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Sorry. Writing Chapter Seven, still, and doing almost nothing else. (Scarlett Perkins has just arrived at the library to look at the microfiche files of old newspapers.) It's a bit of a wrench to go back from the fountain pen to the keyboard. Just received the sad news that the writing cabin in the woods I use sometimes -- mostly to type or proofread undisturbed -- now has wireless... (damn!)

This came in a couple of weeks ago, but I've held off on answering it until I knew what was happening...

Whatever became of the annual Dave Sim/Neil Gaiman lithograph auction mentioned here: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2004/11/on-table.asp ? I was one of many who didn't win the first one, and I was hoping to have another crack at it...

What happened was the US Post Office.

I got the second one in a year ago, painted and collaged on it, sent it off (insured) to the CBLDF. Then we waited. It didn't arrive. And then we discovered that simply insuring something for a value doesn't really matter if the Post Office doesn't want to pay... A saga that went on for a year.

Dave just sent me a new 2007 lithograph -- I think this may be my personal one -- which I plan to art all over and give to the CBLDF to auction, to make up for the one the Post Office lost. And I think we'll send it FedEx, as well, just to be on the safe side. And the 2008 one should happen fairly soon -- possibly to coincide with the New York Comic-Con. We'll see.

Look, Neil!

I just thought that would be the kind of site you would like...

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/

Regards,
Richard.

It is! How wonderful.

Hi Neil

I've noticed on your blog that you often say the stories you write have been in your head for years. I was wondering, do you deliberately leave ideas gestating for years before doing anything with them, or is it simply because you have a large backlog of ideas? I've noticed with my own writing that for some reason, the older the idea, the more comfortable it feels to write. Do you find that?

Thanks!
Ben

A bit of both. Sometimes it's nice to have an idea for a book or a story in the back of your head for years, accreting bits to it, growing and becoming bigger and more interesting, sometimes it's a worrying thing having a story you'd like to write and aren't getting to, for very occasionally, alone in the darkness, they die and rot and turn to mould and slime.

It tends to be less intentional (except for The Graveyard Book, which was a better idea than I was a writer twenty years ago) than to do with how much I write and who's waiting for what.

Hello Neil,Is there any significant difference between Anansi Boys and Anansi Boys: a novel (P.S)? I have read Anansi Boys and want to buy my own copy, and Amazon has both editions/versions. When I was nine or ten my teacher read Anansi stories to the class. I've had a soft spot for him ever since.Thank you
Morag Gray

The (P.S.) editions of the books on Amazon.com are the large format "trade paperback" editions, with interviews in the back (and, in the case of Anansi Boys, an extract from American Gods) published by Harper Perennial. The (P.S.) edition of Anansi Boys has a cover that's electric blue and eye-burning yellow, and is unmissable. It's bigger than the "mass-market paperback", printed on better paper, but contains the same novel.

I can't find a good image of it online, so here's the new cover of the P.S. trade paperback of Smoke and Mirrors, which comes out later this week, a vision in purple and green.

I'm writing The Graveyard Book right now. Or at least, trying to get back to the place where The Graveyard Book is. Yesterday I called in the colour and lettering corrections on Absolute Sandman Volume 3 -- finally, Dalmatians will be spelled correctly! -- and today I have to write an introduction to a script in it (for Sandman 50 -- the only Not Full Script in the whole 75 issue run) and an afterword to the volume as well. (Next year DC are bringing out Absolute Sandmans 3 and 4.) And today I'm also writing a foreword to a book of essays by the late Professor Frank McConnell, who wrote the introduction to THE KINDLY ONES and was a remarkable and fine man.


Hello! While I'm sure Mr. Gaiman himself won't read this, and from the look of a similar question in the FAQ section, he may not want to.

My friend and I are looking to write a short story and/or screenplay based off of the main plot elements in Sandman IV. We're not sure if if we need to go through any legal loopholes to do so, and thought you may be more helpful than emailing DC first.

Thank you very much,

Michael Garrity

Michael, it's a great big blog, filled with information. A quick site search shows that I first answered this question in October 2002, over five years ago. There's even an answer in the FAQ section, because it's a question that's frequently asked. (You comment on having read the answer in the FAQ at the beginning.) It's still the same answer, I'm afraid. If you want to do a Sandman thing, you would ask DC Comics or Warner Brothers, and they will almost certainly say no.

A question of nudity...

Almost every review of "Beowulf" has focused on the handling of Beowulf's nudity when he fights Grendel: many finding it unintentionally funny, one or two speculating that it was *intentionally* funny, but still, lots of people fixated on it. (By the way, I do like how Caitlin's novelization spells out that Grendel has no sex organs, so nothing to see there, literally...) It seems worth asking, how much was the treatment of Beowulf's nudity a decision you and Avary made, and how much was it a decision Zemeckis made? I wonder if there was a chat along the lines of "He's naked in the original poem, so how do we deal with that on film, where male nudity means an automatic R?"

(As a friend who saw and loved "Beowulf" said, "I was promised nudity! Angelina's naked, but she's covered! Beowulf's naked, but HE'S covered!")

Chris Walsh

P.S. To change the subject abruptly, thank you for mentioning Project Erin last month.

That sort of thing - how you shoot a naked fight, or indeed a clothed fight - is entirely a director's decision. (In a film like Beowulf, where every pixel is a decision, I think you can pretty much assume that everything is the director's decision).

If you're curious about what Roger and I had originally written in May 1997 (what I think of as the Jabberwocky Version) and then about what the final shooting script looked like (which was the Roger-and-Neil final draft as amended by Robert Zemeckis), with extensive amazingly honest introductory material by Roger on how it started and then how it came back to life, and why in the end Roger sold it to Steve Bing's company for Bob Zemeckis to direct rather than make it himself, then you might want to check out the Script Book -- http://www.harpercollins.com/books/9780061350160/Beowulf/index.aspx