Brain Snacks: Tasty Tidbits of Knowledge
Neil Gaiman thinks of Stardust as a book with a feminine gender; even though it has a male hero, it develops really complex relationships between its female characters. (Source)
Gaiman decided to write Stardust because he wanted to read a fairy tale for adults, but he had trouble finding one. (Source)
Stardust actually started as a collaboration between Gaiman and artist Charles Vess. They pitched it first as a comic book, then as a graphic novel. Gaiman retained the rights to his prose, which he then published separately (but the graphic novel is worth looking for—it's gorgeous). (Source)
What was particularly fun about Stardust to Gaiman was that he deliberately had the bad guys and the good guys missing encounters with each other, rather than having unambiguous battles and victories. (Source)
Gaiman wanted it to feel as though Stardust had been written in the 1920s, so he bought himself a fountain pen and set to work. (Source)