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Good morning.

Well, I'm now into the second week of off-tea and eating-lots-of-fruit-and-veg-when-I-get-hungry. Drinking lots of water, and juicing things, and occasional herb teas. Weight is starting to drop. Concentration, which went completely out the window when I stopped drinking tea, is returning, and sleep patterns are changing.

The weather was wonderful two days ago, then it rained yesterday, and today I woke up and watched big white flakes of snow drifting past my window and thought, Oh bugger, and decided to stay in bed for days or weeks until the weather became more sensible, a thought that lasted until the dog needed to go out, two or even three minutes later.

Starting to plan out the coming year. I wrote a proposal for a personal, non-fiction book about travel and myth, and my publisher wants to do it, so now I'm figuring out all the whens and the hows, especially of the travel bits. And I'm deciding whether I'll blog from the road or stop while I'm travelling, leave the computer at home, and put the effort into writing in notebooks, or what.

It's ten days until the CBLDF reading and Q&A that I'm doing in New York at the comic-con. This just turned up in my email from http://www.cbldf.org/ and I thought I'd post it here as a reminder to anyone in the New York area...

Neil Gaiman Benefit Reading at NYCC
Tickets Available Now!

April 18: Experience the magic of Neil Gaiman at an exclusive reading to benefit the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

Neil Gaiman, the renowned author of science fiction and fantasy short stories and novels, graphic novels, comics, and films will be presenting a live reading benefiting the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund at the New York Comic-Con. The appearance, a paid ticketed reading event, will be called an "An Evening With Neil Gaiman" with 100% of the proceeds going to benefit the First Amendment legal work of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund.

General admission tickets to the reading are available for $20, while supplies last. Tickets for the VIP reception are strictly limited to 100 pieces, and will include access to meet Mr. Gaiman and receive two signatures, plus a gift bag of exclusive Neil Gaiman oriented items from CBLDF, and preferred seating at the reading. VIP reception tickets are available for $500.

Seating is limited and going fast. Reserve your General Admission or VIP Ticket now! __._,_.

In addition to which, Jeff Smith is also doing an event for the CBLDF. With an open bar...

Toast the arrival of Jeff Smith's new comic book epic RASL! Come meet Jeff Smith in person at his only New York City appearance of the season, enjoy an open bar, and get a takeaway bag of tons of exclusive RASL goodies. Only 100 general admission tickets and 26 VIP tickets are available so get your ticket now! Tickets are available now! Get the Full Details here!

And then there's the Hellboy 2 team...



Why can't we give you fanart at the signings in Australia?

(Boggles for a moment.) Of course you can give me art. Or anything you like, short of body parts. If it's too much for me to carry, I'll smile sweetly at the people hosting the events and get them to post it back to me. (So a month after I get home I get a box filled with cool things I'd forgotten.)

recently, on my latest hunt for more books, i bought myself a nice fat copy of fantasy short storys by Rudyard Kipling. That night i made my mug of cocoa and got comfy to read a couple, when turning the first few pages i happened upon a quick little 'hello and welcome to the book' by a certain mr N Gaiman. ok, so not really strange. Writers write intoroductions, nothing odd about that. but this is by no means an isolated incedent! it seems like ever since i started to read your books(become aware of you etc), you've been popping up in introductions everywhere. it appears to me that you do a fare share of them.

is doing an introduction something you enjoy and so you take most of the chances given to you? (you like sticking your 'neil was ere' mark on books)

or as an artist who works and has worked over several different medias do you simply get alot of offers?

what do you enjoy most about writing one?


ps. sorry if this question is slightly untimely now that you are unofficialy/officialy banned from taking any on!

Writing an introduction is really fun and pleasurable -- it's like introducing a really good friend at a party to a lot of people who don't know him or her, but you know they'd be friends if they met. You want to go "This is Mr Poe. He's written some wonderful poems and stories -- they're especially good if you read them aloud," or "This is Doctor Who. He built my internal landscape." Or "This is The Thirteen Clocks. If you feel sad you should read this book and it will probably make you feel better."

I get asked to write a lot more introductions than I say yes to, and they take up much more time than I imagine they will when I say yes, but there are very few that I regret having done. Really, I ought to try and make a place on this website that collects them. (Those not collected in Adventures In The Dream Trade, anyway.)

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.....

Mark Buckingham just sent me his illustrations for Odd. Here's the one for Chapter Three...

(Someone wrote in wondering how we make a profit or a royalty or anything on a ten penny -- or even one pound -- book. And the answer is, we don't. World Book Day is a good cause, and we did it for nothing.)

...

And finally, a Writers' Strike video with a message for all of us. Especially adorable animals.

(If you're on an RSS feed where you can't see it, click on the link to the actual blog entry.)

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This morning is even snowier than yesterday -- huge white kissy snowflakes falling continually. I tried to take a few photos and discovered that my digital camera has problems with showing falling snow. Maddy's got a snow day. Holly came home for a few days to work on her thesis, and was meant to be out at my writing cabin for a few days but has had to work here instead, and doesn't seem to mind a bit. We're under the same Winter Storm Warning we've been under for 48 hours, but there's plenty of food.

I'm honestly enjoying it a great deal -- we haven't had snow like this this year. I don't think we've had it for a few years -- the snow goes over your wellington boots when you go out to fill the birdfeeders. And the knowledge that it's March, and thus the snow won't be here for the next three or four months, and that we're probably past the severe minus evil temperatures as well, is also cheering and heartening.

This is the view from the spare bedroom window...

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Snow, mostly.

Edit: Last night Blogger was just giving me error messages. Trying Picassa just made everything worse. But I kept trying, and eventually put up a Webalbum and went to bed. But now it's working. So this is what the world looked like yesterday evening...

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