Home Again, Home Again, Coughetty Cough

I'm home from the tour. I'm tired and a bit sick (some sort of cold thing) but happy to be back with my dogs in my house. Already the tour is feeling a bit dreamlike and unreal. (Did Amanda really sing me a surprise Lou Reed/ Velvet Underground song in each new location? Did Amanda and John Cameron Mitchell also sing me "I'm Sticking With You" in Portland?)

\


I'm glad that I got to be with Jason Webley on the Eleventiest Night of All. This blog has brought me many good things over the years, but I'm most glad of the friendships I've made through it I wouldn't have made otherwise, and I would never have known Jason if I hadn't mentioned, here in this blog, back in the dawn of time, how much I liked a video of a song of his called "Eleven Saints".

Neil Gaiman on WhoSay

My best friend and I went to your "An Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer" show in Portland on November 8th and it was incredible. The two of you inspired both of us to grow as artists and people. For that, thank you. That said, I was wondering if you could tell me the name of that incredibly creepy song you sang at the end - the one where the disturbed man tells his mother about his killing spree. And how did you find it to begin with? Was it a popular song or something obscure you stumbled onto?


It's a song called "Psycho" written by a blind American songwriter named Leon Payne about fifty years ago. I ran across it as one of the extra bonus live tracks on Elvis Costello's Almost Blue album, where he covered the version done by a man named Jack Kittel (which I eventually heard on a collection of songs that Elvis Costello had covered). When I first started going out with Amanda I would teach myself to play songs, which I would play her over the phone, and that was one of them - I think because I liked a version of it that was more lonely and plaintive and crazy and slow than the versions I'd heard.


During our drive from LA to San Francisco Jack Kittel's version came on (I'd plugged my phone with much random music on it into the car stereo), and Amanda asked if I'd like to sing "Psycho" to an audience larger than her. And, nervously, I said "maybe..."


(Which reminds me: this article on Amanda is the best thing I've read about her so far, in that it reads like an accurate portrait of the woman I married and the person I know. I missed it when it first came out. http://www.popmatters.com/pm/tools/full/150167)

I've not seen Tom Stoppard for years (July 2008 in Brazil), so was delighted to learn I'll be sharing a stage with him in Melbourne Australia on December the 16th. Not actually sharing it -- he'll be on it from 7 until 8, and I'll be on it from 9 until 10. But nearly. And if you want to see both of us talk that evening it gets cheaper.

Details at http://wheelercentre.com/calendar/event/tom-stoppard-neil-gaiman-package/

Talking of stage-sharing: I mentioned here how much I loved the panel I did with Connie Willis at World Fantasy Con in San Diego.

That panel has now been uploaded to YouTube. You can watch it in its entirely. It is Connie and me talking about craft and Where DO We Get Our Ideas and all that for an hour.

...

Let's see. What else? Absolute Sandman Volume 5 came out. And that is most definitely the last Absolute volume of Sandman unless and until I actually write some more.

Dear Neil,

First of all, thanks to you and Amanda for a wonderful concert last week. It was really, really marvelous to be there with you. I'm wondering if the recordings of the tour will be available for those of us who didn't get in on the Kickstarter eventually?
Second is this: I'm a recently declared English literature major taking an introductory course to British - or, since we also read Beowulf, Anglo-Saxon literature. Although I see you as a very modern writer, and also the type of writer many people who absolutely couldn't ever stand to be an English lit major would read books by, reading the first book of The Faerie Queen I was repeatedly reminded of Stardust, and I know you also did the screenplay for Beowulf. How do you see this type of English tradition in relation to your own writing? Is it a conscious, deliberate, or completely unintended influence? And do you have any advice for me for surviving the rest of the term (Milton, Pope, Blake)?
Carolyn

I'm glad you enjoyed it. I'm not sure if the physical CDs will be available beyond the Kickstarter supporters (it'll be a 3 CD pack), but the audio downloads will be available for everyone.

How do I see that tradition in relation to my own writing? I don't really think about it much: I love the poets you refer to, mostly (I never liked Alexander Pope's writing as much as I like Pope himself, or at any rate the version of Pope that I read as a boy in the James Branch Cabell Story "A Brown Woman" -- you can read it here, if you're curious). I read it all for pleasure, whether in school libraries or on my own, trying to understand how it all fitted in to the stuff that I already knew that I liked, discovering poets I liked and poets I didn't care for.

Advice for surviving it? Lord, I hate to think of good writers as people you should survive. It's why I worry when I'm told I'm being taught in schools and colleges. I'm sure that Thomas Hardy wrote good books, and wish I'd come across them on my own, and all I know is that enforced reading of Thomas Hardy at school left me with a dislike of his books that's visceral, real and undoubtedly unfair.

Will you in the near- or slightly-more-distant-future teach a writing workshop?


Perhaps. I loved teaching at Clarion, but I also walked away from Clarion with 18 people whose lives and careers I now felt part of in a way that surprised me. I might do it again one day, probably should do, but am in no hurry.

Neil,


Your post - http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2003/06/tommy-leprechaun-dies-organs-are-built.asp


That link that 'goes' (went) to the Missoulian is dead.... do you have a copy of that Tommy the Leprechaun story?...it was most excellent - yes, that short little man touched many lives....
I am, Phantasmagorical - Tommy gave me many pieces of 'magic'.....


Thanks,John


Oh, I met the man who murdered the man who stole his clothes - at MSP - I worked at the prison....

It's sad. So many of the old links from the blog are dead. (And many of the images have vanished as well.) But we're in luck here: I checked archive.org and it still had a link to the original story. You can read it here.

Reading that old blog entry reminded me of the existence of this, from the dawn of the Internet, and I looked on YouTube, and found it once again, and I post it here for anyone who wonders what the original 1944 Warner Brothers version of Lord of the Rings, starring Humphrey Bogart as Frodo and Peter Lorre as Gollum, actually looked like*:








*Not a true statement. For purposes of humour only. Void where prohibited.

Labels: amanda palmer, Connie Willis, Jason Webley, liking the stuff they don't force you to study, Psycho, Tom Stoppard, Tommy the Leprechaun

Birthday Wishes

The tour is over.

It was amazing, and it got better. Vancouver was fantastic. Portland was amazing. Seattle was almost as amazing as Portland, but it was the only stop on the tour I didn't do mostly new material at because we were webcasting it.

I went looking on Flickr for a photo of me last night in Seattle - Amanda surprised me on stage with her signing "Take Back Your Mink", accompanied by a small, well-choreographed burlesque troupe, and then presented me with a birthday cake. But there were no photographs of that up yet, so here is a photo someone took of me in Vancouver. Portland and Seattle were filmed. All the shows were recorded. We'll be releasing a triple CD of the tour to Kickstarter supporters, and there will also be a digital download. I don't yet know how the film of the last two gigs will be released or what it will be once it's edited.

It's my birthday today. I'm 51. There is no way I can get my head around 51.

It sounds so terrifyingly grown up. I know that I am remarkably fortunate: there are people I love who who love me, and I make my living making art that I take pleasure in making. I don't know what else I could ever ask for. So many birthday wishes coming in.

Thank you, each and every one of you. I'm very grateful.

Labels: birthdays, seattle

If this is thursday then where on earth did the last week go?

A blog post written this morning, one-fingered, on Amanda's iPad, while she slept, was eaten by the iPad or the ether.

Damn.
Here's my AMAZING LA assistant Cat's blog about World Fantasy Con and what happened while I was in LA. http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/11/world-fantasy-con-late-late-show-neil.html
I'm backstage right now at the Brava Theatre in San Francisco.

Let's see..

First of all, a thousand thanks to everyone who gave anyone else a scary book, or encouraged other people to, for All Hallow's Read. Thank you!

Craig Ferguson and the Late Late Show was fun. Amanda was meant to record her bit at 4:20, my section around 5 ish, but a newly added dance number at the opening of the show meant we didn't leave until about 6:30pm... and the rest of the evening squirmed and coped as best it could...

My friend Mark Evanier served as haggis mule for the Late Late Show, and he writes entertainingly and accurately about the experience and the view from backstage at http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2011_10_31.html#021526

Left to right: Moby, Amanda Palmer, Stephin Merritt. Pay no attention to that toy pianist at the back.

The Haggis came from Macsweens via scottishfoodoverseas.com, ace haggis importers. My assistant Lorraine did all the hard work, at one point enlisting both Mark Evanier and Wil Wheaton in her secret haggis-importing clan, and sending around emails that said things like:


Hello all,

First of all, THANK YOU for be willing to accept our Haggis. And tend it. And keep it safe. True friends, indeed...

Sadly, Mark didn't copy me when he replied to Neil that he was a couple of blocks away, and Neil was in the cities at the time taping NPR and by the time I got Mark's note it was too late, the Haggis Shop is closed, the order set, and One Little Haggis is on its way from Scotland for Friday Delivery to Mr Wheaton.

If it is easier for all concerned, perhaps, Mark might acquire the Haggis from Wil, and deliver it Monday. If Wil would like to keep the Haggis and make the journey himself, well, that's just fine too. Mostly, whatever it easiest, I do not want our Haggis to disrupt lives and wreak havoc.

Again, my thanks to you,

Lorraine

Which I quote in full because I love the haggisy emails that were sent around. (Mark Evanier took delivery of the haggis in the end.)

Here's the song... 

And here's the interview...

Right. So the Wilshire Ebell Hallowe'en gig was wonderful, but chaos. We got to the theatre late, late from the Late Late Show, and the rehearsing time never happened, the costume contest and the us chatting took up much more time than we had thought, and we had to be offstage at exactly 10:30 or the tour would turn into a pumpkin, so the set list wound up becoming a peculiarly moveable feast... and it was wonderful. Nothing quite went as planned, but it felt like everyone, including us, was having the kind of evening that only ever happens once.

The scary rabbit twins in fezzes won the costume competition, with Roborina coming in second and Hester Prynne at the far left not winning, although her glowing A was often the only thing in the audience visible from the stage, so I always knew where she was. (Margaret Cho introduced us and helped with the costume competition. She is a very good thing.)


Amanda and I drove up the coast. We spent the night at the Madonna Inn (I am still trying to decide if it's a real American Gods place or not. I think probably it is) and then the next morning drove to San Francisco.

(It's now tomorrow, after the Brava show. Time to type has been tight.)

The Brava show was much tighter than the LA show. I read different things (I plan to read different things every night). We didn't have strict on-stage curfew, which meant that things could run a little long and no-one worried. The Jane Austen Argument debuted a new single, Holes, with lyrics by me and art by Mark Buckingham. (You can listen to it here.)

Amanda played me "Walk on the Wild Side" as an early birthday present, assisted by the Jane Austen Argument and Lance Horne.

And finally, for now (only because I have to stop writing this blog and sleep, despite all the things I meant to write about here) Absolute Sandman Volume 5, containing Endless Nights and Dream Hunters and more, comes out tomorrow. You can preorder it discounted at Amazon,  You can preorder it from Indiebound. (You can preorder it from Barnes and Noble, but they don't get a link until they put Sandman graphic novels back on the shelves of their shops.)

Or you can just go and buy a copy from your local comic shop.

Barnes and Noble have done something very wonderful recently, though. Last year, they recorded me reading the opening passage to James Thurber's book "The Thirteen Clocks", which is one of my favourite books. And now they've animated it. Here's a link to the Barnes and Noble blog where you can watch it.

Right. Sleep.

Labels: amanda palmer, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., Craig Ferguson, haggis smuggling, halloween traditions, Stephin Merritt, The Thirteen Clocks

"Neil Gaiman Presents" is open for business!

This poor website's had quite a buffeting in the last 24 hours, what with the launch of All Hallows Read (the allhallowsread.com website is run off neilgaiman.com). Sorry if you've had trouble. The Webgoblin has upgraded everything, and it should be working again by now.

I just came back from Radio K.N.O.W. in St Paul, where I recorded a segment for NPR's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED - they've started the Back Seat Book Club for kids, and picked The Graveyard Book as their lead title. Here's their article on the Book Club. More questions are still coming in, so I promised I'd answer some next week at their site.

I also recorded a couple of little things in the studio there for the introductions I've been doing to the Neil Gaiman Presents line at Audible.com.

This is something I'm really excited about. Don Katz at Audible.com knows how much I love audio books, and offered me the chance to have my own record label at Audible, getting books I loved and wanted to hear that had never been audiobooks made as audiobooks and out into the world, with the best readers I could find, using Audible's ACX platform. (The idea of ACX is that there are a lot more books out there than there are audiobooks, so ACX is a way of introducing authors and rights-holders to actor/performer/readers and producers/directors. It's very simple and sensible, and should, I hope, result in a lot more audiobooks out there in the world.)

It's been a year in the planning and now the first five books are out, with a lot more at various stages in the production process.

The first round of audiobooks consists of:

LAND OF LAUGHS by Jonathan Carroll read by Edoardo Ballerini.
YOU MUST GO AND WIN written and read by Alina Simone
PAVANE by Keith Roberts, read by Steven Crossley
 LIGHT by M. John Harrison, read by Julian Elfer
 THE MINOTAUR TAKES A CIGARETTE BREAK by Steven Sherrill, read by Holter Graham

Which is to say, one beautiful work of  magical realism about the dangers of having a favourite book, a collection of really funny essays about travel and Russia and being a musician, a collection of stories that become a moving alternate history, a strange and glorious space opera and a work of contemporary americana with a minotaur in it.

You could say "Why aren't these books all the same kind of thing?" and I would say "Because I like lots of different things. And so might you."

Coming up in the next round we will have Ellen Kushner reading SWORDSPOINT and John Hodgman reading Robert Sheckley's hilarious pre-Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy galactic travel fantasia DIMENSION OF MIRACLES. And lots, lots more...

 I recorded introductions to each book, worked with Audible to acquire the rights, worked with the authors (when they were alive) to choose the readers. I'm ridiculously proud of the whole thing. (There's a lady at Audible.com named Christina Harcar who has done all the heavy lifting and I am very grateful to her, to everyone involved at Audible, and particularly to Don Katz for indulging my madness.)

If you've never tried Audible, it's amazingly easy - you can use your Amazon ID and password to log in and sign up. The full list of what "Neil Gaiman Presents" has coming out is at this link.

If you've never tried an audio book before, this might be a good time to find out if you enjoy them. They will go and live on your phone, your tablet, your computer, your iPod...

(And if you're an author or an actor or a director/producer/engineer, you can get started using ACX at http://www.acx.com/help/learn-how-neil-uses-acx/200680340.)

I don't really have a good photo of an audiobook being recorded to round this out, so here is a photo of my wife chasing a chicken.

Labels: a photo of AMANDA chasing a CHICKEN, ACX, audible.com, audio books

The Back-seat Book Club and the Egg Salad

National Public Radio's ALL THINGS CONSIDERED has started a book club for the young:

We are starting a special project at NPR aimed at our younger listeners. We're talking about all those young people who listen to NPR programs while riding in the car or sitting at the kitchen table. We'd like you to lend us your ears and your curiosity. Beginning this October, All Things Considered is rolling out The Back-Seat Book Club for kids ages 9 to 14.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/21/141473961/read-graveyard-with-our-new-back-seat-book-club

Pretty obviously, I'm thrilled that they've chosen The Graveyard Book as their first book. There's a link for young readers to ask their Graveyard Book questions, and I'll answer as many as I can on the air on All Things Considered this Friday.

(Also, I was delighted to see that The Graveyard Book has made it back onto the New York Times bestseller list.)

And there's now a very pretty Adult Edition of the book out:

Photo from Cat's excellent blog at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/10/october-skies.html.

(People who like prints, signed or otherwise, should check out the Prints page at Cat's Neverwear.net - the Molly Crabapple Desert Wind posters go up in price on November 1st).

...

I did an interview with a reporter about The Simpsons this morning. It was fun and odd to be talking about it, and here is a picture of me and an egg salad from the upcoming episode with me in it to celebrate. Am I pleased about this egg salad? Do I look pleased? Why is the title of the Simpsons episode The Book Job? Why have I blogged three times in 12 hours after not having blogged for two weeks? Will anyone ever fix the Livejournal officialgaiman syndicated feed? Why did I say the egg salad was a tuna salad on WhoSay? Is it something to do with the colour?


Neil Gaiman on WhoSay

Labels: Book clubs, Egg Salad, not being crushed by The Simpsons, NPR, The Graveyard Book

Thoughts on joining a club that would have me as a member

I'm still grinning about finding myself, for the second year running, on the Astrid Lindgren Award longlist.

It's a very long list of very amazing people doing good and powerful things for children's literature and literacy around the world - writers, illustrators, oral storytellers, promoters of literacy: 184 nominees from 66 countries.

The Guardian asked how I felt about it, and I wrote a reply to them, but I wrote it on my phone, which was out of range of any signal and thus didn't send it. So it wasn't in their article.

I thought I'd put it here. Because I meant it, and I still mean it.

This is my second year on the Astrid Lindgren longlist, and I'm a strange mixture of thrilled to be picked and honoured to be in such company. Just as thrilled as I was last year, in truth.

Last year Shaun Tan won, which made me feel that the award was going to the best people. With a longlist of 184 people I feel less like I'm in competition for an award and more like I've been told I'm part of a club of people who've been doing the right thing.

Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone.

Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them.

And I'm honoured to be part of the club.

Labels: Astrid Lindgren Award, Groucho Marx, What I think

All Hallows Read News, and stuff.

I'm way behind in blogging. Partly because I started playing with Tumblr (http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/), which is fun because it's novel and shiny, and because it makes a few things that are hard to do in Blogger really easy. Partly because I was off the map for a bit, doing a number of things, including spending time with Amanda at her sister's in Santa Fe, where I got to be an Uncle to her nephew Ronan who started out calling me Uncle Neil and then switched to Neilgaiman, and when last seen was resisting all Amanda's efforts to persuade him to call me Uncle Neilgaiman.

Yesterday I went to see the Chippewa Valley Roller Girls play. (They played Harbor City, in Duluth, and were honorably beaten.) My assistant Lorraine is now skating with them as Quiche Me Deadly, although yesterday she was not skating, instead she organised... well, as far as I could tell, she seemed to be organising everything. Lojo Russo played the intermission, for example. After the game, Lorraine took me over to her teammates and introduced me to them.

Photo by Ctein.

Eventually she persuaded them to give me back.

...

Right.

I'm at home, wrapping things up, and preparing for the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, and then the Evening With Neil and Amanda tour West Coast Tour that follows it.

On October the 31st, Amanda will be a musical guest (she will be forming a small and magical supergroup for the occasion), and I will be in the guest's chair talking with, Craig Ferguson. I had hopes of getting him a MacSween's vegetarian haggis. Zooey Deschanel will be the other guest. It will be fun.

And then we will careen from the Late Late Show studios over to the Wilshire Ebell for the Soundcheck and then the first of the "Evening With Neil Gaiman and Amanda Palmer" shows.

(There are still tickets available for the LA show as I type this - perhaps because it's on Hallowe'en, and people often have things to do on Hallowe'en. The two San Francisco shows, Portland and Vancouver sold out immediately. There are a few tickets left for Seattle on November the 9th.)

Which reminds me...

A year ago, on a plane, it occurred to me that there should be a scary book-giving part of Hallow'en, and I wrote this, here on the blog:

I was on a flight home last night, and I thought,

You know, there aren't enough traditions that involve giving books.

There's World Book Day, which grew out of Don Quixote Day/Cervantes Birthday/St George's Day in Spain, where roses and books are given, but really, we need some more instant traditions that involve the giving of books, the kind that spread all over the world.

And then I thought,

Hallowe'en's next weekend...

So:

I propose that, on Hallowe'en or during the week of Hallowe'en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they'll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they'll enjoy.

I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands -- new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe'en. Make their flesh creep...

Give a scary book.

If you don't know what kinds of books there are, or what would be appropriate for the person you're giving a book to, talk to a bookseller. They love to help, most of them. (The ones that don't tend not to be booksellers for long.) Talk to librarians. (Do not plan to give away their books though, unless they are having a library sale.)

That's it. That's my idea.

Scary book. Hallowe'en.

Who's with me?


Neil

(And for those of you who protest that, honestly, you need no excuse to give books as gifts, and you do it all the time, and it comes to you as naturally as breathing -- well, that's wonderful, and I'm glad. Think of this as your chance to spread books to people to whom you might not normally give books, or to receive books you might otherwise never read.)

And, with help from the ever-amenable Web Goblin, Dan Guy, and the former Web Elf, Olga Nunes, we made the All Hallows Read website at http://www.allhallowsread.com/. (The festival was named on Twitter.)

This year, lots of people have taken the severed head and started to run with it.

Tor.com, for example, has a great list of suggested books. Here's a great piece on the Huffington Post website, with an excellent video.

A few months ago I called Elise Howard at Harper Children's, who has been my editor there for the last decade, and spoke to her about it. She loved the idea of getting involved. She offered to print a poster, for the winning entry in an All Hallow's Read poster contest...

Artists: Enter the All Hallow’s Read poster contest, and your winning design might become the official All Hallow’s Read poster in 2012.

Your original submission should spread the word about All Hallow’s Read and encourage participation in the program. The winning poster design will be announced and featured on AllHallowsRead.com and will become a limited-edition poster to be printed and distributed to participating booksellers for All Hallow’s Read in 2012 (printing and distribution sponsored by HarperCollinsPublishers).

I thought that the poster idea was a wonderful one, and was thrilled that they were going to sponsor that when I got another message from Elise. This time with something even more fun that they were going to do for people in New York. On Tuesday...

Hi, Neil.

We’ve got everybody on board here at Harper for All Hallow’s Read and our big book drop on 10/25. In addition to encouraging readers to participate in the AHR book drop and retweeting their efforts and pictures, we’re going to drop sixty Harper titles for readers of various ages at locations around New York City. Lucky readers will find copies of The Graveyard Book and Coraline, Dark Eden by Patrick Carmen, Possess by Rachel McNeil, Scary Stories by Alvin Schwartz, and Vampire Boy’s Good Night by Lisa Brown.

We’re going to create a downloadable sticker for All Hallow’s Read book drop participants to print and use, so that book finders can take up the mission, too.

Throughout the day, we’ll call out the AHR book-drop project on our Twitter and Facebook accounts. Look for your favorite Harper staffers in the #AllHallowsRead discussion on 10/25!

Elise

In addition to this book drop project, they've made some fine scary book recommendations (you can read them at http://www.allhallowsread.com/book-recommendations/ - and I did a list myself, with the help of about 1800 suggestions from Facebook, right now as a PDF on that page.

Of course, you do not need to be a publisher to do a book drop, and we now have a page on the All Hallows Read site with a Book Drop Sticker that you can print out and put in a book, which lets people know that the book is there to be taken and read.

And All Hallows Read even has its own forum, where people can exchange ideas, tips and useful ways to give scary books.

...

It feel like the end of a decade, too. Ten years ago I was an adult author who was going to publish a book called Coraline, my first children's book from a major publisher. I had two editors, Sarah Odedina at Bloomsbury in the UK and Elise Howard at Harper Children's in the US. They were two of the smartest editors anyone could have. I felt comfortable with them, and safe with them, and they advised but never ordered, they supported me as an author, they were patient when they had every right to ask where the book I was meant to be writing was. One on each side of the Atlantic.

And in a matter of weeks, both of them have gone - each of them has her own imprint. Sarah is publishing Bonnier's children's imprint, Hot Key Books, in the UK, and Elise will be creating a children's line for Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill.

I wanted to wave them goodbye here, and to say thank you for everything they did. Their authors will be very lucky to have them, and I'll miss them.

...

Hi Neil,

This is too long to Tweet, so I was wondering, are you aware of Mark Oshiro's "Mark Reads" project and the fact he's currently doing (almost finished) American Gods?

"Mark Reads" started as "Mark Reads Twilight" and was done as a joke, but when he started blogging Harry Potter in the same vein, he realised he actually liked the series and stopped making fun of it - and he now does books that he actually hopes to enjoy and think seriously about - he does chapter by chapter reviews/reactions and tries to read completely spoiler free. The blog has had literally millions of hits and hundreds of thousands of followers.

I know you can't mention everyone who ever does a reading project of one of your books and that you must have heard everything there is to hear, but the real reason I'm writing to you about him today, though, is because of something in particular he said in today's review (chapter 18)

"that’s half the charm of American Gods. This might technically be a fantasy novel, but it rarely feels fantastic. It feels like the very best history lesson I could ask for, or perhaps a fireside story told with sincerity and heart, or maybe even a tale handed down over the centuries. It’s comforting even if it is disturbing at times, and I found myself feeling like this was all being shared with me out of respect for me as a person. It’s not often that I feel that way about a book; it’s like Gaiman is a close friend who trusts you, so he hands you this as a gesture that he thinks you’re an all right person, that he feels safe in saying that you deserve this."

I just thought that was a nice sentiment about you, and that you should be aware of it.

http://www.markreads.net

best always,

Natalie Fisher

I went over to Mark Reads and I was really impressed. It was fun, as an author, watching a reader paying attention and writing about his reactions, all the way through. There were some really smart people in the comments, too. (You can follow along as Mark reads American Gods at http://markreads.net/reviews/category/american-gods/)

...

And finally, two things: Lemony Snicket writing about money and about cake at Occupy Writers, and Elvis Costello sings one of my favourite songs from his first album, My Aim Is True, but with monsters instead of angels, and a two instead of a shoe.

Labels: All Hallow's Read, An Evening With Neil And Amanda., roller derby, The Angels No Longer Want to Wear My Red Shoes

I bet you think it's easy just to eat a banana and not say anything

You may remember this video. It was filmed by Amanda's assistant, Superkate, on Brighton Beach, at the beginning of September.



Well, this one is the sequel. It's our thank you. Filmed a few days ago in a mall in Cambridge MA by Claudia Gonson. The sound is a bit echoey.



...

Over at http://superpunch.blogspot.com/2011/10/art-inspired-by-neil-gaimans-american.html there's an amazing assortment of art inspired by American Gods. All sorts of styles and kinds of art. Here's one I love, of the Zorya, and Shadow and Czernobog playing checkers.



...

Here's an astonishing video of the Evelyn Evelyn song "Have you Seen my Sister Evelyn?"

I was going to write that it was because I wrote something about this song on this blog that I got a "thank you for saying nice things about our song" email from Amanda Palmer that turned into a correspondence, and then turned into me agreeing to write some stories for the Who Killed Amanda Palmer book, and then, a little over a year afterwards, developed into the start of the relationship that we now have, and then I went back and looked for the link, and discovered that actually it was Evelyn Evelyn's "Elephant Elephant" song that I was nice about. Proving that memory is a fallible sort of a thing.

But it's still an amazingly beautiful video.

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Would you like to have lunch with me, in LA or when I'm on the road? Or would you rather have lunch with Frank Miller and his editor Bob Schreck? Or have writer and former DC Comics publisher Paul Levitz review your portfolio and tell you how to make it in comics? Or have Frank Quitely sketch a postcard for you? Or have me do a sketch on a postcard for you? (Frank's will be prettier.)

All these things, and a ridiculously long list of other things, are possible. Details and a list of things at http://cbldf.org/homepage/be-counted/ where the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is having an NPR like membership drive, with some amazing things for people who want to pledge for them. The donations are big, but count as charitable donations, and come off your taxes.

And if you don't want (or cannot afford) one of the big ticket items, you can still - and should - become a CBLDF member at http://cbldf.org/contribute/membership/. Annual membership starts at $25, for which you get a Green Lantern membership card. But no power ring.

Labels: American Gods, banana, CBLDF, Evelyn Evelyn, the fallibility of human memory

One Ordinary Day with autumn leaves

I am home, after ten days of working on a Grand Guignol theatre piece with Stephin Merritt and director Steven Bogart, and some wonderful and enthusiastic young actors.

This is how enthusiastic they were: when we had a ten minute break, and they had been working all day, and I asked if anyone would mind being zombies and or murdering each other while I talked about All Hallow's Read, none of them did, and they murdered each other with enthusiasm.



Right. I am at home with a Maddy who has lost her voice. It is very sweet. She whispers everything, and I make her cups of lemon and honey. As I am typing this, I am listening to her play the violin. It's a perfect Indian Summer - a sunny, warm autumn, and the leaves are beautiful, and October is most definitely in the chair.

Lots of things going on. Cat Mihos is ebaying a lot of rarities for Trevor Valle -- friend, fan and the reason why I have the Neilgaiman.com website. Trevor's going through some horrible medical stuff right now. Kitty and Trevor explain what's going on at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/09/trevor-treasure-chestopening-soon.html, tells you about some of the rarities and cool things at http://kittysneverwear.blogspot.com/2011/10/trevor-chest-up-in-full-effect-yall.html and the actual auction is on eBay at http://www.ebay.com/sch/kitty9thlife/m.html?_trksid=p4340.l2562

Lots of cool, rare stuff - including three pages of Marc Hempel art from Sandman: The Kindly Ones.

Kitty also learned that, back in 2000, Trevor had bought from the CBLDF a box of the original Craig Thompson screenprint/posters for the Last Angel Tour. These have long since sold out on the CBLDF website, and aren't simply available anywhere anymore. She bought them from Trevor outright, and is going to be putting them up on Neverwear soon. (There's a picture of Trevor holding one on the front page of the website, although they aren't for sale yet.)

I found an image on the web of one of them. They look like this, were silkscreened onto heavy card stock, and have to be signed with a paint-pen.

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In the UK, the Society of Authors wants to draw attention to the BBC's cutbacks to short stories.

This is what I wrote in The Guardian Blog about it;

I love short stories. I grew up on them, and the stories that had an effect on me are now encoded into my DNA. Shirley Jackson's "One Ordinary Day With Peanuts" and "The Lottery". Saki's "Sredni Vashtar". WW Jacobs's "The Monkey's Paw". Kipling's "The Gardener". There are heaps of them, and it's love all the way.

For a working writer, this is a silly sort of love. You should write novels. Short stories sell for the price of a good dinner, if you're lucky (and the magazines and anthologies that used to buy them are themselves fading away or gone completely). When they get reprinted they won't cover the taxi fare to get to the dinner. I'm lucky, and have collected my short stories into books that sell well for short-story ­collections, but still only a fraction of the number that my novels sell.

But short stories are the best place for young writers to learn their craft: to try out different voices and techniques, to experiment, to learn. And they're a wonderful place for old writers, when you have an idea that wouldn't make it to novel length, one simple, elegant thing that needs to be said. People like reading short stories. And they like ­listening to short stories.

For years, Radio 4 has supported the short story. Ten-minute stories, professionally read, give writers young and old a chance to make a ­professional sale. Full disclosure: I wrote a short story, "Jerusalem", for them a few years ago, and grew up listening to short stories on Radio 4 and dreaming that one day I'd have a story on there.

Now the station's support for the short story is waning. The Tweetathon we're doing to bring attention to this (each Wednesday for the next five weeks, in association with the Society of Authors, a writer will tweet the first line of a story and tweeters will add the next four sentences to create a short story in 670 characters) may or may not produce great stories: hive minds are excellent news-gatherers and commentators but tend not to produce great art.

All I'm hoping is that it reminds people how much pleasure readers, and listeners, get from short stories, and how much we learn from writing them. If we produce another "The Monkey's Paw" that'll be a bonus.

In Wednesday, at 11 in the morning UK time, and at 6 in the evening UK time, the Society of Authors will put up the first line of a short story by me on their twitter account, @Soc_of_Authors, and they want you to continue it. There will be two different stories. (I don't even know which ones they will use -- I gave them a choice of several.)

http://www.societyofauthors.org/soa-news/society-authors-launch-short-story-tweet-thon-soatale

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You can hear my This American Life talk on Adventures at http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/448/adventure from tomorrow, or all over the US on various Public Radio stations from Friday Night. Er, the night before last.

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When last seen, I was proofreading A LITTLE GOLD BOOK OF GHASTLY STUFF. It was proofread, and has gone off to press. Because too many people had ordered copies, more than expected, while I had only signed enough limitation sheets for the limited edition, publishers Tom and Elizabeth Monteleone asked me if they could print more books to satisfy the people who had ordered...

So I said yes.

Which means right now you can STILL order an unsigned edition of A LITTLE GOLD BOOK OF GHASTLY STUFF. It's an assemblage of stories, essays, poems, reviews, speeches and introductions by me, about 25,000 words in all, with a Gahan Wilson cover showing me being attacked by uglies.

Ordering details are at: http://www.borderlandspress.com/littlegold.html. Yes, the shipping abroad fees are either twice or four times the cost of the book. Scary. Sorry.

If you think you may want one, order fast. The books are now being printed, and they won't go back to press when they've sold out.

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Lastly, it seems that Barnes and Nobles across the US are removing 100 DC Comics Graphic Novels from their shelves (literally removing them and sending them back to the warehouses for the next four months) in response to DC's deal with Amazon.com to make these 100 Graphic Novels available as digital exclusives to the Kindle Fire.

I mentioned this on Twitter, and wound up getting a strange deluge of hate mail. Here's a polite one:

I never thought I would have to tell you that myself, my children and several of my friends are extremely disappointed with you. I can't believe that you would let your Sandman fans down by letting DC/Warner Bros release your books on the Kindle and not all e-readers.

I was very excited when I heard that Sandman was coming out as an e-book but was heartbroken when it was announced that *I* and my kids won't have it on our readers.

Thanks.

And I wonder why on earth people assume that I, or Alan Moore, or Frank Miller, have any say at all in DC Comics's marketing decisions. Do they think that someone at DC calls us up and gets our permission before they do such deals, or that we have any ability to stop it? The first I heard about the exclusive, was hearing that Barnes and Noble staff were having to take their graphic novels off the shelves.

I think that Barnes and Noble's reasons for doing this are pretty obvious. It's to intimidate other publishers and make it clear that exclusives with Amazon will not be tolerated. But, following the death of Borders, Barnes and Noble's position as the US's sole huge bricks and mortar shop chain is something that it's very easy to abuse. I hope that this is a negotiating tactic, because otherwise it does bad things for customer choice all around, digitally and otherwise. (It's also publicised the upcoming Fire, publicised that DC's basic graphic novels are available there, and publicised that they are no longer in Barnes and Nobles, in a way that must make Amazon the happiest company on the block this morning.)

There's a beautiful leatherbound edition of American Gods and Anansi Boys that's only available from Barnes and Noble. I'd hate to see this considered justification by Amazon for removing those books from the Kindle.

On the good side, I hope that it means that local comic shops (http://comicshoplocator.com/ for your nearest) will stock and sell more copies of that basic 100 Graphic novel list.

If there's any more news on this, I'll post it. Otherwise, I'm just waiting, and remembering how long and how much effort it took to get the books into bookstores, and being sad that they aren't there, and knowing that it's not the fault of the people who work there and had to take them off the shelves (or explain to customers that they don't sell them any longer, but you can still order them from Barnes and Noble's website).

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Right. Off to work.

I've been experimenting with a Tumblr recently. It's fun. http://neil-gaiman.tumblr.com/

Labels: autumn, Craig Thompson, short stories, The Last Angel Tour poster

WARNING: NOT SAFE FOR WORK UNLESS YOU WORK IN A MUSEUM AND HAVE THE SECURITY CAMERAS OFF

Hullo world.

I'm in Boston, right now, actually in Cambridge, working with director Steven Bogart, a wonderful crew of young actors, and Stephin Merritt, evolving a theatrical thing about the Grand Guignol, the Parisian theatre of horror, in the early years of the 20th century. We're in a church sub-basement, and I worry a little about the cries of pain, screams of fear, and sounds of human beings completely breaking down as they are tortured and destroyed making it up to the street, but if they do it doesn't seem to bother anyone.

Jessica Fox, a filmmaker, is recording our process, and a couple of days ago we headed into a nearby graveyard and recorded a promotional video for All Hallow's Read. (What is it? learn all at http://www.allhallowsread.com/) I love actors. They are people who will happily sacrifice their 10 minute breaktime to murder each other in a graveyard in the background of someone else's video.

Yesterday morning Amanda and I were invited to the Museum of Fine Arts' DEGAS AND THE NUDE exhibition. Amanda had done the audio guide to the exhibition, the one you get from an iPhone as you walk around the exhibition. This is because a) she has a beautiful talking voice and b) she can talk with authority about being nude. We were given a private showing. Amanda had brought chalks and some paper along, because she had had an idea.

"I thought I could take off my clothes in front of the Degas nudes, and then Neil could draw me," she said to the Museum people, as they began our tour.

They conferred, decided this would be just fine as long as the security cameras were turned off. Then they discovered that they couldn't turn off the security cameras, so they had a man in a forklift come in and hang coffee cups over the security camera lenses in that room. And I sketched nude Amanda in chalks for ten minutes. Then I got in a cab and went over to WBUR Boston to record a bit I'm doing for THIS AMERICAN LIFE about Adventures and how I don't have them.

Ira Glass was on the other end of the line. He introduced himself. "How was your day?" he asked. So I told him. There was a pause. "Are you lying?" he asked, sensibly, and I said no, I wasn't.

The THIS AMERICAN LIFE piece goes out this weekend. The theme is ADVENTURES.

More next post...

Labels: Degas, nudity, What adventures are