The Wedding Mystery Explained

I went to New Orleans and I had the best birthday I've ever had.

There was food (the best New Orleans food, which is the best food in America. I loved eating at the Commander's Palace, and at Muriel's, but I loved The Green Goddess more - Chefs Chris and Paul are heroes). (The "Mezze of Destruction" secret message should still give you a secret foodie easter egg of some kind, if you eat there and say it to your server. It's the secret "Neil sent me" code.)

On the morning of my birthday I was surprised by a wonderful unexpected art-event flashmob wedding.

If you head over to Amanda's blog and read this (and you should. Trust me) http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/1597897908/still-life-with-wedding-party

you will learn what Amanda did and how she pulled it off. It was amazing.

And once you've read that (go and read it. It'll make more sense of the rest of this) head over to http://www.kylecassidy.com/pix/travel/2010/nfgafpnola/afp-nfg-wedding-album-1.pdf in order to see some beautiful photos arranged into a wedding album by Kyle Cassidy. I don't think I knew that any of those photos were being taken except for the last.

As you read Amanda's blog and look at Kyle's photos you can marvel at the ease with which she persuaded me, without in any way suspecting anything was odd, to wear a top hat in my search for breakfast and tea; you can observe the way that I am astonished by Amanda's first surprise and then banjaxed by her second as a wedding party appears from nowhere; then marvel at the way that, when I think I can be no happier, she tops it with an actual produced-out-of-nowhere cup of tea.

This was how it ended (click on the photo to see it big enough to appreciate it), with Amanda and me with white paint on my face flanked by my glorious daughters, with our friends making happy faces and me holding tea.

Next time we get married, I'll marry the lady, not the statue, and there will be invited people and not a flash mob, and I'll know it's happening in advance, and there will be a paper and it will be legally recognised, but I cannot imagine it will be any more joyous than this was. And truthfully, after that morning's magical wedding, I don't think I could ever feel more married.

A lovely photo of Maddy and me and Holly by Adriane Biondo

...

(PS: As a result of the last interim post, I have learned that the Sushi making kit was from Lena St George-Sweet and Hamish Brown. I love my blog.)

(PPS: More of the New Orleans trip to come)

Labels: A Wedding, birthdays, tea and not-tea, The green goddess

Three Quarters of The Way Around the World...

I didn't expect to have time to blog until tomorrow, but I'm awake early.

So, let's see. I'm in the UK. Arrived friday night, saw my daughter Holly and my scary goddaughter Hayley, who now share a flat. Holly and I ate at Kikuchi in Hanway Street. She told me about the voluntary closing of The Hump, and suggested that Michael Sheen and I may have precipitated the raid.

Up early on Saturday and I took the train to Brighton, where I was a surprise guest at the World Horror Con. James Herbert was the Special Guest of Honour, and I was there to interview him in front of an audience. I'd first interviewed Jim back in 1984, when I was a young journalist. Seeing him and his wife Eileen, and meeting his family, made me really happy. Later in the day, Ingrid Pitt was not up to being interviewed for the full hour of her programme item, and so Kim Newman interviewed me for about 35 minutes. I signed for Stanza Press's Off The Coastal Path, which has my poem "My Last Landlady" in it

A few people complained that if they'd known I was going to be there they would have brought suitcases filled with my books, which I think might be very good reason for not telling people I was going to be there. I had a great time and actually met people I didn't know before the con, and caught up with old friends, neither of which normally happen at conventions. Hmm...

Yesterday was really fun. There's a project I started in 1996 that is now coming to fruition. We'll call it Mystery Project X for now. It's making me happy. And I'm getting to work with producer Hilary Bevan Jones, who produced "Statuesque", which also makes me happy, while possibly dragging Paul Cornell into my madness, ditto.

The hard part of yesterday was learning about the Moscow suicide bombers. Five days ago I was riding the Moscow tube, was at one of those stations, was discovering just how much I liked the Russians. A week ago it would have been another sad news item, now it was horribly personal: these were my friends.

(Here's a journal filled with photos of me and Russian readers: http://satu-san.livejournal.com/49214.html)

And my favourite me in Moscow photograph:

Today belongs, for the next 13 hours (beginning as soon as I get out of this hotel bed and go and have a cup of tea and walk up to to Soho) to the Graveyard Book movie.

Tomorrow morning belongs to Doctor Who, when I will see Mr Moffat and learn what I'll need to do to rewrite my episode from being a Season 5 to being a Season 6 one. Then I fly home, having gone, very literally, around the world.

After that, in a couple of weeks it's National Library Week, for which I am honorary Chairman, and a couple of events I'm doing to go along with it: Indianapolis on the 16th, where I will be delivering the McFadden Memorial Lecture (a free, first-come-first-seated event), Chicago for the CBLDF on the 17th (Prime Seats now gone, General seats still available,buy tickets now http://c2e2.com/en/Events/Neil-Gaiman), and a talk at Minnesota's Washington County Library on April the 18th...

(Here's a competition that my friend Laurie King is running as part of National Library Week. Go and take part: http://www.laurierking.com/events/twenty-weeks-of-buzz/fantasy-library-contest)

And then, the fourteen months of madness that started with Coraline's release at the same time as the Graveyard Book was awarded the Newbery Medal will be over with and done, and I will go back to being a quiet sort of writer who makes stuff up. And about time, too.

Labels: Moscow, Mystery Thing, National Library Week, tea and not-tea, the Brighton Horror

Now We Are... Eight?

So I'm standing in the kitchen in a vague sort of way, and it occurs to me that I made a cup of tea some time ago. Not proper tea, more a sort of camomile bedtime thing. I distinctly remember making it. I wander around vaguely inspecting all the places that a cup of tea might profitably wait for me, beginning with By The Kettle, and On The Kitchen Table, then getting a little more desperate, I checked The Islandy Thing In The Middle Of The Kitchen You Can Put Things On, and even, without any hope of actually finding it in there, The Fridge.

It was at this point I started wondering if I had actually made said cup of tea or merely imagined it, and what the likelihood was of it having been stolen by gnomes if I had really made it.

I then remembered that today was the blog's eighth birthday.  (Here's the first real post. It's number two because number one was a test post.)  I thought, I'd better go and post something about that, and wandered back to the sofa I've been mostly inhabiting for two days, and there, beside where I had been sitting, ignored and undrunk, where it had probably sitting for at least an hour, was a cup of very cold camomile tea.

And I thought, eight years ago, when I began carefully charting the progress of American Gods, nervously dipping my toes into the waters of blogging, would I have imagined a future in which, instead of recording the vicissitudes of bringing a book into the world, I would be writing about not-even-interestingly missing cups of cold camomile tea?

And I thought, yup. Sounds about right. Happy Eighth birthday, blog. 

(I expected in honour of the birthday month, the Oracle is now a turbanned me, and indeed, it is: http://www.neilgaiman.com/oracle/)

This post was brought to you by a cup of cold camomile tea.

Labels: birthdays, blogging about the blog in a strange mirror-like pattern that leads into infinity, tea and not-tea

Tulsa June 28 and suchlike

Details for the reading/talking/signing in Tulsa on June 28th is now up at http://www.roadworkok.com/gaiman.htm

I'm presenting a screening of Beowulf and talking about that (and I have no doubt, everything else). And I'm kind of excited as I have never been to Oklahoma, and I will, I hope, get to look at Lafferty stuff while I am there...

...

Lots of people have been writing in asking me for my opinion on the proposed Orphan Copyright legislation.

Currently I'm reading http://www.copyright.gov/orphan/orphan-report.pdf and I won't have an opinion until I've finished reading it. Then I'll read everything else I can find (like this http://lessig.org/blog/2007/02/copyright_policy_orphan_works.html and the mountains of stuff up at http://www.illustratorspartnership.org/01_topics/article.php?searchterm=00185). And then I'll probably put something up here, or point to the sanest place on the web I've run across.

The only thing that most of the emails coming in on it right now have in common is the conviction that common people are being disenfranchised, and that if the legislation goes through you will now be forced to pay to register copyright on something in order to seek damages – which has, I'm afraid, always been the case. You own your copyright at the moment of creation, but, at least in the US, you still have to register it and pay the registration in order to pursue damages for copyright infringement.

(The Copyright office FAQs on this at http://www.copyright.gov/help/faq/faq-general.html#mywork are helpful and clear on it.)

[Edit to add: Hi Neil,

All the hoopla about orphan copyrights is just that -- hoopla. This post explains a lot:

http://maradydd.livejournal.com/374886.html

I found it on Boing-Boing.

Best,

Jess

I hadn't linked to the hysterical post at http://mag.awn.com/?ltype=pageone&article_no=3605
because it was obviously hysterical and, even from the little I know about copyright, it was ill-informed. But it's nice to see it taken apart. And just as nice to see http://ursulav.livejournal.com/758643.html]

...

Hey Neil,

I heard you were reading at Comic-Con New York. While that would be awesome, $500+ is very steep so keep us informed on other eastern US appearances, please!

There's a party/reception for VIPs (VIPs being defined here as "people who have bought $500 tickets") at which you get a gift bag, preferred seating and I sign stuff for you. But a ticket for the actual event itself is only $20, which is much cheaper -- plus $30 for a membership to the convention on Friday (or $45 for the whole weekend).

Here's the link to get tickets at the New York Comic-Con site.

I'm planning on reading Orange, and some of The Graveyard Book.

...


Dear Mr. Gaiman,

With all due respect, what on earth are you thinking!

You sir, are an Englishman. Nevermind that you have seen fit to galavant over to the colonies for an adventure or three, you seem to have been taken in by those New World types.

I refer sir, to the fact that you seem to have GIVEN UP TEA!! Have you, at some moment in this overlong winter, taken leave of your senses? Think it through man! The answer is not less tea but MORE!! I suggest Assam, or failing that a pint of gin.

Yours worriedly,

Spike,

Oxford.

ENGLAND (having a cuppa).

Obviously I'm still English. If I'd become American I would have stopped drinking coffee.

Labels: orphan works, tea and not-tea, tulsa oklahoma

Why Introductions?

Good morning.

Well, I'm now into the second week of off-tea and eating-lots-of-fruit-and-veg-when-I-get-hungry. Drinking lots of water, and juicing things, and occasional herb teas. Weight is starting to drop. Concentration, which went completely out the window when I stopped drinking tea, is returning, and sleep patterns are changing.

The weather was wonderful two days ago, then it rained yesterday, and today I woke up and watched big white flakes of snow drifting past my window and thought, Oh bugger, and decided to stay in bed for days or weeks until the weather became more sensible, a thought that lasted until the dog needed to go out, two or even three minutes later.

Starting to plan out the coming year. I wrote a proposal for a personal, non-fiction book about travel and myth, and my publisher wants to do it, so now I'm figuring out all the whens and the hows, especially of the travel bits. And I'm deciding whether I'll blog from the road or stop while I'm travelling, leave the computer at home, and put the effort into writing in notebooks, or what.

It's ten days until the CBLDF reading and Q&A that I'm doing in New York at the comic-con. This just turned up in my email from http://www.cbldf.org/ and I thought I'd post it here as a reminder to anyone in the New York area...

Neil Gaiman Benefit Reading at NYCC
Tickets Available Now!

April 18: Experience the magic of Neil Gaiman at an exclusive reading to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Neil Gaiman, the renowned author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, and films will be presenting a live reading benefiting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at the New York Comic-Con. The appearance, a paid ticketed reading event, will be called an "An Evening With Neil Gaiman" with 100% of the proceeds going to benefit the First Amendment legal work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

General admission tickets to the reading are available for $20, while supplies last. Tickets for the VIP reception are strictly limited to 100 pieces, and will include access to meet Mr. Gaiman and receive two signatures, plus a gift bag of exclusive Neil Gaiman oriented items from CBLDF, and preferred seating at the reading. VIP reception tickets are available for $500.

Seating is limited and going fast. Reserve your General Admission or VIP Ticket now! __._,_.

In addition to which, Jeff Smith is also doing an event for the CBLDF. With an open bar...

Toast the arrival of Jeff Smith's new comic book epic RASL! Come meet Jeff Smith in person at his only New York City appearance of the season, enjoy an open bar, and get a takeaway bag of tons of exclusive RASL goodies. Only 100 general admission tickets and 26 VIP tickets are available so get your ticket now! Tickets are available now! Get the Full Details here!

And then there's the Hellboy 2 team...



Why can't we give you fanart at the signings in Australia?

(Boggles for a moment.) Of course you can give me art. Or anything you like, short of body parts. If it's too much for me to carry, I'll smile sweetly at the people hosting the events and get them to post it back to me. (So a month after I get home I get a box filled with cool things I'd forgotten.)

recently, on my latest hunt for more books, i bought myself a nice fat copy of fantasy short storys by Rudyard Kipling. That night i made my mug of cocoa and got comfy to read a couple, when turning the first few pages i happened upon a quick little 'hello and welcome to the book' by a certain mr N Gaiman. ok, so not really strange. Writers write intoroductions, nothing odd about that. but this is by no means an isolated incedent! it seems like ever since i started to read your books(become aware of you etc), you've been popping up in introductions everywhere. it appears to me that you do a fare share of them.

is doing an introduction something you enjoy and so you take most of the chances given to you? (you like sticking your 'neil was ere' mark on books)

or as an artist who works and has worked over several different medias do you simply get alot of offers?

what do you enjoy most about writing one?


ps. sorry if this question is slightly untimely now that you are unofficialy/officialy banned from taking any on!

Writing an introduction is really fun and pleasurable -- it's like introducing a really good friend at a party to a lot of people who don't know him or her, but you know they'd be friends if they met. You want to go "This is Mr Poe. He's written some wonderful poems and stories -- they're especially good if you read them aloud," or "This is Doctor Who. He built my internal landscape." Or "This is The Thirteen Clocks. If you feel sad you should read this book and it will probably make you feel better."

I get asked to write a lot more introductions than I say yes to, and they take up much more time than I imagine they will when I say yes, but there are very few that I regret having done. Really, I ought to try and make a place on this website that collects them. (Those not collected in Adventures In The Dream Trade, anyway.)

Labels: and snow, CBLDF, interesting weather, not staying in bed for a week, Something to do with old introductions, tea and not-tea