Midwinter Institute Gushing part 2 #alamw11

This is the part where I get to tell you about my honorary Master's degree. but not yet.

First to the swag. The book that GreenBeanTeenQueen got was called Glow, but I am not sure of the author. I received a free audiobook copy of the latest Wheel of Time book called Towers of Midnight. On the last day of the conference most display items are for sale or are even given away free so I made the most of that time too. I got the whole set of the Ranger's apprentice books, I got a hard cover edition of The Ring of Solomon the final book in the Bartimaeus series, I got the hard cover graphic novels of The Amulet of Samarkand and the Lightning Thief. So I was pretty happy. Wife got a lot more we wound up shipping or packing over 200 lbs of books for her teens at the library.

As for the rest of the trip, it was fun but rather uneventful until we went to a meetup with some of GreenBeanTeenQueen's blogger/librarian friends. We had dinner a couple times and walked around San Diego, until they decided that they were going to start their own library called The International Library of Awesome or ILOA for short. I was feeling a little left out since I was the only one who was not technically a librarian due to the fact that I do not have a Master's in Library Science. They solved that problem for me by granting me an Honorary Master's of Information and Library Science.

They also came up with an idea that will be a new segment on the blog. Once a month you will get to watch a video blog entitled P&G. This stands for Puke and Glitter, I will coordinate with another ILOA member to read the same YA book and give it a review on a one to five scale of buckets of puke if I did not like it, and buckets of glitter if I did like it. The book choices will generally be books that we expect will elicit a puke response from me and a glitter response from my co-host that month. However, you never know when I might give out some glitter (it will be manly glitter though, like blue glitter or camo colored or something.) So watch for that.

I guess that is it. Starting tomorrow I am going to try to finish the second half of NaNoWriMo. So I will post back with updates and you will see how I progress...

Midwinter Institute Gushing part 1 #alamw11

WARNING! Major gushing to follow.

Sorry it has been so long, but I hope to make up for it this week with my updates from the American Library Association's Midwinter Institute from sunny San Diego California.

GreenBeanTeenQueen and I arrived Wednesday night and made our way to our fabulous hotel - The Gaslamp Hilton and our room has a wonderful view of the convention center and the bay behind. We have been treated to beautiful sunsets and gorgeous mid 60s weather.

Thursday we woke up and made our way to the San Diego Zoo which was even better than advertised. I grew up going to the Brookfield Zoo which is considered the third best zoo in the United States, but I can fully understand why San Diego is number one. The landscape was beautiful, and I saw animals there that I did not know even existed. It was so much fun, I highly recommend it.

Then we went to the San Diego Maritime Museum and got to go on several ships. First we went on a 1874 merchant ship, then we went on a replica of a pre-civil war era warship, we went on a retired soviet submarine from 1974, then a retired American submarine from 1968. We also went on a steam liner from circa 1870. It was incredible to see all the craftsmanship and we got some great pictures that I will post later.

We closed our evening walking around the beautiful gaslamp district.

Yesterday we woke up and did all of our registration for ALA. Then we went to lunch at the wonderful Yard House. It was amazing, a lot of bar food, but it was bar food the way that a culinary school would do it. So good! Wifey got 3 cheese grilled cheese with tomato bisque soup and I got Parmesan crusted chicken with garlic mashed potatoes and 3 mushroom sauce.

After lunch wifey had a committee meeting so I wandered over to Petco Park where the San Diego Padres play. They have a beautiful stadium and you can walk all the way up to the outfield fence to take pictures of the field.

After wifey's committee meeting, we got to go to the opening of the exhibits. It was awesome, we ran into some friends, and then when the doors opened rushed to get all of the freebees. Within 11 minutes I was heading back to the hotel with bags bulging. After 3 additional hotel runs we went to the Yalsa Not so Silent Silent Auction. It was fun but a bit to rich for us so we left early for our YA Librarian/Blogger meetup. When we got there we found that a publisher had come and comped us drinks up to $500. We had a couple authors and many blogging librarians, it was an absolute blast. The publisher who came had worked for Tor and for Random House before moving to Baen, so I was his shadow for a lot of the night learning all that I could about those publishers. He also recommended a epic fantasy series by Steven Erikson which I am very excited to read. Eventually as the meetup slowed down we went back to the room, ordered room service, and went to bed.

Today has been amazing. We got up and went over to the convention center, and we got tweeted that Macmillan wanted to meet with us. We went over to the booth and found that that the amazing library marketing team had seen my tweets. I had tweeted about how upset I was that neither Tor nor Wizards of the Coast had come to midwinter institute. I had also tweeted how I was carry bags for GreenBeanTeenQueen and that I could use encouragement should anyone see me weighed down with books. Turns out that they had a surprise for each of us. For wifey, they had an ARC of a book that will not be published for more than a year to do a special review on. For me, they had a free audiobook from Tor! I can't give titles until after the conference so come back and I will tell all.

This totally made my day and gave me a whole new respect for Macmillan. I am so grateful for the gift and I promptly tweeted Macmillan's praises.

Now, I am off to lunch, and wifey is in committee today so I think I will take in some NFL playoff football. I would love to hear your thoughts.

#deathlyhallows Review (Spoiler Alert) #RIPDobby

So Greenbeanteenqueen and I went to the midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night, and I have to say it was awesome. I have never been so impressed with a Harry Potter film since the first two, and since I did not get into Harry Potter until after those movies I have never up until this morning left a theater feeling satisfied after a Potter Movie.

We dressed up as Lupin and Tonks as we did for the book 7 release, but our costumes were a bit half hearted this time due to lack of time and money restrictions. There were a lot of people dressed up at the movies but none of the fantastic costumes we had seen at previous movies.

The movie itself surpassed all my expectations. Yes, if you have not read the book you might get a little lost with all of the hows and whys of the story. Yes, by itself this movie is nothing special (meaning if it did not have a book series backing it up it would not stand alone). Yes, it ends on a cliffhanger and it has some pacing issues during between the capture of the locket and the trip to Godric's Hollow. But that does not change the fact that the movie stayed true to the book and had vast majority of everything that I wanted to see from part one. And yes Dobby's death is just as poignant a moment as it is in the book.

Successes:
Rupert and Emma are fantastic, I think they really nailed the Ron/Hermione dynamic in this one (Particularly Emma)
Voldemort is amazing
Nagini is terrifying
Dobby is just perfect
They ended part one at what I think is the best possible spot.
I felt like the movie ended too soon and would have been happy to stay for another two and a half hours and watch part two
The scope is much more epic and the emotions more raw
So much action
The courtroom seen and its aftermath was wonderful
The story of the three brothers could not have been more well done
Bathelda Bagshot was super creepy
The Bellatrix/Hermione interrogation was great.

Failures:
Scrimgeour is too nice
Potter Watch is replaced by an ongoing newscast in the background that has important information but is more distracting than helpful
The Harry/Hermione dance/near kiss was superfluous
Harry never tells Ron that he does not have feelings for Hermione
I wanted Harry to realize that when he was in the ministry he was someone important
Bill's introduction was awkward
Tonks and Lupin's baby was hinted at but was never explicitly stated
They never showed Dobby's grave
They showed but never explained the name taboo on Voldemort

This movie was awesome. I want to go back and see it again today. I don't think I will, but I will see it in theaters at least one more time. I can't wait for part 2

Day 3 #NaNoWriMo Update

I am happy to announce that I wrote 1797 words today making me 3 for 3 so far with NaNoWriMo. As you can see on the left side of your screen that brings me up to 5383 words. I am a bit mystified by my success thus far, granted being home sick with the flu has helped a little. Not actually with writing because I have written very little during the time that I would have been at work, but with getting the dogs to get thier energy out during the day so that I can write at night.

I think I am so motivated to do this for several reasons:

I want to see if I could,
I needed some time away from my adult fantasy project,
I knew I wanted to do a YA project as well and I already had a story in mind,
My wife and I have a bet going to see if I can really do it,
My critique partner is bored and needs more writing from me so that she will have something to keep herself busy,
I find that I am having an easier time writing in first person (NaNoWriMo YA Fantasy) and I am in third person omniscient (Adult YA Fantasy),
I am enjoying telling a more simple story (my adult fantasy is very complex with four main storylines that weave around each other, two of which are not in chronological order)
My YA Fantasy is set in the same world that I created for my adult fantasy project and actually fits into the adult project's storyline.

So if you are doing NaNoWriMo how are you doing with it? Is it easier or harder? Where do you draw your motivation to keep up the relatively torrid pace?

#NaNoWriMo

After much encouragement from my wife and my critique partner, I have decided to engage in NaNoWriMo this year.

I have spent the morning signing up on the NaNoWriMo site, and I have decided to work exclusively on the YA Fantasy series that I have planned. This means that everyday I will have to crank out 1667 words, which is going to be extremely difficult due to my long writing process.

I will complete 50000 words this month, so please leave any encouragement that you possess because I will need it.

Meet My Newest Distraction

Distraction comes to me in many forms.

I have ADD which makes sitting down to do anything tough.

I work full time. I love playing video games (World of Warcraft and Console based...FYI WoW Cataclysm release date is Dec 7th!)
I have a beautiful wife. I have a sweet three and a half year old Wheaten Terrier named Wrigley.

But Saturday we got my newest and biggest distraction. Meet Zedd:

He is our new 11 week old Soft Coated Wheaten Terrier puppy. He is a bundle of energy but worth all of the hassle. So welcome to the family Zedd.

My First Blog Award

A huge thank you to my Critique Partner, Abby Minard at Above Water for giving me my first blog award. She may think the blog award is girly but it is the thought that counts! I will happily put it on my blog.



Now the rule is that you have this blog award on to 5 others, and here are the five I have chosen.

First, I want to give this to back to Abby! So definitely check her blog out.
Second, I want to give it to my wife Sarah at GreenBeanTeenQueen she has an awesome blog and I do not say that just because she is my wife.
Third, to my brother who is blogging about his life and faith. You can find him at God, Love, Life, Joy.
Fourth, to my good friends The Lundgrens who blog about the struggles and triumphs that their family has had due to the difficulties that face their twin sons who were born two and a half months early. You can find them at Life With The Lundgrens.
Fifth, goes to Colene Murphy at The Journey. She is an aspiring YA author who has an extremely entertaining and beautiful blog.

Facing my First Major Writing Slump

I suppose it happens to every author. You hit a writing slump. I have been in a bad one for the last month and a half. Every line of dialogue has felt stale, every story twist seems contrived. Part of this has been that I have been very busy in my work and personal life, but the real reason for my slump has been a combination of several things.

First, I started (and finished) reading a new series. (For more on this see www.greenbeanteenqueen.com) When I am reading I am not writing, one because I fear that I will unintentionally steal ideas and two because when I actually find a series that I really like I dive into it.

Second, I do not like where I am in the story. My main characters are both in a transition period which is really difficult to write and even more difficult to make interesting.

Third, I think my series is going to run longer than I origionally planned, which to my ADD mind is very hard to deal with until I restructure how I think about the series.

Finally, I am worried about the quality of my work and so it makes me try to avoid working on my story.

So how have a I broken out of this slump? Well credit goes to two people. First to my wife who has been an encouragement to keep writing. She provides me with motivation everyday and is so supportive my my dream to become a professional writer. Second to my critique partner who is a much more talented author than I am, but still takes time to work with me, encourage me, and kick my butt when I need it. (On a side note, when her work gets published you are all in for a real treat!)

But most of all, what has broken this slump is actually writing. Forcing myself to sit down and write. Yesterday I did a guest post on www.greenbeanteenqueen.com. The last night I had a terrible nightmare, the plot of which I am hoping to make into an amazing short story. I am charged up again to write, and I hope that I get to show you some fruit this renewed passion soon.

I would, as always, LOVE to hear your thoughts! My next post will be about what I have gotten done since my first major writing slump.