Neil Gaiman's Blog, page 17

Chu's Day: a history and a signing...

So Chu's Day came out two days ago. It's my first book for really really small kids. I hope it gets read to kids too young to read it for themselves, and that they enjoy it and demand it be read to them again. Adam Rex's illustrations are beyond cute, for they are witty and wonderful.

Chu's Day sprang into my head pretty much fully formed one day in Beijing in 2009. I grabbed a notebook and wrote the story.
When I got home, I picked up a notebook and a pen, and simply drew and wrote the story as it was in my head, because it seemed easier than writing long descriptions of what was going on on each page.  That was what I sent to my editor at Harper Children's.
I can't find the original handwritten one - here's a few pages taken from a version that Harper Children made to show how the layouts would work with type:


They really liked it. Now I had to choose an illustrator.


I really liked Adam Rex's work. I'd seen some of his actual prose books, which I'd enjoyed.  (I had completely forgotten that he had given me a Sandman painting back in the late 90s, which was one of the pieces of artwork that were auctioned off for the CBLDF at the Fiddler's Green Convention in 2004.) I browsed illustrator websites, but there was something about the way he drew animals, funny, honest, accessible, realistic and cartoony at the same time...


We asked Adam. He said yes. I was happy.

He took my doodles as a framework, and then added his own layers, jokes, bits and such...

So pretty soon my scratchy doodles, like the one above of the elephant blowing dust off the book, or the one of Chu and his father in the diner, became things of beauty and wonder like this:




Most important of all, obviously, Adam gave Chu aviator goggles.

[image error]

It's been out for a couple of days. People on Twitter are reading it to their children, which makes me happy.

You can get it Amazon, Barnes and Noble, from Independent bookstores via Indiebound, or pre-order a signed copy from Books of Wonder at http://www.booksofwonder.com/prodinfo.asp?number=105164.

Right now the reviews are coming in. They are mostly really nice. Even the one for the three-minute long Audio Book.

I got a press release from Harpers this morning, and I'll cut and paste a bit from it into here....

PRAISE FOR CHU’S DAY
“The rhythm of Neil Gaiman's humorous picture book about a sneezing panda, ‘Chu's Day’, replicates the tantalizing on-again-off-again feeling of a sneeze that is just . . . about . . . to explode . . . but doesn't. ...The explosion, when it finally comes, will delight children ages 3-6 with its comic magnitude.”— Wall Street Journal
“The hows and whens and whys provide the substance of this slight tale, which is enriched primarily by the sly humor in Adam Rex’s deeply hued oil paintings. … You can bet that when Chu finally does sneeze, it comes at an unexpected and inopportune moment — and shows Gaiman’s keen understanding of a 5-year-old’s comedic sensibility.”— New York Times
“A humorous story of a small panda with a giant sneeze! … Adam Rex's warm and colorful illustrations show in detail just why Chu's parents feared this little panda's sneeze.”—USA Today
“Gaiman’s comic timing gets a boost from strategic book design and from Rex’s hyperreal paintings, which emphasize Chu’s round, fuzzy form and apparent harmlessness. Gaiman and Rex deliver a classic one-two-three punch, making hay from the notion that a cuddly baby panda is not to be trusted.”
   — Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Kids will find the idea of a monstrous sneeze funny, and it may prompt some attempts of their own. Rex’s richly detailed illustrations are brimming with fantastic touches. Share this one at toddler storytime for lots of giggles, or one-on-one for spotting details in the art.”
— Booklist

A CHU’S DAY EVENT!NEIL GAIMAN and ADAM REX will be doing a book-signing at BOOKS OF WONDER on Saturday, February 23rd at Noon!*Neil and Adam will be pre-signing a quantity of limited edition CHU’S DAY posters which will be available to fans at the event and online for a donation to Books of Wonder*
And the other reason I am posting a bit from the press release is that Adam and I are doing a release event at Books of Wonder on Saturday February the 23rd. We'll sign all the copies of Chu's Day anyone wants, and other books as well. Books of Wonder is one of my favourite Children's bookshops in the world. They've been going through some rough times recently.

The last release event I did there, on the 7th of March 2009, had a certain amount of tragedy in it -- in the taxi on the way to the signing I learned my father had died unexpectedly of a sudden heart attack, and it was the 8 hour signing event that helped me keep it together and not fall apart. (Here's a Youtube video of me talking about and reading Blueberry Girl on that day, and not falling apart.)

It's at 18 West 18th Street, New York, NY 10011 on Saturday, the 23rd of February, at Noon.

Goodnight.



Labels:  Chu's Day, books of wonder, aviator goggles, Adam Rex

       

Amazing Book Cover Announcements and throwing up in anniversary gutters

My publisher, William Morrow, have just released the cover for my first adult novel in about 7 years, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. It comes out in June. It looks like this:



This is how the publisher describes it:

The Ocean at the End of the Lane is a fable that reshapes modern fantasy: moving, terrifying and elegiac—as pure as a dream, as delicate as a butterfly’s wing, as dangerous as a knife in the dark. It began for our narrator forty years ago when the family's lodger stole their car and committed suicide in it, stirring up ancient powers best left undisturbed. Dark creatures from beyond the world are on the loose, and it will take everything our narrator has just to stay alive: there is primal horror here, and menace unleashed—within his family and from the forces that have gathered to destroy it. His only defense is three women, on a farm at the end of the lane. The youngest of them claims that her duck pond is an ocean. The oldest can remember the Big Bang.

And they've announced the existence of the beautiful Chip Kidd-designed Make Good Art speech book, which will be out in May. (An actual "by popular demand" book, because lots of other publishers came to my agent and asked if they could make my speech last year at UArts into a book, in time for Graduation Time this year. And we went to my normal publisher and suggested they do it, and they agreed.)


Neil Gaiman Addresses the University of the Arts Class of 2012 from The University of the Arts (Phl) on Vimeo.

Chip is probably the finest book designer in the world. And in this book he breaks all the rules of design and makes something amazing in its own right.

Amazon run the biography of from Chu's Day on the Make Good Art Amazon page, which will undoubtedly confuse some people.

Morrow have also released The Ocean at the End of the Lane desktop wallpaper in, so far, six version, so you will not forget that it is coming out:
iPad (Download)2560x1440 (Download)1920x1080 (Download)1024x768 (Download)800x600 (Download)640x480 (Download)And…
A 3-D image of The Ocean at the End of the Lane (Download)A 3-D image of Make Good Art (Download)

They look like this:

...
I sang the Fireball Xl5 theme, as you probably know if you've been reading this blog.
Here's the footage of that, and my new year's wish:



In other news, my second wedding anniversary last night was fun, except for the food poisoning, which meant that Amanda and I threw up in gutters a lot, and I spent this morning in the ER watching her get a saline drip. We went out for such a fancy anniversary dinner, and it was the most expensive food we've ever thrown up. Next year I think we'll just go somewhere we like.
(I read Michael Fry's The Odd Squad in the ER, because that was what I had with me. Perfect ER reading while the person down the hall is screaming and the homeless man in the wheelchair has begun to grunt, loudly and incoherently, and your wife is sleeping on a drip beneath the beautiful black Kambriel greatcoat, which seems to have found its person. Funny and sweet with a steely centre.)
I'm now on my way to Minneapolis from New York, to see my daughters and my dogs, and to take part in the pilot for a new NPR radio show.
...
REMINDER: Sydney Australia. Melbourne's sold out, but there are still tickets to come and see me in Sydney on January the 25th. It will be a long, fun evening. There may well be some music. (And if anyone from Salt & Poppet is out there, and if you still have the Australia Day Poem puppets from Melbourne and want to repeat it in Sydney, let me know.)
Tickets are onsale at http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/370024/cbf6892451/1575524295/4dd7bdf0bc/


Labels:  make good art, unconditional love, fireball xl5, The Ocean At The End of the Lane

       

My New Year's Wish...

It's a New Year and with it comes a fresh opportunity to shape our world. 
So this is my wish, a wish for me as much as it is a wish for you: in the world to come, let us be brave – let us walk into the dark without fear, and step into the unknown with smiles on our faces, even if we're faking them. 
And whatever happens to us, whatever we make, whatever we learn, let us take joy in it. We can find joy in the world if it's joy we're looking for, we can take joy in the act of creation. 
So that is my wish for you, and for me. Bravery and joy.

...
Fifteen minutes ago I was terrified, having just written this, and about to walk up onto the stage to perform the Fireball XL5 theme song with Amanda and the Grand Theft Orchestra. And I thought "You just wrote a New Year's wish. Listen to yourself. Put it into practice." I went out bravely. I sang in front of a thousand or so people with joy. 
And you know, it was wonderful.

(for a collection of the previous New Year's Wishes: http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2011/12/my-new-year-wish.html)

Labels:  joy, Happy New Year, bravery

       

Being Green

I'm back in New York, got in late last night, in time to rehearse my song (the Fireball XL5 song) for tonight's New Year's Eve gig. Waiting for me in New York was a remarkable coat, made by Kambriel. I wore it out into the world last night: it's wonderful, but it makes me feel fictional when I wear it.

Had a late night dinner in the hotel with Amanda, and did something we do not do often, viz., communicate only in writing. Passing notes back and forth across the table. It's a nice break from routine, and sometimes we doodle or cartoon as well.

Then sleep. I woke up in a good mood. "I love you more than anything," I said.

"No you don't," she said, not even bothering to properly wake up. "You don't love me more than breathing. If the choice was breathing or me, you'd pick breathing."

"Not necessarily. Is the choice breathing or death, or breathing or some other option, like photosynthesis?"

"Death," she said, without opening her eyes. "You'd love photosynthesis. You'd be green like the Hulk and you'd stand in the sun with your arms and fingers spread and a big smile on your face. Now shush, I'm asleep."

And she went back to sleep while I lay next to her pondering the pros and cons of photosynthesis.

Labels:  the pros and cons of photosynthesis, fireball xl5

       

Several Lomo photographs

The best thing about the Lomo camera, in my opinion, is not the glorious semi-accidental pictures it takes. It's the way I mislay the rolls of film and then find them months later with no idea what's on them, and get them developed, and wind up looking at forgotten slices of the past. The first photos were all taken about a year ago, when it was as snowy here in the Midwest as it now.

       

This is from the Summer, I think. A double or triple exposure of the kind I love (made in the camera, no  photoshop). Dogs.

And a small self-portrait from September, backstage at a New York fashion house... 

Right now I'm at home in the Midwest, spending quality time with my daughters and my dogs. 
Cabal's back legs are getting wobblier and wobblier, which is harder on my heart than it is on him. Lola's trying to figure out how I can figure out where she is all the time when she runs off and hides, a white dog against the snow in the moonlight, and I have not explained the significance to her of the glowing red collar flashing about her neck.
I'm also learning all the lyrics to the Fireball XL5 theme song, which I am going to be singing very nervously in New York at Amanda's New Years Eve Party, as a thank you to the late Gerry Anderson, a man who had a lot to do with the shape of my childhood. (For the record: My favourites were Thunderbird 4 and Gordon Tracy, Captain Black, Melody Angel, Joe 90 when he had an enemy agent downloaded into his head, and the ladies on the moon in purple wigs.)
Talking about purple: Amanda is going to be doing a more or less normal New Year's Eve gig, followed by a complete cover of Prince's Purple Rain. I am hoping that if this is a success that next year she may decide to do The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars.

Labels:  Gerry Anderson, Purple Rain, seven photographs, dog photograph

       

On the Glorious Last US Booksigning Tour, with digressions onto Concorde and Australia

Hullo.

I've been all over the place. I went back to the midwest and spent two days with my dogs, and I helped wrap the beehives for winter.


(I discovered my zombie arm had been yarnbombed when I got home.)

Now I'm back in Cambridge MA, missing the dogs, but starting to feel more at home in this rambling high house. The at-homeness has more to do with furniture than anything else, I think.  For example, a desk-chair was just delivered. There's nothing like a comfy chair for making you want to sit and write, if you are me.

I've handed in the latest draft of the HBO AMERICAN GODS pilot, and a short film I've written for another project, and I'm writing a bunch of different things right now.

I'm also proof-reading and copy-editing a bunch of books. Today I got to read through the UK edition of Fortunately, The Milk*, profusely illustrated by Chris Riddell. I laughed a lot at Chris's rough sketches. Can't wait to see it finished. (Skottie Young's illustrating the US edition. I've only seen two pages of his work. It's just as funny in a different, more manic, way.  I love them both and am so glad that each publisher went its own way on this.) Fortunately The Milk will be published in September in the US and October in the UK. I just wrote a description of it for the US edition. I explained:

This is quite possibly the most exciting adventure ever to be written about milk since Tolstoy's epic novel War and Milk. Also it has aliens, pirates, dinosaurs and wumpires in it (but not the handsome, misunderstood kind), not to mention a Volcano God.

It contains passages like this:

“You are charged with breaking into people’s planets and redecorating them,” said a noble and imposing-looking Tyrannosaurus Rex. “And then with running away and doing it again somewhere else, over and over. You have committed crimes against the inhabitants of eighteen planets, and crimes against good taste.”
 “What we did to Rigel Four was art!” argued a globby alien.
 “Art? There are people on Rigel Four,” said an Ankylosaurus, “who have to look up, every night, at a moon with three huge plaster ducks flying across it.”

...

I love that Fortunately the Milk is two different books -- one in the US, one in the UK: it allows them to be published a month apart, which is much easier on the author.

In the old days of publishing, books in the US were published up to a year before or after the same books in the UK, but that started changing about ten years ago, and the internet changed it, as it has changed so much. People who like authors will buy their books when the books come out, and if the book is published in the US, people in the UK will simply go to Amazon (or some such website) and buy it, and if the book is published later in the US then American readers will head off to Amazon.co.uk (or similar).

When my new adult novel, THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE** is published, this summer, it will be coming out on June the 18th in the UK and the US too. This presents interesting challenges, mostly involving bi-location, and makes me miss Concorde, just a little.

No, I do not miss the sonic booms or the environmental damage, and, having been on one of the Concordes once, I do not miss the plane itself, which was small and dilapidated and chilly and old. But I miss the way one could fly to New York from London and feel like one had made a local hop and land three hours before one took off, and I miss the moment of looking out of Concorde's window and seeing the curvature of the Earth and feeling like all human problems were very small and far away.

(It was about 15 years ago. I had to get to Amsterdam to do a signing in high summer, and the UK trip I was meant to be doing was suddenly cancelled, leaving me without a flight.  When the person on Northwest airlines' phone said, "Honestly, I can't believe how many miles it will take to get you there during the blackout week. You could take Concorde for that," and I said, "Hang on, I can use airmiles to fly Concorde?" and she said, "Well, yes.")

Which is a bit of a wander off the subject, which is that it now looks like I'll do a few days in the UK before publication, then fly back to the US on publication day, and then sign like a fiend across America, then go back to the UK and sign some more and then probably come back and do a handful of Canadian signings, and then collapse.


This will be my first actual signing (as opposed to reading) tour since Anansi Boys in 2005. I’ll go places and in each place I’ll do a reading, a short Q&A, then I’ll sign books.
I think the OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE tour will be the last actual signing tour I ever do. They’re exhausting, on a level that’s hard to believe. I love meeting people, but the sixth hour of signing, for people who have been standing in a line for seven hours, is no fun for anybody. (The last proper US signing I did, it lasted over 7 hours and I signed for over 1000 people. I'd suspect a lot of the signings on this tour will be like that, or bigger.)
So I’m going to try and make this tour the glorious last US book signing tour, and then stop doing book signing tours for good.
I’ll do a bunch of American signings on the tour, including, I hope, places that I don’t normally get to, like the US South. I’ll go to the UK, and do a smaller, more manageable tour. (You can get on and off trains in the UK, to get to places.) 
And then, over the next year or so, I’m going to do my best to go to places I don’t usually get to, or to which I haven’t gone in a long time, as THE OCEAN... is published — places like Brazil and Poland, and I'll do whatever kinds of signings or events are appropriate there.
I may do events, and there may well be pre-signed books for sale there, and I might even sign books if I feel like it (I did a ninja book signing at St Mark’s Bookshop in New York a week ago, announcing it a couple of hours before I did it on Twitter. It was really fun. They may well have a few signed books left in stock, if you need holiday gifts) but once the Ocean at the End of the Lane tour is over, I do not think I will do any more book signing tours.
...
I was asked if I could go to Australia around publication time for OCEAN too, and I had to say no -- only one me, too many places to be. But I am going to be in Australia in January, and I'll be doing three events there. 
At 6 pm on January the 20th, I'll be at the Theatre Royal in Hobart, Tasmania. I'll be doing a few things including  reading an unpublished story - appropriate for all ages, although it'll probably mean more to adults. Jherek Bischoff is going to be there, making music happen while I read. Ticket details are at http://www.liveguide.com.au/Tours/774225/MONA_FOMA_Festival_2013?event_id=795603. The event is close to sold out, I believe, so get tickets now. It'll be over in time for you to see David Byrne later that evening...
On the 24th of Jan I'll be in Melbourne, at the Atheneum Theatre, doing an event for the Wheeler Centre. It's going to be centred around Ocean at the End of the Lane, and for that and for the event in Sydney, Hachette, my Australian publisher, will be giving each attendee a special preview of the book, in the shape of the first three chapters. Tickets and details at http://wheelercentre.com/calendar/event/neil-gaiman1/ 
On the 25th, I'll be in Sydney. The event will be similar to, but probably completely different from, Melbourne's, although people who come will also get the special limited Hachette novel preview. It's under the aegis of the Sydney Writers Festival, which is one of my favourite Festivals in the world. Tickets and details at http://www.cityrecitalhall.com/events/id/1440
(Last year I did an evening in Sydney and one in Melbourne. They both sold out fast, so please, get tickets if you want to go. Do not wait and be sad and send me sad messages asking if I can squeeze you in somehow.)
...
Right. I am going to go and sit in my writing chair some more now and make stuff up and write it down.


*very silly. Funny. For readers of all ages. Contains milk.
** not very silly at all. Sometimes funny but mostly personal and even scary and disturbing. Not for children, even though it's about a child. Contains a small amount of milk; was manufactured in a facility that processes nuts.









Labels:  Concorde, australia, yarnbombed zombie hand, War and Milk is a book I made up, signings, signingry

       

Author meets world

Hullo world

I'm currently living in a house Amanda and I have rented in Cambridge MA. She wanted to be out here to be able to be here for her friend Anthony, who is going through some particularly gruelling cancer treatments. It's a large, strange house, all oak-panelling and odd-shaped rooms we didn't notice the first time we walked through it. I'm loving it, despite living out of boxes.

Amanda thinks, correctly, that it's too big, but is humouring me. (She's using the Cloud Club as an office home-base.)

The thing I'm missing most being out here is the dogs: Cabal is not doing well physically currently. He has Degenerative Canine Myelopathy and his back legs are liable to slip out from under him and he can no longer do stairs. When I got out here I realised that he wouldn't be able to manage this place and regretfully abandoned my plan to bring the dogs with me. He's got his world that he loves out there, and so I am going to go back to the Midwest and be with him whenever I can. (Lola, on the other hand, could come out here like a shot, but she's his company.)

Thanksgiving was spent at Amanda's mother and stepfather's, but over the Thanksgiving period all of my kids came in from all over the US.

I'm starting to get writing rhythms back, which is good.

I missed the shooting of my next Doctor Who episode, although I've seen a rough assembly already. Warwick Davies is really good in it, and I asked the impossible of Matt Smith and he pulled it off with aplomb. (Watching the rushes of Matt getting gloriously, apologetically, sweary at fluffed takes of some of the dialogue stuff I'd asked him to do made me grin like a mad thing.)

Right now, also due to being in the wrong country -- like this minute -- I'm missing this, which arrived a few hours ago:



That's left to right, Benedict Cumberbatch, David Harewood,  Natalie Dormer, Dirk Maggs, James McAvoy, David Schofield and Anthony Head, all gathered today to record the BBC Radio 4/Radio 4 Extra production of NEVERWHERE.

(It'll start on Radio 4 and then go over to Radio 4 extra.) The adaptation is by Dirk Maggs, who did the last three Hitchhiker's Guide Radio adaptations. He's co-directing it with producer Heather Larmour, who is the one who went off and made this happen after a small enthusiastic chat in a London coffee shop much earlier this year -- the kind of conversation that you have that normally just leaves you feeling happy, but doesn't actually turn into anything real. This time it did.

The cast includes...

James McAvoy                RichardNatalie Dormer                 DoorDavid Harewood               MarquisSophie Okonedo               HunterBenedict Cumberbatch      IslingtonAnthony Head                   Croup   David Schofield                 VandemarBernard Cribbins               Old BaileyRomola Garai                    JessicaChristopher Lee                Earl of Earl's CourtAndrew Sachs                    TooleyGeorge Harris                    Abbot   Don Gilet                            Fulingous, Ruislip, BlackfriarAbdul Salis                          Sable, Sump, Clarence, Homeless ManPaul Chequer                     Gary, Guard 2    Lucy Cohu                          LamiaYasmin Paige                     Anaesthesia, Tenant 2 – female, Match girlJohnny Vegas                    Lord RatspeakerStephen Marcus                Varney, Homeless man, Letting agent, Guard 1Karen Archer                      Sylvia, Old Woman, Dream Hawker, Mother...
...and lots more (including an author, who recorded his bits last month). It will go out in six episodes.

Am I excited? I am. Very much so.

(Also, CHRISTOPHER LEE IS GOING TO BE SAYING LINES I WROTE. This makes me happier than I have any right to be.)

It will be broadcast somewhere in the first 4 months of 2013. And you will be able to listen to it wherever you are in the world, using the BBC's iPlayer.

I'm currently listening to Tor Dot Com's AMERICAN GODS MIX TAPE while I work on the HBO American Gods pilot episode. http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/11/the-complete-american-gods-mix-tape

Right. Back to work...

Labels:  Neverwhere audio, Doctor Who, this actually is my beautiful house, Cabal and me, American Gods, this is not my beautiful house, CHRISTOPHER LEE

       

Transcendent Jet lag: also an Elephant, Lunatic Heroes, Bad Sneezing & Media

I'm in Nantes, France, at the Utopiales Festival. A bit jet-lagged, but happy. I turned 52 about 40 minutes ago.

This morning I rode on a carousel and saw an elephant. Here is the elephant:


(Both of these things and more at http://www.lesmachines-nantes.fr/)
I just spent some of the last 40 minutes looking at the dailies from my Doctor Who episode. I won't put any spoilers about it up here, not yet -- not even things that probably aren't really spoilers, like the villain, the working title, or any of the stuff that's all over the web right now. (Google and it will all be yours...)
Dave McKean is here in Nantes. He drew me a birthday card...



I was in Vienna on Monday, kicking off a secret project with Lomo. (See some of my Lomo photos here, along with a Very Odd Interview).
One reason I'm a bit jet-lagged is that I flew with Amanda from Vienna on Tuesday morning to Boston, where she voted and we saw her best friend Anthony, who is having some very serious health issues, and then the next day I flew to France. 
(Amanda wrote a beautiful heartrending blog about who Anthony is, his illness, and his part in her life at her website here.)
Anthony's written a book, introduced by Amanda: stories about his life and family, called  Lunatic Heroes . He's a terrific writer, and the book's good. He's having a book launch on the 20th on Nov in Lexington Ma., and Amanda and I are going to be reading/performing that night to support him. (I'll be reading some of my new novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane.) 
The tickets for the reading are $10 each, and the money from the tickets is going to cancer care and research.

Tickets for the event are available at: http://lunaticheroes.bpt.me

If you're anywhere in the Boston area, come to Lexington and say hello.

...

Would you like me to demonstrate how bad a sneeze-actor I am? You would? Then watch this...


It's the trailer for Chu's Day. Chu's Day will go on sale on January the 8th. It's for really little kids. (Here's an Amazon link.) Please spread the video around.
...
Cool author Patrick Rothfuss is the guiding light and force behind the Worldbuilders movement, which exists mostly on his blog and raises money for Heifer International. As he explains on his blog,

Heifer International is my favorite charity. It helps people raise themselves up out of poverty and starvation. All over the world Heifer promotes education, sustainable agriculture, and local industry. 

They don’t just keep kids from starving, they make it so families can take care of themselves. They give goats, sheep, and chickens to families so their children have milk to drink, warm clothes to wear, and eggs to eat.

He's been giving away amazing books to people who donated, over the years. This year he's doing a calendar, with art by Lee Moyer. They asked if they could put a character from American Gods into it, and I said yes.

Apparently, Media looks and dresses a whole lot like the lovely Amanda Palmer. (It's a painting, not a photo.) She's June...



(I love the Lucy-Amanda creature talking to Shadow in the comic at the start of the month...)

You can order your Worldbuilders Calendar directly from Pat at http://thetinkerspacks.bigcartel.com/product/pre-order-2013-pin-up-calendar.

I hope you order yours. They'll make great gifts. And I trust that next year's Worldbuilders Fantasy Calendar will consist mostly of hunky Men-of-Fantasy wearing not very much at all, to balance things out.

...

Sleep. It's time.




Labels:  Doctor Who, Chu's Day, worldbuilders, Anthony Martignetti, Pat Rothfuss, amanda palmer, Dave McKean

       

All my yesterday. Also a mouse.

Almost 25 years ago, researching the Sandman story that would become A Game Of You, I read up on New York and Hurricanes, and how very ill-prepared Manhattan is, and how vulnerable.

I worry about my East Coast friends, and I'm glad that Sandy isn't a full hurricane. Stay safe.

Yesterday morning started early with the Today Show on BBC Radio 4.  You can read about it and hear about it at http://news.bbc.co.uk/today/hi/today/newsid_9764000/9764349.stm. Philip Pullman and I talked about fairy tales, as a warm up to talking about them onstage at the Cambridge Theatre last night.

I went out to lunch with my editor and publisher at Bloomsbury books, talking about next year's FORTUNATELY, THE MILK (the silliest book I've ever written. Also the timey-wimiest. Also it has a bit with dinosaurs on a space ship, although was written long long before Doctor Who put dinosaurs on a space ship, and was actually vaguely inspired by a line about dinosaurs in a space ship I put in Good Omens, long long long ago). The English edition will be illustrated by an English illustrator, the American by an American. I vaguely hope this will continue to hold true all around the world....

After lunch I looked at my phone, and learned that Philip Pullman had gone to hospital, and that the Cambridge Theatre would now be me and someone else.

In the end the part of Philip Pullman was played by three other people: author Meg Rosoff, interviewer and moderator Rosie Boycott, and (special guest Philip Pullman) Audrey Niffenegger, who read The Three Snake Leaves from Philip's Grimm Tales.

I finished the evening by reading "Click-Clack the Rattlebag" to everyone, and telling them they could get it free from Audible. Then I did a signing, which was one of the mad kind, because there were many hundreds of people to sign for before the theatre closed. Did it all, stumbled away, hugged friends, ate dinner, bumped into more friends (including special surprise what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here friends Margaret Cho and Andrew O'Neill), and got home knackered but happy, throat sore from talking too much.

The housemouse that's living in the place I'm staying has ignored all the humane traps I put down and instead ate most of a probar and an entire packet of airplane peanuts from inside my jacket pockets. It is wiser than I am, at least in the ways of mice and men.

I went to see Arthur Darvill and a wonderful cast in Our Boys at the Duchess Theatre. Funny, sad, moving, relevant -- and playing to a house that seemed about half full, which seemed wrong. (Arthur has promised me music.) If you're in London, go and see it.

Public Radio's Selected Shorts has done a Poe Special, and they interviewed me about Poe when I was in Charlotte N.C. last month on the Unchained Tour. You can read about it at http://www.wnyc.org/shows/shorts/2012/oct/28/

(I wonder why I can't easily embed audio into Blogger any longer. I spend too much time on Tumblr, and then I come back to Blogger, and miss the simple easy Tumblr functionality.)

SO FAR "Click-Clack The Rattlebag", the free audible download, has raised about $31,000 via the US website for Donor's Choose, and about £5,700 via the UK website for Booktrust.

There's been a fair amount of confusion and problems with people signing into or signing up for Audible or getting it to play, for which apologies: I think the biggest problem with something like this is the speed with which it was put together, and I appreciate those of you who have made it work.

The story is up and free for another 36 hours. If you are in the UK it's http://www.audible.co.uk/scareus, for most of the rest of the world it's http://www.audible.com/scareus. (Germany is http://www.audible.de/pd/B009VHP3TG).








Labels:  philip pullman, Sandy, Mouse, ScareUs

       

Post Koko Ruminations

I was going to post this as part of another announcement, about something that's really cool and fun. but it looks like that's going to be much later tonight my time. So in the meantime...

Amanda played Koko's in Camden Town the other night. It was important to me because

a)  it was before and after her performance at Koko's four years and two weeks ago that I realised that   I was actually in love with her, and decided that my life was probably going to have to change a lot.

b) That performance four years ago was the first time I'd ever found myself on a stage with her, or on a real rock stage since I was a teenager. She had me play the tambourine. I was terrified. (Tiny blog from back then actually written backstage at Koko's as I came offstage here.)

I realised how far I'd come and how much I'd changed on Tuesday night, as I sang "Psycho" on a stage with an orchestra of four magical musical saws (and Amanda on ukulele, and Jherek on banjo) and I wasn't really scared at all. And I was singing.


I was the least unexpected of three guest stars (the other two were the awesome Scroobius Pip, and the ageless and legendary Richard O'Brien, who sang the Time Warp).



The evening had an overlay of sorrow. Just before Amanda went on we learned that Becca Rosenthal (aka Becca Darling) had passed away. Becca was a friend of Amanda's in Boston with impeccable taste. She and I became friends when she performed in my short film Statuesque (she was the airman human statue who gets hugged by young Liam McKean). She was too young, too smart and too funny to be gone. I'll miss her very much.

After the gig was done Amanda walked me home from Koko's to the place I'm staying. We sat out on the roof and talked about life and love and time and death, and then I walked her back to the bus. And she went back on tour, and I walked home again and went to sleep.

Now I won't see her until we meet in Vienna in ten days. (She has her last European gig there. I need to go and see Lomo about a Mysterious Project I can't talk about yet.)

And then I go to Nantes for the Utopiales Festival, where I will get to spend time with Dave McKean, and see Michael Moorcock and Nancy Kress and Norman Spinrad and other old friends.

From there I will go to Pittsburgh for November 14th (come and see me! The evening will be Stardust themed, but I will undoubtedly talk about other things, especially The Ocean At The End of the Lane.)

And then I don't do anything publically until Dec 1st in Hartford Ct, at the Connecticut Forum, where I will be sharing a stage with Neil deGrasse Tyson and Neri Oxman (perhaps because Neri sort of sounds a bit like Neil... no, no it really doesn't. But it starts with the same two letters.)

Also, if you are listening to the TODAY Show on BBC Radio 4 on Monday the 29th, you might happen to hear Philip Pullman and me talking about Grimm's Tales, and what fairy tales are for...

...

The Tenth Anniversary reading of CORALINE is underway over at the Mousecircus.com website.

A strange and mysterious and motley bunch of authors and suchlike folk can be seen and listened to reading a chapter each. I read the first chapter. Lemony Snicket reads the second chapter (haven't you always wanted to know what he actually looks like?). My beautiful and talented fairy god-daughter Natashya Hawley reads chapter three... And it continues. (Melissa Marr. R! L! Stine! John Hodgman! Fairuza Balk! go and look!)

http://mousecircus.com/coraline-videos.aspx?VideoID=24

...

Also, in case you are wondering: I'm really a bit nervous: the table read of my episode of Doctor Who is next week. Think good thoughts at us. I'll try and post some photographs afterwards.

Oh, and for the curious, the episode will be called ███ ████ ████████ . Only with letters instead of Ascii Blocks. Unless we change the title again before it's broadcast. Which might well happen, actually. I mean, it was originally called █ █████████ ██ ██████.

Labels:  Doctor Who, What Lemony Snicket Looks Like, Kokos, Becca Darling, Time Warp Again, Coraline Tenth Anniversary Readings, Walking home