Neil Gaiman in conversation with Geoff Boucher at Live Talks Los Angeles

that never happens when you're actually writing does it in my head actually no I mean that that's the the the weird wonderful fantastic side of what a wonderful side of I will crush the candy bars the the wonderful side of doing something like this is that the entire writing process is so ridiculously lonely and you come up with a great line and you write it down and the room is quiet I mean I you know my kids and and my wife make fun of me because they get to see the facial expressions I make Paul writing I'll say that was what was happening in the story so obviously I was doing it but apart from me making strange facial expressions that I can't see the room is normally quiet and nothing interesting is going on so there's that wonderful moment for me of reading a line out to an audience that I thought might be funny or I thought might be shocking or I thought me you know just just work and the audience makes the noise yeah the appropriate noise yes good voices best noise I've ever heard from an audience ever was here in LA about five years ago on the graveyard book tour so was anybody here for that and every other stop got the idea was I would go to a city and I would read a chapter from my book and you know chapter one was in New York and chapter two was in Philadelphia sure but chapter seven is twice as long exactly twice as long as any of the other chapters so all I did before coming out on stage was I went flip flip flip flip okay it's that many pages so that's here and I stopped halfway through and wasn't really even looking and some words that's a good place to stop where you know I haven't sort of thought it all through but there is a moment in chapter 7 when of the graveyard book quest somebody that you think up until that point has been a very good nice person suddenly reveals himself to be a very nasty dangerous person indeed and that was the point where I went that's that's exactly how I'll stop there so you got I got to that point and I heard an entire audience go you should have raised the price like double the price right on the stuff there's another noise that people make to celebrate things and that's at the cash register and you're celebrating some very good news today right I I am much to everybody's astonishment we I mean we were genuinely astonished I had the conversation with my my wonderful editor Jennifer Braille a few days ago and I said are we gonna make the New York Times list honey we're gonna make the New York Times list I said oh that's good are we gonna like you know do do well and she said well there's some big people in there and then there's Dan Brown and he is he is at number one and he is gonna be outselling everything by a factor of about two to one so they will be buying them in the Costco's they will be those books are gonna be going and what do they just have to be used to that okay Farah and so yesterday I'm sitting signing away doing the pre signing thing where you know basically so anybody who's here at 10 o'clock and has a babysitter get back to can go you know I don't want to meet him I can see him I will take the same but this unsigned book I will trade it for a saying but it's fine I'll catch you next time so I was signing my way through and the phone kept ringing and I thought home finally finished answered it it was my agent and she's like okay you know times this and I said oh how do we do she said you're number one that's good that's very good it is wonderful and it seems so so incredibly unlikely and I'm just thrilled you know and it is unlikely I mean that's not a book it's not even a book that should have existed there's a book it just sort of everything else I've done I at least knew that I was doing you know I've been planning to write a book called the graveyard book for about 20 years and and as the years got closer I was going okay and I know the shape of this book and it's gonna be every two years it'll be a set of short stories it'll be shaped like this and you know when I knew that it's I knew American Gods was gonna be the size and shape of a brick every time you say American guards that's gonna happen it's like it it's like a special effect it was really good so you know I knew that was gonna happen whereas the the actually there's two books that have surprised me I shouldn't say it's the only one this in Coraline both surprised me and I and they were both written for specific people Coraline I we were talking about this in the Egyptian thing of me last month Coraline was written for my daughter Holly and I thought it was gonna be about 3,000 words long they just sort of kept going through time this was not meant to be a novel and I was I'd gone to Florida to work on a number of things I was planning to write I had a pilot episode of something too right I had a doctor whose script to do the thing that became nightmare in silver was written there I had all of the staff that I wanted to work on it and my wife was in Melbourne Australia where she was making an album and I missed her and I missed her a lot and she was very gone she was absolutely making her albums she was it wasn't like when she stood up on the road and we call in and we check in and there's long phone calls this was she was making album and there was very little room for me she figured that you know she was absolutely doing her bit in the relationship by sending daily texts said I love you and making an album so and I missed her so I started I thought a writer a short story and it was okay she doesn't really like this is probably telling tales out of school she doesn't really like fantasy a lot excuse me but she likes me she likes sort of honest stuff and she likes feelings I've never really been into doing a lot of feelings in fiction because I'm English and Mail and the magical combination of English and mail as opposed to war means that the you know feelings tend to be to other stuff people say why don't you do feelings like a while they're implicit in that but but I thought okay I'll do a short story for her and we'll have the stuff that she likes him and it'll be a silly little sort of love letter missive letter in a bottle and I'll finish it I'll send it off to her while she's making her album and that was the plan and so I started writing it and it chugged along and somewhere in there I went you know it's not really a short story it's a novelette because they're about 10,000 words are definitely a novelette and then after a while pretty another week I started going well it's it's a novella the people that told you about your phones are surfing the internet so um and I thought it's a novella and then I thought it's a very very long novella and someone that I emailed my editor and said Jennifer I'm I've got this thing that I'm writing and it's a novella and I'm not really sure how we'll publish it but just wanted to warn you that it exists it's like a hurricane it's on the man and then and then the three or four months had gone by and I hadn't actually finished this story to send it off to a man because she's now finished making her album and she came to Dallas to mix the album and I flew to Dallas to be with her and I finished writing the book in a coffee shop in Dallas and then I started typing it and that was great because every night she'd come back exhausted from a long day of mixing the album and I'd read her what I'd written what I typed out that day and then in the morning I'd say to her okay so where do you remember up to and she told me where she fell asleep I go back before that might read to the end of the thing and at the end of our time in Dallas I'd finished typing the book and I did a word count and I sent very astonished and kind of apologetic email to jennifer Braille and I said I'm I wrote a novel I didn't mean to no offense but there is a novel that now exists that didn't exist before I hope you don't mind and she was like well send it along it's number one by the way and and I sent it over to her and and she was the I think she was the second person to tell me send it to a couple of my friends and was getting very odd reactions not reactions that I normally expect because they'd say things like I cried this British males and they'd also email me and say things like this is the best thing you've ever written and I go it is it's an extraordinary book it's an extraordinary book in the way you're describing it's almost like we are reading your mail which is always fascinating so we all read your mail when you're not around but maybe would you want to read some of your mail to show the audience do you guys want to hear some of the book a quick show of hands on because we're now sort of it's been out for over a week just wave if you've read it okay good so you're still the people who haven't read this are still way in the majority so I'll go I'll go early our narrator at this point in the story is seven years old and his his bedroom has just been let out by his parents to make money and he's moved into his sister's bedroom and is rather grumpy about it and currently the his bedroom is being let out 2002 and asked South African opal miner it was the first day of the spring holidays three weeks of no school I woke early thrilled by the prospect of endless days to fill however I wished I would read I would explore I pulled on my shorts my t-shirt my sandals and went downstairs to the kitchen my father was cooking while my mother slept in he was wearing his dressing-gown over his pajamas he often cooked breakfast Saturdays I said dad where's my comic he always bought me a copy of smash before he drove home from work on Fridays and I would read it on Saturday mornings in the back of the car do you want toast yes I said but not burnt my father did not like toasters he toasted bread under the grill and usually he burnt it I went outside into the drive he looked around I went back into the house dad where's the car in the drive no it isn't what the telephone rang and my father went out into the hall where the phone was to answer it I heard him talking to someone the toast began to smoke under the grill I got up on a chair and turned the grill off that was the police my father said someone's reported seeing our car abandoned at the bottom of the lane I said I hadn't even reported it stolen yet right we can head down now meet them there toast he pulled the pan out from beneath the grill the toast was smoking and blackened on one side is my comic there or did they steal it I don't know the police didn't mention your comic my father put peanut butter on the burnt side of each piece of toast replaced his dressing-gown with a coat worn over his pajamas put on a pair of shoes and we walked down the lane together he munched his toast as we walked I held my toast and did not eat it we'd walk for perhaps five minutes down the narrow lane which ran through fields on each side when a police car came up behind us it slowed and the driver greeted my father by name I hid my piece of burnt toast behind my back while my father talked to the policeman I wished my family would buy normal sliced white bread the kind that went into toasters like every other family I knew my father had found a local baker's shop but they made thick loaves of heavy brown bread and he insisted on buying them he said they tasted better which was to my mind nonsense proper bread was white and pre sliced and tasted like almost nothing that was the point the driver of the police car got out opened the passenger door told me to get in my father rode up front beside the driver the police car went slowly down the lane the whole lane was unpaved back then just wide enough for one car at a time a puddle II precipitous bumpy way with Flint's sticking up from it the whole thing rutted by farm equipment and rain and time these kids said the policeman they think it's funny steal a car drive it around abandon it there'll be locals I'm just glad it was found so fast said my father funny them leaving it down here there said the policeman because it's a long way back to anywhere from here we passed a bend in the lane and saw the white Mini over on the side in front of a gate leading into a field tires sunk deep in the brown mud we drove past it parked on the grass verge the policemen let me out and the three of us walked over to the mini while the policeman told my dad about crime in this area and why it was obviously the local kids had done it then my dad was opening the passenger side door with his spare key he said someone left something in the backseat my father reached back and pulled the blue blanket away that covered the thing in the backseat even as the policeman was telling him that he shouldn't do that and I was staring at the backseat because that was where my comic was so I saw it it was an it the thing I was looking at not a him although I was an imaginative child prone to nightmares I had persuaded my parents to take me to Madame Tussauds waxworks in London when I was six because I've wanted to visit the chamber of horrors expecting the movie monster chambers of horrors I'd read about in my comics I'd wanted to thrill to waxworks of Dracula and Frankenstein monster and The Wolfman instead I was walked through a seemingly endless sequence of dioramas of unremarkable glum looking men and women who had murdered people usually lodgers and members of their own families and who were then murdered in their term by hanging by the electric chair in gas chambers most of them were depicted with their victims in awkward social situations seated around a dinner table perhaps as their poison family members expired the plaques that explained who they were also told me that the majority of them had murdered their families and sold the bodies to anatomy it was then that the word anatomy garnered its own edge of horror for me I did not know what Anatomy was I knew only that Anatomy made people kill their children the only thing that it kept me from running screaming from the chamber of horrors as I was led around it was that none of the waxworks had looked fully convincing they could not truly look dead because they did not ever look alive the thing in the back seat that had been covered by the blue blanket I knew that blanket it was the one that had been in my old bedroom on the shelf for when it got cold was not convincing either it looked a little like the opal miner but it was dressed in a black suit with a white ruffled shirt and a black bowtie its hair was slicked back and artificially shiny its eyes were staring its lips were blue ish but its skin was very red it looked like a parody of health there was no gold chain around its neck I could see underneath it crumpled and bent my copy of smash with Batman looking just as he did on the television on the cover I don't remember who said what then just that they made me stand away from the mini I crossed the road and I stood there on my own while the policeman talked to my father and wrote things down in a notebook I stared over many a length of green garden hose ran from the exhaust pipe up to the drivers window there was thick brown mud all over the exhaust holding the hose pipe in place nobody was watching me I took a bite of my toast it was burnt and cold at home my father ate all the most burnt pieces of toast YUM he'd say and charcoal good for you and burnt toast my favorite and he'd eat it all up when I was much older he confessed to me that he had not ever liked burnt toast had only eaten it to prevent it from going to waste and for a fraction of a moment my entire childhood felt like a lie It was as if one of the pillars of belief my world had been built upon and crumbled into dry sand the policeman spoke into a radio in the front of his car then he crossed the road and came over to me sorry about this Sonny he said there's gonna be a few more cars coming down this road in a minute we should find you somewhere to wait that you won't be in the way would you like to sit in the back of my car again I shook my head I didn't want to sit there again somebody a girl said he can come back with me to the farmhouse there's no trouble she was much older than me at least 11 her red brown hair was worn relatively short for a girl and her nose was stumped she was freckled she wore a red skirt Gill's didn't wear jeans much back then not in those parts she had a soft Sussex accent and sharp gray blue eyes the girl went with the policeman over to my father and she got permission to take me away and then I was walking down the lane with her I said there is a dead man in our car that's why he came down here she told me the end of the road nobody's gonna find him and stop him around here three o'clock in the morning and the mud there is wet and easy to mould do you think he killed himself yes do you like milk Gran's milking Bessie now I said you mean real milk from a cow and then felt foolish but she nodded reassuringly I thought about this I've never had milk that didn't come from a bottle I think I'd like that so when we first meet when we first meet the narrator it's later in life and it seems to me we were talking about this a little bit before that it's the protagonist that's most obviously close to you yeah I mean it's it's absolutely not or autobiographical it's it's filled with lies and things that didn't happen and stuff I made up and the family isn't actually my family but the kid is pretty much me ish I mean if you you know there's a scene in the book about halfway through where our protagonist gets to escape down a drainpipe you know not the kind of drain pipes you have in America but proper heavy cast-iron drain pipe is bolted to the side of a brick wall the kind you can actually get you read about the stories we climb up the drainpipe and he goes down the drainpipe and he goes down the drainpipe because he's learned to climb up on the drain but up and down the drainpipe because he's read in books that kids go up and down drain pipes which is you know I after I sent the book to my younger sister to read and she loved it and she sent me a an email back saying I thought you'd like this it's a photo of you aged seven standing on that drainpipe so that's me those are my knees my sandals no toast toast 'less but I you know that's the kind of thing where I actually cheated because my dad didn't actually find a baker's that would make giant incredibly heavy brown bread things until I was about twelve yes John the white sliced bread and then when I was 12 actually there was a period would make his own bread and that was terrible because because he would make me sandwiches to take to school and he'd make like cheese sandwiches or peanut butter sandwiches and he wasn't he never quite got the bread-making thing down so although he always made them with enormous enthusiasm so they would crumble and incredibly crumbly and by the time he got to lunchtime it would somehow turn into a ball and it would just be a ball with peanut butter or cheese at the center and crumbs and you'd sort of pick this thing up and you go you are not a sandwich but anyway so yes there's an awful lot of me in there and my point of view and more than anything the thing that I was trying to give to Amanda was there are places a lot of the places that I grew up don't exist anymore hmm people build roads over them build housing estates over them they just sort of vanished and I thought it would be fun to try and conjure up these places so you could actually you know if you had access to Google Earth circa 1967 you could actually point to where all the things occur but then of course I lie and I cheat and I move things around and I I took the pond from one place and moved it to another I swapped farms around bye thank you there's a really lovely line in there which I can't do justice to but where he's on the journey back the geographic journey and it's taking him back through time and he sees that the lane is the only thing that hasn't changed and you talk about you know the sort of the Riven Lane it's really kind of lovely is that where was that at for you that you know I haven't actually gone back down that way which is what one of the things that's really interesting for me is the lane that we lived on when I was a kid I was I was completely convinced that the world that I lived in was a sort of a you know essentially a sort of semi mythological place and or at least I was I was able to always overlay it with with a sort of peculiar mythology so when I heard that one of the farms down our Lane was mentioned in the Doomsday Book which was the the big list of all the properties in England that was compiled for William the Conqueror in 1066 compiled probably about 10 80s it didn't occur to me that that you know I found some years before it would have been this little wooden hovel I just went ah that nice red brick farmhouse has been there for a thousand years and then I started thinking wouldn't it be interesting if the people who had lived there who lived there now had been the same people for a thousand years I don't think anyone would notice in this part of the world and I started building this weird little personal mythology out of that so somewhere in my teens I decided they'd be called the hemp stalks well and and I just had them when they lived there and they lived at the bottom of the Lane and I kept expecting to write a story about them so and and seem that I never actually got to write a story set in my lane I never did but I'd sort of decided that probably their family had spread out a little bit so there are hemp stocks in Stardust and then then there's Liza hemp stock in the graveyard book and I thought okay well they're obviously relations and one day I had a vague idea I would go and write a story with the hemp stocks in it and then in about 2003 so that was sort of always sitting there then in about 2003 I bought my first mini mini cooper and my father was visiting America at the time he was still alive and I said you know it's so fun I think a mini it's it's peculiarly I don't know whether by intentional by design or just by accident its proportionally they've made them bigger than they were when I was a kid so it's proportionally exactly the same size taking action figure than I was when I was a kid it's like they're one of the few things that hasn't changed somehow because I said you know I love that the old white mini that you had get rid of that and he said never told you that story did I and I said no and he's Wow we had a lodger and he went gambling in Brighton and he gambled away all his money and he gambled away all his friends money and then he stole the mini and he said it was left down the lane and I went down identified the body and sold the mini that afternoon and I didn't go did he tell the person that he sold it I I don't know what's called sorry I didn't ask that question but mostly Anna and I also didn't you know sort of weird thing with something's in distant past I didn't go what a terrible tragedy what I actually did was go you mean something interesting happen in my house when I was servant and nobody told me you just missed it that was this sort of seven-year-old outrage with me going there was all this interesting stuff in books and I thought that never happened in real life and something happened in real life and I didn't know and so I thought one day maybe I'll maybe I'll take that little weird kernel and not it's not about the real thing that happened but I will take that kernel and at the moment where I thought well actually that's the story that does take place at the end of the lane and I have the hemp duck family down there already as they've been since I was 9 waiting for me oh I'll see what happens and that really is I think what propelled it into being that's do you think the fact that when you started the project you had every intention of it being a non public story that it gave you a little extra leeway to go to this very personal space I mean do you think that you would have told that story anyway hi it's odd I mean the truth is I've been doing the very personal stuff since the beginning violent cases my first ever graphic novel mr. punch which I did in the mid-90s there's a handful of short stories there's one called closing time there's a few lis short stories where I you know I'll take a character who is pretty obviously me and I write a very unreliable sequence of autobiography in which I change stuff around and start playing with it you know violent cases I wrote in 1986 as a very young man and it's about being three years old and being treated by an osteopath who turns out to be Al Capone's osteopath due to have been and slowly the the Portsmith of the 1960s and Chicago of the 1930s sort of collide in some peculiar ways and that was very much that was one of the first things that I ever did but normally what would happen whenever I would do these weird little personal stories is that they would they would be published to deafening silence and people came up to me so I really liked that thing I would say thank you but they wouldn't actually touch no they'd just be these these weird things that I'd go okay I love the idea that you know by the end of my life you'd have an entire completely unreliable autobiographies were of there are these things so but I don't think I would have done it had I known that I was writing a novel and that it was gonna be published as another I think that you know it was absolutely a driving thing in this it was gonna be one of my little short stories and it was essentially personally I would have I would have published it it would have gone into would have given it to an anthology or into a magazine or something once it was done or possibly just kept it around for the next short story collection and gone look an unpublished short story like I did that I think with how to talk to girls at parties from the last one sure so it in which is another one of those incredibly unreliable autobiographical it's fiction no one that expects it to be reliable some of the questions that I get from people on the cards of these things are very very puzzled they actually want me to try it you know they're like could you tell us exactly what percentage is true and tell us all the true bits and I'm going to truth is it doesn't work like that it's like it's like a giant it's like a mosaic you know you have a mosaic picture and it's a picture of some people and and if you get close it's all made up of tiny little squares and those red squares most few squares and those green squares and there's black squares and and there's red squares and and you know on all the little red squares are true but they're not the picture that they're sitting there in sentences next allies and it's de fiction and they're just little things that make it feel you know that they're there to add and a level of veracity to an otherwise completely unreliable narrative yeah the bricks in the mortar they are basically they're there to convince you that I'm not lying to you yeah I totally believe you everything you say where'd you find that the writing craft for you do you find what you find is the challenge that you have at this stage in your career every stage of your career you have a different challenge a different opportunity what do you see as your challenge he's been acting the biggest challenge right now which is definitely a completely different challenge to when I started out is trying to do stuff I have a number for and and that's always something that keeps you going but when you're starting out everything you do is new I found it a lot right now working on the new Sandman stuff that I'm right okay when I when I when I began writing Sandman in 1987 dear God everything was new every panel was knew I'd never got I'd never done that panel transition before I'd never written that thing and it was all completely new and I didn't know how to do it so that was the challenge the challenge was I have no idea what I'm doing but every time I make the reader turn a page I've just done a whole bunch of panels that I've never done before now I'll go okay I'll do this oh no that was that was in that issue okay so I'll do that one they won't Wow I know I did that Bree flies and this is sort of weird feeling of just desperately trying to go I had actually done an awful lot of things I've written a lot I've said a lot and so the challenge for me is always trying to go okay how do I do it new and make it different to make it interesting or a new and order challenge for me is sometimes how do I revisit things and keep it fresh with Sandman right now it's a weird kind of how do I revisit it and keep it fresh I just did a short story it's called how the Marquis got his coat back which is the first piece of armor it's the first piece of never wear fiction I've ever done since and it basically you know came into existence because the BBC did this absolutely fantastic radio audio which will come out by the way for sale in September there to sort of negotiable and it had these fantastic people add James McAvoy and Benedict Cumberbatch you had Christopher Lee [Applause] you are so trappy they just want cover batch to be saying man that's I bet at everybody who claps Benedict Cumberbatch's also wearing a doctor you t-shirt my theory I have seen more unlicensed doctor who t-shirts on this tour then BBC worldwide knows exists I have now seen six licensed t-shirts as opposed about 7,000 so and I loved I loved the adaptation they did it was fantastic and they was really fun I thought well I'd really like never one I should go in I should go and finish that story yeah and I had half a page literally of a short story that I'd started in 2002 and it never got finished or even continued it never got past the first page because I started it on the wrong kind of paper which sounds kind of prissy I know if you're an author so a fan you lot a marvelous and you give me things and I for my part try and use the things that I'm given and a fan gave me a beautiful sort of leather-bound notebook with absolutely beautiful paper and said here take this I made the paper myself I made the notebook myself and the paper actually has crushed rose petals in the paper and I went great it's a lot of pressure well what what the person giving it to me happened thought from what I didn't know until he started writing is if you take a fountain pen and drown right on paper that has crushed rose petals in it every line you will hit a cross crush rose petal bit and it will clog your pen and after about you know a page of cleaning the pen every line I went I put the notebook aside but I felt so guilty about the fact that the short straw was sitting there I wouldn't got a completely different notebook and wrote a completely different story which was one called monarch of the Glen which showed up in smoke and mirrors in other places so I had this I had the words how the Marquis got his coke back underlined and a description that lasted about a half a page of his coat and no nothing actually in the way of plot and so I had to go okay how do I do whenever we're story I haven't done never where since 1976 in 1996 this is going to be exciting and weird and and it was really fun but it was fun but again I had to figure out how you go back so that's the challenge right now is just not wanting to repeat myself not wanting to ever in the words of Douglas Adams become my own word processor [Music] I don't know I don't know if she's cheering I whatever she was cheering I'm for it do you have other I think I read if I remember correctly it's either Tom Clancy or Joseph Wambaugh there's one or the other that only writes with a Ticonderoga number two pencil rolled down that well they're two people no I I what I do have my weird little sort of quirks I tend to write him fountain pen I started doing that with with Stardust and liked it so much I just liked what it did to the prose I liked the fact that it felt like it tightened everything when I start on computer and I work into it I noticed I never delete anything I just get bigger and and my prose has a tendency to bloat whereas if I and I always feel bad about you know I can't write a page and then just delete it whereas if I'm writing in a notebook and then I have to type stuff out I can look at a page and go there you're rubbish and I can not type it out and I feel like I've saved myself work but other than that I've thrown something away or some but what I do like to do in a notebook is change the ink color every day have a couple of pens on the go in different ink colors so that I can actually look and see how productive I was that day and I actually like that like y'all look half a page in green and then it goes Blacky I didn't do anything that day and oh I can go look hey nine pages here and browning see you bro that's look I did it so that that I like that's definitely in terms of weird writing rituals is there any time that you how much do you hold back your ideas before you say them to anybody as far as is there a vulnerable stage or protium stage where you think I you've learned that I you don't share at that point or do just fine I used to share compulsively and with joy and then and I would people say what are you working on what are you going to do and I said well I'm gonna do this I would tell them book ideas I would tell them stories and that started fading after a panel at World Fantasy con in Chicago in 1989 I think where Terry Pratchett and I announced the title of what would have been the sequel to Good Omens and the following year one of the people on the panel brought out a book with that title and we went oh that's interesting you can do that I suppose yes you can do that and so I learned a little bit from that and also there was a time when I watched my former English agent kill out an entire project for me when she said what are you working on now what are you thinking about and I said well I've got this this thing that I'm thinking about and I told her this entire plot and it was it was just this weird goofy little thing I was thinking of I don't even know if I figured out whether it was gonna be a comic or a book or whatever but it was about a this kid who decides that the only way he makes a promise to his he's not terribly smart he makes a promise to his mother that he will make a name for himself in the world people will know his name and then he realizes that he has absolutely no talents or skills of any kind he thinks well actually you don't have to be skilled and talented you can just murder something so he besides that he will be he will go down to Disneyland he will be the person who shot Mickey Mouse that was and after that things got very weird so but I have this whole plot and I'm sort of telling her about it I get to the end and it's all been sort of fun and weird and exciting and you have all these sort of you know Disney enforces and goofy masks and things coming around and I may have filed off some of the serial numbers it might have been called the mouse and it's probably wise probably no chance and I got to the end like I finished and there was a long pause and she said not very high concept is it dear and I've never written it that was that - that one that one was buried it just we just went and died so um that's awful so that was sort of the point I started being a little bit more holding things in and I also said it also the internet changed things a bit when I was starting out I'd be on you know I'd be on a signing tour for Sandman I'd go out and sign some copies of Sandman and people would say so who's the missing brother that we haven't met yet and I'd say oh it's distraction a big help cool so you know that kind of thing and what are you gonna do with this and I just tell them cuz it's fine you're in a comic shop and then somewhere in the early 90s the you know records comic started appearing and these and suddenly I discover oh hang on if I tell somebody something in a comic shop somewhere I'm no longer just telling one guy in a comic shop so much I'm now actually technically telling the world yeah cause I had to start learning to keep secrets about things that I was doing planning to do in fiction yeah these are questions from our you people you look hi Neil that's not a question how long had you had the idea for the TARDIS incarnate oh it was wonderful thank you how long did I um so I've been talking on my blog of Ages about how much I was enjoying the new Doctor Who and how much I'd love the old Doctor Who and at some point in there Steven Moffat and I who I'd never met agreed to meet up for dinner because we mutual admiration and I had heard through a dealer friend of mine he was actually my dealer that we would do these things that we would we would arrange to meet in the McDonald's oh oh fakes it 11 and we and he would go in first and he'd sit down at the table and he'd have like a newspaper magazine and I'd sort of hang around and then he'd get up he walked past not look at me and I go down and I'd sit there and I'd lift up a newspaper he left on the table I would take the DVDs and put them in my but we could have done it less formally right there was so much fun trench coat and so and I'd heard that maybe Moffat was going to be taking over Doctor Who and we had this meal where we started talking in hypotheticals I'm saying you know if only I if somebody actually did ask me oh [ __ ] it you know that I'm taking over I'm gonna be sure running Doctor Who I know that you want to write an episode well let's just stop [ __ ] around okay [Laughter] solo all right he said just just if you can't with an idea call me and what was interesting is I I didn't I haven't had the idea about making the TARDIS a person might might it began all upside down in the way that you you start with a germ of an idea I thought wouldn't it be nice to make the TARDIS which is always the safest place in Doctor Who the most dangerous place if I'm gonna make the TARDIS the most dangerous place I need a companion being menaced because it's no fun to have the doctor being menaced in the TARDIS that should be a companion how am I going to do that we'll obviously it'd be really cool if the TARDIS is sort of soul and intelligence is replaced by something malevolent fair enough what am I gonna do with the TARDIS I've got soul and I've got a doctor obviously not in this bit I'll stick it in somebody it's always been you know they've always referred to the TARDIS as being female it's always been you know old girl and stuff like that from the nautical side of things so great it'll be a girl and I like phone Stephen Moffat and I explained the whole plot to him and as far as I'm concerned the fact that I'm sticking the TARDIS inside a woman's head is actually the it's not the big thing and I get to the end of my pitch he says Oh TARDIS girl I love it that's the plot is great okay I'm gonna skip that one you have that power I'm just doing this capriciously hi Neil again you are a very polite audience I like that there's a smiley face and a thanks there's a big thanks at the end for answering the courses step we're stuff nice stuff I say hi now this better be good right okay Stephen King told you to enjoy it Stephen King told you to enjoy it my recommendations to those who know they should but still can't okay so let me clarify so um 1992 season of mists had come out and I was in Boston doing a signing and it was a long long long signing and Stephen King and his family showed up at the signing Joe the incredibly young Joe Hill back when he still looked like a clonal you know sort of 19 year old version of his father I am still not convinced he wasn't grown from you know a fragment of Stephen King's liver they just planted and watered I think so Joe came in and gave me a note from his dad and I'm going why do I know this handwriting and I get the Stephen King he said come and have dinner I said I can't that lines around the block and he said we'll come back to our well this is our hotel come and say hello so 11 o'clock at night I get to the hotel and Steve just says you know this is fantastic this thing that you're doing The Sandman stuff I loved Good Omens that the lines around the block this is great you should enjoy this and I didn't I it was the one great piece of advice I was given that I never did I worried I worried about the next deadline I worried about whether the ideas would stop I worried about whether I was any good I wondered about whether I'd been any good I wondered about the fraud place you know the people who will show up at your door and say we know and now you have to go and get a real job and then I was gonna have to go and get a real job because when the fraud police catch up with you you're doomed so all of this stuff was just roiling you through my head and bubbling and and it really wasn't until about the point that you know you're talking 16 17 years later I won the Newbery Medal yeah for the graveyard book and suddenly when you know I think I can enjoy this I may as well I don't know what else to do I will enjoy it and I sort of breathe a huge sigh of relief and stop being quite so worried and nervous and I'm still you know I'm still a complete wreck in terms of needing reassurance you doing great new but definitely actually I love your little text message saying you'd read it and you liked it was hard but no at that point where you know when I've written something I will send it out I have no idea if it's any good or not and I'll send it out to friends and quite sure that if somebody writes back and says ah you should probably bury this one I will probably bury it so my advice is don't be like me stare I don't know how I suggest either win the Newbery Medal really early she's got to your career or just just actually you know spend time enjoying stuff do you know get out play with dogs having dogs carefully cheered me up having beans there's nothing like having you know a hobby that could kill you which I think you know all writers should have so so definitely I recommend dogs bees I would recommend cats but they've never done anything to cheer me up cats they know that cats are wonderful but when you are a writer it's like the difference between cats and dogs when you're writing I'd write with a dog in the room um the dog just looks up and goes I don't know what you're writing but it's really good [Applause] [Music] and I like and there's nobody in the world it's plepper as you are whereas cats actually get up onto the table they walk past they look at the screen and they go you put a comma there also they secretly email each other at night it doesn't go well for the cat in this book oh it doesn't it doesn't go well I like the cats one of the first issues with Sandman was the dreamed of a thousand cats was that like a huge there he's there we have a natural segue congratulations on the book and his question is I'd like to know if you think fantasy writers dream more vividly than people who live and work in the straight world your imagination lovely question first of all the answer to the first part of the question is I have no idea because I haven't got to be somebody who works in the straight world I've only got to be a fantasy writer and I haven't got to dream anybody else's dreams or live in anybody else's head so it's hard for me to go yes I dream more vividly because I don't know I might not I do know that the way that I dream changed when I started writing Sandman III I used to have nightmares and I used to be a very very night merry kid I would and then a nightmare II teenager and then you know into my twenties I would have these these nightmares I'd wake up you know absolutely heart pounding terrified and then when I was writing Sandman I get one of those heart pounding terrified on my god I was in the basement and I went down and and down and I'm in the basement and there was the corpse of a baby and you could see like that the autopsy had been taken apart and sewn back together again and then it started coming for me and it had these little sharp teeth and and I began that's really good and I scribble it down before I forgot it and very very rapidly the great nightmares went away I just pretty much stopped and my eventual theory was whoever was doing them was just go get it we throw the weirdest [ __ ] at him he just goes yes I was loving my nightmares but I do think there's there is definitely something really weird and wonderful that that Steve puts his finger on in the second part of that question which is the the pipeline to the subconscious in his book on writing which is a fantastic book that I recommend that anyone out here any of you who want to be writers read Steve's book on writing it's filled with really really good information but remember that you are allowed to have adverbs if you want really to per book Steve seems it says don't and it's like God is in the adverbs so but but there is this thing where what what he calls the boys in the back room or the boys in the basement and this was definitely a book that was written with the collaboration of the boys in the basement you have these you don't you're writing stuff that you know is correct you don't know how it's gonna turn out you don't actually know what's gonna happen next but you kind of trust the boys in the basement you trust these people who kind of know what they're doing and live in your head this weird kind of pipeline to your subconscious you're driving you're not you know yelled dr. o once described the process of writing one of his novels is like driving in the dark with your headlights on and he said well you can't see very far but you can see as far you could you could drive from New York to LA just with what how far ahead you can see and this book was more like driving through the fog at night with one headlight out you're going kind of slowly mm-hmm but what fascinated me was I always knew pretty much what was going to happen tomorrow what I'd be writing tomorrow at the end of the day I knew where that was and when I didn't I would wake up the next day and the boys in the basement would have been shifting the stuff around my god oh yes I know what I'm writing and I'd read it and I would just write the next page it would keep going so I do think just because we have to do this day after day the making stuff up thing and the trusting that we're doing the right thing we do have kind of thing but I don't think it's it's exclusive to write us a fantasy or horror or science fiction you I I love Dickens and one reason I love Dickens is because I wrote Sandman and it was serial fiction and it was a long-form serial fiction so I go when I look at something like Bleak House and I started going okay this is the staff way he knows what's happening this is the stuff what where he has no idea what's happening but if he thinks it may come in useful this is something that he's actually just done because he needs something to fill between that page and that page but actually he is gonna find later on but that's incredibly useful because at the point where he goes you know I just need for this plot to work I just think the character who's that size next shape and I you know and that fascinates me then Sandman I'm just writing a scene currently where I did the rough draft and I went you know it's such a pity because I'm having I need a character who is this shape and I wrote this character and then suddenly once I've done the rough draft I was going you know actually I had that character already she was in Sandman number three I can bring her back she can be that thing and people are gonna go boy he's clever and I have no idea if I'm clever or not it may well be just the boys in the basement doing their job the cat says not that's always say not there's two things that spring to mind first of all how big is Stephen King's basement because that guy that's scary John Irving I wonder what you think of this John Irving said that he never starts a book until he writes the last line which is sort of taking what you're talking about to the next sort in Flevoland GARP we are all of us terminal cases before he started or else he said he would just be meandering in the desert does that resonate with you at all or is that just too far no it really doesn't resonate in any way shape or form I don't want to know what the last line is before I start I don't really want to know how it ends I would like for me it's always the process of discovery that's magical that one of the places that I suppose is a nice example of the thing that I'm talking about is in the graveyard book in Chapter one of the graveyard book I wrote a nursery rhyme I made up this you know sleep my little baby Oh sleep until you waken and the and it ends she doesn't finish it she can't remember how it finishes and so it doesn't finish and all I knew was that it would come back in the end and I would find out how it ended and I didn't think about it yeah for a moment and I hadn't thought about what the rhymes were and I hadn't thought about any anything and how it was gonna you know match into the themes of the book and then I'm writing the very last chapter and in the very last scene at the very last chapter there is mrs. Owens and she sings the final thing and the final thing is just this leave no path I'm taken and I thought that's that's it and I just felt like the first reader mm well I didn't feel like that's what the clever writer I just felt oh oh that's that's that's what she says how fantastic and then finished the book and found out how it ended there and I and you have to have for me if you don't have that process of discovery you don't have anything except of course the current Sandman project because I know exactly what's on how about ailments because that of course ends with the splash page of Sandman one that will be at the end of episode say nobody's gonna buy it though yeah I just skip that completely you know there's there are some people that are storytellers tonight we have with us someone who is a story a neverending story ladies and gentlemen the this is like an akuna this is like a concert encore now you guys here and he's gonna come back so I had this idea and a lot of it has to do with how incredibly cool with spaces it's really a wonderful space and I'm doing as you know I'm on tour for the ocean at the end of the lane that's what I'll be signing for you plus one other thing and that's what this is all about one of the things you should never ever ever ever do if you become an author is have a lead title come out from your a dull table sure in June and then a lead title come out from your children's publisher in September this is wrong do you not do this so given that I was away when they told us that and given that this was a book that I've been working on quietly in my notebook for about a year maybe 18 months and handed in and it just so happened that once it was handed in and by the time it was illustrated it was coming out in September I suddenly found myself with an extra book coming out and most of the stops on this tour I've just read from this but I thought this is such a glorious little venue that if you didn't mind so the book is called fortunately the milk and I'm going to set the scene for you and the scene is once upon a time I wrote a book called the day I swap my dad for two goldfish it was a book it was actually inspired by my son Mike who at the time was about four years old and I told him to do one of those things that you know you should never tell a small child to do like I think I said isn't it your bedtime and he looked up at me with fury and he clenched his fist he said I wish I didn't have a dad I wish I had and then he could see him stop and try and figure what else can you have and then he said I wish I had goldfish and he went off to bed I'm stealing that and so I wrote a book called the day I thought I'd have to goldfish in which a farmer is swapped for a number of things by some kids and he gets passed along from kid to kid he's really as newspaper never notices and this book has been given to fathers on Father's Day as Father's Day gifts ever since and I have felt guilty because I thought you know status so I thought I will strike a blow for fathers everywhere I would do a book for the dead for kids with a dad as a hero so that was my plan because I will have this dad do the kinds of really cool heroic things that dads do in real life so the kids are out of milk for their cereal he is gonna go down to a corner shop and get the milk and that is where we begin where they've been waiting rather a long time for their milk there was a thump and a bang at the front door my father came in where have you been all this time asked my sister ah said my father um yes well funny you should ask me that you ran into someone you knew I said and you lost track of time I bought the milk said my father and I did indeed say a brief hello to mr. Ronson from over the road who was buying a paper I walked out of the corner shop and heard something odd that seemed to be coming from above me it was a noise like this thum thum i looked up and saw a huge silver disc hovering in the air above Marshall Road hello I said to myself that's not something you see every day and then something odd happened that wasn't odd I said while something order said my father the odd thing was the beam of light that came out of a disc a glittery shimmery beam of light that was visible even in the daylight and the next thing I knew I was being sucked up into the disc fortunately I put the milk into my coat pocket the deck of the disc was metal it was as big as a playing field or bigger it's got amazing illustrations by Scotty young that you cannot see from we have come to your planet from a world very far away said the people in the disc I call them people but they were a bit green and rather globby and they looked very grumpy indeed now as a representative of your species with demand that you give us ownership of the whole planet we are going to remodel it i jus i well well I said then it said we will bring all your enemies here and have them make you miserable until you agree to sign the planet over to us I was gonna point out to them I didn't have any enemies when I noticed a large metal door with emergency exit do not open for any reason this means you on it I opened the door don't do that said a green globby person you'll let the space-time continuum in but it was too late I had already pushed open the door I jumped I was falling fortunately I'd kept hold of the milk so when I splashed into the sea I didn't lose it what was that said a woman's voice a big fish a mermaid or was it a spy I wanted to say that it wasn't any of those things but my mouth was full of seawater I thought myself being hauled up onto the deck of a little ship there were a number of men and a woman on the deck and they all looked very cross who be a landlubber said the woman who had a big hat on her head and a parrot on her shoulder he's a spy a walrus in a coat a new kind of mermaid with legs said the man what are you doing here asked the woman well I said I just sent out to the corner shop for some milk for my children's breakfast antha my tea and the next thing I knew he's lying your majesty she pulled out her Cutlass you dare lie to the queen of the Pirates fortunately I kept tight hold of the milk and now I pointed to it if I did not go to the corner shop to fetch the milk I asked them then where did this milk come from at this the Pirates were completely speechless now I said if you could let me off somewhere near to my destination I will be much obliged to you and where would that happen to be so the queen of the Pirates on the corner of Marshall Road and Fletcher Lane I said my children are waiting there for their breakfast you're on a pirate ship now I'm a fine buck ol said the pirate queen and you don't get dropped off anywhere there are only two choices you can join my pirate crew or refuse to join and we will slit your cowardly throat and you'll go to the bottom of the sea where you will feed the fishes what about walking the plank never heard of it said the Pirates walking the plank I said is what proper pirates do look I'll show you do you have a plank anywhere it took some looking but we found a plank and I showed the pirates where to put it we discussed nailing it down but the pirate queen decided it was safer just to have the two fattest pirates sit on the end of it why exactly if you want to walk the plank ask the pirate queen ih doubt onto the plank the blue Caribbean water splashed gently beneath me well I said I've seen lots of stories with pirates in them and it seems to me that if I'm going to be rescued at this the pirate started to laugh so hard their stomachs wobbled and the parrot took off into the air and amazement rescue they said there's no rescue out here we're in the middle of the sea nevertheless I told them if you are going to be rescued it will always be while walking the plank which we don't do said the pirate queen here have a Spanish doubloon and come and join us in our piratical adventures it's the 18th century she added and there's always room for a bright enthusiastic pirate I caught the doubleu I almost wish that I could I told her but I have children and they need their breakfast then you must die walk the plank i edged out to the end of the plank sharks were circling so what piranhas and this was why I interrupted my dad for the first time hang on I said piranhas are a freshwater fish what were they doing in the sea you're right said my father the piranhas were later right so I was out at the end of the plank facing certain death when a rope ladder hit my shoulder and a deep booming voice shouted quickly climb up the rope ladder I needed no more encouragement than this and I grabbed the rope ladder with both hands fortunately the milk was pushed deep into the pocket of my coat the Pirates hurled insults at me and even discharged pistols but neither insults nor pistol shot found their targets and I soon made it to the top of the rope ladder I'd never been in the basket of a hot-air balloon before it was pretty peaceful up there the person in the balloon basket said I hope you don't mind me helping but it looked like you were having problems down there I said you're a Stegosaurus [Applause] I am an inventor he said I have invented the thing we are travelling in which I call professor steggzz floaty ball person carrier I call it a balloon I said professor steggzz floaty ball person carrier is the original name he said and right now we are 150 million years in the future actually I said we're about 300 years in the past do you like hard hairy wet white crunches he asked coconuts I guessed I named them first said Professor Snape he picked up a coconut from a basket Nate its shell and all just as you or I might crunch toast he showed me his time machine he was very proud of it it was a large cardboard box with several pebbles on it and stone stuck to the side there was also a large red button I looked at the stones hang on I said those are diamonds and sapphires and rubies actually he said I call them special shiny clear stones special shiny bluey stones and special shiny red stars I suggested indeed he said I called them that when I was inventing my really good moves around in time machine 150 million years ago well I told him it was very lucky for me that you've turned up when you did and rescued me I'm slightly lost in space and time right now and I need to get home and in order to make sure my children get milk for their breakfast I showed it to him this is the milk although I expect that 150 million years ago you call it wet white drinky stuff dinosaurs or reptiles said professors think we do not go in for milk do you go in for breakfast cereal I asked of course he said dinosaurs love breakfast cereal especially the kind would not sing what do you have on your cereal I asked orange juice mostly or we just eat it dry but I shall put this in my book in the distant future small mammals put milk on their breakfast cereal I shall write a wonderful book when I return to the present as I said I think this is definitely the past it has pirates in it it's the future he said all the dinosaurs have gone off into the stars leaving the world to mammals I wonder where you all went I said the stars he told me that is where we will have gone so I said can you take me home well he said yes and no what does that mean yes I would love to take you home nothing would make me happier no I cannot take you home in all honesty I do not believe that I can take me home my time machine is being temperamental I need a special shiny greenie stone I've pressed that button many times but nothing happens button don't you mean big red flat pressing thing house I most certainly do not it is a button I named it after my aunt you're welcome and after that of course things get weird and that comes out in September that'll be out yet after that things get a bit weird and that comes out in September another fascination with breakfast so obviously there's yes there's total breakfast sir so don't know but it's my favorite meal and you're my favorite writer ladies and gentlemen [Applause] you

Channel: LiveTalksLA

Views: 1,844

Keywords: Neil Gaiman, Harper Collins, Fantasy, Thriller, American Gods, Sandman, Norse Anthology, Live Talks Los Angeles

Id: I8jxOFyx71o

Length: 80min 31sec (4831 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 04 2021