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There's nothing like a day when you can sleep in, especially when you are in a hotel a long way from home and you don't have to take anyone to school or take anyone for a walk. It almost never happens -- normally if I'm in a hotel I have to set alarm clocks. And the whole sleeping in bit is made even better when the day before was long and exhausting, and made better than that by the fact the clocks have gone back an hour so I can really sleep as long as I want to plus an hour...

But the front desk phoned at seven a.m. to let me know I had a driver I didn't want or need or order waiting to take me nowhere at all. And that was that on sleeping in for the morning. So I shall write a slightly sleepy morning blogpost instead.

It's weird. They call these things junkets. It's a word that means either "a sweet dessert", "a party" or "a trip made for pleasure at someone else's expense". And the pleasure trip aspect is certainly there for the journalists, who get flown to somewhere nice by the film company, put up in hotels, see the film and then spend a day or a few hours talking to the people who made it. When I was a journalist, getting on a junket was always considered a good thing -- a small amount of work for a fair amount of pleasure and adventure.

Having done a few of them now on the other side of the press conference tableI think it's worth mentioning that they aren't really junkets for the people organising them or for the people being interviewed.

We assembled yesterday in a hotel back room. A lady did hair and make up for the cameras (which means, in my case, a bit of powder, and then her looking at my hair and asking "Is it meant to be like that?" and me saying, um, yes, sorry. Then into a back room to be led onto the stage for a press conference. Ray Winstone and Crispin Glover had just seen the film and loved it (Crispin: "And mostly I don't like films I'm in,"), John Malkovitch, Anthony Hopkins and Angelina Jolie haven't yet seen it. Bob Zemeckis was there but decided some years ago not to do things like interviews and junkets and press conferences (very wise).

I like Angelina. She's nice, very professional, and has a slightly goofy sense of humour. Last time I met her was November 2005, when she was doing the acting bit of Beowulf. Even then, it had already been reported in the papers that she had closed down production on Beowulf by walking off the set after a fight with Ray Winstone -- two weeks before her first day on set. I realised that where she was concerned the press were happy to simply make up stuff that sounded credible. It didn't need have to have any basis at all in reality.

It was obvious during the press conference that a large contingent of the press just wanted to talk to her and talk about her private life, something she declined to do and handled with grace and aplomb. Overall, the press conference went well (I think my favourite bit was the way Ray Winstone, answering questions, refers to me and Roger Avary as "The Boys", as if we're a couple of writing hardcaseswho will come over to your house and beat you up with our typewriters.)

And then on to interviews. Round tables: a dozen journalists in each room, and Roger and I go in, talk for half an hour and are then moved to the next room, where another dozen journalists are waiting to ask the same questions, while Anthony Hopkins, always one room behind, is moved into the room we were in.

And then it was individual interviews, and telephone interviews with journalists in Kansas and suchlike places. And then, brain dead, we were done.

The reaction to the film from the journalists and interviewers, who had seen it the previous night, seemed overwhelmingly positive, which was a relief.

It's nice that people have started to see the film, and are now actually talking about the thing they've seen. (I got a bit tired of reading online "reviews" of the film, which were always mash-ups of what people thought they'd seen in the trailers with what they imagined we were doing to the story, along with complaints about visuals they hadn't properly seen yet, which then normally concluded with the loud and proud announcement that as they knew they wouldn't like it, they wouldn't be seeing it, and it certainly wouldn't be Beowulf. Several of them were written by people who should, I thought, know better. I've never minded getting bad reviews, but in the past they've always come from people who had at least read or seen the thing they were complaining about.)

Anyway, now we've started screening it, real reactions are coming in.

Here's a letter Jeff Wells that he put up at his blog in advance of his review appearing, which he's posted I think partly because he was embarrassed by having said nasty things about Beowulf last week before seeing it http://hollywood-elsewhere.com/archives/2007/11/beowulf_2.php
Here's someone who saw a preview screening at UCLA - http://strstruckdreamr9.blogspot.com/2007/11/beowulf.html
and another early screening blog http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=43263288&blogID=325323587
Moriarty review it over at aintitcool -- http://www.aintitcool.com/node/34678 -- and I'm sure that lots of other reviews are going to start surfacing now that people are seeing it. (It's not that we were playing the completed film close to our chest. It's just that it wasn't completed -- the film, in its final form, was only emitted from the computers this week. And the Imax 3D print people started seeing on Friday afternoon was only completed on Friday morning.)

...

Dear Neil,

About two or three months ago I was found a book in the New Release section by you and Micheal Reaves. Being a fan of yours, I bought the book, presuming it would be good. It was good.

However, it didn't seem to be your style exactly so I checked the release date: 2007.

I was surprised that I hadn't heard anything about this book on your blog since I have been reading it for about a year, maybe more.

I thought that maybe, albeit doubtfully, there was someone else in the world named Neil Gaiman.

Nope. Under OTHER NOVELS FOR YOUNG READERS BY NEIL GAIMAN, was Coraline.

The book is called Interworld.

Just asking why you havent mentioned it at all on your blog.

-Camille

I'm posting this to remind people that there is a SEARCH function on the www.neilgaiman.com pages. They take you to http://www.neilgaiman.com/search_form/. If you typed in Interworld it would give you about 15 hits from the website, first among them http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/labels/Interworld.html which is all the times I've labelled a blog entry Interworld since I've been doing labelling on this blog (basically this year). And which would answer all your questions...

Hello, Neil!

Sorry if this is old news, but your journal has been nominated for Best Literature Blog on the 2007 Weblog Awards.

http://2007.weblogawards.org/polls/best-literature-blog-1.php

The voting closes November 8 and you're currently in the lead!

Best of luck,

Leanne

Thank you! What fun. (Which left me suddenly wondering what happened to the "Bloggers Choice" awards -- looks like they get handed out next week in Las Vegas.)


...

Lots of people asking what's happening in the Philippines in a couple of weeks. I'm talking to an ad congress -- I don't think the event is open to the public -- and doing something with Fully Booked (I googled but only found http://www.fullybookedonline.com/adsdetail.php?id=53).

Anyway. Maddy is here -- I've told her she has to blog the Premiere please -- and I am going off to be a dad now. (In the interests of fairness, I should add that an apologetic fruit basket has just arrived from the people who sent the 7.00 am car and driver, putting me in mind of the Elvis Costello bit on the old Larry Sanders Show. And that Maddy has been eating the gummi bears out of it.)

Things -- particularly things to do with movies -- happen oddly, when they happen, and they never happen in the way you expect.

For example, back in 1996 Michael Reaves was working doing adventure cartoon serials at Dreamworks Animation. He started talking to me about an idea for something that could be a potential animated story, and we began talking about what we'd want to see animated and why, and that became an idea about a boy who finds himself in the middle of a war between two equally powerful forces, who joins a super-team consisting of versions of himself from different alternate realities to try and maintain the consmic balance.

We pitched it to executives, first at Dreamworks and then elsewhere, and watched them get increasingly confused and grumpy.

Somewhere in the winter of 1998 or 1999, Michael came up to my place, and we wrote it as a novel, pretty much as a Heinlein juvenile, because the treatments we did simply confused people and we were sure that if they read the novel they'd understand.

And then we discovered the novel seemed to confuse them too, and we sighed and we put it away and got on with our lives.

Last year, Michael reminded me of the book, and we took it out, dusted it off, sent it out to publishers and were happy when Harper Childrens wanted to publish it. They commissioned a lovely cover for it by James Jean.



The early reviews were very positive. Film and TV people started contacting my agent about it. And now, a decade later, I'm delighted and slightly bemused to report that it's just been optioned by Dreamworks Animation, who want to make it into a movie...

There's a moral there somewhere, you know, but I have no idea what it is.

I'm in Cologne, in Germany, in a hotel that seems to have been built
inside a giant water tower, and am paying an astonishing amount for
internet access. I don't have flu so far, and have had no travel
disasters.

There's a reading and a signing tomorrow -- details at:

http://www.litcologne.de/va/160307/gaimankoester.php

Dear Neil,Today I wandered into an EMPiK bookstore and picked
up a paper informing about you booksigning in Kraków and Warsaw. (for
wchich I can't wait, by the way.)There was an article about you, and
it said that you're "linked to Poland" because your grandparents came
from Lodz. It that true, or did they completely make it up?I live in
Lodz, so you can pretty much imagine my amazement.Love from,Sylwia
G

My paternal great-grandfather was thrown out of Lodz, where the family
owned a department store, for being the black sheep of the family. I'm
not certain whether my grandfather was born there or born in Belgium
on the way to England. (I do know my grandfather never had a passport,
and was, until he died, considered a "stateless person", which is the
kind of thing I would have put into Mr Punch if I'd known it
then.)

Hey Neil:After some investigative work, I determined that (1) a while
ago, you said that the reason you don't have a LibraryThing account is
that you don't have the time and (2) recently, you have been blogging
about how you are entering your book collection into a database. So I
said to myself, wouldn't it be sweet if Neil were to put his library
on LibraryThing? Because even if he doesn't have time to tag most of
those books, we could still see what he owns. Which would be beyond
sweetness.

That's definitely the plan. Tim offered me a LibraryThing account or two
ages ago, and when everything's on a database I'm looking forward to
importing it to LibraryThing and getting it up there.

This isn't a question, I just thought I'd let you know that on
one of [adult swim]'s commercials last night, in which they bemoaned
the death of Captain America and exclaimed how Stan Lee would never do
something so stupid an attempt to be "deep and meaningful", they
attached a "P.S. Neil Gaiman already has deep and meaningful covered".
Or it said something like that. All right, hope you have a lovely
day!

And they show Futurama. (People have asked if I'm jealous of
Alan Moore for being on The Simpsons, and I'm not. If he were
a head in a jar in Futurama, on the other hand...)


Hi Neil,I read this blog nearly daily and have no idea how I
missed info on "M is for Magic" and "Interworld." What are these
books? Are the stories in "...Magic" found in your other collections
or are they new?And have no clue about "Interworld." Please help out a
longtime fan. Cheers,Greg Trax

Interworld is a novel I wrote with Michael Reaves in about
1998. We wrote it because we had an idea for an animated series, and
we kept explaining it to TV people who got confused, so we wrote a
treatment, which seemed to confuse them even more, so we wrote a novel
-- a sort of transdimensional romp. (First mentioned on this blog at
http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2002/01/handed-in-narrative-draft-of-ramayana.asp.)

You can see the cover up at http://www.jamesjean.com/illustrations/interworld.html

M is for Magic is for school libraries and such. Most of the
stories in it have been collected, although some of them aren't easy
to find (like http://www.neilgaiman.com/exclusive/shortstories/blackbirdstory)
and there's one story that's never been collected ("How to Sell the
Ponti Bridge" from 1984) and a new one, "The Witch's Headstone" that
will appear first in the Dann/ Dozois WIZARDS collection.

...


I now have a corporate website! I've always wanted a corporate
website. When I was a small boy and adults would ask what I'd like for
my birthday I would sigh and say "Can I have a corporate website?" and
they would explain, in that irritating way that adults had, that I
wasn't a corporation and the interwebs had not yet been invented and
frankly they were still reeling from culture shock from the arrival of
transistor radios and what the hell was wrong with a tub of silly
putty and a Whizzer and Chips Annual anyway, and no, I couldn't have a
catapult either, you can put someone's eye out with one of those.

Most of the content isn't there yet, but it's evolving http://www.blankcorporation.com/
for the curious. And it wasn't written by me either, but is just the
sort of thing I wanted it to be.


...

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Bees-How-Keep-Them/dp/0395883245

Hello-- Sue Hubbell's book is a wonderful first book for new
beekeepers -- or for people who think they might want to keep bees.
Sue has a deep empathy for bees and approaches relating to them with
such grace, She therefore often does things differently from the bee
textbooks or procedures of the commercial bee keepers. She
demonstrates a humane and bee-centric approach to beekeeping.

As new beekeepers, Sue's perspective was the most valuable thing we
gleaned from all the books we read on keeping bees. Her love and deep
appreciation for bees left a lasting impression on us and in how we
relate to our bees. And it is a fun read for "arm chair" beekeepers as
well.

Our local bee club (www.pugetsoundbees.org) has
"beginner" bee keeping classes before each meeting. The instructor
looks out at the room with a few beginners amid scores of veteran
beekeepers and dutifully asks "Are there any beginners here tonight?"
and invariably the entire assembly raises their hands.
Good luck -- it is so much fun!

I read the Hubbell book on the plane, and loved it.

Let's see. Recently I've written an introduction to a book on The Twilight Zone, and am currently doing my editorial pass on the galleys of INTERWORLD, a young adult book that Michael Reaves and I wrote some years ago that we're currently bringing out of mothballs, dusting off and sending to meet the nice people.

I also got swept up in a small adventure that turned me into a giddy twelve-year-old comics fan, and about which I shall say nothing more until the time is right. And possibly not even then. It was all Jonathan Ross's fault, anyway.

And now the weather forecasters are predicting the mother of all winter storms for us in the midwest this weekend. Ten inches of snow. Freezing rain. An ice storm. Everyone is making contingency plans and buying several months' suppies of toilet paper, and I'm being English and am convinced it won't happen. Interesting weather almost never does, not when they say it will.

This just came in from Charles Vess, who wonders if any of you have any of the STARDUST art he's looking for...

From Charles Vess:

From June until September of this year I'll be mounting an exhibition
of my Stardust art at the the William King Regional Art Museum in their
premium exhibition space.

A LOT of people will be seeing the exhibition and I want to put my best
'face' forward. So I'm looking for various pieces of Stardust original
art that I've sold over the years and would like to borrow that art back
for this show. The names of the donors will be included in various
publications concerning the exhibit as well as being on the identifying
labels themselves.

In particular I'm looking for these full page illustrations:

(All page numbers refer to the trade paperback edition)


1. (page 46) The couple on the hill (with the Village of Wall in the background)
beside a tree looking up at the falling star.

2. (page 52) Tristran in his bowler hat entering the deep woods surrounded by
various fairy types.

3.Cover art to mini #2 with all of the Lords of Stormhold floating in
the air around the dark rocks of Stormhold.

4.(Pg #96 -97) The two pages of multiple panels with Tristran's first candle walk
between worlds.

5.(Pg #104)Tristran and Yvaine walking in the wood. She has a crutch.
6.Tris and Yvaine riding the unicorn through woods with gnarly
creatures in the fore ground.

7..(Pg #161) Small figures of Tris and Yvaine looking up as galleon passes
through golden clouds above them.

8. ( Pg #188)Tris passed out on ground w/ Yvaine sitting beside him. A dark
haired woman (his mother) stands above him. Red goblin creatures frolic
in the fore ground tree limbs.

9.( Pg #193)Tris in a sitting room w/ Victoria Foster surrounded by nick nacks
and green men. A cat sits on the rug beside him.

10.( Pg #205) Yvaine gives Tris the medallion. Dark haired Mom looks on. The air
around them is filled with all manner of people and beasties.

11. ( Pg #209) Looking down at the fair w/ the Village of Wall off to the left.
Very small figures of Tris and Yvaine walk off thru the field. In the
far distance the mountains of Stromhold rise w/ Flying Galleon beside them.

12. (Pg #213) Last piece in the book. Colored pencil on black paper. Yvaine
stands amidst dark stones and raises her arms towards her 'sisters' that
dance through the night time sky above her.

Here's my e-mail if you have any information on the location of these
pieces: [email protected]

Thanks!

Charles

...

The previous post drew a lot of responses -- most of them agreeing with me. A few articulately disagreeing, and I thought I'd post a couple of them....

Mr. Gaiman-

If I may, a few comments about today’s posting about the appearance of the word “Scrotum” in the children’s book.

1. A few librarians in this NY Times article were quoted out of context from e-mails taken from LM_NET, a listserv for school librarians. In fact, LM_NET postings are subject to copyright and librarians were not contacted by the Times in response to their quotes.
2. All librarians are not tight-bunned, tight-assed “Shh-ing” maniacs. (I know, I am one—a librarian, that is, not tight-assed.)
3. Given the current climate of education in the US, you can’t blame a public (or private) school librarian for being incredibly sensitive to this issue. Unfortunately, we live in a period where it’s easier to throw away books and tell kids to “just google it” rather than keeping librarians on-staff. Each of us fights for our credibility and necessity every day. One conflict with a prominent community-member over (an admittedly) ridiculous matter such as this can end a career, as it’s easier to drop a staff member’s salary than fight a legal battle over censorship. While there are those of us who are willing to throw our chins out and fight, there are many battle-scarred vets of the library wars who have been cowed by the system and will quietly drop it rather than fight anymore. The public school librarian is fighting to keep of the endangered species list.

While I’ve been an ardent fan of yours, I could not let today’s journal slide without some commentary.

Yours,

Harry F. Coffill
Library Media Specialist
East Grand Rapids Middle School

I'm afraid that just because something is "copyright" it doesn't mean it can't be quoted. It can. It's called Fair Use. And I don't see why the Times would have to contact the people about their quotes -- if it's written down, that's all you'd have to show the fact-checker, if there is such a thing... Once you've said it, it's out there. (This blog is copyright me. Doesn't mean it doesn't get quoted, or that I'm consulted about it when it is. Here's an example of one time it happened. If you're going to say something in a semi-public forum, you're quotable, or misquotable, and that's just how it is.)

Hey Neil,

Speaking as a librarian, I happily bask in your general approbation.

Speaking as a librarian, I detest the idea of censorship, and the thought of choosing not to purchase a Newberry-winning book simply because of a single word.

Speaking as a librarian, I must also point out that the issue is, unfortunately, perhaps a bit more complicated than that, and that referring to those librarians who choose not to buy the book as "rogues" who've gone over to the dark side is likely to be an unfair oversimplification, at least in some cases.

Are there prudish librarians who have knee-jerk reactions to "bad language" and "inappropriate content?" Of course. We're only human, and therefore only flawed.

However, in many cases...using, as an example, the librarian cited as saying that SADLY, they will not be purchasing the book...it is likely NOT the librarian's own personal choice or even preference to exclude this book from their collection, but is the decision of the library director, library board, or school itself, based upon community outcry and patron pressure. In many cases of books being challenged, the challenge never goes as far as a banning. However, there are still cases in which otherwise excellent books are banned due to some small piece of "questionable" content. Don't forget, one of the most challenged and banned authors of all time is Judy Blume, the author of well-beloved, classic, but very frank (and therefore "dangerous"), children's and young adult books.

Librarians, as much as anyone and everyone else in this country, are subject to mob rule at times, and are always always subject to the workings of bureaucracy and politics. It's sad, but it's true.

...which I understand, but both of which emails leave me thinking that surely saying "It won the Newbery Medal. We order the books that do that. It's been the most respected guide to quality children's literature since 1922," would fend off most threats to a school librarian's job... wouldn't it?

Ah well. My next children's book, the one I'm currently writing, is very unlikely to have any rude words in it at all, but people I've read the first few pages to tend to look at me with a concerned sort of look and say "Is this really a children's book? I mean it's scary and then that stuff..." and I say yes, and I'm sorry but that's how the book goes and there's nothing I can do about it. Of course there is -- I could cut it out and write a book that wasn't as good. And I can hope that anyone who gets past the first couple of pages will find it very hard to put down. I can hope. But I'd understand any school librarian who was worried.

And I also got this from the "Higher Power of Lucky" post, which made me smile...

Hey there, Neil.
I illustrated "The Higher Power of Lucky" (although it didn't occur to me to provide a picture for the minor scrotum incident). Thanks for weighing in on the whole kerfuffle. Coincidentally, I read "Endless Nights" yesterday, absolutely loved it, and made some sketches this morning which I posted on my blog:
http://planetham.blogspot.com/
I'm also a Writers House client, so maybe I'll see you at some swanky cocktail reception sometime (if they even have such things).All the best,matt phelan

Well worth checking out Matt's cool artblog, if just for the masonic raccoon... And alas, while I have been a client of Writer's House for almost 20 years, I've never been to a swanky cocktail reception there yet (although they once threw a lovely bash with nibbly bits at the Franfurt bookfair for all my foreign publishers).

...

I get a lot of appeals for good causes in and I long ago sighed and decided that I can't post all of them. But this one has camels in it...

Not a question, so much as a request. There is an amazing thing going on in Kenya involving librarians, generosity, and of course, camels. The link is http://camelbookdrive.wordpress.com/ if you could post it for the fabulous readers of this blog. If you have already mentioned it, I apologize. It's been awhile since I've visited, although now I seem to have spent about 3 hours reading past posts. Damn.

Beth (librarian in training, who, for the record, is perfectly happy about the word scrotum in any book)

consider it posted. And I'll see if I can't put together a bunch of books for the camel library...

And finally, another article from Nerve's comics issue. This one's about the Gordon Lee case and the CBLDF. I've written about it here before -- I've been writing about it for years. But if you've missed it, or you thought it was over... http://www.nerve.com/dispatches/clark/gordonlee/

My daughter Holly is producing The Vagina Monologues at Bryn Mawr this year. http://events.vday.org/2007/College/Bryn_Mawr_College. Which I would normally not have posted here, but I just discovered from a correspondent that -- in Atlantic Beach Florida -- the play in question has has just been renamed The Hoohaa Monologues, to avoid offending passers-by with small daughters who ask embarrassing questions... which seems, somehow to miss the point on a scale that's positively awesome.

Congratulations to Xeric Award winner Joshua Kemble. Many years ago Dave Sim, eyeing Kevin Eastman's publishing house Tundra and Peter Laird's nascent Xeric Foundation said, "There's a right way and wrong way to lose a million dollars". Tundra is long, long long forgotten, but since September 1992, the Xeric Foundation has given out almost 2 million dollars in grants to self-publishing comics creators. http://www.xericfoundation.com/


I'm on deadline right now, doing a final spit-and-polish on Interworld (very odd, reading and fixing seven year old manuscript), so I shall not tarry here. I'll just point out that tomorrow, the Ninth of February, is this blog's birthday.

And that Danguy and the Webelf have made it the best birthday toy ever. But that will have to wait until tomorrow... Read the rest of this post