The First American Gods Trailer

I've just come back from San Diego Comic-Con, where I didn't really go to Comic-Con. Instead, from 8 am until about 11 at night, I was interviewed, photographed, asked questions, moved in and out of serious black people-movers. I got to fall in love with the American Gods cast -- I'd met a few of them in Toronto, but now I got to know the lovely people who portray Shadow, Mr Wednesday, Bilquis, Mad Sweeney and the Technical Boy up close, not to mention get a hug from our brand spanking new Easter.

A very silly and lovely cast: Clockwise, from bottom left, Yetide Badaki (Bilquis),  Pablo Schrieber (Mad Sweeney), Ricky Whittle (Shadow), Bruce Langley (The Technical Boy), Ian McShane (Mr Wednesday).

 This is my favourite moment: I was on the IMDB yacht, for an interview with Kevin Smith, and before the interview began they pointed to a large and very white bed, and suggested I should do the thing that made me happiest in bed. So I pulled out my notebook, and started writing...

I finished the latest draft of all six GOOD OMENS scripts the day before Comic-Con. That was really the last major project I had to finish before I could start the novel. Which means I should be starting to write a novel very soon...

Labels: American Gods trailer, San Diego Comic Con

I bet you thought I was dead...

I'm not really sure what it says about the last month and a half that the last actual blog post was the day before THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE was published, June the 17th.  Mostly it probably says that when I had any down time I was too tired to blog.

So I will do a brief recap of what happened.

THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE was published. It went to #2 in the UK (beaten by Dan Brown) and to #1 in the US. It's still on both bestseller lists, six weeks later. (I think it's now at #7 in the US.)

The reviews have been fantastic. Ones that made me particularly happy would include the New York Times review

“Childhood memories are sometimes covered and obscured beneath the things that come later, like childhood toys forgotten at the bottom of a crammed adult closet,” Neil Gaiman writes in his slim, dark dream of a new novel, “The Ocean at the End of the Lane.” “But they are never lost for good.” Who we used to be sometimes seems like a faint shadow of who we are now, but Gaiman helps us remember the wonder and terror and powerlessness that owned us as children.(...)Gaiman is especially accomplished in navigating the cruel, uncertain dreamscape of childhood.
There is a moment, toward the end of this novel, when the narrator drops into the duck pond (or ocean, as the Hempstocks call it), and his mind melts and achieves a kind of transcendent understanding: “I saw the world I had walked since my birth and I understood how fragile it was, that the reality I knew was a thin layer of icing on a great dark birthday cake writhing with grubs and nightmares and hunger.”
Which replicates the experience I have whenever reading one of Gaiman’s books. His mind is a dark fathomless ocean, and every time I sink into it, this world fades, replaced by one far more terrible and beautiful in which I will happily drown.

And A.S. Byatt reviewing it in the Guardian (!), and, well, hundreds of reviews, actually, and I've lost all the links now. But people, on the whole, have liked it.

There have been lots of interviews with me. In some of them I say the same things, and in some I say different things. For example, here's the Financial Times asking rapid-fire questions.

I went on a tour. Sometimes I was on a bus, and sometimes I wasn't. I didn't get a lot of sleep, and I signed many many thousands of books for many thousands of really astonishingly nice and patient people.

(Photo by the invaluable Cat Mihos.)

I'll grab some accounts from people's blogs (thank you, denizens of Twitter for pointing me at some good ones): Here's an account of the Symphony Space evening, when I was interviewed by Erin Morgenstern.  Here's a beautiful account of the Chicago signing, from someone standing next to me making it all work. And here's another, with photo of lovely people who ran the event too.

After Portland, I went ot Seattle and had a magical break in order to teach 18 of the smartest writers I've ever encountered how to... well, I'm not sure what I taught them how to, actually. Mostly I learned from them. But they were students at Clarion West: I inherited them from Elizabeth Hand, and I passed them on to Joe Hill, and I think they all have a great future ahead of them. (Over 700 writers applied for the 18 places.)

You can see some of them (and me) if you click on this link, then go to extreme right of the third row: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/interactive/2013/aug/03/selfies-celebrity-instagram-twitter-photography

Then I went back on the road. It turns into a bit of blur again immediately, because a plane tragically crashed in San Francisco on landing, which threw all plans into disarray closed off a runway and meant that the following day I didn't get to Ann Arbor until two hours after the signing was meant to have started, and everyone was really nice...

My bag was lost and spent 4 days following me around the country.

The tour finished in Lexington, when John Scalzi introduced me and interrogated me while a rock band played loudly next door: Look, here is me in a Cyberman head backstage with Scalzi. And then it finished properly in Cambridge two days after that. And then it finished later that week at Comic-Con in San Diego.

By the time of Comic-Con I was VERY tired indeed.

Entertainment Weekly took a photo of me there. I looked like this:

I presented Eisners, avoided being snogged by my co-presenter Jonathan Ross (as a follow up to this 2007 moment)(Mr Ross kissed John Barrowman instead), although I made up for it by kissing Chip Kidd instead when he came up to collect Chris Ware's final Eisner Award. I was on a great Sandman panel with Sam Kieth, J. H, Williams III, Dave McKean, Todd Klein and Shelly Bond. I was on  panels about Jack Kirby and Will Eisner, and there was a Spotlight panel, where I was interviewed (and, unsurprisingly, embarrassed) by Jonathan Ross:

I went home. My wife came off tour. I picked her up at the airport with a handmade sign.

We went to the Newport Folk Festival. We painted a mural on an unborn baby's wall.




 We both recovered a bit more.

Yesterday, I started writing again.

Today I flew to Canada for the start of the next leg of the tour. Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver. All sold out, I'm afraid.

Next week I go to the Netherlands and sign in Rotterdam and Utrecht (Details on WHERE'S NEIL), and will be at the Lowlands Festival at 17:30 on Saturday afternoon. Then round two of the UK, and on to the Edinburgh Book Festival. The Edinburgh Book Festival events are sold out...

If you are in the South of England, and free on the evening of the 18th of August, come to Portsmouth and watch me do an EVENING WITH NEIL GAIMAN and a book signing in the Guildhall. That afternoon, there will be a naming ceremony as a small road by the Canoe Lake becomes "The Ocean at the End of the" Lane. It points at the Atlantic Ocean -- or at least at the English Channel...  (Details here.) If you think I'm delighted by this, you'd be right, but a lot of the delight has to do with all of my Portsmouth Relatives Who Have All Moved To Exotic Places Like Harrow coming back for the day to watch me beam delightedly at the lane-naming, and to tell me that my grandparents would have been proud.

Baffled, undoubtedly, but proud nonetheless.

Labels: San Diego Comic Con, signing as much as I can, The naming of lanes, The Ocean At The End of the Lane, Touring

And by the way, here is some actual news:

My big secret for the last 18 months is finally out, and it feels, literally, like a weight off my chest.

I like that I can tell people what I'm writing when they ask.

Labels: javascript:;javascript:;, San Diego Comic Con, Sandman, Thetthesas

One of the Clarion posts I wasn't going to do, but...

Several people wrote to ask why I wasn't doing a Coraline movie panel in San Diego on Saturday, as mentioned on this blog a few months ago. Laika had asked me to do it originally (and that was when I mentioned it here) but, as far as I know right now, all the Coraline people are madly beavering away trying to get the film finished in time, they've never mentioned it again and it's not on the Comic-Con schedule.

Dude-Sure La Jolla is ten miles away from downtown San Diego, it's also only ten minutes away! So why can't you stop by the con one day? After all how hard can teaching be? Aren't your fan worth it? Late - Chip

They definitely are -- that's why I'll be doing a reading at Mysterious Galaxy tomorrow, and a signing (but I think all the signing numbers are already given out).

As for teaching not being that hard, I'm sure you're right. But whether it's hard or not isn't really the point. The work days start at 8:30am and go till about midnight. Clarion is boot camp for writers -- it's intensive story round table criticism in the morning. In the afternoon while the students write stories (they write at least six stories in six weeks, sometimes more), I'll be doing an hour of individual work with each student (there are 18 of them this year), and giving talks on specific subjects that students want to know stuff about (talks still to come: Writing Comics, Writing for Film and TV, and one on Story and Myth), introducing evening guest speakers (tonight we had author David Brin, with comics genius Scott McCloud and editors Patrick Nielsen Hayden and Liz Gorinsky coming in later in the week), while nights are spent reading the stories we'll be critiquing the following morning.

It's really a fun and fascinating experience for me as a visiting instructor: I'm over my initial terror and I think the students are learning lots -- probably more from each other than from any of the instructors. But it's not a schedule that's really made for nipping in to Comic-Con and doing an imprompu panel or signing. Depending on how many of the individual student conferences I have on Saturday, I might be able to get into the con for a few hours, but if I do I'd spend the time trying to say hello to old friends, or even try and catch some panels. Then I'll need to get back earlyish on Saturday to meet Geoff Ryman and Nalo Hopkinson, who together are teaching the last two weeks, and to fill them in on anything they could need to know.

(I was made very happy to learn that some of the Clarion students learned about it from this blog, by the way.)

Mr. Gaiman, my name is Bruno D'Alincourt, and my question is, how you draw up its dialogues?
If you speak alone, get you.
If you use your cats.
His family.
Your friends.
Or another case to let their texts flow as if they were called in real life.
I know that the dialogues that make the story (For more fícção or description that is) more 'family' possible, as had already been counted and so many can identify with it.
Since already thank you very much.
But unless we see more, having a good morning, good afternoon and a good night.
And you are truly happy.
What all you want God to give you twice.
And do not forget what happened to the man who has everything I wanted ...
... He had a happy life for all forever.
I hope that this humble reply fan.
Me sorry for my English badly written, promise better.
Anything we see in the future.

I don't really know what it is you're trying to find out, Bruno, but I think you ought to know that what the translator program turned it into was practically poetry, if it wasn't already.

Labels: Clarion, on not knowing the meaning of hard work, San Diego Comic Con

Holly's Birthday Post

Have you ever had the odd feeling that a headline writer exists in an entirely different universe to the one that you live in? For example, you would expect an article headlined I create gods all the time - now I think one might exist, says fantasy author Terry Pratchett to be, perhaps, about how Terry Pratchett now thinks there is a god. The subtitle, The best-selling fantasy author grew up not believing in a supreme deity - until the day the universe opened up to him as he was preparing for another spell on a chat-show would also lead you to the same conclusion, demonstrating that the headline writer simply didn't bother to read the article, which begins

There is a rumour going around that I have found God. I think this is unlikely because I have enough difficulty finding my keys, and there is empirical evidence that they exist.

Very odd, but also very Daily Mail.

I'm sure you've been asked this quite a bit, but since you're going to be in San Diego for the Clarion workshop, are you planning on doing any outside signings or even anything Comic-Con-related (since it's the same weeks you're teaching)?

Also, are there any campus related events revolving around the workshop, like bookstore signings or the like? I ask because I'm a poor grad student at UCSD and couldn't justify taking the time from my thesis research (and money I don't have) to even think about applying to Clarion, though now I'm thinking I should have at least tried.

Good luck with the workshop!

There may well be a signing at Mysterious Galaxy. Probably a couple of days before Comic Con gets going, just to keep the numbers at the signing to manageable levels. No plans at all to go to the con, although it's not impossible that I'll find myself doing a Coraline panel on the Saturday.

Dear Mr, Gaiman,

I've been happily buying up the Absolute Sandman volumes as they've been coming out. It's been a joy to re-read through the series. I used to have the series in trade form, but was always a little disappointed not only that they weren't in sequential order, but also the incredibly small Vol.3 trade. I digress.

My question to you is regarding the afterwords found in the Absolutes. I think, as a fan, I've been a little spoiled by some of the personal retrospects on your previous work, either from 1602 or Smoke & Mirrors. I was expecting more reflection on your run on Sandman, talking about why you wrote this or how you came up with that or who inspired this. I guess I found the final afterwords in the Absolutes to be a little disappointing, especially after so much material is in the books already.

Also, a part of me had hoped that the introductions in many of the TPB's would have made their way into the Absolutes, but that's a minor point.

Will always be a big fan,

Nick Piers

I didn't really think that the world needed me pontificating on Sandman. I think the work stands on its own (or I hope it does), and given that the very first afterword of all -- on The Doll's House, nineteen years ago -- said that the policy on Sandman afterwords was going to be "Never apologise, never explain" I think that either apologising or explaining would have been equally inappropriate.

If you want that kind of thing, though, The Sandman Companion, by Hy Bender, was filled with apologies and explanations both, along with lots of other things -- much of it consisted of interviews with me about just the stuff you were hoping for.

The idea of The Absolute Sandman volumes was to bring out the 2000 pages of the work as best we could, with the colours of the first 49 issues corrected and brought up to modern times, with any text corrections that had evaded us in the past corrected, with, in each volume, about a hundred pages of hitherto unpublished scripts and pencils and extra material, including never-reprinted short stories. It was never planned that I'd do an exegesis or annotation.

There are of course annotations to Sandman up at http://www.arschkrebs.de/sandman/annotations/, although reading them I always find myself going "That's true... that's accurate... that's perceptive... that's complete and utter bollocks and factually inaccurate to boot... that's well-spotted... hmm, they missed all the rest of the references there...". So perhaps I should try to persuade DC Comics to let Les Klinger do an Annotated Sandman for the 25th Anniversary...

Neil-

You mentioned in the blog recently about doing Graveyard Book movie meetings.

Since you are at the point in your career where you are essentially ensured that the film option will be purchased on anything you choose to write, do you think you have started, either consciously or unconsciously, writing with that eventuality in mind?

Do you find yourself stopping and going "Well, how would that translate to visual" or "Too much inner dialog in this scene"?

Curiously yours, and missing Cody's already. I found out while attending Rory Root's memorial at Flying Colors, so it was a bit of a double whammy.

I don't think so -- novels are novels and films are films and I suspect that if you tried to write a novel going, with each bit you wrote, "this scene needs to work as a film" you'd just wind up writing a book that read like, and was as unsatisfying as, a novelisation.

Hi Neil

Many years ago, more or less when it was made clear to me that the character of Fiddler's Green had based his appearance on that of G.K. Chesterton, I started reading Chesterton's books whenever I could find them. Needless to say, I think he is the closest a fairly obscure writer (to modern readers) can get to a National Treasure, and it's a shame that virtually all of his work is out of print. But then imagine my delight when I came across the following recently published volume:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Selected-Works-Chesterton-Special-Editions/dp/1840220813/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214460335&sr=8-1

An incredible bargain, and one that I'd urge any of your fans to get hold of if they want to read some of the best work ever written in the English language. And no, I don't work for Wordsworth Editions.

Thanks

Richard

What an enormous -- and astoundingly cheap -- book.

I was just reading an interview you did with Raintaxi in which you said that you didn't think much about your audience when writing, except for age. I found this interesting because my high school English teacher drilled into my head that the audience was the most important thing to keep in mind when writing. (I once said that the audience for something I'd written was "anyone who wants to read it," and he said that was a lazy answer.) Is it still true that you don't consider the particulars of your audience? How important do you think it is for most writers to do so?

(The Raintaxi interview is here.)

I suppose if pushed I'd have to admit that the audience I'm mostly writing for, when I'm writing, is, er, me. Or someone a lot like me, who's read a lot and likes the same kinds of thing in a story that I do.

If I'm writing a book intended for children it probably won't have any swearing or sex in it, although Anansi Boys doesn't have any swearing or sex in it, and it's an adult novel.

I think it's a good thing to decide that you want to write for an audience of nice, smart people who, if they reread a book or comic will enjoy making connections they didn't see the first time, for example, or who will work for something and take pleasure from working for it if there's something there to get (my ideal audience, I think). I think it's useful to use yourself as a sample of your audience -- I did when I was writing Sandman.

But beyond that I don't envision an audience, and I definitely don't write for an audience, or I might start second-guessing myself and writing to please an imaginary audience and not to please myself. And the only person whose taste I'm really familiar with is me.

(The truth is, even the imaginary reader of this blog, is me. I put up links that interest me. I don't think most people want to know what's in a Magic 8 Ball, or even that the blue liquid inside a Magic 8 Ball might be toxic, but it makes me happy.

Also this blog officially supports Saving the Cryptozoological Museum.)

Dear Mr. Gaiman,


I'm currently tutoring two young boys, ages 9 and 7, who are very reluctant readers. I've spent the past few months happily ploughing through all of your work, so I thought I'd spread the Gaimany goodness in hopes of raising interest. I've started the 9-year-old on Coraline, and read The Wolves in the Walls with the 7-year-old. After I read him the final pages today, he shut the book and flipped it over to look at the cover. He sighed a deep sigh of satisfaction.

"That's probably the second-best book I've ever read," he said quietly.

Pleased and surprised, I asked him with the first-best book he'd ever read was. After looking wistfully out the window for several moments, he shrugged and replied "I don't remember. So I guess this is pretty much the best book I've ever read."

High praise from a 7-year-old boy, so I thought I'd pass it on. He has since decided to write his own (unauthorized) sequel called The Tigers in the Walls. ("The man who wrote this book has a good imagination," he explained, "but I want to know what happens when other animals come out of the walls." I later learned that apparently tigers play bingo and order pizza while disguised in long coats and wigs.)


Thanks for the stories and for your time,

~Mia Hrabosky

You're welcome! It made me smile.

And someone has a useful correction...

Hi Neil!

Just a correction, the 'Doorway to Hell' is in Darvaza, Turkmenistan. Not as 'Darvaza Uzbekistan' as reported on the various interweb memes mentioning it.

You can also see the fire pit on Google Earth/Maps.

The Google Earth Map link

But more interesting than that, while looking this up I found a quite different door to hell...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qz2SeEzxMuE

Thanks for the blogging,

- Jay Blanc

Thanks for the extra information.

Mr Neil,

Back in 2006 you mentioned that you were working on a project with Penn Jillette that would be a film adaptation of "The Road to Endor". Since I couldn't find any more recent mentions of it, (and I'm really hoping I'm not going to be one of those people who somehow misuse the search function and miss that in reality there is a clear and straight forward answer that would pop up immediately if only one could use search engines properly) I was wondering if this project is still happening or if it died along the way somehow.

Thanks,
Nicole Cannon

No, it didn't die. We wrote the script, had a reading, did a rewrite based on that, and then had another reading of the script (with Bill Nighy as one of the leads, along with Andrew Scott and Dan Bittner, which was magic). Then we waited. Hilary Bevan Jones, who is producing it, has been producing Richard Curtis's new film, The Boat That Rocked, and that's just wrapped. I saw her in England last week, and she's about to start talking to potential directors. When there's news I'll put it up here.

And finally,

Hey Neil! You finally got the attention of Cute Overload! They totally rolled all over you talking about how their raccoon pics are way better than yours. Are you going to take that lying down?

Well, the person who originally linked from this blog to Cute Overload was the Web Elf (retired), not me.

But yes, I'm definitely going to take that one lying down. They described me as snorglable, after all, so they win. And anyway, I hope that cute overload will always beat this blog for cute furry animal photos and clips, even if I may edge ahead of them from time to time in, say, links to Todd Klein's blog or to the Birdchick's latest updates on our bees.

Labels: absolute Sandman, Clarion, door to Hell, En Dor, how cute does it get?, oh dear god the Daily Mail, San Diego Comic Con

Maddy TV Episode Two

(By the by, if anyone does have any video of Neil being snogged by Jonathan Ross at the Eisner Awards, pretty please put it on YouTube. Or email it over. Or both.)

Regards,
The Official Web Elf

PS from Neil, you don't have to, honest.

PPS from Web Elf, ignore that last PS.

Labels: attack of the clones, Maddy Gaiman TV, pleas for snogging, San Diego Comic Con, sequels

Here and Now

I'm rather hoping that Maddy will take over this blog while we're here in San Diego, but she is fast asleep right now so it's up to me to say that a) we're here, that b) I signed piles of books and the 50 CBLDF prints, and that c) this evening Roger Avary and I presented 20 minutes of 3D Beowulf footage to the world.

And while I can't show it to you in 3D, and it's Not Really The Same as seeing the Actual Thing, the trailer is now up at http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/beowulf/

...and the Beowulf website has gone live at http://www.beowulfmovie.com/.

After the presentation there was a party-reception-thing on a rooftop. I don't think I moved more than five paces from the entry in the two hours I was there, saying hellos and doing mini-interviews and the like and occasionally watching people with plates of nibbles go past but never coming near enough for me to actually find out if there was anything on the plates I wanted to eat. Sigh. I am crap at parties. At the point that I realised that any attempt to say goodbyes would mean I would be there for another hour, I slipped off down the stairs and went back to my hotel, still wondering what kind of nibbles had been on those distant plates....

Labels: Beowulf, San Diego Comic Con, why I am crap at parties

More info to come. But this is a start...

Here's some Comic-con info.

incidentally, if you're planning on carrying something around on the offchance you find yourself bumping into me in a breakfast line or a lift, make it something light. I will feel guilty if anyone carries around an Absolute Sandman for the whole convention, just in case.

Hello Neil! I'm a huge fan and will be attending Comic-Con for the first time this year, and meeting you is what I'm looking forward to the most. With that being said, I was told from more experienced individuals that the best way to get something signed at the signing after the Friday session will be to skip the session altogether and just get in line for the signing. I really hope this isn't the case because I would love to do both. Any advice?

Actually, it looks like they are doing a drawing for tickets in the signing line at midday on the Friday so nobody will need to miss anything.

However, I've added in a bunch of signings during Comic-con, in order to try and make a few more people happy. I'll be signing on Thursday (probably), Friday and Saturday.

Here's the current version of the Comic-con schedule...

Wednesday 9.00 pm -- Roger Avary and I present the first batch of Beowulf to the world at the Horton plaza. If you miss it or can't get in, our presentation and the Q&A will be taped and reshown, along with the footage, at 5:00pm and 6:00 pm on Thursday. As per the previous post, and the link on the comic-con site, tickets to all these things from the Paramount booth... which won't be open on the Wednesday. Hmm. I'll investigate.

Thursday -- we're still finalising the signing for the day. I'll put it up here when I know. but it's most likely to be around mid-day and last about 30-40 minutes...

I'll be at the Paramount Pictures presentation in Hall H -- talking Stardust (and showing a scene or two) and then, with Roger, talking Beowulf.

Then I do lots and lots of interviews and things, and surface once more at the Stardust screening that night, 9.00 pm at Horton Plaza. I'll introduce the film, and then, around 11:00 pm, I do a Q&A. (Again, tickets from the Paramount Booth, or available from the CBLDF, if they have any left... the Stardust package has already sold out but it's possible that a few people who bought it may not be at Comic-con and will throw their tickets back in, so checking with the CBLDF table prove fruitful).

Friday -- currently

Midday is the drawing for signing line tickets (see above).

2-3:15 PM SPOTLIGHT ON NEIL GAIMAN. ROOM 6 CDEF

3:15-4:15 NEIL SIGNING: OFFICIAL COMICON AUTOGRAPH AREA ROOM 6

and then, to help with the signing thing...

6-7:00 PM CBLDF SIGNING AT THEIR BOOTH # 1831

And then that evening I'll be a presenter at the Eisner Awards.

Saturday --

I'm not yet sure what I can announce. Suffice it to say that if you turned up at the midday Focus/Rogue panel you might see or learn something to your advantage.

2:30-3:30 PM I'll be doing a signing with Brian Froud at his booth # 4818, for a poster we did of my poem Instructions, which will benefit the CBLDF.

7:00 PM -- the mysterious event that you might have learned of at midday will occur, and will go on till about 8:30ish.

(I'd rather just give you details, but so far I've been specifically told not to. Which is, in my opinion, a bit silly, and as soon as I can tell you things, I promise I shall.)

Then there's the CBLDF Benefit auction, which I plan to try and make it for the end of...

Sunday -- I get to do a proper panel!

10:30-11:45 Jack Kirby Tribute— Let’s face it: when it comes to comics, it’s Kirby’s World and we just live in it. 2007 has seen a bumper crop of Kirby projects, including the first volume of DC’s deluxe chronological reprinting of all the Fourth World stories, a major documentary about Jack on the Fantastic Four DVD, and Mark Evanier’s upcoming art book Kirby, King of Comics. Join Evanier as he talks to Neil Gaiman, Erik Larsen, Darwyn Cooke, Mike Royer, and members of the Kirby family about the lasting influence of the undisputed King of comics. Room 1AB

And I would love to do a signing on Sunday, but alas I cannot, for immediately after that panel I have to flee to LA for Stardust...

...

For years people have written and asked about a Dave McKean short films DVD. And now it's happened... It's coming!

The most information on it that I've found is at http://community.livejournal.com/davemckean/23697.html

Labels: CBLDF, Dave McKean, San Diego Comic Con, signing as much as I can

Stardust at Comic-Con. Beowulf Preview ditto.

I'll be putting up a whole post -- possibly later today -- with all the information about my movements and signings and so on at Comic-con. But I'm getting this up first...

http://www.comic-con.org/cci/cci07prog_paramount.shtml

Only at Comic-Con!

Paramount Pictures announces special offsite screenings for Comic-Con attendees!

Paramount Pictures has announced two special screenings at Comic-Con which will take place at offsite theaters. Tickets for these events are available on a first-come, first-served basis only at the Paramount Pictures booth (#4423) in the Comic-Con Exhibit Hall.

On Wednesday, July 25, be among the first to see footage from Beowulf. This World Premiere screening will take place at 9:00pm with a special introduction and Q&A with Neil Gaiman and Roger Avary. Repeat showings will occur on Thursday, July 26 at 5:00pm and 6:00pm.

On Thursday, July 26, see the new film Stardust, with introduction and post-screening Q&A with Neil Gaiman. This special screening is at 9:00pm.

Once again: Tickets for these events are available on a first-come, first-served basis only at the Paramount Pictures booth (#4423) in the Comic-Con Exhibit Hall.

Labels: Beowulf, San Diego Comic Con, Stardust movies

orchids and hemlock

The dog training, since you asked, is going very well. Dog has figured out that if he sits next to me and persistently places his nose between my right hand and either the keyboard or the mouse, I will eventually stop attempting to type and take him for a walk, while I for my part can get him to sit, lie down, come, or shake paws three times out of five if I'm also holding something he likes to eat and if there's nothing interesting going on and if he feels like it. I think we're both making excellent progress.

I just took him for a walk down in the woods (he took off after a wild turkey. On every walk we've been on recently he's wound up flushing a turkey, who then flies off making lots of noise, so he'll chase her and ignore the chicks. This time she ran off until he was well away from them, and then took to the air, and he vanished off after her, coming back five minutes later soaking wet and with large bright grass-green patches all over him) and the woods are a strange mess of wildflowers and towering giant hemlocks, and every few feet a wild gooseberry bush flourishes, leaving me puzzled why tiny green caterpillars devour all the gooseberry plants I put in while the wild ones grow like nobody's business.

(Excuse me. The Birdchick and her husband, non-beekeeping Bill, have just arrived with a new Queen for the Kitty hive. I need to go and put white clothes on and walk in the woods once more.)

Dan Guy wrote to let me know that...

The word cloud hasn't been updated since the server migration two+
weeks ago. Now that you're on a host to which I have decent access
I'm rewriting the word cloud's back end to be much more efficient.
(The label cloud is still operating normally, though, and now is even
automatic.)

Which is to say, the word count quoted was incorrect. Here are the
right numbers:

1,000,951 words in the blog
4,082 words are by Maddy recently guestblogging
996,869 words by you
3,131 words to go until you reach the million word mark!

So it's closer than I thought. Tick. Tick.

There's a song on the new They Might Be Giants album called "Careful What You Pack." According to Flansburgh, it was written for a movie but wasn't used. There's been some speculation that the movie was Coraline. Can you confirm?

I can. Yes, it's a song they wrote for CORALINE. There were a few they did that didn't get used.

Did Maddy like the Doctor Who Season Finale?

She really did. She even cried a little when the master died (I thought the death was great but was still a bit grumpy that my prediction that the master would be shot by his wife had come true). She liked it more than I did, really. I thought it was a bit of a curate's egg (in the erroneous sense of Good In Parts, not in the actual sense of All Rotten) but I would forgive a lot for John Simm's performance as the Master, which I loved, especially following Derek Jacobi's, which I loved in a very different way. And if it wasn't Blink or Human Nature, it still had lots of things I liked, and Utopia and The Sound of Drums were both enormous fun. Even if the Toclafane plot was the Cybermen plot of the season two end, and was also the Dalek plot of the Season one end. I hope that season four won't end with the discovery that somehow human brains are fuelling the New Mechanoids. And the least said about the mini-Doctor in the cage and the magic saying of the name that makes it all better, the better...... .

Hi Neil,

Your journal entry regarding your plans for Comic Con reminded me of the interview you recently had with Quint from Ain't It Cool News, in which you mentioned that on that Wednesday, July 25th, you would be hosting a showing of Beowulf footage, with Roger Avary, for a theater of about 400. My question is whether this is still going to happen, and if it is, what I can do to take part in it. (This is my first Comic Con, and would love to start it off right.) I apologize if this information is forthcoming, or if I just missed something. I'm so excited, I can't wait. Thanks for listening. (Sorry if I accidentally sent this twice.)

-Ben

I'm not sure. If I find out about how people can get in to that -- or the Stardust event on the Thursday evening, or the event on the Saturday that I can't talk about yet, I'll post the details here.

I do know that the Beowulf panel and screening will be filmed and repeated, so if you miss the original panel you will still be able to see the 3D footage (and a film of me and Roger burbling about it) at some point during the convention. But I don't know if I'm allowed to say that yet. If I'm not, deny everything.

Labels: a million words, bees, Doctor Who, gooseberries, San Diego Comic Con, They Might Be Giants, turkeys