Beagles, girls, movies

It's raining.

I first discovered Tolkien through an article by Peter S. Beagle (called, I think, Tolkien's Magic Ring, in the Tolkien Reader) when I was about 9. When I was in my early teens I found Beagle's I-wish-I'd-written-that first novel A Fine and Private Place (why has no-one ever made a beautiful film of it, I sometimes wonder), and soon after I obtained The Last Unicorn. I loved The Last Unicorn, although I loved it less because I wanted something else again just like A Fine and Private Place. (I was young and hadn't realised that it was better to have unique things that were good, rather than a sequence of diminishing returns to the well.) Beagle's written some wonderful short stories since, and several fine novels, and now, over forty years after The Last Unicorn, he's written a sequel novella, Two Hearts. This is cool. What's just as cool, for those of us fascinated by alternate methods of distribution, is how it's for sale. There are 3,000 of them, signed and autographed. And they aren't for sale. Instead, they come free if you buy (as CD, MP3 or download) the audiobook of Peter Beagle reading The Last Unicorn.

Speaking as someone who loves audiobooks, and loves audiobooks read by the author (if the author's someone who can read) I think this is a fascinating method of marketing.

If you're interested, you should potter around the www.conlanpress.com website -- http://www.conlanpress.com/html/audiobooks.html is the audiobook page, http://www.conlanpress.com/html/books.html is the books page. I hope it works for them.

...

Brief conversation with small daughter. "Dad, can I go to the movies with my friends?"
"Sure. What are you going to see?"
"Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy."
"Ah. You know, I really want to see that too."
A sage nod. "Okay. Well, if it's good, I'll go and see it again with you."

I thought about offering to sit way at the back somewhere and pretend I didn't know them, and promise not to do anything specifically embarrassing but they're ten year old girls and they know that somehow it just wouldn't be the same.

...

Mr. Gaiman,

After a few back and forth e-mails with Ginger at Writers House about turning your short "We Can Get Them For You Wholesale" into a student film, it has become clear that, though they will (and have) provided rights for a production and private showings, we will never be able to show the thing at festivals. No director is willing to take up such a project.

What would it take to be able to get around this? Is such a thing possible without heaps of money?

The project as it sits would be a very faithful adaptation, though L.A. would have to figure into it instead of London. But, without festivals it does no one any good except to have a film that will never get anyone a job anywhere, which is the point.

Any help, advice, or commentary on the situation would be greatly appreciated.

-Derek Johnson
Graduate Film Student, Chapman University, Orange California

Well, it's a trade-off really, and one forced on us by bitter experience. (There was someone who made a student film of one of my stories, without getting proper permission, and saying it was only to be done as a student film, and then put it in for lots of festivals and it started showing up in a number of places, including being shown on planes, and it got rather awkward, especially as someone actually had bought the rights to the story in question.)

If you want free rights to adapt a short story as a student project, with the understanding that it doesn't get shown in any commercial context including film festivals, you go and talk to Ginger at Writer's House and if the rights are free and unencumbered and you don't irritate her, she'll send you a contract granting you the right to do it.

On the other hand, if you want to make a film that you can show at festivals, release commercially, control the rights on, and so on, you can go and talk to Jon Levin at CAA, and pay the going rate for one of my short stories (they aren't cheap, I'm afraid).

At least once, someone given a "you can make a free student film" agreement, wrote a script and started shopping it around Hollywood studios, trying to put together a major commercial film, and got rather upset when it was pointed out that he didn't have those rights. (At which point Merrilee, my agent, did what she normally does in similar circumstances, which is ask me to just say no to everyone, and I did what I do, which is say no, I'm willing to let students make non-commercial films, and I know it's a headache, and we'll see what happens in the future.)

(I do sometimes think that someone should round up all the different student films that have been made of WE CAN GET THEM FOR YOU WHOLESALE. They range from the brilliantly accomplished to the charmingly inept, from dogme to twilight zone, literal and out there. There are male protagonists, female protagonists. An astonishing range of stories told from that one tale. It'd make an amazing DVD or website, and I'd probably allow it over the massed protests of those who look out for my interests because it would be so utterly cool -- like a series of filmic remixes. I have no idea how one would get it to happen though.)

About time

Let's see...

I'm home, and just mainly catching up on everything. Lots of introductions and suchlike things, about to start copyediting ANANSI BOYS. I squirted bee-lure on the plum and cherry blossoms, which was the official signal that it was time for thunderstorm season to start and render the squirting pointless. I moved my bedroom all around because it was Spring, and then decided that, seeing that the house's ancient wooden garages are seriously starting to crumble, it's finally time to bite the bullet and replace them. (This is the joy of owning an old house. I never go "Oh look, a large royalty cheque with nothing to spend it on". I just sigh and feed the cheques to the house, and it never even says thank you.)

Lots of tabs and windows open, that I think idly that other people might find as odd as I do -- http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1105895.cms for example, tells us about Osama Bin Laden as a metaphor in Indian love songs: This is not the first time bin Laden has figured in a Kannada film audio. He did so earlier in another song written by matinee idol Upendra for "Appu", in which Puneet Raj Kumar debuted. The song went: "Bin Laden alve allaa (Bin Laden shot through two huge buildings, I have shot through your heart)".

Michael Swanwick's introduction to Hope Mirrless' Lud-in-the-Mist is online at http://www.infinityplus.co.uk/introduces/mirrlees.htm and the book is now more back in print around the world than it's ever been, in a variety of editions -- it's now out in a nice new US edition: Here's the amazon link to the new US edition. (Posted, I should add, because it has the most reviews and information, and not because I think you should buy it from Amazon.)

Have also been trying to take photos of the latest bunny-of-the-month, from the wonderful Cat Grey (http://www.morbidtendencies.com), to post here. Ones that show what it can do...

And we're now using Skype as an intercom in the house.

Hi Neil, I'm a student on a Professional Writing course in Cornwall, and as part of our course we have to write an analysis of a section of the writing business. In a strange fit of madness (and having a particularly useful friend at a publishing company) I decided to focus on the business of promoting books. I was wondering if you could give a very brief insight into what the promotional hoopla is like at the author's end - how long you're likely to be promoting Anansi Boys (which I'm really looking forward to, by the way) and whether it's just the book tour, or also interviews. Cheers, Hannah Swithinbank

In truth, Hannah, the best thing you can do is to read the AMERICAN GODS part of this blog -- the first eight months or thereabouts. http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/archive.asp and they're arranged in monthly chunks. If you want to see what it's like promoting a book from the author's end, anyway. I was doing my best to take people behind the scenes.

It's a book tour. It's interviews. It's talking to reps and to the people from the book chains and everything else anyone can think of.

NG, Do you ever do any readings of your work in LA? If so when have you done them and what were they and who took part and set it up? Sorry for so many questions.

Yes -- I've done a couple of CBLDF "GUARDIAN ANGEL" tour readings, and one fun evening when the late (and much-missed) Bill Liebowitz took over The Stinking Rose restaurant's function room, and I did a reading there.

Most of the book-signings come with a reading as well, although it's normally much smaller. The problem that I've run into in the past in bookstore signings is they have strict fire laws, so 100 people get to sit inside the bookshop and hear the reading, and 400 people get to stand outside and get squirted by the lawn sprinkler system (well, that was what happened in Vroman's in Pasadena last time I was there. We'll see what happens next time around.)

Dear Mr Gaiman, I've tried to find the answer to this question on the FAQ and failed. Please excuse me if it has been asked before. In The Kindly Ones, Thessaly reads a "self improving book". But the text on the cover says "John Bauer" - a painter who was born in my home town in 1882. Is there a hint I should be getting? Did you or the artist decide that this was the book she's reading? I love his work, but I wouldn't call it exactly improving. Or is there another John Bauer? Thanks for all your work. Sorry if you feel I'm wasting your time.

Without going and checking, I thought the "improving" book she read was called something like "When Bad Things Happen To Fictional People" and that the John Bauer book was something she was reading for her art history course. Take another look...

Neil,>From the picture of you and Zemeckis and Avary I'd say you're one of those backward-handed watch wearers who put the watch on the writing hand. True?

Quite true, yes.

You can also see the photo, and Roger's comments about the day in question over at Roger's journal.

Neil I note the occasional reference to Jake Thackray in your journal. I am one of a number of people who try to keep Jake's songs alive by singing them. We do quite a few shows but each year since his death have tried to do at least one 'Jakefest'. The third of these is to be held in Edinburgh on September 17th this year and I'm one of the organisers. If you are at all interested details will be posted at www.jakethackray.co.uk in the near future.Regards Ian Burdon Edinburgh

Well, I'll be in New York about to start the ANANSI tour. But I'm happy to mention it here. Somewhere someone reading this, might either like Jake Thackray, or would like him if only they knew.

Hi Neil,the following is from Warren Ellis's mailing list... So I am wondering, what WOULD you have asked for? :)Michael I'm currently getting a lot of email asking when my next convention appearance is. In the hope of forestalling more, the answer is:there aren't any. I have no more convention invitations.It costs money to bring me to a convention: a business-class flight from Britain and a decent hotel room. Fly me into the States, andyou can't afford half-a-dozen more local guests.So I don't get brought into places like San Diego, because publishers don't want to blow their budgets on second- league creators. I don't fit into places like APE or SPX. Big shows spend their money on cross-media guests, small shows can't spend the money,and I'm not the box-office draw that middling shows need. I actually thought about attending San Diego a couple of years ago, andtalked to a publisher about it. I told them I'd need a business-class flight (better air filters -- otherwise I spend a day on an inhaler) and a decent-sized hotel room. They said: "But if we give you that, what will Neil Gaiman ask for?"So, you know, don't expect to see me at another convention for a couple of years. One comics show every six years is probably enoughfor everybody anyway.-- W

I'm with Warren on this. (And if the publisher who said that to him was one I've worked with, they were being disengenuous. It's always been business class flights and a decent room before I'll think about going anywhere, for I am officially too old and cranky to fly around the world in coach and be expected to function when I arrive, and if I'm going to sign for hours and hours I don't want to go back to a hotel room where the carpet makes sucking noises as you step on it and the remains of the last guest's pizza are still beneath the bed. The only real exception to the decent class air travel is the San Diego Comic Convention, which I go to as a guest about three times a decade, and where I tend to go by train, so I get lots of work done on the way out there, and sleep a lot and stare out of the window on the way back.)

But mostly it's about time and about whether I want to go somewhere and when I get asked and even then it's really about time.

Which reminds me: someone e-mailed me and mentioned the following to me. And now someone else just wrote in with the link, and asked me what I thought about it...

(The first time I posted this, blogger ate most of it. The second time I rewrote it and tried, blogger crashed in a spectacular way and gave me a whole array of glistening new error messages. Third time, possibly, lucky...)

So the link that may or may not have been problematic was to Tribe.net, where someone had come up with the idea of inviting me to dinner via the Greater Talent Agency, who handle my speaking engagements, and went so far as to get a price for it from the redoubtable Lisa.

And while I admire the ingenuity and imagination and initiative, it's not going to happen. Some things are for sale and some things just aren't.

Having said that, we've done something similar in the past for the CBLDF, and probably will again: on the last Guardian Angel tour we put dinner with me in each city up on eBay, and raised many thousands of dollars for a good cause. But mostly, the going-and-speaking-places thing is something I don't do, because (as I said) time is limited, and the best thing about Greater Talent Network is that they get to say no to 90% of the requests for me to speak that come in. And I get to stay home, and to write.

The Post with the photo of me and Bob and Roger in it

Left to Right -- Me and (director) Bob Zemeckis and (my fellow writer) Roger Avary yesterday at the end of three days of script work on Beowulf. All the photos that were taken of us actually working are unusable because we're making the sorts of bizarre faces that people tend to make while making things up. Also, in several of the photos, Roger is fondling (or possibly gesturing with) either the honey-squeezer or the mead-bottle.

Earlier that day the actor who is going to be playing Beowulf had arrived to talk to Bob. He'd come in to the US for the meeting, and, for no reason that I ever understood, the limo driver had driven him south from LA to Orange County, instead of driving the many many miles north to Zemeckis-world. He arrived five hours late...

The casting of this film is fascinating. It's actor driven, and there really aren't any stars in it. Well, as far as I know, and yet.

I'm home now. Tomorrow I plan to plant things, and to walk around the garden a lot. Even at night I can see that the cherry tree has blossomed.

...

And I just realised that I never mentioned here that the MirrorMask illustrated script book has been published (this is the Amazon link, this is the B&N, and this the link to booksense.com). I'm going to try to get in to DreamHaven over the next week or so, and once I have done they may have some signed ones there -- check their neilgaiman.net website.

Video and Sheckley and Votes and Louie

When I met Jack Wall, he was John Cale's recording engineer, and was engaged to my friend Cindy. And now he and Cindy have been married forever, have a daughter named Grace, and I've watched Jack create a career writing music for games. Recently Jack told me about his latest project -- he wanted to put game music onto the concert stage.

Which is an idea I found simultaneously odd ("Right," says a cynical little Neil with horns and a pitchfork on my left shoulder,"because the world needs to hear the Mario theme rendered by a sixty piece orchestra") and really cool ("Well, yes," says the homuncule me in the white robe with the wings on my right shoulder, "that might be really interesting. And think about the variety of game music around these days. It's not just things going blippetyblobbleblop, after all. It also may wind up both getting people into concert halls who would never go, while at the same time exposing the people who do go to concerts to an entirely new field of music...").

Anyway, Jack and his friends have made it happen. Video Games Live debuts on Wednesday, July 6th at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles featuring the LA Philharmonic. Then it goes all over the US. Check it out at videogameslive.com

...

Robert Sheckley is extremely ill in hospital in Kiev. His condition is grave. http://www.mosnews.com/news/2005/05/05/sheckleyhospital.shtml

This is not a good thing, and I'll keep my fingers extremely tightly crossed for Bob, and send worried love to his family, and especially to Alisa and Ziva. And then I'll go to http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/archive.html and read some Bob Sheckley stories:

Like Protection, http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheckley4/sheckley41.html
Bad Medicine
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheckley2/sheckley21.html
or A Wind is Rising
http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/classics/classics_archive/sheckley/sheckley1.html

...

Hey Neil,
Found a reference from last year saying you would be voting in the UK elections. Did you? Any verdict?
Emrys, Oxford

My verdict is that they really don't make it easy to vote from abroad, and that I should have registered to vote-from-abroad long before the election was announced, because while I did register and sent the PDF file in, the relevant voting papers still hadn't arrived by the time I left the house to come here (nor would they have got back to the UK in time if they had).

(On the other hand, Wealden, where I last lived in the UK, was such a monstrously safe Tory seat that my one little lost ballot is unlikely to have done anything. But still.)

...

I played the kazoo on Louie Louie with the Rock Bottom Remainders, some years ago (I wrote about it here) and was amused to hear that it's just been banned from band.
Proof that school principals don't always read their Snopes.

Waking up and catching up...

It's extremely early in the morning, and my time zones are all screwed up right now. I've been in too many countries and time zones in the last few weeks, and I wake up at 5.00 a.m. utterly awake, and fall asleep with my head on the table at nine at night, failing to answer email. I'm out west working on BEOWULF for a few days -- my daughter Holly has come out to join me: she's got school papers to write, while I'm off with Messrs Zemeckis and Avary. Her dreadlocks are now encased in small metal things, and she's acquired another nose ring since I last saw her.

Let's see -- lots of messages from people in the Philippines or Singapore (or people in Indonesia or Malaysia who are ready to travel and want to book planes) wanting to know if I have information yet on signings and talks and things.

I don't have exact information yet about where every signing will be, but I do now have some general dates, and will post these on condition that I'm not then deluged with requests for which bookshop I'll be in in each city. As soon soon as I know all of them, I'll post the whole thing, here and at Where's Neil.

Arrive Singapore July 3.
Events July 4-6.
Fly to Manila on July 8--arrive probably late afternoon, according to
the schedule on Philippine air.
Events July 9 to 11.
Fly out July 13th, arrive late that day or early 14th in Melbourne, via
Sydney.
7/15 to 7/17: Continuum 3
7/18: Events in Melbourne
7/19: events in Canberra
7/20: events in Sydney
7/21: events in Brisbane
7/22: DAY OFF with Eddie Campbell and family
7/23: Fly to Sydney to fly to Hawaii

and I believe that Harper Collins will be arranging a signing in Hawaii of some kind. And then I'll fly home.

Dear Neil,
Howdy. I'm a fantasy writer in California and I was wondering if you knew any sites that had lists of fantasy confrences by region/year. Any advice you could give would be helpful.
Thanks a ton, keep up the good work! Daniel

There are a few websites around with lists -- http://www.sflovers.org/Reference/fandom/conlist/cons-bydate.html is an example. Locus Magazine keeps information on conventions up online -- http://www.locusmag.com/Conventions.html.
If you're serious about writing fantasy (or SF) you should subscribe to the print edition of Locus (https://secure.locusmag.com/About/Subscribe.html). It is incomparable.

(Some extracts from their Susanna Clarke interview up at https://secure.locusmag.com/2005/Issues/04Clarke.html)

Which reminds me -- SciFi.com's Sci Fi Magazine is offering a free copy of the issue with the interview with me and Dave McKean being interviewed at Sundance about MirrorMask in it to readers of this blog who subscribe online. Details at https://www.scifi.com/scifimag/subscribe/index_gaiman.html.

From The Beat -- http://www.comicon.com/thebeat/archives/2005/05/links_and_kinks.html -- I learned that USA Today did a feature on Jeff Smith and Comics into Schools and Libraries. It's an excellent piece -- it made me feel that I was there at a historic moment, which in a way I suppose I was, and I was fascinated by the little caveat:

Carol Jago, who teaches English at Santa Monica High School near Los Angeles, says anything "that gets kids reading rather than watching television and playing video games is good." But she stops short of assigning comic books in the classroom, saying that puts teachers on a slippery slope.

"If our mentality as teachers is how to make the text easier and easier, we're moving in the wrong direction," she says. "Our job as teachers is to help students read hard texts. When a student tells you the work is hard, you should say, 'Good; now I know it's the right book for you.' "

Jago is a fan of Spiegelman and Neil Gaiman, creator of the cult DC Comics series Sandman and a popular graphic novelist. She believes their works are "great, great pieces of literature."

But teachers should assign them for outside class, Jago says. "They're serious books. I am not denigrating their artistic merit. It's just not what we should be teaching."

http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2005-05-03-educational-comics_x.htm

and http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2005-05-03-educational-comics-sidebar_x.htm
for a list of comics and grade level. (I'm not convinced that comics can't be "hard" by the way. I remember talking to a class in Chicago about the Sandman "A Midsummer Night's Dream" [assigned because it contained no nudity or swearing, as I recall] for whom the marks in the word balloons might as well have been chicken scratchings.)

This just in from the ever-invaluable Lucy Anne (quick! Go and see what nuggets she has found for you at The Dreaming):

Hi Neil:

Something you might want to share with your readers.

"Shockheaded Peter" has posted a closing date.
http://www.playbill.com/news/article/92766.html

If anyone is interested in catching it before it closes on the 29th
and wants discounted tickets, they should check with the Theatre
Development Fund, where students and such can get discounted tickets
(www.tdf.org).

Discounted tickets were also available at the TKTS booths in NYC last
week (http://www.tdf.org/tkts/off-broadway.html)

best
-randi

It's a pity -- I thought Shockheaded Peter was simply one of the best things I've seen on stage. People of the right temperament (ie people who like Hoffman, or Gorey, or Lemony Snicket,or Tim Burton, or gothic novels, or Coraline, or anything creepy and good) would like it too. I don't think it ever found its audience, though.

...

People ask me if I'm ever homesick for the UK, and what kinds of things make me homesick. I have a long list, and an odd list, but it only took one of tumulus's pinhole photographs, and suddenly bluebells went straight from nowhere at all to the top of the list. Possibly because the pinholeness of the images looks like it feels as a kid, when you look up, while reading in a bluebell wood in April.

...


1. You have stated that you were a punker in the days of yore. Do you feel that has had any overt influence on your writing? I ask as one who writes and still hops up and down at the fringes of the punk movment. Also, did you the Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Buzzcocks, any groups like that?
2. Along with a group of youths in raggedy jeans, I am getting ready to help start a zine. Any ideas or advice for a start-up publication like us?

Did I what the Pistols etc?

I think that the punk ethos of you don't need anything, you just need to do it and figure out what you're doing as you go, has probably informed everything I've done since. It seemed a pretty sensible and refreshing idea at the time. Likewise the idea that you ought to be enjoying what you're doing and be doing it because you think it's cool and fun. The idea that mistakes are part of what make things interesting, and it's probably wisest to get it right and move on and not spend the rest of your life polishing it.

(It also left me with the idea that a black leather jacket was an appropriate sartorial item in any possible context.)

I think if I were doing a zine now, I'd do it on the web as well as in print. If you do an interview with anyone, make sure you have a charged recording device (fresh batteries or whatever) and a functioning tape/mike/etc -- when I was 15 I did a two hour interview with artist Roger Dean of which the first two minutes recorded, and I've never forgotten it.

Hi Neil,

Just wanted to make you and my fellow blog-readers aware of the impending, soon to be past, time-travel convention at the end of this week. Of course it doesn't actually matter if you aren't able to mention it until after the event, but I thought everyone might appreciate as much notice as possible until we do actually invent time-travel - http://web.mit.edu/adorai//timetraveler/

Thanks for all your stories. Tim.

Consider that it will have been mentioned.

Neil,

I was wondering what time of the year The Sandman Special came out. I know it was 1991 but was it at the same time as the "Seasons of Mist" storyline or was it while the one shots were coming out. The latter would make more sense but as a reader who picked up the series in trade paperback format, I just wanted to know what the original order of the series would have been. Thanks for the stories.

Julie

If memory serves (he said, like Chairman Kaga) it came out around the point that A Game of You was wrapping up. "Thermidor" definitely came out first.

Where is my Island?

Mr. Gaiman:

Thank you writing such wonderful stories and for maintaining such a wonderful blog.

I think fans of this blog, though it may seem too self-promoting to you, would love to hear what others are saying about advance versions of Anansi Boys. Jonathan Strahan has some wonderful things to say about an e-mail version on his blog (just scroll down a bit).

http://notesfromcoodestreet.blogspot.com/

Also, I'm putting in a request for you to sign in Milwaukee, WI, this fall (I know, you have nothing to do with the itinerary, I should contact my local bookstores). Thanks again for writing such magical stories, and for being such an ardent and enthusiastic supporter of the genre (your enthusiasm is quite infectious; reading your blog makes me want to go read and read and read!).

Kelly Christopher Shaw
Milwaukee, WI


Oh good. I'm really pleased that Jonathan enjoyed it so much.

(His review is at http://notesfromcoodestreet.blogspot.com/2005/05/spider-stories.html)

It really is a funny book, I hope, although that's not really all it is. In the back of my head, when I was writing it, I had a writer named Thorne Smith, who is now almost forgotten. (Undeservedly so, although I suspect that many of the things that made his books work so well in the 1920s are the same things that make them harder for a reader to parse today.) He wrote books which, sentence by sentence, were comedies, but when you stepped far enough back were tragedies. Anansi Boys isn't one of those -- in my head at least, it remains a comedy the whole way, but the Thorne Smith approach to books with eruptions of magic into normal lives seemed like a territory that would be worthwhile to explore.

...

My assistant Lorraine has a blog she shares with her band-mate (and my televisual undead assistant) Malena, at http://www.lorraineamalena.blogspot.com/

Yesterday, talking about their new album, she says: Soon we will start recording. It all seems to be coming together nicely, and we go into the studio Friday the 13th of May ( nice day for it , eh? ) for the Lojo Russo portion of the sessions. If anyone know of an Uilleann or Irish Bagpiper player in the Twin Cities area who would be up for playing on a cool Gothic Folk cd, let me know. We have a song that has pipes all over it, if we can but find a player.

And I thought I'd repost that here, because, at least right now, I've probably got a few more readers than they do. Although, I'd like to point out, they'd only had their blog and website up for a couple of weeks when they got an official corset endorsement thingie -- they now wear and endorse the corsets they love, and they get free corsets to wear at gigs and in photos and when out walking the dog and so on.

I, on the other hand, have industriously blogged away, wearing my fingers to the proverbial etc, for over four years, but despite dropping serious hints, I would like to point out that I still had to buy my own Mini and my own fountain pens, and I'm honestly convinced that if I ever want to buy my own island I'm going to have to do it myself.

Oh well. They'd like a bagpipes player and can provide their own corsets.

Maddy as Stephen Hawking etc...

Maddy has just discovered the speech function on the iMac. "Do you really want to hurt me? Ooh do you really want to make me cry?" it said (how on Earth does a ten-year-old discover Culture Club?) immediately followed by "Maddy Gaiman is awesome" and as a follow-up, "But Neil Gaiman is kind of weird".

Oh god, now she's using it for communication. "Would you like to watch some TV before it gets too late?" the computer just announced in a voice like a prepubescent Stephen Hawking. "Er. Sure," I said, a little nonplussed, "um. What would you like to watch?" "Whose Line Is It Anyway? Or are you bored of that? Ha. Ha. Ha. Dad. Answer me." "Er. Okay. "Are you sure? Why don't we see if there's anything else just for a change?" Now it's sounding like a female HAL 3000. "Maddy is laughing," it stated, which is both better and worse than the dead-sounding Ha. Ha. Ha. It's still doing it. "Daddy. We have to go. We have wasted seven, now eight minutes, doing this. Your fault I'm sure. Father, dear, please."

Now everyone (This is Maddy for your information) I suppose you think Dad's blog is wonderful and want to read it every day and wait for the marvelous things he says like that thingie up there. But, really I must tell you I am the inspiration for all this things! Plus, I can make computer cats and fish. Wanna see? Fish: ><)))"> and Cat" =^..^= Meow! Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.

There. I've got control of the computer back, by cleverly putting on a previously unwatched Bugs Bunny DVD. (Why does Maddy at age ten remind me of Holly at 15?)

About this point in the day, most of you are probably wondering what I look like in a bow-tie at the Nebulas . (Oddly enough, the previous time I wore a bow-tie was probably about the time of the very first Nebulas, forty years ago: see http://www.neilgaiman.com/gallery/gaiman.asp.) If you want to see Nebula photos, you should go to http://www.midamericon.org/photoarchive/05neb16.htm. (The first photo with me in I'm chatting to Anne McCaffrey, who had been made a Grand Master, in the second we're being squirted with canned string, and in the third I'm signing something under the watchful eye of Janis Ian.)

when the anansi boys thing first came on the site i thought it had a tour listing on it. i have been back to it several times and ican't find it there or on the where's neil page or the link you posted. i even looked in your blog just in case. was there a list of tour cities or was i confusing something? thanks.(((_^))Y Leah Thorp

The Anansi Boys tour hasn't been announced yet. As soon as it is, I'll put it up. (The US tour will start on Sep 20th, and will include two or three Canadian signings. The UK one will start around November 5th, and might also include a few English Language signings in Scandinavia and Europe.)

Dear Neil,Over the weekend, I had the great honour of meeting my first agent at a writer's conference... and completely blowing my interview fifty words in. It left me with a much clearer picture of how poorly I understand the synopsis process. Pray tell, o great god of complex storytelling, how do you go about summarising your work when it comes to the business end of things? What do you do about dual major plot lines? I'm not after a hand-holding; I'm just a little lost as to the right direction to go. This is an area where I've got a fair amount of technical knowledge, but all my attempts turn out drier than the Nefud Desert in a drought.Thank you ever so much. Sincerely,S . E. Ward P.S., Holly is absolutely beautiful!

Well, I think so. She says she thinks she looks like a chipmonk in that picture and will I please post one of her that she likes.

Normally, I don't even try to summarize. If I have to explain a story, I'll tell someone the start, and then explain that stuff happens after that. Beyond that, I don't think that anyone listening wants to hear "And then John eats the magic muffin and turns into a zebra. Meanwhile, in another part of the forest, Chuck and Eric are having an existential crisis brought about by Eric's feelings of self-loathing, which gets really bad when Eric's clonal sister, Erica, is appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer..." You're probably better off saying "It's like The Wishing Chair meets Carrie. A contemporary magical thriller, with a horror twist," and then explaining the premise, and then stopping.

You want to tell someone enough about what you've written that they want to read it -- agent, editor, producer, whoever. Not try to tell them so much that they don't have to read it. (The same thing applies to cover letters to editors or to writing jacket copy for your book. Tell them enough of the set-up to make it sound interesting, then shut up.)

The Speech I Just Gave at the Nebulas

Welcome, to the Nebula Awards, on this, the 40th anniversary of the founding of the SFWA. That's the Ruby Anniversary, for anyone wondering what sort of gift to give.

And forty years is a very short time in the life of a genre.

I suspect that if I had been given the opportunity to address a convocation of the most eminent writers of science fiction and fantasy when I was a young man -- say around the age of 23 or 24, when I was bumptious and self-assured and a monstrous clever fellow -- I would have a really impressive sort of speech prepared. It would have been impassioned and heart-felt. An attack on the bastions of science fiction, calling for the tearing down of a number of metaphorical walls and the building up of several more. It would have been a plea for quality in all ways - the finest of fine writing mixed with the reinvention of SF and Fantasy as genres. All sorts of wise things would have been said.

And now I'm occupying the awkward zone that one finds oneself in between receiving one's first lifetime achievement award and death, and I realise that I have much less to say than I did when I was young.

Gene Wolfe pointed out to me, five years ago, when I proudly told him, at the end of the first draft of American Gods, that I thought I'd figured out how to write a novel, that you never learn how to write a novel. You merely learn how to write the novel you're on. He's right, of course. The paradox is that by the time you've figured out how to do it, you've done it. And the next one, if it's going to satisfy the urge to create something new, is probably going to be so different that you may as well be starting from scratch, with the alphabet.

At least in my case, it feels as I begin the next novel knowing less than I did the last time.

So. A ruby anniversary. Forty years ago, in 1965, the first Nebula Awards were handed out. I thought it might be interesting to remind you all of the books that were Nominees for Best Novel in 1965...

All Flesh is Grass by Clifford D. Simak

The Clone by Theodore Thomas & Kate Wilhelm

Dr. Bloodmoney by Philip K. Dick

Dune by Frank Herbert

The Escape Orbit by James White

The Genocides by Thomas M. Disch

Nova Express by William Burroughs

A Plague of Demons by Keith Laumer

Rogue Dragon by Avram Davidson

The Ship That Sailed the Time Stream by G. C. Edmonson

The Star Fox by Poul Anderson

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Philip K. Dick


I love that list. It has so much going on -- SF and Fantasy of all shapes and sizes, jostling side by side. Traditional and iconoclastic fictions, all up for the same lucite block.

And if you're wondering, the 1965 Nebula Winners were,

Novel: Dune by Frank Herbert

Novella: "He Who Shapes" by Roger Zelazny and "The Saliva Tree" by Brian Aldiss (tie)

Novelette: "The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth" by Roger Zelazny

Short Story: "'Repent, Harlequin!' Said the Ticktockman" by Harlan Ellison

... it was a good year.

Forty years on and we're now living in a world in which SF has become a default mode. In which the tropes of SF have spread into the world. Fantasy in its many forms has become a staple of the media. And we, as the people who were here first, who built this city on pulp and daydreams and four-colour comics, are coming to terms with a world in which we find several things they didn't have to worry about in 1965.

For a start, today's contemporary fiction is yesterday's near-future SF. Only slightly weirder and with no obligation to be in any way convincing or consistent.

It used to be easy to recognise SF written by mainstream authors. The authors always seemed convinced that this was the first novel to tackle Faster Than Light travel, or downloadable intelligence, or time paradoxes or whatever. The books were clunky and proud of themselves and they reinvented the wheel and did it very badly, with no awareness of the body of SF that preceded them.

That's no longer true. Nowadays things that were the most outlandish topics of SF are simply building blocks for stories, and they aren't necessarily ours. Our worlds have moved from being part of the landscape of the imagination to being part of the wallpaper.

There was a battle for the minds of the world, and we appear to have won it, and now we need to figure out what we're doing next.

I always liked the idea that SF stood for Speculative Fiction, mostly because it seemed to cover everything, and include the attitude that what we were doing involved speculation. SF was about thinking, about inquiring, about making things up.

The challenge now is to go forward and to keep going forward: to tell stories that have weight and meaning. It's saying things that mean things, and using the literature of the imagination to do it.

And that's something that each of us, and the writers who will come afterwards, are going to have to struggle with, to reinvent and make SF say what we need it to say.

Anyway.

Something that, after half a lifetime in this field and a lifetime as a reader, that I think worth mentioning and reminding people of, is that we are a community.

More than any field in which I've been involved, the people in the worlds of SF have a willingness to help each other, to help those who are starting out.

When I was 22, half a lifetime ago, I went to a Brian Aldiss signing at London's Forbidden Planet. After the signing, at the pub next door, I sat next to a dark, vaguely elfin gentleman named Colin Greenland who seemed to know a lot about the field and who, when I mentioned that I had written a handful of stories, asked to see them. I sent them to him, and he suggested a magazine that he'd done some work for that might publish it. I wrote to that magazine, cut the story down until it met their wordcount requirements, and they published it.

That short story being published meant more to me at the time than anything had up to that point, and was more glorious than most of the things that have happened since. (And Colin and I have stayed friends. About ten years ago, he sent me, without the author's knowledge, a short story by someone he'd met at a workshop named Susanna Clarke... but that's another story.)

So. Twenty two years ago.... Six months later I was in the process of researching my first genre book . It was a book of SF and Fantasy quotations, mostly the awful ones, called Ghastly Beyond Belief. [And here I wandered off into an extempore bit of quoting from Ghastly Beyond Belief, by me and Kim Newman, mostly about giant crabs. And space crabs too. I'm not going to try and reproduce it here, sorry.]

-- and I found myself astonished and delighted by the response within the field. Fans and authors suggested choice works by authors they loved or didn't. I remember the joy of getting a postcard from Isaac Asimov telling me that he couldn't tell the good from the bad in his works, and giving me blanket permission to quote anything of his I wanted to.

I felt that I'd learned a real lesson back then, and it's one that continues to this day.

What I saw was that the people who make up SF, with all its feuds -- the roots of most of which are, like all family feuds, literally, inexplicable --are still a family, and fundamentally supportive, and particularly supportive to the young and foolish.

We're here tonight because we love the field.

The Nebulas are a way of applauding our own. They matter because we say they matter, and they matter because we care.

They are something to which we can aspire. They are our way -- the genre's way, the way of the community of writers -- of thanking those who produced sterling work, those who have added to the body of SF, of Fantasy, of Speculative Fiction.

The Nebulas are a tradition, but that's not why they're important.

The Nebulas Awards are important because they allow the people who dream, who speculate, who imagine, to take pride in the achievements of the family of SF. They're important because these lucite blocks celebrate the ways that we, who create futures for a living, are creating our own future.

Labels: Best Of, Nebula Awards, speeches

Three photographs

This one is from the photo shoot in January. I'm trying not to squint. Every twenty seconds I'd move further along the wall, as the shadow of a nearby building ate more of the sun. Kimberly is on the left.




When the shoot was done, my daughter Holly, who had been doing her homework in the room next door, and occasionally coming out to laugh at me, helped use up the last few pictures on the roll. She looks like she's having fun. I think I look a little dazed.



This is the one we're going to be using on the book jacket of ANANSI BOYS. It was taken in the first two minutes of a many-hour photo session, on the street next to Kimberly's studio.


Photos were taken by and are copyright Kimberly Butler (except the one of her taking the photo of me. I don't know who took that one. Probably her assistant Byrdie).

Jetlag morning

Lot of flying yesterday and now I'm home again. For a day. Last night's useful post was written, but was eaten by weasels. Next week is the last week of Beowulf-with-Avary-and-Zemeckis work for a long while, and then I get to be home for about a month, if you don't count the trip to New York for Book Expo, and right now I just like the idea of sleeping in my own bed for a couple of nights running.

Lots of questions and comments from you lot waiting for me when I got home, along with lots of books I had things in [including the Strahan/Haber Fantasy Best of 2004, Jon Scieszka's Guys Write for Guys Read, which contains the true story of why, when I was eleven, my headmaster hit me with a slipper and thus why books are dangerous, the George Alec Effinger collection Live From Planet Earth] and the DC Comics Death Bust, which really looks good (up there with the Merv Pumpkinhead and the Desire busts). Here's a picture of the prototype, but the finished thing seems significantly cooler -- for a start her expression is much less severe than this:

Lots and lots of messages and questions and such waiting for me.

Hi mister Gaiman... I'm french and my name's stephanie. I juste have one simple question. Have you heard of bookcrossing, and do you have an opinion about it ? I'm a bookcrosser myself, and must warn you that any answer will be shared with my bcer friends ! Thank you.

Hello Stephanie -- well, you could listen to BBC Radio 4's OPEN BOOK, which has its page at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/arts/openbook/ and listen to the latest program. It's only up until Sunday, I think, but you can hear me being interviewed by Mariella Frostrup very early one morning about bookcrossing. (I think the Bookcrossing stuff starts about 20 minutes in.) Otherwise, you'll have to search this website to find out...

Hi Neil!I don't suppose there's any chance of the ANANSI BOYS audiobook coming out early, is there? (I'm facing a long, boring cross-country drive at the end of August.)-Kristin

I don't think so. I managed to get the CD of me reading Coraline out early, but I don't think that it'll happen this time.

Hi Neil,Launching straight into my big question - do you ever plan to visit India? I assure you that if you ever landed in Bangalore or Bombay you would get a massive reception. There is a loyal fan base here who will go to hell and back (literally: the back streets of cities; dealing with a suspect salesman who is not REALLY a bookseller selling a rare secondhand copy of the Books of Magic; I could go on.) to get our hands on a Neil Gaiman comic.So would you brave the monsoon and come? Regards,avantika.

Happily. But this year is spoken for, and next year is already full. And, for that matter, nobody's actually invited me to India.

The good news, BTW, is that Headline are pushing very hard to have their cool, spiffy, uniform new editions of my previous books out by the time that I get to Australia this year, in mid-July.

Dear Neil: As I'm always trying to shove more people to the theatre, an FYI that Playbill Online (www.playbill.com) is offering $47 tickets (that's 30% off) to the NYC production of Shockheaded Peter through its online club, which is free to join. Also, any thoughts on the resurrection of Sweeney Todd next year? I heard Cyndi Lauper as Mrs. L??? Oy vey.Toodles,christine with an x

If it's the production of Sweeney Todd that was on in the West End last year, in which the actors are also the orchestra, I thought it was pretty interesting, if somewhat confusing to people who didn't know the story.

And anything I can do to help plug ShockHeaded Peter in New York...

How has what you've written connect to events in your life and what awards have you won?

Indirectly. Most of them.

Why do you write your,or any books/novels?

I write my books/novels because if I don't, I can't guarantee that anyone else will.

I write other people's books and novels because... actually, I have no idea why I write other people's books and novels. Until I read this question, I didn't even know that I did.

Neil, Just curious to find out if the media has been pestering you about your take on the Hitchhiker movie because of Don't Panic. And what is your take by the way? Steve Stanis

A little, but I'm coping (one interview, now up at the Christian Science Monitor, and an anecdote at IGN http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/607/607319p1.html). The people who made the film have been really keen on my seeing it, and if I hadn't been quite so peripatetic over the last few weeks it would have happened already. As it is, I'll be paying my money to see it like everyone else.

...

When you start writing movies, you soon find yourself joining the Writers Guild. (The best bit of this, if you're in the US, is that you get health insurance.) When I joined, I discovered that the Mississippi is a dividing line between the Writer's Guild East and West, and living, as I do, a few miles East of the river, I found myself a member of the Writer's Guild East. Until a few weeks ago I assumed it was all one Union, and that this was a simple jurisdictional thing, for ease of administration or something. And then, from the Writer Action board, I noticed that the East and West bits were having problems. So I did what I normally do when puzzled about something like this, and asked Mark Evanier to explain it to me, which he did: http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2005_03_23.html#009729

It's now getting weirder, at least according to this article: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/thr/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1000884445

It's all sort of sad, really, especially because the Writer's Guild is, at least in theory, a really good thing. (I'm still puzzled about why one job needs two unions divided by a river.)

It's my birthday. I'm sure you've gotten a huge number of birthday requests...mundane, bizzare and everything in between. But all I ask for on this day when I pass the two-decade mark is this: could you post a sort of wolf-ish picture of yourself? Maybe even in a longish sort of coat? That'd be fantasic. Thanks hon. ~Jady

You know, I've already missed your birthday. (Happy birthday.) Oddly enough (well, I did talk about them on this journal when they were taken, so possibly not that oddly) there are some photos answering to that description, and I just need to get versions from the wonderful Kimberly Butler that she'd be happy with me posting here.

I also need to post the official author photo that'll be the Anansi Boys jacket photo, which I like, mostly because I don't like being older than the majority of the photos out there, and I always feel that it's a good thing to get recent ones up.

And one final post. I normally don't put the ones like this that come in up here, but this one just made me smile, and I wanted to share it.

I just wanted to say THANK YOU!!!

My husband and I took our then 5 year old son, Jared, to hear you read in Charlotte, NC, 2 years ago. Jared had your book, Coraline, signed then. (You had been sick, and you read your poem, Crazy Hair, which he LOVED!)

Well, fast forward to this year and last, when in school, I was told that he had visual and auditory processing delays, because he wasn't reading 'at his level'. I ended up pulling him out of one of the best schools in our state to homeschool him, because I truly did NOT believe them, and didn't agree with their assessments. He was simply young for his age, I felt. He was only 6 then, and I felt they were just pushing the kids too hard.

Anyhow, that was last November, and we really backed off on how much we were 'requiring' him to read. We read lots TO him and with him, but didn't expect him to read much on his own. He felt like he was too 'dumb' to learn to read, because of how the school had treated him. (That was HIS words, not mine!)

Well, last month, he found the book you'd signed on our bookshelf. He remembered seeing you, and talked about it endlessly. Then he said, "I'm going to read this!" I was afraid, frankly, because it's NOT a first grade level book at all. But HE READ IT!!! I went into his room at night and snuck it out so I could read it (bad bad mommy!!!), so I could discuss it with him, to gauge how well he was understanding what he was reading. I wouldn't say he got EVERYTHING, but he got enough to be able to relate the story back to me.

I can't tell you how grateful I am, to you for writing it, and for doing the tour that sparked his interest.

Jared has been voracious since then, reading well above his level, and everything he can get his hands on. I knew he had it in him, it just took Coraline to spark that interest for him to WANT to read.

Thank you SO much!!

Heather Hubbard