"In addition to horror, he writes fantasy, fairy tales, science fiction, and apocalyptic romps, in the form of novels, comics, picture books, short stories, poems, and screenplays. Now and then, he writes a song."
At the moment he's getting a lot of attention for "Coraline," the book on which the wonderful 3-D film was based, and his 2008 children's book, "The Graveyard Book" (Kipling's "The Jungle Book" retold set in a graveyard) debuted in the number one spot on the New York Times best-seller list and won the 2009 Newbery medal.
The article reveals that when Gaiman showed an early draft of "Coraline" to an editor he was told it was too scary for children. Gaiman says adults find it scarier than kids--that could be true, I got the chills a couple of times watching the film.
Gaiman is very active on social media; the article says he uses Twitter sometimes a dozen or more times a day. "He attributes his recent No. 1 débuts to his ability to communicate directly with his fans: he tells them to buy a book on a certain day, and they do."
The article has a few interesting insights into his writing process. For instance, when he was writing the "Sandman" series of comics:
'The whole is a chaotic collage, composed at the dizzying pace of one issue a month—a rate, Gaiman says, that forced him to access and transcribe his unconscious thoughts without much analysis. Many of the episodes reveal a vexed relationship to the idea of authorship. In “Calliope,” Richard Madoc, a blocked writer, makes a sex slave of the Muse. After he becomes rich and famous for his new work, Dream punishes him with a never-ending stream of ideas: 'A man who falls in love with a paper doll. . . . An old man in Sunderland who owned the universe, and who kept it in a jam-jar in the dusty cupboard under his stairs. . . . A sestina about silence using the key words dark, ragged, never, screaming, fire, kiss.'"
PS: here's the site where you can get a free download of the "Coraline" script as well as an interview with director Henry Sellick (see the black strip at the bottom of the page to find where to click to download the script): www.focusawards2009.com/#/coraline/craft
(Want to write your own book? Helpful guidance is available in my book, "Your Writing Coach," published by Nicholas Brealey and available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other online and offline retailers around the world.)
