Today is the day that the first adaptation of Sandman is released. 

It's the first three graphic novels, PRELUDES AND NOCTURNES, THE DOLL'S HOUSE and DREAM COUNTRY, released, as  full-cast audio drama, on Audible. The adaptation was written and directed by audio genius Dirk Maggs, and only it's taken 28 years to happen -- since Dirk first pitched Sandman to BBC Radio 4 in 1992. (They said no.)

For years, blind and partially sighted people, or people who for whatever reason couldn't read comics but wanted to still get access to the stories, have asked me if there would ever be an audiobook of the Sandman books. It took a long time, but this is the closest we could come to giving the world the original graphic novels, bumps and all. You don't have the art, alas, but I hope that the performances and the music give you something that translates it to another place.

It should be out now on all the English-language versions of Audible. There should be versions in other languages coming relatively soon.

(It will be out in a few months on CD -- 少数派 - 高效工作，品质生活:2021-6-12 · <strong>We're sorry but sspai doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.</strong>  -- and I like that they begin their entry: This content is not for kids. It is for mature audiences only. Just like the original graphic novels, this audio adaptation contains explicit language and graphic violence, as well as strong sexual content and themes. Discretion is advised.) 

Sandman was always "For Mature Readers" and this is no different.

Here's an interview with me (and an extract from "The Sound of Her Wings") at the EW site: 少数派 - 高效工作，品质生活:2021-6-12 · <strong>We're sorry but sspai doesn't work properly without JavaScript enabled. Please enable it to continue.</strong>

So many talented actors and voices are involved. 

I'm the narrator -- often reading descriptions of places or characters I wrote in the original scripts long ago for artists to draw, which Dirk has cunningly snuck into the script.

There are hundreds of characters in these eleven hours, brought to you by 68 actors (well, 67 actors and me):

Labels: shadowrocket安卓免费版, Sandman

In 9 days, on the 15th of July, Audible will release the first of the SANDMAN audio adaptations. These are, well, full cast audiobooks of the first three SANDMAN graphic novels: Dirk Maggs gave me the role of the narrator, and I gave him the original scripts, so often what I'm saying as narrator is what I asked the artists to draw, over thirty years ago.

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For people who need it in a more tangible form, it will also be for sale as CDs.

Click on this, and you will hear James McAvoy as Morpheus...

Labels: Sandman

I'm taking a Social Media Holiday right now. It seems to be helping. But I couldn't let this pass...

In 1996 we filmed the original Neverwhere television series (which I wrote for Lenny Henry's company Crucial Films who made it for the BBC). One of the most inspiring moments for me was when Earl Cameron came in and auditioned to play the Abbot of the Black Friars. He was a legend back then, 25 years ago. Watching him audition at an age when most people were already long into retirement was an honour and a treat. He got the part, not because he was a legend, not because he was an icon, but because he was so good, and his interpretation of the character became, for me, definitive. It was the one I put into the novel.

Earl had been a trailblazer as a performer on film and on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He had come to the UK from Jamaica during the Second World War, as a sailor, and had stayed, and become an actor. He was one of the first UK actors to "break the colour bar", one of the first black actors in Doctor Who, a mainstay of cinema and television, always acting with grace and moral authority. Now we were fortunate enough to have him and his compassion and his gentle humour, acting away in monkish robes in muddy cellars, chilly vaults, and deserted churches, all over London.

In 2017, BBC Radio 4 (in the shape of Dirk Maggs and Heather Larmour) did a glorious audio adaptation of shadowrocket安卓下载, and it did my heart so much good to see Earl Cameron over 20 years on, and to catch up and to reminisce about the Neverwhere cold and the mud. He played a dragon in Anansi Boys. He was 100 years old then. (That's us, in the studio hallway, in the photo above. It was taken by Dirk.)

He died, yesterday, aged 102, nearly 103. The world is a lesser place without him in it. 

Labels: earl cameron, legend, Neverwhere

An Acceptance, in rough times

Last night, starting at at 1:00 in the morning, my time, was the Nebula Awards ceremony, held by the SFWA, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America. The first award they gave out was the Ray Bradbury Award for Outstanding Dramatic Presentation, and it meant the world that it went to episode 3 of Good Omens, "Hard Times".

Exactly one year ago, Good Omens was released to the world, on Amazon's Prime Video service. Thirty years ago this month, Good Omens was published as a novel. It seems amazing that it still has so much life, and still feels so relevant to people's own lives. Especially now.

Here's the complete list of all the nominees and of the awards given out at the Nebulas last night. Congratulations to everyone nominated!

The entire proceedings existed in virtual space, via the magic of Zoom and other technological things.

This is what it looked like on my screen, just before we went live...

Here is the speech I gave. I wore a hat, because, even though Terry Pratchett loved pointing out that he was a hat person and I wasn't, not really, I thought it would have amused him.

I didn't intend to write the television adaptation of Good Omens. I did it because as he knew his own immeasurable light was dimming, Terry Pratchett wrote to me, telling me I had to do it. That no-one else had the passion for the “old girl” that the two of us had. And I was the one of us who had to make it happen, so he could see it before the lights went out.

I'm used to dealing with the problems of fictional people.  Now I found myself dealing with much harder problems, of real people and immutable budgets.  But I was even more determined to make something Terry would have been proud of. And I was part of an amazing team – Douglas Mackinnon, our director, Rob Wilkins, Chris Sussman and Simon Winstone and the folk from BBC Studios, the Amazon Studios team, and above us all the cast and the crew, who united and went over and above what anyone asked of them to tell, together, a kind of love story about protecting the world, about an angel who isn't as angelic as he ought to be, and a demon who likes people. And for them, I want to thank Michael Sheen and David Tennant.

Terry and I had written a book about averting the end of the world, about the power of not going to war, about an armageddon that didn't have to happen.

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And now, we are all of us living in Interesting Times. The Horsepeople are riding out, as they have ridden so many times before, and the world still needs saving – from plague, from racism, from foolishness and selfishness and pain. It says in Good Omens that we have to save ourselves, because nobody else is going to sort it out for us. And we do. 

It feels almost indecent to be accepting an award while so many people are hurting, but thank you, from me and from Douglas, who took the words and made them so brilliantly come to life. This is for Terry Pratchett.

You can watch the whole ceremony at: 

http://www.facebook.com/SFWA.org/videos/996082517476423/

or at this YouTube link:

(The Good Omens bit starts around 22:30)

Labels: Good Omens, Nebula Awards, Ray Bradbury Award, speech

An extremely apologetic post

So. I did something stupid. I'm really sorry. 

The last blog I wrote, about how I had been here for almost three weeks, turned into news - and not in a good way. ShadowsocksShadowsocks客户端4.1.10.0无广告官方版 ...:2021-5-29 · 部分用户反映无法打开GitHub对应的下载链接，我把Android、WIndows、Mac版本的客户端安装包都已经打包好供大家下载。 如果下不下来可伍可伍留言邮箱发送（android是4.5版本的apk，Mac是1.7.1版本的NG客户端，Windows是2.5版本的可运行文件exe），最新版的客户端地址还是要去上面的链接 … sort of news. And I've managed to mess things up in Skye, which is the place I love most in the world.

So, to answer the questions I'm being asked most often right now:

What were you thinking? Why come back to the UK?

Because like so many other people, my homelife and work had been turned upside-down by the COVID-19 lockdowns. I was panicked, more than a little overwhelmed and stuck in New Zealand. I went to the UK government website (http://www.gov.uk/foreign-travel-advice), trying to figure out what to do, and read:

I've been living in the UK since 2017, and all of my upcoming work is here - so 'you are strongly advised to return now' looked like the most important message. I waited until New Zealand was done with its strict lockdown, and took the first flight out. (And yes, the flights and airports were socially distanced, and, for the most part, deserted.)

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When I landed the whole of the UK was under lockdown rules.  I drove directly to my home in the UK, which is on Skye. I came straight here, and I've been in isolation here ever since.

What were you THINKING?

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Would you leave New Zealand again, knowing what you know now?

I got to chat to some local police officers yesterday, who said all things considered I should have stayed where I was safe in New Zealand, and I agreed that yes, all things considered, I should. Mostly they wanted to be sure I was all right, and had been isolating, and that I would keep isolating here until the lockdown ends, and to make sure I knew the rules. Like all the locals who have reached out to me, they've been astonishingly kind.

Since I got here Skye has had its own tragic COVID outbreak – ten deaths in a local care home. It's not set up to handle things like this, and all the local resources are needed to look after the local community. So, yes. I made a mistake. Don't do what I did. Don't come to the Highlands and Islands unless you have to.

I want to apologize to everyone on the island for creating such a fuss. I also want to thank and apologise to the local police, who had better things to do than check up on me. I'm sure I've done sillier things in my life, but this is the most foolish thing I've done in quite a while.

Labels: apologies

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Hullo from Scotland, where I am in rural lockdown on my own.  I'm half a world away from Amanda and Ash, and missing both of them a lot. We check in on screens and phones twice a day, when I get up and before I sleep (which is when they go to sleep and when they get up) but it's not the same.

I was in New Zealand with them until two weeks ago, when New Zealand went from the Level 4 lockdown it had been on for the previous 5 weeks down to Level 3. I flew, masked and gloved, from empty Auckland airport to LAX, an empty international terminal with only one check in counter open -- the one for the BA flight from LAX to London. Both flights were surreal, especially the flight to London. Empty airports, mostly empty planes. It reminded me of flying a week after 9/11: everything's changed.

I landed in London about ten in the morning, got a masked car service to a friend's house. He had a spare car (bought many years ago as a birthday present for his daughter, but she had never learned to drive), with some groceries for me in a box in the back, waiting in the drive, with the key in the lock. I drove north, on empty motorways and then on empty roads, and got in about midnight, and I've been here ever since.

The journey was, as I said,  surreal. It was also emotionally hard. Amanda and I had found ourselves in a rough place immediately before I left (my fault, I'm afraid, I'd hurt her feelings very badly, and... actually beyond that it's none of anyone else's business). We agreed that we needed to give each other some space, which had been in very short supply in lockdown in New Zealand. So it was a sad sort of flight, even without the world in lockdown, and a sad sort of drive.

(You can read all about how we got to New Zealand and why we were there at all at  linux(ubuntu) shadowsock(ss) install_orDream的博客-CSDN博客:2021-5-27 · 本文适用于解决openssl升级到1.1.0伍上版本，导致shadowsocks2.8.2启动报undefined symbol: EVP_CIPHER_CTX_cleanup错误。 最近将kali升级到了最新版本，编译之后shadowsocks无法启 …. And, for the curious, the song that's currently stuck in my head is mostly Al Stewart's “Warren Gamaliel Harding”.) 

I needed to be somewhere I could talk to people in the UK while they and I were awake, not just before breakfast and after dinner. And I needed to be somewhere I could continue to isolate easily, which definitely isn't our house in Woodstock, currently at capacity with five families who have fled Manhattan and Brooklyn and Boston. 

Once the world opens up and travel gets easier Amanda and Ash and I are looking forward to being together again in Woodstock. (Yes, I've seen the newsfeed headlines saying I've moved to the UK, and even that we're divorcing. No, I haven't moved the UK, and yes, Amanda and I are still very much together, even with half a world between us.) 

Thank you to everyone who's been kind and nice and helpful, while Amanda and my problems got rather more public than either of us is comfortable with. We love each other, and we love Ash, and we will sort ourselves out, in private, which is much the best place for things like this.

It's rough for almost everyone right now – some people are crammed together and wish they weren't, some are alone and crave companionship, pretty much all of us are hurting in one way or another. So be kind. Be kind to each other, be kind to Amanda (who is getting a huge amount of undeserved internet flack for this, some of it really cruel),  and if you ever meet him (he will tell you very seriously everything he thinks about zombies, or his latest zombie-supplanting discovery, Richard Scarry's detectives), be kind to Ash.

Neil

PS: Amanda and I wrote a letter together, for the curious and for the bits of the world that is wondering what's going on, and whether they should worry about it. Feel free to send anyone who wants to know how we are and what's happening to read it.

Dear Everybody.

This has been a hard few weeks for us.  We are not getting divorced. It’s not that exciting.

We love each other very deeply. As sometimes happens during the course of a long marriage, we have hurt each other. We have lived our lives individually, and then as a couple, very publicly (and right now, too publicly).  

We have been trying to figure out how best to love each other for twelve years.  It is fair to say that this relationship has been the hardest, but also the most rewarding, collaboration of our lives. 

Living in lockdown is hard. Working on a marriage, as everyone married knows, is also hard. And we are very aware there are thousands, probably millions of people who have been dealing with their own versions of problems like ours over the last few months – and many face situations that are far worse.

We will sort out our marriage in private, which is where things like this are best sorted. We're working together to try and do this better. We care about  each other so much, and we have a small boy we love and delight in, and those are reasons enough to work together to fix things. 

So that's what's going on. It's not as much fun or as interesting as the newsfeed headlines made it seem.

For anyone who felt the urge to choose sides on this, trust us, there really aren't any sides to be  taken: we are on our side, and we're on Ash's side, and we hope you are too.

None of us know what the future is going to look and feel like, right now, and that's scary. We need to be able to have each other’s backs.  So please, if you can, have our backs, and we will do our best to have yours. 

And to the vast majority of people out there who have been kind and sane and supportive to both of us, and to each other,  thank you, we love you and appreciate it, and you, so very much.

Peace, and definitely love,

Neil and Amanda

Labels: amanda palmer, Ash, Life in lockdown, married life

Today, the news releases went out and now the world knows that James McAvoy is starring as Morpheus in the Audible.com adaptation of the first three volumes of Sandman, Preludes & Nocturnes, The Doll's House and Dream Country. 

And the rest of the cast is just as impressive. Look:

That's 68 remarkable actors, playing a lot more than 68 parts. And I'm narrating it...

It will be released on the 15th of July 2023.

The US preorder page (with a lot more information on it)  is at http://www.audible.com/pd/The-Sandman-Audiobook/B086WP794Z

The UK page is at http://www.audible.co.uk/pd/The-Sandman-Audiobook/B086WQCVVG

The Canadian page is at http://www.audible.ca/pd/The-Sandman-Audiobook/B086WP9GS1

I've listened to the final mixes of about ten out of the twenty parts so far, and they are glorious and magical things. Dirk Maggs and I first approached the BBC about doing an audio adaptation of Sandman in 1992. They said no. I'm so glad they did, because if they had said yes we wouldn't have this...

Labels: Dirk Maggs, The Sandman Audio

On the Beach

I have an odd habit of humming songs that, later, I realise, have something to do with the situation I'm in. I first noticed it when, as a teenage boy, I realised I was both lost on the Paris Metro, and singing the Beatles song "Help".

These days I keep noticing that I'm singing something that begins, "The man from the television walked onto the train, I wondered who he's going to stick it in this time..." and it only just occurred to me that it's an Elvis Costello song called "Waiting For the End of the World".

So.

Life in Melbourne over the last couple months was pretty quiet, once the bush fires were done and the air became breathable. I was being a dad to a four year old (while his mother was on tour), and reading, and writing. I went to Perth and did a reading, I went to Adelaide and drank Penfolds Grange Hermitage 2008, saw my dog Lola and was given a Doctorate by the University of South Australia.

I was waiting for Amanda to return from New Zealand, when we would have a short end-of-Amanda's-14-month-long tour holiday and then go home to Woodstock. Amanda would rest after tour and I would ramp up and go back to work.

Then I got a phone call from Amanda, asking me to pack up the Melbourne house and fly out early the following morning, in order to get to Wellington before midnight the following night. If we got there after midnight, compulsory 14 day isolation would be needed.  We flew to New Zealand (Marissa our nanny flew home to Woodstock, but fortunately Xanthea, who had been assisting me and Amanda, volunteered to come out with us -- an enormous relief as I had, with Amanda's bags, too many bags  to get easily into and out of an airport with a small boy).

So we landed in Wellington.

Amanda did the final gig of her tour to an empty church, and I popped in and read The Masque of the Red Death from the pulpit and, later, Goodnight Moon. (The venue, St Peter's in Wellington, was really wonderful and the people were so kind and helpful.) (You can watch it all here.)

We drove to the house Amanda had rented (it was meant to be just her, and her old friend Kya and Kya's three daughters for a couple of days while Ash and I were in Melbourne. Now it was all of us for a week.) And then the request came in from the NZ government to self isolate if you'd flown in from abroad. So we've been isolating for the last five days. It's not hard: we are in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes we walk on the beach, keeping our distance from people if we see them.

In a couple of days Amanda and Ash and Xanthea and I move somewhere more houselike and continue to isolate, and Kya and her daughters go home and isolate there.

And I feel so lucky that I'm with my family and that the three of us (and Xanthea) are together.  I had thought if I stayed in Melbourne, Amanda would be able to come back after her tour, but that wouldn't have happened. Countries are locking down borders and planes are being cancelled. So coming to New Zealand with Ash was indeed the wisest thing I could have done.

I'm not sure how long we are going to be here in New Zealand. I know I'm doing a lot of conference calls, and having a lot of Zoom conversations. I'm watching some things get delayed, and many of the readings or talks I was meant to be doing in the next few months are getting cancelled or postponed.

I'm worried about my friends -- the ones who aren't writers are all in jobs where they need to interact with large groups of people, which means they are all out of work now, with jobs suspended or cancelled, with income that's gone away. Amanda and I are putting four or five families up in our place in Woodstock -- mostly refugees from New York, with some refugees from Boston. I hope they are all right.

I've said that anyone who wants can use my books right now -- read them online, or post them, or entertain children or loved ones with them. It seems like a sensible thing.

And I think I may actually get some writing done.

Labels: coronavirus, family ties, new zealand, on the beach

A New Year's thought...

I'm in Australia. It's New Years Eve here already and the world is burning. Or at least, parts of Australia are.

I ought to be in Woodford, at the Festival. I'm not. I'm in Melbourne, convalescing from flu and bronchitis. The last time I got sick like this was three years ago, landing in Queensland, on my way to the Woodford Festival. Which I also missed, because I was ill. I'm starting to suspect it's actually long haul plane flights I'm not good at.

I've written so many New Year's wishes here...

(This is a link to a New Year's Post from the last time I was sick in Australia, where I collected them all together: http://4s9po0.wcbzw.com/2016/12/another-year.html.)

I think today I'll put something else up instead. Here in Australia bush fires are forcing people into the sea, forcing towns to be evacuated. There's loss of life, human and animal. Loss of property, too.

Meanwhile, in the Northern Hemisphere, it's winter. And it's going to be a hard winter for a lot of people.

A month ago I wrote a poem.

This poem began with asking people on Twitter what “warmth” made them think of. Thousands of people replied. I was planning to write a story, but a poem felt a better way of including all the different thoughts and points of view and memories.

And I read their responses, and then wrote this:

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A baked potato of a winter's night to wrap your hands around or burn your mouth.

A blanket knitted by your mother's cunning fingers. Or your grandmother's.

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or return to it, the tips of your ears pricked pink and frozen.

The tink tink tink of iron radiators waking in an old house.

To surface from dreams in a bed, burrowed beneath blankets and comforters,

the change of state from cold to warm is all that matters, and you think

just one more minute snuggled here before you face the chill. Just one.

Places we slept as children: they warm us in the memory.

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or the wood burning in the stove. Breath-ice on the inside of windows,

to be scratched off with a fingernail, melted with a whole hand.

Frost on the ground that stays in the shadows, waiting for us.

Wear a scarf. Wear a coat. Wear a sweater. Wear socks. Wear thick gloves.

An infant as she sleeps between us. A tumble of dogs,

a kindle of cats and kittens. Come inside. You're safe now.

A kettle boiling at the stove. Your family or friends are there. They smile.

Cocoa or chocolate, tea or coffee, soup or toddy, what you know you need.

A heat exchange, they give it to you, you take the mug

and start to thaw. While outside, for some of us, the journey began

as we walked away from our grandparents' houses

away from the places we knew as children: changes of state and state and state,

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while food and friends, home, a bed, even a blanket become just memories.

Sometimes it only takes a stranger, in a dark place,

to hold out a badly-knitted scarf, to offer a kind word, to say

we have the right to be here, to make us warm in the coldest season.

You have the right to be here.

I wrote it for UNHCR, who had it made into a scarf. We did it to raise awareness of the plight of Syrian refugees who are facing winter and need help. For UNHCR's Winter Emergency Appeal. There's a website: http://www.unhcr.org/belowzero/  Go and look.

It's a warm scarf, too.

And I hope in the year to come you won't burn. And I hope you won't freeze. I hope you and your family will be safe, and walk freely in the world and that the place you live, if you have one, will  be there when you get back. I hope that, for all of us, in the year ahead, kindness will prevail and that gentleness and humanity and forgiveness will be there for us if and when we need them.

And may your New Year be happy, and may you be happy in it.

I hope you make something in the year to come you've always dreamed of making, and didn't know if you could or not. But I bet you can. And I'm sure you will.

Labels: A Poem, A scarf, shadowrocket安卓下载, shadowrocket下载官网, UNHCR

Ocean at the End of the Night

The press night of the National Theatre production of Ocean at the End of the Lane was wonderful. Also, emotionally gruelling. I sat between two women who both cried a lot, and a reviewer next to them who was doing fine until tears started splashing on his notebook. It's not that it's sad, exactly, more that it can hit you right in the feels...

The reviews are five star and four star. They say things like

Is shadowrocket安卓免费版’s “The Ocean at the End of the Lane” a story of childhood for adults or an adult view of the world for children? As director Katy Rudd’s astonishingly theatrical production of Joel Horwood’s adaptation resoundingly proves, the answer is: Both. Although wisely recommended for audiences above the age of twelve – the age of the central character – this captivating piece of theater, now premiering at the National Theater in London, is as scary as it is splendid and as moving as it is, in every sense, magical. (Variety)

and

I don’t know why but I assumed this stage adaptation of a 2013 fantasy novel by Neil Gaiman – award-winning but not, I think, widely known – was a contractual obligation Christmas show, something to ensure the building could open its doors to families (at least those with children aged 12 and over) during the holiday period. 

Far from it. As one decade gives way to the next, what we have here is the NT’s successor to The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – something of that order and wow-factor. The similarities with Mark Haddon’s novel are striking: the protagonist is an alienated boy drawn into a hurtling adventure cum psychological maelstrom; yet The Ocean at the End of the Lane is still a different kettle of fish, enfolding us inside a much more discombobulating narrative labyrinth.  (Daily Telegraph)

And it's all true.

This is far and away my favourite of any of the adaptations of my stuff people have made. I just wish more people were going to be able to see it. The Dorfman is an intimate theatre, and the run ends on January 25th.

Labels: National Theatre, The Ocean At The End of the Lane