Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
I'm glad Neil hasn't posted anything for a little while, because whatever
he's writing, I'm looking forward to reading it.

American Gods keeps having fascinating echoes in my mind. Do you guys have
that happen, where a book keeps fading in again to make a few asides or
pointed comments after you're ostensibly done with it?

Elise,
who is somewhat more well-rested than earlier this week, and who is glad
that Mr. Ford is out of the silly hospital and back among us, and who is
ratting him out on this right here. *smooch* (I know you hate being fussed
over, but I'm glad you're doing better. Now write more. <feral grin> I gotta
say, looking forward to more stuff by writers I like is one of the fine
things about life these days.)

P.S. In case PTerry's around here still, I oughtta mention how much splendid
fun Discworld is being to read. I saved it until I really really needed it,
and now's the time, and oh, am I glad I'm reading it! Woo-hoo! Cackling and
scaring the cat, and all that.
  

    





Remember T-shirts anyone?

Personally, I think Tara's simple design is great.  I would love a "These are
not my scary trousers" t-shirt.  Of course, I would wear it with my kilt, so
people would have a completely different idea what it meant.

Anyway, I was wondering if someone was actually moving forward with this, or
if I should de-lurk long enough to open a Cafe account and pledge all the
profits to the CBLDF?  Naturally, as a big lurker I was waiting to see if a
real Well person was going to move ahead with this before I offered a hand.

- The Other Glen
  

    
Mary,  arghhh! Connecticut? What level are you teaching? And
sympathies and all good wishes to your boss. 

Adriana,  don't let's be silly, I'm nothing of the sort. But it was
kind of fun to start. It won't be long before I'm gnawing my hand off
in frustration, when I get stuck. S'why I'm not a writer.

Mr. Ford,  I hope you're well.

Jouni,  I seem to have lost your email. So the following hide-y bit is
for you, if you want it.
  

    <hidden>
  

    
Mein Gott in Himmel, wherever Our Neil is, and whatever he's
eating/smoking/drinking/writing, it sure is having an effect.  I
haven't laughed that hard in at least a week.

For those of you who haven't been to visit today, it's Neil's journal
at www.neilgaiman.com/journal that has us all giggling like children.

Mike--sorry to hear you were under the weather.  *Very* glad to hear
you're better!  Be well!

Don't let her fool you, Maure is brilliant.

Maure--6-12.  I can't handle the younger ones.  They wear me out.  And
the older kids (while I totally agree that they're too worried about
being "cool"), desperately need to know that high school is not all
there is--that they will eventually find other people like
themselves--that they won't always be outcasts.  I wish someone had
told me when I was that age.....

Elise--which Discworld are you reading?  Aren't they just the cats
meow?   As long as the cat isn't Greebo....... 
  

    

Mary, it says I am not authorized to view that page.
  

    
Email from Glen Seymour:

Linda, you can't reach http://neilgaiman.com/journal/ but you can reach
http://neilgaiman.com/journal/journal.asp which is where the link off the main
page takes you.

- The Other Glen

=====
"Pizza wants to be free" - Neil Gaiman
  

    
Adriana and Mary,  do you _see_ why I love youse guys?? I come here,
and feel like I'm playing catch-up daily just to have a general
background understanding of some of the things I'm reading from
everyone here - and then *you* call *me* brilliant. 

Mary,  I love that you are going to be the person to let the kids know
that there's a whole wide world. Quinton will be going to junior high
next year - I am crossing my fingers for a teacher who will at least
try to understand him. I'd hate to see him, wonderful loonie that he
is, get crumpled up by the small pond politics of junior high.
  

    
The definition of science fiction Neil cites on his journal page
is generally attributed to Damon Knight.  
  

    

Thanks Glen!
  

    
Oooo, yes, thanks Glen.  I should know better than to try to put up
links--it's completely beyond my technological capabilities.

Well, Karen's update is this--they've found another tumor, a small
one, and they're going to zap it with radiation, as opposed to surgery.
 More tests will be run to see if the cancer has spread anywhere else.
 She's going to be off from work for the next month, leaving me in
charge of Production (essentially, the mailroom).  There was no
indication that it had spread into the bone, but they need to do more
tests.  It's not good, but as we discussed when she told me this
morning, you take it one day at a time.

And, really, who can do anything else?  As my Protestant brothers and
sisters say, we are not promised tomorrow.

Thanks so much for your good wishes!  They mean an awful lot.

Mary (who thinks Roddy Doyle's grand altogether, so he is)
  

    
ack! Too much to respond to for someone who has felt asleep all day
(or at least since she woke up at 9:30) and is still up at (checks
clock) Egads! When did it get to be after 3AM?

Jouni - look forward to seeing it

Maure - I envy your talent/patience/both/whatever that helped you come
up with the rhymes... libertine... hee.

Mary - crossed fingers and virtual hugs for Karen's swift recovery
after successful annihilation of the tumor.

Mike - not fussing, just glad to hear you are not in hospital (as I
wouldn't suffer anyone a stint in a joint with *that* food -
blecccchhh!)

Elise - Actually, Stardust (of all things) tends to resurface and talk
to me every now and again. And every time the store turns into a zoo
(like a typical Friday night shift) I tend to think of it as the fairy
market. It's made even more surreal when hungry homeless people try to
sell worthless cds, offering up their souls in addition to the cds, in
the hopes that the value will go up. That happened today - only I
didn't really notice it until I got home because while I was at work
during the transaction, the owner was scaring people by kicking boxes
and throwing things. Like I would be intimidated by something like that
- what a baby (rich baby, but still a baby). 

Whoa, that was kind of a tangent. Sorry, guess I needed to vent.

Um, tra la la...

squeaks, 
mouse-enthusiast who shall not be named
  

    
Lenny -- Damon Knight quote now attributed.

Other than that, writing too many things, with too many other things
needing to be written. Running as fast as I can. Trying to post a
journal entry a day, but everything else is going to the dogs.
  

    <scribbled by maureluke>
  

    

Beams to your brother, Maure, for the correct outcome.
  

    
Linda, a heartfelt thank you to you.

last bit scribbled because I posted it in a fit of anxiety, and
changed my mind about the propriety of it. 

Linda, when I scribble things, why does my name revert to "Heather
Ma"?
  

    

The scribble command changes whatever was in the pseud field with the 
contents of the name field in your account.  All it could fit was Heather 
Ma.

Sounds like a cool name for an alter ego or a new identity if you were in 
the market for one.
  

    
Neil--very sorry to hear about George Alec Effinger.  And Joan
Harrison.  I just read Mr. Effinger's story in Book of Dreams and
thought it was delightful.  <<sigh>>

What's going on?  My friend Jeff the opera baritone who was here a
couple of weeks ago e-mailed to say his granddad passed.  He had been
sick for quite a while.  Not a good weekend.

Mary (who just finished watching Jackie Chan's "Miracles" again, and
thinks he's a wonderful director, dammit!)  
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes Tue 3 Jul 12 10:14>
  

    
DanGuy - I can't wait to see how the DVDs turn out. I'm also thrilled
to hear that your company is looking into releasing overlooked TV shows
because those are usually the ones that should be remembered.

Maure - Really wonderful bits of poem. I agree with Squeaks; the sort
of patience it takes to write that well is admirable to say the least,
more akin to amazing :)

Jouni - I can't wait to see the end result. And maybe some of the
stoplights along the way, if we're nice? And say pretty please with
sugar and sprinkles and Fudge Mint Oreos on top?

Neil - I'm also very sorry to hear about Mr. Effinger. His story is
the one that has stayed vividly with me in the years since I last read
Book of Dreams, while many of the others have faded.

It's odd how life pushes so much at once and then backs off. About 4
years ago I lost 2 family members and 3 friends in about a year and a
half. Thankfully no one since then.

Squeaks - the book that I wind up thinking of more than any other is
actually an old murder mystery by Michael Crichton called Case of Need.
I don't know why a period medical mystery from 1969 has such sway over
me, but for whatever reason over the past 13 years I've read the cover
off that book. I have fun identifying people in my life with its
characters.

My copy is finally sucumbing to paperback Leprosy after all these
years, but I can't make myself buy a new one. Maybe I can find a quick
resource on the art of bookbinding :)

My other favorite literary hidey-hole is actually Sandman #50. It's
the only Sandman that I absolutely had to buy a first printing of; all
the others I own only in TPB form. The story and the art just make me
so sad, but so awestruck as well. And now my copy is actually signed,
albeit sitting in Chicago waiting to be mailed...

Shawn - who watched Frailty this weekend and was disturbed at how
unentertaining a movie filled with solid Texas actors turned out
  

    
Well, I finally finished Nine Hundred Grandmothers this weekend.
Lafferty grows on you, I think. His highly unusual handling of dialogue
put me off at first, but I eventually got into the groove of things
and was able to enjoy the absurd logic of his world. I say world, and
not worlds, because people keep reappearing in his short stories.
There's something incredibly fun for me in that shock of recognition
when a character from one story suddenly reappears in another one five
stories later.
I was also tickled to find that I *had* read Lafferty before. The
Narrow Land has always been a favorite of mine (in that it's stayed in
my head in much the same what that Mr. Effinger's did in Shawn's) but
I'm terrible at remembering author's names... especially authors in
short story collections.

In other news, the show closed to a sold out house on Saturday and the
first thing I did the next morning was shave the 'stache. The hair
will go in about a month, since I want to grow it out as much as
possible before doing the cut and color for the Agatha Christie show
I'm doing in June.
  

    

Sold out house sounds good!  And now we need to talk about Stones in his 
Pockets...
  

    
E-mail from Paige Lawrence:

     Dear Neil?

     Not sure what I have to say.  I am somewhat humbled by the idea that I
can write this and have you read it in the first place.  I don't deserve it.
There is probably some 19 year-old college student who has read every scrap
of text you have ever written starting with Sandman or some such thing who
would kill just to sit down and chat with you over tea for 15 minutes.
Nevertheless, here I sit, having just recently and for an extremely finite
period become "The Newest Neil Gaiman Fan on Earth."  (Hereon abbreviated as
"TNNGFOE")
     A certain Mouse-enthusiast who shall remain nameless is so happy to see
the FOG ranks swell that she said I simply had to post some sort of note
just to say hi.  Slightly astonished, I agreed, although the truth is that I
am writing this because I am stuck at a spot in the story I am working on
and I hope that by writing something else the words will begin again to
flow.  For me this is a little like waking up on a Wednesday and realizing I
am a Cure fan and then Thursday having a friend call me from Robert Smith's
house to see if I want to chat.  Because I am from Berkeley, (where the
'thinking' comes from) I was able to speak with an Astro-physicist friend
and his accomplice, a statistician who guessed that by the time I wrote out
the words, "The Newest Neil Gaiman Fan on Earth," my title would indeed have
become forfeit and transferred to an even newer Neil Gaiman fan in, I don't
know, Omaha or Bristol or Old Swineford or somewhere equally distant and
spooky.
     It began quite simply enough.  Someone says to you (and you'll have to
trust me on this), 'Hey why not read Neverwhere?'  Sounds innocent enough
doesn't it?  Sure, sure Neverwhere, I'll get there.  I have to finish the
Dune saga by Frank Herbert, the prequels being written by his son Brian,
this crackpot theory on the origin of man called the 12th Planet (actually
sold at the Dark Carnival bookstore, Berkeley, CA in the 'Crackpots and
Conspiracies' section of the store), and then I will read Neverwhere.  For
that's truly when I became TNNGFOE.  As a precursor I read this graphic
novel called Stardust and I finished it in about 10 hours.  It was wonderful
to read but the true mania that created TNNGFOE, came later.
     In that way that people often do, I have a tendency to observe myself
as an outsider would when I am interacting with friends, when I am enjoying
a good book, listening to music etc.  The most striking thing about
Neverwhere was that it made me feel like Richard Mayhew in that, I was just
sort of minding my own business and then there is this bloody author on the
sidewalk holding a book up and waving it about.  So you decide to be proper
and you pick up the author clean him off, give him coffee or McNuggets of
some kind and read the damn book.  It seems harmless enough and then next
thing you know you go a little mad and start devouring his work wholesale,
thus becoming TNNGFOE.  Somewhere in the middle of reading Neverwhere I had
an extremely odd train ride in to San Francisco which inspired me to start
writing.  And the ideas haven't stopped coming ever since.  I am a musician
by trade and most of my attention is focused on my band.  The cool thing
about this is that I have no hang-ups about creative writing.  In music I am
always a little concerned about whether or not I am any good or whether
people will like my work etc.  But with writing I don't have to care, it's a
hobby for God's sake.  I can write whatever I want and never worry about
whether or not it going to be published and I'm having a blast doing it.
Music is never this easy.  I think that inherent lack of restrictions is
helping me find my voice as a writer much more quickly than if I had always
been my dreaming of becoming a best-selling author.
     I tend to have a keen sense of the melancholy in the world and I see it
reflected in your work.  It's comforting.  I was driving down Sunset Blvd.
in Hollywood one morning at about 6 a.m. and right at the height of the
strip somewhere between the Whisky-a-Go-Go and the Roxy and I remember
seeing a couple of junkies walking down the street.  Suddenly I felt the
weight of all the disappointment Hollywood had ever created.  It was like
feeling the pain of every failed actor, musician, gambler, hustler, and
criminal, all at once.  Interestingly enough I just took my first trip to
Las Vegas and it felt even worse.  Just read 'The Goldfish Pool and other
stories," and it reminded me of that morning drive down Sunset.  I believe
that for every person who actually writes these things down in story or song
or whatever, there are many others who feel the same things and don't give
them voice.  I think you are a noble writer and I enjoy your work very much.
     With that, I would like to leave a simple question behind.  Is it
always the case that when you have time to write you can't, and when you
have no time to write all, the best ideas come to you?  Seems to be true for
musicians and writers alike..

Respectfully Yours,
Paige Lawrence
Until recently TNNGFOE
  

    
Hi and welcome, (and good luck with your writing) Paige.

Danguy- That's so awesome. I used to watch that show religiously. You
have a very cool job.

Danw- Glad the show went well:)

Maure- I didn't get to read your post, but I hope everything's okay. 

Oooh! <looks at calendar> I'll get to hear Coraline soon! I'm so
excited! <Does happy Neil dance>

I've been stuck with my writing lately as well, and have therefore
acquired an unhealthy addiction to PBS. I realized this moring that I
need to interview my characters tonight and ask them just why in the
hell they don't want to be written. 
  

    
Linda,  ahhh, ok. Thanks. It was driving me crazy. 

DanGuy, you say it like missing Tom Cruise is a bad thing . . . 

Shawn and Squeaks,  I'm more inclined to go with "luck," rather than
"talent" or "patience." I'm nearly done with it, finally. Thank you
very much for the kind words, in any case.

Dan,  ooooo, sold out! Wonderful!

Paige, wow! and welcome. :)

Erynn,  Thank you, I am very well. But my brother is on trial. It's a
nightmarish joke of a case - which makes it more frightening because
it's so unreal, but today was the prosecution's show, and it seems to
be going well for the defense (my brother). I feel much better today
than I did all weekend. Part of the problem is that the trial is in
Pennsylvania, and I'm in Illinois. I get very anxious when I am in the
dark, especially about my immediate family. My parents persuaded me not
to go, because I am impatient and have a terrible (mostly dormant)
temper. From what they told me went on today, I'd have been jumping out
of my skin during court, so it's a good thing I'm not there, I
suppose. 

I was sickly scared this weekend, and posted asking for good thoughts,
but then I felt awkward posting something so close to me. And here I
am again, doing it, but I won't scribble this time.