Loup Gurus and Insomnia

So...I've been tweeting about werewolves all day, it's now 3:21 a.m. and I'm thoroughly spooked. And all hopped up on Coke Zero so I can't sleep. It all started with a link I found to the new Wolfman movie trailer starring BENICIO DEL TORO (great casting!), EMILY BLUNT and ANTHONY HOPKINS. It looks wonderfully gothic and atmospheric. And scary!

Lawrence Talbot is a haunted nobleman lured back to his family estate after his brother vanishes. Reunited with his estranged father, Talbot sets out to find his brother...and discovers a horrifying destiny for himself.



Then I started thinking about Silver Bullet, which is one of my favorite werewolf movies of all time. Gary Busey! Yay!

Whenever the moon is full, it comes back.



Which led me to An American Werewolf in Paris and the (R rated) cemetery scene with that Great Bush song Mouth. Soooo appropriate.

And then I found out that Leonardo DiCaprio is developing the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale into a feature length movie and giving it a gothic twist. Evidently, they're going back to the darker roots of the story. I'm thinking werewolf.

So here I sit at 3:42 in the morning with loup gurus on on my mind. How long til daylight?

Titles and Covers

I've been on a Young Adult reading spree for a while now, and I can't help wondering why so many of them have one-word titles. Turns out, I'm not the only one. Now you can create your own YA cover and one-word title thanks to 100 Scope Notes.

Here's mine. Notice how I made sure to put my author name above my title. Haha. I love being in control.

CREATE YOUR DEBUT YA COVER

1 – Go to “Fake Name Generator”

The name that appears is your author name.

2 – Go to “Random Word Generator”

The word listed under “Random Verb” is your title.

3 – Go to “FlickrCC” or click

Type your title into the search box. The first photo that contains a person is your cover.

4 – Use Photoshop, Picnik, or similar to put it all together. Be sure to crop and/or zoom in.

5 – Post it to your site along with this text.

Sleep warm, Elvis

Happy Birthday, Alfred Hitchcock!

In honor of the 110th anniversary of my idol's birthday, I present some of my favorite Alfred Hitchcock quotes:

1) Blondes make the best victims. They're like virgin snow that shows up the bloody footprints. (and they say blondes have more fun!)

2) Give them pleasure - the same pleasure they have when they wake up from a nightmare. (He's onto something there.)

3) I am to provide the public with beneficial shocks. (I would like to make this my creed as well.)

4) I have a perfect cure for a sore throat: cut it. (What a guy!)

5) Self-plagiarism is style. (This I love! I call it self-cannibalism)

I'm Not Worthy

I've been invited to the Arkansas Literary Festival next year in Little Rock. Super psyched, honored and intimidated. Take a look at some of the past attendees: Joe Klein, William F. Buckley, Jr., Garrison Keillor, Christopher Hitchens, Joan Hess, Jill Conner Browne, Roy Blount, Jr., Donald Harington, former Senator Dale Bumpers, former Senator David Pryor, John Shelton Reed, Joey Lauren Adams, Kay Gibbons, Nikki Giiovanni, John T. Edge, Connie May Fowler, Ace Atkins, Kevin Brockmeier, The Book Guys from NPR, Sonny Brewer, E. J. Dionne, Jr., Carolyn Hart, Dorothy Allison, Tom Epperson (co-writer of The Gift, one of my all-time favorite movies) and Laura Parker Castoro.

Holy crap! I will need major beta blockers to get through this event. Good thing I'm not opposed to fake courage.

Oh, and I notice that Charlaine Harris is on the front page of their website. I FLOVE her. I hope she attends the festival so I can get all fan-girly with her.

Tim Burton at MOMA

Okay, this is a night at the museum I can get behind. According to Timeout New York, Tim Burton will have a display at the Museum of Modern Art. Here's the blurb:

“Tim Burton” at the Museum of Modern Art (Nov 22–Apr 26)
Gear up for next year’s Alice in Wonderland with this MoMA career retrospective of Hollywood’s creepiest director. This exhibition and film series presents all things Burton, including his earliest childhood drawings and storyboards created during the production Edward Scissorhands and other movies. Not to be missed: an intriguingly grotesque, untitled pen-and-ink sketch from The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and Other Stories."

You can see a preview of Tim Burton's art at Slash Film.

This sounds like all kinds of creepy and grotesque fun, right up my alley. Definitely worth a trip to the Big Apple.