Alicia Lozano makes her return to the Hero Complex with coverage of a packed-house event at UCLA's Royce Hall.

Neil Gaiman had a rough year. His father died while the 49-year-old author was working on a screenplay of his 2005 novel “Anansi Boys” and financing crumpled for a film adaptation of “The Graveyard Book.” But standing before a rapt audience (and a wildly diverse one, considering the children carrying copies of “Coraline,” the parents toting “American Gods” and goth kids wielding “Sandman” issues) at UCLA’s Royce Hall on Thursday night, Gaiman was nothing but sprightly storytelling and good omens.

“I always wanted to be the kind of writer who can tell whatever stories he wanted,” said Gaiman, dressed in his ubiquitous uniform of black on black with appropriately shaggy hair and alabaster skin. “It never occurred to me not to be.”

And this is exactly the kind of storytelling that has made Gaiman “the most famous writer you’ve never heard of,” according to the Times of London. At Thursday’s event, hosted by UCLA Live, the journalist-turned-comic-book-writer-and-eventual-novelist breezed through almost 30 years of literary works, ranging from whimsical poems to devilish short stories and culminating with full-blown adult novels.

He kicked off the evening with a reading of “My Last Landlady,” a poem inspired by the “horrors” of off-season English seaside resorts that once vacated in the winter become dark and twisted traps for unsuspecting tourists. 

After the reading, Gaiman launched into a brief retrospective of his work as a “crossover artist,” one who can deftly navigate the sometimes conflicting worlds of horror versus fantasy, children’s versus adult, comic versus fiction writing.

His first book, 1991’s “Coraline,” which became a 2009 silver-screen hit, took more than two decades to write, Gaiman confessed. He started it as a 22-year-old journalist, who soon after turned to comic books, “a medium that people mistake as a genre,” he explained. But his publisher argued that the children’s book he sought to create was too scary for kids and too juvenile for adults. It was tucked away until Gaiman found considerable success through his “Sandman” comic series and he was finally allowed to experiment with prose suitable for anyone with enough imagination to accept the “other.”

Sticking with the crossover theme, Gaiman continued with a reading from “The Graveyard Book,” originally conceived as a ghost version of the “The Jungle Book,” inspired by his then-2-year-old son, Michael, now 26, who enjoyed riding his bicycle through a cemetery, which coincidentally was one of Gaiman’s favorite places to visit when he himself was a child. This book also took almost 20 years to write. He kept putting it away until he became a better writer, Gaiman said. Eventually, he realized that he wasn’t getting any better and decided to finally give it a go. The result won the Brit a 2009 Newberry Medal.

His last reading came from a 100-page novella called “Odd and the Frost Giants,” about a young Norwegian boy living among Vikings who runs away from home with a broken leg, only to be followed by a bear, fox and eagle. In the novella -- originally written for World Book Day, during which English schoolchildren can buy books with 1-pound vouchers -- Odd comes face to face with some of Gaiman’s favorite, and most often invoked, gods: Loki, Odin and Thor.

When asked about writing for children versus adults during question-and-answer time, Gaiman noted that young readers “don’t come to stories with preconceptions,” making them a perfect vehicle for introducing the fantastical and horrific.

He ended the night by reading from “Instructions,” a poem about what to do when you find yourself living in a fairy tale. “Trust your dreams, your heart and your story,” he advised. The poem will eventually be published in a collection of the same name illustrated by Charles Vess. Gaiman is also working on a nonfiction story about Buddhist myths in China called “A Monkey in Me.”

-- Alicia Lozano

RECENT AND RELATED

Neil Gaiman says "Graveyard Book" film dead -- for now

Neil Gaiman and the stuff that dreams are made of

Neil Gaiman's short film "Statuesque" comes to life

Neil Gaiman on the Hollywood future of "Sandman"

Gaiman says Alan Moore was the Beatles: "I was Gerry & Pacemakers"

"Crying Game" director Neil Jordan will direct "Graveyard Book"

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" film: "I will be spitting venom all over it"

Exclusive set photos: "Coraline" coming to life

Henry Selick's maquettes charm the Con

Neil Gaiman on foot in rural China researching next project

Photos: Top, author Neil Gaiman in Manhattan in 2007. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times. Bottom, Gaiman on a cemetery stroll. Credit: Philippe Matas / HarperCollins

Neil Gaiman knows that the best stories must be both bitter and sweet -- he is, after all, the author of “The Graveyard Book,” the tender children’s novel that opens with a nasty knife murder. Still, the 49-year-old Brit sounds dazed when he reflects on the past year of his life.

“I had a really strange year,” the author said in a faraway voice. “I was leading up to the writing of an ‘Anansi Boys’ screenplay [based on my 2005 novel], which begins with an incredibly funny sequence where the protagonist's father keels over from a surprise heart attack. And as I was doing that my father keeled over and died of a surprise heart attack. It’s not terribly funny though, is it?”

The death of David Gaiman during a business meeting in March left his son searching for words. As the weeks passed, though, the writer was met with blank screens, blank pages and a blank stare in the mirror. The author of “Coraline,” “American Gods,” “Stardust” and the comic-book epic “The Sandman” was suddenly unable to conjure up those apparitions of imagination that had made him a signature figure in fantasy circles.

“It left me just completely stilled for about nine months,” Gaiman said. “It was very weird.... I’ve never really had much time or patience with writer's block. I think sometimes you need a period of just healing and distance before you can say, ‘Yeah, I’m ready to do that now.’ ”

Gaiman will speak Feb. 4 at UCLA’s Royce Hall and, after winning the Newbery Medal last year for “The Graveyard Book,” there will probably be strong turnout for an author -- he was already a rock star with the Comic-Con crowd thanks to his landmark, seven-year run on “Sandman.” Gaiman has a reputation for wit and sprightly storytelling, but the Royce audience might hear a speech tinted with sadness on the edges.

Gaiman is also mourning the loss of a highly anticipated film project: “The Graveyard Book” adaptation that was to be written and directed by Neil Jordan (“The Brave One,” “The Crying Game” and “Interview with the Vampire”) has fallen apart on the financing front. It’s a demoralizing setback for Gaiman, who had announced Jordan’s participation last January on “The Today Show.” It may all still happen, of course, but it added to a year of tumult for the author.

“It was all put together over at Miramax Films. The people there had a long, great relationship with Neil Jordan and it was all set up and ready to go, and then Miramax was more or less erased from existence,” Gaiman said. “It became a filing cabinet in somebody’s desk, more or less.... But it looks like almost all the pieces are on the table again. They have a studio, they have a distributor and they are putting stuff together and I’m not allowed to say anything else.”

Gaiman has a spotty history with Hollywood, but he’s clearly fascinated by its career upsides. He was publicly bitter that the film adaption of his “Stardust,” starring Michelle Pfeiffer and Robert DeNiro, wasn’t marketed by Paramount Pictures as a clever-but-winking fairy tale in the vein of “The Princess Bride.” But last year Gaiman was over the moon with Henry Selick’s acclaimed stop-action interpretation of “Coraline,” a movie that grossed $122 million worldwide and earned strong reviews. Gaiman also co-wrote the screenplay for “Beowulf,” the 2007 film from director Robert Zemeckis. Overall the Hollywood experience has been eye-opening.

“These days we’re in this strange and fascinating world where it seems that even movie studios don’t have the money to make movies anymore,” Gaiman said. “That’s been the story of most of the films I’ve been involved in. The long, strange journey is the financing part; the journey of the filmmaking is always incredibly easy and straightforward.”

Gaiman, born in Portchester, England, lives in rambling old manse in Minnesota, but he and his fiancee, Amanda Palmer of the punk-cabaret duo the Dresden Dolls, attended the Golden Globe Awards this weekend. Selick’s “Coraline” was nominated for best animated film, and the author of the source material was dazzled and amused by his red carpet experience. He found himself sharing a banquet room with George Lucas, Paul McCartney and Mike Tyson -- an experience, he said, that was just like real life but entirely different.

“They definitely were all there, you were not hallucinating,” Gaiman said with a chuckle. “There was also Mickey Rourke in a cowboy hat, Meryl Streep threatening to rename herself ‘T-Bone.’ It was also the same room where my fiancee was threatened with removal and the confiscation of her camera for taking a photo of the teleprompter with her iPhone. Someone with security did not want the illusion to be shattered that these stars had not actually memorized the jokes they were making.”

Gaiman has high hopes that a long list of his creations of the page will live and breathe on the screen. “As a writer,” he said at one point in the interview, “what we’re fighting is obscurity.” His “Sandman” (which is a metaphysical and operatic chronicle of the modern-day doings of Morpheus, the immortal god of dreams) would seem like natural fantasy property for comic-book-obsessed Hollywood studios. The author is also optimistic that the “Graveyard Book” project has not truly given up the ghost. "It's a natural, that's why Jordan wanted to do it in the first place; he knew that someone was going to do it."

At the UCLA Live event, though, the storyteller plans to linger on matters of magical creation, not multimedia commerce.

“I think what I want to talk about is what the imagination is and what the imagination does,” Gaiman said. He also wanted to emphasize that, despite some trying times, he will not arrive at Royce Hall as glum as, say, Silas, the dour vampire who becomes an orphan's protector in "The Graveyard Book."
 
“Having said that it was a down year, and my dad dying, it was also one of the biggest up years I’ve ever had -- and the strangest. Any year that begins with you winning the Newbery medal and any year that begins with someone like Henry Selick making a movie like ‘Coraline’ out of one of your books, that’s an up year. And now I’m engaged….”

So what’s next for the writer? The big goal is completing that “Anansi Boys” script and getting past the emotional connection it has to his father’s death. “It would be a nice way to put that story to rest,” he said, “and put what happened to rest.”

-- Geoff Boucher

RECENT AND RELATED

Neil Gaiman and the stuff that dreams are made of

Neil Gaiman's short film "Statuesque" comes to life

Neil Gaiman on the Hollywood future of "Sandman"

Gaiman says Alan Moore was the Beatles: "I was Gerry & Pacemakers"

"Crying Game" director Neil Jordan will direct "Graveyard Book"

Alan Moore on "Watchmen" film: "I will be spitting venom all over it."

Exclusive set photos: "Coraline" coming to life

Henry Selick's maquettes charm the Con

PHOTOS: Top, Neil Gaiman strolls among the headstones. Credit: Philippe Matas / HarperCollins. Middle, Neil Jordan at work on set of "The Good Thief" in 2002. Credit: David Appleby / Fox Searchlight Pictures. Bottom, Neil Gaiman in New York, summer 2007. Credit: Jennifer S. Altman / For The Times.

 
 
Brave enough to enter the other world? Come see a free screening of "Coraline" at 7:30 tonight at The Landmark at 10850 W. Pico Boulevard and then stick around for my interview with director Henry Selick up on stage. We'll be taking questions from the audience as well, as this event that's brought to you by the Los Angeles Times and The Envelope is the first of five screenings leading up to the Oscar voting. Hope to see you there.

-- Geoff Boucher

Top photo by David Strick; photo of Neil Gaiman, below, by Kimberly Butler

Neil Gaiman and the stuff that dreams are made of

Neil Gaiman on the Hollywood future of "Sandman"

Gaiman says Moore was the Beatles: "I was Gerry & Pacemakers"

"Coraline": Meet the cast

Exclusive set photos: "Coraline" coming to life

Henry Selick's maquettes charm the Con