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Viewing: Blog Posts Tagged with: The Ocean At The End of the Lane, Most Recent at Top [Help]
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1. gal·li·mau·fry (noun) 1. a confused jumble or medley of things.

posted by Neil Gaiman
I taught my first class at Bard on Tuesday night. It was slightly nerve wracking, but the 14 people who are listening to me burble about writing and fantasy seem very nice and relatively forgiving, and I'm looking forward to doing it again tomorrow night. Only, I hope, saying different things.

The Evening With Art Spiegelman and Me at Bard was wonderful. It was sold out, and became mostly an interview, with me asking Art things, although I read the first few pages of the version of Hansel and Gretel I've written that Lorenzo Mattotti has illustrated, which was rather wonderful. (You can see one of the marvelous Mattotti illustrations on the screen behind us in this photo by Gideon Lester.)


There aren't any more events in New York this year that there are tickets for, except for THE TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS at Carnegie Hall. (At which I think I will also do the first reading of the whole of Hansel and Gretel as well.) Lots of people are asking if there will be a signing there... and I'm definitely considering it. The Ocean at the End of the Lane will have just come out in paperback, and The Truth is a Cave In The Black Mountains graphic novel will just have come out.... It's definitely possible.

Tickets and information at http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2014/6/27/0800/PM/Neil-Gaiman-The-Truth-is-a-Cave-in-the-Black-Mountains/

(And Where's Neil will tell you everywhere else I'll be until July, including San Francisco, London, Edinburgh, Barcelona and Madrid: http://www.neilgaiman.com/where/.)

Right now I'm in San Diego, just for the day, in order to see Amanda, who is out here where it is warm and she is working on her book. I'm not sure that spending a whole day flying out, and a day flying back, in order to spend a day together, makes the best sense, but I missed her and she missed me and I quite enjoy writing on planes...

The new house in the woods is wonderful, and I'm enjoying getting to know the whole new world of  the Hudson Valley. And the old house back in the Midwest is still there, and it still has my books on the shelves and my art on the walls and my bed, and I suspect I'm going to wind up dividing my time between both places, as much as I succeed in living in any one place. I have a wife who also seems determined to have a bi-locational existence, only with Melbourne, Australia and New York City as her two places that she spends her life. We'll figure it out. As long as I get a desk to write at, and a view of trees, I'm happy.

Today, The Ocean at the End of the Lane came out in paperback in the UK. There's a moving version of the poster, which you can see here (needs Flash):  http://www.teainteractive.com/clients/ocean/

And here are the Ocean posters that do not move, and I am extremely happy because I don't think I've ever had books that were posters before. They leave me faintly nervous: I hope that the kind of people who would like the book will find it, and that people who would simply not enjoy it do not succumb to the blandishments of advertising. (Goes and checks Amazon.co.uk to see if people are still enjoying it now it's out in paperback...) (And then puts up the Waterstones link, on noticing their name on the poster. Hello Waterstones!)





Let's see. I'll probably forget a few things I meant to mention here. I interviewed Stoya  in the Oyster Magazine (she is seen here being Death at a Dr Sketchy's).


Biting Dog Press are releasing a limited print in June of 500 copies of my "8 Rules For Writing".




You can't buy them retail -- they will be going directly to bookshops -- but Dave of Biting Dog is releasing 50 of them to the public directly as incentives to fund his daughter Kayla's Elephant Sanctuary Volunteer Trip: details at http://www.bitingdogpress.com/Merchandise/orderpage.html.

I'm speaking in Syracuse, NY on April the 29th, as part of the Rosamund Gifford Lecture series. I will talk, and I will read, and it will be interesting. Details at http://www.dailyorange.com/2014/04/author-of-coraline-to-speak-at-crouse-hinds-theater-this-month/

I was thrilled to see that James Herbert will have a horror writing prize named after him. Jim is much missed, and this can only help to make sure that his name remains in people's minds.

Locus, the Magazine of the Science Fiction and Fantasy field, does an annual poll and survey: you have another five days to make your votes heard, and to tell them who you are. The poll closes on April 15th: http://www.locusmag.com/Magazine/2014/PollAndSurvey.html

A photo Amanda took of me last night. She calls it "Schrödinger's Door."



This blog post, forwarded to me by artist-genius Lisa Snellings, about the knock-on effects that my story "Harlequin Valentine" had, broke my heart and opened it wide: http://www.grinsekatz.com/harlequin-valentine

Finally, congratulations to Stephen Colbert on becoming the next David Letterman.  I loved my time on the Colbert Report, rumpled funeral suit attire and all, but liked the man Colbert much more than the persona Colbert (and loved that he broke character while interviewing me). I'm really hoping that the Late Night show will be hosted by the man. (In case you missed it, here's the video of the interview from 2009.)



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2. Two New UK Book Covers, and a Small Philosophical Thought

posted by Neil Gaiman
Bloomsbury just sent me the cover for their paperback of FORTUNATELY, THE MILK. It is coming out in the UK on June 5th, 2014. I love the cover, and was impressed by the Children's Book of the Year tag, as I had forgotten. (It's been a mad year. There are too many things to remember.)




And seeing I am posting that, I also thought I should post this:


...which is a photo I stole from Sam Eades's Twitter Feed. (I think we can safely assume the aquamarine nail-varnished thumbnail is Sam's.)  Sam was the publicist at Headline all though Ocean. She's amazing -- cheerful, sensible, a delight to be around, and the kind of person who can come up with a mad idea like getting a road named after a book and just make it happen while being on a signing tour like no other and getting the author fed.

She's just left Headline for Pan MacMillan, and she will make authors there very happy and I miss her already.)

It's the UK paperback cover of THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE. The paperback comes out in a week. 

And it was only when I looked at them both, I realised I've got two books coming out in the UK with, actually and honestly, "Book of the Year" on the cover. And I thought, I'll probably never have that again. It's really unusual for me to have two books out, one for adults and one for all ages, in the same span of time. And lightning doesn't strike twice. For a moment I started feeling glum, finding myself worrying about backlashes and things that probably don't ever happen again and the nature of time and life...

And then I thought, I should remember what Stephen King told me, something I put into the Make Good Art talk and book. I should enjoy this.

So, contrary to my vaguely worried nature, I am doing my very best to enjoy it.  Book of the Year, twice, for two books. That's pretty good, isn't it?

...

It's Art Spiegelman Week. Not only will Art and I find ourselves in conversation at Bard tomorrow night, but there is more Spiegelmanny wonderfulness in New York this weekend, some of it accompanied by Ditch artist Joost Swarte. You can read all about it here, at the Drawn and Quarterly blog: http://drawnandquarterly.blogspot.com/2014/03/its-art-spiegelman-week-in-new-york.html

The coolest bit of all might be this Sunday Morning, when you get to see a stained glass mural...

Sunday, April 6th: PRIVATE VIEWING & BREAKFAST WITH ART SPIEGELMAN
Manhattan, NY: A rare chance to join Art Spiegelman (class of '65) for coffee, carbs, and juice as he gives a personal guided tour of the 50' x 8' two-sided glass mural he designed for the school. Secrets-literally-behind the window will be revealed!

And he'll have special guest Joost Swarte on hand, showing slides of his own stained glass windows in the Netherlands!

The tour begins Sunday, April 6th, at 10:30 am, at the High School of Art and Design cafeteria, 5th floor. That's 245 East 56th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues.Get your tickets here now! Tickets are $20, but $15 for those of you with a MoCCA pass, and free for current A&D students! Proceeds go to the Alumni Association to benefit the students of Art and Design. 

...

St Mark's Bookshop has slowly become one of my favourite bookshops around, I think because it's so well curated. I never walk in there and think "So many books are being published. Why don't people just stop and read the ones that are already out there?" which I sometimes find myself thinking on walking into huge chain bookshops. Instead I just walk around going "I didn't know that existed. I'll have that, and that, and that, and I'll get that for a friend...".

They are doing an Indiegogo fundraiser to help crowdfund their move. Support it, if you can. (I'm going to donate a hand-annotated book or two to their rewards.) https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/st-mark-s-bookshop-on-the-move

...

Reminder: the Symphony Space "Selected Shorts" evening has sold out.

The only remaining event on the East Coast this year is the Carnegie Hall TRUTH IS A CAVE IN THE BLACK MOUNTAINS reading, with the FourPlay String Quartet and Eddie Campbell paintings and all, on June 27th. It's happening at the same time that THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE is coming out in the US in paperback.  (Amazing things will be happening on that that night: trust me. This is the big one...)

Tickets at http://www.carnegiehall.org/Calendar/2014/6/27/0800/PM/Neil-Gaiman-The-Truth-is-a-Cave-in-the-Black-Mountains/


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3. The Ocean at the End of the Lane Audiobook Review

Title: The Ocean at the End of the Lane Author: Neil Gaiman Narrated by: Neil Gaiman Publisher: HarperAudio Publication Date: June 18, 2013 ISBN-13: 978-0062263032 Listening copy via public library I've written before about my love for Neil Gaiman (and Doctor Who) and fans will not be disappointed by Neil's latest work. The Ocean at the End of the Lane has tropes familiar to both the author

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4. A Calendar of Tales Update, and Two Covers.

posted by Neil Gaiman
I got up early this morning and went into a recording studio, and recorded audio versions of each of the twelve stories in the Calendar of Tales I'm doing, under the patronage of BlackBerry (you can read about it here).

Which means, the hard bit is now done. 

I chose the twelve tweets (actually -- with one exception, March, which I fell in love with, and never had any competition -- I chose three tweets for each month, as the people whose tweets were chosen had to be okay with me having chosen them, and they had to tell BlackBerry it was okay for me to use them, and some people never got back to them, so it was good to have fallbacks). 

And then I spent a couple of days when I thought I was going to be writing, being filmed and interviewed for the project. There was an entire film crew based in my garage. (It is a big garage, but it took me by surprise to see it transformed into an ops room.) 

And then the film crew left, and I grabbed a pen and a blue book of blank pages, and I started scribbling: March first, (that was the one I fell in love with, as I said, and is piratical) then April (which is funny) and November (which is sad), then January (sort of exciting and things go bang), October (funnyish) July (heartbreaking and hopeful, my favourite of all of them, but different people have different favourites), September (magic), June (funny), May (WEIRD), February (strange), August (short and very hot), December (sad, but I ended it on a less sad note than I had planned when I remembered  that it would be the last one in the sequence).

Logan Airport in Boston had closed because of a Blizzard. I flew home in the few hours between it opening and Minneapolis St Paul airport closing in an ice storm.

Then I typed the stories out, and sent them off to BlackBerry, and waited nervously to find out if they liked them (they did, which was nice, as there was no fallback plan for what we'd do if they didn't).  I dashed into a recording studio, recorded them, even did some of the voices I shouldn't have had to have done. 

...

And that was as far as I got blogging two days ago, and then life grabbed me and I haven't looked up until now. I'm not really even looking up now -- I have my head down and should be working. There are not one, not two, but four drop dead argh now now now deadlines in my life this week, so whenever I write anything I feel guilty for not writing something else.

("Always scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr Gaiman?" whispers an imaginary Duke of Gloucester in the back of my head.)

My excuse for getting back to this incomplete blog entry is, Headline books has released the UK cover to THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE. It looks like this:


Like the US edition, it will be released on June the 18th.

(Here's the US edition for those of you who need your memories jogged)


and yes, a boy on the cover of the UK edition, a girl on the cover of the US one, and both of them are accurate. 

June 18th. In the US you can preorder a signed first edition books from Porter Square Books in Cambridge or now through Barnes and Noble. It's a While Supplies Last sort of thing -- the window to order will close in a few weeks, then I will be sent a lot of sheets of paper to sign, which will got to the printers and be bound in to the relevant copies of the first edition.

(Also, there are people who have read advance copies now talking about it on GoodReads. No spoilers, so I do not mind linking to the page in question.)





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5. Pre-signed copies of OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE available now (USA only)

posted by Neil Gaiman
Just a quick post (for the USA only right now I'm afraid) to say...

When I am in Cambridge MA, my local bookshop tends to be Porter Square Books. It's definitely Amanda's favourite local bookshop, because when she is done with Yoga she goes in there and orders their fresh rolls* and is made happy. Sometimes she buys books too. Sometimes I wander in and out unspotted, and sometimes they notice me and I sign whatever they have of mine on the shelves that day.

So when Harper Collins asked how I felt about pre-signing some copies of The Ocean at the End of the Lane for a local store to sell, I said sure. I like keeping a good local bookshop in business and guaranteeing that there will always be fresh rolls for Amanda when she gets out of yoga.

I'll pre-sign the books at the end of March or beginning of April. I'll actually pre-sign stacks of  sheets of paper to be bound in when the books are printed, as the books won't yet actually be printed when I have to sign them.

Right now, they are available from:

http://www.portersquarebooks.com/pre-order-signed-copy-ocean-end-lane

(There will undoubtedly be more places offering pre-signed copies. I'll list more of them as they turn up. Some of them will undoubtedly offer international shipping, which Porter Square Books does not. And the bookshops I sign at on tour will have spare signed copies left over. And I have no doubt that Hachette-Headline are plotting their own ways to make signed books happen.)

The picture of the book above is from this Harper Collins post, which also contains many links to desktop wallpaper you can download. It looks like this.




The Ocean at the End of the Lane desktop wallpaper in six versions:
And…
  • A 3-D image of The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Download)
  • A 3-D image of Make Good Art (Download)




*Fresh rolls, also known as summer rolls, salad rolls, fresh spring rolls, soft rolls, crystal rolls. These.



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