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There's a special section in the NY Times today on technology innovation. The cover story is about prediction markets and their usefulness for business decision-making. Something about it unsettled me, at first, but then I started thinking about the possible applications a little closer to home. What if we could use such a tool to help direct the features we choose to build at WebJunction for our members there - it's a smallish set of the library profession (30K members, 70K visitors a month) or even help direct decision-making at OCLC with the wisdom of the membership of our vast, global cooperative. Would you make "bets" on what's coming and what's next if you could win an iPod? It has such a lovely tone of fun and gaming that I think people might actually 'play'.

I'd love to hear if anyone knows of any library-related application of prediction markets *in libraries*. If our patrons could bet on the future of the library - where would that be?

There's an odd point in writing, when you reach a bit that you've known was going to happen for years. Years and years. And then it doesn't happen like you thought it would...

It's as if there's a ghost-story behind the text and nobody knows it's there but me.

Still on Chapter Seven of The Graveyard Book, but I'm well into the last half of the chapter, and it no longer feels like I'm walking towards the horizon, with the horizon retreating as I advance... I've written about eleven easy pages today, and cannot wait to get back to it. If I'm still awake and writing I may pull an all-nighter.

It barely feels like I'm writing it. Mostly it feels like I'm the first one reading it.

Pretty soon now, Mr Ketch will fall down a hole. Mr Dandy, Mr Nimble and Mr Tar will have a gate opened for them, and the man Jack will get just what he always wanted...

...

And look, Bill Hader is selling Lafferty to the world, via the New York Times.

(And hurrah, he's also plugging Joe Hill, Clive Barker and John Wyndham. But it's the Lafferty that put the smile on my face. I'm going to give a talk in Tulsa this summer, mostly because I want to visit the Lafferty manuscripts...) (And here is Lafferty's own short story, "Nine Hundred Grandmothers", for those of you who want something to read.)

I'm back in the UK, and, today, really starting to feel the jet-lag, which means that the long description of everything I did in Japan may have to wait, or to be one of those things I always mean to write and never do. But I had a really busy Saturday and was taken to many places -- the oddest of which was a blessedly short visit to the Maid Cafe. "The line between pop pulture and porno is sometimes blurred in Japan," said my guide as she took me there, which meant that whatever I was expecting it definitely wasn't the Japanese equivalent of being taken to a cafe where the waitresses were all completely asexual children's party hosts pretending to be six themselves, speaking in helium chipmonk voices and dressed like Alice in Wonderland, where I would feel as if I had tuned into a game show on a foreign television station that I did not understand. I kept trying to imagine how one could transpose something like that experience into the US or the UK, and failing.

I bought lots of brush-pens.

I came back to the UK.

And am now brain dead (which is okay as nobody is interviewing me today). Tomorrow I am a special guest chairperson at Susanna Clarke's event

EXCLUSIVE UK EVENT
Susanna Clarke with special guest chairperson Neil Gaiman, Tuesday 25 September, 7pm
UCL Bloomsbury Theatre, 15 Gordon Street, London, WC1H 0AH

Susanna is the international bestselling author of the wonderful Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell and to celebrate the paperback publication of The Ladies of Grace Adieu she will be in conversation with legendary author, Neil Gaiman. This is a rare appearance by Susanna and the only UK event to celebrate publication so book early to avoid disappointment.

Click here for booking information and ticket prices.