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Dressed in black and based in the US, Neil Gaiman has, in the past decade, become an author hero among readers of all ages, including the 1.8 million who follow him on Twitter. In prize-winning, best-selling novels including Coraline, Neverwhere, American Gods and The Graveyard Book, he combines the everyday and the other-worldly, drawing on sources from English folklore, science fiction, fantasy, horror and fairytales to rock music and the Midrash. An element of enchantment runs through all his work. To mark the publication of The Ocean at the End of the Lane, an unsettling and very personal fable about memory, magic and survival, he is making one public appearance in London. Interviewed by the Guardian's literary editor, Claire Armitstead, he reflects on the boundaries between children's and adult literature; the appeal of working in multiple forms - such as comics, picture books and screenplays; the writers - from Kipling to Edgar Allan Poe - who have most influenced him; and the lure of darkness.