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Neil Gaiman's Journal

Neil Gaiman's Journal: started February 2001 when nobody knew what the word Blog meant. Talking about writing, comics, books, films, bees, demonic tomatoes, cats, travel and a dog ever since.

The awful truthJanuary 6

I am easily made happy. Today's mail brought a letter from AudioFile Magazine, with copies of the magazine along with Certificates saying that The Graveyard Book audio had won an Earphones award, and another certificate which said nice things about my reading aloud skills (Here's the full list of their Best Voices of 2008.)

I think, more than anything I do, I get concerned about the audiobooks, and made happy when they (and I) get recognised. They're hard work; I'm very aware that I'm not a professional reader-of-books-aloud; and, most of all,  they're personal. If you don't like a book I've written I won't take it personally: I'm not the story, after all. But if you don't like a recording of me reading something... well, it was me sitting in that studio for three days reading aloud to someone in another room, and yes, it's personal.

So, yes. Big happies all around.
...

Several ones like this in today...

Kevin Murphy (Mystery Science Theater 3000's Tom Servo, and now of Rifftrax fame) wrote today that you are secretly Leonard Cohen. Are you? Photographic evidence points to yes: http://blog.rifftrax.com/2009/01/06/okay-now-what-the-hell/

Or to

Mysteries and evil buttonsJanuary 4

I should be writing and not blogging, so I will put up one panel of pencilled Andy Kubert art from the first part of the Batman two parter I'm doing, and hope nobody tells me to put it down again...

Dear Mr Gaiman
The black Coraline keys around, is it true that if you have one you can participate in a scavenger hunt? or are they just something cool you can collect?

I don't know. I'll ask. I suspect the "scavenger hunt" thing may have been made up by someone selling them on eBay, though, as no-one has mentioned it to me. The impression I get is that they are simply mysterious keys that sometimes appear on walls. Yup, I checked. The keys are just keys.  There will be Coraline Nike dunks, winnable through the website, though, and they will look like this, with black buttons and stitching and such...

Actually I didn't shoot a man in Reno just to watch him die, but he could tell I was extremely crossJanuary 4

Someone sent me a link this morning to an eBay auction that claimed to be of the contents of a Coraline Box. And as far as I can tell right now, it's a fake thing (still waiting to hear back from the studio), in that it's not a costume from the film and it's very obviously a home-made doll. How odd.

Too many FAQ line questions stacking up: I'm getting close to the point where I'll do a massive answering of stuff, I think. You're more likely to get a question answered if it's actually a question, and if it's short, and if it's answerable, and if I feel like answering it.

Several people misread the last post, and assumed that I was saying that Paterson Joseph was the Doctor and I was somehow disappointed. No, I was saying that Matt Smith is the next Doctor and that Rich Johnston had somehow got it wrong.

The new, revamped WEIRD TALES is doing a bunch of stuff about me and Sandman on their website (and they have an interview in the next issue of the magazine). There's a nice description of what it was like backstage at The Graveyard Book reading in Seattle at http://weirdtales.net/wordpress/2009/01/02/neil-gaiman-an-appreciation/.

And finally, if you go to Amanda Palmer's latest Blog entry

For those of you who missed it...January 3

As many of you learned from Rich Johnston's Lying In The Gutters, Paterson Joseph is definitely going to be the new Doctor Who. It even got a green light. But alas,  for once, in an affront to decency and sense, Rich is less reliable than the Daily Mail.

Admittedly the Mail printed their story after the BBC had announced the new Doctor.  

I'm a teeny bit disappointed about Paterson Joseph. But still, now it means if I ever wrote a story where the Marquis de Carabas met the Doctor... no. That way lies madness.

Matt looks very at home in front of the TARDIS, though. And I trust Steven Moffat's judgment completely. So that's one less thing in the world to worry about.

Rumour control?January 2

My opinion of IO9 just lurched down. This morning brought lots of mail from people asking about the truth of,
http://io9.com/5122012/a-new-side-of-sawyer-doctor-whos-returning-monsters-and-gi-joes-troopers

Rumor patrol: Word has it a designer has done "extensive work" on seeing how CG versions of the Martian Ice Warriors would look — but it's not for any particular episode, necessarily, just so the show's producers can see what the Warriors would look like, for future reference. Or possibly, they're showing up soon. In related news, Neil Gaiman has denied his season five episode ("Faces In The Dust") will feature the Ice Warriors. Also, Mark Gatiss has an Ice Warrior story called "Cold" in the Doctor Who Storybook 2009 (and past storybooks have yielded stories that later became episodes, including "Blink.")

So no, it's just lies.

I haven't denied that my Doctor Who episode "Faces in the Dust" will have Ice Warriors in it, because I'm not writing a Doctor Who episode called "Faces in the Dust" (which is a pretty rubbish title, who makes this stuff up?) and I've been having much too much fun not denying anything about Doctor Who, other than admitting to having enjoyed some nice dinners with Mr Moffat, as chronicled on this blog. (If I'd denied it, I would have denied it her