warren_ellis:

• Toxic Substance Allows Birds to “See” Magnetic Field
  toxic superoxides!
  (tags:sci weird bodymod )
• Spillway: Major Project 1: Care of Wooden Floors
  Will Wiles' book: "I am not very good at exciting one-sentence summaries: In the past I have described it as "an episode of Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em written by Franz Kafka", "a sort of satire on minimalist interior design" and "a little like Mon Oncle vs Lost In Translation"."
  (tags:people books )

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warren_ellis:

Matt Jones at Spreadshirt:

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warren_ellis:

Chad Michael Ward took Katie West out to The Salton Sea.

Did you order Katie’s book yet?

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warren_ellis:

New music from the guy described as "punk folk" by rocksellout.com. Me being far gassier, I said of his stuff: "Just him and a guitar - an angrier, wittier Billy Bragg is one way to approximate his style, though that’s far from exact, and he’s a lot more original than that."

The four new ones are on the top of the player. If you haven’t heard Sam before, check out "The Dirty 13" lower down afterwards, it’s my favourite of his older stuff.

Sam Russo, ladies and gentlemen.

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warren_ellis:

Clockwork Century: hub for the alternate history created by Cherie Priest for her incredibly good forthcoming novel BONESHAKER.  You can also find there a novelette set in the same world, TANGLEFOOT, that’s available for free reading.

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warren_ellis:

There’s little scarier for a writer than the idea of losing your eyesight. Perhaps you could find your way clear to adding a little help for John Ostrander, co-creator of one of the most groundbreaking comics of the Eighties, WASTELAND.

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warren_ellis:

That’s right. Accepting Warren Ellis Dot Com into your life gifts you an entire mysterious new hour every day. Tell your friends. Good morning.

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warren_ellis:

QUATERMASS, or, as it has been renamed since, THE QUATERMASS CONCLUSION, was the final QUATERMASS television presentation. (Many years later, a radio presentation, THE QUATERMASS MEMOIRS, tied the man’s life together marvellously.

Professor Bernard Quatermass, founder and head of the British Experimental Rocket Group, the other great hero of British sf television, had been off the screen since 1959. The first three QUATERMASS serials helped define television drama. Imagine an sf television series that emptied out the country’s pubs once a week. That was THE QUATERMASS EXPERIMENT, QUATERMASS 2 and QUATERMASS AND THE PIT. Nigel Kneale, creator and writer of all the QUATERMASS projects, offered this to the BBC, who refused it. And so Euston Films produced it for ITV in 1979.

Kneale was one of my great influences. And just tonight someone pointed out to me that (only) the first of the QUATERMASS episodes is on Google Video. It may seem a little old and creaky to you, but please do bear with it.

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officialgaiman:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/day-2-of-ala-and-reading-things-aloud.html

Yesterday I had a breakfast with many librarians, then signed was interviewed in front of a crowd by Roger Sutton from Hornbook, signed for happy librarian-folk for three hours, then napped and went off to dinner with the Newbery Award Committee, the sort of dinner where you have each different course at a different table, and talk to everyone. Then I signed books for them (and for a few stray Printz Committee judges, who crept in).

This morning was Dim Sum with Jill Thompson for breakfast (Here is Jill. People always want to know where she got that bag, and she made it herself. I told her she should take orders for them for a ridiculous amount of money.) Then with Elyse Marshall, ace HarperChildren's publicist, to a local studio where I was interviewed for Barnes and Noble, then recorded some paragraphs from Kipling's The Jungle Book, Ray Bradbury's story "Homecoming" and James Thurber's The 13 Clocks. I loved doing them -- B&N will pick one sequence and have it animated and put up online.

Was fascinated by how different the voice of the narrator was in each case -- the voice of the book, and that reminded me that I had not yet answered this, and had meant to:

Neil ~ Thank you for many hours of entertainment, whether I'm reading your works, or you are! My daughter is finding that chapter books are a good thing, and wants me to read them to her. I'm glad to do so, but I'm looking for some suggestions from a masterful book reader (you) to a very coarse book reader (me). How do you keep the character voices straight in your head? I suppose it helps that you know the words particularly well since you wrote them, but any tips or suggestions? Any other pointers for engaging the listener? I know my daughter doesn't mind (she still wants me to read, after all!), but I'd like to be better for her and for me. Thanks and keep up the superb work, both here on the blog and in the offline printed universe! BRIAN

Let's see. Character voices are more or less easy: I sort of cast them in my head as I go. What's the person like? Who do they remind me of?

I'm appalling at doing accents, but not bad at doing people. And mostly you're not even doing impressions, just general brush strokes. How does a person sound? Well, you hold them in your head and generally sound like that.

When dealing with a larger than life story I'll sometimes go for a larger than life cast in my head: In (for example) The 13 Clocks, in my head, when I read it aloud, I tend to cast Marty Feldman as the Golux, and Peter Sellers (doing his Laurence Olivier in Richard the Third impression) as the evil Duke.

It's hard though, in a big book with a lot of characters, some of whom may nip off-stage for seven or eight chapters at a time. Do your best, and have a picture in your head. Borrow from your life. Steal voices shamelessly.

Most important, just do the voices (including the voice of the Book, which may not be your voice exactly, but should be close enough to it that it won't be a strain), and do not be shy. Even at your worst, you're doing better than you would if you didn't do the voices, and kids are a mostly uncritical audience, especially if you do it with confidence.

Read it as if you're telling a story. Read it as if you're interested and you care. And, the biggest and most important one, vary the tune.

I heard a young writer reading some of his own work in public a few weeks ago, and every sentence had exactly the same tune, the sime rising and falling cadences. They all ended on the same note. The beat that ran through the whole passage did not change from first to last. It was hypnotically dull.

Listen to people read who are good at it. BBC Radio 7 and BBC Radio 4 (here's the Radio 4 Readings website)are a great source of an ever-changing series of books and stories, fiction and non-fiction, all read aloud and read aloud well. Listen to the tune, where voices go up or down. Listen to what makes a reader speed up or slow down -- listen to what keeps you interested and where you lose interest. And do it as they do -- change the tune, change the pace, keep interested and it will keep interesting.

But mostly my advice is this: just do it. Enthusiasm and willingness to do it counts for most of it, and you learn by doing it and get better from doing it.

I've been reading in front of audiences now for almost 20 years. I've got significantly better in that time, mostly because I've done it so much. You learn as you go. You get better as you go. Practice makes if not perfect then at least pretty decent.

And that's all.


Except to wish Roz Kaveney happy birthday.

warren_ellis:

We’re working on FELL #10 right now.

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warren_ellis:

"BATTLE!"

(warrenellis.com is not safe for work. Conan! posts are not safe for your perception of 21st Century society.)

(Hello to anyone coming here from Observer Music Monthly. The post they were citing is very short and is here.)

(tip of the hat to Jordan at ModBlog, doing a fine job)

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warren_ellis:

BioRequiem Etsy: selected oil paintings and prints. Many of you will have seen her line art in COILHOUSE. As Zo-bot itself says, once these are gone, they’re gone forever. And since she’s doing more and more gallery shows, you’re unlikely to see them this cheap again.

IT SAYS OBEY.

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officialgaiman:

http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2009/07/how-to-play-with-your-food.html

I'm in Chicago right now, for ALA: the annual meeting of the American Library Association. I've been to a couple of them before and have always had a marvellous time -- once, with people like Art Spiegelman and Scott McCloud and Colleen Doran explaining to curious librarians what graphic novels were and why they should have them in their libraries, another time getting to visit New Orleans for the first time Post-Katrina, when I went to two dinners with Poppy Z Brite, and one of them was the first time Poppy's husband, chef Chris DeBarr, ever cooked for me*.

When I was in Melbourne, five years ago, Poppy was a guest of honour with me, and somewhere back then it was decided that we would be going to Alinea, a Chicago restaurant of remarkable coolness. The years went by and I was never in Chicago for long, and Katrina happened, and once Poppy went back to New Orleans she did not want to leave, but we knew one day it would happen.

And tonight it did. Poppy flew up from Chicago and took me to dinner. It was expensive, and, I only discovered at the end of the meal, Poppy was paying. (This is a big public thank you.)

The service and friendliness and sense of enjoyment from the Alinea staff was remarkable. I've had, on rare occasions, food that was as good, and, rarely, I've had food that was better, but I do not ever recall any meal that was as much fun to eat. 23 Courses (hmm, very illuminati) of things that melted or popped or squrunched in your mouth in astounding ways.

I think my favourite not-actually-putting-something-in-my-mouth moment was when the table was covered with bubbling belching dry-ice smoke, and I asked Poppy very nicely if she wouldn't mind saying, "Tonight, my creature, I shall give you Life!" for me, and, bless her, she did.

If anyone reading this is at ALA, I'm doing two signings at the HarperCollins booth 2011, one at 1.00pm on Saturday, the other on 9.00am on Monday (which should have some amusement value). Also a panel on Monday at 1:30pm on the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. The rest of the time is filled with interviews, receptions, speeches and such.

I'm actually here to receive the Newbery Medal for The Graveyard Book. Which will be presented on Sunday night, and for which I have written (and already recorded) a speech. (Which will be played if I forget how to talk on Sunday night. It's possible.)

And I want to thank Harper Collins for indulging me, and keeping up the free version of The Graveyard Book on the mousecircus website all that time. You can still listen to (or watch) me read The Graveyard Book, chapter by chapter, across America, at http://www.mousecircus.com/videotour.aspx. You can also buy it.

(And to answer a sharp-eyed questioner, yes, there are a couple of changes in the latest printing of The Graveyard Book; I fixed an error in astronomy I'd made, and a misspelled foreign word, and fixed some paragraphs in the acknowledgments that were truncated in the original US edition.)


(And that reminds me: yes, I will be at San Diego Comic Con briefly on Friday July 24th, to do a panel with Henry Selick about Coraline, and a one hour signing afterwards. I'll be at the Eisner Awards for a bit that night, then will zoom across town to the Benefit concert that Amanda Palmer and Vermillion Lies are doing for the CBLDF.)




*Chris says people have been asking for "The Mezze of Destruction", the code-phrase that tells him they were sent from this blog, at the Green Goddess, and getting special extras -- restaurant Easter Eggs, as it were, and I have been getting happy messages from people who have eaten there who tried it. And, almost needless to say, lived.


Right. Bed.

warren_ellis:

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warren_ellis:

An exclusive first look at a forthcoming short series via Avatar Press.

(It’s not actually steampunk. And there’s not really a serial killer.)

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warren_ellis:

In which Bruce Sterling beats the shit out of some people:

”

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stuart_immonen:

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ImmonenIllustrationsInc/~3/d7fjt1t48Hk/2201

http://www.immonen.ca/news/?p=2201

A picture of an unnamed neurosurgery patient knitting should be enough for anyone, but just in case it isn’t, Moving Pictures by Kathryn Immonen and Stuart Immonen updates today, as it does every Friday.

You can subscribe too, or add iii_moving_pics to your LJ friends list.

Today, page 122.

warren_ellis:

Oh god why am i awake

I WILL TELL YOU WHY! Because it is Friday, it’s just gone noon, and it’s FREAKANGELS, all for free!

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warren_ellis:

Extracts from Anna Chen’s “illustrated personal journey through the life and crimes of Hollywood legend Anna May Wong“, as presented on May 26 2009.

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warren_ellis:

At bleedingcool:

The next movie I write will be Jurassic Park 4: ADAMZOIC, in which a group of committed Creationists sneak onto a dinosaur-infested Island in an attempt to prove that humans and slavering proto-avian carnivores can live in harmony, as in Eden. The film will be 3 hours long; will feature multiple variations on the theme of Cute Naked People being disembowelled while trying to sing hymns; will include at least one incidence of punning, based on the words “pray” and “prey”; and will end when the sole survivor realises the error of her ways, embraces the Power Of Darwin, and spontaneously evolves a set of wings to escape.

Then gets shot down by Jeff Goldblum: Avenger Of Maths.

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