Merry Christm...er Neil Day!!

Last night I could not fall asleep. No, it was not because I kept thinking of all of the horrible things that the dentist was going to do to me this morning (which actually wasn't too bad), it was because of new Neil Gaiman books!! The long wait is over and I am now the proud owner of 2 (yes, only 2) brand new, hardcover, first edition, Neil Gaiman books.

The first is Interworld, a Young Adult novel written by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves and is apparently about a boy at war against himself in two different dimensions of reality. At least that is what I gather from the jacket flap. I may be totally wrong about that. We shall see.

The second book is M is for Magic and is a collection of short stories for children. Most of these have been published before, but it's a great collection and the cover is wonderful. I have another signed, numbered, limited edition of this book coming to me later from Subterranean Press!

A word to the wise. If you go to Barnes and Noble to buy these, don't freak out if you can't find them in the fantasy/sci-fi section. I found Interworld in the Teen section and M is for Magic in the Children's section. So I suggest you look there.

While in the children's section, I also picked up the last three books I need for the Newberry challenge. They are Bridge to Terabithia, The High Power of Lucky, and The Tale of Despereaux. All three look great and all are new to me except for Bridge which I read ages ago, so it might as well be new to me. So I now own all of the books for that challenge and can get started on it!

I couldn't find the new illustrated Stardust or the Stardust visual companion, but that's ok, because I couldn't afford them anyway! I spent enough money today as it is....thank God I signed up for B&N's members program when I had the money for that ;) But in other Stardust news, I'm happy to welcome Deslily to the Stardust ranks as she received her copy in the mail today...you're in for a treat! Also, Friends of English Magic (a wonderful site for Susanna Clarke, Neil Gaiman, and Charles Vess related news) has started a Stardust movie news blog! How cool. I suggest visiting it often ;)

Lots of Neil Gaiman News!

I'm sure that if you're a fan, you've heard most if not all of this already, but there's a whole bunch of Neil news lately!

Nymeth and Carl informed me in the comments section of my Beowulf review that Beowulf has already been filmed and is being released in November of this year! From Carl: "It is being done by the same people who did Polar Express on that form of animation is supposed to be miles more impressive than it was when they did P.E." Here's the official website.

Neil Gaiman also announced on his blog yesterday that Dreamworks Animation has officially optioned Interworld and it will be made into a movie! Yay!

Interworld will also be released on June 26th (just a few more days!) as will his short story collection M is for Magic. At the end of a post from today, Neil has given us links to the first couple of chapters of the audio version of Interworld.

And last but not least, a big congratulations to Neil Gaiman for picking up two Locus Awards: the first for "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" in the Best Short Story category and the second for Fragile Things in the Best Collection category!

Being a Bum

Today was quite a mentally exhausting day. Working at a psychiatric hospital, you eventually learn not to take the problems home with you. And overall, I've done a pretty good job of leaving work at work. However, there are certain days that are just hard not to take home with you. One of the most upsetting things about working with children is seeing the amount of sexual abuse that goes on. I was shocked at how often this happens when I started over there, and even more shocked to find how hard it is to prosecute offenders. When they do get prosecuted, they're only in jail for a year or two, then they're back on the streets. Sexual trauma has such a huge effect on children. In my opinion, people who do this to kids should be locked up with the key thrown away. While they are satisfying their addictions, they are ruining the lives of these kids, or at least making their lives alot more challenging than they need to be.

So after all of that, I had decided that I was going to go to the gym again to work off some steam. But I made the mistake of laying down in bed first and now I'm in my pajamas going nowhere.

On a totally different note, Subterranean Press released the cover for their version of Neil Gaiman's M is for Magic, which I have already ordered and I was so disappointed. The cover is just horrible in my opinion. Yesterday's blog post had the most anticipated cover, and this has to be the most disappointing cover. Oh well, at least it's signed and numbered by one of my favorite authors.

One other thing I wanted to mention was that Endicott Studio had a post today about a new book on Charles Vess being released. It's Modern Masters Volume 11 and it's subject is Charles Vess and it looks amazing. It focuses mostly on his graphic novel and comic book work. Looking forward to this one!