David Maybury | Blog

See where I’m going with this? Chains have links.. and I’m sticking up a list of links that could make up a chain. Right. I’ve slipped off the deep end - never mind.

First off, the lovely Celine Kiernan (who now owes me a wispa) has started a blog - Celine is already finishing her third book, she says so on the blog…

Next up are the poor souls over at the trappedbymonsters blog. Eight writers are trapped in a cave by monsters making them blog stories, pictures, jokes… and whatever else takes their fancy. Head over and see if you can help them out.

Mr Braine has a question for Roald Dahl…

Fighting Words got a huge mention in the Irish Times yesterday - if you haven’t heard about it yet head on over and read the article…

Neil Gaiman won the Newbury award - he was a bit shocked about it too… made for some fun tweets. And speaking of Mr Gaiman - he will be in Dublin on 17 February signing books in Chapters with an un-disclosed musical guest. (Hint)

Pauline McLynn is off to help judge the Costa’s - and the guardian is wondering who will win… All will be revealed tomorrow.

And finally the Dublin Film Festival tickets went on sale last night. Get flexing your credit cards and book some good movies…

I have a few minutes with Neil Gaiman later this week - anyone have any questions they would like to ask him??

I’ll try and ask as many of them as I can and put the interview up on the site afterward. And if you’re feeling really energetic Neil will be signing books in Easons on O’Connell Street from 7pm on Thursday - details here.

It’s official. At last night’s launch of Sixteen After Ten - an anthology of work by the Trinity College Creative Writing M.Phil students - the school announced that Richard Ford (Pulitzer, Pen and Faulkner winning US writer) has been appointed associate professor for the next three years.

There will be a series of readings and Ford will also act as American writer in Residence throughout the college. There’s plenty of him to go around…

And to make things fair: a belated congratulations to Harry Clifton (Poetry professor for the UCD Creative Writing MA) on winning the Irish Times Poetry Now Award.

More from the Irish Times.

Darren Shan has agreed to write the winning bidder of an ebay auction into one of his next books - either his children’s novel The Demonata or his new adult fiction Hell’s Horizon. The winner’s character will get ’several mentions’ and a death scene.

Darren has given it a plug on his site and the bidding has been fairly high. How much would you pay to star in a Darren Shan book? Nearly €1,000 according to the current bid.

A very worthwhile cause and a great way to raise money.

There’s only a few hours to go before Children’s Books Ireland announce the shortlist for this years Bisto Book of the Year. I have tried (and failed) to get a hint of who is on the list… but I have come up with a few names I’d like to see nominated.

I’d be very surprised not to see Enda Wyley’s The Silver Notebook (O’Brien Press) on the list - or Karl O’Neill’s The Most Beautiful Letter in the World for that matter, another O’Brien Press book. And, on the list of O’Brien Press releases, Conor Kostick’s The Book of Curses might make an appearence…

A few others that I’d really like to see nominated: Skullduggery Pleasant, Derek Landy, Michael Scott’s The Alchemyst, Siobhan Dowd’s The London Eye Mystery, Brendan O’Brien’s The Story of Ireland, Eoin Colfer’s Airman and/or Artemis Fowl : The Graphic Novel and Donough O’Malley’s Monkey See, Monkey Do.

I’m sure that I’ve missed a few great titles here so I’m really looking forward to reading the full list later today. The CBI site has more on the awards.

Neil Gaiman is celebrating his seventh blog birthday and his publishers have kindly agreed to a great big online book give away as part of the celebrations. There’s about a week left to vote for which novel you want to read on your computer screen. So go get yourself voting. (or click here to see the results of the vote at the minute)

Harper Collins are handing out free e-books at the minute. Some interesting titles are up for perusal including Paulo Coelho’s The Witch of Portobello and Erin Hunter’s Warriors: Into the Wild. (via NYT)

DC/Vertigo are dishing out a free downloadable PDF of Swamp Thing #21 - Alan Moore’s first (technically second) issue. And on the subject of Mr Moore there is a brilliant and surprisingly long documentary on him online at altertube.

Sinead continues the Musical Rooms series with the Delorentos - interesting insight into how the band work together. There’s a great homemade poster in the background. One for mass production maybe?

ROSS! BANG ME LIKE YOUR DRUMS

Kung Fu Rodeo has a breakdown of the Watchmen movie stills (from ‘extremely reliable source‘ - no more rumour spreading for me). Looking forward to seeing Rorscach’s mask and Doc Manhattan’s clothes (all CGI). A picture is worth a thousand words. More from the Watchmen Official Blog.

Drawn! has the news that Six Word Memoirs book is out and available to the wider world. This is a fantastic idea for a book - collecting snippets of insight from writers. There was a poetry competition a few years ago judged (I think) by Paul Muldoon. He gave the overal prize to a six year old for their poem (of not quite six words):

The Turtle moves movey movey.

And finally a weird and wonderful Vittel ad with the many faces of David Bowie:

Many thanks to Lili Forberg for the title: -soes is the new -sies. (Congratulations on the nomination!)

The short list for the 2008 Blog Awards is up online. Congratulations to everybody listed - here’s quick look down the list for Best Arts and Culture (sponsored by Poetry Ireland) :

• Bookmark
• Scamp
• Asylum
• The Sigla Blog
• Eddie Mullan’s No Clarity
• Tuppenceworth.ie
• Dear Dead Beat
• Dermod Moore
• The New(ish) Journalism
• American Hell
• Stunned

Could it be three years in a row for The Sigla Blog? Or will there be a new winner this year? Either way, I’m looking forward to meeting everyone at the awards in March. Best of luck!