Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Adriana: Yes, please god.  Hopefully the day after we close escrow. 
May it be soon.  (Of course, we have to find the house first.)

So... I went to lunch with an old friend I'd lost touch with for a few
years.  (I mean, *she's* not old--she's young.  Just the friendship
was a little out of date.)  She's at Top Cow and she brings me a
totally random present.  And I'll be damned if it doesn't have a
Foreword by... Neil Gaiman.

"Savoir Faire is *everywhere*!"
  

    
P.S.  <abbess>:  The thing that really got me was the day (3 days ago)
when I figured out the obscene amount of money it takes to close a
house.  Just to earn you the privilege of moving in and paying them
even MORE money for the rest of your natural life.  ACK!!!
  

    
Hi, Pamela!  Congrats on the house thing!  May you find one that feels
so much like home, you don't think about the money :^)  I don't know
if I'll ever get to that point - I've always liked the thought that the
water heater dying was somebody else's problem, financially.

Adriana - while I wouldn't claim to dislike any arc in Sandman, "A
Game of You" was my introduction to the comic, and it failed to grab me
at the time.  I suspect it was just a bad place to come in, but it got
a great review in the Detroit Metro Times, and I'd been listening to
Tori and hearing about the connection between she and Neil, so that's
where I started.

It wasn't until months later, when I traded some Star Wars stuff at a
local comic shop and had some money left over with which I acquired
"Preludes and Nocturnes", that I really got hooked.  While I enjoyed
all of it immensely, it was Neil's ability to write both "24 hours" and
"The Sound of Her Wings" that really got me.
  

    

Pamela, congrats on the house!  You've got what's called buyer's remorse 
and what I call buyer's terror!  It will ease as time progresses and the 
mortgage payment, etc. starts seeming more reasonable as other prices, and 
your salary rise.

Adriana - that was Michaela's husband who lost the ring.  I don't have a 
husband.  Er, maybe I do and I lost him?
  

    

>> Adriana - that was Michaela's husband who lost the ring.

     She's married to the King of Gondor?
     Uh, never mind.  If we start talking about lineages we'll be here
all night.
  

    
Don't talk about the water heater dying.  It might hear you and decide to
join the dryer and the heating units...  shh.

I love the rings, too, Kelly.


The thing that got *me* about the house was this statement that the bank
has to disclose that shows the entire amount of money they estimate you'll
pay over the life of the loan, in principal and interest, and it had one
extra significant figure....
  

    

You mean that zero?
  

    
Adriana - <<<hugs>>> And re: Game of You - I'm one of those people who
refuses to read things out of order. I found out about Sandman in 1992
and was interested, but it wasn't until 1994 that I moved in with
someone who had the entire series. I blew through the first few trades
and enjoyed them, but until The Wake, Game of You was my favourite. I
think it took me 'til I got through the first few books before I really
felt comfortable with the story and Game of You was the one that I
first felt like I started really getting involved in, rather than
looking at it from the viewpoint of someone trying to catch up with
everyone else... if that makes any sense.

Kelly - They look beautiful on!

Neil - Welcome back. And I'd like to take a moment to gripe that while
you're happily in the 40s, it's 33 degrees outside my window right
now. I live in CA so I don't have to deal with cold weather (or much
hot weather for that matter). grrr.

Michaela - Good luck with the car... and out of curiosity, has anyone
here ever had gooseberry jam? (Snow White thing I've been wondering
about since I was 7)

Pam - Yay! House! And like Linda says, once the initial shock wears
off, you'll get used to it, and as the salary rises it might even come
to looking reasonable. :)

squeaks, who really must get back to the lone-star she's been working
on.
  

    
Michelle -- ate gooseberry jam? Sure. I've even made it.

The WPA paid people to rip out members of the ribes family
(gooseberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants, whitecurrants) in the 1930s,
as they were thought to harbour pine rust. So several generations of
Americans have grown up without goosberries or currants as tastes they
know.

Elderberry wine is wonderful. Elderberries taste like autumn in your
mouth -- not sweet, not sour, just autumnal. Elderflower cordial is the
best thing to pour over a fruit salad. (Lots of recipes for it out
there -- mainly elderflowers, sugar and lemon juice. Or look at
http://www.belvoircordials.co.uk/)

Just wrote SUCH a good, long, blogger entry on my first,
long-forgotten, unpublished children's book, and why I pulled it out
last night to read to Maddy as her bedtime story. And I KNOW that
there's something weird going on between my firewall and blogger right
now, and *knew* I had to copy it before telling it to post, just in
case. Then, proudly hit the post thing and watched it zap into
oblivion, uncopied. Sigh.


Dan -- I never read the flashlight on the back of the knees stuff --
but did see suggestions that allowing sunlight to touch the back of the
knees could help reset a body clock.

Abbess -- I was on FuertaVentura. It's a canary Island. I liked the
sandstorms.

Adriana -- sorry to hear about your grandmother.
  

    

I like this instruction in one of the receipes at that cordials site:

"Put everything into a food processor and whizz."
  

    
Neil - oy... I've lost the entire contents of my Handspring twice now,
because of not backing it up (well, not all of it... but I've lost
months of calendar and address book entries). It's a painful, painful,
frustrating thing. And still, I somehow fail to learn the lesson.
And yet, I think I'll back up my Handspring right now... yes, I'll do
it right this very minute before the backup goblins that exist in your
house decide to burrow through the internet and give me a what-for.

Squeaks - Tell me about it. I took a shower at a friend's yesterday
and watched in amazement as I watched steam coming off of my skin. My
skin was so much warmer than the air around me that the water was
visibly evaporating! I tend to keep my own house sufficiently heated
that I've never seen that before.

Adriana - I add my consolations to those of the mob. 

Ok, back into lurk mode...
  

    
Mike: Yes.  And you owe him your allegiance.

Michelle: I've had gooseberries and gooseberry pie, but not jam. 
They're not my favorite.  (I'm a blueberry kinda girl, me.)

Thanks to everyone for the kind comments about home-buying.  We now
have a realtor, too, and will be looking this weekend.  Yikes!
  

    
P.S.  My stomach hurt for a whole day after seeing Eddie Izzard on
Friday night, from laughing so hard.  He's brilliant.
  

    
Pamela - Oh, those Romans..............

I just completed my collection of Izzard tapes (even got the
Glorious/Lust for Glorious spoof combo vid, in which a group of PR
people try to figure out how to market Eddie in the US), and I've been
giggling like a madman.

With the exception of "Live at the Ambassadors", in which he's quite a
bit heavier and dressed as a man, his nail polish the only hint of
what's to come in later years, every tape is just screamingly funny.

The beauty of it is, you can now get all of the tapes, save the first,
in Official form, from http://www.izzardmerchandise.com , and for very
reasonable prices.

Run, don't walk............
  

    
Thanks for the link, Rick!  Birthday presents comin' up!  (And that
spoof video sounds very funny.)
  

    
I think there's supposed to be an "s" in that "est."  (It's been a
*long* time since French class.)
  

    
Kelly _ I think those are the loveliest rings I have ever seen!  I
hope you have many years together, just as perfect and lovely.

Pamela - I think it's so cool that you're getting a house!  Good luck
in the search!  It's so exciting, having a place where you can put your
furniture, a place that you can paint or knock out walls or whatever
you wish.  

Actually, I think A Game of You is one of my favorites...I cried at
the end, it was so lovely and sad all at once.  I also cried at the end
of book....um...9? (counts trade paperbacks) Yes.  9.  I think I got
weepy near the end of book 10, too.  

So, anyway...I'm trying to finish my second book, and trying to get an
agent....I'm also trying to design my own cross stitch pattern for
much the same reason that I write - I have an image in my head, and
want to put it down.  Thinking in squares is not as easy as you'd
think.  And that's one thing I'll probably still be doing when I see
you all again.  :D  Take care all, I'll still be lurking, wishing you
all well.  It was nice hanging out with you.

OK.  Got my gloves?  My car keys?  Yep.

Cindy
  

    
Michaela -- the trouble with suggesting a book by Jane Yolen is she's
written so many books in so many styles for so many age-groups that
she's not an easy one to pin down. BRIAR ROSE would be my suggested
starting place, though.

Maure -- I'm not sure. I've not heard anything from the producer in
about a year: when last heard of he was looking for a director. I put
together an outline for it for him, and we spoke to a few directors --
I pitched it to Ang Lee, for example -- but they've gone silent, and my
plate is full enough right now I'm prepared to wait.

RE: Eddie Izzard -- if you go to AMAZON.CO.UK you can buy the
two-packs of CDs for the same price as the individual CDs. Or you could
a few months back.

Abbess -- how does the trip from Schiphol work? I normally just go and
find the NorthWest Lounge, after browsing the seed shops in the
airport and buying odd pumpkin seed packets.

pamela -- did you remember your question?

Dan -- if memory serves It Was Decided that there were light sensitive
cells on the back of the knees. I have no idea how they decide these
things though.

Adriana  -- alas it's true about Game of You.

Pamela/Abbess et al. If you think closings and mortgages are bad, wait
until you Get The Builders in, and you discover that all the jokes
about taking twice as long and costing twice as much aren't jokes.

Rick -- I have to confess that Live at the Ambassadors is my
favourite. Possibly because it was my first, and possibly because I
watched it with Lenny Henry, who knows from Standup and was doing a
running commentary ("he's just winging it here, watch this...") and
laughing like something huge and delighted exploding at every good
line.

When I introduce people to Eddie Izzard, I tend to stick Live at the
Ambassadors on, and go forward chronologically, so you see him smarten
up, lose weight and so on.

Cindy -- sorry you're going. (Same goes for everyone else who's
financially being dragged off into Lurker mode.)
  

    
Kelly--I've been meaning to say--the rings are lovely!

Pamela--congrats on the house!  Good luck on the search.  So glad
you've been introduced to Eddie--he's addictive.  Lots of good psueds,
too.....;-)  I recently spent a large chunk of Tara's fabulous (ratio
of cute *straight* boys to women--about 1:10--sounds sad, but in this
town it's fabulous) Onion Soup party quoting Eddie with Tara's
ex-roomie & my friend Debbie.  I think between the three of us we did
all of Glorious, Dress to Kill, and 1/2 of Definite Article.  Many
people stopped by to join in--it was a great ice-breaker.

Ninave--best of luck on the agent/2nd novel front. And have you tried
using graph paper for the cross-stitch pattern?  It helps lots.  I
haven't done a lot of designing, but you're right--it ain't easy.  If
you publish your design, let me know.  I love to cross-stitch (or maybe
I just love to buy patterns, given how many I have sitting around
waiting for me!)  

Neil--welcome back!  May all of your deadlines be met.  If you get a
chance, tell us what-all else you're working on besides the Endless
collection.  And I hope you find time for that play before
2005.......:-)

Mary (reading Finder by Emma Bull, because Tara rocks)
  

    
I was at my sister-in-law's, and noticed a Jane Yolen picture book in the
play room.  "I know the person who wrote that book," I said to niece Emma.
Melanie said, "Oh!  Do you know any other books she wrote?  Because we
really like that one."

I said, "Well...there's only a couple of hundred...."
  

    
Neil, thank you for answering, I'd sent it in to your FAQ line, having
thought a) you missed the question, and b) it was a better spot for
the question. The subject, I noticed, seemed to disappear on Mr.
Carroll's site after having been mentioned enthusiastically a few
times. So I figured it was a back-burner thing, or a no-burner thing.
I would love to see it someday. I'd love to see any Carroll book as a
film, actually, if it were done properly.
  

    
Neil -  to go from Schiphol to Amsterdam during a layover in the airport, we
had to wander through immigration (no problem, even for the Croatian-
passport-bearer, as we'd learned on a previous trip when the person at the
check-in desk in Boston had refused to believe our connecting flight to
Croatia existed, and only checked our luggage through to Amsterdam...), head
out into the huge main check-in lobby and look around for signs about
trains.   There are big maps with info on the entire Dutch train system, and
little terminals where you can buy a ticket - all without stepping outside
of the airport lobby.  If you look carefully there are terminals that showed
some logos in common with our American bank card (credit cards failed
because you need to know the PIN, and I didn't, but my bank card was
something I knew the PIN for...) and you don't even have to get any dutch
cash.  Er, that would be Euros now, I guess.   You tell the thing you want t
go to amsterdam central, round trip, and out comes a little ticket, and then
you go down the stairs with the sign saying 'trains for Amsterdam central'
and 5 minutes later a train comes and 15 minutes after that you are in
Amsterdam.   We probably would've been nervous about doing it if we'd had
less than 4 hours, overall, because you want to get back to the airport in
enough time to check back in through security... but it was fun and easy and
different than the airport lounges and shops.  (Isn't smuggling seeds into
the US considered a Bad Thing?)

No builders here so far, only plumbers and fantasies about a nice big
kitchen that would involve not only more money than we want to spend but
space that doesn't exist.   But yes, all those jokes about home ownership do
seem to turn out not to be jokes after all...
  

    
Smuggling seeds is wrong, but buying commercial seeds is fine (I even
stopped and asked customs my first time in from Schiphol -- where they
sell seeds in the airport).
  

    
Hm.  I looked at the tulip bulbs which all said "Not for travelers going to
the US" and assumed that meant I couldn't buy anything like that.  Oh well.

The one thing that was a total failure in walking around Amsterdam was
finding a place to have a quick and tasty breakfast at 9am or so.  We wound
up buying sandwiches at the train station at a place pretty near identical
to the places in the airport, after the only non-seedy-bar-like-place we'd
found turned out to not be serving food yet...

By the way, Neil, the other tidbit from my trip that I didn't share was that
a museum in Zagreb had just opened an exhibit on clocks - a for-real House
of Clocks, but less fun than the story you read at MIT.  It still made me
laugh and since *all* of the musuems seemed to be having free admission for
the christmas season, it was worth going in and poking my head around.
  

    
(We haven't had one for years, you see.)

Ninave/Cindy:  Here you are leaving already, and I never even knew
your real name.  Prayers to the muses for your books.  We'll miss you! 
Re: House--I am getting excited about *finally* being able to decorate
in our real tastes.  No more mauve carpets for us!  A designer friend
has promised to help us make something coherent out of our bizarre
combination of tastes: a mish-mash of Arts & Crafts and Japanese
elements with some Kay Nielsen thrown in.  Hopefully with a sense of
humor.

*sniff*  I miss everybody who's gone.

Neil:  I know the question; I just don't know the word.  (I asked some
guy in a gray suit to help me remember, but I forgot who he was.) 
It's a trivial question, really: a word from AG that I wanted to know
if you had just been walking around with in your vocabulary or if you
had to look it up.  Because it amazed me.  But I've decided that I'll
never find it again without a second reading, because I can't place the
moment in a scene.  I think I'm finally ready for a re-read now.  I
didn't want to do a second-draft reading until I'd fully processed the
first time through, which takes me a while.  Otherwise, it's not really
a second reading, just an addendum to the first, if that makes any
sense.

Neil/Maure--re: movies--just finally read through Bookmagazine for
Nov/Dec and realized that Neil and Death:HCOL received a mention for
graphic novel movies in the making.  And Maure, I'd love to see
Carroll's TWS as a movie.

Re: Izzard--I don't know which tape we saw, actually.  I'll have to
ask.  But I was very impressed by the times he was obviously just
taking off on a riff.  They were amazing.

Abbess: Good luck with your plumbers!