Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween. You know, if you're into that sort of thing.

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Something Rotten Book Blog Tour - Day Three

The next stop on my mini-blog tour is up at author and illustrator Karen Lee's blog. All new questions, all new answers!

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Something Rotten Book Blog Tour - Day Two

I've been blogged again!

Check out interview two of my Book Blog Tour over at Stone Soup, the blog of Jack of All Tales author Kim Norman. Thanks, Kim!

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Wii Fanboy Likes Mii Too

My Wii Bling got another mention today - this one at Wii Fanboy, who were led to it by the post yesterday at Hawty McBloggy. Ain't the internet grand?
Wii Fanboy had a link to another fun alternative wristband that completely cracked me up. Check it out.

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Geeky Pumpkins

Niki just sent me to this very cool site featuring a bunch of geeky pumpkins. My favorites are the Death Star Pumpkin
and the Pac Man Pumpkins.Fun! Thanks Niki!

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Hawty McBloggy Likes Mii (Well, My Wii Bling)

bs angel (that's her gamer name) over at Hawty McBloggy posted an article about my Wii Bling on her blog today. She writes about gaming from a woman's perspective and she has a very cool running feature where she showcases Etsy discoveries. I was clicking around her site and made a little esty discovery myself - bs angel has an etsy shop too. She makes really nice cards - and a few naughty ones and cards for gamers.
You can read an earlier post about my Wii Bling here and you can find them for sale in my shop. The blue feather wristband is my favorite.

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Something Rotten Book Blog Tour - Day One

I've been blogged!

This week begins a Book Blog Tour, of sorts, for the debut of Something Rotten. Today's entry is up at writer/illustrator Elizabeth Dulemba's blog. Check it out!

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I'm on the cutting edge!

Look what came in the mail today! It's on sale now and I have a project in the book. Here's my decoupaged file cabinet - now living in my office. It says, "The brain is a wonderful organ. It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get to the office."And here's my favorite project in the book.Nicole Novak Luperini is a genius and I want to use this in our new house. We're thinking of getting a big ass ceiling fan (from Big Ass Fans, of course) for the library and now that I've seen this I want to decoupage the blades. Of course, we won't be doing anything like that for a few months yet. . .

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Another Rotten Review

Something Rotten has gotten another good review, this one from the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, or the BCCB. The BCCB showed the love for Samurai Shortstop last year, giving it one of its two starred reviews. No star this time, but a very good review nonetheless:

As the title and subtitle hint, this mystery story is a revisioned Hamlet, here set in Denmark, Tennessee, the home of Horatio’s boarding-school friend Hamilton Prince. The sudden death of Hamilton’s father, owner of the lucrative Elsinore Paper Plant, and the swift remarriage of Hamilton’s mother to her former brother-in-law has Hamilton suspicious; it doesn’t help that he’s still hung up on townie Olivia, who’s the daughter of the Prince family lawyer and who’s convinced that Elsinore has been covering up its dangerous and illegal pollution of the Copenhagen River. The overlay of Raymond Chandler onto the contemporary Shakespeare plot adds unnecessary gimmickry, but it does make Horatio’s narration teen-appealingly snarky, and the rest of the story capably accentuates the elements likely to intrigue the YA audience: adult dishonesty, youthful disaffection, troubled romance. There’s a hint of Chinatown as well as Chandler in the industrial pollution plot, but Gratz deftly uses that story to energize the updated Hamlet, as his alterations (Hamilton wavers between feigned and real alcoholism rather than madness, while the final face-off is a public hearing rather than a duel) are adroit and effective. The snappy patter and friendship-centered drama make this readable in its own right, and it would serve multiple curricular purposes by giving readers a chance to discuss the reasons behind the variants (Gratz kindly provides his main characters with a more hopeful ending than Shakespeare) and to gain additional understanding from viewing the plot at a different angle. Readers will find this enjoyable as a pleasure read and surprisingly painless as a curricular entry, and if the subtitle suggests sequels rather than “The rest is silence,” can you really regret the continued crime-fighting adventures of Horatio and Hamlet?

My favorite phrase from the whole piece, of course, is "surprisingly painless." I think I'll use that as an advertising teaser for the book from now on . . .

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Gratz Industries HQ: Doors!

It's been quite some time since we had a Gratz Industries HQ update for you, but truth be told, there hasn't been much new. In fact, we think the builders are almost done with their part of the work, which means it's almost time for us to put on our hardhats and get to work on all the things we left for ourselves to do. Like the plumbing. And the heating. And the electricity. And the exterior siding. And the interior drywall. And the . . . you get the picture. Right now, ambitiously, we're hoping to be living in the new house by April. One of us may have to take up prostitution to afford that, but hey - you do what you have to do.

Here's our first-floor deck, flanked now by two windowed garage doors. We had a large, all-glass garage door in our Atlanta loft, and we loved it. These partial glass doors are a concession to the colder climate, but should give us an amazing open-air feel two-thirds of the year. (The porch will be screened in too, so no bugs!)

Here's the view from the inside. You'll be able to see green through there once the mobile home is dragged away. Well, it will be brown dirt we'll see first, but we'll bring the space back to life. This interior space will be our kitchen, dining room/library, and living room, with the garage doors as a rather dynamic backdrop, methinks.

Here's the front door. We couldn't put windows in this wall because of the stairs, so we put one in the door!

The third floor got doors too. Here you can see the French doors in the bedroom. They're boarded over right now to keep them closed--there's no hardware in any of the doors yet.

And that's it for the update. There can't be much left, but the builders haven't been by in a while, and we're no hurry to call them up and ask where they are because if they're done we owe them the second half of the money. 8-/ We have it, we have it - but the longer we wait to give it to them the more brief the time we have to live with levels our bank accounts haven't seen since we were in college. Yikes! So, um, maybe I can sell another book this month . . . I know I have some old stuff laying around here somewhere . . .

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Happy Rotten Day!

Hi kids - the day has finally come. It's Something Rotten On-Sale Day!

(And there was great rejoicing.)

I don't know about you, but I was at one of the hundreds of midnight parties held across the country last night to celebrate the unveiling of Something Rotten. This event wasn't held at a local bookstore of course, it was held in my hotel room in Cartersville, Georgia, where I'm slated to do school and library visits all day today, but it was a raucous party nonetheless. And yes, in case you are wondering, I did wear a costume--I dressed up as Hagrid, the bearded, big-hearted groundskeeper Horatio befriends at Wittenberg Academy.

Seriously, today is the day Something Rotten officially goes on sale, and if you're not already planning to join me at a launch party or signing in the next week or two, now is the time to go get your copy. Does that mean you can run down to your local Borders or Barnes & Noble to grab a copy? Alas, no. Neither of the two big chains brought Something Rotten in, and while I'm thankful to B&N for supporting Samurai Shortstop, I now say . . . forget 'em! There's never been a better reason to support your local independent bookseller than this, and the chances are very good that your local indie will have Something Rotten on the shelf. The Penguin sales reps, who meet with and sell to the independent booksellers across the country, chose Something Rotten as their kids book of the season to highlight and get into stores, and they've been terrifically supportive. Something Rotten will be well represented everywhere but the chains--and of course it's available at many fine online retailers as well.

As before, I'd love to see some Something Rotten sightings. If you've got a camera on your cell phone (like Horatio!) send me the pick via the e-mail link on the right here on the blog and I'll post it with your name.

Thanks for your support! Now I have to go get dressed up in my Hagrid the groundskeeper costume for my school visit today . . .

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Robert's Snow

Every year there is a terrific fundraiser called Robert's Snow. Children's book illustrators create original snowflake ornaments which are sold in an online auction with the proceeds going to support sarcoma research at Dana-Farber. I've just checked the ornaments for this year (so far - more are still to be posted) and my current favorite is "Pinky's Red Scarf" by Maxwell Eaton III.
Click on the picture to see it closer.

I love the Max and Pinky books - and Jo does too. Check them out - Best Buds and Superheroes - they're too funny. And bid on an ornament if you're a children's book fan.

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A New Handbag

I've been super busy lately, but I just made the time to finish a purse that's been sitting, unfinished, on my work table for a long time.I wanted to submit this to Lark Books for their 500 Handbags (juried by Jay McCarroll of Project Runway fame!) but they have really strict requirements for digital submissions and my camera and photography setup weren't up the the task. I really need to build a white box for photography so I can avoid the bad shadows you see above. Maybe in the new house. . .

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More Rotten Notices

Something Rotten got a couple of mentions over the weekend, first in a mini-review from the Cincinnati Public Library:

What do you get if you take one of Shakespeare’s most popular creations, Hamlet, shave a few years off of his age, and plop him down in modern day Tennessee? You get a darkly comic mystery that works way better than it has a right to. High school junior Horatio Wilkes joins his friend Hamilton Prince on a trip back to Hamilton’s hometown of Denmark, Tennessee. Hamilton is depressed because his father has recently died under mysterious circumstances. Not only that, but his mother has just married Hamilton’s uncle, Claude, who has taken over the family company, the Elsinore Paper Plant. However, when Mr. Prince's death starts to look like anything but an accident, will Horatio be able to stop flirting with Hamilton’s ex, Olivia, long enough to prove that the playa’s the thing, um, er, the main suspect?

. . . and another brief notice about my upcoming Knoxville event in the Oak Ridger.

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Pimp Your Wii with My New Wii Bling

I'm waiting for some more glass to make some new pendants. In the meantime, here's something else I've been meaning to do for a while. We love the Wii, but the standard wristbands are awfully drab. Alan got the genius idea to make new wristbands and so I've come up with several designs and I've started to list them in my Etsy shop.
A super soft feather wristband for glam players. Black, pink, and red are on the way.Wear your smacktalk on your wrist with this one. It reads "Bite Mii."Flower Power comes with this one.All natural wooden beads and hemp cord for more granola and/or manly players.
This one is so Jo - a pink wristband with sparkly gems - perfect for players who always choose Daisy or Peach when playing Mario Party 8. Soon to be available in blue too.It's really easy to change the wristband and these are really strong - no Wiimotes flying through our television on my watch. But check out this funny website documenting Wii mishaps.

Alan has chosen the wooden beads, I picked the feather wristband, and Jo (the master of Wii bowling) chooses the pink sparkly one. Surprise, surprise! The unexpected benefit of upgraded wristbands? Now we all have our own personal Wiimotes.The family that Wiis together. . .

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Rebound Designs

A little searching on the web is turning up all kinds of great things made of old books. Why so much searching? I have a million ideas for things I want to make from my very large pile of very damaged books - not all of them lend themselves to the small size of the pendants - but I don't want to duplicate what anyone else is doing. And it's FUN!

So here's my latest find. Her name is Caitlin and she makes purses out of old hardcover books. I covet this Nancy Drew bag.

My grandmother used to buy me a new Nancy Drew book every time she came to visit and I still have a soft spot for those little hardbacks. I have no idea where mine are though - probably sold at a rummage sale where I hope they made someone's day. I still remember the absolute delight of finding an entire box of Tintin books at a garage sale.

For those who need a somewhat roomier bag, check out this Shakespeare. Nice, eh? Very classy.

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Gratz Industries HQ: Rain (and Door) Delays

Not much new to report on the new headquarters. Last week the place was spiffed up, and these short walls were added to the second and third floors. The builders had left them until last to facilitate moving large boards up and down through the open spaces without having to scale (or spear) the walls.

They also added a rubber seal on the third floor patio--which also happens to be the second floor roof. At least a quarter of the roof, that is. I'm sure we would have thought of that ourselves. After the first major rain.

Can I say again how glad I am that Marvin and his crew are doing this phase of the work? Now, if we just had more money, we could pay them to do the REST of it. As it is, we're going to have to wait for the money to come in in chunks. (Think of them as . . . book-sized chunks, if you will.) In a way this will work fine though, as we wouldn't have time to finish the rest of the house right away even if we had the money. Then again, if we had the money, we could just pay someone to finish it . . . wait, I think this line of reasoning is becoming circular.

Now we're just waiting on the delivery of the doors--both regular and garage-sized--and for the recent rain to abate . . .

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Rotten Review: Kliatt

Wendi is outdoing me lately with the blog posts - or as Jo would say, she's beating the pants off me. I may have more exciting news to come this week, but for now I have to share this very good review of Something Rotten from Kliatt, a bi-monthly magazine that, according to their web site, "publishes reviews of paperback books, hardcover fiction for adolescents, audiobooks, and educational software recommended for libraries and classrooms serving young adults." Kliatt is used by teachers and librarians across the U.S. and Canada to select "the latest and best materials." That's good news for me!

Here's what they had to say. Oh, and there's a well-deserved spoiler alert in there, so skip those two sentences if you're looking forward to reading the book without knowing some of the specifics . . .

Students who have slogged through Hamlet will enjoy this witty, modern retelling of the old story through Horatio's point of view. The Prince family lives in Denmark, Tennessee and runs the Elsinore Paper Company, which is polluting the river and stinking up the town. Not only that, Hamilton Prince (Horatio's best friend) has a new father. Yep! His uncle has married Hamilton's mother "Trudy," within two months of her husband's mysterious death. This book is rife with many clever comparisons, and Gratz has manipulated the story to fit a modern setting. BEGIN SPOILER ALERT: In this book, all's well that ends well. Olivia/Ophelia lives and she and Hamilton get back together, and the bad guys are caught. A few notable deaths and timely explosions do make the scene. END SPOILER ALERT: The title indicates this is the first of a series, leaving open the question of whether Horatio is going to show up at his sister Desdemona's wedding, or his sister Miranda's island hideaway; or maybe he'll appear on his sister Juliet's balcony in the next book. He has six sisters, so the question of where he is going to insert himself next, where no Horatio is in the cast, is one to ponder. This book is good fun and might make an excellent reward for those who score "A"s on their Hamlet tests.

Myrna Marler, Associate Professor of English, BYU
for Kliatt Magazine

Thanks, Myrna! May your children all have good teeth and high SAT scores. Although I would like to point out that you don't have to have read Hamlet to enjoy Something Rotten--but it's even funnier if you have! (If I do say so myself.)

Here's a link to a PDF of the review, if you're into that sort of thing.

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Brush with Fame

So I was at a cocktail party for work last night - which sounds WAY more exciting than it actually was - until I met Matthew Reinhart. Matthew Reinhart, the pop-up artist who created Mommy? the pop-up book, featuring text by Arthur Yorinks and art by (drumroll please. . .) Maurice Sendak! Here are a couple of pictures from inside the book - perfect for Halloween (and the link to the book takes you to Robert Sabuda's website where you can buy a signed copy). Check out the way the monsters just pour out of the page on the second spread. I know it's a pop-up and that's what's SUPPOSED to happen, but this one is especially good.As if it wasn't cool enough just to meet him - he said he liked my necklace. I was wearing the Fishy Deep pendant with the turtle illustration from Chicken Soup with Rice. I would really have liked to talk to him about his work, but we started talking about where we're from instead, and then someone else came up and I didn't want to monopolize so. . .that was the end of my brush with fame.

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Book Autopsies

Thanks to Greg over at The Fabricationist for pointing me to another artist cutting up books with amazing results. Look at these!

His name is Brian Dettmer and each image has a link to the gallery where I found it. You can also jump here, here, and here to see more. And (because I know you're going to ask) here's an except from his statement at Toomey-Tourell Gallery explaining (a bit) how he works. . .

Explanation of Book Dissections- In this work I begin with an existing book and seal its edges, creating an enclosed vessel full of unearthed potential. I cut into the cover of the book and dissect through it from the front. I work with knives, tweezers and other surgical tools to carve one page at a time, exposing each page while cutting around ideas and images of interest. Nothing inside the books is relocated or implanted, only removed. Images and ideas are revealed to expose a book’s hidden, fragmented memory. The completed pieces expose new relationships of a book’s internal elements exactly where they have been since their original conception.

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The Indians Are Due

Chicago Cub fans like to point out that they haven't won a World Series since 1908. Yes, next year will be the one hundred year anniversary of the last time the Cubs could be called world champs.

Still, you have to love the sign shown tonight during the Indians/Yankees playoff game:

"The Indians are due since 1492."

And bonus points for it being Columbus Day today.

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Playing with Scissors (or X-acto Knives)

The next three Chicken Soup with Rice pendants are up on Etsy. I have four more to make from this book but I'm waiting on delivery of more glass. I hope to have them finished and up by this weekend.

Speaking of cutting up books - check out these works by a real master. . .

The artist is Thomas Allen and he does amazing work. This one with the ship is called Swell. The one below is Bookend.

Stacked (hee hee)

Uplift. Look at that wonderful shadow!Teeter

And my favorite. . .Stress.

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Countdown to Something Rotten!

Just added a new feature to the blog today - a countdown to the release date of Something Rotten! You can find the countdown clock in the column to the right, beneath the "About Us" feature. Twelve days and counting!

EDIT: The Something Rotten Countdown Clock has now been bumped to the top of the column!

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Wonder Woman!

It's getting close to Halloween so I thought I'd post a brief tutorial about how I made Jo's Wonder Woman dress. I feel almost silly posting a tutorial because it was really, really easy - so easy that I didn't even think to take any pictures while I was making it. So I guess this is more "sharing an idea" than posting a tutorial.

Jo loves Wonder Woman - and all the other DC superheroes. She asked for a Wonder Woman costume for our annual family vacation to Dragon*Con. Fun, but I needed to do a bit of thinking for this one. Bustiers and tights are fine for grown ups, but Jo needed something age-appropriate - and comfortable enough to wear all day. Here's what I came up with.

I started with a simple A-line dress. One pattern piece for the front, perfect for applique. Jo is most familiar with the animated series look so I used that as my inspiration. I used the (simple) chest emblem from the newer look Wonder Woman instead of some of the older eagle emblems. I also knew I wanted the distinctively-shaped belt, and a star-spangled skirt. So that's it - just a few appliques - actually pretty simple.

I traced the A-line dress front onto some large paper so I had a full-sized dress front that I could sketch my appliques on to get the proportions right. I sketched in the chest emblem and the belt and figured out how many stars I needed and what size they should be.

Once I figured out where the belt would fall I drew a line there so I could piece a red top and a blue skirt. The belt applique covered the seam so its placement didn't need to be too precise, as long as it fell somewhere under the belt.

Trace those applique shapes onto fusible applique like Wonder Under, iron the fusible to the applique fabric, cut the pieces out, and iron them to the dress. Use a satin stitch around the edges so the dress is washable. Now put the dress together. You want to do all of the applique BEFORE you assemble the dress so that you're working with nice flat pieces.

Voila! You're done! Jo has already pointed out that she's the fastest kid in the world so she "really needs" a Flash dress. That will be even easier - a red dress with appliqued Flash emblem. She's also asked for a Star Sapphire costume for next Dragon*Con, so I see more of these dresses in my future.

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Name Dropping

Deborah Wiles knows who I am! I have proof.

There are rumors that Jon Scieszka also knows who I am. I have no proof of that though.

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Top Chef is dead; long live Project Runway!

SPOILER ALERT - Don't read any further if you haven't seen the final episode of Top Chef Season 3 and care about the outcome.





Well, Season 3 has come and gone, and Hung is the winner. Wendi and I won't mince words; we're disappointed. Not so much in the decision of the moment--Hung certainly deserved the trophy based on tonight's performance--but Hung has never been our favorite chef. Far from it in fact. Hung is cocky and arrogant, constantly telling us that the judges don't get him and his food when they don't like it, and lapping up their praise like they are the arbiters of all that is right and good about food when they praise him.

Oh Hung, how do we dislike thee? Let us count the ways. You never help others in the kitchen. You always think you're better than everyone else. You put things on a plate a dog wouldn't think looked appealing. You run around with knives. You dis the other chefs. You work so fast you never stop to consider your dish, your decisions, your customers.

Who can forget your arrogance in the food quiz Quickfire Challenge when you decided to hastily identify an ingredient without tasting it and crashed out? Or the semi-final Quickfire challenge where you finished your lemon trout six minutes early and stood around acting all smug, only to realize you had forgotten the lemon juice after your time was up? Or the frozen dinner elimination challenge where you knew how to win it but let Joey--Joey!--hustle you?

Hung just isn't the kind of guy you stand up and cheer for when he wins. He was certainly a master of making adjustments. All along I thought Hung was going to be the Austin Scarlett of Top Chef--someone wonderfully talented but locked into a very specific creative mode that would see him eliminated--albeit late in the game--for his inflexibility. Hung bucked that though, and took his "your food has no soul" scolding to heart for the finale.

Wendi was rooting for Casey, while I had a soft spot for Dale. Casey certainly looked strong in the last few episodes leading up to the finale, while Dale has always found a way to turn disasters into triumphs--including his "make it work" elk dish that won the final elimination challenge before the finale.

After watching tonight's judging, it was clear that Casey was not going to win. I have a pet theory about these kind of shows--particularly Top Chef and Project Runway, both of which we love. My theory is that there is always one episode per season where a contestant breaks down and loses it. I call this the contestant's Waterloo. Unlike Napoleon's Waterloo though, a contestant's Waterloo does not always mean defeat. Sometimes the contestant rises above the Waterloo, and it's a steeling, energizing moment for him or her.

This season, we saw Micah's Waterloo in episode three, when she had a minor meltdown and decided that the whole thing was pointless and that she'd rather be back with her family. It broke her. We saw Sara N. freak out over having to cook in her clubbing clothes and meet her Waterloo (and elimination) in episode eight. We saw Sara M. take an absolute beating in the elimination judging for episode seven (and we actually thought she was a goner!) only to rebound and grab the competition by the balls until her elimination in the final episode before the two-part finale.

One of the most obvious and dramatic Waterloos in either show has to be Andrae's complete and absolute breakdown on the runway before the judges in Project Runway Season 2. Andrae sobbed and sobbed, working through a choking, tear-filled story about the loss of his store and the ruination of his life just before the taping of Project Runway began. The Waterloo was brought on by the necessary destruction of a meaningful denim jacket in a horribly mangled effort to win that episode's elimination challenge--which was to create new couture using only the clothes on the contestants' backs. And the reunion episode revealed that the breakdown we saw on TV was only the tip of the iceberg! It ran for several minutes, and had to be edited down just to fit in the episode. It was both horrifying and riveting--but Andrae survived it! And never again did he break down like that. He made it through another seven episodes until bowing out gracefully just three shows shy of the finale.

During a Waterloo, a contestant usually can be heard to say things like, "You know, I don't need this competition to know I'm a good chef/designer," "I really miss my family and friends right now," and "You know what, I've had a great run, and I stand by all my decisions." There is gloom in the contestant's face and doom in his/her voice. You can often see it coming from the opening minutes of the show. A lot of this is good editing, I know--but the Waterloo is always there if you're looking for it.

These competitions must be grueling. What we see on a weekly basis happens on a daily basis for the contestants. It's get up in the morning for a Quickfire challenge, face an elimination challenge in the afternoon/evening, and crash back in a suite with all the other contestants that night, only to get up and do it all over again in the morning. There is very little down time for these guys, and absolutely no time when there isn't a camera there to catch them brushing their teeth or sitting in the hot tub or grabbing a smoke out on the balcony.

So of course there is a breaking point for every contestant. They may even see it coming. The look on CJ's face as he stepped off the plane in Newark and saw Padma in the airport told you right away he was the one who would go, long before he ever put that slimy broccolini on a plate. He just didn't have it in him to compete right then. He had visions of New York pizza in his head, and his fear that he wouldn't make it across the river to Manhattan for just one day consumed him--and defeated him.

Most of the time the contestant is well aware of the Waterloo. They are overwhelmed, frustrated, mentally blocked. They begin a dish or a dress with absolutely no idea where it's going, and it does, in fact, go nowhere. If the contestant survives this momentary weakness, the chances are good that they will rebound stronger than ever and never have another Waterloo--even should they be eliminated later. A Waterloo does not always mean elimination, and elimination is not always precipitated by a Waterloo.

Tonight was Casey's Waterloo, and it was a very, very bad time to have one. It began early in the episode, when she confessed that she was having trouble breathing in the high altitude of Aspen. Was it just the high altitude, or a mixture of anxiety and altitude? She looked nervous and unsure of herself from the start. Her celebrity sous chef was even nervous for her, confiding to us that Casey kept adding, adding, adding, even though the guest chef clearly shared our empathy for Casey. (In fact, a text poll during the commercial breaks revealed that a whopping 68% of viewers wanted her to be the Top Chef.)

And yet it was not to be. In the judging, Casey blamed the altitude, the additional dish they were told to prepare, even Howie--Casey, for shame!--until forced to confess that her only successful dish of the night had been prepared by Howie. All night Casey was off her game, making changes and additions to her dishes on the fly when preparation and execution had been her fortes all season long. It was Dale who had always been the master of improvisation, and he was again tonight, pulling perhaps his best "make it work" dish out for the surprise fourth dish.

Even through the final judging, I thought Dale might pull it out. He had two tremendous successes and had taken chances with all his dishes, but Colicchio hated Dale's lobster dish and that seemed to seal it. One inedible dish out of four was the killer for him, as Hung put together two stellar dishes, one passable dish, and a phoned in chocolate cake desert. I held out hope that the judges would give Dale credit for taking a chance and dock Hung for playing it safe. As I said to Wendi during the commercial break, it was as though Hung had gotten a weak base hit while Dale had hit a screaming out to the shortstop. To which would the judges give more credit? Rightfully so, I suppose, they gave credit for the base hit. (Sorry--it's also the first night of the National League playoffs.)

And so Casey met her Waterloo and Dale was bested by Hung. All along Hung had proven himself a technician of the first degree, and tonight one bad dish from Dale--one of those seat of the pants fiascoes that he had always mixed in with those fabulous impromptu victories--meant the difference between $100,000 and second place.

Congratulations to all three finalists, and, begrudgingly, to Hung--who after all deserved it. We may not like you, Hung, but you have our respect.

We've had so much fun watching this season and breaking it down afterward that Wendi and I have decided to blog about Project Runway Season 4 each week there is a new episode. Often one of us is on the road during the week, and we'll sit at the computer e-mailing the other one with comments and questions while we watch, so blogging about the episodes one at a time seems like a natural extension of that. We hope if you share our passion for Project Runway you'll tune in and share in the discussion!

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Alan and Jo make the local paper

Tonight: an object lesson in the difficulties of getting good publicity for your novel.

It was a banner week for Gratz Industries, as two of our employees made the local weekly paper, the Mitchell News-Journal. ("Serving Bakersville, Little Switzerland, Spruce Pine, and the rest of beautiful Mitchell County")

First, on page 3A, was this feature story. (Click the image to see it larger.)

As Wendi says, you gotta love a town where a new crosswalk is worthy of a page three feature story. According to the caption, Jo is one of the fairly indistinguishable little kids in raincoats crossing the street at the new crosswalk. Not only is her picture in the paper, she was interviewed!

When asked if she liked it, Jo Gratz, a student at the school, responded by saying, "yeah, mmmhmm."

That's good press! But Gratz Industries wasn't done. This little item was featured on page 3B. (Again, click to read larger.)

Jo gets page 3A, Dad gets page 3B--the "Arts" page. Which, by the way, is in the Sports section. No picture, as you'll note, and no quotes. I did not warrant an interview. Perhaps if I had announced my new book while using the new crosswalk in town? And of course to add insult to injury, the headline misspells my last name, when they went to all the trouble of spelling it correctly throughout the copy.

Getting coverage from your local media is always a hairy proposition. I usually advise authors to focus their publicity efforts demographically, not geographically, but that's still no reason to ignore your hometown media. Admittedly, Mitchell County has only been my home since April of this year--but I had hoped for a bit more coverage!

Then again, considering I never got coverage from either the Knoxville News Sentinel or the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, perhaps I should be thankful they mentioned me at all . . .


EDIT: Dad points out that they misspelled my name in my web address too.

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