Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Well, back from a much needed skiing weekend with brother and dad in
Colorado.  Am happy to report that my influence as an uncle is
beginning to take shape.  It's great to hear my 3 yr old nephew singing
along with Nightmare Before Christmas and to hear that he's been
scaring his friends by making them watch it when they come over.  Makes
up for the fact that he also sings along with Power Rangers and
Backstreet Boys.

Neil -- as to your appearances in comics, there seems to be a version
of you called Lil Neil (or somethin) in James Owen's Starchild.
  

    

I'm reading the Sandmans in the order the library sends them.  This
weekend's one is about Delirium and Dream traveling together, looking for
their brother (although I am not sure which brother - I may have missed
that...).  I swear I've met Delirium!  Now I am watching to see who around
me speaks in rainbow-colored word bubbles...
  

    
Mmm, Brief Lives is one of my favourites... And I don't really have
intentionally multi-coloured hair just now, but it is several
variations of pastel (trying to bleach out layers of different colours
and it looks like rainbow sherbet).

So, I managed to get away from work after only 9 hours today! Yay!
Last week's 57 hours of retail hell is something I'd like very much not
to repeat ever again.

squeaks, who got one of her tattoos from BL - yay Jill Thompson!
  

    
Oh, and while I'm thinking about it, have any of you (who know him)
heard from Trevor (NightWalker) lately? I've been trying to reach him
and am finding it a bit impossible.

-squeaks, who needs to drive to LA to see him, but would find it
infinitely easier to plan if he knew about it first. :)
  

    
Email from Jouni Koponen:

Neil - Goes and does signings claiming to be the real Death? Now THAT
sounds weird!

Tried to sign up to American Gods database and received the following
comment:

  Subscribe Me Status: Already Listed! Your email address is already in
  our database!

Hmmm. Don't recall signing up before...

Jouni
  

    
Jouni -- hmmm. I just went and tried registering with an e-mail
address I knew I'd not used before, and it let me in just fine. You
could try a different e-mail address and see if that works.

It's probably a glitch on the website, unless you've started doing
things in your sleep and not noticing.

The lady does signings claiming to be 'the model for Death'. She has a
website somewhere, with some bad photographs of her with curly eye
things drawn in, and the covers of the Death comics as well. 

Which is made more sad by the fact that the covers all used top UK
models, aged 15-17, and Dave used three different models for the High
Cost of Living, the D:THCOL the book, and the Time of Your Life comics
and book.

It's possible that she may, as she claims on the site, have been Death
once at a convention for DC. But I wouldn't put money on it (and she
doesn't have any photos of her as Death at a con).

I first heard of her when I discovered she was doing signings in West
Coast comics shops.

Lindqa -- that ranking article is fascinating. Yesterday AG was down
in the 11,000s. Today it's up in the 1500s.

if the Library sends you THE KINDLY ONES or THE WAKE, wait until
you've read all of the others before you read them.

Michelle -- I got an e-mail from him recently saying he needed to
interview me for the Biting Dog Press limited edition of Murder
Mysteries: The Play for Voices, but no e-mail questions arrived as a
follow up.

Daniel -- I forgot about James Owen. Is he still doing comics?

Streak -- depends how long before publication. 
  

    
Just a quick "hello" and introduction.

I was long-time lurker and occasional contributor in Neil's topic on
GEnie.  Through an amazing bit of serendipity (someone on a character
animation list quoted Neil re:Tim Hunter/Harry Potter, I wrote to ask
where the quote was from, he sent me a link to The Dreaming, which
linked to AmericanGods.com, which linked to here), I finally found my
way here.

It's amazing to find a place that feels so much like the GEnie topic. 
I feared that something had been irretrievably lost as that service
did its Dance of Death; it's a great comfort to find that I was wrong.

I have a feeling it has something to do with Neil's ability to attract
such a diverse, interesting group of people, wherever he turns up.  If
Esther Friesner and a few others were about, it would feel like I'd
never left.

I haven't ventured into many comic shops since I moved from Michigan
to Massachusetts a few years ago, the original Vertigo books (ie
Sandman, Shade, Hellblazer, etc) having been the big draw for me, but
my Sandman hardcovers still occupy a special place on my bookshelves,
and I'm really looking forward to American Gods.

Anyways, it's nice to be here - still trying to decide how much of
topic 73 I want to try to wade through, having spent the better part of
Saturday getting up to speed with 104 :) 
  

    
Neil -- Not sure.  I know Coppervale Press was running out of AZ and
that they have out two trades of Starchild but really haven't heard
anything in a while.  Did a couple of web searches but didn't really
pull anything up.  I liked that book a lot although the issues were
coming out a little too far apart to follow it very easily.  Rereading
it in the hardcover was a lot better.
  

    
Neil, I don't know if you know Jenna Felice at Tor, but you know everyone.
If you know her, you probably know about her hospitalization and her
uncertain prognosis already.  I just thought I should mention it on the 1%
chance you don't.
  

    

Sounds like beams are in order for Jenna...

And Neil - thanks so much for info about the order in which to read these!
  

    
Rick -- it does feel like the Genie topic, doesn't it? Not quite as
intimate, and I miss people like Esther and Patrick&Theresa, but it's
very civilised here.  Topic 73 is enormously fun: it starts out as a
formal interview and then it slowly descends into chatty chaos.

Daniel -- I enjoyed James's comics, but after a while it seemed like
he just didn't do them any more. 

Martha -- yup, I've heard. I shall keep fingers crossed for her, and
hope she comes out of the coma and comes out herself.

....

Between everything else I wrote a short-short story today (about 900
words) which, not knowing what else to do with it, I'm sending to
Gordon Van Gelder at F&SF. I hope he likes it. I'm very suspicious of
it, myself: it seemed too easy, and I'm terrified that it's something I
read by Fredric Brown when I was 12 that's just taken this opportunity
to pop up again, and I only think it's something that I made up. But I
tried it on my agent Merrilee, and on Ellen Datlow, and they both
seemed to think it was originalish.

If Gordon doesn't want it, I'll probably put it away for next year's
Xmas card.
  

    
Okay...went to hot topic yesterday, and can't help but feeling a bit
disappointed.  Not a lot disappointed, mind you.  I got a Dream shirt
and a Death shirt, and I like them both very much.  (And the Dream
shirt helped start a conversation which led to someone asking me for a
date.  Thanks, Neil.)  I was more impressed with the Dream cape in
person rather than online, and vice-versa with the candles.  They also
had these blank black books that say "Dream" on them with the key to
hell and a gold pen that I didn't see online.  Which leads me to my
disapointment...Almost everything Dream had the key to hell on it.   I
can certainly understand it being on some stuff, it looks neat and
whatnot, but I get the feeling that someone only read Season of Mists. 
Maybe I'm being silly, but that upset me somehow.

I really, really should be doing homework right now.  I've got finals
next week, and a hellvua lot of homework due Thursday.  But I'd so much
rather be here with you guys.  :)

Rick--A welcome to you from the fellow newbie.  

Neil--Any idea when we will know the tour dates, or if my attempts at
getting you near Cincinnati worked?
  

    
Neil - does the story have Charles Fort in it? :) 

squeaks, who just watched a fascinating program on the Mandelbrot set
and fractals... NEAT!
  

    
Rick -- A warm and hearty welcome. :-)

Neil -- I have no idea how Amazon's ranking system works. However,
thanks to your friend from Harper Collins who sent me the cover of the
U.S. edition, I was able to create a small banner ad that's been
blazing away on the front of my Web site. I've also taken to
advertising the book in each issue of my magazine (Pre order now!!!!)
<grin> 

If anyone wants a copy of the banner, feel free to copy it from
http://www.inscriptionsmagazine.com/AmericanGodsbanner.jpg
Then simply link it to Amazon's page for the book
(http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0380973650/)

Jade
  

    
Email from Jouni Koponen:

Neil - '...unless you've started doing things in your sleep and not
noticing.' Well I really hope thats not the case, because the distance
between this computer and my bed is about 3 kilometers!

Anyhow, tried another E-mail address I've had about two weeks, and had the
same response (Already listed blah blah...), so I wrote to the Webmaster
people and asked whats going on.

Has there been any newsletter stuff yet?

Now that you're doing the Death script and all, Who would be your
favourite person to be Death? (I'm quite sure this has been asked few
times before, but I really don't remember your answer)

New short story, eh? Hmm, just hypothetically speaking, who would I have
to kill to get in to your Xmas card mailing list?

Jouni
  

    
Hallo all--

Inasmuch as I'm taking a bartending course-- and am, therefore, in a
mixological state of mind-- I propose this challenge:

Create and name a mixed drink based on one of Neil's characters. 
Provide the recipe and a justification for the name.  Try to stick to
ingredients available in the mundane world (no yolk-of-Roc-egg or
thousand year old tokay or anything like that.)

Perhaps we can assemble a distinguised panel of judges to sample the
potations.
  

    
e-mail from Scott Conner:

  Greetings and Salutations....

  In regards to James and Coppervale, lately he's been reprinting the
Starchild material in (thin) semi-TPBs.   While I like James' writing and
the series in general, he seems to suffer from ambitions that he can never
quite follow up on.  His relaunch of International Studio was a tease...I
would LOVE a magazine like this.  Unfortunately, the current market will
probably not support such an effort.

 Also, had a great time at BosKone recently with Charles Vess.   We drove up
together and had a good time talking about art, books. movies, music, Neil,
and what have you.  For those of you who haven't been fortunate enough to
meet Charles in person, he's one of the nicest guys you could ever hope to
meet.  I also had the pleasure of meeting Rick Berry while we were there.  A
very articulate, intelligent guy and great fun to talk to.  Not a bad
artist, either!

  After the convention, we headed to NYC for an overnight visit with Michael
Kaluta.  Neil, I definitely agree with the intro. in "Echoes" that Mike is
indeed one of the five coolest people on the planet.  Being surrounded by
mountains of art, books, and various cool things, I was the proverbial kid
in the candy store.  Mike defintiely has the best stuff  to space ratio of
anyone I know.  I also found out that Linda Medley is an amazing sculptor as
well; her Galactic Girl Guide statue is stunning.

  I do regret not being able to hook up with Randi or Rocky for dinner while
I was up there, though.  Charles smiled at the memory of Rocky's sushi
dinner incident.  ; )
  

    

Neil - uh-oh.  I just discovered that the other book the library sent is
The Kindly Ones.  Is it too soon to read it?  It may never come my way
again.
  

    
Angelina -- you're one up on me, I still haven't seen any of it.

To tell the truth, I'm not even entirely sure who does the designing.
whether it's Hot Topic in house, or some branch of DC comics.

Not sure where the fascination with Key to Hells comes from, although
it certainly predates this -- I've seen people wearing them for about a
decade, and I believe there are several gothy jewellers who make them
commercially (and I should add, without any acknowledgment or royalty).
What's sad is that the pirate ones will inevitably be nicer than any
official ones.

The moment I get tour dates and locations I'll put them up on the
americangods site. And I may even post them here.


Michelle -- fractals are such fun.  Alan Moore taught me all about
them (and lent me the books) back when he was planning Big Numbers. 

Linda -- how many have you read so far?
  

    

I'm only on my third, I think...I can't always read the ones the library
sends because they have such short loan times, being interlibrary
loans.  And don't ask me the names!!  I remember Preludes and Nocturnes,
and right now I'm reading Brief Lives, and I can't remember the other
one.  And I read Stardust, but that doesn't count in this context.

I may just have to break down and buy some, I guess...
  

    
I'd strongly recommend putting off Kindly Ones. I don't think you'll want to
have read it yet.
  

    
Linda -- in that case, it's probably best to hold off on The Kindly
Ones and the Wake until you've read most of the others. In the Kindly
Ones all the balls that have been tossed into the air during the rest
of the story finally come down and pay off...

jade -- how very cool of you. Right now, my favorite line about the
book is a line from Teller (of Penn and Teller) who read it and sent me
an e-mail where he described it as "Brilliantly entertaining, hard to
put down, sexy, thrilling,dark, funny and poetic". Which made me happy.

Jouni --  no newsletter stuff yet, that I know of. (I haven't seen one
yet, anyway.)  I'm not quite sure how people get onto the Xmas card
list. You'd have to ask my assistant Lorraine, who is in charge of it.

Scott -- That's the impression I get from Coppervale too.

Rick Berry emailed me to say he was going to do a panel with Charles,
which must have been fun.

I miss working with Charles. It's been too long. I want him to
illustrate a children's book I'm planning, about a Viking kid and an
eagle and a bear and a fox, and I should call him and find out when
he'll be free.

Rocky still posts here from time to time. Haven't seen anything from
Randi in a while. (And while on the subject of the thingies, did Luna
ever get her duck?)
  

    
Linda - where do you live?  I have "loaner" copies of almost the
entire series (think I'm missing The Wake), perhaps we can arrange
something.
  

    
Neil - here's what Luna has to say about the duck...

"things got very confused in new york, and everyone thought i was
crazy, and then chris claimed the duck had disappeared into an
alternate dimension"  and she also says "hi"

And of course I just feel all embarrassed and stupid that I didn't
just mail it to her in the first place.  

Anyway, back to trying to quickly finish all of the homework I put off
this quarter.  

Jen
  

    

Rick, we are on opposite coasts!  But I really appreciate the offer.

Neil - you have the nicest fans!

And thanks for the words of advice.  I shall refrain...