:00:03. > :00:11.then her maternity leave can begin. Now it is time for this week's Meet
:00:11. > :00:14.the Author. Normally we've fixed interviews with
:00:14. > :00:20.-- normally we fix interviews for Meet the Author a few weeks in
:00:20. > :00:23.advance but this interview has been in the back since January. That is
:00:23. > :00:29.an indication of how hard Neil Gaiman works. He made his name in
:00:29. > :00:32.the 80s and 90s with the Sandman series of comic books, a comic book
:00:32. > :00:37.for intellectuals, according to Norman Mailer. Since then he has
:00:37. > :00:42.written more comics, adult books, a couple of episodes of Doctor Who and
:00:42. > :00:47.film scripts. His latest adult novel is called The Ocean At The End Of
:00:47. > :00:52.The Lane. It is commonly says, his most personal work yet. -- it is, he
:00:52. > :00:56.says, his most personal book yet. This is a novel about childhood but
:00:56. > :01:02.it is very definitely not a novel for children. That is incredibly
:01:02. > :01:07.true. Although it did have to decide why was writing to it was for. And
:01:07. > :01:12.whether this was a children's book. Obviously, I'm known for children's
:01:13. > :01:20.and adult fiction. Writing something with a certain amount of magic and
:01:20. > :01:26.menace meant that guy -- meant that I had a 7-year-old antagonist and I
:01:26. > :01:31.had to decide if it was for adults or children. And the protagonist,
:01:31. > :01:37.there is amount of you in him. A bookish little boy. How much of it
:01:37. > :01:41.is autobiographical? It is absolutely not autobiographical in
:01:41. > :01:45.the sense that it happens to me. That would be alarming if it had!
:01:45. > :01:51.And it is not autobiographical in the sense that the family is not my
:01:51. > :01:58.family. But it is very close. Very close to my point of view. I've
:01:58. > :02:08.wrote to the book because my wife was making a record. -- I'm wrote.
:02:08. > :02:08.
:02:08. > :02:18.She was in Melbourne working on an album. # I've never been too good at
:02:18. > :02:18.
:02:18. > :02:25.this kind of thing. # And so I wrote what started out as a short story
:02:25. > :02:30.for her, and then it did not stop. What had in mind was something that
:02:30. > :02:33.alter what I was like when I was seven, but it was like to look at
:02:33. > :02:38.the world through her eyes -- through my eyes and what the
:02:39. > :02:42.landscape by grew up in was like, because that is not there any more.
:02:42. > :02:46.You cannot go back and see it because people have built houses on
:02:46. > :02:52.it. Why began describing this thing using elements of fantasy that I had
:02:52. > :02:57.one was a small kids. Using an anecdote that occurred about when
:02:57. > :03:05.was my 40s. I discovered that we had a lodger who killed himself using
:03:05. > :03:12.our car. I never knew about that and a piece of information, I thought,
:03:12. > :03:19.what would have happened if it had had strange reverberations. I've
:03:19. > :03:22.created a story out of that. works as a full-length novel but it
:03:22. > :03:27.seems surprising that something that finished could have developed out of
:03:27. > :03:33.something that you originally thought was a short story. It is,
:03:33. > :03:38.and it surprised me. Does it happen to you often? No. Normally have a
:03:38. > :03:43.good idea of what I'm doing. When I wrote American gods, I knew what I
:03:43. > :03:48.was writing. Now I am writing a big, thick novel. Writing the graveyard
:03:48. > :03:51.book, I went in with structure. I knew there were going to be eight
:03:51. > :03:55.short stories and they would take place two years apart and they would
:03:55. > :04:02.have this and that. With The Ocean At The End Of The Lane, I started
:04:03. > :04:08.writing a short story and I was unsure as to whether it was going.
:04:08. > :04:11.But it was a short story so I did not need to worry. I knew would get
:04:11. > :04:17.their fairly quickly. At the beginning, was it a book about
:04:17. > :04:20.amnesiac? It is about that but it is largely about the inability that
:04:20. > :04:27.adults have two remember what it is like to be a child and to see the
:04:27. > :04:32.world as a child. Memory has fascinated me for years, childhood
:04:32. > :04:38.memory. In this book, I also wanted to hold on to something that I'm
:04:38. > :04:42.remembered as a kid, which was reading children's books. I would
:04:42. > :04:48.read these books and I would think, you have no idea what it is like to
:04:48. > :04:51.be a kid. How can you not remember? And I was promising myself that when
:04:51. > :04:56.I grew up I would write children's books, and I would remember what it
:04:56. > :05:00.was like to be a kid. But in this case, what started to fascinate me
:05:01. > :05:04.more and more as I was writing it was, what did it mean to be a kid?
:05:04. > :05:10.What was the difference? If you were talking to an audience of adults
:05:10. > :05:14.about being a kid, there is a point in their at one point when I start
:05:14. > :05:19.talking about the different ways that you travel. And I would stick
:05:19. > :05:21.to pads, and I've would look for parts. Kids look for strange
:05:21. > :05:28.alternative routes. They look for escape routes and more interesting
:05:28. > :05:34.ways. You go onto the road Denver sent through the back. That is how
:05:34. > :05:44.children travel. It is an enormous part of what I'd try to write about.
:05:44. > :05:49.The lads give up the book is East Sussex Grimstead. Your father was
:05:49. > :05:55.working for the Church of Scientology. Are you as much -- are
:05:55. > :06:04.you or have you ever been a Scientologist? I know no that I'm
:06:04. > :06:13.not. Did you lose the faith?I think I am a writer. For me, what
:06:14. > :06:21.fascinates me most is possibilities. Ideas. Even as an idea, -- even as a
:06:21. > :06:25.kid, I had so many... There were so many religious backgrounds going on.
:06:25. > :06:34.I was at a Church of England school. I was a reader of science-fiction
:06:34. > :06:44.fantasy, so everything became one glorious morass, Apple among niche
:06:44. > :06:45.
:06:45. > :06:48.of police. -- a blancmanage of belief. You write a huge range of
:06:48. > :06:52.work, work for children and adults, and have you ever thought of doing
:06:52. > :06:57.what Iain Banks did and actually adopt a different persona, for
:06:57. > :07:07.different genres, for serious writing like this, and then genre
:07:07. > :07:07.
:07:07. > :07:13.writing? I could become Neil M Gaiman! I have always wanted
:07:13. > :07:17.everything I do to have my name on it and to be made -- and to be me.
:07:17. > :07:22.Even when in terms of marketing, it is the wrong thing to do. This
:07:22. > :07:29.often, I have a book called Fortunately The Milk coming out,
:07:29. > :07:32.which is a children's book about time travel. It is about a time
:07:32. > :07:35.travelling stegosaurus in a hot-air balloon and it has aliens and
:07:35. > :07:41.madness and it is the funniest in I have written. It is coming out in
:07:41. > :07:49.the same year that The Ocean At The End Of The Lane comes out. It is the