Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
And the best Fortean Timeses are the old, black and white, little
'zines. They're all collected and available, but they actually
sometimes reproduce that weird Fortean feeling.

I remember once spending a week in the British Museum researching
Kaspar Hauser, and learning that Fort had missed some wonderful Fortean
stuff from the contemporary accounts, and that most subsequent
researchers tended to dismiss it as too weird. This was almost 20 years
ago. I wonder if I'll ever tell the story -- or if I could ever find
the refernce books I found back then once again.
  

    
Patrick told me this afternoon that Mike Ford was told quick come in and get
your kidney.  Hope it's a good one!
  

    
Martha?  How should I be reading the 'your' in that post?
  

    
Michelle -  good luck getting home.  The biog at the beginning of the
collected Dover Fort should be in your mailbox soonish.

(Steve thought I said Charlie Ford, not Charles Fort. Oy.)

-randi
who will probably have Suzanne Vega playing in her head for a little
while now
  

    
Quick come in and get your (Mike Ford's) kidney.
  

    
I don't know who Mike Ford is, but I'm glad to hear about his new
kidney.

I DO know that when I was really young I had a kids book about
Fortean-type stuff, including a chapter about Kaspar Hauser. Poor li'l
bugger freaked me out then, and still gets to me.



  
  

    
        Will Eisner's new book, Minor Miracles, has a fun reworking of the
Kaspar Hauser legend.
  

    
Thanks, Martha.  Thought it refered to someone else and was floored. 
(pronoun trouble is not pretty).

Ditto to what Len said about Mike Ford - I'm sadly wordless with
what's appropriate to say, except best wishes.  

Neil - thanks for the answer about the CD.  Amusing how I can come up
with all these explanations, and the reality is nothing more
complicated than because that's the way it is.  

-randi 
  

    
Hasty post -- Mike Ford is a) my friend, and b) John M. Ford, who is
one of the best writers out there. Winner of the World Fantasy Award
for The Dragon Waiting. Author of The Scholars of Night. And other good
stuff.

He is also the only man to put me in a Star Trek novel.
  

    
He's also terrifyingly smart and very funny.
  

    
I adored _How Much for Just the Planet?_ to no end.  I'll look for Dragon
Waiting and The Scholars of the Night. What else has he written?

Hurrah for his new kidney!
  

    
Is Mike Ford Elise's SO?  In anycase, it's always good to find vital
organs when you need them.

And I am offtopically happy.  I read at the 7th Street Entry on
sunday; it was a tough, growly piece for a roomful of nearly all
strangers, and it went well.  And I've finished the first draft of my
first comics script, and I've got a superb artist who is as
enthusiastic as I am, if not more.  So we'll have to see what happens
after the rewrite.  Neil, what would you say is the average length of
the script of a smaller graphic novel...like say 'Violent Cases' or
'Mr. Punch'?  I know it depends on thw writer and how they choose to
write it, but can you toss out a ballpark figure...?  Also, thank you
for printing the Calliope script in Dream Country...  
  

    

Beams to Mike and his new kidney and to lioness...
  

    
yay!!! new kidney for Mike!  Yay!  (Did I mention "Yay!"?)
 
Mr. Ford's got a book due out any day now:   _The Last Hot
Time_.  Sample chapter at tor.com (it's safe to look now since the book is
out any day now).

Neil did a fine introduction for a great collection of Mike's
work:  _From the End of the Twentieth Century_ 
  

    
_The Last Hot Time_ is out.  A bulletin from Elise on
rec.arts.sf.fandom this morning reports that

"[...] one of Mike's first remarks when he was being
wheeled into his room for the first time was fannish:

"I am more than before," he observed, displaying a certain endearing
satisfaction in having just the right quote.

Note: since they have not yet done surgery to remove the peritoneal
dialysis catheter, he's still Borg, though, he says."
  

    
Neil - Glad to hear that your friend has a new kidney :P  

(It is a good reminder for all to seriously consider the possibility
of being a donor should misfortune arise). 
  

    
Sarah, yes, Mike belongs (more or less) to Elise. For whom I am as
delighted as I am for Mike.  I sent him flowers, and (following a hasty
call to Brits pub) a steak and kidney pie.

How long is the script for a short graphic novel? Well, the words for
Mr Punch amount to about 11,000 words. There wasn't much in the way of
panel descriptions in there as that's normally not how I worked with
Dave McKean. That was about a 92 page graphic novel.

When i wrote Sandman a 24 page script tended to be about 48 pages
long, and about 10,000 words, with about 2-3000 words of dialogue.

Does that help? Or answer your question?

...

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0915368730 is the Amazon page
for Mike's END OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY, by the way. I went and looked.
Out of curiosity, I checked my books in Bestselling order and
discovered that Amazon's bestselling software is bizarre: the (out of
print) Sandman Book of Dreams (rank 103,938) is number 1 on the list.
Neverwhere (6,230) in paperback is #73. Good Omens (3,283) is at #10.
It's quite strange.

I'm apparently also the author of WRESTLING, A PICTORIAL HISTORY,
although the description of it makes it sound a lot like the LIVE AT
THE ALADDIN video. 

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/0967056691.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg is the
cover. Lots of wrestling in it, I expect.
  

    
And http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967056691 is the strange
entry.
  

    
Sarah--congrats on your reading!  If I lived out there, I'd have been
present.

I'm off to Amazon to buy a Mike Ford book.
  

    
Neil--  Did you, um, do any wrestling at the Aladdin?
  

    
And this is just a gripe--

Why is it that whenever I hear about a really great fantasy novel
(from, say, the Year's Best Fantasy and Horror, or this conversation,)
that novel is inevitably out of print?

...Moonwise-- finally found it in a used bookstore in Vancouver...
don't know how I got Rats and Gargoyles...  And now I see that the
Dragon Waiting is out of print!  Bah!
  

    
The url in your message 1268 gives me "The file you requested could not be
found -- But don't let that stop you."

And yet I am stopped.
  

    
Type 0967056691 in the search box on the front page at Amazon; it
should bring it right up.

According to Amazon, co-author David Hofstede is known for such fine
works as "Hot Young Hollywood Trivia Challenge" and "The Dukes of
Hazzard: The Unofficial Companion".  

This wrestling paperback must have been an interesting project, indeed
:)  

-randi

happy holidays to those who are holidaying!  
  

    
The Dragon Waiting does show up used fairly regularly at places like
Dreamhaven.  And can be had for reasonable rates (sometimes) on eBay.
Ditto for the other out of print Mike Ford stuff.
 
And it's worth noting (yet again) that his Star Trek books are fabulous
('cuz not all Star Trek books are).  And work relatively well for
non-Trek fans.  And Neil has the best song in _How Much For Just The
Planet?_
  

    
Which one is Neil's?