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Coming this February to the ZACH SCOTT, performed by the ZACH SCOTT's "youth pre-professional troupe," a musical based on April Lurie's young adult novel, BROTHERS, BOYFRIENDS, AND OTHER CRIMINAL MINDS:

"At first glance, April Lundquist seems like your average high school freshman in 1970s Brooklyn. She's sporting bellbottoms and dancing disco like all of her friends. But when the Mafia shows up on her doorstep--literally--April finds herself confronted with some tough choices to make. Will she be able to save her brother, navigate boyfriends, and capture the perfect kiss, all while keeping her cool? Find out in ZACH's world premier production of this new musical for the whole family!"

Saturdays February 5, 12 and 19 at 1pm & 4pm and Sundays February 6, 13 and 20 at 6:30pm on ZACH's Kleberg Stage.

Click here to buy tickets.

Cynthia and I had the pleasure of attending a read-through a few months back. Even at the rough draft script stage and without all the songs, it was hilarious and engaging. Can't wait to see it!

April: Texas Library Association Conference
May: International Reading Association Conference
May: SLJ Day of Dialog/BEA
June: ALA Annual Conference

It’s crazy…but we also have lots of fun.  First up is TLA in Austin where we have a phenomenal line-up of authors signing with us:

Wednesday, April 13th
10:15 am – 11:00 am Pat Mora (author aisles)
10:15 am – 11:00 am Rafael Lopez (author aisles)
11:30 am – 12:30 pm Lauren Oliver (author aisles)
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Will Hobbs (author aisles)
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm Bettina Restrepo (author aisles)
1:30 pm – 2:00 pm Crystal Allen (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Sophie Jordan (Harper booth 1824)
2:30 pm – 3:00 pm Tera Lynn Childs (Harper booth 1824)
3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Suzanne Harper (Harper booth 1824)

Thursday, April 14th
9:00 am – 10:00 am Diane Stanley (author aisles)
11:30 am – 12:00 pm Jason Henderson (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 2:30 pm Jennifer Archer (Harper booth 1824)
2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Kevin Henkes (author aisles)
3:00 pm – 3:30 pm Don Tate and Audrey Vernick (Harper booth 1824)

And don’t miss JAMIE LEE CURTIS as the Keynote Speaker on Wednesday, April 13th at 9:00 am!

Aside from our outstanding authors, we’ll have galleys galore at our booth (#1824) and we hope you’ll stop by to say hi to Patty, Robin, and me!

See you in Texas!

~ Laura

Meet Austin.

He’s a boy with a book. And the book is called The Gentleman Bug (Atheneum Books for Young Readers, 2010) by Julian Hector.

The book is about a quiet, refined, small-town bug who loves reading. When a beautiful lady bug comes to town, she doesn’t seem to notice the gentleman bug. So he tries to spiff up his style to gain her attention.

Of course, things go horribly wrong. But then, they both discover that they have a love of books in common. And that’s all it takes for their friendship to be sealed.

Austin says it’s important for people to be gentlemanly toward each other. He says he is a gentleman because, “I help people. When other people make fun of them, I stick up for them.”

Austin also says that it’s important for people to be themselves and not to try and change just so they fit in better with others.

Here’s what else he had to say about this book:

Our reviewer: Austin

Age: 8

Things I like to do: Lift weights, read, play basketball and skateboard.

This book was about: A bug who was a gentleman and liked to read. Everyone made fun of him, but he didn’t care. Nothing could bother him when he was reading. Then he met a lady bug. She liked to read too, but didn’t tell him. Then, they read together every time they met.

The best part was when: The gentleman bug and the lady bug met.

I smiled when: The gentleman bug was all dressed up and looking in the mirror.

I was worried when: The gentleman bug bumped into someone else at the restaurant and everything spilled all over.

I was surprised when: The lady bug arrived.

This book taught me: To read and really not care what other people might say. I should say, “I don’t care what you think. This is me and nobody can change me.”

Three words to describe this book are: “The.” “Gentleman.” “Bug.”

My favorite picture in the book was: The last page where they are reading books together.

Other kids reading this book should watch for: How to be a gentleman.

You should read this book because: It’s a nice book. And you can learn a lot from it.

Thanks, Austin!

Julian Hector wrote the text and drew the illustrations for this book. Want to learn more about him? You can:

• Visit his website.
• Read his blog.
• Review this biography.
• Check out this kid review of another book he illustrated.

Official disclaimer:

Oh, by the way, I won this nifty book in a giveaway sponsored by Mike Jung, a book blogger whose own book – Geeks, Girls, and Secret Identities – comes out lat

At long last I have a new finished piece of art to post:

I suppose I'm reasonably satisfied with this piece. It seemed like it went a little smoother than usual and I managed to keep the paint fairly thin on the background which helps to cut down on time spent on the piece. What bothers me a bit is this isolated pool of red-orange that is the squirrel/boat. The warm yellow of the dragonflies was intended to balance out the orange of the squirrel, but I think they are too small to be as effective as I'd like. I did push some orange-ish color around in the background, but maybe not enough... All the same I think it came out okay.
Prints are in my Shop.

Not only have I finally gotten back to painting, but we've also gotten back to our frequent weekend hiking. We had a good long walk at nearby Bull Creek this past weekend. This trail was about three miles one way meandering back and forth across the wide creek. Where in LA we could clearly see the extremely parched condition of the land in the form of dry creek-beds and trickling waterfalls, here we could see the opposite - an abundance of water. We've heard the reason for this is that the soil's quite thin and underneath lies a layer of rock, so the water can't really soak into the ground and therefore channels into the many waterways that wind around the hills here. You can see how rocky the land is around the water in these pictures:

The trail came to an end in a small dog park. I have never seen so many happy dogs together in one place at the same time. It was fun to watch them splashing around in the water so exuberantly. I think they had the right idea too - it was surprisingly warm that day and the water looked so inviting!

We spent Memorial Day in beautiful Austin, Texas at the Texas State Solo & Ensemble Contest at the University of Texas. There were hundreds and hundreds of high school kids from all over Texas there, giving up their holiday weekend to perform. Small ensembles dotted the benches and walls outside the music building. They were warming up and practicing. I got chills listening to a trumpet trio play Bugler's Holiday.

One of the benefits of an Austin excursion is fantastic food (yummm...Trudy's) and the opportunity to visit Book People Bookstore. We had acquired a friend of Entling no. 2 at the store and she cheerfully tagged along with me upstairs to the kids' section. (My own kids speed away from me in a bookstore as fast as their winged feet can fly them.) We were perusing the shelves when a Book People person came by to offer his help. He told us he had not read ALL the books ther but he had read a lot of them and if we had any questions, just ask.

Hey, I thought, that is MY usual line.

Then it hit me.

That was TOPHER!

I know about Topher Bradfield because Rockstar Rick Riordan raves about him on his blog. Topher was a force in the creation of Camp Half Blood and a children's book evangelist at local schools and literary events in our capital city and beyond.

I chased after him.

"Are you Topher?"
He agreed that he was and asked (probably nervously) who I was.

He must have decided I did not pose an overt threat because we then spent a splendid chunk of time talking books. We share a grand enthusiasm for all things Percy Jackson. He pointed us toward a table of his current picks and we were treated to a series of wonderful booktalks that had passers-by stopping in their tracks to listen (and then pick up the books to buy.)

Then he began to read the first chapter of Skulduggery Pleasant: Playing with Fire aloud to us. Wow! There is nothing like hearing a gifted reader share a book they love.
Topher performed the book with enthusiasm and a whiff of James Joyce in his delivery.

As I left the store with my new stack of books, I was reminded of the famous last words I had uttered an hour earlier, "I'm not getting any books today."

I did not know I was going to meet Topher.

Well, after a blistering summer it's finally starting to cool down around here. It still gets a bit uncomfortably warm around mid-day, but mornings have actually been a bit chilly. So the past couple weekends, we took advantage of the pleasant mornings and went out for a bit of hiking. First stop was McKinney Falls - three miles on the Onion Creek Trail ending at the falls which were more of a trickle, but with very neat rock formations.


And last weekend we hit three really small parks that all happened to be in the same area. The tower in the picture was at Mayfield Park which seemed to be a popular site for weddings. A young brood of peacocks occupied the grounds. The males seemed to revel in practicing displaying their tails which were not all that grand yet since they were still quite young, but that didn't discourage them in the least.

And the last picture is a view from the top of Mount Bonnell which seems to be something of a tourist site.















Lastly, for the sneak peek of what I'm working on - a couple character design sheets for my current book projects - a follow-up to What's Your Angle, Pythagoras?:

Octavius is only twelve, but he is very big. He's a nervous, worrying type.

Amara is nine years old and somewhat bossy. Her name means "eternal."

We must be in the flight path of the monarch migrations to Mexico here in Austin because I have seen so many of them over the last few weeks! A couple weeks ago we hiked Commons Ford park which is west of the city and everywhere I looked I'd spot a monarch. They seemed especially fond of one particular type of flower which were quite plentiful in the park. I've seen a a good number of the other 'big butterflies' around too, swallowtails and such. Monarchs are a real childhood favorite of mine!

Every so often I discover that my husband has, unbeknownst to me, lent his hand to my work. Sometimes his little additions go unnoticed for days or weeks until I've come back to the drawing for reworking or reference. I always get a good laugh from these unexpected contributions:
And so I continue to labor under his corrupting influence... Read the rest of this post

For any librarians attending SXSW — which I’m gathering will be at least a few judging from the chatter I’ve been hearing — I’ll be there starting tomorrow night. Here is the short list of events I’m committed to

• Librarian meetup at the Iron Cactus on Saturday at 12:30 - more details, or here
• MetaFilter meetup Saturday at 6:30 at Mother Egan’s - more details
• The panel I’m on about community moderation — with folks from Flickr and YouTube and Etsy and CurrentTV — Sunday at 3:30
• Fray Cafe Sunday night from 8 - midnight. I’m a featured performer, come hear my crazy story.

I leave on Tuesday. Monday is an open day and I may go to the Ransom Center to see what’s nifty there.

I'm just wrapping up on the tail-end of my book project, so hopefully I'll have some art to post soon. In the meantime, more photos...

It's wildflower season here again in central Texas and although I really haven't had much time to get outside lately, we did take a quick jaunt a couple of weeks ago to shoot a field of pink evening primrose. Chris happened to spot this distant field as we were driving on the elevated highway you can see in the background and figured out how we could reach it using back-streets.





















The ground was a bit marshy, but well-worth the mud to take some good reference photos.

Hopefully we'll get outside for a bit this weekend before the summer heat sets in. We've already had some uncomfortably warm days this spring - just a prelude to what's coming...

The wildflowers are still exploding here and the blues and pinks seem to have given way to yellows and reds. I don't remember them being quite so spectacular last year. Perhaps the weather conditions are more favorable this year? Or maybe I just wasn't getting out much around the same time last year. On a morning walk, I stumbled across a steeply sloping field of Mexican Hats:
Indian Blankets quite literally blanket the ground along my husband's drive to work. He also located another large field of the flowers on a different road much to my delight:













I can't think that I've ever lived somewhere where I could walk through such a picture postcard flower-scape until we moved here to Texas. Scattered throughout the dominant Indian Blankets are various other flowers. I think these are coreopsis:

They say everything's bigger in Texas - and when it comes to the local bugs, they weren't kidding. This little (or not so little) guy was hanging out in front of my neighbor's front door for about a day:He's a giant stick insect. It's probably hard to tell from the picture, but he was about 5-6 inches long. Seems he wandered a little too far away from his forest home where I'm sure he's most excellently camouflaged. Hopefully he's since found his way safely back to the trees following his little adventure amongst the man-made.

Realizing I hadn't posted anything in such a long time, I scrounged around a bit for something and came up with this drawing:
This was an unused drawing for a private commission. We opted for something larger and with more characters, which I'll post in the near-future. I still like this drawing and I've got the color well-visualized in my mind for it, so maybe I'll come back to it some day...

Okay, I may not be heading to SCBWI but I am, in October, going to the VCFA event in the Lone Star State.

Anyone else going?

I am registered and now entering the "how do I decide which hotel to stay at" phase. This phase is soon to be followed by the "ohmygosh how am I going to get from point A to point B and everywhere else phase" which is also known as the typical (for me) transportation panic phase. Other phases soon to follow will include the "what if I have forgotten how to do the chit chat in person networking phase," the "everyone will be younger or skinnier or more talented than I am phase" and then of course the "is it too late to change my mind and cancel phase." Oh, and let's not forget the "I have nothing to wear phase" which I'm sure I will pass through several times.

I kid you not.

Yes, I am an introverted wimp but I am really going to try and break out at least a little bit.

I think I am going to go a day early on the chance that I can have some time to meet some local friends. So if you live in the area, please let me know because otherwise I will go early and then sit in my hotel room playing the stupid bubble game on my phone until the battery dies.

It's been a while since I've posted anything, much less a new piece of art, but I'm finally back with a new illustration. This painting was a private commission. As I worked on it, I was reminded of one of my old favorite picture books, Owl Babies in which three baby owls await nervously for their mother to return home. I love the simplicity of the characters in the book and am amazed at how much expression the illustrator was able to convey almost entirely through the eyes and subtle gestures. I'm hoping I was able to similarly capture some of the sense of relief and recent distress the two little lost squirrels are feeling as they run toward their mother's outstretched arms:


On a personal note, a dear art school friend came to visit last week and we took a few days to explore Austin and get in a dose of adventure, trying out some new activities, among them river tubing and ziplining through the trees. Following are a few pictures of our hike around Hamilton Pool - we first hiked along a trail that followed a creek all the way to the Pedernales river:
Due to drought conditions, the river was quite low. I'm quite tempted to go back and hike along the dry parts of the riverbed to see what there is to see before the rains come and fill the river back up.



We then took the short trail to the pool itself which is partially sheltered in a large grotto. According to texasoutside.com, "The preserve's pool and grotto were formed when the dome of an
underground river collapsed due to massive erosion thousands of years ago." It was such a striking and unusual setting, that it almost looked like a man-made resort. The water looked so inviting on such a hot day, but sadly, we didn't have time to go for a swim. Perhaps another day...

More art soon...

The rains finally came to quench our parched land here in Texas. The air cooled, and by the time the weekend rolled around I thought how wonderful that it's finally cool enough to go outside and do a little hiking. So on Saturday, which was quite cloudy in the morning, we drove down to McKinney State Park to finish up the trails we hadn't yet hiked. After about ten minutes on the trail, the sun came out from behind the clouds and that nice cool hike I'd been looking forward to for so long became a hot, sweaty hike. Even so, it was good to get outside for a while.


The longer trails were a bit ho-hum, walking through the same landscape for a long time without many points of interest aside from the remnants of an old homestead and grist mill. But the trails around the water were quite picturesque.







It seems that the butterfly migrations are beginning again. There were so many butterflies fluttering along the trails, especially this kind. I'm not sure what type it is, but they were everywhere.

Good Morning:

I started my day with a cool and rainy 3 mile walk. Now that's a great way to start a fresh new day, if you ask me!

I've been looking over some of my past posts this morning, and I think I need to make it clear that I AM NOT AN ENTOMOLOGIST!! Wow, I can't believe how many posts I have that focus on insects. Mantis, Ladybugs, Walking Sticks.... and I admit, I have the creepy-crawlies just like so many others. Because my kids have learned outside of school since the beginning, I have always had cool projects going on all the time. It just so happens that there are lots of cool Science projects on the market for the "common folk". When my boys were younger, the insect projects were what they always chose. So, through the years, we just became "friendly" with bugs.

This post will focus on the release of my many hundreds of baby Praying Mantis, and that should be it for bug posts. At least for awhile anyway!

We released my babies late yesterday evening in my garden. They have voracious appetites and eat thousands of aphids and small insects each day. Being that they eat aphids, we released most of them on and around my roses. The egg sacs were still productive, so we hid them under the roses. After we released them, we managed to get some very good pictures of them in their natural environment:

Praying Mantis on Yellow Rose



Praying Mantis Egg Sac



Praying Mantis Close-Up



Now that most of you are probably thoroughly creeped out, I would like to thank you for being so patient and kind enough to continue to read my blog.

Now...here's my two newest collage prints listed in My Etsy Shop.

5" x 7" collage print entitled: "Ghostly Gert's Tucson Patio Party". This collage is what I like to call "story art". Most of my larger than ACEO size collages are story art. Here's Ghostly Gert's story:

This is poor ol' Ghostly Gert, revisiting the most exciting yet tragic day of her "life". Oh the happenings on that lovely desert patio. It goes like this: August 13, 1910, a sweltering hot day in Tucson, Arizona. It was Gert's 11th birthday and she was having a big party. Hundreds of friends and family members were swarming in. The food was delicious and the cake, oh the cake. It was 4 layers high. It was such an extravagent party. Everyone was laughing and dancing. Gert and the other children were playing games. Hopscotch, Tag, Croquet. Then, before anyone could do anything to stop it, tragedy struck...

Now, you get to fill in the blank. The end of the story belongs to you.



The second print that I listed this morning is an ACEO entitled: "Song Series: Inspired by Stairway To Heaven". This one is for all of you Led Zeppelin fans out there!!



Thanks so much for stopping by my blog today.

Until Tomorrow:
Kim
Garden Painter Art
gnarly-dolls

MARK: Today I had help from Lucy, age 8, with today’s update. I asked her to talk about our stays in Bryan and Austin, TX while I typed what she said. Full disclosure – I took what she said and changed the order of some sentences so that it goes in chronological order. Otherwise, though, this is what she said. Her comments are in the larger font.

LUCY: When we came into Texas, we were listening to a song named "After Breakfast Let’s Go to Texas.” My mom and dad are in a band that’s called the Church Ladies and it's their song.

We went to Bryan, Texas and stayed with Petey, my mom’s friend. Petey is a really nice man. We walked around Texas A and M. It was really hot out and I liked it a lot. Petey told us about butterflies and Texas Rangers and trees.



MARK: For the Texas A&M football team, there is great importance given to "The Twelveth Man." Here's Karen with her hand on the thigh of that hallowed player.



Also, in Bryan we finally got our antenna fixed! Yay! Here's a picture with Daniel from the Honda dealer.  Such a nice guy!



LUCY: We went to a restaurant. It was my dad’s birthday. It was a Mexican restaurant and I tried Sopapillas and I loved them. In the Sopapillas we put a candle and sang Happy Birthday to my dad.



Another day we went to Aunt Pat and Uncle Frank’s house in Austin, Texas. We saw Suzanne and Stephen my second cousins and Francesco, which is a baby, my new cousin. Francesco was 3 months old when I met him. He was really cute. I love the way that he holded on to my finger.

MARK: Here's Zoe with lovely Francesco, and then my family:



MARK: While we were at in Austin, Lucy decided to play with my aunt’s weight set and promptly dropped a 5lb weight hard on her left ring finger. It then proceeded to turn purple and swell up. It’s still purple and swelled, but a bit better now. And she can move it around, so we’ve decided it must be okay. Yet another adventure with Lucy.

(I have a picture of Lucy's finger but Karen seems to have hidden the camera and she's asleep right now -- the nerve! -- so I can't download it.  But I'll put it up here soon)

LUCY: We went to lots of bookstores and me and Zoe got these little stuffed animals and my brother got a hat. We went in the kids section and played with the trains.



MARK: We loved the beautiful state capital building -- where we arrived just in time for an amazing tour. And we remembered the Alamo...



We visited an amazing independent bookstore in Autsin called Book People. They were very kind to us!


At a Barnes and Noble in Austin we had an unlikely encounter too strange for fiction: I was standing there talking with a bookseller when I heard a woman’s voice behind me say, “Mark? Mark Hughes, is that you?” I turned around and there, out of the blue, stood a familiar face from Rhode Island. Beverly Pettine is a friend of the family who used to work with my mother. Beverly doesn’t live down here in Texas--it was just a strange coincidence that she just happened to be visiting her sister in Austin (who knew?) and just happened to be in exactly the right the bookstore with her sister and niece when she saw a sign announcing that I was going to be appearing here. She looked at the time and my appearance just happened to be exactly when she was here. If I were to put that in a story, no one would believe it. Yet, here’s the proof: Here I am with Beverly in front of our car in Austin, TX, of all places. Whoda thunk? :-)

 

We also had a very nice afternoon with friends of friends. Our neighbor, Jay, grew up in the Dallas area so we were very pleased to meet Brad, Holly, Katie, and Grace, who live in Austin. Lovely people and our new friends in Texas. :-)



LUCY: Yesterday we went to Stephen and Jonathan’s house and they have five dogs. Their names were Max, Casey, Billy, Toby, and Lloyd. They were cute. I loved to pick Max up. He was the littlest but he was 31 years old. We went in Stephen and Jonathan’s pool and swam. Stephen and my dad and mom threw us in. It was really fun.

Right now my brother and sister are filling their stomachs with Cheetos. We’re driving to Dallas, Texas. We’re going to stay with Gigi. We were just listening to High School Musical in the car.

MARK: A sad note: I just got some terribly disappointing news from NPR – they are not going to air the road-trip stories after all. Given their already busy line up and the fact that the producer working with me will be away in Alaska for a month starting this week, they made their decision not to go forward with the road-trip stories. I can’t tell you how disappointed I am about this. I sent out the message about NPRs decision earlier this morning and was truly touched by the many, many the kind emails people sent in reply. I’m grateful to have such a supportive network.

On the other hand, I’ve already learned a great deal from working with NPR so far, and the experience has been a lot of fun. Perhaps after the summer is over I’ll submit some commentaries in the style of the first one, where I talked about quitting my job. We’ll see.

In any case, this is so far the only significant set-back in an otherwise successful and happy road trip/book tour. And I’m determined to get over it before we reach Dallas. :-)

I appreciate your friendship.
-- Mark

LEMONADE MOUTH (Delacorte Press, 2007)
I AM THE WALLPAPER (Delacorte Press, 2005)
www.markpeterhughes.com

Meteor Crater, Arizona

Coordinates: 35 3 N 111 2 W

Diameter: 4,150 feet (1,265 m)

Each summer, movie screens nationwide (and increasingly world wide for that matter) are crowded with blockbuster flicks pitting man against other men, nature, and often alien life forms. Well, I think most people are pretty good at distinguishing science fiction from reality, but the truth is, planet Earth does get visitors from outer space every once in a while. Evidence of these occurrences is limited, but hard to miss. Take Arizona’s Meteor Crater for example. (more…)

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It's been such a long time since I've updated that I'm just not sure where to start... So, we're finally all settled here in Austin after our big move from LA. It's hard to believe we've been here for about a month and a half. The time just flew by and now it's nearly Christmas! I had forgotten how all-consuming long distance moves can be. During the move there are these long stretches where we're just waiting around, but at the same time there are so many little loose ends to take care of. It seems like I've done everything but art lately, although I did manage to scribble down a first draft of a very simple early reader that's been swimming around in my head for a while.

We spent our first two weeks here in an Extended Stay on the east side of the city which was . . . okay. We managed to find an apartment within our first four days here which I thought was very efficient of us! So I was able to call in for delivery of our possessions pretty quickly. Unfortunately, the mover scheduled the delivery for the Tuesday before Thanksgiving which was the same day we were supposed to fly out to visit my parents. Try as I might to reschedule, I couldn't reach the moving coordinator, who, as it turns out was sick with the flu for an entire week, so we had to cancel our trip lest our things be left on the curb or shipped around the country for a while before they made their way back to us again. Needless to say, none of us were to happy about any of this.

One of my big concerns regarding the move was not knowing how the cat would handle it. I've never traveled with a cat before so it was uncharted territory for all of us. He actually did surprisingly well on the flight over and in the hotel. There was a bit of growling and slinking around, but he took it all really well. Where I made my mistake was when I took him with me to the empty apartment one day to do some cleaning. He was fine all day - really interested in checking the place out and then in the very late afternoon something in his little brain snapped and he started dashing around madly and frantically washing, twitching his fur and shaking his head as though there was something on him that he was trying to shake off. It was very disturbing to watch him in this state. We took him to the vet to see if what was bothering him was something environmental. The vet seemed rather baffled by our description of his behavior and suggested we just keep an eye on him for a while. He did gradually get over the problem, so we can assume it some kind of bizarre stress response. Thankfully, he's all back to normal now.

So far, I'm really liking Austin. It's very pretty - very green - not at all the stereotype of the dry, dusty Texas I'd always imagined. And I am so happy to have forest the reaches right up to our back balcony. It's quite an improvement over our last view of the building next door - the typical LA 'view.' We have a nice big picture window in the master bedroom which makes for really great bird-watching. The cat and I are both loving it. There seem to be a couple pairs of cardinals that frequent the juniper nearby. They are just so pretty to watch flitting around, nipping berries off the branches. Must paint a cardinal... The wildlife is just great around here and we haven't even started hiking the local wilderness yet either. The forests must be teeming with deer since we see them all the time. They are pretty brave. They come right up onto the lawns and you can get pretty close to them without spooking them at all. I know a lot of people have deer in their backyard, but I never did so it is pretty novel to me. Oh - and I saw a little owl the other day! It was just so cute! Must paint an owl...

And here I was worried that I wouldn't have any pictures to post since we all know pictures are the best part, right? I went outside, thinking maybe I'll see something interesting to shoot. Shot a couple pictures of berries for future reference and on my way back to my apartment I spot three deer grazing on the lawn just like I was saying:
Well, most important of all, my husband is very happy with his new job which is a very good thing since we did move all the way here for it after all. He's working on a next-gen game called Darksiders. It's set in a fantastical post-apocalyptic future with angels, demons, etc. and you play as one of the four horsemen. It's still in it's early stages, but what they have so far looks really great. There are some trailers here (yes, you have to sit through a commercial if you want to watch them) :
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21723.html
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/21562.html
This one's an interview/trailer:
http://www.gametrailers.com/player/22357.html

Well, I think I've yammered on long enough today. It's almost time for dinner anyway. Since I probably won't update again until after the holidays (we'll be in Arizona!), I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! See ya in 2008... Read the rest of this post