please stop my assistant becoming a mad cat lady

Let's see. First things first,



My assistant, the Fabulous Lorraine, is fostering two Bengal cats, and says they're really ready to go to someone who'll love them. They were sad, scared things when she got them, and they've really turned from sad cats into rather wonderful things. She says it's time for them to find a good home because she's going to get attached to them otherwise (and she already has two Bengal cats, so risks turning into a mad cat lady if nice people don't come and adopt them). Their names are Sabrina and Ginger and they come as a pair. If you're interested, head over to Lorraine's blog.

Hi Neil. This past weekend I tried to introduce my girlfriend to sushi. It didn't go so well. She did try, and put on her best game face, for this I can only appreciate her more. Unfortunately the sushi wasn't as fresh as it could be and was over-wasabied. She is willing to try one more time (did I mention my appreciation and acknowledge my luck?) We will be driving from Des Moines to Minneapolis so I thought I would see if you had any favorite area sushi bars. Thanks.

The rule for any new thing is try the best you can find. Always. There are people who have eaten supermarket sushi, and cannot understand why anyone would want to eat rubbery, fishy, possibly slightly slimy, chilled fish on dried-out cold rice-pudding for pleasure, and think that's what sushi is. Whether it's Sushi or anything new, try the best. That way, if you don't like it, you know you don't like it, rather than a sad shadow of the thing it could be.

There are lots of solid sushi places in Minneapolis -- I really like Sakura in St Paul, as much for the people who run it as for the (mostly very good) food. Origami can be nice, so can the two Fuji-Yas. Kikagawa's okay. Other people swear by (or at) some of the others. About five years ago I wrote on this journal, in reply to a similar question that,

“To be honest, Minneapolis sushi is much of a muchness. There's nothing that's outstanding, like a Nobu, and nothing I've had so far that's been dreadful (apart from Fuji Ya when they first put sushi on their menu, about eight years ago, but they soon got the hang of it). I tend to go to Sakura in St. Paul, because Miyoko and her staff treat me like family, and the food's good.”

I was about to opine that this was because we were a long way from the sea, then I remembered that Katsu in Chicago is one of the best sushi restaurants in the world, and it's just as far from the sea as Minneapolis.

Hi Neil.

I don't think I've seen you mention this before: With the renewed interest in "Watchmen" of late, I was wondering about the 'special thanks' you received in the collected edition.

What kind of contribution did you make? Or was it just for being such a nice guy? ;)

Thanks

Robin

I thought I must have answered this here, but googled it and couldn't find anything. However I did find this interview by Brian Hibbs up at the Dreaming. (Well, in The Dreaming's google cache -- it's just been redesigned and relaunched hurrah!, and I think a few links may be broken.)

I remember Alan ringing me up when he was writing Watchmen #3, and said, "Neil, you're an educated bloke. Where does the quote `Shall not the judge of all the earth do right?' come from? I think someone said it when they were dying, but I don't know when."

I went out, and found it for him, rang him back, and said, "No. It's
Genesis. God threatening to nuke Sodom and Gomorrah." He said, "Thanks", then
went off.He rang me back a few months later and said, "Neil, I haven't any
quotes for the titles of #7 and #8. This is what happens in them, go find me a
quote." So I went off and got him "Brother to dragons, and companion to owls..."
from Job for #7, and the poem for #8, Eleanor Farjeon's "Hallowe'en". "On
Hallowe'en the old ghosts come."Also, while I was researching the Old Testament
stuff, I was working my way through a huge Biblical concordance, getting various
details. It fell open to a page on obscure history, and the name Rameses jumped
out at me. I discovered this quote that said, roughly, "I've killed all these
places, and left the widows weeping there. Everything is at peace, and
everything is great in the world." So I rang up Alan, and said, "What do you
think of this?" He said "Great! I'll stick it in #12" So you've got Ozymandias
quoting Rameses in Watchmen. (ED: #12, Pg. 20)

Which is pretty much it -- I also lent Alan the bird-book from which he got the quotes on owls that Daniel Drieberg uses in the back of Watchmen 7,

(It was really interesting reading a nineteen-year-old interview with myself. Or someone a lot like me, anyway. Cocky little bugger, wasn't I?)

FYI: If Charles Schultz drew Sandman
http://docshaner.deviantart.com/art/Charles-Schulz-s-Sandman-93543466

Hope you're well.

Cheers,
jon

Good grief!

I was recently reading a recent Fantagraphics Peanuts collection, and slowly realised that I'd read (and re-read and puzzled over) all of the Sunday strips as a very small boy. I had a book called Sunday's Fun Day Charlie Brown and never understood the title until a few weeks ago.

And finally, a lovely video interview with Tori about the Comic Book Tattoo project, and her own history with comics and plans for the future.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/herocomplex/2008/08/tori-amos-on-he.html

Labels: Cats, Peanuts, sushi, Watchmen

late night thoughts

Everyone else is at the official Beowulf Junket London hotel, but I'm not. I'm in the hotel I was in when I was in London for Stardust stuff, because in a year when you've travelled too much it's sort of nice to be able to walk through a familiar door and have someone say, "Hullo Mr Gaiman. Back again?"

Let's see. Dinner with daughter, scary goddaughter and the webelf (retired) in Kikuchi's in Hanway Street, which I've meant to try for ages and which is every bit as good as I'd heard it was. (Over at Mark Evanier's blog you can see a photo from a couple of nights ago's dinner of two comics icons and a bloke in a leather jacket who needs a shave.)

Flew over on British Airways and it was brilliant. Much more impressive than Virgin Upper Class. (Ah well. Soon the movie world will be done and it'll be back to travelling NorthWest as per usual.)

So, Neil...when a lovely person like yourself, who has adapted a story into a screenplay, shows up at red carpet events...what's that like? Meaning, do all the A-listers like Angelina say, "oh, hey! Neil Gaiman - script writer!" or do they go, "oh, hey! Who are you again?" I can't imagine what that would be like. I don't know what would be more nerve-racking: people like John Malkovich saying, "hey, I know you!" or people like him saying, "hmm...not sure I know you, but hello." I think probably the former is a bit scarier, but that's just me.

Stay well,

Andrea the Demonic Ice Cube

I think this may be a redundant thing to say, but it depends on whether they know who I am or not, and they would know who I am either because we've physically worked together and met before or some other way. (The some other way can be anything from reading Sandman to reading this blog, or just being the parent of someone who does -- something that I was reminded of at the premiere when I was introduced to Kathlyn Beatty's mum and dad.)

The people who know who I am know who I am. The ones that don't, don't. But I think that's true for whoever you are or whatever you do in life, and it isn't just about red carpets.

This isn't really a question, but didn't see any other contact info -- I ran across this item tonight for people who play Second Life: a free Beowulf avatar that looks pretty cool. Info here:

http://fabfree.wordpress.com/2007/11/07/just-for-the-guys-beowulf-avatar/. Also available is a free (virtual) movie t-shirt.

There's also a Second Life press conference for Roger and me on Saturday -- details at http://www.countingdown.com/movies/3351082/news?item_id=4001216

It'll be my first time on Second Life.
...

The webgoblin is going to be moving us from the ancient version of Blogger we're on to something newer, which should avoid some of the problems of recent days. It may create some new problems, so bear with us in the week to come, but we are hopeful that all will be well.

...

Since you are now on strike and cannot write or rewrite anything for movies or television, would it not be a wonderful time to write some comics?

Be a better time to finish a 5/8ths finished novel.

Labels: blogger, Identity -- a good thing?, sushi, The Graveyard Book

American Gods Blog, Post 126

Got up this morning at 6.50 to head off to Norwich (an acronym, Alan Bennett once wrote in a comedic sketch, for "Knickers off ready when I come home") for an 11.00am signing. If this seems a bit of an early start to you, remember that Norwich is the only city that Lucy Ramsey ever got Terry Pratchett to a signing to late, and that she wasn’t ever going to let it happen again.

It’s 10.00 am now, and so we’re cruising through Norwich looking for breakfast...

...there, and by the magic of the new paragraph break, we had breakfast and then I did a signing in Ottakar’s of Norwich – nice people (I always say that, don’t I? Well, it’s always been true of the people at the signings, and on this tour it’s been true of all the people who run the shops. It’s not always like that – every author will tell you horror stories of irritable store staff who view the author’s presence in the store as an unaccountable intrusion. Normally in these cases they also didn’t ever bother to do anything to tell anyone you were coming to their store so you’re not just a bother, but a demoralised bother because nobody came. My last one of those -- I’d managed to forget it until I was reminded by Lucy -- was at W.H. Smith’s in Brighton in 1999.).

Was hoping for review coverage of American Gods today, and didn’t see any (most of the review coverage I saw was for children’s books, inspired by yesterday’s Carnegie Award). On the other hand, we’re in at #9 in the Independent book list; while the Times has a list of the fastest selling books, and we came in at #4 as the second fastest-selling hardback fiction book in the UK (after Tony Parsons’ new novel) which has to be a good thing, as it means we’re selling through the people in bookshops and through word of mouth.

So, now in car en route to Canterbury....

...Canterbury signing was lovely. A great one to end the UK signing tour with. Saw Dave McKean and family, and just got back to the hotel (at 2.00 a.m.).

And that was today, except that I also answered a nice e-mail from an Entertainment Weekly journalist about this journal, and failed to answer an e-mail from a New York Times journalist about this journal (tomorrow, I suppose).

Oh, and during the Q&A someone asked if I really was existing on nothing but sushi, and I had to admit that my peregrinations around the UK had been practically Sushi free. F’r example, tonight I ate – before the signing – at the Café Des Amis in Canterbury, which is Dave Mckean’s favourite Mexican restaurant. Sometimes he just goes there with his notebook and sketches or thinks, and he wound up designing and doing all the art on their menu and notecards and stuff, because he wanted it to look nice.

Labels: American Gods Blog, book reviews, Canterbury, Dave McKean, Norwich, sushi, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 122

Let’s see, where were we? More to the point, where am I? (Stops. Thinks. Birmingham. Right. Knew it was Birmingham.) Just on my way to do a lunchtime signing at Andromeda Books – mainly because Andromeda was the place I signed first. It was with Kim Newman, in 1985, for a book called GHASTLY BEYOND BELIEF.

Tonight is Ottakers bookshop in Walsall – not a place I’d’ve picked to do a signing, on a tour that doesn’t take in Oxford, Cambridge or Reading, – but we’ll see how it goes.

The last couple of evening signings have been fun – Leeds two nights ago, and last night in Manchester, at Waterstones. They sold tickets (₤3.00 each) and people kept coming, several hundred of them, so the event moved from Waterstones to the church next door, which meant, I was told, No Swearing. It also meant that people didn’t get any free wine, cos it was a church.

So I read the Essie Tregowan story. Toward the end people got quieter and quieter and you could hear every squeak and echo. People laughed less, though.

The people and the organisation were both terrific. I saw Ramsey and Jenny Campbell and several other friends and old acquaintances, all-too briefly in every case. Thrown out of the church at ten p.m. as that was when the burglar alarm went on by, but a final dash of speed signing did it, then to the radio.

I had a few seconds before the interview to talk to the interviewer, so I checked to see if he’d read the book, and he hadn’t, which was good to know, as I explained more than I might have otherwise. But what was meant to be a 5 minute interview turned into a half hour chat on the air, and was very enjoyable.

Then back to the hotel, where there was no food to be had, for it was gone midnight, and all I’d had to eat since breakfast was some Tesco’s sushi that someone had brought to the signing (“my girlfriend says I’m mad but...”) so Lucy and I went to an Indian restaurant next door, and when the food wasn’t what I’d ordered I shut up and ate it, because I just wanted food and sleep. And then we walked back to the hotel, went off to our rooms, and slept the sleep of the dead. Well, I did. At 7.30 Lucy rang to say that she was still stuffed from eating a huge Indian meal at 1.00am and thought she’d skip breakfast, and I decided to do the same, so lay in the bath and read several pages of Harry Stephen Keeler’s THE CHAMELEON (the second half of the sequence that begins with THE MYSTERIOUS MR. I). An astonishingly brilliant and postmodern sort of device and structure underlies both books, marred only by the fact that the mystery of the narrator’s identity is starting to become wearisome. But as unreliable narrators go, this one is certainly up there.

On the train to Birmingham I planned to work, and instead I slept.

We’re edging up the UK charts – number 19 last week, number 16 this week.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Birmingham, interviews, sushi, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 111

Just did the oddest radio show; suddenly found myself having to have opinions about Pyramid Selling, Legalizing Heroin, Foxhunting, Bullfighting and Right vs left wing libertarianism. Occasional nods to me being an author were made, by the host, after checking his press release -- "Neil, it says here you wrote Good Omens, with Terry Pratchett, a novel about the end of the world. Now if the world really were ending do we think that we'd start looting, or just be peaceful" etc. V. odd...

Ate more conveyor belt sushi for lunch, but I think that's it for me and conveyor belt sushi. (But surely, you must be sick of sushi by now? chorus the multitudes who have been reading this blogger. Er, no, not yet, says author.)

Labels: American Gods Blog, radio, sushi

American Gods Blog, Post 110

So I am here in my hotel.

Very very tired -- got off plane at gatwick 8:30 am, met by Lucy Ramsey (Headline publicist), train to London, taxi to hotel, lunch with publisher, interview with Daily Telegraph, Interview and photosession with SFX magazine (both interviewers forgiving of long pauses. Hope photographer equally as forgiving of dissolute and unkempt and unshaven and (because room not ready) unshowered sort of look.

Then in taxi to British Fantasy Society open night. I signed some books and gave a short talk on the book and talked so more people and then Lucy rounded me up, took me back to the hotel (around 9:40pm), I went to conveyor belt sushi bar in hotel and ate sushi, then came down to hotel library and sent this, and now I'm on my way to bed...

Tomorrow I'll tell you about the interview I sat and listened to here in the hotel library waiting for the room to be ready. Tomorrow starts very soon...

....

Julie Washington's piece in the Cleveland Plain Dealer is now online....

Also getting a number of complaints from people about neilgaiman.com crashing their browsers. Suggest you e-mail the details to the authors on the webpeople (their details are on the bottom right of the front page). Of course, if it's crashing your browsers you won't be able to read that or, I imagine, read this.

And on that note I shall go to bed. Goodnight.

Labels: American Gods Blog, sushi, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 92

Ahoy shipmates. Belay there. Avast, and other nautical things.

So I`m in a car with Jennifer Hershey, on the way from Lexington to Dayton, being driven by the lovely and competent Gwenda Bond. Gwenda in her real life does something in the governor of Kentucky`s office, and she is an angel in human form. Well, more or less.

Last night I signed in the Barnes and Noble in Skokie - a huge store. I read some of Chapter Four, with Czernobog and the Zorya, answered questions and signed, signed, signed. About 150 books sold, for a total of 300-odd for the day in Chicago. My favourite present was a double CD of a 1996 Elvis Costello Chicago gig.

Somewhere a little before midnight Jennifer Hershey and I got into a car driven by Bill Young, the Author Escort, and we drove through the night to Lexington. Got to our hotel at 6:30 am to find that Gwenda had already checked us all in and set everything up, I went and found my room and went to sleep in a real bed. Woke up, showered, did a little e-mail (not much - I`m way behind right now, and probably will be for another month). It was around midday, and Gwenda turned up bearing sushi for us all for breakfast. (Really good, by the way. I never thought of Lexington as one of the great Sushi places in the world. Whodathunkit?) And then we drove to the signing.

Some time ago Gwenda used her mysterious influence to have me made a Kentucky Colonel. Now, to celebrate me actually turning up to sign books in the Commonwealth, she presented me with a certificate and a card proclaiming me an Admiral. I shall hope that Kentucky does not declare war on any other states during my lifetime or my lack of nautical knowledge will come out.

I read some of Chapters 7 and 8, up to the autopsy in Cairo scene , did a Q & A, then signed for a few hundred people - a real Head Down and Get On With It signing in order to be out on time. Strange and wonderful gifts. ("It`s wonderful. What is it?" `I`m not sure. But it`s small. You said on your journal you liked small.") Nice people - I say that every signing, but I`m always pleased and surprised by how very nice everyone is.

After the signing, I signed the pre-orders (books for people who had phoned the store and ordered copies but couldn`t be there) and a small amount of shop stock.

There`s an urban legend among authors that simply the act of signing a book that the store has in the back sells it. "A signed book is a sold book" they say. Actually this is tosh. Bookstores return books for credit, and signed hardbacks enter the system all the time; while the covers are ripped off signed paperbacks and the insides are thrown away (or walked off with). A signed book is just a book.

On this tour there`s not much stock being signed, mostly because there`s not been time, but if you`re hunting a signed book it`s always a good idea to call a bookstore after an author`s been there.

And now we`re driving to Dayton - it looks like we`ll be on time, which is a relief, as I`d not been certain it would be possible. (This was because someone had told us it was a certain 3 hour drive if we were lucky. Not the way Gwenda drives it wasn`t.)

...

Much later. We`re in a hotel room, waiting for room service. It`s 1:10 and we put in the order a bit before midnight. We`re hungry and we`re getting kind of sad. The hotel is filled with drunk Jaycees. A couple making love in one of the elevators asked me if I had a room free that they could use. On the good side, there`s a minibar in the room. On the downside, it`s completely empty. At 1.00 am we phoned down to the front desk and we told them that we didn`t had any food , and they said they`d tried to bring it and knocked on the door and we didn`t answer, and I said they hadn`t and they went off to investigate.

There. They investigated. They`re bringing it up to us. Really they are.

The food came at 1:30 am. It was cold where it should have been warm and warm where it should have been cold and tasted like they really had made it when we called down for it, ninety minutes before. We ate it anyway. We didn`t care. Then Jennifer and Gwenda said goodnight and went off to their room, and I sat here and typed this final entry.

Books and Co. in Dayton does wonderful signings, and this one was no exception. But I have to be up in a little under 4 hours time and on the plane to Cleveland, so details will have to wait for another time.

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, hotel, sushi, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 90

Blogger.

Dateline American Gods plus one.

I'm in New York in a car on my way to the Huntingdon signing, with the libretto on my lap. So...

This is what happens two days before publication: you fly in to New York, and do a gig with the Magnetic Fields. Two sets. I did two completely different readings - lots of short stuff, some new stuff, some weird stuff. Afterward it occurred to me that I did the readings completely for Neil Gaiman fans, and that the people who were solely Magentic Feilds fans (Stephen Merrit says that's how their name is most often misspelled) were probably very puzzled and perplexed. The readings I'd do for an audience entirely consisting of people who have no idea who I am or what I do would be very different from one I'd do for people who want to hear B-sides and rarities...

And I got to watch both sets of the Magnetic Fields - who also did two very different sets early evening and late. Which made me astonishingly happy. It 's a very good thing to have your favourite band in the whole world be people you like to spend time with as well as people you like to watch. Highlights for me were Stephen`s performance of Papa Was a Rodeo (first set version) and Claudia's Acoustic Guitar (second set version) and the second set duet of Yeah, Oh Yeah.

Next morning - Monday - I slept in, for the last time for a long time, then went up to the Harper Collins office and Met People. Meeting People at your publishers is part of being an author they don't tell you much about. It's fun. People are in publishing because they love books. This is an important thing to remember. (a very few of them are in publishing because they once loved books. This is sad when it happens.) I met the e-book division. They love e-books, which is harder to do. Now, I have recently acquired an e-book and haven`t had much a chance to play with it - so far I think the best thing about it will probably prove to be that you can read in the dark without waking up the person next to you. I will report back on the crop of e\books by me, which come out next week, and which I will look at on my new toy. After I met the e-book people I met the people who run HarperCollins.

(It's now half a day later, and I'm typing on the way to Newark.)

Let`s see. Monday. Okay... so, I signed books for people at HarperCollins. I had dinner with people from HarperCollins. I went to bed. I went to sleep. After about half an hour I woke up completely and unexpectedly. As the e-book was by the bed, I read the instructions for the e-book in the dark, and practised the alphabet for making notes in the dark. If I had been someone in the bed next to me, I wouldn`t have woken up, if you see what I mean.

Breakfast with the Harper Children`s Publisher, my Harper Editor and my agent about Coraline. It'll be published in 2002 - they want to move it from Spring to Fall, to get more attention for it. I say okay. (American Gods will still come out in paperback in May of 2002) Then we run, my agent and I, to her office, to meet my UK editor on Coraline, who is in New York. She`s from Bloomsbury, and I like her immediately, and look forward to working with her.

The day spins and whirls and somewhere in there I eat lunch (Onigashima on 55th St., really really good sushi) and somewhere a bit later I turn up at Borders in the World Trade Centre for the reading and signing.

A host of friends turn up before the signing as I sit in a back room signing books for staff, and I say my hellos and check my pens... and by a little after 7.00pm I'm out there in front of the people.

It`s been years since I felt nervous at a signing. This time I feel nervous: it`s publication date. It`s the first signing. I don`t know.

Borders World Trade Center is a good store. I did a signing there for Neverwhere in 1997 and it was a tight squeeze then... and there are a lot more people there now. Over 500 of them, at a guess. Seating for about 80 people at the reading, which meant that three-quarters of the people couldn' t see what was going on. (My apologies if you were one of them.) Surprised, as I said, to find I was genuinely nervous. Read the opening of the book as the nerves slowly dissipated, answered audience questions about an odd assortment of things (including, rather to my surprise, pumpkin-growing) and off we go signing...

Finished around 11:30 with over 450 AMERICAN GODS signed. (Rule here - any copies of American Gods plus two other things.) Hurrah for Daryl and the staff...

Walk out of signing to find a few friends hanging around, including my friends writer Andy Heidel (former HarperCollins publicist, now sci-fi-channel man) and his fiancee Jen the Puppet Queen (Mama Lion on Between The Lions) and the wonderful Claudia Gonson (sings, plays keyboards for and manages the Magnetic Fields). They had been hanging around for hours to say hello and maybe even buy me a drink. I haven't eaten since lunchtime, and tell them so, and we wind up eating upstairs in a little Japanese place somewhere half a Manhattan away from Borders World Trade Centre. Where we immediately bump into someone who had been at the signing but had, after three hours, given up and wandered off...

Get back late to hotel. Bath. Sleep. It`s late. That was publication day.

Wake up rather in need of a shave to learn that I forgot to pack a razor. Right. I'll buy a razor. Run for breakfast with my agent, and from there to a meeting with a booking agency who want to represent me as a public speaker. Am kindly disposed to them because they represented Douglas Adams and had already approached me before he died - in fact I'd been ready to call him and find out whether he liked them... Not that I want a career as a public speaker I should add, but I need somewhere to send all the requests that are always coming in for me to go to universities and cutlural festivals and such, and these guys are probably going to be better at saying "No" than I am.

On the way out I learn how many copies of American Gods were sold on the first day of publication at Borders, at Barnes and Noble, at Waldenbooks. ("Is that good?" I ask. I'm told that, yes, it's good. It's bestseller numbers. Now we just have to hope it keeps up for the rest of the week.)

Lunch at Yamaguchi on 45th St (their prices are twice what Onigashima was for worse food.) An afternoon of drop-in signings.

Drop-ins are just that. Hit and run attacks by an author, where you go in, sign the shop stock, go away again. This can be an unpleasant experience, or a pleasant one. Ever since a store in San Francisco had a line of 60 people waiting for me at one of these, I've forbidden publishers to tell bookstores any more about drop-in times than than "He'll be in in the afternoon". But frankly, for as many places as you drop in and they're excited and have alerted their favourite customers to hang around the store all afternoon to meet you, there are as many stores that you get to be met by blank looks from store assistants and they explain that they aren't sure where Dave is, and Dave is the only person who knows where the single copy of your book that they are sure they have somewhere was put.

I sign a heap of American Gods at the Barnes and Nobles in Astor Place and Chelsea.(if you`re in New York and you want a signed copy, that might be the best way to go.) Realize I`m not going to have time to buy a razor before the signing.

Out to Huntingdon Long Island to Book Revue. Sign staff stuff. Eat a hasty tuna salad (I`d learned my lesson on not eating at all the night before). It 's a medium-sized signing in a thunderstorm, although lots more people can sit and see what's going on than at Borders. I read The I-Love-Lucy scene. It must have been a unique experience for the audience, hearing a bemused English author doing his Lucille Ball impression accompanied by ominous thundery rumbles. I'm not saying it was any good, mind you. Just that it's not an everyday occurrence.

(That last bit was typed in Newark airport. Now I'm writing sitting in Chicago O Hare airport, waiting for Jennifer Hershey, my editor, who is doing this leg with me.)

Book Revue was a pleasant signing - nice staff, nice store - huge as a Barnes and Noble superstore, but it smelled like books, like paper and wood and old binding glue - and, as always, the people in the line were nice people. Finished a little after eleven. 170+ copies of American Gods were sold, many hundreds of people were made happy.

In the car on the way there and on the way back I got to talk to the book`s publicity team, Jack and Dee Dee. It was good

Got back to my hotel by around 1.30 am. Put in for the 6.30 wake-up call, ate a banana, did some packing. Noticed a message on my phone and called and discovered a package of images had arrived for me from England, so called down for them, and waited.

Package arrived. It made me happy. I slept.

And the wake-up call stumbled me out of the hotel and there was the driver. "Off to Newark," I said. "No, to La Guardia," he said. I panicked. We checked our papers, and I was right and he`d been given the wrong information. And I started typing this.

They may have served breakfast on the plane. I don`t know. I was asleep. Now I`m in Chicago. A few minutes to post this and run. Then I really have to find a razor.

Labels: A Walking Tour of the Shambles, American Gods, American Gods Blog, Coraline, Magnetic Fields, sushi

American Gods Blog, Post 24

Hard work doing the US galleys. They were waiting for me when I got up Saturday morning, went off first thing this morning (Monday) and I didn’t do anything else over the weekend, except go and eat some nice sushi.

Someone’s done a lot of find and replaces -- NEVER a good idea in galleys. Dave Langford put something in Ansible recently about how on the galleys of my novel Neverwhere someone Found-and-Replaced all the flats to apartments. People said things apartmently, and believed the world was apartment.

None of these were quite that bad – they were subtler...

F’rinstance: All instances of the word round have become around. Fine for walking around the lake, less helpful for the around glasses, the around holes in the ice; blonde has uniformely become blond, and so blonder has become blondr; for ever has become, universally, forever, and for everything thus became foreverything, and we also got foreveryone, forevery time and so on. Each had to be found and caught.

Little things – the icelandic þú became bú, which won’t bother anyone who isn’t Icelandic. Blowjob had inexplicably become blow job again. (I think a blowjob is a unit of sexual currency, whereas a blow job is something you can get -- or indeed, give --instead of a wrist job, a sleeve job or a window job.) And once again every damn comma gets scrutinised. And I changed an Advertise to an advertize which was nice of me.

I changed the copyedited ‘vast hall of death’ back to ‘vasty hall of death’ which was what I’d originally written; it’s a quote from Matthew Arnold, which was in its turn quoted by Roger Zelazny, and I think that people can get the idea that vasty’s an archaic form of vast.

Not sure of the logic that has people talk about a “motel 6" or “drive down Highway 14" but also talk about “Comparative Religion One-oh-one”. But I just put a query next to it and left it.

I am, having read my book three times in three versions in the last three weeks, checking everything, finally feeling very done with it. Noticed some sloppy sentences this time through, ones that Fowler would have tutted at. If I could fix them with a word, I did; if they needed to be completely rewritten, I left them, figuring that perfection can wait. Maybe for the next book.
...

The first of the blurbs is in. It’s from Peter Straub, who says, in an e-mail to my editor, Jennifer Hershey...

Dear Jennifer --

Many thanks to both you and Neil for sending me the early galley of
AMERICAN GODS. I think it is a terrific book, clearly Neil's best to
date, and am very happy to offer the following quote:

From his first collection of short stories, Neil Gaiman has always been
a remarkable, remarkably gifted writer, but AMERICAN GODS is the first
of his fictions to match, even surpass, the breathtaking imaginative
sweep and suggestiveness of his classic SANDMAN series of graphic
novels. Here we have poignancy, terror, nobility, magic, sacrifice,
wisdom, mystery, heartbreak, and a hardearned sense of resolution - a
real emotional richness and grandeur that emerge from masterful
storytelling.

Will that do? It's a wonderful novel, and I congratulate both you and
Neil for bringing it into being.

Peter Straub
...

Which has me happy as a sandboy. (What is a sandboy? Why are they so happy?) I guess because I really wanted American Gods to be a book that had the power and scale and resonance that Sandman did (and which, by their nature, and not necessarily to their detriment, neither Neverwhere nor Stardust could have had -- they were intrinsically smaller, lighter things). That it’s done that for one reader – and that that one reader is a writer of whose work I have been a fan since I read Shadowlands at about 16 – makes me feel like the last two years of hard writing really had a point.

...

The permission came in on the Tom Waits song Tango Till They’re Sore, and I got the first word from the Please Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood people, and I sent them the follow-up fax. Waiting on e.e. cummings still. But the permissions should be done VERY soon.

...

And an e-mail in from a correspondent who shall remain anonymous:

I've looked at some of your journal and I'd never realised the actual effort
and workload that goes into it AFTER the book is 'written'. Nor why it took
so long between concept and hardback appearance - until now that is. Is
your brain "American Godded Out' or still on an enthusiasm roll?

Dear Anonymous of New Zealand. I’m still enthusiastic. But I’m very pleased I don’t have to read it again this week.

And I’m pleased that some of the mechanics of taking a book to publication are coming out in the journal. People know that authors write books, and then books appear on the shelves. Some of them are bestsellers, and some aren’t. But that’s all most people know. One reason I liked the idea of doing this journal was being able to explain the stuff that happens between handing in the mss and publication. (That there are no authorial grumbles about either the UK or the US book covers is very unusual -- I’m happy with them both and they both look like covers for the book I wrote.)

Someone on The Well asked. Why don’t writers just edit their own books, kinda like musicians who produce themselves?

And the answer to that, Bill Clintonlike, is probably, it depends what you mean by Edit.
Edit means so many things. Editors do so many things.

In the US they like to get more involved. This can be a good thing or a bad thing. Michael Korda once told me it all dated back to Jacqueline Susanne, who wrote books that were readable, but all typed in upper case in something that didn’t have a lot to do with English; so editors began getting their feet wet and getting involved in the writing process, making suggestions for things to cut, rewriting where they had to, and so on.

It’s certainly true that UK editors tend much more to look at a manuscript, ask themselves “is this publishable?” and if the answer’s yes, they publish it.

(In my case, the best thing an editor can do while I’m writing something is to keep cheerful and encouraging, say nice things, and keep getting words out of me by hook or by crook. I’ll sort out the problems for the second draft.)

Then there are copyeditors. Most editors now are too busy to actually spend 30 plus hours reading a manuscript with a blue pencil scrutinising each wayward comma. But, they figure, somebody has to do it.

In each case, the main thing an editor is meant to do when they do their jobs is to make you look good. I think the analogy is much less a musician producing her own records, and a lot more like an actor doing his own make-up and wigs, or an actor in a one man show doing her own lighting. Sure, you can do it yourself, but it’s much easier, and you’ll get a better look, if you get another pair of eyes and hands in to do it.

Editors make you look good. That’s their job. Whether it’s by pointing out that the relationship between the lead character and his father was never satisfyingly resolved, or by pointing out you’ve changed the spelling of the name of the landlady between her two appearances. Like the lighting guy, they are another pair of eyes.

And I always like another pair of eyes. If I’m writing a short story I’ll send the first draft out to a bunch of friends for feedback; they may see things I’ve missed, or point out places I thought I’d got away with something that I hadn’t. Or tell me the title is crap. Or whatever. I listen, because it’s in my best interests to listen. I may listen and then decide that, no, I like my title, and the relationship between the protagonist and his father is just what I want it to be, or whatever, but I’ll still listen.

(Something I learned ages ago. When people tell you there’s something wrong with a story, they’re almost always right. When they tell what it is that’s wrong and how it can be fixed, they’re almost always wrong.)

Of course, there are authors out there who are not edited. This is not necessarily a good thing. I read a bestselling book by a bestselling one of them. He had a flashback scene in which one of the neighborhood kids was wandering around, twelve years before he was born. An editor would have put a pencil mark beside it and said “Do you mean this?” and the embarrassed author would have admitted that, no, he wasn’t thinking, he just mentally thought of the names of some of the kids and forgot that one of them would have been minus twelve in that scene, and fixed it. So I don’t plan to become one of the great unedited.

I would say that when you find a good editor, you stick with them; and when you find a good copyeditor you stick with them as best you can.

(Often, in the US, they won’t tell you who the copyeditor is. They are more anonymous than taxmen. Apparently, there have been too many occasions in the history of publishing of overstressed authors ringing up copyeditors at 2:00am and screaming “I’m going to kill you, you bastard – how dare you change my noble and beautiful forgot to an inspid and lustreless forgotten?” that you are actively discouraged from talking to them before, during or after the copyediting process. This makes it hard to know when you got a good one, and harder still to keep them when you did.)
...

We’re very close to posting the details on the signing tour. Honest.

And, whew.

Labels: American Gods, American Gods Blog, copy editing, editors, Galleys, Peter Straub, quotes, sushi