Waving From Beijing

Sending this to blogger by Email. I hope it will post.

I'm in Beijing right now, in an airport hotel, about to plunge off early tomorrow morning to Western China. Where, I am told, there may not be any internet or even phone text messaging, due to political unrest. So even emailling in blogs won't be possible.

There's no Twitter here, no Blogger. I can see Neilgaiman.com but the Journal pages are blocked.

So do not be surprised if I vanish. Will send photos or something as soon as I get back.

I'll be travelling around China, but will definitely be giving a talk and doing a signing in Chengdu in about 11 days, and then I'll be in Singapore for the Book Festival with the lovely Amanda Palmer (who will also be playing a gig there). And apparently signing for everyone who comes to the Singapore Festival whether they have tickets or not.

Before I got on the plane this morning (yesterday morning? 24 hours ago, anyway) I recorded my NPR MORNING EDITION piece on Audio Books. I interview David Sedaris and Martin Jarvis (who recorded the GOOD OMENS audiobook they're releasing on Nov 10th in the US) and Don Katz from Audible and Rick Harris, who produced/directed me in many of my early audiobooks. It'll be broadcast in November and I'm sure I'll be back in time to tell you when it'll be broadcast (with longer versions of the interviews on the web).

(That's what the photo's of. Cat Mihos took it of me in the KNOW studio recording stuff. Which reminds me, she has a sale on at Neverwear.net she wanted me to tell people about.)

Right. Bed, I think. Yes. Definitely bed.

It Snowed This Morning

It snowed this morning. I thought it had all melted by the time I went out walking with a camera, but here's a sprinkling of snow on a tree-fungus. It's just wrong. I am not ready for winter. Not yet.

And below is Cabal and some leaves (and Maddy). Many of you have written in to ask why he's not wearing his Go Away Hunters And Do Not Shoot At Me orange cape. It is because he dashed off into the woods the other night after a deer, and returned without it.

Probably the deer is now wearing it to bamboozle hunters.

I'm madly trying to finish things before I head out to China for a few weeks, to wrap up the research on my Journey to the West project (this trip was meant to have happened in Feb/March, but the one-two good-bad punch of winning the Newbery Medal and my father dying threw the whole planned shape of the year out of whack, and it's not back yet).

I finished a short story called "The Thing About Cassandra" and the editors accepted it (hurrah, especially because they were most gracious earlier this year when a story I was writing for them crumbled into dust and ash in my hands before it was done). I'm trying to finish a short story about a cave on the Misty Isle before I leave, and I'll be recording my stuff for my NPR Morning Edition piece. Sxip Shirey is working on the music for my short film soundtrack and every day he sends me bits of music and I play them, and send back a yes, or a no, or a why don't we try this?

We harvested the honey on Thursday, and Cat Mihos chronicled it all on her blog (http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2009/10/bees-glorious-bees-title-suggested-by.html) including film footage of me shaking bees off a frame, so I refer you there for photos and an account of our day's Beeing. Strangely my favourite moment was when the bees from the Green hive got upset, and suddenly I found myself crouching by the hive in the middle of a storm of very angry bees... and found myself feeling very peaceful and placid, and didn't move and I let them stop being grumpy, and all was good. (Except for Hans and the Birdchick both being stung on their ankles and through their bee suits).

Let's see. Here's an account of the Toledo talk http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091006/ART02/910060367, and of the Cleveland talk (http://www.clevescene.com/scene-and-heard/archives/2009/10/05/a-geek-heros-welcome-for-author-gaiman).

Both were fun, and started giving me ideas for how to do the CBLDF Reading Tour next year.

Hi Neil,

I know Banned Book Week is over, but since you discussed it on your journal, I hope you won't mind one more question about it.

When is it OK to challenge a book? Should a book be challenged at all if it seems inappropriately placed? For example, I read a lot of young adult, and I found myself reading a book that was distasteful to me, as an adult. (I thought the language and sexual incidents were gratuitous to the story, and beyond what I would want a teenager reading.) I pointed this out to the children's librarian, and she said it would be reviewed. Afterward, I panicked a bit. Had I done something wrong, I wondered. Had I just banned a book?

In your opinion, is there ever a time to challenge a book's placement? For the record, I still don't believe in outright banning a book from a public library, but now I'm not sure how I feel about challenges to young adult sections.

Sincerely,

Amanda R., Louisville, KY

I'm not a librarian or part of the ALA, so you're getting one author's opinion here.

I don't think drawing a librarian's attention to a book, or even suggestion that it's been mis-classified is in any way wrong, or an attempt to ban books. My collection M IS FOR MAGIC exists mostly because I'd noticed some middle schools had begun to buy Smoke and Mirrors and really wasn't comfortable with that book, which contains some stories that really were just intended for adults, being in middle school libraries. (I don't have a problem with it being in High School libraries.)

I think librarians make judgment calls all the time, judgment calls based on community standards, on what they believe about books, and about those books that exist in the grey areas between Children's Books and YA, between YA and Adult Fiction. (Occasionally, as when I hear about The Graveyard Book being kept under the counter, or away from kids under 14, I find it irritating. But, as I say, I also think that librarians are allowed to make judgment calls.)

At the end of the day, I don't think the problem is the people who want to figure out where books get shelved. It's people who want to remove the books entirely, and would very much like to burn them. It's people stealing books as a way of making sure that other people don't read them.

(Here's an excellent article from the School Library Journal about the dilemma of shelving The Graveyard Book - http://www.schoollibraryjournal.com/article/CA6635766.html?q=graveyard+book+children%27s+collection -

which concludes,

Are some libraries shelving Gaiman’s book in the YA section because of its disturbing opening scene? If so, then that “clearly smacks of self-censorship,” says Pat Scales, president of the Association of Library Services to Children. Scales, who says that although determining what materials belong in the children and young adult section is oftentimes difficult, “Anytime you keep something from its intended audience or make it difficult for them to find, that’s self-censorship.” And that’s against professional ethics.

Scales’s advice is to buy one copy for the children’s section and another for the YAs. “Kids have loved ghost stories from the beginning of time,” she says. “What are you going to do? You can’t keep all ghost stories out of the children’s room.”

but truthfully, I wouldn't blame any librarian who decided they wanted The Graveyard Book kept in YA. I would get grumpy if confronted with librarians who had decided not to get The Graveyard Book for their libraries, despite the Newbery Medal, because they thought kids should be protected from it.

Dear Neil,

I’m sure you get loads of nice mail from lots of people around the world. How much nasty mail do you get, though, and does it make you feel bad? If it does, how do you deal with that? I’m a beginning author and I just got my first piece of nasty mail, wherein the writer said she had an absolute “hate crush” on me. I consoled myself with cake and wine but the effects were predictably fleeting.

Thanks,
C.B.

There are mean and crazy people out there, and the relative anonymity of the Internet means that there are always those who will glory in their ability to do the online equivalent of pushing a dead rat through your mail box and running away. You just have to pay attention and you rapidly notice,

a) they're a bit mad.

b) they are very few in number and

c) it's only the internet.

I get well over ten thousand FAQ messages in on this site every year. Most of them don't get posted, because most of them are people saying, in various ways, thank you. Out of that ten thousand there will be a handful, no more than a dozen or so, of weird, poisonous, creepy or crazy ones that come in (from a distinctly smaller number of people than there are email addresses). Most of those get filtered before they reach me. And the ones that make it through normally leave me with a strange, joyous feeling that I must be doing something right if those people don't like me. I'm fascinated by how much more upset they get whenever I get a big award or something good happens.

(On Twitter, I learned very rapidly that any people who posted something nasty, to whom I gave a second chance, would then post something REALLY nasty. So I learned to block first offenders without any troubling of my conscience.)

My advice to you would be to do with creepy emails what Kingsley Amis used to say he did with bad reviews: he let them spoil his breakfast, but didn't let them spoil his lunch. Let the effects of the creepy people be fleeting too. And keep writing, and keep doing well, because it really seems to irritate them.

Which reminds me, The Graveyard Book was made a Boston Globe-Horn Book Honours book, this year, and you can see video footage of the awards ceremony at http://www.hbook.com/bghb/video09.asp, including my editor Elise Howard reading the actual speech I wrote, and the video I recorded for them just as I went down with the hell-flu of last week.

...

Right, more Tabs closing:

I was sorry to learn that Henry Selick and Laika, the director of and studio who made the Coraline movie, are parting company. They were an unstoppable combination, and I wish both of them extremely well in whatever they do in the future.

Why you should dress up as Delirium for Hallowe'en.

Was thrilled to see One and a Half books by me on the Australian Favourite Books of All Time list.

Was fascinated by this New Scientist article -- I've been interested in this ever since I read Ann Hubble talking about the experiment breeding Arctic Foxes for tameness, which, in a couple of decades, produced an animal profoundly doglike. (And the footage of the tame vs aggressive rats is a little chilling...)

...

I just noticed that to celebrate our Year On The Bestseller Lists, over at http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx, where you can still watch me read ALL of The Graveyard Book for free, new Q&A videos have started appearing.

(It looks like they've been going up for the last 5 weeks. I should have mentioned them here, sorry.)

If you head off to http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx?VideoID=16 you will see lots of me answering questions. It's surprising to me how tired I look in them -- I'd forgotten just how gruelling the schedule was, and now all I remember is how immensely enjoyable it was to read stories to and answer questions from so many people across the USA.

Labels: bees, Cabal and me, dog photograph, mad people, the unbearable whiteness of beeing, videos

One Perfect Autumn Day With Editorial Pie

If you were wondering

what kind of a day it was

it was a this kind of day.

Labels: autumn, dog photograph, Pecan Pie, this actually is my beautiful house

The Monster That Devoured Cleveland

In a hotel room in Cleveland. The hotel just sent up a Bic disposable razor, as I had left my many-bladed thing at home, and wanted to shave. For the first 30 seconds of shaving, I thought, ah, why do I use an expensive shaving device rather than one of these? It works just as well. Then I noticed the amount of blood appearing and decided that there was a lot to be said for multi-bladed shaving devices. Also, ow.

Anyway, I went to Cleveland yesterday -- set out very early in the morning and got to Cleveland in time for a 2:00 reading/talk and a signing. There's an auditorium in the Cleveland Library (a beautiful building that used to be a Catholic Girl's School) that fits over 650 people. The auditorium was full. So was the overflow room where 350 people watched it on a big TV (I went and said hello to them first, so they knew it was me and not just animatronics). I learned when it was all over that fire marshalls and such got involved, and that people were being turned away (I'm really sorry).

Then I did a reading. The cold has left my throat missing a chunk of range, but done that nice thing where I get all this bass I don't normally have, so it was easy doing the bear's voice, and harder doing some of the others, and then we did a Q&A and I did another reading and it was all over too quickly.

After it was over, I signed forever. I was given lots of really good art. (I'm often given art. But there was more really good art at this one.)

Hi Mr. Gaiman,
I've been a devoted reader since middle school (I'm now a graduate student, so that's a long time!) I was so excited to find out you were giving a talk in Cleveland, where I started grad school recently. I was so disappointed to show up today, with the Graveyard Book in tow for signing, and be turned away by police officers due to overcrowding at the library. I had been looking forward to this event for a few months now, to finally get the chance to meet you.

Will you be returning to the area anytime soon?

Signed,
A sad, devoted fan

I'm sorry. I don't think anyone at the library had dreamed that more than a thousand people would show up. I think some of them thought it was a bit optimistic having an overflow room at all. I'm in Toledo tonight, which is sort of in the area, but then it's going to be a while.

I'm thinking about doing a Comic Book Legal Defense Fund Reading tour at some point in 2010. It'll be a decade since The Last Angel Tour, which was, as far as I was concerned at the time, the last time I was ever doing this. But, you know, ten years...

(Incidentally, people sometimes ask me where they can buy signed stuff from, and I normally say "I don't know" or "Dreamhaven". But there's always the CBLDF Neil Gaiman store. A useful tip for Xmas. Also the only place that you can get the me-related BPAL perfume "imps" (small sampler scents).

Hi Neil, love your work and am wondering will you be visiting little old New Zealand any time soon? Would love to hear you speak, I realise you must be super busy and thank you in advance if you have a chance to answer.

Kia kaha,
Kat

Yup. In March, although I don't think the event has officially announced it yet.

..

Right. Got to go and find a car now. Thanks to everyone in Cleveland, or at least, the library people, and the people who came to the library, and my friend Chelsey Johnson, who came out and ate with me afterwards. Now on to Toledo (Details at http://www.toledolibrary.org/events/authors.asp, although it's not going to be a signing, I see. Probably a good thing, as, after yesterday, my hand hurts.)

Labels: CBLDF, Cleveland, libraries, Toledo, what happened to the days when I did cute or funny or interesting labels then?

It's been One Year...

About eighteen months ago, at a party held by ex-HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman, in LA, on the Fox Lot, a nice lady named Riley Ellis came over to me, introduced herself, and explained that she had read an advance copy of The Graveyard Book and that in her educated opinion it would be at least 53 Weeks in the New York Times bestseller list. I took this, at the time, as amiable Hollywood Hyperbole indicating that she had liked it. While I'd had books on the bestseller lists -- I'd even had Number Ones -- nothing ever lasted more than 6 weeks. The books went onto the list, drifted off, then carried on quietly selling forever.

Then The Graveyard Book came out. It went onto the New York Times children's bestseller list. The children's list is only ten places long. Weeks went by. It stayed there. When it started to drift down, it won the Newbery Medal, and drifted up again. And then, in defiance of all reason, it stayed there.

I told Elise Howard, my editor at Harper Collins, that if they could keep it at #1 for four weeks, I would buy everyone at HarperChildren's cupcakes. They did. I did. (Actually, my agent, the amazing Merrilee Heifetz, paid at least 10% of the cost of the cupcakes, and did much more than 10% of the organising to make them happen.)

Somewhere in the cupcake madness Elise promised me that if The Graveyard Book managed to stay on the list for a year, she would bake me a pie. It seemed unlikely, but then...

...people kept buying it. Last week was week 51. And we had drifted down, a place here, a place there, to our lowest position on the chart. We were at number ten. Below that, you aren't on the charts any more.

And suddenly, it became very important. Firstly, 52 consecutive weeks is a lot more than 51 weeks, and secondly, PIE. Elise was going to bake one. (I am sure there are many people who edit books and also casually produce pies. Elise, for all I know, may be one of these people. I do not believe she is. I liked to think that she was someone who, if The Graveyard Book stayed on the NYT Bestseller List for a year, would need to brush up on her pie-making skills, to navigate the unfamiliar twin territories of piecrust and filling. It would be an adventure.)

I sent out a thing on Twitter, suggesting that if there was anyone who'd been putting off buying a copy of The Graveyard Book, this would be a Very Good Week to do it.

And then it was today. Wednesday, when the previews of the Times list creep out to advanced subscribers. And the whole house was on tenterhooks. I was on tenterhooks, as sat and I signed sheets of paper for the Neverwhere Limited Edition. My assistant Lorraine? Tenterhooks. Her friend Betsy, Woodsman Hans (who dug out a giant pond while I was away)? Tenterhooks all the way. The only one not on tenterhooks was Cabal, my big white dog, now back in his People Shooting Season orange cape, who couldn't figure out why we weren't taking him for a walk, and was getting frustrated with the foolishness of people.

The phone rang. Lorraine said, "It's for you."

I took the phone. "Hello," said Elise Howard, happily. "What kind of pie would you like? I was thinking rhubarb..."

The Graveyard Book had crept up to #8. (And Odd and the Frost Giants had gone onto the list at #5.)

So we did our year, and I wrote an email to Riley Ellis saying You Were Right, and she wrote back to point out, very sweetly, that she'd said 53 weeks actually.

So now Merrilee and I are plotting ways to send pie to HarperChildrens (my initial plan of finding a bakery in New York that would enthusiastically make an amazing pie big enough to feed 125 people seems to have been sunk by real life) and once again she will pay about 10% of the price of the pie and she and her assistant Jennifer will do 98% of the organising.

A year ago I was reading the first chapter of The Graveyard Book to a roomful of people in New York. I had just returned from China. I had a broken finger. My dad was still alive. Amanda and I were vague friends and project-buddies. I thought I'd written a good book, and hoped people would notice and like it, but none of the awards or recognition had happened. And now I'm planning my return to China in a few weeks, to wrap up the research for the China book. I'm writing again, and enjoying writing again...

...

Banned Books Week continues.

Several people wrote in telling me that I had it wrong in yesterday's post and that there aren't bookshops in every little American Town where kids can buy books that have been removed from their school libraries.

Actually, I knew this already.

The last time I posted here about the lack of sarcasm marks in punctuation, people wrote in to tell me that there are Ethiopian languages that actually have a written sarcasm mark, intended to show the world that the person writing means the opposite of what he says. So if anyone is translating this blog into Ethiopian, you'll need to put sarcasm marks around that bit of yesterday's post.

Ah well. To make up for it, here is a link to a sane and civil (and sarcasm-free) letter from a librarian to a concerned parent, explaining why he does not plan to remove a book from the library shelves: http://jaslarue.blogspot.com/2008/07/uncle-bobbys-wedding.html

Labels: banned books week, New York Times Bestseller, Pie mainly rhubarb but also enormous, What are tenterhooks anyway?

On banning books and escaping from the attic...

Another not-quite-back-on-top-of-things-yet day. Awake at 5.00am expecting to drift back to sleep, and I didn't. Ah well. Wandering around the house unshaven, in my oldest dressing gown, feeling vaguely scary, like a crazed uncle who has escaped from the attic.

Frost is predicted for tomorrow, so lots of frantic apple-picking and tomato-gathering is happening right now. But I am not doing it. I am wearing a ratty dressing gown and blogging.

Hi Neil,
I know you're a wonderfully self assured and present writer who may not need more Positive Thoughts, but what the heck, here's one.
I wanted to say in response to the "tired of hearing about Amanda" reader that I'm on the other side. Not that I want every post to contain Amanda, but I always smile when you do mention her and what fun you all have been having. You do the same when talking about Holly, or Maddy, or Mike, or Bees, and that's cool. Maybe people don't want to hear about them either, but whatever. :)
I think they're all great and I love to hear your stories. It makes us feel a little part of your life (for those of us who know you're a Real Life Person and not just an Award Winning Writer.) I will sometimes tell my husband, "Guess what Neil and Amanda did!" Or, "Maddy's going to meet the Jonas Brothers!" or "Amanda just auctioned off a date with Holly!" or "Mike works at GOOGLE!" (My husband is a computer programmer so he was very excited about that.)
Anyway, if that makes me weird, so be it, but the internet has a way of forming a community that we're all still figuring out, and is wonderful, and intertwined, and sometimes fantastically small. Just the way I like it.

Love and Laughter,
Mel

Oh. Good. That makes me happy. I don't think I like being an Award Winning Author very much -- it seems to carry with it an awful lot of respectability and such that I know I didn't sign up for, but I love being a Real Life Person, and delight in being Maddy and Holly and Mike's dad, or being the person who comes up with the plan to unite Zoe, the blind cat in the attic with Hermione, the deaf cat in the basement. (NB. This plan may not work.)

And the most interesting thing to me about this internet thing is that we all are sort of making it up as we go along.

Hey Neil,

Just wanted to let you know that I, personally, have no issue with you talking about Amanda. On the contrary, it let's me (and the other fans) know that you're happy. And that makes me happy to know it.

My question for you is, with Halloween coming up, do you have any favorite traditions? I'm trying to think of some good ways to celebrate the spookiest night of the year, so any ideas would be welcome!

By the way, congrats on staying on the bestsellers' list for so long! The Graveyard Book is amazing!

- Samantha

Hallowe'en traditions? Not really. For the last few years I've gone to my assistant Lorraine's house (she's been away) and scared children with a rather sweet looking rabbit that opens to reveal huge teeth and tongue... and a small bar of chocolate, sitting on the tongue.

And there are poems I like to read to Maddy on Hallowe'en.

(This year, however, I will be in Singapore on Hallowe'en. So I will read Maddy her poems when I get home.) (http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=135663652857)

Which reminds me. I'm in Cleveland talking and signing on Sunday and Toledo talking and signed bookplates on Monday.

...

It's Banned Books Week. There's a rather mad Wall Street Journal Editorial explaining how silly a Banned Book Week is (after all, if you're a kid and a book that somebody's parents didn't want any of you to read is removed from your school library, it's not really banned: you have the freedom to save up your pocket money and go out to the well-stocked bookshops you can somehow find in every American small town and buy a copy for yourself). The editorial doesn't quite go as far as claiming that libraries are UnAmerican, but it strongly implies that all librarians and people who work in libraries are, along with people who support the First Amendment -- unless they're trying, reasonably, like Good Americans, to stop other people's children from reading things they don't like. There's a cartoon of Good Americans being intimidated by a Scary Librarian too, for anyone who missed the point.

There's a ( from my perspective) sane reply to it over at the Huffington Post http://www.huffingtonpost.com/joan-e-bertin/banned-books-week-still-n_b_302248.html although I was more interested in the pie charts over at the ALA site, showing what books get challenged and who challenges them. http://www.ala.org/ala/issuesadvocacy/banned/frequentlychallenged/challengesbytype/index.cfm

I've got a few letters from librarians over the last few months copying me on conversations about middle school libraries getting nervous about The Graveyard Book (the saddest bit of which was one worried middle school librarian explaining that she had no intention of reading it, but wanting to find out from other librarians if it was the kind of book that might get her into trouble) but on the whole my books seem to be relatively unbanned and unchallenged. I'm always aware that the next book I write might tip things over the edge. Or that some twerp might decide to challenge Coraline or The Graveyard Book, or Blueberry Girl...

...

According the the Guardian,

After winning a trio of major literary awards in the US, Neil Gaiman's The Graveyard Book has landed a nomination for the Booktrust teenage prize on a shortlist which is being described as the award's most subversive yet.

Hurrah for subversive award nominees.

The nominees are
Auslander by Paul Dowswell
The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman
Ostrich Boys by Keith Gray
The Ant Colony by Jenny Valentine
The Vanishing of Katharina Linden by Helen Grant
The Ask and the Answer by Patrick Ness

Details and a photo at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/21/booksforchildrenandteenagers-awards-and-prizes
...

Jonathan Carroll on Twitter pointed me at the photos of Australian criminals at http://www.atimetoget.com/2009/07/early-sydney-mug-shots.html from which I wandered to http://blogs.hht.net.au/justice. Haunting photographs. Much more fun than mug shots at the Smoking Gun.

...
Right. I better post this and start signing sheets for the limited edition of Neverwhere that Harper Collins are bringing out this year. (And that reminds me: Subterranean Press are doing an edition of Smoke and Mirrors, illustrated by and designed by Dave McKean. It's not cheap, but it gets more expensive on Friday. (If you liked Dave's very sold-out Subterranean edition of The Graveyard Book, this will be like that, only more so, because all the illustrations are original.)
...

And finally, we have a Magical Hallowe'en Party Map. It's at
http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Graveyard_Book_Halloween_Parties. Five independent bookshops have listed their parties. I know -- from things booksellers have said to me -- that there are more to come. So, if you have a shop and a party planned, let the webgoblin know and he will make sure that your store is on the list.

Labels: banned books week, halloween traditions, neve, subterranean

Bet you thought I was... oh hang on, I used that one already

I'm home (for a little bit), and, as of yesterday, down with vague travel crud - a sort of combination of somewhat-sore throat and chest and low-level headache, general ache and cold, none of which would be enough to bother me on their own, but all together have felled me - possibly just so that I can catch up on my sleep instead of getting back home and immediately trying to catch up on work. So I'm sleeping a lot and drinking lemon and honey (we have honey. See http://blog.fabulouslorraine.com/2009/09/beeing-with-boss.html for details) and slurping occasional soup.

I had a great time on the road (the most exciting bit was making my short film, the most upsetting bit was fearing my bag had been stolen while making my short film, while actually all that had happened was a helpful hotel person had put it into a hidden closet and closed the door, so the closet was hidden again). I went to Scotland and to Watford and to Berlin and Hamburg. I stayed in Imogen Heap's lovely flat in South London, and still have not met Imogen Heap. Saw an awful lot of my daughter Holly, who moved to the UK when she graduated, and who I miss.

Spent a lot of the time off the web, which was good, and something I'd been looking forward to. Wrote two longish short stories which I now have to type.

It got autumnal in the UK toward the end of our stay, and cold, wet and dark in Scotland. I had a couple of days of warm when I arrived back in the midwest, but it is now, today, officially, chilly Autumn. The trees are laden with apples, the grape-vines are covered with grapes, and the tomato plants are hung with very late tomatoes that need to be canned or salsaed or just cooked before they rot.

I landed in Minneapolis (after a massive 22 hour journey which began in Scotland), spent a night at home, saw my bees and went straight to the Midwestern Booksellers Association meeting, and was honoured with their Children's Literature Award (for The Graveyard Book). Also I chatted to a breakfast of booksellers about Odd and the Frost Giants.

I don't think I've said much about Odd here recently. It's out in the US now, in a shiny new hardback edition, with new illustrations by Brett Helquist. It's a book about using your head, I think. And about beauty. I talk about it at http://www.mousecircus.com/bookdetails.aspx?BookID=18

There's a "trailer" for it here:

and you can read the first 25 pages from it at http://browseinside.harpercollinschildrens.com/index.aspx?isbn13=9780061671739
(and, for those who do not have a helpful bookshop locally, the Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/Odd-Frost-Giants-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0061671738).

I learned this morning that The Graveyard Book Audiobook I recorded won the UK Children's Audiobook of the Year (Dawn French won UK Audiobook of the Year for Dear Fatty, although I was disappointed that the article from the Independent doesn't mention the talented Lisa Tarbuck, who actually read the audiobook).

Strangely enough, the most frequently asked of all the questions waiting for me when I got back was What do bees smell like? Honest. So picking one of those from the pile...

Dear Mr. Gaiman,

My 5-year-old son, Avi, asked me what bees smell like. I told him that I don't know and was sad not to be able to answer such an excellent question. Today it occurred to me that you might have smelled bees. If you have, would you be willing to answer Avi's question?

Thank you for your time!

Elizabeth Israel-Davis
Portland, OR

Mostly bees, and bee-hives, smell honeyish, a thick sweet smell. If they get sick they can smell bad. But mostly they smell like honey.

Hey Neil, All Saint's Day is coming and I want to dance the macabray with my friends. Do you have any dance instructions other than "Step and turn, and walk and sway"?

Loved the book.

Jane

I think that readers of The Graveyard Book who perform their own version of the macabray will always be right. And should put video footage of themselves performing it be put up, I will try to link to it.

Which reminds me -- around this Hallowe'en many independent bookshops in the "lower 48" of the US are going to be having The Graveyard Book parties, in a bid to lure me out to sign in their shops in December. If you want to dance the macabray, or just enjoy a particularly graveyardy night, you may want to check if your local bookshop is doing one, and when.

(And if the bookshops who ARE going to be holding a Graveyard Book party want to let us know about it, then email your shop's name, the location of the party, the date and the time to webgoblin@neilgaiman.com and we will put a Master Graveyard Book Party list up here.) (Even if your party is in a location like Hawaii, Alaska, Manilla, Omsk or Edinburgh, places which do not qualify for win-a-Neil-Signing.)

Dear Neil,

I've been ogling over your bookshelves on Shelfari (of course) and noticed that you have the same bookcases that a lot of bookstores do, with the upslanted bottom shelf. I've been trying to figure out where to order these ever since I saw them in bookstores. Could you let me know where and about how much these are? Thank you!

~Karen
http://theblackletters.net

Alas. I bought them from my local bookshop when they went out of business, some years ago, and do not know where they got them from.

Mr. Gaiman,

Are you aware of this:

"Young adult writers! Detroit teacher of blind kids wants your ebooks for her Braille printer!"
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/09/13/young-adult-writers.html

love you, love your work,
-- Justin

I was -- Cory sent it to me -- and I'll be getting them files for the Children's books. But I'm happy to spread the word further.

Amanda, Amanda, Amanda.

I miss hearing about your books and writings.

I am tired of hearing about your girlfriend...

You know, I wasn't going to mention Amanda in this post, until you reminded me. But we just spent six weeks together, working on the film and travelling and going to each other's events, and this blog, even when it gets a bit sporadic (as it has done over the last couple of months) is mostly going to be about what's going on, and who I'm with, and what I'm doing. If I'm somewhere doing something with Amanda, she'll get mentioned. (It's probably just as bad for some of her fans, who are going "who is this Neil and why is she singing to him anyway?")

...

There will be lots of catching up on everything in the next few weeks. And now the wonderful Cat Mihos is back from looking after the Jonas Bros, I can put some attention into helping her make Neverwear.net into the website I think we both dream that it ought to be.

Olga Nunes, former webelf, designed a newNeverwear tee-shirt, with a line from Coraline suggested by a competition winner:

...

I wish that Blogger would get some apps for the android. I'm using a Mytouch as my phone right now, and while I like using it, it's frustrating how easy it is to Twitter, how hard to blog from it. I had discussions with people at Blogger when I started using the G1 about things that didn't work, which they agreed, after a short while, were actually bugs, and they suggested I try emailling things to the blog instead, which lasted one email, when it turned out that things a phone didn't think you needed to see in an email, like lots of people's email addresses, showed up in the blog version.

...

Finally, most of you probably know about the recent typhoon that hit the Philippines, and the flooding and loss of life. If you missed it, here's the BBC news, and here are some eyewitness reports http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/8276970.stm.

For right now, http://tourism-philippines.com/philippines-flood-donation-appeal has a good rundown on ways to donate, from in the Philippines and out, while a donation to https://www.wfp.org/donate/ondoy will help feed the hungry, and those who have lost their homes, in the Philippines.

Labels: amanda palmer, blogger oddnesses, Odd and the Frost Giants, Philippines, The Graveyard Book Halloween Party Competition, What Bees Smell Like

I think I just made a film...

The film was finished. I spent the last few days editing it with a terrific editor named Amanda James, and it was handed in, with a cut-off of last night at 7:30pm, when we had to lock it (because today we will grade the film). At 7:28 we were sitting nervously looking at the phone waiting for the Senior Executive at Sky TV to tell us what he thought, and at 7:29 we had huge grins on our faces, because he had phoned and told us that he was very very happy indeed, had absolutely loved it and he wouldn't change a frame.

It's eight minutes and 21 seconds long.

So now it has to be graded, and our temporary soundtrack (a mishmash of The Velvet Underground, Owls, Rasputina, David Bowie, Steeleye Span, Bela Fleck, Kate Bush and Louis Armstrong) will be replaced by a real score, which will be written and recorded by the amazing Sxip Shirey.

And then it will be shown on Sky some time in the 12 days before Xmas (along with 12 other silent films, still being made).

I loved making it, loved editing it, loved working with talented people.

Tomorrow it's off to Berlin (not that I'm doing anything there. I'm with Amanda, for a donations-only gig she's doing) then to Hamburg ( where I am doing the book festival -- details at http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/ where you will also find out about me in Cleveland and Toledo in October and UC Santa Barbara in February).

Right. Off to grade my film now.

Labels: hamburger, Statuesque

Lights! Camera! Action!

Directing a film right now. No time to blog and barely time to breathe, but you can see Amanda's account of filming on Sunday and yesterday (with photos) over at http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/182070703/secret-sunday-london-show-behind-the-film-scene

And my only comment is that everyone is so good at what they do, and my actors are so amazing (Bill Nighy is a dream to work with)( a good dream, not one of the scary kinds), that honestly I'm not sure what I'm doing apart from being made to look very good by everyone else.

Back to work now. We have to shoot Bill making sandwiches.

Labels: Statuesque

Back. Not dead. Hurrah.

I'm back from the Middle of Nowhere. I had a wonderful time with no internet, email or twitter. It was fine and fabulous. I caught up on my sleep. Amanda even persuaded me to go jogging with her in the Scottish rain.

Now in London.

On Sunday, I'll start shooting a short movie (you can learn all about it here). We'll be at Charter Place in Watford High Street (WD17 2BJ for the curious) and will be shooting on Sunday the 6th from around 11 until 6.00pm. There will be human statues, and people are welcome to come by and watch, throw money into bowls and see what the statues do, wave at a silent and statuesque Amanda Palmer and so forth. I'm happy for people to wander past and see what we're doing: I'll be working, so probably won't be stopping to sign books or say hullo, I'm afraid.

And, for the curious, this is what some of the downstairs library, and Hermione the Library Cat looks like. (I wish the upstairs library with all the good reference stuff was in it too.): http://blog.shelfari.com/my_weblog/2009/09/neil.html

Labels: library downstairs, silence is golden, Statuesque