Hi! I have a thing where I really like to hear authors and especially poets reading their own work. You probably won't be coming to do a reading near me (Princeton, NJ) anytime soon, and I have (alas) no money, as poor high school students without jobs tend to. Consequently, I was wondering if you knew of anyplace online off the top of your head where I could find a soundclip of decent quality of you reading something you've written. I know that you're transplanted from England, but your writing feels very American in my head, and I'd like to fix that. Thanks a lot!

Well, over at Dreamhavenbooks.com's website, you can pick up WARNING: CONTAINS LANGUAGE, a double CD of me reading stuff. And pretty much anywhere you can get the HarperCollins3 CD set of me reading CORALINE, and you can hear me reading some of it over at the mousecircus.com site. A new CD of me reading short stuff will be out this year. And on this website there's some audio over at http://www.neilgaiman.com/audio/audio.asp -- and pretty soon we should get the readings that used to be up at the scifi.com website up over there as well.

There's now a Fantasy Blog Shares Market: you can find the share prices for this journal at BlogShares - Neil Gaiman's Journal.

Um.

I've reached Walt Disney World with two young ladies (aged respectively 8 and 17) and the 17 year old is trying to sleep and the 8 year old wants to know how she can keep herself amused while waiting for a room service fruit plate and hot chocolate to be delivered. And there are lots of FAQ thingies waiting (I've actually posted a few replies over in the FAQ section), several more universities (I've now officially lost count), a few more high schools and high school teachers wanting to be considered...

And then there are the flirting Disney characters...

For example:

dear neil-
i also had a strange experience at disney world. my younger sister & i (she was 19 & i was 21) went to have our pictures taken with eeyore. while my sister was taking the picture of me, eeyorekept grabbing me. he even put his hand on my butt. i then took a picture of my sister with him. afterwords she said he had done the same thing to her. it is no wonder that small children cry when they see those costume characters. they are definately twisted.

Not to mention...

Dale of the Rescue Rangers was definantly flirting with me when my family went to Disney World. We were having dinner in that rotating resturant, I forget what it's called. Anyway, characters were visiting all the tables and hugging people. I got multiple hugs from Dale. My whole family noticed.

Kate

and here's one from inside the costume...

Well, I guess it makes some kind of sense that there is a former Disney "Cast Member" that played Mickey Mouse in a previous life and happens to be a die hard fan of your work. By the way, by previous life I do mean more than a decade ago when I was in college. For the record, I flirted shamelessly as Mickey, the kind of subtle flirting you can get away with when you are not allowed to speak, which was the only way to make the process somewhat bearable. As bad as that may sound Mickey is never the worse. Pooh, on the other hand, is the biggest flirt of all.

By the way, if you post this please do not post any identifying info. Even though the list is probably longer than people think, there are only so many people that have played Mickey over time and I could get in some serious legal trouble.

So hopefully this clarifies/intensifies the Mickey flirting inquiry.

Have a great weekend and enjoy Disney,
{please don't post my name}

and, finally, one that has rather less to do with Disney. Unless they decide to introduce the Schrodinger's Cat character (I suppose there would be a 50/50 chance the person inside the costume is Dead...)

Neil,

I present to you the Interactive Schroedinger's Cat, quite possibly the best explanation I've ever encountered.

http://www.phobe.com/s_cat/s_cat.html

Enjoy.

Sincerely,

August C. Bourr�
http://www.vestige.org

It really is interactive, too. And cute.

This isn't exactly a FAQ, since it's not really a question at all, but I don't know where else to send it. I just wanted to let you know, that I too have been (possibly) flirted with by Mickey Mouse at Walt Disney World. I had just graduated from high school at the time. When I finally got to the front of the line to get a picture and autograph with Mickey, I got the distinct impression that I was being flirted with. It was extremely bizarre. Then I read what had been written in my autograph book, and it said, "You're so cute. Love, Mickey Mouse." Very strange experience. Not as strange as Santa Claus saying, "Looks like Santa gets his present this year," but still very strange.

As unusual as it may seem to some, perhaps Mickey Mouse is a big flirt.

-Laura

I knew it!

Neil -

In light of your essay about books and gender, I'm curious about how you would perceive gender reaction to your writing. Do you find that in your extensive interaction with your readers, through signings, appearances, and emails, that you seem to attract either gender (females dresses as cartoon rodent flagship cornerstones notwithstanding) more regularly as an author? Additionally, has it varied by book, and if so, how much does the readership on a particular book fall into agreeing with the gender of that book, as you would denote it? I ask, primarily, because in my own contact with Neil Gaiman readers, which is clearly going to be from an infinitely more limited perspective than yours, I have found that while I initially thought your work something I would recommend to my fellow grown-up Douglas Adams graduates (decidedly more likely to be male), as I begin to introduce students to your work, I find that young females particularly relate to it.

Just curious,
Jason Sherry

The only way I can tell stuff like that is from signings, really, which I think must be a pretty good sampling of, at least, people who would go to signings. The gender balance is about 50/50, and has been for many many years. The age range is a lot harder to call. Ten years ago I knew at a glance if someone was a fan, or there to get a book signed for a son or daughter (or grandson, or granddaughter) too far away to get to the signing. These days I simply don't know any more (partly because readers who found me when they were young are in many cases now respected members of their communities, and partly because the books are more likely to be read by people over 50 than the graphic novels would have been). If you were to randomly throw a ball into a crowd at my signing it would be rather more likely to hit someone under, say, 35 than over, but beyond that there's not a lot I can point to that the people have in common. Except they're surprisingly nice. (Not surprisingly to me, I expect it, but surprising to bookshop staff, whose eyes grow wide before the signing starts because there are green-haired punks and cool tattoos and pretty gothladies in great clothes in lines next to men in suits with briefcases and matronly ladies with glints in their eyes and people with small children and they started lining up at dawn or whatever, and I don't know what the staff expect but they tend to come up to me at the end and say "Your fans were all so nice!" as if riots or bloodshed would have been the normal order of events...)

Please please please I'm doing a project about you for school and I cannot find ANY information about your childhood, adolescence, or basically anything about your personal life. I can't just talk about your career, it has to include your background, inspirations, influences, etc. Please help!

Well, there are many hundreds of interviews out there, but the best and quickest source for much of that stuff is the Dreaming website, at www.holycow.com/dreaming, where Puck and Lucy Anne have assembled an incredible resource of all that kind of thing. I did a quick look for the page to point you to, and it looks like the link at the site is broken right now, so I found a google cache of the relevant page.

Some of the works mentioned are linked to from the article. Others aren't -- but look in your school library. Many schools have the various Gale Research volumes, Something about the Author and the rest of them.

The google cache refernce is here:
http://216.239.53.100/search?q=cache:4rl8x-
WDkJEC:www.holycow.com/dreaming/discuss/963378934,21890,.asp
+gale%27s+st+james+authors&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Howdy,

Perhaps it's just because I finally got my copy of _World's End_ in hardcover, but I read this article on the BBC and thought of you (and the "Hob's Leviathan" story):

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/2910849.stm

So they went from "Giant Squid" to a "Colossal Squid." I wonder what they'll do when they find the next bigger squid down there.

-- Ed


Me too...

...
A few days of Disney World/Orlando for me and the girls start tomorrow night. My thanks to everyone who offered to show us around, feed us, dress like scary clowns and amuse us while we were waiting in lines etc.

The oddest Disney experience I ever had was for the launch of Big Entertainment, about a decade ago. They flew me and my wife in (that it was January and minus 40 back home, and had been for a couple of weeks, was a huge factor in our agreeing to go), along with Mickey Spillane and Leonard Nimoy, for the announcement of the line, and a photo-op. Disney had a Mickey Mouse on hand, and after the group photo Mickey Mouse and I posed together for some photos.

Afterwards I said to my wife, "I think Mickey Mouse was flirting with me."

"Oh... Did he say anything?"

"Nope. They aren't allowed to say anything. It was a girl in there, though. I think."

"Well, if it didn't say anything, did it do anything?"

"Nope. I mean, the person's inside a six-foot high mouse-costume, representing wholesomeness and the Disney Brand Identity."

"Well, how do you know you were being flirted with?"

"I don't. I just sort of suspect it."

And she probably gave me a look at that point.

I tried to explain the concept of Schrodinger's Cat to Holly today, over the phone, making rather a mess of it on the way, with regard to her going, until the form comes back from the university she applied-to-but-does-not-know-which-one-that-was, to Bryn Mawr and Smith. It might have been easier if, instead of comparing her choice of university to mythical cats in quantum boxes, I'd just pointed to how you can never be certain if you were actually being flirted with by Mickey Mouse. There are, as they used to say at the end of horror movies, some things man was not meant to know...

Several people have asked me to post that http://www.livejournal.com/users/neil_gaiman_rss/ is working fine as an RSS feed of this journal, while the Gaimanblog one at http://www.livejournal.com/users/gaimanblog/ hasn't put anything up for several days. So, right, that's all posted.

Back to chapter 5 of 1602 (it's a comic I'm writing for Marvel, which Andy Kubert is drawing), which seems to have developed weird correspondences with current events. Actually, that's not true: the plot of 1602 has stayed pretty steady since I started writing it, at the beginning of last year. It's just current events have decided to get in on the act, which I would have sworn would be impossible when I plotted it.

Hey... here's this thing off www.blogcritic.com about Sandman #50:

http://www.blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/22/234355.php

Thousands have probably sent you this but if they didn't here it is.

Hmm... I suppose I should throw a question in to make it faqworthy...

so... how do other people's interpretations of your work hit you?

I know that when people interpret stuff I do it fascinates me to sense how other people perceive my creation... but then all that is still fairly novel to me... we'll see how I feel about that when I'm out of my first decade of proactive creativity.

-Kari

I suppose I tend to put things into two categories, reviews and critical works, and I'm interested in reviews when it comes to finding out how something is being generally received, but as soon as I have an idea of what they're saying, I lose interest. Good pieces of criticism, the kind that make you want to go back and read something you thought you knew again, I love, whether they're pro or con -- but they are far and few.

When I was a younger, and I was getting my first reviews, a good one would make my day, a bad one would blight it. And then I started to realise that reviewers said such different (and directly opposite) things, I could safely ignore them all. As I said in this journal when the first two American Gods reviews came in, one saying it was a wonderful road novel let down by the bits in the little Wisconsin town, and one saying that the bits in the Wisconsin town were perfect and the novel only lost its focus when it hit the road, if you listened to them, you'd go mad.

Hello Neil,
I've been trying to open the March archive of your blog, but haven't been having any luck. Would you be so kind as to repost the link to the "books for troops" site from several days ago? I'm going to propose that my writing group put together a care package of morsels from Dreamhaven and Uncle Hugo's. Thanks.

Paul of the Science Museum

The March Archives seem to have hit the Blogger Archive Bug, and aren't accessible by clicking from the archive page right now.

But they still exist -- you can get to them through:

http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal_archives/2003_03_01_archive.asp

which will have the link for books for soldiers...

A note for Shalene about meeting Harlan Ellison - I went to a signing many years ago in Virginia, and even though it was fairly early in the morining, and my friends were a bit nervous about the meeting, when we finally made it through the line he was quite charming, and signed several things for my friends. It says something that I remember, after all this time, how nice he was to us.

Oh good.

Four more universities since the last posting (though I think one or two are duplicates).

and finally,

Hi Neil

Just read 'Closing Time' in McSweeney's and whilst you may not consider it one of your best,I quite enjoyed (In fact I read it twice to make sure I understood it!)

One thing still confuses me though - when the writer first meets the three boys he goes on to say that the three of them fished out the pieces of the magazine from the ditch. Am I missing something or should that have been four - the writer plus the three boys?

If I've missed the point please tell me and I'll try again!

Best wishes

John Potten

Glad you liked it. And no, that wasn't a strange, deep, meaningful Wolfean clue, that was a typo that wasn't picked up, but which I hope will be corrected by the time the story is collected.

Since you are so approachable with your legions, I was wondering if you have found that other writers are that cool, or are there some who must be avoided at all costs? The reason that I ask is I have an opportunity to hear Harlan Ellison next week, and would hate to approach him, book and pen in hand, only to have him jam my favorite nib into my eye. (I don't think that would actually happen, but it's nice to get some gossip on other writers).

Best,
Shalene Shimer

Harlan certainly has a contentious reputation, but in my experience, as a friend of his and as a fellow guest at conventions, if you're polite to him he will be a perfect gentleman back. If you try and provoke a reaction from him, you may get one, or he may simply decide to ignore you for evermore. But good manners will get you a very long way with Harlan.

I'm trying to think of any "authors to be avoided at all costs" I've run into over the years, and I'm not really coming up with anyone. Mostly, we're a pretty nice bunch.

...

We're up to 64 universities at present, unless i've miscounted, and more universities and courses are still flooding in...

The mail today included several letters from literary organisations letting me know that Coraline was shortlisted for some awards, a new Bunny of the Month Club Bunny (two-faced, this one, like Janus, with little pink dungarees, and red eyes on one face and blue on the other), the paperback cover for Coraline, the new mass-market paperback cover for Stardust, several Brenda Kahn CDs, and my own personal copy of the four-song demo that my assistant Lorraine's band Folk Underground did for the St. Patrick's day gig at First Avenue. (She's given the few they had left over to Dreamhaven's Official Neil Gaiman Online Store, which I mention for any curious Flash Girls fans who wonder what it sounds like when Lorraine plays with boys instead.) There was also the galleys of THE WOLVES IN THE WALLS, which is way out beyond gorgeous. It's quite perfect, and absolutely unlike anything I imagined it looking like as I wrote it, which is the fun and the charm of working with Dave McKean.

It will be out in the summer, along with an awful lot of other stuff.

...

An e-mail in from Patrick Marcel in France, letting me know that Neverwhere is on the list of the 200 most important books published in France in the last ten years. He translated it, so he has reason to be proud.

We're currently at 57 universities (and a high school course teaching Smoke and Mirrors).

...

Hi Neil,

While recently in Dublin, I came upon a poster for what was apparently a production of "The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish." Now, of course I was quite excited to rather randomly find a Neil Gaiman-related activity while wandering from pub-to-pub in a foreign country while slightly inebriated, and I immediately made plans to attend a showing the next day, if possible. At that point, however, my rather skeptical friend pointed out the portion of the poster that specified that the show was for 5-to-10 year olds. As images of being a 22-year old, leather jacket-wearing, childless American male conspicuously seated in a kindergarten-sized chair in the back of a room filled with young children and suspicious parents whispering about me in Irish brogue flitted through my mind, I gradually gave up on attending the show, and instead settled on taking a picture in front of the poster.

So I turn to you for judgement, Neil. Should I have just sucked it up and gone to the show, as I originally wanted to? Or did I wisely choose on the side of discretion by letting this particular opportunity pass? Your opinion would be most appreciated.

Many thanks for all the words.

Nick

There's a newspaper review of it, which I posted here some time in the last couple of weeks, and it looked terrific from the review. I think you should have gone, but mostly because I'd love to have heard what it was like.

It can be very interesting, being a rare adult at children's events, anyway. I remember how odd it was, researching Mr Punch, and being the only adult at Punch and Judy shows...