the lightning and the lightning bug

I know there are lots of things I should be blogging about, like the Oracular Orb Android App and being taken kayaking by my trainer and the poor bee who got stuck in my hair, and the strangeness of spending days with a New Yorker writer, and potato salad recipes, but they can all wait.

I took the dog out for a walk tonight, and together we wandered across the meadow next door. It was a warm summer's night, dark, and moonless. There were a handful of fireflies flickering intermittently, some so close to me I could see they were burning green as they flew, and some further away, who seemed to be flashing white.

And in the sky above them a continual roil of distant summer lightning (the storm distant enough that it was silent) burned and flashed and illuminated the clouds. It seemed as if the lightning bugs were talking to the lightning, in a perfect call and response of flash and counterflash. I watched the sky and the meadow flash and flash while the dog walked ahead of me, and realised that I was perfectly happy...

Labels: less than 100000 fireflies

luck, the good kind

I'm starting to repeat myself but it's still true: the best bit about having accumulated a dog, it seems, is not the devoted hound, and it's not even the way the walking the dog keeps me much thinner and healthier than I was previously. The best bit is nights like tonight, when the fireflies are out in abundance like gleams and glints and stars in the gloaming, and there's a low ground-mist like something from a horror movie or a dream. And I never saw that world before I had the dog. I didn't go out walking in the evening on my own. I didn't know it was there.

There are a couple of clips from Stardust up at Yahoo.com, introduced by me -- one scene that was shown last year at Comic-con, in which Mr DeNiro and Mr Gervais haggle over some lightning, and one scene in which the Primus, Tertius, Septimus and the Bishop of Stormhold have just raised their wine cups and toasted their quest, with unfortunate results...

http://movies.yahoo.com/movie/1809426615/video/3439942/

(And there's a nice, although not particularly optimistic, review over at http://www.geek-vs-life.com/blog/2007/07/23/sprinkling-some-stardust/)

I'm interviewed about Comic-Con over at The Hollywood Reporter. It's actually a really fun interview. At least, I'm being possibly too honest, and I hope no-one takes it the wrong way...

Labels: being impolitic and much too honest in interviews, less than 100000 fireflies, stardust clips

fireflies

I went to Philadelphia and watched Holly walk across the stage in a cap and gown and collect her diploma, and I was proud as any parent could possibly be. Then I came back again.

(Next week I do it again, only this time to Providence and to watch Mike get his master's. Slightly less thrilling, as he left in December and has been working at Google for most of this year, but I'm sure I'll be every bit as proud and happy.)

I only got online to tell you that if you take the dog for a walk last thing at night you can find yourself unexpectedly seeing the first fireflies of the year twinkling in the bushes, and what a fine thing that is.

But then when I got online I discovered that the Stardust Movie site is now live at http://www.stardustmovie.com, so I thought I'd mention it.

And I learned that the second volume of ABSOLUTE SANDMAN has just been announced at the DC Comics website -- http://www.dccomics.com/graphic_novels/?gn=7881:

The second of four beautifully designed slipcased volumes, THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL. 2 collects issues 21-39 of THE SANDMAN and features remastered coloring on all 19 issues as well as brand-new inks on THE SANDMAN #34 by the issue's original penciller, Colleen Doran, and a host of bonus material, including two never-before-reprinted stories by Gaiman (one prose and one illustrated), a complete reproduction of the never-before-reprinted one-shot THE SANDMAN: A GALLERY OF DREAMS, and the complete script and pencils by Gaiman and Kelley Jones for Chapter Two of "Season of Mists" from THE SANDMAN #23.

Vertigo 616pg. Color Oversized Hardcover $99.00 US

(The illustrated story it refers to is what we old-fashioned types call a "comic", and it's the painted John Bolton Desire story that I was never able to persuade DC comics to do as a poster; the prose story is the short story that was on the box of the original Sandman statue.)

Somehow I doubt that Amazon.com will accidentally stick it up at $14.95 this time, but it's probably worth checking to see if they do.

And my advance copy of "In the Country of the Blind", an H. G. Wells short story collection with an introduction by me, arrived today. Having a few hundred Penguin Classics on the shelves, it's extremely nice to have one up there that I had something to do with.

Labels: absolute Sandman, Holly graduates, In the Country of the Blind, less than 100000 fireflies, Mike