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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."

posted by Neil

The reviews will help, but I'm not sure that reviews make as big a difference as simply advertising and letting people know something's out there. (Princess Mononoke was an eye-opener for me in that regard. In its first year it had the top positive review score on Rotten Tomatoes. Didn't get people in to see it.) Word of mouth and "buzz" are difficult, probably impossible to manipulate. So you advertise, and you put the word out to where people who see films congregate. 

I was sent the "tracking" for the film the other day, where the various studios and agencies find out what groups are planning right now to go and see what films, and if your friends are males under the age of 25, then all the Coraline promotion is working. Two weeks ago it was ranking very low on the list of films that that group wanted to see. Over the last few days it's spiralled up.

It's hard to promote a film that's as much for adults as it is for kids, easy for something like this to bomb -- or to be perceived as having bombed, which is not the same thing. The advertising is out there for another couple of weeks, and it'll probably get more pervasive as we get closer to the 6th of February, and will not please your friends. And the run up to Coraline will take over this blog more or less completely, I expect, because it's all I'll be doing. And then, after Feb 6th, it will all trail off, and the advertising will die away completely, and it will fade from the blog with occasional splashes of mention if the film does something interesting, or if I go somewhere to help  promote it.

(Which reminds me: Jameson Dublin Film Festival. I'll be there on February the 15th, when they will be screening Coraline. And, for anyone in Dublin -- or indeed, in Ireland -- who missed the signing last year, I will be doing a reading and signing in Chapters in Parnell Street on Feb the 17th at 5pm. Perhaps with an as-yet-unnamed Special Musical Guest.)

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I read This Blog of Cheryl Morgan's. Thought "That's bizarre. I mean no-one would actually DO that." Then read around and realised that, yes, there are people who are interpreting the laws to get lead out of products aimed at children as meaning that they have to be kept away from book, with all that printing in it. It's mad and silly, but here's an American Library Association letter explaining that, yes, it's true, and what you can do about it. 

http://dintywrites.blogspot.com/2009/01/scary-library-shit.html

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Lovely early BLUEBERRY GIRL reviews starting to come in:

Publishers Weekly

In a magical blessing for unconventional girls, Gaiman (The Graveyard Book) addresses the "ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind," asking them to shelter and guide an infant girl as she grows. "Help her to help herself,/ help her to stand,/ help her to lose and to find./ Teach her we're only as big as our dreams./ Show her that fortune is blind." Sinuous, rococo lines-the flowing hair, drooping boughs, winding paths that inspired the pre-Raphaelites-spread their tendrils throughout Vess's (The Ladies of Grace Adieu) full-bleed spreads, potent mixtures of the charms of Arthur Rackham, Maxfield Parrish and Cecily Barker's flower fairies. An Art Nouveau-ish font in a blueberry color compounds the sense of fantasy. On each page a different girl-short, tall, white, brown, younger, older-runs or jumps or swims, accompanied by animals meant to guard and protect her. Fans of Gaiman and Vess will pounce on this creation; so too will readers who seek for their daughters affirmation that sidesteps traditional spiritual conventions. All ages. (Mar.)


Kirkus Reviews

A rich and beautiful prayer for a girl. "Ladies of light and ladies of darkness and ladies of never-you-mind, / This is a prayer for a blueberry girl." Three women in flowing robes-the appropriately mythological Maiden, Mother and Crone-float in the sky over a small, dancing child trailed by numerous birds of the air. Free her from "nightmares at three or bad husbands at thirty," let her run and dance and grow, teach her and help her find her own truth. The verse is lovely, sinuous and sweetly rhyming, piling on blessings. Vess's precise line-and-color illustrations fill each spread with velvet colors and the iconography of myths and fairy tales, a good match to fantasist Gaiman's words. Plants, animals, sun and meadow appear in elegantly drawn detail, their realism tempered by floating trees and magical flowers. The girl transforms from stanza to stanza and spread to spread, blond or burnished, child or nearly teen. There is nothing cute or cloying here, just beauty, balance and joy. (Picture book. 4-8)

And the next post will probably be all coffee. You lot are amazing. 

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Nearly forgot: