{"id":371627,"date":"2010-02-28T02:38:17","date_gmt":"2010-02-28T07:38:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\/press-releases\/naperville-reads-author-neil-gaiman-says-he-always-wanted-to-be-a-writer"},"modified":"2010-02-28T02:38:17","modified_gmt":"2010-02-28T07:38:17","slug":"naperville-reads-author-neil-gaiman-says-he-always-wanted-to-be-a-writer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/371627","title":{"rendered":"Naperville Reads author Neil Gaiman says he always wanted to be a writer"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><p>It took Neil Gaiman 20 years to decide he was a good enough writer to turn his idea for &#8220;The Graveyard Book&#8221; into reality.<\/p>\n<p>It took just four months on the shelves for librarians to bestow Gaiman with a John Newbery Award for it.<\/p>\n<p>Decked out in all black from his shoes to his leather jacket, the hip British author recently spoke to Naperville Unit District 203 junior high students from a stage decorated with headstones.<\/p>\n<p>Gaiman made a number of appearances in Naperville last week for both adults and children in his role as the 2010 Naperville Reads author. <\/p>\n<p>The program is a partnership among Anderson&#8217;s Bookshop, the Naperville Public Library, District 203 and Indian Prairie Unit District 204 to get people reading and discussing the same books.<\/p>\n<p>Gaiman told students he was inspired to write &#8220;The Graveyard Book&#8221; while watching his son ride a tricycle around the cemetery next to their house. When he started seriously writing the book two decades later &#8211; starting with Chapter 4 &#8211; it was one of his daughters who encouraged him to continue by simply asking what happens next.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The trouble with being an author is if somebody actually asks you what happens next that gives you a reason to carry on writing,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Gaiman did just that and the book came out in September 2008. <span id=\"more-21571\"><\/span>Four months later his phone rang at 5 a.m. The voice on the other end told him he won the Newbery Award.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, Gaiman has seen several of his books turned into movies, including &#8220;Stardust&#8221; and &#8220;Coraline.&#8221; The latter also was inspired by one of his children.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;The great thing about being an author is you have a really, really good opportunity to impress your children because you can actually do something they might like,&#8221; Gaiman said.<\/p>\n<p>The book took about 10 years to write and filming the &#8220;stop-motion&#8221; movie was time consuming as crews had to move dolls in tiny increments and photograph each movement.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to novels, Gaiman has written newspaper and magazine articles, poetry, TV scripts and comics. He is well-known by comic book fans for his &#8220;Sandman&#8221; series. In 2009, he also wrote, &#8220;Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader,&#8221; which was set at Batman&#8217;s funeral.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Last year I got to kill Batman, which was kind of fun,&#8221; he said. &#8220;Everybody should kill Batman once.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Gaiman said writing was all he ever wanted to do.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I was the kind of kid who grew up with a book in his hand &#8230; I loved books,&#8221; he said. &#8220;I wanted to write pretty much as far back as I can remember.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He read to students from his novel, &#8220;Odd and the Frost Giants,&#8221; though he was briefly interrupted by one of the top annoyances to public speakers &#8211; a cell phone ringing.<\/p>\n<p>Oops.<\/p>\n<p>It was his own.<\/p>\n<p>Gaiman also answered questions from students. In response to a query about whether there will be a sequel to &#8220;The Graveyard Book,&#8221; he said he may write another book using some of the same characters, though it wouldn&#8217;t exactly be a sequel.<\/p>\n<p>In light of the creepy books Gaiman has penned, another student asked about the scariest movie he had ever seen. Gaiman said his favorite is &#8220;The Haunting,&#8221; which &#8220;scared me absolutely senseless.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Washington Junior High seventh-grader Christopher Gamble, a fan of &#8220;The Graveyard Book,&#8221; said it was an honor to listen to Gaiman and he hopes to tackle &#8220;Odd and the Frost Giants&#8221; next.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;His books are nice and interesting and they keep going,&#8221; Gamble said. &#8220;They don&#8217;t calm down like some of the books.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on <a  href=\"http:\/\/www.dailyherald.com\/story\/?id=361797&amp;src=143\" title=\"Naperville Reads author Neil Gaiman says he always wanted to be a writer\" rel='nofollow'>DailyHerald.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Distributed via <a href=\"http:\/\/chicagopressrelease.com\" rel='nofollow'>Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/E2vaumVTHm-AeLSZ1vtqaXUIOWo\/0\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/E2vaumVTHm-AeLSZ1vtqaXUIOWo\/0\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/E2vaumVTHm-AeLSZ1vtqaXUIOWo\/1\/da\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feedads.g.doubleclick.net\/~a\/E2vaumVTHm-AeLSZ1vtqaXUIOWo\/1\/di\" border=\"0\" ismap=\"true\"><\/img><\/a><\/p>\n<div class=\"feedflare\">\n<a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.chicagopressrelease.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?a=1-10BbdSfZA:737DBl1bQ10:yIl2AUoC8zA\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?d=yIl2AUoC8zA\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.chicagopressrelease.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?a=1-10BbdSfZA:737DBl1bQ10:qj6IDK7rITs\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?d=qj6IDK7rITs\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/feeds.chicagopressrelease.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?a=1-10BbdSfZA:737DBl1bQ10:V_sGLiPBpWU\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~ff\/windycitynews?i=1-10BbdSfZA:737DBl1bQ10:V_sGLiPBpWU\" border=\"0\"><\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/feeds.feedburner.com\/~r\/windycitynews\/~4\/1-10BbdSfZA\" height=\"1\" width=\"1\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It took Neil Gaiman 20 years to decide he was a good enough writer to turn his idea for &#8220;The Graveyard Book&#8221; into reality. It took just four months on the shelves for librarians to bestow Gaiman with a John Newbery Award for it. Decked out in all black from his shoes to his leather [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-371627","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=371627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/371627\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=371627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=371627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=371627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}