SOMETHING ROTTEN

Look, Ma, I'm on Rotten Tomatoes!

I guess if you do something long enough, somebody is bound to notice.

The busy elves over at RT have uploaded 94(!) of my Good Times reviews from the last couple of years onto the site.

I'm right up there with the big kids from the Chicago Sun Times and New York Magazine (among many others).

I even get my own page, listing all my reviews, with links to the movie pages in question!

This is kind of a cool deal. Color me stoked!

ANTICIPATION

Hey, film fans!

Remember that upcoming Guillermo del Toro movie, The Shape Of Water, I was fangirling all over a few posts back? No, I haven't seen it — it comes out December 8 — but the gender-bent Little Mermaid meets The Creature From the Black Lagoon, meets Beauty and the Beast vibe has me drooling in anticipation!

Maestro del Toro calls it a Cold War Fairy Tale!

Well, a new, expanded trailer has just been released. And, naturally, since we're all buds, I thought I'd share it with you.

And speaking of breathless anticipation, what's up with Game of Thrones?

Season 7 ended at the end of August.

But Season 8 — the FINAL SEASON! — isn't scheduled to be broadcast until (gah!) 2019!

Feeling blue? Who isn't?

But cheer up with this reel of on-set Game of Thrones bloopers!

You're welcome!

CERTIFIED FRESH

And to top off a kind of amazing week, I was just invited to join the roster of "Tomatometer-approved" film critics over at Rotten Tomatoes!

This is a big thrill for me. I've loved this site forever!

It's always fun for me, when I've finished writing my own review, to cruise over to RT and see what other critics are saying. Sometimes, my opinion agrees with the majority, but often not.

(Seriously, 92% Fresh for A Ghost Story? What movie did these people see?)

I'm told it may take a couple of weeks for them to start adding my reviews to the site. I'll let you know when I see one!

IT'S A BOOK!

And the hits keep coming!

So excited get my Advance Reading Copies (ARCs) for BEAST!
It's a book!

Or book-like, anyway. The actual print edition of Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge, will be in hardcover, due July 10, 2018.

My lovely publicist at Candlewick Press is preparing a list of book-bloggers to send them to.

Let me know of you're interested!

Can't wait to share my Beast with the world!

COVER REVEAL!

Hey, folks!

For a while now, the artisan elves over at Candlewick Press have been hard at work on the cover art for Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge.

And now, at last, I get to share it with you!

Et, voila!

My story takes place in the French countryside, at the dawn of the 17th Century, more than 100 years before the tale we recognize now as Beauty and the Beast was written down in book form (first by Madame de Villeneuve in 1740, then retold by Madame de Beaumont in 1756).

My narrative imagines what the real story might have been behind the familiar fairy tale we all think we know. And the Gothic touches in this image evoke the dark, romantic mood of my story.

I've been extraordinarily lucky in all my cover designs. Just look at those three, cool Alias Hook covers over there to your right:  The US edition from Thomas Dunne Books, the audiobook from Blackstone, and the original UK edition from Snowbooks, a symphony in gold foil-on-black.

This beauteous Beast cover carries on that tradition!

I couldn't be more thrilled! What do you think?