Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
madman, I'm glad no-one was hurt.

Jouni - I do have an attic, yes. But apart from the corpses of legions
of flies, occasional bats, and boxes filled with tee shirts, there's
not a lot in there.

Murder Mysteries -- in all honesty, I don't know much about it. As far
as I know, they guys doing it are doing it as an arts and crafts
project, rather than as a major publishing enterprise. I have a copy
here, and need to proofread it, and probably ask if I can do an
afterword or something (it has a rather strange introduction about how
no-one listens to radio plays any more, which seems an odd thing to
write for something that was never written for the radio, but for the
internet, and has been listened to a fair bit...)

Reg -- but Shakespeare's clowns aren't disturbing or scary. Mostly,
they're irritating. 
"Why nuncle, belike th'art either a cuckold or a lemon drop!" 
"And for why, fool?" 
"Easily said. A cuckold has horns not his own on his head, but a lemon
drop gets sticky and hairy if you drop it half-sucked on the carpet." 
"Why then, be off with you fool, and get yourself a better haircut."
"Aye, aye, but there'll be a quitch of bacon in my grommet betimes."

etc.

Sorry to hear I won't be going to Australia.

i did get one invitation from a for-profit con, but the impression I
got was that I was expected to sign for 12 hours a day. And I can do
that without flying to Australia. Or, more to the point, I don't have
to do it. Which is much more fun.
  

    
I just printed out the first draft of the novel. One and a halfth
spaced, it's 538 pages.

There is a great deal of corsetry, maquillage, cosmetic surgery and
filing off the rough edges still to do. Not to mention making sure that
all the chapters have the right quotes at the top of them. And I
suspect that after the book has gone to its editors in the US and the
UK, there will be some rewrites and expansion of some bits in chapters
17, and possibly something between chapters 17 and 18...

But I can get a haircut now.

About time.
  

    

Congratulations!

Meanwhile, the library informs me that my requested Sandmans (?Sandmen?)  
have managed to complete the crawl over the bridge and are now awaiting
me...
  

    
Isn't Mike in the attic?

Congrats on the finished draft!
  

    
Congrats on finishing the book...
  

    
Or should I say..congrats on finding the ending and have fun with the
retouching..
  

    
Yay, yay, YAY, Neil!
  

    
Well, Mike's bedroom is attic floor level. But he's not *in* the
attic. He's off the attic.

So far one person's read it through -- Mary, my wife -- and she liked
it very much. She felt that the endings work.
  

    
Email from reg:

Congratulations Neil. I'm sure that it's a great load off your mind both
figuratively and literally. Any thoughts on how many words you are going
to get cut off your hair? Should we expect to see a new look? Or a
return to the classical mullet?

I don't blame you for turning down conventions like that. No-one really
enjoys them except the folk making the money and I'd prefer that you not
come out here at all than come out here and have a wretched time.

Re:Shakespeare's clowns, my more serious suggestion would be that I
think humour is a temporal thing in the same way that it is a cultural
thing.

It is rare to find any classical "comic masterpiece" which comes across
today as thigh-slappingly funny in the way it was viewed in its own
period. Most of the humour in "Gulliver's Travels" would probably be
considered gross by even the Farrelly brothers today, and most of the
humour in "Don Quixote" would make Japanese gameshow viewers
uncomfortable.

I think it is the same thing with Charlie Chaplin movies, which
apparently had 'em rolling in the aisles when they were first shown, but
now seem little more than whimsical, sentimental and occasionally rather
misanthropic curiosities.

I would also make a special case amongst Shakespeare's clowns for Lear's
fool who, whilst obviously the inspiration for your little pastiche,
manages to rise above being just an amusement for the groundlings, to
become a truly poignant figure in his own right.

Oh, alright, he's still not funny.

Reg
  

    
From Jouni:

Yesss...

Onneksi olkoon! Congratulations on finishing the book!

Jouni
  

    
Email from Scott Conner:

Greetings and Salutations.

  First of all, congratulations on finishing the draft.  Really looking
forward to the book.

  Second, I too would have really liked to have had Edward Gorey
illustrations in Coraline.  Which leads me to ask:  What other
collaborators (in any medium you work in) would you like to work with that
you haven't been able to thus far?

  I fully intend on picking up a copy of your collaboration with Harlan
Ellison as soon as they take it out of the box, or preferably sooner.

  And good luck with the pumpkin(s).  Is a pumpkin large enough for Maddie
to fit in the possible genesis of a story somwhere in the future?

  Thanks for your time and accessiblity here on the forum.  'tis much
appreciated and very entertaining.
  

    
Reg -- No idea what the haircut will be. I was thinking of having it
practically shaved off, but it's getting cold now, so that seems silly.

And, no, that wasn't meant to be the Fool from Lear. That was meant to
be the Fool from As You Like It. Or the Fool from Twelfth Night...

And what I find so strange -- and the conversation with Jim Miller --
was that Shakespeare has no trouble writing humour: Bottom and his
bunch are hilarious. But that's character based comedy.

Jim's theory is that most of that stuff is Will Kemp's improvs. "Hey
Will, get up there and do the fool stuff."

My theory was much closer to yours. I found it strange that when I
tried to play the Goon Show tapes to my kids they simply blinked and
shrugged (although they loved Round the Horne). 

But then, why is Chaplin so icky, when Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd
and Laurel and Hardy are still so damn funny?

Scott -- dunno. Let's see...Brian Froud would be fun to work with.

I'll write a pumpkin story one day, I expect. But there are a lot of
stories that need to be written before that.
  

    
how odd -- I just wrote a post about finishing things and about
finishing this book (in first draft) and suchlike that seems to have
evaporated into the ether. And I even told Reg he was right on the King
Lear thing, really, although the fools are much of a muchness...

and I posted it, and it vanished. Odd.
  

    
Off the attic?  I see, this is your own strange personal definition of
"attic" that has to do with use and not location.

Don't shave your hair down!
  

    
Cassie writes from the Internet:

Neil, congrats on finishing the draft of the book!

And along the same lines as Scott's question, I have a more specific
question -- have you ever thought about working with Tony DiTerlizzi? 
He's worked with TSR, White Wolf, and Wizards of the Coast mostly, but
recently put out his own children's book, Jimmy Zangwow's
Out-of-This-World Moon Pie Adventure.

I'd love to see my favorite author and my favorite artist working
together.

Cassie
  

    
A Cassie--but not my Cassy.  (Though people are always misspelling her name
that way.)
  

    
Cassie, Is that the Tony who did those lovely pictures of Tori, years
ago? He gave me some.

...

Sendak. I'd love to write something for Maurice Sendak.

But mostly I've been spoiled over 12 years of comics. I got to work
with most of the greats, and most of the people I wanted to work with.

I did Mr Punch with Dave McKean. I got to write a novel with Terry
Pratchett. Lots of fun collaborative things happened.

I really don't have a burning desire to work with anyone else, living.
Which is not to say that I won't. (Hmm... Brian Froud....) But is to
say that it's less of a driving engine.

I'd like to work with actors more, though.
  

    
On the other hand, since no man is an island, I'd welcome
collaborative input on:

1) haircuts. Shall I just go and get the hair cut, or shall I do some
kind of something with it for the CBLDF? (I dunno exactly what. Maybe
someone could stuff a cushion with it. Or something.)

2) cats. Anyone in the Minneapolis area want a soppy, friendly,
pretty, neutered coffee-and-caramel-coloured tom cat? Too many cat
dominance issues going on between him and the house's other male cat.
He answers to the name of Lucy-The-Boy-Cat but would probably be very
relieved to be called something else.
  

    
Is this another cat that Maddy named?

You could get the hair cut and save it for later donation of some sort.

If it was six inches or more of hair, you could donate it to a good
organization that makes human-hair wigs for kids having chemo, but it surely
can't be that long.
  

    
Martha -- spot on. A Maddy-named cat. Not quite as brilliant a name as
Beanflower, but still, a fine name.

I'm sure it's longer than 6 inches in the back, but not on top.
  

    
Emailed by Scott Conner:


Neil, would it be tasteless to suggest that the leftover hair be marketed
as the Gaiman trichinobezoar collectible?  ; )
  

    
If I had a place to call my own, I'd be the first to raise my hand. 
I'll gladly check around with my cat-able friends.  

About the hair, I think that with a little lamination, they could make
great bookmarks.  They do it all the time with dead flowers...  You
could embellish it with an excerpt or something equally as fun...I'd
get one.  :)  I also see beautiful paperweights...but I don't think
I've ever met anyone who actually used a paperweight.  Or maybe I just
have a little affixation with clear plastic...

RenFest was fun, and I tried very hard to ignore the fact that Neil
Gaiman was writing but a couple feet away from us druing that last
Bedlam show.  So, were you working on American Gods, then?  I'd like to
read it and joyfully exclaim, 'Spee! I saw that part happening!'.

Also, I was asked to post this link:
http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=452875625 
Premium tickets for the LA Guardian Angel Tour, and right now they're
at well below ticketmaster prices. So go bid!  :)

And Jouni - Here's a link for a little more info on Murder Mysteries:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/george.walker/gaiman.htm  
  

    
Scott -- not really. But the big question is whose stomach it'll be
cut out of.

Sarah -- I thought of you, and of Shira, as locals who might need an
affable long-haired cat. And then I thought, well, probably you aren't
good candidates, and Shira's parents would probably never let her read
anything else I ever wrote if I dumped a cat on her....  but I'm sure
there'll be someone around.

(Well, maybe. "I'm not auctioning *him* for the CBLDF," I said to my
assistant.)

The bit that I was writing was the scene in chapter 17, where Easter
and the madman go to the ash tree south of Blacksburg.
  

    
It was the "nuncle" that gave it away.

I suspect Jim is right to some extent. (I'm sure he'll be very
relieved about that.)It's easy to forget that Shakespeare was writing
for a regular company and had to give them all the most suitable
material. To say nothing of the fact that the folio editions are by no
means an exact representation of what was originally written.

I admit that my theory has some great gaping holes in it. Some things
remain eternally funny. As anyone who saw the footage of Bill Gates in
Paris earlier in the year will attest, the pie in the face gag still
works.

Actually W.S. Gilbert was the exception that sprung to my mind.
Admittedly, most modern G&S productions take liberties with the script,
but the originals still stand up quite well.

Anyway, you are quite right. Shakespeare's clowns are not really funny
to a modern audience.

On the hair question, if you are not desperate to denude your head as
soon as possible, how about a "Cut Neil Gaiman's Hair" auction for the
CBLDF? You might need to set some pretty firm limits on how much you
want removed, but who knows how many closet hairdressers there are out
there just waiting for such an opportunity.

And yes, I felt so guilty about these good inkwell people having to
post so many comments from me, I went and got myself an account.

Reg
  

    
I think most fannish households in Minneapolis have reached cat capacity,
but I'll ask a few folks at the Minn-stf meeting/party this weekend.

(Actually, most households I know have added more cats than they thought
they should have, go figure, because of cats they couldn't resist).

Maybe Elise has some ideas?
 
I can't have more than two cats in my apartment (and I'm reluctant to
tempt fate anyway as these two male cats get along great).