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tv   Book TV  CSPAN  December 25, 2012 8:00am-9:15am EST

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>> brian vandemark, his most recent book, "american sheikhs" to families, for generations in the story of america's and fluids in the middle east. this is booktv on c-span 2. >> author neil gaiman delivers the nascent award lecture answers questions at the book festival. the work presented honors authors he made historic contributions to the literature to avoid reading public. this was held at george mason university in virginia were many book festival events are held. it's about an hour 15 minutes. [cheers and applause] >> i know you're applauding because it's the better than the guy who practice i know. [laughter] thank you very much. what a lively audience.
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i wish i could stay longer, but my role is very brief. i'm bill miller and developed to festival and writing programs here at george mason. [applause] >> thank you. i was going to say that you've arrived at fault for the book whether you intended to or not. if your array was accidental because you were interested in neil gaiman, this is -- we started the festival wednesday. we are having a great time. we don't end until sunday. there's programs in the floppy. with a few big ones up if you're interested in other events. in this german sunday. [applause] following me to the podium will be the mayor of fairfax city,
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race silverthorne houle introduced a nice case. we are going to keep things to a minimum and shift to formality staff. he's going to read, take questions from cars that some of you filled out an answer those and then read again. then we would do the presentation and then he will be done. bookstore will be open in the lobby if you haven't had a chance to buy one of the present looks. so here's the mayor. [applause] >> at evening, ladies and gentlemen and distinguished guests. it's been 15 years since the possibilities of the book festival at george mason university was first discussed. the city was one of the initial founders of the festival this protagonist order of the festival percents. in the past seven years, then stage and indirect fairfax or
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local businesses, old town hall county museum visitor center and the city of fairfax regional library. for the past two years are brand-new sherwood community center. were proud to strengthen the ties between the city of fairfax at george mason's fall for the book festival. it is now my distinct honor to introduce to you a special guest this evening. neil gaiman was born in hampshire, united kingdom and is in the united states near minneapolis. a self-described feral child who was born -- who was raised in public libraries. it was like fostering his lifelong love of reading. gaiman began his career in england as a journalist. his first book was to rant arendt biography that taken three months to write and i can't with a biography of douglas adams, don't panic, the official hitchhikers guide to the come election -- companion,
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i'm sorry. his groundbreaking series coming sandman -- [cheers and applause] collected a large number of u.s. awards in its 75 issue run. i was a city hall and a young woman said to have every single one of those. including nine will eisner comic industry were simply heard heard the words. in 1991, the first comic i virtue received literary award for best short stories. he's also won the coveted two. a word. mr. gaiman is credited with being a creator of modern comics as well as some out there who's worked and reached audiences of all ages. he is listed in the dictionary of literary biography as a top 10 living postmodern writers and is a prolific writer of prose, poetry, film, journalism, comics, song lyrics and drama.
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it is a, please welcome me and give anyone fairfax and george mason welcome to mr. neil gaiman. [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] [cheers and applause] >> there are an awful lot of view. [laughter] hello. right, so the plan for this evening. there is one. although i only decided what it
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was about four minutes ago. so there is a plan. the plan is as follows. i couldn't decide whether to review read you something from a new novel called the ocean at the end of the leg, which i sent off to the publisher for good, price the send button and lettuce salad for my book at about 3:30 this morning. [cheers and applause] so it is about as fresh as anything can possibly be. i'd like to read that, but it's a novel. it keeps going. they will walk out of here: what happened next?
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i thought that's not fair, even if every single one person buys the book, it is still not a sometime next year. it's still not really fair. i thought maybe i could do a very short story as well. and i said i've also got these questions because i was given questions on cards and i've carefully separated questions into once i will probably answer, once i probably won't answer because they're silly and dr. who. [cheers and applause] and they may find that just would've taken one from one and one for the other. so my plan is basically, i am going to redo a little chunk of novel. i'm going to answer a bunch of
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questions. i'm going to reach of a very short story. they are all new things, so you should, at any point combo wind up sitting there going, i know how this goes. [laughter] that's the plan. [applause] and the only thing that can conspire to defeat the plan is reading from an ipaq. occasionally it's really exciting because suddenly you go i have no idea how i got here or how to get back to the same that i actually want to get back to you. so the book is called the ocean at the end of the lane and it begins with a quote from mori said back in conversation with art spiegelman in "the new yorker" on september 27, 1993
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when maurice sendak says, i remember my childhood vividly. i do terrible things, but i enjoyed myself later told no way do. it would scare them. it was only a duck pond in the back of the farm. it wasn't big. headstock second is the ocean, then it doubly silly. she said they come here across the ocean from the old country. her mother said she didn't remember properly and it and it was like tenneco and anyway, the old country. his grandmother said they were both wrong and the place that it found was the really old country. she said she remembered the really old country. she said they were legal country at loan up.
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i'm going to skip the prologue. and get you straight into the story. the orator is about seven years old and as things begin here slightly grumpy because he just had to give up his bedroom and the families running short of money and different people are staying in his bedroom. my former bedroom at the top of the stairs flied out in a variety of very. i feed them all with suspicion. they were sleeping in my bedroom, you see my little dove of peace and that is just the right size for me. there had been a fat austrian lady who told her she could lay her head and walk around the ceiling, an architectural student from the ceiling and an
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american couple may not be scandalized relief when she discovered they were not actually married. and now, there is the opal miner. a south african, although he made his money mining for opals pdq my sister in an opel each come a rough, black rock with craig blue red fire and it hit my sister liked him for this and treasure her opal stone. i could not forgive him for the death of my kid room. 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 wish. i would read. i would explore. i pulled on my shorts, t-shirts for mishandled. i went downstairs to the kitchen. his father was cooking on another slept in. it is very distressing count over his pajamas.
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he was cooked breakfast on saturdays. i said dad, where's my comment? q. would spot me a copy of smashed before he drove home from work on friday and i would read it on saturday mornings. do you want toast? yes, but not urge. my father did not like toasters. he toasted bread under the grill and usually printed. i went outside into the drive, looks around. push the kitchen door and went in. i liked the kitchen door. at swung both ways. you could walk in and out with arms laden or full. dad, where's the car? in the drive. no, it isn't.
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what? the telephone rang and my father went out into the hall with the phone was to answer it. i heard him talking to someone. the test began to smoke under the grill. i got up in a chair and turned the perloff. that was to please my father said. someone reported seeing a car abandoned at the bottom of the league. i hadn't even reported us to look at. he pulled the pin out from the grill cover the toasters smoking and blackened on one side. is my comic fare or did they steal it? [laughter] i don't know, the police didn't mention your comment. my father put peanut butter in the brain scientists can replace distressing count with a coat over his pajamas, put on a pair of shoes and walk down the lane to get there. we walked perhaps five minutes down the narrow lane, which ran
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through fields on each side when a police car came up behind us had slowed and the driver greeted my father by name. i hit my piece of her toast behind my back on my father talked to the police man. i wish my family would pay normal come the slice, white bread, the kind that went into toasters like every other family i knew. my father had found a local baker shop come within the exclusive heather brown bread he insisted on buying them. he said they tasted better, which was to my mind nonsense. proper bread was white and please placed in tasted like almost nothing. [laughter] that was the point. the driver of the police car got out, open the door and told me to get in. my father rode up front with the driver. the police covered slowly down the lane.
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bolinas unpaved back then, just wide enough for one car at a time from a, precipitous bumpy with the whole thing prodded by farm equipment and rain and time. these kids think it's funny to steal a car, drive a car and hit the internet. >> i'm just glad it was fun so fast that my father. pastorius mall grow with with hair so ponder this almost white and red, red cheeks stared at us as we went past. i hope my piece of toast on my lap. funny than leaving it down here said the policemen because it's a long walk back to anywhere from here. we passed a bend in the lane and saw the way to many over the side in front of the gate leading into a field, tires sunk deep in the brown eyed. we showed passed it, part on the
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grass verge. the policemen that be out in the three us were over while the policemen told my dad about crime in this area and i was obviously the local kids had done it and make thought it was opening the passenger side door with the spare key. he said, someone is that something on the back seat. my father reached back and pulled the blue blanket away that covered the thing in the backseat. even as the policemen was telling him he shouldn't do that and i was staring at the backseat because that was where my comment was. so i saw it. it was in it, and think i looking at. although i was an imaginative child, prone to nightmares, i persuaded my parents to take me to matter the source? in london when i was six because i wanted to visit the chamber of horrors come expecting the movie
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monster chambers of horrors had read about in my comics. i wanted frankenstein's monster and the wolf man. instead, i was one of three seemingly endless sequence of dioramas of unremarkable men and women who had murdered people. [laughter] usually watches and members of their family and who then were murdered in turn a hanging by the electric chair or in gas chambers. the plaques were depicted by thick and thin awkward social situations from a seated around a dinner table as their poisoned families expired. the plaques that explain who they were also told me the majority of them had murdered their families and sold the bodies to anatomy. it is then that the word nmma garnered its own edge of horror
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for me. i did not know what anatomy wise. i only knew that anatomy made people kill their children. [laughter] the only thing that kept me running screaming from the chamber of horrors as i was let out of the senate the had looked fully been. they could not truly dead because they did not have a localized. the thing in the backseat and been covered by the blue blanket. i knew that blanket. it was the one in my old bedroom on the shelf when it got cold. but it's not convincing either. it looked a little like the opal miner, dressed in a black suit with a white ruffled shirt and black bow tie. its hair was slicked back and artificially shiny. its eyes were staring at us was ever bluish in the skin was very red. if the ticket. he upheld. there was no gold chain around
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its neck. i could see underneath it, crump and bent my copy of smash. i don't remember who said what, just that they made me stand away from the many. i crossed the road and and stood on the other the policemen talked to my father and wrote things down in a notebook. i stared at the many. the green garden hose ran for the exhaust pipe to the driver's window. there is 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 burned. [laughter] and cold. at home my father ate all the most part pieces of toast. jim heatley and chuckle good for you and are in toast my favorite. and he would eat it all up.
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when i was much older he confessed he'd never liked burnt toast and a day to prevent it from going to waste in for a fraction of the moment i entire childhood felt like a lie. [laughter] it was as if one of the pillows had crumbled into dry sand. the policemen spoke into a radio in the front of his car. they crossed the red came over to me, sorry about this, sunday, there's going to be a few more cars coming in a minute. we should find you somewhere to wait for you to be in the way. what you like to sit in the back of my car again? i did not want to set there again. somebody, a girl said he can come back with me to the farmhouse. it's such a vote. she was much older than me, at least a love in. her hair was one relatively short for a girl and her nose was snob.
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she was freckled. she were a red skirt. girls didn't wear jeans back then much, not in those parts. she is sharp, gray blue eyes. the policemen then put the girl over to my father got permission to take me away and then i was walking down the lane with the girl. 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 going to find and stop them around here at 3:00 in the morning. do you think he killed himself? guests. do you like milk? grant is milking bessey now. i said, you mean real milk from a cow? been so foolish, but she nodded
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reassuringly. i thought about this. i never had milk that didn't come from a bottle. i think i'd like that. we stopped at a small bar and come over and old women older than my parents with gray hair like cobwebs and a thin face, long black tubes attached to each of the cows teats. we used to milk them by hand, but this is easier. she showed me how to milk went from the cow down the black tubes into huge metal chairs. the trains were left on a platform outside the barn, where they were collected each day. the old lady gave me a cup of creamy milk from bessie the cow. the freshman before it onto the cooler. nothing i had drank had ever tasted like that before. rich and warm and perfectly happy in my mouth. i remembered that milk after i'd forgotten everything else.
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there's more of them up the lands of the woman suddenly, also coming down with plates clashing. you should get the point to the kitchen. these concrete and a cup of milk won't do a growing boy. the crow said have you eaten? just a piece of toast. it was burned. last night she said this is hand stuck farm. come on. she took me in the front door to the enormous kitchen, sat me down to the huge wooden table that looked as if faces were staring up at me from the old wood. we have breakfast here early. she said the teamsters at first way. she gave me a china bowl filled with warm porridge with a lump of homemade blackberry jam, my
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favorite in the middle of the porridge and she poured cream on it. i switched it with my spin before it it it, swirling into a purple mass and was his happiest i've ever ever been about anything. it tasted perfect. a stocky woman came in. her red brown hair was streaked with gray and cut short. she had apple cheeks, dark green skirt that went to her knees and wellington boots. she said this must be the boy from the top of the lane. it would be fired at the meeting tease him. she felt a copper kettle and put the kettle on to the flame and took down the pipe shaped blanks from a cupboard and hesitated, looking at the woman. the woman said your rights, six. the doctor will be there too. and the woman pursed her lips and made a noise. they may still know she said. he wrote it so carefully two,
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folded in his pocket and they haven't looked there yet. what does it say? read it yourself with the woman. i thought she was let his mother. she seemed like she was somebody's mother. then she cited says he took out the money his friends had given him to smuggle out of south africa, along with all the money he made a few beers mining for opals and went to the casino to campbell. he only met together with his own money and donate it to dip into the money his friend had given him until he made back the money he had lost and then he didn't have anything for the woman. that's not what he wrote though said levey squinting her eyes. what he wrote this to all my friends, i'm so sorry. it was not like i meant to and i hope you can find in your heart to forgive me for it cannot forgive myself.
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same things that the older woman. she turned to me, i invitee smock. you've met them a profit in the milking shed. she was mrs. hand stuck before me. this is the oldest find here about. i wondered why there are called hemp stalk, but i did not. anymore than i asked how they knew about the suicide note or with the opal miner.as he died. they were perfectly matter-of-fact about it. i nudged him to look in the pocket. there's a good girl. they'll be in here in the kettle boils to ask if i seen anything unusual and have their teeth. but you take the boys down to the pond. it's not a pond. it's laotian. she turned to me and said. she led me out of the house the way we had come.
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the day was so great. we walked around the house done the cow path. is it a real ocean asked? yes she said. we came back suddenly, it wouldn't shut of old age in between a duck pond spotted with duckweed and lily pads. there's a dead fish come in silver is a quite floating on its side on the surface. that's not good. i thought you said it was the notion i told her. it's just a pond really. it is a notion she said. we came across it when i was just a baby from the old country. she went into the shed and came up that long bamboo pole would put the turkish rugby match on the end. she leaned over, carefully pushed the net need the dead fish. she pulled it out.
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but the fire was in the doomsday book. i said your mom sent so that was william the conqueror. yes. she took the dead fish out of the net and examined it. it was still soft, not stiff and it flopped in her hand. i've never seen so many colors. the soviets, but mcbeath was blue and green and purple and each scale is tipped with black. what kind of fish is that i asked? this is very odd she said. mostly fish in job died anyway. she produced a horn handled pocketknife, although it could not have told you from where could she push into the stomach of the fish and sliced towards the tail. this is what killed her. she took something from inside the fish and put it still greasy
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from the fish gets into my hand. i bent down addicted into the water, bring my fingers across it. i stared at it. queen vic tori's face stared back at me. the fish eat a six pounds. it's not good is that. a little sunshine showed the furcal face in what some might her hair. she said your father is wondering where you are. tend to be getting back. i tried to give her the little soldier sixpence, but she shook her head and said you can buy chocolate or sherbet lemons. i don't think i can i said here it is too small. i don't know if shops will take sixpence like these boundaries. then put it in your piggy bank. it might bring you luck.
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she said this doubtfully as if to say what kind of luck it will bring. the policemen and my father and two men in brown suits and ties receiving the farmhouse kitchen. one of the men told me he was a police van, but wasn't wearing the uniform from which i thought was disappointing. if i was the police then i would wear my uniform whatever it could. the other man with a suit and tie with dr. smithson, our family doctor. they were finishing their teeth. my father thanked for taking care of me and said it was no chocolate on could come again. the policemen who'd driven us to do many now drove us back to her house and dropped us off at the end of the drive. probably best if you don't talk about this to your sisters said father. i didn't want to talk about it to anybody. i had found a special place, made a new friend i lost my
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comic and i was told in old-fashioned silver sixpence tightly in my hand. i said what makes the ocean different to the city? baker said my father. a notion is much bigger than the sea. why? just thinking i said. could you have an ocean that was his policy pond? knows that my father. pawned our pond size, lakeside lakeside east premises are seas and oceans or should. atlantic, pacific, indian, arctic. i think that some of the oceans they are. my father went to his bedroom to talk to my mom and be on the phone with her. i chopped the silver sixpence into my piggy bank. it is the kind of china piggy bank from which nothing could be removed. one day when it could hold no more coins, i would be allowed to break it.
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it was far from full. [applause] [applause] and after that, things get weird. last back -- [laughter] is a very strange book to right because it wasn't until the end but i decided it definitely wasn't a children's book. on the one hand it does have a 7-year-old protagonists and three wonderfully strange magic
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which is living at the bottom of the garden at the end of the lane and that the other hand has the scariest stuff i've ever, ever ridden in it. and i've written some really scary stuff in my life. so i had to sort of decide. i went coming in no, caroline, i'm not cool with that being the case the. caroline is on the accuser because mark and gary lied, which is true. at the time was the youngest daughter. she would've been about six of my agents, who's married to a nice man. when i sent the manuscript for caroline, i sit here you go. she called me up and says great, but it's obviously not a children's book.
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i said i think it is. she said no, it's much too scary. i said okay, read it to your kids. [laughter] if your kids are fine with it, we will send it to children's book editor. if your kids have a problem with it, none of the bullet wind up paying for years of therapy, but i will send it to an adult editor. so she said right she phoned me up a week later and said my kids love it. i am sending it to talese howard and that was where she sent it and they loved it. about three years ago was it care line musical off-broadway with music of stephen merritt of the magnetic fields and it was
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pretty wonderful. the first night i wound up sitting next to mark and gary, a beautiful place 15, 16-year-old young lady. my wife amanda was with manager douceur. it's because of morgan that this is a children's book because morgan was so scared. morgan said, i was terrified. [laughter] she said they knew that if i let on that i was terrified, i wouldn't find out what happened next. [laughter] so that is why caroline became a children's book. this on the other hand i would not really feel calm to pull. there's definite this. don't.
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questions. definitely ask, i asked randomly and dr. who. there are some good slipped into the other one. have you liked the famous writer vic or hugo ever been a bill in someone else's story and if not, how would you like to be? says at the bottom honestly, i am writing the story. [laughter] i don't know if this is spoilers, but if any of you saw my appearance on the simpsons, any of you who did not see "the simpsons" episode, please picture fingers in your ears.
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i always when it's time to take them out. are they in your ears? in the book job, i turn out to be a baddie because it was brilliant because inmates at manuscript they told me a guinness and sends an asked about that myself and myself and i said sure. i figured this script would be very much at some point homer would say not even neil gaiman could come up with something like this and you cut to be going you're right, i couldn't. december the script and i was in here to read stuff. i'm still in here, still doing stuff. but i'm getting towards the end i haven't done anything in a few pages. i'm the baddie. it was brilliant. my delighted foul at the end that i cannot read and write is
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one of my favorite moments in all television. the ec, this is ambiguous because it might be a doctor who questioned that it might not. when you write, are you like a 9-year-old in the bedroom? [laughter] yes. mostly that's what it feels like actually. i know these parts had to go to get there somehow. it seemed so simple when i took it apart. everything i took apart as a 9-year-old. each have something like an old television and take it apart or put it back together again like it says in these books that says a thousand interesting things a boy should know and then i will know how to make my own television end of suffering trap on a desert island with television components --
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[laughter] -- i will be able to watch my favorite television program. it never works. here's a heartfelt fan one that says if you truly love signing books, why? okay, the answer to that, and it is a painful one is look around you. in doing hastie had cal. i've been told that 1800 people in this room between the two floors. couldn't figure out quickly how long it actually takes to send books for 1800 people, allowing 30 seconds per person. the last time i did a signing for about 1800 people i finished at 3:00 in the morning and it didn't feel like doing one of those tonight. i'm sorry. i'll come back.
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[cheers and applause] the best place to catch me is for the national book fair, where he starred as early as possible and fine until last time i signed until the disassembling the stands around me and there are still people. we've been through a pink four people that day and it just kept going. next question. this one is about his existentialist against. why? [laughter] why not. what book did you enjoy writing mouse -- most? i don't know.
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the ones i enjoy writing us are the ones i hate writing the most good the ones that are fine had the huge guys commit terrible lows and ones where you get to stomp around and found my agent and say why do you let me do this? i could've been a gardener. [laughter] she says no you couldn't. ago well, no i couldn't, but why -- just write the book. i really enjoyed writing the new one, the ocean at the end of filling. mostly i enjoyed it because i was doing stuff i had done before and i love doing stuff i haven't done before any boat. i loved writing american guard, which had a huge sword of -- [applause] it was fun and it was horrible
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and the lows for amazingly low. could you tell us about your writing gazebo? was the conceit that they are and you redesigned it where did you build it from scratch? i didn't build it because i am a writer. and honestly with very few exceptions you should not trust us near screwdrivers, hammers, crowbars, wrenches. i don't know what they do. now, i got some very nice people who are friends of my assistant, lorraine, who normally built things for wind fares. so they were very good at building shops and i said, could you build a gazebo? they said how hard can it be. so they built me my writing
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gazebo come which breaks all the rules of writing gazebos, but none of us knew and it's a wonderful place for rating, except for the mouse problem, which is very recent and i -- we are going dr. who. but i put all the various first drafts of the top his wife, which is mostly called the house of nothing outline and then it became bigger on the inside for two years and that it was called the doctor's wife for the last three weeks. i put all the tracks in nature or in one day i opened the jar and five mice came out, one at a
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time, very, very from police. i pulled up a script and they left a scratch. it wasn't completely eaten, but i thought, i'd meant to get these to the library of congress or somebody and now they'll mock me. what is your best advice for getting started writing? you said down. [applause] if you plan to read with a pencil, make sure your pencil sharpening your paper. if you bear with the pen, sillier patent, make sure your paper. if you're writing on the computer, turn the computer on, activator processing program. have some kind of automatic saving system in place so that you will not accidentally type and press the wrong button and
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you type the first word and type in the first word or writing the first word may very well be some kind of outline for yourself at the stuff you have to write before you begin. but just do it, sit down, start right. people always want more than not from me. and i tell them that and it's like i'm trying to keep a secret from them. they look at me going and coming out, but what's the real secret? [laughter] they want me to tell them about the postcard that you can't send if you're a real writer. or if you want to be a writer in that bed that you bring the postcard. with a black match ended the last of the postcard birds, you
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hear on the door and there's dave baker's and sherman alexy and jonathan laid some in stephen king and me and we are hearing roads. [applause] deweese and now you will learn. [laughter] is easier than that. just write. this document at the beginning doesn't have to be very good. the trick is to keep writing. i got to teach a clear and reselling. four years ago i taught a
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clarion which is a fight we can't come six-week long science-fiction boot camp and teachers comment into a week. i did weeks work out which i was told when everyone cries and has service break downs, indeed they do, which was great. at one point, one of my guys took me aside and said how can you tell which of us is going to make it? and i said no. he said that some of us are brilliant and some of us aren't. and can't you tell? is that the ones who make it will be the ones who write and write and write in some of the ones who are brilliant they have written brilliant stories and never write again. but the ones who get in there and write every day and finish stories ebony finish stories and
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write the next time, they will make it. and i saw him about four months ago in arlington as he was nominated for a nebula award. he didn't get the award, but still very proud of him. my wife and i have both the audio book versions. as such each voice actor. did you have those choices in mind is your writing the book? i suppose it did, but i also had to cheat because i had to steal some of the ones i like from the tv series. the ones i did like i substituted the ones that were in my head. what was your favorite book as a child? depends when. being a child was a very long period of time and my tastes changed. you know, when i was five years
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old, it was a red book of short stories about. but that was rapidly supplanted by the time i was seven by c. s. lewis' books. [applause] at the time i was eight, with the hobbit and when i was nine, rather peculiarly, i think i became michael moorcock. then for a couple of years, it was the first two books of "lord of the rings" because that's all they had in the school library. they have done this to individual book. they had the fellowship of the ring and the two towers. and when i get to the end of the two towers, i would go back and read the fellowship of the ring. when i was told, i went to school at english prize. they said you get a book.
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and i said i would like the return of the king. [applause] i wanted to find out how it ended. what is your advice for someone that wants to write and be published? right, finish things. make a really good unpublishable. send them to people who may publish them. when they come back from those people with nose saying that they can publish them, send them to somebody else. someone out there is drug enough were desperate enough to publish your story and then keep writing. don't go i finished my story, i saw the story. just write the next one. i notice a lot of your stories feature very started strong-willed woman,/gross. thoughts?
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i think you are observant. [applause] and skipping down. if you could travel with any characters, which one? to come the patch or trod was my job share. the doctor who thought any of you who recently offered no idea what we're talking about is that it's an english tv show in which the hero, the doctor, a mysterious time traveling figure. after years of terror to keep the mystery. the doctor, when he dies, when he gets too exhausted, when he
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physically placed in a place that would kill somebody else, or perhaps then the actor playing him decides to move on, the doctor regenerate and you get a new one. you don't get a new one playing the old one. so it's a different personality, different person, but there's still very much the doctor and it's a sweet continuity. the first time this happens it feels at a bug. they say no, they took my doctor away. i like skin. but am i going to do at this new guy? suddenly you realize it is a feature, a good thing. sooner or later you will find your doctor and patrick tron was made up to her. do you ever feel the basic elements of your books have become too formulaic?
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any doubts about that? now, i already feel that. [applause] and i don't really feel that because at the point where you want to reduce anything to a one line description, you can reduce anything through online description. you know, romeo and juliet and love story have essentially the same if you get it down to about 10 words. but it's not the same thing. i'm sure in some ways the ocean at the end of the lane, a plot could be normal person finds something weirder and bigger on the outside and that probably would fit most of my books. but that is always what happens when it back at what i've
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written, never did what i decided to write going in. the devil is always in the details. if humor questions. this is quite fun. above the picturesque streets in the u.s., what made blacksburg tree of life special? because my friend tori amos has a family detained, crumbling family farm. i don't know if i ever told anyone this before, but he was pretty much the farm that i still to put the tree of life and shred it. i counted 96 and 97 for writing her tour bus for the first few days. she took an afternoon off to go
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see this old, strange, crumbling family farm. did she find any typos in where? yes, i found typos. you always find typos. typos, gaiman's latkes no matter how beautiful and how much effort you put into the boat, when the new book arrives, you'll grab it and randomly turn to any page or i will go down see a typo. it's now got the point where i expect it and i'm also disappointed if it doesn't happen. did you know after you voted that the word hello to become one of the most tearjerking moments in history? now, i didn't. i just thought it was a really good joke. i loved the idea that the first
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thing that's said to the doctor is goodbye. no, that's not it. the last thing she'd had to say was hello. i just thought, that's o'connor. so i was really proud of myself. i didn't realize i would rate cards. i just thought, i'm really clever. no, absolutely not. not only that, but i even put one line into the doctor's wife to make sure it couldn't happen again. the point where she says this very talked. she might be lying, but i had an idea that this is where she talked. will it be read in another episode of dr. who? yes. [cheers and applause] and the e-mail that i read before coming down here assumed
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caroline skinner, one solitary chair for caroline, who is the executive producer of dr. who, as saying by can't we have it monday? because i'm getting an award. [laughter] you have to be patient. so, i have writing one. i don't understand it enough about it because it might jinx it because anything i say gets reported as news if it has anything to do with the curfew. i got a hugo award for a doctor's wife, which is wonderful. [cheers and applause] one conversation, with my mouth
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full at the after party. i literally had my mouth full there's a journalist from the website and says you're doing another job or who? is it going to be in the series? you share? fast with season five in season six could do the same. she said it better? that gets reported as news. how would you like a short story with a mandated -- and ending? [applause] 's is a story that has not been put dish. i wrote it very, very recently as a charity anthology. i was asked to write some scary stories for a benefit charity
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anthology. and i loved scary stories, particularly when we head into a sober, which is heading into every bradbury called the country and the trees are just getting a little more skeletal and it's getting a little chillier and a little wetter in shop windows start feeling of the kind of stuff that i like, which only happens once a year or what do you look go my gosh, giant spiders are dead things. how cool is this? and then i think it's probably good the other 11 months of the year described boring stuff because then it wouldn't be special. ..
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yes, actually, i think you'd do. i finished my homework and it is my bedtime and i am a bit scared. not very scared, just a bit. but it is a very big house and lots of times the lights don't work. i reached over and tell fooled his hair. i can understand that, i said. it is a very big old house.
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he nodded. we were in the kitchen where it was light and warm. i put down my magazine on the kitchen table. what kind of story would you like me to tell you? well, he said thoughtfully, i don't think it should be too scary because then when i go to bed i will just be thinking about monsters old-time but if it isn't just a little bit scary then i won't be interested. you make up scary stories. that is what you do. she exaggerates. i write stories, yes. nothing that has been published yet. i write lots of different kinds of stories. but you do write scary stories. yes. the boy looked up at me from the shadows of the door where he was waiting. do you know any stories about the rattle bag?
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i don't think so. those are the best sorts of stories. do they tell them in your school? he shrugged. some time. what is click clack the rattle bag story? he was a precocious child and was unimpressed by his sister's boyfriend's ignorance. you could see it on his face. everybody knows that. i don't. trying not to smile. he looked at me as if he was trying to decide whether i was pulling his leg. he said maybe you should take me to my bedroom and then you can tell me a story before i go to sleep about a very not scary story because i will be in my bedroom and it is actually a bit dark up there too. i said i will leave a note for
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your sister letting her know where we are. you will hear when they get back. the front door is very slamy. we walked out of the warm and cozy kitchen to the hallway of the big house where it was chilly, drafty and dark. i flipped light switch but nothing happened. the bulb has gone. that always happens. our eyes adjusted to the shadows. the moon was almost full of blue/white moonlight through the high windows on the staircase down into the hall. it will be all right, i said. yes, said the boy soberly. i am very glad you are here. he seemed less precocious now. his hand found mine and he held on to my fingers comfortably, trusting me as if he had known me all his life. i felt responsible and adults.
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i did not know if the feeling i had for his sister who was my girlfriend was love but i liked the way the child treated me as one of the family. i felt like his big brother and i stood taller and there was something unsettling about the empty house i would not have admitted it for the world. the stairs creaked, a threadbare staircase. click clacks, said the boy, and the best monsters ever. are they from television? i don't think so. i don't think any people know where they come from. mostly they come from the dark. good place for a monster to come. yes. we walked along the upper corridor and walking from a patch of moonlight to a patch of moonlight. it really was a big house.
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i wish they had a flashlight. they come from the dark, said the boy holding onto my hand. probably they are made of bark and they come in when you don't pay attention. that is when they come in and take you back not to their nests, what is the word is like nests but not? house? no, not house. where? he was silent. that is the word, yes, where an. he squeezed my hand and stopped talking. take the people don't pay attention back to their alert and what did they do? do they suck all the blood out of you like a vampire? he snorted. vampires don't stop all of the blood out of you. they only drink little bit.
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just to keep them going and flying around. click clacks are much scarier than vampires. i am not scared of vampires, i told him. mean either. i am not scared of vampires neither. do you want to know what click clacks do? they drink you, said the boy, like a coke. coke is very bad for you. said the boy. if you put a tooth in coke, in the morning it will be dissolved into nothing. that is how bad coke is for you and why you must always clean your teeth every night. i had heard the coke story as a
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boy and been told as an adult it was not true but promoting dental hygiene was a good lie. i let it pass. click clacks drink you, said the boy. for if they bite you and then you go all its g inside and all your meat and brains and everything accept your bone's annual skin tone turns into a wet milkshake and click clack clack sucks out through the holes where your eyes yesterday. that is disgusting, i told him. did you make it up? we had reached the last flight of stairs, all the way into the big house. no. i can't believe you kids make up stuff like that. you didn't ask me about the rat or bag, he said. what is the rattle bag?
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well, he said sagely, soberly, a small voice from the darkness beside me, once your bones and skin, they hang you on a hook and you were at or in the wind. what do these click clacks look-alike? even as i asked him which i could take the question back and leave the unasked. i thought huge, spidery creatures like the one in the shower this morning. i am afraid of spiders. i was relieved when the boy says they all look like what you are expecting, what you aren't paying attention to. claiming wooden steps now. i held onto the railing, held by the -- held his hand with my right. it smelled like dust and old would behind the house. the boy's tread was certain even though the moonlight was scarce. do you know what story you are going to tell me to put me to
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bed, he asked, it doesn't have to be scary. not really. maybe you could tell me about this evening, tell me what you did. that won't make much of a story. my girlfriend just moved into a new place on the edge of town, she inherited from someone, very big and very old. i'm going to spend my first night with her tonight, i have been waiting an hour or so for her and her housemates to come back with the whine and the takeaway. si? said the boy. there was that precocious amusement again but all kids can be insufferable sometimes when they think they know something you don't. probably good for them. you know all that but you don't think. you just let your brain fill in the gaps. he pushed open the door to the attic.
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it was perfectly dark. the opening or disturb the air and i heard things rattle gently like dried bones. click clack clack clack, like that. i would have cooled away if i could, but small fingers pulled me forward unrelentingly into the dark this. [applause] [applause]
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>> president of the mid-atlantic chapter of mystery writers of america. >> thank you. >> as some of the main know, most of the being more fantasy fans may not, it is the premier organization of mystery writers, professionals and allied fields and anyone who loves a mystery. while neil gaiman is not primarily a mystery writer he has been known to commit the occasional crime story from time to time including one for which he was recently nominated for an edgar award. we are delighted to sponsor his appearance tonight and present him with an award that is given for your extraordinary contributions to bringing with ritter to wide reading public. [applause]
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[applause] >> thank you. [applause] >> thank you so much. it is such an honor to be given an award like this. is also such an honor when i look at the other people who have been given the award
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because they are all people i consider my friends and people who live look at hand go you are doing the same thing that i do from another strange direction, always such a delight to run into stephen king, people who love words, who love stories, who believe -- done an anthology and edited and given a story to an anthology to benefit -- thank you. [applause] >> people who care passionately about literature, about words, about freedom of speech, about bringing good stories to everybody. if there's anything i ever
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wanted to do, i have to some degree succeeded and to some degree fell short of, the desire to write every kind of story that never was and to write it for everybody. i really do want it all. i want to give it to you. thank you so much for this. [applause] >> have a good day. good night. thank you so much for coming. [cheers and applause]

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