Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Neil - hurry up and write your Charles Fort story already! As for the
gift for Mr. Ford... I get the pun, but steak & kidney pie = <insert
Jill Thompsons drawing of Delirium when she drank turkish coffee> for
me. ew. Still, glad he's getting new internals. :) re: wrestling...
don't know how to respond to that... 

Randi - Neato! Thank you! And thanks for the well wishes getting home.
Have so far only hit two major cities and have managed to hit them
both during rush hour... *sigh

-squeaks, borrowing a kinko's computer in El Paso because she's that
big a net junkie. Should be home tomorrow night tho'. Yay! My own bed!
  

    
A bit late, cos work is eating me up whole:

W:CL, my 2 cents: for owners of the CDs (and I am one), I think the
sticking point would not be the sequence of the release (so long as
there's a schedule and we know stuff is coming along) but getting a CD
for 13 minutes of new stuff (a point which people have already
mentioned).  Having said that, I think pricing also matters... if
they're released as single CDs, it might not pinch as much for people
who want the 13 minutes.  I remember thinking that W:CL was a bit
pricey, but it was 2 CDs, so, theoretically, if they're released each
on their own, then they'll be priced lower than W:CL was...

(Um, make sense? ^_^;) 

Other things:

*crosses fingers for Mike's kidney*

randi - Mayhem 2000 is just too wonderful. ^_- I love The Onion.

And a Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!

-- Mimi, the birthday Sag girl ^_-
  

    
Hey, Neil --

Just a quick note here, since things are still a bit hectic. Mike says thank
you for the steak and kidney pie. "I ate half of it," he said, and then
explained his tone of triumph by saying "It was *huge*."  Apparently he was
the envy of the other patients, as there were comments of "That smells
better than the regular dinner." The staff was definitely amused, too.

Oh. He says to tell you that he has three kidneys in 'im now, not counting
however many were in the pie. (They transplant the new one in, but leave the
old ones there.) And the new one is definitely working. And Mike walked to
the end of the hallway and back yesterday.

Anyhow, the pie (and the flowers, too!) made a big hit; thank you so much.

Shira and Sarah: I'll send you email about another try at tea, OK?

Elise,
tired and happy

(Oh! P.S. to Neil:  Mike's song "American Guy" -- minus the directions
verse, of course -- and my silly Gilbert & Sullivan Guy Fawkes songs 
will be published in Geri Sullivan's zine IDEA later this month....)

(and another P.S., to Gorey: my copy of Mike's book HMFJT PLANET is
hiding, but Neil's song is the one sung by the proprietor of the movie
palace, and is something lovely about ... Monochrome, perhaps?  And I
*really* like Ilen the Magian's curtain call in the book; Neil, does it
seem fitting? [Lioness is trying not to write spoilers, here.])
  

    
Steak and kidney pie!  Excellent.  Also excellent about the walking and the
urine production.
  

    
Streak -- I really liked Minor Miracles, particularly the first couple
of stories.

Randi (1258) -- I know what you mean.  & Thanks for the Onion
pointer... 

Len - 1271 -- I hope someone will bring Dragon Waiting back into
print. Meanwhile Bookfinder.com lists dozens of cheap copies (including
Half.com) so you shouldn't have a hard time getting one.

There aren't any Dragons in The Dragon Waiting, by the way.

Martha -- how odd. I clicked on it and it worked. (THey seem to have
fixed the Bestselling order thing now.)

Laurel -- the Mike Ford Star Trek books are indeed wonderful things.

Gorey -- Monochrome was my song in HOW MUCH...?

Michelle -- well, I was very surprised to learn about the wrestling as
well. Out of interest, where are you driving from and to?

Mimi -- point taken. What if I were to stick the 13 minute track on a
website -- either at Gaiman.net when I get it running, or at
AmericanGods.com if it's from there? So you'd be able to download or
listen to it.

I don't want to make people who already have WARNING go out and buy a
new (single) CD just for that. I just want to put as much as I can on
each CD... And yes, we'd price them as singles, rather than as a double
CD.

Elise -- hurrah. That's wonderful. And yes, absolutely. 
  

    
I'll throw this question out to all, since I my knowledge of
Thanksgiving is limited to TV soaps, what exactly do you do?  I know it
involves something with a turkey and recreating events..um...doesn't
it?
  

    
Pretty much the turkey.  With as many family members as can stand to be in a
room.  The turkey must have stuffing and there must be cranberry sauce.

Also, there's a lot of football on tv.

The only event recreated by anyone is last year's Thanksgiving, with the
turkey, the relatives, and the football on tv.  And the Macy's Thanksgiving
Parade is on television in the morning, floats and giant inflated cartoon
characters going down the streets of New York for some reason.
  

    
Thanks to everyone for your recommendations on books.  Now I just have
to wait for a month or two and it will be Christmas.  I tend to
celebrate holidays abroad based on when the presents get here.  :)

Neil -- thanks for the pointer to SciFi.com's readings archive!  There
was a terrible rainstorm here the day I got the message, and I think
this might have affected my Internet connection, but I listened to you
all the way through "Chivalry" despite your severe electronic stutter. 
I liked having your voice in this cold, empty house with the rain
ranting outside.  

I'll still be keeping my eyes open for the CDs, though.

I'm off to Kyoto in a week, so if anyone wants copies of fox shrine
pictures send me an e-mail and I'll send you one when I get the film
back.
  

    
(1281) Hide or run away and pray the relatives don't find me.
Seriously, I love them dearly, just not all at once... Usually I leave
town. (2 years ago was Hawaii, last year was Tennessee - thanks Neil! -
and, well, I'm still working on today... necessary nap?)

Mimi - forgot to ask, I met an Eric in New Orleans who used to date a
Mimi Ko who liked Neil stuff. Any chance it was you? (said something
about you going to a particular school, but all I can remember is that
I think it starts with a "W")

Neil - Good idea to release single cds. And if you could put up the 13
minutes online somewhere, that would be even better! Incidentally, I
was driving from New Orleans (left on Tuesday) to Oakland (arrived an
hour ago!) Beat my record of miles per day logged (Wednesday = 1125
miles). It's amazing how much homesickness can inspire one to stay
awake and drive dammit! 

Congrats to Mike for a working kidney... tho' I still don't know how
he could stomach the pie... :-P

-squeaks, who needs to go write Mike now, since it's the anniv of the
day we first met (Randi, you'll remember Bob Weir's friends from last
year?)
  

    
Fair enough.  Thanks Martha :P
  

    
Amanda -- I think there are secret thanksgiving rituals they perform.
It can't be *just* eating turkey and men gathering around the TV
drinking beer saying things like "Hell, call that a play?" while the
women sit around in the kitchen drinking cheap white wine saying things
like, "Well, all I'm saying is I may be eighty years old but I know
the difference between a hanging Chad and a Dimpled chad, and I think
that Mister Al Gore is just a sore loser".  But I've not seen anything
more than that yet.

Emily -- sorry about the electronic stutter. I think that there's a
couple of other readings up at the scifi web site.

Michelle -- that's quite a drive. 
  

    
Well, if you take my family's turkey-day tradition into consideration,
you'll have to add the obligatory "make fun of Michelle's hair"
remarks, followed by my grandmother threatening everyone if they don't
show up for X-mas morning at her house (we've tried to explain to her
that she's Jewish, but it's a rather pointless argument). Dessert was
nummy tho'. It had chocolate chips in it. Usually after dessert, we get
into book discussions. I think I msy hsve suckered a favourite aunt
into the 'cult o' Neil'.

Neil - The drive goes by much more quickly with lots of Red Bull, but
the cost is what little sanity I have left (and the $2 I had to shell
out for each can). Still beats flying, IMHO... 

Sorry so rambly. 

-squeaks (all I said was that next it would be blue again... i thought
Grandma rather *liked* the blue hair)
  

    
*quick reply*

Neil - I think it's a good idea to put the extra material online. Then
people who have WARNING can choose to either listen to it online or
pay for the whole CD. But I think it's the 'having a choice' that will
stave off the grumbling. (Personally? I think I'll probably get the CD
anyway. :P I prefer CDs cos of portability and sound quality.)

squeaks - Holy Cow. I *am* her. Or she's me. Gah. *takes a moment to
get over the shock* Btw, you got Eric's contact info? His old email
account has stopped working and mine has changed too.  *will talk about
this over email or something*

Emily - Lucky! You're going to Kyoto! ^_- I'm heading to Tokyo myself
next weekend... gotta catch up with a couple friends, and also catch a
concert with them!! (L'Arc~en~Ciel... at Tokyo Dome! Will bring
binoculars. ^_-)

-- Mimi, running off into Friday Night
  

    
The turkey is misunderstood.  Eating the flavorless, fibrous,
dried-out, trance-inducing flesh of the fowl is a ritual act of
atonement for how rotten the Pilgrims treated those early Friendly
Indians.
  

    
Mimi - "doormat-kun" <heehee!> check your inbox.

-squeaks, sauntering off into Friday night (no energy to run)
  

    
Michelle -- there are a lot of other good drinks in the same vein as
Red Bull. Some taste better. Aqua Libra was always my favorite.

Mimi -- right. There, well yours was the deciding vote.

maddy (my youngest daughter) has developed an enormous fondness for
Scooby Doo. Which means I keep watching bits of Scooby Doo, in sundry
incarnations, and keep thinking of a story about the Scooby gang, much
later. What an odd thing to think about.
  

    
Len - tee hee.  Apparently the secret to making sure the turkey isn't
terribly dried out is to use a kosher one.  We tried that this year,
but unfortunately the fat from the turkey got all over the oven bag and
caused the whole oven to catch on fire. Had to cut off the power to
the house.

Amanda - Don't listen to them. Martha is right. Thanksgiving is
nothing more or less than the getting together of extended family for
the length of a (usually) turkey dinner.  Which doesn't mean people
don't get themselves completely nuts trying to impress the relatives
trying to make the perfect pumpkin pie or creamed onions that could
come out of a Prarie Home Companion routine - they do, but that's their
own weirdness.

I've sat outside through a (very very cold) Macy*s Thanksgiving Day
Parade once. It was much more fun to watch them blow up the balloons by
Central Park the day before.

Michelle-who-is-home-in-one-piece(yay!):  Yep, I remember :)  My god,
there really are only 21 real people in there world, aren't there?

Neil - Out of curiousity, how much later are we talking?  
And what is gaiman.net going to consist of, once it's done?   You
haven't had to buy all the new domain names that were just approved to
keep the speculators out, have you?

-randi
who frequently thinks odd things about animated series
  

    
Lucy Anne - it's not that there are only 21 real people... it's just
that the world is shrinking is all. I'll just go blame it on tyg for
nearly being a nexus. 

Neil - Have never (to the best of my recollection) even *seen* Aqua
Libra... But then most of the people I spoke to in Texas and Lousisiana
had never heard of Red Bull (or Hansens, or Blue Ox, or...) either. If
I have the choice, it's all about Black Cherry flavoured Blue Ox - but
I've only ever seen it in the bay area. As for Scooby Doo; loved it
when I was younger. Stopped loving it once I started hanging out with
pot-heads in high school (tho' being cast as Velma that Halloween
didn't help). 

Yipes! I'm running late for work! (yes, I still say 'yipes' because of
that show - but I don't say 'jinky') 

-squeaks (who is rambling because she drank too much Red Bull after
dinner. mmmmmm... sushi!)
  

    
Michelle -- a hasty websearch revealed that you can get Aqua Libra and
Purdeys in the US via mail order. It also revealed that both Aqua
Libra and Purdeys are obscenely overpriced if you order them online
from any of the places I found (they were charging roughly twice what
the occasional US grocery type place who has them charges).

Randi -- I'm unconvinced about kosher vs non kosher turkey. The last
time I enjoyed Turkey was back in the UK, and I'd drive down to the
nearest farm on Christmas Eve and pick up a turkey they'd killed and
plucked etc that morning from the farmer, and they were good. The place
only raised a couple of dozen turkeys a year, free range. And they
tasted of something, and weren't dry or anything.

And on the more relevant question...

Trever has neilgaiman.com and neil-gaiman.com, both of which, he says,
are mine for the asking. I've bought the related orgs and nets for
both of them, and gaiman.org and gaiman.net.  Gaiman.com is owned by
someone else. 

I like the idea of making Gaiman.net the home base, with the others
taking you to it. We'll see.

I'm talking to some people whose websites I like about doing mine,
with the plan being to make it self-supporting. (I expect you'll be
able to order stuff from it, with DreamHaven actually being the place
you're getting it from.) Although I also like the idea of being able to
clean out some of the fire hazard stuff in the basement.

Now I've actually, rather grudgingly, agreed that there probably
should be an official website, with stuff on it, I've also agreed to do
some cool stuff for the new novel.com, which Harper Collins are going
to be putting together. Probably something kind of like this, only more
of a journal. We'll see.
  

    
Oops above. Make that Trevor. 

And today is going to the viewing of the body of my wife's late uncle,
something which still strikes me as faintly ghoulish. (It's the jewish
upbringing, I suspect. You don't see bodies. You go and say hello to
the relatives sitting shiva, and you eat honey cake, and nobody
shaves.) But it's the right thing to do, so I do it.

And something much more trivial, but even more distasteful: pick the
author photo from the contact sheets from last week's photo session.

The photographer's ideal photo seems to be of me looming out of the
smoke in a sinister fashion like a latter day Jack the Ripper. My
family like all the ones in which I look goofy. ("Well, you look like
you in them.") I need to sit and puzzle over them trying to figure out
a) what kind of photo it  ought to be and b) which of those photos says
that best.
  

    
Amanda - Thanksgiving is a way for us to test first our math skills
and then our ingenuity.  A secret, complex mathematical formula is
handed down through each generation involving how many chairs will need
to be borrowed, how to maximise silverware use with the least amount
of mis-matched sets, and how many 18 pound turkeys to buy.  After much
thought and effort, the formula fails to work every single time.  There
is always more turkey left over afterwards than was bought in the
first place.  This is either a miracle like the loaves and the fishes,
or perhaps the relatives who hosted thanksgiving in past years simply
brought all of their leftovers to get rid of.  In any case, it is in
the days following thanksgiving where we must come up with as many new
and interesting recipes as possible.  (sort of like the zuchinni test) 
And that there is my two cents.

Jen.  (eating some really great turkey noodle soup and making her
first post as a member)
  

    
The only place I know to get Purdeys in NYC is a deli on 59th st & 1st
ave.  The problem is that just up the block is bar that serves
fantastic martinis. Purdeys... martini... the booze always wins.

I share the feeling that viewing the body is kind of ghoulish-- i
prefer honeycake.  The first time I went to a wake I forced myself to
look as a kind of a trial-of-manhood thing.  Now I think it's just
icky.

David Rosengarten of the TV Food Network suggests cutting the white
meat off the turkey when it's done, then finish cooking the dark meat. 
I want to host a t'giving at my place, if only to try this.  (I know I
could make turkey anytime, but t'giving gives it extra oomph.)

I love the idea of catching up with the Scoobies later in their lives.
 Except for Scrappy Doo, that is.

Neil-- I saw Miyazaki's film "Laputa" today.  Great stuff, but I kept
wishing for your words to magically appear.  Any plans in the future to
work with him again?
  

    
We Presbyterians didn't look at bodies, either.  If there was a casket, it
was closed.  Thankfully.  When I went to the wake of a Catholic friend's
father (I'd never met the man alive), it seemed to me you're not seeing the
body so much anyway as a lot of wax and cosmetics.  Still, whatever makes
people feel better.
  

    
Martha - Most funeral homes give you the option here, whatever the
religion.  Personally I have less trouble looking at the body than
watching the coffin sliding back behind the curtain or being covered in
dirt.  

Thanksgiving - Hmmm.  Sort of explains it, but to be honest it sounds
like a dress rehearsal for Christmas sans presents.  

Len -  Wow.  You mean turkey is *not* meant to taste like that? 

Scooby Doo – Wasn’t the same after they introduced Scrappy.  He was
just too annoying.  Never could look at Scooby and Shaggy the same way
once I grew up and realised that Scooby snacks were actually hash
cookies, and the only reason they saw ghosts everywhere was because
they were having a paranoid trip.  Don’t even get me started on the
Smurfs :P

'Energy' drinks - Red Eye Platinum has rather a kick. Try mixing with
alcohol. Seems the Guarana extends the effect of the alcohol (drunk
longer) and the alcohol does the same to the Guarana (awake longer). 
Great dance mix.  Don’t suggest more than one though.  I know an
ex-truckie that had three with scotch and couldn’t sleep for two days. 
He was not a small man.

With Christmas just around the corner what does everyone have planned?
 How is it normally celebrated in your part of the world?
  

    
Oh, and I meant to say 'Hi Jenny' nice to have you post with us :P