Oh to Be In England etc etc

In the UK for Eastercon. It's nice to be home (and amazing how comfortingly home it still feels after 16 years away).

I noticed that Terry Moore's STRANGERS IN PARADISE won the GLAAD award for Best Comic -- congratulations. Somewhere I have the beautiful GLAAD award that Sandman took for the same thing, about a decade ago. And then I read the small print of the Awards Press Release and realised with pleasure that STARDUST took the award for Outstanding Film (Wide Release) -- I was very pleased for Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman (and Robert De Niro), but wish that I'd known that it was happening. I called Matthew and Jane and told them. I wonder who accepted the award -- someone at Paramount? It says on the press release the awards ceremony will be telecast on Bravo, so I'll set the TIVO and find out.

The Eastercon is at a hotel near Heathrow, and because I took Silverjet in to the UK (this is the second time I've flown them, and I'm really impressed. The tickets are much cheaper than regular business class, every seat on the plane is business class, and you don't have to worry about checking in for an international flight many hours beforehand, as they have their own little check-in-lounges at the airports. I hesitate in plugging them because right now it's easy to get seat and to change flights) I landed in Luton, where I was picked up by a Taxi from the convention, which was a nice surprise (especially when I saw the lines of stopped traffic outside Heathrow).

I had a bath and then slept some more.

The con is, I am told, pretty full, but there are still memberships and day memberships.

I'm doing a signing on Saturday at 4.00, and my Guest of Honour speech/reading is Sunday at 2.00pm. There's another signing "on scooters" I am assured, on Sunday night at 8:15.

As a sort of general thing at the con, if you see me and I don't seem to be doing anything, and you have something with you you want signed, and you sidle over and mutter "It's for Norman" (if your name happens to be Norman) then I'll probably scribble on it for you.

Right. About to wander out into the world to see old friends and make new ones.

I have noticed that you look identically cool-writery in all your photos. I would like to know how this is done, please. When I'm in family photos whoever's taking it looks at the camera screen and gets a little frown and then they say "we'll just do that one again." I'll say sorry and then they say "That's alright, dear, you can't help it." and they take four or five and then just give up and email whichever one had my eyes most open and my mouth most closed.

Is there some trick?

Yes. You don't let anyone put the photos of you with your eyes shut, or with a goofy grin, or looking like you just dropped something, or drooling, on the back of a book or in a newspaper. Then people think that you always look like that.

Hey Neil,

I love your audio books. Listening to you reading is like having my Dad read me a bedtime story. Will you be reading The Graveyard Book and if so when will it be available?

Looking forward to it...

Thanks

Claire
I'll record it within the next month or so and it should be out in September when the book comes out.

I'm also planning to collect together all the live readings of chapters from the Graveyard Book as well... maybe make them downloadable or watchable from http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff.

So probably a thousand people have asked by now, but what does coffee which has been partially digested by a civet cat taste like? I've never quite been willing to shell out the extra money to find out. Is it worth it?

It was a perfectly nice, fairly mild, not-at-all acidic coffee -- with an astonishing caffeine kick to it. But I'm a tea drinker, not a coffee drinker, and while I could probably describe different teas in ways that might communicate things to other tea drinkers, when it comes to coffee it was a very nice, not-bitter, not-acid, cup of coffee, and someone else will have to describe the underlying notes of cinnamon and vanilla and red wine in civet-coffee, for it will not be me.

Labels: Awards, civet coffee, eastercon, photos, you know I'm starting to worry that the labels are all getting sort of normal these days

picture time

Hey world! It's Maddy G-Dogg. Guess what! IT'S PICTURE TIME! WOOOOOOOO

Myself, Dad, Heather and Henry Selick. Yeah, we look cool. I know.

The Wonderful Madeleine and Henry Selick's son, Harry.

Me getting my make-up done! Oooh la la!





Henry's magnificent assistant Shelley!! And I would just like to point out that behind her, there now sits a napkin. On this napkin, written in the finest of magenta ink, is:

Maddy Gaiman is amazing!
-the world.
P.S. I heart Shelley

Marvelous Maddy and Shining Shelley!

Dad, me and Merrilee in a yummy little sushi restaurant! P.S. If your daughter has never tried a Caterpillar Roll, please do not persuade her to pop one in her mouth. The whole eel and avacado thing is not something that a particular 13-year-old is a fan of.

Me with my chocolate pig named Franklin. :)

That's all for now folks. Oh and by the way as I am writing this, my father, aka the brilliant yet slightly odd Neil Gaiman, is downstairs signing some books like crazy! GOOOOO DAD!

Bye. :)

Labels: evil caterpillar rolls, Maddy, photos

Roger and Me

What was the red carpet like? It was like this...

And here's Roger Avary and me on the Red Carpet line.




Maddy has promised to write me a blog entry about this evening. She is now on a Red Eye home in order not to miss any school -- her insistence, not mine, bless her.

It was a lovely night.

Labels: Beowulf Premiere, photos, Roger Avary

Thanks, Len

The reason Lenny Henry isn't in these photos is that he took them on his cameraphone. Here's me, Doña (Mrs Noah) and Rudolph (Mr Nancy).

]

Here's Petra Letang (Rosie) and Matt Lucas (Graham Coats and Tiger). Matt has the best smile of anyone I know. You could run power stations off Matt's smile.

A group shot. That man Lenny Henry took it, and is thus not in it. Clockwise from the pinkness of Matt, Rudolph, Doña, Jocelyn (Daisy), Petra and me.

Me and Matt. I look tired and like I'm ready to be done with touring and go home and spend time in my own bed now if you don't mind thank you. Matt looks luminous.

For the people who are writing in to point out that the Hay website is no longer accepting online ticket bookings for later today, you're right. Now you have to take your chances -- they had 150 tickets left when it closed, so you should be fine... (Just told that they will definitely have tickets on the door...)

Labels: anansi boys, Four Photos, Lenny Henry, photos

Eh bien...

Two days in Paris, ten days on the road, and today I've been interviewed and photographed, I've signed and signed and sketched and signed, and all I can think right now is how much I really really need a lie-in and a day off.

This morning I had my photograph taken in (among other places) a graveyard by photographer Phillipe Matsas, and I flashed back to GOOD OMENS, when Terry and I had our author photos taken in Kensal Green Cemetery, which meant that every second American newspaper that photographed us had arranged a trip to the local graveyard. And I thought "My next book is The Graveyard Book," and realised with a sinking feeling that too much of 2008 will be spent in graveyards trying to find an appropriate facial expression...




(The photos from this morning are © Ph. Matsas / Opale - www.agence-opale.com)

Labels: appropriate facial expressions, France, photo of me looking up at something that I don't know what it is, photos

New Year's Day

The rain turned to snow before midnight, and I was already asleep by then, feeling sort of under the weather. This morning the sky was a perfect blue and, feeling a bit less like I was getting 'flu than I had the night before, I headed out for a walk in the woods.

The best thing about going for walks in the woods are the cats, who pretend they aren't really along for the walk, but are merely there by some kind of feline coincidence. Today the cat pretending she wasn't actually accompanying me was Princess, who was extremely well camouflaged. We startled a rabbit hiding in a fallen screech-owl box, who waited until we were inches away to thump off at speed.

I don't think I've made New Year's Resolutions for a while, but I think it's time to lose some weight, get back into shape and start to think about the next adult novel while getting a lot more written on the next children's novel. Meanwhile, lots of small deadlines to get done.

I'm not sure how long this article from the Economist will stay up online, but reading it left me wishing I hadn't already written a djinn story, in American Gods, and starting to wonder if there wasn't something else I wanted to say.

All this may yet play a part in the war on terrorism. Factions in Somalia and Afghanistan have accused their enemies of being backed not only by the CIA but by malevolent jinn. One theory in Afghanistan holds that the mujahideen, “two-legged wolves”, scared the jinn out into the world, causing disharmony. It is jinn, they say, who whisper into the ears of suicide-bombers.

...The story of Ahmed Shah Masoud, the commander of Afghanistan's Northern Alliance, clearly shows up the link between jinn and myth-making. Masoud resisted the Soviet Union and the Taliban from his base in the Panjshir valley until he was assassinated by al-Qaeda operatives on September 9th 2001. According to local legend, Muslim jinn were on his side. One of his fighters was said to have slain a dragon in a mountain lake during the Soviet occupation and to have brought the dragon's jewel to Masoud, with the help of Muslim jinn. In murdering Masoud, some Panjshiris say, Osama bin Laden declared war on Muslim jinn also.

http://www.economist.com/world/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8401289

Labels: djinn, photos, Princess, Winter

American Gods Blog, Post 116

So, I was definitely wrong about the whole hardback/trade paperback thing on American Gods, as people turned up at the signing at Forbidden Planet today with copies of American Gods in trade paperback they'd bought at Borders. Lucy Ramsey couldn't explain it and went off to investigate (on a saturday afternoon, bless her).

Not sure why Borders would be selling 10 pound paperbacks when everyone else is selling 10 pound hardbacks -- and slightly concerned that, as the ISBN is different, any copies sold through Borders won't show up on any bestseller lists, which would be a pity.

Several people came -- for the signing at Forbidden Planet -- from France, Spain, Sweden and Finland (there were many Brazilians and New Zealanders there too, and many other French, Dutch, Spanish etc people there, but none of them had come specially). I felt faintly guilty for not doing something more exciting than just signing books, since they'd come such a long way...

(A strange sweet moment that sat in the middle of a 4 hour signing like a haiku, as a young lady tentatively put out one hand to touch my hand while I signed, I think just to reassure herself that I was real.)

The Daily Telegraph had a photographer at the signing. People kept asking him to take photos of them with their cameras, so he'd put down his massive telephoto thing and use people's little disposables to snap us together. It made me smile.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Best Of, photos, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 54

So, today brought an envelope, and in it, the finished book cover for American Gods. It's lovely. Big lightning bolt on the cover, gold letters, and the back cover is covered with wonderful blurbs, many of them melted down from ones already posted here. Also photo of me, with smoke in background and messy hair. Author delighted. Finished books should arrive on the 31st of May. Author excited.

Also e-mail today saying American Gods has been sold to Czechoslavakia and to France, which gives us the first two foreign sales.

The most interesting American Gods call was from the editor of the e-book edition of American Gods, which will be published at the same time as the novel, asking about what kind of things we can add to the e-book: I suggested that we add this journal...

And because none of that is very interesting, I thought I'd put up a link to some wonderful photos... here. For anyone who, like me, tends to think of the past in sepia tones...

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, author photos, covers, photos

American Gods Blog, Post 37

Off to the UK for a few days to see some people and listen to some music. Am in an airport, and have just discovered that the modem was inadvertantly removed from my computer, so I'll a) be offline for a few days and b) have to disappoint all the people I'd promised I'd finally tell the story of the day I got the jacket photo taken -- I was planning to write it on the plane and post it this weekend. You may have to wait until next week. (No, it's not a cruel joke by an evil author -- and I'm mostly grumpy right now as I'm going to have to lug a notebook computer and bag around England for four days and it'll be about as useful as hauling a paving stone). (Well, I also have a speech to write and a few other things, but really on the road it's an e-mail machine.)

Labels: airports, American Gods Blog, covers, photos