Waiting for Stephin

I'm working on something I can't talk about, while awaiting the arrival of Stephin Merritt, out to work on a project that I can't talk about (a different one). I feel like I should start putting my collar up and talking in code phrases.

Neil,

I read your post today regarding "cashing in" on Blueberry Girl and Crazy Hair. It totally pisses me off when people can't be happy for the success of others when it's righfully due. I have seen this phenomenon on message boards of popular bands. You'll have people that will love a band until said band starts getting out in the mainstream and starts selling CDs, then suddenly the band has "sold out" or "sucks." Anyways, glad you haven't let it get you down.

Quick question: Will you be attending San Diego Comic-Con this year? It will be my first "con" and it would rock to meet ya!

Peace,

Jonesy

You're too kind. I think I've sort of made that crossing over the last month, and it's okay. I liked it best when I felt like anyone who liked my stuff had me as a private thing the world didn't know about, and I'm not sure, post Newbery and Coraline film, that that'll be true again, or if it is it may take a little while to happen. It's always nice to discover someone and feel that, in some way, you own them, or a little bit of them, because they aren't public.

No plans to be at Comic-Con this year. My only real convention plans are to be Guest of Honour at WorldCon in Montreal in August. Here's the English website: http://www.anticipationsf.ca/English/Home. Worldcons are wonderful things, and I have the fondest memories of my first one, 21 years ago -- meeting Julie Schwartz for the first time, being the last person left in the bar with William Gibson at 5.00 am, pitching George R R Martin on an idea for a Wild Cards character who like, lived in dreams...

Hiya, Neil!

My husband and I are both in the field of advertising here in Portland, OR (he's a motion graphics designer; I'm an interactive producer) so imagine my glee when I read in today's Oregonian that a little movie called "Coraline" was going to save Oregon's economy! I knew your books had changed my life metaphorically-speaking, but who'dathunk that one of your books would literally change my world?

http://blog.oregonlive.com/portlandarts/2009/03/in_the_coraline_economy_we_tru.html

Thanks from the bottom of the heart of the creative world here in Portland!

Mikki

That's rather marvellous. Thank you Mikki.

I, like a thousands of others, have been a fan of yours for a long time. It started with American Gods back in 2003 at a B&N and it sort of spiraled from there. Anyway, I was curious if you would ever be returning to the Adult Fiction side literature? I am a fan of your young readers books, but there is something even more fantastical to your novels.

Also, please find a place in comics and stay there, I miss you.

Best,

Jacob Kohl

As long as I'm alive and writing I expect I'll continue to do this peripatetic sort of dance, in which I wander from children's books to adult novels, from picture books to big non-fiction things, from TV to radio to short stories to movies, and sometimes take in things that happen on the stage on the way. So yes, I'll do more adult novels. And I'll do more comics. But I won't stay there.

...and Stephin Merritt just arrived. His luggage, however, did not arrive. Also not with him is his gate-checked bouzouki. I can set him up with spare pajamas and toothbrush and such, but I do not have a bouzouki here.

Labels: Stephin Merritt, the absence of bazoukis, the perils of famousness

Trees

Just a small post to say that the snow is falling and falling and falling, and walking the dog is like walking into a Christmas Card, and that http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/christmas08/entertainment/neil-gaiman-hanukkah-with-bells-on-1203307.html is the small, true memoir I wrote for the Independent on Amanda Palmer's tourbus in Chicago two weeks ago.

It should have been a ghost story, but there you are.

...

Mostly the emails that break one's heart don't ever get posted here. This one I replied to, but, with names removed, I'm also putting it up here...

Hi Neil! My name is [name removed]. This is going to be pretty random, but I hope that you actually recieve and read this message. I have been dating [name also removed] and [he] informed me that you were his brother. This christmas I want to make him a personalized journal with photos of his friends and family. I was wondering if you had any photos of your family, the rest of your brothers of even your father. I'm having some trouble collecting photos from [him] and your father's side of the family. I understand that you might not take this message seriously but I honestly hope you do. If you have any doubts about whether I am actually dating [him] or just some crazy fan call and ask him about me, but please don't mention the journal. I don't want the surprise to be ruined. Thanks for you time and hopefully I'll have some pictures in my email inbox soon?

...and I told her that I don't have any brothers, just sisters, and that I didn't know the gentleman she had named, and that I was sorry. And I really am.

I never know how to respond to people who have been dealing with people who pretend to be me (it's happened a few times now) or pretend to be friends with me. This is the first time someone's claimed to be family...

...

Russell Cherrington wrote in to let me know that Harrods still have copies of the Bloomsbury signed and limited edition of The Graveyard Book for 25 pounds. (Most places in the UK are, he told me, out of them, and they're on eBay for 75 pounds.)

sir

what order should I read The Sandman in?

thanks

rob.

It would probably work best if read in order, but it doesn't matter that much. Just make sure you read the last two books last. (Which reminds me: this is one of the most interesting pieces I've read about Sandman in ages.)

...

Also, an Amazon oddity that made me happy -- The Thirteen Clocks, by James Thurber is riding high in the Amazon.com top 100. (#33 as I type this.)It's the one I did an introduction for, and that my burbling about in this very blog helped bring back into print. I'm hoping that people will get it as presents and that they will read it aloud to each other.

It's a wonderful book.

(Edit to add: Aha! It's Daniel Pinkwater's fault! http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98558194 Listen to the talk.)



(And the UK Amazon is selling The Graveyard Book for 50% off. Which is disconcerting.)

Labels: bookshops, family ties, Sandman, the perils of famousness

Q: Was this the face that launched a thousand ships? A: No.

Hi Neil,

Go on, show us a picture. You know you want to ;-)

David

Here's a cameraphone pic I took for curious friends. It was taken yesterday, just after the doctor left, still a bit stunned. (In the strange way of these things, my doctor was just driving past, and called to see if I was around and could offer encouragement on his novel, just after the incident occurred. So I had a doctor there in minutes.)

Today I look much less stunned, the nose is even bigger, and there's emu oil and germoline on the cut to stop it scabbing and help with scarring. Opinions around here are divided on whether or not I'll have panda-eyes for New York. Opinions are also divided on whether I should try and cover the bruising up with make-up for the interviews on Friday, or whether I should use latex and a small bottle of Kensington Gore to make it look more interesting (my heart goes with the latter, my head for the former).

I drove Maddy to school this morning. She has an extremely cool crescent-shaped scar next to her eye, from when, as a small child, she ran into the corner of a table. She said,

"Will you get a scar?"

"Maybe."

"I like my scar. You know, I get people I've known since kindergarten asking me about it, these days, as if they've just noticed it."

"Really? What do you tell them."

"What you told me to tell people who asked."

I racked my brains. Nothing. "What was that?"

"I tell them I got it in a swordfight."

"Oh. Good."

Dear Neil

What is it like to live in a world where one can call up some famous movie producer (or was it a director) and chat? Is it nice? Or is it a little bit lonely sometimes? Or am I just being presumptuous?

Thanks for your time.

Ian


Not presumptuous, but it's just sort of irrelevant, at least the famousness bit. Friends are friends and people you work with are people you work with. If you're working with them it takes about 20 seconds to get over the feeling of, "Oh my god I'm in a room talking to X!" and to get on with whatever it is you're meant to be doing (if it's work). If they're your friends you only become aware of the famousness thing when someone else says "Excuse me, was that X?" or asks for an autograph or something.

I wouldn't phone up a famous film director or producer to chat. But I might phone a friend, who produced or directed, and was famous, to chat. Big difference.

I'm lucky in that I'm not a celebrity, and I'm not really famous. I'm well known for what I do among the sort of people who like what I do, and I wouldn't want to be more famous. And famous is, for pretty much all of the people I know who are, a side-effect or by-product of doing what they do, which is pretty much always what they love doing, and it's not a particularly desirable by-product at that.

(Not necessarily a bad one either -- you can do good things with it. Gillian Anderson's used hers to help push National Doodle Day -- a neurofibromatosis fund-raiser that raises money from celebrity doodles. http://doodledayusa.org/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=134 has doodles by lots of interesting people that will go up on eBay in a month. Although the ones I like best are from the less famous and the more draw-y, like Sergio Aragones, Gahan Wilson, and Kendra Stout (who did the "scary trousers" t- shirt, and just did a mouse pad for Cat Mihos's Neverwear.net) and Fred Hembeck. Also there are two by me.)

Lonely, when it happens and wherever in the world it happens, is lonely, and that has nothing to do with famousness (except as a sort of an occasional by-product of, Because I do what I do I'm sitting in a hotel-room in a country where I don't know anyone a long way from my family and friends. And authors don't have it bad compared to, say, stand-up comedians or truck drivers). But then, I'm also the kind of person who daydreams about booking a passenger cabin on a merchant ship and going off around the world for six months writing a book.

Dear Neil,

I have just discovered that brightly colored bubbles are available, and go by the name Zubbles (http://www.zubbles.com/index.asp). Considering the story you read in Helena last year, I thought you might want to know, although since the website has a 2005 copyright date, maybe you already do.

Speaking of the story, I'm really looking forward to "Orange," and the rest of The Starry Rift. It comes out right before my birthday, and it seems fitting that I could get it a year after I got to hear you read "Orange," which was a one-day-late birthday present from my parents (who bought the tickets) and my best friend. (She drove us from Missoula to Helena, even though she'd only seen Mirrormask and knew nothing else about you! She loves Stardust now, and she liked Good Omens, too.)

- anna

It's mortifying to discover you're the kind of SF writer who can imagine something futuristic after it's been invented, isn't it? Soon I shall imagine the "air-plane" -- a fixed-wing heavier than air flying machine!

This just came in from Jonathan Strahan, editor of The Starry Rift:

I've set up a website at www.thestarryrift.com which contains
information about the book, downloads of the cover art, short interviews
with some of you (they'll appear one a day over the coming week or so), and
as much relevant stuff as I can muster.

I've also arranged a chance for readers to win some copies of the book.
Thanks to Viking, I'm giving away a copy of The Starry Rift to the first
five readers who email me at thestarryrift@gmail.com and tell me the name of
the last science fiction novel they loved and why. The details are at
http://thestarryrift.com/win/

...

Dear Mr. Gaiman,

I was wondering if the techno-masters behind your website might be able to turn the countdown for the upcoming American release of The Graveyard Book, which appears on your homepage, into one of those iGoogle "gadget" thingies. That way I can put it on my 'iGoogle' homepage next the "gadget" I have for Frank Miller's "The Spirit" movie.

Most Sincerely, Daniel Crandall

I forwarded it to Dan Guy, the webgoblin, and he sent back, within a couple of minutes:

Here's an off-the-shelf countdown clock for THE GRAVEYARD BOOK. I may try to create a most customized one as well.

Click here for the igoogle GRAVEYARD gadget.

Labels: doodles, Neverwear tee shirts, photo of me having just been bonked in the face by a pipe propelled by a dog, the perils of famousness

The past tense of looming

The chipmunk was still in my drainpipe. It made noises in the night. It threw wild chipmunk parties on the other side of the wall to the headboard of my bed. Something had to be done. There was a trail of birdseed leading in to the drainpipe, left by the chipmunk. I thought, right. Best thing to do is to catch him and then move him somewhere else, and while he was out to put something in the drainpipes like a metal grille or wire-wool or something a chimpunk cannot get through.

There's a live trap in the garage I've used over the years to relocate woodchucks. I got it and put it at the base of the drainpipe. I filled a bowl with sunflower seeds as bait and put it into the trap. I went inside to answer the phone.

"Any particular reason you're trapping squirrels?" asked my assistant Lorraine as she came in.

"You mean chipmunks," I said. And then, "Oh bugger."

I went out and freed the squirrel from the trap, who ran up into a tree and shouted rude things at me in Squirrel. Things so obviously rude and personally insulting that I was just relieved I don't speak squirrel.

The chipmunk is still, of course, in my drainpipe.

I do not care, because I am off for the Beowulf junket and premiere and will not sleep in my bed for a while. Maybe by the time I get home he'll have moved.

...

More information on the Dave McKean "Luna" origami crabs at

http://jamesmclark.blogspot.com/2007/11/origami-emergency.html

a "Nice Hair" Hallowe'en treat from Miss Em -- a three page story in which her Neil character becomes... ah, but that would be telling... (I liked the way he was lured out by a cup of tea most of all...)

http://www.yinepu.net/nicehair_halloween_07.html

Hi Neil.

I was wondering if the looming writer's strike has the potential to impact any of your projects.

-Mike

Aurora, CO

More than looming. It has loomed, and I am now On Strike. I've never been On Strike before. (Mark Evanier's blog -- http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_11_02.html -- gives a lot of background and information on today's events, and http://www.newsfromme.com/archives/2007_11_03.html#014294 adds to it.)

And yes, it impacts some of my projects. It means that the US TV network that wanted to option a book of mine to make into a TV series isn't going to be able to buy it (or anything else of mine) until the strike is done. It means that I'm not going to be able to do the rewrites and polishes on the 1999 NEVERWHERE movie script for Hensons and the Weinstein Company until the strike is done. It means that Roger Avary and I won't be able to rewrite or polish or work on BLACK HOLE. That I can't discuss or sign on to (MOVIE X) until the strike's done.

I also need to talk to the WGA and find out whether I can write a TV project for the BBC (I suspect the answer will be No, but I should ask).

It doesn't impact Beowulf, which was written in 1997 and rewritten in 2005, and Roger Avary and I will still be doing the press for it, because that's not a writing job. I don't know if it impacts Henry Selick's work (as a writer, not as a director) on Coraline or not -- probably not.

Truth to tell, I'm in a slightly better position than most WGA writers in that I can (and do) write books and things that aren't TV and films in addition to writing TV and films, so all it means is I'm now going to finish writing a book a would have finished writing anyway, and when that's done I'll raise my head above the parapet, blink, look around and figure out what I'm going to do next.

...

I was talking a few days ago about having somewhere to put photos of all the Hallowe'en costumes based on stuff I'd written, and Emily rose to the challenge:

Calling all Neil fans:

A Flickr site has been created so that you can share photos of any Neil-inspired costumes, crafts, or other creations that you have made. The photo album can be viewed here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/inspiredbyneil

Instructions on how to submit your photos to the album are here:

http://www.flickr.com/people/inspiredbyneil/

We've already got a couple of submissions. Keep 'em coming!

...

Hi Neil,



Just curious, how do you see this journal of yours, especially in relation to the newly rising blog culture that we have here, as well as your growing fame-itude? It seems that when you first started, no one really knew what to write in these internet thingies, and now even dogs have blogs. Where do you see yourself on the blog spectrum? Related to this, I remember you mentioning at a talk several years ago that you wanted to limit your fame-itude by not getting your photo into books and suchlike (citing Stephen King as an example, I think). And yet I can "see" you every day in my rss feed aggregator, along with images of Maddy and odd videos here and there. So my question is, what has changed over the last few years? Your view on fame-itude? Your blogging habits? The internet?

Many thanks,

~Sushu

I've never minded author photos on books -- the Stephen King thing I would have mentioned was Steve telling me that he wished he had never done the American Express "Do You Know Me?" ad, when suddenly people knew what he looked like. It moved his face into public consciousness. (I'm glad to say I don't think I'm there yet -- and I hope I never will be.)

I guess I'm more famous than I'm comfortable with, but that's just something that is, and I don't think there's much that can be done about it. I don't think it has much to do with the blog, or with the fact that you can watch videos of me on YouTube. And I've managed to go many years without seeing myself on the blog spectrum, but if I have to be anywhere I'd like to be at the point where the indigo shades into the violet, please.

Labels: chipmunk in my drainpipe, Squirrel billingsgate, the perils of famousness, writers' strike

goggling

There's an interview over in Time Out New York today that suggests that I'm about going to move from whatever cult famousness I have to being someone who is recognised in delicatessens. I hope that doesn't happen. I've spent about 15 years turning down things like People Magazine and the David Letterman Show mostly because I didn't want to be famous in that way, remembering Stephen King's comment to me back in 1992 that if he had his life to live over again the main thing that he would change would be the "Do you know me?" American Express TV advert. He wouldn't do it, because somehow his face entered the public domain at that point. I prefer a world in which the people who don't know me or what I do also don't know my name or what I look like...

Personally I think the genie will stay in the bottle. But we'll see.


I saw your talk about Henry Raddick. Just wondering if you've come across Wayne Redhart on amazon.co.uk?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/cdp/member-reviews/AZN3ZSQQU3WW5/203-8036728-7975947?ie=UTF8&display=public&page=1

Andrew

I hadn't, but I have now. The comments are often funny, but sometimes the simple existence of the item itself left me goggle-eyed and giggling.

...

There's a really lovely new STARDUST statue coming out, designed and modelled by Charles Vess. Details at http://www.dccomics.com/dcdirect/?dcd=7061&cat=STATUES&lst=new.
I notice that you can get it extremely cheaply (at cost -- almost half price) over at http://atlantiscomicsonline.blogspot.com/2007/08/arriving-887-and-stardust-staue-deal.html

from a store that over-ordered (thinking it was the poster)and needs to shift them...



(Which reminds me -- someone let me know that Amazon.com is deep discounting the ANANSI BOYS audiobook on MP3 CD that Lenny Henry recorded. I don't think the MP3 CD audiobook experiment, which I was pushing for, actually worked very well, but if you plan to put in on an ipod or computer, or have an MP3 CD player, it's a great way to get the audiobook without getting a dozen CDs.)

...

If you're in the Atlanta area, once you've seen Stardust on Friday night, you could see Mirrormask on Saturday the 11th on the big screen at the Centre for Puppetry Arts -- http://www.puppet.org/edu/education.shtml#mirrormask.

...

Interesting interview with Matthew Vaughn at http://www.superherohype.com/news/topnews.php?id=6109
I'd always wondered what he meant by the Princess Bride meets Midnight Run comparison, but reading his explanation, I finally got it.

...

Am reading Steve Aylett's book LINT right now -- a biography of a fictitious SF writer, someone a little like Philip K Dick. Reading it very slowly, because I keep wanting to read bits out loud to people. It's astonishingly funny, but I have no idea whether or not anyone who isn't me would laugh at it. Or with it.

Labels: LINT, MP3 Cds, the perils of famousness