How was my birthday?

It was good.

At work, the PC I've got is a slower model. Today I entered work to discover they gave me the newer one that they promised me. It's not the newest and I don't care. It's fast, it has Windows XP and I can do my work while listening to my tunes, and that's all I care about.

At lunch I made my goal. I updated my synopsis, typed up a letter for Rachel Vater and emailed her. I know I shouldn't get my hopes up but all I truly want is for this story, these characters to reach children. To entertain and maybe inspire.
Tomorrow I'll organize a group to send queries to.

I received well wishes from friends online and on the phone. My parents sent a nice card, too.

My wife made me chocolate brownies (I wanted that instead of cake) and the kids made me cards. Two new figures (Green Arrow and Red Tornado) arrived today, too.

All in all, not a bad day.

Happy Birthday

Well, today I turn 40. Weee. Yeah, right.

Nice part of having a blog no one reads? No one knows it's your birthday. ;)

New Potter figures, good and bad.

Here’s the Leaky Cauldron picture site.

The good is that these figures are coming out.
The bad is that they are only released in the US.
Aw well.

Finished with the edits!

Finally!
Now to update the synopsis and query letter, compose a letter to Rachel Vater and then it's resubmission time!

Facts:

Fact #1, new job is going great. There is a learning curve and I'm working more than at the last job, but it's fun and I'm enjoying it.

Fact #2, The new car we bought a few weeks ago (new as in 2002) is doing great. This week I (with the help of my wife) turned some mp3s to wavs and burned some cds for the van. Finally we're driving with real tunes!

Fact #3, Stranger Than Fiction is a good movie. Go rent it. Of course I'm partial because I'm a wanna be writer.

Fact #4, Five more chapters to edit and it's done! Then it's time to revisit the synopsis, the query and write a letter to Rachel Vater.

Fact #5, I'm in a good mood tonight!

Fact #6, Monday is my birthday. Gah. I'm too young to be 40. Gah.

Fact #7, No one reads this blog so my birthday is still a secret. Well, Willard and Dani read this blog, but who are they gonna tell? 40? GAH!

Fact #8, The dogs want to go for a walk.

Fact #9, This email is finished! Bye!

(40, yuck)

Message to Willard

Hey bud, I still can't get on your blog.
I can get to Dani's and other blogger blogs, but not yours.
You might want to look into it.

New Job

Well, it's not so bad. The benefits are good and the pay is great. The commute is OK, too.

I'll be working harder and I hope I can do the work.
I guess we'll see.

First Day

It's my first day at the new drafting job.

Wish me luck!

Things

Things didn't work out for the move so we'll be staying here in Utah. Ah well. At least we have a house and I've got a new job to get to on Monday.
We'll look forward to things here, and fix up the house a bit.

Btw, we bought a new car a few weeks ago. It's another Windstar. It's newer and has all the bells and whistles.

I'm still going through the novel one last time. I'm starting Chapter 15 today. So much to do and so little time to do it.

JLA the Movie! FOR REAL!

I saw this on Raving Toy Maniac!

I'm so excited!

Here it is, as posted by fellow Utahn, LilMissVixen.

----

Justice prevails for Warner Bros.
Studio eyeing DC superhero team feature
By PAMELA MCCLINTOCK
DC Comics super-team Justice League is heading for the bigscreen.


Michele and Kieran Mulroney

Batman may meet up with Superman on the bigscreen after all -- along with Wonder Woman, Aquaman, the Flash and all the rest of DC Comics' biggest names.
Warner Bros., with its major appetite for fresh franchises, is looking to make a feature based on super team the Justice League of America, hiring writing duo Kiernan and Michele Mulroney to pen the script.

It's the first major action the studio has taken on the project.

Feature film is bound to include some combination of DC's most iconic superheroes, although the studio wouldn't confirm which ones they might be. It's unlikely that the studio and DC Comics, a division of Warner, would opt to feature second-tier characters.

Since its inception in 1960, JLA has featured almost every major hero in the DC Comics universe, although the core team has largely remained the same: Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Aquaman, Flash, Green Lantern and Martian Manhunter.

The heroes typically band together to fight alien menaces or groups of supervillains.

"The Justice League of America has been a perennial favorite for generations of fans, and we believe their appeal to film audiences will be as strong and diverse as the characters themselves," Warner prexy of production Jeff Robinov said in announcing the hiring of the Mulroneys.

In taking on the ambitious project, Warner faces several conundrums.

Now that the Batman and Superman film franchises have been revived, does the studio go after Christian Bale ("Batman Begins") and Brandon Routh ("Superman Returns") to star in a Justice League pic? Studio is also trying hard to bring Wonder Woman to the bigscreen.

To a large degree, casting will depend upon the story arc for the JLA feature and at what point in the superheroes' lives the plot takes place.

Warner also must deal with myriad producers working on the Batman, Superman and Wonder Woman franchises.

Studio dropped its efforts to make "Batman vs. Superman" in order to focus on relaunching "Batman" and "Superman" as individual properties, which it has done.

Filmmakers Chris Nolan ("Batman Begins") and Bryan Singer ("Superman Returns") are each on board to helm the next installments in the two respective franchises. Nolan's "The Dark Knight" is eyeing a 2008 release and the next "Superman," 2009.

The potential payoff of bringing JLA to theaters can't be ignored by Warner, which turns out more tentpoles than any other studio.

Comicbook fans have long clamored for a movie version of JLA, and word of the Warner project is certain to be a hot topic at New York Comic Con, which unspools today in Gotham.

JLA has spawned several cartoon TV series, including 1960s and '70s show "Super Friends" and current Cartoon Network skein "Justice League Unlimited" from Warner Bros. Animation.

The Mulroneys -- Kieran is the brother of thesp Dermot Mulroney -- caught the attention of studios around town with their rewrite of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" for Fox.

Other screenplay projects include "On the Nature of Human Romantic Interaction," "Paper Man" and "Worst Case."

Kieran and Michele Mulroney are repped by Creative Artists Agency and Management 360.

(Ben Fritz contributed to this report.)

Locked out!

RASSEN FRASSEN!

The stupid dead bolt on my front door is a bit loose. Sometimes it locks on it's own.
This morn' after returning from dropping off the kids at school, I went inside, dropped my keys on a night stand type piece of furniture, set the dogs free from their kennels and promptly closed the door to keep the cats inside while the dogs went pee outside.
After the dogs were done I discovered that I was locked out. Oh I had made sure that the main lock was unlocked, but forgot to grab my keys in case the dead bolt tricked.
Outside in a coat, pajamas and tennis shoes, I walked around trying windows. My in laws don't have a key to that lock (they will!) and my cell was inside.
I had to try a window that needs fixing and it broke. I got in and then let the dogs in through the front door.
I made copies of the dead bolt key and called the window guy to come estimate the window.
So much for two hours of novel fixing.
Ah well.

Chad Vader # 6!

Here's the newest from Blame Society Films and YouTube.

Funny look at job hunting.

Thoughts

We went to church today! YYAAAY!
See, I've got a rep for being this staunch Mormon guy, but the truth is we are inactive due only to laziness. Heck, I want another Saturday.
Well, we went today. I took the kids because I promised my wife I would while she was in Cali with my parents.
It worked out OK. I need to do that more often.

Meanwhile, she's doing great with them. I haven't heard from her much today, but she's happy because she can breathe better there. I hope she gets the job and we can move.

Got my MS (manuscript) back! Not much editing left to do! I'm excited! I'm planning on working on it this week to polish it up. After that I can resubmit to Rachael Vater and a few others.

Tonight the kids get to have a slumber party with me. We'll be watching Abbot and Costello movies until we fall asleep. No school tomorrow.

More on my life tomorrow for the two people reading this blog. ;)

The Wilhelm Scream Compilation

This sound effect scream was used in a lot of movies. I'm surprised at some of them.

Here it is, by way of Youtube.

My wife left me!

HA!
Made you look!
We just dropped her off at the airport.
We made a decision to try to move to California. This was decided last month. My wife is tired of working at home and would like to try the office life. I'm tired of the office life and would love to try the home dad thing.
So she started looking for work while I remained at my last job. We realized that we both should try, because the cost of living there is more expensive, so I put my resume on Monster.com.

Turns out Northern Utah is desperate for drafters. I wound up getting an interview for an SL architectural company and got the job. I start on the 26th.
Unless my sweetie gets her job.

See, I miss my family very much. They all live in central California while my wife's family live here in northern Utah. I've lived here since '83 but for the last 19 years I've lives far from my family.
Meanwhile, we live 30 miles away from a Charter school and the entire Utah school system sucks. They pass my learning disabled children by instead of teaching them on their level. If we remain, my kids will be left behind in their education.
My wife might still be able to progress but she's fighting a bad rep that her family have caused.
These are all reasons why we feel it's time to move.

She got three options in central California. One's with a Charter school, doing accounting. Two others are with the city of Merced. One as a County clerk assistant and the other is an accounting job. She is set to appear in Merced, California on Tuesday at 10 am for a job interview. If she gets one of those jobs, we're moving.

So we just bid her goodbye and now we get a week without her while she spends time with my parents and goes to the interviews.

*Crosses fingers*

Note to self...

Reminder:
Must make blog entrees about wife's California job interview and our new car.
Also must make entree about kid's responses to my questioners.

Busy me.

NECA's Harry Potter figures

I said "Only collect the Justice League and Avengers" but these Potter figures are tempting me!
When I heard of thier plans to make sets and include pack in figures like Ginny, I started to go nuts.


Here’s figures.com's pics of the NECA Toyfare display.

One of these days I need to check out thier web page to see if I can get these.

Toy Fare o7

It seems pretty small this year. DC Direct showed a lot of stuff that we've already seen. For me the coolest thing from them was the Marvel Family. I can't wait to get them.

I also saw a special sneak peek at the upcoming Marvel Legends Black Knight. This head shot pic is so rare I had to get it by email.

There are a lot of figures I'm looking forward to this year.

Speaking to the class

It was so strange.
I didn’t know what to expect. I was nervous but I pushed the nerves back and just went into the school. As I approached Jeff’s class (I’d been there before, after school) a young boy started calling out my name.
“Mr. Bryan! Mr. Bryan!”
I guess he was my escort. I’m not used to being called Mr. Bryan but it made sense. It was kind of funny.
So I entered the class and Jeff was up front. All these 6th graders smiled with excitement. Holy spit! They’re all excited to hear from me. Plain ol’ me!
Jeff had told me ahead of time that they had questions. Once I was there, at the front of the class I just figured I’d open it up for questions, then after I’d tell them about the changes to the book and how a writer tries to get an agent and publisher.
During the questions I was able to tell them those things too. When I said that I heard they had questions over half the class shot their hands up! I was so happy that so many kids enjoyed Ann and her brother. Man what a rush!
There were questions on how did I come up with many of the characters. People wanted to know the name of the second book and how many books there would be. They wanted to know if I was going to write other books after Ann’s tales were done. They wondered what my vision of the covers for books 1 and 2 are and when I told them what I wanted for cover 1 they smiled. When I told them that I didn’t have cover 2 planned they had ideas! They laughed and shot even more hands out as I explained things. They seemed to understand as I told them of Ann and Roland’s aging problems and hoped that I would be published.

I was scheduled for 30 minutes and it took 45. Jeff finally had to cut it to those who still had their arms up. No more questions were allowed after them. The last question was if a kid could have my autograph. Soon I was signing a bunch with my real name (cause they knew it) and my pen name. I guess that pen name idea is redundant now, but I’ll still proceed with it.

After I left, my head had swollen very big. Don’t worry. I’ve had strong beta reads and a bunch of rejections. I wont believe any dilutions of grandeur.
Still, it was an amazing experience. They all wanted it published. This was the earlier version, too. The one that needed lots of work.
I can only hope that the next version will entrance adult agents like it entranced the main age group it’s meant for.

Yes! Finally got my Destroyer!

Toy Biz made quite a few figures during their time as Marvel's chief action figure maker. One line was called Marvel Legends and it featured many of the comic company's characters. Even some of the most obscure characters made it on the shelves.

The toy making rights have passed onto Hasbro, but last year before the switch, Toy Biz released Marvel Legends 15. I needed each character for my collection with the exception of one. The Thor Buster Ironman was useless to me. Problem was, each figure had a piece of the villain Modok (that's him on the far left in the chair thing).
As luck would have it they created variant versions of most of the line. I needed most of those to fill in certain gaps in my collection too. The variant Ironman was a Thor baddie called the Destroyer. He's an unstoppable suit of Asgardian armor that can be activated and sent out to kill Thor. A rare character and a truly dangerous bad guy. He's on the far right.
New problem. I never saw any of the variants here in Utah. So I waited until the time came to finally buy Destroyer on eBay.
$40 bucks! Sheesh.
He arrived today and I couldn't be happier. :)