I think I'm somewhere in Pennsylvania

Sunday was spent in Washington DC. I took my son to the Spy Museum, and finished an essay on several Batman covers for DC comics' Bob Greenberger (AKA Kate Greenberger's dad), which has sort of turned into an essay on the nature of Batman as a gothic hero. (And I need to make clear on the final draft that that does not mean a Byronic hero.) (Which reminds me... two years ago in http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2002/04/well-this-is-simultaneously-question.asp Atara Stein asked about Dream as a Byronic Hero. She's now completed her book on the subject of Byronic Heroes, and it's a deliciously readable jaunt through high and low culture -- http://www.siu.edu/~siupress/titles/f04_titles/stein_byronic.htm)

Yesterday was spent in the car, or signing things. There wasn't really any middle ground. I went to Pittsburgh, signed many hundreds of the original Miracleman comics for New Dimension Comics' owner Todd McDevitt, who bought an Eclipse archive, and who has promised to donate much of his takings to the CBLDF, then did a signing at his store for a few hundred very nice people. Then I got into the Mini and, because I was exhausted but not sleepy, drove on for an hour or so.

And now I'm awake. I do love the way that American chain motels have started offering wireless internet as an inducement: I fell asleep last night to a BBC radio 7 program on Flanders and Swann (it's at http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbc7/listenagain/wednesday/ but only for one more day).

Neil. I am such an idiot. I rushed to the post office in August to rush in my entry for Fiddler's Green Con so that I could participate in the Have Dinner with a Guest of Honor Lottery, and then, when the email came to respond, what did I do? Missed it. (Work, you see) So much anticipation, so much rushing about for a small chance to have sushi (my fav!) and chat with you, and I blew it. I haven't felt this much regret over something I failed to do since childhood. What to do? I count myself thrilled and lucky that I will be attending Fiddler's Green none the less, and wondered, being a writer who visits your musings daily for little bits of precious dropped threads, how I could go about chatting with you ever so briefly just one on one at this convention. I know, I know, five hundred people, one you and everyone clamoring to speak to the creator of the Dream King, if ever such a thing is possible.

Well, right now - unless there's a last minute surge of people, which there probably won't be -- it's looking like it'll be closer to 200 people than 500. And I'm planning to make myself as accessible as possible. Your best bet is to just come and find me, or just ask. I don't have enough of a sense of the schedule yet to be able to say "I'll be free at such and such a time", but I'll be there, probably in the bar or a comfortable public space, through the whole thing, when I'm not either on panels or helping with the auction, or asleep. That's my plan, anyway.

(The Fiddler's Green website is at http://www.fiddlersgreencon.org/)

Dear Mr. Gaiman:I know you have provided the link to the third-party 1602 annotations in the past, but some of us latecomers can't find it anymore. Would you mind reposting this information? Regards,Mark

I'm very happy to: Jess Nevins' annotations for the first 3 chapters of 1602 can be found starting at http://www.geocities.com/jessnevins/16021.html, Julian Darius is up to issue 4 at http://www.sequart.com/marvel1602.htm and then ther's Jason Pomerantz doing the whole thing, and a final wrap-up interview with me at http://cwn.comicraft.com/cgi-bin/index.cgi?column=mysteries.

I was really impressed by the 1602 oversized hardback, which I saw (and signed a lot of copies for people) this weekend -- it looks good, and at a cursory glance the corrections I asked for have almost all been made. It seems a lot more readable. (Several people have pointed out that Marvel's house style "spine" means you may have to look for it in the "M" shelves of bookshops rather than in the "G" shelves next to the Sandmans.)

In the story Facade in "Dream Country," you used the character "Element Girl" which you did not create. How did you get the rights to do that?--Madeleine.

I asked my editor. Someone asked me last night if I minded that things have been done with "my" characters since I stopped doing Sandman, and I said that I knew the rules when I went in. (And have always been gratified at how much people have respected my wishes and kept their hands off some of my characters.) DC Comics is a huge sandbox. You can play with toys that other kids left behind, before you, but you'll leave the toys you brought behind you when you leave.

Four Hours of Signing Later...

Yesterday, I got to the Mall at around 9:00am ish. Lisa-from-Harper-Collins and I were looking at the map upside down, so we walked from one end of the Book Festival to the other. Bumped into R.L. Stine at the far end of the Mall. "Did you see your signing line? They started lining up at 8:30," he told me cheerfully.

Got to the tent I was meant to have been at in the first place, just where the taxi had initially dropped us off, at 9:00am at 9:30ish, and did an interview with Green Man Review for half an hour, and then I went off to start the 10:00am signing. The line was very very long (about 500 people in the line, the Book Festival people told me). I learned that the first people for the signing had turned up at 5:30 am, but they hadn't got into line until 8:30. I signed until 11:00am, and the line wasn't noticeably shorter. I'd already agreed to do an extra hour after the signing by this point. "Can you do another hour here now?" they asked. The only thing I'd hoped to do was have a cup of tea with Neal Stephenson, so we put that off, and I kept signing until 12:00pm when I had to go to do a radio interview with Heloise. Then I had half an hour, so I grabbed some lunch, said hello to my old friend Doug Winter, who was there to introduce Peter Straub's presentation, and stumbled off to do my reading.

I read some chunks of Anansi Boys, and people laughed in all the right places. (For those people who've asked, assuming I finish it on time, Harper Collins are hoping to publish it in September 2005.) By this point I'd already agreed to do another signing once the reading and Q&A were done, which I felt a bit odd about because the people in the 2:00pm signing line (most of whom had arrived before 10:00am that morning) were going to have to miss the reading. But the reading was enormously fun, and the tent was packed. Michael Dirda introduced me. I had ten minutes off, during which I filled my pen and chatted to Neal Stephenson, then got back to signing for people, which went on until 4:00pm, when I signed for the last couple of people and it was all over. I went back to the author tent, said hullo to Tony DiTerlizzi and Holly Black (& their Others), went back to my hotel and realised that I was utterly exhausted.

Lisa-from-Harper-Collins gave me all the things I'd been given during the day (including four brand new pairs of black socks. Nice black socks. And do not think I'm not grateful. In fact I'm wearing a pair of them right now,) and she went back to New York.

I sat down on the bed, and woke up an hour or so later, not sure where I was, who I was, or what day it was. Once I'd figured all those things out, I went off and had dinner with Michael Dirda, my son Mike and friends.

...

I got a nice note from someone in the line, with a link to a blog. So for those of you who weren't there: http://dig.badsitcomplots.com/archives/2004/10/neil_gaiman_and.html

According to the Washington Post, I did the extra hours of signing because I am "a savvy businessman". I'm still trying to figure this one out. I thought I did it because there were about 500 people in that line at 10:00am, many of whom had come a very long way, and it seemed like the right thing to do.

...

Bloomsbury Books in the UK have just started a website for me and Dave McKean: http://www.gaimanmckeanbooks.co.uk/ -- some lovely e-cards, and screensavers. It really catches the feel of Dave's work. There's a new screensaver for The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, which is simple and sweet, and is now the screensaver on my computer. It's worth exploring (the different books bring up different e-cards and screensavers and so on).

...

I came across the trailer for the movie MirrorMask and then that led me to Coraline (the movie) which led me to the book and now I find myself here. I have not read anything from you yet...and its a headache to keep up with everything so I just decided to ask you what book you would suggest I read first?

I don't know. They're all sort of different. The impression I get is that Neverwhere is a good starting place, but I wish someone would do one of those questionnaires where you tell it books and films you like, and it tells you you'd probably be best off starting with Stardust, or Sandman, or American Gods....

In the meantime, your best bet is to browse http://www.neilgaiman.com/stories/stories.asp and see what catches your fancy.

Hi Neil, Just got back from your reading in DC--my girlfriend and I thought it was wonderful. We were wondering if there's any chance you'll do the audio version of Anansi Boys? We'd love to hear you read the whole thing. Michail Velichansky

I rather doubt it, only because I really want English actor and comedian Lenny Henry to do it. (And not because his wife, the multitalented Dawn French, did an amazing job reading the UK audio version of Coraline.) But I'll read bits of it here and there, I'm sure.

...

And they've got clips from the "13 Nights of Fright" stuff up on http://www.foxmoviechannel.com/ now. It's very silly, a lot of fun, and does not claim to be art. (Incidentally, the website of Jude Prest, who wrote all the things that I say, or most of them, is now back up at http://www.judegerardprest.com/).

One final post while the antivirus updates

Neil: You ought to have pointed out that at blacksocks.com, if you manage to convince a friend to sign up for their service, you get free pairs of black socks. Given how many people read your blog and given the gravity and prevalence of the Missing Sock Problem, I would think some of your readers would want the service anyway and would be happy to put you down in their "referred by" field on their Black Sock Order Form. :-) Of course, this might prompt single shipments of black socks coming to you with such frequency that *you'd* need a form letter to deal with them. *enjoying the very idea of blacksocks.com just a bit too much* ~Amanda in Charleston, SC

Well, credit where credit is due. It was Sam Newman, from http://www.magpiebrain.com/ who wrote to tell me about the existence of blacksocks.com, and who finished his note, I'm in no way affiliated with them, nor in fact do I subscribe to their service - I'm dropping heavy hints around my girlfriend in the hope I get some for Christmas. Is it wrong that I actually want socks of Christmas?

So Sam ought to get the free socks. Not me. (My socks have not yet arrived. Will report back when they do.)

Right. Now I'm really gone.

The only post until I get to Washington, probably

Let's see....

I'm currently the sole inhabitant of a beautiful colonial farmhouse, the sort of place where one ought to go for long walks and bicycle rides, or sit drinking wine in the back garden with lots of women wearing diaphanous white things, all of us just slightly out of focus as in 1970s calendar photographs, or one could just descend on the place with a small family and go off as a mob to pick apples and be a tourist, and where I've done none of these things. Instead I've set up my computer on the kitchen table and am working very hard trying to finish the Mirrormask Movie Script Book. So far I've written the Introduction, and am banging my head against the various drafts of the movie, trying to figure out what to include of the lost bits, and what to let go. And when I get too bored or irritated with trying to make a program (Final Draft) do something it really wasn't ever meant to do, I go over and work on the third and, I hope, last draft of the BBC Radio 3"MISTER PUNCH" radio play.

I've also written all the text for a "Really Useful Book" which Dark Horse will be releasing, just like the one that adopts Helena in Mirrormask. (It's a little red book filled with helpful and appropriate advice.)

And getting onto the internet in this town is really hard. This is a good thing. (I assured the nice man I'm renting the house from today that a high-speed internet line would not have been an attraction for me.)

Dear Neil,You should add a search function to your journal. It's really big, you know. Doing something as nice as that would have its perks: your FAQ questions would probably be reduced from a lot of redundancy, and you'd be able to find stuff easier yourself, if you ever felt the onset of age trampling your doorstep. Plus, we wouldn't have to worry about asking a question if you've already answered it somewhere else.-Benjamin

There really is a search function. It's been there for several years. It's the magnifying glass with the word search over on the left of the screen, or it's http://www.neilgaiman.com/search/search.asp. What we really need is a redesign to make things like the Search function (and lots of the other strange things on the site) more easy to find. That's unlikely to happen within the next six months, though.

Dear Neil,

Since you've done such a great job in introducing the world to Susanna Clarke, I wondered if you would be kind enough to tell people within reach of the north-east of England that she will be appearing at the Durham Literature Festival next Sunday, 10th October at 2.00pm. (There are full details on the LitFest website at http://www.literaturefestival.co.uk/workshops.html#print).

The event is being presented as a session for wannabe writers, and I'd hate for people who like good fantasy writing to miss it because it isn't being promoted specifically to them - I've checked with the Festival organiser, and they don't have a problem with us telling everyone about it.

And - added attraction - if you buy a book at the Festival, you get a bookplate http://www.literaturefestival.co.uk/2004/bookplate/index.html specially designed for us by Bryan Talbot, to stick in it!

Thanks - Jean

You're welcome.

Dear Neil,I am a college sophomore who is comtemplating writing comics for a living. Without being too personal or offensive, do you know how many comics/ how often, would one have to write comics for that to be their sole source of income? Do comic writers get paid on commission as it were? Is there some minimal paycheck a writer gets paid should their book be released? Thank you for your time.Michael Serpe

I'm not sure it works quite like that. I mean, I remember one comics writer, some years ago, explaining to me that, in order to make writing comics an economically valid proposition, she wrote each of her comic scripts in 24 hours. At the time it was taking me about 3-4 weeks a month to write each Sandman script, and she told me how very foolish this was, when I could have knocked them out and been making real money. But all the Sandman comics have stayed in print forever, in trade paperbacks that go into printing after printing, all over the world, and I get royalties on them, while her comics are somewhere in the back issue bins, and long forgotten.

So, in my case, the answer was "one".

Normally a comics writer is paid for a script, then paid a royalty (or, if it's Marvel, an "incentive") on top of that based on sales.

But if you want to make money, you're probably better off doing something else. There are lots of ways to make more money that are easier. Write comics because you'd rather be writing comics than doing anything else. That way, if you don't make much money, you'll at least have made some cool comics. (That was the same advice I gave about writing many years ago at a school careers evening.) (The link's to a PDF file of a zine put out by Noreascon. Obviously I failed to discourage Graham Sleight, as I successfully discouraged many young men and their parents that evening "No, there is No Job Security as a freelance writer. None at all. Go and talk to the Hotel Management people.".)

Good luck, either way.

...

I should also remind people that

1) The Washington DC Book Festival is this wekeend. I'll be signing at 10:00am, and giving a talk and a reading and answering questions at 1:00pm, in the Science Fiction and Fantasy tent. You don't need tickets or anything to come, and there are dozens of great authors who'll be talking, signing and so on through the day.

2) I'll be signing in Pittsburgh on Monday for New Dimension Comics at 6:00pm -- go to Where's Neil -- http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/where.asp -- for details.

3) Fiddler's Green is approaching fast. Lots of cool people have decided to come along -- I was thrilled to hear that artist Lisa Snellings will be there, with Cool Stuff. (And she wants me to tell people that her latest rat is Edgar Allan Poe -- http://www.ravyn.com/lisasnellings/web/poe.html for details.) My current plans for it mostly involve sitting somewhere nice and accessible when I'm not actually on a panel or similar, and just answering people's questions, nodding aimiably, scribbling on things, and so on. So whether you're one of the 35,000 people whose questions to the FAQ line have not yet been answered, or one of the 3,000 or so who have, this is going to be an excellent opportunity to ask me whether the Endless were also Beginningless, who's going to be playing Death in the New Line movie, or whether you can try on my leather jacket. And it's all for the CBLDF.

The website is http://www.fiddlersgreencon.org/ and you need to reserve a room now through the con to get the convention room rates and suchlike.

And I'm looking forward to making a cool announcementabout something Charles Vess and I are doing that will benefit RAINN there. (Which reminds me -- the 2005 RAINN Tori Calendar is now out -- see http://www.neilgaiman.net/just-in.php for details).

4) Nearly forgot to tell you that 1602 is now out in hardback from Marvel. As the New York Times explained yesterday:

Marvel 1602 By Neil Gaiman and Andy Kubert 248 pages. Marvel. $24.99

The heroes of the Marvel Universe � icons like Captain America, Doctor Strange and Daredevil � are reimagined in 17th-century roles in this hardcover collection. The swashbuckling setting suits the heroes � the intelligence agent Nick Fury serves as the Queen of England's most trusted spy and the outcast X-Men are thought to be a demon-possessed "witchbreed." Character designs and the detailed script to the first chapter are also included.

(I really liked the idea of the NYT article -- four books that were all over the place in terms of comics as genre, although I would have liked it better if I'd been able to tell whether the G. Jones book at the end was a comic or prose. My guess is prose, as I don't remember him ever drawing anything.)

...

And I spoke to Dave McKean today, and it looks like there will be a Real Mirrormask Trailer up very soon indeed.

Mirrormask Taster

I'm somewhere in the middle of America on my way to somewhere else, and it's 2:30 am and I'm in a Comfort Inn which, wonder of wonders, has wireless. So I'm writing to let you know that the Mirrormask Trailer is now up at www.mirrormask.com. The music's not actually music from the film, and the trailer's just moving images really, with no sense of the story (or even that there is a story), but it's the first moving anything that's been seen on the web so far. The next trailer will be longer, and feel more like the film. Still, it's Dave McKean's images, and they move. It's more of a taster than a trailer... feel free to spread the word.

Before I get into the car...

Several hundred messages in, 99% of which were funny, or useful, or both, and about socks. I've been referred to http://www.blacksocks.com/ and have already placed my first order, because, well, there's a website for black socks...)

Most of the other 1% were about Coraline. Several of them were from the same place.

Hi neil my teacher mr.walsh has asked me if i can get the schools name and my name up on the website because my class is a massive fan of your work we have recently read Coraline and love the characters such as Coraline, the Cat, The other mother and if we get our names or anyhting like that on the website for a prize he said hes going to buy us wolves in the walls and thanks for reading this plz write back frm Aleighcia....... And 7P1 Mr walsh's english class in Rumney High!! :-)

Go for it. And if he doesn't get your class a copy of THE WOLVES IN THE WALLS, let me know.

hello Neil my name is sadie and i have just finished reading coraline with my class at ruhmney high school. My teacher mr Walsh said that you are a great auther.We had this homework to try and email you and for you to reply to me and get my name or the schools name mentioned on the site. My question for you is how long have you been writing horrors and what got you interested in them? please could you reply to me and the schools name mentioned in your email thankyou. ps I loved coraline and know i want to read wolves in the wall.

Dear Sadie,

I have been writing horrors since... hmm. I'm not sure. I wrote a really good creepy story about were-cats when I was about 11, and a story about underground vampires when I was 12, so a bit over 30 years. I have no idea what got me interested in them, or why I wasn't interested in writing stories about more cheerful things. Even as a child, I never wrote a single story called "The Happy Pony."

HI! I think Coraline is wicked! But i have 1 question about it! If the other mother created the world on the other side of the door where did she come from?!> From Natalie Lewis

From Somewhere Else. Quite a long time ago.

Hello Neil! Regarding your missing socks, perhaps http://www.lonelysocks.co.uk/ can help you out! Cheers, Cindy

They're fine on the one-missing sock aspect of things. But not much help when it's both socks going. All socks going.

And incidentally, no, socks are not the larval form of wire hangers. Paperclips are the larval form of coathangers, which later emerge from their closets as bicycles. Avram Davidson demonstrated this conclusively in his 1954 Hugo award winning short story "or all the seas with oysters". If you don't believe me, you can look it up.
...

There's a wonderful review of THE DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH up at the Guardian website:


The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish by Neil Gaiman, illustrated by Dave McKean.Bloomsbury, �12.99. Ages 4+

A bittersweet, guffaw-out-loud story from the most distinctive partnership in picture books today. Features their trademark detached parents - dad is central to the story but is so immersed in his newspaper it all just happens around him, while mum takes three pages to notice her daughter's mouth is gagged. Don't miss the afterword. DR

(Also a lovely mini-article on C.S. Lewis's Narnia books on the same page.)

...

Right. I'm off to work: I have to make the MirrorMask Script Book this week, and I'll be hiding out to do it. I'm not sure that I'll even have internet access until next weekend at the Library of Congress Book Festival in Washington DC, so don't be alarmed if you don't hear from me.

PS -- It looks like the trailer for Mirrormask will probably be going up at the www.mirrormask.com site sometime tonight. This is the one on the Storyteller: Greek Myths DVD, which Dave McKean isn't a fan of because it sounds like every other trailer, and I don't like because it doesn't mention Dave McKean, but which everyone else loves...

Socks and the Single Writer

"You're a writer? I've got an idea for a book you can write." This is right up there with "If you all just hand over your wallets nobody's going to get hurt. Except for any writers amongst you. We really hate writers," on the list of things writers generally hope not to hear.

So it made me happy to read the story of where Schindler's List came from, and to find one time where "have I got a book idea for you" was a very good thing to have heard: http://www.granta.com/extracts/2135

...


The fax of today's "form letter" from Dave Sim mentioned that today's postbag of people he was sending signed Cerebuses to numbered a mere 14 people, and that today, for only the third time in the whole of human history, the Rest of the World outnumbered the Americans. He's sent out almost 1500 Cerebuses so far, and people are starting to realise that no, there doesn't appear to be a catch. (There have been a few days this week when he had few enough Cerebuses to send out that he sent personal letters instead of the form letters.)

Which I mention because:

Hey, Neil. Was hoping you could let everyone know that the archive for the Dave Sim Form Letters is now operational at: http://richardmooreart.com/sim/simgaiman.html
Also need to encourage more and more folks to get us their form letters. We're missing quite a lot of them.Thanks, Dana...

So if you're someone who sent off for your free, signed, Sandman-parody Cerebus (and if you didn't, and you'd like one, write a real letter, with enough postage to get to Canada, to Dave Sim, Box 1674 Station C, Kitchener, Ontario N2G 4R2, Canada, and tell him why you'd like a copy, and, wherever you are in the world, he will send you one) then you'll want to check out the archive, and watch as Dave has much too much fun making fun of people who put glitter into their letters, and, well, me.

If the letter you received from Dave isn't up there, then send a scan of it along to Dana.

And the Soon A mentioned in the September 16th letter would like to tell people that he's not a her, he's a him.

...

Neil, In your recent journal entry, you say, "Also talked to my editor, Jennifer Brehl, about finally bringing out a mass-market paperback edition of Smoke and Mirrors, my last short story collection,..." -- which I thought a bit funny, because I have what I thought to be a mass-market paperback edition of Smoke and Mirrors. It was put out by Perennial ("an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers"), and the cover photograph is by J.K. Potter. Is this not the case? Did I somehow stumble onto some lucky limited-edition paperback? Either way, I plan on bringing it for signing at the National Book Festival. Looking forward to seeing you there!- Elissa

Right -- that's our wonderfully respectable-looking trade paperback. The "mass market paperback" is the small-sized one you can buy in supermarkets and fit into your pocket. I want it to have a cover that makes it look like it's Not Good For You At All.

...

The last time I grumbled about socks on this blog, I was missing one sock. Now I seem to be missing all of them. I'm starting to suspect that somewhere in this house there must be a secret drawer filled with socks that no-one's told me about -- or possibly that some huge, stealthy bird in the attic is building a terrifying nest out of black socks. (This last bird-related ponder was not endorsed by the official bird lady of neilgaiman.com who will probably write to let me know that no actual birds build nests out of socks and it's probably some kind of enormous rat, or gnomes.)

This morning I sighed and unwrapped a pair of Bryn Mawr black socks that Holly had given me, because they were all that was left at the back of the sock drawer. Other than those, I am sockless. Tomorrow morning I plan to go around the house with a magnifying glass, looking for the spoor of the missing socks. How far can they have gone? And why this mass exodus?

We, the sockless, demand answers, not mysteries, dammit. I shall keep you informed of any developments.

Prague below...

When I was in Chicago Jill Thompson gave me a copy of the Scary Godmother DVD. Maddy and I watched it together this evening -- she's been a fan of the books since she was old enough to have a book placed in front of her. It's really fun -- a slightly wobbly start, but as soon as it gets to the Fright Side it takes off and becomes visually cool and genuinely funny. My main puzzlement was that they didn't get Jill (who, after all, is really the Scary Godmother) to do the voice herself; every time the Scary Godmother spoke I'd think "but that's not what she sounds like". Maddy laughed at the jokes and enjoyed it no end.

I don't do many book reviews here, and I don't normally ever bother with giving things bad reviews (better not to mention them, I normally feel), but seeing that the Holiday Gift-Giving Season is coming up, you may want to avoid buying The Comic Book Encyclopedia by Ron Goulart (Harper Collins) for anyone this year. It has an eye-catching cover, lots of cool illustrations and design work, but is, as an encyclopedia anyway, useless. I browsed through the copy I was sent today, in the way one does with reference books, and I didn't encounter an entry without a factual error or an embarassing typo. It's short on facts, is padded with obscure 30s and 40s characters ("Captain Midnight" and "Captain Tootsie" together get two full pages, while Steve Ditko gets three short paragraphs) and contains several odd moments -- why on earth spend over half a page slagging off the short-lived and now completely forgotten Clive Barker comics by Marvel in the early 90s with a lengthy entry about Clive's lack of success in the comics field, when most contemporary creators don't get mentioned? The author makes it clear that he doesn't like most comics since the 80s, the book isn't really aimed at anyone in particular, and has a sort of attitude of "why should anyone care what year From Hell started or Bone ended, or how one correctly spells Aardvark-Vanaheim or Sam Kieth, or who actually created John Constantine?" It's the kind of book that I wind up resenting because, damn it, there really should be a Comic Book Encyclopedia, on a par with the Clute-Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction or the Clute-Grant Encyclopedia of Fantasy. A good one, filled with usable information, not something that reads like it's been knocked together in a hurry from older books, un-copy-edited and unfact-checked. A book like this is going to be useless as a work of reference, and it takes up the space on the shelves and on a publisher's list that a real Encyclopedia of Comics could have used. The comics field deserves much better than this. (And Ron Goulart, who has written with knowledge and passion about the comics of the 40s, and written some decent SF in his day, could have done much better than this.)

Neil- I have been thinking of going to your Anansi Boys reading in Chicago-if I can get my algebra homewrok done. I was wondering what Anansi Boys is about and whether you will do a book signing or not? Erm, if you don't want to answer the first question, that's fine. And if you do do a book signing, would it be before or after your reading??? You response would be much appreciated.Thank You.-Lizard

Signings at the Chicago Humanities Festival are always after the reading/talk. Anansi Boys is about what happens after Fat Charlie's father's funeral. It's quite funny, and scary, and odd. I think it may be a love story. I don't know, Lizard. I've not finished it yet. Maybe when it's done I'll know what it's about.

Another thought on elections, from a Palm Beach County pollworker:

Florida may find a way to be a problem again this election. Once people get their lives scraped back together a bit, I think there may be a mass exodus from Florida. Everywhere I go I hear people ready to sell their houses and get the hell out of Dodge. Which means there will be hordes of people in moving-van limbo during that crucial 29-day period who will be unable to vote.

(Also, forgive me if I'm being nosy, but is Tori's house okay? I know she couldn't have been far from where the two storms made landfall, but I haven't heard a peep.)

--Amanda Coppedge
http://www.amandacoppedge.com


Oddly enough, I asked her that same question this morning. She says that apart from the fifty-foot yacht -- not hers -- that the hurricane dropped in her back yard, and the lack of power, it appears so far to be fine. She, very sensibly, was in Cornwall while the hurricane season came through.

John Kerry's rehearsing for the big debate tomorrow night at The House on the Rock (resort)!! http://www.madison.com/tct/news/index.php?ntid=11276&ntpid=0 Has he read "American Gods" then??? - Steve Manfred, River Falls, WI

Probably not. I hope he got to visit the House itself, if only to listen to the Mikado play the Danse Macabre...

Really fast one for Ingrid: I had an import DVD that at first played only in black & white, but I got round it by just bringing up the DVD Player Settings menu and selecting the display option. I then chose, I think, RGB from the three video options that appeared. But if you try each one of those three, that might fix it. Cheers, Pete - P.S: Adored your Miracleman: Golden Age, Neil

There you go, Ingrid. Worth a try.

Hello, I'm currently mired in rewriting a novel length manuscript and I'm wondering: what is your writing process like? Do you agonize and obsess over every word, or do you just hack on through to the end knowing that an problems can be fixed later? Also, do you work very closely with your editor on rewriting? How much professional feedback do you get? Thanks so much. I'll be seeing you at Fiddler's Green. Jeff (Manxom Vroom on the World's End)

It depends. Mostly I just carry on. The bad stuff can mostly be fixed or thrown out. The most valuable thing is the period between finishing it and when you reread it pretending you've never read it before and definitely didn't write it, the few weeks when you allow yourself to forget it. Then when you read it as a new reader, sometimes it's obvious what to do to fix anything that needs fixing. I'll also send stuff out to people whose opinions I trust, explaining that until it's done they aren't really allowed to say much more than "Is there any more?" but once it's complete I'm happy to take all and any input onboard. Just as long as no-one minds me throwing it back overboard as soon as I start rewriting.

(Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what's wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong.)

hello, we are a group of young fans of your books and as some kind of thanks to you we play a live action role-playing game inspired by your Neverwhere in Prague (Czech Republic). So if you would like to see some photos of Prague Below and it's inhabitants, visit http://www.harald.cz/foto/nikdykde2/index.html I hope you would enjoy it Karmin

I enjoyed it very much -- thank you for sending the link.

Hi Neil, Discovered this little gem whilst voyaging upon the Internet Ocean and thought you might appreciate it:http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_1086492.html?menu=news.quirkies.badtaste
Your writing has broadened my horizons, my mind and my philosophy. Thank-you. Best regards,Tim Edwards

That's hilarious.

Students at a Catholic school complained about new Haribo sweet wrappers which they claim portray fruit having sex.

(Click on the link to see the wrappers in question, and the rest of the article.)

I just recently finished listening to American Gods and really enjoyed it. This made me wonder if there is a chance we might see an audiobook of Good Omens. I've read it a number of times and think it would be quite fun to have an audio version of. Are there any chances of this ever existing? Thanks,Gregory Blake http://www.ezoons.com/

I know that Harper Collins very much want to do one. And Terry and I would both very much like to hear it. So I think the odds are pretty good one will happen.

...

Had a good talk with Julia Bannon, webmistress of neilgaiman.com, about the next incarnation of the www.neilgaiman.com site. The biggest problem is that there's an incredible amount of stuff to be read and looked at on the site (did you know that the 1997 Neverwhere website is archived in http://www.neilgaiman.com/gallery/gallery.asp? It's the top window on the right), but it takes a certain amount of poking about to find things (and there are some things that even I can't find without googling for them). I want to open it up, make it cleaner looking, and also make it much easier to access the stories and articles and pictures and so on. It seems silly to have it all, and then for people not to know it's there. The next incarnation of the site is probably still about ten months away, though.

Also talked to my editor, Jennifer Brehl, about finally bringing out a mass-market paperback edition of Smoke and Mirrors, my last short story collection, which I think we'll do when Anansi Boys comes out in hardback next year. Assuming I finish it, of course...

The Smile (more or less)

A couple of weeks ago I was at the Minnesota RenFest, looking after two smallish girls and seeing Folk Underground, and at one point, while I was sitting and watching Bedlam, my photo was taken (by Rick Sachwitz, a former fop) -- I'm sticking it up here mostly because people have written in to complain that I never smile in photos. The beard is slightly less scruffy this week, and looks slightly more realistic. Not much, but a bit.

"people need bridges"

The location of the crucifixion, which oddly enough was in pretty much the same place as the tomb of Jesus, was revealed to the Emperor Constantine's mum in a vision, and a chapel was built there. For about 300 years the current incarnation of the chapel has been administered by monks of six different denominations, who take responsibility for their own little bit of the place. (Except for the Copts or the Ethiopians, who lost their bit of the church and now live on the roof.) When I first read about this, I imagined that with all the different denominations cheek by jowl it must be like the Odd Couple, only worse. (I learned all about these living arrangements in a book by Giles Milton in which he retraces the travels of Sir John Mandeville up to Jerusalem, The Riddle and the Knight. It's an okay piece of travel writing, but doesn't really throw much light on Mandeville.)

It's probably always difficult to share a house, but I assumed that the sacred nature of the place probably eased the pressure. I was wrong, according to a story in today's Guardian, which tells of a recent bloody punch-up at the tomb, between the Franciscans and the Greek Orthodox clerics. My initial guess was that it was probably over whether or not the Franciscans had eaten something the Greeks had left in the communal fridge, and I turned out to be almost right. It was because the Franciscans had left the door open.

Arrests were made. Faces were bloodied. If anyone turned the other cheek, it was only to avoid a thrown punch. You can read about it at http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1314466,00.html.

Meanwhile, over in San Francisco, The Emperor Norton's legacy lives on. (Some people who read the Sandman story THREE SEPTEMBERS AND A JANUARY thought that I'd made him up. I didn't.) (I just googled for a nice reference, and bumped into this class Study Guide for Sandman: Fables and Reflections. Who knew there was such a thing as teachingcomics.org? What an excellent resource.)

Anyway, Cheryl Morgan drew my attention to the campaign to get the Bay Bridge renamed the Emperor Norton Bridge. The details are in this comic strip, and this letter. Send your e-mails, if you think it's a good idea. I very much hope it happens. I have a soft spot for the Emperor...

I'm a bit worried that lots of people have sent you this link already, but it seemed interesting. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/3696750.stm A book borrowed in Iverness, returned approximately a century overdue via South Africa - the librarians gracefully agreed to waive the fine!

This is because librarians are cool.

Hi Neil, You metioned the DVD player you have, we have a (supposedly) zone free Sony DVD player but our problem is that our DVD's from Europe will only play in black and white. This is quite frustrating and kind of defeats the purpose. Do you ever run into that problem with your player? We really need one to play all of our movies from Norway!Thanks so much, Ingrid

My guess would be that most region-free DVD players automatically shift between the NTSC format (which US TVs are in) and PAL (which most of the rest of the world is in) and in the US they'll output them both as NTSC. Some don't -- I noticed yesterday that a Sony plays them without changing them. You either need a Video Standards converter, or a multiformat TV, or a different region free DVD player.

...

Incidentally, the volume of questions coming in is now up to between 50 and 75 a day. This means that lots and lots of really good questons, observations and so on aren't going to get posted or replied to. Please don't take it personally.

As you we're talking about those limited edition books, I was just wondering that are there going to be any cheaper prints of the extra material in the future? It's hard to find an extra 200 $ per book when you're a student. (Or is the extra material going to be forever hoarded and kept from the poor people?)

I don't know. So far, none of the publishers of the regular edition have asked.

It wasn't that Hill House or I decided to add the extra material to get people to fork over the money for the books: Hill House went to Harper Collins and got the license from them to do the gorgeous collectors edition of the books, just as they did for the Neal Stephenson books and the Shirley Jackson and the Ray Bradbury and so on. When Pete and Pete came to me to talk about what kind of limited edition books I'd like to see, I was the one who said "Look, if you're going to do this as the definitive, gorgeous, boxed thing, I'd really like the text to be the one that I'm happiest with." And Hill House are into pleasing people, and they liked the idea, so we did just that, and then we realised when the book came in that we'd created something gorgeous that people would want to read but were going to be unable to read without damaging the gorgeous object, so Hill House printed up the Readers' Editions at their own cost, and sent them to subscribers and bookbuyers for nothing, so that people could read the book while still leaving the object pristine; just as they sent out the "Chinese Emperor" story as a Christmas card to subscribers to apologise for the production process taking so long.

Neverwhere's a book that already exists in several variant editions, so again, it's something I'd like to see in an "author's preferred" text. Stardust, on the other hand, is a book that I'm perfectly happy with, so when Hill House do their Stardust the fun will probably come from trying to make the book a really cool object -- I've always liked the idea of Stardust as a very small leather-bound book that looks like it was printed in around 1925.

I've not heard that any existing publishers of the books want to go over to the Hill House version of the text. If it happens it may happen when the book is completely reset for a new edition, and I'll let people know if any publisher does plan to bring it into a mass-market existence.

(If you want it but really can't afford the Hill House edition, keep an eye on eBay -- there's one up there now -- and on the online secondhand booksellers sites like abebooks and bookfinder.com. You never know.)

(I'll probably put the Chinese Emperor story into the next short story collection, though.)

And finally...

To: Neil Gaiman

I was not sure if to send you a message, but somebody else broached the topic of the US election on your blog, and you responded, so I thought what the heck.

I wanted to ask you to mention on your blog that the deadline for registering to vote in many states is this Saturday, October 2nd 2004.

A lot of people, especially young people, do not realize that they have to register a month before election day, and they lose their chance to vote.

If you are not comfortable using your blog as a forum for 'getting out the vote', that's okay. As you are not (yet!) a US citizen, I also realize that you might not want to be accused of exerting undue influence on the US election!

Just thought I'd ask. Cheers!

Consider it mentioned.