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I've got something that's probably only a bad cold that caught up with me after five months on the road, so I was asleep last night by about nine... and awake this morning at six.

I finished typing the Dying Earth story for Messrs Martin and Dozois, who were sitting on an otherwise completed book drumming their fingers against their tabletops in a worried manner and waiting for me to finish touring. It's an odd story but it made me happy, and, while I get to do some Jack Vance impressions (no-one but Vance can do Vance properly) I got to do me too.

Again, tabs to close and plenty of them.

Or in one case, tabs to keep open. I'm now hooked on http://www.oldbaileyonline.org , reading my way through the ancient legal cases, loving the details and the names, occasionally marvelling at the difference in times and moral codes and modes of justice. (Like this: http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t17140908-26&div=t17140908-26 which reminds us of the value of freedom of speech...)

A slightly odd Batman article in http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/2008-11-17-batman-gaiman_N.htm -- I'm not exactly misquoted, but I'm not sure I'd entirely endorse any of their conclusions.

(I don't think I've ever had an Alex Ross cover on anything I've done, and it was lovely to see it...)



....and, now that it's been shown full size on the back of Previews, I don't think there's any harm in putting up Andy Kubert's cover, in its original uncoloured version. (which is the one I can find on my computer.) (If anyone grumbles I'll take it down.)



...

I've been pondering the word prevaricate on and off for a number of years. I'd used it once in Sandman to mean someone not making up their minds, and Emma Bull, reading it, said "You mean procrastinate. Prevaricate means to lie." And I changed it before it saw print, realising that if she thought it was being misused, so would many other readers. Then, eighteen years later, I read an article on how to hang Rothkos which contained the sentence "Rothko was always prevaricating over how his art should be shown," said Waldemar Januszczak, art critic for the Sunday Times, and decided to research.

I think it's a word with shades of meaning, and while in the US it tends to get used simply as "to lie" (as in "All politicians prevaricate"), in the UK it's more often used as a synonym for Equivocate -- i.e. to avoid giving a straight answer... even to tergiversarate. And it's the equivocation, with its implications of putting off a decision that then shades over into meanings that aren't simply "to lie".

And after writing that I just found some people arguing with each other about that on a French/English board, as if it's a new meaning that's just come along. The Big Oxford English Dictionary that I need a magnifying glass to read lists as Prevaricate definition #2 "To deviate from straightforwardness; to act or speak evasively; to quibble, shuffle, equivocate." And it gives examples going back to 1651. (Squints. Checks with magnifying glass. Nope, 1631.)

...

Joe Gordon asked if I could mention this excellent Vertigo Encyclopedia interview up at the FPI blog, which I do, partly because I still feel guilty for not ever reading Alex's book A Scattering of Jades, copies of which were pressed on me in proof by friends, and which, like so many books people give me, never made it off the to-be-read pile.

Berkeley Breathed's favourite strips are up at http://www.berkeleybreathed.com/pages/favorite_strips.asp.

A few people have sent me links in to the Io9 article on How Sandman Changed the World. It's over at http://io9.com/5086663/5-ways-that-sandman-changed-the-world if you want to read it. I guess I have the same problem with it I do with a lot of Io9 stuff -- it's an article that reads like someone was assigned it, and sort of blogged it out in a bit of a hurry without any research or real thought. I don't think that Sandman actually did any of the five things he lists it as having done, and a lot of the things presented on the page as if they're facts are opinions, and dodgy ones at that. (Which sounds remarkably ungracious, considering it's a blog entry that says nice things about Sandman. If so, blame it on the author being in bed with a cold.) (And, before people write in asking about the "lost Sandman role playing supplement", and before it makes it into Wikipedia, the Mayfair Games Sandman someone talks about in the comments is more or less entirely fictional. I think I had a chat about a potential Sandman game with Dan Greenberg, who wrote the DC Magic supplement, but it went no further and Mayfair went down soon after -- I've never before encountered the idea that the two things were linked, and no Sandman game was ever written, made, solicited or cancelled.)

On the other hand someone sent me a link to this article on children's literature at http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=6403. It's a fascinating essay which I agree with parts of, disagree with parts of (I really rate A.A.Milne as a humourist, children's writer and playwright, and my five-year-old love for the Winnie The Pooh books is all-consuming), but love his journey from premise to conclusion. If we are in a golden age of children's literature, it's probably mostly because of Sturgeon's Law. There are a lot of books being written right now, after all.

Also ran into this article by Roseanne Cash on songwriting (which I suspect applies equally to writing of all kinds) which I really enjoyed: so much of the magic is made by turning up and crafting something, simply by doing the work, and it's so hard to convince people of that, and it doesn't make the magic any less for it.

The Independent has its 50 best books for Winter up as a slideshow at http://www.independent.co.uk/extras/indybest/arts-books/the-50-best-winter-reads-1017075.html (click on the picture of the Ali Smith book to start it). The Graveyard Book is one of the books, I'm happy to say, and it's also on Amazon.co.uk's Years Best SF and Fantasy list.


And Meg Cabot says nice things about The Graveyard Book, and dispels rumours on her lovely chatty blog.

...

About seventeen years ago the phone rang. "You're nominated for a World Fantasy Award for best short story," I was told.

"You should make sure that Charles Vess is nominated too," I said. "He drew it. And as a comic, it's not just the writer. It's both of us."

There were a couple of phone calls, and when the nominations were announced, Charles had been added to the list.

Which was something I found myself remembering when I read,

The Canada Council for the Arts won't add Canadian illustrator Jillian Tamaki's name to the official list of nominees in the text category for this year's Governor-General's Award for children's literature.

"We're a little bit late in the game" to either discuss the issue or make the addition, Melanie Rutledge, head of writing and publishing for the Canada Council, said Wednesday evening. But "we'll take it under consideration going forward. ... We're always wanting feedback like this."

It's for Skim, a graphic novel [Jillian] created with her cousin, author Mariko Tamaki. The book, published by Groundwood Books/House of Anansi Press, is one of five titles short-listed for the $25,000 G-G prize in children's literature (text), with Mariko Tamaki cited as the sole creator. If you give a writing award to a comic and ignore the art, you're being foolish, short-sighted and fundamentally failing to understand what comics are or what comics writing means.

And it's never too late to fix things.

Now, before I head off on some barking mad Jeremiad against short-sighted Canadians, I shall drink some chicken soup and go to sleep.

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I got home half an hour after my birthday was done. Spent yesterday mostly sleeping -- at least, I remember nothing about yesterday other than the moment I looked out of the window and realised it must have been snowing for a while and I hadn't noticed, and watching Sarah Jane Adventures with Maddy, and saying the dialogue a few seconds before the characters did, with the right intonation and everything, which left her suspicious that I'd seen the episode before and left me explaining that, no, I just knew how they went.

I have oodles of links to post and tabs that need closing, but I think I'll save that for a post later tonight, and now take the dog for a walk in the snow: I realised, this morning (at the Dentist's, being fitted for a new sleep apnea mouth-thingummy) that I've been on the road since July, and that my exhaustion is my own silly fault, and that Next Year, except where unavoidable, or where already committed, I will stay in one place more or less and write.

Miriam Berkley (http://www.publishersmarketplace.com/members/MiriamBerkley/) found some photos she took of me back when Sandman started. Sometimes it doesn't seem like twenty years since the first issue of Sandman came out. And then I see a photo of me at just-28, and it does, every minute and every year of it.


Ever since the Compleat Death was announced, people have been writing in wondering why it wasn't an Absolute Edition. People really like the Absolute Sandmans (and I was reading through Absolute Sandman Volume 4 last night, and being really impressed by the size and detail -- particularly on reproduction of the Michael Zulli pencils in The Wake, which are remarkable -- and I could really see why). And, because people kept writing in to me and asking about it, I started wondering why we'd have an edition that would be a different size and shape again from the Absolutes. Recently I talked to people at DC about it (especially as, following the critical and commercial success of the Absolute Sandmans, it was becoming apparent to them that it might make sense to keep these things in the same format) and, at the last possible moment, Paul Levitz came down on the side of keeping the editions consistent and keeping me -- and, I hope, you -- happier (thank you Paul). So, no Compleat Death in March. But there will be an Absolute Death later in the year...

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Sorry about the font-mess of yesterday's post. I did it using Safari on a PC, and the result was hellish. Obviously these are not two things that work well together when playing with Blogger. And each attempt to clean it up on my part made it worse. (Thanks to the Web Goblin for fixing it.)

I did a second draft of the Waterstones "What's Your Story?" story (only a few words I wanted to change, but it meant handwriting the whole thing out again), and FedExed it off today.

My thanks to the Eagle Award voters -- I was thrilled that Absolute Sandman volume 2 won an Eagle Award for Best Reprint. (Last year it was Absolute Sandman volume 1. Next year the vote will probably be split between Absolute Sandman volumes 3 and 4, and something else entirely will win.)

(I was looking to see if there were covers for Absolute Sandmans 3 and 4 up yet at Amazon, and noticed that volumes 1, 2, 3 and 4 are all on sale for $62.37 [and that they are going to weigh a grand total of 29 lb altogether] and the last two have 5% preorders discounts up as well. Which I mention mostly for those people who write to me and grumble about the Absolutes being $100 books.)

Not sure if the cover for Absolute 4 is a mock-up or the real thing. I suspect it's not the final, mostly because I'm pretty sure that face is from Sandman #1, and for Absolute 4 we'll be taking a cover portrait from somewhere in the last 20 issues.

...

Regarding the Julie Schwartz Memorial Talk at MIT on the 23rd of May: To reiterate from the other day -- over at http://cms.mit.edu/juliusschwartz/tickets.html we learn that Tickets to the event are $8.00 and will be available at the door, pending availability. There won't be any available on the door, because they have almost all sold out. The website has a list of places selling the tickets -- yesterday there were about 60 tickets still out there. So this is a sort of a last call -- you can try phoning the places at the website to see if they still have tickets...


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An ebay auction with a story... I've been rereading some old Batman comics recently, although I don't think I'd want these. But the story that comes with them is wonderful...

I'm worried and upset about the earthquake in China. From Nancy Kress's blog I learned that at least some of the friends we made in Chengdu last summer are okay -- and so are the pandas.

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Rice pudding re-prompt! Once you get home to proper milk, of course. "Your general guidelines for a batch of rice pudding please, Mr. Gaiman!"Thank you!! ^_^b

I'm working on it, honest. Decided to figure out the proportions I'd used by a) finding a very similar recipe on the web and starting from there and then b) fiddling with it.

Two night's ago's rice pudding (the web recipe) was much too salty and wrong. I fiddled with the proportions and last night's was a lot better but now too sweet. Tonight's rice pudding would have been perfect I have no doubt but I forgot to buy more milk, so I didn't actually make one.

Dear Neil,

The press down here in Brazil have enthusiastically announced you'll be here for the Paraty International Book Fair, first week in July. But since you're also scheduled to lecture at Clarion, I'd like to ask if this is true. Or maybe you have a doppelganger. Or maybe the organizers here had a dream. Or maybe you're taking a weekend of from Clarion down here in Rio (if so, it'll be winter here, and rainy, not the best time to come...) Best regards,Eric

That sounds right, yes. (I teach Clarion the 3rd week in July.)

Hello hello hello,

To quote one of your other fans, “I have a question for you about writing”. I find that my own writing will echo the style of which ever author I am currently reading. Any idea how I might get around constantly mimicking others?

You write more.

I don't think there's anything wrong with copying other people's styles -- it's a skill you'll need, after all. Many actors begin as mimics. You don't worry about it, and keep writing, and after a while you'll have written enough that you can't help sounding like yourself, whether you want to or not.

Style is what you get wrong, that makes what you do sound like you. Style is what you can't help doing. Style is what you're left with.

(I just googled "style is what you can't help doing" because it sounded half-familiar, and I wondered who said it originally, and it may have been me, as I found myself looking at an extract from a speech I gave to an audience of comics artists and writers in 1997 at ProCon in Oakland:

We are creators. When we begin, separately or together, there’s a blank piece of paper. When we are done, we are giving people dreams and magic and journeys into minds and lives that they have never lived. And we must not forget that.

I don’t want to sound like an inspirational speaker here. "Be you." "Be the best you that you can be." But this is really important. It’s something that we mostly lose track of when we starts, because when we start in comics we’re kids, and we have no idea who we are or what our voices are, as artists or as writers.

Young artists want to be Rob Leifeld, or Bernie Wrightson, or Frank Miller, just as young writers want to be Alan Moore, or Chris Claremont or, well, Frank Miller. You’ve seen their portfolios. You’ve read the scripts.

We all swipe when we start. We trace, we copy, we emulate. But the most important thing is to get to the place where you’re telling your own stories, painting your own pictures, doing the stuff that one-one else could have done, but you. Dave McKean, when he was much younger, as a recent art-school graduate, took his portfolio to New York, and showed it to the head of an advertising agency. The guy looked at one of Dave’s paintings—"That’s a really good Bob Peake," he said. "But why would you I want to hire you? If I have something I want done like that, I phone Bob Peake."

You may be able to draw kind of like Rob Leifeld, but the day may come, may have already come, when no-one wants a bargain basement Rob Leifeld clone any more. Learn to draw like you. And as a writer, or as a storyteller, try to tell the stories that only you can tell. Try to tell the stories that you cannot help but tell, the stories you would be telling yourself if you had no audience to listen. The ones that reveal a little too much about you to the world. It’s the point I think of writing as walking naked down the street: it has nothing to do with style, or with genre, it has to do with honesty. Honesty to yourself and to whatever you’re doing.

Don’t worry about trying to develop a style. Style is what you can’t help doing. If you write enough, you draw enough, you’ll have a style, whether you want it or not. Don’t worry about whether you’re "commercial". Tell your own stories, draw your own pictures. Let other people follow you.

If you believe in it, do it. If there’s a comic or a project you’ve always wanted to do, go out there and give it a try. If you fail, you’ll have given it a shot. If you succeed, then you succeeded with what you wanted to do.

And it's still true. (That speech is, along with another speech about tulips and comics, and an essay on how to do successful signings, available in Gods And Tulips, illustrated by Chester Brown, price $3 from the CBLDF commercial website.)(And for those of you after instant webby gratification, the whole Procon speech is up at the Magian Line archives at http://www.woxberg.net/gaiman/magian/3-2.html.)

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Lots of really good suggestions for ways to outwit Heisenberg's Uncertain Rice Pudding Principle, and I will try them and report back, although it may have to wait until the snow melts and Spring is sprung and the farm shop around the corner start milking their cows again.

And the webgoblin says that the deceptively ordinary-looking image URL http://www.neilgaiman.com/extras/countdown.gif should, if pasted into things, allow you to have your own Graveyard Book countdown badge.

The webgoblin adds: For example,
<img src="http://www.neilgaiman.com/extras/countdown.gif" width="144" height="164" />
posted to a webpage or in a blog, will give you:

Never mind the bloody USA.

When can I get it in East Finchley?

About three weeks after it comes out in the US, at an educated guess. It says November 2008 on the Bloomsbury site (and 3 Nov 2008 in the Bloomsbury catalogue), but I would imagine that they actually would want it in the shops before Hallowe'en...

...

Normally I just smile and shake my head when people start worrying about security issues when it comes to books. They're books. It's only friends of mine who have never published anything who send me copies of their manuscripts all locked and encoded, with the password to open it in a separate email. The bestselling and award-winning authors I know just send me books as email attachments months before they come out.

But I got a call from my movie agent, Jon Levin at CAA, who mentioned that movie book scouts in New York had somehow got hold of The Graveyard Book as a computer file and had been slipping it to producers and studios, who had been calling him about it, and then I got an oddly-written anonymous grumpy message on the FAQ line from someone who had obviously read an early draft and found a bit in it confusing, and I'm now fascinated by the idea that there are people out there with my book, before it's even properly, absolutely finished, who I didn't give it to.

I really don't think I mind, but I had to stop and think about it for a while first. And I guess that the reason I don't mind is because the alternative is that people don't care. It's a problem of success, and for the most part the problems of success are good problems to have.

I'm unlikely to be more circumspect next time I write a book -- I'll still email the book to friends to get a sense of what works and what needs fixing, and I assume that the book scouts will still have their mysterious agents pervading the New York book world.

Ah well. In the meantime I'll keep writing the book and keep playing with it until the last sheet of the last galley proof is pried from my cold numb fingers.


Hi, Neil.

Regarding the Absolute Sandman, can you explain to a broke graduate student who has all of the Sandman graphic novels and a good number of the individual comics why the Absolute Sandman is still a must-purchase-or-possibly-suffer-lifelong-regret-and-trauma thing?

Thank you,

Brandi

Dear Brandi

you should use your local library as a resource. Sometimes your library will have a copy, sometimes it's only available on inter-library loan and will have to be ordered. And then you can read them without paying money and decide what you think.

(Libraries are your friend. It's one of the refrains of this blog, I think.)

I'm not entirely sure that the Absolute Sandman replaces the trade paperbacks, any more than the trade paperbacks replaced the comics (because the covers and the ads and the letter column and all that stuff gives you an experience you don't get from a trade paperback) and I don't want to start turning into Elvis Costello, who has now sold me all of his music at least four times in ever-more-upgraded formats with extra bells and whistles.

But if you want a permanent copy for your bookshelf, the Absolute Sandmans are as good as it gets. I don't think they're going to vanish from the book and comic shops immediately -- DC have overprinted healthy amounts, certainly good for a few years to come -- but they are probably too expensive per unit to go back to press in Hong Kong for smallish reprints.


Mary

No, they won't be coming out in Absolute format.

Hi Neil,

Is it true you will be in Australia in May, 2008?

Cheers,

Yoomi

It is, it is. I'm out in early May for a conference on children's literature in Melbourne, and I'll do a couple of signings while I'm there. Details to come very soon.

...

Maddy wants me to let everyone know that the two of us are going out to Laika together in a week to see the Coraline film set, and that she plans to be Special Guest Blogger during that time. So I have.

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Today my assistant Lorraine is in the kitchen doing mysterious things to obtain beeswax from slumgum, and I am mostly on the phone copy-editing The Graveyard Book.

Anyway. Free books. I started thinking about times we've used this principle in paper books -- using the free thing to spread the author or the idea, and, if you ignore the five fingered discount (remember, in the UK you can add Terry Pratchett to the "four authors who are flying off the shelves and don't forget the graphic novels" list) then you still have things like Free Comic Book Day. And before there was ever Free Comic Book Day, there was Sandman 8.

It was 1989. I wrote Sandman #8, Mike Dringenberg drew it, and the editorial and marketing departments at DC Comics got enthusiastic about it. I went out and got three pages of quotes from fantasy and horror authors about Sandman, wrote a "The Story So Far". DC Comics overprinted Sandman #8 and sent each retailer an extra 25% above what they'd ordered, for free, and told them that they could do whatever they wanted with them.

Some stores simply sold them.

The smart stores gave them away. Some of the smart stores even went back to DC and asked for more. The stores that gave them away were the stores who, a year or so later, found it very easy to sell Sandman trade paperbacks to their customers. And then to sell Sandman hardcovers. And some of them are now selling the Absolute Sandmans.

(And a few people have written to let me know that ABSOLUTE SANDMAN Volume 3 is now up at Amazon, with the extra 5% discount for pre-ordering it bringing it to 42% off.)

Anyway. There weren't any grumbles that we were somehow devaluing other comics, or that this was Marxism in action, or that this was going to put comics retailers out of business or anything like that. It was about expanding the readership, about convincing people that it was safe to try something new.

(I just called Brian Hibbs at Comix Experience who put labels with his store's name and address on his free comics and then left them at barbers' shops and on buses and anywhere else he could, bookcrossing style -- he said he passed out about 400 copies of Sandman 8 and got 100 readers back, who bought every copy of Sandman, and the collected editions, and some of those people are buying Absolute Sandmans from him now -- and then he pointed out that it wasn't just Sandman that those people bought, but lots of them discovered comics and bought everything...)

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Rachel McAdams says she would like to be Black Orchid on the screen -- I'd like to see that too. I didn't know what I was doing when I wrote Black Orchid, and it shows, but there's some dialogue I'm still really happy with, and a wilful attempt to avoid cliche that I'm still proud of. And Dave McKean created an entire school of realistic superhero art (one he's still apologising for). It was our first full-colour baby.

I wish her luck.

...

How does he come up with the cover images? Dave I mean. Does he just make it up out of his head like writing? Or is there a HarperCollins committee that says, "We would like a blue cover with a knife. And perhaps a black one with some mist...no no, more swirly please."


Can you ask him? And if he answers, can you post it?


Thanks Neil!

-Miriam

I can answer this -- I was there and watching it. The first cover Dave did was done to a Harpers request (they sent him a sketch of the kind of thing they wanted, and he painted that). With the more recent ones I posted, Dave had simply read the book (which I was still writing when he did the first one) and then sketched a bunch of potential covers and handed them in.

Hi Neil,

Can I ask what happened to the much more finished graveyard book cover that you posted a few weeks back? I have a feeling that Dave might be someone that hands in finished pieces on a whim sometimes, but had he just done that for promotion etc, or was it just an early version? I know what it is like to do covers several times, not just as roughs but also finished pieces, and I think the rough sketches you posted might be stronger than that one, but I just wondered...

-Joel Stewart

Well, it exists, and it might be used in promotion, or turn up in the back of the Subterranean Press Edition or as a colour Frontispiece to the Bloomsbury limited edition, but it probably won't be a book cover (unless there's a foreign publisher who wants it, I suppose).

It was done to order, but it really didn't reflect the book I wrote, which was why we went back to Dave and said, "you don't have to worry any longer about doing a book cover that looks like it's for young readers. Just do a book cover."

And yes, I think most of the ones he came back with are stronger than that was.

And yes, it's not at all unknown for Dave simply to do finished art and hand it in. On Sandman he did it after he was removed from the book, as we started The Doll's House. He was told that he was off Sandman so that he could concentrate on finishing Arkham Asylum -- he simply went home and did the next three Sandman covers and sent them off to DC...

...

Which reminds me -- it's been a very long time since I posted a link to http://gaimanmckeanbooks.co.uk/ -- there are some very wonderful Dave McKean screensavers and ecards and suchlike there... Read the rest of this post

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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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The second of four beautifully designed slipcased volumes, THE ABSOLUTE SANDMAN VOL. 2 collects issues 21-39 of THE SANDMAN and features remastered coloring on all 19 issues as well as brand-new inks on THE SANDMAN #34 by the issue's original penciller, Colleen Doran, and a host of bonus material, including two never-before-reprinted stories by Gaiman (one prose and one illustrated), a complete reproduction of the never-before-reprinted one-shot THE SANDMAN: A GALLERY OF DREAMS, and the complete script and pencils by Gaiman and Kelley Jones for Chapter Two of "Season of Mists" from THE SANDMAN #23.

Vertigo 616pg. Color Oversized Hardcover $99.00 US

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Today was spent doing Absolute stuff. For the Absolute Stardust (which is technically not an Absolute Stardust but an oversized hardback Stardust with stuff in) I proofread all the extra material, added a postscript to the reprinting of the original "pitch document" to publishers from 1993 (did I really think that Croup and Vandemar belonged in Stardust?), and for the next volume of Absolute Sandman we dug out dozens of little thumbnail comics I'd drawn for Sandman over the years, found the still-unopened First Sandman Statue (#1 of 1800) in order to photograph the box for the book (which will also have the short story on the back of the box in it) and even found photocopies of the pencils of the first 8 pages of Sandman 23, which will probably be the script that gets published in the book.


Also mysterious boxes of stuff to do with beekeeping have arrived. I've always wanted bees in the garden, and it turned out that the birdchick has always wanted to be a beekeeper but didn't think that it would work, keeping bees in an apartment in Minneapolis, and anyway her rabbit would object, so we've agreed to join forces: she gets to keep bees in my garden, I get to help, and all our friends and loved ones get to keep their distance nervously and eat honey. What could possibly go wrong? In this way we shall make up for the vanishing of bees across America.



I've just heard that there will be a limited edition of M is for Magic, the story collection for young readers, from Subterranean Press. The copies in the bookshops will be illustrated by Teddy Kristiansen. The Subterranean edition will have illustrations by Gahan Wilson: one thousand numbered copies and 26 lettered copies -- details up at http://subterraneanpress.com/index.php/2007/03/05/announcing-m-is-for-magic-by-neil-gaiman/

...


Hi Neil, random question. So does Lorraine live there? Because she seems to be around all the time.


No, she has her own house, and she's goes there in the afternoon when she finishes work, and at weekends. It's a very nice house, filled with paintings, dead things and even a small Hallowe'en village. (As Lorraine was off in LA Hallowe'en week last year I got to go to her house to feed the trick-or-treaters -- because nobody ever comes to my house on Hallowe'en, possibly because it's too far from everything or too spooky or something -- and the kids all looked around when they came to the door and were impressed that someone had made that much effort for Hallowe'en, and I didn't have the heart to tell them that Lorraine's house was like that the rest of the year as well.)

Lorraine will not, however, be there next Sunday night, March the 11th. This is because Hera is going to be coming in from New Zealand and the two of them will be playing together in Stillwater, MN. (Details at http://lorraineamalena.blogspot.com/2007/03/hera-and-fabulous-lorraine.html) Lorraine has been learning lots of Hera songs in preparation. Lorraine says that I should make a point of plugging the gig on this blog because that way the whole of Minneapolis will turn out to see them.

This is a photograph of Hera. Lorraine is certain that if I post it, the gig will be completely full. If you're in this part of the world, you should go. After all, it's Sunday Night in Winter in Minnesota; you have perhaps something else are you going to be doing?

I recall that a while ago you mentioned your daughters' fascination with a web site where photos of models and celebrities were retouched, often substantially. Here's a consumer software package that offers to do the same. It's been on Boing Boing so a hundred other fans have probably also sent you this link, but here it is in the unlikely event you haven't seen it yet. http://www.portraitprofessional.com/

But, but that's horrible. I mean, I looked at their gallery, and it seems to be software that turns photos of human beings into photos of soulless androids, and they are proud of it. All of their befores have interesting human faces. Their afters just look wrong...

...

Lots and lots of emails coming in each day from people with lists of questions for me to answer for their papers or magazines or websites -- normally five questions, for some reason. I explain why I don't do them here http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2003/08/fair-and-balanced-well-fair-anyway.asp and here http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2006/06/hmg.html, and it's still true. I suppose it's probably time to amend the FAQ line thing to explain that not only do I not do homework for people, but alas, I don't answer lists of interview questions either. I might do if people would send in the time to answer them with the questions, mind you.

Were your high school english classes helpful to you as a writer, or were they a waste of time?Thanks, Amy

Probably more much helpful than a waste of time. I remember enjoying them, for the most part, although I sometimes suspect that if I'd come to Thomas Hardy on my own, when I was ready, I would have really enjoyed him, and instead I found English to be a sort of Thomas Hardy aversion therapy.

Truth to tell, when I became a writer I realised that a lot of stuff I had thought pointless at school was now desperately important, and I had to teach myself piles of history and geography and science that I hadn't bothered with, and which were now really interesting subjects because I had a use for them. Writing and English I always had a use for, and some fairly decent teachers so they were never boring.

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The snow continues. It's been a lazy sort of blizzard, but I shovelled the path half a dozen times this afternoon. Driving was scary, school was cancelled. I took a few photos of the view from the back door but Blogger is being grumpy and won't upload them.

As many of you have seen, the Oracle (at http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/8ball/) has mysteriously changed its appearance. The original shamanic and beturbanned wild-haired me will be back every February, and perhaps for special occasions, like my birthday. Other strange things will, I hope, appear in the 8-Ball for the appropriate season (will there be pumpkins in October? Little Interesting Skulls on National Little Interesting Skull Day? Snow at Christmas? Only the webelf knows for sure). (The current 8-Ball pictures a http://slaughterhousestudios.blogspot.com/ Lisa Snellings creation.)

Hi Neil,
I just finished listening to the "Fragile Things" audio book. Do you have any further plans for Mr. Smith and Mr. Alice? They're two of the most fun (yeah, I feel guilty for saying that) characters I've run across in a long while. Hope this question hasn't been asked a zillion times before but I'll bet it has.
Thanks,
Brian Ford

I definitely expect to see them again, yes. If I write more of the stories of what happened to Shadow in the UK, Mr Smith will be in the background of that. But there's at least one story with both of them in it, and I really want to write that one as I know what it's about.

I should have mentioned here that FRAGILE THINGS got nominated for an Audie Award (given for audiobooks), as best short fiction collection. Which made me happy, although slightly uncomfortable as the Audiobook I did last year that I was really happy with was Stardust. But Fragile Things has me attempting a number of accents, and it has a much wider range of, er, things in it.

(http://www.neilgaiman.com/works/audio/stardust is the Stardust page, for the curious -- you can hear the first ten minutes or so of the first chapter there. I can't see an audio page for Fragile Things on neilgaiman.com yet, but when one appears I'll mention it here.)

no matter how much, or hard, i shake my computer the oracular message is must really shake it. should i take that as my oracular message at this point?
ellen schinderman

I suppose you could try clicking on the oracular ball and dragging it back and forth very fast instead of picking up your --

No. Scrap that.

Actually I really like the idea of you shaking the computer. Keep it up. Maybe eventually something will happen...


dear neil: my mom & i are real big fans of yours! your blogs is the only one my mom allows me to read but those fangirls looked real scary!!!!!!! and that wasn;t a very nice photo of you sorry but does a girl have to wear only black and not smile to get your attention? i love you really !!!!!!! xxxPat

Thank you, Pat. I just checked with my daughters (both on the same couch I'm on, both on their computers), and Maddy says she wears mostly blues and Holly says she wears mostly greens and browns, and they both smile an awful lot, and they have my attention whenever they want it...

Good Sir,

Let us say that I have a name that while not bad, is not exactly fit to print. It is rather mumbly, and doesn't look quite right no matter how I arrange it.

Though I am fairly certain you don't use a pen name, I was wondering if you know anything about doing so.

Till again,
Whatever Me I May Be

There's nothing wrong with pen names, and there are hundreds of reasons for deciding to use one.

Pick a name you like, avoiding on the way names like Stephen King or Charles Dickens, and put it on your manuscript. Let's say you choose "Gerry Musgrave" (which I think was the name I reviewed movies for Penthouse under, as I already had film review columns in other magazines.) You just type "Gerry Musgrave" on your cover sheet, and then send a cover letter telling the editor the name you want the cheques made out to. It's that easy.

Short and Sweet:
Do you know when the other volumes of Absolute Sandman will be published? I can't find any info on them anywhere.

The next one will be out in October 2007. The third and fourth should I hope both be out in 2008.

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