honey and sting

Went to the Neil Gaiman book-signing in San Diego yesterday. Neil was just incredibly nice, along with witty and touching. The most telling thing, to me, was his statement of intention about his latest book, Anansi Boys. He said (well, after he said he wanted to write a funny book to show he could be funny because, after American Gods, so many people started to assume that Neil is a "serious" author and that when he and Terry Pratchett had collaborated on Good Omens, Neil had written a "serious book" and Terry had come along after and sprinked jokes in it)-- *pause to breathe* -- he said, his intention in writing Anansi Boys was to "increase the sum total of happiness in the world." And that he was going to begin it with the dedication. "This book," he said, "is for you. Personally. And you can tell all your friends that it was dedicated to you." Because, he said, he wanted each person to be happier for having read this book, and what is nicer than to begin it knowing it was written for you, personally? So when each person came up to get their book signed, he wrote their name at the beginning of the dedication, which says "this book is dedicated to you", and underlined the "you." Despite a certain element of... contrivance about it all, it really was quite unexpectedly touching.

I thought about how both American Gods and Anansi Boys, while very different books, are about sons of gods. And how the "job" of gods is to give blessings. And how Neil, having become a "god" in the writing world -- or at least having acquired a kind of aura by virtue of his talent, clarity of voice, and willingness to make his intentions matter, had blessed us. It was really quite special and inspiring, more so because of his quite matter of fact, "nothing special" kindness and respect for everyone there.

So, he read a bit from the book, then took a few questions. Someone asked him what his work ethic was when writing -- he said, when starting a novel, he goes on retreat to Tori Amos' Irish house. And does it again near the end. Otherwise, he does 4 hours a day writing, from around 1-5.

Someone asked if there were any plans to collaborate with Terry Pratchett.
He said, "When we wrote Good Omens we were young and had a lot of time" -- he had learned, of time, money, and work, you can have 2 out of 3 at a time. And how they are both so busy now, because before, that was before he was "Neil Gaiman" and Pratchett was "Terry Pratchett" and now it would take a squad of men in thin watches and exquisitely tailored suits months to work out the arrangements... but... that said, the 2 of them had sat next to each other at a panel recently, and had floated some ideas, sooooooo ...the idea of the possibility of the notional consideration of the... (he went on like this for at least 2 minutes worth) of doing another book the Good Omens worls is not fantastically far from their minds.

Someone asked how he feels about comic book characters he developed being written by other authors now. He said that it depends -- in some cases, he's proud of where his creations have gone, where others have taken them. In others, they are written so differently from "his" character that he just doesn't even consider it the same character, just someone else with the same name who happens to be drawn similarly.

And then it was time for the signing, and he signed my friend's copy of The Wolves in the Walls for her 6-year-old with a cool silver pen on the black paper, and made a drawing of a wolf head as well. All in all, a very satisfying event.

ETA: I remembered one more question and answer -- someone asked something about the process of making films from his written works. He talked about how little control authors have -- how he is supposedly executive producer on something now, but they aren't even sending him script revisions. How people had blamed Ursulla Leguin for the train wreck that was Sci Fi Channel's "interpretation" of the Earthsea books, because "she took the money", but, he said, that's not how it works: You sell it to one group of people who promise to be faithful to your story, who then lose funding or their company is bought out and 3 business transactions later, the rights are owned by someone new who has totally altered your vision, and there is nothing you can do about it. He said, even if you are the person writing the script based on your story or novel, it can go wrong. You write the script, and, just then, The Matrix is big, so the producers say, "that's great, but can you make it more like The Matrix?" So you rewrite it and you come back and they read it and say, "it's just like the Matrix, isn't it? Can you make it a bit less like the Matrix? What's new this week we should make it be like?" And so on. So, on his next film project, he's actually producing it himself. *s*