Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
Quick note 'cause I'm borrowing a friend's computer...

Daniel - Nothing I can think of to say seems enough. Most sincere and
humble condolences for your brotber. 

Rocky - I still say leaf piles are fun. Leaf *mountains* are another
story.

Len - What a great opportunity! Best of luck. When I was in school,
the best I got was a brief occasional solo in our show choir concerts
(and I didn't pass out once!)

Gotta go. Need food!!!!

-squeaks, who is about to watch the transfer of a mama rat and babies
from one cage to a larger one... this should be funny.
  

    
Len - Desperation?

Mimi-ko - pictures would be fabulous.

Lioness - If your out there, how is the kidney holding?

Neil - I think having you own website would be lovely.  The more
websites that actually have interesting people with things worth
reading makes the net a richer place to visit, and you definitely fit
into that category.  
  

    
Agreed.  Having an official-type website will rock; I'm glad you're
finally considering doing one! I just hope you aren't flooded with
requests from students demanding that you write their English papers
for them.

On the odd chance its of interest here, they ran a neat interview with
Ray Bradbury in the local paper today.  
http://www.newsday.com/coverage/current/fanfare/tuesday/nd420.htm
  

    
Email from Daniel Loft:

Thanks all for the kind words.

Daniel
  

    
Len, good luck with The Dream. I've always wanted to direct one. (That
and Farquar's The Beaux' Stratagem.)

Mimi -- Well, I'm trying to choose a picture that isn't looming from
the fog. (Many of the best ones actually look as if my head is on
fire.) I'd like to go for something a little less forbidding. I don't
know that I'm actually up to grinning in a photo yet.

(I haven't been to Dreamhaven in a couple of weeks. I'll get Lorraine
to call by tomorrow, if I remember. She's wrapping up the new Flash
Girls CD at present.)

Daniel -- that's awful, and horrible, and you (and your family) have
my best wishes.

I think that if you're going to display the body, it's better that it
be made to look okay, I suppose. And I think you did the right thing.
But I do think it's fundamentally cultural. (And I know I come from a
tradition -- Jewish -- in which corpses are fundamentally taboo.)

Mary -- what a great set of traditions.

Rocky -- I don't know why I never show teeth in photos. Oscar Wilde
didn't do it because he had rotten teeth, we are told. But my teeth are
okay. It's just habit, I guess.

Jade -- I'll take that as another vote for a goofy photo, then.

Amanda -- well, I hope I can make it work. I can finally find
something to do with all the introductions to other people's books and
comics and shopping lists I've done over the years, for example.

Randi -- Well, I think even an official website will not offer an easy
"e-mail Neil" option. (The best bet is still for people to send stuff
to me at Dreamhaven. If they are patient.) (As I've just finished
replying to a box of letters dating back to January....)
  

    
By the way, Amanda. One of the few websites I actually do check out is
http://www.cybereditions.com/aldaily/

Arts and Letters Daily. A very good place.
  

    
Incidentally, am currently doing the second draft of American Gods.
Half of what I'm doing is untangling, tidying, trimming, joining --
what Terry Pratchett wisely named 'corsetry'. And the other half is
writing bits I should have written the first time around. Some of which
are really rather odd. 

The strangest thing is sitting and writing scenes that are many
chapters apart.

I got to write a very odd scene in the Egyptian Underworld.

And I have a huge scene -- half a chapter or so, -- still to write.
It's the Big Climactic Scene, which I avoided writing in the first
draft. And people grumbled, and I felt that they were more or less
right -- I was just being perverse. So I'll write it.

And then do a once-over of the text to clean up any ragged bits, and
then I will be done.
  

    
Randi -- nice Bradbury article. Thanks.

I love the idea of a whole novel based, I assume, on his Homecoming
short story (which is my favorite Bradbury story, against stiff
competition). I suppose because, when I read that story I identified
with the protagonist more than I've ever identified with anybody. I
never *believed* any of his other young male protagonists -- I was ten
or eleven when I read Dandelion Wine, for example, and I thought it was
fundamentally dodgy. 
  

    
I think I've come to love Ray Bradbury less as time has passed--
especially after I asked him for permission to adapt one of his stories
into an opera, and he said it wouldn't work.  What does he know?

BUT-- I strongly identify with the relationship between Will and Jim
in Something Wicked This Way Comes-- I think their friendship is one of
the most realistic depictions of relationships between boys at that ge
that I've ever seen. 
  

    
Neil--What's The Beaux' Stratagem about?
  

    
Daniel -- sympathies and best wishes during this difficult time.
 
Neil -- my offer still stands to talk webstuff any time.  Sometime 
when we each have more than 5 minutes to spare!  Lorraine should
have my contact info (and if not, it's easy enough for me to zap it to her
again).  Which reminds me I probably owe her a letter re things Flash
Girlian.  
  

    
Just as I was starting to despair...someone directs me to another sink
hole for my time. lol. Great site.
  

    
Neil - So when is the projected release date for Gods?
  

    
Amanda -- July 2001, in the UK and the US. Which means it'll be on
sale in June.

Writing today. And trying to catch up on e-mail. (I'm proudly caught
up to Oct 31st now. More or less.)
  

    
Len -- the Beaux Stratagem is a Farquhar comedy, with innkeepers,
robbers, beaux, disguises, lovely women, drunks, etc.  It's a
fascinating intersection of styles of comedy.
  

    
Took maddy to the Children's Theatre production of The Lion, The Witch
and the Wardrobe this evening.

The Minneapolis Children's Theatre is a peculiar theatre -- the most
amazing production values, but the actual productions tend toward the
dreary. This was exciting -- it was (by special dispensation) the Royal
Shakespeare Company production of The Lion, the Witch and the
Wardrobe. Amazing production values, wonderful costumes, beautiful
music...

... and Maddy loved it.

On the minus side, it had some appalling performances. The young actor
playing Edmund was uniformly the worst actor I can remember seeing on
a professional stage: unintelligible delivery, art-of-coarse-acting 
performance that mostly consisted of mugging and waving his arms
around; the White Witch (who was a competent actress) played it with a
transylvanian accent and bad clown make-up, hamming it up like a baddy
in the final episode of a Dr Who storyline. Nothing was allowed to be
scary or even creepy.

But I had a nice meeting with the lady who wants to do The Day I
Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish as a stage musical.
  

    
But it's so creepy.  Turkish Delight, I can never look at Turkish Delight
without shuddering.  Oh well.
  

    
I can never *taste* turkish delight without shuddering.  I never
understood how Edmund could get sucked in by that stuff.  (On the other
hand, the hot drink she poured him seemed mighty appealing.)

Neil--"Two Goldfish" as a musical...  I had thought about that the
year it came out, but had a lot of questions about how to vary the
action onstage, since a lot of the pleasure and humor of the story lies
in the repeating pattern.  I can see "Wolves in the Walls" working
brilliantly as a musical, though.  

Are you at any liberty to talk about her approach to the piece?

btw-- Pinkwater people-- has anyone out there read his comic strip,
"Norb?"
  

    
I just saw the "Happiness Patrol" episode of Doctor Who, last week,
with its hammy dog-women in clown costumes who shoot people in
shopping malls.
  

    
Neil - Egyptian Underworld = good! (she types, thinking of the Bast
tat on her leg... )

Ugh, Turkish delight... 

On a completely unrelated note, my mouse (Fate, a.k.a. "$queak$")) is
1 year old today. Anyone who realizes how many times she's been to the
vet in that year will realize that this is a truly impressive
accomplishment for her. Not that any of you are expected to care. I'm
just very happy about it.

-squeaks, who really wants to see The Nutcracker again
  

    
What *is* Turkish Delight, exactly? I've read all of the Narnia books
many a time (in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd grade, my teacher even read them to
us), and have of Turkish Delight out of that, but I have no idea what
it is.

I haven't been to the Children's Theater for ages. I believe the last
time I was there was when they were doing a play about Langston Hughes
- must have been in 5th grade, or so. First time I ever heard the word
'streetwalker,' I think. [giggle]

I'm going to the City Children's Nutcracker tonight. Have any of the
MN area people ever been to a performance? It's great. My friend Hali
is in it. The way they do it is just really neat. The most advanced
orchestra from the organization I play in (Greater Twin Cities Youth
Symphonies) used to accompany, but they don't anymore, for some reason.

Ooh. In case anyone was wondering, Ms. Sarah Rudek's comic script is
fabulous, and when drawn and published will be the prettiest thing you
ever saw. :)

-shira
  

    
When I was a boy growing up in England they had Fry's Turkish Delight,
an unpleasant, chocolate covered pink jelly nobody ever wanted to eat
twice.

Since then I have discovered that there really IS good and very good
Turkish delight in the world: a transparent, hard-jellyish candy
flavoured with rose-water or mint or somesuch, often with ground nuts
in it, sliced into large cubes. I've had it a handful of times,
normally in the kinds of restaurants where you eat with your fingers
and watch the belly dancer walk silver dollars across her midriff.

I've also made the mistake of buying stuff that looked, from the
packaging, like that sort of Turkish delight, but was just sugary and
faintly icky.

Len -- not yet, no. And I bought the NORB collection. Good stuff.
  

    
I just wouldn't trust Turkish delight.  I've read the Narnia books.
  

    
Maddy has announced she desperately wants to go back and see LION, THE
WITCH AND THE WARDROBE again. It's over 2 hours, and she's six, and
we've had earnest arguments about things she liked and I didn't (and
things we both did).

Lucy-the-boy-cat has gone to live with the Stemples in minneapolis and
is settling in very well. All he needed was a home with no other cats
to visit paradise.
  

    
Michelle -- please wish Fate/Squeaks Happy Birthday from me. I believe
this is roughly 30 years old in Mouse years...