Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Aargh!  The double posting curse!

>Charge $10, but give a pay-what-you-can discount.

What if there was a choice of two different prices?  $5 bucks for a
regular polaroid, and $10 for something with a sweeter pot?  Not that I
can think of anything right off.  

Oh...

*giggle* If you've finished American Gods by then you could save your
hair and give out ribboned locks of it so your fans can make little
Neil Gaiman voodoo dolls..."you will put me in your next book...you
will put me in your next book..."

I am *so* joking.
  

    
For ten bucks, you can wear The Jacket next to your naked flesh!

--Oh, sorry.
  

    
Aaargh...must...resist...temptation...

Martha -- volunteering?

Sorry :>

Ah the psychology of wearing Neil's clothes.  I have heard stories
about that jacket.  And that's all I have to say about that...
  

    
I have touched The Jacket before, if only from the outside.  I'll be fine.
  

    
Sarah -- I'm with Martha on this. I'd suggest that Sunnny charge $10,
with an 'if you can't pay $10, pay what you can" discount.

Sunny -- you've heard stories? Do tell. I wore that jacket for about
seven years, and can't remember it ever doing anything exciting,
noteworthy, or more interesting than keeping off the rain and having
lots of pockets at any point. Perhaps it had a secret life I know
nothing of.

I dunno. I thought briefly about giving the hair to the CBLDF, but it
seemed a silly thing to do.
  

    
Does anyone know anything about
http://www.wsmf.org/texts/emonks/annex/Literature/
They have Don't Panic posted there without permission, along with an
enormous quantity of stuff by, among other people, Douglas Adams,
Harlan Ellison... it all appears to be copyright material. My blood is
boiling, gently.
  

    
Neil -- The story I heard involved alcohol and the stripping away of
clothes.  Could be a comics folk legend.  In any case, I am sure that
now that the jacket has joined my circle of friends it will endure
plenty of booze and nudity.  Heh...in fact my best friend got the ball
rolling with *that* tonight.  It's very hard not to knock things like
beer bottles over when you are a giant goth marshmallow.

On the hair tip...All I know is that I would feel *really* creepy
about giving out my DNA to fans.  You never know when one of them is
going to turn out to be a mad scientist (hell...look at Neal Adams) who
is going to clone you in her garage laboratory.   I would suggest,
though, that you might donate it to a program like 'Some of My Best
Friends Are Bald', which makes wigs for people who need them.

And $10 with a what-you-can-drop discount it is.  Think it would be
okay to bring my camera to the LA GAT member reception then?  S'pose I
should run that one by the Chrises before I go popping off at the
shutter...
  

    
If someone put together a book of all the things Neil has done that he's
never heard of, I'm thinking it would be a quite fat and contradictory one!

Haven't heard of the site.  emonks, eh.  Are they illuminating the mss.
they're illegally copying?
  

    

Neil, we just started a topic to discuss exactly this issue here in
inkwell.  The one called Writers Fight Back!
  

    
Oh, yes, please join us there!

(Honored to meet you, love your writing, friend of Elise's, hi.)
  

    
Never heard of emonks but I poked around a bit.  It looks like they
were trying to keep the emonks/annex folder somewhat hidden, since
there aren't any links to it from the emonks page.  Google found it
though, probably because someone posted the link to mailing list that
got archived.

Oddly enough, on the front page of that web site there's a rant about
someone selling a CD of old radio scripts on eBay.
  

    
Sunny -- ah, a story that has much embiggened with time.

It was San Diego con 1991, and there certainly wasn't any alcohol
involved. I was at a not particularly exciting room party, chatting to
Rantz Hoseley, and, because the room was hot I'd left the jacket in the
care of Kate Worley.

When I went back to Kate there was a problem: an idiot had asked to
try it on, and was now refusing to take it off (actually there might
have been alcohol involved there. Or he might merely have been a twit).

"If you two change tee shirts, I'll give it back," he said, leering at
Kate.

She looked at me, and I looked at her, and, very quickly and
efficiently, we swapped tee shirts. I don't think that anyone in the
room noticed at the time. The jerk gave me back the jacket, and Kate
and I went into the room's bathroom, and we swapped our tee shirts back
again.
  

    <scribbled>
  

    
Yes, embiggened...

I'll note the correct version.  
  

    
I sent a letter (Subject: Very Polite letter) to the guy who's
registered as the owner of the offending website.

It was a polite letter, although I pointed out that other authors
might not be as nice. As I said,

Some authors may sue you. Harlan Ellison will mail you dead gophers as
well.
  

    
Hm. Wonder if Harlan Ellison will sell dead gophers to other writers wishing
to emulate him.
  

    
Oh, pick your own up by the side of the road.

Dead armadillos probably work as well.
  

    
Speaking of Harlan Ellison, did anyone else catch his interview
(probably rebroadcast) on West Coast Live on saturday?  He was very
funny, told a story about a keyboard sprouting fangs and wasn't quite
as gruff voiced as I remember Neil's impersonation to be. 
  

    
I think harlan actually shot his own gophers, if memory serves.

I just posted in the writers fight back topic:

There. Several e-mails from Tom Higgins (the wsmf man) this morning:
he was mortified that the stuff was up on a website he was responsible
for (he didn't know it was there he says, and I believe him), and was
making sure it was not only zapped out of existence but also that
google et al cleaned out their caches and mirrors.
  

    
*Excellent*.
  

    
I'm reminded by the 'Neil's Jacket' stories of one of my favorite
issues of Batman comics:

    The Three Lives of Neil's Jacket
  
   "While Neil is out tending the pumpkin patch, a fierce gust
    of wind snatches his jacket away and blows it into the
    neighboring city of Minneapolis.  The jacket comes, first,
    to a struggling unpublished writer who's about to pack it in.
    Without noticing the "If Found, Please Return to Neil Gaiman
    at Smalltown" label in the back, the writer tries the jacket on
    and is inspired to finish his story.   He leaves the jacket  
    at a Salvation Army store, where it is next discovered by a  
    nervous young rock singer.  
    After her successful gig and contract signing, the singer 
    loses the jacket backstage.  But a roadie grabs it
    and hangs it on the mailbox of a would-be book pirate.  The 
    jacket flutters ominously in the breeze, catching the 
    pirate's eye, and shaming him into abandoning his life of
    crime.
    At last, Neil's faithful butler catches up with the jacket,
    before anyone reads the address tag.  She shepherds
    it off to the CBLDF, where it is auctioned to Sunny."
  

    
Lenny, that's genuinely funny...

So... I'm home and tired still. But I wrote a huge chunk of the book
today anyway. Well, lots of pages. In handwriting. I'm dying to find
out what happens next...
  

    
Burning with curiosity about this mysterious jacket, I finally had
someone point me to some photos of it as modeled by its former owner.

1. Mr. Gaiman, you are a fine-looking gentleman.

2. That is one gorgeous jacket and I am now on fire to have my own
leather jacket customized. 
  

    
you can't just post that without the pointer!
  

    
From response 283:

http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=393010433

However, I had trouble using that link.  It definitely works if you do a
search for ended auctions and use that nine-digit item number at the end
of the URL.

Mr. Gaiman is definitely a cutie, no doubt about it.  When I checked that
book out of the library, the librarians were swooning over the photo on
the dust jacket, speaking of jackets.  %^)  (I went back to check today on
my request for copies of The Sandman, but they told me it could take up to
month!  I guess the copies have to walk over the Park Street Bridge from
Oakland.)