Sad Sack

Sad Sack
I am Sad Sack

Vote for my powers...

Not that I give a crap about your opinion, but in each of my posts you can vote for which "super" powers you think I used best (because your approval means so goddamned much to me).

Evil Eye/ Wall of Impenetrable Despair/Really Awkward /Stinkybutt/ Tedium

When Two Blogs Collide

A couple of posts ago, I mentioned that I’d picked up Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels over winter break and read the entire series several times. I have to wait a few months for the next installment, so I’ve been reading her author blog in the meantime. As a long time Neil Gaiman fan, I got a big kick out of last week’s post:

“I did some lightning plotting last week about a book I want to write. I’m fascinated by cemeteries, and I thought it would be interesting to write a book set in a cemetery. I imagined the protagonist, a girl raised by ghosts in a cemetery, and I began figuring out how she’d live, how she’d avoid being taken in by the state and put in a group home, and what she would do to pass her days in such a lifeless place. Then I went on Amazon and clicked on Fiction, then on Cemetery, and found that Neil Gaiman has already written a book with a similar premise.

So, what do I do now? Let my lovely idea go? Buy the Gaiman book, and read it enviously? Purchase every copy on earth and burn it?

Can I salvage my own idea? I haven’t decided yet. I would have been happier if I hadn’t checked, I think.”

And in the wonderful way that the internet works, another crossover fan spotted her post and emailed Neil to tell him about it. He commented on his blog:

“Sometimes I think that ideas float through the atmosphere like huge squishy pumpkins, waiting for heads to drop on. I remember back in 1989 Terry Pratchett and I plotting a novel once about a serial killer who kills serial killers, and we had most of the pieces in place, and then both of us realised we'd have to actually write it, which seemed like less fun than making it up, and so we left it. I would have put him in the Serial Killer's convention in Sandman, but he just didn't fit. And I was pleased when I saw the Dexter books that that pumpkin had finally landed on the head of somebody else, who wanted to write them. Sometimes you're just lucky that the pumpkin lands on you first.

But the truth is, it's not the idea, it's never the idea, it's always what you do with it. I remember Jonathan Carroll telling me to "Write it new", when we talked about how I had thrown out a whole Sandman storyline on reading Bones of the Moon. And I'm pleased I went back and wrote A Game of You. Charlaine's Cemetery Girl, if she writes it and I hope she does, would be different in every way from The Graveyard Book, because that's how it works.”


This all left me with a case of the warm fuzzies…it’s neat when authors you like acknowledge each other.

Here’s a little video I took of Neil during The Graveyard Book tour. About three minutes in he talks a bit about where the idea came from…or at least where his main character came from:

Bush is Over.

It's official, we've got us a new president! I'm almost filled with an overwhelming sense of well-being and am cautiously optimistic about the future. I can't believe it's finally over. Is it just me or were those the longest eight years ever?

Already starting to lose that new year smell...

I've got a few ideas for posts that I think would be really interesting. Unfortunately, they're going to involve a little of bit of research and web scanning. In the meantime, I'm alive, well, and starting a bit of school tomorrow.

I managed to read over 19 books during Christmas break. Which is less impressive when you consider that the first 16 are the 8 installments of Charlaine Harris's Sookie Stackhouse novels that I liked so much I read them twice (I actually went over them a third time, just to read the parts I REALLY liked). I also read Christopher Moore's Bloodsucking Fiends and You Suck (starting to see a theme here?) and Joe Hill's Heart-Shaped Box, which, incidentally, did not include any vampires (though there were lotsa goth chicks). Heart-Shaped Box was pretty darn good and I'm not surprised that Warner Bros. has already bought the movie rights (Neil Jordan's going to direct it, he directed Interview With the Vampire - see what I did, I brought it back to vampires!). I look forward to seeing that one.

The only music I'm listening to is the mix cd that my cousin Cathy made for me for Christmas. She didn't give me a song list so I have no idea who anything's by or what it's called, but I'm enjoying it. It makes me feel closer to her (awwww...).