posted by Neil
I'm home, after ten days in New York and Boston and Cape Cod. I've left Maddy behind in New York, where she is doing an internship before going off to college. Then I left Amanda behind in Boston, where she is packing before she goes to France and Italy to do interviews about her new album before she flies to San Francisco for her art show and Kickstarter-backer concert.
It's a beautiful night. I'm told it was evilly hot while I was away, but it's glorious now, a night filled with fireflies, somewhat spoiled by Lola dashing off into the darkness while walking through a cornfield, and returning in triumph with a young raccoon she had just caught and killed.
Barnes and Noble have once more started to sell the Sandman graphic novels (along with the other DC Comics graphic novels they'd stopped selling) in their brick and mortar stores, so I am happy to link to them once again. I doubt either boycott actually did anything, but mine made me feel marginally empowered. Anyway, they are selling copies of STORIES, the anthology I edited with Al Sarrantonio, in hardback, for $2.99. (It contains my story "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and many other wonderful stories by wonderful authors, and it won the Shirley Jackson award and the Locus award for Best Anthology.) I'm not sure how long they'll be selling them at that price.
It's a beautiful night. I'm told it was evilly hot while I was away, but it's glorious now, a night filled with fireflies, somewhat spoiled by Lola dashing off into the darkness while walking through a cornfield, and returning in triumph with a young raccoon she had just caught and killed.
Barnes and Noble have once more started to sell the Sandman graphic novels (along with the other DC Comics graphic novels they'd stopped selling) in their brick and mortar stores, so I am happy to link to them once again. I doubt either boycott actually did anything, but mine made me feel marginally empowered. Anyway, they are selling copies of STORIES, the anthology I edited with Al Sarrantonio, in hardback, for $2.99. (It contains my story "The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains", and many other wonderful stories by wonderful authors, and it won the Shirley Jackson award and the Locus award for Best Anthology.) I'm not sure how long they'll be selling them at that price.
Here's the video (via the Open Spark project "Your Music Played By Lightning") of the 8in8 song Nikola Tesla, words by yours truly, played on enormous Tesla Coils. It is impossible to describe the glorious nerdy rush of pride I felt looking at (and listening to) this.
Here's a fan-made-video of the song with lots of cardboard in it, and fewer giant electronic zaps...
There were many wonderful things on the kitchen table waiting for me, but my favourite was the mock-up of the new edition of Stardust.
There hasn't been a hardback of Stardust in print in the US for about 13 years. I'm not sure why not. Jennifer Brehl, my editor at William Morrow, talked to me about what I wanted to see in a book. I told her I wanted it to look and feel like something from 90 years ago, like the books I treasured as a kid that I found in the school library (the ones I'd buy for a penny in the school library sales, and loved ever after). Bless her, she got it. She took all my blathering and went off and has started making it into a book.
She's commissione
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 3/29/2011
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: feeling like you're in a book, lomography, Add a tag
posted by Neil
The shots of the hare carcass and eagles have mysteriously vanished from my computer, so here is the highland cow who stares at me when I ride my bike.
My favourite, perfectly non-fictional conversation from today:
Scene: Somewhere in the Highlands & Islands. In a car. George is a local, and I am giving him a lift home.
Me: You know, George, I think that wood over there is where the golden eagles nest. There's a pair I've seen around a lot -- the ones I saw eating that hare -- and they always seem to go back to the wood around that black house on the hill. I've spotted both of them perching in those trees...
George: Could be, Neil. They wouldn't be disturbed much - the people who own that house came up from down South, but they stopped coming when they discovered it was haunted. (Realises he may have said something wrong. Decides to add something cheery.) At least your place isn't haunted.
Me: No. But it's cursed.
George: I wouldn't pay any attention to that. (Pause. Then, helpfully,) As long as you don't try and leave the house to your son, everyone should be fine.
Michael, my son. Not cursed yet.
PS: Not sure how long I'll be at Number One on this TIME list of the 140 Twitterers to follow -- probably not long -- but you can stop Sarah Palin's inexorable rise into first place by voting for me at http://www.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,2058946_2059139_2059131,00.html
PPS: These black and white photos of f
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 12/5/2010
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: weeping angels, Ig Nobels, lola's tongue, dog photograph, kevin smith, lomography, blue ribbon honey, Add a tag
posted by Neil
I went to LA to spend Thanksgiving with Amanda's family, but before Thanksgiving Amanda and I were guests on Kevin Smith's inaugural "Starf*cking" interview, at his Smodcastle, a fifty-seat theatre in Hollywood, in front of a live audience. It was a three hour show, or longer - Kevin interviewed me and Amanda, then Amanda played, then I read "Being An Experiment...", after which I inveigled Kevin and Amanda into helping me do a scene from AMERICAN GODS as a three-hander.You can listen to it soon: http://smodcast.bandcamp.com is where it'll go live (for a 90 cent donation for each of the three chunks - or more, if you are feeling affluent, all of which goes to The Wayne Foundation) (this is The Wayne Foundation's Mission Statement).
(Photos by Allan Amato)
This is Amanda at soundcheck.
By: Neil Gaiman,
on 11/30/2009
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: audio books, NPR, David Sedaris, Where's Neil, BPAL, lomography, Martin Jarvis, Whitgift, the queen of sheep, old teachers, Add a tag
Maddy's friend Claire, at San Diego airport...
And here's Ivy McCloud (almost invisible, far right) and my goddaughters and their friend...
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And once that was done I felt like I was off-duty and stopped taking photographs, so the adventures that followed are pretty much unrecorded, photographically. I saw lots of friends, travelled by train (Christopher Salmon's film of The Price got its kickstarter funding as I was having breakfast on the train from Los Angeles to Santa Fe. 2001 of us funded it. You are all awesome), played the melodica with Amanda's three-year old nephew Ronan, rewrote a film script, and copy-edited the American Gods Tenth Anniversary edition.
I meant to blog about NPR's Science Friday Broadcast of the 2010 Ig-Nobel Awards, (as described at http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2010/09/banned-books-and-ig-nobels.html) at http://www.npr.org/2010/11/26/131608853/silly-science-honored-with-ig-nobel-prizes (you can download the evening in podcast form here).
Then I got home, in a snowstorm, to find a Weeping Angel in a jar of honey. (A photograph and explanation of sorts can be read in http://www.birdchick.com/wp/2010/12/lets-get-weird-with-honey/).
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By: Neil Gaiman,
on 11/30/2009
Blog: Neil Gaiman (Login to Add to MyJacketFlap)
JacketFlap tags: audio books, NPR, David Sedaris, Where's Neil, BPAL, lomography, Martin Jarvis, Whitgift, the queen of sheep, old teachers, Add a tag
posted by Neil
For those of you who missed it, here's the NPR "Open Mike" piece I did on audiobooks... You can listen to it here, or download it, or email it...And here, at closer to full length, are the interviews I did with Martin Jarvis and David Sedaris. If you enjoyed the piece, they are filled with wonderful bits that didn't make it in. And the Martin Jarvis interview is practically a masterclass in how to approach doing Audiobooks.
(The strangest moment for me in the Martin Jarvis interview is when he talks about remembering the voices of teachers, and names John Branston and Dick Glynne Jones. I went to Whitgift School in Croydon, which Martin had also attended twenty years before me, and I was taught by both of them. I was in John Branston's production of Julius Caesar at the Fairfield Halls -- and was taught O-level English by Dick Glynne Jones. As he said their names, I thought "He can't be talking about the same people..." but of course, he was.)
There's a sort of interview with me, and a gallery of snapshots, over at http://www.lomography.com/magazine/lomoamigos/2009/11/30/neil-gaiman-shoots-with-the-lc-a-plus. I love the low-tech magic of the camera, and the wonderful hodgepodge nature of the shots, a mixture of art of documentary, such as the moment when a collapsing shelf deposited the contents of a make-up bag into a toilet, to Amanda's doomed attempts to make friends with sheep, or a photo that should not have come out of my goddaughters watching the DVD of Coraline with their 3D specs on...
For me, the most exciting bit is that they gave Dave McKean a camera to play with. I can't wait to see what he did.
I've grabbed a few more shots from their gallery. Here's the Queen of Sheep herself...
Maddy's friend Claire, at San Diego airport...And here's Ivy McCloud (almost invisible, far right) and my goddaughters and their friend...
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