Neil Gaiman

“The new BlackBerry Z10 is designed to keep you moving,” reads the copy on the website of a new promotional campaign for the recently-launched smartphone. “So we’ve given it to three people who never stop. These incredibly talented and ambitious people are always looking for the next exciting challenge.”

Yeah, that’s pretty corny.Neil Gaiman

But I was certainly surprised to learn that one of the three people involved in the Z10 campaign was the author (and longtime TeleRead favorite) Neil Gaiman. (The campaign’s other two artists are the singer-songwriter Alicia Keys, and the filmmaker Robert Rodriquez.)

But here’s the interesting bit: As the promotion’s website explains, each of the three celebs was given their own phone, with which they were instructed to “create something amazing with the help of their fans. We’ll be documenting the whole process for everyone to see,” as the promo copy explains, “and sharing the outcome for everyone to enjoy.”

Sounds like a pretty decent idea to me. And as for Gaiman’s project, he’s calling it “A Calendar of Tales.” As he explains in one video on the site, Gaiman has always been fascinated by the idea of collaborating in some way with his fans. His idea, as far as I can tell, was to ask questions about a particular month of the year by using the #KeepMoving hashtag on Twitter. His fans responded to the questions, and he then wrote one story for each of the 12 months based on whichever tweet tickled his fancy, I suppose.

You can download all 12 stories as a PDF here; the stories have also been illustrated by fans who followed Gaiman’s BlackBerry project.

There are also three “episodes”—videos, really—of Gaiman discussing the project, and the progress he’s made. We’ve embedded them all for you below, in order.

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