The Dreaming

There’s an oh so brief mention in the New York Times, as part of a larger article by Martin Arnold about popular authors writing for children.
To whit, “…HarperCollins will soon have children’s books by Clive Barker, the horrorist writer, and Neil Gaiman, the fantasy writer. The question is, if writers of adult books want to be inhabitants of the children’s book world, do the writers, of necessity, change prose styles? The answer is, they shouldn’t…”.

A very similar mention is made in Jennifer Brown & Jason Britton’s article from the May 20th Publishers Weekly, A Bountiful Crop for Kids:
Neil Gaiman is coming out with Coraline in July, with a 150,000-copy first printing; the audiobook, read by Gaiman, with music by the Gothic Archies, will be released from HarperChildren’s Audio two weeks before the book’s publication.

Also a brief mention in Martin Levin’s Shelf Life column for May 11th in the Globe and Mail.

From MJ Rose’s May 14th column from Wired:

Horrors redux: Paula Guran will re-launch her horror and dark literature site, DarkEcho Horror. It includes scores of professional book reviews, articles and interviews with authors such as of Clive Barker, Peter Straub, Neil Gaiman and Joyce Carol Oates.

Guran’s own award-winning e-mail newsletter, print magazine Cemetery Dance, and the PDF magazine The Spook will also be online at DarkEcho Horror.

Two Neil interviews are posted,Pretty Decent/ American Gods, originally in the July 2001 edition of PDF format magazine, The Spook, and We Tell the Lies That Tell The Truth/Stardust, originally published in HorrorOnline in 1999.

Also, the American Gods paperback is again #3 on the new Independent Bestseller list, and #5 on the Salon/Powells bestseller list. It’s also starting to show up in newsstand best seller racks, at least in NYC, which is a strange and neat thing.

Olson, Ray. “Adventures in the Dream Trade”, The Booklist; Chicago; Apr 15, 2002

Gaiman, Neil. Adventures in the Dream Trade. Apr.2002. 2002.286p. NESFA, P.O. Box 809, Framingham, MA 01701, $26 (1-886778– 37-X). 818.

YA/L: For fans, great readers’ advisory; for aspiring writers, inspiration.

The American Gods paperback debuts at #3 on the Independent Bestsellers list.

This should be the link to the next round of Locus bestsellers, which should collect the American Gods paperback rankings from most of the major bestseller lists. I am unsure as to when it will go live, but imagine it will be in the next few days

Publishers Weekly has posted a few BEA related articles mentioning Neil, including one on graphic novels, and one on children’s books; they also ran the following piece back on April 22:

Gaiman in 3-Book Morrow/Avon Deal
Author Neil Gaiman, who made a big success with his Sandman graphic novels and whose American Gods was a 2001 bestseller, has signed a three-book deal with executive editor Jennifer Hershey at Morrow/Avon, who had published his first work. She signed for two new novels and a book of short stories with agent Merilee Heifetz at Writers House. The North American deal includes audio. Gaiman is also the author of a children’s book, Coraline, due this summer, and is at work on several movie projects.

Speaking of BEA, I’m not finding advanced copies of Coraline yet in NYC, at least at the usual suspect. Hopefully that means they’re being read.

Neil mentioned it (and LucyAnne & I!) in his journal, but they’re so gorgeous I have to post the link to P. Craig Russell’s Murder Mysteries adapation preview.

Wow!

There’s an excerpt of the Neil interview from Sketch magazine online

Fox News ran a story on girl friendly comics, singling out the Sandman series.

Comicon’s Splash page includes a really well written, comics-oriented take on BookExpo America.

Bud Plant has a number of Neil related things on sale, including two Charles Vess prints from Stardust (The Power of Storm Hold, The Witch-Woman Cracked Her Whip), the Dream Hunters hardcover, the Incarnations figures, and the Sandman Companion hardcover.

There’s info on the special edition of Coraline in the May Previews (actually there’s a whole Neil section on the order form on p. 46, listing all the HarperCollins books)

According to the April issue of “Busted”, Neil is now on the board of directors of the CBLDF (apologies if that’s an older bit of news – somehow I ended up in their database as Randi Watson. If they have me confused with this person, I’ll be very bemused.)

And finally, William from NeilGaiman@yahoogroups.com posted the following info from an interview with Karen Berger on Newsarama:
Newsarama: Let us run a few names by you, ask you about what some of their future plans with Vertigo may be…Neil Gaiman – can you give us an update on his Endless book in the works and do you and he have any future plans together?

Berger: “The Sandman: Endless Nights – Neil’s new Sandman graphic novel is going to be huge for us. It’s Neil better than he’s ever been, joined by an astonishing international lineup of artists: Moebius on Destiny, Milo Manara on Desire, P. Craig Russell on Death, Bill Sienkiewicz on Delirium, Miguelanxo Prado on Dream, Liberatore on Destruction, and Barron Storey on Despair. Nothing definite to announce just yet on future stuff, but give us time…”

You can find the full interview here

You know you want it. I sure did.

The American Gods mass-market paperback is out. Even out here in Chilliwack, BC (Canada) I see it on store shelves — and not just bookstores! I keep fighting the urge to hand it to people who are browsing books and saying “You won’t be dissappointed.”

If you’ve avoided American Gods because of the high price of hardcovers, grab yourself the paperback now and start enjoying one of Neil’s best.

Bill Baker, comics journalist sends this note along:

I thought you and your readers might want to know that an extended interview with Neil about his writing and creative process will be hitting the stands next week in Sketch #14. In our 90 minute chat, Neil covered a great deal of territory including how, when and why he became interested in storytelling, how he develops a tale, what kind of influence a particular artist might have upon his process and the results, as well as what he gets from the act of creation. All of this and much, much more — including a look at his ashcans for the Sandman comic series and several pages of his long hand manuscripts for Stardust and the forthcoming Coraline — can be found in the issue.

Sketch #14 can be purchased at any comic shop, online via a wide variety of sources [Dreamhaven books has stocked up on this issue, I believe], or directly from the publisher at www.bluelinepro.com through the Sketch links there.