Is there a comprehensive list of your books that have Pulp Fiction covers? As far as I can tell from my *extensive* googling, it’s only said that Anansi Boys, American Gods, Stardust, and Neverwhere were released with the pulp cover (according to articles from 2016) but I bought a brand new Ocean at the End of the Lane w/ the pulp cover in 2020. So do you know if it’s only those 5 books with the pulp style covers?

Are there plans to release more of your works in the pulp style covers? If not, can there be? Because, if I may be so bold, pulp fiction style covers of Good Omens and The Graveyard Book would be two very cool additions to my bookshelf.

Sorry for this incredibly nerdy and inane ask but I’m dying to know.

There are seven out so far, with an eighth being painted:

Robert McGinnis, the artist, is 95 years old. I’m grateful for every painting he does for us.

The brief from me was as simple as I could get it:

Mostly, for all except American Gods, which could be haunted spooky American landscape, I'd love people, and the feeling that we are looking at the kinds of book covers nobody does any longer.  Mr Nancy in the foreground for Anansi Boys? - something that says Funny, Thorne Smith, slightly sexy, strange. Stardust, a beautiful study of the Star ? Very fairy tale. Neverwhere, very Adventures, and perhaps Richard and Door, or a scene or moment from the book?

Jennifer Brehl, my editor at William Morrow, came back with:

I think there should be figures/people on all four covers. Looking at McGinnis's art (and the other covers you sent me) it seems that the characters are extremely important. I was also seeing TWO characters per cover. Rough images: AMERICAN GODS: Shadow and Mr. Wednesday, standing in a rugged landscape beneath a lightning-streaked sky ANANSI BOYS: Mr. Nancy in his yellow hat (didn't he have a yellow hat, or am I misremembering?) holding mike singing to young woman STARDUST: Tristran leaning over a sleeping (fallen) Yvaine (Star) NEVERWHERE: Richard carrying/supporting a wounded Door through a door -- leaving the World Above and stepping through to Below.

That seemed like enough to get going with.

We did American Gods first. Landscape and lightning, Shadow and Wednesday. We lifted the "Underground novel" blurb from a 60s paperback of Stranger in a Strange Land.

When we did Anansi Boys it followed the same pattern (although I knew what I wanted as a blurb):

Mr McGinnis sent in some cover sketches. He honed in on the opening scene, with Mr Nancy singing Karaoke to tourists in a Florida seaside bar. We had told him we wanted it to feel like it was a book cover from 60 years ago, and that all these covers would have slightly different sensibilities. We knew that he was the one painting the most memorable book covers in the 50s and 60s, so our brief was to paint what he would have done if he'd read the book back then.

He sent in 5 sketches and I picked a few of the ones I liked best and sent them to Todd, to start talking about visual book styles. (Here are a couple.)

Everyone's favourite was the first.

Todd mentioned that it reminded him of this kind of style, and sent me book covers to show what he meant. He suggested that we have the title over on the left (like the ALL THE WAY cover here).

The finished cover painting came in...

and Todd did a few versions, always picking up the green from Mr Nancy's hat and tie:

(There were lots more versions than these, but I'm limited to 10 images on Tumblr.) I suggested that we lost the Awards stuff, which made it feel cluttered. And I picked the typefaces and versions I liked best, which gave us:

The publisher wanted the #1 Bestseller information back...

I suggested that if we were going to do that we should add an adjective of some kind, like "rollicking" or "magical" just to make it less dry. So Todd did a few of those...

(We actually went with "Magical" on the finished book.) And we had a book cover.

Steve Reeves as Sandokan, the Malaysian Pirate, foe of all Englishmen. 

Though he is identified with the role of Hercules, Steve Reeves only played Herc twice, and most of his 60+ film career was in other roles like this one. 

Well, you asked....

For a long time Jews didn’t have surnames. We were patronymic. If your name was Ruben, and your father’s name had been David, you’d be Ruben ben David. (ben meaning son of, or bat daughter of). Ashkenazi Jews got surnames at the end of the Eighteenth Century, when countries passed laws making the Jews get surnames.

So...at the end of the nineteenth century, in Radomsk and Lodz in Poland, into the 1940s, it was spelled Heiman. The Heimans on this Holocaust memorial, in Miami, were my family. By the end of the War, they were all murdered.

My great-grandfather, and his family, left Poland and moved to Antwerp in about 1911. 

Here’s the Antwerp Police records on the family from around 1913. It was being spelled Geiman, then. (It was a throaty “Ch” sort of an H, the kind you’ll find in the scottish Loch or in Chaim, a first name meaning life, which is, I am assured, where the surname comes from, and the Ch became a G.) 

Leib Geiman was a courier on the Antwerp Diamond Bourse.

(Why is my great-grandmother, Eva, not listed? Why were all the children there with my great-grandfather but without her? I have no idea.)

Somewhere around 1914, Leib Geiman came to London. There are different stories in the family about why he left Antwerp, most of them involving a missing diamond.

My great-grandfather Leib (or Leon) spelled his name Geiman for the rest of his life, and that was the name he was buried under in 1951.

My grandmother, Mary, didn’t like the spelling Geiman. She kept fiddling with it. My grandfather was Gaeman on the engagement announcement, then Gaiman on the wedding invitations. I think she went back and forth a bit -- Gaeman was the spelling on my Aunt Helene and Uncle Ronnie's birth listings. And then, before my father was born in 1933, my grandmother changed it again, to Gaiman, and that was the name he was born under, and that was how they left it.

My Uncle Monty became a British Citizen in 1948. His naturalisation information says,

(I don’t know why they weren’t dotting their eyes...).