If you are anywhere near Bard, come and be my Guinea Pig

I'm staying in an ancient farmhouse in New York State, several miles from Bard College, 90 miles North of New York.

It's astonishingly peaceful here.

It's the first time Amanda and I have actually lived somewhere, without any other people in the house, somewhere that wasn't a hotel, in about 18 months. It's really good. This morning we went for a five mile walk, and we talked the whole way. So much to catch up on.

It's the calm before the storm of course, as she's going to spend the best part of the next 14 months on the road with her band, and we'll catch each other as we can. I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to live for most of that time (current front runners are London, New York and San Francisco, for the curious).

Amanda is working with the Bard theatrical/performing arts department and her band, all under the direction of Michael McQuilken, to build make and sculpt the tour they're going to be doing. Somewhere in there she got MIT involved and so now has a lot of very strange high tech stuff that has never been let out of the lab, including the ability to play people as instruments. She's doing a couple of test shows for the public before the tour, on Sept 5th and 6th.

I finished a quite long, and very late, short story the other day, rather to my surprise. I nearly gave up on it a few times along the way, but didn't want to disappoint the people who were waiting for it. I sent it to the editors nervously. They loved it, and so (to my relief) have the few other people I've shown it to.

The story has a title that keeps changing, but is more or less something to do with the image above (borrowed from here).

I want to read it aloud to an audience to find out what really works and what doesn't, as I do the second draft, and to see what I need to fix. I think it's going to be somewhere between 50 and 60 minutes long to read aloud. Depending on how long it is I may read a few other things to make up the time to about 70/80 minutes. (Any requests?)

I talked to Bard, hoping for an empty classroom and a few students with time on their hands.

They gave me their biggest theatre, the Sosnoff, on Wednesday the 5th of September at 6 pm. (Details here.) It's in the amazing Richard B Fisher Centre for the Performing Arts building.

It's completely free to get in. You are, after all, guinea pigs.

Bard will be seating on a first come first served basis, but 900 seats is a lot of seats to fill, so you should be able to get a seat, if you come. (If you're coming from far away, get there earlier.) (Also, if you are hesitating, please come.)

If anyone's already going to see Amanda and the Grand Theft Orchestra that night (doors open at 7:30) wants to come and see me first, I will definitely finish in time for that. (They'll be in a different theatre about 100 feet away.) (You can reserve tickets for the Amanda show here. And if you don't want to see me, or can't make it, she'll also be performing the following night.)

Edited to add a picture from our walk this morning.

Authors. You can't give them away.

Labels: Bard College, short stories, spindles

One Ordinary Day with autumn leaves

I am home, after ten days of working on a Grand Guignol theatre piece with Stephin Merritt and director Steven Bogart, and some wonderful and enthusiastic young actors.

This is how enthusiastic they were: when we had a ten minute break, and they had been working all day, and I asked if anyone would mind being zombies and or murdering each other while I talked about All Hallow's Read, none of them did, and they murdered each other with enthusiasm.



Right. I am at home with a Maddy who has lost her voice. It is very sweet. She whispers everything, and I make her cups of lemon and honey. As I am typing this, I am listening to her play the violin. It's a perfect Indian Summer - a sunny, warm autumn, and the leaves are beautiful, and October is most definitely in the chair.

Lots of things going on. Cat Mihos is ebaying a lot of rarities for Trevor Valle -- friend, fan and the reason why I have the Neilgaiman.com website. Trevor's going through some horrible medical stuff right now. Kitty and Trevor explain what's going on at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/09/trevor-treasure-chestopening-soon.html, tells you about some of the rarities and cool things at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/10/trevor-chest-up-in-full-effect-yall.html and the actual auction is on eBay at http://www.ebay.com/sch/kitty9thlife/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Lots of cool, rare stuff - including three pages of Marc Hempel art from Sandman: The Kindly Ones.

Kitty also learned that, back in 2000, Trevor had bought from the CBLDF a box of the original Craig Thompson screenprint/posters for the Last Angel Tour. These have long since sold out on the CBLDF website, and aren't simply available anywhere anymore. She bought them from Trevor outright, and is going to be putting them up on Neverwear soon. (There's a picture of Trevor holding one on the front page of the website, although they aren't for sale yet.)

I found an image on the web of one of them. They look like this, were silkscreened onto heavy card stock, and have to be signed with a paint-pen.

...

In the UK, the Society of Authors wants to draw attention to the BBC's cutbacks to short stories.

This is what I wrote in The Guardian Blog about it;

I love short stories. I grew up on them, and the stories that had an effect on me are now encoded into my DNA. Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day With Peanuts" and "The Lottery". Saki's "Sredni Vashtar". WW Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw". Kipling's "The Gardener". There are heaps of them, and it's love all the way.

For a working writer, this is a silly sort of love. You should write novels. Short stories sell for the price of a good dinner, if you're lucky (and the magazines and anthologies that used to buy them are themselves fading away or gone completely). When they get reprinted they won't cover the taxi fare to get to the dinner. I'm lucky, and have collected my short stories into books that sell well for short-story ­collections, but still only a fraction of the number that my novels sell.

But short stories are the best place for young writers to learn their craft: to try out different voices and techniques, to experiment, to learn. And they're a wonderful place for old writers, when you have an idea that wouldn't make it to novel length, one simple, elegant thing that needs to be said. People like reading short stories. And they like ­listening to short stories.

For years, Radio 4 has supported the short story. Ten-minute stories, professionally read, give writers young and old a chance to make a ­professional sale. Full disclosure: I wrote a short story, "Jerusalem", for them a few years ago, and grew up listening to short stories on Radio 4 and dreaming that one day I'd have a story on there.

Now the station's support for the short story is waning. The Tweetathon we're doing to bring attention to this (each Wednesday for the next five weeks, in association with the Society of Authors, a writer will tweet the first line of a story and tweeters will add the next four sentences to create a short story in 670 characters) may or may not produce great stories: hive minds are excellent news-gatherers and commentators but tend not to produce great art.

All I'm hoping is that it reminds people how much pleasure readers, and listeners, get from short stories, and how much we learn from writing them. If we produce another "The Monkey's Paw" that'll be a bonus.

In Wednesday, at 11 in the morning UK time, and at 6 in the evening UK time, the Society of Authors will put up the first line of a short story by me on their twitter account, @Soc_of_Authors, and they want you to continue it. There will be two different stories. (I don't even know which ones they will use -- I gave them a choice of several.)

http://www.societyofauthors.org/soa-news/society-authors-launch-short-story-tweet-thon-soatale

...

You can hear my This American Life talk on Adventures at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/448/adventure from tomorrow, or all over the US on various Public Radio stations from Friday Night. Er, the night before last.

...



When last seen, I was proofreading A LITTLE GOLD BOOK OF GHASTLY STUFF. It was proofread, and has gone off to press. Because too many people had ordered copies, more than expected, while I had only signed enough limitation sheets for the limited edition, publishers Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone asked me if they could print more books to satisfy the people who had ordered...

So I said yes.

Which means right now you can STILL order an unsigned edition of A LITTLE GOLD BOOK OF GHASTLY STUFF. It's an assemblage of stories, essays, poems, reviews, speeches and introductions by me, about 25,000 words in all, with a Gahan Wilson cover showing me being attacked by uglies.

Ordering details are at: http://www.borderlandspress.com/littlegold.html. Yes, the shipping abroad fees are either twice or four times the cost of the book. Scary. Sorry.

If you think you may want one, order fast. The books are now being printed, and they won't go back to press when they've sold out.

...

Lastly, it seems that Barnes and Nobles across the US are removing 100 DC Comics Graphic Novels from their shelves (literally removing them and sending them back to the warehouses for the next four months) in response to DC's deal with Amazon.com to make these 100 Graphic Novels available as digital exclusives to the Kindle Fire.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and wound up getting a strange deluge of hate mail. Here's a polite one:

I never thought I would have to tell you that myself, my children and several of my friends are extremely disappointed with you. I can't believe that you would let your Sandman fans down by letting DC/Warner Bros release your books on the Kindle and not all e-readers.

I was very excited when I heard that Sandman was coming out as an e-book but was heartbroken when it was announced that *I* and my kids won't have it on our readers.

Thanks.

And I wonder why on earth people assume that I, or Alan Moore, or Frank Miller, have any say at all in DC Comics's marketing decisions. Do they think that someone at DC calls us up and gets our permission before they do such deals, or that we have any ability to stop it? The first I heard about the exclusive, was hearing that Barnes and Noble staff were having to take their graphic novels off the shelves.

I think that Barnes and Noble's reasons for doing this are pretty obvious. It's to intimidate other publishers and make it clear that exclusives with Amazon will not be tolerated. But, following the death of Borders, Barnes and Noble's position as the US's sole huge bricks and mortar shop chain is something that it's very easy to abuse. I hope that this is a negotiating tactic, because otherwise it does bad things for customer choice all around, digitally and otherwise. (It's also publicised the upcoming Fire, publicised that DC's basic graphic novels are available there, and publicised that they are no longer in Barnes and Nobles, in a way that must make Amazon the happiest company on the block this morning.)

There's a beautiful leatherbound edition of American Gods and Anansi Boys that's only available from Barnes and Noble. I'd hate to see this considered justification by Amazon for removing those books from the Kindle.

On the good side, I hope that it means that local comic shops (http://comicshoplocator.com/ for your nearest) will stock and sell more copies of that basic 100 Graphic novel list.

If there's any more news on this, I'll post it. Otherwise, I'm just waiting, and remembering how long and how much effort it took to get the books into bookstores, and being sad that they aren't there, and knowing that it's not the fault of the people who work there and had to take them off the shelves (or explain to customers that they don't sell them any longer, but you can still order them from Barnes and Noble's website).

..

Right. Off to work.

I've been experimenting with a Tumblr recently. It's fun. http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/

Labels: autumn, Craig Thompson, short stories, The Last Angel Tour poster

Not just procrastinating on proofreading...

Good morning.

Happy Banned Books Week!

It's a grey, quiet Saturday here. Everyone's off doing stuff: it's just me and the dogs.

On Thursday, Sharon and Bill Stiteler came over and we checked the hives and started to feed them. We have six hives right now - two Italians (doing brilliantly in comparison with everyone else after a late start and a lousy year - we even had a super full of honey), two Carniolans (doing okay) and two Russian hives (one may or may not survive even a mild winter, one has a solid chance). We came back to the house.

Sharon Stiteler started making noises. Normally when Sharon makes noises, it means that something exciting has been spotted, and it's generally to do with birds.

It was.

A merlin had taken a red-bellied woodpecker from one of my birdfeeders, and was eating it in front of the house.

Here's a photo I took of the merlin. Sharon tells the whole story, with many photos and explanation of, among other things, how she knew it was a lady merlin over at her blog: http://www.birdchick.com/wp/2011/09/merlin-vs-red-bellied-woodpecker/

Yesterday I decided to get some beeswax from the buckets of slumgullion in the garage. It took three tries to figure out how to do it correctly, but I now have a pie-dish filled with clean, perfect, butter-yellow beeswax, smelling faintly of honey, and know how to get it right for next time.

No idea what to do with the wax, mind. But at least it won't get thrown out.

Today I'm proofreading. The Little Gold Book Of Ghastly Stuff for Borderlands Press comes out very soon, and they emailed me over the pdfs last night. It's a really sweet little collection, almost entirely from the last decade: two poems, four stories (including, for the first time anywhere, the complete version of my first ever published short story, "Featherquest", published in 1984, cut by half on its first appearance and never reprinted. Do not get overly excited: it isn't very good), two oddments, four articles, a couple of speeches, a few book reviews and suchlike. I signed the 500 limitation pages last week. Then Borderlands discovered that too many people had ordered the signed edition and asked me if I would give my permission for them to overrun the print-run and sell some unsigned, un-numbered copies, to make the people who ordered copies they didn't have happy, and I said yes.


The unsigned copies have not yet sold out, although they will probably go very soon after I put this up. There's only ever going to be one printing of this, so, if you want a copy, head over to http://www.borderlandspress.com/littlegold.html and order one now. Bizarrely, it costs more to mail it internationally than the book costs (four times as much if you want to internationally Fedex it).

I do not enjoy proofreading.

And I need to go back to it.

Before I do, here is a Bill Stiteler film of me shaking bees off a frame of honey or three on Thursday:

The Vanishing Bee Trick from Bill Stiteler on Vimeo.

And I need to close some tabs, so...

A link to the the Society of Authors website to explain a bit more about the short story tweet thingummy they are doing, and in which I am participating: http://www.societyofauthors.org/soa-news/society-authors-launch-short-story-tweet-thon-soatale. I wrote something that should have been a blog entry here for the Guardian and felt guilty about it, but suspected I might be reaching more Radio 4 listeners. Here is the link to me talking about why I love short stories and why:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2011/sep/16/neil-gaiman-tweetathon-society-of-authors-radio-four


The CBLDF has started this year's membership drive with some amazing donation incentives. You should still get your $25 membership, which will get you in to CBLDF events and help fund Free Speech in comics, but this year they are offering things like lunch with famous and important comics people, portfolio reviews and suchlike. (Lunch with me in New York has already gone. Two lunches to go...) Details at http://cbldf.org/homepage/be-counted/


P Craig Russell has written a blog about the creation of Sandman 50 at http://www.artofpcraigrussell.com/?p=588

My favourite photos are these from the Atlantic showing New York in the 1940s. They are in colour, which somehow changes everything. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/09/in-the-throes-of-creation-color-photos-of-new-york-in-the-1940s/244498/#slide1

Amanda Palmer talks to USA Today about her Evelyn Evelyn graphic novel, while Cynthia Von Buhler explains and demonstrates her art methods.

I saw Tori last week in LA for a wonderful happy-sad evening of red wine and catching up, and she gave me a copy of Night of Hunters, her new CD. It's become my favourite thing of hers in the last decade - I am playing it much too much. It's haunting, and her daughter, my fairy goddaughter Tash sings on several tracks, something that could have gone so very wrong and didn't. Here's a link to a Tori Interview, with a video for one of the songs (in which you will see the house in which I wrote much of Anansi Boys and in which I finished American Gods, and in which you will see Tash).

...

And finally, as anyone who has been on Google has noticed (have you puppetted the Google Doodle? No? Quick. Go and doodle with it) today would have been Jim Henson's Birthday.

(I've been given a lot of honours in my life, but I am not sure that there is anything I am prouder of than this one.

Honest.)

And here's a video about the Doodle in question...



Okay. Proofreading time. Wish me luck.

Labels: bees, bird eat bird, birdchick, CBLDF, Jim Henson, Merlin, save the short story, short stories, Tori Amos

ants and screencracks

Somehow in my sleep last night (fell asleep while working, on the sofa) I cracked my notebook computer's screen, and yesterday afternoon the new posh slick black internet router was discovered when I picked it up to try and work out why the internet was so very, very slow, to contain an ants' nest,  upsetting a very large number of little black ants in the process, most of whom ran off, carrying their eggs and probably grumbling about me in Ant.

What an odd world.

Let' s see: interview with yours truly up on BBC Radio 3's R3Arts podcast at http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/r3arts/ and downloadable at http://downloads.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/radio3/r3arts/r3arts_20090511-1800a.mp3

-- as with the Jonathan Ross one, it may only be up for a few more days, so if you want to hear me burbling, that's where.

Stephin Merritt is interviewed about the CORALINE musical in Vanity Fair, with a great selection of photographs from the stage production. http://www.vanityfair.com/online/culture/2009/05/13/stephin-merritts-new-musical-coraline.html

and these reviews came in from  the FAQ line:

Hi Neil,

I was able to get rush tickets to Coraline last night and it was simply...astonishing. There are no words to even describe the beauty that I witnessed on that stage. I was surprised at how well the story translated to the stage and how perfect the lighting, music, and disturbing, yet exciting, acting performed. I know you probably feel the same way as well. So thank you for writing the story that eventually made its way as a piece of fantastic, jaw dropping theater. Do you know if the show will be running again in the future. Or if the music will ever be released?

All my best,
Crystal

Neil,
I just got home from the Coraline musical- it was delightful, enchanting, and fantastic! It was even better than what I'd imagined and I dream lots. My fiancee and I talked about the show all the way home from New York (we live in Philadelphia) and we both are wondering if there will be a CD made of the wonderful music? We loved the alternative instrumentation and all the singing was pure perfection tonight. I don't know if we'll be able to swing a second pair of tickets for the show, but we'd love to hear those songs again! Please use your powers for good once again and make this happen!

kerplink, kerplunk, kerploonk,
Elizabeth Hahn

and (for reasons of fairness and balance)

Hi Neil,
Got to see the musical Coraline last night. LOVED the toy pianos! Not sure about bits of it: our lead requires a degree of suspension of disbelief that approaches stress! And not quite sure that everyone's laughing in the right places. Liked the Cat & Misses F & S. Always love Mr. Bobo! My daughter, a huge Stephin Merritt/Magnetic Fields fan, adored the music, and how delightful to see Stephin himself after the show! He signed a Playbill for my daughter & we went home v. happy.

...and the answer is, I don't know if there will be an original cast album or not. I know a lot of shows don't get them, for reasons too complex to go into here (ie it was all explained to me late one night some years ago but I have forgotten the details which had something to do with Actors Equity and suchlike)but, like you, I very much hope there will be.

The CORALINE musical has a VERY limited run, so if you want to see it, and you are in the New York area, book tickets now. I know I keep saying this, and it's mostly because the moment that all the tickets are sold out I will start getting the sad emails that ask why I didn't mention it.

Ticket details are at http://www.mcctheater.org/tickets.html and if you are under 30 or a student there are cheap seats available (if there are seats available) shortly before curtain-up.

And talking of limited ticketing, if you read http://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/events/printersrow/ you will learn that

This year's Chicago Tribune Young Adult Book Prize will be awarded to Neil Gaiman. Join us in congratulating Neil at the Chicago Public Library at 12pm Saturday, June 6, 2009. This event will be free, but it is a ticketed event because space is limited. Check back May 18, 2009 for ticketing information.

Again, you may want to get into the website early on Monday to get a ticket. (Free tickets are the worst, as people do not feel obligated to use them once they have been bought, and it's a sad thing to talk to a three-quarters filled "sold out" room when you know there were people who wanted to come.) It looks like a wonderful festival, too.

My question is inspired by your answer to the question re George R R Martin. There, you mentioned a story whose deadline passed you by so spectacularly that you simply apologized and moved on to your next bit of writing (a script which I am quite curious to learn the name of). I got to wondering what the story was about, and I started wondering if it would ever reappear.

So my question is, do you ever feel like things you are working on go completely dead, and you more or less just bin them and forget about it, or do you feel more like stories go dormant, but still have the possibility to be finished/rewritten at a later time?

There are a handful of unfinished stories. And in my head none of them are really dead. Only sleeping.

...

Finally, a huge thank you to Adelle, from LUSH (the nice smelly bath-and-cosmetics-and-stuff-people), who decided that it would be a good thing, while I was in the UK last week, if I went to their King's Road spa and got a "synaesthesia" massage

I wanted to relax, and that was what I got.

It was both perfectly awesome and slightly silly (although nowhere near as silly as the YouTube video implies), and the silly somehow seemed to help the awesome along. An amazing massage from Morag, along with colours, scents, birdsong and suchlike. The sort of thing you'd do for a loved one on a special occasion.

[I should add, I don't think they gave me the spa thing because I was going to blog it - more that they are fans at LUSH (witness the Stardust bathbomb) and wanted to do something nice for me. But I was very happy to blog about it anyway.]

Right. Work.

Labels: coraline the musical, lush, short stories, Where's Neil

Horse races and horse trading

It's an electronics not working kind of a day. My voice mail isn't working, for example. Meanwhile, right now I'm waiting for an Internet tech support man to ring back. I told him that the internet was slow, and he sounded very doubtful and suggested that I do a speed test. I did. It's running at 6K, which was about half of what I'd guessed...

Anyway. Just a quick, happy post to say that Fragile Things was just nominated for the Edge Hill Prize for the short story.

According the web site (http://www.edgehill.ac.uk/Faculties/HMSAS/English/CreativeWriting/NWShortStory.htm)


The Edge Hill Prize is an exciting new award for excellence in the short story.

It will be bestowed annually by Edge Hill University on the writer who, in the opinion of the judges, is the author of the best collection published the previous year from a writer born or based in the UK or Ireland.

The winner in the inaugural year will receive a cheque for £5000 at an award ceremony at the Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester on 20th July 2007.

We are pleased to announce this year’s shortlist:

* Neil Gaiman, Fragile Things (Headline Review)
* Jackie Kay, Wish I Was Here (Picador)
* Nicholas Royle, Mortality (Serpent's Tail)
* Colm Tòibìn, Mothers and Sons (Picador)
* Tamar Yellin, Kafka in Bronteland (Toby Press)

All the authors on the shortlist have been invited to read at the 2007 Short Story Conference at Edge Hill University on 21st July.

It's a really diverse bunch of nominees, and I'm thrilled that Fragile Things made it onto the list. I think people mostly think I'm exaggerating when I tell them that for me the fun is in being nominated for awards, not in winning, but overall that's true. (There have been exceptions. I loved winning the Hugo for American Gods, mind, because it was so unexpected, and I loved winning the World Fantasy Award for Sandman 19, because it was a recognition for the medium). I guess it's because I've been an awards judge and have watched what happens (all too often, everyone's second choice wins, because everyone can agree on that), and because the gap between win and lose is so small. I like being nominated -- it makes me feel like I've hit an award-nominated level of quality, and that feels good. Beyond that, it's a horse race and the end result of the horse race doesn't matter. I realise that there aren't a lot of people who feel like this about awards, and I'm also aware that it's easy for me to say, because I've already got my fair share of awards and more, so talking about not caring about the actual winning can sound, frankly, smug. But it's still how I feel.

And this is a good award: there's not enough attention paid to short stories. They're seen as trivial, or not as good as novels. They have that whiff of unreality about them that means that people who only write short stories are always being asked when they will be writing a real book. I've not seen another award given to single author collection regardless of genre.

I wish I could be in the UK for the announcement and to take part in the reading, but I'll be doing Stardust stuff in preparation for the San Diego Comic-Con on the following Wednesday, which means I'll be in the wrong country that week.

Okay. The tech support man phoned back (he said I should phone another tech support line instead). Now I can take the dog for a run.

Labels: Awards, Edge Hill Prize, short stories