the how of blogging

I read Neil Gaiman's blog nearly every day, and usually there's a few different topics addressed in each blog (with each topic being seperated by an ellipsis). I was wondering.. does Mr. Gaiman just write his almost-daily blog all at once, or does he leave some kind of blog-program running in the background and write to it when he comes across something he thinks is worth writing down? I suppose, in my mind, I have this idea of Neil being done with writing that day, and then he goes and writes a blog. But sometimes his blogs are almost schizophrenic, meaning there's (sometimes) many different subjects he addresses in each of them. So I was just wondering is all. :-) Keep up the good work on the site,-Paul.

It all depends. There's no real pattern -- sometimes I keep a blog entry going until it seems long enough. Sometimes I write them in the morning before work starts, sometimes at night on the couch, and sometimes, like right now, I just go onto blogger to post in order to let anyone who's likely to read this and also send me email know that due to gmail being tooth-grindingly irritating right now, anyone who's sending email to my gmail account is getting it bounced back.

But then I think "I can't just post that. There are lots of people out there who don't give a toss about my gmail. I should at least put something else up."

So then I put up a link to "Dylan Hears a Who" -- http://www.dylanhearsawho.com/home.htm -- where you can hear what sounds astonishingly like a mid 60s incarnation of Bob Dylan singing his way through the Dr Seuss catalogue, and it will probably make you happier.

Labels: Blogging, Bob Dylan, Dr Seuss, gmail

Cat scans

Lots of people wrote to let us know that yesterday's mystery Russian alien was... a guitarfish (although there was healthy disagreement on exactly which kind).

Hi Neil,

I'm a big fan of your work, and I am a big fan of ampersands, so when I decided to get a tattoo of the latter, I wanted the one from the softcover editions of "Preludes & Nocturnes" and "Fables & Reflections". The only problem is, I don't know which font they're in. So, instead of feverishly searching (actually, I already did that), I decided to go right to the source. Do you know what font it's in?

While I didn't know, I figured Dave McKean would, so I asked him, and he said,

The answer to your blogger question about the ampersands:
Which PB editions? Since DC have released 57 versions, I'm not sure which one you mean. If you mean the recent SANDMAN LIBRARY editions, I have a copy of Fables... and this lovely scrolly fancy ampersand is set in MISSIONARY, a font available from Emigre designed by the brilliant Miles Newlyn (if memory serves me correctly). If you don't mean this edition, then can i recommend this empersand anyway, it's the best one.
...

Seeing the Village Voice has just leaked it, and a few of you have written to ask about it, yes, I will be a Guest at the PEN World Voices Festival at the end of April. I can't give you any other details right now, but the curious should go to http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1096 and sign up for the Festival mailing list for more information.

I just finished Peter Beagle's I See By My Outfit, a book I've wanted to read since I was a teenage Beagle boy and learned of its existence in the back of A Fine and Private Place, and I loved it. It's the true story of a two man road trip across America on motor scooters, and it's as much a journey across time now as it is across space: funny, heartwarming and wise. The kind of book you feel a better person for having read.

Too much fun is being had with Readerware (http://www.readerware.com/rwFeat.html) and a cuecat scanner, as books are brought up to the new library upstairs and scanned in or ISBNd or entered by hand before being put on the shelves. Mostly I wish, given the number of old books here, that someone had thought of ISBNs before 1966... And then I wish that the library upstairs was three times the size, as I don't think it's going to make the dent in the basement library that I hoped it was going to.

Labels: ampersands, library upstairs, PEN world voices festival, Peter S Beagle, Readerware, tattoos, typefaces, weird russian fish

From Neil the nine-fingered...

In addition to my having what I suspect must be the only doctor left in the western world who cheerfully makes house calls if he hears I'm poorly, I also have the kind of doctor who, when I call him to ask if I should head down to the emergency room, says "Why don't you come up to my office and I'll see if you need stitches." So I did, and I didn't need stitches, just a superglue patch-up on a finger that had had too close an encounter with a kitchen knife.

So instead of posting anything interesting, I'm going to put something up that doesn't need much typing:

Russian fishermen catch squeaking alien and eat it... http://english.pravda.ru/science/mysteries/07-02-2007/87167-alien_monster-0

Labels: Doctor Dan, sharp kitchen knives, superglue, weird russian fish

small poetry ponder

An odd moment of things that bounce off each other: This morning I read this New York Times article on the genetic make-up of the UK and Ireland, and thought, Sure, but I know that already... why do I know that? and then smiled, as I realised I was remembering a Kipling poem that said much the same thing to me as the article did, only it said it as poetry and as story.

The Kipling poem, The Land, is at http://whitewolf.newcastle.edu.au/words/authors/K/KiplingRudyard/verse/p3/land.html.

Labels: genetics, Kipling, poetry

"I am the emperor, and I want dumplings"

Lorenzo di Bonaventura, producer extraordinaire, is interviewed about Transformers over at http://www.moviesonline.ca/movienews_11409.html, and they ask him about Stardust. His answers are informative and interesting,

Q: I’d like to go into Stardust for a second if you don’t mind.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Okay, sure.

Q: I heard that they’re test screening out in Pasadena and it had very, very high test scores.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: It did, which I was surprised by actually.

Q: How has it been going on that as well?

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: Exceedingly well. It’s a weird thing to say. I don’t think everybody’s going to love the movie because it’s not a movie that’s designed to be that and yet when we went and tested it, they really flipped for it so it caught me off guard. It was a movie where I expected to have a larger portion of the audience go ‘well, that’s sort of out there. I’m not sure it’s for us.’ And what happened was that we delivered I think the romance so spectacularly well – Matthew (Vaughn) did such a good job with it – that it caught a segment of the audience in that I wasn’t expecting.

Q: I’ve heard an anecdote along those lines saying that the studio was afraid to call it a fairy tale similar to like a Princess Bride and that Matthew really wants to call it but that it’s sort of being discouraged.

Lorenzo di Bonaventura: That’s not true. We all have the same fear which is when you use the word fairy tale… It’s interesting. We learned this from the focus groups. When we asked them to describe the movie to us and then they would give us a description and then we’d say to them, ‘What do you think if we describe it as a fairytale?,’ they’d say ‘NOOOOO!’ like that and we’d go, ‘Whoa! Okay, alright! We’re not going to call it that!’ It was really sort of an interesting thing. Because it’s not a movie that fits into any simple genre -- it is an adventure movie, it is a romance, it is a fantasy, it is Neil Gaiman’s bizarre world view -- there’s going to be some struggle for us to find the way to voice this thing, so we’re really going to need you guys to help us actually. (Laughs) It’s true. We’re going to be a very print-driven movie.

I've known Lorenzo for a decade now, since he ran Warner Brothers, and he is a very wise man. Although I probably think my worldview is more normal than he does....

Hi Neil,

This isn't a question, but some information: At dinner on Friday evening, my friend's mother was telling us a that a man in Wal-Mart told her the Russians are stealing our bee technology, which would be the reason for all the vanishing bees (re: the article in your journal for 3/5/07). He seemed pretty sure of it, so I figured I'd pass along the warning just in case. Watch out for all those new bees in your garden.

Sincerely,
Stephanie H.

It could be Russians with apian transporter beams stealing our bees, I suppose. ("Locked onto the hive co-ordinates, tovarisch." "Good. Bring them in.") God knows, if we don't listen to friends' mothers telling us what men in Wal-Mart said, we'll never learn anything...

My own theory about the disappearing bees is that some bright bee in each of the now-empty hives said, "'ere, why are we eating this appalling corn syrup muck out of container tankers when we've spent all year making lovely honey? Why are we being driven around the country on the back of trucks? Why do we put up with this? We're bees for god's sake. We can fly. Let's go somewhere else." And then the rest of the bees went "She's got a point, you know," and then they went elsewhere.

Is there any plans to do an unabridged production of Neverwhere? Your stories
have always been best when read aloud, they lend to such wonderful story telling.
I'd read most of your books once, and recently listened to Anasi Boys,
and Stardust. I felt like a kid again, telling and listening to stories around
the camp fires with my friends when reading out loud was the fashion. Thanks for your good works. ~Chad

Yup. I recorded it already. The existence of the extremely abridged version of Neverwhere with the astoundingly truncated ending has always irked me, despite the Brian Eno music and the really solid Gary Bakewell reading, but the license for it has now expired, and I am happy to say that it will vanish from the world.

The new version will be out later this year, probably in the Autumn. I actually recorded it from the "author's preferred text" version, so it's the longest version of the text. I loved recording the audiobook, and doing all the voices, and found myself remembering how much I liked all those people, and wanting to write The Seven Sisters all over again.

Labels: bees, Ferdinand I Karl Leopold Joseph Franz Marchlin Emperor of Austria King of Hungary and Bohemia, Lorenzo Di Bonaventura, Neverwhere audio, Stardust

Absolute Mondays

Today was spent doing Absolute stuff. For the Absolute Stardust (which is technically not an Absolute Stardust but an oversized hardback Stardust with stuff in) I proofread all the extra material, added a postscript to the reprinting of the original "pitch document" to publishers from 1993 (did I really think that Croup and Vandemar belonged in Stardust?), and for the next volume of Absolute Sandman we dug out dozens of little thumbnail comics I'd drawn for Sandman over the years, found the still-unopened First Sandman Statue (#1 of 1800) in order to photograph the box for the book (which will also have the short story on the back of the box in it) and even found photocopies of the pencils of the first 8 pages of Sandman 23, which will probably be the script that gets published in the book.


Also mysterious boxes of stuff to do with beekeeping have arrived. I've always wanted bees in the garden, and it turned out that the birdchick has always wanted to be a beekeeper but didn't think that it would work, keeping bees in an apartment in Minneapolis, and anyway her rabbit would object, so we've agreed to join forces: she gets to keep bees in my garden, I get to help, and all our friends and loved ones get to keep their distance nervously and eat honey. What could possibly go wrong? In this way we shall make up for the vanishing of bees across America.



I've just heard that there will be a limited edition of M is for Magic, the story collection for young readers, from Subterranean Press. The copies in the bookshops will be illustrated by Teddy Kristiansen. The Subterranean edition will have illustrations by Gahan Wilson: one thousand numbered copies and 26 lettered copies -- details up at http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/2007/03/05/announcing-m-is-for-magic-by-neil-gaiman/

...


Hi Neil, random question. So does Lorraine live there? Because she seems to be around all the time.


No, she has her own house, and she's goes there in the afternoon when she finishes work, and at weekends. It's a very nice house, filled with paintings, dead things and even a small Hallowe'en village. (As Lorraine was off in LA Hallowe'en week last year I got to go to her house to feed the trick-or-treaters -- because nobody ever comes to my house on Hallowe'en, possibly because it's too far from everything or too spooky or something -- and the kids all looked around when they came to the door and were impressed that someone had made that much effort for Hallowe'en, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that Lorraine's house was like that the rest of the year as well.)

Lorraine will not, however, be there next Sunday night, March the 11th. This is because Hera is going to be coming in from New Zealand and the two of them will be playing together in Stillwater, MN. (Details at http://lorraineamalena.blogspot.com/2007/03/hera-and-fabulous-lorraine.html) Lorraine has been learning lots of Hera songs in preparation. Lorraine says that I should make a point of plugging the gig on this blog because that way the whole of Minneapolis will turn out to see them.

This is a photograph of Hera. Lorraine is certain that if I post it, the gig will be completely full. If you're in this part of the world, you should go. After all, it's Sunday Night in Winter in Minnesota; you have perhaps something else are you going to be doing?

I recall that a while ago you mentioned your daughters' fascination with a web site where photos of models and celebrities were retouched, often substantially. Here's a consumer software package that offers to do the same. It's been on Boing Boing so a hundred other fans have probably also sent you this link, but here it is in the unlikely event you haven't seen it yet. http://www.portraitprofessional.com/

But, but that's horrible. I mean, I looked at their gallery, and it seems to be software that turns photos of human beings into photos of soulless androids, and they are proud of it. All of their befores have interesting human faces. Their afters just look wrong...

...

Lots and lots of emails coming in each day from people with lists of questions for me to answer for their papers or magazines or websites -- normally five questions, for some reason. I explain why I don't do them here http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/08/fair-and-balanced-well-fair-anyway.asp and here http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/06/hmg.html, and it's still true. I suppose it's probably time to amend the FAQ line thing to explain that not only do I not do homework for people, but alas, I don't answer lists of interview questions either. I might do if people would send in the time to answer them with the questions, mind you.

Were your high school english classes helpful to you as a writer, or were they a waste of time?Thanks, Amy

Probably more much helpful than a waste of time. I remember enjoying them, for the most part, although I sometimes suspect that if I'd come to Thomas Hardy on my own, when I was ready, I would have really enjoyed him, and instead I found English to be a sort of Thomas Hardy aversion therapy.

Truth to tell, when I became a writer I realised that a lot of stuff I had thought pointless at school was now desperately important, and I had to teach myself piles of history and geography and science that I hadn't bothered with, and which were now really interesting subjects because I had a use for them. Writing and English I always had a use for, and some fairly decent teachers so they were never boring.

Labels: absolute Sandman, English as a Waste of Time?, Hera, M is For Magic, Soulless Android Photos, Stardust, What Lorraine does in the evenings

No longer the blog without giraffes

Today the snow stopped falling, the sun came out, and it's almost blinding. A picture postcard day. I took another photo from the guest bedroom (it used to be Holly's bedroom, but she's now going to be sleeping in the new upstairs library when she's here, as soon as it's finished) just to compare with yesterday's photo, to show the sunlight and the even-more-snow of it all...



So I'm taking this short story class this quarter; well, it's almost over actually. Anyway, my teacher's response to the entire class about our final drafts was one of "they could still use a lot of work." She emphasized how Annie Proulx, the writer of the story "Brokeback Mountain," revised the story sixty times before finally being finished with it.

On that note, firstly, what's your revision record (i.e. the most
revisions of any body of work you've done)? And second, what's your
stance on the amount of revision that should be necessary? -Malinda

I think Murder Mysteries went through about twelve revisions of the basic text, which is far and away the most I've ever done, but a lot of that was because I wanted the murder mysteries in question to work and be satisfying, for all the clues to be there for the reader, and I'm not really a natural mystery writer.

Most short stories go through a couple of drafts and a polish -- I'll write a first draft, then (if it wasn't typed) I'll type it up, and then I'll email it to friends and find out what didn't work, or puzzled them. (I miss Mike Ford. He was the sharpest of all of them -- saved me from making a fool of myself half a dozen times.) And then, if I can, I'll put it away for a week or two. Not look at it. Try to forget about it. Then take it out and read it as if I've never seen it before and had nothing to do with its creation. Things that are broken become very obvious suddenly. I'll go in and polish it up, and possibly keep playing with it a little -- it's on the computer: everything's malleable until it's printed. I'll try and read it aloud the next time I do a reading, in order to find out what I can about it, including places where what I wrote was not what I meant, and I'll fix what I find. And then I'll go on to the next thing.

Personally, I think you learn more from finishing things, from seeing them in print, wincing, and then figuring out what you did wrong, than you could ever do from eternally rewriting the same thing. But that's me, and I came from comics where I simply didn't have the liberty of rewriting a story until I was happy with it, because it needed to be out that month, so I needed to get it more or less right first time. Once I disliked a Sandman story on proofreading it so much that I asked if it could be pulled and buried and was told no, it couldn't, which is why the world got to read the Emperor Norton story, "Three Septembers and a January", although I no longer have any idea why I thought it was a bad story, and I'm pleased that Tom Peyer ignored my yelps.

When I was younger and people handed me unfinished things to read, I'd have lots of comments. At least once I realised later that I'd killed a fledgling book for someone by pointing out an abrupt viewpoint shift at a point where the book was barely hatched. These days my comments tend to consist of variants on "That's really interesting. What happens next? Where's the rest of it?"

Hey, Neil. I was just browsing next to a coworker of mine, when he looked over to my station and asked, "More weird stuff about giraffes?" as I had previously found myself at the giraffe haters monthly website (giraffobia.com). I said, "No, but there's probably something on giraffes on here." Imagine my surprise when the site search listed no hits for either 'giraffe' or 'giraffes'. I feel this is an error
which must be corrected, if only by posting this request.
Yrs trly, Jeff

Consider it fixed.

Hi Neil,

I read through your FAQ and yes, I am another one of those film students wishing to make a short film from one of your stories, either "Chivalry" or "We Can Get Them for You Wholesale" from the novel "Smoke and Mirrors".

In the FAQ it says that you don't own the rights to anything but "Mr. Punch" and "Stardust". Does this mean that I have to go to the book publisher to ask to make it, and if so, is that Avon Books or Headline Book Publishing? or are they the same thing?

I'm sorry if you are sick of people asking you these questions. And if by great luck and good chance I am allowed to make it do you mind?
Much Love, Jen.

Actually, what it says in the FAQ (which has its own problems, alas, I just realised on looking at it, and really needs a big overhaul) is, in response to questions about adapting Sandman mostly,

No, I don't control any of the rights to any of the stuff I did for DC Comics -- Sandman, Hellblazer, or anything (except Mr Punch and Stardust). DC Comics does.

If you try and get the rights to do a student film, they will say no. This is because all those rights are already tied up, and DC Comics no longer has those rights to grant, not because they are being mean.

I'm not sure how you got from that I don't own any of my short stories or novels. I do, don't worry. I was talking about stuff published by DC Comics -- Sandman, Black Orchid, the short stories. If you want the rights to any of that, you go and talk to DC.

My agents can't grant permission for you to make a film of "Chivalry" because Miramax bought it some years ago (I think it's something Harvey Weinstein took with him when he left). But apart from that, you just contact my agents.

As for student films of We Can Get Them For You Wholesale, you should read http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2002/09/just-watched-lovely-we-can-get-them.asp
and then read (more importantly, for all Student Films including that one) http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2005/05/beagles-girls-movies.asp which explains why we're pretty strict about making sure that the free rights for student films stay just that.

...

I've not been a huge fan of my German book covers up to now -- you can see some at http://www.neilgaiman.de/buecher/index.html -- but was thrilled to see the Heyne Anansi Boys cover...
...

And finally, now playing: Barbara Kooyman's Undercover. I loved Timbuk 3 -- one of the best gigs I ever went to was a tiny Timbuk 3 concert in a basement under a flyover in Westbourne Grove -- and here Barbara K, who was half of the 3 before they broke up, does acoustic covers of ten of their best songs, a decade later, as a benefit for Public Radio. It's marvellous. I learned about it when someone sent me a link to http://www.austinchronicle.com/gyrobase/Issue/story?oid=oid%3A449447. You can hear a track and find out about it at http://sparrowswheel.org/ and buy it at http://texamericana.org/store/cds/Undercover/

I wish she'd covered "Standard White Jesus", though...

Labels: Barbara Kooyman, film rights, German book covers, giraffes, revisions, short films, sunlight, the swampy godless mess that is the FAQs, we can get them for you wholesale, writing

In which your correspondent admits to not knowing very much at all

For years people have been writing from the UK to ask when a Region 2 version of Neverwhere would be out, and I've pointed out that actually the US one is Region Zero, so they can just buy that.

I recently got a query on the FAQ line about the new BBC reissue of Neverwhere on DVD, and whether there would be anything new and cool on there. Since this was the first I'd heard of it, I asked Lenny Henry. It was the first he'd heard about it. I checked Amazon.co.uk, and it's coming out at the end of April. I was sort of hoping that if the BBC ever released it then we could put extra footage back into it, fix a few things that still really bothered me, do a commentary track with some of the actors and the producer that was more than just me in a room eight years after I'd last seen it, sort of busking desperately...

...but given that it's coming out in seven weeks, I think all those things are now pipe dreams. (Not even sure if it'll be my commentary track from the US DVD on there, or nothing at all).

Still, it will be out in the UK, legitimately. Here's the cover that's up on Amazon -- I don't know if it's a real cover or a placeholder.



[Edit to add, I thought I'd put up a Neverwhere DVD cover that I actually like here as well. Interestingly, it uses some of the same stills. It's the Japanese cover, and it's a bit small:]

Labels: DVDs, Japanese Neverwhere cover, Neverwhere, pure ignorance

Gene wolves

LOOK AT Gene: a genial smile (the one they named for him), pixie-twinkle in his eyes, a reassuring mustache. Listen to that chuckle. Do not be lulled. He holds all the cards: he has five aces in his hand, and several more up his sleeve.

I once read him an account of a baffling murder, committed ninety years ago. "Oh," he said, "well, that's obvious," and proceeded off-handedly to offer a simple and likely explanation for both the murder and the clues the police were at a loss to explain. He has an engineer's mind that takes things apart to see how they work and then puts them back together...

My essay on How to Read Gene Wolfe (of which those are the first two paragraphs) is up at the F&SF website. And so is Michael Swanwick's essay. And so is Michael Andre-Driussi's. I recommend getting the magazine in question, of course. Meanwhile, I just got sent a proof of Gene's next book, called, I think, Pirate Freedom. (Gene Wolfe and Pirates. Two tastes that go great together.)

(It was the matches on the ground, by the railway tracks, that Gene pointed to, in the old press clipping murder case, that cracked it; but of course by then the tramp was ninety years dead...)

Here's the cover of A Walking Tour of the Shambles, which I post because it has a Gahan Wilson caricature of me and Gene on it. Gene is the one with the moustache. I am the one looking troubled.

Labels: A Walking Tour of the Shambles, Gene Wolfe, Yes it's still bloody snowing in case you were wondering

but the snow's all road and the road's all snow...

This morning is even snowier than yesterday -- huge white kissy snowflakes falling continually. I tried to take a few photos and discovered that my digital camera has problems with showing falling snow. Maddy's got a snow day. Holly came home for a few days to work on her thesis, and was meant to be out at my writing cabin for a few days but has had to work here instead, and doesn't seem to mind a bit. We're under the same Winter Storm Warning we've been under for 48 hours, but there's plenty of food.

I'm honestly enjoying it a great deal -- we haven't had snow like this this year. I don't think we've had it for a few years -- the snow goes over your wellington boots when you go out to fill the birdfeeders. And the knowledge that it's March, and thus the snow won't be here for the next three or four months, and that we're probably past the severe minus evil temperatures as well, is also cheering and heartening.

This is the view from the spare bedroom window...

Labels: and snow, and yet more snow