The anti-Twilight movie

Just saw a really cool vampire movie. No not the ennui-ridden Edward and Bella. I'm talkin' Oskar and Eli. What, you haven't heard?
Let the Right One In is a Swedish Vampire horror film that really gets under your skin.

My wife and I walked home after seeing this film and not only were there no people in our usually bustling Chicago neighborhood (post Turkey dinner) but the chilling atmosphere of this moody and twisted little film left me feeling really creeped out.

In a nutshell it's about a bullied twelve-year old boy who befriends the twelve year old girl next door. She's a cute little kid. And she's a vampire. They become buddies and, well, people get bitten. It has some truly terrifying scenes and actually some funny, campy ones. If you like intelligent horror as opposed to torture porn (Saw, Hostel). This is a must see if it is playing in your town.

Happy tofu turkey day!

It's been quiet in the royal kingdom lately. Working away on my book and reading my fellow crit member's WIPs. Plus busy at work, as usual.

But it'll be nice to have a few days off. Looking forward to that turkey and mashed potatoes. I do like tofu but not when it comes to the Power of the Turkey!

Have fun, all. Don't stuff yourself!

Get it? Don't stuff yourself. 

*sorry*

Tres cool

This is awesome. Thanks to Tabitha. Thanks Tabitha!

It's a wordmeter. A tool that lets you see how often you use certain words in your writing. My three main characters are Max, Julia and Sebastian and the chapter I uploaded is entitled Balthazar. I can see how this will be really useful. We all have a tendency to repeat certain words. With this tool you can see just how often that word comes up.

Tabitha, thanks again!
Also, this is the guy that created it. Thanks, dude!

local SCBWI Event

I went to a local SCBWI conference in a suburb outside of Chicago this past Saturday. It was really fun and informative. I got a chance to meet a fellow blogger, Tabitha, who has a great blog.

The speakers:

Cheryl Klein from Arthur Levine Books. She was great and talked a lot about Plot. Really informative stuff.

Caroline Mackler from Wendy Lamb Books--also fantastic. She spoke about Voice.

Martha Mihalick from Greenwillow Books for Children. Her topic was, gee, I don't remember because I don't have my notes in front of me. At work now. Well, whatever it was was great!

One agent, Jennifer Rofe from Andrea Brown. Really fun and blunt in her comments on publishing.

Also Harold Underdown, a former agent and editor who now has his own consulting business.

It was all really helpful. The cool thing is that we have stickers with the name of the conference on it and the editor or agent's name which might help us get out of the slush pile. (I never considered sending directly to editors but I definitely will because of this. You never know, right?)

They all talked a lot about acquisitions and how a book is sold. They were all really passionate.

One thing that I took away from this conference is that if you have something good, editors (at least the three that spoke) will help you with it and make it better. They want to see good books succeed. They talked a lot about the revision process, too. Especially Jennifer Rofe, who showed the editorial notes she sent to her client, Cynthea Liu, who was also there. Her new book looks great.

I came away feeling psyched and with the realization that if I work hard enough, I believe I can sell my work-in-progress. Only time will tell.

Now I have the big SCBWI in NY in January, so that should be cool. Overall, good times.

SCBWI winter conference

So I registered for my first big conference.

It's the Annual Winter SCBWI Conference in New York in January.

My wallet hurts.

Airfare. Hotel. Workshops. I'm really looking forward to it. Anyone else going? There's a small one I'm going to next weekend here in Illinois, but this is the Big Mack Daddy of writers' conferences. Agents. Editors. Authors. Critiques. I can't wait. If you've attended one of these before I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

I was there

I guess I'll go against my vow of not having partisan political posts on my own blog.

Oh well.

Wherever your political beliefs may lie, you have to at least admire the spirit of what transpired last night. It was an amazing experience and one I won't soon forget. Let's hope that this is a new start where we can all come together and be a little less volatile, a little more kind and a lot more hopeful of the future.


Now, back to obsessing about books!!

VOTE!

Obama national campaign headquarters is in my building. We just got the good news that we are closing early! Yippee! There's all kind of security and media around here for tonight's big event in Grant Park, where Obama will appear.

I'm going to go home and try to use this time to write, instead of sitting in front of the Boob Tube watching the talking heads and all their speculation.

Happy voting day to everyone.

As the Titanic went down, I came up...

That's a quote from Studs Terkel, great Chicago writer, who died the day before yesterday at 96.

Chicago, and the world, has lost a great voice. Author. Oral historian. Radio genius. He gave voice to the common man in his acclaimed books Working, Hard Times and many others.

Fortunately, I was able to meet him. He lived in my neighborhood but it was the first time I had ever seen him. I was on the bus one day and saw this stooped, elderly man sitting across from me. That's Studs Terkel I said to myself. So a few seconds before my stop, I got up and said:

Excuse me, Mr. Terkel?

Huh? What? (with a hand to his ear. I think he was almost deaf at this time.)

I just wanted to say it's a pleasure to meet you. I think you're great.

Oh! Great. You've made my day young man! What's your name?

So I told him and he said it was great to meet me. A few other people on the bus looked at me. I don't think they knew who he was.

If you're not familiar with him, his work is more than worth checking out. His interviews are truly amazing.

His work is all over the web but here's a link to the main site. Studs.

He will be missed by many.