Tour Dates From a Vanishing Author

Sorry that I've been away. I am a bad blogger.

I've been putting off blogging until I had the details of the June AMERICAN GODS TENTH ANNIVERSARY tour, and the last date came in today. (Yes, I know I've mentioned some of these before, and some of them have been up on WHERE'S NEIL. But this is all of them together in one place.)

There's still some information I don't have. I am pretty sure that we'll do most of these events GRAVEYARD BOOK tour style -- do a really long event with lots of talking and reading and being interviewed and audience Q &A, with me pre-signing a few thousand books. It's possible that some of the events may actually have proper signings -- you'll need to ask them.

And an apology - the Washington DC date is already Sold Out. It sold out as soon as it was announced by the Press Club.

New York City – Tuesday, June 21 at 8:00pm. (Was sold out but they have opened the balcony so there are seats again.)
Address: 92nd Street Y, Kaufmann Concert Hall, Lexington Ave @ 92nd Street.
(Link: http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T-LC5AE34)

Portsmouth, NH – Wednesday, June 22 at 7:30pm.
Address: The Music Hall, 28 Chestnut St., Portsmouth, NH 03801
Hosted by RiverRun Bookstore,The Music Hall and New Hampshire Public Radio.
(Link: http://www.themusichall.org/calendar/event/neil_gaiman)

Washington, DC – Thursday, June 23 at 6:30 pm SOLD OUT. SORRY.
Address: National Press Club, 529 14th Street, NW Washington, DC 20045
Hosted by Barnes & Noble.
(Link: http://www.press.org/neilgaiman)
(The Press Club will be selling signed books, though, through their website.)

Minneapolis/ St Paul - Friday, June 24 - 8:00pm
WITS at the Fitzgerald Theatre, 10 E. Exchange St.; St. Paul MN
With Musical Guest Josh Ritter
John Moe and John Munson in charge
(I think there's a real signing after this one, although there will, I hope, also be pre-signed books for those who do not want to wait.)
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/radio/programs/wits/
There are still some tickets at http://fitzgeraldtheater.publicradio.org/tickets/box_office.shtml

(Local controversy about WITS including how much I am being paid to appear and who I am giving the money to at http://minnesota.publicradio.org/collections/special/columns/polinaut/archive/2011/05/gaiman_to_make.shtml)


Seattle – Sunday, June 26 at 7:00pm.
Address: Town Hall Seattle, 1119 8th Ave. Seattle WA 98101.
Hosted by University Book Store.
(Link: http://www.bookstore.washington.edu/events/events.taf?page=201106

Technically their tickets go on sale on the 21st but call 1800-3357323 (University Bookstore) & they'll take your order for tickets &/or the book. They'll also take your reservation.)

San Francisco – Monday, June 27 at 7:30pm SOLD OUT. SORRY.
Address: First Congregational Church, 2345 Channing Way, Berkeley, CA
Hosted by Booksmith
(Tickets: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/179279

info: http://www.booksmith.com, and http://berkeleyarts.org)

Los Angeles - Tuesday, June 28 at 8:00pm
Address: Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills, CA 90211
(Tickets: http://rarebirdlit.myshopify.com/products/neil-gaiman-at-saban-theatre.

Info on www.sabantheatre.org and www.rarebirdlit.com)

Given the jaw-dropping speed with which some of these events have already sold out, or have nearly sold out, I suggest getting tickets early if you're thinking of going, and not putting it off until later.

....

The American Gods illustration above is from http://ka-ha-si.blogspot.com/2011/05/storm-is-coming.html and I loved it.


...

AUDIES 2011

I was thrilled to learn that the Audiobook of STORIES won the Audie Award for Best Short Story Collection -- congratulations to readers Anne Bobby, Jonathan Davis, Peter Francis James, Katherine Kellgren and Euan Morton.

...

Here's a really fun DOCTOR WHO interview that Charlie McDonnell did with me when I was in Cardiff last year:



Charlie is really nice. He also makes great videos and I like his music.

...

This is a great list of Things You Should Think About Reading in Genre: http://yetistomper.blogspot.com/2011/05/for-win-guide-to-2011s-best-of-best.html

...

Right now I'm hiding out in a house borrowed from friends, more or less off the internet (on a very old, slow, practically unworkable steam-driven local internet that probably still has valves, or even sprockets) to get some writing done for people who are waiting patiently for things.

It's fun, beautiful, I swam today for the first time in ages, tomorrow I have promised myself a run on the beach (if I put it down here it has to happen). But mostly I'm just writing.

Last week my glorious wife came out to the Midwest to visit me at home. (So far this year I've always gone to Boston or Brooklyn to be with her, or we've coincided in Mexico and Tasmania and such.) It was wonderful just spending quiet time together, and being with her and with my son Mike, his lady Courtney (Mike just moved to Chicago from San Francisco) and my youngest daughter Maddy.

We cuddled and talked and walked and talked and caught up, and on Monday we failed to go off with Sharon and Bill to inspect the bees because we were still cuddling and talking (fortunately I can check Sharon's Birdchick Blog and see that everyone's doing fine). I'm so curious about the Russian bees. We've gone from three Russian hives to two (we combined two hives into one, using the newspaper method).

And then, all too soon, it was over. It gets harder to say goodbye to Amanda each time, and we're still figuring out how two busy people who are on the road too much can be together as much as possible. We spent time on this trip staring at our calendars and working out times and ways we could match velocity. At some point this year we may go on the road together, we've decided.

It's going to be really hard when she makes her next album, and goes on the road for 18 months to promote it.

For now, you can get an idea of Amanda's schedule over the next few months, and some hints at a couple of not-yet-formally announced events of mine, including a London one, at http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/6092365751/my-new-evil-plans-tour-dates-in-states-uk

...

Former Web-Elf Olga Nunes' plans to take over the world, or at least make art in it, continue to grow. I love the photo at http://olganunes.com/2011/05/post.php, (along with the ad from Kevin Smith's podcast for her LAMP project).

Matt Cheney's Sandman reactions and thoughts continue to be worth reading and following. The latest is "Soft Places", the Marco Polo story: http://www.boomtron.com/2011/05/sandman-neil-gaiman-meditations-fables-reflections-soft-places/. I hope he collects them one day.

Also pleased to see that they are inspiring discussion and thought. Cheryl Morgan takes Matt to task for a comment in an earlier review, while writing (from my perspective, anyway) the most perceptive and accurate summary of Wanda's role in A Game of You I've seen so far at http://www.cheryl-morgan.com/?page_id=10825.

Right. I need to go and make art.

...

Here's a photo from the last time I was here, eighteen months ago, with Amanda and Cabal.

He was teaching her Yoga on the beach.



And finally, Weird Things Customers Say In Bookshops. One bookseller's list. So funny. So sad. So strangely similar to things booksellers have told me all around the world. Read it and sigh.

Labels: american gods tenth anniversary edition, apologies, downward-facing dog, looking-off-to-the-side dog, Sandman, tour

I am not a number...

Still in England. Had a day where I managed to see a lot of the people I needed to, mostly by throwing all the social meetings I wanted to make with friends under a bus. Plans for the Ireland/Scotland/England bit of the Graveyard Book tour are now in place, for a start. Not sure whether I talk about the other three things, but they were fun.

Todd Klein has announced the on sale date for the prints he did -- he points out that the Alan Moore ones sold out in three days, so if you're interested, it's there for you -- http://kleinletters.com/Blog/?p=1305

I was sent a link to the list of SFX Magazine's compiled-from-lists-sent-in-by-the-public top 100 SF writers. I spent most of it with my eye running down from 100 going "He's better than me. He's a lot better than me. She's much better than me. What's he doing down there, he's better than that..." but it was nice to come in at #3 anyway -- and when they let me know SFX assured me that I was already at #3 by a good margin when I linked to the survey on this blog, so I hadn't skewed it, which always my fear.

Labels: absent friends, bigger on the inside, sfx, Todd Klein, tour

Beware the March of Ideas

I'm in Cologne, in Germany, in a hotel that seems to have been built
inside a giant water tower, and am paying an astonishing amount for
internet access. I don't have flu so far, and have had no travel
disasters.

There's a reading and a signing tomorrow -- details at:

http://www.litcologne.de/va/160307/gaimankoester.php

Dear Neil,Today I wandered into an EMPiK bookstore and picked
up a paper informing about you booksigning in Kraków and Warsaw. (for
wchich I can't wait, by the way.)There was an article about you, and
it said that you're "linked to Poland" because your grandparents came
from Lodz. It that true, or did they completely make it up?I live in
Lodz, so you can pretty much imagine my amazement.Love from,Sylwia
G

My paternal great-grandfather was thrown out of Lodz, where the family
owned a department store, for being the black sheep of the family. I'm
not certain whether my grandfather was born there or born in Belgium
on the way to England. (I do know my grandfather never had a passport,
and was, until he died, considered a "stateless person", which is the
kind of thing I would have put into Mr Punch if I'd known it
then.)

Hey Neil:After some investigative work, I determined that (1) a while
ago, you said that the reason you don't have a LibraryThing account is
that you don't have the time and (2) recently, you have been blogging
about how you are entering your book collection into a database. So I
said to myself, wouldn't it be sweet if Neil were to put his library
on LibraryThing? Because even if he doesn't have time to tag most of
those books, we could still see what he owns. Which would be beyond
sweetness.

That's definitely the plan. Tim offered me a LibraryThing account or two
ages ago, and when everything's on a database I'm looking forward to
importing it to LibraryThing and getting it up there.

This isn't a question, I just thought I'd let you know that on
one of [adult swim]'s commercials last night, in which they bemoaned
the death of Captain America and exclaimed how Stan Lee would never do
something so stupid an attempt to be "deep and meaningful", they
attached a "P.S. Neil Gaiman already has deep and meaningful covered".
Or it said something like that. All right, hope you have a lovely
day!

And they show Futurama. (People have asked if I'm jealous of
Alan Moore for being on The Simpsons, and I'm not. If he were
a head in a jar in Futurama, on the other hand...)


Hi Neil,I read this blog nearly daily and have no idea how I
missed info on "M is for Magic" and "Interworld." What are these
books? Are the stories in "...Magic" found in your other collections
or are they new?And have no clue about "Interworld." Please help out a
longtime fan. Cheers,Greg Trax

Interworld is a novel I wrote with Michael Reaves in about
1998. We wrote it because we had an idea for an animated series, and
we kept explaining it to TV people who got confused, so we wrote a
treatment, which seemed to confuse them even more, so we wrote a novel
-- a sort of transdimensional romp. (First mentioned on this blog at
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2002/01/handed-in-narrative-draft-of-ramayana.asp.)

You can see the cover up at http://www.jamesjean.com/illustrations/interworld.html

M is for Magic is for school libraries and such. Most of the
stories in it have been collected, although some of them aren't easy
to find (like http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories/blackbirdstory)
and there's one story that's never been collected ("How to Sell the
Ponti Bridge" from 1984) and a new one, "The Witch's Headstone" that
will appear first in the Dann/ Dozois WIZARDS collection.

...


I now have a corporate website! I've always wanted a corporate
website. When I was a small boy and adults would ask what I'd like for
my birthday I would sigh and say "Can I have a corporate website?" and
they would explain, in that irritating way that adults had, that I
wasn't a corporation and the interwebs had not yet been invented and
frankly they were still reeling from culture shock from the arrival of
transistor radios and what the hell was wrong with a tub of silly
putty and a Whizzer and Chips Annual anyway, and no, I couldn't have a
catapult either, you can put someone's eye out with one of those.

Most of the content isn't there yet, but it's evolving http://www.blankcorporation.com/
for the curious. And it wasn't written by me either, but is just the
sort of thing I wanted it to be.


...

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Bees-How-Keep-Them/dp/0395883245

Hello-- Sue Hubbell's book is a wonderful first book for new
beekeepers -- or for people who think they might want to keep bees.
Sue has a deep empathy for bees and approaches relating to them with
such grace, She therefore often does things differently from the bee
textbooks or procedures of the commercial bee keepers. She
demonstrates a humane and bee-centric approach to beekeeping.

As new beekeepers, Sue's perspective was the most valuable thing we
gleaned from all the books we read on keeping bees. Her love and deep
appreciation for bees left a lasting impression on us and in how we
relate to our bees. And it is a fun read for "arm chair" beekeepers as
well.

Our local bee club (www.pugetsoundbees.org) has
"beginner" bee keeping classes before each meeting. The instructor
looks out at the room with a few beginners amid scores of veteran
beekeepers and dutifully asks "Are there any beginners here tonight?"
and invariably the entire assembly raises their hands.
Good luck -- it is so much fun!

I read the Hubbell book on the plane, and loved it.

Labels: bees, Interworld, library upstairs, M is For Magic, the blank corporation, tour, Webelf Wonders

Seeing you asked for them, a sampling...

I'm on the plane home.

I'm typing this on the plane home, although I won't send it until I get back tonight, by which time I'll already be home, and it'll be out of date...

Let's see. Yesterday I was photographed in the morning, then tumbled off to Gottingen by train. Actually walked around Gottingen for a little bit with Doris-from-Heyne-my-publisher, and bought Maddy some small toys, and bought myself a notebook that looked like it wanted to have a book written in it.

I'll write of Martin Semmelrogge
And talk about him in my blog
As he would do, had he the blog
And were I Martin Semmelrogge

Then we went back to the hotel that Martin Semmelrogge was staying in, and waited for him to arrive. He has a wife, called Sonja, and a dog who travels with them, a polish sheepdog called Crazy, and a fast car, but no driving license any more, so he only drives late at night. It being daytime, Sonja was driving, and there were traffic jams. So he was a bit late.

Martin is a German actor, famed for his bad-boy roles, along with his occasional brushes with the law from moments of Hunter Thompsonian excess. He is an engaging man, with a rattish, raffish grin.

I tell of Martin Semmelrogge
Who travels with his wife and dog.
They call him Crazy. That's the dog.
And, maybe, Martin Semmelrogge.

He's very funny. Our first meeting, over a lunch a few days ago, he explained how to get out of trouble driving fast across America. You need a radar detector, and you have to tell the police that because you are German that you misread the speedometer and thought it was in Kilometers, not Miles, per Hour. Of course, he told me and Gaby-from-Heyne-my-publisher, occasionally the police call each other to say that there's a man in a red mustang doing 120 mph, or you get shopped by a trucker, and then you spend the night in jail.

He thought Gaby and I should drive back with him from Hamburg to Frankfurt, instead of taking the plane.

Zooming through the Rain and Fog
There goes Martin Semmelrogge
In his car his wife, his dog,
but not me or Gaby.

He certainly upped the entertainment quotient for the tour. And when I got too bored or stressed I would make up Martin Semmelrogge poems to amuse myself...

Now in the end I'll pettifog
I've rhymed it "Martin Semmelrogge"
It should be "Martin Semmelrog-ge"
Bogger.

Anyway, the Gottingen reading was enormously fun -- I did the best reading I've ever done of Sam's "I believe" speech. Then train back to Frankfurt, and by 1:00am I was settled down for a night in the airline hotel, where nothing worked properly and I couldn't get online. A previous guest in the room had set the TV alarm for 6:00am, and it worked perfectly, and I cursed him and his ancestors, not to mention his progeny and his camels.

Then the plane.

Alisa Kwitney (who is, in no particular order, a former editor of mine and my friend since about 1990, author of the Chronicle "Sandman: King of Dreams" book [the mysterious Sandman coffee table book that either has or hasn't been published recently, depending on where you look for it], and a very smart and funny novelist) got me a copy of her new book "Does She Or Doesn't She?" and I've been carrying it around for a while now. Somehow the plane seemed a good place to read it. It has a quote from me about Alisa (with an added editorial exclamation mark) on page one and she thanks me in the acknowledgements because every now and again when she was writing it she'd ring me up and chat about her plot, and I'd say "Well, why don't you do something like this...?" without much idea of what I was talking about, given that I hadn't read the book she was writing.

Anyway, apart from the fact that the book's title is not as good as the book, and that all Alisa's books have been lumbered with those identikit Chick Lit covers which show cartoons of sassy women strutting coolly off the page while toting Accessories, it's a terrific book. The heroine has a fantasy at the start of most chapters, each fantasy in a different genre. My favourites were the hilarious Bewitched pastiche, and the Vampire sequence, which showed that Alisa could do the Laurel Hamilton thing brilliantly if she wanted to. And meanwhile the story is something that starts out more or less normally, and then dissolves into a lunatic farce of FBI men, Russian aphrodisiacs, TV Soap Opera, hot water pipes, identity, infidelity and attempted murder. And sex. Lots of sex. Lots and lots of sex. Lots and lots of sex, written by an old friend, which is marginally more embarrassing to read, even when you're really enjoying the book in question, than you might think. Anyway, it's the kind of book that fans of genres (except cowboy fiction. She didn't do cowboy fiction in there...) would really like if it wasn't for the way the cover tells them not to pick the book up.

Which reminds me...

Saw the entertainment weekly photo. Very nice.

I was wondering how many books per year you're requested to write blurbs for. In the past two weeks, I've seen a note by you written for Craig Thompson's Good-Bye, Chunky Rice and Robin McKinley's Sunshine. If things continue at this pace, I'll see 48 blurbs by you in one year.

And I wonder, if you read something you don't like, do you simply refuse to write the blurb?

Sure. Or if I don't have the time or the inclination to read something. And I'm actually on a sabbatical from doing blurbs, because it makes it easier to just say no to everyone. But people still send me advance manuscripts or proofs of books, and lots of the blurbs that have come out on book covers in recent months � Robin McKinley's, Nick Sagan's and the latest Greg McDonald Flynn novel, for example, have just been my comments on what I'm reading, taken from this blog. I'm not sure if the Craig Thompson blurb (it was for Blankets, by the way, not for Goodbye Chunky Rice) was from this blog or not.

I keep running into the problem of not knowing whether to say nice things about books here or not. Mostly I still do, because it's fun to recommend books to people. But if I put something up here on the journal I tend to qualify statements, and write something like"If he'd paid more attention to details this would have been a perfect book. As it is, it's only unmissable if you have nothing else to read. Still, the description of the Assassins Anonymous meeting is absolutely gripping and if the rest of the book were this good it would have been magnificent," which publishers then leave out the qualifying bits of, and I find myself saying "a perfect book... unmissable... absolutely gripping and... magnificent!" on the back of someone's book.

Whereas something that's meant to be a blurb normally stays a blurb.

Labels: Alisa Kwitney, blurbs, Does She Or Doesn't She, Germany, Martin Semmelrogge, tour

No Sleep Till Minneapolis

I am very, very tired. Up at 6:30 am to fly to Frankfurt, which wouldn't have been so bad if the "late dinner" last night in Hamburg scheduled for 10:00pm had happened at 10:00pm, but I was still signing then, so I didn't get to the restaurant until midnight, and got precious little sleep.

Did a lot of interviews today. Most were okay, but one interviewer asked such strange questions it started feeling like some kind of weird wind-up. And I was very tired. But that's still no excuse... (The real answer to "Did you ever meet or interview Douglas Adams when you wrote the book about him?" should actually have been "Of course I did. I interviewed him extensively between 1983 and 1987", and not, as I heard my mouth saying, "No, we never met. I think he was scared of me. I spoke to someone through a closed door at one point who claimed to be Douglas, but I think it was really one of his friends pretending to be him. It was all extremely disturbing.")

Lovely review of Wolves in the Walls in the Guardian.

Finished Will Birch's book "No Sleep Till Canvey Island" on the plane back to Frankfurt, the history of the London Pub Rock scene of the early 70s, and played the first Stiff Records Boxed Set on the iPod, which seemed about right. Good book, filled with excellent anecdotes, including a wonderful lesson in how unrelated people and events can create unintended consequences (in this case, a hippie film-editor with a dream of making a "pleasure dome" on an abandoned Martello Tower who hooked up with a con-man...) although the doomed New York Brinsley Schwartz launch hype is the best set-piece.

The web-site's down right now, so I have no idea when this will go up.

And now I'm going to bed.

Labels: Douglas Adams, Germany, interviews, tour, Will Birch

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 125

More from the Strange STuff People E-Mail Me Department: http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-gaiman-neil.asp is an interview with me (you have to page down past the biography stuff). http://www.kiplinger.com/spending/ is -- right now anyway -- something that lists the best prices of "this week's bestselling book, CD, DVD and software." American Gods is the book (and Fatbrain is currently the best price, it says).

Did a signing in Bristol at lunchtime which was lovely. It should have been an evening signing with a reading and stuff, really. Saw Diana Wynne Jones and several other friends, albeit too briefly in every case. Biut I got to tell Diana of Maddy's addiction to WARLOCK AT THE WHEEL, finally... Then got the train back and did an AOL chat, then London Live radio, now back in the hotel.

Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to go to Norwich for a lunchtime signing, then on to Canterbury where I shall see Dave McKean and his family, which I am looking forward to.

Sunday is the Giles Brandreth radio show on LBC, and a desperate attempt to see as many people as possible. Monday is editorial meetings, sign 300+ books in the Headline offices, and, in the evening, do some filming and reading and such with Tori for some album stuff. Tuesday morning I fly home.

Wish I had some trenchant and brilliant comments to make on the media or something, but mostly I'm just pooped. People have stopped assuming I'm American though, and my daughter Holly, when I phoned home last night, said "Dad! You sound so English!" which I shall take as a compliment, although I'm not entirely sure that was how she meant it. Really, my accent is just a universal sort of case of "you aren't from round here, are you?"

Labels: American Gods Blog, aol, Bristol, Dave McKean, Diana Wynne Jones, Holly, interviews, Maddy, radio, 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 121

Oh, and a little websearching produced:

Sandboy: As happy as a sandboy is an expression which implies blissful contentment. I believe that the saying is truly Bristolian in origin. On Bathurst basin, in the City centre is the long established Ostrich Inn. The Inn is immediately adjacent to the Redcliff caves which, in their day, were a prime source of sand. Past landlords of the Inn used to send little boys i.e. Sandboys into the caves to collect sand to spread on the floor of the Inn to soak up the beer and ale droppings (much like butchers used to put sawdust on the floor of their shops). The Sandboys were paid for their efforts in beer. They were indeed happy.

Lovely signing in Leeds last night, marred only by the sad death of the sound system, so I did it unmiked (thanks to James and Juliet for all their help). Then to dinner with lots of really nice Leeds booksellers.

I lost weight on the US tour. This one, however, has such luxuries as breakfast, lunch and dinner built in, so I'm sure I'll gain it all back, and more. (sigh.)

Labels: American Gods Blog, leeds, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 119

There seemed to be a certain amount of confusion about what was actually happening at the Vancouver signing/reading so I investigated. Felicia Quon (this column's Canadian correspondent) reports:

This is from the organizer at the Virgin event in Vancouver...

The wristband guarantees that you get into the reading/q&a and that you get
to have your book signed. Wristbanded folk get in first as well. There will
be a separate lineup for those without wristbands.

So it looks like a book guarantees you a place at the reading, but that you can still get into the signing with or without one.

Labels: American Gods Blog, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 118

So the UK tour is now well underway and right now I’m happy as a sandboy (what is a sandboy? Why are they happy?) as it’s proving to be almost a holiday after the US tour.

The US tour was 90% signing, with a very few interviews.

These UK signings are – so far – proving easy: enough people at each signing to justify the signing – 60 or so at lunchtime, 150 in the evening (Manchester will be bigger). And the rest of the time is being spent doing interviews: over breakfast, over tea, in railway stations and hotel lobbies.

The difference between the US and the UK? Hmm... well, more of the copies of GOOD OMENS have been pre-signed by Terry Pratchett, so I get to do more punch lines than set up lines. More men than women – in the US it was a solid 50/50. And the lines are – I am happy to say – shorter.

This morning’s breakfast interview was with a journalist from the Scotsman – who first interviewed me when he was a young fan and I was a young comics writer over a decade ago. I got to grumble to him about the Scotsman’s attempts over the years to put together an article showing I thought that J.K.Rowling nicked Harry Potter from Tim Hunter. According to Joe from Waterstones they’ve run such an article on more than one occasion –“I think you were on the front page on a slow news day” he said. (The local METRO newspaper had an article about it when I arrived – although this was more presented as a tragedy I had survived – plucky young writer’s prize creation could have been huge but then J.K. Rowling stole his thunder sort of thing. It sort of ignored that Tim is owned lock stock and barrel by Warner bros, and that if anything I think Harry Potter has actually encouraged them to make the Books of Magic movie. But then, nobody asked me.)

Odd hotel last night – the Point Hotel in Edinburgh. It looks and feels like an elegant modernist five star sort of hotel – vast white rooms, double Jacuzzi style baths and so on – but then you start noticing that the lifts only work sporadically, the only soap in the bathroom is an empty wall-unit in the shower, that the lobby staff sent away a Taxi sent by the BBC to take Lucy Ramsey and me to Radio Scotland (the Brian Morton show. Good radio by someone literate.) because we weren’t waiting for it in the lobby, rather than calling the rooms or leaning into the bar where I was being interviewed by Scottish Book Collector (“Are you for people who collect Scottish books, or for Scots who collect books of any kind?” “Er, both really.”) and telling me the taxi was there. (The mad dash to make it to the radio station in time for the interview was the kind of thing of which heroic ballads are made.)

Which reminds me – upcoming radio appearances for people who live locally, or who like seeing whether you can find various stations on the internet:

Weds 11th July – 4.30ish GMT –
11.00pm – Andy Peebles, BBC Radio North

Thurs 12 July – 9*30pm - The Late Show BBC Radio midlands

Friday 13 July 10.00pm Gideon Coe, BBC London Live

Sunday 15th 4.00pm – Giles Brandreth, LBC

...

Saw the Entertainment Weekly photo. Not a bad picture at all, but the hair-and-make-up guy had managed to transform my normal tangle of barely kempt hair into something I don’t think I’ve ever seen on top of my head.

...

Now in Leeds in a really lovely hotel.

As far as I can establish, the UK hardback selling at 10.00 pounds (6.00 right now through Amazon.co.uk) is only for a limited time. So if you’re planning on waiting to get one, as a gift or whatever, you may want to get it now and put it away, as they’ll be climbing back to ₤17.99 soon enough. (This information, like all other information posted here about the UK edition, is liable to be utterly wrong. On the other hand, it turned out there were only a handful of trade paperbacks on sale in the UK, all through Borders in London -- they think -- and only for a couple of days.)

Right -- the phone rang, interviewer in the lobby. got to go.

Labels: American Gods Blog, author photos, Edinburgh, leeds, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 117

Wrote a blogger post today in the library of this hotel, but the computer crashed utterly and terminally just as I finished. And all the sensible things I said at the time have been entirely forgotten.

(Jetlagged author tries to remember things he said, but he can only remember mentioning that the lyric version of New Age on Tori’s “Strange Little Girls” CD is not as reported the one from the Velvet Underground's LOADED but actually the version from the Live 1969 LP, and I can only remember that because it’s playing in the background as I type this.)

I think I warned people that on some of these stops the bookshop is selling tickets to the reading – you get the cost of the ticket back from the price of the book if you buy one, although you shouldn’t need a book to get into the line. Some stores do the tickets for the reading but let anyone into the signing line, whether you have a ticket or not. And most of them won’t do any of that stuff either way and you’ll just get to the bookshop, be read to or not depending mostly on whether it’s a lunch or evening signing, and shuffle along a line that will move much too slowly until everyone’s done.

Labels: American Gods Blog, Tori Amos, tour

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 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 108

So, later today -- it's now the 4th of July, which seems very appropriate, given the book -- I fly to the UK.

In the meantime, advance word is we'll be on the NY Times list for a second week, and the book is now in its fourth printing. (Yay!) With luck, the 5th printing will have my wayward apostrophe back.

I see the Vancouver signing in the Virgin Megastore is apparently limited to 200 people. Not sure how I feel about that, but it's not my call, so if you want to be there get your ticket or whatever it is early.

If you're reading this and I owe you an e-mail, take comfort in the fact that you are not alone. There's a host of you. Cohorts. Legions, even.

Labels: American Gods Blog, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 107

So....

last US signing done. Braindead. Handhurts.

Nice review at SFsite -- http://www.sfsite.com/07a/ag107.htm and go and browse the rest of SFsite while you're at it.

And a reminder that The Dreaming, at http://www.holycow.com/dreaming is still the best and fastest place to find news and reviews, mainly due to the diligence of the astonishing Lucy Anne (dunno how she finds that stuff so fast) and of webmasterJoe Fulgham. There's a link there to a fascinating article by Michael Dirda on fantasy which says everything I've been saying for a long time now and says it quicker and better. Go and read it. Print it out and make people read it.

Honest.

Labels: American Gods Blog, the Dreaming, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 106

http://www.nationalpost.com/artslife/arts/books/story.html?f=/stories/20010630/607032.html is our first review from Canada...

And tonight is my last signing for American Gods, on this tour, on US soil.

So I thought I ought to say thank you. After all, I didn't go out and buy the books. I didn't stump up $26 for a hardcover, or drive hundreds (or in a couple of Texan cases, thousands) of miles to go to a signing. I wan't the one telling my friends and family and just people I met on the bus to go and buy American Gods. I didn't host the signings, or pluck up my courage and order a book for the very first time on the internet, or talk my editor into letting him or her review the book or any of those things. I wasn't the guy in the bookstore handselling American Gods to everyone who came past me. That was you lot did that.

And yes, I worked hard on this book for several years. And I wasn't the only one -- the people at Harper Collins -- the ones you know about because I've mentioned them here, and the ones you don't, because I haven't, like the local reps who are actually out there selling the books in to the bookstores, the marketing staff and so on -- they've worked hard, too.

But without you lot supporting the book it wouldn't have meant anything. We're currently at #5 on the Independents list, and at #8 on the chains list from the NY Times.

So, my thanks.

(No, this isn't goodbye. This blogger has at least another month to live, I'd say. But I wanted to say thanks anyway. I'm tremendously grateful to all of you.)

Labels: American Gods Blog, reviews, thanks, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 105

The problem with trying to keep some kind of record of a tour like this, is you need to have the time to write entries about the tour...

Today was DreamHaven Books in Minneapolis. I've known Greg Ketter, the owner of DreamHaven, since 1984 (we met on a train to Brighton), I've been signing in his store as long as I've been doing American signings, from a tiny store to a medium sized store to the giant purple building he currently occupies.

The staff of DreamHaven are good people. The customers are triffic. The DreamHaven web site at dreamhavenbooks.com is without doubt the best place on the web for going and finding stuff by me you might not find elswhere. Some of it, like the book Angels And Visitations, or the CD Warning Contains language, Greg has even published.

I try and do too many signings there -- one a year or thereabouts -- just to make sure that the numbers don't get too huge. Even so, today's signing started at 2:00pm and I left the store, hand hurting, everything signed, a couple of minutes before 9.00 pm.

Barnes and Noble tomorrow marks the last of the US signings. I wish I'd got to write more about the various US stops as they went by -- I never talked about Keplers (700 people, but only about 300 of them braved the signing line) and Vromans (they gave me two bottles of ink. Burgundy -- although it's pretty much purple -- and brown) and Book Soup (my favourite bookstore for browsing and buying whenever I'm in LA, although much too small a space for the signing -- I wish the Library they were meant to be holding it in hadn't fallen through) and many of the rest of them I only touched on, or may not even have mentioned at all.

The UK tour will kick off with a Forbidden Planet signing next Saturday at 1.00pm, although there will be a lot of other stuff to do with launching the book that I'll try and report back on here, much of which is very different to the way it was done in the US.

For a start, there will be a launch party.

Launch parties are fun, on the whole, for everyone except the author (who has been out of the country for several years) and the publicist organising the party. This is because the invitations are split squarely between the author's friends (who all have several years of catching up to do) and People The Author Should Meet -- who can be buyers from book chains, people from publishing, journalists, or just people who somehow got to the party. And the trick is for the publicist to get the author around the room in order to talk to everyone there without the author's friends ever feeling slighted as he gets yanked away from them after a measly three minutes.

I have very understanding friends, but I still worry about getting all the way around the room.

(Normally, an hour into the launch party, everyone's downed as much of the publisher's wine as they can and the publicist is having a fit as two journalists are found trying to make love under an antique table, and an ancient feud about a long-ago book review surfaces and there's a screaming match between five old friends and someone else starts crying in a corner and the last thing anybody cares about is the author anyway, nor will they remember much in the morning. But still, as long as publishers persist in holding the launch parties, and as long as the wine keps flowing, people will keep coming.)

I'm looking forward to the UK tour. I have no idea how long the lines at the signings will be over there, or how the book will do. I know that Hodder are behind it all the way -- they're doing the hardback at a discount with a money back guarantee, which I learned when I saw it a couple of weeks ago -- as good as Stephen King or your money back. I'm not sure that's what I'd have said about it, and I keep getting the urge to write to Steve and explain that it really wasn't my idea. But if it gets people to pick up the book, I'm happy. I just hope they aren't looking for chills and real horror because, while there's a lot of stuff in American Gods, that's not really the territory it covers.

How long have I been typing this? I should go to bed. Good night.

Labels: American Gods Blog, DreamHaven, Greg Ketter, launch parties, Stephen King, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 102

Just posting this because there are still 6 boxes of books to be signed and removed from my bed before I can go to sleep.

http://cbldf.safeshopper.com/13/cat13.htm?279 It's got a bunch of stuff you won't get anywhere else, and is, I think, the only place you can simply order one of the signed 5000 books online. And that's not all. It's all for a good cause. Check it out.

And here's a review: http://www.likesbooks.com/heidi23.html.

And this is for any of you who think that stories are universal. Read it and ponder.

I go home in a few hours. This makes me very happy. I like the idea of sleeping in my own bed. Maybe walking around the garden and saying hello to the pumpkins. Reading Maddy's bedtime story. Not travelling, for just a few days.

"How are you doing?" asked most of the last fifty people in the line at tonight's signing as they came up.

"I'm tired," I said. "But I'm pretty good."

"Get some rest," they said, one by one, concerned.

I have nice readers.

Labels: American Gods Blog, CBLDF, home, Maddy, reviews and reviewers, tour

American Gods Blog, Post 100

You`re probably thinking to yourself, I wonder where he is now? That one's easy. He's typing this in a train on the way from San Diego to Los Angeles. Which means that by the time he posts this, he'll be in his room in his hotel in LA.

And you may be wondering, I wonder how he's holding up? And the answer is, Okay, all things considered. Tired on a short of sleep sort of level, tired on a cellular level, much crankier than is my - his - sod it, we're back into the first person - my usual wont.

The hotel in San Francisco didn't help.

If they can, when travel agencies book authors into hotels, they put them into good, solid, businessy hotels, or sometimes into really good hotels. There are a couple of hotels (there's one in Portland for example) that are particularly keen on touring authors, and greet you with copies of your book to sign for their library.

And if you've got the kind of author who may not be eating until back in his hotel room very late, you make sure that the hotel has overnight room service.

For reasons no-one understands, I wound up in a little tourist hotel in the Japanese district of San Francisco. It wasn't the kind of place that had overnight room service. It wasn't the kind of place where the concierge would let you know that you had had six boxes of books to sign delivered to your room. For that matter, it wasn't the kind of place where, once they'd agreed that the books existed and would be delivered to your room, they actually bothered to deliver them to your room.

Also, it was an additional 15-25 minutes away from everywhere we needed to go, and when your day is running to the minute, the hour you can lose getting to and from the hotel comes out of sleep time.

This was particularly frustrating to Ellen Fishman, who was my author escort.

I know I meant to write about Author Escorts before, and have indeed mentioned them in passing. But I should probably explain them a bit more before continuing.

In the UK, if a publisher sends an author on tour, they often send a publicity person with them. Most of the publicity people are attractive young women, and there's not one of them that won't tell you horror stories of the time that author X or celebrity Y, who they were accompanying around the country at the time, decided that the real reason the publisher had sent an attractive young lady on tour with them was for purposes of sexual relief. After a glass or two of wine at the end of a long day's signing and interviewing, they'll even name names.

In the US, when a publisher sends an author on tour, they contract out their care to an Author Escort. Every city has one agency, some have more than one. Author escorts pick you up at the airport holding a copy of your book in their hands. (It's a good thing if you look like your author photo as that's how they recognise you.) They get you to your hotel, to the radio station or the TV studios. Every doorman and parking lot attendant in the city is their crony. They know the back ways. They will make things work and deliver you to wherever you are meant to be on time, guard you at the signing, get you back to your hotel.

Ellen has looked after me each time I've gone to San Francisco. Stephen King once said if he was having a heart attack and needed someone to get him into a hospital and treated he'd want Harlan Ellison by his side. I'd want Harlan too, but only if Ellen Fishman wasn't available.

Some of them are that good. Some of them aren't. I've only had maybe two who were useless in all the time I've done signing tours.

On my last tour I asked all the author escorts who the worst people they'd ever had were. (It wasn't for me. Jonathan Carroll asked.) They all declined to answer, and then I'd tell them who the others had said (luckily my first escort had a number of opinions, and one bookstore was particularly voluble about the worst person they'd ever has sign there) and they'd say "Oh let me tell you about her," or "I had him, he was a sweetie" and then they'd give me their lists.

At the time Brett Butler made number one, but only because Jeffrey Archer hadn't toured for a while. The ones who remembered him still looked nervous when his name was mentioned.

And sooner or later I'll finish talking about author escorts, Screen Savers, and survival tips for on the road.

...

There. Now we're three signings behind on the blogger. Cody's, Mysterious Galaxy and Vromans... maybe I'll get a chance to write about them tomorrow. Right now I just want to post this and sleep.

Oh, for all the people who have come up to me and asked why I call this journal a blogger - "Is it a British thing?" - you should go to www.blogger.com and find out...

Still. I'm now in a nice hotel in LA, and Holly's here, which made me a lot less cranky than I was. She was thrilled when we opened the door to the hotel room to find lots of people had sent flowers, champagne and faxes telling us that the New York Times List thing was a good thing, and she was astonished that journal-reading people came up to her at Vromans wishing her happy birthday and congratulating her on passing her driving test. (Her license has a photo of her with an ear to ear grin on it. It's astoundingly cute.)

...

I've put in a request to the powers that be to make this journal (a) easier to read. (I want larger type dammit.) And (b) to make the links visible without having to pass the mouse over them to reveal them (which seems to defeat the purpose of them being links). I hope we can make it happen soon...

Labels: American Gods Blog, Author Escorts, Ellen Fishman, Harlan Ellison, Holly, hotel, Jonathan Carroll, Stephen King, tour