Where do I get a mercury fountain anyway?

I just learned that you can order the paperback of ANANSI BOYS, out in the US in the Autumn, on Amazon and suchlike places, but no-one seems to have the cover up. So... The Harper mass-market paperback cover will be a lot like (although possible not exactly the same for type and text) as this:



Hey Neil,


Are you aware that there's a Japanese artist who has created a "love
couch", based on the principle of the theremin, that sounds a tone when
people sitting on it touch?


http://www.pingmag.jp/


rebecca

I'd read about the emotional tree over at http://www.fabulist.org/ but the rest of the inventions look rather wonderful too. I want the mercury fountain. No, honestly. I really, really want the mercury fountain.

Ummm...this isn't a Neil question at all, but since you've so nicely answered many
other questions relating to books and publishing, I thought you might help.


I'm living in Japan, and a friend of mine likes to use the books of a
certain bestselling American author (unfortunately, not you) to study
English. He reads them in Japanese, and then listens to the English
audiobooks. However, he has had a difficult time locating a few of
them, because the Japanese translation titles differ from the American
titles. Do you know of a way to find bibliographies with titles of both
translated editions and English editions? I Googled every which way I
could think of, but had no luck.


By the way, thanks for being a nice guy to your fans, and thanks for,
well, being yourself :)


And of course, thanks for the help!


Jess

You're welcome. I don't know of any bibliographies that will do it -- but the easiest thing is probably for your friend to go to Amazon.co.jp and look at the English language editions of the books listed there and see if he recognises the plots.

An Amazon.co.jp search gives this link for me only in Japanese, Which is a different set of results to what you'd get if you went to the Amazon.co.jp front page and typed "gaiman". You could work out what was what from covers and plot descriptions, even without the titles.

(And I just noticed what appears to be a Japanese edition of the BBCs Neverwhere coming out on DVD. How cool. I wonder if the BBC will send me a copy...?)












And finally, your cut out and keep New York Times guide to the many Beowulfs of the next 18 months.

In which our author is a bit of a wet blanket

You know, just for the record, and I hate to spoil anyone's fun, but no,
http://www.myspace.com/neilgaiman
has absolutely nothing to do with me. I'm not writing the blog there either. (And a note to any future would-be me-impersonators: Please work on your spelling. "hygene?" "deticated?" "assumtion?" And, for obvious reasons, I can't ever imagine describing myself as a red-blooded American...)

[Edit to add that it seems to have vanished now. Oh well. Thanks to everyone who wrote to let me know that it wasn't me, and to Amy and Maure who got there first.]

Old friends...

The script for BLACK HOLE is starting to feel like a real movie script, I think. Roger and I bought a bunch of CDs with names like "CHARTBUSTERS From 1974!" and have them playing in the background a lot of the time. Oddly enough, the intervening 32 years hadn't erased how much I didn't ever want to hear "Billy Don't Be A Hero" again. One verse in and it all came crashing back...

...

There hasn't been a lot of time to read recently, but I found myself on a plane last week with a proof of Rick Veitch's new book CAN'T GET NO. I've been a friend of Rick's for the best part of 20 years, and fan before that, so I've read a lot of his work, but this book still surprised me. CAN'T GET NO was odd, which is mostly why I'm writing about it here, to try and figure out what I think about it, and it's not just slightly odd – it's supremely, magnificently strange, and like nothing else I've read. It's a (physically roughly the shape and size of a pocket paperback on its side) graphic novel that's a direct descendent of the wordless "novels in pictures" of the early 20th century, books by Masareel, by Ward, by Milt Gross. The story itself, the dark Odyssey of a young executive whose life falls apart in the days before September the 11th, is told clearly in sequential panels, without word balloons. The captions are a sort of abstract soundtrack – a surrealist prose poem that counterpoints the story, intersecting with it, reflecting it, deepening it. The combination of image and text has a weird, cumulative effect, a sort of literary synesthesia that gave me the same kind of oneiric reading sensation I normally only associate with novels by, say, Thomas Pynchon or Steve Erickson. I don't think that CAN'T GET NO reinvents the graphic novel – it feels more like Rick is rediscovering the power of the "story in pictures" as he goes, taking everything he knows about comics, everything he learned about dreams doing the Rarebit Fiend comics, and making something new and moving and, as I said, utterly strange.

...

Hi Neil, not a\ question, but just though you (and maybe your blog readers) would like to know that Dark Horse comics and Adidas have teamed up to produce a limited edition of shoes and track jackets to raise funds for the CBLDF. The link to the article is:

http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/8578.html

Thanks for your time,

Andy

I feel very out of the loop -- I'd not heard about this at all. Looks really cool, too. Good for Dark Horse.

Hi Neil,

Have you announced yet if you plan to attend the 2006 Comic-Con in San Diego? I searched the archives and checked Where's Neil and didn't see it mentioned one way or the other.

I'll be going for the first time, having been invited by my new publisher. After writing screenplays for several years (including working with Ted Elliott and Terry Rossio, who wrote one of the better adaptations of Sandman), I've been hired to write my very first comic.

I'm enjoying the new medium immensely, but it leads me to my second question...

After writing screenplays for so long, I'm having some difficulty transitioning into writing for comics. I tend to think in terms of shots rather than panels, so I find that I regularly try to cram 8 or 9 panels on to every page.

It's driving my artist batty. Usually he can come up with good ideas for conveying the necessary information and emotional context in fewer panels per page, but it's forcing him to do work that should be my responsibility.

Do you have any tricks or techniques that allow you to easily switch from one medium to the other? I know I'll develop my own analytical tools and "gut feeling" after a certain amount of time, but I'd like to make my learning curve as steep as possible.

Many thanks,

Steve Barr
Los Angeles

I find that drawing it yourself -- doodling it out as thumbnails -- always helps. And -- to take an analogy from movies -- remember that you're the director and editor as well. It's easy in a film script to say "Jack is watching TV when the doorbell rings. He sighs and throws down his copy of TV guide, gets up and answers the door, where Admiral Nelson and a small furry alien named RODNEY are waiting, sipping Pepsis." And the director and the cameraman are going to block that out, and then shoot it in several set-ups, and then the editor will assemble it into a couple of shots from the choices s/he has. In comics, you've got one panel, maybe two to do that, so you just have to grit your teeth and pick two panels tell it in...

It's also useful to set yourself formal problems. Tell an entire story wherever possible with three panels on the top tier, three on the bottom and one thinner one across the middle, say, or (something I want to try in an issue of Eternals) use the classic Jack Kirby four equal panels to a page thing.

When I was writing THE KINDLY ONES I decided that I wanted it, wherever possible, to be six equal-sized panels to a page, arranged 2/2/2, because that's an arrangement that the eye loses -- you see it and then you forget it.

The other thing that you might want to try is writing a looser script and let the artist break it down into panels. You can learn a lot from that, too.

Mostly, experience and experimentation will sort this stuff out for you. Have a great time at San Diego. I don't currently have any plans to be there, but you never know.

...

Those nice people at LOCUS have a special offer for readers of this blog.

If you want a copy of their February 2006 edition, with interviews with me and Terry Pratchett fifteen years after their first Neil and Terry Good Omens interview, postpaid (so it's $2 cheaper than it would otherwise be) or as a free gift with a 12 month subscription to the newspaper of the SF field, go to

https://secure.locusmag.com/2006/Issues/02SubscribeGaiman.html

This is also the issue with their Year in Review stuff, and recommended reading list for 2005, and such (Here's the contents list). It's a good deal.

...

Hello Neil,

Perhaps you're already aware of this fact, but Fabulist.org has an advanced track (Lunascape - Raven Star) from "Where's Neil When You Need Him?" available for preview.

http://www.fabulist.org/archives/2006/04/wheres_neil_whe.html

cheers,
Sabrina

I was, but I'd forgotten to mention it.

Another thing I'd forgotten to mention is that the web elves have been having far too much fun with the photos on the new ever-changing front page and innards of www.neilgaiman.com (and when I groused about having a photo up there of me with Chthulhu on my head I was told that I was lucky they hadn't put up the supremely odd Matrix-baddie-style Entertainment Weekly photo from 2003). If you have any pictures you think ought to be on the front page of Neilgaiman.com, you could try sending them to neilwebelf@gmail.com. As long as they don't have me with any kind of stuffed elder god on my head.

(Just load in in the front page and refresh to see what other images they have up there.)

...

Neil,

Will Tori be doing the voice of the tree in the Stardust movie?


amy/aitapata


I don't know. I very much hope they'll ask her, and I hope she'd do it if she was asked, but neither of these things are under my control. Still, it's not something that anyone making the movie has to worry about or think about until the point in the production where off-screen voices would need to be recorded, so I doubt we'll know until very late summer, or later.

But you DO have a stalker! You gave me permission (via a friend who asked on my behalf, at a signing in Pittsburgh) to stalk you! Should I be offended now?By the way, I'm likely to be in the Twin Cities anyway in early August, so I figure that's a promising time for the actual stalking to take place. Is this convenient for you?

Not a problem.

Hi Neil A new comics/censorship issue with a new twist has emerged, this time featuring your old publisher Paul Gravett and his recent book "Manga! 60 years of Japanese Comics", being removed from libraries in the US after a 16 year-old boy's mother complained about it containing pornographic content. You can read up on it at Paul's website www.paulgravett.com, as it's kicking up something of a stink in some areas, and is straying into debates about what is appropriate to put in a library, etc. What are your thoughts?


I think that removing reference books from libraries is a very silly thing to do. I've not read it, but I've read a lot of Paul Gravett's writing over the last 25 years and it's always been well-reasoned, well-researched, inclusive, and never sensationalistic.

There's a good summary of the articles currently up at http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/041_californiancontroversey/041_californiancontroversey.htm

"To remove a book about the history of the genre of Japanese comics just because it contains a section on erotic comics is comparable to removing an encyclopedia because of an entry on erotic practices," NCAC Director of Arts Svetlana Mintcheva said.

The American Civil Liberties Union is one of the lead members of this coalition. The book Manga: Sixty years of Japanese Comics, became the subject of controversy after 16-year-old Matt Jones of Victorville told his mother the book contained illustrations of graphic sexual acts and sex with animals. The book was found to also be available in branches located in Hesperia, Apple Valley and Barstow.

Along with the order for removal of the book, Postmus also called for officials with the county library to draft a plan to protect children from similar books.

Monday, the supervisor said the book will remain off the shelves of the county library. "A cartoon depicting a person engaged in a sex act with a giant hamster doesn't belong in a San Bernardino County library. And our tax dollars shouldn't be used to pay for it either," he said. "That's simply what this is about," Postmus said.

(I find myself imagining a short checklist for books that they want to put on the shelves of San Bernadino County Library, saying only "Does this book contain a cartoon depicting someone having sex with a giant hamster?" and "Was it paid for by our tax dollars?" and if the answer to both is yes, it gets thrown away.)

If you live in San Bernadino county, and you want to be able to read MANGA! in your library, you might, as Paul points out on http://www.paulgravett.com/articles/041_californiancontroversey/041_letters.htm, want to write a polite letter of protest to
Mr. Bill Postmus
Chairman, Board of Supervisors, San Bernardino County
385 North Arrowhead Avenue, Fifth Floor
San Bernardino, California 92415, USA
email: SupervisorPostmus@sbcounty.gov
fax: (001) 909-387-3029

The most effective form of protest is a clear and well-reasoned argument. Please refrain from using threatening, insulting or otherwise legally actionable language when writing to elected officials.

It's For Everybody. Like, er, Coca-Cola!

Roger Avary and I are working on the Black Hole adaptation right now, Charles Burns' story about (among other things) a sexually transmitted teen plague in 1974. Roger just went looking to see if there were any films up on the web about Venereal Disease of the kind they might have shown in schools back then. Instead he found this, and I, bemused, amused, and amazed, am passing it on to you, and I suspect that, like VD, you'll be passing it on to all the happy smiling people that you know. The "I'd like to buy the world a Coke" school of venereal disease warning...




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKi5kv7MwPg

And I've just noticed that you can read my introduction to Martin Millar's novel THE GOOD FAIRIES OF NEW YORK up at the Soft Skull Press site, here. (It was originally written for the Italian edition -- I'm very happy the book will once more be available in English.)

Am I blue...?

I blogged about the following legal case a few years ago, in which a writing assistant was suing Warner Brothers TV and others over FRIENDS, claiming that sexual talk by writers during creative sessions was sexual harrassment in http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/04/heigh-ho-glamorous-life.asp but now a decision has come down...

Here is the LA County Bar Association's report of the case, along with a
link to the decision:

Where terms of plaintiff's employment required her to transcribe sexually
oriented jokes and discussions related to the creation of a television
situation comedy featuring sexual themes, and where such jokes and
discussions included sexually coarse and vulgar language that included
discussion of the writers' own sexual experiences but, for the most part,
did not involve and was not aimed at plaintiff or other women in the
workplace, no reasonable trier of fact could conclude such language
constituted harassment directed at plaintiff because of her sex within the
meaning of the Fair Employment and Housing Act or that the comments were
severe enough or sufficiently pervasive to create a work environment that
was hostile or abusive to plaintiff in violation of the FEHA.
Lyle v. Warner Brothers Television Productions - filed April 20, 2006
Cite as 2006 SOS 1999
Full text http://www.metnews.com/sos.cgi?0406%2FS125171

It's a pdf file -- towards the end is a remakably sensible concurring judgement from Judge Chin, that people should actually read.

Yesterday I linked to some small Stardust photos -- a few people sent me links to
http://people.aol.com/people/galleries/0,19884,1184568_15,00.html in which you can see one of them larger (and get an idea of the windy chilliness of Skye).


The finallists for the Locus Awards have been announced at https://www.locusmag.com/About/LocusAwardsAd.html and I'll be there, as it's also the day that I'm MCing the Science Fiection Hall of Fame Awards, helping out in some capacity. Still, I found myself blinking when I read, at https://www.locusmag.com/2006/News/04_LocusFinalists.html that the day starts at 10:30 am to noon: Breakfast Buffet and Omelet Station at the Courtyard Marriott with Connie Willis, Neil Gaiman, and others. Which left me rather worried that I'll find myself spending the morning manning the Omelette station while Connie Willis makes waffles for people, and that it will all end in tears.

Interesting article by Peter Sanderson on comics and academia, in which he bucks several widely held ideas at http://comics.ign.com/articles/702/702072p1.html.

So, in an article about James Cameron's opinion that digital filmmaking, especially the ease of 3-d in that medium, will save Hollywood, I saw this quote:
"Robert Zemeckis' 'Beowulf,'...is employing 3-D-animated performance capture...."

Is that accurate? I couldn't find anything about it in the journal archives, and journalism on Beowulf has been reliably unreliable.

Also, didn't they come up with 3-d, smell-o-vision and suchlike to combat rampant TV watching in the 50s? Do you suppose James Cameron is claiming that it worked really well? Not to naysay; I think 3-d is good times.

-Kevin

It's simpler than that. As I understand it any performance capture/motion capture system is potentially 3D because it's recording the performances in three dimensions. So, according to Bob Zemeckis, it's very easy to simply output the information in 3D, which was why Polar Express was the first Imax full length 3D film (according to this, anyway -- http://www.imax.com/minnesota/films/polarexpress.htm). I expect that the IMAX screenings of Beowulf will be in 3D as well.


You can't tease us and get away with it. Please tell us what are Scott McCloud's recommended reads for webcomics. Thanks in advance.

Rammer Martínez
myspace.com/smokymirrors

I can do better than that. I can point you at the very website where Ivy McCloud's husband has spent years pointing people at the best that online comics have to offer, while occasionally making some of them himself. It's http://www.scottmccloud.com/comics/mi/mi.html

I am very excited over the Stardust movie. I do have a couple of curiosities though. Why was the name Lilim replaced for Lamia? Also, why was the choice made to replace Captain Johannes Alberic with a Captain Shakespeare? And how did this Captain Shakespeare become an opposition? As far as I knew from the book the Captain helped out Tristran and Yvaine and was not in opposition of them. If you can't answer these questions I won't mind, but I'll still be curious. Thanks.

Well, the name of the witch queen in Stardust isn't Lilim, that's the name of the three of them. Lilim is a plural noun, and the witch queen's name is never given ("her true name was long since drowned and lost beneath the cold ocean".) Matthew Vaughn and Jane Goldman felt that the three witches needed individual names, so collected them together from classical sources (which made me smile, as one of them is also in Neverwhere and another name is found in the original Books of Magic).

As for Captain Shakespeare and the flying pirates, it's fair to say that anyone who has read the book will have a better idea of what to expect there than anyone who hasn't, and it's also fair to say it has a few surprises for anyone who has read the book. It isn't the book, after all.

I tried adapting Stardust into film form myself, for Miramax, about seven years ago, for a film that never happened, and I rapidly discovered as I wrote the treatment that things that are fun in books sometimes need you to find equivalents that are the same kind of fun, but completely different, in order to make them into hundred minute films, and Stardust's end, as plot-strands miss each other in a satisfying way, just wasn't a film. I tried fixing things in my own way, and there are places that Jane and Matthew wound up doing the similar things to what I did and places where they picked very different solutions to things. (And some scenes, like the Lion and the Unicorn battle, went, to everyone's sorrow, because it would have cost about 1.5 million to film and the money had to be spread where it would do the most good.)

...

And finally, the Dave McKean cover to the rather wonderful (I think, having been playing it for most of the last two months) "Where's Neil When You Need Him?" a CD of songs inspired by stuff what I wrote. Hear the Future Bible Heroes doing over Mr Punch, Rasputina singing a Coraline song, Hungry Lucy doing a haunting take on Wolves in the Walls...

I've never been quite this shade of blue before...

Merkins for Goats...

My initial response to this, upon clicking on the link, was "bloody hell, that was quick"...

Hi Neil,

I'm sure everyone and their aunt has already sent you this, but just in case they haven't I found this link with production pictures from Stardust: http://filmmagic.com/ItemListing.aspx?cgl=182634&evntI=0

I've only just finished reading the book and the scene in the pictures looks quite like the same scene in the book I think. I'm sure the film will turn out great (at least I hope so, because they definitely have great source material to work with) and I can't wait to watch it.

Good luck with all your current projects!
Michelle Scerri


No, you were the first and only one so far to find those photos -- but they must be from today's shoot in the Fairy Glen. I can't work out whether they're from a set photographer or from someone sneaking around with a telephoto lens.

That's from the scene where the Witch meets Ditchwater Sal, and they divide the hare and have an unfortunate incident with some Limbus Grass. And you can see the goats. (I was told that the goats are actually lady goats in drag, goat-merkins and all. This may be true, or it may just have been a film crew pulling the leg of a credulous writer...)

Hey Neil,

This might seem like a weird question. But do authors of your fame and stature ever have to deal with stalkers/paparazzi and their ilk. Or is that something solely reserved for the more visible celebrities? Just curious, as an aspiring writer/novelist/beat weirdo guy. Thanks.

Andy

So far, whenever I've encountered the papparazzi, they've always wanted to take photos of whoever I was with, and I was just the bloke standing beside the famous person. Which is a nice place to be, if you ask me.

I've never had a stalker, I'm glad to say, and am very happy for it to stay like that. I know a handful of authors who have had stalkers or unhinged fans hiding in their attics or whatever, though, so I think I'm either very lucky, or more likely, that I just have very nice fans.

...

Department of you can't argue with that, exactly...

Roger Avary (on the phone to someone): Listen to me, I know exactly what I'm talking about. My film is, after all, Number One.

(Roger wrote Silent Hill, and seems delighted by the critical drubbing combined with the huge commercial success, having previously always got it the other way around.)

...

Over at The Dreaming website Lucy Anne has tracked down dozens of articles and reviews and suchlike, many of which I'd not seen before -- http://www.holycow.com/dreaming/
is the place to go to read the Time Out interview or lots more Wolves Reviews and articles, or even longer Stardust cast lists, or all sorts of things I should have mentioned here but forgot (like this http://www.orbital2008.org/).

tea break blogging

Another quick post-- I've got to keep typing things people are waiting for, I'm afraid.

I just got sent the Dave McKean cover of the CD of songs inspired by stuff I wrote, "Where's Neil When You Need Him?", and it looks most wonderful, and very Dave McKeany. I'll put it up here next time...

There's an article about Wolves in the Walls, and me, and, er, jet lag, in the European TIME this week -- http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/article/0,13005,901060501-1186537,00.html.
(Puzzled about the "Mirrormask" profits comment though; from everything I've heard it's perfectly on track with where it was meant to be at this point.)

There are many things I keep meaning to write about here as soon as I get a moment -- Gene Wolfe's Soldier of Sidon (and the whole Soldier series), for example, or the new Rick Veitch graphic novel Can't Get No -- but something I promised myself I would talk about, and which instead I am simply going to point to Cheryl Morgan's excellent description of, is Polder -- http://www.emcit.com/emcit128.php#Learning. It's a book celebrating John and Judith Clute, who are two people worth celebrating.

(Also, I keep meaning to mention that I read The Year's Best Comics and Graphic Novels -- it reprints part of a speech I gave at the Harvey Awards as its introduction -- and I couldn't understand why anyone would reprint apparently random chunks of comics stories, without any explanation of what you're reading, where you are in the story and what comes next, as a "Best of the Year". Lots of pages of comics in there, but no context for anything, which made what should have been a Year's Best feel instead like a sort of random and contextless sampler. Very odd. If they ever do any more, I hope they explain what they're printing. Or print whole things.)

Right. Back to work.

Zoom (me arriving) Zoom (me leaving)

I've been actually at home for the last day or so, and I need to leave almost immediately to go and work on Black Hole, so have spent the last two days Not Blogging, but instead doing things like going and buying lots of small samples of blue paint for Maddy's wall, and putting them on so that she could decide what colour it's going to be (and let her use up the excess sample paint writing MADDY WAS HERE on her wall in leftover Ocean Mist), sorting out the firefly lights so they're now working, checking out the plum trees and the grapevines and getting songs onto Maddy's iPod Nano (a gift from Paramount for Stardust's first day of shooting; I already had one from Beowulf's first day of shooting). Also took Maddy to Dairy Queen.

I was going to link to the Quotable Neil website as a way of avoiding posting, and I realised on reading http://quotableneil.blogspot.com/2006/04/random-quotes-of-arbitrary-sort.html that one of the good things about having a blog for years and years is that your opinions change -- my opinion of webcomics, for example, has gone way up since that early 2002 post, mostly because that Scott McCloud would insist on pointing me at good ones...

A lovely review of the WOLVES IN THE WALLS play from the Daily Telegraph -- http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.jhtml?xml=/arts/2006/04/20/btwolf20.xml-- one from What's On Stage (http://www.whatsonstage.com/dl/page.php?page=greenroom&story=E8821145291220), from Rogues and Vagabonds (http://www.roguesandvagabonds.co.uk/cgi-bin/newslist.pl?bid=8979)
and from Scottish Theatre Web (http://reviews.scottishtheatre.co.uk/reviews_2006/wolves_in_the_walls/index.htm).

Meanwhile the STARDUST army seems to have invaded the Highlands and Islands. I don't know what it says about me, but the bit in this article that made me smile widest was where the B and B owner said ""All the crew members are really polite". I thought, oh good. That's a relief. I can go back to Scotland, then.

Neil-
I am planning on making the trip to Balticon to hear you speak.
However, the people from Balticon have not yet published any kind of schedule. They are only saying that the guest of honor will have his choice of which events to attend.
So my question to you is, will you be there for the whole convention or is there a specific day I should plan on being there to hear you speak?

My other question to you is, is it ok to photograph while you speak? No flash.

best,
kim bush
(shotbykim

I'm there for the whole convention (although I suppose that if the plane from Australia is delayed I might be slightly late on Friday). I don't know my schedule I'm afraid, but I'll be around for the whole thing.

Hi Neil. This isn't so much a question as much as it is a statement. I took it upon myself to be one of the first people to get a tattoo from MirrorMask. I have adorned my leg with some of the sage-like advice from the Very Useful Book:

http://i38.photobucket.com/albums/e142/gonzoe1/DSCN1716.jpg

All I ask is that both Dave and yourself do not go senile in your old age and to MirrorMask what George Lucas did to Star Wars. I hear the tattoo-laser removal process is painful.

I'll bear that in mind...

Mr. Gaiman:

I thought you might find this interesting.
http://leegoldberg.typepad.com/a_writers_life/2006/04/no_hope_for_thi.html

Basically: A fanfiction author decides to publish her work.

Sigh. That's asking to be squished like a small and particularly squishy bug under the mighty bug-squishing thumb of George Lucas, really, isn't it?

helpful one

I'm a bit behind on everything right now. But I thought the world should know that, in support of Lestat the Musical, Dave McKean is doing a signing in New York on April 24th at 7.00pm -- details at this press release (which also details the other fun things happening in New York related to Lestat ). For example, The public space overlooking Central Park and Columbus Circle will be filled with anexceptional array of Elton John's fabulously unique feathered, sequined,and bejeweled stage wardrobe that has been the signature style statement of this pop music icon's illustrious career. From the look of the New York Times public reviews, Lestat may not be around very long, so you may want to catch it if you can...

Someone sent me a link to http://www.unphotographable.com/, and I'm very grateful.

So today the cast and crew of STARDUST flew up to Inverness. They start principal photography tomorrow, on the Scottish mainland and then on Skye. I want to wish them all the very best of luck. (I think the only main actor to be added since my last note is Rupert Everett as Secundus.)

Bits and bobs.

I am a narrator at the National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped at the LIbrary of Congress in Washington.

Can you tell me how to pronounce the title of your book "Coraline"? Is it Coraline (line I), Coraleen (long E), or Coralin (short i)?

Thanks so much for your hlep.

Nicola Daval
Recorrding STudio
NLS/BPH


I pronounce it Coraline (to rhyme with "horror-wine"), because I thought I'd made it up, and that was how I wanted to pronounce it. So that would be my preferred pronounciation.

But...

Then I found some sheet music on eBay for a Coraline song. It was a standard Victorian Death Song, about a dead little girl, and was filled with poetical thoughts along the general lines of,

"She had such roses in her cheeks
Her hair was like a queen's
And I shall never see ye more
My darling Coraline"

From which I discovered that a) Coraline was a real name before ever I made it up, and b) it was pronounced "Coral-een".

So that's right too. (And it's how it's pronounced across most of Europe.)

The short i version of Coraline had never occurred to me.

...

I need to close some tabs. So -- here are some cool photographs, and the story that goes with them: http://smithmag.us/2006/03/24/faces-in-the-crowd/

Why it's never a wise idea to tell an impromptu joke when public speaking.

Jerry Siegel's original press release, cursing the Superman film -- http://www.tcj.com/275/siegel1975.pdf

Publisher rejects "Jesus loves Porn Stars" bible. (Which leaves me wondering how the publisher would have reacted to a Jesus loves Thieves/Tax Collectors/Women Taken In Adultery Bible...)

Another Wolves in the Walls review.

Over at eBay, the Lisa Snellings one of a kind rat went for an astonishing $1,232.00 for the CBLDF. (hurrah. And thank you, whoever got it and bid for it.)

Lisa's limited editions are up at http://www.lisasnellings.com/limited.html, some originals for sale at http://www.lisasnellings.com/original.html. She also has a really spiffy new gallery site up at
http://www.lisasnellingsgallery.com/ . Go and buy something beautiful and disturbing, like a sculpture, and tell her that I sent you.

The Endicott Studios are doing some rather lovely poetry-and-art e-cards -- http://www.endicott-cards.com/postcards.html. Today's card is based on my poem Instructions. Lovely art by Jeanie Tomanek.

And finally, I bet you were wondering who the worst twenty literary agents out there are, weren't you? Read this entry at Making Light to learn -- http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/007440.html#007440. The agent complaining loudest about her justified inclusion on the list is Barbara Bauer, at whose website http://www.bbla.com/ you can read poems like this: http://www.bbla.com/wtc2.htm. (A remarkable poem that should, I think, be read aloud by groups of people, late at night.)