Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
If it didn't, we'd get flame wars and obscene people and psycho
stalker people.  I know.  Many think we have that but having once been
a member of other forums, I can tell ya; it ain't nothing like what
happens on the free ones - at least not unless that's what you want.
It's worth the money to me. 
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes>
  

    
Iknow.  Just sayin.
  

    
I've always like the "plain vanilla" view of the well because it looks
more like work.  

Uh, I mean I only use the Well for the Java conference, yeah!
  

    
This is my second incarnation on the well.  I like that it hasn't
changed much.  In the writer's group are names I remember from 10 years
ago.  That's the first thing I noticed that makes the Well feel more
like a neighborhood cafe than a strip mall hangout. 
  

    
rrussell8--you read it on a plane!  How long was the plane ride?  I
finally bought the book after being "chastised" for getting something
wrong.  Still haven't read it though.  _Listen_ to it a lot... but
haven't read it.
  

    
It was a long journey - Sydney to HK, and hour and a half in transit
and then HK to London. I slept a fair bit as well. I vastly prefer
reading to watching movies on the small screens, but my number one
priority on long haul flights is sleep.
  

    
I like the well is simple and easy to navigate.  Dang these places you
go to all the time who think you mush change things once a month or
so.
  

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

    
OK, so I yelled at y'all, then bailed for a week.  I suck.

Exam week.

Have just stopped laughing like a loon at "Bitchcakes!"  Neil's blog
am *funny*.  Yay!  Hugs!

Mary (reading "Bitten" by......bugger, I can't remember, but it's not
bad for a werewolf novel....)
  

    
Never heard "bitchcakes" before, but then again I don't get out much. 
Character's name is so forgettable.  Loved the email with the market
researchers, though.  Got it in one!  Specially the Arthur Dent image. 
_We_ think Neil is cool no matter what he does.  (shades of Fat
Charlie's dad?)
  

    
Finished _Stardust_.  Now on to Mssrs. Strange and Norrell!
  

    
What did you think of Stardust?

Did you get the edition with the Vess artwork, or the novel form?

Why would anyone buy the novel form?
  

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

    
Why would anyone buy the novel form?

Because it's a book.
No, didn't read the one with the Vess art work.  I have trouble with
comics and tend not to buy them to read.  I get them for the pictures
nowadays. 

I liked the story.  Fortunately forgot about Tori as tree, but when I
remembered I realized why the tree seemed "embossed", or just a little
bit separate from the mood of the story.  Slightly different feel.  I
particularly liked the three stories converging and resolving the way
they did.  I was talking last night about mysteries and how cool it is
to go back and see how the resolution is threaded through the story. 
This is one of those kinds of stories.

OK.  Now I have to look for/at the Vess art.
  

    
From my understanding, the text is identical.  What you get from the
novel-form of Stardust is simply a lack of accompanying artwork.
  

    

The text is not quite identical, but it mostly is.
  

    
Is it a comic or an illustrated novel?
  

    
Sheesh - it's not like I have every copy out there... yet. ;)
Actually, if you have anything to ask of the Stardust completeists
(there are at least 2 of us), you should do it now. Very soon we'll be
busy having heart attacks and strokes trying to keep up with all the
movie merchandise and buying new homes to fit it all into.

The novel is different - it's subtle, and I like the illo version
better, but it is a different object. One of the things I love about
books that you just don't get in illustrated things (in general) is
that you're forced to use your brain in different ways to understand
what's going on. It's like when you ask 10 people who read American
Gods what Shadow looks like - you'll get 10 mostly different answers.
While there's less of that in Stardust, I still view it as two
different interpretations of the same story because I somehow managed
to visualize some of the characters a little differently from the way
Vess drew them. So that's why bother reading the novel. 

The other nice thing about the novel is that you can make your
anti-comic-book acquaintances read it. They usually then beg to borrow
the illo version, which just makes me happier. 

As for text differences - the bulk of the story is identical in
wording. The differences mostly lay in the visuals. Where the
illustrated version tells a bit of the story with a picture, the
novelisation has to paint that picture in words - so it ends up being a
little more descriptive of the imagery. In other places (the first
place I noticed when I compared the two versions), the novel is just
padded a bit for flavour where the illustrations need none: In the
first chapter, in the description of the gap in the wall through which
you can glimpse Faerie, there's an extra bit in the novel about  how
none of the villagers of Wall ever grazed animals or grew crops on that
meadowland. Little things like that. 

Heh, slipped by (hamilton)... it's a graphic novel that was originally
issued in 4 pieces that I'd call a comic, only I think it's really
standing on the edge of a line there. Most comics aren't illustrated
with 100+ watercolour paintings.

Hope that helps. 
  

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

    
You thought I was kidding about having a heart attack and getting a
bigger house? ;)

I hate to think what poor Maureen's going to do with her website
(http://www.stardust-and-alchemy.com/stardust/) once the merch starts
happening, but my boy (while not being crazy about the idea) is
allowing me my silly obsession so long as we have reasonable living
space in the sea of Stardust schwag.
  

    <scribbled by dfowlkes>
  

    
Stardust movie merch.........<<sigh>>.

That reminds me that I haven't picked up the MirrorMask action figures
yet.

Neil's getting expensive!  I'd complain, if it wasn't all so cool.

Lost my final cat yesterday.  Berlioz was 16.  Heart attack.  Being
catless is weird.

Am still in school.  CPS is starting to seriously piss me off.  Must
go on vacation soon, or there's going to be trouble.  Right here in
River City.

Saw Kong.  Mostly agreed with Neil's review, only I wasn't quite as
bored in the middle.  But it was too long.  And why is no one
mentioning 2046 in the year end best-of lists?  It was faboo.  It will
suck if it doesn't get a foreign language Oscar nom.

Mary (reading Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, having just finished
Monster by Walter Dean Myers)
  

    
Meant to say--DanGuy is, as usual, right.  That boy is a keeper!
  

    
I'm glad I didn't read the illustrated version.  I think it would have
spoiled the story for me.  My experience of faerie and such is much
darker, much less certain and confident than the illustrations portray.
 A kind of perpetual twilight.  I get that from reading Neil's stories
whether he intends it or not.  I could be influenced by childhood
reading though.  All the stories I read had those kinds of
illustrations: people gloriously illuminated by their own inner light
against dazk skies.