Mostly MirrorMask

Maddy, currently a demon-child in a red dress, red make-up and some nifty red horns I was given while on tour, will not be trick-or-treating tonight in a gesture of solidarity with her best friends who have just got braces on their teeth and thus cannot eat sweet sticky things. I suspect this means she is a Good Person. At that age I would have sympathised, but been pleased that there was more for me. (Except this was in England, where nobody gave you sweets on Hallowe'en when I was a lad. Mostly, as I remember, they just locked themselves indoors and shivered.)

...

My friend Lena St George-Sweet MBE writes from the British Council in Singapore to say:

Could you possibly tell your readers that �MirrorMask� will be shown commercially at two GV cinemas from 8 December; and if they log on to our site, they stand a chance to win tickets to our gala on 7 December.

http://www.britishcouncil.org.sg/whatson/event_details.asp?EvID=436 http://www.gv.com.sg/Booking/promotions.htm

So consider yourselves told. If you're in Singapore, go and win tickets.

There's a thoughtful review of MirrorMask at Emerald City, at http://www.emcit.com/emcit122.php#Mirrors and at http://www.empireonline.co.uk/redcarpet/ you can currently read small interviews with Jason Barry (who has from the interview, I suspect, not quite forgiven Dave McKean for putting him into a mask) and Stephanie Leonidas.


You say in the MirrorMask script book that Dave McKean wrote some of the scenes in the film. Why doewsn't he have his name on the script? It is story by him and you but script by you. Peace. Jackie.

Because the Writers' Guild, who hand out the credits, have a much higher standard for directors and producers who write bits of script than they do for writers -- mostly to stop a director or a producer (for example) going through a script and changing the characters' names, or inventing a bit of business or a scene on the set and then asking for a writing credit, or things like that. As I understand it, if you're a director you have to have written a substantial proportion of the actual script, and have done a lot of the heavy lifting to get your name on as a writer.

And as the WGAe site explains, Credits are the one area in which the writer cannot negotiate. The determination as to what a writer's credit will be rests entirely with the Guild.

(As another example, the shooting script of Beowulf was actually written by Robert Zemeckis, but solidly based on the previous scripts that Roger Avary and I had written -- as director he would have had to a lot to it to get a credit, which he didn't do, so the film when it gets released will be in just our names.)

In addition to the WGAe credits link, there's an excellent article over at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screenwriting_credit which explains many of the secrets of screenwriting (why the Story By credit on MirrorMask is "Dave McKean & Neil Gaiman" rather than "Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman", for example -- and that was after several phone calls with the lady from the WGA, showing her the original emails and so on, to convince her that Dave had to get story credit and stop it being just "By Neil Gaiman" which was what the WGA would have preferred. And once that "story by" credit was agreed, that meant we then couldn't describe MirrorMask as "Written by Neil Gaiman", under a different WGA rule...)

Deniable reporting

A positive review of Anansi Boys over at http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/ae/books/news/3421181 albeit one with some very odd assumptions and strange and silly sentences. For example, in the first paragraph we learn that Science fiction and fantasy writers especially took to [Joseph] Campbell because he allowed them to see themselves not as dime-store hacks but as working in the tradition of the Viking sagas and Beowulf. It's possible, I suppose, but I've never met any such people, and I've known a lot of SF and Fantasy writers. (Then again, I actually have been working in the tradition of Beowulf recently, and there's even a book about me, the Sandman and Joseph Campbell, so what do I know?) It's now the third review to mention Lewis Hyde's Trickster Makes This World, which is reason enough for me to try and find a copy at some point, if I remember.

There's another interesting Anansi Boys review over at Rain Taxi -- http://www.raintaxi.com/online/2005fall/gaiman.shtml -- and there's lots more interesting stuff online and in their print edition at http://www.raintaxi.com/.

The definitive STUDIO 360 Interview with me is still up at http://www.wnyc.org/studio360/show100105.html for free, although it's also up for sale at iTunes and at audible.com . (Anansi Boys, read by Lenny Henry is also up for sale at iTunes -- here's the URL, but it only works if you're in the US, I think-- and audible.com. And on CD and MP3 CD.)

The Japanese edition of Stardust just arrived, with a poster folded in it. I looked carefully at all the books up on Amazon.jp, so I could post the cover here, but it doesn't seem to have shown up there yet.

I'm looking very hard for the song you once wrote about Martha Soukup... I live in Israel (you met me at the signing in Washington :P) and there's nothing to be found about her, about her books and about your song. Personally, I heard it in the movie made in your tour from about five years ago. Where CAN I find this song? I'm desperate!

Well, the Live at the Aladdin video is now an extra on A Short Film About John Bolton. You can find the poem as the introduction to Martha's collection of short stories, The Arbitrary Placement of Walls, and I'm pretty sure it's also in my collection of oddments, Adventures in the Dream Trade.

Dear Neil, If I buy one of your books from a bookseller or another retailer that's discounted from the usual retail price, does that mean you get less money? Or do you get the same amount of money as if I bought a copy at full price?Thanks Nicolai

It depends on how discounted it is and where you get it from and what kind of agreement they have with the publisher. But I'd not worry about it.

...

I wasn't going to talk here about the online story that Angelina Jolie had walked off the set of Beowulf because she was fighting with Ray Winstone, because it just wasn't true and I didn't want to spread it. But now that it seems to have made the papers all over the world (from http://www.startribune.com/stories/1553/5693082.html to http://tonight.co.za/index.php?fArticleId=2957390&fSectionId=354&fSetId=251 or http://thebosh.com/archives/2005/10/angelina_jolie_47.php) and people are writing in to ask me about it, I suppose I ought to say something, as I assume that people reading it are going to be going "there's no smoke without fire". But this one is all smoke.

Beowulf's ahead of schedule; Angelina Jolie, when I met her last week (on her first day of shooting and after the first stories had already come out claiming she'd shut down the production) was there on time (after a 5:30 am pick-up) and was really nice and acting her heart out with Crispin Glover and Ray Winstone.

According to some sources from the set, Angelina was so furious that she told the producers she refuses to work any more with Winstone unless he says sorry.

"It's left poor Robert Zemeckis (director) in an awful position. Most of Angelina and Ray's scenes also feature Anthony Hopkins, John Malkovich and Crispin Glover, so Robert risks losing these big names unless he reconciles the feuding pair," a source was quoted by Hollywood.com.

Which is all very convincing -- except that Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovitch had already wrapped their stuff and gone home a couple of weeks ago, while Ray and Angelina's scenes only have the two of them in, which means, Watson, that the "source" hasn't read the script, knows nothing of the shooting schedule, and isn't involved with the film in any way, not even distantly.

The theory on the set was that one of the gossip magazines had planted the story online so they could then deniably "report it", which is as credible as any other, I suppose. Anyway, feel free to point people here if they tell you Beowulf's been shut down.

mostly words

Went out and did a saturday go-to-the-post-office-get-addams-from-framers-then-buy-some-food run and was delighted to see that most of the kids wandering round the supermarket with their parents were in costume.

It wasn't all the costumes, though. It was the small, lost-looking child (probably male) wandering through the pet-food aisle in an all-enveloping furry black and white skunk costume who made me so happy, but I am easily pleased.

The arrival of America's Next Muppet was reported in the Times - I'd not heard that it was a go from Hensons, but was lucky enough to be there when they were shooting some of the pilot... (Incidentally, if I'd written the sentence "Frank Oz voiced Miss Piggy and Yoda in Star Wars" I would have deployed a comma, to stop people making the obvious jokes...)

I'm looking forward to writing letters in my Jane Austen TrueType font -- http://pia-frauss.de/fonts/ja.htm to learn about it and to get your own.

Neil,Just a sad note on a cold Saturday. There was a notice on a library listserv I subscribe to that Sandman: Endless Nights has been challenged in Washington state due to the "pornography" in chapter 2. The librarian will be defending the book and was looking for help. I pointed her to CBLDF, ALA and a host of online review sites such as No Flying, No Tights. But can you think of any other places I might have directed her?thanks, be well, keeping fighting the good fight, Geri

In addition to the above, she could also approach DC Comics directly, who would, I suspect, be only too happy to give her a bundle of print reviews and articles on Endless Nights, and a list of the awards and so on it won. Having said that, I trust it wasn't on the childrens' shelves (as that would be a silly place to shelve it); there is a reason why it says "Intended for Mature Readers" on it.

Let me know what happens.

hey neil, i've been trying to get the tickets for your edinburgh event at waterstones for quite a while. they actually wrote my name down on some sheet they have for booking but every time i call to confirm they keep saying they haven't received the tickets yet, they also offered to call me when they get them but backed off when they heard i'm in spain hehe, it's a pain because i don't know if i should book the plane tickets and hotel or not, would be great if you post it maybe someone knows what happened to those tickets. thanks, sylw

followed by

hey neil (god damn i hope u read it :p), i keep trying to get some info about "booked" tickets for waterstones event on 9th november, with no result. i am sorry to mess up your relaxation time but it seriously freaks me out, probably if i dont book tickets soon i wont come, and it will suck and make my bday one of the worst in the century (jk, well it will suck but not THAT bad, guess i'll survive) so i'm begging for some info about waterstones, more like 'what the hell is going on with the tickets if i cant get confirmation on the phone?! >:Pthanks,whalerrr

The message I got via Lucy Ramsey at Headline Books was Neil, I spoke to Andy Jameson at the shop and he said he can't understand this as they have had tickets for some time. They should try again. The actual event is at the Roxy Arthouse, 2 Roxburgh Place, Edinburgh. Lucy

So sylw/whalerrr, my suggestion would be to call the Edinburgh Waterstones, and if they give you any run-around, ask for Andy Jameson.

I don't have an email for that branch of Waterstones, but for any of you enquiring about Manchester tickets for the following day, you would email enquiries@manchester-deansgate.waterstones.co.uk.


Neil: Your clever reply to someone's inquiry, below...

"There is a world in which publishers let me choose typefaces, but I'm afraid it's also the world in which the Second World War was decisively won by the Belgian-Martian alliance. In this world, you'll effect a change in things like this by writing to the publisher directly. Honest."

... reminds me of 2 linguistic issues I've never been able to resolve satisfactorily. Maybe you can help:

First, if I had been writing that sentence, I'd have said, "...you'll affect a change in things...," generally believing that "affect" is the act of causing change, while "effect" is the noun- the actual change. I think I glean this primarily from the term "cause and effect" which, granted, could be verb-based, but I've always thought of as a pairing of described nouns. Any thoughts?

Also- and this doesn't stem from the reply above but simply came to mind as something that's always bugged me: Is the word "forte" actually pronounced "fort"? My 10th grade teacher insisted that this was so, but it's one of those words that even if you think you're right, you pronounce it incorrectly so everyone doesn't try and correct you.

Thanks for being someone I feel might actually answer these lingering questions, even if you don't. By the way, I drove 2 hours to see MirrorMask last week and I'm certainly glad of it. I must say however that I saw the film (had no choice, did I?) in one of those "theatres" where you sit at a table and eat a meal during the film. What a gross idea! People chomping all around you, fumbling with condiments while trying to keep your eyes on the screen, receiving the check and feeling the need to pay before the movie has ended. Very irritating.

Also bought Anansi Boys (See, I'm earning my keep.). Good stuff. Thanks, Neil.

Sincerely,

Craig

Effect and Affect as verbs mean two different things. Effect as a verb means to bring about a result, while affect in that context would mean to influence. ("I will effect a change of government means you will make one happen, while I will affect a change of government means that you'll influence one that's already happening. (Here's a useful reference -- http://www.bartleby.com/64/C003/015.html).

Forte pronounced "fort" is righter than "fort-ay" but they're both right.

(I've given up on trying to persuade Americans that the act of filleting a fish -- or indeed a fillet of fish -- is pronounced "fillit" and not "fillay".)

And, posted for Balance on the yesterday's font-comments...

Of no possible concern to you or to anyone else, but since you have someone complaining about Didot . . .

I'm a proofreader by trade (for academic writing, mainly), and I have the opposite problem - my pet hate is books that are printed in any kind of sans serif font (Arial, Geneva, etc.). It looks cheap and tacky to me, and I tend not to read these books unless I'm being paid. With AB, though, I can't even really *see* the problem, even after it's been described.

Just so you know that the opposite sort of crank exists.

(And you signed some of my books in Austin after I had already left - thank you most humbly.)

Cheers,
Emilio

Neil, Curiosity. In American Gods, your characters state that Paul Bunyan was the creation of an Advertising Agency. (One of the greatest evils in the world. I should know. Wasted two years of my life at one.) Where did you get this information? Or should this question be: Is this true? And if so, where would I find a reference to this? Yrs,Travis Clark

Richard Dorson (whose books I cannot praise highly enough) coined the term "fakelore" -- as opposed to "folklore" -- for things like Paul Bunyan, who, in his current form, whatever existed there before, was mostly made up by writers working for the Red River Lumber company...

http://www.straightdope.com/columns/020510.html


And finally, MirrorMask and Canada:


Dear Neil,

I have just been to the first screening of "Mirrormask" in Toronto. From what I can tell, there are only two theatres in Canada currently playing it and they're not doing much to promote or advertise at all. I spoke with the manager and gave her an "if you promote it, they will come in packs and droves" kind of pep-talk and she seemed interested.
For those who have been hunting high and low for Canadian release dates, ticket links with showtimes and addresses are here:

Toronto:
http://www.movietickets.com/pre_purchase.asp?house_id=6494&movie_id=47989&showdate=0

Vancouver:
http://www.movietickets.com/movie_detail.asp?movie_id=47989

Hope that helps,

Danielle

PS- In case you couldn't guess, I LOVED it.

I'm very glad. People have also let me know that MirrorMask is playing in Phoenix and in parts of Wisconsin, unnanounced. Probably your best bet, if you're in the US, is just to use something like Hollywood.com , which will see if MirrorMask (or any movie) is playing within 50 miles of any zip code or town you list.

PS: Nearly forgot to mention that those Hallowe'en Girls Malena and Lorraine are signing copies of their new CD, Mirror Mirror, at Dark Delicacies tomorrow, Sunday. (The first thirty should also be pre-signed by me.) Details at http://www.darkdel.com/.

(And that Peter Sanderson's four part essay on Anansi Boys -- in which he points out some connections that even surprised me -- concludes at http://comics.ign.com/articles/662/662494p1.html.)

a polite spoiler free post...

I woke up to a horde of messages like this,

Neil, You're one of my favorite authors in the world so I am sorry if this sounds mean but -I haven't seen Mirrormask yet (as it's not out anywhere close to me yet but as soon as it is, I'll be going to see it) and I am afraid you spoiled me a bit for the movie with your discussion of the Mirrormask script book. Could you try not to spoil the movie for those of us who haven't seen it yet? Monica

To which the politest answer I could muster was, don't worry, that wasn't a spoiler, except for a treatment of a film I haven't written that's printed in the back of the MirrorMask script book. (For MirrorMask the film itself it's not "what happens", and refers to an image rather than to an event.) You haven't found out how anything ends, trust me.

Lots and lots of upset messages telling me that the MirrorMask film listings at the Sony site bear no relationship to the places it's showing (including one sad message telling me that the theatre listed doesn't even exist). I've forwarded them to Hensons, who will probably forward them to Sony, but I don't know that there's much else I can do.

Slightly better news, for the people wondering about the UK tour -- there are updated listings at http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk/author.php for locations and information. (It doesn't mention the Irish bit of things, though.) Also the Manchester signing has just moved to a larger location (I don't know where), with more tickets. I wonder if there will be a saxophone player outside this time...

Hey Neil. I'm a graphic design student and big fan o' yours. Loved American Gods. Loved it. Can't wait to read Anansi Boys. I bought it. Why O Why did you and/or your designer choose to use the font, Didot, as your body text? This is a headline text. The thin strokes are too thin and the thicks too thick. This typeface hurts my eyes to read close up. So. I'm going to sell the hardback copy I have and wait for the paperback despite my giddy.Please don't use didot as a body copy typeface. Love you.

There is a world in which publishers let me choose typefaces, but I'm afraid it's also the world in which the Second World War was decisively won by the Belgian-Martian alliance. In this world, you'll effect a change in things like this by writing to the publisher directly. Honest.

Hello PEOPLE hello

I get the oddest things in my FAQ inbox. For example...

This is Ann, a researcher with People Magazine. Do you have any idea the cities in which Beowulf will be filmed? I understand the filming has started; we're trying to figure out where.

And I couldn't figure out how to reply. I mean, if you pick up the trades, they will tell not only where in Los Angeles they're shooting Beowulf but in which studio building. And Bob Zemeckis has all-but finished shooting the movie anyway. All in one room, on a 25-foot square space called The Volume, where he's been capturing the performances of some astonishing actors -- among others, Anthony Hopkins and John Malkovitch and Ray Winstone and Robin Wright Penn and Crispin Glover and, yes, Angelina Jolie (who is, I should add, excellent, along with being very nice, and will be, I have no doubt, the reason why I get odd messages like this from People Magazine). (And horses. Galloping horses.)

If I had to compare it to anything it's like watching the characters from Tron performing Shakespeare on a minimalist set. Only it's not like that at all.


I hope this isn't rude but I have the Mirrormask script book (which I loved) and at the end it has the story you first wrote to Dave McKean about (The Mirror and the Mask) and then the story that Dave McKean came up with instead (MirrorMask) and the emails you and he sent each other, & the way I read it MirrorMask is obviously his story. My question is, will you ever tell *your* story, about Lenore and the changeling and the fairy world so on? It felt like magic. Maybe as a graphic novel??

I don't think so. MirrorMask was very much Dave's story from the start (it was a dream he had) but I think I used enough of my story in there -- the block of flats, Valentine as a character, the two girls becoming one at the end (even though it's not the way I'd originally imagined it), helping a sick parent -- that I think that, even though it and MirrorMask are very different, it would feel too familiar somehow (in addition to which I realised one I reread it for publication that I'd actually taken my favourite moment in it from Jack Vance's lovely story "The Moon Moth").

I think you'll just have to read that outline again and make the film-that-never-was in your head.

oops. I have to run. More later.

Belfast etc

A message in from Lucy Ramsey at Headline in the UK --

Dear Neil The Canterbury event on 5th November is now sold out. Lucy

--so any of you who are thinking about going to any of the UK events might want to lock down your tickets, or have a back up plan of going to some of the lunchtime signings instead. (Some complaints coming in from people about bookshops not answering their phones or putting tickets aside or things like that, for which I apologise but can't do a lot.)

The good news is that it looks like I'll be doing a signing in Belfast on November the 16th -- the first Belfast signing I've ever done. Details to come.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/2005_09_01_archive.asp#112564075495195381 is the UK tour for anyone in the UK who hasn't noticed that I'll be out there signing from the 5th of November to the 16th. (Additional info, or possibly more up to date info at http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk/author.php.)

The Amazon Mystery -- solved!

Lots of messages letting me know things like

hey Neil, amazon is trying to mess with everyones heads by punching in weird dates. there is a little mention of it here.
http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=4363

Most things are coming out 36 years ago on DVD it seems...seems the dates are just place holders til more offical info is available. C.

and

Hi Neil -Regarding the MirrorMask release date on Amazon.com.....It seems that they are doing weird things on the site showing strange release dates for things that don't yet have actual real release dates. I heard about it here -http://www.tvshowsondvd.com/newsitem.cfm?NewsID=4363. Hopefully they will realize how ridiculous this is and stop the madness soon.

And I finished Anansi Boys last week and loved it. Am now telling everyone I know to get it and read it. :-)Cheers, Kerry

Fair enough. And thanks for telling people to get and read ANANSI BOYS. (It's the best way of spreading the word about books, I am assured: word of mouth.)

Oddly, the coolest book I've had something vaguely to do with, NOISY OUTLAWS etc seems to have come out to a deafening silence -- I've only seen one review so far --http://wildcat.arizona.edu/papers/98/198/04_11.html (which finishes For my final argument on why this book is most definitely worth your $22, I offer this list of why you need this book now: hotshot authors, an amazing title, merciless jabs at crappy children's stories, awesome amateur poetry, a crossword puzzle that you can finish and feel smart about, and a half-finished Lemony Snicket story on the inside of the dust jacket that you're invited to finish and send-in (the winners get their entries published in a future McSweeney's book). On top of that, all proceeds from the book go to 826NYC, a nonprofit group that helps students develop their writing skills, so you can feel good - not creepy - about venturing into the children's section the next time you're in a bookstore ). So in the absence of reviews, consider this a little bit of word of mouth. I finally read it all yesterday, and it's wonderful.

And I notice that McSweeneys has now announced their NOISY OUTLAWS six city extravaganza on November the 12th (which I would be doing something for except I'll be signing people's books in the UK) but Lemony Snicket himself will be presiding over the business by satellite from Brooklyn to Michigan and beyond. It's a great book, all for an extremely good cause, and any of you reading who have blogs or write for newspapers or things should review it or at least mention the 6 City Extravaganza....


If I dress as Death for Halloween, the one from Sandman and I send you a photo will you put it up on your blog?

Um, no. I don't think so. But if someone else volunteers to set up a webpage, or one of the picture service things, where people who dress as Death (or, I suppose, any characters I made up) for Hallowe'en can send their photos, then I will happily link to it from here when Hallowe'en is all done.

It was Twenty Years Ago Today...

Hi Neil. Just thought you might like to know Amazon has the release date for the DVD release of Mirrormask listed for December 31st 2025. And we thought we had a long wait for theatre release.

Cheers, Jon A.

I went and checked at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000BT97AO/002-4249447-7730454 and Jon is quite right. Twenty years seems a long way away, but Sony are probably just scheduling it that far off because during the Great iPod Content Uprising Years of 2013-2024 people aren't going to have much time for things like actually watching films, what with gathering together in places where the iPodPeople can't get them and shooting them in the brain and all that stuff, and it's only after the Man-Droid-iPod Peace Treaties of 2024 that anyone gets back to the serious business bringing out DVDs of long-forgotten movies.

Alternately, I suppose it could be an Amazon.com typo and MirrorMask could be coming out on the last day of this year. That would be nice.


Reading Anansi Boys, I'm noticing that current technologies are mentioned quite frequently. In a way this sort of nails the book down to a very specific slice of time. Do you ever worry that including very contemporary things in a story gets rid of any ambiguousness as to the era in which it is set, possibly making it less "timeless?"
Also, I was very amused to see one of my favorite movies, Eraserhead, in the book, and it got me wondering what your thoughts on the film may be.

-jason.
oneiromancerproductions.com


Not really. I like to think that anything that relies on people being people is going to be pretty timeless, no matter when it's set. Someone once said that if you create a real person in fiction you can make an Everyman, but if you set out to create an Everyman you'll just make a formless sort of nobody, and I suspect that the same could be true of trying to set something in a timeless now. You don't dismiss Jane Austen or P. G. Wodehouse, or even Douglas Adams, for writing about their time, after all.

...

I'm answering questions about ANANSI BOYS over at http://www.well.com/conf/inkwell.vue/ -- Spoilers abound, so you may want to give it a miss if you have not yet read the book.

So, to entertain you and allow me to close a bunch of tabs, first some wonderful words from foreign tongues; here's a link to an apparently semi-official site for the Lestat musical (with a nice bit of Dave McKean art); this blog's official birding consultant has been picked on the team to go and look for the legendary Ivory Billed Woodpecker and that she's listing what she's allowed to take on this pleasure-cruise; Jonathan Carroll sent me a link to a site that allows the devout to accessorize their iPod shuffles appropriately; Archimedes' killer mirrors probably didn't work as advertised, alas; and Batton Lash's Supernatural Law is now a webcomic. I thangyew.

The Addams Thing

When I was a small boy, about seven years old, the kid at the end of the lane had a copy of The Penguin Charles Addams, a slightly oversized black and white paperback, and I used to go over to his house and read it, treating each cartoon as if it were a riddle or a puzzle to be unlocked or solved. With the exception of one cannibal joke ("Dinner smells lovely dear, who is it?" is the caption, in my memory) I didn't find them funny. I found them fascinating, and I'd stare at them trying to unpick them. Part of the attraction may have been how much the nameless Uncle Fester looked like Leo Baxendale's Grimly Feendish character from WHAM! and SMASH! comics (now rising from the grave in the Moore-Reppion-Oakley ALBION comics, of course) -- I didn't know then that Baxendale had nicked Grimly's look from the Addams character, or that he'd actually written for the New Yorker a few of the jokes that Addams had drawn...

So I'd stare at these drawings of people in haunted houses knitting baby clothes with too many limbs, or of ski tracks going around trees, or of one small face staring up at a screen with joy from which everyone else in the audience was staring at in horror, repulsed, and I'd work hard to figure out the story of the image, the what was going on, the why and the whether it might be funny, the what-happened-before and what-would-happen-after, and, one-by-one, they would make me happy. (Then again, I was a seven-year-old kid whose favourite short story was probably Bradbury's "Homecoming".)

And then the boy down the lane moved, and took his Charles Addams book with him, and it was another decade before I saw more Addams drawings and realised that the drawings and that-TV-Show-I-Saw-Once-But-Was-Never-On-Again-That-Wasn't-The-Munsters were related, and and another three decades before I too owned a battered and now pretty ancient copy of the Penguin Charles Addams. (I have other Addams books -- including one that he signed to Phil Silvers -- but that original one is my favourite.)

To this day, one of my favourite places in the world is the tiny Charles Addams art gallery on the third floor of the New York Library (follow the signs to the Mens' Toilets and it's just before you get there), and one of the things, almost forty years on, that I still enjoy from an Addams cartoon is the moment of "Huh?" before the moment of "Oh," and then the way that the world reconfigures.

The cartoon that follows was my Anansi Boys publication present to myself. (Thanks to New Yorker cartoonist Harry Bliss, who pointed it in my direction.) It just arrived, and I've taken it off to the framers, very happy.

While Blogger for some reason didn't want to show the image, the new Picasa "Blog This" button worked like a dream. (Or it did if this publishes properly.)




... and because the leap from Addams to Gorey isn't a huge one, there's a Gorey Font over at http://www.emeraldrain.com/fm/content/goreyttf.html. 

Maddy decided that in the run-up to Hallowe'en she...

Maddy decided that in the run-up to Hallowe'en she wanted to watch a scary movie, "But not, like, you know Dad, the Boston Chainsaw Massacre or something," so we're currently sitting and watching The Innocents, which is significantly less disturbing than America's Next Top Model, Maddy's second-favourite TV show.

Really interesting review in Melbourne's The Age. I definitely got the sense when I was out there last time that Australia was a bit behind the US and the UK in its understanding and acceptance of fantasy (despite having several of the best fantasists and fabulists currently writing out there), but I was still astonished that any reviewer would feel the need to start a review with,

THERE is a problem with "genre". All enveloping terms such as crime or science fiction are anathema to many. They're not serious fiction. Regardless of the grudging acceptance by the literary world of James Ellroy or William Gibson, commercial classification remains a stigma.
The worst one of all is that horrific appellation fantasy, a world definitely for dweebs or, at best, "young adults".

the review that follows is extremely positive, which is nice. But it still seems strange.


Hi. I just finished reading Anansi Boys I liked it quite a bit. Its also whetted my appitite for more Anansi stories. One thing is bothering me though, I don't know if someone has asked you this already or not but here goes. On page 145 Fat Charlie recalls the lines of a poem he read in school, "The Assyrian came down like a wolf on the fold... And his cohorts were gleaming in purple and gold." He then has trouble remembering what cohorts are. Now the week before reading Anansi Boys I read Terry Pratchett's Going Postal. On page 169 of the Harper paperback edition I read, "The postman came down like a wolf on the fold, His cohorts all gleaming in azure and gold..." and then a character mentions thinking that cohorts meant something different than it actually does. So are you and Terry Pratchett part of some Byron quoting club or something?

No, we just have heads that go to similar places sometimes, I think.

I'm pretty sure though that I ran into the couplet from the poem first quoted somewhere else, by someone else, long before I knew it was Byron (Kipling, perhaps?) -- but it's the kind of couplet that people tend to ponder.

Ogden Nash did it best (http://plagiarist.com/poetry/534/).

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Part three of (probably) four parts of Peter Sanderson's extended essay on Anansi Boys is up at http://comics.ign.com/articles/660/660510p1.html .

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Hello, Neil! I have a question in regards to "Stardust." After borrowing "Stardust" from the library, I have read it, and it was excellent. However, I have not yet bought the book, because I am kind of confused about the different editions. I know one is illustrated by Charles Vess, and this is the version originally published. Is the text in this version identical to the unillustrated version in its entirety? Thank you, and best of luck with the coming tour in the UK and Ireland. Aaron

I think there are a couple of sentences here and there in the text-only version of Stardust that were cut from the illustrated version because of space, and one -- about a badger's heliotrope dressing gown -- that was cut because when Charles drew the badger he forgot to put in the dressing gown.

NEIL. i just learned that dakota fanning is the voice of "coraline." no one, not even you, can describe how great that is. the fact that coraline will be on the big screen is incredible. but my question is this: since Henry Selick ("Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas," "James and the Giant Peach") is writing (NOT YOU?) and directing the film, and Bill Mechanic is producing it, HOW MUCH INFLUENCE AND INVOLVMENT WILL YOU HAVE? IT BETTER BE ALOT!! YOU HAVE TO MAKE SURE THEY DO IT RIGHT!!!!!

Honestly, unless you're actually directing the film, the best influence and involvement you can hope for is to have picked good people to make the film in the first place and cross your fingers that they get it right and don't die or get fired. (There's a film I'm listed as an Executive Producer on, based on something I created, which they apparently no longer send me scripts for, and the last script I did see bore so little resemblance to the thing I created that I suggested, without rancour, that they change the name of the film and the lead character in order not to confuse people.)

It's hard enough for the writer of a film to have any say in what happens the day it starts shooting, a million times more so for the writer of the original material.

In the case of Coraline, the film is Henry Selick's, and I have an enormous amount of confidence in Henry. The artwork I've seen so far has been excellent, I've heard some They Might Be Giants Songs I really liked.

And my fingers are crossed.

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My assistant, the Fabulous Lorraine, is off at her initial CD release party tonight: http://www.lorraineamalena.com/. She'll be doing a signing, with Malena, her band partner, at Dark Delicacies in LA next week, looking, I suspect, nothing like what she does when making me tea and arranging travel. I've offered to presign a bunch of CDs for them.