BUT! Before you do! I just have to say this is a really cool moment for me because waaay before I got an agent or ever had a book coming out, I lurked at Bildungsroman ALL the time. I still do (minus the lurking). It’s right at the heart of the Children’s/YA Lit scene and was and continues to be such a huge resource for me as both a writer and a reader (if you write or read YA, you need to visit Little Willow’s site regularly, seriously). Little Willow gives 1000% to the community and sending her Cracked Up to Be was a very humbling moment for me. ALSO! She pointed me in the direction of one of the most awesome zombie novels EVAR and when you can point a huge critical zombie fan to a non-disappointing zombie work of fiction, that is practically the equivalent of saving their lives. From a zombie.

So you see my debts to Little Willow are great.

And my latest guestblog is up at The Swivet and it’s about writing YA. You can read that here. Check out the first comment! My knight in a blue shirt totally commented! Or at least I choose to believe he did. I am kind of thinking it might not actually be him because, you know. He didn’t ask for my phone number.

Anyway, this feels like a lot of Courtney on one Internet, so I will try not to push it with this blog entry and go back to revising with my one good eye. Happy Monday, peoples!

And I can take absolutely zero credit for this. The wonderful Daisy Whitney introduced me to the equally wonderful Sheila Clover English of Readers Entertainment TV/Circle of Seven Productions, who did some mad distributing on my behalf.

For those of you who don’t know, book trailers began with COS (and this book trailer junkie BOWS DOWN to them–God, I love book trailers). So it was pretty cool being in contact with them for that alone aka cue fangirl. Within a day of sending Sheila the wmv file, my trailer was live everywhere. Like, my google alerts went absolutely crazy over it, which was pretty exciting. I would’ve had to clear a week off my calendar to get it in half the places they did. I get incredibly overwhelmed just thinking about it.

I have to be honest–it can be a lot daunting out here as a new author trying to do as much of the self-promo thing as can be done from my own laptop and in 24 hours, these guys made it a whole lot easier for me. I’m in total awe of and very grateful for the support they offer the writing community and the incredible work they do.

AND it’s not just that they helped me get my trailer out there–it’s that they really love and believe in books and that they’re committed to connecting them with as many readers as possible. That’s a wonderful thing. If you’re in a position where you need to get your work out there like this, don’t look any further than Circle of Seven/Readers Entertainment TV. Thank you, Sheila!

Except maybe zombies.

Things about zombies that I know:

They eat brains.
They eat YOUR brains.
They are flammable.
But not as flammable as Edward Cullen.
Who is extremely flammable, as it turns out.
They are slow moving, except when they run.
In which case we are all screwed.
They don’t live in trees.
Certain zombie animals probably do, though.
Like zombie birds.
Occasionally, zombies show glimmers of intelligence.
But you are supposed to shoot them before they get to that point.
You can’t have sex with a zombie.
SERIOUSLY YOU CAN’T.
And I don’t know why you would want to.
But apparently some people do.
I learned that from Showcase after 2 am.
Showcase is very educational after 2 am.

~fin~

Anyway, I’m making progress on my book, this is good. And something this fake radio silence has taught me is the value of using various social networking thingamajigs. I don’t know how many people are following my twitter, but there’s some peace of mind in knowing that even though this blog is silent, I’m somewhere online, complaining about the way life is. It placates my secret fear that you will all forget about me and find some other volcano enthusiast (WILL S/HE LOVE YOU LIKE I LOVE YOU?). Yay social networking!

Speaking of social networking, if you’re on GoodReads, you should friend me!

Also in related news, the livejournal feed hasn’t updated to show my last post and I don’t know why. I wonder if it will show this one! SUSPENSE.

Anyway, if you would like to see how writing Your Mom has been going, I leave you with this:

Key: the pretty blonde represents me (of course), the fella with the unrelenting hunger for my brains represents my book and the hot geek with the driving gloves represents SEXINESS IN A BROKEN WORLD. You know. Just in case I wasn’t doing a good enough job of it already.

My mom finished Cracked Up to Be! It was an agonizing experience, waiting for her to finish it and to share her thoughts. I am really happy with what she took away from it, though slightly skeptical of her accolades, because you know. She birthed me. I am pretty much flawless at everything in her eyes. In any case, here is the blurb she provided for me, for promotional purposes:

After I finished Courtney Summers’s debut novel, CRACKED UP TO BE, I gladly returned the bribe money she gave me and told her, “No, Courtney. It was MY pleasure.”

Love you, Mommy!

So that was really nice.

In other really nice news: I’m getting A NIKON D80!

This turn of events came as a bit of a surprise, which I’m sure no one will believe as I’ve wanted one for so long (even more when my D70 went to camera heaven). But I truly didn’t expect that I’d be capping my lovely Christmas by ordering a new digital SLR for myself. And then my mom was like, “Hey, Courtney! Check out Futureshop’s online holiday sales! Wow! Look at that D80!” And then I was like, “Really? Should I get it? *angsty back-and-forth*” And then she was like, “Oh look, they have a limited quantity! Oh look! Someone bought one while you were thinking about it! Oh look! There goes another one!”

I didn’t know it then, but Futureshop was giving my mother a commission.

In spite of her camera pushing, it took a couple of hours to take the plunge and order it. And then I felt terrible afterwards. As of today, I am at peace with the decision and I can’t wait to hold that sexy beast of a camera in my hands. I’m going to put it to good use and try things I haven’t tried before. I miss taking photographs so much.

And then I saw 28 Weeks Later!

< spoilers, blah, blah >

Before I start eviscerating it, I should say 28 Days Later is one of my favourite movies of all time. It is so impossibly good and effectively disturbing, that even now, I have a hard time finishing it. That is a mark of a good horror movie as far as I am concerned. Seriously. It is so perfectly tense and terrifying. The characters feel so real and honest, it gives an incredible emotional heft to a movie about a Rage Zombie Apocalypse (who would have thought?!). AND it was filmed digitally (I embrace teh digital technologies, obviously). The aesthetic was gorgeous and gritty. PERFECT. The whole movie just brought respect back to the horror genre. Where it belongs.

28 Weeks Later’s opening gave me a false sense of hope because WHAT AN OPENING. Really. So much tension you could snap in half. What a desperate chase and escape that opening was, seriously thrilling and brilliant and brilliantly filmed. Robert Carlyle leaving his wife behind to get eaten by The Infected because he had no other choice?

WOW.

Unfortunately, that opening made me get a little ahead of myself. As soon as I saw that, I started envisioning the course the movie would take. I thought, oh my gosh, this is going to be a movie about a man who made a hard, but ultimately right decision.

(Dear family and friends, if there comes a time when there are Rage Zombies between us and I’m by the nearest exit and you need saving, well… I love you enough to live for both of us. Love, Courtney)

So I thought, given the perfection of the first movie and forgetting the Sequels Generally Suck rule, the rest of the movie would be this fantastic survivalist tale about Robert Carlyle living with the decision he made until The Infected breached the parameters of the safe zone, and he was forced to make the same decision with the remaining members of his family–WHICH WOULD HAVE BEEN AMAZING, Y?

Seriously! It would have made 28 Weeks Later a horror movie that’s fearless enough not to punish its lead character for being a a flawed human being and then the audience would have to struggle with the character’s choices but find it almost impossible to condemn him for them! No eye for an eye! No vigilante justice! Just flat out SURVIVALISM! ROBERT CARLYLE MAKES IT AND HAS TO LIVE WITH HIMSELF.

WHAT A CONCEPT! IT BLOWS MY MIND EVEN NOW.

But that was not what the movie was about. Instead, I get this:

Robert Carlyle has a useless (and boring) son and daughter.
Robert Carlyle’s wife lives.
And is an immune carrier of the Rage Virus
but doesn’t know it.
Robert Carlyle’s wife could provide a vaccine for the virus but–
oh wait.
That plot thread will be dropped mid-movie because
all we really need Robert Carlyle’s wife for is to infect Robert Carlyle.
And now that Robert Carlyle is infected, it’s SQUARE.
EVEN. JUSTICE.
Because anyone who doesn’t make a likeable choice
should be punished for it! Especially in movies and books!
Because GOD FORBID WE BE INTERESTING.
So now it’s just useless boring son and daughter.
Infection, infection, infection
run, run, run
escape, chase
blah, blah, blah.
Interesting adult characters gratuitously introduced
and gratuitously killed off.
Useless boring son and daughter live.
Except son is now an immune carrier of the Rage Virus
so now if he so much as sneezes on someone
Rage Zombies will take over Paris.
Which is exactly what happens.

Suck.

My level of annoyance and disappointment is probably unreasonable. I know this. But when you misuse Zombies and you misuse ROBERT CARLYLE (who is AMAZING)…

IT’S AWN.

I just think it would have been so much more interesting if Robert Carlyle’s character had carried the movie by making the same choices over and over again, until he was all alone and had to live with them for better and for worse. Surviving in every sense of the word!

WHY DIDN’T THEY MAKE THAT MOVIE? IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AWESOME.

Sigh.

And that is what is new with me.

So I guess I have seen everything now.

- I had a dream Jason Vorhees was going to machete one of my friends to death. “So here’s the plan,” I told my peeps. “We will stay away from [friend].” And then they were like, all appalled at me and I was like, “What? Why are you all looking at me like that?!” Some people, I’m telling you. Everyone KNOWS you don’t step in front of Jason when he’s going for the kill. It is a foolish thing to do and it ain’t gonna save anybody. So I spent the whole dream pacing by the windows, worried as all get out he’d mistake me for my friend. When I woke up, I got out my dream dictionary and discovered my dream means I am cruel, yet practical. And also very, very pretty.

- I can’t stop watching zombie movies when I write. I love zombie movies. I have have decided zombie movies are so inspirational they should be placed on the Inspirational shelf in most stores. Maybe I’m a big weirdo but there’s something strangely comforting about watching people being stripped of everything that makes their lives worth living and still wanting to live in spite of it. It’s ~*poignant*~. Another thing that’s great about zombies is that they’re not a romantic embodiment of death, like say, oh, I dunno… vampires.

- I’m completely addicted to and weirdly fascinated with that TLC show, Say Yes to the Dress. I spend the whole hour rolling my eyes and making snarky remarks at all the brides who spend insane amounts of money on a dress (read: all of them) and then I cry with them when they find The One because I cry at everything. Or maybe I’m not crying at the sentimentality of it all, I’m crying at the insane amounts of money being spent on dresses and how many Yamaha Clavinovas that money could buy. I can safely say I would never spend that much money on a wedding dress. EVER. I’m still talking about the one woman who dropped $11k on a dress and got married at Disneyland. I can’t even remember if she was the same woman who bought her wedding dress and then came back and bought ANOTHER one she could relax in after the ceremony, during the reception. Anyway, it is a great show, basically, but I have a feeling I think it’s a great show for all the wrong reasons. I don’t know. Fridays at 10 PM EST, bbs!

Here is my pumpkin, which really isn’t so much a pumpkin as it is a WARNING TO US ALL.