Wednesday, May 05, 2004

No distinguishing marks or features

Let's see...

if you go to the ALA store for the poster at they've now posted the small print down the side in readable format. Click on recommendations to read it.

Talking about which, Libraries beat Google (mostly) in a recent Guardian test...

THE WOLVES IN THE WALLS was just awarded the English Association's award as one of the four best Children's Illustrated Books 2003. According to their website: the awards are presented to the best children's picture books of the year. The winning books are chosen by the editorial board of the English Association's journal for primary teachers, English 4-11, from a shortlist of 12-18 books selected by a panel of teachers.

Which reminds me: the US Wolves in the Walls website is here: and has several posters and the "this computer guaranteed free of wolves" wallpaper.

While across the ocean (but still only a click away), Bloomsbury's website has the gorgeous Wolves in the Walls screensaver and ecards at I'd suggest giving it as Mother's Day present, except it probably isn't a very good one. Nor is Coraline, unless they start having Other Mother's Day.

Incidentally, you can see the new cover for THE DAY I SWAPPED MY DAD FOR TWO GOLDFISH at Bloomsbury's It comes out in August, in hardcover in the US (from harperchildrens) and the UK (from Bloomsbury). The US edition will come with a free CD of me reading the story on it, which I was sent to approve this afternoon, and it sounds pretty good, although I'm not sure about the music.

(And there are a bunch of odd questions and answers from me up at

Now that's not fair Mr Gaiman. You tempt us with morsels of 'Mirrormask' but so far we, the adoring public, have seen not a snippet. How about posting a frame or two online? Mr McKean wouldn't mind, would he?

I don't know. But I wouldn't do it without permission from him and from Henson's -- it'd be like me emailing him a few pages from a book in progress to find he'd put them up on his blog. (Not that he has one.)

I know there are plans to create a real -- currently it just takes you to a sort of bookmark page -- and to put some images and material there. The only trouble is, right now, all the people who would be doing it are busy trying to finish the film.

Mr. Gaiman,
Thank you for a wonderful journal and for all of your fabulous writing. Your comments about MirrorMask, describing the 8 minutes of footage, have got me very excited for its eventual release. To think, a Gaiman/McKean comic come to life! Which leads me to my question: what kind of release will MirrorMask receive? Will it go the festival circuit route, or will it have one nationwide release date? Thanks a lot.
Kelly Shaw, Milwaukee, WI

Current plans are for some film festivals, then a limited theatrical release, then, some months later, a DVD release. Personally, I'm hoping it gets a real theatrical release, but that will depend on what happens when the powers that be at Sony see the actual film, and possibly on what happens at the film festivals. It also depends when the film gets finished.

It's remarkable. I saw every take of this film that Dave shot, and I wrote the blasted thing, and I still never imagined it would be anything like what he's actually made. I want to be there for the cast and crew screening, when the actors find out what kind of film they were in.

I just checked out your author poster, and it scares me (the way clowns & ventriloquist dummies do). It's the part, combined with the goatee. I've always found facial hair vaguely menacing, and that paired with your unnaturally wrangled hair... just gives me the chills.
However, that's sort of a good thing. Maybe not what you were going for - but keep it in mind for the eventual horror hosting gig.

You'll be pleased to hear then that I think I'll have something more or less like that look, only without the someone-else's hair, for the Horror Host gig -- which will shoot Very Soon -- and then once that's done I'll start looking like something else instead.

Wrote another 2000 words of Anansi Boys today. I've started Chapter 6, and suddenly the book isn't funny at all. It's become sort of disquieting. And I think it's going to get quite scary, which seems to be against the rules for something that is, fundamentally, at least for the first half of the book, a farce. Oh well. I shall not worry. I shall just keep writing it and see what happens.

I've got a writing and research question for you, if you have a moment. I know that most novels take a lot of research for various things, some of which are probably unexpected. I'm starting work on a story that might get to novel length (hopefully), and it is going to require a lot of time hitting the books. My question to you is if you use a lot of researched things in a novel do you have to cite them or make a sort of Bibliography page for them? I don't remember if I've seen that before, and I would hate to get neck high in this thing and not know the name of a book I took a chunk of imformation out of ten chapters ago.

Thanks for helping a hopeful future writer.

While it's not a bad idea to keep notes on what you found where for yourself -- mostly because you may want to check something -- no-one's going to make you keep a bibliography or cite your sources for a novel. That's why they call it fiction...