Random Thanks on a Friday

1. Thanks to all who read my guest blog at Teen Book Review last week and who entered to win the signed copy of LOVE, MEG. And the winner is: girlJordyn! Yay!! As soon as Jocelyn gets me your address, I will ship it out asap so you can enjoy it this summer! I hope you'll let me know what you think when you've finished. (btw, love your wordpress blog, ms. girljordyn!)

2. Thanks to all who attended the event at the Wallingford Public Library last night. What a fantastic time we had - me most of all! Great questions, great energy. I hope everyone who read or will read MEG will email me or post about the book. I love to get feedback from readers!

3. Extra special thanks to Jennifer Nash, the YA librarian at WPL who did an amazing job getting everything together and encouraging people to read my books. She made French toast sticks - and for everyone who read MEG, you know what French toast is all about - and played the Rembrandts and served pink lemonade! :) Ninja's Pics will go up on the website very soon!

3A. More thanks to Jerry Nash, Jennifer's husband, fellow Gemini and science teacher, who had great questions and owns the Friends soundtrack (yes!!) and who gave me a copy of the Friends theme song on CD for my very own!

4. Thanks to reporters Carrie MacMillan at the Waterbury Republican-American and Carole Goldberg at the Hartford Courant for helping me publicize my events and books. With their attention, the word is getting out that MEG and VEE are pretty cool books to read.

4a. Lots of thanks to my new special reporter friend, Stacey Graham Hunt, at the Meriden Record-Journal, who interviewed me over the phone and then came to my reading last night and who I'm so excited to be seeing when she comes out to LA this summer AND takes ballet class with me...yay!!

5. Thanks in advance to everyone who comes to Borders on Sunday at 2PM! I can see into the future and see that we're enjoying Seattle's Best Coffee and some sweet treats as we're talking about VEE. Yum!

Shameless self-promotion

Because if I don't do it, who will?

Are you in the Connecticut area? Do you need a reason to be?

Then come on down to the Wallingford Public Library on Thursday, June 26 at 7PM (that's tomorrow night!) where I'll be reading from and talking about LOVE, MEG!

Not near there? Not free that night? Well, then come to the Borders in Farmington on Sunday, June 29 at 2PM. Coffee, desserts, and ALL ABOUT VEE!

And I hope you all got your copy of the Waterbury Republican-American newspaper on Tuesday! Did you check out the Lifestyle section and see the fabulous article by feature writer Carrie MacMillan about yours truly? No? Well, take a look here on-line and I'll scan it when I get home so you can see me in all my full-color glory. Yay, technology!

The queue, the queue!

(For those of you in the Connecticut area, be sure to grab a copy of the Waterbury Republican-American newspaper today and check out the Women section - there's an article about me by feature writer Carrie MacMillan!)

Recent selections from the Netfix queue:

"Sweeney Todd" - I adore Johnny Depp, honestly I do, but I just could not get into this movie. Bloody yes, it was like "Hamlet," where pretty much everyone dies and I don't think I'm spoiling anything by saying that. Really, though, I don't dig musicals at all. Which is strange, I know, coming from someone who dances every day of her life but music, like Marge Simpson says, is none of my business. And speaking of The Simpsons...I don't like it when that show does musicals either. So although I admire Depp and Helena Bonham Carter and Alan Rickman, this movie only got 2 stars from me.

"Semi-Pro" - B-ball in the 70s sounds like such a great premise, especially with Will Ferrell at the helm, but this was just not that funny. Again, HH liked this more than I did although we both agreed the romance between Woody Harrelson and Maura Tierney was completely lame and unnecessary. We fast-forwarded through some of it, to be perfectly honest. And who was the guy living with her? Her boyfriend? Brother? Either way, it was just plain weird. Another 2-stars from me.

"Balls of Fury" - Now here is what you do with a silly movie: expect nothing. And when you do, it's much much funnier! Dan Fogler is not Jack Black but he was very good in this. In fact, the scenes before he gets to the ping-pong tournament at Chris Walken's Central American estate are better than any of the others that follow. Great supporting cast: James Hong, Maggie Q, Patton Oswalt, George Lopez (who should have been given more funny things to do). Some LOL moments but again, expect nothing and you'll enjoy it.

"The Golden Compass" - We loved this movie. Again, we were expecting nothing. I had read the Philip Pullman novel and felt, eh, I don't get it. There was so much set-up in the first book and not a lot of payoff and I didn't get to the next book. Most of the time I kept wondering what Asriel was up to in the Arctic tundra and we never went back to him. The movie distilled everything down for those of us who are denser than the 10 year olds who read the book. Of course, the cast was fantastic: I love love love Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman and the little girl, Dakota Blue Richards, was amazing! I cannot believe they are not going to make a sequel to this movie! I had heard that it was not as popular as they thought, didn't make as much money as they had expected, and that the CG was way too expensive to do a second one. I hope they change their minds because I would love to see what happens next.

And when in doubt...watch BBC's The Office.