me a new 2007 lithograph -- I think this may be my personal one -- which I plan to art all over and give to the CBLDF to auction, to make up for the one the Post Office lost. And I think we'll send it FedEx, as well, just to be on the safe side. And the 2008 one should happen fairly soon -- possibly to coincide with the New York Comic-Con. We'll see.

Look, Neil!

I just thought that would be the kind of site you would like...

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

Regards,
Richard.

It is! How wonderful.

Hi Neil

I've noticed on your blog that you often say the stories you write have been in your head for years. I was wondering, do you deliberately leave ideas gestating for years before doing anything with them, or is it simply because you have a large backlog of ideas? I've noticed with my own writing that for some reason, the older the idea, the more comfortable it feels to write. Do you find that?

Thanks!
Ben

A bit of both. Sometimes it's nice to have an idea for a book or a story in the back of your head for years, accreting bits to it, growing and becoming bigger and more interesting, sometimes it's a worrying thing having a story you'd like to write and aren't getting to, for very occasionally, alone in the darkness, they die and rot and turn to mould and slime.

It tends to be less intentional (except for The Graveyard Book, which was a better idea than I was a writer twenty years ago) than to do with how much I write and who's waiting for what.

Sometimes an old idea gets relegated to the back of the line in the mad delight of a new idea, one you've never had before, and that you write fast in the thrill of the new. No rules. Just stories, and you tell as many of them as you can.

Hello Neil,Is there any significant difference between Anansi Boys and Anansi Boys: a novel (P.S)? I have read Anansi Boys and want to buy my own copy, and Amazon has both editions/versions. When I was nine or ten my teacher read Anansi stories to the class. I've had a soft spot for him ever since.Thank you
Morag Gray

The (P.S.) editions of the books on Amazon.com are the large format "trade paperback" editions, with interviews in the back (and, in the case of Anansi Boys, an extract from American Gods) published by Harper Perennial. The (P.S.) edition of Anansi Boys has a cover that's electric blue and eye-burning yellow, and is unmissable. It's bigger than the "mass-market paperback", printed on better paper, but contains the same novel.

I can't find a good image of it online, so here's the new cover of the P.S. trade paperback of Smoke and Mirrors, which comes out later this week, a vision in purple and green.

Why are you writing just kid's books? Why don't you write another adult novel?

Everything in its time. Truth to tell, I don't honestly think of The Graveyard Book as a children's book. It's a novel, and the protagonist grows from about 18 months to about 16 years during the course of it. I think some young readers will like it and I think that some older readers will like it (and some young readers, and some adults, will find it too scary or too morbid or too odd). It's not like anything else I've done, anyway...

Labels: anansi boys, Dave Sim, wireless, writing things

still brainless after all these years

Steve Bissette and Hank Wagner are out here until Sunday interviewing me for an unauthorised book about me that Hank and Chris Golden are writing (Steve's writing a few of the movie chapters, and is here because Chris can't be. It's a pleasure to see Steve here again, and amazing to think we've known each other for 22 years.) I'm happy to help, although am also happier that it's unauthorised -- biographies and things are like lifetime achievement awards, and they make me uncomfortable. After all the travel and suchlike I do not yet have anything resembling a brain, so the interview mostly consists of me going "Ummmmm." They are very patient.

When I go online right now I compulsively and automatically check the Beowulf rating over at http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/beowulf/. (73% fresh as of time of writing.)
My favourite review so far today -- in terms of feeling that it reviews the film we wrote -- is Ty Burr's at the Boston Globe.

I expect I'll stop checking in a couple of days.

And I just picked up Maddy and her friends from a screening of Beowulf. Maddy found it just as scary as last time, and I am unconvinced that an audience of 13 year old girls is entirely what Beowulf is aimed at. "What did they think?" I asked Maddy.
"They think you're weird," she said.
"Oh. Sorry."
"But don't worry. I explained that you wrote it with Roger Avary, and that all the bits they didn't like, Roger wrote."

I trust that when she is old enough, Miss Gala Avary will adopt the same tactic.

Two new art blogs -- Mia Wolff's at http://wolffbrain.blogspot.com/ and Jill Thompson's at http://jillthompson.blogspot.com/ (go down until you find the page from Magic Trixie).

The BBC World Service Anansi Boys radio adaptation goes out Saturday 20.00pm GMT (http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/schedules/internet/wsradio_sat.shtml) and then for a week should be at http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/world_drama.shtml

Labels: anansi boys, Beowulf, I am not dead yet

And now a word for those we sponsor....

Last night I wrote a thirty second scary story. Actually I wrote a 90 second REALLY scary story, then chipped at it, hacked and deleted and rephrased until it was thirty seconds long. Afterwards I wished I'd saved the 200 word version.

This morning I went to the local NPR radio station and recorded it -- we cut out another sentence, and I slowed down a hair -- for an NPR Hallowe'en special...

....


I believe that the curious can see the whole, uncut, me getting an award at Scream 2007 thing at

Neil Gaiman Receives Hell's Dildo - Scream 2007

Posted Today

Neil Gaiman accepts "Hell's Dildo" at the 2007 Scream Awards.

It cuts off before I welcome Roger Avary and Ray Winstone to the podium to introduce Beowulf, but if it hadn't you would have seen Roger wearing his "Scary Trousers" tee shirt in front of a billion people.

(Cat Mihos blogs about the awards at http://furrytiger.blogspot.com/2007/10/birthday-girl-scream-awards-dream-life.html. Lovely photos, but my Big Pupil Thing means redeye all the way...)

I should mention that the amazing Cat's Neverwear site is over at http://www.neverwear.net/ and you can get your Kendra Stout "Scary Trousers" or your Dagmara Matuszak "Anansi Boys" tee shirts there. (I suggested that Cat should do a tee shirt with the full "I believe" speech from American Gods on it next...)

Which reminds me -- I've now finally seen the bound insides of the Hill House ANANSI BOYS (you can see pictures at http://hillhousepublishers.com/hh-update-22oct07-01.htm) and they are astonishingly beautiful. Hill House are still trying to get straight answers out of the Polish printer about when he's actually going to have the books bound and delivered to the US -- he's made too many promises to them that haven't come through -- but it looks like it's getting closer and closer to being a reality.

...

Ross Douthat replies to my post of the other day at http://rossdouthat.theatlantic.com/archives/2007/10/dumbledore_is_gay_ii_1.php

...

This is more of a marmite locating datalet then a question.

There is a large and rather unusual store near Cincinnati, OH called Jungle Jims.

Along with Jim's collection of large animatronic singing creatures, there is a decently size section of foods from England in the international part of the store.

They have a website at junglejims.com at which you can view some off the strangeness under the attractions section.

Marmite, of course, is there and also Hobnobs and various and sundry other foods of interest.

I feel like I'm writing a pamphlet for a tourist attraction now, so I'll stop.

Whenever I drive across America -- which isn't often -- I try and stop in at Jungle Jim's on the way back. And not just for the UK food, but for the amazing variety of world food. It's an amazing place. Would that all supermarkets could have that magic.

...

I just heard about the event chronicled in http://117hudson.blogspot.com/2007/10/show-must-go-on.html
We were lucky in that the actor who was hurt was the only one who was sort of understudied (as one of the wolves had also played Lucy's brother in an earlier production) so they reconfigured the second half for seven people instead of eight to do the wolf party...


...
Mr. Gaiman,

I checked to see if you've mentioned it yet this year, and saw that you hadn't-- would you mind taking a second to remind your fans who haven't already signed up that National Novel Writing Month begins in a week?

I'm a first-timer, but a lot of your journal entries recently have really inspired me to sit down and write, and NaNoWriMo is a great way to combine your advice and a great community. Figured I'd send in reminder in case there are others who feel the same way I do. Thanks!


-Laurie

I can do even better than that. I can point people to http://www.nanowrimo.org/
And I can finish my Letter Of Encouragement to the troops...

Labels: anansi boys, cat mihos, hill house, Marmite, Neverwear tee shirts, Roger Avary, Spike Awards, the kind of post in which I don't do anything cute in the labels, wolves in the walls

be it never so humble...

I am home.

Which, after six weeks and over half a dozen countries, is a very nice thing to type.

I think I did the last ten days running on empty, and the last two days (Press Junket, Premiere, Press Junket, fly straight to New York, Wolves in the Walls opening night, fly home) by doing that thing they used to do in westerns where they start breaking up the train they're escaping in and throw it into the train's furnace to keep going.

My dog is here, and was a bit puzzled at first, but having dragged me off through the woods a couple of times has now decided that I am definitely me and this is a good thing.

My entire family is in the UK right now (well, all the female members of it, Mike is off in the west being a Google), but Bill and Sharon Stiteler were out here, planting trees and flowers and feeding the bees, so I made the three of us Maitake Mushroom omelettes this morning and realised it was the first time I'd cooked anything in six weeks.

Lots and lots of cool stuff waiting for me -- some of it I sent back, some of it is stuff that arrived while I was waiting -- foreign editions of books and suchlike. I'll try and take photos. I think my favourite was the Korean edition of Stardust...

The most beautiful thing was an advanced copy of the Hill House Anansi Boys notebook, beautifully designed by Dagmara Matuszak, containing all sorts of strange stuff, including my initial outline from around 1998 and the first 15 pages of an attempt at an Anansi Boys film script from around the same time (it has a Jerry Springer Show joke in it that feels extremely 1998). Seeing that many people, including me, had started to despair of ever seeing the finished books, I think this is a hopeful sign.

(Incidentally, Thea Gilmore has a new website at http://www.theagilmore.net/ from which I learned that the Cowboy Junkies are playing The Trinity Session in London at the Royal Albert Hall on Wednesday.)

Labels: anansi boys, dagmara matuszak, hill house, mushrooms, too much globetrotting and not enough staying at home with the dog