Wednesday, March 19, 2003
I think you'll find this interesting, basically you can now pay e-bay to be in a novel:

especially the part where its mentioned :
Frederick Gundling, 32, is repped by PMA Literary & Film Agency. His first novel, Disconnected, is expected by many to be a crossover hit. It's the sort of book that might result from David Foster Wallace, Jasper Fforde, and Neil Gaiman being chained together in Clive Barker's basement for 90 days, forced to watch every episode of South Park between bare-knuckle brawls with Chuck Fight Club Palahniuk.

Good lord. Now there's a source of income for the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund I'd never considered before. Is this for real? Yes. Fans have paid as much as $17,600 to appear in novels by the likes of Kathy Lette and Nick Hornby. By successfully bidding on this auction, you earn the right to appear as a character in Disconnected AND support a worthy literary charity at the same time. After you sign a simple release form, Frederick Gundling will create a minor character based on info you supply, such as name, age, and physical description. Although normally the charity takes all of the money, not 20%. Anyway, good luck to him -- if nothing else it's a fun way of getting people talking about a book that's not come out and that hasn't quite sold to a publisher yet.

hola neil,
you posted the cover a while ago to "Wolves in the Walls" and said dave had it finished. any news on its release? i heard you read it a few years ago on your last angel tour in chicago and have been waiting with baited breath for this project to come about. i work in an elementary school library and have not only made them order "the day i swapped my dad for 2 goldfish" and "coraline," but my boss (the librarian) has fallen in love with your work (after my incessantly telling her you're my favorite author) and is using your books in some capacity as her thesis for her masters degree. oh, and i told her all about "wolves" and she wants it here too.
sorry, i'm rambling. take care. good morning.

The Wolves in the Walls will be out (from Harper in the US and from Bloomsbury in the UK) in August I believe. I'll find out if we can get a preview up on this site. I think that Harper actually went and got so they'll probably be doing a cool, strange website with information on it.

Hullo Neil,

Reading your comment on "screaming meemies" I found I couldn't resist the urge to find out where the phrase came from. According to the Online Etymology Dictionary (


Though I rather like my visual of gaudily-clad older ladies with horn-rimmed glasses and pink bouffants, who run in circles 'round each other while screaming.

I also wanted to thank you. Thank you for sharing the frightful and lovely things in your head. Thank you for collaborating with other great artistic talents, and not being daunted into inaction by new mediums. Thank you for being polite and charming to your admirers, even when you're feeling off. You are an extraordinary person.

Thank you. I think I'm pretty ordinary, to be honest. I've got a talent for making things up and writing them down, which happens to be what I want to do. And for the rest of it, well, the politeness and such is mostly from knowing how I like to be treated.

Y'know, all the talk about writing and all is swell, really. But what people really are curious about is...Neil, Neil, quite surreal, how does your garden grow? Or is it too soon to regale us with a few offerings from the produce section?

Much too soon, alas. There's still snow on the ground at home.