Category Archives: Art, Theatre, & Film

Friday Morning

The boy bounced into my bed at about a quarter to seven this morning and announced that it was a Grandma day, as indeed it is. We cuddled a bit and then he said:

    SPARKY: What if someone took all the Star Wars movies in the whole world? Then we wouldn’t be able to watch them at Grandma’s and we would be very sad.

    A: We would be.

    SPARKY: And they would have taken them out of all the movie places and the schools and everything, and no one could watch them, and everyone would be very, very sad.

    A: But then you and BunBun could fly all over the world and fight them and get the Star Wars movies back, and you could give them back to everyone who was sad, and everyone would say, “Yay, Sparky and BunBun!”

    [PAUSE]

    SPARKY: Well, that would be impressive.

He was so totally humouring me. HRH and I nearly died of laughter.

I noticed last night that Nixie has become extremely thin. I know why this is: Gryffindor bolts his food and then moves to her bowl because she has a couple of mouthfuls then walks away, expecting it to be there half an hour later. We’ve begun feeding all three cats less and Gryff and Cricket have lost weight, which is a good thing, but so has Nixie, who really can’t afford it. So this morning I gave her an extra bowl of food in my office, behind a closed door, and she ploughed through it like she was starving (erm). Afterwards she came and found me to purr at me and rub against my legs and hands, then tried to entice me into my office ahead of schedule. It was like she was saying, And now we’re best friends! We’ll play, and cuddle, and later we can braid each other’s hair! When she was born she was the tiniest of the litter, and we gave her an extra feeding every day to make sure she survived; that extra bit of nurturing and bonding time was one of the reasons she evolved into being my cat. Starting that up again isn’t a hardship at all.

There is warm air outdoors, there is melting snow, there was sun for about five minutes till it got above the overcast line, work on the anthology continues apace, and I have a single two-part scene to write before the Orchestrated will officially be a complete first draft. That’s today’s goal, and then it’s out of the way for when the anthology kicks into high gear next month as more completed submissions pour in. That’s not the only reason it’s today’s goal, of course: I’m really excited about the idea of actually finishing the novel. Usually my books get stuffed into a metaphorical drawer because I can’t decide how they’re supposed to end. Actually that’s not entirely true; thinking back, over the past four years only two have done that, the Poppy book (or Creating the Muse or the GCN or whatever you might remember it being called in its vast variety of temporary names) and the Pandora book. And I think about the Pandora book a lot, trying different resolutions in my mind. Many Names got finished, Balsamic Moon was finished (albeit in a two-page summary of the final chapter), Il Maestro e le Figlie di Coro is technically a complete first draft, although I think it needs an epilogue (I’ll confirm that if and when I ever revise it). Swan Sister is ongoing, as are the non-fic twins Harpsichord Dreams and the as-of-yet-untitled cello book, although all three are hibernating at the moment.

So yes: very exciting. I suspect starting with a brief synopsis, expanding it to a detailed synopsis, then writing from that synopsis is to be thanked for the actual execution of the project. (See how I cleverly avoided the word ‘outline’ there?) I usually prefer to write blind and discover what happens as I go, but I have to say, knowing the end helped a lot on this project. There are a half-dozen places where I would have stalled otherwise.

More tea! And I must see if those scones are still edible. And I should probably put a batch of bread on to rise.

Forty-Four Months Old!

Our house is all Star Wars, all the time. The boy is alternately Artoo, the Millennium Falcon, and either the Imperial Star Destroyer or the Rebel Blockade Runner. Lego is now material for creating X-wings and TIE fighters and Star Destroyers. I found an R2-D2 figure the other day (Clone Wars figures, who knew?) and bought it for him. He’s still thanking me. He drew about nine pictures of Star Wars characters and ships last week, which I should find and put up on the fridge.

I love that someone can mention something about the moon, and I can say, “That’s no moon, that’s a space station,” and without missing a beat my son will reply, “It’s too big to be a space station. Maybe you should turn the ship around. Yeah, yeah, I think you’re right.” While he plays with Lego spaceships in his room I can hear him recite passages of dialogue accurately, complete with inflection and accent.

In the book area we’re revisiting picture books as we search for a new series of early chapter books to read aloud. A Bear Called Paddington didn’t work; neither did The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. The ratio of illustrations to text needs to be higher.

January was music month at preschool, and as part of the unit he made a guitar out of an empty Kleenex box and the long roll from gift wrap at school, complete with rubber bands stretched across the box opening. The picture says it all.

The biggest thing this past month is his sudden fascination with babies and how they grow. After seeing a woman in an advanced stage of pregnancy (as in, one could see and/or feel the baby moving) he asked where babies came from. Rather than get into super-specific technical explanations we told him that there’s a little bit of each of the mother and father that is grown inside the mother’s tummy over a long, long time. He then (incorrectly but understandably) inferred that the food one eats is what grows the baby. No no, we explained, the baby actually grows underneath the tummy, not in the stomach where the food goes to be digested, although indirectly yes, the food one eats is what helps the baby grow. And then he decided that he had a baby in his tummy and could feel it moving. So we had to disappoint him by saying that alas, only mothers could do this particular trick, although if he wanted to find a way for fathers to do it too when he grew up then more power to him. He then decided that there was a baby growing in my tummy, specifically a baby sister. And he cheerfully started telling people this. Which made things slightly awkward at times, until he decided we needed a new Maggie-cat, and included the information that there was a baby Maggie and a baby sister growing in my tummy. (Just to be absolutely clear: No, on both the kitten and the baby.)

We’ve begun talking about where we will eventually move to next, although it’s certainly not any time soon. He was quite upset by this for a bit, saying that he didn’t want to move to the new house, that he wanted to stay here, that this house was fine. I asked him where this hypothetical little sister would sleep. “In my bunk bed, with me!” he said. “She’d be too little,” I pointed out, “she’d need a crib.” “We could move my easel and put the crib at the end of my bed,” he said, which was very generous of him. While they were out on a walk or a shopping trip he and HRH saw a puppy, and talk turned to owning a dog someday. When they came home Liam burst into the house and said, “Mama, we have to get a new house and then we can have a dog!” So suddenly the new house isn’t such a bad thing. He’s decided that the bathtub will be bigger, the kitchen will be bigger, the living room will be bigger ( “And we will bring our new TV!”), and he will have an office of his own, like Mama and Dada do, with his own computer. To which I said hey, sure, because HRH has already let the IT guys at work now that the next time the eMacs get replaced he has dibs on a couple, one earmarked for the boy himself.

I mentioned that there was a level-up somewhere around Christmas. Well, there’s been another in the past two weeks. The reasoning and language and behaviour and associated stuff has refined yet again. It’s great. On the other hand, he’s hiding his reading skills from us and still trying to convince us that he can’t dress himself or draw. He pretends all over the place and tells exciting stories, and is getting better at lying down in his room and playing with trains or cars for a good half hour or so, constructing elaborate conversations between them and narrating the action.

He has recently gone crazy for raw snow peas. He’s been horse-like in his appetite lately in general (as in eating horse-sized servings, not preferring grass and oats) but particularly so for raw peas and carrots, bananas, blackberries, cantaloupe, and corn. The nap habit is kind of iffy; at school we’re lucky if he naps for half an hour, because there’s so much going on to distract him, and the older kids don’t nap any more. And as he hangs around with them, well, he sees it as perfectly reasonable that he doesn’t need to nap either. Which is, alas, untrue, because if the nap is missed he’s a whiny cranky horror by six o’clock. He naps around an hour and a half with his caregiver and Grandma, and about two hours at home, though, so heh, the nap is not a thing of the past yet, my son.

Something that amuses us is a sudden aggressive politeness. When you tell him to do something and he angrily says, “No, thanks!“, it’s really hard to hide the smile. He has also recently taken to moaning, “Oh, I never get to do [thing you won’t let me do]!” when we tell him no, and we’re very hard put to not laugh out loud at the dramatic hyperbole. Especially when it involves playing with cars, Lego, trains, colouring, watching a movie, or eating crackers. Because you know in our house those fun things Just Aren’t Done. Ever.

Other Liam posts this past month:

~ Liam is introduced to Star Wars

Interview Outtakes

The second half of the interview with Neil Gaiman has been posted at fps!

Here are the promised outtakes.

First, a single line because it made me laugh. The context: The assistant had given me the two minute warning, which meant about seventeen minutes had gone by.

    NG: You haven’t even asked any questions, I’ve just monologued at you!

And here’s the post-interview stuff.

    A: I have tons more questions that I wish I had asked —

    NG: I’m sorry!

    A: But obviously we are out of time. So what I will ask you to do is —

    NG: Do you need me to scribble on anything for you?

    A: I would very much like you to. It took me – I’m not kidding – since I was given this assignment it took me five days to figure out what I would ask you to sign, and finally I said, Well, since the interview’s for Coraline, I shall ask you to sign that.

    NG: Spell your name.

    A: A – r – i – n.

    [NG shakes his fountain pen]

    NG: I, of course, was an idiot, and left this uncapped.

    A: Do you need another? [because OF COURSE I have brought a fountain pen to a Neil Gaiman interview] Oh, you’ve got a back up. Okay. [ballpoint, alas]

    NG: How is this, it should work – A-r-i-n? [writes]

    A: Yes, that’s correct!

    NG: Where’s it from?

    A: My parents made it up.

    NG: Ah! [draws]

    A: Well, obviously it’s all over the place now, but thirty-eight years ago they made it up. My mother is Scottish, from Kirkcaldy, and wanted to call me Aran, for the Isle of Aran.

    NG: Right.

    A: My dad’s Irish, and wanted to call me Erin. So, they compromised. They went halves.

    NG: [laughs] So you have an Aran meets Erin. Which leaves you somewhere around the Isle of Mann in terms of geographics.

    A: [Laughs.]

    [NG continues to draw]

    A: I’m trying to get my son to agree to let me read him The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish.

    NG: How old is he?

    A: He’s going to be four in a few months. And he won’t – ‘No Mama, I don’t want to read it, I just want to look at the pictures.’ And he’ll look at the pictures and say, ‘Why is he holding a gorilla mask?’ And I say, ‘Well, we’ll have to read the book and find out.’ ‘No, I don’t want to do that yet.’

    NG: That’s so cool. The point I knew that The Wolves in the Walls worked as a book was when my friend Gary Wolfe called me from Chicago to tell me his grandchildren had been over, and the 3 yr old had made him read them The Wolves in the Walls and he did. And then the light was going, and she asked if he would read it again. And he couldn’t really see the text properly so he began, ‘Lucy was wandering around the place.’

    A: Telling the pictures.

    NG: And she said, “Granpa. It’s ‘Lucy walked around the place.’” And she, on one listen, had it cold.

    A: That’s great. I love hearing my son start to do that. ‘Here Mum, I’ll read this book to you,’ and you know, he’s pretty darn close, and you realize that reading really is an awful lot of memorization.

    NG: Yeah. It’s – there’s so much of words that is memory, remembering the shapes, the word shapes. We don’t actually read it; we only think we read it.

    [NG shows A the drawing he’s done in the book.]

    A: [laughs] I love it. Thank you, so very, very much.

    NG: You are so very welcome. Thank you for coming.

    A: I’m looking forward to you coming back in August.

    NG: I will be here!

This is the last post on the topic, I promise. But you must understand, it’s been eating my life since Tuesday of last week. In a good way, but still. Now it’s all out of my system.

Here is something totally unconnected: I have an appointment with the luthier tonight to adjust the 7/8 cello, and get the rental thing started. I hope I can stay awake that long, and be focused enough during the appointment to test and evaluate the adjustments.

In Which She Talks About The Interview With Neil Gaiman

First: Part One of the Interview With Neil Gaiman is live at the fps web site! Yesterday was all transcribing and editing and formatting stuff. Later today I shall post an outtake, I think.

What was the human experience behind the published interview? Read on!

To begin with, I got to the interview site half an hour early. The STM directions were off by half an hour (in my favour, but still). I killed twenty minutes by wandering around old Montreal (hurrah for a warmish day) then showed up at the interview site ten minutes before my slot was scheduled to start. I had no idea who to talk to to check in, but a very nice lady at the concierge’s desk pointed me to a man in a blue sweater who had met someone famous-ish when he’d arrived. Accordingly I went over and waited patiently for him to finish his conversation with someone, then introduced myself and hurrah, it was my contact. Who proceeded to tell me they were running forty-five minutes late, and Neil was nowhere in sight. (Later I learned that his flight was very late, and there was a press conference to get through before the private interviews could begin.) So I said I’d come back for four-thirty and went to have a nice hot cup of tea in a nearby Van Houtte cafe that was warm and upscale and relatively empty but for a handful of people reading, like me. I had my copy of Smoke and Mirrors with me, because I’d figured if things were a bit late I could read a short story or two. Well, I read half of it, then tidied up and went back to the hotel.

Where I learned that there would be yet another forty-five minute delay. (This would be the traffic jam of waiting interviews to be conducted before mine.)

Well, at least I could see Neil this time; he was posing in a lovely overstuffed cognac leather armchair in front of some very luxurious wood panelling while a photographer snapped a cascade of digital photos. Rather than leave again I settled into a chair in the lobby and took out Smoke and Mirrors once more. (Ended up finishing it, too.) He sat down for the next interview and had a cup of tea during it, then did the interview before mine, and then the assistants put a little sample platter of food in front of him and looked at me apologetically. Good grief, the man was exhausted, and I’d been going to suggest that he eat at some point myself; I wasn’t going to make a fuss! He polished that off quite quickly (it smelled truly lovely, and reminded me that I’d eaten quite some time ago and had no idea what supper was going to be) and they brought me over to be introduced.

Looking back on it, I think what I was going for was a very human interview, rather than a right-down-to-business you’re-here-to-answer-questions kind of interview. Which wasn’t necessarily good for my end product, but seemed to succeed in making him relatively comfortable. I could not, absolutely could not, ignore the fact that he was exhausted and trying to keep up with everything, or treat him like a means to an end. He’s a person, first and foremost. And my approach did mean I lost a few minutes of topical stuff, but I’d like to think it made him a bit more relaxed and felt like someone wasn’t expecting him to perform so much as share a conversation about cool stuff. (If we’d had time I would have asked him one of Ceri’s questions: “What have you been waiting to talk about the whole tour, but no one’s asked yet?” That was a derivative of her first suggestion: “Okay Neil, you’ve been on tour for ages, and the Newbery before that. What do *you* want to talk about?”)

He didn’t look as tired as he’d looked in some of the photos I’d seen from earlier in the tour, and I was glad for his sake. The Montreal stop was so brief in his whirlwind press junket, and to be late out of Toronto and having to end up compressing all the appearances and interviews must have been beyond crushing. The grace under cumulative pressure that he demonstrated was really inspiring. My mother would say that he was a true gentleman, and she’d be absolutely right.

Our settling-in and level-checking conversations consisted of talking about his schedule, how long before he could see his daughter Maddy (one day) and before he could go home (three), talking about how he was trying to keep up with all the Newbery coverage (and was losing ground), and talking about Emru. Then we got into the interview proper, which went pretty much as the published interview reads until the assistant gave me a two-minute warning. (That happened between part one of the published interview, and what will be part two.)

At the end he asked if I’d brought something I wanted him to scribble in, and I pulled my copy of Coraline out. I’d agonised for days over this: what, out of my extensive Oeuvre of Neil Gaiman collection, was I going to bring for him to sign? My first issue of Stardust? Preludes and Nocturnes, as I first encountered his writing in the very first issues of Sandman as it was released? The original copy of The Books of Magic vol. 3, which is also signed by Charles Vess? (That got nixed because when I checked it was inscribed to Johane, who gave me her set when she moved.) The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, for Liam? (Who has been resistant to the suggestion of reading it, although he goes through all the pictures and asks what’s happening; my standard answer is, “Well, we’d have to read the book to find out.”) Good Omens? I might have brought American Gods, but t! has it out on loan. Fragile Things, although I love it, was, well, too new. The Graveyard Book? I adored it, but I didn’t want him to think I’d brought it just because it won the Newbery. Just before I left I settled on my copy of Coraline, because it was the reason I’d been given the interview, after all. He drew a lovely big picture of a ghostly rat saying “Boo” in it for me.

I wanted to talk to him about so much. I’m reading Susannah Clarke’s The Ladies of Grace Adieu, for example, and I know he was instrumental in getting that titular first short story published, so I wanted to ask him about that. I wanted to ask him about his creative process and how or if it differed when writing for different media. I wanted to talk about the Newbery, although we did touch on it in the pre-interview bit, because for one of my favourite authors to win one of my favourite awards makes me want to ask all sorts of questions. I wanted to thank him for introducing me to Thea Gilmore and Tori Amos. I wanted to tell him that I played the cello, for some reason. And I wanted to thank him for those very many hours of joy he’d given me as an author, and how much inspiration as a writer.

And I wanted to say, “Once upon a time Ceri handed you a blank postcard at a signing and said, ‘I have a friend who is collecting story prompts and I’m surprising her with postcards from the authors at this con. Would you write a line or a thought on this to mail to her as a story assignment?’ And I got the green-ink fountain-penned postcard from you in the mail and used it as a talisman for years until I finally wrote the story in February of 2006.”

And above all, I wanted to say, “You are such an incredibly generous man, sharing what you do with the world. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

He is such a wonderful man. I love him. I loved him as a writer before; as of the interview, I totally love the man himself as well. The world needs more men like Neil Gaiman in it.

In Which She Reveals The Even Cooler Assignment; Or, Hangin’ Out With The Dream King

Well, I’m home from having tea with Neil Gaiman.

No, I’m not kidding. Well, we both had tea, but not at the same time.

He wins the Nicest Man Alive award, hands down. I have never had someone who only just met me stare into my eyes that intently while he spoke to me, nor felt so at ease with that someone. Thank the gods for recording devices, because I couldn’t have taken notes to save my life.

I have a twenty-minute private interview to transcribe tomorrow. And yes, there will be a longer post here detailing the experience, too. Watch for the interview to be posted at fps by the end of the week!

Embargo Lifted: Coraline Film Review

Coraline Onesheet, © 2008 LAIKA, Inc. All rights reserved.

Yes, Gentle Readers, today the press embargo has been lifted, and I can finally share last week’s Cool Thing with you.

Last Wednesday I went to the press screening of Coraline, the first stop-motion film presented entirely in 3D. Based on the Hugo-award-winning novella by Neil Gaiman, the film was absolutely spectacular in every aspect. I went as an agent of Frames Per Second Magazine, the online magazine devoted to animation in all forms, and today my review of the film is up at the fps site.

The short form? It was freaking amazing. Jaw-dropping. You know how pretty much every major animated feature pushes the envelope? This one pushed an entire mail truck.

But you can read why I was so impressed in more detail over at fps. Enjoy!

—

Coraline
Release Date: February 6th 2009 (nationwide)
Director: Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas)
Writers: Henry Selick; based on the book by Neil Gaiman
Studio: Laika Entertainment

AUGH!

No, no, this is good. This is good of such magnitude that I can’t encompass it.

I have just been given not one but two of the Best Assignments Ever. This has nothing to do with the rush editing job I’ve been working on all day so far. No, this was a phone call setting up Something Big for tomorrow morning (okay, another rush thing, but I can handle it), and something Even Bigger for next week.

I’m so freaked out that I’m shaking. It’s a good kind of freaked out, but still, there’s an awful lot of panic in there.

Okay. I am okay. But I am a geek. And terrified that I’m not grown-up enough to pull this off.

Repeat after me: Professional writer. Professional writer. I am a professional writer. With tons of experience in the associated areas. How long have I been in the book business? Also, I am a geek, which counts for something when all’s said and done, really.

Professional writer. Professional. I am professional. (If I say it often enough, maybe I’ll believe it or it will finally sink in or something.)

Okay, it might actually be working, because I’m calming down. Or maybe it’s the rapid pacing up and down the hall between typing sentences that’s doing the calming.

Non-disclosure agreements dictate that I can’t share these until I’m told I can share. Trust me, when I’m allowed, I will shout from rooftops. In the meantime I will be over here in a quivering mass, nibbling at my fingertips and mumbling to myself.

I would say that I love my job, except right now I’m eyeing it with a certain amount of disbelief and suspicion.

ETA: And now, an hour later, I am completely exhausted from vibrating at levels of Unbelievably Awesome and have a headache. Yay for extra-strength Excedrin. Also, despite caffeine being the last thing I need right now, I am treating myself to a latte-from-a-packet, because we don’t have enough milk to make hot chocolate.