Oh, THAT'S why...

"We are talking about tools and carpentry, about words and style...but as we move along,you'd do well to remember that we are also talking about magic." Stephen King, On Writing

"All you need is a little faith, trust, and pixie dust!" Peter Pan

I always knew my fascination with all things Disney was related to my passion for writing. Every great Disney animated film is a little romance novel. Well, maybe not 101 Dalmatians. But think about it...Cinderella, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, Sleeping Beauty. They all have that age-old plot: Prince meets Princess, Prince falls in love with Princess, Prince loses Princess but finds her shoe, Prince and Princess live happily ever after. The only thing that changes, boys and girls, is the shoe. It may be a poisoned apple, a dying rose, a sleeping spell, but one thing is certain. These romantic couples always meet their conflict head on, overcome it and find their happy ending.

Usually with an Oscar-winning soundtrack in the background.

A few nights ago, I ran across a documentary titled, UB IWERKS, The Hand Behind the Mouse. I've been to the Magic Kingdom enough times to recognize a Main Street window name when I see one. I knew Ub to be one of the "nine old men," the original Disney animators. But this "old man" holds the place of highest esteem in the Disney Archives. Ub created Mickey.

"I just hope we never lose sight of one thing. It all started with a mouse." Walt Disney.

Although Walt and Ub had been together since their Kansas City days, they did split for a while over "creative differences." About ten years later, Walt was able to lure Ub back, and the pair went on to create some truly wonderful animation for decades after. (Ub also worked with Hitchcock on "The Birds," which I find fascinating. That's kind of like a Disney film on steroids.)

Even Ub eventually realized Walt's contributions to the marketing side of the empire could direct the success of the project. "It's not what you create that matters," Ub said later in life. "It's what you do with it."

Old Uncle Walt sure knew what to do with things, didn't he? And he never lost the magic.

Have a magical day,
Susan

Ask and Ye Shall Receive

Not two days ago I was whining about the cover for BLAME IT ON THE GHOST being MIA, when I look into my Yahoo mailbox and -- Voila!-- I find this:



Not bad. Not bad at all. While it isn't exactly what I asked for - there's no sign of the beach house or the ghost - they did go with an important plot point that I described. The heroine washes her really long hair at the makeshift shower on the deck.

I'm very happy with their portrayal of Dylan. It's all right that we can't see his face. The view we do get is Very Nice. I'm happy with his hair, which is supposed to be slightly shaggy. And that overall blue tone lends an eeriness to it that suggests the ghost. Also, if you remember the cover for Diamonds, you can see that they repeated the font and style for the title. That will make them look quite nice side by side.

And now on to the usual Friday stuff:

What I'm Listening to - Chris Botti, When I Fall in Love

What I'm Reading - STRIPPED by Julie Leto

What I'm Watching - ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!!??? Pre-season starts tonight at 7:30!! YAY!!

Have a wonderful day!
Susan
also known in some circles as DELIA

You Can't Always Get What You Want

"I went down to the Chelsea drugstore..."

Turns out my time-traveling couple need to go to London. I've been to London. It was 1992. This book is set in 1962. I suppose some things have changed in thirty years. And some haven't. While I was there, I was driving around with my childhood friend who lives there now, and HIS friend who was born and raised in Liverpool. We turned a corner, and Alan (his friend) said, "There's the Chelsea drugstore."

Sure, I'm a big Stones fan. What woman my age isn't? So I look out the car window, and I see this:




Not quite what I expected.

So thinking about Star and Colin, and where they might be headed in 1962
London, I googled "Chelsea drugstore." Wow, there are a lot of hits for that phrase, most of them, of course, to do with the Stones' song.

But I found several schools of thought about what the Chelsea drugstore really was BEFORE Mickey D took it over. There is the not unexpected belief that it was a pharmacy. There are several references to it being a pub or a nightclub.

But the most interesting one claims it was the record shop Alex visited in A CLOCKWORK ORANGE. Hmmm....that same site alleges that Mick Jagger was slated to play the role in the movie immortalized by Malcolm MacDowell. Interesting.

Well, now I'm bursting with trivia about the Chelsea drugstore, The Rolling Stones and Stanley Kubrick movies. But alas, none the wiser as to where my couple will wind up when they get to London. Ah, well. I suppose that's why they call it fiction.

If you try sometimes, you just might find... (altogether now)...you get what you NEED!

Have a great day,
Susan

Here Comes the Ghost

Usually so much happens between signing the contract for a book and actually seeing the book available to the public that you have a tendency to almost forget about it in the interim. In a way this is kind of neat because it gives me the chance to get excited about it all over again.

I've written quite a few stories since last I looked at BLAME IT ON THE GHOST. I'll be just as excited as anyone to see the finished product when it arrives in a couple of weeks. First of all, I'm eager to see the cover. As much as I love TOUGHER THAN DIAMONDS, I was greatly disappointed with the cover. The two people didn't look anything like the picture I had in my mind of Jake and Rebecca. And that bra she's wearing! That's a Wal-Mart bra if I ever saw one. Rebecca buys her lingerie in a more upscale environment.

When the art sheets came around for GHOST,I was ever so much more specific about how things should look on the cover. Even sent them a few pictures of things so they would know EXACTLY what I meant.

The action takes place in an old house on Indian Rocks Beach. The house is very important. It's almost a character itself, so I really want it to be just right. I sent along this picture for the art department to use as inspiration:



This isn't exactly the house we want, but it's really close. We'll find out soon enough, won't we? Everyone I ask is rather vague about when I'll receive a cover, but we know for sure it will be prior to August 30. They won't put the book live on the site without one. Let's hope we love it!

Have a wonderful day!
Susan

Just One More Thing...

I know I said I was done with Harry Potter posts, but then I found this cute little Sorting Hat kind of thing, and I couldn't resist.


Find out your Harry Potter personality at LiquidGeneration!

At first I thought I wanted to be Hermione. I mean, I was the one who always had my hand up. "Pick me, pick me, pick me!" But Hermione ends up with Ron. It's Ginny Weasley who gets Harry. And she goes through her entire tenure at Hogwarts snogging virtually everyone. So I'm pretty happy with this.

So, go ahead. Click the link then come back and tell us who the Sorting Hat picked for you. We'll wait.

Meanwhile, the typical Friday stuff:

What I'm reading - ON WRITING by Stephen King. Yeah, there's a guy who knows a thing or two about the craft. I read this a long time ago, but when I came across it during the office remodel, I started it again. Great book. I highly recommend it to writers and readers alike.

What I'm listening to - GENIUS LOVES COMPANY by Ray Charles and Friends

Coming next week - our 100th Post! Maybe we'll do a look back. A retrospective, if you will, of the Blonde's thoughts.

Or maybe not.

Have a great day!
Susan

Back to the Future

I should have finished this time travel story at least a week ago, maybe two. The thing is, I thought of something that makes it a LOT better. I hate to rewrite more than just about anything else. But here I am back on page one, filling in all the little holes to make this thing flow smoothly now that I've had this brilliant idea that makes it so so SO much better.

I've never paid a lot of attention to time travel. "Back to the Future" and "Peggy Sue Got Married" are both great films. And my Boy is named Christopher because of "Somewhere in Time." But that's about it for me. I didn't even watch the two BttF sequels. And that movie with Meg Ryan and the guy from ... whenever he was from ... was perfectly awful.

But here I am mired in this thing, and discovering how really, really difficult it is. You have to think of EVERYTHING. And once you establish a rule, you have to stick with it. Like, if she's injured when she's in the past, will she still have the injury when she goes back to her own time? I think she would.

But the thing that everyone absolutely MUST abide by is this: YOU CANNOT CHANGE THE FUTURE. So, if she did something when she went back that altered her present, then she has to go back and fix it!

And that's where the fun begins.

Have a great day.

Susan

I'm an eBay-bee

I will admit: All things computer frighten me. I don't know why. I've always managed to figure out everything I needed to figure out. I've kept myself surrounded with people who know a great deal about them, however, so that's been some comfort.

I used to write in long-hand in spiral notebooks. There's an esthetic pleasure to watching the words flow out of a pen like some long, meandering river or the ribbons of a maypole. But I'm a Baby Boomer. We're edge-riders, risk-takers, world-changers. At least we used to be. Now we spend more time worried about our annuities and shaking our heads over the music, but that's another story.

It bothers me that I spend $138.03 per month on a storage unit that's full of stuff I don't know what to do with. Plus, my best friends have plans to sell their dental practice and their home and live a long adventuresome time in a motor home. So Jeanette and I decided we had to solve this eBay mystery. There's gold in them thar boxes!



I have always considered myself a cut above your average dummy. So off we go! Jeanette used to be a semi-grand poobah in the person-to-person cosmetics business, so our test balloon, we decided, would be the Silver Anniversary doll of Miss Mary Kay herself. Surely it would be a collector's dream for MK consultants and doll people alike.

After much study. Okay, after a few minutes of study, I managed to get the thing up there. Yes, you can now go to eBay and see the Mary Kay doll (tastefully photographed against my freshly painted office walls in a complementary color). Bid on her if you like. I'd be thrilled to at least make back my one dollar investment.

If this works out, I'm going to start throwing handfuls of The Boy's sports cards up there. He was a big Niners fan in the Joe Montana days. Maybe we'll stumble upon a rarity.

At the very least, I have the best written sales copy of anyone out there.

Have a wonderful day.
Susan