Scott Westerfeld at Red Balloon

I made a rare venture out on a Friday evening to join the crowd at Red Balloon Bookstore in St Paul.

Author Scott Westerfeld gave a talk on the history behind his Leviathan stories, showing illustrations from the book and talking about illustrated books generally.

He'd show a picture such as this



and talk about the back and forth conversation between himself and illustrator Keith Thompson about what was in the picture and how it reflected or didn't what was going on in the story or what might be happening next.

I always assumed that the author would just write the tale and the illustrator would go back and illustrate scenes of interest. I wouldn't have guessed the level of storytelling collaboration involved. Fascinating process!

Scott is meeting soon with the folks at Wizards of the Coast to produce a Steampunk card game. The crowd was very interested!

He is also meeting with a company in Los Angeles about the effects for transforming faces and figures for an Uglies movie.

Great things ahead.

My Name in Lights! Fortune and Glory!

Fortune and Glory is mine, I'm quite sure (Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom reference, thus the cute Lego Indy...great game by the way, buy it now!).

Scott Westerfeld posted my Uglies series cartoon on his blog Westerblog He also places me in the post heading with hurricane Gustav!!!!! Hurricane D.O.A. will surely be the next step in my ascension :) He also kindly linked visitors to D.O.A. Central, aka this blog.

Since I gloriously have tomorrow off, I'll be writing and posting my Uglies series review. Also, off I go to Barnes and Noble to pick up the Midnighters Series, which has always sounded intriguing, and his first book in the Succession series "Risen Empire".

D.O.A. Recommends Scott Westerfeld's Uglies Series

CLICK TO SEE FULL CARTOON

I'm not really ready to write my review, but I did do the cartoon last week and I might as well put the beginnings of the post out here. I have had an actual comment on the icky spam graphic in the previous post by non other than D.O.A. Spouse. He wrote in the comment box, behold! This means deep deep things. The wondrous Floating Lush also called it "gross" maybe even "really gross". And my favorite game designer in training "Super B" doesn't care for it either. He wants the picture of Nosferatu I used with my vampires for teens list to always be at the top of the D.O.A. page. Lush will explain to him that there is already a Vampire Librarian blog so that would be not so charming as he thinks.

So, anywho, this intro is *not* the review. There is alot to think about when reading the four (so far) novels in the "Uglies Trilogy". How I love a trilogy that keeps on ticking! The novels in the series are:

Uglies
Pretties
Specials
Extras

The main character in the first three novels is Tally Youngblood. She is typical for an "Ugly" in her society--just waiting to turn 16 and have major surgeries that will transform her mind, body, and life. I really enjoyed following this character through her enforced tranformations.

The society she lives in is revealed very cleverly in each new novel. Like many dystopian novels, what seems a perfect society and life for its inhabitants is slowly revealed to be something very different. What struck me however as I read each one was, that I could see how the citizens of the city Tally lives in could enjoy the lives set out for them. It wasn't just a big black and white "society controls its people, society is evil" theme. The story and the society itself was multi-layered, and terribly flawed, but fascinating. More when I have more time to write.