Neil Gaiman’s Calendar of Tales

I believe that Neil Gaiman is the equivalent of a rock star in the writing community. His tales are popular with both the young and old alike. His works include children’s books, adult stories, comics and have become animations, movies, short films and theatrical productions. He has a following, with which he interacts beyond the mere book-signings, readings and QnAs, via the use of online social media. He blogs, tweets, uploads photos, etc. I remembered when i met him, it was at a book-signing in Bristol, UK, on my first visit to the UK, and he had such a gentle demeanor. He signed a present i got for a friend for her birthday, Death’s comic book, where he inscribed: Happy Birthday, please don’t die. It is things like this that make him loved by his fans.

On February 4th, he launched a new project requiring the participation of the public. The basic idea is that he wishes to write twelve stories, each corresponding to one of the twelve months, which will be inspired by his audience/followers/readers/fans. He unleashed this project on twitter and received massive feedback, making the relevant hastags trending topics. If you want to participate, and share your stories with Neil Gaiman you can read more about it on his blog, just use the month and the #KeepMoving hashtags and who knows, you might inspire him for a tale. He also opts to request the fans for artwork for these stories. You can send Neil Gaiman your tweets from 5pm GMT 4th February and get them in by 5pm GMT 6th February.

Blackberry has been the patronage of this whole endeavor, which will possibly result to a paper Calendar that will benefit charity, and an amazing app (or possibly a website) with all the stories, and all the art of various kinds up for everyone. You might like to follow Blackberry on twitter so as to notify you on whether or not your story will be used.