From the Dollhouse to the Bookstore
A very thrilling week is upon us! First of all, Happy Valentine’s Day! Yay! I’ve always liked Valentine’s Day (I know, shocking — as if I was suddenly going to have a dark side about that!), mainly because I think it’s a fun opportunity to let people know you like them — not only romantically, but maybe just because you think they’re totally awesome.
Among the many people I know who are totally awesome is my sparkly friend Alix, who edited my very first novel at Harper and is an editorial genius, if you ask me. And now she has a BLOG! Hooray! Something new and exciting to read! If you like writing or books or lovely smart people saying lovely smart things, you should check it out! 🙂
And say, if you like books, wouldn’t you like to celebrate Valentine’s Day by meeting some authors?
That’s right! Kids Heart Authors Day is upon us! HUZZAH! I promised to remind you, so here it is: this Saturday (Valentine’s Day!) from 10am to noon, authors all over New England will be signing their books in fabulous independent bookstores. Like, for instance…this one!
Yup, that’s where I will be — at Village Books in Roslindale, along with Karen Day, Marissa Doyle, and Kathleen Benner Duble, so please stop by! I’m happy to sign any of my books (and they should have Avatars 1 in stock to sell, woo hoo!) and I’ll be handing out shiny new Pet Trouble swag (freeeee!). OMG, now you’re totally excited, aren’t you?
Plus if you come up to me and tell me you’ve read my blog, I might actually explode with happiness. Surely you don’t want to miss that! 🙂
Or if Roslindale isn’t close enough, there are oodles of other participating stores, so visit the website and find one near you! Authors aplenty! Support the book business! For the publishing world is sad and languishing right now, but dude, people should remember that books are the best way to get through a recession. They’re cheaper than other entertainment (like Broadway shows; poor Broadway) and they last a lot longer (especially inside your brain!). Also they are pretty…and they make your children smarter! (So sayeth Freakonomics!)
Of course, now I’m going to awkwardly segue directly from hooraying about books into promoting a new TV show, but as I’ve said before, I love good stories in any medium, and I am MASSIVELY WILDLY RIDICULOUSLY EXCITED about this one, because finally Joss Whedon, who created the best shows in the history of television (don’t try to fight me on this), is back on our TV’s!
YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Dollhouse is here at last! BEST DAY EVER! It launches this Friday at 9pm on FOX, which means I can spend Friday nights for the foreseeable future watching Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, then Dollhouse, then Battlestar Galactica, and HOLY BATS doesn’t that sound perfect? Oh, go on, embrace your inner geek; geeks are totally cool now. (So sayeth the Internet!)
Plus, can you even handle how strange and weird and wonderful these previews are?:
*Overdose of Joy Coronary*
Apart from all the Joss, of course, there’s the Tahmoh Penikett, who’s also on Battlestar Galactica (HELO!) (that’s his name, not a misspelling of "hello", if you’re BSG-illiterate), which means TWO HOURS of wild steely hotness every Friday, at least until BSG ends.
If you’re curious for more details about the show and the themes of the show, check out this Joss Whedon interview in Salon, which will hopefully give you an idea of how intelligent and thoughtful it’s going to be. (Plus funny! and action-packed!)
And for the love of everything, please watch it, because if it gets canceled I will be much too depressed to write, and I’m sure other more important authors feel the same way, since Joss has inspired a whole generation of writers (seriously, the Buffy fans are everywhere).
So I suppose I should get some writing done now, just in case. :-) Oh, but first, I wanted to share this bizarre NYTimes article. It’s about how investigators have finally found the source of this strange maple-syrupy smell that sometimes appears all over Manhattan. What’s exciting about it for me is that I’ve totally experienced this! I remember it really distinctly; I was living in New York a few years ago, and I was walking down the street with some friends, when suddenly the air was filled with this crazy-amazing-sweet smell, like pancakes…but EVERYWHERE! GIANT PANCAKES LANDING ON MANHATTAN! I mean, seriously, people smelled it for blocks and blocks.
It was like a really cheerful X-Files mystery, and I figured I’d never find out the answer to it…but here it is! My favorite part of the article is that apparently there was a "crack maple-syrup team" working on the problem all this time. AWESOME. How does one get that job? And how do you phrase it on your resume? Can you put "crack maple-syrup detective"? Because I would totally hire that person.
Also, I wouldn’t mind living next to that factory. It’d smell like pancakes all the time! Like living in Candyland! (Dibs on the cabin in the Gumdrop Mountains. Or the beach house by the Ice Cream Sea. DUDE.)
Lastly, I’m going to leave you with a video that made me cry (which I found here). Apparently there’s an effort underway to invalidate the 18,000 marriages that were performed between May and November in California, before Prop 8 passed (BOOOOO). Can you imagine? Why would anyone do that to people who love each other? It’s too sad. Look at all these sweet, happy faces. I mean, seriously.
"Fidelity": Don’t Divorce… from Courage Campaign on Vimeo.
Next week I’ll let you know how Kids Heart Authors Day went…fingers crossed that we get to meet oodles of great readers! 🙂
Quote of the Day:
[As Cameron looks up the chimney]
Cameron: There’s something alive up there.
Sarah: Is it something that can hurt us?
Cameron: It’s a bird. I’ll kill it before it flies away.
Sarah: No.
Cameron: Maybe later?
Sarah: Maybe never.
— Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles