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I'm really starting to like Google Voice. The 3 cents a minute calls to Russia from Canada through my cellphone are rather wonderful for a start. It has its little foibles, though: it sends a voice-to-text text message to your phone if someone leaves you a message. That's good. If an American leaves a message it's going to be pretty accurate. If an English person leaves a message, it might as well be random words. That's not good.
Did two panels today -- a conversation with Gary Wolfe, where we talked about reading fiction and criticism and reviewing and Gene Wolfe and such, and a conversation with Cheryl Morgan where we talked about dogs and bees and pumpkins and Doctor Who and things like that.
I presented two awards -- Best Graphic Fiction and Best Artist, and I won what feels like the heaviest Hugo there ever was for The Graveyard Book. I thought the Best Novel award would and should go to Neal Stephenson's Anathem (and still think that it might have done if that book had actually been included in the Hugo Voters Reading Packet that John Scalzi organised, where every Hugo voter was able to read all the Hugo nominated stories etc, thus, at least in theory, giving a much more educated voting base, who would vote on the basis of things they had read, rather than on name recognition or without having read things that were published in out-of-the-way places). I didn't have a speech prepared, but thanked everyone except one person.
You get about a week between being notified that you are nominated for a Hugo Award and the nominations being announced. This is to allow you to say "No, thank you" if you wish, and to decline the nomination. (I did this a few years ago with Anansi Boys.) The late Charles N. Brown called me during that week having found out by his own methods, or possibly just guessing, and told me not to decline the nomination. He was astonishingly firm and bossy about it, and while I had been wavering, after that call I emailed the administrator of the awards to let them know that I accepted. I should have thanked Charlie, and I didn't. So I am, here.
I was, with Chip Kidd, Irene Gallo and Geri Sullivan, a judge in the Hugo Logo contest. We got over 400 submissions, many of them amazingly good. Here's the winner.
A quiet Sunday. My trainer, Todd, arrived this morning, took me for a walk and a bike ride.
Bill and Sharon Stiteler came over, along with my assistant Lorraine, and the four of us went down to the beehives: all the bees are doing well. They're "Minnesota Hygienic" bees, a variety of Italian Bee. On Thursday (we think) the three packages of Russian Bees arrive, and we will install them in waiting hives. (The differences between Russian and Italian Bees are explained in this PDF document. Simply put, the Russians are more resistant to Varroa mites, keep queen cells on the go at all times so if something happens to their queen they have another ready to go, and they do better over winters than Italians because they don't overpopulate.)
Then I cooked and wrote and wrote some more. Now watching old episodes of 30 Rock with Maddy on the sofa...
I was just feeling like I was just starting to get back on top of everything today when I saw this:
I thought I would let you know that, while your Contact Neil page refers anybody looking for information to your About Neil page and Biography, a lot of the information there is shockingly out of date.
For instance, the Biography mentions nothing beyond 2004 - no Coraline movie, or Detective Comics, or Graveyard Book, and subsequently, no Newbery - and talks about 2005 events such as the release of Beowulf in the future tense.
Will this be remedied?
Cheers, WR
And thought, oh god. And yes, the biography needs updating. Probably, really it needs throwing out and writing a new one: it tended to be updated as I went, which meant that fairly small things and great huge things sat side by side. And for some reason it's always last on the list of things to do. So yes. I'll get on it, or find someone who will. Or I'll just keep meaning to do it...
Err... hello (blinks once or twice)
So... I was wondering... this wonderful Thow a Party win a Reading Thing-a-bobber... is it open to libraries?
I have a group of teen volunteers who slave for me here at my library, who are very excited about the possibiltiy that the contest may indeed be open to libraries.
Acting as the voice of reason, I said we needed to check the rules. I am not a very good voice of reason, because I am pretty excited about the possibility too.
So, is it? We'll probably have a Graveyard book themed party anyway, but it would be a lot easier to sell it to the Higher Ups if we could possibly get an author visit out of it.
Thanks!
Merideth
Hmm. Good question.
No, I don't think the win-a-December-signing event is open to libraries. It's to encourage, and show support for Independent Bookshops. But I'm going to ALA in July to collect my Newbery, and there will be many librarians out there whose brains I can pick, and I bet we can come up with a library-friendly idea: there might possibly be some secret Library-related things in 2010 on the horizon, after all.
Is your piece about the '87 Worldcon going to be available anywhere except the Anticipation programme booklet?
'87 was also my first Worldcon. My own recollections, as a 22-year old student gopher include the moment when I somehow collected two entire TV news crews and was leading them round while completely failing to find anyone who knew where they were supposed to be, or why, or had any credible claim to be important enough to talk to them. Also the "we hate the hotel manager" Chinese wall, filk session, gopher party and (in hindsight blessedly) failed lynchmob.
Steve
Right now the only place it's going to be published is the Anticipation book. But I do tell, in abbreviated form, the story of why my hatred for the Metropole Hotel and its manager is peculiarly undiminished, 22 years on.
See this link where the Web Goblin proposes the following:
BE IT PROPOSED THAT WHEREAS Mr. G has a lot of trophies already and WHEREAS Mr. G's house is of finite space and WHEREAS Mr. G's mantle is already full and WHEREAS the Web Goblin's mantle is quite bare and WHEREAS the Web Goblin did write the blog much of last summer and WHEREAS the Web Goblin keeps the blog running merrily THEREFORE Mr. G should totally give the trophy to the Web Goblin should his blog win the British Fantasy Award for "Non-Fiction".
I think this merits consideration. :-)
Oh. Good idea. Sure, if the blog wins, the award is Dan's.
Good evening, Neil.
Sorry to burden you with this; over the past year I've been reading as much R.A. Lafferty as I could lay my hands on, but it seems that not much (particularly in second hand books) have sifted through to Southern Africa. So I decided it was time to buy another short collection like "Lafferty in Orbit" or "Iron Tears", only they were all gone. Most pages for Wildside Press editions were gone or are simple "out of stock" and have been that way for weeks. And this is Amazon.com, not some local on-line retailer. Likewise, Wildside Press has no longer individual volumes of Lafferty's work on sale.
I know you're not the executor of his estate, but I know you're one of the biggest Lafferty aficionados out there, second only to Michael Swanwick, and it was your generous mentioning of him on your journal that made interested in Lafferty. So I'm asking; has Lafferty's been dropped by Wildside Press due to the current world economic climate, or is this just temporary?
If he's been dropped, then the world has grown a great deal colder, and not because it's winter here.
Kindest Regards and yours sincerely
Johnnie
I don't know whether or not the Lafferty books from Wildside Press are still in print (it doesn't look like it). But there's an awful lot of Lafferty out there right now -- look at the Lafferty entries on Bookfinder.com . And there are many hungry dealers in second-hand books who will be only too delighted to take your money in exchange for books. Trust me.
The trouble with the last week was that every day was filled with remarkable things, and I would think, "Right. That's a good blog entry there," but I'd grab sleep instead, and the next day would be just as remarkable and just as long. So I need to do, at the minimum, a round up of the Coraline Musical First Night, being interviewed in the bath, and the Amanda & Me HousingWorks event.... (which the last question in the Q&A section in the middle turned into something a bit more newsworthy than I had expected) and the Printers Row Book festival, and how unimpressed I am with Delta Airlines (given their lack of interest in finding my lost garment-bag), and Crazy Hair coming out and going onto the NYT bestseller list...
But it is nearly two in the morning, and I am in a hotel in Toronto and I need to sleep. So instead, here is a Magnetic Fields song arranged for voice and Gameboy...
I think, more than anything I do, I get concerned about the audiobooks, and made happy when they (and I) get recognised. They're hard work; I'm very aware that I'm not a professional reader-of-books-aloud; and, most of all, they're personal. If you don't like a book I've written I won't take it personally: I'm not the story, after all. But if you don't like a recording of me reading something... well, it was me sitting in that studio for three days reading aloud to someone in another room, and yes, it's personal.
So, yes. Big happies all around. ...
Several ones like this in today...
Kevin Murphy (Mystery Science Theater 3000's Tom Servo, and now of Rifftrax fame) wrote today that you are secretly Leonard Cohen. Are you? Photographic evidence points to yes: http://blog.rifftrax.com/2009/01/06/okay-now-what-the-hell/
Why didn’t anyone else see this coming? Why am I the only one to realize that Neil is actually groaning, tortured, half-mad folk-rock poet Leonard Cohen, who maintains his astonishing youth and beauty by feasting on the pineal glands of innocent women?!
I dunno.
You spend your adolescence dreaming that you'll grow up to be Lou Reed, and then you grow up to be Leonard Cohen. Having said that, 'Tower of Song' is one of the songs I would take with me to a desert island, even if, in Manila, my fingers once typed John Cale when my head thought Leonard Cohen.
(Strangely, as I write this, I'm sitting on the sofa with Holly watching Lou Reed introduce Leonard Cohen at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, as we clear out unwatched stuff on the TIVO).
I was wondering if you'd seen any of the coverage (boingboing, Ebert, QuestionCopyright) about Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues?
On the one hand, I think an artist using another artist's work as the basis of a movie should get permission/compensate that person. On the other hand, the creator in this case has been dead for twenty years, and forgotten for more. Meanwhile Nina is arguably generating value for the corporations that currently own the rights.
I also thought it was interesting that she's come to the conclusion that physical distribution is more likely *limit* the audience that can view her work.
Now that you have a Wii, will you be playing the Coraline Wii game? Or would that be incredibly boring for you since you created the world it is set in?
The Coraline Wii is a mystery to me. (It might be less of a mystery if I asked anyone at Laika about it, mind you.) Then again, I seem only to be using the Wii as an exercisey fitness thingummy at present. Weight is dropping, waistline shrinking, and scores are going up for the most part, I'm loving the yoga and the balance stuff, and my trainer was impressed yesterday at stuff I seem to be able to do I couldn't do before, like snowshoe up the side of a hill without getting out of breath. (My first time in snowshoes. Interesting things.)
Just starting to come back to humanity again. Huge quantities of email waiting for me, some of which will undoubtedly get overlooked, and if you sent me a big important businessy email and I seem to have missed it, then wait a few days and send it again.
The original schedule this week was perfectly fine. It was only when we learned that Monday in Dublin was a bank holiday, and Dublin moved from Monday to Thursday that it became impossible, but none of us actually noticed, so I wound up doing the week on about 4 hours a night's sleep, and yesterday began at 6:00am with me on breakfast TV in Dublin, then I flew to the UK and was interviewed, signed boxes of books, drank tea, then did a reading. Was a bit grumpy at the reading, mostly I think due to lack of sleep. (I learned that it is not a good idea to let your cellphone ring when I'm doing a reading and tired. Nor is it a good idea to take photo after photo when the house-lights have been left up, the digital click on your camera is too loud, and I'm heading for a good bit.) I signed for many, many hours for a lot of people.
Fell asleep fully dressed on hotel bed at some point.
Today was a meeting on The Graveyard Book possible one day film, seeing friends and family, and a trip to see the last French and Saunders show at the Drury Lane, where I got to tell Dawn that I really liked her book of letters, "Dear Fatty". Which I did.
I have an almost infinite number of tabs open, and will list as many as I can, so I can close them and thus speed up this computer:
An interviewer in Wales asked me about Richard Dawkins trying to stop children reading fairy tales. Then a friend sent me a Daily Telegraph article to show that he'd gone over the top. The odd thing about the article is that the quotes from Professor Dawkins don't say what the article says he says, if you see what I mean, and the quotes themselves seem rather devoid of context, as if he was answering questions which we can't see. Odd.
Still in Washington DC. It's still cold. It's still raining. Now lightning is flashing and thunder rumbling as well, and it just dawned on me that the White House breakfast tomorrow will be at the White House, and that I ought to do something special (apart from just dragging Maddy along to it as a combination of daughter and good luck charm) so I put my remarkably shiny boots outside the hotel door to be shined some more.
I had a day with some wonderful things in it -- after the interviews I went out to one of the Smithsonion places, and got to go backstage and learn about book and paper and art conservation, and to see rusting spaceships and sweat-stained spacesuits and raider-of-the-lost-ark-storage-warehouses. My thanks to Judy and Tegan and to Nora for showing me strange miracle things.
The schedule I got from Harpers that I posted for the tour had me talking in the Children's Tent tomorrow for an hour, from 11:45am to 12:45, but I think I'd be more likely to believe the LoC website, which gives me something closer to half an hour, from 11:45 to 12:15. The signing starts at 1:00pm. I don't know how long they'll let me keep signing for. I suspect we'll find out.
A few pictures: WIRED online have a Corinthian Tattoo up in their favourite comics tattoo article.
There are going to be film tie-in editions of Coraline out next month (the bottom one has essays on the film be me and by Henry Selick, and stills, and such):
And there's an Alternate Reality Gaming Network, which suspects me in the case of Who Killed a certain lady rockstar. But I am almost definitely not involved.
So I got home yesterday at sunrise. Slept all day. Was up all night but not good for much. (This is what sunrise looks like when you get close to my house.)
Today I slept until early afternoon. Then got up and walked the dog. I got very used to using the camera as a diary while I was in China (as a back up for a notebook, and sometimes a substitute), so took the camera along on the walk.
G. K Chesterton observed that one of the best things about being away is that you get to see what you come back to with different eyes.
Found myself amazed by the size of my house, for example. There are a lot of people in China, and they live, on the whole, in much smaller places than mine. (Actually, that's probably true of most of the world: it takes a certain idiocy to want to live in an Addams Family House in the first place). But having, over the last month, met a number of families in which several generations lived in one room, it seems really strange to have so much space.
I saw many vegetables growing, pumpkins even, while I was in China, where I also learned that pumpkin vine tips make a great stir-fry-vegetable (if you peel off the fuzzy stuff first). And was happy to see that I had a few pumpkins in my garden. Not many, but enough.
Was pleased to observe, on my walk, that the falling-down barn has not yet fallen down.
Astonished and delighted to see blackberries. I planted the one blackberry bush about five years ago, and people would always decide it was a weed and mow it or cut it. Finally, earlier this year, we put big metal rods up to persuade people not to mow over it, and now I'm home and, gosh, blackberries. Not as nice as the ones in my grandma's back garden, when I was a boy, mind.
Also a grape-trellis covered with grapes. Really yummy ones.
Lorraine tells me that Cabal was depressed while I was away, and he went off his food and moped. He's been extremely happy since I've been back. I have not the heart to tell him I'm going off on tour soon. (Maddy knows, but she assures me that as manager of the volleyball team she will probably not have time to really miss me. She is probably just telling me this to make me feel better.) (I just read that to her and she says, "Say 'PS Maddy will totally miss me', so they don't get any wrong ideas.")
A tree in front of my writing gazebo has been cut down, I notice. It was a sapling when the gazebo was built, but had grown and was cutting off the light.
Brightly coloured fungus on the side of trees. Tomorrow, when I walk, I may look for giant puffballs in the woods, but without enthusiasm, as they are my least favourite of the edible mushrooms. (Which reminds me -- when I was in China I was fed something called both Bamboo Pith and Bamboo Fungus, also known, less appetisingly, as the Stinkhorn. I googled and wound up learning all about the unexpected but, for ladies at least, gratifying qualities of the fresh stinkhorn. Dried and reconstituted with bamboo shoots, it would not have the same effect.)
And also, while I was gone, the remarkable Hans put in an electric fence. There have been more and more sightings of bears in this region, and we've been assured that an electric fence will keep bears out of the beehives, as long as the bears don't get to them in the first place. (Which is to say, if you have a beehive and a bear gets into it and then you put up an electric fence, the bear will cheerfully go through the fence to get to the honey.)
And because, not unreasonably, the last time I posted dog photos, many people asked for pictures of cats, and because I don't think Coconut (who was, long ago, Maddy's kitten) has ever been photographed in this blog, here are Princess (sitting) and Coconut, in the front hall, where the dog is not allowed to go.
I went to the Humane Society today and picked up their list of Things They Need, and gave it to Lorraine. She went out and bought bleach and cat food and peanut butter and so on, then went up to the Humane Society to drop the stuff off.
She returned much later carrying a cardboard box containing a calico kitten with whom she had fallen in love, and was last seen taking the kitten home to introduce to her Bengals. This is Princess glaring at the calico kitten...
And this is Lorraine's kitten, puffed up and halloweeny in order to persuade everyone that she is in fact a very big cat indeed.
In regard to the above, did they ask you to do it, and would you have accepted if they had?
Nobody asked me to do it, but then, when Douglas asked me if I'd like to adapt Life, The Universe and Everything for radio I said no, and that was with Douglas alive and asking. (Dirk Maggs did it, and did an excellent job.) It seemed a thankless task.
I like Eoin very much, and wish him well with the book. He'll probably write a sixth Hitchhiker's book with more enthusiasm, and certainly faster, than Douglas would have done. But it won't be a Douglas Adams Hitchhiker's book.
For the record, if I don't get around to writing a sequel to something while I'm alive, I'd very much rather that nobody else does it once I'm dead. It should exist in your head or in Lucien's library, or in fanfic. But that's me, and not every author feels the same way.
Hello Neil,
This is almost a dangerous question to ask you, because it is about something John Byrne has said. But as a large proponent of libraries, I was curious as to your thoughts on something he recently stated regarding trade paperbacks in libraries:
"Ever since I started writing for a living, I have found myself viewing libraries somewhat differently than once I did. I think we are all in agreement that libraries are A Good Thing -- but are they A Good Thing right across the board? When we have niche products like comics, is it really a good idea for them to be available in libraries?"
I don't think it's a dangerous question, and it has a remarkably easy and straighforward answer, which is, Yes, it's a very good idea for them to be in libraries.
Hello Neil,
First off, I hope this email finds you well.
I've planned to attend the Library of Congress book festival and just wanted to know if there are any general rules of etiquette for your signings.
Is there a book limit for signing?
Can a say a few words about how much I enjoy your work in person? I promise it won't last longer than 15 nervous seconds.
Most importantly, how early should I arrive before the likely rush of other frothing fans?
These questions constantly roll in my mind. I'd hate to add extra weariness to a likely hot, humid, noisy,(yet still awesome) festival.
Thanks for coming to the southeast!
Sincerely, Dan
The book limit will depend on how many people there are, and how many people I can get through in the time I've got. It'll be announced at the signing, but it won't be more than three books, and it may well be only one.
And of course you can talk to me. Most people seem to use the signing line as an opportunity to say thank you, and most authors are pleased to hear that they've made a difference, or just to be thanked. We like it if you say hello, honest.
How early you should get there? I don't know. Each time I've signed at the LoC Book Festival it's been different. According to the website this time it's:
Teens & Children Pavilion
11:45-12:15 pm (This is a short reading from The Graveyard Book, and a Q&A).
Book Signing
1-3 pm (and it'll probably go longer if they don't need the space, but may be cut off if they don't have anywhere to move it to, or have something else planned for me at 3.00pm).
We may wind up with people who would like to be at the reading/Q&A who skip it in order to be early in the signing line. But that's if they've actually told people where to line up for the signing, which they may or may not do.
Last time people were in the signing line before dawn. I don't think that would work this time, as I'm not doing a morning signing.
Hey Neil, I would love to know what time the Columbia University reading is taking place on September 30th. I am very excited t go but don't know what time to arrive. Thanks.
I see in "Where's Neil" that you'll be doing a signing in New York City and Philadelphia. With New Jersey right in between, why not a stop here?
Because the people who aren't on the East Coast, some of whom are travelling hundreds of miles to get to the readings, would rise up as one person in their anger at the unfairness of it all, and destroy New Jersey in their rage. Which would be sad, because there are lots of bits of New Jersey that are actually quite nice.
When Sarah Palin was mayor of Wasilla, Alaska, she (allegedly) attempted to get books she didn't approve of out of the public library. This is scary. Are free speech organizations like the CBLDF and the First Amendment Project going to take this issue on?
What you fight is specifics: bad laws, bad arrests and the like. People trying to ban books and comics and people trying to stop other people selling or publishing or creating comics and books and suchlike.
You don't fight "alleged attempts to get books out of a public library" ten years ago. To "take this issue on" I suspect would consist, Father Ted-like, of people walking around Sarah Palin with placards saying "Down with This sort of Thing" and "Careful Now", which would probably not result in increased freedom of speech.
Hi Neil! This Andrew Drilon (I was the creator "Lines and Spaces", the Alex Niño tribute comic which won the Philippine Graphic/Fiction Award last year). I've been making lots of short comics since then, under the banner title Kare-Kare Komiks, and they've gotten nice comments from people like Emma Bull and Warren Ellis, so I thought you might be interested:
Anyway, I'll be posting "Lines and Spaces" there tomorrow, for those who are planning to enter the contest this year (the deadline's at the end of the month), and I'm hoping you can help spread the word.
The official feed now includes the byline at the top, as requested by several people using feed readers that don't display the author properly.
For those who, like me, had trouble making out the words, here are the lyrics to "I Google You", posted by Mr. G in the comment thread to a blog post. The whole discussion there is interesting.
Many people wrote in to offer suggestions for a collective noun for Johns, most of them thinking along similar lines. Among the most intuitive were: a flushing, a trick, and a gospel.
Interesting search queries by which people arrived at neilgaiman.com over the past month: [oops nudity] - 51 hits, [community suffering] - 27, and [good omens slash] - 6. And now many more people will be ending up here for each of those.
Lastly, let's go to the mailbag!
From: John Lorentz Subject: Sometimes Real Life Is Too Strange
Neil,
A few nights ago, some crooks took advantage of some gullible people here in Portland by posing as Wells Fargo security guards and met people coming to make use of the night deposit slot at a local bank.
"The night deposit slot here is out of order. But if you'll put your deposit in this bag, we'll deliver it to another branch in the morning."
On the news tonight, our local NBC affiliate (KGW) pointed out that this is exactly like a scheme described in AMERICAN GODS, giving the page number in the trade edition of the book and holding that page up to the camera. (They don't have the video up of the version of the story with the reference to your book--if they post it, I'll send you the link for when you finally return to good Internet service.)
So if there's a sudden surge in sales of American Gods here in Portland, that's probably why.:)
Right. Tonight I'm home, sitting on a sofa with my daughters who are watching the Olympics. This morning I went out and bought lots of lightweight, quick-drying clothes and other useful travel things, with my assistant Lorraine. (At one point during the clothes-buying part of things Lorraine helpfully said, "Boss, you're still wearing their pants. Why don't you go and change back into your own?" Which seemed like a sensible idea, so I grabbed my jeans and headed back to the changing room, overhearing the sales lady saying, "Is he a professor?" and Lorraine's reply of, "He's a writer. It's the same thing.")
So I now have lots of new, light, easily washed clothes, many of them grey or white, which means I will spend much of the next four weeks feeling like I am in disguise.
I don't know if I'll be able to post while on the road -- I'm going to be very much off the beaten track doing research for the next big project, and a lot of the time I'll be on foot in rural China, so I hope that Dan Guy The Webgoblin will be able to post as things happen, and news needs to go up. And then there's always Maddy (or even Holly).
I've been talking to Harpers about the follow-up to Giving Away American Gods. The next plan is Giving Away Neverwhere, which will be done in some different ways to the way American Gods was done. I'm hoping it'll happen in September. More info, from me or thewebgoblin, as we get it.
And I forgot to mention that it was indeed Béla Fleck who, reading on the blog that I wanted a Banjo-based Danse Macabre, recorded a version for Banjo and cello which is positively awesome, and which will be on the audio book.
Right. Bed.
0 Comments on bed bed bed as of 8/14/2008 1:02:00 AM
I'm fairly nervous about teaching at Clarion this year. I said no when asked for years, because I wasn't sure what I had to teach anyone about writing. Mostly I figure I'm still figuring it out myself. I finally said yes, and I still don't think I know enough to dare to actually teach anyone.
In the shower today I tried to think about the best advice I'd ever been given by another writer. There was something that someone said at my first Milford, about using style as a covering, but sooner or later you would have to walk naked down the street, that was useful...
And then I remembered. It was Harlan Ellison about a decade ago.
He said, "Hey. Gaiman. What's with the stubble? Every time I see you, you're stubbly. What is it? Some kind of English fashion statement?"
"Not really."
"Well? Don't they have razors in England for Chrissakes?"
"If you must know, I don't like shaving because I have a really tough beard and sensitive skin. So by the time I've finished shaving I've usually scraped my face a bit. So I do it as little as possible."
"Oh." He paused. "I've got that too. What you do is, you rub your stubble with hair conditioner. Leave it a couple of minutes, then wash it off. Then shave normally. Makes it really easy to shave. No scraping."
I tried it. It works like a charm. Best advice from a writer I've ever received.
Merrilee (who is, as she has been for the last 20 years, my literary agent) has gone away, leaving me with a huge sheet of paper on which pretty much everything I've agreed to write over the next 18 months is written down in purple and white (for books or articles or stories) and green and white (for film or TV scripts).
I'm now officially forbidden from agreeing to write any more introductions, or saying "Sure, I'd love to do that, that sounds fun," without consulting her first, so she can say "YOU WHAT? ARE YOU MAD? OF COURSE NOT!" At least until the current round of stuff is done.
...
Bob Miller, who was the publisher of Hyperion, is heading over to Harper Collins [NB: one of my publishers, and also the people who pay for this website] where he wants to set up an experimental publishing unit with no or low advances and with profit sharing for an author. It could be interesting -- I was particularly fascinated by the final line of the NYT coverage:
Mr. Miller said he was considering offering both e-book and audio editions of the hardcovers at no extra cost to the consumer.
Because it seems to me that giving away an e-Book with a hardback is an excellent way to grow the e-book world, and something that a publisher could do at little or no cost. And I like the idea of essentially having bought a HEART-SHAPED BOX license rather than a copy of HEART-SHAPED BOX -- of course buying the book would give you the audio and the text, not just the object.
The Guardian and the New York Times both write about Bob Miller's arrival at Harper Collins, and between the two articles you get a fairly good picture of what's being said.
I think the Times statement that Typically, authors earn royalties of 15 percent of profits after they have paid off their advances is very dodgy. Many Authors earn royalties of 15 percent on the cost of a hardback, which goes to repay an advance until the advance is earned back, and then continues on from there. It's not 15% of profits.
Publishers can be making healthy profits on books that have not earned back their royalties.
(My son Mike is home for a couple of days, and we went walking in the blazing summery sunshine, which only got weird when we were tramping through still unmelted snow, and he asked how that could be. I tried to explain simply, with pretend numbers,
Me: Let's say you get a thousand dollar advance on a book, with a ten percent royalty, and the book sells for ten dollars. The publisher has to sell a thousand books before you have earned out. But the publisher is selling the book, which it costs them a dollar to make, to the retailer, for four dollars. So they'll earn money from five hundred copies on...
Mike: So fifty-fifty profit sharing would be really smart in that case.
I was looking through your site at the word counts you posted for your books, and I wondered how you arrived at that cont? I know most word processors have a word count function--is that what you used? I've also found a formula where you count characters in a line, divide by six, then multiply the answer by how many lines are in your document. Which way did you arrive at your counts?
Waiting patiently for "The Graveyard Book," ~Karen
I just use the word counters on whatever word processing thing I'm using at the time. They may disagree a little.
In notebooks I laboriously count the words on a couple of pages, divide by two and use that as my What I'm Writing Per Page Average. Then when I type it I find out how wrong I was.
Hi Neil,
Have you seen this lovely awesome video of city lights at night made by my favorite astronaut, Don Pettit(who also happens to be married to my husband's sister)? While on the space station he figured out how to film the earth's lights without the blur of travel. It is so cool. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eEiy4zepuVE
Enjoy,
Claudia Carlson
I hadn't, and it is extremely cool.
Hi,
I'm organising one of your events in Melbourne, and just wanted to let your readers know how they can book:
Was that where I spoke last time I was in Melbourne? If it's the one I'm thinking of, it is not huge, so book to guarantee a seat. Lots of people asking why I'm not going to New Zealand or Perth or Brisbane or Canberra or Adelaide on this trip (A: Because there is only one of me and time is not infinite... Sorry. )
... This one's important...
Hi Neil,
You may remember Emru Townsend. He did this interview with you around the time you were promoting Princess Mononoke:
You may also remember his sister Tamu, who is one of the organizers for Anticipation SF, the 2009 Worldcon in Montreal where you will be guest of honor.
The reason I'm writing is that Emru is in need of a bone marrow transplant.
He has been diagnosed with leukemia and a condition called monosomy 7. Due to the monosomy 7, he has an increased risk of the leukemia coming back, no matter how successful chemotherapy may be. A bone marrow transplant is his best chance for survival. Unfortunately, his sister was not a match.
While anyone, anywhere can be a potential match, his best chance for a match comes from a donor who shares his ethnic background. As the son of two African Carribean parents, his chances are further diminished as blacks are underrepresented in bone marrow registries worldwide.
Emru is one of the nicest, coolest people I've had the good fortune to meet. He also runs fps Magazine, one of the best web sites around devoted to the art of animation.
Would you mind posting this message to get the word out and maybe get more people around the world to join the bone marrow registry?
Registration is quite simple, and usually requires a cheek swab or a small blood sample. If you end up being called in as a donor, the procedure itself is a simple, painless day surgery. Recovery involves mild discomfort in the pelvis and back for a few days. Your own bone marrow will replenish itself within six weeks.
The donation process is anonymous. You won't know if you're helping Emru or somebody else, but you will be helping to save a life. How cool is that?
For more information and links to bone marrow registries all over the world, please visit:
When I get a second I'll post about seeing The Magnetic Fields in Chicago. In the meantime, lots of tabs need to be closed here...
...
On April the 18th I'll be doing a reading and a Q&A as a benefit for the CBLDF at the New York Comic-Con. I haven't mentioned it here but people have already noticed,
Mr Gaiman,
I was really excited to hear that you'll be attending our Comic Con here in New York. then I read that it'll be a ticketed event. I'm sure it's for the Heroes fund or some other worthy cause, but surely you can do a free signing while you're there. You'e Neil freaking Gaiman, I'm sure DC would let youtake over their booth for a couple of hours. Please.
regards,
Frank
Hi Frank
I don't think it'll happen, I'm afraid. The CBLDF and the New York Con have organised the appearance as a fundraiser, and to ensure that it's successful that's going to be my one appearance (it's a lot more of an appearance than I had planned to do before the CBLDF asked me -- if they hadn't asked, I wouldn't be there at all). As you say, it's a worthy cause. (It's the same sort of thing they set up for Stephen King last year.)
Neil Gaiman, the renowned author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, and films will be presenting a live reading benefiting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at the New York Comic-Con. The appearance, a paid ticketed reading event, will be called an "An Evening With Neil Gaiman" with 100% of the proceeds going to benefit the First Amendment legal work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. "Reed Exhibitions and the New York Comic Con have always shown a passion for the First Amendment, and their continued commitment to the CBLDF is a tremendous boon to our work," says CBLDF Executive Director Charles Brownstein. "We're thrilled to team up with them for this rare and special event."
"We're elated to be working with the CBLDF to host this incredible event," states Lance Fensterman, Show Manager for New York Comic Con. "Neil Gaiman is a huge personality, and the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is an incredibly influential and important organization. To have them both come together like this at New York Comic Con is a significant honor and I know this will be an enormous highlight of our weekend activity."
"An Evening With Neil Gaiman" will be Mr. Gaiman's only public appearance at New York Comic Con. It will be held on Friday, April 18, at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, and will feature a reading of material selected by Mr. Gaiman. A limited access VIP reception will take place immediately before the event. New York Comic Con, the largest popular culture event to occur on the East Coast, will take place at the Jacob K. Javits Center in New York City, April 18 – 20, 2008.
The book has now had 54k users and 2.3M page views. On average each user is viewing 42 pages.
Which doesn't tell us how many people have read the whole book on their screens and how many people have read one page and shaken their heads and gone away.
It'll be up for a couple more weeks...
This next just came in from Jennifer Brehl, my editor at Harpers, and someone who has been hard at work on making the book available.
Neil –
Below is a link to the survey that the HC internet team hope your will post to your blog. They are very enthusiastic about getting input from your fans to help them to improve the Browse Inside application.
The first few questions will be used for segmentation: current fans vs. new readers, print readers vs. digital readers, etc. It may be that the different groups have different reactions to this promotion and to the online reader.
At the end of this, the internet team would like to invite respondents to participate in a “Browse Inside” Advisory Panel to provide more in-depth feedback.
As you know your fans better than anyone, we’re eager to hear your opinions.
I hope that people will take the survey -- the ones who didn't like the way that Harpers did it as much as the ones who did. If you would prefer a downloadable book or a different interface or something, let them know...
I was vaguely wondering about whether to do a glossary of unusual words for The Graveyard Book, but for some reason when I read,
parents may need to be on hand to explain adjectives such as Miltonian. A glossary, rather than Gaiman's introduction, would have been a nice addition.
I found myself deciding against putting a glossary in. I thought that really, part of the fun of words is finding out what they mean. It was always one of the things I loved about books -- that they had cool new words in them. There are words I remember going and finding what they meant, puzzling over and chewing until I understood them (disembowel, for example, a word I ran into as a 7 year old in a John Brunner short story that taught me an awful lot about bodies and what's in them and what you could do to them) and words I remember discovering from fiction and understanding from context.
And it's fun as an author to throw in good words. Someone told me off for putting the word roiling in Odd and the Frost Giants[v.tr.1)to make (a liquid) muddy or cloudy by stirring up sediment. 2) To displease or disturb; vex: My roommate's off-putting habits began to roil me.v.intr. To be in a state of turbulence or agitation], as if kids would be upset by an unfamiliar word. I think I got roiling from R. A. Lafferty, as a kid, and loved it.
Nicked from George R.R. Martin's blog (grrm.livejournal.com), and as much as I love reading both of your journals, I love reading your books and your characters more. And I know that blogging is a distraction to me whether writing papers or short stories -- especially that temptation to tell people what the story's about, which somehow always makes me want to write it less...
I think she has a very valid point (writers need to write, and they need to write the thing they're doing). Beyond that, I read the rest of the rant as a thickly trowelled-on mixture poetic license and rhetorical excess to make the point that when you're blogging, you're not working (a true statement). And it's obviously true for Robin. Me, I like being an author with a blog. And one reason I don't do comments here (as I've said before) is pretty much for the reasons she outlines -- I might get sucked into it and lost forever.
But I think that suggesting that a writer stops being a writer because they blog or have a LiveJournal is silliness, and obviously easily disprovable. Different writers work in different ways. Some are sociable, some aren't. As Robin Hobb says on her FAQ
I've always preferred to work alone, not sharing my work with anyone until it goes off to an editor. That's my quirk. Many professionals attribute a lot of their success to workshops and writers' clubs.
And I think her rant and her reaction to blogging is just part of the same quirk. Blogging works for some writers and not for others. For those for whom it doesn't work, her rant is a useful exhortation not to do it.
A couple of years ago Gene Wolfe wrote two stories inspired by Lisa Snellings-Clark art. DreamHaven published them. It's a book called Strange Birds. It's a wonderful book-- the second story is one the most disturbing horror stories Gene has ever written.
Now DreamHaven have announced Strange Roads, a chapbook featuring three new stories by Peter S. Beagle, with a full-color cover and black & white interior art by Lisa Snellings-Clark. Limited to 1000 copies.
(Strange Birds, Strange Roads... I wonder what the next book title could be, and what poor foolish author will be sucked into Lisa's dark world of madness and poppets and pain.)
(It's me actually.)
...
The Children's Book Council of Australia are holding a conference (as mentioned earlier on this blog) called "All the Wild Wonders" in Melbourne this year. It'll have some fun keynote speakers (http://www.iceaustralia.com/cbca2008/speak.html) two of whom will be giving speeches that are open to the public. Those two are me and Shaun Tan. And I want to hear what Shaun has to say enough that I'm going to get up early on Saturday 3 May 2008, because his talk starts at 9.00 am. (Mine is on Sunday the 4th and starts at the same time.)
...
I'm sure a lot of people have already asked you, but I'm dying to know your stance on the Spitzer scandal. Having written about it from time to time, how do you feel about prostitution in general?
Nope, nobody's asked me (probably very wisely). I think my views on adult sex-workers are a lot like the ones expressed on Penn and Teller's Bullshit episode on Prostitution (on YouTube here) only without all the swearing.
...
And finally, from Farah Mendelsohn, an important one:
Dear Neil,
this may be old news to you, but Terry Pratchett has donated $1 million to Alzheimer's research.
Pat Cadigan has launched a "Match it for Pratchett" campaign to get fans to see if we can raise as much. The initial post is here: http://fastfwd.livejournal.com/316828.html
Any luck on recreating the best-EVER rice pudding? :D
--Denise
No, and I'm a bit grumpy about it. What I did was put some sweet rice in a bowl, then add some raw sugar, a smidge of salt and and then pour in some local milk. Then I shoved the bowl in an oven, and when I took it out a while later I had a perfect rice pudding. Thrice. The fourth time, having mentioned it on this blog, I figured I'd actually work out the amounts and immortalise it, at which point it all went wrong. It worked fine as long as I was doing it by eye, but was doomed the moment I started to try and pay attention to what I was doing. It's like one of those particles that you can know where it is or how fast it's going, but not both. I can apparently cook rice pudding well or keep track of times and quantities but not both....
One day.
Hi Neil,
Regarding the amazon discount on Absolute Sandman 3.
I place my order last week working out that the discount of 37% plus the extra 5% would be a 42%.
However, the 5% discount was applied to the already discount price so in total it was just over a 40%.
Still a bargain compared to the 10% discount that amazon.co.uk are offering. Regards
Chris
Ah. Good to know...
Hello Neil,
I know there has been a lot of hooplah about the free book. However, your diabolical plan has worked on me. I read it last weekend, then immediately went out and bought Anansi Boys.
Now I'm interested in reading Sandman next and am confused as to what to buy. The Absolute Sandman looks cool, but the $77.62 on Amazon is pretty steep for something I'm not sure I'm going to love $77.62 worth.
So, is there anything still in print that will give me a just a taste of Sandman?
Of course. The trade paperbacks are cheaper, and a way to find out if you like it. There are ten volumes in the Sandman series, along with Dream Hunters (a prose book with lovely illustrations by Yoshitaka Amano) and Endless Nights (a set of seven short stories).
I think the Absolute Sandmans are absolutely worth it, by the way. They're beautiful, each one's 600 pages long, oversized and slipcased. And the odds are good that, given the cost of production, they won't stay in print forever.
Hi Neil,
You are currently in the running for "Most Likely to be a Defrocked Pirate Living in the Wrong Century" poll on Deb Geisler's blog on Livejournal. She talks about it here:
