posted by Neil
For those wondering about the Belljar -- my theory that the bees would do whatever it was the bees would was right. As soon as it went onto the green hive, the bees invaded it. They checked out the strips of white wax I'd put in, sniffed dismissively, went "Obviously done by an amateur" and began to remove them. These two photos are from about ten days ago.
Here you can see them chomping through and removing another piece of white wax. I imagine that they found a use for it somewhere in the bowels of the hive.
These are from today (hot, muggy, humid, grey day). The bees have pretty much finished removing all the wax that I put in and are now building their own (yellow, not white) wax installations down the side of the belljar.
And you can see some wax foundations on the side of the belljar being put in by bees who know what they are doing. That's the nice thing about bees. After this many million years, they really do know what they're doing.
Here's my favourite bee song. It's by Mirah and the Spectratones, and it's called Community.
posted by Neil
Worldcon is underway. (
Here is an interview with me about it.) Today I went with Dave McKean to the Drawn and Quarterly shop where we saw my friend the lovely Peggy Burns. In this photo I am showing Dave one of the
Bigfoot books, which I am very fond of.
Then was interviewed, had lunch with
Patrick and Teresa Nielsen Hayden. Then I was interviewed by Jessica Langer and an audience. Met a bunch of people --
John Scalzi was the one I've been waiting the longest to meet in the flesh, and he was every bit as nice and smart as I'd expected. Then a panel on the life and work of John M Ford, after which I slipped off with Jon Singer and Beth Meacham. (
Edit to add, there's a lovely photo and description of the panel here.)
I talked with Beth about the R. A. Lafferty Treasury that we want to do, where we'll assemble a big Best of Lafferty collection, with individual stories introduced by different authors, just as the Avram Davidson one was.
Then Opening Ceremonies, where I gave an off-the-cuff speech I had written 6 weeks ago, which very nearly came true (especially the hedgehogs), and I watched Charles Stross in conversation with Paul Krugman, which was fascinating from beginning to end.
Then I popped in to the TOR party, where
Kyle Cassidy took photos of me and the Clarion alumni from last year who are here (in the party bathroom, with a fisheye lens camera), and gave me a book of astonishingly beautiful photos he had made for me in an edition of one. It took me by surprise and left me unspeakably happy. What a good friend.
This is a Kyle photo of me in beekeeper mode:
This is a Kyle photo of me in the green room today with Anne Murphy my minder at the con. She is amazing, and without her I would not be wherever I am meant to be whenever I am there; and she never gets flustered and she never gets bothered, and she's a joy to have around. I firmly believe that in real life she designs giant fighting robots, of the kind where you sit in their head and then they fly off to save Tokyo, even though she says that isn't quite what she does at all. Because if you did design giant fighting robots, you'd want to keep it a secret.
(They are twitpic photos, so if you click on them they will get bigger and clearer.)
...
Mr. Gaiman,
I work at an independent bookstore in New Orleans and we wanted to try to get you to come in. We all wanted to enter The Graveyard Book Hallowe'en party contest, but since you announced it, all of the staff have been trying to find specific rules and guidelines on how to enter, but can't find anything more on your site, or anything at all on Harper's sites. If you have any further information or could let us know how to get a hold of it, it'd be much appreciated...
Thanks for your time!
-Melanie Britt
HarperChildrens sent out an excellent ecard, but for some reason haven't put it up on their website, so I'll get it put up on this one.
I'll quote from the rules (at some length I'm afraid. Skip this if you aren't a bookseller, or if you don't want to talk your local bookseller into having a party):
ENTRY
To enter the Contest, you must be an independent bookseller; you must host an in-store Halloween Party, with The Graveyard Book as the theme, between September 30, 2009 and November 1, 2009; and you must submit event photographs or a video, along with a brief paragraph describing the Party, to [email protected] by November 6, 2009 (9:00 p.m. PST). Contact your HarperCollins Sales Representative to discuss using cooperative advertising funds for the Party.
Entries with photographs must include at least three (3) but no more than five (5) photographs. Photographs must be provided in .jpg format and as attachments to the entry email. Video entries may not exceed 120 seconds in length; must be provided in .mov or .flv format; and may not exceed a file size of 75 MB. Only one (1) entry per qualified bookseller is permitted.
All entries must be accompanied by a brief paragraph (100 words max) highlighting the details of the Party: Name of store, location of store, number of attendees, overview of Party, special promotions or features. Paragraph may be included within the body of the entry email or attached as a separate Word document.
PRIZES
One (1) Grand Prize winner will be offered an opportunity to host an exclusive Appearance by author Neil Gaiman at the bookstore. The Appearance will most likely consist of a reading, book signing, question-and-answer session, etc. Specific details of the Appearance are to be determined, based upon the location, space limitations, and other requirements of the winning bookstore. The date, time, and duration of the Appearance depends upon the Author’s schedule. The Sponsor and Author currently project that he will be available in December 2009. If the Grand Prize winner cannot host the Appearance during that month, or if the Author cancels a scheduled Appearance, then the Sponsor and Author will endeavor to select and offer the Grand Prize winner a mutually acceptable alternate date for the Appearance.
Five (5) First Prize winners will each receive five (5) signed copies of The Graveyard Book in hardcover and a customized video greeting from the Author. The specific details (content, length, delivery date, etc.) of the customized video greetings are to be determined by the Sponsor and Author.
Five (5) Second Prize winners will each receive one (1) signed copy of The Graveyard Book in hardcover and a tagged video greeting from the Author. The specific details (content, length, delivery date, etc.) of the tagged video greetings are to be determined by the Sponsor and Author.
All prizes will be awarded, provided there are at least eleven (11) qualified entrants.
SELECTION AND NOTIFICATION OF WINNERS
The Contest winners will be selected by the Sponsor and Author in their sole discretion based upon the following criteria:
(i) Overall creativity of the Party, as demonstrated by the invitations, signage, decorations, activities, entertainment, and refreshments.
(ii) Customer attendance and response (i.e., enthusiasm, costumes, participation).
(iii) Ability to capture and represent the spirit of The Graveyard Book.
I'm requesting a little...clarification, I guess, on the Graveyard Book Halloween party contest. We have a few local businesses who heard that we're planning on doing it and who would like to be involved (because it sounds fun). Would it be disqualifying if we allowed that? Are there any actual rules beyond "have a party; document it; send in the stuff; wait and see"?
Thanks.I asked Elyse Marshall from HarperChildrens, who said,
Without knowing exactly how the local businesses would be involved (I'm guessing some kind of sponsorship or donations, i.e. bakery provides cupcakes, party store provides balloons) I think this sounds okay. However, the party must be held in-store. We included this in the rules to level the playing field a bit, so that those stores which might not be able to afford an off-site venue can still have a fair shot of winning.
If anyone has any questions they can email us directly at [email protected].....
Dear Neil,
I would really like your bell jar of bees to work, and so I'm worried that you might have made a small blunder by gluing the strips flat to the glass. Turlough's strips appear to be perpendicular to the glass.
I took the liberty of asking Turlough on the bee blog: http://turlough.blogspot.com/2007/07/will-they-or-wont-they.html
Here's the response:
"Yes, the strips should be perpendicular to the jar. They aer "glued" in place by gently heating the wax strips to make them tacky.
I'm not sure what will happen with flat strips."
Which is not to say that your flat strips won't work too. If they don't work, give perpendicular strips a shot.
Best of luck to you--and congratulations for a well-deserved Hugo nomination. I love your writing and your imagination; the world would be less enjoyable without both.
Sincerely,
Christian Moody
Cincinnati, OHActually, the day after I put them in, curious as to bee behaviour, I twisted about half of them so they were perpendicular to the glass, and left half of them flat against it. So we'll find out.
...
I have five bottles of Jones Soda with my face on them, one from each appearance on the Fast Forward TV show from 1993 to 2006. (I look really rough in 1999. Which is Green Apple flavour. In case you were wondering.)
posted by Neil
Let's see:
It's a bit quiet. Maddy and Holly and their mum are in the UK for a few weeks, Amanda's in Boston preparing to head off to Russia, and I'm home quite alone if you don't count a large white dog, working very late into the night trying to finish things for people before I go to Worldcon.
It's filled with genuine insider stuff, including this, which made me smile:
I’ve always thought of Neil Gaiman as the cat in Coraline. He’s very wise, dryly humorous, and superior in a cat-like way. He has a great voice and I considered early on having him voice the cat. In re-setting the story in the U.S., I felt I needed more ethnic range in the characters leading me to the marvelous Keith David. Sorry, Neil.
(I did the cat on the
audio book. It was enough.)
I wanted to start keeping bees, but my dad, whose yard I would have to use, says that keeping bees is too stinky. My grandfather says they don't smell at all (his father kept bees). As a person currently keeping bees, can you tell me if they/their hives smell bad?Healthy hives smell like honey, mostly, when they're opened: a thick, deep, sweet smell. (They don't smell like anything when they aren't opened.)
The only occasion you're going to get a bad-smelling hive is if it's diseased or dead; and the same is true of people.
Had a quick look at the belljar-of-honey photo's as well. Looks like it needs an airvent hole on the top....
Didn't spot it in your photo, nor read about the signing hand being full of glass-splinters.
Cheers,
RenateI don't think it does. The bees climb and fly in from the open bell-bottom (there's a hole in the wood beneath them), and leave the same way.
Neil, I think the foundations strips in the BELL JAR were glued in PERPENDICULAR to the jar in the original photos you shared. Glue the edge of each foundation piece onto the inside of the jar.
This may make no difference at all (IANABK), but just an observation of a difference between your jar and the one that inspired you.
...EricYup. I know. We'll see what they do. My assumption is that the little bits of foundation are there to give them some wax and a starting point and the idea, and, seeing it's wild comb, they will do what they want anyway, like bees mostly do, but really, it was for ease of gluing. But if I get back from Worldcon in Montreal and nothing's happened, I'll do it the other way. Photos will be posted, whatever happens.
Also, to put the bell-jar back into the dark and to stop it getting blown away or stolen by passing wood-trolls, I put a broodbox around it (
the one in the photo here).
Hello Mr. Gaiman, you posted about the "pre-paid Neverwhere from the now-as-far-as-I-can-gather extremely defunct Hill House" and stated "You should have received an email from Harpers letting you know this edition was on the way". I pre-paid for it and I have not received an e-mail from Harpers. I'm sure others have not been e-mailed as well. Can you post something about how we can contact them about it. I did not know about this until you posted about it and I and others I'm sure don't want to miss this. Thank you so much for getting this book to happen and please continue to help all of us finally get it. Thanks again.There may well be people who didn't get the email (I know some of Hill House's email addresses were long out of date). If you prepaid for a limited
Neverwhere (and some of you may have done so as far back as November 2003) and you want to make sure that you're on the list, write to
[email protected]. Jennifer is my editor at William Morrow, and the person organising this: be nice to her, she's a hardworking, fulltime editor who has taken this on as an extra task, helping to discharge Hill House's karmic debt, and if she doesn't get back to you immediately, she will soon.
Glad to hear that people who payed for the Hill House Neverwhere will be getting a book after all. I am writing to inquire if anything was being done for booksellers that had taken orders for the Hill House subscription. My understanding is that they'd pre-payed HH just as individuals had, but the one I'd ordered mine from (shocklines.com) hadn't heard anything about the Harper Collins edition. I've already been given a refund for my copy, but I feel really sorry for the store which is just out the money. Thanks for all you do.
If they prepaid for the book, they should get in touch with Jennifer, whether they are stores or individuals. She'll let them know what's happening (I assume they'll simply get their books, just as individual customers would have done).
...
A few small ones: I'm still not sure how to get the balance of personal to not-personal right in this blog, at present. For the curious, the lovely Ms Palmer talks about our relationship over in
The Skinny.
(And note that I'm not saying there's anything bad about vampires, quite the opposite. Just that in a world in which a dozen people immediately write to me on Twitter to point out that I've got it wrong, as they are
all writing Vampire stories, in which Vampires are now everywhere, is a world in which High Vampire Season is coming to an end). You shouldn't be glutted with vampires: they should be a spice, not a food group.
posted by Neil
The Birdchick had looked at the photos of the belljar I'd linked to in the last post more closely than I had, and she asked whether I should have put some kind of foundation in, to get the bees started. On Twitter Teresa Neves pointed me to
http://turlough.blogspot.com/2007/07/will-they-or-wont-they.html where we learn explicitly that, yes, strips of foundation were used.
So I cut some foundation into strips. (It looks like this.)
And I glued strips of foundation onto the inside of the bell jar.
Then I took it back down to the hive and put it back.
