Neil Gaiman's Blog, page 48

BELLJAR Postscript

The Birdchick had looked at the photos of the belljar I'd linked to in the last post more closely than I had, and she asked whether I should have put some kind of foundation in, to get the bees started. On Twitter Teresa Neves pointed me to http://turlough.blogspot.com/2007/07/will-they-or-wont-they.html where we learn explicitly that, yes, strips of foundation were used.

So I cut some foundation into strips. (It looks like this.)



And I glued strips of foundation onto the inside of

Who Bells The Bees? With photos...

The day just got away from me, and I decided that I needed to do something to get back on top of it. So I got a bell-jar....



And put on my beekeeping veil...



And I put the bell-jar on top of a hive.



The bees do not seem to mind.



And the red hive looks a bit like a 1960s TV robot from a distance.


I do not know if this will happen here. But I love the idea of finding out...

Labels:  bees, unstressing, honey

Doing a gloomy bear and other noises

The best bit of today was reading ODD AND THE FROST GIANTS aloud for the audio book. (It's short enough that I could do it in an afternoon, and it will be about 90 minutes long when it's released). I discovered that the first chapter is a bugger to read aloud -- no dialogue and great big run-on-sentences that were a delight to write for me the author and a serious pain in the buttocks to read aloud for me the reader; and I discovered that I love doing my gloomy bear voice (which is

Green and Pleasant World

A couple of years ago I wrote a short story for the BBC Radio 4 William Blake 250th anniversary celebrations. The idea was to write a story inspired by a poem or line of Blake's. I took the poem Jerusalem (you can read it here).

It was read, well, by Alexander Morton, and broadcast in November 2007. I remember not liking it when I heard it, feeling mostly disappointed with how far it was from the thing in my head, uncomforable with the tiny edits needed to make it fit perfectly into

Worldcon schedule

I was just sent this, my schedule for WorldCon (http://www.anticipationsf.ca/). I repost it here as a public service, or something.

Anticipation Schedule for Neil Gaiman

Thursday, August 6

2:00 PM – 3:00 PM P-511BE

Question Time with Neil Gaiman

You are invited to submit questions beforehand to the box held at the Kaffeeklatsch sign up table.

5:00 PM – 6:30 PM P-511D

The Life and Work of John M Ford

John M

Eleven Days or Thereabouts

Dear Diary

right. When last heard of I was putting on fancy clothes to go to the Newbery Caldecott Alcott Awards Dinner, and receive the Newbery Medal.

I wrote the speech back in April, and recorded it then, so that it could be given out to people at ALA as a CD and printed in The Hornbook. Then I didn't look at it again, figuring that way it would be new and interesting to me when I got to it at ALA.

This did nothing to decrease my nervousness; neither did wearing a suit.

Beth Krommes

quick one

Just a very hasty note to say that in an hour I will be on stage at the town square shear madness theatre. They will read my tarot cards and then do improv based on it. Tickets are cheaper online www.tarotlounge.com. if you are in Vegas, it should be odd. Or cool. Or funny. Or all three.

I hate typing on touchscreens.

Day 2 of ALA, and reading things aloud.

Yesterday I had a breakfast with many librarians, then signed was interviewed in front of a crowd by Roger Sutton from Hornbook, signed for happy librarian-folk for three hours, then napped and went off to dinner with the Newbery Award Committee, the sort of dinner where you have each different course at a different table, and talk to everyone. Then I signed books for them (and for a few stray Printz Committee judges, who crept in).

This morning was Dim Sum with Jill Thompson for br

How to play with your food

I'm in Chicago right now, for ALA: the annual meeting of the American Library Association. I've been to a couple of them before and have always had a marvellous time -- once, with people like Art Spiegelman and Scott McCloud and Colleen Doran explaining to curious librarians what graphic novels were and why they should have them in their libraries, another time getting to visit New Orleans for the first time Post-Katrina, when I went to two dinners with Poppy Z Brite, and one of th

Are you Comix Experienced?

The next blog was meant to be about reading aloud, but I wanted to blog this rather than Twitter it to make sure that everyone had an equal chance:

Go and read http://savagecritic.com/ (and you need to read both http://savagecritic.com/2009/07/neil-gaiman-at-comix-experience-719.html which is the story behind the signing (and has some photos of me in 1989 with the most remarkable mullet) and http://savagecritic.com/2009/07/neil-gaiman-at-comix-experience-719_08.html which is the fa