red suede shoes

Yesterday went by in a sort of a blur of jetlag and subsequent lack of sleep, and at some point I found myself, faintly surprised to be there, on a lectern in front of about 600 people reading the whole of "A Study In Emerald" from FRAGILE THINGS. And then I signed until midnight. (The only unusual thing I remember signing yesterday night was a lady's red suede shoe.) I'm now at the airport in DC, on my way across the continent.

The first official review of Fragile Things has turned up, in the Washington Post -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/09/28/AR2006092801423.html
It's by author Graham Joyce (and I have a great photo of Graham I took at Fantasycon I want to put up here when I get it off the camera).

oops. they just called us to board. got to go.

New York New York um

Up and awake and about to stumble out of the hotel and off to the airport, wondering suddenly why I'm not going to Washington by train as I could sleep on the train rather than negotiate more airport hell, but ours is not to wonder why, ours is just to blink uncomprehendingly at the daylight and do what the schedule says.

The 500 seats were full last night and we were into standing room. John Hodgman was an amazing Master of Ceremonies and hilarious interviewer, and even limiting it to Fragile Things plus one item per person I didn't get out of there until gone midnight, which on the UK time I'm still on was five in the morning.

Holly came up from Bryn Mawr to keep me company. At one point she passed me a note asking me to drink the tea beside me that I had forgotten about. I did. It was now cold. She walked eight blocks to find an open Starbucks, and brought back another cup of tea for me. I have the best family.

Signed a little over 500 copies of FRAGILE THINGS, two boxes of ANANSI BOYS paperbacks and sundry other things (books, comics, a pair of breasts [female] and a bottletop [initials only]).

Right. Airport awaits.

Then it's Washington. Politics and Prose ( who have just posted this from last year) and do not forget, if you are coming, that the venue has been changed to a bigger one.

....

PS -- a review of FRAGILE THINGS at http://www.bookgasm.com/reviews/horror/fragile-things-short-fictions-and-wonders/

quick one

Yesterday I signed at Forbidden Planet (and signed, and signed). Tomorrow is the event in New York. (You may want to get there early.)

Several people have asked whether I want to stop the tour because of Mike Ford's death, and I don't. He wouldn't have wanted it, and work is an excellent distraction.

I was looking at this post, http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/12/lovers-dreamers-and-death.asp
and realised that there was some garble in the pre-last year incarnnation of this blog. I'll find out about ways to fix it, but for now, I thought I'd just repost Mike's "with apologies to Jim Henson" song as it should be. It's too damn appropriate.


THE FINAL CONNECTION

Why are there so many songs about hearses?
The way to the uttermost side,
Hearses go fast, and traffic parts for them,
But who's in a hurry to ride?
Wagons and roads are an eloquent metaphor,
Gentling and straightening the way,
Everyone takes that last exit to Brooklyn,
Home at the end of the day

Remember the start of Magnificent Seven?
Steve and Yul drove to Boot Hill,
Just a small fable of folks being equal,
And going to sleep where you will.
Tickets and transfers and waiting for answers
At something so common yet strange,
Someday you'll ride it, the last train to Clarksville,
All classes, all stations . . . all change.

Look out the window and wave to the strangers
What do they see in the glass?
Up ahead, can you see, we've stopped for Emily,
There will be more as we pass.
Savor the journey, however you're going,
It's been your whole life to get there,
Someday I'll travel, without reservations,
I hope I've two coins for my fare.

Ten Years Ago.

This was the introduction I wrote to Mike Ford's book From the End of the Twentieth Century, ten years ago.

...

Concerning Speculative Engineering, with notes on Exploration, the Scattered Oevre of John M. Ford, and an Unreliable and Vaguely Scatalogical Anecdote about Freud or Someone Like That.


...and here we gather to celebrate John M. Ford (b. 1957 and still very much alive) -- not the Elizabethan playwright John Ford (1586-1639), nor the film director John Ford (real name Sean O'Feeney) (1895-1973), although they frame him as they framed several of his early novels, but the late twentieth century writer of that name -- and the immediate metaphor that keeps coming to mind, embarrassingly, is entirely defecatory.

It's a half-remembered anecdote about Freud or Jung or one of those brainy big-bearded German bods who was, at least in the anecdote, asked by some aspiring young man how he (the aspiring young man that is, not the big-brained German bod,) could become famous in his field.

And Freud or Jung, said, "You shit all in the same place."

Which is something that comes to mind when we stop to puzzle why Mike Ford (the John is silent, as in M. John Harrison) is not as well-known as lots of other writers who are a damn sight less able and thousands of times less good.

This is a man who has written a World Fantasy Award-winning novel of alternate history, The Dragon Waiting; who wrote the best hard sf juvenile since Heinlein stopped doing juveniles, Growing Up Weightless; who wrote my favourite modern spying and intrigue and Christopher Marlowe too novel, The Scholars of Night; who wrote not one but two astonishingly brilliant Star Trek novels -- one, The Final Reflection, a first contact novel from the Klingon perspective, the other, How Much For Just The Planet? a genuinely funny musical farce -- each book responsible for setting new parameters to the Star Trek Franchise, mostly consisting of "He got away with it because we hadn't thought to make rules against it, and now he's done it no-one else is going to do it again"; who has written award-winning poems -- one of his Christmas cards won a World Fantasy Award as Best Short Story; who published a cyberspace novel, prefiguring Neuromancer, Web of Angels, when he was 23, in 1980.

You begin, I trust, to see what one of those beardy German bods I mentioned earlier would probably refer to as 'zer problem'.

And if you don't, read this book.

It's like dipping into a kaleidescope, or receiving mailings from far-flung departments of the Library of Babel -- or talking to Mike Ford.

Mike Ford in person has been my friend for over a decade: he is a warm, brilliant man, with an habitually slightly quizzical expression which dissolves into a delighted, almost schoolboyish grin when he makes a connnection no-one has made before, which is pretty often. He is one of the few people who genuinely has no snobbish considerations about high and junk culture: he speaks both languages, and can translate between them. (He once took a typo on an invitation to my annual bonfire party as the starting point for a short (and, incredibly, performed) musical drama -- somewhere between Rodgers and Hammerstein, and Sellers and Yeatman.)

Examine the goodies here assembled, from over 15 years of writing:

Essays include 'Rules of Engagement' -- a delightful study of how readers relate to texts (using Ford's own contentious How Much For Just The Planet? as a case in point); 'From the End of the Twentieth Century', in which he talks about The Naming of Trains and fantasy and the theatre, and also offers us a key to opening the fiction of John M. Ford:

"The artistic task is to present things clearly, approachably, while still leaving space for them to mean more than their literal existence," he tells us, exactly and wisely.

Of course it is. And like a slack-rope walker, a master-baker, or the original 'Mission: Impossible' team, he makes it look so easy.

Prose tales in this collection include the new story 'Here to Get My Baby Out of Jail', which turns out not to be a new story at all, but one of the oldest stories: 'Intersection' and 'Mandalay' two (of the four) Alternities stories which make one wish he would write the other three; 'Walkaway Clause', which is a love story; 'Waiting For the Morning Bird' which is, as the author points out, non-fiction, even the parts that are made up.

And there are songs -- proper lyrics, capable of being sung. One caveat though -- while most of Ford's anagrams and references are capable of being resolved by anyone with a Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, a good Dictionary and a little luck, I must confess myself still utterly baffled by the identity of Ilen the Magian, who sang 'Monochrome' in How Much For Just The Planet. Lord, but it's a fine song nonetheless.

When the weather gets colder and the nights get shortest, then, addressed in a fine and calligraphic hand, the postman brings me Speculative Engineering's latest production, part Christmas card, part chapbook, always limited (one is informed) to one hundred unnumbered copies. And one counts oneself fortunate, never quite knowing what one is going to receive. For example:

A prose-poem meditation on the dreams of satellites, moving and transcendentant, very high over Milk Wood.

A tour of Shakespeare's histories, presented by a number of dead playwrights, doing a Dick deBartolo with and to Gilbert and Sullivan and Frank Loesser, along with the odd villanelle.

A delving into mythic engineering -- the engineering of myth, and the engineers of myth, -- with Daedalus and his son, Lefty.

And what this next holiday season will bring, no man but one can say. Several of these pamphlets have been assembled here for your delight.

Clear evidence that John M. Ford is not an author who confines himself to one small area, piling it high in one place.

But then...

Reading the materials (and not just 'Mandalay') that comprise this book put me in mind of another writer whose output spanned short stories -- mainstream, SF, fantasy and adventure, novels, poetry, songs, parodies, and children's fiction -- the author of 'The Married Drives of Windsor', a Shakespearian caprice about cars, starring all of good Will's main characters, as the high point of 'The Muse Among the Motors', his collection of poems about motoring, written in the styles of great poets of history. For there is something of Kipling in John M. Ford: the restlessness, and the willingness to play, to explore formal verse and formal stories, the urge toward parody, and the ability to tug unashamedly on the heartstrings. Like Ford, he was all over the place, but his core subject was people, and what went on inside them -- inside all of us. Look at 'Walkaway Clause' or 'Waiting For the Morning Bird'.

And reflecting on what happened to Kipling, it is comforting to observe that sometimes the big-brained anecdotal German bods are, to put it bluntly, full of shit.

For John M. Ford is not just a writer, but a writer's writer. We are lucky to have him. And while some writers are content to sit in their own small rooms, repeating themselves for an audience who knows just what it wants (id est, whatever it heard and liked, last time), John M. Ford seeks out new lands, like an Elizabethan sea captain, or a Western pioneer, or the man in Kipling's poem 'The Explorer' who heard 'a voice as bad as Conscience'...

On one everlasting Whisper day and night repeated --so:
"Something hidden. Go and find it. Go and look behind the Ranges-
"Something lost behind the Ranges. Lost and waiting for you. Go!"

And who went to see.


Neil Gaiman. Winter 1996.

Mostly Politics and Prose

I think that the London event went very well -- the organisers were very happy that 700 people showed up, and I was happy that a lot of them decided against gettting into the signing line, and instead bought pre-signed books, or just went off.

I haven't yet really coped with Mike Ford's death. It was unexpected and knocked me for a loop. He was my friend and the world feels emptier and meaner right now. I'll see if I can find my introduction to his book of short stories...

Here's a Making Light post about Mike. http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/008033.html

This came in from Seale at HarperCollins about the Washington DC event on Friday:

I spoke with Cleve Corner today and because they have had a huge response to their upcoming event with you, POLITICS & PROSE is moving the event off site to a larger venue just down the street. The new location is:

Wesley United Methodist Church
5312 Connecticut Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20008

The store will send out two additional email blasts to their customer base, as well as follow up with everyone who has contacted the store about the event. There will be a sign at the store as well telling people to come just down the street to the larger venue (store is at 5015 Connecticut Avenue NW).

Cleve is very excited about the response to the event and just wants to make sure that everyone is as comfortable as possible, and the evening is a huge success.

John M. Ford

I got an email from my friend Mike Ford -- author John M. Ford -- a couple of days ago.

Emails from Mike were always wonderful things. This one was called Speaking of closing tabs and went...

. . . some of the literoid crap from Making Light. The reason I sent you the first one will be apparent enough. The others, heck if I know.

1. And it came to pass after a decent interval of shoveling much dung, and the creatures that did eat of the fishes of the sea departing with rejoicing to do the same for the first time in an month, that they piled out of the boat, and smelt air that did not smell.

2. Whereupon the mighty lizards, those that had not already been skinned to maketh luggage and upholsterings, and who had early in the voyage eaten all the creepy-looking Precambrian thingies, went forth to find them places zoned for extinction.

3. And Noah looked about at the world, which was vast and empty and damp, and thought, well, we hadst best get around to it. An good thing the world is the Tigris and the Euphrates and the land between and that is it, or I would be one tired patriarch.

4. And he looked upon his wife, who went off in haste to gather something or other.

5. And he looked upon his daughters, and up at the heaven, and it did not darken.

6. Okay, he did say, and unto the maidens, Yoo Hoo.

7. And as he approached them, there came an hurtling stone, that struck him on the head, and he looked up again, wondering.

8. And there came a voice behind him, saying, "Sorry, friend. I wasn't looking. Name's Deukalion. This is the marina, right?"

9. Noah looked in the direction of the voice, and saw another boat, and it was big, and it had a promenade deck and a lapstrake hull.

10. And Noah's spirit was troubled.

11. But before he could cry unto the Lord something about bad jests, there came another voice, and he turned to see a modest multitude.

12. And they had no beards, and did carry their young upon their backs, and had their goods on wooden draggy things.

13. One of them raised his hand, saying, "Hi. Boy howdy, that was an long landbridge."

14. And as if there were not enough weirdness thereof, a great beast, with as it were an hangover, came up from the sea, and said, "Have you seen my mom?"

15. But another man, mighty in thews and all that, came up from yet another way, and did tear off the beast's arm and did beat him silly with it. And the warrior said his name was Bee-Wulf, which is being translated, Lupus and Wild Honey.

16. And Noah went unto his sons, Ham, Spam, and Jay-Z, and he rent their garments, because his own was the only warm thing on the boat.

II Crossovers, 1:1-16

This one, well, will likely be self-explanatory in light of Recent Literary Events.

"So, Poirot, this Betjeman chap is some sort of a poet, eh?"
"Yes, 'Astings. Somewhat."
"Good thing there's only a couple of suspects in the case, then."
" 'Astings, for a man who spends his leisure time with the world's greatest detective, your mysterious mind is perpetually stuck in what you call the neutral gear. It is exactly because there were only two Betjeman biographers of note at the time of the affaire d'acronyme that the mystery is so fascinating. What if this obviousness hides an inobviousness within its -- never mind. Suppose that it were someone not in the -- what was the fellow's word?"
"'Fetid swamps.'"
"Yes, what if he were not of the standards of the bog? Suppose it were, in fact, Michael Moorcock?"
"Uhm, I don't --"
"Your supposer is broken, 'Astings. Rub your two little gray cells together in their nourishing mix of gin and IPA. Could it not have been John Clute?"
"Wasn't he in that movie with Jane Fonda?"
"There are days when I only wish you were played by Donald Sutherland."
"Well, if anyone could have written it, then, well, I could have."
"'Astings, I have seen you Googling upon the 'peotry,' and being satsified with the result. In my suspect list, you are between le Voldemort and la V. C. Andrews."
"I say, at least one of them is dead."
"I only 'ope to sell so well when I am dead. Voici, this log of the web. Could not this literary rudite-crudite have been produced by the evil master-mind of the Langford? Or his evil but much shorter and if possible narrower American time-twin?"
"I'm afraid you're in Doctor Who country now, Poirot. And anyway, wasn't the American clockwork fiend's evil twin the Mike Harrison bloke?"
"You 'ave 'idden 'epths, 'Astings. And you will never again be invited to a First Thursday meeting."

And this one I can blame (politely) on Jo Walton, who said something about the BBC running a pome of mine in their readings of 9/11 pomes. I offered this as an audition piece.

Hail, thou Bridge on the northerly Forth!
Twixt Queensferry South and Queensferry North
Bearing high traffic loads on an over-Firth courth.
And after the Tay, which was quite blown away
On a terrible, horrible, rather wet day
And the train out of Scotland was dunked in the bay
Still the builders did say, in their style gravely gay,
That double cantilevering pointed the way.
And so no further locals should fall in the drink,
They brought iron and steel and the oxide of zinc;
And thanks to the girder, the bolt, and the pin
Since the day it was built, it has not fallen in.

. . . but you know, you can't really parody the poor bloke, in the same way that attempts to simulate Really Bad Slush by good writers never quite get it right.

And I mentioned that I was thinking about doing a Short Story once I was done typing in the mass of handwritten Novel. Just on the moment, Graham Sleight and Farah Mendelsohn reminded me that I promised them just such an outpouring for Foundation #100. (I had not forgotten this, but I thought I had long ago missed the deadline.) It is, as you would expect, humblingly fine company to be in -- Nalo, Margo Lanagan, Eileen Gunn, Andy Duncan, and so on.

Yes, spellchecker, "humblingly" is a word. Now, anyway.

So I had best go off and Get a Few Things Done.
Best as,
m.

I hadn't replied, although I meant to, and Mike never seemed to mind if I did or I didn't.

And now I never shall, because I just heard that Mike passed away this morning. And I miss my friend already...

coolnesses

My favourite moments of today were Clive Barker's impromptu Guest of Honour Speech at Fantasycon, in which he declared war on the idea that Fantasy was a genre, and the rather astonishing moment half an hour later when I finally realised that the reason that my name was being read out was because ANANSI BOYS had just won the August Derleth Award as Best Novel. I've never won a British Fantasy Award before, and was chuffed and astonished.

(Edited to add, here's the full list -- http://www.fantasycon.org.uk/blog/?p=21)

Right. Bed now. Reading and Q&A and signing tomorrow.

from fantasycon

I am, in no particular order, at Fantasycon and still alive.

I've signed lots of advance copies of FRAGILE THINGS for people, been on several panels, talked to lots of people, made some new friends, caught up with many many old friends (some of whom had obviously done that amateur dramatics thing of making their hair go white to indicate passage of time) (and a glance in the mirror suggests that I've started doing the same thing).

I'm way behind on the FAQs, but I've noticed lots of people have started asking about getting signed books, or if they can get a loved one's books to me to sign. Your best bet for signed stuff right now is contacting any of the bookshops at which I'll be signing over the next ten days. DreamHaven (who also have the www.neilgaiman.net website) have the most experience at this, but any of the bookshops on the UK or US leg of the tour should be able to take credit card orders for personalised copies and ship them out.


Hi Neil,
I hope the UK presentations go well this coming weekend i was thinking about going to the Monday 25th in London but am completely skint having spent my last few pounds on Alan Moores Watchmen (my first of his work and hopefully not my last depending on how this one goes). I thought I'd ask if you have any major rivalries with other authors such as Alan Moore, be they playful rivalries or bitter ones? Also with whom if you don't mind saying?
Thanks a lot and good luck,
Steve
Southend

I suddenly feel very boring. No, I'm afraid not. Most of the people I suppose I could potentially have had a rivalry with (Grant Morrison? Clive Barker? Alan Moore?) are good friends and have been for twenty years or more, but more honestly I can't think of any bitter rivalries -- or even playful ones -- in any of the writing fields I've worked in, be it comics or SF or Fantasy. Writers tend to be helpful to each other, and make each other's lives easier. Not always, but mostly.

Neil, please be our hero! HELP PRESERVE THE HOUSE OF CLOCKS FROM ITSELF!
Feeling a bit nostalgic, I walked down Meat Street the other day longing to stop in to the House of Clocks to spy for looming adventure. I was horrified to see that the HOC has been taken over by aggressive spam pirates. I notified the web mistress and was told that she would be very pleased if someone, anyone, could send her information and/or instructions on how to filter the guestbook entries without cost to prevent further nefarious intrusion and mutiny. If you, your superhuman assistant, or any of your concerned readers know of any such guestbook software and have the inclination to save this national treasure, could you/she/they please go to the House of Clocks guestbook and email the archivist link (the web mistress) with the key to salvation and remedy for the overwhelming spam? Everyone knows Meat Street is a dingy, spooky place, but with all of those vagabonds pouring out of the HOC, it's become downright uninhabitable. Please help us or put the wo rd out, and you will again be hailed with revelry from non-corporeal beings.

Bless you my child,
Saint Marie of the Declining Order
The Shabby Abbey, Chicago, Illinois

And I nipped over to http://www.preserveusfromthehouseofclocks.com
where I learned that, yes, the guestbook, which used to be filled with magical fictions, is now sadly clogged with spamposts by the hundred. Can anyone help Joanna out?


Dear Neil,

You've written in the past that, as far as you're concerned, there really aren't any inviolable Rules Of Writing, never to be broken.

Even so, I'd like to ask your opinion of the oft-repeated advice to writers that they ought, as a general rule, to 'show, not tell'.

Do you think this is good advice? Or do you think a writer ought to feel free to do showing or telling in whatever quantities they like?

Is this something you think about when reviewing early drafts of your own work?

Thank you.

It depends what you're writing and what kind of effect you want to have on the reader. "Show don't tell" is a useful rule of thumb, but lots of fine books and stories tell (Borges, for example, does almost nothing else, and we love him for it), and so do storytellers.

There was once a princess who, although she was perhaps a little on the thin side and extremely short-tempered, was very beautiful...

could often get you further than a page in which you see her short temper and learn about her beauty (although, if they have anything to do with the story, you'll do that anyway).

It's whatever works for the story. Show what you need to show, tell what you need to tell. It's your story.

So, I went to http://www.wheresneil.com/ and I found your square on my 5th try. Did I just get incredibly lucky or are there multiple winning squares? Or do you know? You might not have any idea. But, if you do, I'm curious :)

~ Robin

I think it's just one. (I've not found it yet, although I've found lots of small postings that people have done in other squares, and I think that if we ever do something like this again you should be able to put up a photo of yourself on your square...)

voice recognition systems and stuff

Leaving in a few minutes for Fantasycon in Nottingham, after a lovely couple of days in the Peak District with Colin and Susanna. I wasn't meant to be working while here, but I did a small chunk of Eternals, and yesterday at Nick Powell's request I wrote some new lyrics for the opening song in the Wolves in the Walls stage play. (Websites here and more specifically at http://www.improbable.co.uk/wolves/.) It'll be at

Platform at the Bridge, Glasgow
13th - 14th October

Northern Stage, Newcastle
17th - 21st October

West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds
25th October - 4th November

Liverpool Playhouse
7th -11th November

Malvern Theatres
15th - 18th November

Oxford Playhouse
21st - 25th November

I heard that it now is going to the US early in 2008. Slightly disappointed that the US tour so far just looks very East Coast and Chicago, and hoping it'll travel a bit more, at least to San Francisco.

An early review of Fragile Things up at http://speculativereviews.blogspot.com/2006/09/fragile-things-by-neil-gaiman.html

We're trying to get away in the next ten minutes, although a very frustrated Susanna is trying to pay her TV license over the phone, or rather to persuade it that she already has a TV license, but she's dealing with a voice recognition system at the other end that doesn't recognise hers as actually being a voice, while she and Colin are also trying to arrange a pick-up for 500 signed and slipcased copies of Ladies of Grace Adieu. (Which are only on-sale at http://www.jonathanstrange.com/. Or will be, once they've been picked up and taken away. And Susanna won't be doing signing tours and things, so if you want a signed copy, with lovely Charles Vess illustrations, that's probably your best bet.)

Where I am

In case you were wondering, I've slipped off for a couple of days before the start of Fantasycon. I'm staying with Colin Greenland (who is so much less impressed than I am that I've known him for 23 years now) and Susanna Clarke (who gave me a beautiful, Charles Vess-illustrated, advance copy of THE LADIES OF GRACE ADIEU), and they've taken me on lots of very nice long walks of the kind that normally end in a large meal in a cosy pub, thus adding back all the calories I'd burned on the walk and a few more for good measure.

Meanwhile, I promised Headline, who already do the very fun http://www.neilgaiman.co.uk website, that I would mention here that they have a new competition-sort-of FRAGILE THINGS WEBSITE.

It's http://www.wheresneil.com/ and you can claim your place there and win a prize.

And I think this was first out of the hat with the Youtube mastermind information...

Hello, mister G.


The Sandman Mastermind clips are up on YouTube:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0Y-YxIYUjXM

http://youtube.com/watch?v=HQ-nMygHbco

Quite funny, and some of the questions would be pretty difficult even
for a Sandman fan (but not the hardcore ones, I'm afraid). The whole
"metatextual" speech was ended in this sweet "oh, that's really
interesting" way that you end a conversation with a mortician.


Cheers, Izydor Ingwar I.

...

And for those of you who wrote to me concerned about what had happened to Hill House Publishers, there's an explanation and apology up on the Hill House website, along with a current update -- http://hillhousepublishers.com/hh-break01.htm