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posted by Neil Gaiman

In a friend's old old house today, as Amanda records in the basement studio and I write in a corner, while Ash sleeps in his seat beside me. Rain lashes the windows and the wind shakes the shutters, and it seems like a proper English Summer as far as I'm concerned.

Today is the publication date for THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS, my collection of non-fiction, of essays and speeches and introductions. It's out. it looks like this:


Or it looks like this:

What View accomplishes, though, is considerable. Broken up into sections — "What I Believe," "Music and the People Who Make It," "Some People I Have Known," "Make Good Art," and so on — his musings shine with wit, understatement, and a warm lack of pretention. He speaks of "backing awkwardly away from journalism" in his youth, the first step of his eventual metamorphosis into an award-winning fantasy author with a fanatical following, and reflects on the patterns that arise in our lives: "Events rhyme."
Accordingly, View draws order out of the seeming chaos of Gaiman's scattershot career, from journalism to comics to novels to children's books to screen adaptations. He talks about his life, but always through the lens of an external subject, usually on object of passion: the superhero comics of the legendary Jack Kirby, the transgressive songs of Lou Reed, the way "the shape of reality — the way I perceive the world — exists only because of Doctor Who." That was written in 2003, before Gaiman actually wrote for Doctor Who; similarly, his many ruminations onAmerican Gods, his greatest work of prose, take on a deeper resonance now that the book is well on its way to becoming a cable TV series.
Gaiman is a writer above all, though, and his entries about writing and reading make up the meat of View. They range from the deeply personal, eerily poignant "Ghosts in the Machines: Some Hallowe'en Thoughts," first published in the New York Times, to an appreciation of the element of dreams in H. P. Lovecraft's work — a particularly illuminating topic, as one of Gaiman's most beloved characters, Morpheus of The Sandman, is the deity of dreams himself. Even more intriguing is "All Books Have Genders," a meditation on the making of American Gods — as well as a humble assessment of his authorial flaws — in which he offers the succinct slogan "Novels accrete," an entire master class on the creative process summed up gracefully in two words.

(Photo of Ash NOT smiling as a bonus, because people keep asking if he ever stops being happy. He's happy pretty much all of the time, but here's one of him looking pensive.)

posted by Neil Gaiman

I've been very bad at blogging for the last three months. I've actually been pretty bad at everything for the last three months, except for changing a baby, bathing a baby, remembering the words to old nursery rhymes, and helping Amanda to get enough sleep.

People ask me what cool new music I've been listening to, and all I can think of is Wally Whyton's 50 More All-Time Children's Favourites (which I had on LP when I was tiny and recently downloaded on MP3) and the Ellis/Laycock/Broadside Band's Old English Nursery Rhymes (which I'm only allowed to play when Amanda is not in earshot, even though it calms the baby like magic). Nobody seems very interested in my opinions about nappies aka diapers (when we use disposables, we use the Andy Pandy bamboo ones, no! come back! I used to be interesting...) or baby clothes (huge fan of the Magnificent Clothes magnetic clothes line, which allow you to get up in the night and change the baby without ever waking up enough to figure out complicated things like snaps or buttons or velcro) or...

There. No brain. I sound like a walking advert for baby things. If I get email done, or something read, I'm proud of myself. The rest of the time, it's changing the baby. Who mostly seems amused by the whole thing...



I've finished the giant proofread for a book coming out in May, called THE VIEW FROM THE CHEAP SEATS. It's a collection of my nonfiction.  It's not every speech, introduction or article I've written, but it's all the speeches that seemed important, all the articles I was still proud of, all the introductions that seemed to be about something bigger than just telling people about the book or author they were going to read. (Kat Howard helped such a lot: she went through the archives, read everything, and made an initial call about what should go in or go out. Then she sighed whenever I changed my mind or remembered a forgotten piece I'd written about something).

I'm about three months behind right now, on everything. And I'm cooking a new novel in the back of my head, which I was meant to start next week, but may be as far as three months away while I finish things that people are waiting for.

I'm thrilled that people have been buying and saying nice things about Sandman: Overture (bit.ly/OvertureDeluxe).  It's been eight weeks at the top of the NYT Graphic Novel bestseller list, and it's made it onto lots of End of the Year Best Of lists, The consensus seems to be that it added something real to the Sandman story, and I'm not sure I wanted anything more than that, apart from the joy of working with J. H. Williams III.



Yesterday was our fifth wedding anniversary. It was a quiet day, with a lot of love in it. We did not need to sacrifice the baby to the Fish Gods, or send him into space in an attempt to save him from this doomed planet before it explodes. I'm profoundly grateful to his gorgeous, brilliant and kind mother, my wife and friend and partner and love. I wouldn't change a thing.

It's worth all the sleep I've lost.

And I'll try and be a better Blogger, in the months to come, and a worse Tweeter and Facebooker and Tumblrer.

Thank you for sticking around.

Scorch - Demolitions Expert

Sev - Sniper and Combat Specialist












Well I guess I'll talk about some Graphic Novels I've read a late and maybe convince ye their worth a look at:

Salt Water Taffy: The Adventures of Jack and Benny - The Legend of Old Salty by Matthew Loux - This Graphic Novel is about two brothers Jack and Benny whose parents have decided to take the whole family away from the city and to spend the summer in the state of Maine at the weird and mysterious Chowder Bay. The two brothers, Jack and Benny, make fast friends with one of the locals known around those parts as Fisherman Angus O'Neil. One evening the boys see something huge and monstrous on the beach, but can't quite make it out. After talking to Angus they discover that Chowder Bay has a mysterious resident in the waters known as Old Salty. This leads to strange robberies by lobsters, very strange behavior by seagulls and an epic battle between Old Salty and Angus. Does any of this make sense? If not read this excellent Graphic Novel and it all will. I really loved this book and look forward to the next in the series.

Marvel Adventures Hulk, Volume 3: "Strongest One There Is" by Paul Benjamin & Steve Scott - In this latest installment of Hulk adventures the title pretty much sums up what is contained in this Graphic Novel. The Hulk in four bombastic stories takes on both super strong villains and friends. The Hulk just seems to get himself in bad situations wherever he ends up. In the first story the Hulk takes on one of Bruce Banner's friends in Doc Sampson, both brain and muscle, as he to has been exposed to gamma radiation (but not to the extent that Banner was) and retains his considerable Psychiatrist I.Q. In the second story our mean green smashing machine takes on one of the X-Men's most dangerous enemies the unstoppable Juggernaut. In the third story, through a series of misunderstandings, the Hulk goes up against the ever loving blue eyed Thing. As if that was not enough, in the last story the Hulk, Doc Sampson, the Thing and the Juggernaut all go up against an enemy strong enough to challenge them all!!!!! If you like the Incredible Hulk, you will love these stories that cover issues 9 - 12 of the comic. A definite two thumbs up!!!!!