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The idea of book trailers seems weirdly genre-bending. I was just explaining them to my seven year old as he came over to peer into my laptop, intrigued by the music from a Lemony Snicket trailer.

"They're short movies," I said. "About books. They're like an ad for the book."
"They're not like an ad," he said. "They are an ad."
He's right of course.

I was on the Harper Collins site looking for the trailer for Susan Juby's Another Kind of Cowboy. A friend is reading it to his daughter who is now laid up after a school ski trip. The friend reports that the book is excellent for reading aloud. I like the fact that the trailer for the Juby book actually has a trailer in it.

I'd like to watch more trailers, but basically I'm lazy. I'd like them all in one place for convenient browsing. A sort of trailer park, if you will. And I like the ones that have been uploaded to youtube so that I can embed them here. Like this one for Meg Rosoff's How I Live Now:



Any trailer recommendations?

Here's the trailer for Eoin Colfer's new novel, Airman.

The novel gets a good review over at Fuse #8.
Here's a bit of what she says there:
Is it fantasy? No more than any historical novel where the hero indulges in science. Is it science fiction? Only if you consider the notion of one man discovering the use of propellers on his own fantastical. Is it steampunk? No. Stop being silly. No this is, odd as it may sound, fiction with spice. That's not really a category, so I don't know if you can call it anything but original.

I think we'll be needing this one. And incidentally, anyone who isn't in awe that Elizabeth Bird is doing a review a day and doing them darned well needs a slap upside the head with a good book.

The 3D trailer for CORALINE was leaked on the web over the last couple of days. Laika were not very impressed... so they gave us a nice clean, pristine version.

You want to watch the Quicktime version if you can [Edit to add, actually you want to watch the DivX version, now at the top of the page, which is really lovely and actually allows you too see textures and such], but the web goblin put up a YouTube version for those who can't.

http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff/Video_Clips/Coraline_Teaser

Dear Mr. Gaiman,


I was wondering if you have come across this:

http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/world/2008/02/21/pleitgen.germany.nazi.comic.cnn

yet. I'm curious about your take on the whole issue. Do you think that something as important as the Holocaust can be depicted through a comic book? If it can be, then do you think its all a matter of people's misconception of comics as an inadequate source of serious story-telling?

A comic book aficionado,

Ronald

Given that art spiegelman's Maus won the 1992 Pulitzer prize, and is a, oddly enough, comic book about the Holocaust, I think that argument was settled 16 years ago. (Dave Sim's upcoming Secret Project is Holocaust-related, and is one of the most emotionally affecting things I've read in comic-book form.) I think any argument that states that comics (or radio or film or a musical or the novel or insert your favourite medium here...) by its nature trivialises its subject matter is foolish, shortsighted, dim, lazy and wrong. You can say "This is a bad comic." You can't say "This is bad because it's a comic."

I've got an awesome interview of author Bruce Coville up over at my main site. I hope you'll check it out.

Holly and I had gone to see The Simpsons movie together. We drove back not saying anything.

After a while, Holly sighed. "You brought that on yourself, Dad. You wrote the bit in your blog today about not being recognised and not wanting to be famous. And now that happens. See?"

"I could move," I said. "I could head off to the Scottish Highlands. Or Patagonia. I could absolutely go to Patagonia and leave no forwarding address."

"Oh dad," said Holly. And then she pointed out, "You aren't allowed to vanish mysteriously until Maddy's eighteen."

"I could wear a hat," I said, a bit desperately.

"It wouldn't do any good," she said. And she may be right. And if I brought it on myself by writing my previous blog entry then maybe if I don't actually talk about it on this one it won't happen again...

...


The Birdchick and her husband, "Three Dollar" Bill Stiteler, were over today and we went out to the bees, checked on things, and brought some honey home. I'm sure that Sharon will document our bee day on her remarkable blog -- it's a terrific record of events. I just wanted to say how wonderful the honey tastes, fresh from the hive. And it tastes different to the last batch -- less piney, more fruity. I hope we'll have lots of honey to give to friends at the end of the year, and that we'll have enough to keep us going until next summer.

We're already planning a couple more hives, and today we started to plant wildflowers because, well, it will make the bees happy next year...

I told Sharon I thought she should take her bee-learning experiences and put them into a book. I hope she does.

...

You know, the funny thing is that LOST DANES FEARED FOOLISH DEATH DURING SCOTTISH STROLL could as easily be a headline for Beowulf as it is for Stardust. But the Danes in question here is Claire and not a bunch of Hrothgar's men directionally challenged and in trouble.

And -- for those of you who wrote in wondering about the scene in the trailer where Charlie Cox ("Cox somehow manages to walk a tightrope between matinee-idol dashing and puckish whimsy, as the film veers from a childlike innocence to an absurdist, Candide-style picaresque." L.A. Times) and Claire Danes ("as the short-tempered star, Danes hurls insults with the lethal accuracy of a screwball heroine" L.A. Times) meet for the first time.

They were -- in the trailer anyway -- apparently the best of friends. But here's a taster of the actual scene: http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2007/08/03/exclusive-clip-stardust/

It's educational comparing it to the way the scene is cut in the trailer.

...

The retailer who had over ordered the Charles Vess Stardust statues wrote to let me know that he had sold them all within minutes of me posting the link, and to say thank you. I got the impression that he could have sold his statues many times over, so I went to Charles Vess's site, at http://greenmanpress.com/news/archives/105
and found the link to
http://www.statuetoys.com/stardustmoonstarstatue.html where they're selling it for $60 off, at $134.90. But that's a pre-order price, and the thing ships very soon, so you may want to move fast.

I also checked Dreamhaven's wonderful Neil Gaiman & Friends shop, at http://neilgaiman.net/ but it didn't look like they had it listed yet.

...

Pam Noles has been my minder at San Diego Comic-Con for almost a decade, and the only reason I survived the last three Comic-cons that I've been a Guest of Honour at is that Pam makes sure that I did.

People think I tell Pam what to do at Comic Con, because I am the writer and she is the one-woman entourage, but actually, it's the other way round. If you ever find yourself a guest at Comic-con and Pam looks after you Do Not Sign Things For People When You Aren't Meant To be Signing Them, otherwise you'll find yourself turning up on her hilarious blog described as "The Occasionally Disobedient Guest". You can read about it at : http://andweshallmarch.typepad.com/and_we_shall_march/2007/08/tidbits-from-th.html

(The bit where I was signing for people while, literally, running, was on the Sunday, as I left the Jack Kirby panel and ran for a plane.) (Which reminds me, a few people wrote in asking about the Kirby story I described as one of my favourites --I just checked and it was The Losers in Our Fighting Forces 153. )

(And my Comic-con "Spotlight On..." panel is described at http://www.comicbookresources.com/news/newsitem.cgi?id=11485)

...

I'm interviewed in the LA Times about Stardust and other stuff, and they gathered quotes from Matthew Vaughn, Claire Danes and Roger Avary: http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-ca-charlie5aug05,0,1998613.story

(The photo was taken through a glass door, which is why the image is refracted so oddly, and the unusual expression on my face is me looking at the photographer and thinking, "Er, is that going to work...?")

And, more interestingly (for me, at least) Charlie Cox is also interviewed in the LA Times -- http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/movies/la-ca-charlie5aug05,0,1998613.story (but you may need to register or visit bugmenot.com for a password in order to read it).

...to see the movie of the Spiderwick Chronicles.

Go here to watch the trailer!

Woot! And starring Freddie to boot!

In case you're interested in the zany fun and crazy ways of participants in Script Frenzy, let me share these with you.

Trailers from some of the scripts (all awards determined by the Office of Letters and Lights)

Most Hilarious


Best Use of Creepy-Child Voice-Over


Best Use of Cute Photos of Lemmings


Best Forbidden Facial Hair (?!)


And overall winner in the Most Awesome category


I have got to learn how to make You Tube videos. I mean, my script --Photo on the Fridge-- would be even more awesome for a trailer than these. Well, you can imagine, I'm sure!

Script Frenzy is fun. Wish you were here.