posted by Neil Gaiman

I'm typing this in an airport lounge in Cleveland. It's a 'pay money or use a fancy credit card to get in' lounge, and I have a fancy credit card I never actually use in the back of my wallet, so hurrah, free internet and a cup of tea.

Last night was my first night away from the baby and Amanda since the birth. I spoke at an event at the University put on by the Cuyahoga County Public Library Foundation and Case Western Reserve University. I enjoyed talking, and managed not to get too wistful about missing the baby.

This morning felt very strange: I woke up in a kind of panic in a hotel bed, wondering how I had slept so long and why I hadn't changed the baby in the night and oh my god where was the baby oh right I'm in Cleveland.


This is what he looks like when he wakes up.

Now I'm flying back to them.

We've spent the last week in the sunshine seeing aged relatives and being on holiday. Real life (and chilly Autumn in the NorthEast) starts on Monday.

This is Anthony. We call him Ash for short. He wears a hat these days.
(I haven't received a full report on the Humble Bundle yet. Will post it here when I do.)

BUT THERE IS NEWS:

On November 9th, I'll be in Brooklyn, in conversation with Junot Diaz, talking about Sandman and such, and afterwards there will be the only Sandman Overture hardcover signing. (The book is officially released on November 10th.)

Tickets are free, but you must RSVP: https://neilgaiman.splashthat.com/

On Nov 7th I'll be in Conversation with Armistead Maupin at Bard. This is the fourth of the Bard talks I've been doing (Art Spiegelman, Audrey Niffenegger and Laurie Anderson were the first three).

Join a public conversation between Neil Gaiman, Bard���s Professor in the Arts, and Armistead Maupin, the best-selling writer and activist. Maupin is the author of 11 novels, including the nine-volume Tales of the City series, three of which were adapted for television with Olympia Dukakis and Laura Linney. He and Gaiman will discuss their heroes Charles Dickens and Christopher Isherwood, the craft of storytelling, and many other subjects. Part of a regular series of conversations at the Fisher Center hosted by Professor Gaiman.

If you are in the area, you should come. Tickets and info at  http://fishercenter.bard.edu/calendar/event.php?eid=129331.

Me and Armistead in San Francisco in the summer. 

There are a handful of other appearances I'll be doing before I retire from the appearances and talks thing at the end of November and go back to being a full time writer for a while:

On Friday Oct 23rd, I'll be at the West Virginia Book Festival, in Charleston, WV.
http://wvbookfestival.org/

On Friday the 13th of November I'll be in Texas. Will there be masked figures with machetes, or will it be a local chainsaw massacre? Probably neither, given that I'm talking in Austin, reading stories and answering questions and generally having too much fun on stage. It's a big Auditorium, and there are still a few hundred seats left, but they are going fast. http://thelongcenter.org/event/neil-gaiman/

On Saturday the 14th of November I'm doing the same thing, more or less, only with different words, in Long Beach, CA. (There are about 20 seats left, from what I can see: http://www.carpenterarts.org/2015-2016/neil-gaiman.html )

THE SLEEPER AND THE SPINDLE came out in the US and (much to my surprise) went in at #1 on the NYT YA bestseller list. It's now in its 3rd week on the list, and is a really pretty book.

Hayley Campbell's gorgeous book of everything you ever wanted to know about me is coming out in paperback soon, with a faux Victorian cover that doesn't have a picture of me on it. Too many people thought the hardback was just drawings of me or by me or something, so they gave it a title that clarifies what it is and why.

It's called The Art of Neil Gaiman: The Story of a Writer with Handwritten Notes, Drawings, Manuscripts, and Personal Photographs. (link.)





The UK gets a new hardback of GOOD OMENS, a beautiful new cover to THE OCEAN AT THE END OF THE LANE, and also a (physically) tiny edition of HOW THE MARQUIS GOT HIS COAT BACK, to give people in the UK who have owned the author's preferred edition of Neverwhere for a decade parity with the US, where they only just got it but it had the Marquis story in the back.

I got to see the new UK covers for OCEAN and MARQUIS on Twitter this morning and take joy in posting them here:



And on a final note, the last part of Sandman Overture came out, and people have read it, and the reviews are very kind. I've seen https://comicspectrum.wordpress.com/2015/10/12/sandman-overture-6-dcvertigo/ and http://www.ign.com/articles/2015/09/30/the-sandman-overture-6-review
http://www.comicosity.com/review-sandman-overture-6/ and http://www.comicbookresources.com/comic-review/the-sandman-overture-6-vertigo and when I read them I felt like people actually understood what JHW3 and I were trying to do, and that we'd actually pulled it off.

It's a strange feeling, revisiting a story and characters you created almost thirty years earlier, and trying to add layers, so that if someone rereads the original story they will see events and characters they thought they knew as well as they knew themselves, in a different light.

I made it back by sunset.






Labels:  austin, long beach, The Sleeper and the Spindle, how the marquis got his coat back, Sandman Overture, sunset, Baby, Hayley Campbell, Cleveland, Armistead Maupin