A poem about Invasions and Extinctions, written for Australia Day...

Read at the Sydney Opera House, Australia Day 2011.

  

We killed them all when we came here.

The people came and burned their land

The forests where they used to feed

We burned the trees that gave them shade

And burned to bush, to scrub, to heath

We made it easier to hunt.

We changed the land, and they were gone.

  

Today our beasts and dreams are small

As species fall to time and us

But back before the black folk came

Before the white folk’s fleet arrived

Before we built our cities here

Before the casual genocide,

This was the land where nightmares loped

And hopped and ran and crawled and slid.

And then we did the things we did,

And thus we died the things we died.

  

We have not seen Diprotodon

A wombat bigger than a room

Or run from Dromornithidae

Gigantic demon ducks of doom

All motor legs and ripping beaks

A flock of geese from hell’s dark maw

We’ve lost carnivorous kangaroo

A bouncy furrier T Rex

And Thylacoleo Carnifex

the rat-king-devil-lion-thing

the dropbear fantasy made flesh.

Quinkana, the land crocodile

Five metres long and fast as fright

Wonambi,  the enormous snake

Who waited by the water-holes

and took the ones who came to drink

who were not watchful, clever, bright.

Our Thylacines  were tiger-wolves

until we drove them off the map

Then Megalania: seven meters

of venomous enormous lizard...

and more, and more. The ones whose bones

we’ve never seen. The megafauna haunt our dreams.

This was their land before mankind

Just fifty thousand years ago.

  

Time is a beast that eats and eats

gives nothing back but ash and bones

And one day someone else will come

to excavate a heap of stones

And wonder,  What were people like?

Their teeth weren’t sharp. Their feet were slow.

They walked Australia long ago

before Time took them into tales

  

We’re transients. The land remains.

Until its outlines wash away.

While night falls down like dropbears don’t

to swallow up Australia Day.

Labels: australia, dropbears, megafauna

On the Glorious Last US Booksigning Tour, with digressions onto Concorde and Australia

Hullo.

I've been all over the place. I went back to the midwest and spent two days with my dogs, and I helped wrap the beehives for winter.

(I discovered my zombie arm had been yarnbombed when I got home.)

Now I'm back in Cambridge MA, missing the dogs, but starting to feel more at home in this rambling high house. The at-homeness has more to do with furniture than anything else, I think.  For example, a desk-chair was just delivered. There's nothing like a comfy chair for making you want to sit and write, if you are me.

I've handed in the latest draft of the HBO AMERICAN GODS pilot, and a short film I've written for another project, and I'm writing a bunch of different things right now.

I'm also proof-reading and copy-editing a bunch of books. Today I got to read through the UK edition of Fortunately, The Milk*, profusely illustrated by Chris Riddell. I laughed a lot at Chris's rough sketches. Can't wait to see it finished. (Skottie Young's illustrating the US edition. I've only seen two pages of his work. It's just as funny in a different, more manic, way.  I love them both and am so glad that each publisher went its own way on this.) Fortunately The Milk will be published in September in the US and October in the UK. I just wrote a description of it for the US edition. I explained:

This is quite possibly the most exciting adventure ever to be written about milk since Tolstoy's epic novel War and Milk. Also it has aliens, pirates, dinosaurs and wumpires in it (but not the handsome, misunderstood kind), not to mention a Volcano God.

It contains passages like this:

“You are charged with breaking into people’s planets and redecorating them,” said a noble and imposing-looking Tyrannosaurus Rex. “And then with running away and doing it again somewhere else, over and over. You have committed crimes against the inhabitants of eighteen planets, and crimes against good taste.”
 “What we did to Rigel Four was art!” argued a globby alien.
 “Art? There are people on Rigel Four,” said an Ankylosaurus, “who have to look up, every night, at a moon with three huge plaster ducks flying across it.”

...

I love that Fortunately the Milk is two different books -- one in the US, one in the UK: it allows them to be published a month apart, which is much easier on the author.

In the old days of publishing, books in the US were published up to a year before or after the same books in the UK, but that started changing about ten years ago, and the internet changed it, as it has changed so much. People who like authors will buy their books when the books come out, and if the book is published in the US, people in the UK will simply go to Amazon (or some such website) and buy it, and if the book is published later in the US then American readers will head off to Amazon.co.uk (or similar).

When my new adult novel, THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE** is published, this summer, it will be coming out on June the 18th in the UK and the US too. This presents interesting challenges, mostly involving bi-location, and makes me miss Concorde, just a little.

No, I do not miss the sonic booms or the environmental damage, and, having been on one of the Concordes once, I do not miss the plane itself, which was small and dilapidated and chilly and old. But I miss the way one could fly to New York from London and feel like one had made a local hop and land three hours before one took off, and I miss the moment of looking out of Concorde's window and seeing the curvature of the Earth and feeling like all human problems were very small and far away.

(It was about 15 years ago. I had to get to Amsterdam to do a signing in high summer, and the UK trip I was meant to be doing was suddenly cancelled, leaving me without a flight.  When the person on Northwest airlines' phone said, "Honestly, I can't believe how many miles it will take to get you there during the blackout week. You could take Concorde for that," and I said, "Hang on, I can use airmiles to fly Concorde?" and she said, "Well, yes.")

Which is a bit of a wander off the subject, which is that it now looks like I'll do a few days in the UK before publication, then fly back to the US on publication day, and then sign like a fiend across America, then go back to the UK and sign some more and then probably come back and do a handful of Canadian signings, and then collapse.

This will be my first actual signing (as opposed to reading) tour since Anansi Boys in 2005. I’ll go places and in each place I’ll do a reading, a short Q&A, then I’ll sign books.

I think the OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE tour will be the last actual signing tour I ever do. They’re exhausting, on a level that’s hard to believe. I love meeting people, but the sixth hour of signing, for people who have been standing in a line for seven hours, is no fun for anybody. (The last proper US signing I did, it lasted over 7 hours and I signed for over 1000 people. I'd suspect a lot of the signings on this tour will be like that, or bigger.)

So I’m going to try and make this tour the glorious last US book signing tour, and then stop doing book signing tours for good.

I’ll do a bunch of American signings on the tour, including, I hope, places that I don’t normally get to, like the US South. I’ll go to the UK, and do a smaller, more manageable tour. (You can get on and off trains in the UK, to get to places.) I'll do some Canada.

That tour will probably finish at the beginning of September. And then, over the following 24 months, I’m going to do my best to go to places I don’t usually get to, or to which I haven’t gone in a long time, as THE OCEAN... is published around the world — places like Brazil and Poland, and I'll do whatever kinds of signings or events are appropriate there.

I may do events, and there may well be pre-signed books for sale there, and I might even sign books if I feel like it (I did a ninja book signing at St Mark’s Bookshop in New York a week ago, announcing it a couple of hours before I did it on Twitter. It was really fun. They may well have a few signed books left in stock, if you need holiday gifts) but once the Ocean at the End of the Lane tour is over, I do not think I will do any more book signing tours.

...

I was asked if I could go to Australia around publication time for OCEAN too, and I had to say no -- only one me, too many places to be. But I am going to be in Australia in January, and I'll be doing three events there. 

At 6 pm on January the 20th, I'll be at the Theatre Royal in Hobart, Tasmania. I'll be doing a few things including  reading an unpublished story - appropriate for all ages, although it'll probably mean more to adults. Jherek Bischoff is going to be there, making music happen while I read. Ticket details are at http://www.liveguide.com.au/Tours/774225/MONA_FOMA_Festival_2013?event_id=795603. The event is close to sold out, I believe, so get tickets now. It'll be over in time for you to see David Byrne later that evening...

On the 24th of Jan I'll be in Melbourne, at the Atheneum Theatre, doing an event for the Wheeler Centre. It's going to be centred around Ocean at the End of the Lane, and for that and for the event in Sydney, Hachette, my Australian publisher, will be giving each attendee a special preview of the book, in the shape of the first three chapters. Tickets and details at http://wheelercentre.com/calendar/event/neil-gaiman1

On the 25th, I'll be in Sydney. The event will be similar to, but probably completely different from, Melbourne's, although people who come will also get the special limited Hachette novel preview. It's under the aegis of the Sydney Writers Festival, which is one of my favourite Festivals in the world. Tickets and details at http://www.cityrecitalhall.com/events/id/1440

(Last year I did an evening in Sydney and one in Melbourne. They both sold out fast, so please, get tickets if you want to go. Do not wait and be sad and send me sad messages asking if I can squeeze you in somehow.)

...

Right. I am going to go and sit in my writing chair some more now and make stuff up and write it down.

*very silly. Funny. For readers of all ages. Contains milk.

** not very silly at all. Sometimes funny but mostly personal and even scary and disturbing. Not for children, even though it's about a child. Contains a small amount of milk; was manufactured in a facility that processes nuts.

Labels: australia, Concorde, signingry, signings, War and Milk is a book I made up, yarnbombed zombie hand

Where I am and what I am doing. Also, Dogs.

In case you are wondering where I am, which is something I often do, I am in New Orleans for a small birthday gathering for my 50th birthday, which is tomorrow, and for the Amanda Palmer Dresden Dolls gig on Friday (it's a special gig - a gulf oil spill relief-benefit forBTNEP, an organisation that is working to preserve, protect, and restore the Barataria and Terrebonne estuaries of Louisiana).

(Here is a link to a photo of me yesterday in my natural habitat.)

...

Given that my dogs are not here and I miss them today, I thought I should do a brief tutorial in dog recognition.

Cabal's on the left here, Lola's on the right.

There. That was easy, wasn't it? Mm, probably not. So...

Here are two photos by the Birdchick that I just went and stole from fuckyeahcabal.


Cabal looks sort of noble. A lot of the time he also looks serious, as if he is doing complicated long division problems in his head and does not want to be disturbed. He has a pink nose. He likes staying close to me and is still recovering from a couple of spinal operations, and a couple of leg operations, but is now walking again, and even running, sometimes. He's almost 8 years old, which means he's sort of my age in dog years.



Lola would not know noble if it sat on her head. She has a slightly pointy face, an embarrassed grin and a black nose. She bounds and is impossible to exhaust. She's about 9 months old, and seems like a teenager. If I leave things on the floor she may chew them. She likes leafpiles better than anything in the whole world.



They get on really well, and on the whole, Cabal seems much happier with Lola around, and Lola is settling down. She plays well with us. We're hoping that eventually she'll play well with other dogs. (As a smaller puppy, she was Sent Home from Doggie daycare with a Stiff Note.)

...

And The Price is on the front page of http://www.kickstarter.com/. You should go and see what other great projects they have that people can help fund. Also, if you can, help spread the word about The Price. It's been up on Kickstarter for less than a week and is already almost 1/3rd funded. It's Christopher Salmon's dream project. I'd love to see him make it.

...

I'm feeling so odd about turning 50. The last time I felt like this was, strangely enough, when I turned 24.

I'd liked being younger than 24. Anything cool I did, people would say "And he's so young," and that felt good. And then suddenly I was 24 and I felt like I couldn't be a boy wonder any longer, and the world had become level.

Turning 50, I feel like, damn: I can't be a promising young writer any longer. For the last decade, I've hated getting Lifetime Achievement awards, they'd make me feel squirmy and awkward, and now I'm going, ah, I'm going to have to accept them with good grace.

But I'm glad I'm a writer. There are a lot of professions in which you're done by my age. And I don't feel done at all.

...

Hi Neil

I received an email this morning from the Sydney Opera House which revealed that you and Amanda are performing there together on Australia Day, January 26th.

http://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/whatson/amanda_palmer_goes_down_under.aspx

Needless to say my wife and I grabbed tickets (G25 & G26 if you would like to wave to us!).

I have not seen any mention in your Journal or Where’s Neil as yet. Are you in a position to give us any information on this concert as yet?

Also will you be doing any other events or signings whilst in Sydney this time? I would like to get my final two Absolute Sandman’s signed and I’ll need a lot of warning so I can get to the gym and work out. Those mothers are heavy.

All the best
Chris Harcourt

Sorry about that -- the gig is Amanda's, and I was waiting for her to announce it, and I think the Opera House may have announced it themselves before she expected it. She put up a hasty entry on her blog.

I don't know about signings and such, I'm afraid.

The TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS reading I did in Sydney earlier this year with FourPlay string Quartet and Eddie Campbell art is going to happen again, with, I think, some extra paintings, at the MONA festival in Hobart on January 15th - details at http://www.mofo.net.au/MOFO_Highlights.pdf

With respect to the tea party gone awry but actually for the better tale, told in the "A gallimaufry" blogpost, does it worry you that as charming as the story is, it also smacks somewhat of cronyism and a reminder that privilege begets privilege? I mean, I'm sure the young lady was lovely, but how nice for her that her mum could afford $4,400 for her to have tea with you, and that led to a masterclass from Paul Levitz, and then to an internship. Not a lot of kids at Cooper Union or RISD could afford $4,400 for tea, could they? It pays to have money.

I'd love to love your tale of the tea that went rightly wrong, but it gives me a slightly sick feeling instead. I wish you had a different tale to inspire me about the Moth auction.

You know, I've known too many people who won auctions and such, and then told me sometimes heartbreaking stories of how they managed to pay for it, to ever take it for granted that anyone who paid for something like that (or her mother) could easily afford it.

My attitude is that if you've managed to win an auction for a good cause that I support- for something like the CBLDF or The Moth or RAINN,- then I'm going to look after you as best I can.

It was lucky that the young lady was interested in comics, and had already told me she wanted to edit comics, because, when we discovered that the afternoon that the Moth had tried to set up for us had failed completely and utterly, I hailed a taxi, headed for DC Comics, hoped that everyone I knew hadn't left for the day, and talked my way in.

It could have gone wrong another hundred different ways. We were lucky that Paul Levitz was knocking off for the day, and had wandered down the corridor to say goodnight. We were also lucky that Paul is someone who thinks that knowledge should be shared and passed on to the next generation, and that the young lady asked smart questions, and impressed him enough that he told her how to apply for a summer internship. And it came as a pleasant surprise to me a few weeks ago to find that she had applied for one, and that was how she'd spent her summer.

But you obviously (or maybe it isn't obvious, so I will say it here) don't need to pay thousands for a Moth Benefit tea with me to get a summer internship with DC Comics, or with Marvel, or with Dark Horse. You don't need to pay anything at all. What you need is to keep an eye on their web pages, to apply in time and make yourself sound like someone they'd like to have around the office for the summer. (Here's last year's MAD Magazine internship applications, for example.)

And as far as I was concerned, the point of the story was that, while the adventure happened last year, the Moth have promised that it won't happen again, and that this time wherever I turn up for tea, will have tea and will be expecting me.

Personally, I keep hoping that one year they'll suggest SUSHI WITH NEIL GAIMAN as a Moth prize. For now, it's tea. Unless something goes wrong. https://www.biddingforgood.com/auction/item/Item.action;jsessionid=FCG-PzM5xkCyEjNyq4b0yw**.app3-i?id=120626095

...

The way the FAQ line mailbox works, most of the letters that come in are people saying thank you for the stories, and while I read them, I normally don't post them here. But every now and again, one touches me in an unexpected way. Take a look at the part of this journal entry from 2005...

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2005/04/jetlag-morning.asp

Go and read it. I'll still be here when you get back.

Right. This just came in, as a sequel...

I wrote to you in 2005 about my son, Jared. I'm sure you don't remember, but you posted my comment on your April, 29, 2005 journal entry.

I had been told that Jared, then 5, had visual and auditory processing disorders and that he'd never learn to read. We went to a book reading of yours, and then, a couple of years later, Jared found his signed copy of Coraline and decided he would teach himself to read it. He did it!

Jared is 12 now, still homeschooled, and I'm happy to say is reading and comprehending on a college level. We found out that he 'only' has a visual processing disorder (VPD), a fine motor delay and he's highly gifted. Because of the VPD, he has no visual memory... he cannot make 'pictures' in his mind. He describes it as 'just being black in there'.

We were talking about his VPD, and I asked him how he taught himself to read. He replied that he remembered your book reading, so he decided to figure out how to 'translate' the weird squiggles on the page into auditory sounds so he could remember them. (This explains the difficulty he had transitioning from reading aloud to silently!)

I'm almost certain that if he had had someone try to teach him to read, he couldn't have done it. It seems that you gave him an idea that allowed him to figure out how to overcome his disability.

Over the years, this has given him the confidence to overcome a number of hurdles. He simply thinks back to teaching himself to read, after several adults had told him he never would, and he is reminded of how remembering you reading aloud gave him the idea to 'translate' written words into sounds... and he thinks outside the box to figure out a way around whatever he's having trouble with.

As I said, he's 12 now, and reading "Grey's Anatomy", the medical school textbook, for fun! He has decided to be a trauma surgeon.

I honestly don't think his life would have turned out this way if we hadn't taken him to your book reading.

So, thank you again for writing, for reading, and for changing my child's life.

Heather (Hubbard) Conrad

Thank you, Heather. Tell Jared I'm a fan.

Hi Neil,

Do you know when the Absolute Sandman vol 1 will be reprinted? Or if it will be?

It's out of stock pretty much everywhere I have looked.

Cheers,

Nat

They've been reprinted already, and are in a boat crossing the ocean. I think they'll arrive in January. I also checked the DreamHaven Books neilgaiman.net site, and they have it in stock as well.

Labels: australia, birthdays, Cabal, hearts and how to warm them, L-0-L-A Lola, The Moth

the word 'person' included fictional or imaginary characters ...

Dear Neil

I'm one of your many fans from Australia. Today in my country a judge made a ruling that could set a dangerous precedent, particularly for readers of adult oriented comics and (especially) the retailers who supply them.
A New South Wales judge has found that a man found with crude, fan made pictures depicting Simpsons characters Bart, Lisa and Maggie having sex.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/simpsons-cartoon-ripoff-is-child-porn-judge-20081208-6tmk.html

Apparently these drawn images are "people" in the eyes of the law and there is no distinction made between this and actual photographs of pedophilic acts.

This worries me for a number of reasons. First of all, I own a copy of Lost Girls. By this definition, I'm in possession of something that could put me in jail and have me registered as a sex offender. Also, this has the potential for a slippery slope that could lead to censorship/ the banning of some of my favorite works, not to mention jail for the proprietors of Australia’s few and far between dedicated Comics shops. To the best of my knowledge, Australia has nothing like the first amendment and I'm not sure if the CBLDF operates outside of the US.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Thanks for your time and please, do not stop writing.

Peter M

"In my view, the magistrate was correct in determining that, in respect of both the commonwealth and the NSW offences, the word 'person' included fictional or imaginary characters ...," the judge said.

And I suspect the Judge might have just inadvertantly granted human rights to cartoon characters.

I think it's nonsensical in every way that it could possibly be nonsensical. The Simpsons characters aren't real people. They definitely aren't real children. (Given that they first appeared in the late eighties, they're also all over eighteen now...)

The famous 1967 Wally Wood "Disney Memorial Orgy" poster (http://flickr.com/photos/25308024@N08/2509508040/sizes/o/>(possibly not safe for work, might prompt embarrassing questions from small children, do not click on this if a small reproduction of cartoon characters doing softcore filthy things upsets you)is a parody of Disney's image, an attack in cartoon form on the idea of consumerism and the innocence of cartoon characters, as the Disney characters let their hair down and indulge in a memorial orgy for the late Walt Disney. The idea that you could be arrested in the Western World for having that image in your computer is mind-boggling, let alone for owning Lost Girls, or for doodling members of the Peanuts gang doing things they tended not to do in the Schulz comics, or for reading Harry Potter slash, or owning the Brass Eye Paedophilia special. And, I should warn members of the Australian judiciary, fictional characters don't just have sex. Sometimes they murder each other, and take fictional drugs, and are cruel to fictional animals, and throw fictional babies off roofs. Crimes, crime everywhere.

The ability to distinguish between fiction and reality is, I think, an important indicator of sanity, perhaps the most important. And it looks like the Australian legal system has failed on that score.

I don't know if it's something that they can further legally appeal, or afford to appeal, but I hope they can. If not, I hope that a bunch of Australians will get together to change the law.

I'm sure the CBLDF -- and many other organisations who have concerns about the barriers between art and life, expression, freedom of speech, and, possibly, now, pension plans for cartoon characters -- would offer advice and information. But this is something that Australians will have to sort out.

...

The full version of the Boston Metro interview from the other day has just gone up on AICN.

The Wall Street Journal extracts Laura Miller's excellent book on Narnia.

Douglas Adams' short story The Private Life of Genghis Khan (if memory serves, a rewrite of a TV sketch he wrote with Graham Chapman done for the Comic Relief Book, with an additional Hitchhiker's gag at the end) is up at http://www.douglasadams.com/dna/980707-07-s.html.

And I promise I'll do one of those posts where I round up mail and answer lots of things soon. Very soon.

Labels: australia, naked Simpsons

Leaving Downunder

Dinner last night with Margo Lanagan arranged by Allen and Unwin, where she reassured me about Clarion and told me about her new novel (I am excited) and we talked about words and about Australia and about a story I mean to write this year. Then back to the hotel and had a three hour phone call to Bloomsbury in London, calling in the copy-edits on The Graveyard Book. My copy editor was very patient with me, despite the oddness of The Graveyard Book meaning that sometimes things would be a bit counter-intuitive: I had to explain to her how a ten year old (dead) boy could have a twenty year old (dead) grandmother. But most of her queries were wise and smart and (this is important) will make me look good.

A flood of letters from Australians who inform me that I was having my leg pulled over the hamburger thing -- and if you read what I posted and imagine the chef as a dry-humoured assie bloke, that's just how it reads. For example:

> (Unconvinced Five Star Hotel Night Chef.) "If you say so, sir. It's just people here complain if their hamburgers aren't made of ham.


Major possibilities:

a) chef was sadistic or insane

b) chef had quirky sense of humour

c) balance of your mind disturbed by excessive book signing

d) you were unwitting participant in 'candid camera' equivalent

e) you had accidentally wandered into a neighbouring universe

f) other
In Australia, hamburger means ground up cow. Always.

Saw your talk at the State Library in Melbourne btw - very enjoyable, and The Graveyard Book sounds like it's going to be a good one.

cheers,

Steve

I'd go for f). Honestly, she sounded very young, very defensive and, I'm afraid, a bit upset, like someone who had actually been told off a few weeks ago by a hotel guest for the lack of ham in his hamburger and had been determined not to make that mistake again, and now here was a smartarse pom late at night telling her she'd been right all along. And I felt a bit sorry for her.

(This was at the Four Seasons Sydney in George Street -- a nice enough hotel, although the rooms are tiny, but also the first Four Seasons I've stayed in that felt more or less like a Mariott - as if they'd bought someone else's hotel and put a Four Seasons logo on, but not really changed anything else.)

I'm off to the US today, via Narita airport. A few people kindly wrote and offered to show me around during my 9 hour layover, and I was going to take at least one person up on it, but I now strongly suspect that instead of doing anything at all I'll get a local hotel room and try and sleep -- horizontally, rather than sitting down -- between two ten hour flights.

Let me point you at this Boing Boing Entry and this Locus Article, in which Cory Doctorow talks about dandelion and mammalian reproductive strategies and how these things relate to selling things or giving them away on the web -- some of this came out of a wonderful conversation last Christmas between Cory and Rob Brydon and me, which Cory and I carried on the next time we saw each other, at Eastercon. (The ideas are all Cory's. All I did was say, "What exactly do you mean by that?" and "But for Heaven's sake, Cory, what about...?" a lot.)

...

Hi Neil,

Quick question about The Graveyard Book - do you have plans to release signed copies in cardboard dumps as you did with American Gods and Anansi Boys?

I offered, but that's no longer possible for some logistical reason I never quite understood.

Neil,

I'd just like to thank you for your appearance at Books Kinokuniya in Sydney on the 6th. It was a great night, and truly inspiring to see that despite the 500-odd people eagerly queued, you still had time for each one of us.


Thank you also for posing for a photo with a sign expressly prohibiting personal photos (which can be quite shamelessly found at my blog; http://chasinggeese.blogspot.com/2008/05/please-note-awesome.html). It made my night.

Now that's all taken care of I'd like to ask if your short story 'Orange' is in print anywhere, as I've only seen it as a video of a live reading (or memorably first hand, when you were in Sydney in 2006).
Kind Regards,

Luke


Why thank you. "Orange" is in The Starry Rift. You can learn more about it at http://thestarryrift.com/

...

Michael Zulli sent me http://englishrussia.com/?p=1808#more-1808 -- beautiful pictures of fairy tale abandoned Russian wooden houses.

...

Despite following instructions on stripping this computer with Windows Vista down to its work and memory undies, it's still like working with a computer in 1986, in terms of slowness and pauses and delay. Dynamism.com helpfully sent me Windows XP to do a downgrade on it, which I'll do when I get home... I still love the computer, though: it weighs about half of a Mac airbook, and has a DVD drive to boot. But I can't simply type and keep typing - it suddenly stops to inspect itself for fleas or something and loses anything I typed while it was thinking, or squashes words together, or I find myself randomly typing somewhere else in the paragraph... argh.

...

And before I forget, a big, big thank you to everyone at Allen and Unwin, especially Sarah Tran, to all the booksellers (Ellison Hawker, Dymocks in Melbourne and Sydney, and Kinokuniya (who gave me the new edition of A Humument as a thank you for signing there, which made me unspeakably happy), and to the staff and organisers of the CBCA, the Melbourne State Library folk, to various old friends who waved or helped (you know who you are) and all the people who showed up at the signings and made it so pleasant...

And yes, in 1998, I brought the "stick" home with me.

Labels: australia, hamburger, Margo Lanagan, sydney, you have no idea how much I hate the combination of this computer and windows Vista

a few final copyright thoughts before we leave the subject entirely

I ought to be proofreading The Graveyard Book. I used to love proofreading, but that was many a year ago now, especially as I have both the US and the UK versions to proof, so anything one of them picks up I have to consider for the other, and I have to read both versions back to back, not because they are different but to see what the copy editors did on different sides of the Atlantic. (Shakes head, ruefully...)

The May event at MIT isn't sold out, it's just the tickets were offered to MIT students/staff first. This according to friends of mine at Pandemonium and The Million Year Picnic, both of which are now selling tickets.

A quick Google gave me http://community.livejournal.com/millionyear/33091.html
with lots of information on the MIT event.

If you want to call to reserve tickets (617-492-6763), you must pick them up within 48 hours. No call-in reservations for tickets after May 14th. Four tickets maximum.

I've noticed you're on the speakers' list for the Children's Book Council Australia's conference in May. I was just curious if you'll have time to do a signing in between your two gigs.

If not at the CBCA, do you have plans to do one while in Melbourne this time around at all?

Thanks in advance

-S

If you click on WHERE'S NEIL it will take you to http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/ and you will learn about the three Melbourne, two Sydney and one Hobart events next week. And to answer some other frequently received questions, I do know that it's been twelve years since I was in Perth and a decade since I signed any books in New Zealand, yes. I am also aware that it is unfair on the people in Brisbane and Adelaide that I'm not signing there, and it's even harder on the people in Canberra because, having only one body and two potential locations it could be in, I picked Hobart (where I had not been for a decade) rather than Canberra (where I was in July 2005).

I am compelled, after reading your thoughts on the JK Rowling Lexicon case, to try to sort out in my head if it bears resemblance to your dealings with certain characters you created for MacFarlane's Spawn series. Obviously the cases are different, but I see vague similarities.

While it (the lexicon) existed only on his website, and no one was profiting from it, then I see no issue naturally. The minute it gets published in book form, he stands to make oodles of money from it. Let's face facts here, people would buy it in droves. In that case I feel that he either HAS her permission to do so, or does not. If he does not (which clearly he doesn't), then does it not put him in the wrong? Does he not require her permission to make money with characters and places and ideas she created? Should he not have approached her perhaps to begin with?


I just saw these vague similarities. I realize he is not taking the created characters and making new stories with then (ALA MacFarlane was doing), and taking credit.......it just seems wrong to me. If it's a poorly done book, then that reflects on, not only her, but her world as well doesn't it?


They're similar only, I suspect in that at the end of the day they aren't about the things that people (including the people who were involved in the litigation) thought they were about. I thought the McFarlane case was all about Creators' Rights, and trying to make Todd keep his promises, and his copyright filings claiming that he'd written the issues that I'd written, and all sorts of suchlike things. I think in Todd's mind it was all about proving that He Made His Rules And Was Really Tricky And Everybody had To Do What He Said, or something like that.

But really, in the end, in the appeal court, after the trial jury had delivered their verdict and I'd won all 17 counts on the case, it all came down mostly to this: does the clock start ticking on a copyright breach case when the breach is committed or when it's discovered. There's a three year statute of limitations on copyright claims. In 1996 Todd had filed his copyright claims , claiming to have written Spawn 9 and the Angela series, then three years later, in 1999, he let me know he wasn't going to honour any agreements he'd made with me for the stuff I'd created. Had my clock already run out? His lawyers were certain it had, and even some of my lawyers thought I was on shaky ground.

And the Posner legal decision at the Appeal was, essentially, nobody is expected to patrol the copyright office looking for breaches, and the clock only started ticking the moment I found out about it. (The whole Posner decision is up at http://www.ca7.uscourts.gov/tmp/CR1FGCDA.pdf and is really pretty interesting reading.)

In the Time-Warner-Rowling-Vander Ark case it's not about "is he making money from her ideas?" or "will this stop fan websites?" or any of that stuff that people are talking about on line. It doesn't matter from a legal perspective that Ms Rowling was doing or planning her own encyclopedia, or that the money is going to charity, or any of that stuff, although I'm sure Ms Rowling feels it does (because I would, if I were her).

As far as I can see it's only about a couple of really grey areas of copyright law -- I suspect, and I am SO not a lawyer, that it will come down to whether or not what Mr Vander Ark had done to Ms Rowling's work in his Lexicon was sufficiently "transformative" as to render it a new work.

There's an online annotation of Sandman. If the people who did it -- or if someone else -- decided to publish it, I couldn't stop them even if I didn't want it to come out, even if Les Klinger had finally persuaded me to get DC Comics to let him do an official Annotated Sandman. (Someone asked when Les's Annotated Dracula comes out -- it'll be in October 2008.) That's because it's obviously a transformative work -- it's based on my work, but it springs off from it.

If someone did a website in which everything in Sandman is listed in alphabetical order, as a concordance or lexicon... whether or not I was going to do one doesn't matter. Whether or not someone else is making money off my work and words and ideas doesn't matter. Whether it's a good lexicon or a bad lexicon doesn't matter. Whether it quotes me extensively may or may not matter (how extensively I'm quoted is a matter of Fair Use, but paraphrase me and you are home and dry on that count). What matters is whether it sufficiently transforms what I've done into something else by taking those entries and putting them into alphabetical order. How much original work is being done? The King James Bible is in the public domain. If you made a lexicon or concordance of the King James Bible, listing every person and place mentioned in there, something that would take you a lot of time -- you could copyright it. If someone copied it -- simply took your King James Bible Lexicon book and put their name on it -- could you sue them? Should you?

And, personalities aside, and all the newspaper commentary and most of the bloggage and online opinions, that's the kind of thing that this case will come down to in the end.

Hi Neil,

Like yourself, I am a fan of Harlan Ellison. However, as a feminist, I get really sick and tired of Ellison's misogyny.

I was wondering how you reconcile the fact that Ellison is your friend and an awesome writer with the fact that he can be really sexist. I'm especially curious because you have two daughters. (And one that went to a women's college! I went to Mount Holyoke, myself.) What do you tell them when Ellison makes denigrating remarks about women? I sincerely hope that you do more than merely laugh it off and regard it as "Harlan being Harlan." Even though he's funny as Hell, his attitude is really damaging. Besides, relying on sexist humor is beneath him and I really don't understand why he does it. I dislike it when Ellison claims to use such humor in a reclaimatory way. He's a white man -- he cannot reclaim sexism on the behalf of women.

I appreciate you taking the time to answer my question.

Best,

Emily Neal


You know, in my presence over the years Harlan has made some astoundingly denigrating remarks about studio executives, the Walt Disney company, a number of restaurants we've eaten in, several eastern European publishers, food in England, the English (except -- possibly, sometimes -- for me and his wife), editors, other publishers, a (male) science fiction critic, television producers, Fantagraphics, friends of mine, movie producers... the list goes on and on. When Harlan's rude about my friends in my presence I tend to point out they're my friends and he's being a twit, and he either looks shamefaced or he tells me I'm an idiot for liking so many people. There are lots of people, and some classes of people, like studio accountants, that Harlan has been less than civil about. I don't ever remember "women" as a class being on the list. (I remember him once being extremely rude about a female studio head, but that was in her role as a studio head, not in her capacity as a woman.) Which means I read your letter and I'm as puzzled as if it were asking how I can stand Harlan's attacks on people of colour, or the left-handed, or jazz musicians.

As for "Harlan being Harlan," I'm reminded of what the producer of the documentary Dreams With Sharp Teeth, Erik Nelson, said, when I told him that I thought the film was unbalanced, and he should interview some of Harlan's enemies. He said, "That's what Harlan said. I told him, 'Harlan, you're your own worst enemy'."

...

Off to Australia on Saturday...

Labels: annotations, australia, copy editing, copyright, Harlan Ellison

Snowdrops

My trip home was derailed (well, deplaned, but that seems to mean "getting off the plane" rather than the plane trip home turning into a little expedition to hades) by an extreme snowfall in Minneapolis. So the trip home took 36 hours and left me a bit out of sorts. Still, this was waiting for me when I finally got home -- snowdrops in the snow. A small perfect thing.


There's a reason why I made the magical flower in Stardust a snowdrop, after all.

My First Snowdrop resolutions -- I need to get back into shape (eat sensibly; find a new trainer; go for longer, more energetic walks with dog; do some nice stretchy yoga even). This last trip left me aching all over, and I've moved up a tub in jeans sizes (long term readers of this blog may remember that there are five tubs of jeans of different sizes in my closet. If ever I have to wear the ones in the tub at the far right -- mostly bought by accident or in fits of optimism -- I'll know I've got some kind of eating disorder or wasting disease, and when I only fit into the ones at the far left I know I've been not-moving for too long. And I've moved one tub to the left). It's time to slim down a little, but mostly it's just time to get fit again after a very, very long winter.

...

I sent Newly-Stoker-Award-Winning Author Joe Hill The Graveyard Book when I finished it, because he has small sons, and I was hoping he would read to them.

(He did. They liked it. He said, "It's a great one for reading aloud. You should really hear me call for help in NightGaunt sometime," and then when I said I would like to, he e-mailed me a sound file. I was impressed.)

And he talks about the book a little on his blog -- http://joehillfiction.com/?p=163 in terms that I would use as a blurb if I hadn't said nice things about Heart Shaped Box, and would fear accusations of log-rolling.

I'm really pleased he liked it. I'm pleased anyone likes it.
...

My assistant Lorraine just passed this on from the conference organisers in Melbourne --


Hi Lorraine,

It's good to see all the details of Neil's trip up on the website -
now I can finally believe it's happening! I wonder if you could
arrange for there to be a link to the conference website
http://www.iceaustralia.com/cbca2008/ on the Sunday date when Neil's
keynote is open to the general public so that people will find it easy to book.

Thanks, Sian

So there's the link, and we'll put another up at WHERE'S NEIL. Come and see me talk. Come and see Shaun Tan, who is nominated for a Hugo for The Arrival, a book I tend to force people to read. (This is a link to pages from The Arrival and an essay about it on Shaun's site.)

If I hadn't been on the road I would have remembered to post something about pre-selling tickets at MIT to the first Julie Schwartz Memorial Lecture, but it looks like the pre-sold tickets are now sold, and it's now going to be tickets on the day for people in the Boston area.

05.23.08 | 7-10 PM | Kresge Auditorium

Julius Schwartz Memorial Lecture: Neil Gaiman

New York Times bestselling author, screenwriter and comics luminary Neil Gaiman (The Sandman, Beowulf, Stardust) is scheduled to present the first Julius Schwartz Lecture in Kresge Auditorium at 7PM on May 23rd, 2008. Doors will open at 6PM.

Pre-Ticket Sales will occur on March 31st and April 1st in Lobby 10 from 9AM until 4PM. Tickets are $8 apiece, no limit. CASH ONLY, GENERAL ADMISSION, NO RESERVATIONS. Tickets will also be available at the door the evening of the event

Labels: Airplanes, airports, australia, Julie Schwartz memorial lecture, losing weight and getting fit, snowdrops, travel

a quick one

Lots of questions about the Siegel copyright decision, including "don't you have to be dead to take advantage of this?" (no) and "Does this apply to you and can you get copyright on your Sandman stuff now?" (no and no)-- here's an FAQ on the Siegel decision: http://uncivilsociety.org/2008/03/a-siegel-superman-copyright-de.html

...

And here's the schedule of my trip to Australia at the end of April and beginning of May:


Wed 30th April HOBART

7.00pm PUBLIC EVENT: Author Talk & Signing

Address: Hadley s Hotel

34 Murray St, Hobart TAS

Duration: 20 min author talk & 40 min Q&A, followed by
author signing

Bookseller: Ellison Hawker Bookshop


Sun 4th May MELBOURNE
9.15am PUBLIC EVENT: CBCA Keynote Session
Address: Melbourne Convention Centre
Corner Spencer & Flinders Streets,
Melbourne VIC


MON 5th May MELBOURNE


1.00pm PUBLIC EVENT Author Talk & Signing

Address: State Library of Victoria

Centre for Youth Literature

(Village Roadshow Theatrette)

325 Swanston St, Melbourne VIC

Duration: 20 minute author talk & 40 minute Q&A/ signing

Bookseller: The Little Bookroom





MON 5th May MELBOURNE

7.00pm PUBLIC EVENT Literary Dinner

Address: Georges Restaurant

819 Burke Road, Camberwell VIC

Duration: 20 minute author talk & 40 min Q&A session
following dinner

Bookseller: Dymocks Camberwell


TUES 6th May SYDNEY

6.00pm PUBLIC EVENT Author Talk & Signing

Address: Books Kinokuniya

Level 2 The Galeries Victoria

500 George St, Sydney NSW

Duration: 20 minute author talk & 40 min Q&A session.
Followed by author signing.

Bookseller: Kinokuniya


WED 7th May SYDNEY


12.00pm PUBLIC EVENT: Author signing

Address: Dymocks George St

424 George St, Sydney NSW

Duration: approx 1 hour

Bookseller: Dymocks George St

Labels: australia, Superman, zoom

I am sick of winter and would like some sunshine now please

Lots of really good suggestions for ways to outwit Heisenberg's Uncertain Rice Pudding Principle, and I will try them and report back, although it may have to wait until the snow melts and Spring is sprung and the farm shop around the corner start milking their cows again.

And the webgoblin says that the deceptively ordinary-looking image URL http://www.neilgaiman.com/extras/countdown.gif should, if pasted into things, allow you to have your own Graveyard Book countdown badge.

The webgoblin adds: For example,
<img src="http://www.neilgaiman.com/extras/countdown.gif" width="144" height="164" />
posted to a webpage or in a blog, will give you:

Never mind the bloody USA.

When can I get it in East Finchley?

About three weeks after it comes out in the US, at an educated guess. It says November 2008 on the Bloomsbury site (and 3 Nov 2008 in the Bloomsbury catalogue), but I would imagine that they actually would want it in the shops before Hallowe'en...

...

Normally I just smile and shake my head when people start worrying about security issues when it comes to books. They're books. It's only friends of mine who have never published anything who send me copies of their manuscripts all locked and encoded, with the password to open it in a separate email. The bestselling and award-winning authors I know just send me books as email attachments months before they come out.

But I got a call from my movie agent, Jon Levin at CAA, who mentioned that movie book scouts in New York had somehow got hold of The Graveyard Book as a computer file and had been slipping it to producers and studios, who had been calling him about it, and then I got an oddly-written anonymous grumpy message on the FAQ line from someone who had obviously read an early draft and found a bit in it confusing, and I'm now fascinated by the idea that there are people out there with my book, before it's even properly, absolutely finished, who I didn't give it to.

I really don't think I mind, but I had to stop and think about it for a while first. And I guess that the reason I don't mind is because the alternative is that people don't care. It's a problem of success, and for the most part the problems of success are good problems to have.

I'm unlikely to be more circumspect next time I write a book -- I'll still email the book to friends to get a sense of what works and what needs fixing, and I assume that the book scouts will still have their mysterious agents pervading the New York book world.

Ah well. In the meantime I'll keep writing the book and keep playing with it until the last sheet of the last galley proof is pried from my cold numb fingers.


Hi, Neil.

Regarding the Absolute Sandman, can you explain to a broke graduate student who has all of the Sandman graphic novels and a good number of the individual comics why the Absolute Sandman is still a must-purchase-or-possibly-suffer-lifelong-regret-and-trauma thing?

Thank you,

Brandi

Dear Brandi

you should use your local library as a resource. Sometimes your library will have a copy, sometimes it's only available on inter-library loan and will have to be ordered. And then you can read them without paying money and decide what you think.

(Libraries are your friend. It's one of the refrains of this blog, I think.)

I'm not entirely sure that the Absolute Sandman replaces the trade paperbacks, any more than the trade paperbacks replaced the comics (because the covers and the ads and the letter column and all that stuff gives you an experience you don't get from a trade paperback) and I don't want to start turning into Elvis Costello, who has now sold me all of his music at least four times in ever-more-upgraded formats with extra bells and whistles.

But if you want a permanent copy for your bookshelf, the Absolute Sandmans are as good as it gets. I don't think they're going to vanish from the book and comic shops immediately -- DC have overprinted healthy amounts, certainly good for a few years to come -- but they are probably too expensive per unit to go back to press in Hong Kong for smallish reprints.

Dear Neil,

For the person new to 'Sandman' and not sure they'd love it enough to justify the price for the Absolutes - I had never read 'Sandman' (hangs head in shame) and bought the first one on a whim. They are definitely worth it - I have the second as well and have already pre-ordered the third. I was wondering if 'Dream Hunters' and 'Endless Nights' would be included in the 'Absolute Sandman' collection, or should I go ahead and buy them?

Regards,

Mary

No, they won't be coming out in Absolute format.

Hi Neil,

Is it true you will be in Australia in May, 2008?

Cheers,

Yoomi

It is, it is. I'm out in early May for a conference on children's literature in Melbourne, and I'll do a couple of signings while I'm there. Details to come very soon.

...

Maddy wants me to let everyone know that the two of us are going out to Laika together in a week to see the Coraline film set, and that she plans to be Special Guest Blogger during that time. So I have.

Labels: absolute Sandman, australia, rice pudding