The Librarian Writer

Title : Cinder Author : Marissa Meyer Publisher : Feiwel & Friends Publication Date : January 3, 2012 ISBN-13 : 978-0312641894 400 pp. Reading copy via local library With one of the most eye-catching covers in awhile, coupled with an awesome concept, Cinder was high on my list of must-reads for 2012. I'm happy to report that it's just as fun as I thought it would be. Cinder takes the Cinderella story and makes it a fractured fairy tale by setting it in a far-flung future. In that world, Cinder is a cyborg mechanic living in New Beijing while a plague sweeps Earth. The only hope of a cure comes from a kingdom on the moon that's run by an evil queen. The queen wants to marry Prince Kai to form an alliance that will eventually make her the ruler of both the moon and Earth. Prince Kai desperately wants to help his people, but after he meets Cinder, he can't stop thinking about her. The fun of the book is seeing how Marissa Meyer plays with the trappin...

Tomorrow night is the season two finale of Downton Abbey , the PBS Masterpiece Classic series that has women (and many men) swooning over Edwardian dresses and upstairs/downstairs intrigue. The basic story is that the titular grand house belongs to Lord Grantham, who has the misfortune to have three daughters instead of a son who can inherit Downton Abbey (see Pride and Prejudice for a further discussion on entitled estates). The heir, a cousin one of the daughters is set to marry, dies on the Titanic. The next heir is discovered to be a young lawyer named Matthew, who seems rather embarrassed that he's meant to be the next Lord Grantham. As the family learns to deal with Matthew, there's also all sorts of shenanigans with the servants, some directly dealing with the family and some not. In case you didn't know, Downton Abbey is the brainchild of Julian Fellowes, the writer of the brilliant Gosford Park . Downton Abbey stars a bevy of British actors with posh acce...

Kelli and me making history at The Four Seasons I've hinted before that I was working on a secret screenplay project , and I have officially turned in the first draft! Let me go back a little. Last fall, my friend Kelli approached me about writing a screenplay. Kelli is a producer, actress, writer and all-around awesome person. She wants 2012 to be about creating projects with what she has instead of waiting for projects to come to her. (Take a moment and check out Kelli's website, Think Outside the Box Inside the Box . It could change your life.) So would I be willing to write a screenplay for her to star in and produce? A screenplay that could be produced for a microbudget? And not a short, but a feature-length screenplay? That could be shot at her house so she didn't have to get permits? And Kelli's character had to have a missing tooth (the reason why is a long story) ? And I would get full writing credit but basically no money? Well, when you put it like ...

"This tesseract stuff is blowing my mind." And so it begins ... Another year of new books! Yay! Last year I did monthly updates of the Debut Author Challenge books that I read, and I want to do that again this year. But I also want to add any other reading news that I may have to share, so I'm making these entries the more encompassing "Reader's Corner" rather just "Debut Author Challenge." But I will start with January's debut author book ... I missed my chance to get Cinder from Netgalley (can I blame the holidays?), and just got a copy from the library a couple of days ago. So my inaugural debut novel for 2012 ended up being Pretty Crooked by Elisa Ludwig. And it was a pretty good way to start the year. As I mentioned in my review, there's a big discrepancy between the number of ARC pages and the number of pages listed on Amazon. So there will be an update after the book is released. In other book news, I wanted to shar...