The event with Susanna Clarke was lovely, except for the, oh, 45 minutes or thereabouts that all 250 of us spent standing outside on the pavement in the cold, waiting for the fire brigade to establish that the problems in the nanotech lab next door were a false alarm.
I was asked tonight who'd win in a fight -- probably a no holds barred cage match, I suspect -- between me and Bill Gibson. I said me, but my daughter Holly, who was there, just laughed at me afterwards and said she couldn't imagine me fighting anyone. Holly says that Me vs Bill Gibson would be like a fight between a baby bunny and a duckling, and she is probably right.
I'm still really jet-lagged. I feel as if the going-to-Japan and the coming-back-from-Japan crash came at the same time -- just had a completely failed conversation with my agent, who soon figured out that the communication things simply wasn't happening, and told me to call him back tomorrow.
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If you're in the UK, remember that next Tuesday, Oct 2nd is the big event at the Criterion:
Tuesday 02 October 07 Event 422 at 18:00
Neil Gaiman in conversation
Featuring: Neil Gaiman
Exclusive event-only book signing afterwards, at Waterstone's Piccadilly
Don't miss this one-off London appearance by one of the world’s greatest imaginative minds, and author of many bestselling novels, including American Gods, Anansi Boys, and the cult novel Stardust . The film of Stardust, directed by Matthew Vaughan and starring Claire Danes, Charlie Cox, Sienna Miller, Ricky Gervais, Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert De Niro, premieres in London on Wednesday 3 October at Odeon Leicester Square. We have a pair of tickets to the premiere: all ticket-holders to the event will be entered into a draw and the winner will be announced after the performance.
Price: £5.00
Venue: Criterion Theatre, Piccadilly http://www.criterion-theatre.co.uk/
http://www.hayfestival.com/wales/browse.aspx?type=date&value=02-Oct-2007
I think I'll probably do a reading from
Stardust as part of it. If you want to come, it's always wisest to order tickets early -- there will probably be seats on the night, but you can never be too sure.
(Also the Bath Children's Literary Festival event is this Saturday at 6.00pm --
http://www.bathkidslitfest.co.uk/event_J19.htm for details.)
Mr. Gaiman,I live in Beijing and your CCTV interview just aired (Sept. 25). I was really impressed that you could follow her random questions. I was disappointed that you were not deemed important enough to get the male reporter who usually interviews heads of state. I wanted you to know that the piece had aired and may air again Sept. 26. Thanks, Kade
Not to worry. I'm not a head of state.
Neil, Neil, Neil, Neil! Reading your blog can be so bloodly frustrating! What was your opinion of that Lolita restaurant? What do you, as a father of a young teenage daugther on the threshold of her maidenhood thinks of those young women exploiting the idea of pedophilia?I'm not comfortable enough with the by-roads of Japanese pop culture to be able to say what exactly
was going on in that place, but it didn't seem to be about paedophilia, not in any way I understand the term. It seemed to be about a whole set of cultural cues that I wasn't really able to read -- the clientele were about 60/40 male to female, most of the men were the same age as the girls working there (early 20s), and I got the impression it was much more about the girls getting to exercise their fantasies of being maids, whatever maids were in this context, and the customers of both genders seemed to enjoy playing rock, paper, scissors with them. My opinion was one of, mostly, complete bafflement and bemusement, and I was there because the guide felt that, like the fish market and the Meiji Shrine and the modern art museum, going to one of the maid cafes was one of the unique things about Tokyo.
Hi Neil, I have a quick question about agents and the submission process...Months ago, shortly after completing my first novel (YA fantasy), I drew up a list of agencies that I thought might be a match. Several envelopes were dispatched to said agents. Fingers were crossed.I waited.Three weeks later, the replies began trickeling in. A few were form rejections; others had some decent comments, but were rejections all the same.Then an unfamiliar envelope fell through the letterbox. It turns out that this was the reply from my Dream Agency (why not aim high?). The gist of the letter was this: Your writing shows great promise, but this is not yet ready for representation. Send us your next project.Here is my question:My second novel, which I think is a stark improvement on the first, is almost ready. Should I send it exclusively to my new contact at The Literary Agency Of My Dreams? Or should I treat the process exactly as I did first time round, and send out simultaneous submissions? Many thanks for your time.I don't think there are any rules. If it was me, I'd send it to the new contact who thought you had potential, with a letter saying,
you said to send you my next project and this is it, and I'm not showing it to anyone else until you've seen it, because they were nice, and deserve something for that, and if they feel they grew you from a bean they will work harder for you. But there aren't any rules. And if it was me I'd be sending my book to editors and not to agents anyway.
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Why am I typing? Why aren't I sleeping?
I'm back in the UK, and, today, really starting to feel the jet-lag, which means that the long description of everything I did in Japan may have to wait, or to be one of those things I always mean to write and never do. But I had a really busy Saturday and was taken to many places -- the oddest of which was a blessedly short visit to the Maid Cafe. "The line between pop pulture and porno is sometimes blurred in Japan," said my guide as she took me there, which meant that whatever I was expecting it definitely wasn't the Japanese equivalent of being taken to a cafe where the waitresses were all completely asexual children's party hosts pretending to be six themselves, speaking in helium chipmonk voices and dressed like Alice in Wonderland, where I would feel as if I had tuned into a game show on a foreign television station that I did not understand. I kept trying to imagine how one could transpose something like that experience into the US or the UK, and failing.
I bought lots of brush-pens.
I came back to the UK.
And am now brain dead (which is okay as nobody is interviewing me today). Tomorrow I am a special guest chairperson at Susanna Clarke's event
EXCLUSIVE UK EVENT
Susanna Clarke with special guest chairperson Neil Gaiman, Tuesday 25 September, 7pm
UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, 15 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AH
Susanna is the international bestselling author of the wonderful Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and to celebrate the paperback publication of The Ladies of Grace Adieu she will be in conversation with legendary author, Neil Gaiman. This is a rare appearance by Susanna and the only UK event to celebrate publication so book early to avoid disappointment.
Click here for booking information and ticket prices.
(Incidentally, Mike Carey is doing a talk in the same series on October the 25th.)
Several people have sent me links to
this New York Times article on Bill Hader, and it made me feel incredibly happy to be lucky for someone, especially as long as the lucky thing is him reading the books and not, say, cutting off one of my feet and carrying it around in his pocket, which would be just dreadful really, all things considered.
And since I posted links to the Joyce Hatto case when it started --
here's the definitive article from the New Yorker, which is a lot closer to what I thought had happened than I expected.
Today I was interviewed about the mysterious device.
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If you're in the UK on Tuesday the 25th of September, and you want to hear Ms Susanna Clarke, author of
Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell, in conversation... then you should be at the
Bloomsbury Theatre15 Gordon StreetLondon WC1at 7.00pm.
Everyone who's anyone will be there.
I'll be there. Actually, I'll be up on the stage, being the other half of the conversation. (The half that says, "Now, Susanna, tell us...")
Put it in your diaries.
Hey, Neil,I saw Stardust today and loved it (as did my mom, whom I dragged with me), but I came out with a few questions.1) The new ending: did that come from you, or was it an invention of Jane's and Matthew's?Er... bit of both. I suggested some events for the scene in the witch's lair, which were the kinds of things I'd assumed that we needed as far back as the first time I did a treatment for
Stardust. But Matthew and Jane had reached a lot of the same places that I had because they were the sort of things you'd do in a film. (You need Septimus and the witches and Tristran and Yvaine in the same place, for example.) The happier ending was Matthew's. I'd suggested that he shoot the other one too, but really I don't think it would have worked with the film he made.
2) I don't know was a "sequencer" does, but I noticed in the credits that one J.J. Connolly was credited with being it. Would that be the same J.J. Connolly who wrote Layer Cake?
It would indeed.
3) Was Matthew Vaughn consciously intending the shots of Captain Shakespeare while during Septimus' attack on the ship to echo the shots of Buffalo Bill dancing in the mirror in The Silence of the Lambs, or was the similarity coincidental?I think it's coincidental. Or, perhaps, imaginary.
4) Are there plans to publish the screenplay? (Or will it be included in the visual companion coming out in September?)
It's in the Visual Companion. Which was published in paperback on July the 10th, according to Amazon.
http://www.amazon.com/Stardust-Visual-Companion-Stephen-Jones/dp/1845764226
5) Speaking of which: any insight on why the visual companion and the soundtrack aren't being released for another month, rather than concurrently with the film?
The Companion's been out for a while now, at least in paperback. It's a beautiful book. The hardback is listed on Amazon as not being out for a few weeks, though.
I noticed that the Stardust score is
already on iTunes, not sure why it won't be out for another few weeks on CD though.
(
Deepdiscount has it as 28 August,
Amazon as September 11th.)
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Cool!
Dr Jon in Australia sent me this:
Hi, Neil.You've prolly been flooded with this link already, but in case you haven't:Death drops scythe, adopts 'softer' lookhttp://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/world/death-drops-scythe-adopts-softer-look/2007/08/13/1186857383958.html"A small religious group that worships the grim reaper and is fighting for government recognition unveiled a softer image of their Death Saint today: a woman with a porcelain face, brown, shoulder-length hair and long thin fingers."Quite interesting, especially in light of the "adoption" of the Endless Death as a Deity-Of-Choice by some in the neopagan movement.
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and then there's
hi neil!
maybe not all that necessary for you, but at least it's a clever idea. just wanted to pass along the link in case you hadn't seen it yet.
http://www.riteintherain.com/ Rite in the
Rain Notebooks: All-Weather Writing Paper
=^.^= canton ...You never know... I can imagine needing one of those, even though I tend to feel that spelling it "write" would have increased my desire to use their notebooks.
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Current travel plans now have me going from Chengdu to Beijing for the
Beijing International Book Fair which means I'll be in Beijing during the Hugo Awards (sigh). And I'll now be in Japan about three weeks after that. I'll put details up here as I get them of any signings or events or anything.
