That's success for you. With so many different media to work in and any number of non-fantastic tales to his credit, one wonders if Gaiman even considers himself a fantasist at all. I'm a storyteller . Every now and then I will tell a completely mainstream story because that's the story I want to tell. Most often, I like to use some kind of reflecting or distorting mirror.
Fiction is the lie that tells the truth.
The important thing is to tell a true story, to tell a story that feels true. Fantastic literature has been a staple of the cultural diet for, well, pretty much since language was created, if you choose to go back that far. Lately, though, there has been an upswing in the field, occasioned perhaps by the impending millennial rollover and the attending anxiety that the population seems to be feeling. Gaiman, for his part, despises this trend toward cookie-cutter imagineering, and rightly so. Fantasy ought to be the magic, the fantasists ought to be the people who are going out there and dreaming the dreams and creating the myths.