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That was fun, the blog's seventh birthday. I enjoyed making the inspirational poster, and also enjoyed watching the webgoblin do all the hard work on making the survey. I also tried personally to answer all the FAQ line questions that came in yesterday -- I think I missed a couple, and two or three replies came back informing me that they'd been got by spam filters or people who didn't put in their email addresses correctly -- but I did reply to pretty much all of them.

Don't forget to vote (at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/02/birthday-thing.html). I'm enjoying watching the results so far -- not actually what I would have predicted. But there's a week to go and a lot of votes still to come in.

There's an article about Harper Collins and putting Free Books up in the New York Times -- and it says:

Neil Gaiman, the fantasy novelist, short story and comics writer, is asking readers of his blog to vote on the title they would most like to give as a gift. An electronic scan of the winning title will be offered free on the HarperCollins site later this month. Mr. Gaiman said the online effort was not so different from what has been going on for generations.

“I didn’t grow up buying every book I read,” said the English born Mr. Gaiman, 47. “I read books at libraries, I read books at friend’s houses, I read books that I found on people’s window sills.” Eventually, he said, he bought his own books and he believes other readers will, too.

I think the point I was making wasn't so much that eventually you buy your own books, as that there's not and there has never been a simple one-to-one relationship between the books you read and way you find authors and the books you buy. It's more complicated than that, and more interesting. It's about the way that it's assumed that books have a pass-along rate, that a book will be read by more than one person. If the people who read it like the book, they might buy their own copy, or, more likely, just put you in that place in their heads of Authors I Like. And that's a good place for an author to be.

And for those of you who are wandering in from linkage, or who read this on an RSS feed and haven't gone exploring http://www.neilgaiman.com/, there's a fair amount of free stuff up there already, much of it at http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool_Stuff -- for example, http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Cool%20Stuff/Short%20Stories has five short stories up, (one from M is for Magic, two from Fragile Things, and two that are only up online). And there's free audio stuff as well -- a downloadable version of A Study In Emerald from Fragile Things, and the first chapter of the Stardust audiobook.

Over at Locus magazine, at https://secure.locusmag.com/2008/2008PollAndSurvey.html, you can take the Locus Poll and Survey. You're taking part in the biggest vote for SF and Fantasy there is. More people vote for Locus Awards than for the Hugos or the Nebulas...



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Hola Neil,Quick question about Absolute Sandman Vol. 3. Vertigo now has the info for it up at: http://www.dccomics.com/graphic_novels/?gn=9050. I was wondering what the "Desire story from VERTIGO: WINTER'S EDGE #3" is (different from the Bolton Desire story in Vol. 2?) and if the 10-page "Fear of Falling" is missing from this volume?

Also, if that really is the cover art, it seems to be missing out on some great Mckean artwork. Both Vols 1 and 2 featured iconic cover images from the softcover of a major story arc contained in the volume. It seems a shame not to use the striking "Brief Lives" softcover image of the portrait made from all the photographs. Thought you might know what the final version looks like.

And the Dave McKean Shorts DVD has disappeared indefinitely with no further mention. Thought you or one of your readers might know what happened, for those of us who are anxiously awaiting it.

Thanks for your time - can't wait to experience "The Graveyard Book".



Actually, the Brief Lives image was the first suggestion from the DC Comics art department, and I vetoed it, mostly because that image, which we were so proud of at the time, has been repeated by so many people ever since. Even Dave McKean's been hired to do versions of it by art departments around the world, and I've spoken to artists who were handed that cover and told to reproduce it for movie posters or CD covers. Whereas I thought that Dave's painting of Morpheus from the cover of Sandman 50 might be really beautiful if taken out of context.

No, the Desire story is the Michael Zulli-illustrated "How They Met Themselves" story, with the Rosettis and Mr Swinburne going for a winter picnic. "Fear of Falling" is in there (and Danny Vozzo fixed some colouring errors on the hair).

The last time I checked with Dave McKean on what was happening with the DVD, he said:

We had several technical problems converting all this very differently
formatted films from PAL to NTSC, and framerate changes, and editorial changes
and other pernikity changes, and we decided since we will only be doing this
once, we'd take the time to get it right, rather than rush to our initial
release date. I've just taken delivery of what I hope is the final beta version,
which means it should start to reappear on websites/Amazon/distributors lists
etc. Don't fret, it will be out in a few months.

Dear Neil,You've most likely received many such requests, but I thought I'd throw mine into the pile as well: in light of your celebratory blogday vote, I'd like to know which of your own "hideous progeny" you would most like to see distributed gratis to your (not yet, but soon to be expanded) adoring public?Of course, I don't expect you to give us an answer before the voting has finished, but I'm a curious thing and hope you're willing to share this with us all.By the way, it's a beautiful day in Southern California today. It's a breezy 73 degrees outside, and the not-so-smoggy skies as smiling down at me as I write to you. Diamond dust snow sounds lovely, but you may want to consider getting some vit. D, courtesy of the sun, soon! I think your pen-ink will thank you for it as well. :)Best,
Chrissy

Truth to tell, if I had a clear choice, I wouldn't have come up with the online survey. I would have just put up a free book.

Hi Neil!Just to let Jodi know, if she really wants to talk to other people about the posts, the officialgaiman RSS feed of this blog on livejournal (http://syndicated.livejournal.com/officialgaiman/) has a fairly active comments section. Of course, you have to have a livejournal to comment, and they'll eventually disappear, but it's still fun.
celeste

Consider it plugged.

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It's too late at night, so this is just to say that I went in to Minneapolis to to see Jonathan Coulton, in company with with Jen-the-dogsitter and Sharon-the-beesitter (although Sharon was actually and inexplicably on the Coulton Merch table). It was a delightful show -- Paul and Storm, the support act (and occasional backing vocals and badinage) were terrific and Jonathan was astonishingly good. They got a standing ovation at the end, and not just because Minnesotan audiences are nice and nobody wanted to go out into the snow.

If you're in Madison, Chicago or St Louis over the next few days go and see him --http://www.jonathancoulton.com/shows.

...

I keep forgetting to post about Freerice, a sort of combination of it pays to Improve your Wordpower and the Hunger Site, and I really should, especially because it's more fun than solitaire when you're making a phone call and in front of a computer screen at the same time. Hundreds of people have written to tell me about it, but the first was Rachel Landau back in October, who said...

Hi, Mr. Gaiman! This website is probably far too distracting for you while you're busy writing, but could you post this link up?www.freerice.com
Improve your vocabulary and save the world, all at one website!

...

Hey Neil,Been reading this blog for a long time. Always enjoy seeing how ordinary and absurd other peoples lives can be. While I love the pictures you post off the people, animals, and places that are important to you, I have noticed that you never put any up of your son. Is he camera shy like me, or do you omit him for another reason?

I think he's less keen on the limelight than his sisters. But he's certainly turned up from time to time -- I found a few pictures of him at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/Mike.html
for example.

...

It looks like I'm not going to post the 3D Coraline trailer here (mostly because it was made to be seen in 3D). But the good people at Laika and Focus are putting their heads together, and a Coraline Christmas Present is Being Discussed....

...

I just saw that American Films are not welcome in China. I sort of shrugged, but when I then read that,

Four films that would normally have expected to be cleared for release in January or February have been locked out: Disney's "Enchanted," DreamWorks' "Bee Movie," Paramount's "Stardust" and Warner's "Beowulf."

I started to take it personally...

...

And to finish, some robotic Coulton...

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I'm not sure how I missed The Privilege of the Sword. It's a sequel to Swordspoint, which is one of my favourite of Ellen Kushner's novels, and thus one of my favourite books. (Ellen Kushner would be my evil twin, only she's a girl, we're not related, and I strongly suspect that if either of the two of us is evil, then it's me.) When I was in LA last week, Harlan Ellison brought out a pile of books and said "Take something to read on the plane," and when I saw there was an Ellen Kushner book I hadn't read, I grabbed it with enthusiasm. I read the first half of the book on the way to the UK, the second half just now on the way back. It's lovely -- disconcertingly it moves from a first person to third person and back, and just as disconcertingly it feels at times like a YA novel for really smart YAs, only with lashings of hot sex. Everything happens in it just as it ought. Katherine is fifteen, a well-brought-up country girl, whose mad Uncle, the Duke, is going to make her a swordsman. And he does... It's elegant and fun and delightful.

So. A report on the last few days. Right.

I had an impromptu birthday party of great wonderfulness held in the hotel and organised ("Dad, I didn't organise it, the hotel did it all, I keep telling you,") by my daughter Holly. A wonderfully random assortment of friends came out, all on no notice -- including some, like Geoff Ryman and John and Liliana Bolton, who I have not seen in years. Champagne was quaffed. (Quaffing is like drinking only you spill more towards the end.) Mitch Benn showed up at half past twelve (by which time it was no longer my birthday and it was now his daughter Greta's) and sang "Be My Doctor Who Girl" while accompanying himself on his guitar until the hotel made him stop.

The 11th was the Beowulf premiere. It was huge -- an event that dwarfed the LA version. Flames gusted from the side of the building, there was a thirty foot high TV with Vikings and drums in front of it, thousands of people, and the whole thing was enormous. I tried to sign as many autographs as I could, and was yanked away to do interviews, but did the last part of the red carpet with Holly. I knew I had finally made it when I saw myself identified as "unidentified cast member" in the online premiere photos.

[Edit to add; I have been identified. I am Crispin Glover.]

Occasionally I get rather odd letters in on the FAQ line shouting at me for SELLING OUT TO MAMMON and WHY DON'T YOU WRITE NOVELS ANYMORE YOU HOLLYWOOD MOVIE SELLOUT, all the kinds of things that make me wonder why the people didn't send the letters in back in 1997 when I went off with Roger and we actually wrote Beowulf (or at least in March 2005 when we did the rewrite) and I find them as strange as I do the people asking why I no longer write comics ("But I do," I tell them. "In the last five years I wrote more comics than anything else.") It's weird being told you've sold out or gone Hollywood for work you did many years ago. Even so I found myself feeling peculiarly Hollywood at the London premiere, wearing my flash jacket and marching with Roger, Bob Zemeckis and the stars from cinema to cinema as Ray Winstone thanked people for coming and then added, cheerfully, "And I WILL kill your monstah."

(Relieved to see Beowulf's been certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Some people really like it and some people really don't, but the former outnumber the latter.)

And then up really early on the 12th, flew a couple of hours, had a business meeting, then drove into the more or less webless wilds for a day, had a day off, slept mostly, then got up at 2:30am to drive back to civilisation.

I often grumble about cell phones, but anything you can use to bring help when your car shreds a tyre on a mountain road at 6.00 am is all right in my book. Somehow I didn't even miss my plane back to London or my plane to the US.

And now I am home after 26 hours travelling. A busy three days, then off to the Philippines with Mike, then I finish The Graveyard Book...

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I'm not sure how I missed The Privilege of the Sword. It's a sequel to Swordspoint, which is one of my favourite of Ellen Kushner's novels, and thus one of my favourite books. (Ellen Kushner would be my evil twin, only she's a girl, we're not related, and I strongly suspect that if either of the two of us is evil, then it's me.) When I was in LA last week, Harlan Ellison brought out a pile of books and said "Take something to read on the plane," and when I saw there was an Ellen Kushner book I hadn't read, I grabbed it with enthusiasm. I read the first half of the book on the way to the UK, the second half just now on the way back. It's lovely -- disconcertingly it moves from a first person to third person and back, and just as disconcertingly it feels at times like a YA novel for really smart YAs, only with lashings of hot sex. Everything happens in it just as it ought. Katherine is fifteen, a well-brought-up country girl, whose mad Uncle, the Duke, is going to make her a swordsman. And he does... It's elegant and fun and delightful.

So. A report on the last few days. Right.

I had an impromptu birthday party of great wonderfulness held in the hotel and organised ("Dad, I didn't organise it, the hotel did it all, I keep telling you,") by my daughter Holly. A wonderfully random assortment of friends came out, all on no notice -- including some, like Geoff Ryman and John and Liliana Bolton, who I have not seen in years. Champagne was quaffed. (Quaffing is like drinking only you spill more towards the end.) Mitch Benn showed up at half past twelve (by which time it was no longer my birthday and it was now his daughter Greta's) and sang "Be My Doctor Who Girl" while accompanying himself on his guitar until the hotel made him stop.

The 11th was the Beowulf premiere. It was huge -- an event that dwarfed the LA version. Flames gusted from the side of the building, there was a thirty foot high TV with Vikings and drums in front of it, thousands of people, and the whole thing was enormous. I tried to sign as many autographs as I could, and was yanked away to do interviews, but did the last part of the red carpet with Holly. I knew I had finally made it when I saw myself identified as "unidentified cast member" in the online premiere photos.

[Edit to add; I have been identified. I am Crispin Glover.]

Occasionally I get rather odd letters in on the FAQ line shouting at me for SELLING OUT TO MAMMON and WHY DON'T YOU WRITE NOVELS ANYMORE YOU HOLLYWOOD MOVIE SELLOUT, all the kinds of things that make me wonder why the people didn't send the letters in back in 1997 when I went off with Roger and we actually wrote Beowulf (or at least in March 2005 when we did the rewrite) and I find them as strange as I do the people asking why I no longer write comics ("But I do," I tell them. "In the last five years I wrote more comics than anything else.") It's weird being told you've sold out or gone Hollywood for work you did many years ago. Even so I found myself feeling peculiarly Hollywood at the London premiere, wearing my flash jacket and marching with Roger, Bob Zemeckis and the stars from cinema to cinema as Ray Winstone thanked people for coming and then added, cheerfully, "And I WILL kill your monstah."

(Relieved to see Beowulf's been certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. Some people really like it and some people really don't, but the former outnumber the latter.)

And then up really early on the 12th, flew a couple of hours, had a business meeting, then drove into the more or less webless wilds for a day, had a day off, slept mostly, then got up at 2:30am to drive back to civilisation.

I often grumble about cell phones, but anything you can use to bring help when your car shreds a tyre on a mountain road at 6.00 am is all right in my book. Somehow I didn't even miss my plane back to London or my plane to the US.

And now I am home after 26 hours travelling. A busy three days, then off to the Philippines with Mike, then I finish The Graveyard Book...

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Just did the Second Life press conference. Just before it started the nice lady from Warners excused herself to give my privacy to be interviewed. "Before you go," I said, very aware that whatever can go wrong on these things will always go very wrong, "give the dial-in info, in case I get cut off."

Because whatever can go wrong will on these things, Roger Avary, half-way across London, was the one who got cut off, without the call in number, and I was the one who wound up talk-talk-talking to make up for it.

Other than that, a nice birthday so far. Lots of interviews, and then, as I had a couple of hours down time, I had tea with my friend Derren Brown for the first time since this post, which was astonishingly pleasant (and we were surprised to discover that we both went to the same school).


norman mailer has died.

thoughts?

or no thoughts?

Just a bit saddened. I had a lovely dinner with Norman and Norris back in about 1990, at the house of Martha and John Thomases. Norman was ferociously smart, and surprised me at one point when he went off on a rant about the English and quinine and tonic water by interrupting himself when he realised I was English and being desperately keen to make sure I hadn't taken offense -- the opposite of the pugnacious image he'd acquired. I liked Harlot's Ghost and Ancient Evenings, wasn't a huge fan of a the early books that got him his reputation, and owed an enormous amount of why-Sandman-was-taken-seriously-in-the-early-years to Norman's quote on the cover of Season of Mists, for which I shall be forever grateful.

(Edit to add -- Martha talks about it at http://www.comicmix.com/news/2007/11/10/norman-mailer-neil-gaiman-fanboy/)

Ok, I have to ask - why did you decline to interview Nico? I'm a sorta fan of VU, and I think I'd be as interested in talking to her as I would be in talking to Lou Reed (who I think is one of the most interesting figures in modern music.) And I'd think that at that point you'd not really be in a position to decline an interview without a pretty good reason... So SPILL good sir!

Because at that point -- 1984ish -- she was a drug burnout who couldn't manage more than a sentence, and wasn't actually interviewable. And after she had wandered off into the crowd her manager looked at me and said "You aren't going to interview her then, are you?" and I said, "I'm afraid not". There's a great book called THE END aka SONGS THEY NEVER PLAY ON THE RADIO (I think) by (if memory serves) James Young about Nico at that time.

(See http://www.james-young.com/nico.html)

....

Later. Mr Gaiman has drunk too much champagne to continue this blog entry.

& so to bed.

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Went out to my writing cabin today for the first time in many months, having failed to notice that it was a day like an oven in the Midwest and having many optimistic but inaccurate memories about how effective the portable air-conditioning unit in there was. I cooked, but I hand-wrote about a thousand words of a short story for the BBC's Radio 4. (Who, after I agreed to do it, kept writing and pointing out that the money for a short story from the BBC is even worse than money from anywhere else and was I absolutely sure I still really wanted to write it? And of course I do.)

I took the dog with. And I stopped writing when the storm clouds rolled in and it all turned into night outside.

I just got a slightly nervous email from Evan Dorkin, who was surprised and, I think, a little worried by the response to his LJ rant about the scents in Diamond, so I wrote back and reassured him that I thought it was funny and honestly hadn't linked to it so that people would go and shout at him. This is Evan Dorkin, after all, the man behind Milk And Cheese and the Eltingville Club, and he rants really well. He's very funny.

Todd Klein is the best letterer I've ever worked with, and because I like working with him so much he's now statistically pretty much the only letterer I've ever worked with. He's a craftsman, and one of the nicest people in comics, and he was my unofficial editor on Sandman as well. He's just put up a website at http://kleinletters.com/, and if you're interested in the craft of lettering comics, or in the story of Sandman from the only other person to be there from Sandman #1 to Endless Nights... and a whole lot more besides, then you should wander over.

Just out of curiosity, how many words were Anansi Boys, Neverwhere, and American Gods respectively? I'm working on a novel and, while I don't want to modify it for word count or even aim for any word count, I certainly don't want it to fall in that ackwardly middle novella-type length that you see published so infrequently. It's amazingly hard to find word counts for published novels... Thanks.
Logan

Anansi Boys is a hair under 100,000 words and Neverwhere is a few thousand words over 100,000. American Gods when originally handed in was about 300,000 words (and still is, if you get the "Author's preferred text edition" in the UK and was cut to somewhere a bit under 275,000 words. Stardust was 50,000 words. Coraline was 30,000 words. (I think that 60,000 words is probably a good minimum word count to aim for when you write an adult novel, 40,000 for a book for younger readers. But publishers go more for whether they like something than what the word count is.)

Hi Neil,
I noticed on the Comic Con sneak-peek schedule that you will be on a movie panel on Thursday 7/26 and the Jack Kirby tribute panel on Sunday 7/29; will you have your own session during the convention?
thanks!

Yup. I'm still waiting for final confirmation on the various other panels and presentations I'll be on, then I'll post them all here, but the solo one is:

Friday July 27th:
2-3:15 pm Spotlight on Neil Gaiman.
Room 6 CDEF
signing after from 3:15-4:15 pm

And talking about word counts, I notice from http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/clouds/words/ that I'm now a mere 12,000 words away from having written a million words on this blog in the last six and a half years. Blimey.

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I have almost -- almost, so close I can taste it -- finished the "Danse Macabre" story, which means I'm over half way through the Graveyard Book. Now the plot starts...

Sure many have asked this, but which book are you reading in the photo with you by the tree?~Andrea the Satanic Ice Cube Diva

I am sitting under a tree reading a most wonderful bunch of essays by Sue Hubbell called Shrinking the Cat. (Here's a review I found. The book is better than the review.)

...

Many, many people wrote to tell me about this new thing called Firefox and why I should use it instead of Explorer. Truth to tell, I've been using Firefox since it was Firebird, and happily plugging it. But sometimes I use Explorer. It's ever so slightly easier to blog with Explorer -- there are few bells and whistles that Firefox doesn't get from Blogger; if you have more than one Gmail account open at the same time, you're going to need two different web browsers anyway; and (this one tends to be the biggest one that stopped me becoming exclusively Firefox based, at least on the laptops) sometimes Firefox is a memory hog. I'll notice that a computer has slowed way down, go and check the CPU and find out that Firefox is using it all. I used to simply kill Firefox with a Ctrl-Alt-Delete and then reopen it later with sessions saver, but I started worrying that I was doing something wrong, so I did a search over at Firefox help, and discovered that if it's being a memory hog they suggest you kill it with a ctrl-alt-delete...

I still use both, unashamed...

...

I was excited when I read

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/6741697.stm

to learn that Wolves in the Walls is going to Las Angeles as well as New York, and disappointed to learn that it's not -- as The Stage says, right now Wolves is only going to the New Victory -- details are at http://www.newvictory.org/show.m?showID=1028522.

I meant to post some of the Day I Spent Being Interviewed about Stardust links, but Lucy Anne has them all up at http://del.icio.us/thedreaming -- but there's a long one at Ain't it Cool that's fun http://www.aintitcool.com/node/33002

And you can hear me being interviewed at Hay on Wye here...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/radiowales/sites/content/pages/editedhaylights.shtml

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