Neil Gaiman crowdsources new short story collection

Author and icon of the cool internet nerds movement Neil Gaiman has released a new, part-crowdsourced, online-only short story collection. The thirty-one pages of A Calendar of Tales contain twelve new stories, one for each month of the year, written over the past few weeks after Gaiman tweeted various questions related to the months and took inspiration from the responses garnered.

Gaiman’s questions were, for the most part, presumably purposefully banal, generic and open-ended, the better to bring out the weirder side of his fans (which, given the average Gaiman fan, probably doesn’t take much prodding).

May’s question, for example – ‘what’s the weirdest gift you’ve ever been given in May?’ – met with the response ‘an anonymous Mother’s Day gift. Think about that for a moment.’

‘If August could speak, what would it say?’ resulted in a story based on the reply ‘August would speak of its empire lasting forever whilst glancing, warily, at the leaves cooking on the trees.’

‘What Historical figure does March remind you of?’, meanwhile, was answered with the studiously quirky ‘Anne Bonny and her rapscallion heart, dreaming for a ship of her very own.’

That initial crowdsourcing taken care of, Gaiman (and corporate sponsor Blackberry) is now taking it a step further for an eventual digital and print edition of the short book, soliciting illustrations from readers to accompany the text: ‘a sketch, photo or doodle, using paint, ink or collage’. There’s no word yet on whether or not artists will be financially compensated for their efforts, or if the thrill of contributing to a Neil Gaiman book is expected by Blackberry to be reward enough. As the A.V. Club points out, you’d think Gaiman of all people would be aware of the pitfalls of that approach following the toxic response last year to requests from Gaiman’s wife Amanda Palmer that fans play in her live band in exchange for beer, hugs and high fives.

Related Articles

Responses

Sign up to our Newsletter

Subscribe

* indicates required

BookMachine Ltd. will use the information you provide on this form to be in touch with you and to provide updates and marketing. Please let us know all the ways you would like to hear from us:

You can change your mind at any time by clicking the unsubscribe link in the footer of any email you receive from us, or by contacting us at [email protected]. We will treat your information with respect. For more information about our privacy practices please visit our website. By clicking below, you agree that we may process your information in accordance with these terms.

We use Mailchimp as our marketing platform. By clicking below to subscribe, you acknowledge that your information will be transferred to Mailchimp for processing. Learn more about Mailchimp’s privacy practices.