Is this thing on?

I finished reading STARDUST an hour and a half early, so I also did some poems and "A Study In Emerald". When I was done Rick Harris, my director, played me some of the high points in voice actors being irritated with directors -- a wonderful William Shatner noise and telling a poor director who had suggested he might want to greet Spock more enthusiastically "you disgust me", and some fine, fine Orson Welles being irritated about Findus Frozen Foods ad copy.

Over at http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/2006/01/finally-neils-sculpture-in-motion.html is footage of the moving sculpture Lisa Snellings made for me, um, moving.

What was the best book you read last year...? http://www.powells.com/contestpuddlys2006.html wants to know.

From the afterword to Pam Noles's remarkable essay about race in fantasy at http://www.infinitematrix.net/faq/essays/noles.html you can learn that The Carl Brandon Society has created two awards. Details at http://www.carlbrandon.org/awards.html

blogging for ghosts..

This morning's post went straight to the beta-testing new version of this site, and I assume that whatever I write now will go there too and nobody will read it for a few days... I hope that things get sorted out soon, so that you can read this, and the last post. Still, it tells us that we're cruising down the road toward the NEW IMPROVED easy to navigate Neil Gaiman.com with lots of cool stuff on it...

...

So I was reading Stardust aloud in a studio today and suddenly had one of those odd moments when you notice something utterly wrong in a book you've written and wonder why you've never noticed it before (and why apparently no-one else ever did either). There's a scene where I have the witch queen sharpening her obsidian knives with a whetstone. And I thought, "That wouldn't work, that's not how you sharpen a volcanic glass blade", and wondered how I'd comne to put that in -- I think the knives had started out as metal in one draft (it was ten years ago, and I've forgotten) and then I'd changed them to obsidian because it would be more fun for Charles Vess to draw, and not noticed the whetstone, and almost a decade had passed until I came to read the sequence aloud, and then it hit me.

There's a reissue of Stardust, with a new cover, coming in October from Harper Perennial. Now I have to decide whether to leave that scene as it is, or change it.

Just thought you might like to know that you're the 5th "Most Owned Author" on mylibrary.com. Directly ahead of J.R.R. Tolkien and William Shakespeare. http://www.librarything.com/users.php

Which tells us lots of interesting things about mylibrary users. (Which I find, to be honest, an extremely attractive sort of website, and if I only had a month or so with nothing to do, I'd input my own books.) It's a fascinating site -- a couple of clicks and I was reading a discussion about race in Anansi Boys...

I thought you should know about this: http://www.livejournal.com/community/virgule/92396.html. It's a call for papers for a conference on your work. Will you be writing one, perhaps?

Not on your nelly. Be like helping out at your own autopsy (as I just wrote to a friend in academia, who invited me to cowrite a paper).

Stardust Audio

I'm recording the audio book of "STARDUST" right now. It's fun, although by the end of the day I am more exhausted than I would believe possible from something where I just sit in a studio and read something I've written.

What I learned yesterday: 1) Do not give a minor character a funny voice that's hard on the throat but fine for a couple of sentences when that minor character is going to come back and talk his way through an entire chapter in a hundred pages' time. 2) Take a break at the end of a chapter, whether I think I need it or not. I do.


...

Over at http://www.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/1991_Gaiman_Pratchett.html is an interview with me and Terry Pratchett from 1990, about Good Omens and other things. And (gulp) a photo...

On balderdash, really...

Hi Neil,

I was reading an article in the paper this morning illustrating the changing face of publishing. The article detailed how Sir V.S. Naipaul's Booker prize winning masterpiece "In a Free State," when submitted to over a dozen different publishing houses under an assumed name, was rejected by each and every one.

Further in the article it explains that "according to [David Taylor], no more than 20 writers of literary novels earn enough to survive on without another source of income."

I was curious about your opinion on how the publishing game has changed, and (not to prod too much) if you personally earn enough off writing to support your family without an exterior source of income.

Thanks a lot,
Alex


Well, yes, the people the first chapters were sent said no. But we will never know how many of the editors looked at it and thought "Some berk's sent me the first chapters of In a Free State. What an idiot. That's one for the bin," nor how many thought "I'm an editor for a popular paperback fiction house looking for big budget bestsellers, what do I need with a fine literary short story?" (It's been a long time since I read "In a Free State", but I remember it as a set of short stories and novellas, and articles I've seen so far suggest that it was just the opening chapters that went out.)

I was amused by Naipaul's reaction, implying that the modern world is too degraded to recognise his genius, and I would respectfully suggest that if you sent out the first few chapters of a Dan Brown book, a J. K. Rowling, a Jane Austen, an Ian Fleming or a Clive Cussler book -- or a Neil Gaiman -- to 20 random publishers you'd probably get a rejection too, and not just from the ones who recognised the book and weren't going to embarass the loony who sent it in, but also from the ones who don't currently want or need a book or author like that on their list. Publishers reject things all the time. They have a limited number of slots open for a certain number of types of book. You need to find the right publisher, to find an editor or someone who will get behind the book in the right way, and then it's still a matter of luck. Many award-winning bestselling books get rejected by publishers before they find the one that's ready to take them (I remember Frank Herbert telling me that over twenty publishers rejected Dune) and they may have made the right decision for them on that book. (Just as authors sometimes find more than one publisher competing for their work, and have to decide which the best publisher for them will be.)

As for "no more than 20 writers of literary novels earn enough to survive on without another source of income." I think that's technically what statisticians call a "made-up number".

Most of the estimates I've seen from places like The Society of Authors suggest that between 2 and 6 percent of writers make a living such that they don't need another source of income. (And I'm fortunate enough to be one of them, yes.) That's a lot more than twenty people.

But you also have to think about the definition of "writers of literary novels" in that quote -- if you define "literary novels" as the opposite to "popular fiction" and then define "popular fiction" as anything that sells, then you could probably prove that no living "writers of literary fiction" earn enough from their books to survive on.

(On a thought I just went and checked Making Light, and found that Jim and Teresa and Patrick and the commenters have already said everything I've said, and better and at more length, so you should also go and read http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007138.html#007138. And while you're there, read http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007140.html#007140, which isn't about writing at all.)

Neil - In your response to the recent question about Ms. Mirrlees, you noted that Swanwick's essay does not appear to be online. I thought I would let you know that the Wikipedia entry you linked to contains a link to this: http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/introduces/mirrlees.htm- which appears to be the essay in question.Regards - Kristin Necessary

No, that's Michael's introduction to, I think, the UK edition of Lud-in-the-Mist. The biographical essay I was talking about was about 20,000 words long.

Right. Goodnight.

flotsam and jetsam

Miss Olga wrote to let me know that she has brought back the Fabulist over at fabulist.org (NOTE FROM 2023: The domain is now a hive of villainy and viruses, so the link has been removed.), brighter, shinier and more faboo than ever. It may grow to become the engadget.com for kitsch t-shirts and funky things you can listen to or hang on your wall or eat or just make you happy, or possibly it may not.

(The coolest thing I've bought recently, doing my own bit for the fabulist, is four CDs of girlsongs in a hatbox -- details at http://www.rhino.com/store/ProductDetail.lasso?Number=74645. And given that every six months someone writes to the FAQ line and asks about region-free DVD players available in the US, I'll put in a plug for http://www.dvdshippers.com/itemms910.html, which is a nice multi-region DVD player for $129.)

(And, because it makes me happy on a daily basis, and has caught and zapped 17 pieces of Spam while I've been writing this, let me add another plug for the Cloudmark spam filter .)

Is it a definite that you'll be signing after you speak at the 92nd St Y? If so, do you know how the line will work? Will it be by seating or will it work more like it did after the Symphony Space Susanna Clarke event, with everyone making their way toward the lobby to line up? I called and asked, but the woman on the phone wasn't very informative. She said she couldn't tell me which room the talk will be in (and therefore couldn't tell me how many tickets are available) and that there's no standard way of running signing there. Also, I was wondering if this talk is the only thing you're dragging yourself to New York for. I'm pleased whenever I see you'll be making an appearance, but at the same time I feel bad and think, "Aw, poor him, he has to leave his family and home again." Especially this soon after a brutal signing tour.

I'll definitely be signing after the talk, but I don't know how it'll be organised. When I did it with Art Spiegelman a couple of years ago, it was a reasonably informal sort of thing.

Which reminds me, there's an interview up on the 92nd St Y site -- http://blog.92y.org/index.php/weblog/item/neil_gaiman/ . I looked at the site and saw that I'm the first of the "Wired at the Y" talks -- WIRED magazine and the 92nd Street Y bring you a special series featuring leaders in business, technology, design, entertainment and science. Adam Rogers, WIRED's senior editor, moderates. The second speaker in April is Brian Greene, "one of the world's leading theoretical physicists, is a brilliant communicator of string theory, a concept that might be the key to a unified theory of the universe. He is the author of the bestseller The Elegant Universe and The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time and the Texture of Reality. Greene is a professor of physics and mathematics at Columbia University and is co-director of Columbia's Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics."

Just what I need, I thought, with gloomy satisfaction. "The next speaker in this series will give you a key to a unified theory of the universe. But tonight, an English bloke who needs a haircut will talk about, er, making things up I expect."

And yes, there's something else I'll be doing. It's going to be fun, I think. And I'll tell you what it is next week.


...

Mr. Gaiman:I have just completed the first chapter of the newest edition of "Lud-In-The-Mist" as well as your own introduction to the text. These first nineteen pages appear to me to include the major themes of existential philosophy some seventeen years in advance of Satre's publication of "Being and Nothingness". I am neither a philosopher nor a literary critic, but I am interested in defending my thesis. I have searched the internet for additional critiques of Ms. Mirrlees work in vain. Do you have any references or suggestions that might be useful? Thank you in advance if you are able to reply. Joel Abrams

Well, it'll make a change from people pointing out that her poem "Paris" prefigured "The Waste Land". The only solid critical-biographical study I know of is Michael Swanwick's essay in FOUNDATION. http://www.sf-foundation.org/publications/backissues.html, which I believe he's going to publish as a chapbook sooner or later. It doesn't seem to be available on-line, though.

The Wikipedia article on her at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hope_Mirrlees isn't as bad as a lot of Wikipedia, and it has a link to a photo of young Mirrlees and Jane Harrison at http://www.presocratics.org/harrisongallery.htm.

Neil, I read your journal daily, and yet, when you write a Deadman story for DC, I have to find out about it from bloody Ain't It Cool News? What's up with that? A little more shameless self-promotion, please.

Sorry.

(I just did a search on the neilgaiman.com site for Deadman, and found http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/08/chicken-soup-and-ice-cream_04.asp which at least proves I once mentioned it existed.)

...

I was intrigued by the review of Jay Lake's Rocket Science at Bookslut, and doubly so after a quick google took me to an intriguing essay by Matt Cheney at Strange Horizons about Rocket Science and Anansi Boys and the difficulties of writing about entertainments.

...

Maddy and I (and Mike and Holly and Holly's friend Rachel) watched the Christmas episode of Dr Who together, and although Maddy was not, as she would be the first to tell you, actually scared or anything, she did decide it might be sensible to sleep on the sofa in my room that night. Just, you know, because.

Mostly Books and Beards

Neil -- I was reading over your journal and saw your note about the special edition of Anansi Boys offered by Ottakar's. I don't suppose you would have a suggestion for how those of us who don't live in the UK could get ahold of that? Is there a US retailer or some online service that Ottakar's has?Thanks! P.S.: I read and loved the American version of Anansi Boys, just so you know!

I didn't know, so I emailed Jon Howells, Our Man at Ottakars, who said...

Hi Neil,

Of course. Any of our stores will be happy to take orders from overseas -fans should contact any of the stores (details of all of them are on our website - www.ottakars.co.uk).

Post to the USA is �10.00 airmail (quick - usually a week), or a fiver surface mail (Willie Lumpkin speed). If any of your readers want to get hold of a copy through one of our stores via the website, they are welcome to do that. If they want to do it throughme, that's fine - they should email me at jon.howells@ottakars.co.uk. Payment will have to be by credit card, I'm afraid (unless they want to send dollars, which is fine, but not very secure and not very quick). Sorry we don't sell through our site, which would make life a lot easier. Maybe one day...

Happy New Year, Jon

...

I don't know if I've mentioned it here before or not, but P�ca Puppets in Ireland are going to be doing a theatrical puppet version of Coraline. I'm really hoping I get to see it. Their newsletter says,

Development of �Coraline�, P�ca�s next show for older children and adults, continued throughout the year. A co-production with �igse, Carlow, and in association with Project Arts Centre, Dublin, it is based on Neil Gaiman�s dark contemporary fairytale of the same name. Plans are afoot to bring it to the World Puppet Art Festival, Prague, as well as an Irish tour Summer/Autumn 2006. Director Sue Mythen and performers Margot Jones, Niamh Lawlor and Joe Moylan, did a week�s exploration of the story in Dec �04 assisted by the Abbeyonehundred. This year artists, Fiona Dowling and Slavek Kwi joined the team for intensive development of script and design, including consultation with children and child psychologists. This was thanks to an Arts Council bursary, and a Dublin City Council Award.

(and in other Coraline news, an article in the Education Guardian tells how Coraline is used in schools, with help from Powerpoint -- http://education.guardian.co.uk/evaluate/story/0,,1677046,00.html).

Dear Neil, are you going to be in Pennsylvania anytime soon? Just wondering. When do you start writing? Thanks a lot, Faith

On January the 26th, when I go to Temple University http://www.temple.edu/ and talk, because Chip Delany asked me to. (He was in hospital at the time, and had a nightmarish catheter incident while we were talking, so the conversation ended with him getting off the phone in a hurry, although with remarkable composure, because of all the blood and such.) (I just looked to see if Chip had a website, and of course he doesn't, but there's a marvellous interview with him by Jayme Lynn Blaschke at http://www.sfsite.com/06b/srd106.htm.
Sample Q & A:
Do you feel your most significant contributions to the field have/will come from a university setting, or as an author of fiction?
Writers write what the world compels them to write; and the University nudges you strongly toward writing non-fiction. Significance is not a factor in that -- because it's the one thing the writer him- or herself has no access to. The eighteenth century playwright Thomas Ottway very probably died more or less sure he would go down in literary history as the greatest English playwright of all time. During his lifetime, his work was regularly compared to that of Shakespeare, and it was a critical given of the time that his play Venice Preserved was a better play than Hamlet.

But today how many people remember Ottway? Or have ever read a line by him? If he survives at all, it's as a canonical example of just how wrong-headed an era or a local and provisional set of literary opinions can be. )

When do I start writing? Fiction is normally after lunch, once all the email and calls and interviews and letters are done, unless I'm in hiding working on a longer piece, in which case it's when I wake up.

...

Marcus at Blackwells wrote to let me know that I thought I'd let you know that Alan Moore has agreed to host the Moorcock event we have on the 18th January. Blackwell Charing Cross Road present an evening with Michael Moorcock, in conversation with Alan Moore. Wednesday 18 January at 7pm.

Tickets �6, concessions �4, from the shop during opening hours (9.30 - 8.00 Mon-Sat, 12.00 - 6.00 Sun) or 0845 456 9876 (Mon-Fri, 9.30 - 6.00)

I really wish I could be there. If you're in the UK, and have any desire to hear two brilliant bearded wild writing geniuses talk about fiction and magic and anarchy and music (just a wild stab in the dark, that, on the subjects) then you should be there. Trust me.

...

Neil - thanks for pointing out that Anansi Boys is 50 percent off at B&N right now (I'm an employee and didn't know). Faithful readers may be interested in knowing that Terry Pratchett's Thud! is part of the same promotion and is also 50 percent off. (So is Paris Hilton's "book" Your Heiress Diary, but I suspect that she and you don't have much crossover in fanbase.) - Seth Christenfeld

Books-A-Million also has Anansi Boys 50% off as part of their after holiday sale both online and in their store. Robert

Hey, Neil. First, thanks for the wonderful stories and the engaging blog! I just wanted to let you know that in the UK (not sure about Europe) Waterstone's is also offering Anansi Boys at 50% off. I'm not sure when the sale ends but I saw it over the weekend.

...

Hi Neil,

I read this on a website (http://www.anotherealm.com/prededitors/pubagent.htm) about literary agents. It said, "Most agents do not represent short stories unless they're in an anthology for publishing as a book. There simply isn't enough money paid for short stories so that an agent can earn a living. If you write short stories, plan on sending your work directly to publishers."

If this is true, should I stop writing short stories and focus on producing a novel or a childrens/YA book? I was hoping that my short stories would at least get the attention of a good agent. Now it seems I have may to change my plans.

Oh, by the way, I'm an aspiring author who has never been published.

Thanks, Neil!
Chan

First off, I want to refer anyone with writing questions to http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/01/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about.asp, a post on this journal mostly written by Teresa Nielsen Hayden which contains everything you need to know, pretty much. It's worth bookmarking as an astonishing collection of web resources and information, honestly.

To answer your question (although the information is really in the paragraph you quote), most agents don't sell individual short stories. That's the bad news. The good news is that editors of things -- anthologies and magazines and suchlike -- that publish short stories do read short stories. This cuts out the middle-man.

An agent might well read your short stories, with an eye to seeing if you might have a novel in you. An agent mostly wants a novel to sell. If you have a collection of brilliant short stories that the agent can sell as a book however, if you're the next Kelly Link or Margo Lanagan, then an agent might well be interested in representing you. But you're unlikely to sell an individual short story for more than a few hundred dollars, and few agents are going to send your story out for you to potential markets -- it would cost more in postage than the agent will ever make on commission.

It's good to write short stories, and a fine way to learn your craft and to get your name out in front of people. I highly recommend it. And if your stories are published I'm sure that it will make getting an agent easier. But you'll have to send them to market yourself.

Quick One

MirrorMask is getting its official cinema release in the UK during the first week of March. However, I just got a message letting me know that the Mancunians amongst you are in luck:

Just wanted to get the word out: Odeon Manchester, in the UK, are showing "Mirrormask" from Friday - I'm told only for one week, to make sure it qualifies for the BAFTAs, so I think it's the only place in the UK to see it right now.

http://www.thefilmworks.co.uk/index.php?page=whatson&tbx_site_id=11
(about 2/3 of the way down, under "March of the Penguins" and above "Polar Express IMAX")

January the 3rd

One month after the DreamHaven signing, I find myself feeling suddenly rather guilty -- it's the photographs of people lined up round the block in the snow.... Those of you who have wondered what Greg Ketter's marvellous purple store looks like, or what the people who do the work there look like, should take a gander at http://www.neilgaiman.net/pictures.php.

Barnes and Noble has the Anansi Boys hardback as part of its After Holiday Sale, at 50% off, online and in its shops, for the next few weeks.

Will Eisner died a year ago today, and I have to type up the introduction to the Eisner New York stories book today. Sigh.

I saw your entry about the re-issue of "Good Omens" with two different covers. Please *please* tell me that they won't have different title pages as well! I'm a cataloger by profession, and you have no idea how difficult these cute marketing ploys make cataloging a book. At the very least, libraries that get both versions will have to make some kind of a note regarding the order of authors' names on the cover. And libraries that only get one and don't realize there is another version are going to be confused. I suppose I shouldn't be whining - after all, one could look at this sort of thing as job security - but anything that increases the difficulty of clearly identifying a work adds to information chaos and helps readers not at all.Thanks.Joan, a cataloger at The Dallas Public Library


I believe they'll have the same interiors; only the cover will change.

G'day Neil, I read your interview at the back of Anansi Boys and found myself agog at the fact that you said that you never have had a nickname. What universe did you come from? I mean, (and I sincerely mean no offense), but, your last name is Gaiman, translated as Gay-man!! Hint, hint. Assuming that this was your birthname, then I can't believe that you weren't hit with every scrap of homosexual innuendo and the connotations(?) that go with it. I'm from Australia and we always found excuses one way or the other to throw a nickname at someone, always in fun of course. I don't think that we're really any different than anybody else, so, what gives?
Anyway, I'm nearly ready to read your new book, and am looking forward to it.
Kindest Regards
David Nelson

I suppose I was fortunate in having most of my schooldays before the mid-Seventies, then, or just in not having been to school in Australia...

In the Crowley and Aziraphale's New Year's Resolutions, I'm a bit confused by Aziraphale's Resolution #4. He says, "I will try to be nicer to the customers. They want to buy books; I want to sell them." I thought in the novel Aziraphale DIDN'T want to sell his books, that that was one of the gags -- that he had this bookstore because he loved books, and he didn't want to part with any of them. Am I misremembering, or has Aziraphale softened in recent years?

Thanks,
Elizabeth S.


Not at all. He's had Resolution #4 on his New Year's Resolutions list since the early 1870s. It's a Resolution, and is thus always completely and perfectly forgotten by January the 3rd.

Meat Machines

A reminder for anyone in the New York area that I'll be doing a talk (and, I believe, probably signing afterwards) at the 92nd St Y, next week. http://www.92y.org/shop/event_detail.asp?productid=T-LC5WR01

hi Neil,
a question about your show at the 92nd st Y: the student discount isn't mentioned on the website, so is there a way to buy discounted tickets in advance? or just at the door? (and will there definitely be tickets available there?)

and a more personal question that I've always wondered about: how do you feel about compliments? adoring fans? do they make you feel fuzzy inside or do they annoy you sometimes? do loving things fans say ever make you cry? it amazes me that you are so modest and kind despite the fact that millions of people love you (or love things you've created). I mean, how does that feel? what's it like? I wish you'd write a story or something about what it feels like to be a beautiful beloved storyteller.
with much adoration and even more curiosity,
Lily

The only information I have on the student discount was from Circus who said, --

Neil--

Just a quick bit about prices for the 92Y event, specifically for the poor student types (myself included) among your readers. I called yesterday to inquire about the student price ($12.50) and was told that it is not possible to puchase tickets at the discounted rate in advance. The only way one can get the student rate is to go to the Y an hour before the show and buy them then. Thought your readers would appreciate the information.

See you in January,
Circus

...which seems fair enough. I'm doing an interview with someone from the 92nd St Y soon and will ask him if there's any more information.

As to the "How I feel about fans/being an author/etc" question... I'm not sure there's a short or an easy answer. A lot of the time, it doesn't feel like it has much to do with me, which may be one of the problems with being a writer, or may be one of the benefits of being a writer. It's probably more immediate being a singer, say, or an actor -- you go out there at night and do the thing you do for lots of people who cheer or clap or don't. But the thing I do, that's important when I do it well, is to write, and that's a pretty solitary sort of occupation. I like the privacy and whatever anonymity I still have.

As for the rest of it... I like it, but I don't take it personally. I'm pleased people like the stories, but consider that mostly to be my good fortune in that the stories I like to write seem to be stories that many people want to read -- I couldn't write "to suit popular taste" to save my life, so I'm just lucky there's an audience out there; I'm always very aware that most writers have real jobs, and that those of us who can give up our day jobs to write are few and far between and very lucky indeed; I'm pleased when the stories help people (something I had to come to terms with at first with Sandman, when I'd get letters from people for whom Death, as a character, had allowed them to cope with the death of a parent or a child) but I'm always aware that the stories weren't written to do that, they just did, and that it had as much to do with the people reading as it did to do with me.

I've been doing some of it too long for it to have a huge impact, I suspect: I've been signing people's books and comics for about 20 years now, which is long enough for any sense of "Wow, they want ME to sign something I WROTE for THEM!" to wear off, say about fifteen years ago, but it's still extraordinarily pleasant to meet the people, and to replace the numbers with faces.

Much of the time I forget about the stuff you listed completely. Having written something people liked doesn't make it any easier the next time you're staring at a half-filled page, convinced that it's all tripe, and badly-written tripe at that. There's a cabinet filled with awards, because they were getting all over the house, and I think I feel better about them being off where I can forget about their existence, for much the same reason. (Except for my Hugo for "A Study In Emerald" which is, for some reason lost in the mists of history, sitting on top of my chest of drawers in the bedroom, between my Mr Punch puppet and The Bride of Frankenstein, and is currently being straddled by a sock monkey I was given at a signing last month, thus increasing its resemblance to some kind of slightly dangerous futuristic silver sex toy.)

So I'm grateful, and I'm lucky. But every now and again I wonder whether it's just some sort of odd dream I'm having when I'm twelve in which I got to do everything I ever wanted, and sooner or later my Dad's going to wake me up with a cup of tea and tell me that I'm late for school, and I still won't have done my geography homework.

...

I suspect that there's a cover-up going on, as one of the new biotech iPods seems to have got out in Honolulu about twenty years ahead of schedule. http://www.local6.com/news/5710517/detail.html

pricise information

I only ever met Ian Dury once, in a French radio station, a few months before he died in 2000. I was awestruck, and I don't awestrike easily. "You used the word contumely in a song," I told him. "You're my hero." "I just pulled it out of a thesaurus, mate," he said, with a smile. Over at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/ there's a retrospective of interviews with Dury (http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/networks/radio4/aod.shtml?radio4/ian_dury_bbc is the direct link, and as with most BBC radio links, it won't be up for more than a week).

Dear Mr. Gaiman,I recently read Good Omens and really enjoyed it. It has a very large fandom, and some of your fans have been wondering: do you read the fanfiction that's written of your work? Even more under speculation: do you write fanfiction and post it under other names?Karla Rubinstein

No, I'm afraid that I don't read any of the fanfiction based on my stuff. I'm sure it's better for everyone if I don't. And no, I don't write fanfiction and post it under other names (what on earth would be the point of that? If I'm going to write a story, I want to be able to put it in my next short story collection).

...

Over at The Dreaming -- http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/ -- Lucy Anne has collected a gargantuan pile of recent stuff, roundups, newspaper articles and bits and such, saving me the trouble of listing it all here. You should go and look.

...

Please give me pricise information about you.thankyou

I am precisely in my mid forties and I write things. I still have all my own hair and fingernails. I do not have all my own pens, because I absent-mindedly leave them places and never see them again. I speak fluent English but cannot juggle. My eye-colour is hazel which is not a very precise sort of eye colour at all, I'm afraid, wandering from green to brown to grey and even to blue depending mostly on the lighting.

Mr. Gaiman,I just wanted to share that Neverwhere was listed by Frommer's as one of their favorite books that make them see the world.
Here's the link to the site.
Nat K.

Thanks, Nat.
...

Last year, someone asked about the Ottakar's boxed edition of the UK ANANSI BOYS, querying mostly whether it would be worth the money -- there's a review in at http://www.thealienonline.net/blog/2005_12_01_tao_ed_archive.asp#113510436109289132, and not only are they very nice about it, but the price is described as actually very reasonable for this sort of thing, which will I trust put everybody's mind at rest.

...

To clarify, for the befuddled who have written to me requesting an explanation, Good Omens is being reissued in the US in February, in hardcover for the first time since 1990 and with a new introduction, Frequently Asked Questions, a piece on Terry by me and a piece on me by Terry. It will be coming out in an edition with two different covers, to ensure that people who can only find the G shelves in bookshops have an equal chance of finding it to the ones who only know about the Ps.

The covers will look more or less like this:

Hullo Neil,

Happy Holidays and a Splendiferous New Year to you and yours. IGN, in their End-of-Year madness has posted a Top 25 of DC Vertigo comics and you managed to get four hits, with Black Orchid at #25, The Books of Magic at #14, Death: The High Cost of Living at #11 and Sandman as the #1 Vertigo series. So congrats to that and the link to the list is here:

http://comics.ign.com/articles/677/677353p1.html
Congrats on that and hope all goes well.

Matt from Chicago, IL.

and also

Look, another wonderful and deserving recognition....
http://citypages.com/databank/26/1308/article13990.asp

You will need to scroll down a bit to your mention...

-Amanda
...

I forgot to mention that while I was on holiday I read Angela Carter's lovely Nights at the Circus, and Garry Kilworth's not-yet-published Attica, a fantasy quest (sort of) set in an attic. Or perhaps in all attics. It's an excellent book, good and original and, in all the best ways, strange. It kept transporting me back to the attic of the house I lived in as a boy, in which we would find peculiar things left by the house's former owners, cardboard boxes filled with large glass bulbs, like light-bulbs, each containing several tablespoons of dusty liquid mercury, or round bricks of glittering white marble, and suchlike forgotten magical objects...