Googling things mostly

Hi Neil,I have always wondered this: is the King of Pain who comes to tempt Joshua Abraham Norton an actual historical figure? Or is he just something you came up with because of the Police song? I have searched the Web several times but couldn't find anything about him.Regards,Nicholas from Singapore

Did you try googling? There seems to be something wrong with the formatting of the Sandman FAQs. But a quick googling told me that you'll find the answer over in http://www.neilgaiman.com/faqs/sandmanfaq/
Still, I spent a few additonal seconds googling, and actually found Herbert Asbury's Barbary Coast on line, where we learn that,

an occasional visitor at the Cobweb Palace, was an itinerant healer who
called himself the King of Pain. He was probably the most ornate personage in
the San Francisco of his time—his customary attire was scarlet underwear, a
heavy velour robe, a high hat bedecked with ostrich feathers, and a heavy sword.
When he went abroad, he rode in a coal-black coach drawn by six snow-white
horses. The King of Pain made a fortune selling aconite liniment from a pitch at
Third and Mission streets, but he lost all his money at the gaming tables and
finally committed suicide.

There.

Work Habits...Hi Neil! I'm a film & tv editor/sometime filmmaker/aspiring writer. I'm curious about your work habits. Are you one to hide in a quiet writer's garret, work in the local coffeeshop or tavern? Do you, as Douglas Adams did, have music playing all the time as you write? I take it from your assistant's "A Day in the Life of a Personal Assistant" you tend to be more of a night owl.My own work habits as far as writing goes are somewhat limited by by "real job." I usually end up sitting down to write at about 7pm, screw around looking up stuff on Wikipedia, dusting my desk, trying to find that small scrap of paper that I wrote someone's phone number down on two weeks ago, and eventually start putting words down around midnight.Thanks for the great work! I wish more people had the chance to see Mirrormask on the big screen... I fortunately did in that very short week it was here in Los Angeles.Cheers!--Jud

I'm afraid I haven't been a late night writer for almost a decade. I used to be a late-night author, and I sort of miss it. But these days I'm an afternoon writer, mostly.

(It's worth pointing out that Lorraine's "Day in the life" was semi-fictional. While it's composed mostly of real bits -- she did have to head out early and wake me a few days ago, when I had to do an early-morning call to my UK editor to go over the galleys of Fragile Things, and she'll come out and make sure I'm not going to miss a plane if I've got to leave at the crack of dawn -- I'm normally up and pottering about and have made my own tea by the time she drives up with the mail.)

I have been trying to find a "American Gods" in audio form. I have the cassette tapes, but have had no luck finding it on CD. Since I traded cars, part of what I lost was my tape player, and was wondering where I could find it online where I could download the book, or if it is available through CD format.I am sending this hoping that it is not available on Amazon, since I have looked there, and hate having to blame myself on my own stupidity for not seeing what is in front of me.Thank you,Larry Wilmoth

I tried googling American Gods CD to see where it took me, and found myself on the page for the MP3 CD -- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060836253/104-0858245-5880730?v=glance&n=283155 -- with a link to the downloadable audio -- http://www.audible.com/adbl/entry/offers/productPromo2.jsp?BV_UseBVCookie=Yes&productID=BK_HARP_000720. It didn't actually tell me how people could buy the CD version that only went to libraries, but you could order that from your library. Or you could get the MP3 CD and put it on your iPod or computer and burn it to audio CD.

Parlor trick for Fat Charlie..."Levitating Screw" using magnets, wire, and a lime!http://undeniablefacts.blogspot.com/2006/08/undeniable-friday_11.html -Fred

That looks both silly and fun from the little video. But it's the lime that makes it magic. (I wish it was the lime that levitated, though.)

Hi Lorraine. I loved your description of life as Neil's assistant. Can we see some pictures of his hand-written manuscripts?Thank you,Mike

I hate to tell you this, but Lorraine was just doing a guest-post here. Luckily, I can point you to handwritten manuscripts on this here very website -- http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/books/americangods/notebook/book_1_introductory.jpg/view
Although they seem to have shrunk in the redesign to the point where they aren't easy to read (well, they were never easy to read. But they were at least readable before).

So who pays?
I mean I often see you post about popping off to one destination or another. Is the life of a famous author *insert swooning fans here* actually that lucrative, or do other people pay for most of your trips? Is there ever an instance where you think "Hey I'd like to take the family on that trip to Venice/Australia/The Caribbean but we will have to SAVE some money to do it"?
If the money is always there for what you want, was it always that way and could you please tell me how it feels?
Manda

Er, mostly if I'm going somewhere to do something then someone else is paying. This is because I'd rather be at home. (Next week's trip to Spain to be Best Man at Mark Buckingham's wedding is, of course, an exception.)

I've been a best-selling author for a long time now. And Hollywood has been optioning things I've written since around 1990. So yes, I can afford my own tickets and things.

How does it feel? Okay, I guess. It makes some things easier. It doesn't fix anything important. It takes away the small fights and miseries and grind-you-down irritants and hard choices of not having enough money. The biggest thing I wish it would buy me, which it doesn't, is time: more time to write in, more time to do things in.

One does not expect to see Neil Gaiman quoted in a historical political
analysis comparing and contrasting the US political situation with the Nixon
administration:

http://agonist.org/stirling_newberry/20060811/the_end_of_the_age_of_nixon

Well, this one didn't, anyway.

Rob

Nor would I, honestly.

...

Finally, when I was on the Stardust set last month I took a few slightly illicit photos with my cell-phone... I'm going to post one of my favourites here, because it makes me smile. It's Claire Danes, who plays Yvaine, sitting on the floor between takes, laughing at somebody's joke (Charlie Cox's, I think). (If no-one growls at me for posting it, I may post a few more.)

For your diaries. Well, if you live in Arkansas.

I'll be talking in Conway, Arkansas on November the 14th: http://www.uca.edu/cfac/wrsp/speaker_series.html has the details. Each semester... the Department of Writing and Speech invites acclaimed writers to visit UCA, hold master classes with writing students, and give a free public reading/talk for the campus and community. (October is Dave Eggers.)

It should be fun. When I was talking at Yale last month I was reminded of the first time I was ever formally invited to talk at a college, in the mid-90s, and I arrived in St Louis to discover that I'd technically been invited in by the Art department, who were rather embarrassed as the English department had decided to officially boycotting the whole event because I Wrote Comics and they didn't approve of that sort of thing. (Oddly or not, I sort of miss those days.)

What My Assistant Does

Over the years quite a few of you have written in and asked what Lorraine, my assistant, actually does. (Whatever it is, she does she's been doing it now for about 14 years.) Today she swung by on her way to go off and do her other job (er, playing violin and singing). "Hey," she said. "Check your email. I wrote about what it's like to be a personal assistant."

I checked my email. I read it. I laughed. I nodded with a certain amount of recognition. (Though I've only sprung a visit to to Tasmania that she had to organise on her once, in about 1998, and I didn't bring back any animals at all.)

"Shall I put it up on my blog?" she said.

"Sure," I said. Then, "Would you like me to put it up on mine?"

She said yes, she would actually, so here it is. A Lorraine's-eye view of the world...



A Day in the Life of a Personal Assistant


Wake up. Drive to Boss's House. Think to myself "way way too
early". Make tea. Get ready to wake Boss for an early morning conference call
with foreign editor. Attempt to wake Boss. Find what looks like a corpse. Remember Boss
promised to have an "Early Night" and wake upon the dawn like a lark, refreshed
and ready for the day. Realize Boss has only been asleep for an hour or so.

Shake corpse. Corpse attempts speech. Corpse fails. Tea, I say,
over and over, in conversational tones. Boss makes it to tea, which is beside
the bed, not a far leap for many, but a large one for Boss. Asks me to find the
Last Big Contract for the Last Big Project but I am too smart for that trick.
Wait until Boss is actually working thru morning e-mail until I leave the room.

Make more tea. Start to go thru the mail, which comes in a bucket sort
of thing every morning. Throw away the junk. Bucket thing still full. Start to
open the Mail and sort into piles. Important, Black and Whites of Comics in
Progress, Galleys of Books in Progress, Case of Mangos (look, if you want
something from me, case of mangos gets that request right to the top)
contracts, requests for quotes, fan mail, gifts from fans and friends,
Things From Editors, Publishers, and Studios, CDs people have sent, and really
odd things. (see essay on Top 10 Things
Never To Send Your Favorite Writer ) Notice one of the CDs. Stop. Impressed.
Love her work. Pop cd into the player. Ah, yes....

Time for more tea for
Boss. Remind him about the conference call in ten minutes. He asks, any chance
of breakfast? Make breakfast. Fast. Get Boss on call, with more tea and go
downstairs with tiara for the portion of the day known as "Princess of No"

E-mail. Lots of E-mail. I promise myself I will, today, get it down
under 500 today. I will be patient. I will be kind, as I dash people's hopes and
dreams. You have 130 new e-mails, my computer helpfully tells me. Well, it's
early I think, not to worry, can't really sink my teeth into it until I get at
least 200.

Dear Assistant, we would like to invite your Boss to our
Con next month, next year, in ten years time, many of them start out. Can't
be done, sorry, he is booked thru the year 2060. When he will be 100. Sorry,
says the Princess of No.

Dear Assistant, can we interview your Boss
for our web-page, fanzine, newspaper, major paper, television show,
documentary? "Maybe," I tell the Washington Post, David Letterman and the
guy doing a documentary on .Seriously Weird Un-dead Things who Like Mangos (hey,
I like Seriously Weird Un-dead Things and Mangos, rule number one, get the
Assistant behind you ).......

The ones that come thru foreign publishers, I say,
"you get one major interview, pick it wisely, that's it for you". Boss is
published in over 40 different countries. I wonder how we are going to do 40
interviews for his current bestselling book, the one coming out in a month, and
the two movies he is working on. Everyone else gets to meet the Princess of No.
(No one likes her. UN-popular )

Dear Assistant, I wrote you almost
a week ago and have received no reply to my questions, what's the problem?
I have my first good laugh of the day.

Dear Assistant, I am an
aspiring writer-publisher-editor-illustrator and desire greatly to get into the
field and am inquiring about an internship with Mr Gaiman, I don't need to be
paid, just a couch to sleep on and I feel I could be of great help working with
him and his publishers and could learn a lot from an internship. (hmmm...we DO need someone for the garden. But no.)

Receive a letter
from my best friend asking what I am up to today. Ruining people's hopes and
dreams I say. Oh, she writes back, the usual. Another letter friend asks can we
go out sometime. I wonder idly what that means.

(During the E-mail phase
I should point out the phone has not once stopped ringing. )

Boss is off
the conference call and I give him a list of calls to return. He lets me know
the cats have been peeing in inappropriate places. I apologize and take
responsibility for the cats' bladders, and go have a talk with the cats. Look
says I, you gots these nice litter boxes, whyfor you peeing around all the
doors? Cats say because you close the doors. I say, Because if we don't you pee
in the rooms. Stand off. Never argue with a cat.

Arrange with Movie People for Boss to go out for Meetings the following week. Arrange car to
airport, air, car to hotel, hotel car service to meetings and airport again.
Arrange Meetings: Breakfast, Coffee, Lunch, Coffee, Drinks, Dinner, Drinks for
people in order of importance. Wonder that Boss isn't fat and floating
away.

In one of the ebs and flows we find ourselves, Boss and I, able to
flee the house and have a walk round the garden. Nice garden, nice walk.Take
notebook, always. Now I have things to do if I get bored. Not to complain, I
like the garden. Threaten plants with pruning shears if they don't start growing
better and making me look bad.

I go to the grocery store, the post office, the bank, the garden center and out for some really weird electronics whose purpose I will never understand.

Back home again I hear Boss on
the phone with Friend with Family in Town. I overhear Boss say Sure, come on
out tonight for dinner and spend the night, I have to leave for the UK in the
morning, but that's ok. Wait, I say, leaving out the fact I am completely
unaware of this UK trip, first things first, How Many and What do they Eat? Go
back to grocery store, find beds and bedding.. NOW....

What do you mean, Boss you leave tomorrow? Oh. Right. Says he. Director needs me on the set.. Just found out. Oh, I need to go via Tasmania. Right.

Set up airfare from Midwest to Tasmania, find
hotel with shuttle, and arrange flights to UK and hotel and back home four days later.

Have short talk with Boss about tomorrow's flight. I tell him
again that flights will not wait upon him, they are fixed and firm and WILL
leave without him. Boss finds this funny. Again. Remind Boss that he is leaving
for LA the day after he gets back from the UK.

Boss brings home
Tasmanian Devil. Research Tasmanian Devil care. Boss tells me Tas has shredded
the couch. Take responsibility for Tas's claws. Shoot Tas. Know that if Boss
asks where's Tas, the phone will ring, and he might forget for days.

Phone rings. Oh, says I, he's here. Oh, uh, loved your last movie.
Lovely about the Oscar.

Check e-mail. Ah, that's more like it. Numbers I
can really sink my teeth into. Letter from Godlike Writer asking is Boss free to
be Grand Master of Everything on April 30th he says he will if he's free. Sure,
says I, he has nothing except Easter Weekend when he is Godlike Master of
Everything at the Most important Thing in the World. Easter Weekend, I recall
from last year, is in early April. Copy Boss. Get mail back from Boss. Find out
Easter Weekend Moves Each Year and is now on April 30th. Damm. Write letters throwing myself on my sword.

Being a Personal Assistant is like shooting from the hip. You have to be
fast, you have to be ready. If it goes wrong, oh, and it will, you will take the
blame. If it goes right, that's good because that's how it should be. I,
however, know that I am appreciated. My Boss has the sweetest temper going, and
is one of the kindest people I have ever met. I know everything I do is really
really important. He has told me so, many times.

I lay in my bed,
wishing I had got everything I wanted to done, and run over my various
affirmations for the day tomorrow. I will get my e-mail under 500. I will get tomatoes staked. I will be friendly, funny, and try and get to the gym.

Then two very very truthful, simple and
profound things occur to me and I smile.

I so love my job. And....

Thank the Gods that I am not as busy as my Boss.

fragile rutabagas

There.

All 31 stories (and the introduction) of FRAGILE THINGS are now recorded, and I can get back to catching up on things I have to write, instead of sitting in a studio and reading my stories, vaguely aware that my accent doesn't belong to anywhere any more.

Hello Neil,I hope you are well. I've just been introduced to "American Gods" by Thea Gilmore's track on your recent CD and thought I ought to find out more about you. I'm a very big supporter of Thea's work and wanted to see/read what you were all about. Well, the story is excellent but is keeping me up until 3/4 in the morning so reaching the end will find me returning to more normal hours.However, as any English chap will know a proper Cornish pasty is made from meat, onions, salt , pepper and SWEDE (not carrot)....shame on you, ha!ha! Or was it that your Amercan audience wouldn't know what a swede was. After all it's cattle feed really. Sorry to be pedantic but......who cares!!!! Ho, hum..... nice to write to you and I look forward to reading all your other work as I like your style.Kind regards from Roger in Cambridge, UK.

I'm not sure whether or not I'd actually figured out that what the English call swede is more or less what the Americans call rutabaga when I wrote American Gods. And in the UP you can often get pasties with or without rutabagas. Alas, I never mentioned them. But if I had, you'd still be writing and telling me that they ought to have swede in. So I think we've both learned something.

And really this is my excuse to mention that I just got an advance copy of Harpo's Ghost, the new Thea Gilmore CD. (Big happy smile.)

This is the UK cover of Fragile Things, by the way...

Audio Thoughts

Today and tomorrow I'll be back in the studio in Minneapolis finishing the reading of FRAGILE THINGS audio.

I got an advance copy of the Stardust Audio Book I did back in January. I've heard a little of it, and I think it's okay. (It's a bit hard to listen to stuff I've read with any pleasure. It's like when you hear a message you left on your phone, playing back with mingled embarassment and "I don't sound like that do I?")

It's the new-look Stardust, which looks a bit like the new US trade paperback.

commas matter

Copy-editing can sometimes wear you down -- when you've copy-edited the manuscript, and then the galleys, and you've done it twice for two different countries with two different ideas of what they want their commas to do, and you wonder if it's worth it, trying to keep track of every little comma...

Then you read an account of a 2.13 million dollar comma, and you remember why commas matter.

...

http://www.babynamewizard.com/namevoyager/lnv0105.html is educational and fun to play with...

And the Fragile Things cover is up on Amazon.com...

Leaving Las Vegas

It's been a brilliant week of work. I'm going home with 30 pages of screenplay done, and the two of us very satisfied with the way it's going. It's been really fun and really hard work, and I can understand why Teller has worked with Penn Jillette all these years, because working with Penn is a blast. Also, I got to drive Penn's other pink Mini Cooper.

The blog even got a namecheck from Penn on Saturday night, his first show in a week, as he juggled broken glass bottles. He'd already had one bottle disintegrate, cutting his thumb, and the next bottle he'd smashed was now pretty much a handle with a blade of glass. "Jesus! Well, if something goes wrong," he said, "it'll give Neil something to write about on his blog" and I heard one lone person in the back guffaw.

...

I'd like to say thank you to the Mythopoeic Society and voters for awarding ANANSI BOYS the 2006 Mythopoeic Award, which is a lion statue. As I said in my speech (delivered by proxy as I was here working) "I am very aware that any of the books on this year's shortlist could have taken home the lion as proudly and with as much right as I do", but I'm very grateful.

Right. Back to work, then home.

Working well

The work goes well. I'm enjoying it. At the end of yesterday we realised that after three days of reading and scribbling we had actually done some work, and that this was good. Now comes the hard bit of writing together and seeing what happens. Wish me luck.

In the past couple of days I've also written 6 ETERNALS pages, half-proofread Fragile Things UK, and written two introductions and an acceptance speech. Don't quite feel like I'm catching up, but also don't feel hot breath of the dogs of deadline on the back of my neck.

Let's see -- Ricky Gervais talks about his experience in Stardust at http://www.rickygervais.com/2extras.php.

Marcus Gipps from Blackwells wrote to say

Just thought I'd let you know that the booking line will be open from Monday morning (the 7th, at 9.30) for your event with us, and the tickets will be on sale in the shop from the end of next week, as soon as the tickets and posters actually arrive.

Blackwell present: An Evening with Neil Gaiman

Monday 25th of September, 7pm
Logan Hall
Institue of Education
20 Bedford Way
WC1H 0AL

Tickets cost £7, £5 concessions, and are available from our dedicated booking line 0845 456 9876 (Mon-Fri, 9.30 - 6.00), or in-store at Blackwell, 100 Charing Cross Road, London, WC2H 0JG (as soon as we get them in).

If anyone has any questions or wants to be put on the Event mailing list, email events.london@blackwell.co.uk. If anyone wants to reserve a signed copy or be put on the Signed First Edition Mailing list, email Marcus.Gipps@blackwell.co.uk .

Also, the tickets for the rest of the list are also on sale from the same number, including a few fellow travellers:

Rupert Everett in conversation with Justine Picardie, Wed 20th Sept (all details as for NG)

Terry Pratchett, Thursday 28th September. All details as for NG.

(We also have Richard Ford that week - we're going to be busy! When was the last time you and Terry appeared together? Shame to miss each other by 3 days. Still, at least I can get my Good Omens double signed, and I suspect I won't be the only person to do so).

Blackwell and the ICA present:
Alan Moore & Melinda Gebbie in conversation with Stewart Lee, Thurs 12 Oct. All details as for Neil Gaiman, except ticket prices are £8 and £6.

The rest of the list, in various locations and at various prices:

Joseph Stiglitz (5/9)
JG Ballard (14/9)
Richard Ford (26/9)
Jeremy Paxman (04/10)
Julie Walters (16/10)
Alex Krapanos (07/11)
Michael Palin (28/11)

Not bad going, huh?

I'll put something up on Where's Neil about it in a couple of days.

...

Later. Ten pages of movie script now exists. Much tea was drunk. This is fun.

this blog entry has no title

The Mystery Project is going just fine, thank you.

I just found out from the New York Times (I've now had my name misspelled in the New York Times! This should not be a source of glee and delight to me, but it is) that you can download individual tracks from Harper Audio's NEIL GAIMAN AUDIO COLLECTION (The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, Wolves in the Walls, Crazy Hair and Cinnamon) for a small fee from the brand spanking new Harper's Digital Media Cafe -- and for free you can download Maddy Gaiman interviews her Dad, and, less excitingly, me talking about Stardust, although I'm being interviewed for over twenty minutes, so it would at least fill part of a commute.

And here's a video of Jane Goldman talking about the STARDUST movie, while Charles Vess looks on from the background...

Meanwhile, to close a few tabs: a photo of Sydney Harbour that you need to zoom in on... close enough to see, well, practically everything...

The trailer for that nice Mr Gilliam's film Tideland. Which looks bleak and odd and beautiful and disturbing.

I discovered Jarvis Cocker's new song "Running The World" through Hype Machine. It has rude words in it, so do not click if you don't want to hear a song with rude words in.

The Guardian Blog tells us that reading books is sexy (and illustrates it with a pretty lady reading Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell). Most of the interesting stuff is in the comments.

And finally, I was sent the following, by way of explanation...

Amazon's "people who bought books by X might like Y" service is something that publishers (or publicists) pay for. For a fee, you can pick out 10 different books and an e-mail is sent to everyone who purchased those books suggesting yours. Not sure why they included your books for a math text, but maybe they ran out of other choices before they got to 10 and threw that one in for fun.

In Which The Author Is A Bit Mysterious

There's a great big interview with Alan Moore, pretty much all about Lost Girls, at the Onion's AV club: http://www.avclub.com/content/node/51180/1 (and then, just to demonstrate that comics writers are taking over the Earth, you can read Brian K Vaughan's iPod commentary at http://www.avclub.com/content/node/51196).

Maddy's off with her best friends at science camp this week, and I'm off working with a friend on a project we've tried to get off the ground since 1998, and he's busy and I'm busy, but this week it's happening, or at least starting. And I'm being much too secretive about it right now, but one day, or at least when it's a bit further along, I won't be. (And I'm pretty sure I've talked about it somewhere on this blog already.)

I see from Zap2it.com that Ian McShane has joined the cast of Coraline. I see from a number of Newspapers all around the world that UPI carefully corrected the book and film's name to Caroline before it sent out its press release.

I was sad to see that Cheryl Morgan is closing down Emerald City. It's been a terrific little magazine-on-the-web, a fanzine in the best sense, and a voice of sensibleness and sanity in the wilderness for some years. I'll miss it.

Several people have forwarded emails from Amazon.com to me today that were variants on

We've noticed that customers who have purchased books by Neil Gaiman also purchased books by B. G. Pachpatte. For this reason, you might like to know that B. G. Pachpatte's Integral and Finite Difference Inequalities and Applications, Volume 205 (North-Holland Mathematics Studies) will be released soon. You can pre-order your copy by following the link below.

Integral and Finite Difference Inequalities and Applications, Volume 205 (North-Holland Mathematics Studies)
B. G. Pachpatte
Price: $139.00

I never knew that I was so popular among mathematicians.

...

The Fabulist at www.fabulist.org, is one of those wonderful gate-keeper things that they talk about -- the kind of website that just points you to things that you soon cannot live without. The latest thing I got from them is the Hype Machine at http://hype.non-standard.net/. "Find Music You Never Knew You Liked" it says, and it promptly gave me a ridiculous number of songs I han't known I wanted to hear (did you know that Stephin Merritt's cover of If I Were A Rich Man is available as a free amazon.com download? I'm not saying that you'll like it or that you want to hear it. But it's there.).

...

And finally, Happy Birthday, Winter.