This is swiped from an interview with Neil at http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/mar99/gaiman.htm

What projects are you working on now?

Well, once I've finished recovering from the signing tour, there are a couple of things. There's a children's book that should have been finished by December that's been sitting on hold now for a couple of months. I'm actually feeling very guilty because I left four kids locked in a closet, three of them have been dead for years and years and years. I'm feeling guilty. They've been in there for months and I have to go and get them out.

The reason I am posting that is because that is exactly how I feel about my characters. Poor Sutter was stuck in the hospital with a nosy roommate for ages.

Sutter and Eric have been kissing for about a week, which I guess is pretty much okay as long as she's not flipping out.

Johanna was in a box in a mausoleum for months and months and months.

Angie and Cody have been about to have sex since 1997.

I've got a queen bleeding to death in something that I started and stopped in 1997. That was a big year for me starting things and then stopping them. I even wrote a song for the queen called Caribou, Carry You. But the poor dear is still bleeding.

Marjory is trying desperately to read the mind of a man who's just been blown up and she's scared to death because she's afraid the reason she can't get to him is because he has, indeed, been blown up.

Kitta, Bella and Tsirrow have been sitting on a plain thinking for oh goodness, I guess the day before Danny died. I had all the plot worked out and then I blamed the story partly for Danny's death so I stopped working on it.

Cordelia is still trying to manifest herself enough to tell her story.

Martha is lugging home a bunch of library books about the internet and has been for a month.

Cullen and a selkie have been trying to rescue the daughter of the Queen of the Sea since 1998.

A bunch of kids have been hiding a stolen racehorse since 1995.

A kid whose parents are accidentally neglecting him has been considering a kidnapping for two years.

A woman has just lost her husband and is crying and has been for six months or so.

Adam is doubting that he can satisfy his wife and has been for a year or so.

Polly has gone mad and is in a graveyard and has been for about two years.

These poor women are pregnant with lithopeds and one of them has been miscarrying since 1996, with a brief respite last year when I tried to turn the story into a freakylinks story instead of an x-file.

A woman in the old west is trying to protect her saloon.

Two other women are fighting off aliens and have been for a year most likely.

A woman has strangled her baby at birth with its own umbilical cord and is now using it as a familiar. It's spirit is killing another woman in a park and has been since October of 2001.

A pixie is hiding in a suit of armour and has been there since 1995.

A girl may or may not have been raised by wolves. She's been in the forest since the day before Danny died because I bounced the idea off of him.

A prince is mouldering in a cell while a woman show jumps in another time and place. That's been going on since 97.

An actor who sweeps women off their feet has met his match and they have been talking for three years now.

An engaged girl who broke off the engagement has been having problems since 1998.

And Percival and Jake are trying hard to return a dress that doesn't even belong to them.

Two men in the early twenties have been driving cross country since 2001.

The mayor of a town turns to fraud to save the town. She's been turning for several years now.

A man is being plagued by a fairy who's not quite what he expected. She's been threatening him since 2001.

An abused woman and her many children have been abandoned in a town populated only by dead people for two months now.

A woman has been trying to get to ground zero since September 21 of 2001 to find her daughter and her grandmother.

A homeless girl who dreams of a serial killer has been dreaming of him for a year.

Oh my poor characters. What I put them through! The humanity!

I worry about them.

And I want to run when I hear someone tell me they have an idea I can have. Ideas are not my problem, time is my problem