Hellnotes » Neil Gaiman

All Hallow’s Read

Dave — Sat, 30 Oct 2010 19:07:12 +0000

This is how it began … a thought that Neil Gaiman had during a flight …

I propose that, on Hallowe’en or during the week of Hallowe’en, we give each other scary books. Give children scary books they’ll like and can handle. Give adults scary books they’ll enjoy.

I propose that stories by authors like John Bellairs and Stephen King and Arthur Machen and Ramsey Campbell and M R James and Lisa Tuttle and Peter Straub and Daphne Du Maurier and Clive Barker and a hundred hundred others change hands — new books or old or second-hand, beloved books or unknown. Give someone a scary book for Hallowe’en. Make their flesh creep…

Give a scary book.

If you don’t know what kinds of books there are, or what would be appropriate for the person you’re giving a book to, talk to a bookseller. They love to help, most of them. (The ones that don’t tend not to be booksellers for long.) Talk to librarians. (Do not plan to give away their books though, unless they are having a library sale.)

Here’s what Stephen King had to say: “Science Fiction & Fantasy writer Neil Gaiman put a great idea up on Twitter a few days ago: ‘This year make Halloween All Hallow’s Read.’ Neil suggests giving someone you love a scary book on the 31st. I think it’s a great idea. It can be one of mine but it doesn’t have to be. Have a great Halloween!”

Here’s what Joe Hill had to say: “I’m going to adopt this as a Halloween habit and I hope you will too. It ain’t easy to start a new holiday tradition on short notice – we might have to take a couple years to build this one up – but I think it’s worth doing.”

Find out more about the kickoff of this new Halloween tradition: All Hallow’s Read

Best American Comics 2010

Dave — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:24:01 +0000

On October 7th, New York City fans of Neil Gaiman, Bryan Lee O’Malley, Gabrielle Bell, or just comic stories in general were treated to a discussion between the aforementioned creators and the editors of the recently released Best American Comics 2010 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) collection, illustrators Matt Madden and Jessica Abel.

Gaiman was the guest editor for this year’s collection, responsible for paring down a field of over 100 greats to a small selection indicative of the quality of the comic medium published in 2009. The book features more popular titles such as O’Malley’s “Scott Pilgrim” series, or Robert Crumb’s graphic interpretation of the book of Genesis (aptly titled “Book of Genesis”) alongside quieter releases like Todd Brower and Steve MacIsaac’s “Ex Communication” and Gabrielle Bell’s “Mixed Up Tales.”

“Things that didn’t get in were fascinating,” said Gaiman. “One artist failed to get in because she was Swedish. I didn’t know she was Swedish! It was a silent comic and the line work looked thoroughly American, but unfortunately, it was Swedish! I still think that we should declare all cartoonists and writers honorary Americans. Nobody would know.”

Read all about the event and the participants here: Gaiman Talks Comics in Union Square

Gaiman Returns to Columbia Teachers College

Dave — Sun, 06 Jun 2010 16:13:49 +0000

This coming Tuesday, June 8th, at 7:00 pm Neil Gaiman will be returning to Columbia Teachers College. He will be reading with contributors from the new book, Stories. Those present will include Kurt Andersen, Jeffrey Ford, Joe Hill, Walter Mosley, Al Sarrantonio and, of course, Neil Gaiman. This event is not ticketed> It’s first come/first serve. The space holds approximately 600.

The anthology includes:

“Blood” – Roddy Doyle
“Fossil-Figures” – Joyce Carol Oates
“Wildfire in Manhattan” – Joanne Harris
“The Truth is a Cave in the Black Mountains” – Neil Gaiman
“Unbelief” – Michael Marshall Smith
“The Stars are Falling” – Joe R. Lansdale
“Juvenal Nyx” – Walter Mosley
“The Knife” – Richard Adams
“Weights and Measures” – Jodi Picoult
“Goblin Lake” – Michael Swanwick
“Mallon and Guru” – Peter Straub
“Catch and Release” – Lawrence Block
“Polka Dots and Moonbeams” – Jeffrey Ford
“Loser” – Chuck Palahniuk
“Samantha’s Diary” – Diane Wynne Jones
“Land of the Lost” – Stewart O’Nan
“Leif in the Wind” – Gene Wolfe
“Unwell” – Carolyn Parkhurst
“A Life in Fictions” – Kat Howard
“Let the Past Begin” – Jonathan Carroll
“The Therapist” – Jeffery Deaver
“Parallel Lines” – Tim Powers
“The Cult of the Nose” – Al Sarrantonio
“Human Intelligence” – Kurt Anderson
“Stories” – Michael Moorcock
“The Maiden Flight of McCauley’s Bellerophon” – Elizabeth Hand
“The Devil on the Staircase” – Joe Hill

It’s happening at the Horace Mann Auditorium, Teachers College. Columbia University campus, New York City.

Neil Gaiman On CBS

Dave — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 15:30:24 +0000

Sheila Merritt put us onto this piece on Neil Gaiman that recently ran on CBS. We thought you’d enjoy it, so here it is:

Why Vampires Should Go Back Underground

Dave — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:32:59 +0000

We wanted to alert you to the fact that Shelf-Life is running an online interview with Neil Gaiman about the role of contemporary vampires. We think it’s definitely worth a read.

“I think mostly what it has to do with is what vampires get to represent. Dracula was a great novel of sexual seduction, full of repeated sexual seduction and rape and sex. So it makes complete sense that your solid Victorian vampires were fundamentally evil,” says Gaiman. “And you can have that nice big stake hammered through them as a way of putting them to rest. After that, I think the next big, huge, cultural, ‘somebody’s just written a vampire story’ is probably Stephen King’s Salem’s Lot. Steve basically wanted to do Dracula again, only in a small town in Maine. At that point you got vampires still sort of representing the ‘other.’ Then Anne Rice wrote Interview with the Vampire, which as a teenager I thought was a rather drippy book. I have to say as a teenager who loved vampire fiction and wanted vampire fiction, I thought they all sort of sat around being miserable.”

You can read the complete interview here: Neil Gaiman