PRINCE OF STORIES: THE MANY WORLDS OF NEIL GAIMAN by Hank Wagner, Christopher Golden, and Stephen R. Bissette, is a book that “chronicles, the history and impact of the complete works of Neil Gaiman in film, fiction, music, comics books and beyond.” (It even includes Gaiman’s blog entry about the marriage proposal that happened during the Subic Ad Congress. Yes, Jason and Maui, have gone beyond Google-famous. They are now part of literature!)Aside from providing Gaiman fans with a checklist of almost every single thing he’s ever written, it contains one of the most comprehensive interviews with him. (Although THE SANDMAN COMPANION by Hy Bender provides the reader with the very detailed dissection of the series, the book did not go into as much detail about Gaiman’s life story.)
In PRINCE OF STORIES, you find out trivia, like how their family was originally named Chaiman or Haiman and when they moved to England, the spelling was changed to Gaeman, but was changed to Gaiman during the announcement of his grandparents’ wedding.
The 58-page interview charts the path that Gaiman took to become the writer that he is now.
At a certain point of his life, he decided to become a freelance journalist, so he could learn more about the world of publishing.
Being journalist, he got jobs like writing the biography of Duran Duran and was even offered by Penthouse to become their features editor.
The Duran Duran book paid good money, but the publisher was later sued and had to shut down. He said, it was good thing that publisher closed shop because he might have ended up writing more books like that.
He turned down the Penthouse, because even though it would’ve meant a regular paycheck, he would have been walking away from his real goal of becoming a writer.
When his daughter Holly asked him for advice about what career to pursue, Gaiman answered:
“I tried to explain to Holly, recently, because Holly is off in London right now. She wants to be in film, film production, and she gets offered jobs, and sometimes, she genuinely doesn’t know which job she should pursue. The only thing I can tell her is that I was in her position, wanting to write comics, and wanting to write fiction, now making a living as a freelance journalist. I say to her, look, I used to think it was a mountain, a thing I wanted to do, a thing I wanted to be, and as long as I was walking toward that mountain, it was okay. I told her she needs to figure out what her mountain is, and you can sort of judge these things by – does it take you away from the mountain?”
I’d like to think that in that past three years, I’ve slowly gotten back on course towards that mountain. I think my nine years in advertising, where I’ve had to learn how to tell stories in 30-seconds, has taught me to write better stories.
I look forward to writing more 30-second stories, 20-page mysteries and maybe I’ll even have time to write that 100-page graphic novel.
Where are you now?
Where are you heading?
Does it take you away from the mountain?
Where are you heading?
Does it take you away from the mountain?
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