At Last, The Powers of Neil Gaiman, Atlanta & Haiku… Combined!

As previously stated, Neil Gaiman is making his Farewell Tour. Perhaps one day he might decide to reform and make another round…but at the moment, this is it. We’ve teamed up with Eagle Eye Bookshop in Decatur, Georgia to host The Neil for his stop in the Atlanta metro area. Tickets for the event went rather fast.

However.

I can now reveal that there are five tickets left. And coupled with each of those five tickets is a copy of the book that’s got Professor Gaiman making the rounds: The Ocean at the End of the Lane. Update: We’re also giving each winner two random selections from the Black Phoenix Alchemy Lab Gaiman/Coraline line of scents!

I’m telling you this because you have a chance, starting right now, to win a ticket and a book. Here’s the game: we want you to write a haiku. That’s right, you know how it works: five-seven-five. This haiku should have something to do with The Neil and/or his vast array of works. We–Need Coffee and Eagle Eye–will pick three of our favorite haiku and the three authors behind them will win.

Are you worried that you suck at haiku manufacture? Don’t worry about it. Create one anyway–because the other two winners will be chosen at random from everybody who enters. So everybody has a chance at winning.

Here’s how the game is played.

2. Post it somewhere. Twitter (if you can make it fit), Facebook, Tumblr, Pinterest, wherever. Somewhere you can link to.

3. Follow Need Coffee (@needcoffeefeed) and Eagle Eye (@eagleeyebooks) on Twitter. (Following Neil isn’t a requirement just because we’re pretty sure you’re already doing so.)

4. Tweet the link to your haiku with the hashtag “#GaimanHaiku.”

5. Return to your normal life, if you had such a thing before entering the contest.

Please note: if you win, you collect your prizes at the reading itself here in Atlanta on June 22nd. (Details here.) You must arrange to get yourself to the reading. If you are in Prague or Nome, Alaska or live on Barsoom and can’t get yourself to Atlanta, please don’t enter. It would be uncool if you said you were coming and then didn’t show and somebody who could have gone to the reading didn’t get the chance.

Please further note: we reserve the right to take any entries that don’t follow the rules and feed them to the Cow-Beast of London.

Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

Questions:

When’s the deadline? Friday, June 14th, 11:59pm ET.

Surely that’s not enough time! Um. It’s a haiku.

Can I see a sample haiku? Sure.

Gaiman sleeps tonight.
A golem of black t-shirts
guards the bedroom door.

I am a Haiku Factory! Can I enter multiple times? No, we recommend you churn out your barrage of haiku, pick your best and use it to enter. If everybody entered as many haiku as they could write, we might finally be able to read them all and declare winners sometime in 2017.

Hey, if I’m posting this on Tumblr (or wherever), can I post some of my artwork/photos/doodles/whatever to act as a visual aid? Sure thing. If you’ve got some Gaiman-themed art or photos or BBQ recipes or whatever, throw them into the fray. Just make sure they’re accompanying your haiku. And for the record, I might have to give my favorite “Gaiman-themed BBQ recipe expressed in haiku form” a special prize of its own.

Can I enter for my friend/compatriot/relative who lives in Atlanta and could go in my place? Yes. Just be prepared if you win to let us know who that person is so we can put them on The List.

Can I substitute a sonnet instead? Stop showing off.

I don’t feel right without some legal jargon. Do you have any legal jargon? Sure thing. Knock yourself out.

Now get, er, haikuing. Good luck!