Journal

Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Showing posts with label interviews. Show all posts
Wednesday, November 18, 2009

LOCAL MAN IN HATE MAIL OUTRAGE SHOCK FIASCO

Anything I say about it would sound like bragging, so I'll just mention that The Graveyard Book won the Booktrust Teenage Prize, and leave it at that. I couldn't be there, so Chris Riddell accepted it on my behalf, and read out what I'd asked him to read. (The Booktrust site has an interview with me about it here.)

There's a terrific article/interview in the Guardian about it (I even like the photo, even though I cannot explain the hair) at http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/nov/18/neil-gaiman-graveyard-book-awards.

I will not even attempt to explain the hair. It must have known what it was doing.

The Headline for the Guardian article is

Neil Gaiman's Graveyard Book buried under awards
As the fantasy world's renaissance man collects yet another award, he talks to Michelle Pauli
I quite like the "buried under awards" joke. (Although The Graveyard Book definitely hasn't won all, or even most, of the awards it's been nominated for. Margo Lanagan's wonderful Tender Morsels and Jeffrey Ford's The Shadow Year [which may be wonderful but which I haven't read yet] beat it to the World Fantasy Award, just as Graham Joyce's Memoirs of a Master Forger beat it to the August Derleth award, for example.)

When I was a journalist, one of the things that stopped me wanting to spend the rest of my life journalisting was sub-editors who made me feel embarrassed by carefully introducing mistakes or slight distortions into things I'd written, or into headlines. So I felt a twinge when I read the Daily Telegraph interview, in which I was quoted pretty accurately,
Gaiman, 49, said: "I definitely don't write like Kipling but he was a literary hero as a kid.
"I was fascinated when I first started mentioning that I thought Kipling was an amazing writer.
"I started getting – not exactly hate mail – it was more disappointed mail.
"People would tell me, 'How could a writer like you – that we like – like a fascist, an imperialist dog?' "
but with the headline of
Coraline author Neil Gaiman received 'hate mail' for liking Rudyard Kipling
Neil Gaiman, the author behind the surprise film hit Coraline, received "hate mail" for professing that Rudyard Kipling was one of his literary heroes.
I keep forgetting about the new-style sensationalist Daily Telegraph. I like the way that "not exactly hate mail... disappointed mail" in the body of the article turns into "hate mail" in the headline. And was Coraline really a surprise hit? And is mentioning the Coraline film really how the Telegraph audience would go from "Who...?" to "Oh, right, him."

...

Someone wrote to me recently asking,


Dear Mr. Gaiman,

You've often talked about the rights for readers to choose the books they want to read without censorship. What are your thoughts of a library in Kentucky firing two librarians who restricted reading materials to a child?


Raymond

I figured I'd wait until the facts were in before commenting. So, in brief:

Over in Kentucky, a library worker (not librarian) felt menaced by what she felt was the satanic sexualness of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, and kept it checked out for a year so no-one could read it. (Except her: and she had to be prayed over while she read it.) What worried this lady was,
She just didn't want this book in the Graphic Novel section, which is located next to Young Adult Fiction.
She wasn't trying to keep it from kids. She was keeping it from everyone.

Then a customer put it on order, and the computer would no longer keep it checked out to keep it off the shelves. She violated library policy by finding out who had it on order, discovered the person who wanted it was an 11 year old girl (no information has been given as to whether this was with or without parental knowledge, but I don't think that would have mattered to this lady) and she persuaded another library worker (also not a librarian) to help her stop anyone getting the book. Around this point their plan was exposed. They'd violated enough library rules and policies that they were dismissed. Strangely enough, even after they were fired, the original lady who took the book off the shelves still hasn't returned the book, which seems to me to have crossed the invisible line that separates "stopping people reading things you don't like" from "stealing".

(Incidentally, for those who haven't read it, LOEG: The Black Dossier is many things, but it isn't Lost Girls, and it certainly isn't pornography, although it has moments that comment on classic texts, including some pornographic ones. It has a couple of pin-up-y images. It's got comic-book violence in it and some realistic violence too. It has references in it to British children's fiction that an 11 year old girl in Kentucky is very unlikely to get. Pam Noles wrote an essay about race, minstrelsy and the problematic use of the Golliwogg in it. Is it a book I think an 11 year old would enjoy and get stuff out of? Depends on your 11 year old. I'm always surprised when I meet Sandman readers under the age of 13, but I've met some, and they were ready for it.)

The events are summarised at The Beat here, with a two page local newspaper article that presents a fairly balanced picture of the events here.

So my thoughts of a library in Kentucky firing two librarians who restricted reading materials to a child? I think the library did the right thing. And I think they should get their book back from the lady who stole it.

...

Over at Audiofile Magazine there's a celebration of the audiobooks of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman (me): interviews with Martin Jarvis, Stephen Briggs, Nigel Planer and George Guidall talking about the ups and downs of reading us aloud. http://www.audiofilemagazine.com/epicks/1109_landingpage.html

...

Thank you to all the people who have submitted International Covers (here's the submission page) to the International Covers Page. I'll try and put a few covers here from time to time. Here's one from Russia:



This is the cover to the Russian Edition of FRAGILE THINGS, which I suppose might contain "The Witch's Headstone", or is just a very Graveyard Booky sort of a cover. [Edit to add, I just clicked on it, saw it full-size and realised they're both boys, and it's an "October in the Chair" cover.]

And finally, someone on the NPR blog wrote about Sandman. It's meant to be a nice review of the P. Craig Russell Sandman: Dream Hunters, and I think it was probably meant to be funny, but if so the author seems to have misjudged the tone, and instead just turned out a series of patronising cliches about somebody's idea of Sandman readers.

Which puzzles me, because I've met hundreds of thousands of people who read Sandman all around the world, and they look just like everyone else: all they seem to have in common is that they are intelligent bipeds capable of understanding comics, who like Sandman. Probably a lot like the person who wrote the article.

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Wednesday, September 24, 2008

Why is the man on the right holding a microphone?


I did the Washington Post Book World online chat this morning -- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/09/09/DI2008090902030.html and then did more telephone interviews (while also signing the sheets for the Subterranean Press edition of The Graveyard Book) after which Euan Kerr from National Public Radio in Minneapolis arrived.

I've known Euan for over a decade, but in the past I've always gone to the studios of KNOW in St Paul while he interviewed me. This time (because time is ticking before the start of the tour, and there isn't any to spare on things like driving out to the Twin Cities) he came out to my house. On arrival he donned a bee suit, and headed out with the bee team (me, Stitelers, Lorraine, Cat Mihos who is in town visiting Lorraine and who, fresh from Duran Duran and the Jonas Brothers, will be tour-managing some of the upcoming tour) to harvest honey. Euan sort-of-interviewed me while we did bee stuff, occasionally sticking his microphone down among the bees to capture authentic beeish noises, then afterwards we went together to the gazebo and did a proper interview, with actual questions and answers and things, and not just barked cries of "Can somebody please hold this?" and "Ow, I just got stung through my sock."

The first interviews when a book comes out are the fun ones, because you're finding out what you think: all the questions are new to you, and you're having to figure out what the answers are, and you aren't yet repeating yourself. The hard ones will be in a month, where I'll find myself thinking Did I ever really live in a very tall house? And did my infant son really ride a tricycle around the churchyard across the lane? Are these real things, or just things I've repeated so many times they've evaporated, so now all I remember is the memory of me saying them...?

Hello! I received the e-mail about your appearance at the National Book Fest, which I'm very excited about. In this e-mail, it said that you'd be doing signings, and that I should buy a copy of the Graveyard Book for you to sign. Buuuut, if it won't be available for me to purchase until September 30th, how can I have it for you to sign on the 27th? I'm confused, which I'll admit isn't an uncommon state for me. Will there be copies available in the Book Sales tent? Don't get me wrong, I'd be immensely happy for you to sign something else that I already own, but I'd love to know how this whole Graveyard thing can work, unless you have some sort of nifty time travel device that you've been working on in your spare time.

We have a special dispensation from Harper Collins to sell copies of The Graveyard Book at the National Book Festival (because it's, well, the National Book festival). The only downside on that is I don't think that copies sold on the Saturday will count on any of the bestseller lists, which start ticking on Tuesday night. But it would be silly to be there without books, and it's only three days, and I'm glad that Harpers thought it was a good idea.


I love some of your Books including Coraline...I can't wait to see the movie. I want to ask if its not much of a trouble is How can I contact Dave McKean? I also love his Artworks and I have to say your stories and His artwork are a very good combination. I have a lot questions I would like to ask Him as well. Thank you for your time to check this out...I hope that you continue your great works and am waiting for the Graveyard Book to come out ^_^


http://www.davemckean.com/
is now almost there. It has a front page up anyway. I'm sure that as soon as it goes live it will also have contact information. So that will be how people will contact Dave in the future. (And he's signing in Paris on the 4th of October).
...

When Kitty arrived she was wearing a new tee shirt which made me smile, as on it was a drawing which I'd done earlier this year when asked by Bloomsbury for a sketch of the kind of thing I was thinking of for a Graveyard Book cover, something they could show to Chris Riddell*, which I then sent Kitty when she asked about making a Graveyard Book tee shirt for Neverwear.net, to show her the kind of thing that was in my head when I was writing it, and the kind of direction that might be nice to go.


I didn't expect it to be a t-shirt, and I didn't expect to like the t-shirt that it became, but it's lovely.

...

I was checking something out today, and ran across what I think may be my favourite paragraph in ages. It's from a Chinese website about a county filled with conjurors and acrobats, and I shall reformat it as a poem, because I can:

People in Wuqiao County
are so knee on acrobatics
that they perform strings of somersault,
stack themselves up with amazing agility,
fight with fists or juggle magic
no matter in the streets or in the wheat fields,
even at the table or on the kang (bed).

Even some children hold the bottle
fully filled with oil or vinegar
when going to the store or grain supply center
buying oil or vinegar,
without one drop spilt. On rainy days,

groups of pupils walk in the rain with umbrellas
held on the nose. What’s more amazing,
on the wedding night,
eating cakes or drinking wine is effortless,
and the bride casts the candies
flying out with an empty hand
while the bridegroom send cigarettes
by clapping hands in the sky.


.....................................................................................................................................

*And because Chris Riddell can draw beautifully, and compose pictures just as well, he took my scratchy doodle idea and turned it into this:


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Wednesday, September 19, 2007

lunchblog

Thirteen interviews into the day and I'm trying hard not to repeat myself -- most popular questions so far this morning are What Are the Themes of Stardust, What Are the Origins of Stardust, and What Is Your Favourite Miyazaki Film?

The hardest bit about doing interviews in foreign languages is the long bit where you wait for your answer to be translated into the tongue of the person interviewing you. I noticed that words like Fantasy and Comedy and Cast seemed to be unchanged, and loanwords in the Japanese, which I can understand -- was more puzzled when a list of colours I'd given was transliterated.

Anyway -- links I've meant to put up here for a while...

The Guardian Great Interviews booklets are also on line
:

The Dennis Potter Interview is up at the Guardian Website. Best interview in the world, although it's strange to see it written down. Art and death.

I enjoyed the Francis Bacon interview as well (and enjoyed the Damien Hirst introduction). Also art and death.

(The Sex Pistols interview was great TV, especially when you haven't been 16 for three weeks, but I can't see the point of transcribing it really... still, it's at http://www.guardian.co.uk/greatinterviews/sexpistols/0,,2154659,00.html. Art and swearing.)

more later...

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Thursday, July 12, 2007

the circus drums in the distance...

This coming Monday the interview media circus for Stardust begins, or it does for me anyway. So I went in to Minneapolis yesterday and got a haircut from Wendy at Hair Police, so I will look less like a man with a honey badger growing on his head in the photographs, then I nipped down to DreamHaven and signed stacks of books for them (some that people had ordered and some so they could sell them over at their www.Neilgaiman.net shop). The circus starts Monday and then, with a few outbreaks of Beowulf on the way, it barely stops until about August the 3rd. Argh.

Let's see... Actor Doug Jones talks about me and Miss Maddy visiting the Hellboy set over at his blog, and the day the three of us went to Margaret Island. His blog is just like him. http://dougjones.wordpress.com/2007/07/08/i-think-im-still-alive/

(Here's Maddy and Doug -- sans Abe or Faun or Silver Surfer makeup -- on the bridge the Sunday of fountains and Viggo Mortenson, with Margaret Island in the background. The next time we saw Doug he had shaved off most of his hair, because it's more comfortable, and cooler, to have your head encased in latex if you look like a marine recruit.)

Film Ick reviews the script to Hellboy 2 at http://www.filmick.co.uk/2007/07/all-hellboy-2-you-can-handle-for-one.html.
From the bits they quote, it's obviously an earlier draft of the script than what's being shot currently in Budapest, but you definitely get the flavour. I enjoyed the first Hellboy film, but didn't think it was a major Guillermo Del Toro work. I'm pretty sure, from all I've seen and from reading the script, that the second film will be one of those sequels that improves and deepens and is seriously better than the first film in the sequence, rather than being one of those films that gets knocked out quickly to try and get people to buy tickets for something not quite as good as the thing they liked the first time around. Guillermo sees it as an upbeat, comic-book-based companion piece to Pan's Labyrinth, anyway.

...

I keep meaning to write about, or at least link to, Heather McDougal's Cabinet of Wonders

http://cabinet-of-wonders.blogspot.com/

which is fast becoming one of my favourite stopping off points on the web. It's a blog of essays and pictures of things I either know a bit about and wish I knew more, or about things I know nothing about and really really needed to. Everything from Ossuaries to astrolabes, automata, orreries and shadow-puppets, and even short films of stop motion beetles, like this one.

Start back in March and come forward, or just poke around the coolness...

And not far behind it for sheer interesting stuff, if a little more narrowly focussed, is

http://paleo-future.blogspot.com/

yesterday's future, today.

The link stolen from Eddie Campbell's blog, 1947 comic artists drawing their most famous characters blindfolded... http://a-hole-in-the-head.blogspot.com/2007/07/eyes-wide-shut-in-1947-life-magazine.html

And finally, for when you need a complete trilogy of movies condensed into one tiny pill (like those retro-future "instant roast beef dinner" pills from Just Imagine):

http://xkcd.com/c254.html

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Wednesday, March 28, 2007

be vewwy vewwy quiet...

I think, after doing readings and doing interviews and suchlike for two weeks, talking the whole time, I've just lost my voice. So I shall spend tomorrow being as quiet as possible, and saying as little as possible, because, since I am being interviewed and have a signing on Friday, and it would behoove me to have a voice back.

I finished the short story (a fictional love letter) today, at least in first draft. I think it needs some tweaking before it works, so I shall try not to read it until tomorrow, and then when I read it, I will pretend that I have never read it before...

(The Forbidden Planet signing on Friday is -- according to http://www.timeout.com/london/books/events/381731/neil_gaiman.html -- from 5.00 pm tp 6.30. Lots of signing. If you're in London, come and say hullo, and I trust I'll have a voice to say hullo back...)

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Friday, March 16, 2007

National Characteristics

It was one of those moments when you know you're in another country. Specifically Germany.

10:53 am – I'm in my hotel room answering a written interview questions when the phone rings. A woman's voice says,

"Hello. Mister Gaiman. This is reception. You must come down right now. There is someone here to interview you."

I say, "Er. He's actually a bit early, and I'm doing something..."

"Very good," she interrupts, firmly. "Then you will be down here in exactly seven minutes."

And she puts down the phone, leaving me bemused and leaving the interviewer, standing in front of her downstairs, fairly mortified.

I took nine minutes to get downstairs, thinking "Hah. That'll show her," as I did so, which really wasn't very fair on the interviewer.

The day's interviews were fun, the reading (in a Toyota Showroom, of all places) was very enjoyable, and I got to see the outrageously talented Dagmara Matuszak briefly and to learn what's going on with the Hill House Anansi Boys she's designed.

(While I can't tell you when Hill House will actually publish it, I'm happy to be able to say that I just learned from Peter Schneider at Hill House that he's set up a gmail account, with a person who will reply to all emails checking it, at hillhousepub@gmail.com. If you've had problems getting hold of him or anyone at Hill House, send an email there. If there's still problems, feel free to drop me a line.)


Dear Mr. Gaiman,
I had been thinking about the Subterranean(sp?) Press version of "M is for Magic" and it got me wondering. Does it ever bother you that sometimes these beautiful editions of your work are released and a great deal of your number one fans will never get to hold them, let alone own them because of the price tag? I am in no way saying these editions aren't worth the asking price, just wondering if you ever
wished they were more accessible. Hope your trip, family, and cats(especially Fred) are all well.
Thanks,
Troy


Not really. It would bother me if the expensive edition was the only edition of something that there was, that I wanted lots of people to read, but normally the expensive edition is expensive because it's a smaller print run, of a much higher quality, with special illustrations or similar, and they cost money. The Harper Childrens edition of M Is For Magic will be in a loverly affordable hardcover edition, priced for school libraries, and the first printing will be somewhere between 70,000 and 150,000 copies. The Subterranean edition will be in a comparatively tiny edition, and made for people who love books. I quite like the limited editions of things, mostly because I like beautiful books.

In your recent post you mentioned wanting a catapult as a child. In jest I am sure, but it reminded me of a time I was traveling through Europe and happened to be stranded at Heathrow for quite some time. In my boredom I happened upon a funny sign that listed among the things you most certianly could not bring on a plane, a hand catapult. I am not British, and was curious if that is what us Yanks refer to as a slingshot, or if it is something entirely different and much more destructive. =)
-Sean


An English catapult (or hand catapult) is an American slingshot, yes.


Dear Mr. Gaiman,There is a description for this contraption which says that it was made by an eccentric millionaire living in Utah. Seeing as you are eccentric, and at least assumably well-to-do, and living in my state, I was wondering if you could make one? And if you do, could you invite me over? I would bring deviled eggs, and curried chicken salad. http://geekologie.com/2007/01/girl_in_human_sling_shot.php
Much love,Rain

I don't have anywhere to set it up that wouldn't send her crashing into a tree, though...

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Sunday, October 12, 2003

Frankfurt Bookfair: Day 112.

I think I'm very done on interviews at the fair. They seem to be turning into a hellish blur, during which I've run out of nice, and polite, and cheerful. Today's penultimate interview, for example, from a radio site, done by someone who explained at the beginning that he had read my all comics but not my books, contained bits that went more or less like this:

--I have read your comics, and Sandman, and the theme of them is Personal Failure. What is the theme of your new book?

--Personal Failure.

--This failure. Is it yours?

--No, the readers.

--And your other books? What is their theme?

--Personal Failure. It's all I write about... actually, I can't ever remember writing about Personal Failure as a theme. What exactly were you thinking of?

--Er.

--Is there a specific story you're thinking about? That I wrote?

--Uh. The story, well, the one with the magician who gets the tattoo on his chest, a scorpion, to stop him doing bad magic...

--That's John Ney Reiber's Books of Magic. I didn't write that.... Look, have you actually read anything I've written?

I think we established that he hadn't -- he owned Death: The High Cost of Living, but admitted he didn't know what it was about, as he had only looked at the pictures and not tried to understand the story. It's not that I mind if an interviewer hasn't read anything, but I can't see why you'd do an interview trying desperately to give the impression that you have. Surely it just sets you up for trouble. It was certainly a lively interview after that.

Normally I'm very good at saying things like "Well, that's a very interesting question. Let's look at it another way..." when an interviewer says something dim. I was an interviewer once, after all. But I'm getting grumpy and impatient, and it's time to go home...

("What do you think of the Frankfurt Bookfair?" asked another interviewer.

"I think if I am a very evil man while I live, when I die I will be sent to a Frankfurt Bookfair that will go on forever in every direction, and will never end, and the interviews will never stop," I told him, honestly. I don't think that a multiple choice exam of possible correct answers to give journalists in answer to that question would have had that one listed.)

Ah well. The main lesson I'll take from this is to insist I actually get the occasional day off on tours like this. I've not had one, unless you count travel days, since I left for Washington some weeks ago, and I suspect that even if I'd just had one day of sleeping in, wandering a foreign city, buying presents and writing postcards home, in all this, I'd be a lot more chipper and less stressed. After all, you know that you're getting desperate when your main source of amusement is writing four-line poems about Martin Semmelrogge.

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Saturday, October 11, 2003

No Sleep Till Minneapolis

I am very, very tired. Up at 6:30 am to fly to Frankfurt, which wouldn't have been so bad if the "late dinner" last night in Hamburg scheduled for 10:00pm had happened at 10:00pm, but I was still signing then, so I didn't get to the restaurant until midnight, and got precious little sleep.

Did a lot of interviews today. Most were okay, but one interviewer asked such strange questions it started feeling like some kind of weird wind-up. And I was very tired. But that's still no excuse... (The real answer to "Did you ever meet or interview Douglas Adams when you wrote the book about him?" should actually have been "Of course I did. I interviewed him extensively between 1983 and 1987", and not, as I heard my mouth saying, "No, we never met. I think he was scared of me. I spoke to someone through a closed door at one point who claimed to be Douglas, but I think it was really one of his friends pretending to be him. It was all extremely disturbing.")

Lovely review of Wolves in the Walls in the Guardian.

Finished Will Birch's book "No Sleep Till Canvey Island" on the plane back to Frankfurt, the history of the London Pub Rock scene of the early 70s, and played the first Stiff Records Boxed Set on the iPod, which seemed about right. Good book, filled with excellent anecdotes, including a wonderful lesson in how unrelated people and events can create unintended consequences (in this case, a hippie film-editor with a dream of making a "pleasure dome" on an abandoned Martello Tower who hooked up with a con-man...) although the doomed New York Brinsley Schwartz launch hype is the best set-piece.

The web-site's down right now, so I have no idea when this will go up.

And now I'm going to bed.

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Friday, July 13, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 125

More from the Strange STuff People E-Mail Me Department: http://www.bookreporter.com/authors/au-gaiman-neil.asp is an interview with me (you have to page down past the biography stuff). http://www.kiplinger.com/spending/ is -- right now anyway -- something that lists the best prices of "this week's bestselling book, CD, DVD and software." American Gods is the book (and Fatbrain is currently the best price, it says).

Did a signing in Bristol at lunchtime which was lovely. It should have been an evening signing with a reading and stuff, really. Saw Diana Wynne Jones and several other friends, albeit too briefly in every case. Biut I got to tell Diana of Maddy's addiction to WARLOCK AT THE WHEEL, finally... Then got the train back and did an AOL chat, then London Live radio, now back in the hotel.

Up at the crack of dawn tomorrow to go to Norwich for a lunchtime signing, then on to Canterbury where I shall see Dave McKean and his family, which I am looking forward to.

Sunday is the Giles Brandreth radio show on LBC, and a desperate attempt to see as many people as possible. Monday is editorial meetings, sign 300+ books in the Headline offices, and, in the evening, do some filming and reading and such with Tori for some album stuff. Tuesday morning I fly home.

Wish I had some trenchant and brilliant comments to make on the media or something, but mostly I'm just pooped. People have stopped assuming I'm American though, and my daughter Holly, when I phoned home last night, said "Dad! You sound so English!" which I shall take as a compliment, although I'm not entirely sure that was how she meant it. Really, my accent is just a universal sort of case of "you aren't from round here, are you?"

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Thursday, July 12, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 123

http://www.usatoday.com/life/enter/books/2001-07-12-american-gods.htm is a fun review of American Gods....

Today was nice -- small lunchtime signing (50 people or thereabouts altogether) and so was the evening one. In between I grabbed some food and did several interviews, and after the ottakers in walsall signing we made a mad dash to get to Pebble Mill in time for a live interview, not enormously helped by having the only Taxi Driver in the midlands to whom one can say "BBC Pebble Mill, please" and whose reply is "Where's that, mate?" . Lucy Ramsey talked a lot on her mobile, and I sat in the taxi and didn't worry.We were talked in (via Lucy and her mobile) by a security guard at Pebble Mill

I am, on some things, a world class worrier, but when it comes to getting places on time, if I'm actually travelling towards them in a car or a train or a plane, I just shrug and go, I'll get there on time or I won't. Nothing I can do about it either way. And I don't worry.

So I didn't, and we made it by the skin of our teeth, and the interview was fun. And now I'm back in the hotel before midnight, which is more or less a first.

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American Gods Blog, Post 122

Let’s see, where were we? More to the point, where am I? (Stops. Thinks. Birmingham. Right. Knew it was Birmingham.) Just on my way to do a lunchtime signing at Andromeda Books – mainly because Andromeda was the place I signed first. It was with Kim Newman, in 1985, for a book called GHASTLY BEYOND BELIEF.

Tonight is Ottakers bookshop in Walsall – not a place I’d’ve picked to do a signing, on a tour that doesn’t take in Oxford, Cambridge or Reading, – but we’ll see how it goes.

The last couple of evening signings have been fun – Leeds two nights ago, and last night in Manchester, at Waterstones. They sold tickets (₤3.00 each) and people kept coming, several hundred of them, so the event moved from Waterstones to the church next door, which meant, I was told, No Swearing. It also meant that people didn’t get any free wine, cos it was a church.

So I read the Essie Tregowan story. Toward the end people got quieter and quieter and you could hear every squeak and echo. People laughed less, though.

The people and the organisation were both terrific. I saw Ramsey and Jenny Campbell and several other friends and old acquaintances, all-too briefly in every case. Thrown out of the church at ten p.m. as that was when the burglar alarm went on by, but a final dash of speed signing did it, then to the radio.

I had a few seconds before the interview to talk to the interviewer, so I checked to see if he’d read the book, and he hadn’t, which was good to know, as I explained more than I might have otherwise. But what was meant to be a 5 minute interview turned into a half hour chat on the air, and was very enjoyable.

Then back to the hotel, where there was no food to be had, for it was gone midnight, and all I’d had to eat since breakfast was some Tesco’s sushi that someone had brought to the signing (“my girlfriend says I’m mad but...”) so Lucy and I went to an Indian restaurant next door, and when the food wasn’t what I’d ordered I shut up and ate it, because I just wanted food and sleep. And then we walked back to the hotel, went off to our rooms, and slept the sleep of the dead. Well, I did. At 7.30 Lucy rang to say that she was still stuffed from eating a huge Indian meal at 1.00am and thought she’d skip breakfast, and I decided to do the same, so lay in the bath and read several pages of Harry Stephen Keeler’s THE CHAMELEON (the second half of the sequence that begins with THE MYSTERIOUS MR. I). An astonishingly brilliant and postmodern sort of device and structure underlies both books, marred only by the fact that the mystery of the narrator’s identity is starting to become wearisome. But as unreliable narrators go, this one is certainly up there.

On the train to Birmingham I planned to work, and instead I slept.

We’re edging up the UK charts – number 19 last week, number 16 this week.

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Friday, July 06, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 112

Interviews are funny things. Yesterday morning, in the hotel library, waiting for my room to be ready, I listened to the singer from the Cardigans, Nina, being interviewed at the chair next to mine. She was a nice Swedish lady. Some people wanted to talk about the music, and she did okay on those interviews.

Some were less prepared.

Like the Australian celebrity journalist with his appalling list of questions.

"So -- what DON'T your fans know about you?"

“Well, my private life. But it is private.”

“Come on love. Give us something. A secret. Something nobody knows. Come on.”

"...Er... I have a wart between my toes...?"

"Can't you get it frozen off?"

"Well, nobody can see it. It's between my toes."

"Do you have to wear larger shoes then?"

"No." (Embarrassed pause.) “I wear pointy shoes.”

“That wasn’t much of a secret really, was it.” The lady from the Cardigans shrugged apologetically. The reporter looked down at his list of questions... “So what’s the craziest thing a fan’s ever done?”

“They are very nice.”

“Crazy. Come on, one of your fans must be a little bit crazy...”

And so on, and on, and on.

At least most of my interviewers know who I am. (Except for the radio interviewer today. But then, it’s always a pleasant surprise when radio interviewers have read anything. I knew one who admitted to putting slips of paper into a book when the author was coming to the interview – three slips, one near the beginning, one in the middle, one near the end. It made it look as if he’d not only read the book, but he’d found important things he wanted to talk about. I doubt a single author was fooled.)

Today was interviews, launch party, dinner, and back to hotel by 12:30 am.... tomorrow, a signing at Forbidden Planet in Oxford Street. Starts at 1:00pm...

The interviews (and the interviewers) were good. Not a warty-toe question in the lot of them. Very different. My favourite was Nick Hasted who interviewed me for UNCUT, in something that felt a lot less like an interview and more like part of a conversation Nick and I have been having, an hour or so at a time every 2 years, for 6 or 7 years.

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Wednesday, July 04, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 109

A Very happy 4th of July to all our readers.

And while my family bustles about setting up the barbecue etc, I'm just about to fly to the UK for round two.

Warren James from the Hour 25 radio show e-mailed to tell me the interview he did with me is online at
www.hour25online.com . (link now fixed.)

See you in England...

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Friday, June 29, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 101

And the FAQs aren't working because I haven't had a second to start work on them. The questions are coming in just fine...

Still, until we get an FAQ working, let me point you to http://www.raintaxi.com/gaiman.html, an interview in RainTaxi, which may answer some American Gods questions. Or may not.

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Wednesday, June 27, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 98

Lovely article about, well, mostly this blogger actually, along with the very wonderful Lisa Gallagher of HarperCollins, at http://www.cnn.com/2001/CAREER
/readingup/06/26/american.gods/index.html. And I'd say more about it, but at that point you start walking through a hall of infinite mirrors...

I'm pooped right now in San Francisco. Will try to grab some time in the car on the way to SCREEN SAVERS later today to write about the last few days....

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Friday, June 22, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 91

This just in from Felicia Quon, HarperCollins Canada...

Hello Neil

I know you are on tour (it sounds like it is going very well) , but I wanted to let you know that we have added a signing in Toronto. Here are the details:

Sunday July 22 at 4 pm.
Indigo Books & Music
2300 Yonge Stree
Toronto, ON
Signing only


Contact: 416.544.8516

If this could be posted on americangods.com...

Her wish is our command. And Salon.com has a review up at http://www.salon.com/books/review/2001/06/22/gaiman/ which I really liked. It seemed to be writing about the book I`d written, and I was pretty conscious of the things she points to -- Jesus actually did turn up in a scene which I cut, as it just didn`t work, but I figured a book about American Religion was not the book I wanted to write, which was about American Belief, so I let some things go...

In Chicago. Did STARS OUR DESTINATION at Lunch time, (@200 people, @140 American Gods sold). And I have been assured by Jennifer Hershey that we have become the fastest ever selling american title in Oslo. Hurrah for Norway.
posted by Neil Gaiman 3:42 PM

In Chicago. Did a signing in Champaign this evening. Nice store, about 375 nice people, over 175 American Gods sold by the store, and they also had some sushi around for a tired author at the end. In the car on the way home I found myself unexpectedly doing a radio phone in with WGN`s Steve and Johnnie. Then I slept in the car. Now I post this. Then I sleep some more.

Oddest interview was with a local paper today on the phone. "So," said the journalist. "I guess it must be a real rockstar life on the road. Do you travel with a full entourage? Like a chef and a hairdresser?"

Eagle-eyed readers of this journal may already have intuited that I was forced to disappoint him. For a moment I was tempted to start talking about Alyssa and Armando and Arnold (the butler) -- but in the end I told the truth. It`s me, a book escort, and -- for a couple of days, for her first time on the road -- my editor, Jennifer Hershey, getting a first-hand view of a signing tour.

I bet when she goes back to New York she`ll recommend the whole chefs and hairdressers bit to HarperCollins. But until then, I`m my own entourage.

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Friday, June 15, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 86

So, just as everything gets REALLY exciting, and I have a day to finish organising everything for the next 6 weeks, do several interviews including an NPR one and an online chat at excite.com tonight...

...comes the news that this blogger may have to be frozen for a couple of days, as the changeover to the still-nascent neilgaiman.com happens behind the scenes. Keep checking in here, as I'll post as soon as it goes live again (and this page will automatically take you over to its new location).

Also just discovered that the old Avon neverwhere pages are completely lost, which is a pity, as they were lot of fun.

And Powells.com have put up that journal entry that got out of hand -- you'll find me talking about it in the archives, fairly early on. It was me trying to explain the book, and it just sort of grew. it's at http://www.powells.com/features/gaiman.html

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Thursday, May 31, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 65

I've spent the last few days doing occasional chunks of interview with a journalist named Janet Kornbluth from USA Today, about the Scifi.com Seeing Ear Theatre production of SNOW, GLASS, APPLES. The article/interview's in USA TODAY today, which means it's at

http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ebrief.htm

(if you're reading this in a week or so, of course, it'll have crept off to some other place in the USA Today archives and you'll have to go and find it yourself.)

And if you don't know what Snow, Glass, Apples is, then you're better off going straight to the scifi.com website and listening to it. (To be honest, every site gives you more information than you need, going into it. I think when Harper do it as a CD, then all they will know is that it's a retelling of an old story..)

And -- as an additional note -- the play of Snow Glass Apples is in two parts, and they've only posted the first part this week... I can't see anywhere on the site where it says when the next bit goes up. Next week? In two weeks time?

The USA TODAY article also gives a link to americangods.com. (We actually spent more time talking about this journal, why I was doing it, what I got out of it, why I was doing it as a blog, all that, than we did about Snow, Glass, Apples. Janet may be doing an article on authors and online journals, so this place may pop up again.)

With American Gods coming out, I was hesitant to do the interview, to be honest, mostly because I remember what it was like to be a journalist. Most of the time, it felt like when I wanted to do an article or an interview, I would approach the editor and the editor would say "Mm. We've already done it/him/her." Particularly irritating when I'd wanted to write an article on Alan Moore or Art Speigelman, to be told that the paper in question couldn't do it because they'd "already done comics this year" -- and "already done comics" would normally mean they'd done an article on the 40th birthday celebrations of Desperate Dan or Korky the Kat, complete with a quote on the character's perennial popularity from a junior director at publisher D.C. Thompsons.

So let us hope that we can still get one of those nice USA Today articles on the book, when the book itself comes out.

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Tuesday, May 22, 2001

American Gods Blog, Post 56

Actually there are two other UK signings on Saturday the 14th of July: Ottakers in Norwich at 11:00am and Waterstones in Canturbury at 7:00 pm. I'll post the details when I get a chance.

Sorry about the silence. I went to Brazil and have had a difficult time getting online. Right now I'm in an office in FNAC, a book and stationary store in the heart of Sao Paolo. There's a noise coming up the stairs like the low susurrus of a horde of vandals on their way to sack a city, or possibly just the crowd at a rock concert, which seems to be the people here to get their books signed. I'm meant to do a reading first, and may perversely do an American Gods reading, or less perversely a Sandman:Dream Hunters reading (in English, not in Portuguese, although the Brazilian edition is the one I'm here for.)

Sore throat, mostly from shuting to be heard at the Rio book fair, where the background decibells were scary, and from continual interviews ever since.

Did an MTV interview today that was enormously fun.

And I have to go as the TV crew are here to interview me (45 minutes late. This is Brazilian Time, and it no longer causes me to turn a hair, although if this were the US I'd be having kittens.)

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