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posted by Neil Gaiman

...and not just for the beautiful footage of Cabal in it.

(The film was made in mid-December, and it makes me so happy-sad-happy-again to see it, and see my old dog lolloping through the snow with me.)

Over on Twitter today I've been initiating a strange and beautiful art project. It's about half way through the very first stage, which consists of throwing out questions to Twitter, and seeing what I get back.

Questions like "Why is January so Dangerous?"

or "Where would you spend a perfect June?" with the appropriate Hashtag - #JunTale in this case.

The answers have been amazing. Personal, honest, imaginative, glorious, surprising, strange, unexpected, familiar, magical, wise, funny... all of those things. They can be read over on the BlackBerry Hub for the project, and also on Twitter (just click on the relevant hashtag -- here's April's. Here's June's.)

I've been retweeting them like mad, because I loved them and wanted to spread them.

I'm also using the BlackBerry10 #KeepMoving hashtag, and because BlackBerry are the ones who are helping me do all this I'm also trying to remember to use both the #BlackBerry10 hashtag and to put the capital B in the middle of BlackBerry.

Seeing you are probably wondering: they showed me the phone in question, the Z10, for the first time in Autumn in the UK, I got to play with it, and I really liked it: the swiping the screen with your thumb "flow" things felt really natural, and it's the easiest onscreen keyboard to type with I've ever used. (I always hate onscreen keyboards and I do not hate this one. It is intelligent. I've used the first four of the five features NBC talk about here, and like them as much as they do.) (And no, nobody's asked me to say that last paragraph. If I hadn't have liked the phone I would have said no.)

So they said yes to my idea of using online communities to try and make something cool and special that brought a lot of people together, and I said yes to working with their patronage on the project.

The idea is: I'm going to make a Calendar of Tales. (Yes, I remain as obsessed with the months of the year as I have always been.) I would go to Twitter for story prompts. Then, over a handful of days, I'll write a story, one for each month. Once there are 12 stories we'll go back out to the world to get other people make art of various kinds using the stories as inspiration. One giant artistic ball of wax. Or ping pong game. Or cuddlepuddle. Or pick your own metaphor.

No, you do not have to use a BlackBerry for anything in this, although you might want to follow the @Blackberry twitter account as it would be useful for when they need to DM anyone whose tweets I do happen to use as a story prompt. (But if you don't follow them, I'll wave at you to remind you.)

In the end, we're hoping for a paper Calendar that will benefit charity, and an amazing app (or possibly a website) with all the stories, and all the art of various kinds up for everyone.

I'm enjoying this no end: it's wonderful just to throw questions out, and feel recharged and joyous.  (Actually, December did not leave me joyous. It left me wanting to hug people, and to remember how much we lose when we lose people, and animals, and ourselves from the past as we always do.)

I think I understand a lot more of how Amanda relates to Twitter, when suddenly she'll start retweeting people and use that to create a community, to link people, to make people feel less alone.

I didn't expect this bit of the project to feel like art, but watching the amount of connection it has made between people, I think perhaps it was. I felt like my heart was being broken and healed, all at the same time.

(I also do not know how recharged or joyous I will feel in a few days from now when I have finished writing 12 shortshort stories, mind you. I may be grumpy and glaring and muttering.)



If you go to http://keepmoving.blackberry.com/desktop/en/us/ambassador/neil-gaiman.html they have all the info you could need up, along with more stuff. (Scroll down the page.)

As I said, you can still suggest things: use the month and the #KeepMoving hashtags.

Tomorrow, I have to choose 12 prompts which now seems to me to be a pretty impossible sort of a task given everything that's come in, but I set the rules so cannot grumble. And then on Wednesday I start to write.

There will be a film crew watching me write. This will be VERY interesting, and it is possible I may ask them to go away, or at least to film me from a great distance.

I always envied Harlan Ellison getting to write stories in bookshop windows. Maybe it will be like that.

posted by Neil

I've spent a lot of time since I got back from Australia getting healthy.

Eating very sensibly, lots of exercising, losing weight (it was the shots of me at the Sydney Opera House with my stomach bulging against the Kambriel waistcoat that did it. It brought home that even if my weight was only a little high, when you get into middle age, it's really not smart to let things get out of hand). I've moved from the tub of size 33 jeans in my closet to the tub of 32 jeans (32 jeans means my BMI is no longer where it shouldn't be), and today I noticed that the 31 jeans tub is filled with really nice jeans, most of which are almost unworn, so I've decided to get down to there, which is right in the weight-place I ought to be to make my doctor happy, and do my best to maintain it.

Which is easy to do when I'm feeding myself, really hard to do on the road.

(Do not expect frequent diet/weight etc. updates, although I'll let you know at the point where the tub of 31 jeans becomes wearable. Also, please do not write in on the FAQ line explaining to me why whatever I am doing is wrong for health or idealogical reasons, suggesting diets or exercise programs. I'm always grateful for the suggestions, which never actually accomplish anything other than to make me shrug, and carry on doing whatever it is I was doing in the first place. Right now it's mostly vegetables in abundance, and jogging through the snow with the dogs.)

Because it is February (when this blog was started) the Oracular Orb has, for the next 21 days, become me as a Swami.

And for those of you who were wondering what the Orb is, or why it exists, it all started here: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2007/02/now-we-are-six.html as a sixth birthday present from the blog.

That was four years ago. The blog will turn ten on Wednesday. We're trying desperately to think what to do to celebrate. Suggestions from Twitter include selling to blog to AOL for $315 million and blogging in the nude. (I'm pretty sure I've done that a number of times in the past, I'm afraid.)

Sigh.

I took this photo for Cat Mihos, who sent me an "It was only a lime" sticker I thought was a bookmark and the Mighty Cabal sticker (which exists to support the Valley of the Kings animal sanctuary.

Cabal is doing a lot better.

The U of M were not sure what was wrong with him -- he was falling down a lot, seemed to be unable to coordinate his back legs, and was having trouble running, going up or down stairs, or walking on uncarpeted surfaces. Some days he'd be unable to get up after sleeping, and whimper with pain. They suggested it might be degenerative myelopathy - a sort

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