I took Maddy and her friends to the Mall of America today -- they had unspecified preeteenage things to buy and I needed to visit the Apple store to get Final Cut Studio -- stopping only to pick up my friend Les Klinger from his hotel and drag him along. Not content with having annotated all the Sherlock Holmes stories, he's spent the last few years annotating
Dracula, and told me all about it while we ate lunch. The two thirteen year olds and one almost thirteen year old went shopping happily, and returned with several bags, including a bag with the Victoria's Secret logo. ("You really don't have to look like that, dad. We only bought sweatpants there.")
Then I dropped Les off at his hotel and spent too short a time with several old friends, including the Sherlockian Michael Whelan, the
Roden family and Michael "Langdale Pike" Dirda, the best-read man in America. Then went home. Installed Final Cut Studio...
Charles Vess talks about BLUEBERRY GIRL, our book for mothers and daughters, and he shows some pictures -- pencils and finished art -- over at
http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/185. It's a poem I wrote for Tori's daughter Tash, before she was born, and Charles is making it magical. The plan is to donate a percentage of the royalties to
RAINN . We announced it a long time ago (
in this post) but it's taken a while -- Charles has had so much on his plate, and the paintings have taken him so much longer to do than he expected. But they are astoundingly beautiful.
Talking about raising money for good causes, I got this astonishingly heartening email from Beth at
Black Phoenix Alchemy lab...
I just wanted to drop you a line and let you know how the charity drive is doing. =) In the first five days that the Stardust and Good Omens scents were live, we generated $1500.00 for the Orangutan Foundation UK, and $5370.00 for the CBLDF. That brings us to a current total of $15,300.00 for the CBLDF to date!
Which, given the costs of the upcoming Gordon Lee trial (there's an excellent interview with Charles Brownstein about it at http://www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com/features/118336212712690.htm), is a very good thing indeed. Diamond distributors have asked to be able to put a couple of the scents in their catalogue, which Evan Dorkin amusingly interprets as a sign of the oncoming apocalypse. Personally, I think that a better indication of the apocalypse is an entire article on Canadian Comics that manages not to mention Dave Sim or Cerebus. Bizarre. (Incidentally, for those of you who missed it the first time around, I believe Dave's offer at the end of http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2004/08/lewis-and-clarke-not-to-mention-snuff.asp still stands. Over two thousand people got free comics from him by simply writing in and asking, and I hope that many of them came back and bought the Cerebus collections...)
I feel -- this is Neil -- like I'm making a guest post on my own Blog. (I'm loving what Maddy's doing. Makes me feel quite inadequate as a blogger.) Anyway. Just nipping in to say that I'm going to be doing a semi-informal signing on my last night in Budapest.
I'll be at Sárkánytűz, 1092 Ferenc Krt. 40, on Wednesday July 4th at 7.00pm. I know it's not much warning, but it's really something we set up because I keep getting lots of wistful messages from Hungarian readers who have noticed I'm in Budapest and hope that I could be persuaded to do something. If you're around, turn up and I'll cheerfully scribble on things and answer questions and so on.
Store details at http://www.sarkanytuz.hu/index.php?base=shops&id=10 (And I was thrilled to discover that there's a Good Fantasy and Cool Literature website at http://endless.hu/).
And while I'm here I'll quickly put up a link to http://www.comicon.com/ubb/ultimatebb.php/ubb/get_topic/f/36/t/006422.html which is Kate Keller's offer to match donations to the CBLDF (who need funds for the Gordon Lee case -- http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000314.shtml for details.)
Lisa Snellings is making little blue poppets and donating a dollar to the CBLDF for every one sold.
(She also mentions that Hy Bender, whom you probably know best as the author of The Sandman Companion, will give you expert advice through his websites Hy On Your Book and Hy On your Script. He will analyze your project with humor and clarity to rival any Dummies Books (of which he's written five.) He tells me that the word "Poppet" in your email will get you an extremely reduced price for his services. Hy Bender tends to be partial to Poppets, which could work out well for writers who are too. Check it out, forward it to your writer groups. Thanks, Hy! I'm hoping we can also get the Sandman Companion updated in time for Sandman's 20th anniversary...)
Over at Black Phoenix they've launched more scents -- the Good Omens ones and the Stardust ones. Like the Neil Gaiman ones, the profits go to the CBLDF (and to the Orang Utan Foundation charity).
And a small, painful postscript to something I talked about already on the blog. This letter came in from Maureen Johnson.
Hi Neil,
A few weeks ago, you were kind enough to link to a post on my blog. My book had been banned in a school in Oklahoma, and I was fighting it. With your help, dozens (maybe even a hundred or more) letters were sent to the committee that did the deed. (The day you linked to me, the hits went through the roof.)
What happened next was ridiculous. I spent weeks on the inside track of this small town, getting calls from neighbors, newspaper reporters, and all kinds of people involved and around. We also (with the help of a local reporter) caught them violating policy by banning a book without notifying the public. At one point, they even claimed the whole thing never happened. The letters did have an impact, though. They had to reconsider, and do it publicly. They hated the spotlight.
Well, this committee of geniuses has finally come to a decision. They haven’t banned my book—but they’ve put it on a special reserve shelf. It can only be checked out “for classroom purposes” with a signed note from a parent.
This is arguably the most asinine thing I've ever heard.
This is a book that contains no graphic material at all. This is purely because it has homosexual characters. And from what I can tell, they plan on implementing a policy by which they have parents troop through the library once a year, just in case there are other books they want put on the naughty shelf.
On top of that, they demoted the librarian who was on the committee (Kim), the one who told us what really happened in the meeting where the book was banned. They also made life miserable for main school librarian involved (Susan), the one who came to me for help. Rather than suck up to these people, Susan decided to resign after 30 years at her job. She said she was happy to go down doing what she thought was right. So two librarians took a hit in this, simply because they tried to protect the books on their shelves.
It’s disgusting and insane, but that’s the outcome. In any case, it’s been amazing to see how many people are outraged by this, and willing to do something about it. Your post made a huge difference in terms of getting the word out. I’ll probably go on trying to needle these idiots for a while yet. I can at least try to shame them some more.
Thanks again,
-Maureen Johnson
(And here's Maureen's blogpost about the final decision.)
Just a little note to thank everyone who's bought any of the American Gods or Anansi Boys related scents from Black Phoenix Alchemy labs -- http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/neverwhere.html. Beth is sending off a cheque for over $6,000 to the CBLDF.
Terry Pratchett and I have just agreed to allow BPAL to do a set of Good Omens scents, the money to be divided between freedom of speech and orang utans. Terry also thinks the Agnes Nutter scent should have gunpowder in it...
Read the rest of this post
Right -- the Black Phoenix Alchemy page of scents for the CBLDF is now up at
http://www.blackphoenixalchemylab.com/neverwhere.html
And I'm investigating whether we can do Stardust ones right now (as the Stardust scents that Beth sent were Maddy's favourites).
...
And -- we'll put this up on the FAQ page and so on -- there is now a real address to send stuff that you want to get to my attention, which should work much better than DreamHaven Books (where stuff would sit in a box until the next time I came by). It is,
4470 Sunset Blvd. # 339
Los Angeles, CA 90027
USA
And it's being run by the Mystery Aide. Who is actually (drum-roll) Cat Mihos (http://www.furrytiger.com/), who is going to try and make sure that less of my life falls through the cracks, that I have more time and so on. (Currently lots of the mail coming in through the FAQ line is people who want to interview me, or for me to answer a few questions for their book, dissertation or website, to the point that if I said yes to them all or even to half, I would never get any time to do or write anything else. So those kind of requests, along with anything else, can now be sent to Cat who can at least coordinate them.)
And Cat is also [email protected], should any of you need to reach her directly. She'll be running the LA end of things, and dealing with some of the stuff I simply haven't had the time to get to. (The Fabulous Lorraine is still my PA.)
If you want to send me a book to get signed along with return postage and packaging, though, or buy a signed book, or anything like that, you should still talk to DreamHaven, via their online shop of stuff by me at www.neilgaiman.net website.
