"Mada, mada dane"

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091106.html

A familiar sight to sky enthusiasts with even a small telescope,

This show is breaking my brain. ( Read more... )

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/frlk1_3rAxo/

Tycho: It's back! The ultimate in friction-free, ultra-lightweight charity engines is here, ready to transform the slightest movements of your finger into much-needed respite for young people. Here's what's up: We've got New Hospitals this year, a tender cross-section of facilities you've directed us to over the past year. Focus your Charity Beam on Dayton, Cleveland, Colorado Springs, Boise, Memphis, or (for Canadian readers) Victoria, Ottawa and St. John's. The Sponsors you see on the main page have gotten the ball rolling to the tune of two-hundred and sixty thousand dollars. Not a bad take before the thing even starts, huh? ...

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/final-reminder-for-bookshops.html

A quick reminder (as I was just asked) that today is the day that the bookshop Graveyard Book party reports have to be in to Harper Collins. By 9 pm PST.

http://files.harpercollins.com/Mktg/HarperChildrens/PDF/GraveyardContest_rules.pdf are the rules and info for those who lost them.

Hi Mr. Gaiman,

I was disappointed today to read you won't be part of the judging for The Graveyard Book contests. My not-wealthy, middle-of-nowhere bookstore just sent in its entry, and something we're concerned about is the fairness of judging.

For example, independent bookstores like Powell's (I'm sure you know) easily have enough money and are in a convenient enough location to ask you to come at one time or another. Against stores like that, who were able to put more money into their parties, we stand little chance.

I don't think that it's a lost cause for us; we were very creative. I'm just nervous to know you won't be judging. Can you tell me whether you think the judges will take things like size and location of bookstores into account? It would make me sleep a little easier until the results are announced.

Tusen takk,
Allison

Well, per the rules, the judging is based on:

(i) Overall creativity of the Party, as demonstrated by the invitations, signage, decorations, activities, entertainment, and refreshments.
(ii) Customer attendance and response (i.e., enthusiasm, costumes, participation).
(iii) Ability to capture and represent the spirit of The Graveyard Book.
...specifically to reward creativity, and not the ability to outspend other shops. (That was also why the party had to actually be at the bookshop, and not at another location.)

I asked my editor, Elise Howard, and she said,

Gosh, yes. Here's what we think is happening. We are looking at all the entries. On Monday, we'll send you the best 11, from which you will choose the Grand Prize Winner. The rest will get the first-prize package. So the short answer is that you ARE helping to choose.

The longer answer is that we will be very fair and will consider creativity, which includes work done with available resources, along with pure execution. (Don't you think? We haven't done anything yet; still waiting for more entries to come in.)

...which means that

a) I was wrong and will be the ultimate judge, from the shortlist. (Damn.)

and

b) everyone's on a level playing field.

Does that help reassure you?

PS -- Widgett's Graveyard Book Dessert competition winners have been announced over at http://www.needcoffee.com/2009/11/06/graveyard-book-dessert-challenge-winners/.

This one had NOTHING to do with me at all. But lor' the winning desserts look tasty...

I've got internet! I'd like to thank my new ISP SFR, who managed to give me internet access a whole 10 days before the estimated day, yay!

My new address is available in friends- or access-locked posts on DW, IJ, and LJ. If you want to send me a card and can't see any of these posts, let me know. Speaking of cards, have you signed up for your Holiday Card?

---

This entry was originally posted at http://snakeling.dreamwidth.org/156823.html [ comments]. You can reply there using OpenID.

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/r4ZxTLeOzH4/

Tycho: We spent quite a bit of time trying to determine how we felt about the Dragon Age situation described in today's comic - a character appears in your camp who offers a questline that is only available in downloadable content. The character is literally a salesman. Is this an act of abominable evil? Or is the mass of this evil sufficient to unfold itself - like a Popple - into a creature capable of love? The very moment that the Collector's Edition became available for purchase, I did so. You might imagine that, having done an eight page project for ...

Genre crossing, when done well, can be a very effective storytelling technique, allowing the author to hit the reader with unexpected plot turns and presentation that is sufficiently unusual that it will make the reader think twice about the scene. Alas, when not done well all we get is a hot mess.

Amano is currently demonstrating Not Well with Katekyou Hitman Reborn.

This is especially a shame considering that her first cross went off very well. When she had written sixty issues of a gag manga, full of underwear shenanigans, and suddenly decided she wanted to write a serious, indeed dark in places, battle manga, she made the transition quite smoothly. The underwear phased out and was replaced in a plausible way, the change presented as a moment of personal development for our main character, such as we might expect in a good battle manga. The initial premise, that our hero is slated to inherit a mafia family, offered plenty of material for a darker turn. So far so good. The next two and a half arcs were a marvelous sweep of fast-paced action with personal development and growth for the whole ensemble of characters.

And then we hit the bump. Possibly even the shark. Somewhere, for some reason, the decision was made to extend the Future arc with a new set of villains, and the storytelling fell apart. The pace jinked and faltered, new characters got no background or development, the fights were truncated and disappointing compared to the intense confrontations of previous arcs, and even the first half of the Future arc.

Worst of all, Amano turned back to the gag genre, and, at this juncture, failed to make it work.

This is most evident in our hero, Tsuna. Tsuna has always flailed a lot, to be sure, but less so as time went on; indeed, when he came to the future, the pressure of events and responsibility seemed to wash the flailing out of him and push him toward a more mature presentation even when he isn't wrapped up in Dying Will. With this latest turn, however, the flailing is suddenly back to early levels, to the extent that his weapon reflects it and allies comment on it. The plot provides us with no explanation for this.

This is characteristic of the gag genre: character development is neither necessary nor, in most cases, desired. The character quirks that are used for gags must remain constant, and the nature of the genre is such that readers are usually willing to suspend any disbelief and accept them, however implausible. It's part of the genre expectations.

The genre expectation of a battle manga, and especially a serious one, is that characters will develop, both technically and emotionally. Sudden backsliding of personal development needs some kind of cause or explanation.

As I said at the beginning, these expectations can be crossed, if it is done well. Many battle manga use brief gag moments to break tension; bathroom humor is a favorite. Even the development of the hero can be let to fail briefly, for the sake of increasing dramatic tension. But if the audience is not to reject that tactic, it must be framed, supported, explained in some way--it must be presented as a dramatic moment, in order to be accepted as such. Tsuna's reversion is not.

Hence my fear that Amano has no clue where she's going with the current sub-arc and has fallen back on her roots because she is at a complete loss. If this is due to editorial pressure, to draw out the Future arc more, I hope someone kicks that editor in the teeth soon. If it is due to Amano losing her grip on the story, paging editor!Reborn, please. In either case, the current issues are a fine example of how not to do it.

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/ONSwXKyBKR8/

New Comic: A Truly Fascinating Phenomenon

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/note-to-self-nights-are-for-sleeping.html

Still trying to get back onto a diurnal schedule. (And, I should add, failing.)
And, of course, although I posted it before, it bears repeating that you can watch the film that Steven-Charles Jaffe made of the "Dark and Silly Night" comic Gahan and I did for art spiegelman and Francoise Mouly's Little Lit at the New Yorker site, or here:



And if I'd been here for Hallowe'en I would have posted it here then. Which reminds me, The Graveyard Book party season is over. Over thirty independent bookshops had Graveyard Book parties (The ABA's Bookselling This Week reports on thirteen of the parties -- and the shops -- at http://news.bookweb.org/7149.html.) The very best one of all will get me in their shop doing a signing in December and, looking at these thirteen, I am very glad I am not any kind of a judge for the awards.

My only hope is that the shop that wins will be somewhere warm. But most of the places on the party map will be just as cold by December as my house. (Vague and only climate-based relief that HarperCollins said No to Alaska in the rules mingles with vague and selfish disappointment that they also said No to Hawaii.)

It looks like the CBS Sunday Morning profile on me is going out this Sunday, the 8th, 9:00-10:30 AM, ET. According to this website:

Correspondent Serena Altschul visits author Neil Gaiman -- the tender-hearted master of the macabre -- whose books, including Coraline and The Graveyard Book have topped best-seller lists for 25 years.

.. which left me wanting to go "I am NOT a tender-hearted master of the macabre, I am in fact VERY SCARY INDEED," but I suspect I would convince nobody.

Thrilled to see that Odd and the Frost Giants was listed as one of Amazon.com's Best Books of 2009. While I was in China The Graveyard Book was listed as one of the ALA's teens top ten for 2009 as well, an award voted on by over 11,000 teens. (And I made it onto the list with lots of other good people.)

Also, Fragile Things was awarded the French 2010 Les Grands Prix de l’Imaginaire Award for translated short fiction. My thanks to the judges, but mostly to the translator, who in this case is the incredibly talented Michel Pagel. If I ever look good, do well, sell books or am popular in a foreign country, it's because of the translators, and they never get enough thanks or acclaim. And I think I'll post the cover here, because I never have.

You're welcome. I think this link has everything for sale in the auction: http://shop.ebay.co.uk/scrawldog/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_from=&_ipg=&_trksid=p3686

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap091105.html

Halloween s Moon

http://xkcd.com/659/

Does anyone know where I'm going to be on March 5th, 2010?

Watching Alice in Wonderland in the theaters, that's where I'm going to be, goddamnit.

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/t3kmg99gZ0U/

New Comic: A Truly Fascinating Phenomenon

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/WCSBMdItsdo/

Gabe: My D&D group is so hungry for content that we actually play via email between games. Sometimes it's just the characters talking amongst themselves, other times it's more of a structured skill challenge. I tweeted an example yesterday of one of our exchanges and I got a lot of feedback as well as questions. I thought I'd respond to some of it here rather than trying to tweet back to everyone individually. First of all, here is the example I posted. -Why do you write so much for your players? As a DM you should never tell your players what ...

http://feeds.penny-arcade.com/~r/pa-mainsite/~3/grlsUcJnPJs/

Gabe: PAX East is coming up quick and we're going to need some new enforcers to help us out. We will be bringing over about 150 of our west coast enforcers but we'd like to supplement that with another 150 new enforcers from the east coast. Enforcers get into the show for free but in return we work you like a dog. If this sounds like a fair arrangement to you then fill out this enforcer application and mail it to klindsay@penny-arcade.com. We'll be accepting applications until November 25th. The east coast show is shaping up incredibly well. You can take ...

The last couple of days have actually been pretty good. My seasonal depression stuff hasn't been nearly as prevalent as it had the last few weeks, which is a miracle in and of itself. Yesterday, I spent most of the day trying to rid the house of fleas for something like the 4th time. Sprayed stuff, washed stuff and washed AND sprayed our dog Tasha. Hopefully this will take 'coz this crap is the pits! You KNOW its bad when the fucking things start biting people.

I haven't hopped on World of Warcraft in the last few days, mostly because I seem to be so damned tired lately. Not sure why that is although it could do with hormones. Goddess only knows, really. Trying to motivate myself is a bitchkitty, but somehow I manage to take care of the house and cook a dinner for the girls when they get home.

I've started filling out surveys online to get some sort of money. There's a couple of companies I use and I'm slowly trickling in a few sheckels, which is marginally better than no sheckels. :-P

For some weird reason, I've found myself flirting with one of the guys from the band Arkarna via Twitter and FaceBook. LOL Maybe I'll get a free CD or something out of it! That's just weird to think.


One thing I've contemplated and haven't yet made a decision on is whether or not I should go ahead and take a couple of community college courses this spring. For the uninformed, I've gotten involved in a research group over at Southwest Illinois College (SWIC) specifically because there's a study they're working on about how transgender people perceive sexism and they wanted a transperson in the group. I had already wanted to enroll for classes before I got involved in the group, eventually to practice psychology. Not specifically for LGBT folk, but it would be a good group to have as clients and it's subject matter that I'm familiar with as a queer-identified woman who also happens to be transgender.

I'm just not sure financially that this household can pull it off. I have a duty to Al & Amy to cover 1/3 of the rent and my utilities, which I'm already NOT doing due to lack of a job. Money's already tight and I can't imagine it being like that for 6 years while I attend school. But the thought I keep having echoes my thoughts on LGBT rights: If not now, then when? *sigh* I'm so conflicted, I swear! *sigh*

I just read an addme-type post where someone said one of their hobbies was "raping [their] computer". As English is not their first language, I sincerely hope it's a misunderstanding of sorts and not a deliberate attempt to use the word rape in "edgy", "hip", "funny", or "un-pc" ways. Which I disapprove of. *

The world and the people in it are pissing me off in lots of other ways, too, but I'm too tired to even list these. Maybe I should just go back to bed.

* Eta: I've explained my issues with the usage of the word in casual contexts in this IJ comment.

I am not easily disturbed, not by a long shot. I am a 4chan kid, meaning that I've probably seen enough shit that I do not run the danger of scarring for life anymore. My brain has been shot so many times that it's thrown itself into the swiss cheese subclass and genre.

However after watching 4 episodes of "Higurashi no Naku Koko ni", I sort of kind of don't want to turn out the light to go to bed. Granted, this is not BAD.. I actually loved it.. but damn if in four episodes it didn't cause me to start not once, not twice.. but eight times. I was suitably prepared by the helpful review that Anime World Order provided me but much like all reviews (and spoilers), you just have no FUCKING CLUE what you're in for.

The shit's bananas, but hell.. I approve.

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/11/author-comes-home-and-displays-many.html

I went to XinjiangProvince in Western China to continue researching my Monkey/China book. This is the photo I took of a scenic building that, I discovered when the men came out to arrest us, turned out to be a police station. If you're in Kashgar do not take pictures of this building. Trust me on this.



... or discussion of the pomegranate crop, counted as politics. It made my journey even stranger than it might have been already.
More photos of China and Singapore in my next post, I hope. In summary: Singapore was wonderful, but the visit was much much too short: we were there for about 50 hours altogether. Once again, the food was amazing and the people delightful.


(Middle photo of the amazing bubble by Miss Holly Gaiman. Who is fundraising.)

But if you think I shouldn't the same rights as a straight person, you're a bigot. Pure and simple.

She said it better.