posted by Neil
I went to New Orleans and I had the best birthday I've ever had.There was food (the best New Orleans food, which is the best food in America. I loved eating at the Commander's Palace, and at Muriel's, but I loved The Green Goddess more - Chefs Chris and Paul are heroes). (The "Mezze of Destruction" secret message should still give you a secret foodie easter egg of some kind, if you eat there and say it to your server. It's the secret "Neil sent me" code.)
On the morning of my birthday I was surprised by a wonderful unexpected art-event flashmob wedding.
If you head over to Amanda's blog and read this (and you should. Trust me) http://blog.amandapalmer.net/post/1597897908/still-life-with-wedding-party
you will learn what Amanda did and how she pulled it off. It was amazing.
And once you've read that (go and read it. It'll make more sense of the rest of this) head over to http://www.kylecassidy.com/pix/travel/2010/nfgafpnola/afp-nfg-wedding-album-1.pdf in order to see some beautiful photos arranged into a wedding album by Kyle Cassidy. I don't think I knew that any of those photos were being taken except for the last.
As you read Amanda's blog and look at Kyle's photos you can marvel at the ease with which she persuaded me, without in any way suspecting anything was odd, to wear a top hat in my search for breakfast and tea; you can observe the way that I am astonished by Amanda's first surprise and then banjaxed by her second as a wedding party appears from nowhere; then marvel at the way that, when I think I can be no happier, she tops it with an actual produced-out-of-nowhere cup of tea.
This was how it ended (click on the photo to see it big enough to appreciate it), with Amanda and me with white paint on my face flanked by my glorious daughters, with our friends making happy faces and me holding tea.
Next time we get married, I'll marry the lady, not the statue, and there will be invited people and not a flash mob, and I'll know it's happening in advance, and there will be a paper and it will be legally recognised, but I cannot imagine it will be any more joyous than this was. And truthfully, after that morning's magical wedding, I don't think I could ever feel more married.
A lovely photo of Maddy and me and Holly by Adriane Biondo
...
(PS: As a result of the last interim post, I have learned that the Sushi making kit was from Lena St George-Sweet and Hamish Brown. I love my blog.)
(PPS: More of the New Orleans trip to c
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/30/2010
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: National Library Week, tea and not-tea, Moscow, the Brighton Horror, Mystery Thing, Add a tag
posted by Neil
I didn't expect to have time to blog until tomorrow, but I'm awake early.So, let's see. I'm in the UK. Arrived friday night, saw my daughter Holly and my scary goddaughter Hayley, who now share a flat. Holly and I ate at Kikuchi in Hanway Street. She told me about the voluntary closing of The Hump, and suggested that Michael Sheen and I may have precipitated the raid.
Up early on Saturday and I took the train to Brighton, where I was a surprise guest at the World Horror Con. James Herbert was the Special Guest of Honour, and I was there to interview him in front of an audience. I'd first interviewed Jim back in 1984, when I was a young journalist. Seeing him and his wife Eileen, and meeting his family, made me really happy. Later in the day, Ingrid Pitt was not up to being interviewed for the full hour of her programme item, and so Kim Newman interviewed me for about 35 minutes. I signed for Stanza Press's Off The Coastal Path, which has my poem "My Last Landlady" in it
A few people complained that if they'd known I was going to be there they would have brought suitcases filled with my books, which I think might be very good reason for not telling people I was going to be there. I had a great time and actually met people I didn't know before the con, and caught up with old friends, neither of which normally happen at conventions. Hmm...
Yesterday was really fun. There's a project I started in 1996 that is now coming to fruition. We'll call it Mystery Project X for now. It's making me happy. And I'm getting to work with producer Hilary Bevan Jones, who produced "Statuesque", which also makes me happy, while possibly dragging Paul Cornell into my madness, ditto.
The hard part of yesterday was learning about the Moscow suicide bombers. Five days ago I was riding the Moscow tube, was at one of those stations, was discovering just how much I liked the Russians. A week ago it would have been another sad news item, now it was horribly personal: these were my friends.
(Here's a journal filled with photos of me and Russian readers: http://satu-san.livejournal.com/49214.html)
And my favourite me in Moscow photograph:
Today belongs, for the next 13 hours (beginning as soon as I get out of this hotel bed and go and have a cup of tea and walk up to to Soho) to the Graveyard Book movie.
Tomorrow morning belongs to Doctor Who, when I will see Mr Moffat and learn what I'll need to do to rewrite my episode from being a Season 5 to being a Season 6 one. Then I fly home, having gone, very literally, around the world.
After that, in a couple of weeks it's National Library Week, for which I am honorary Chairman, and a couple of events I'm doing to go along with it: Indianapolis on the 16th, where I will be delivering the McFadden Memorial Lecture (a free, first-come-first-seated event), Chicago for the CBLDF on the 17th (Prime
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 4/7/2008
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: CBLDF, and snow, Something to do with old introductions, not staying in bed for a week, tea and not-tea, Add a tag
Good morning.
Well, I'm now into the second week of off-tea and eating-lots-of-fruit-and-veg-when-I-get-hungry. Drinking lots of water, and juicing things, and occasional herb teas. Weight is starting to drop. Concentration, which went completely out the window when I stopped drinking tea, is returning, and sleep patterns are changing.
The weather was wonderful two days ago, then it rained yesterday, and today I woke up and watched big white flakes of snow drifting past my window and thought, Oh bugger, and decided to stay in bed for days or weeks until the weather became more sensible, a thought that lasted until the dog needed to go out, two or even three minutes later.
Starting to plan out the coming year. I wrote a proposal for a personal, non-fiction book about travel and myth, and my publisher wants to do it, so now I'm figuring out all the whens and the hows, especially of the travel bits. And I'm deciding whether I'll blog from the road or stop while I'm travelling, leave the computer at home, and put the effort into writing in notebooks, or what.
It's ten days until the CBLDF reading and Q&A that I'm doing in New York at the comic-con. This just turned up in my email from http://www.cbldf.org/ and I thought I'd post it here as a reminder to anyone in the New York area...
Neil Gaiman Benefit Reading at NYCCIn addition to which, Jeff Smith is also doing an event for the CBLDF. With an open bar...
Tickets Available Now!
April 18: Experience the magic of Neil Gaiman at an exclusive reading to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.
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.
General admission tickets to the reading are available for $20, while supplies last. Tickets for the VIP reception are strictly limited to 100 pieces, and will include access to meet Mr. Gaiman and receive two signatures, plus a gift bag of exclusive Neil Gaiman oriented items from CBLDF, and preferred seating at the reading. VIP reception tickets are available for $500.
Seating is limited and going fast. Reserve your General Admission or VIP Ticket now! __._,_.
Toast the arrival of Jeff Smith's new comic book epic RASL! Come meet Jeff Smith in person at his only New York City appearance of the season, enjoy an open bar, and get a takeaway bag of tons of exclusive RASL goodies. Only 100 general admission tickets and 26 VIP tickets are available so get your ticket now! Tickets are available now! Get the Full Details here!
And then there's the Hellboy 2 team...
Why can't we give you fanart at the signings in Australia?
(Boggles for a moment.) Of course you can give me art. Or anything you like, short of body parts. If it's too much for me to carry, I'll smile sweetly at the people hosting the events and get them to post it back to me. (So a month after I get home I get a box filled with cool things I'd forgotten.)
recently, on my latest hunt for more books, i bought myself a nice fat copy of fantasy short storys by Rudyard Kipling. That night i made my mug of cocoa and got comfy to read a couple, when turning the first few pages i happened upon a quick little 'hello and welcome to the book' by a certain mr N Gaiman. ok, so not really strange. Writers write intoroductions, nothing odd about that. but this is by no means an isolated incedent! it seems like ever since i started to read your books(become aware of you etc), you've been popping up in introductions everywhere. it appears to me that you do a fare share of them.
is doing an introduction something you enjoy and so you take most of the chances given to you? (you like sticking your 'neil was ere' mark on books)
or as an artist who works and has worked over several different medias do you simply get alot of offers?
what do you enjoy most about writing one?
ps. sorry if this question is slightly untimely now that you are unofficialy/officialy banned from taking any on!
Writing an introduction is really fun and pleasurable -- it's like introducing a really good friend at a party to a lot of people who don't know him or her, but you know they'd be friends if they met. You want to go "This is Mr Poe. He's written some wonderful poems and stories -- they're especially good if you read them aloud," or "This is Doctor Who. He built my internal landscape." Or "This is The Thirteen Clocks. If you feel sad you should read this book and it will probably make you feel better."
I get asked to write a lot more introductions than I say yes to, and they take up much more time than I imagine they will when I say yes, but there are very few that I regret having done. Really, I ought to try and make a place on this website that collects them. (Those not collected in Adventures In The Dream Trade, anyway.)
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