Neil Gaiman's Blog, page 52

If this is Wednesday I must be in New York

A very quick "where I am now" sort of post.

I went to Washington College in Chestertown as part of the PEN World Voices Festival and I spoke to an audience of students and people who had come a long way. Had a tea with English students, then did a reading and was interviewed and Q&Aed and read again in the open air, on a perfect spring evening, as the bats came out. Then I did a one-item-per-person signing (having already pre-signed piles of stuff, so people could also buy pre-signe

London, Paris, New York. Also Lexington High School.

Good morning world. It's thundery wet Sunday morning here, which is rather wonderful.
I had a few days of all my children at home -- Mike is back with a broken leg, Holly came home to work on her dissertation, and Maddy, well she's always here anyway although actually she's in Chicago right now with her school orchestra -- but it ends today as Mike goes back to work (he's doing really well, has been doing all his exercises, is at the point where he can drive, even with a broken-leg-

How to Order WHO KILLED AMANDA PALMER and why outer space tastes of raspberries

Click on this now:


Bohemian Rhapsody played on old computer beeps. Found on http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/20/hp_scanjet_3c_bohemian_rhaposdy/, with thanks to Mistress Mousey for the tip-off. Have you clicked on it yet? You know you want to.
I said that everything turned into the Best of Queen...
 
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Andrew Sullivan comments on Bush policy with an apt matching quote from the Sandman book Season of Mists at http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2009/04/the-sentence

J.G. Ballard and the way the future was

When I was a boy, I loved J. G. Ballard.  And when I was a teenager I loved J.G. Ballard. And as an adult I loved J.G. Ballard.   Different books, though, in each time -- as a boy I read and loved his disaster books, in which the world drowned or was blown away or slowly turned into crystal, and his Vermilion Sands short stories (particularly one called "The Cloud Sculptors of Coral D"). As a teen I took weird cool challenging Ballard out of the library (I loved Concrete Island mos

All the Colours of Hell

For reasons I'm not entirely clear on, emails from my agent that forward jpgs from Germany always turn up with the colours inverted. This one -- an inversion of the upcoming German Paperback cover -- made me smile:

...ah yes, I thought. That's the sequel, all right. CORALINE APOCALYPSE.
And I just got a note from a happy Henry Selick to say that Coraline is now the second highest grossing stop-motion film ever (Chicken Run is the first), and I am proud of him.

...Why are the Absolute

News! I mean real news, honest.

It's SPRING! I mean, it's warm and the trees are budding, the crocuses are blooming and the birds are probably singing although they cannot be heard over the howling and grumbly barking of a large white dog who has just been given his Spring Bath and put out into his pen in the garden to dry, and wishes to alert the appropriate authorities. Definitely spring.

So on Monday the 27th I'm doing a Maryland Event at Washington College, Chestertown, for PEN World Voices. And there was obvi

Sir Clement Freud

I never met Sir Clement Freud, who died yesterday (here's the Telegraph obituary) but his daughter Emma is a friend of mine, and she put us in touch in email. And I mention this because, while his obituaries talk about his political career, or his broadcasting career, and his time as a gourmet, none of them talk about his short-lived but wonderful career as a children's author.

Clement Freud wrote Grimble. The story of a boy of "about ten" whose parents go off to Peru and leave him

To the Bat Hive, Bee Wonder! and other stories

Hans works for me doing mysterious things in the woods. He built a bridge, for example, and a few days ago he painted the beehives.

When I went into the garage, I noticed one hive-box that Hans had taken extra care with...



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You know, Twitter can be really efficient sometimes. I learned this morning from someone on Twitter that there would be a BFI showing of CORALINE in London on Wednesday the 6th of May, and that Henry Selick and I would be talking there, and that you could get ti

It Was A Dark And Silly Night and stuff

Over at http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2009/04/wilson-and-gaiman-at-work-and-play.html You can learn about this cartoon, which I have embedded here because, well, it said I could on the New Yorker site and I thought I'd see what would happen...

As the New Yorker says,

This Friday night at 7, the Morgan Library & Museum will hold a special screening of “Gahan Wilson: Born Dead, Still Weird,” a documentary, directed by Steven-Charles Jaffe, about the life and work of the

Amazonfail Sunday

Argh. My trainer just came over and I worked out for the first time since January. It kind of sort of feels good, but mostly it feels like I was on the road for three months and I need to get back into some kind of shape.
I shall break out the Wiii fit tonight I think. And trampoline a lot.
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Yesterday morning someone called @Zanzando twittered me, saying,

@neilhimself Neil, if you could tweet re: Amazon removing GLBTQ titles from searches & rankings (# amazonfail), that'd be great.