How to use this Page

The Graveyard Book is so close to being finished I can taste it. All the writing's been done and now it's a matter of typing it and reading it and fixing it. (Interestingly, and rather to my surprise, The Graveyard Book looks like it's going to come in at about 67,000 words. Which is a nice meaty read, and about 12,000 words longer than Stardust.)

I wasn't going to blog at all as right now the web is problematic and I am on deadline, but just as I put up the thing yesterday about free ebooks being better than soup I thought these two news items were worth mentioning...

Stardust the movie is nominated for three Saturn Awards, Beowulf is nominated for two (and I'm co-nominated with Roger Avary for one of those). (Full list in easilt readable form at http://www.variety.com/awardcentral_article/VR1117981190.html)

David Fincher is confirmed as the director of the film of the Charles Burns graphic novel Black Hole, which Roger Avary and I are co-writing. Hurrah.

This is cool: Beelzebufo, the frog that eats dinosaurs and challenges our current theories of continental drift...

And Steve Bissette posts the Dave McKean cover to the Golden/Wagner/Bissette book about stuff I've done, now retitled Prince of Stories, at his blog. (Which is a Sandman reference and was me doing a little Velvet Underground reference to a song that seemed to have the whole plot of Sandman in it...)

Add a Comment

Hurrah. I'm not yet sure if I'll be there -- I'll only just have got back from the massive traveling-everywhere-trip to China, Italy, Sweden, Japan, and the UK, and there's a point where it's nicer to be home than in New York, even if it is New York. But Wolves is a wonderful show. And I really do want to see what they've done to The Wolves In the Walls during the recent rehearsals. (I believe this version will be closer to the one that premiered in Glasgow in the Spring (as discussed here) than the one that toured in the Autumn.)

...

Let's see -- a few people wrote to ask why I hadn't announced here that Hard Candy director David Slade was going to be directing Neverwhere, as widely reported on the web. For example...


Yes, it is a bit early I'm afraid.

It's my fault; I'd mentioned to the journalist from MTV, after the filmed interview was over, that Lisa Henson and I would be seeing David Slade, who loves Neverwhere, at Comic-Con, but I'd assumed that bit of the conversation was off-the-record. And we did see him, and he's enthusiastic, and so are we, but nothing's set and signed yet, so it isn't news. (And this will, I suppose, remind me to say less when the cameras aren't rolling.)

And on the subject of things that aren't news, I was fascinated today by a new definition of "reportedly", which is apparently now a synonym for "we just made this up". As in several newsfeeds suggesting that Stardust's budget "reportedly ballooned to $200 million". (The budget was $70 million, and that, I'm afraid, was that; Matthew Vaughn's MARV films put in half, Paramount put in half. If it'd ballooned even to an extra million, we'd have had a Lion and Unicorn battle.) (Here's an article on the Visual Effects in Stardust for the curious.)

The curious can keep track of Stardust's takings around the world over at http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=stardust.htm

(My favourite strange Stardust story was the journalist interviewing me in the UK a few months ago who wanted confirmation on the rumour he'd heard that Matthew Vaughn had proved so willful that he'd been quietly removed toward the end of shooting and that "the producers" took over directing. Even after I pointed out that the producers on the film were, in order of power, Matthew Vaughn, rather distantly followed by Lorenzo Di Bonaventura -- who was mostly off in the US dealing with Transformers stuff, and who doesn't direct -- Michael Dreyer -- who was rather busy producing Stardust -- and, er, me, and I wasn't going to try and fire Matthew and direct Stardust, not for all the little plastic toys in China -- and this was obvious nonsense, he still gave me the unconvinced Where's There's Smoke look, because a friend of a friend had told him...)

My favourite movie discovered today is an animation of the Bayeux tapestry -- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDaB-NNyM8o

There are review sites I've never dreamed existed. STARDUST was rated Very Offensive at the Christian Spotlight website, while the Catholic Bishops Conference seem to find it less so (while warning of both implied premarital sex and a character born out of wedlock as a result of said implied premarital sex).


Teri

That's good to know. We buried them deep in the pumpkin patch.

Hello, Mr. Gaiman,
Regarding the Coraline musical, do you know if Mr. Merritt intends to release it as a CD? It's extremely unlikely that I'll be able to get to go see it live, but I am a huge fan of both of you, and would love to be able to hear the musical, even if I can't witness the spectacle for myself.
Thank you!

Down the line, I hope so, yes. It's a bit early to say. I'm not completely sure where it will premiere, but I'd love to hear an original cast album...

...

There are now ripe tomatoes, although I'll be in China when we get that magical surplus of tomatoes that leads to Salsa making day. I'll miss the grapes ripening on the trellis, and the apples on the tree. And it's the first decent grape crop we've ever had.

At least I'll have the Birdchick (and Occasionally-Beeing Bill) to keep me informed on Honey, bees and birds and suchlike. (Sharon's latest post about birding out here is at http://www.birdchick.com/2007/08/benefits-of-dead-tree.html)

I'll also miss my family and I'll definitely miss my dog (I know I ought to miss the cats, but they never seem to mind me leaving). I won't miss Holly as much though, because by the time I wash up in the UK she will have moved there for good, and she probably will be looking for a job and a flat, and a father who can be hit up for a meal will definitely be a good thing.

Add a Comment

I was meant to be on NPR's TALK OF THE NATION tomorrow. But their schedules have shifted and I'll be on the radio this afternoon -- Wednesday the 8th of August. I think that http://www.npr.org/templates/rundowns/rundown.php?prgId=5
is their website. I'll be on towards the end of the second hour (the hour that some stations don't get).

John Scalzi writes wisely, as usual, over at his blog about Stardust and how he thinks it'll do:
http://www.scalzi.com/whatever/2007/08/07/stardusts_chances.html
and I couldn't see anything there to disagree with.

I have no doubt at all that Stardust will do brilliantly around the world, rock out on DVD, and become one of those films that is beloved. But how it will do this weekend... ah, that's a mystery. I was fascinated by this article about success and failure -- and, more importantly, the perception of success and failure -- in movie box office:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-j-elisberg/hollywood-where-ignoran_b_59464.html
(link via.)

I remember the first time I went to Hollywood, with Terry Pratchett, in 1992 I learned that you could frame any conversation about something you wanted to do in a plot that Hollywood Execs didn't understand or had a problem with if you referred to another movie that they'd seen. ("So why don't they...?" "Because they forget about it, um -- just like at the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK." "Oh. Got it.") And it was useful for talking about the feel of things -- you simply positioned what you were talking about against or with other films.

By 1996, when I went back to Hollywood, something had changed. I remember naming a movie in one of those conversations -- talking about look and feel or about lighting or about something like that -- and having the Exec look at me as if I had something unpleasant on my shoe, and he said, simply, "But that film didn't make any money." He couldn't understand why I would even have brought it up.

...

Over on Charles Vess's blog you can see a photo of us at the end of the premiere, me in a tuxedo and him not, because he forgot his shirt studs.

The birdchick does a honey from our hives taste test over at http://www.birdchick.com/2007/08/go-see-stardust-and-little-about-our.html

Wow. Hey! Why have you stopped putting a "stardust"/"stardust movie" label on posts that involve Stardust? (Of course the choice of labels is completely your prerogative, but it would make it a lot easier to find certain posts, and it seems like this would be an ideal time to make use of the label function - is there a particular reason you have stopped using the labels in this case?)

Ignorance, madam. Pure ignorance. Or at least, ineptitude when it comes to labelling.

Add a Comment

Sooner or later, Stardust will have come out, and no-one will be interviewing me about it, and I won't be linking to things about it, and I'll have a life back again, and this won't be the *Stardust movie blog guest starring Me and the San Diego Comic-Con*. But that's what it seems to be tending to turn into right now, for which I apologise.

There are a lot of Stardust preview screenings happening currently around the US. (I think on the sensible assumption that the word of mouth is good from people who've seen it, and that we need a lot more of it.) I'm not going to post them all (I don't find out about most of them) but if you google "free stardust screening" or "stardust preview" or similar you'll find them -- here's one on Thursday in Boston, for example, along with competitions, like this one for free tickets in Canada. Then there's a bunch of extremely strange things I didn't even know about before I started googling just now, like Stardust make-up, and Stardust Jimmy Choo shoes...

(Heidi MacDonald sent me a "review" of the Stardust poster, which I thought was wonderfully silly. It's at http://toddalcott.livejournal.com/114557.html.)

(Here are some Stardust dead princes watching the action. From left to right: Sextus, Tertius, Primus, Secundus, and I can't for the life of me remember whether Julian Rhind-Tutt and David Walliams are Quartus and Quintus or the other way around. Sorry. I checked the IMDB thingie and it was quite useless. It didn't list either of them, but it still has someone listed who, I assume, simply told them she was in it to pad her resume.)

Comicon is nearly here, hurray! I was browsing through the schedule and must say I expected to see Maddy's name in this panel listing. Would she consider doing this sort of thing in the future? She seems to have fun when talking about her Dad!

Sunday, July 29

12:00-1:00 My Dad Makes Comics!— What does a comics career look like from a kid's eye view? Find out with Sky and Winter McCloud, daughters of Scott McCloud (Making Comics); Alexa Kitchen (Drawing Comics is Easy (Except When it's Hard)), daughter of Denis Kitchen; and Brennan Wagner and Amanda Wagner, son and daughter of Matt Wagner (Grendel, Mage) discuss what it’s like living with dad, the cartoonist. Room 5AB

Maddy was meant to be on that panel, and was looking forward to it, but she has to walk down the red carpet for Stardust later that afternoon, and we can't be in both places at once.

She bought a dress yesterday. It has accessories. She's just had her hair cut. I have no doubt that she will outshine me, and I will be so proud.

...

There's a very sweet UGO interview with me up at http://www.ugo.com/ugo/html/article/?id=17568&sectionId=2 although it has the kind of little transcription mistakes that it's all too easy to make on a phone interview. I didn't actually say that the protagonist in The Fermata was "masticating" on naked women, for example, and I think I was talking about Tales of the Norsemen, not the Lensmen...

...

Cat Mihos has come off tour with Tool to help me survive San Diego. She'll be helping move me around and dealing with all the people who want time with me, and being cruel but fair. (She wants me to tell the whole wide world that she really really really needs a Batgirl costume. Does anyone out there make Batgirl costumes?) As I type this she and Charles Brownstein are busily trying to sort out the logistics of signings at the CBLDF booth on Thursday and Friday.

Hello Neil, I have read your bit about attack dog fans at comicon and dissapointed as I may be, I have decided not to molest,pester, or otherwise stock you at comicon on Friday. If you should perhaps detect me breaking this promise, I will be the wide eyed blonde crying profusely, dressed in black leather....

Sigh. I think people may have taken what I said the wrong way. What I meant was, it's work for me. I don't get to go to San Diego Comic-Con to enjoy the con. I have a bodyguard/crowd handler with me at all times, just to allow me to get from place to place on time. It used to be Kevin Starr and is now Pam Noles (for whom this is the best time of the year in the whole wide world and who offers amazingly important advice for anyone going to the con in this blog entry so read it). I'm not there on holiday and I'm not attending the convention to do things and go to panels (which may be part of my frustration); I'm working. I love meeting people, but it's been 15 years since I was able to really enjoy a San Diego Comic-Con, because there are too many people there.

I don't have "attack dog fans". I have lots of nice readers and there will be an enormous number of people who are coming to San Diego to see me and to see the other Guests and panels, and that's a good thing. I'm not asking people to leave me alone, or not to say hello or whatever. I like it when they do. (Yesterday I happily mentioned on this blog that I'll sign stuff when I can, and suggested that people not drag around copies of Absolute Sandman because it is heavy.)

I'll be working around the clock every day, doing panels, signings, interviews, meetings, promoting the CBLDF and so on. It's an unmissable experience. But -- and this was the point I was making to the Hollywood Reporter question -- it's not something I'd ever do for fun. There's a reason why I've limited doing the full five day Guest of Honour bit to every four or five years: it's exhausting. The last time I did it, in 2003, I wrote, on the Sunday,

Yesterday was fun, although the schedule was slightly punishing, and around 5:30pm I wound up with a clear-cut choice between attending a dinner, two receptions and a meeting before I did the CBLDF late night reading, or going to my hotel room to sleep for a couple of hours. Holly and Pam Noles, who is moving me from place to place at this thing, ganged up on me (it didn't take much) and I went off and slept, before going down to the end of the CBLDF Auction (the Quilt Michelle Made went for $2600) and doing the late night reading.

...and that's mostly what the latter half of that con is like in my memory. A blur of signings and trying to be in two places at once. I don't doubt that this will be very similar.

In previous years I'd take the train there, so I'd get some work done, and take the train home, so I could decompress and spend three days each way not talking to anyone and just watching the world pass by. This time I can't do that -- immediately after the con I fly to the UK to do a Beowulf presentation...

I was perusing some comic-con stuff and noticed under vendors, it said "Neverwhere--Neil Gaiman Merchandise." Just curious as to what this merchandise this might be? Thank you for all the helpful info, too. The Comic-con schedule is a bit overwhelming, so seeing it broken down like that was useful! Good luck this weekend!

It's actually Neverwear, a pun I ought to be more embarrassed about than I am, and it's Cat's project. There will be two tee shirts on sale at the con, an Anansi Boys one, with art from the upcoming (apparently coming sooner than later now) Hill House edition by Dagmara Matuszak, and the Scary Trousers tee shirt with art by Kendra Stout. I may even have a picture of the latter by the time I'm ready to post this.

I've now got more signing information -- this just came in from Charles Brownstein:

The CBLDF will host two very limited members' only signings at its booth. Because these signings are on the show floor we can only accommodate a very small amount of people.

Signing tickets will be offered as a thank you to anyone signing up for new or renewal membership at the Con. Tickets will entitle the bearer to one signature from Neil. People signing up for membership at $100 or better will also receive a set of Black Phoenix Perfume Imps from the Anansi Boys & American Gods collections, while supplies last. Card carrying members with a current membership card (expiration date 7/31/2007 - 7/31/2008) can get a ticket by making any donation to the Fund.

Signings will be:

Thursday 6:00pm
Friday 6:00pm

Please do not line up more than 15 minutes prior to the signing. Because this will occur on the show floor, starting the line up as close to the starting time of the signing will ensure everyone's safety on the floor. Please do not line up if you don't have a ticket. While we'd like to accommodate everyone, we need to strictly limit tickets to ensure that the floor is safe for all attendees and other exhibitors.

Tickets will be available at the CBLDF booth (1831) at the START of each day, on the day that the signing occurs.

...

(And I think I'm now allowed to say that there will be something cool and Coraline related at 7:00pm on Saturday and that you can get tickets for it from the Focus Pictures booth. (Could this be anything to do with the five minutes of Coraline they mention in the Variety blog will be screened at Comic-con ? I can neither confirm nor deny this. But given how hard I'm hinting, if I were you I'd have suspicions.)

...

There's a sneak peek at Beowulf in the LA Times, with quotes from me and Steve Starkey at http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-et-beowulf25jul25,1,4436117.story?coll=la-headlines-entnews
...

And finally this came in on the FAQ line. A story of great oddness, in a small sweet kind of way. And it was prefaced with the statement:

I'm getting married in the...

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/30/28/30_28mysterybride.html

Add a Comment

So this is the million words party post, and as with all good parties, I already feel faintly sick from devouring too many sweet things. (In this case, big lumps of honeycomb, the first from the hive. The Birdchick will tell you all about it. with photos, soon enough.)

(Celebratory Party Art above by the Wonderful Web Elf.)

But it's not just Million Words day. It's also Mike's Gaiman's 24th birthday. Mike, for the record, has a real job, at Google, and no longer looks like this:
He is also no longer anywhere near as impressed by monkey-pony monsters as he used to be.

That's pretty much the only change, and it actually dates back to the original 1998 hardback -- because the size -- and the ratio -- is different from the smaller version , the four double-page spreads, which are "full bleed" and go to the edge of the page each lost a little bit at the edge -- in three cases, you lost a little bit of tree or sky, but in the fourth you lost, er, me. So, to make up for it, you get the new drawing of the Fairy Market as endpapers with me (and Charles Vess, and even Maddy) in there.

why are you so concerned about your hair and makeup?
HELLO; you're a master artist! No one expects you to be pretty, witty and
wise, yes but not PRETTY! Besides you're a man, a manly man at that! And
even though you are now more mature, most women (not me - I'm a shallow
as dish water and a sucker for a pretty face) but most young women love
an older man! So stop fretting about your looks, you're on a press junket
not doing glamor shots!

If you do TV, you get made up for it. Otherwise you look washed out, and if you're me your hair covers one eye in a distracting sort of a way, or something similar. It's one of those sort of fact of life things that you just sort of get used to if you're on a junket, where the TV cameras are omnipresent, or if you're doing TV interviews in a studio. The make-up person doesn't care whether you're male or female, old or young; she cares about making you look human on screen. The hardest job in the last few days (for the make-up lady) was when I had to be interviewed in front of a green screen, and she had to make my hair lie down and behave, because otherwise it would have caused bizarre optical effects when they replaced the green screen with Stardust images. I don't fret about my looks. Mostly, I'm amused by them, and by the process of hair and make-up. It's one of those things you don't expect to have to deal with when you start out as a writer.


Circus

Good luck finding a home for him...


That's Ilan's score in the background.
...

I just got the galleys of my short story in a book called FOUR LETTER WORD:New Love Letters (Here's the Amazon Uk link) to proofread, and find it rather disturbing that I can't see anything wrong with it. (Rereads again. Okay. I found a gives that should be a give. Whew.)

Add a Comment

I'm home, and a bit exhausted. It was a beautiful day, and I took enormous pleasure in wandering around the garden in my dressing gown this morning while not being interviewed. Oh, how I love not being interviewed. I could spend several happy lifetimes not being interviewed, and between the not-interviews I think I could joyfully not get on planes. I could especially not get on the kind of planes that sit on the tarmac for three hours before taking off. I could not get on those planes with a smile on my face and a tip-tapping of my toes.

Anyway, everything here was as I left it on Sunday, more or less. Some small furry bandits (at a guess, but a good one) had completely stripped the pear tree of hundreds of unripe pears, and have started to invade the corn patch. Lots of raspberries, blueberries, carrots, onions and beets. And the apple tree is still laden with apples.

Then I got dressed and wandered down to the hives to see if the bees had missed me. And I promptly got stung on the back of the neck by a bee who obviously hadn't. Which was, I suppose, not a bad thing as a) I now know that I'm definitely not allergic to bee stings, and b) those of us who've been beekeeping had a pool for the first of us to get stung by a bee.

The first of the cluster of interviews to bear fruit is http://www.variety.com/article/VR1117968880.html?categoryid=2508&cs=1 which is a Variety article by Anne Thompson in which we learn that "Finally, after a long, painful gestation, 2007-08 is poised to be Gaiman's year at the movies." I don't honestly remember a lot of painfulness over the last fifteen years of dallying with movies -- mostly it was just interesting, occasionally amusing and often educational.

Anne Thompson's blog, over at http://weblogs.variety.com/thompsononhollywood/2007/07/gaiman-king-of-.html is in some ways more interesting, as she talks about what she perceives as wrong with the Stardust marketing -- "First, I think it will appeal mainly to women, which makes studio marketers crazy. Paramount's selling this movie like an action adventure to get the boys. They're not capturing the charm and sweetness of the movie in their materials. They're making it look like everything else. I asked Nora what she thought of the Robert DeNiro flying pirates billboard and she said it was "dumb.""

Over at http://www.cbldf.org/pr/archives/000322.shtml you can learn about a Stardust special Comic-Con thingummy that the CBLDF is doing --

Be among the first to experience the film magic of Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess' Stardust at Comic-Con! The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund is offering 50 VIP packages filled with exclusive Stardust goodies, plus a special pass to attend a gala San Diego screening of the film to take place on Thursday, July 26.

The Fund's exclusive Stardust VIP package includes: an all-new Stardust print, limited to 50 pieces signed by Neil Gaiman & Charles Vess; a set of 5 Stardust fragrance imps from Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab, and a ticket to the San Diego exclusive screening of Stardust. Stardust VIP packages are available for a donation of $100 to the CBLDF. The Stardust screening is on Thursday, July 26 at 9 PM, and features an introduction by Neil Gaiman, followed by a Q&A afterwards.

Pre-orders of this very limited package will be taken until Tuesday, July 24 at 10:00 PM Pacific Time. You can pre-order here:
If any packages remain, you may pick one up at the CBLDF's booth [1831] at Comic-Con. All Stardust VIP packages *must* be picked up from the CBLDF's booth on Wednesday evening, July 25, or on Thursday, July 26 before the convention closes at 7:00 PM.

(Given what you're getting, I tend to think that the $100 donation should be a minimum, and that if you want to put in more, you should, hint hint.)

http://cbldf.safeshopper.com/22/305.htm?778


I've now seen about 20 minutes of Beowulf in 3D. As soon as I figure out how to describe it without joyously stomping off into happy and impressed swearing, I will. In the meanwhile I'll simply mention that in addition to that footage -- which is reel two of the film -- being screened on Wednesday night at Comic Con (well, at the Horton Plaza), it (along with film of Roger Avary and me introducing it and answering questions) will be shown again twice on the following Thursday Afternoon so that another 800 people can see it. I don't yet know how people will get tickets to get in to those screenings, or to the Stardust screening on Thursday Night (except for the CBLDF ones) or the Coraline event with Henry Selick on Saturday Night that I'm not supposed to mention yet. But as soon as I know, I'll put the information up here.

Which reminds me -- there's another auction at http://cbldf.safeshopper.com/21/cat21.htm?882 -- this is the CBLDF Saturday Night Comic-con auction, although they will, as you'll see, accept bids from people not at the con. An amazing bunch of things from people, and they've got some interesting things from me that they've gathered over the years, including the fabled Stardust paperback covers from 2000 that were designed by Avon, and that Barnes and Noble killed at the last minute -- the idea was that the covers (which form a triptych) were respectively romantic, fantastic, and sort of respectable, and that the book would have three covers and would allow bookshops to rack it in different parts of the store. (When Barnes and Noble killed the idea by refusing to stock it if Avon did it, they took the middle cover and put a blue leather cover over it, with a little window through which you could see the man on the horse. I never really knew who the man on the horse was.) I may have another set somewhere, but I think these were my only ones, and unless they exist in the Harper Collins archives, this would probably be the only set around.

And there's more in the auction -- including what looks like a comic that I doodled during a CBLDF board meeting three or four years ago, which Charles Brownstein rescued from the yellow jotter on the table.

I have been examining the Comic-Con schedule, and I noticed the only autograph time for you (currently) is listed as "Limited - Drawing for a line ticket at 12:00 PM Friday" with the signing listed as being 3:15 pm - 4:15 pm on Friday. Do you know if you will be doing any signing on Preview Night? I would love to get my Absolute Sandman signed, but I fear I will haul it around all day Friday and then not get a line ticket.Thank you! Jeanine

There are a couple of other signings scheduled, so I'll do at least one signing on each Comic-con day (except for Sunday) -- one signing will be at Brian Froud's table, and one will be at the CBLDF booth. (And then there's the tee-shirts that we haven't announced yet.)

...

I wrote to Paul Cornell to tell him how much I loved the Dr Who Human Nature two parter, and wound up getting him to a Stardust screening -- which he writes about at http://paulcornell.blogspot.com/2007/07/stardust-and-faf.html

And from http://www.stardustnews.info/ I read Stardust reviews like
http://thetruthisoutwhere.blogspot.com/2007/07/stardust-movie.html
and discovered that you can ask Matthew Vaughn questions at
http://buzzsugar.com/410236 , although I don't think Martyn's quite found
http://www.mostlydamaged.com/movie-reviews/stardust-review-3.html or Dan Guy's Flickr accumulation of Stardust promotional pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/stardustpromo/ yet.

...

And as I reluctantly admit to a million words of blogging... http://www.theage.com.au/news/books/caught-in-the-blogjam/2007/07/19/1184559950812.html is a lovely article about authors and blogs, why we do it and whether we should or not. While blogs are criticised for being inaccurate, unedited, multifarious, narcissistic, having too many pictures of cats, and encouraging people who aren't experts to behave like experts, these issues don't overly concern me. Me neither.
...

So that's about a million words. Next post we ought to have a party. With balloons.

Add a Comment