looking at you sideways

I don't know. You turn your (still extremely jet-lagged, just in the opposite direction) back for one moment and the tabs to be closed are already breeding...

First, the big sadness: Cody's Bookshop has closed completely. http://www.boingboing.net/2008/06/21/codys-books-of-berke.html
I've loved doing signings and events with Cody's over the years, thought they were special and will miss them very much. It makes me glad that Kepler's is still in business,

I'm a Hachette author in the UK and much of the Commonwealth. I see that, from an Amazon-selling point of view, this might not be a good thing to be.

Here's the New York Times link.

I guess I'll start finding other places to link to when I want to point to books. Amazon is always the easiest way to link, so it tends to be the place I default to.

I got a bit puzzled last year when my name got left off the National Theatre of Scotland production of "The Wolves In The Walls" at the New Victory (it was there as writer of the book the thing was based on, but not as co-adapter or as writer of most of the extra lyrics). Still, I felt that things had swung a bit far the other way when I saw this article from Variety on The New Victory winning the National Award for Excellence...

http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117987888.html?categoryid=15&cs=1&nid=2569

Here's the second part of a two part interview with Alan Moore at the Forbidden Planet blog (where you can learn what he thinks about Gordon Brown being petitioned by the public for an honour on Alan's behalf ):

http://forbiddenplanet.co.uk/blog/?p=7911

The door to Hell. It's in Darvaz in Uzbekistan.

http://www.slightlywarped.com/crapfactory/curiosities/doortohell.htm

Weird Tales is blogging an entry a day on its 85 weirdest storytellers of the last 85 years.

http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/category/the-85-weirdest/page/6/

I was thrilled by Sandman, the whole thing, being on the Entertainment Weekly top 50 new classics of the last 25 years, and baffled why, when they did the entry on what the longest work on their list was, they only listed the first volume of Absolute Sandman, rather than the whole thing. And googled to make sure that my friend Marc Bernardin was still working there to ask him (not that it's anything to do with him of course) and found myself reading this:

http://blog.newsarama.com/2008/06/18/marc-bernardin-black-like-who/

I met Miriam Berkley on a plane in-- I think -- December 1987, on my first professional trip to the US, I think. She's a photographer who photographs authors -- here's an interview with her, along with some of her great author photos:

http://goodbooksguide.blogspot.com/2008/04/eyes-of-miriam-berkley.html


Hi, Mr. Neil!

Thought you might enjoy this:


http://wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/07672/I_Believe...


--Julia


That's cool: Turning wordclouds into art. I have to go and play with Wordle, don't I?

why do the characters in your children's book "The Dangerous Alphabet" look so very similar in appearance (hair color, eyes, clothing - even, somewhat, the shapes of their faces) to Al Columbia's beloved underground cartoon characters, "Pim and Francie"? The similarities are pretty uncanny. Are you and your illustrator very big fans of Al Columbia, or is it simply a very big co-incidence?

thank you for your time.

regards,

brent higgins

I'm not sure I've ever seen anything Al Columbia's drawn, apart from a promo piece for Big Numbers about 18 years ago, but I googled Pim and Francie, found a picture, and can't figure out what they have in common with the brother and sister in The Dangerous Alphabet apart from being male and female children, and his hair being lighter than hers. So it's a mystery to me too.

Sent some pictures of me taken for Time Out Sydney...

And here's a scan of the Entertainment Weekly photo page with my top ten on it. A photo almost unique in the history of pictures of me in magazines, for actually looking like me...


In my head Eddie Campbell whispers, "Ah. Righht. Another picture from the Neil Gaiman School of Looking at You Sideways.")
...

STOP PRESS: "The Witch's Headstone" (which will, later this year, be Chapter 4 of The Graveyard Book) won the Locus Award for best novelette. Thank you to all who voted for it, and to Gardner Dozois who accepted the award on my behalf. It's a really terrific list of winners, too.

From Locus:

Locus Awards Winners

Winners of this year's Locus Awards, voted by readers of Locus Magazine in the annual Locus Poll, were were announced this afternoon at the Courtyard Marriott Hotel in Seattle, at an event led by Master of Ceremonies Connie Willis.

SF NOVEL

The Yiddish Policemen's Union, Michael Chabon (HarperCollins)

FANTASY NOVEL

Making Money, Terry Pratchett (Doubleday UK; HarperCollins)

YOUNG ADULT BOOK

Un Lun Dun, China Miéville (Ballantine Del Rey; Macmillan UK)

FIRST NOVEL

Heart-Shaped Box, Joe Hill (Morrow; Gollancz)

NOVELLA

"After the Siege", Cory Doctorow (The Infinite Matrix Jan 2007)

NOVELETTE

"The Witch's Headstone", Neil Gaiman (Wizards)

SHORT STORY

"A Small Room in Koboldtown", Michael Swanwick (Asimov's Apr/May 2007)

COLLECTION

The Winds of Marble Arch and Other Stories, Connie Willis (Subterranean)

ANTHOLOGY

The New Space Opera, Gardner Dozois & Jonathan Strahan, eds. (Eos)

NON-FICTION

Breakfast in the Ruins, Barry N. Malzberg (Baen)

ART BOOK

The Arrival, Shaun Tan (Lothian 2006; Scholastic)

EDITOR

Ellen Datlow

MAGAZINE

F&SF

PUBLISHER

Tor

ARTIST

Charles Vess

clouds of witness and word

The Webelf wanted clouds made from the years of content on this journal. Dan Guy leapt to her assistance -- Robin to her Batman, Kato to her Green Hornet, Etta Candy to her Wonder Woman. Now you can see the results of his cloud-making work over at:

http://neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/clouds/example-words.php
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/clouds/term_cloud.html

And you will learn odd things about the blog. (I know I did.)

(The full version, including an extra 200,000 words of Questions and comments not by me is at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/clouds/word_cloud.html , but seems less informative the the other two.)

Thanks Elf. Thanks Dan Guy.

And they also tell the story of

"...when you live in a godless universe of pain. If the universe was ordered, Neil Armstrong should be the first Neil on Google."

The quote is from Penn's radio show. You can also get it free from iTunes (here's the URL).

Over at Time Magazine they have a round up of the top ten comics/graphic novels of the year. All good choices, although I was surprised by the appearance on the list of some fine reprints (Kings in Disguise, for example.). Still, it was nice for me to see Absolute Sandman on there, mostly because when I wrote it, in 1987-1989, it would have been unthinkable for Time Magazine, or any real-world magazine, to have devoted any space at all to graphic novels or comics on a Best of the Year list. http://www.time.com/time/topten/2006/comics/10.html

Locus's Recommended list for 2006 is up at http://www.locusmag.com/2007/2006RecommendedReading.html


NEIL: JUST READ YOUR NEW MAILING ADDRESS - BUT I SEND YOU SOMETHING AT DREAMHAVEN -WILL THAT GET TO YOUOR DID I IS JUST WASTED MONEY SPEND ON MAILING? ALSO, ARE YOU REALLY GOING TO BE SPENDING SO MUCH TIME IN HOLLYWOOD? LUV YA- CLARE

It'll get to me, don't worry. It just tends not to be a very fast thing.

And no, I'm not going to be spending so much time in Hollywood, that's just where Cat and her office is. The joy of the modern world is that things can move around it very easily, and we decided that it's far better if letters and suchlike go to someone who can look at them that day and figure out what's meant to happen next, rather than be put in a box with my name on it under the counter at DreamHaven and wait for the next time I decide I need a haircut and go down to Hair Police and stop in at DreamHaven to sign stuff for them on the way home.

...

Lots of artists and possibly someone who isn't an artist drew Spider-Man covers for a good cause. Details and you can pick out the blogging not-an-artist at:
http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=9528

...

In honor of National Gorilla Suit Day, I did an artist trading card and thought you might enjoy it, a bit.Here's the url: http://www.mcmatz.com/2007/01/ebay_auction_at_4.html I will now slowly back towards the exit and fade away...--Madeline

Oh Mark Evanier and Don Martin, what have you wrought?

Dear Mr Gaiman, I've just finished watching the recording of the Cody's Books readings and Q&A session. I'd never heard you read your work before. It's distressing to find out that not only are you a fantastic author but you are also an evocative oral story teller. Surely you're not allowed to be both? On to my question. (I searched and couldn't find anything specifically on this topic but my apologies if I missed it.) As a writer, do you get a similar feeling of closure/reward/enjoyment when you've created the final climax of a story that you hope your readers will experience when reading it or do you always have one eye on the technicalities of writing? Thank you.Regards, Clare Milner

You're too kind.

And the only answer I can give is neither. Because you're not experiencing it at the same speed. There's a relief at getting to the end, but it's also the relief of getting to the end of something you've been working on for, often, several years. Which doesn't mean you're not affected on an emotional level by scenes or by what happens to characters, or that you don't feel what's happening while you write it. But a reader will read something in a few hours that might have taken you a couple of years or more to write. And that big moment of closure may have been followed by another six months of writing.

Neil,In a post a little while ago you mentioned the reading list John Crowley compiled - which looks absolutely fascinating. You said a couple of the books on the list were your favourites in the world. So that would seem to me a good place to start! Which were they though? Sorry if the answer should be apparent from elsewhere on the site but I couldn't find it...Best wishes
Dominic Hartley

They are Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, a book I adore; and The Songlines by the brilliant Bruce Chatwin (do not write to me and point out that Songlines is factually dodgy sometimes. It's still an amazing book and Chatwin wrote astoundingly well).

...

Do you realise this blog will be six years old on February the Ninth? I've had some ideas of things that we could put up that would be fun and special to celebrate the birthday, but they may not be ready in time...

...

g'day mr. gaiman. or night. or whatever it is, where you're at.i've been going through your blog for a couple of days now... (...) here are a couple of questions that i sincerely want to know the answers to.with all the fame and joy you've attained from writing, aren't you afraid to lose it all in an instant? i don't want to be morbid and all, but with all the hard work you've put in to your works, are you afraid to die?sorry... i wanted to ask j.r.r. tolkien the same thing but he isn't around... you see, i'm scared of dying and i'm poor... what is it like for you who has all the things you've achieved in life?

I remember being scared of dying when I was on the plane from London to New York in mid 1988 with the first half of Dave McKean's Black Orchid art travelling in the plane cabin with me -- these were the painted originals, and there were no copies as Dave, barely out of art school, couldn't have afforded to get them all shot at that point. I was writing Sandman issue two or three back then.

And I knew that if the plane went down Dave would never have redrawn the Black Orchid pages, and it would never come out, and that even if the first couple of Sandmans came out no-one would have known where it was going or what it was going to be. I crossed the Atlantic sweating, mentally keeping that plane in the air all the way.

Nineteen years later, I'm remarkably sanguine about life and death. I'm really lucky, in that I've achieved an awful lot of the things I wanted to do, and some people noticed. If I died soon (something, I should add here, that I have no intention of doing; I like life and all the things that come with it), I'd leave a body of varied and interesting work and three amazing kids behind, and that's more than I ever set out to do or hoped for.

Does that help?
...

I'd like to ask a small favour of those of you who have read down this far. Would anyone reading this, anyone with a blog or a website that is, mind linking to the last post -- http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2007/02/and-in-time-it-took-to-say-that-neil.html -- with the link text Penn Jillette? Given Penn's recent rant about the power and ubiquity of this blog on his radio show, I'd like to mess with his head just a little and see if we can actually google-bomb it so that that entry shows in the top few entries if you google Penn's name.

And sshhh, don't anyone tell him. I want it to be a surprise.

1,014,261 not counting these

Right. Maddy has a whole new hairdo consisting of a fringe (which Americans inexplicably call bangs), or bangs (which the English mysteriously call a fringe), and she looks oddly like the Coraline puppet from the Henry Selick film, while I have, er, not quite as much hair in my eyes as I did this morning. Stopped off at DreamHaven (http://www.dreamhavenbooks.com/) after the haircut and signed a pile of stuff for them (it'll be up on www.Neilgaiman.net soon enough).

Also bought a few books, which considering how much time I've had recently to read, and how much I have sitting in piles waiting to be read (I seem to be reading everything I can find about Bert Williams right now) is madness. Still, I picked up, with joyful expectation, Avram Davidson's Adventures in Unhistory, Diana Wynne Jones's The Pinhoe Egg, and Kim Newman's The Man from the Diogenes Club. It's nice to have books on the To Be Read Pile you know will be good. A Charles Vess cover drew my eye, and I found myself getting the paperback of Herminie Kavanagh's Darby O'Gill, and I wrapped up the shopping expedition with a copy of M. John Harrison's Viriconium (not to read, just so I had a copy with my introduction in).

And I just got to see some site statistics (courtesy of Dan Guy who has made the Webelf her Clouds -- the first is up at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/ and is really rather fun. Hurrah for you helpful people out there reading this) and I learned that as of the last post, I'd written One Million and Fourteen Thousand, Two Hundred and Sixty One words on this blog.

I wish I'd known that 14,261 words ago. We would have had a party. With balloons.