And with a huge round of applause from the audience, the event draws to a close.
Thanks for all your comments.
In a last question, NG is asked if there will be any more from Neverwhere.
NG says he loved the Radio 4 version of Neverwhere and felt "I want to go back there". He was asked to write a story, and he wrote a 10,000 word one – "probably technically a novelette" – and it was "really fun going back". Characters include the shepherds of Shepherd's Bush and the elephant of Elephant and Castle. It is called How the Marquis got his Coat Back. But he does say a sequel to Neverwhere would be called The Seven Sisters.
Will we ever see a truly interactive, electronic Neil Gaiman book, one woman asks.
NG says he has been playing around with something like that. "It's quite possible." He is working on something with the FourPlay String Quartet in Australia: "Yes, it is a pun. There's four of them, and they play. Maybe it has another meaning ... "
But he says that in prose fiction there is an amazing level of interactivity going on. He's handing the raw code of words to the readers who build characters and worlds out of them. "You're doing it."
NG is asked about his suggestion that people who suffer a misfortune should make good art.
He says he loves the fact that his speech went viral.
He says he gave it to students at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia.
But people have told him it applies outside of the arts: "make good physics". He's proud of that, he says.
Art has always been his way of dealing with upsetting things.
He says he writes to find out what he thinks about something.
You get to define good art if you're the one making it, he says.
Originally he was just saying "make art" but then he thought he wanted to help people aspire to something.
Would he write for any other pre-existing "franchises" apart from Doctor Who, NG is asked.
He says of Doctor Who: "It's the same show that I watched when I was three." He recalls his dad buying him a copy of "Dalek World Annual" in the mid-60s. "I've still got it. Hasn't got a cover, but I've still got it."
So the joy of writing Doctor Who was like being God, he says, because he knew the mythology of the programme so well. He rattles through some Doctor Who facts he knows, including:
Daleks cannot see the colour red. Think about that for a moment. Because there have been red Daleks.
That gets a big laugh.
People are confused, but they don't stay confused for very long, he says. And I'm allowed.
After American Gods another publisher tried to woo him away from Headline, offering much more money.
But they said they were going to make him the commercial success Headline hadn't and they would train him to write books just like American Gods "only a little bit less weird". I would write them for ever, he says:
American Gods, American Gods II, British Gods ...
I thought: "That's my idea of Hell."
He says he planned to write Neverwhere and Stardust, and then a book called Time in the Smoke, another one set in London. He didn't want to get pigeonholed. So he wrote American Gods instead.
He quotes Noel Coward, saying he had a determination "never to pop out of the same hole twice".
Neil Gaiman books are absolutely identifiable, he says, "because they're written by me and they have my name on the cover".
Did he always know he was going to be a cross-genre author, an audience member asks.
When he was a kid, he wanted to be a writer, but that seemed mythical and impossible, so he thought he would grow up to be an English teacher, or a barrister because "it looks like it's fun on television".
He says he thought he might grow up to be the kind of fantasy writer "with maps in the fronts of their books", or a "clinky clinky" type of science fiction writer.
When he was a journalist in his 20s and interviewed and met authors, they would tell him how they all had a novel they couldn't really get published, something about the French revolution or steam ships, something very different to their usual output.
Even as a 23/24-year-old NG thought "that is not going to happen to me ... I want to do everything."
He says he didn't have a career plan, he had a list, which he showed to his mum ("who said it was a very good list"). On it was writing a novel, writing comics, writing an episode of Doctor Who.
He said he was spoiled by comics because comics are a medium people mistake for a genre. So in Sandman he could do horror or historical; in Miracleman he did utopian fiction and spy stories.
At the point when he was done for the first round with comics, as he puts it, he thought: I have had complete power and I am never giving that up.
NG is asked what his favourite comic story arc is.
He says it is Swamp Thing: American Gothic, by Alan Moore. It made him realise: everything I hoped you could do with comics, you could do.
The artwork by JH Williams is beautiful, he says.
On the first couple of pages, we get to meet Morpheus as a flower, and as a plant, he says. "I said: 'Can you make the leaves look a bit like a cloak?' And he did!"
CA asks him another question from the comments:
NG says when he started writing it he just wanted it to last a year.
At that time it was a point of honour to do 12 issues of a DC comic.
When he plotted the first story he made it eight issues long, because he assumed they would cancel it at that point and he would round it off with four short stories.
But when they got to issue eight they were selling more copies than any comparable comic.
It never felt like he was doing something earth-shattering because it never seemed to change anything - but what he didn't realise then was that the people who were going to change it were still reading it. They were at school or university, he says.
If he had thought of it as something important and ground-breaking at the time, it wouldn't have been as good.
He says he is driving his editors "mad and sad" while he works on a new 25th anniversary Sandman story because he is thinking about all the thousands of people who will say: "So, we waited 16 years for that?!"
You never knew why Morpheus had been captured in the first place, NG says, but he, NG, always knew.
When he was asked by DC to do an anniversary issue, he thought he would tell that story.
"Great - so you'll be doing it on the same rates and terms you signed up for 20 years ago," they said.
I don't know if you've noticed but I'm now a best-selling author, he says.
They said: we can't do that. If we do that for you, we'd have to do it for everyone.
And I said no, he says.
New blood came in at DC, and they agreed to the new terms. "And so I started."
Questions from the audience. A quick-witted audience member asks if his daughter ever got to meet Stephen King. NG says he has only met King without his family. NG was at a signing (he mentions in passing how long the line for his signing was) and then they went for dinner, where King advised him to enjoy his fame and success and celebrity. "I didn't. I worried." He was continually convinced the next week it would go away, he says, and he only stopped worrying a few years ago when he won the Newbery Medal.
NG tells a story about how his daughter has never forgiven him for telling her to "go down to the library and give her a copy of Carrie ... she still glares at me whenever Stephen King's name is mentioned".
CA reads a question out about whether NG is going to do any new children's picture books? He says when you sign up for author school, rule No 1 is not to have an adult book and a children's book come out at the same time, because you will have to promote them for half a year non-stop. But he is doing that this year.
The books are like mirror images of each other, NG says.
The Ocean is framed by an adult recalling what happened to him as a child: his darkest book, his most disturbing book.
Fortunately the Milk is "the single silliest book I've ever written". It's bookended by a kid but it has an adult hero, "and it's about milk". The plot starts with them being "out of milk", he says. The dad goes out to get some and gets beamed up to an alien spaceship. NG goes on to recount what seems to be the bulk of the story, with infectious enthusiasm. "There are ponies, there are vampires ... proper ponies with like sparkly stars on the sides ... "
This gets a small and unlikely round of applause (perhaps from some Bronies?).
Updated
Looking back at his childhood, having gas fires in children's bedrooms seemed more unlikely than any of the monsters or ghosts in the book.
Your main character is powerless in The Ocean, CA says, rather than the powerful characters in traditional children's fiction.
It's true, says NG. He screws up a lot. He causes more bad things to happen. But he does escape at one point, he says. He's learned to climb down a drainpipe because kids in books climb down drainpipes and he feels a duty to, he says.
His publisher asked if they needed to get permission for the quotes from children's books in the novel, he says, but he had made them all up. Books about "girls who could not leave their ponies when the Nazis came ... "
Part of the fun of the myths is that nobody is sugar-coating them, and kids love terrible things happening, he says.
He recalls the terrifying satisfaction on the face of the kid when something really awful happens to a bad person, adding: "Yes!" again.
It's only when you become an adult that you realise about some of the imagery in myths and folk tales: "That's not really very nice."
CA asks another question from the comments:
In much of your work the mythical and the modern merge and conflict. Do you feel myths are still important in modern culture? Why?
NG says he loves myths, describing himself as a "myth junkie".
He recalls reading about Loki and Thor for the first time. They were taking refuge in a very peculiar house, which turned out to be a giant's glove. "Yes!" he says with satisfaction.
The myths of ancient Egypt also appeal to him, he says: the animal-headed gods.
Myths have always fascinated him, he says. He loves to let them "drip and trickle" into his fiction.
His narrator in The Ocean likes them because "they aren't for adults and they aren't for children – they just are". He can still get the same thrill from them as he did when he was a kid, NG says.
He loved the idea that the Hemstocks were very earthy, practical ladies who had dragged their farm across the universe from the dawn of time and plonked it down at the end of the lane, he says.
The ancient Hemstock characters were in the back of his mind for a long time - and when he started writing about the lane in which he grew up it was obvious they had to be in it.
He says that Joe Wright of Atonement and Anna Karenina fame is going to direct the film of this book.
CA asks where he gets ideas such as Lettie being 11 for a long time.
He says his mother said a nearby farm had been mentioned in the Domesday Book. And he thought about what it meant for a farm to be there for a thousand years. That thought sat there all this time, NG says.
My colleague Hannah Freeman has tweeted this Vine of Gaiman reading.
Neil Gaiman reading from new book https://t.co/9tNsXn8M9M
— Hannah Freeman (@Hannah_Freeman) June 17, 2013
CA asks the following question from the comments:
Hello Neil
Can you tell us something about the different ways you start work on stories for children and stories for adults, and if there is ever a fork in the road where you have to decide which of the two to follow?
Thankyou
NG says he didn't worry at first, but as it went on he had to think about things he'd never thought before: what makes adult fiction, what makes children's fiction?
He left notes to himself, for example: "In adult fiction you're allowed to leave in the boring bits."
But what made up his mind that this was adult fiction was the idea that in children's fiction, although he's perfectly happy to make them as dark as he likes, in the end they have to be about hope.
But this is not a book about defeating dragons or telling kids they can be powerful. It's a book for adults who have forgotten about the powerlessness of childhood.
He mentions the character Ursula Monkton, who "was enormously fun to write", whom CA describes as "Mary Poppins from Hell".
What happens if the thing that comes into some children's life is nowhere near as positive as Mary Poppins, he asks.
But not necessarily in the best way, he says.
CA asks why the monstrous creatures in the book give away money.
It's about how peculiarly important money can be as a kid, NG says, because you have no income yourself. I didn't really understand it, he says.
But he recognised it meant "power" - he could use it to buy sweets or "two books".
The suicide is driven by money, he says, and the creature in the book is trying to give people what they want by giving them money (as with the coin down the narrator's throat).
The audience give the reading a warm round of applause.
Gaiman has an interesting voice, his English accent now rounded off by American speech patterns after years in the US.
The section includes the memorable key character Lettie Hemstock, a girl who is eleven years old, but significantly is asked: "How long have you been eleven for?"
It's a visceral and rather disturbing sequence, which perhaps illustrates his point that this is a book about a child rather than a children's book.
NG reads a section where the narrator is suffering from terrifying dreams after the suicide of the lodger. One of the dreams ends with him waking up to find an old silver shilling in his throat.
Despite its having a seven-year-old narrator, it's not a children's book, NG says before reading.
NG recalls a signing the other day in Bath that lasted from 9pm to 1am. By 1am people were coming up saying, "It's really good ... "
CA asks him to read a bit.
He finished, did a word count, and sent an email to his publisher saying, "I appear to have accidentally written a novel."
After several weeks, he thought it's not a short story, it's a novelette. Then he revised that view: it was obviously a novella.
He kept writing. Amanda finished her album. She came to Dallas to mix it and he flew over there too and finished the book in coffee shops.
Then he started typing it and read her what she'd written every night, and she'd fall asleep. He loved that, he says.
NG says his reaction was not sorrow. Instead it was a weird seven-year-old resentment that something interesting had happened that he hadn't known about.
That sat there in the back of his head, he says.
He thought he would write a story for Amanda, his wife.
She doesn't really like fantasy, but she likes me, he says. So he decided to write about the landscape where he grew up and a character like his young self.
It would be a short story for her and then he would get on with his real work (at that time writing an episode of Doctor Who).
Neil Gaiman and Claire Armitstead pic.twitter.com/mhOVk4HzpK
— Guardian Books (@GuardianBooks) June 17, 2013
He bought a Mini in 2003, he says, and was delighted to find he was in the same proportion to the new Mini as he had been to the old Mini when he was a kid - a white Mini (as in the novel).
He asked his dad why they got rid of the Mini. His dad said they had had a South African lodger who smuggled money out but lost it all at the casino. He stole the car, drove it to the bottom of the lane and killed himself (all this happens in the book too).
NG starts talking about his new novel, The Ocean at the End of the Lane, which he says is the first novel he's written "completely accidentally".
With other books such as Stardust and American Gods, he knew the size and shape before he started, he says.
His wife, Amanda Palmer (whistles from audience) – "she is very whistle-worthy," NG says – had gone to Melbourne to make an album, and she wound up with another relationship, with the album, that excluded him. He didn't expect that, he says. He was missing her. "She was sending me happy texts ... " So he thought he would write her a short story.
This was the line, CA recalls:
It wasn't just the murder, he decided. Everything else seemed to have conspired to ruin his day as well. Even the cat.
I thought it would be fun to write something that wasn't a typical Gaiman first line, he says.
CA compliments NG on answering such an impressive number of questions on his live webchat, and the success of the short story he began on the site.
NG says "I put up my line, and the website went down", which gave everyone time to go away and write their short stories.
Anne Chisholm, the chair of the Royal Society of Literature, speaks first to say that they don't usually book such big halls for these events. But for Neil Gaiman the tickets sold out in a flash, she says.
Neil Gaiman (NG) and Claire Armitstead (CA) arrive on stage to a great reception from the audience.
The hall is starting to fill up, although disappointingly I've only noticed a couple of people dressed up. There are far more women here than might usually be expected for a graphic novelist.
Neil Gaiman audience pic.twitter.com/WBOThQHllP
— PaulTOwen (@PaulTOwen) June 17, 2013
If you have any questions you want Claire to ask Neil Gaiman, post them in the comments below, and I'll pass the best ones on to her.
If you don't mind me indulging in a few brief reminiscences while we wait… The Peacock theatre is part of the London School of Economics, where I took a master's in comparative politics almost 10 years ago. I was working nights at the website of a rival newspaper to this one at the same time, and as a result I often found it difficult to stay awake in the early-morning lectures. The trickiest was the compulsory statistics course, which took place right here in the Peacock theatre – a dark underground cavern with black walls and cinema-style chairs backed with red velvet – at 9am each Friday morning. I would chew gum to try stay awake, until one morning I suddenly found myself waking up with a start having almost swallowed the gum, and so I had to abandon that technique. Anyway, just making small talk … How've you been?
The LSE's Peacock theatre #neilgaiman pic.twitter.com/WHfVCYHH2c
— PaulTOwen (@PaulTOwen) June 17, 2013
I’ve just arrived at the Peacock theatre to set up and I’m looking forward to catching a glimpse of some of Gaiman’s fans, many of whom reportedly dress up as his characters – Death, the young goth portrayed by Tori Amos in the earlier post, is a favourite. (Even the stewards here seem to be getting into the fantasy mood; on the way in I heard one young man saying apologetically, “I know it’s quite an unusual fetish … “)
Tonight the author Neil Gaiman will be appearing at the Peacock theatre in London in conversation with Claire Armitstead, the Guardian’s literary editor. I’ll be covering the event – organised by the Royal Society of Literature – in full live here.
Gaiman was one of the key figures in the move towards more complex and adult themes and ideas in comic books in the 1980s and 1990s. His addition of myths, folklore and fairytales – as well as a literary and historical allusiveness – to the superhero genre in works such as The Sandman and Black Orchid made him one of the most influential graphic novelists of the era, along with others such as Alan Moore and Frank Miller.
His novels include Good Omens, written with Terry Pratchett, Neverwhere, which was recently dramatised on BBC Radio 4, and the award-winning American Gods; Stardust and Coraline have both been adapted for the cinema, and he has written episodes of Doctor Who. His new novel, released tomorrow, is The Ocean at the End of the Lane.
Gaiman became a pioneer of blogging during the writing of American Gods, and he is a keen tweeter, although he told the Guardian last week that he was going to take a sabbatical from social media for six months “so I can concentrate on my day job: making things up."
As you can see in this video, he guest-edited the Guardian’s books website on Friday, something he described as being “a position of daunting, fairy godmother-like power”:
Things I was interested in, things I wanted to read about, things I wanted to hear, things I wanted to know: I just had to ask, and they happened.
These included a gallery of current artwork by his sometime collaborator Dave McKean, a podcast in which Cory Doctorow, Jonny Geller and Henry Volans talked about the future of the book and Gaiman read a short story, a run through his top 10 mythical characters, and an extract from The Ocean at the End of the Lane. He also took part in a live webchat with Guardian readers.
Gaiman is famously close friends with the singer Tori Amos; she has frequently namechecked him in song, and posed for the cover of his much-loved Sandman spin-off Death: The High Cost of Living; he included her as a character in Stardust and wrote short stories for her tour booklets and her album Strange Little Girls.
He comes from a Jewish, Scientologist family, although he is not a Scientologist, and is married to Amanda Palmer of the Dresden Dolls.
Claire Armitstead will be asking him about all this and more at the Peacock theatre tonight – and I’ll cover it live here. Live coverage will begin just before 7pm BST, so join us then.
Updated
Agreeing with ID1790460, the Sandman books really were a revelation, bringing whole new vistas to both fantasy and comics (and critics tend not to remember that it retconned the fictional histories of two DC superheroes of the same name and fitted into the DC Universe alongside Superman, Batman and so on). It was a comic series that achieved literary respectability and all sorts of famous comic writers have testified as to how it influenced their work and showed how the medium could produce great art. Did you have any idea how much of an impact it would have when you were writing it?