http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/radio-books-violin-lessons-also-haircut.html posted by Neil
Went in to KNOW radio station in ST Paul today and recorded an introduction to the NPR MORNING EDITION "Open Mike" piece I've been recording on audiobooks, and heard the edit. Asked them to see if they could find a bit more time in the piece for Audible founder Don Katz, who did an amazing interview and was pared down to about a sentence in the current edit. It'll go out in the next ten days, and as soon as I know when it goes out I'll put it up here. I talk to David Sedaris, Martin Jarvis, Don Katz and veteran audio producer/director Rick Harris in it.
Also popped in to DreamHaven and signed a bunch of books. The piles of books have grown so high, and the administration was proving so hard for Greg now that he is a one-man operation that I'm no longer personalising books there. But lots of signed books now in for the Holidays at DreamHaven's Neilgaiman.net site.
Spent much of the rest of the day driving around, being a dad, taking a daughter and her friend to violin, all that normal sort of stuff, and listening to Martin Jarvis's Good Omens audiobook as I did so. I'm about half-way through it now. It makes me so happy, especially hearing Adam Young read in something sort of close to Martin's Just William voice. Weirdly, I found it easier to hear what I wrote and what Terry wrote than I could if I looked at the text (which I discovered a few years ago, when I proofread the Harper Collins edition). The text is a bit of a blur, after all these years, but listening I'd find myself going, "Me... Terry.... Me in first draft, Terry in second.... Terry in first draft, me in second.... My footnote to his bit.... His footnote to mine..." feeling vaguely like an archaeologist. Even spotted a couple of tiny continuity goofs we should have caught 21 years ago that I may call Terry about and correct in future editions.
(She has an East Coast Tour on right now -
11.12 Portland, ME
11.13 Northampton, MA
11.14 Brooklyn, NY (SOLD OUT)
11.18 Philadelphia, PA
11.19 Falls Church, VA
11.20 Carrboro, NC
11.22 Knoxville, TN.
Go see her in concert. She's a wonder live. Tell her I said hi.)
Hi Neil,
I just read about your event in January, where in you will be narrating Peter and the Wolf. My husband and I are over joyed by this. We will hopefully be bringing our three girls up to see the performance. We did have one question though. Will you be reading the original version where the wolf actually is killed, and not the "oh my goodness our kids can't hear about death" version in which they bring him to the zoo? We are both, obviously, really hopeful that being you, and not afraid to scare children (thank you for that btw) will be speaking the true to the story version in which Peter shoots the wolf and then his dead body is paraded through the town as a trophy.
Thanks for your time,
~Cecily
PS- Do you know if there will be tickets for the event or the reception afterwards? It will be a long drive, and it would be nice to be prepared for either staking out seats all day or having tickets in hand. (We could not find any reservation information on the website)
I'd forgotten - or never knew - that there was an alternative version. The script I was sent is the Zoo version. I'll investigate...
And no, I do not know about tickets. I will find out.
Dear Neil,
Your Web Goblin offered to post photos of Coraline pumpkins, and when they were told this, my 8 and 11-year old daughters decided to make some. Here they are, along with 2 emoticon pumpkins and a turnip.
http://www.steampunkfamily.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/10/IMG_01521-300x225.jpg
I used them to illustrate a ghost story: http://www.steampunkfamily.com/2009/10/philomenas-fright/
Three of the four of us were Coraline characters for Halloween. (The 11-year old went her own way as Susan Sto-Helit.)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/37435081@N03/4077708519/sizes/l/in/set-72157622616148613/
The Other Mother is the scariest thing I've ever been for Halloween. All the children (even the 4-year olds!) knew who I was, and I elicited much nervous laughter when I offered to sew buttons in their eyes.
Thank you for being VERY SCARY INDEED
I love how many families were Coraline families, this year.
If, like me, anybody else was intrigued by your mention of Kenneth Grahame's other works and wants to read them with a minimum of searching, they'll be happy to know both 'The Golden Age' and 'Dream Days' are available for free on the always invaluable Project Gutenberg:
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/291
http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/270
Thanks for mentioning them in the first place; I'm always interested in children's lit of that time that has managed to slip through my net.
- B. Bolander
What a good idea. Two very beautiful, gently funny books by the author of The Wind in the Willows. I really enjoyed them, but stylistically they are, well, out of fashion, and will not be everybody's cup of Edwardian tea. Here's a passage that describes the illustration I put up yesterday, as small children steal through the house on a midnight expedition to obtain biscuits (ie cookies, if you are American):
The Blue Room had in prehistoric times been added to by taking in a superfluous passage, and so not only had the advantage of two doors, but enabled us to get to the head of the stairs without passing the chamber wherein our dragon-aunt lay couched. It was rarely occupied, except when a casual uncle came down for the night. We entered in noiseless file, the room being plunged in darkness, except for a bright strip of moonlight on the floor, across which we must pass for our exit. On this our leading lady chose to pause, seizing the opportunity to study the hang of her new dressing-gown. Greatly satisfied thereat, she proceeded, after the feminine fashion, to peacock and to pose, pacing a minuet down the moonlit patch with an imaginary partner. This was too much for Edward's histrionic instincts, and after a moment's pause he drew his single-stick, and with flourishes meet for the occasion, strode onto the stage. A struggle ensued on approved lines, at the end of which Selina was stabbed slowly and with unction, and her corpse borne from the chamber by the ruthless cavalier. The rest of us rushed after in a clump, with capers and gesticulations of delight; the special charm of the performance lying in the necessity for its being carried out with the dumbest of dumb shows.
Once out on the dark landing, the noise of the storm without told us that we had exaggerated the necessity for silence; so, grasping the tails of each other's nightgowns even as Alpine climbers rope themselves together in perilous places, we fared stoutly down the staircase-moraine, and across the grim glacier of the hall, to where a faint glimmer from the half-open door of the drawing-room beckoned to us like friendly hostel-lights. Entering, we found that our thriftless seniors had left the sound red heart of a fire, easily coaxed into a cheerful blaze; and biscuits—a plateful—smiled at us in an encouraging sort of way, together with the halves of a lemon, already once squeezed but still suckable. The biscuits were righteously shared, the lemon segments passed from mouth to mouth; and as we squatted round the fire, its genial warmth consoling our unclad limbs, we realised that so many nocturnal perils had not been braved in vain.
"It's a funny thing," said Edward, as we chatted, "how I hate this room in the daytime. It always means having your face washed, and your hair brushed, and talking silly company talk. But to-night it's really quite jolly. Looks different, somehow."
"I never can make out," I said, "what people come here to tea for. They can have their own tea at home if they like,—they're not poor people,—with jam and things, and drink out of their saucer, and suck their fingers and enjoy themselves; but they come here from a long way off, and sit up straight with their feet off the bars of their chairs, and have one cup, and talk the same sort of stuff every time."
Selina sniffed disdainfully. "You don't know anything about it," she said. "In society you have to call on each other. It's the proper thing to do."
"Pooh! YOU'RE not in society," said Edward, politely; "and, what's more, you never will be."
"Yes, I shall, some day," retorted Selina; "but I shan't ask you to come and see me, so there!"
"Wouldn't come if you did," growled Edward.
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So, I was looking at the website of an aikido dojo that Dan recommended looking into, and one of the things mentioned somewhere on the site was that all aikido is based around circular motions, even when they look like they're just going one direction.
My first thought? "Ooh, this makes me think of poi!"
I don't actually know enough about the motions of each to tell if this is even a reasonable thing to think, but somehow that makes it seem "right."
Or maybe I'm just silly and... not superstitious, exactly, but overly willing to go with my intuition on kind of random things? *shrugs*
Anyway, I like spinning things. Ooh, and I even have a userpic for it. -Em
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http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/murder-re-enacted.html posted by Neil
The Graveyard Book just won a literary award, which never gets old, and this one came with a medal, and also with a cheque. I thought, Hm. I have to get myself something with the cheque and I have to do it immediately, otherwise it will simply vanish into the day to day bank account of life, and I will never look at anything and go "Ah, that is the thing I got with my Graveyard Book Award."
So I bought this. It's "The Murder Re-Enacted": It's an E. H. Shepard illustration (he's most famous for illustrating Winnie the Pooh) from Kenneth Grahame's book The Golden Age. Kenneth Grahame wrote The Wind In The Willows, the story of Mole and Rat and Badger and of course, Mr Toad, also illustrated by Shepard.
I once read an essay by A.A. Milne telling people that, of course they knew Kenneth Grahame's work, he wrote The Golden Age and Dream Days, everybody had read them, but he also did this amazing book called The Wind in the Willows that nobody had ever heard of. And then Milne wrote a play called Toad of Toad Hall, which was a big hit and made The Wind in The Willows famous and read, and, eventually, one of the good classics (being a book that people continue to read and remember with pleasure), while The Golden Age and Dream Days, Grahame's beautiful, gentle tales of Victorian childhood, are long forgotten.
If there is a moral, or a lesson to be learned from all this, I do not know what it is.
Right. Off to K.N.O.W. St Paul to record the intro bits to my NPR piece on Audio Books, and I will play the Martin Jarvis-read GOOD OMENS on the car CD player all the way there.
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( You are about to view content that may not be appropriate for minors. )
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(not really, but going to Florida to see the folks, where it's still summer but the internet connection (dial up) sucks. So no messages please. Back online the 18th.)
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http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/half-lifetime.html posted by Neil
The editor at CBS Sunday Morning asked if I had any photos of my son Mike back at the period when I first had the idea for The Graveyard Book - late 1985. I looked. We really didn't have any. I wandered next door and asked Mary (his mum, my former wife and for these last five years my friend and next-door neighbour) if she had any photos from back then. "No," she said. Then, "Do you mean those transparencies? I have them in an envelope somewhere." She vanished and came back with a large manila envelope from a long time ago. "Here."
Half a lifetime ago -- literally -- I was nearly 25, and working for magazines. Henry Fikret, who photographed a lot of the interviews I did, volunteered to take some photos of me and my family, and he did.A week later the envelope arrived, and I realised that everything he shot was on colour transparencies -- like huge slides -- and I was never sure what do with them, other than being fairly sure I couldn't take them down to Boots the Chemist and have prints knocked out. So they stayed in their envelope, and they kept their secrets, and were forgotten.
Yesterday I had the transparencies scanned, and finally got to see lots of pictures I had never actually seen before of Holly as a baby, Mike at the time that I would have watched him riding his tricycle around the graveyard, and me... at exactly half my age: A young journalist who had sold a very small handful of short stories and two non-fiction books, with dreams of writing fiction and comics. At the time I was dressing in grey, but was getting tired of the way that you would buy something grey and take it home and discover that it was a blueish grey or a brownish grey, and wondering if I'd have the same problem if I just started to dress in black.
And half a lifetime on, it seemed like it might be good to put one up here. I checked, and Mary didn't mind. What odd clothes we wore back then. What big glasses. And look, my hair is practically normal.
So long ago, and it went like the blink of an eye.
...
Birthday wishes are flooding in from around the globe. I wish I could reply to everyone personally, but it would take the next 365 days... so thank you. Thank you all.
... In January I will be part of a free concert for all ages on January 16, 2010, at 7pm, in the World Financial Center Winter Garden, New York. I'll be the narrator for the performance of Peter and the Wolf, performed by the http://www.knickerbocker-orchestra.org (whose website you should visit to get details).
Alan Moore is leaping aboard the Underground magazine bandwagon. Following the success of IT and OZ, Alan's Dodgem Logic is coming out. There's a great interview with Alan at http://www.mustardweb.org/dodgemlogic/
(And enormous congratulations to Alan, who is now a grandfather, and to Leah and John, who are now parents, and Edward Alec Moore-Reppion, who is now, um, born. A Scorpio, like his grandfather and his whatever-exactly-I am, sort of honorary great-uncle or something. Not that we Scorpios believe in that sort of thing, of course.)
Again, thank you all for the birthday wishes...
Road test has been scheduled (Dec. 10th); application to be a writing tutor at Simmons has been sent.
You know, I'm still darn proud of and darn pleased with that Twelfth Night paper I wrote for Nancy's Urban Shakespeare class. It's nice to be able to read something I wrote two years ago and still like it. -Em
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Okay, called the driving school, and with luck I should know by the end of the day when my driving test will be (hopefully in *very* early December). This is good because it means a) I'll have a date for my road test and b) I'll have it early enough in November that I can just include it in my December schedule requests at work and be all set.
So, next question: what kind of car do I want to get? I want:
--a 4-door (not a 2-door) car (2-doors make me nervous if they seat 4-5, and I want to be able to seat 4-5)
--something reliable/sturdy/long-lived/whatever--I tend to be hard on things I love, and I don't know a lot about cars, and I don't want to have to worry too much about taking care of it or it breaking on me
--something with good gas mileage (both for environmental reasons and for Em-is-forgetful-of-such-things reasons, plus reasons listed above)
--something small (i.e. sedan, not SUV--a car is already enough bigger than I am used to being without being a big car, and too much momentum makes me a nervous Em when I go fast)
My mom suggested a Camry, or possibly a Corolla since they're smaller. My driving instructor suggested a Focus, which he said was also reliable but was a little sportier and less expensive. I care more about the less expensive than I do about the sporty, but really I don't know anything about cars.
So, any advice/suggestions/stuff to look for?
ETA: Should've listed "safe" along with "reliable," for obvious reasons. -Em
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| User: |  devonmonk |
| Date: | 2009-11-10 07:48 |
| Subject: | Drive By Posting |
| Security: | Public |
| Mood: |  cheerful | | Music: | "Black Balloon" --The Kills |
I might be quiet for much of this week as I try to wrestle book five into shape, but I wanted to make a quick post today.
My friend, Brenda Cooper's book, WINGS OF CREATION is out today! Congratulations, Brenda! Brenda is a talented writer, a class act, and a gracious, thoughtful member of the science fiction and writing community.
If you haven't tried her YA science fiction, go! Get thee to a bookstore and pick it up today! You can win a copy if you click on this link to her site where she's doing giveaways too!
And here's a quick description of the book:
Joseph has succeeded in rescuing his sister, Chelo, from a pitched battle on the colony planet Fremont. Now he and Chelo and the love of his life, Alicia, and all of their extended family, are finally returning home. Halfway there, a probe intercepts them, sending them new coordinates and a message from Joseph’s enigmatic supporter and teacher, Marcus. War is brewing. Joseph is wanted for escaping to save Chelo. To stay safe, Joseph must bring his family and friends to the renowned planet of Lopali, where men and women can fly, and peace and freedom abound. Or do they? Alicia has always wanted to fly, but the modifications that give humans wings kill as often as they work. Joseph must learn to actually change humans, to free the fliers of a tyranny that has enslaved them, since their species was born. If he can do this, the fliers have agreed to help him stop the war. But it’s not as easy as it seems.
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spaztic_chu has another page of Onoraptor up as a preview! It's colored! Go look at it!
:D
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How To Be Assimilated:
1) Leave me a comment saying "Resistance is Futile."
2) I'll respond by asking you five questions so I can satisfy my curiosity.
3) Update your journal, and leave a comment in mine, with the answers to the questions.
4) Include this explanation in the post and offer to ask other people questions.
Sarah's questions, and my answers:
1. What's your ideal relationship with writing/as a writer ... five years from now?
I think to answer this I need to answer the more general question of “where do I see myself five years from now?” Five years from now I will have had my MLS for three years; hopefully I’ll have had a “real”/”grown-up” job in a school and/or library for most or all of those three years as well. I expect I’ll be living in an apartment somewhere, presumably with a roommate; no idea if I’ll have a significant other, or what the status of our relationship would be if I did.
So, in that hypothetical future world, I would have a place of my own. I would have a regular schedule, and a primary source of income doing something I love. And I would have writing, which is an art/love/compulsion all its own; I hope I will be better about submitting things by then, and more disciplined about writing and revising and everything else that is part of the process, but it will be something that I do because I love it, the way I will make music and spin poi and, I hope, practice aikido.
And y’know, if I could be famous and/or respected and/or award-winning, that’d be great too, but I’m not counting on it. I’d just like to keep writing, and I’d like my writing to get published, and I’d like for people to enjoy it, and I’d like for the stories to get better as I go. It will be something I do for love, not for money.
2. What's an instrument you never learned to play, but would like to?
Cello, because it’s dead sexy. Piano, because it’s so useful/standard/expected. Various percussion instruments--bones and bodhran especially, but I do have a soft spot for military fife-and-drum type stuff. French horn, because it’s beautiful. And I’d like to learn to sing properly.
3. What's something you have a hard time admitting about yourself?
I care far more about what other people think of me than I think is good, or than I’d like to admit.
4. What's your favorite story of mine?
First answer coming to mind, purely for sentimental reasons, is the one for/about Piggy. :) I’m having a hard time remember what-all of yours I’ve read, it’s been so long since I read most of it, and I know there are good things that I should have read yet but haven’t.
Oh. Wait. Baba Yaga. Loved Baba Yaga. I remember ‘cause I wrote the first draft of “Hide and Seek” (which will probably need a new name by the time I’m done revising it), and I was all proud of myself, and then you went and wrote Baba Yaga and I was like “well crap.”
5. Who do you miss?
So, so many people. Bard people, many of them-- Leen and Danjo and Dan and Dev and Rebeka and Anna and Peter and Anna and ‘Poshi and Maggie and Sarah and too many others to name. Ben. Cole. Jen, at odd moments when I think about things that she would be pleased or proud to hear, and I can’t tell her. You-Sarah. Gamgee, and Alia, and Becca, and Erica, and my theater arts freshmen who are no longer even college freshmen ohmygoodness. My dad’s siblings, and my Grandpa the way he was before he got sick, especially since I feel like me-now would have appreciated him-then even more than me-then did, if that makes sense? Jacob. Laura, though she’s in the city and really I should just go see her. Gen, who I haven’t seen in six years but who is probably one of my closest friends right now.
Probably I’ll think of someone else as soon as I post this, but oh well. -Em
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On Facebook, a student from my alma mater wrote: "Well that's the main reason to become an academic, so you can eat kittens."
The following comments ensued:
"Eating Kittens is Gross!": The Exploration of the Sense of Pet Ownership in Modern American Society
"You Don't Even Know It's Cat If It's Fried": Ethical Arguments for the Consumption of the Abundant Food Source Known as Kittens.
Worldwide Hunger: A Solvable CATastrophe.
The Cat's Out of the Bag: A Study and Measure of Feline Intelligence by Means of Escaping from Enclosed Spaces
Kitty Food: A Personal Anthropological Case Study of Serving Kittens to Friends Before Telling Them What It Is.
Catch as Cat Can: Advanced Kitten Trapping as a Wilderness Survival Technique
"Essentializing Kittens: How To Eat Them By Ignoring Their Cute Aspects and Focusing on the Tastiness Inherent in Them as Subjects"
Cat's Got Your Tongue: A Full History of People Feeding Kittens to People Who Don't Suspect it in Medieval European Folklore
Nine Lives?: Impact of Digestion on Feline Reincarnation
Like a Kitten: Religious Symbolism of Kitten Eating in the Music of Madonna
Jean CLAWED Van Damme: An Exploration of the Portrayal of the Feline in Modern American Films
Schrodinger's Barbecue: a Collection of Quantum Physics Recipes
Cat's Got Your Tongue: Not If You Eat Its First
Mixed Blessing: Generational Effects of Interfaith Kitten Eating in American Households
Eliminating The Object-Subject Divide In Human-Kitten Relations, Or, Deconstructing Kittens through Mastication
CATch-22: An Exploration of How to Eat a Kitten, and Pet it too
A Clear and Feline Thought: Analysis of Descartes' Meditations on Kitten Eating
Aspects of Feline Acquisition in Modern American Society
"If You Want to Sing Out, Eat Cats": Cannibalism in the Music of Cat Stevens
Abra-cat-dabra: The Magic of Feline Disappearance in Culinary Technique
Language and Feline Consumption: An Exploration of the Pragmatics of Labeling Food with Terms of Endearment
Do or Do Not: Buddhist Perceptions of the Role of Free Will in Cat Consumption
Real Buddhism: Cats Have No Greater Worth Than Any Other Thing or Animal, So Eat Them (But Don't Kill Them)
Kittens Are Tasty: Speaking Truth to Power on Taboo Foodstuffs
CATatonic: A Revelation & Awakening of the Dormant Urge to Consume Kittens in Modern American Society
Production Confronts Cat-sumption: Pet Perception and Social Conflicts in the Ocatober Revolution
Feline Unity: A Study of the Reactionary Literature Against Kitten Consumption Produced by Women Who Hoard Cats.
No, I don't know either. But it made me almost as happy as "Swift & Lovett's Daycare & Pie Emporium", which my sister intends to open one day.
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http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/for-those-who-read-this-blog-for.html posted by Neil
 (Serena Altschul and some author in July, sitting on the trampoline after two days of interviews. None of which, oddly enough, were done on the trampoline.)
Mr. Neil,
I DVR'd yesterday's installment of Sunday Morning and after zipping through it back and forth multiple times cannot seem to find you, though the description indicated the correct episode. Was it bumped to next week? Have you been sucked into an alternate Neil-less universe?
A concerned reader,
Mary
I'm afraid it was bumped by the Fort Hood Massacre.
I checked: The profile CBS did of me is apparently still going out, probably some time in December, although no-one seems certain when. I was told that we could help ensure that it is broadcast (and possibly make it come out sooner than December) if CBS think people would actually like to see it. Which means that if you do want to see it, you can help the process along if you write or email CBS and (politely) tell them so:
ADDRESS:
CBS News Sunday Morning
Box O (for Osgood)
524 West 57th St.
New York, NY 10019
E-MAIL: sundays@cbsnews.com
...
My friend Steve Brust (a fine and brilliant novelist) wrote to Miss Manners about his financial issues, and what having a Donate button on a website means. She replied to him here. There's a fascinating conversation going on about it at his website that I initially missed because I was in China... Most people disagree with Miss Manners. Even I disagree with Miss Manners, and I don't have a Donate button, or use the Amazon links to generate revenue, or have advertising or anything. (That's because Harper Collins set up this website, and they pay for our bandwidth and such. If they stopped, I'd have to think about ways to make it pay for itself.) ...
Stephen King's UNDER THE DOME was one of my favourite books of the year so far. (R. Crumb's retelling of the Book of Genesis is my very favourite book of the year.) So I was pleased to be sent this link to a really wonderful Stephen King poem:
(It's published by Playboy, which means that for some of you the site may be blocked.)
(Needless to say, I only read the New Yorker for the articles.) ...
Dear Neil Gaiman, I ask for half-a-moment of your time (I would not presume to ask for more). This Spring 2010 I am teaching a Topics in Literature class on YOU at Winona State University (Eng 225: Neil Gaiman). Easy enough to select representative novel (American Gods), short stories (Fragile Things), children and YA (Graveyard Book), but here's the rub: I will likely only assign one Sandman graphic novel to students. I have been debating which is most representative, most worthy of inclusion, most amenable to class discussion and student scholarship. Then I thought I'd ask you. I know you suggest above that, for questions of this sort, we consider you a dead author, but I know you're not. When I came to a similar impasse about which of Ursula Le Guin's works to include in another class, she actually replied and offered her input. I extend the same offer to you: which of the Sandman volumes would you like to see on the syllabus?
Thank you for your time,
Nicholas Ozment, English Instructor
WSU
It's a hard one. I think if I were teaching I'd either go for Season of Mists or Fables and Reflections, because both of them have stuff to teach -- those nice chewy bits that people can like or dislike, argue with or discuss. I know a lot of teachers like to teach Dream Country because a) Midsummer Night's Dream won awards, and b) it's short and c) it has a script in the back. Your call. And good luck.
...
I mentioned recently that there were some beautiful new Polish and Russian book covers for my books that I'd seen at signings, which got me thinking. The International Cover gallery on this website is incredibly out of date.
It's at http://www.neilgaiman.com/p/Neil's_Work/International_Covers.
And though I get a lot of foreign editions in, and will at some point head down to the basement and rummage around and scan some (this week's mail brought the two-volume Japanese edition of Anansi Boys, on the cover of which Fat Charlie is not only Very White, but also Very Thin, and the complex Chinese - ie. Taiwan and Hong Kong - edition of The Graveyard Book) I thought that blog readers, being, as you are, all over the world, might be a better resource for knowing where to look for foreign covers.
So if you have, and want to scan in or link to foreign covers we do not have posted, or are a foreign publisher and would like your books up, there is now a submission page: http://www.neilgaiman.com/extras/covers/ which lets you upload them to the webgoblin, who will put them in the gallery (and on the pages for the books in question). And perhaps we should have them arranged by country as well -- some countries, like the French and the Russians and the Poles, have had so many different covers over the years. (Also, Absolute Death was published this week. It is amazingly beautiful. Yes, I think they overpriced it too and no, pricing decisions at DC Comics are nothing to do with me. And the audio book of Good Omens will be released tomorrow. It's read by Martin Jarvis. People have asked why it is not read by me, and I have to explain that it is because if I read it I would just be doing my Martin Jarvis reading the William storiess impression, so better by far to have the real thing.)
Was your basement finished when you purchased your home or did you have it finished for your basement library? If you finished it yourself, how difficult was it? Also, I thought I saw a dehumidifier in one of the Photosynth pictures. Do you need one because of the books?
I'm asking because we have a full unfinished basement that we would like to have finished. We are running out of room for our books also. I don't think we don't have as many as you do though. :)
Any other suggestions for such a project would be greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
C.
No, when we got here the basement had a clay floor that puddled when it rained. We hired some nice builders and spent a lot of money finishing it, putting in drainage tiles, underfloor heating and all. There's a dehumidifier there in the summer and a humidifier in the winter, because after the first few years I noticed that binding glue and leather book covers were both cracking and flaking. There's now the equivalent of a large house in basement rooms beneath this house, filled with books and CDs and suchlike stuff.
And finally, a few photos from the China trip, taken by Ian Ford (or in one case, on his camera). Ian's a travel guide who now lives in China who helped organise my travels, and came along with me for part of the journey.
 Amanda and I in the silk clothes that my publisher had given us as a thank you for coming, and because they are terrific.
 Amanda, Ian Ford (in the pale top, also a gift from my publishers) and.. my publishers, SF World -- who will be publishing the mainland Chinese edition of The Graveyard Book very soon, and are very excited.
I'm holding the Galaxy Award for this year, given to the foreign author most popular with Chinese reader-voters. This was my second year of winning it, so I have retired from the competition and said that they have to find a new favourite foreign author now.
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Current plan:
1) Schedule driving test.
2) Take driving test.
3) Acquire license.
4) Find and acquire car.
5) Find an aikido class to join.
6) See if studying aikido makes belly dance more appealing?
I'm in love with Sara Barreilles' Little Voice. Love love love it. Also interesting to realize that I really *don't* like a lot of fairy tales--which is to say, I *love* the way fairy tales feel inside my head but there are also always things I don't like about any given fairy tale, and a lot of the fun for me is reworking them in ways that I like better (or seeing other people do so).
I'm also in love with Battlestar Galactica, in a way that is probably not the most healthy, but oh well. Marathons are fun! :P
Training to work in the children's room at the library, and I think I'm really gonna like it. Also, means more shifts for me, because I guess April was needing subs anyway--hooray for library work! :)
Need to clean my room. Don't want to. This is neither new nor exciting, but is pretty much a constant fact of my life. Blargh. :P
Need to work on writing. Have one story I'm revising, one story I just finished a draft of and am waiting for initial comments on, and one story that I should really get back to writing. Need to figure out what I'm most likely to actually get work done on and sit down to it.
Have gotten the first two volumes of Runaways from the library, on April's recommendation--sounded like enough fun to at least be worth trying. Also requested the first Ex Machina and the first Y: the Last Man, the latter because I wanted to read it last year but didn't have time and the former because it came up when I was searching for the latter and why not? Though I should also get back to the list Ben sent me, if only so I can figure out what on it I like or don't like so that I can tell him that and he can tell me more things to read.
Thinking about what I want this journal to be for, anyway. It's been de facto friends-only for a while, but I haven't really been using it for that the way I did a few years ago, and enough people have blogs that I'm starting to wonder if I don't even want to delete all my old entries and start over? Or at least make private all the ones that are currently friends-only. Or maybe just start a blog-blog somewhere else, except I don't know what exactly I'd want that blog to be about. Decisions, decisions.... -Em
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spaztic_chu and I have been working on a coloring book/picture book! It is about a velociraptor who has no friends, so she builds a robot! The preview is of the inks for page four or so. Yep.
yhlee, this is for you. *g* Or rather, the lizard.
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Days 28 through 31 of my grandmother's 1936 trip to Europe, covering her time spent in Paris. (Previously: Introduction, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6.)
Paris, Tuesday July 21, 1936
We left Brussels this morning at eight for a short train ride to Paris. Our first view of Paris was the Eiffel Tower which we saw while we were still some miles out. After we were settled in our hotel we started on a sight seeing tour of the city. Our first stop was Madeline church which is quite unusual because instead of being built in the shape of a cross it was built in a square. It was originally a victory hall. From here we passed the Opera House, the Place de la Concorde, the Bois de Bologne, the Louvre and some of the famous streets. We stopped to visit Notre Dame Cathedral which certainly is a beautiful place. The rose windows and the famous alter where so many of the kings have prayed for victory were very interesting to us all. Our next stop was Napoleon's tomb. It is a perfectly beautiful place. The light is all a pale blue which comes from the plain blue stain glass windows. To look at the tomb you go to a railing and look over the side and below is this huge marble coffin that rises about 20ft from the ground. It is from this tomb that John Paul Jones's is copied. In a little chapel just to the side of the coffin are placed his hat and sword. From here we drove around to where the Trocadero used to be and on this sight they are now building the buildings for the fair of 1937. Then over to the left bank to get a glance at the book and picture stalls and then back to the hotel for dinner. This evening we started out for the Cafe de la Paix and after going in the wrong direction for some time we finally were aided by a kind Englishman and arrived there a little bit soaked but anxious to see all the sights that pass by there.
All the really famous stuff of Paris is, of course, still there, and can be easily researched. Plugging proper nouns into Google, the most interesting new thing I learned was that restaurant,Cafe de la Paix, was designed by Charles Garnier.
Paris, Wednesday July 22nd [1936]
Spent most of the morning getting my hair washed and a manicure then to the American Express office for some money and I again felt ready to conquer the world. This afternoon we went to Versailles, which is a very beautiful place surrounded by lovely artificial gardens, beautiful statues and fountains. The palace itself is very ornately decorated inside & although there is no furniture left at all one gets a grand idea of the luxury and grandeur that the kings of France lived in. We saw the famous mirrored galleries where the Versailles treaty was signed and the room from which Marie Antoinette escaped during the Revolution. This evening we went on a tour of the night clubs of Paris. We left our hotel about nine and went to Montmartre where we got a beautiful view of the city of Paris with all of its lights. Montmartre itself was very interesting with old houses and many outdoor cafes. From here we went to an African mosque where we had after dinner coffee, then to an Apache cafe which was most interesting. Here we had wine and watched the street bums dancing. Our next stop was the Bal Tabarin where we had champagne and watched a very good real French nude floor show. Some of the Annapolis boys were there and so we had an opportunity to dance. Although this wasn't much of a thrill as the floors were just as crowded as those at home. Home at 2 A.M. & finally to bed about 3.
"Have you transcribed any more of grandma's journal?" my mother asks me. "I haven't seen anything new go up on your website in a while."
"A little more," I say.
"What is she up to next?"
"Well, in the last one I transcribed, grandma went to a nudie show and danced with some Navy boys."
"...."
Paris, Thursday July 23rd 1936
After an early breakfast we went shopping in the Galeries Lafayette one of the large department stores of Paris. It was anything but an impressive place and we found the prices terrifically high. From here we took a cab to the Louvre and then as it was too early to go in on one of the tours we walked up and down the Rue de Rivoli and finally ended up at Rumplemeyers for lunch. We were really in search of a cheap restaurant but as we had heard so much about this place decided to go in regardless & we paid plenty to. Afterwards we went thru the Louvre & then back to the hotel just about ready to die we were so tired. This evening Jo & Kay & Charlotte decided to go to see the town & the did by ending up in a place some taxi driver took them. They got a bill for over 200 francs ($20) for drinks; but as they didn't have the money they talked the proprietors into a much lower price.
Paris Friday July 24th [1936]
We left for Fontainebleau at 10:00 an interesting drive thru the poorer districts of Paris. It was really lots of fun seeing the children running around the streets all dressed in aprons, boys and girls alike & the people carrying loaves of bread unwrapped under their arms. The forest near the hotel is supposed to be the most beautiful in France & from what we've seen I agree with the critics. It has the appearance of a beautiful piece of green lace. The castle itself is furnished just as it was during the times of Frances 2 and Napoleon. It is very ornate but has beautiful tapestries, hangings, pictures & exquisite pieces of Stone China. By using your imagination you can really see the type of people that occupied this place. We started back in the same old bus which broke down half way home. We were transferred to another and arrived just a few minutes later than we had expected. This noon we had a terrible lunch of what we decided afterwards was horse meat. Out first & I hope last. After an evening of packin we started out about 11 o'clock for Mont Parnasse the artists' quarter of Paris. Sylvia Sopolitz a new acquaintance who spoke French very well took charge of the party. We rode 5 metros before we reached our destination champagne at the Dome amidst artists, tourists, Arabs selling furs and other vendors. Pastry and coffee at the Cupole a nearby cafe. Then home 7 in a cab having first bargained with the cab driver for a fare we were willing to pay.
My best guess, from minimal research, is that the "Dome" refers to Le Dome Cafe.
My computer's been on the blink for a while, so I've been using Sarah;s, which has led to a pile of post-it notes and scribbled-on scraps of paper gathering on my desk. A lot of these were reminders to post this or that on the blog, which, I obviously didn't do. Sarah spent many hours yesterday trying to revive my ailing machine, which is more or less now acting responsibly. We'll see how long that lasts. In the meantime, I'm gonna play catch-up with a few random mentions of this, that and the other:
- The House of Fun Art For Sale list was updated after we got home from the Baltimore Convention, I just never told anybody because I'm such a savvy business person. We got hit with some unforeseen expenses (inc. a hefty car repair bill, ouch) so I'm offering up some new pieces, a few of them relatively big ticket items, a few of them relatively affordable -- pages from Milk and Cheese pages, Bizarro Comics/Bizarro World, Hellboy: Weird Tales, as well as a few pin-ups, odds and ends and the cover to Dork #6, which was The Eltingville Club issue (a note to the reader/customer who purchased the back cover to #6 and the Eltingville t-shirt some months back - I have lost your contact info, which is why I did not write you about the front cover. If you're reading this, please get in touch with me, because I feel badly that I screwed that up. My apologies!). Also, we've lowered the prices on a number of older pieces on the list. Several pages have already sold since we added the new artwork, as a few regular customers contacted us, but the list has been updated to reflect those purchases. If time allows we'll be adding more stuff before the holidays and we'll likely put some more layouts and small pieces up on e-Bay as well.
- I am going to be appearing weekly on the SLG Radio show every Thursday, or at least every Thursday SLG head honcho Dan Vado puts a show together. My segment will be taking place in the last fifteen or twenty minutes of the show. We'll talk about comics, I guess. We'll see. So far I've mostly yammered about nothing in particular while Dan tries to get a word in edgewise. It's a live call-in show, so folks can participate if they want. Previous broadcasts are archived on the blog radio site and upcoming guests are announced on the page as well, so check it out.
- Speaking of radio, I don't remember if I posted about Jill Thompson and I having been guests on Robin McConnell's Inkstuds radio program recently. You can listen to the episode here. Inkstuds is a great comic book resource, Robin's interviewed a terrific array cartoonists over the course of its 4-yr run (Happy Anniversary, btw).
- Speaking of interviews, here's one Jill and I did with Crimespree Magazine regarding Beasts of Burden.
- Speaking of Beasts of Burden, here's a preview of the first three pages of the upcoming third issue, which is an Orphan solo adventure. While the orders for the series have been less than stellar, the response has been extremely gratifying, and it doesn't look like retailers are getting stuck with too many copies dying on their racks. We've also received some very nice comments about the series from creators like Neil Gaiman, Dave Gibbons, Len Wein, James Robinson and Eric Powell (all on Twitter), which has been cool as all hell to see, I must admit. #3 ships on the 25th, and hopefully will be a fun sort of palate cleanser after the downbeat second issue. At least that was the plan.
- Geek Alert: Universal Monster movie fans take note - I accidentally stumbled across a reference to The Universal Cult Horror Collection, a set of five lesser-known weirdies including Murders In The Zoo, The Mad Ghoul and Rondo Hatton as The Creeper in House of Horrors. The set is only being sold through TCM.com (and one other online source, but the price is the same, iirc), it's part of a deal TCM made with Universal to release some films on demand, and hopes are high that perhaps this could lead to getting Island of Lost Souls out on DVD. The films can be bought separately, as well. I haven't seen any of these, I'm sure they're nutty jerk-fests, but I love this stuff. Now, if I could only afford them...
-I've got something like seven new Fun Strips done or almost done. I've gridded up a batch of strips and pages to work on whenever the ink's drying on another job, so who knows, I may have some Dork-type comics to show you folks sooner or later. Still trying to get more done on that Milk and Cheese strip I started and posted a bit from a little while back, but it's slow going.
- I'm also working on a pin-up for a charity auction that has been fun, little cartoony versions of as many old Marvel Comics villains as I can remember the details for. It's a small piece but I'm trying to get as many figures in as possible, I think I have thirty or so right now. I'm trying to see how many characters I can draw more or less by memory, and then I'll get the reference out and see what I screwed up, and complete the details on the characters I don't know well. Some characters I can't even lay a single line down for, so they'll need reference. In my head I can see The Mandarin and Klaw, but on paper...nada (besides the sonic weapon -- weird!). But it looks like 80% of these bums are still floating around in my memory banks while I forget my social security number and my own phone numbers. Maybe I'll scan it as it stands and post an in-progress image. Or maybe not.
- If the November issue of Nickelodeon was the swan song for the magazine, I'm depressed. If December turns out to be the final issue, still depressed. We had a gag panel in the November Nick...what a bummer to see it end. And just when Emily started reading it, of course.
- I've been reading a lot of Spider pulps, my first Avenger pulp, old horror short story collections, some Fritz Leiber SF short stories, some Robert Bloch, some recent young adult fantasy series (The Magic Thief and The Last Apprentice), some David Goodis crime novels, some lesser-known (to me, at least) Black Lizard crime reprints (The Vengeance Man, You Play the Red and the Black Comes Up), some Jim Thompson, and some Blackjack manga. Nothing heavy, nothing too depressing. The Lawgiver is planning a house move, and is culling his library, so I've been hauling bags of old paperbacks over here to digest and then donate. I'm keeping the Spider paperbacks, though. It's been a lot of fun, and a lot of it is research for projects, so it's sort of work, as well. Some days I just want to stay in bed and read until I fall back asleep, like when I was a kid on a rainy day.
- I'm doing a lot of stuff for Bongo right now, and for the foreseeable future --, and it's time I got back to that.
Latersville, all.
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I was too sick to watch movies last night but did so tonight. Kathryn Bigelow's Point Break with Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, and Gary Busey. About 15 minutes too long, some gorgeous shots of surfing, interesting (but someone predictable) plot. It was not a bad way to spend almost two hours.
And saw the earlier version or Imitation of Life with Claudette Colbert. Here's my post and the thread on the later version Imitation of Life .
Some thoughts: although the guy doesn't overtly pressure Colbert to leave her job he does beg to take her away on his boat doing fish research, hence giving up her career to hang around with him while he continues his. However....she's already rich rich rich, so she could retire.
I don't like that Colbert feels forced to give the guy up (for an indefinite period of time) because of her daughter--not saying it's not realistic or even reasonable; I just don't like it.
Same heartbreaking scenes with regard to Peola coming back to the mom's funeral.
Overly sentimental death scene with the spirituals sung in the background are dreadful.
I've seen Claudette Colbert act better in other movies.
The young woman who plays Colbert's daughter is terrible. The one who plays Delilah's daughter is much better.
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And it was quite nice there. I went to my first World Fantasy convention, got to spend time with many friends, old and new, and see some very beautiful things. It was a long trip, and I was more invested in living in the moment than noting down what I was doing, so I don't even know if I can even retrieve from jumbled memory enough information to put together something like a con report. But I had a fabulous time. The regular irregular blog service will now resume.
I haven't read all of this yet. Only a few of the articles, actually. But what a few they were!
Wow, that sounded overly excited.
"Zonkeys are Pretty Much My Favorite Animal" by Jon Cohen, sounds like a cheesy title I would've written. But in the article, he talks about hybrids. Including zonkeys. Which are not a cross with a monkey, as I first thought. It's a zebra and a donkey. And zonkeys and zorses do look pretty darned cool. Pizzlies (grizzlies and polar bears) just look weird to me. I'm not sure I found a believable picture of a liger.
Turns out hybrids are more common than I and most people would think. What's really weird is if you do a search on Google images, you can't be quite sure which ones are real pictures and which ones are photoshopped. The real ones look so unreal.
Also, turns out hybrids are a good way for a species to get in some new dna to play with. Even if a lot of them are sterile. And sometimes they even go off and form their own species.
Anyway, was cool. Go look for some weird animal hybrid pics!
"The Interpreter" by John Colapinto was a very long article, which I didn't realize when I got into it. But it didn't matter, because I was hooked and had to keep reading all about Piraha. Either Piraha proves Chomsky wrong, or it needs to be studied more. How weird to imagine a culture with no stories and no envisioning of the future. Who think 'few' 'some' and 'many' as their only concept of numbers.
But that's not even the only weird and cool part of the language. Speakers of it can even sing or hum it and still get across what they're trying to say. Without consonants, without vowels. I imagine like how you can say 'I don't know' just with a hum.
And then more linguistic awesomeness with "Untangling the Mystery of the Inca" by Gareth Cook. It's all about khipu. The cords they used as records, by putting knots in. A numbering system had been decoded, but now people are working on reading the khipu for far more than numbers. What really cool things are we going to learn about the Inca when they finally crack the khipu?
These anthologies of science writing as really good. I enjoy the science and nature writing ones slightly less. But they're all full of interesting and well-written articles. 2008's just started off with an especially good bang, so I had to tell you all.
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Amanda and I in the silk clothes that my publisher had given us as a thank you for coming, and because they are terrific.
Amanda, Ian Ford (in the pale top, also a gift from my publishers) and.. my publishers, SF World -- who will be publishing the mainland Chinese edition of The Graveyard Book very soon, and are very excited.
