Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
        Well, a quick poke around the Web turned nothing useful up, so I
have to ask: What the heck is the Oxbow Lake Theory?
  

    
Yes, please, if you aren't saving it for something, do tell.

And how are the pumpkins?
  

    


BatsNeedFriends@aol.com writes:


I *knew* there was a reason I stopped by the message board today! Neil,
I loved the bat story (as you could have guessed!) I'd love to see
Maddy's drawing! I am working on my own bat-ish art project (its a
metamorphosis and I am changing a picture of my cat into a bat)
anyway--> I hope everything is well with everyone...sometimes I feel
like I am crashing a party though... if that makes sense to anyone oh
well... its a slightly odd night and my stomach hurts -- anyway....
about bats and hibernation: bats in cold climates will hibernate until
its warmer(or migrate to warmer places) while bats in warm climates
don't have to hibernate.  I have never heard of putting a bat in the
fridge but I do know that if their body temperature drops to a certain
temperature (I forget what it is) the bat will sleep... so I guess
putting a bat in the fridge would put it to sleep...I won't be trying
it though--> I think my mom would have a fit if she found a bat in her
fridge! *giggle* I can picture it now! I am actually working on
building my own bat house although my mom and I can't agree on where to
put it..I wanted to put it in the tree right outside my bedroom window
but I read that its not good for the bats because it wouldn't be warm
enough...and my mom isnt too excited about it being elsewhere but we'll
see, I havent finished building it yet (school's been the priority
lately) ok I feel like I've batted everyone out! I'll be going now!

                                         Bats Need Friends....
                                                              Tori Bat!
  

    
        Say, Mr. Gaiman, since you've got Sandman like Sting has "Roxanne",
I hope you won't mind another question about Old Tall, Dark, and Even
Darker.  I was watching the movie Labyrinth tonight, and was struck by how
much the labyrinth and the Goblin King seemed similar to the Dreaming and
Morpheus.  Was it one of your influences, or just a case of parallel
development?
  

    
Streak -- the Oxbow Lake Theory of time... I'd tell you, but I'd
rather save it for a novel or something, if you don't mind.

Elise -- The pumpkins are all doing well -- the ones with the salmon
buried under them have exploded. Lots of male flowers, no females yet,
and they're growing about a foot a day.

Toribat -- I wouldn't worry about crashing a party  -- although it's
fairly quiet here. Makes me a little nostalgic for the glory days of
Genie. Having said that, I spent, what, five years or a bit more with
my topic on Genie as an ongoing discussion, diary, tea party and Q & A
session, and I don't have the time any more for something like that,
even if existed....

Streak -- no, I don't think Labyrinth was much of an influence, if
any.
  

    
Here's an optional question.

I was wondering, the other day, whether Neil has any thoughts
that he feels like sharing on the end of the current Books of Magic
series.  It's had a long, checkered history the past few years
under John Ney Rieber and Peter Gross.  In the Rieber issues, Neil was
always listed on the first page as "creative consultant."

At one point I remember Neil making a statement that the one thing he
didn't want to see in BoM was a treatment of Tim Hunter as
"Kid Constantine" a mini-Trenchcoat superhero. Ironically,
toward the end of John Ney Rieber's run of BoM, the stories travelled
into a series of parallel worlds that Tim created -- including one where
Tim Hunter wore a  "Hellblazer, Jr." insignia on his chest and
gallavanted about with a red cape.  I always wondered whether John
threw that in as a kind of private joke.

I noticed that Neil's billing as "creative consultant" disappeared
from the title page of Books of Magic around that time.  Since
then, after Peter Gross started writing the book as well as
drawing it, some of the stories have taken interesting
turns -- more Neil-like than the John Ney Rieber issues in my opinion.
Now Peter Gross has apparently ended his run, and the series has just
stopped, with an announcement that it will pick up again in a few
months with a new backdrop and continuity.

I'm just wondering how Neil feels about this, and the
end of the current BoM run.  (Without necessarily getting
into a discussion of the rumored Books of Magic movie, Harry Potter
and all that -- as curious as I am about the rumors that they're
going to de-Anglocize Tim so he won't be confused with Harry in
the eyes of the moviegoing public.)
  

    
Hi Lenny

well, I'm looking forward to the Dylan Horrocks Books of Magic stuff.

I threw in the towel as consultant at Issue #50, as I was feeling
guilty for taking DC's $200 an issue and not doing anything. In the
final year they'd send me a script and I'd say "It doesn't make sense,
but you could fix it like this..." and they'd say "We know but it's too
late -- john handed it in so late it's already been drawn", so there
didn;t seem any point in even reading the scripts after a while.

The Dylan Horrocks stuff I've read so far I really like.

It's certainly true that the plans for the book sof magic movie do not
call for Tim to be a twelve year old bespectacled English kid, which
would just leave us fending off accusations that Tim is a harry potter
knockoff.  (The last time I did an interview about that, it transmuted
in the English press to "Gaiman accuses Rowling of ripping off Harry
Potter from him" and I had to point out I hadn't said any such thing.
Sigh.)

...

Finished typing Chapter 12 today. 115,000 words into this bloody book
and there's a huge vista stretching out in front of me still. Not
amused. How on earth do the Jordans and suchlike do it for book after
book?

Also had a nice chat with a film director who got hold of Coraline and
wants to film it. And, based on his previous films, and the
conversation we had about what the touchstones were, he'd do it well.
When I'll get a chance to write a script for it god only knows...
  

    
Just discovered a limitation of the web. maddy wants to know what "The
naked bear" is -- from the Hiawatha line "hush, the naked bear will
get thee!" So i went and looked.

Search engines don't have any, um, constructive suggestions. Do any of
you?
  

    

When I want to know the answer to something really esoteric I go to the
News conference and look for the topic called Experts on the WELL and pose
the question there.  Usually someone comes along in short order with
complete details.  g news.  
  

    
Okay -- I did. 
  

    

Experts on the WELL comes through again!  Nine minutes from request to
response!
  

    
Why oh why are you writing such a long long book?

I don't read News but I'm impressed by the fast response and I think I'll go
look at it.  There is just about as much knowledge on the Well as there was
on Genie.

And I bet there are a ton of naked bears on the Web and I bet I know what
they look like.
  

    

Someone posted a description in News and I was surprised as hell.
  

    
I was surprised and impressed, Linda. But the big lesson for me was :
the reverend E. Cobham Brewer knows all. Ask him first. But 9 minutes
was pretty impressive, and I explained it to Maddy this morning. 

Martha: "Why oh why are you writing such a long long book?" 

It's not like I want to, you now. I mean, I get the same advance for a
long one as a short one, and everyone would have been much happier if
it wasn't Late and was in fact coming out in October like we originally
expected it would. 

I feel rather like someone living in New Jersey who set out to walk to
California and is discovering it's not something you can do in a
couple of weeks.

In some ways I wish I'd not been quite so ambitious.

On the other hand, I really love the short stories intertwining with
the body of the novel as a technique.

I think in retrospect it's probably a good thing that Sandman was
published monthly, for it's much longer than this is...
  

    
You need to be Charles Dickens I guess.
  

    

I'm going to go back to Sandman, because I can come up with concrete
examples of my question:
Was it frustrating, when the art did not match up with what was going on, or
was inconsistant? Did it bother you that Thess's eyes were brown in one
book, and both green and blue depending on the artist in another? Or that
Nuala's had the same problems? Or, most bothersome for me, in one panel,
when Dream has gone all spoggly, he looks up at Del and says, "Your eyes are
the same color." And in the next panel we see from Dream's perspective,
looking up at Del, and her eyes are in fact different colors.
Or Destiny casting a shadow in his garden in Mists.
  

    
I just finished reading The day I swapped my Dad for 2 goldfish.  Had
a good giggle.  I didn't even think you could get transformer robots
anymore (transformers..more than meets the eye...). Really enjoyed the
innocent sincerity.  The artwork was pretty darn fantastic to!
  

    
Hey, Neil, thanks for the mention of Martha's book a while back; I finally
got a copy yesterday, and have been pretty much inseparable from it since.
Good stuff!

(Hey, Martha! Damn fine stories!)
  

    
Thank you, Elise!  You are kind and swell.

(Neil: my computer says my ink cartridge is 75% full but no ink hits the
paper when I print, so it'll be at least until I get to a supplies store
before I print anything....)
  

    
Went to Dragoncon to present Amano with an award. Due to standard
Dragoncon organisational skills, the award was not presented on the
first night. "Ah," they said. "you must present the award before the
masquerade tomorrow". Masquerade started 80 minutes late, nobody had
the awards that were menat to be presented or knew what was going on,
and the lady who ran the masquerade came and pleaded with me to delay
"my event" until the intermission. I explained that I was a victim and
knew nothing, and then Amano-san decided he had had allt eh fun he
could possibly have and went off to bed. So no award was ever
presented.

My impression of Dragoncon is that it is simply too big, too chaotic,
and that nobody knows what anybody else is doing. 


Martha -- Do I really need to be Charles Dickens?

Amanda -- isn't the art lovely? Goldfish was written in 1994 and there
were still Transformers around then. Dunno if they're still around
now.

Madman -- well, the Sandman colouring was often deeply irritating, and
was normally not the fault of the colourist but  (During Brief Lives
anyway) of the separations house in Dublin. In Brief Lives every few
printings they let us go back and fix a few more of the goofs -- I
think most of the ones you mention are currently fixed.  Or at least, I
*hope* they are.

Elise -- oh good. Yes, she's a very fine writer. I just wish she'd
write more stories, because there aren;t enough martha Soukup stories
in the world.

Martha -- it's about 450 pages, although you could single space it etc
and make it shorter.
  

    
        I am now convinced that nobody involved in the scheduling of any
convention masquerade is permitted to do a competent job, Or Else.  We're
past coincidence and into conspiracy here.
  

    
Ventured into the toystore and found out that, yes indead,
transformers do still exist!  This discovery lead to a lively
discussion as to the various cartoons that were around about the same
time.  Does anyone remember chatanooga cats?  I am in a minority of one
at the moment! 
  

    
Not me, Amanda

Went onto Amazon.com last night and wrote a Note From The Author to
let people know not to hold their breath for American Gods, as it won't
be out this year. 

At least I'm in the last act.

Went to Rock City yesterday, which is where I plan to set the first
(and last) Last Battle of the war... I suspect I'd've hated it if I'd
gone as a tourist rather than as a location scout.
  

    
No, you don't need to be Charles Dickens, but if you could publish in
installments with readers waiting on the docks--well, I guess you already
did that with Sandman.

You were kind to alert the Amazon readership.

I've already compacted the ms., but as my printer doesn't want to print
right now it's not making any difference.  I'm still confused about my ink
cartridge.  I'll sort this out today or tomorrow, soon as I can get to a
store--
  

    
Martha, honestly, I am enjoying the idea that nothing I've written is
fixed in stone until the whole thing is published. It's so pleasant a
feeling to be able to change things I wrote earlier to make things
later work.

I'm currently very tempted to lose a sub-plot with Thunderbirds and
eagle stones in , and if I do no-one will even know it's gone... which
was not a power I had in Sandman. Everything written was graven in
stone. It made particularly The Kindly Ones a hellish complicated book
to write.