Sunday, February 17, 2008

string them up by their beautiful hair

Today I've been playing Amanda Palmer's song Oasis and the Bonzo Dogs' new song Beautiful People, more or less over and over, like some kind of weird A and B side. (That's a reference for the very old.)


I was wondering where I might be able to find a copy of the "Snow Glass Apples" which appeared on's "Seeing Eye Theatre" as SET has been removed from the scifi website.



Interesting... and a bit mysterious. I figured I'd be able to point you to lots of places that had it up, as I did the last time someone asked. But no. It's vanished from the site, it's vanished from iTunes, it's vanished from, and even the stuff you used to be able to listen to here on this site has vanished as well.

The Audie-award winning CD of Two Plays For Voices (which contains Bebe Neuwirth starring in Snow Glass Apples, Brian Dennehy starring in Murder Mysteries) is still available for as long as it stays in print (here's the Amazon link) (here's the DreamHaven link). Right now that's the only way to legitimately listen to it.

(Look, Dreamhaven have Mirrormask toys on sale.)

I'm not quite sure who the rights owner is for the online versions of Snow Glass Apples or Murder Mysteries, to be honest. Probably the SciFi channel. And if they're no longer hosting the marvellous Seeing Ear Theatre material they did I wish they'd put it up somewhere like Last FM, or at Audible, so that people could hear it...

(In a box in my basement are a hundred or so cassette copies of Two Plays for Voices that Harpers remaindered and that I bought thinking they were CDs.)

Greetings Neil,

I noticed that Amazon has put up a page for "Odd and the Frost Giants":

I just wanted to make sure that this wasn't a mistake before I cancel my order from Amazon UK.



According to Harper Collins, it's a mistake on Amazon's part. It won't be coming out in the US until at least 2009.

Back in 1993 I got a book called The Essential Dracula: The Definitive Annotated Edition, with annotations by Leonard Wolf. Are you familiar with this book? How is the book that you introduced different?



This one is better. It's been annotated by Les Klinger, who did the amazing Annotated Sherlock Holmes collections a few years back. I've read it, and have seen a few designed pages, and it's a remarkable piece of work.


Oh, and the "nothing rhymes with Neil Gaiman" thing. Alan Moore said that. I didn't.

But those of you who are writing in to point out that "simon" or "rhymin'" or "hymen" rhyme with Gaiman are simply wrong. Honest.

Among the ones that came in and did rhyme (and there have been about a dozen so far) this one, by Anna Lawrence, stood out...

In re 'rhymes':

There was a young author named Gaiman
Whose books were beloved of the layman
But the story turned horrider
On a trip down to Florida
When his leg was bit off by a cayman.

... I'm sorry about that, but it had to be done.

Not a problem. If we gave no-prizes, you could have one. Would you like a cassette of Two Plays for Voices? (Anna only omitted "stamen" and "daemon", two other words popular with today's poetic correspondents.)


I wrote the end of Chapter 8 today. Then I went back and started writing a couple of scenes from Chapter 7 I skipped while I was writing it, so the book isn't quite finished. But it sort of almost is.

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