Monday, July 29, 2013

Neil Gaiman: 'I don't think I'm mainstream. I'm lots of different cults'

The Sandman author reveals how he lied his way into journalism and why he could write a sequel to almost everything he's published

    • The Guardian,            

    •                                                                              
neil gaiman
Neil Gaiman, author of the Sandman series of comicbooks. Photograph by Graeme Robertson
 
In one of the earlier stories in Neil Gaiman's hugely popular Sandman graphic novel series, a writer is keeping the muse Calliope imprisoned – "demeaned, abused, and hurt" – to fulfil his need for ideas. She is rescued by Morpheus, Lord of Dreams, who visits a curse of "ideas in abundance" upon the writer. He ends up grovelling on the street, clawing out his stories in blood: "a man who falls in love with a paper doll … two old women taking a weasel on holiday … a rose bush, a nightingale, and a black rubber dog collar … make them stop."
It's hard not to wonder if Gaiman himself ever feels the same way. Already this year, he has published the children's book Chu's Day, about a panda with a big sneeze, and his first adult novel since 2005's Anansi Boys, The Ocean at the End of the Lane. He's also written a Doctor Who episode, and has another kids' book, Fortunately, the Milk, out this autumn, along with his much-anticipated return to Sandman. I emailed him earlier this year to ask if he'd have a chat about Sandman. "Can't happen," he replied. "Six short stories to get written today." OK, then.
Gaiman, chatty and warm despite a hectic schedule on a trip to the UK from his Minneapolis home, admits he "will die with books unwritten". "I think everything I've written with the exception of Ocean has a sequel I could start tomorrow."
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