Good Omens is almost upon us! Or, to give the book, written by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, it's full title:
Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch
Good Omens was published in 1990 and written as a collaboration between Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman. It's a dark comedy about the end of the world.
The son of Satan, Adam, will destroy the earth. That's the Divine Plan. There's nothing anyone can do about it. Except for an angel called Aziraphale and a demon called Crowley. Two creatures on opposite ends of the ideological spectrum, these two have become unlikely allies. After getting drunk at a restaurant and realising they actually don't want the world to end, they come up with a plan.
I'll be posting about the Amazon Prime series, which comes out on the 31st May 2019. But today, I wanted to write about the two amazing authors who wrote this book.
Terry Pratchett
Sir Terry Pratchett OBE is probably best known for the incredible Discworld series of 41 novels. Even Discworld books aside, he was a massively prolific writer. Pratchett is known for his fantasy stories, but he'd also written science fiction and horror.
In his biography in one of his books, he listed his recreations as "writing, walking, computers, life" - a list I completely agree with.
He was knighted for services to literature in 2009, in 2001 and won the Carnegie Medal for The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents and received the World Fantasy Award for Life Achievement in 2010.
You can visit Terry Pratchett's website here.
Terry Pratchett died of Alzheimers on 12th March 2015. I cried at my computer and no one around me understood why. But I want to be an author one day because of Terry Pratchett - because I want to be able to create people and a world and give it all to someone else, like Pratchett gave me the Discworld.
Neil Gaiman
Almost everyone has heard of Neil Gaiman these days as he's recently become incredibly fashionable. The Amazon Prime series American Gods is based on his book of the same name. I strongly encourage you to read the book, it's so good. Review here!)
There have been movies of his books Coraline and Stardust. He's also a graphic novel writer and is famous for creating the beautiful comic The Sandman. Which it was recently announced is about to become a Netflix series!
In response to the Guardian, Neil Gaiman gave his list of writing 'rules' which in my opinion are the most sensible and useful I've ever read.
Neil Gaiman's Eight Rules of Writing
1 Write. 2 Put one word after another. Find the right word, put it down. 3 Finish what you're writing. Whatever you have to do to finish it, finish it. 4 Put it aside. Read it pretending you've never read it before. Show it to friends whose opinion you respect and who like the kind of thing that this is. 5 Remember: when people tell you something's wrong or doesn't work for them, they are almost always right. When they tell you exactly what they think is wrong and how to fix it, they are almost always wrong. 6 Fix it. Remember that, sooner or later, before it ever reaches perfection, you will have to let it go and move on and start to write the next thing. Perfection is like chasing the horizon. Keep moving. 7 Laugh at your own jokes. 8 The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you're allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it's definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I'm not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter.
Gaiman has won numerous awards including the Hugo Award, the Newbery Medal, the Nebula Award, and the Bram Stoker Award and the Carnegie Medals. In 2013, The Ocean at the End of the Lane was voted Book of the Year in the British National Book Awards.
You can visit Neil Gaiman's website here.
To finish up, I have to share this clip of Neil Gaiman telling a hilarious story about their Good Omens book tour.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJJpYG1GJkY