posted by Neil
A very quick "where I am now" sort of post.
I went to Washington College in Chestertown as part of the PEN World Voices Festival and I spoke to an audience of students and people who had come a long way. Had a tea with English students, then did a reading and was interviewed and Q&Aed and read again in the open air, on a perfect spring evening, as the bats came out. Then I did a one-item-per-person signing (having already pre-signed piles of stuff, so people could also buy pre-signed books and run home). It was wonderful, Joshua Wolf Shenk and Kate Bursick and their people were perfect hosts, and if you look at the pictures at
http://news.washcoll.edu/events/2009/04/neilgaiman/ (go down column one then to the top of column two and down again to get a chronological feel of the evening as it darkened)you will get a sense of what it was like.
I got up early, got the train into New York, was interviewed for China, agreed to be part of a cool thing that I can't talk about until it's announced in October, then Claudia Gonson took me to a rehearsal for
the CORALINE musical.
The problem I've had with the Coraline Musical so far is that, apart from hearing a CD of the first draft of the songs, all of the parts sung by Stephin, a couple of years ago, I don't know anything about it. More by accident than design, I'd not been around while they were workshopping it or working on it, so it was a complete mystery to me. I thought and hoped it would be good, but I didn't know.
Stephin Merritt's songs? Amazing. Acting and performance? Wonderful.
Seven performers and I don't think I could pick who impressed me most. David Greenspan (who also plays the Other Mother)'s adaptation? Really good and smart. Leigh Silverman was directing, and she was really good and really smart. Phyllis Chen plays the piano, children's pianos and the strangely-treated piano with the forks and toys and playing cards in the strings that makes the sounds of the Other house, and it's astonishing...
Sound of nervous author breathing huge sigh of relief.
If you were on the fence about going, get tickets now. I think it's going to be the sort of thing that a) sells out very fast (The Lortel theatre is about a 200 seater) and b) given that it's going to have a limited run, it's something that you
will want to have seen first run. Previews start on May 7th, first night is June 1st, and it runs until June 20th.
If you like my stuff, or the music of Stephin Merritt or the Magnetic Fields, or the story of Coraline, or disturbing musical theatre, you will love this.
I've got photos from the rehearsal in the camera, but won't post them here without having the people in them sign off on them.
And thence to put on a jacket and tie and head off into the world of the PEN Gala. I was at the Grove/Atlantic table, and we ate beneath the blue whale in the Natural History Museum and speeches were made and Pen awards were given to writers and printers imprisoned for writing things, and money was raised by the dinner to allow PEN to do its work. Salman Rushdie gave me a ride back to the hotel, and so to bed.
The Pen World Voices Festival website is here. 160 writers in conversation, not all at the same time.
I'll be talking
on Thursday evening, and on
Saturday. (The Saturday event is a $10 ticket, and they have not sold out yet.)
Goodday Neil,
As a young writer who wants to 'get myself out there', I've heard beginning a blog is a good start. Since you've been at the game (of blogging that is) for some time, I was wondering where you thought a good place to start? Free or paid domain? Software choice? Any words from a veteran would be helpful!
Always looking forward to your newest work,
Brent.My words of wisdom: don't blog because it could "get you out there". Blog because you want to blog. There are too many people blogging out there already and too few with anything to say. If you have something you want to say then do it, otherwise go and write books instead. Ditto Twitter: do it if you enjoy it, not because it's a professional thing. Honestly, there's no point otherwise. (I use Blogger, and have done for eight years, and it's pretty reliable.)
Right. On with the day (shall I feel guilty about having a few hundred unread emails? I shall not, and will simply hope that nothing bad is happening in the world...)
posted by Neil
It's SPRING! I mean, it's warm and the trees are budding, the crocuses are blooming and the birds are probably singing although they cannot be heard over the howling and grumbly barking of a large white dog who has just been given his Spring Bath and put out into his pen in the garden to dry, and wishes to alert the appropriate authorities. Definitely spring.
So on Monday the 27th I'm doing a Maryland Event at Washington College, Chestertown, for
PEN World Voices. And there was obviously a bit of confusion about the event, and suddenly it was listed as SOLD OUT which upset and puzzled those people who had been going to go there and had just seen it listed as a free event on the internet with no information about reservations, and people started writing in to complain to me by the score, and I asked the fabulous Caro Llewellyn if there was anything that could be done, because it was looking like the number of upset people was going to outnumber the happy people.
And things have now changed: the venue is now in a 1000 seat location. Those of you who already have tickets will get to sit in the front few rows. Now new tickets will go out -- just turn up.
This is the link to the current sold out event, but it may have been fixed by the time you read this:
http://www.pen.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/3190/prmID/1831The email from Josh, who is running the event, says:
The event will now be held in the Cain Gymnasium, Washington College,
Chestertown, MD.
Same time and place. Reservations are not required.I hope this makes people happier.
Please come, because if I'm now talking to a mostly empty hall I'll feel silly for having made them change it.
There -- they just blogged it: Details at
http://bitlit.typepad.com/bitlit/2009/04/attention-changes-to-417-night-with-neil-gaiman-event.htmlAnd there will be a free event in
New York at 6:30 on Thursday Night April 30th called Leaps and Bounds, Fits and Starts: The Evolution of a Children’s Book Writer with Mariken Jongman, Shaun Tan and me on the panel, moderated by Andrea Davis Pinkney, in the Scholastic Auditorium, 557 Broadway; and a $10 ticket event on Saturday May 2nd
Coraline, Sandman: Books and Imagination: A Conversation with Neil Gaiman at The Great Hall at Cooper Union: 7 East 7th Street (and
tickets to all three events that afternoon can be had for cheap -- Shaun Tan, Emmanuel Guibert, David Polonsky with Jonathan Ames on one panel, and Adrian Tomine in conversation with Yoshihiro Tatsumi on the other.)
,,,
And the second-biggest piece of news is this:
THE GRAVEYARD BOOK won the 2009 Indies Choice Award as Best YA book. This is the Award that used to be called the BookSense Award, and it's given by the members of the American Booksellers Association.
I was thrilled -- even more thrilled when I realised that I would be in New York around then anyway then for the CORALINE Musical Opening Night, so I'll just head out a couple of days earlier.
http://news.bookweb.org/6759.htmlThe last time I was nominated, they did not tell you who had won ahead of time, and Michael Chabon and I lost to Cornelia Funke, and were all three of us very happy about it, particularly as we were given huge bags of Levenger swag (
you can read about it here but ignore everything in the first paragraph).
...
Right. Now, I have to reread and send off my Newbery Speech, then get back to writing Metamorpho for Mike Allred and
Wednesday Comics. The first page of which looks like this:
posted by Neil
Now people are asking for punk-time age 16 photos. The only photo out there that I know of is the one in the back of
The Kindly Ones, although my friend Geoff Notkin, who was the drummer in the band, assures me that somewhere in a storage facility far from where he lives he has all the photos taken that day, and I think I will remind him of this. (Here is his website:
http://notkin.net/. Go and buy meteorites from him so that he will feel well-disposed-enough towards the world to go to another city and and rummage.)
...
At the end of April it's the
PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. I'm honored to be taking part.
I was there a couple of years ago and loved it. Am sure I'll love it this time.
...
Jane Curtin (yes, that Jane Curtin) can be heard reading my story "Chivalry" as part of the PRI "Selected Shorts" series.
(For the curious, you can hear me reading it at
http://www.last.fm/music/Neil+Gaiman/_/Chivalry and if I could find it online I'd link to the Christina Pickles reading of it too -- although it's in the Selected Shorts: Lots of Laughs audiobook.) It's funny, hearing other people read that story, because it's the story I've read aloud the most: I know what each word does for a live audience, and so keep wishing I could direct the reader ("Use the word 'nice' like a weapon wherever it turns up. It means something different every time anyone uses it. Play Galaad utterly straight. Domestic details always trump Arthurian details...")
...
There's a wonderfully (unintentionally) funny (if dim) bad review of
Coraline at
http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/movies/2009/coraline2009.html. It's the kind of review that makes you suspect the reviewer is reviewing the inside of his own head, and not the film at all. When I linked to it on twitter several people wrote in to reassure me that this was not typical of all Christians, something I already knew: I've linked to a bunch of astonishingly sensible Christian reviews of
Coraline earlier on this blog (and here's another sane one, as a makeweight:
http://www.gospelandculture.org/2009/03/coraline/).
...
Daniel Pinkwater is one of my favourite authors. His new book,
The Yggyssey, is up online, and you can read it at
http://www.theyggyssey.com/ .
Lots of people wrote to let us know that yesterday's mystery Russian alien was... a guitarfish (although there was healthy disagreement on exactly which kind).
Hi Neil,
I'm a big fan of your work, and I am a big fan of ampersands, so when I decided to get a tattoo of the latter, I wanted the one from the softcover editions of "Preludes & Nocturnes" and "Fables & Reflections". The only problem is, I don't know which font they're in. So, instead of feverishly searching (actually, I already did that), I decided to go right to the source. Do you know what font it's in?
While I didn't know, I figured Dave McKean would, so I asked him, and he said,
The answer to your blogger question about the ampersands:
Which PB editions? Since DC have released 57 versions, I'm not sure which one you mean. If you mean the recent SANDMAN LIBRARY editions, I have a copy of Fables... and this lovely scrolly fancy ampersand is set in MISSIONARY, a font available from Emigre designed by the brilliant Miles Newlyn (if memory serves me correctly). If you don't mean this edition, then can i recommend this empersand anyway, it's the best one.
...
Seeing the Village Voice has just leaked it, and a few of you have written to ask about it, yes, I will be a Guest at the PEN World Voices Festival at the end of April. I can't give you any other details right now, but the curious should go to http://www.pen.org/page.php/prmID/1096 and sign up for the Festival mailing list for more information.
I just finished Peter Beagle's I See By My Outfit, a book I've wanted to read since I was a teenage Beagle boy and learned of its existence in the back of A Fine and Private Place, and I loved it. It's the true story of a two man road trip across America on motor scooters, and it's as much a journey across time now as it is across space: funny, heartwarming and wise. The kind of book you feel a better person for having read.
Too much fun is being had with Readerware (http://www.readerware.com/rwFeat.html) and a cuecat scanner, as books are brought up to the new library upstairs and scanned in or ISBNd or entered by hand before being put on the shelves. Mostly I wish, given the number of old books here, that someone had thought of ISBNs before 1966... And then I wish that the library upstairs was three times the size, as I don't think it's going to make the dent in the basement library that I hoped it was going to.
