Quick Newsy thing

A sneak preview of the Sandman 20th anniversary poster: http://celebritygossip.epicureforum.com/great-comics-artists-draw-sandman-characters-for-special-edition-poster-119.html

And Henry Selick told me that We will have our two top puppet fab people - Georgina and Martin - at the NECA toy booth with lots of Coraline puppets. Exhibit Hall - Booth 4345 (across from Warner Brother's 4329 booth)

So if you want to see what the puppets -- our actors from the film -- look like, now is your chance.

Rain and suchlike

Good morning! Miss Maddy and I are in Portland. Last night we went to Henry Selick's house and met his family and lots of nice people from Laika and ate lots of amazing food (and I also drank my first cup of the kind of coffee that's made from beans that have travelled through the digestive system of the civet cat [Paradoxurus hermaphroditus]).

Today it's off to Laika to visit the Coraline sets (all 40 of them) and to be interviewed for the DVD extras. Maddy will be doing the interviewing.

I have to get dressed... Here's Maddy:


Well helloooooo everyone I missed you so! Um well today we are going to visit the Coraline sets as I see Dad already mentioned, but I am very excited because everything is going to be super cool! Plus I'm going to interview people so you better watch out because the new Larry King is right here. :) Just kidding! Or am I? Anyways we have some pictures of last night's get together but I do not exactly have the camera with me right now so I guess you will just have to wait until later to see them. It will be the time of your life! Ok, well have a really great day. :)



Me again. People have sent me lots of important emails this morning, many of them letting me know that a bee truck overturned near Sacramento.

Millions of swarming honey bees are on the loose after a truck carrying crates of the buzzing insects flipped over on a highway in Sacramento.

The California Highway Patrol says 8-to-12 million bees escaped from the crates in which they were stored, swarming over an area of Highway 99 and stinging officers, firefighters and tow truck drivers who were trying to clear the accident from the roadway.

CHP Officer Michael Bradley says at about 10 a.m. a tractor trailer owned by Inter City Inc. flipped over while entering the highway on its way to Yakima, Wash. The flatbed was carrying bee crates each filled with up to 30 thousand bees.

Bradley says several beekeepers driving by the accident stopped to assist in the bee wrangling. The beekeepers called their colleagues, who responded and came to help repair damaged bee crates and get them loaded onto two new trucks.

The bees were on their way back to Washington after being used in the San Joaquin Valley to pollinate crops.

(I don't think they were swarming at all. But hurrah for the drive-by beekepers.)


And meanwhile,

Novelists Strike Fails To Affect Nation Whatsoever

Like the Dark Knight trailer, but with buttons...

A few weeks ago someone asked if the Henry Selick Coraline 3D trailer was available online, and I said I'd try and get permission to put it up here. Which the powers that be said no to, because, well, it was 3D.

And then I asked if there was anything I could put up from Coraline. They said they'd see what they could do.

I wasn't sure we'd be given anything, so didn't talk about it. But it's here. I just watched it...

So, for your enjoyment (I hope), a small Christmas present. The first Coraline footage to be released to the world.

(It's not really from me. Laika and Focus chose it and did all the hard work, the Web Goblin did all the building it in the background. I just claim the glory and bask in the reflected wossname.)

It's still about a year away from it coming into cinemas. But here's a first look...

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Video_Clips/Coraline_Sneak_Preview

Last Coraline picture for a while, I expect

I just got sent a photo of me actually looking at some of the characters and their possessions. These are painted models, not the puppets that will be appearing in the film. Henry is explaining, under the gaze of Georgina Hayns, the Puppet Fabrication Supervisor, how Coraline's father has a different kind of jaw movement to some of the other characters. He thinks I'm listening. Actually I'm just trying to figure out whether I should go "Oh look! A dangerous polar bear!" and then while everyone is looking around trying to see what I am talking about or running away or trying to find a nice plump seal to throw to the polar bear and distract it, I could put one of the models under my leather jacket. And then I am remembering that I forgot to wear my leather jacket.

First Coraline Photos

After my visit to the Coraline set just before Christmas I said They are also doing technical tests -- it's easy enough for me to say in the book, and for Henry to put into his script, that as Coraline walks away from the Other House, the trees are less like trees and more like the idea of trees, but making an orchard turn into a misty abstraction is easier said than done when you have to build it. So they've built one, and are doing their camera tests to see if it will work.

I've just been sent a few photos from the visit... here's me and Henry Selick looking at the mock-up of the trees as she walks from right to left. (Click on the photo to see the bigger version and it will become easier to see what I was talking about.) Standing between us (and blocking the Coraline model) is Tom Proost, Shop Foreman.

And because those are a bit shadowy, here's a picture of Bo Henry, set construction supervisor, Henry Selick and me, surrounded by half-painted trees and a bit of nightmarish topiary. I have no idea what I was looking at, but I bet it was extremely interesting.



I'll put up a few more photos when I get them -- I hope they'll send over one or two with characters in. I mean, trees are good, but the characters are the thing...

Photos by Serena Davidson.

American Gods Blog, Post 39

Also today I read Henry Selick's first draft of the CORALINE movie, which was really cool (and really faithful to the book, sometimes almost disconcertingly so).

And because I have this power (apparently there are currently about 19,000 of you reading this thing) I'll recommend a few things: while I was travelling I read and enjoyed Nalo Hopkinson's yummy MIDNIGHT ROBBER, M. John Harrison's magnificent short stories TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS, and the History of the Basque people by the guy that wrote COD. Also read Geoff Ryman's LUST on the plane home -- a powerful and odd book, about, it seemed to me, everything except lust.

And am currently playing Hamell on Trial's lovely CHOOCHTOWN a great deal, and because my assistant Lorraine left Lorraine Bowen's Bossy Nova CD in the car, I was getting very fond of the Bombay remix of the Crumble song before I came out to LA, bringing with me no music.

American Gods Blog, Post 9

Yes, I know this is an American Gods website, and an American Gods journal, and I really ought to write about American Gods here. (And I'm just about to try a draft of the dustjacket copy -- I felt the first round might have given too much away.) But I thought I'd mention that my spooky children's book Coraline (which will come out in hardback from Harper about the time American Gods comes out in paperback) is being adapted by Henry Selick (who directed the Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach and Monkeybone). You can read more about it at http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2001-02/15/14.00.film