I love this segment

I do segments for BETTER almost every day, but sometims there's a segment that just stands out. I love this one - not because of my amazing producer skills - but because the topic is so heartfelt.

Peter Yarrow, of 60s folk legends Peter, Paul and Mary, is continuing his work in the peace movement by empowering school children through a program called "DON'T LAUGH AT ME."

Take a look!

Oh and yes, I got to hear Puff, the Magic Dragon sung live and in person. My life is complete!! :)

Marianne

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!

While yesterday we were out and about, running five miles, going to eat BBQ at the famous Dinosaur in Harlem, and then watching Terminator Salvation, today has been much more low-key. Which is fine - sometimes you need a down day to recover from the week.

On Weds I had dinner and drinks with my agent and we brainstormed some for The Camelot Code. I really think the story is starting to click for me. It's such a bigger tale than when I started the first version - in fact, likely the biggest story I've ever written. In this version there's a lot more fantasy elements and plot threads drawn from Arthurian legend. Which I like, being a big King Arthur junkie and all. At times it feels like The Neverending Story but I think when it is finally completed it will be the best thing I've ever written.

I was just thinking how this fall/winter is going to be a big release time for me.

October: BOYS THAT BITE re-release
November: STAKE THAT re-release
December: GIRLS THAT GROWL re-release
January: BAD BLOOD
MY BLOOD VALENTINE ANTHOLOGY
Spring: GAMER GIRL trade paperback release

And then what next? I'm not sure. But I have a ton of ideas! It's just a matter of picking one. I will say I'm having fun writing the fantasy elements of Camelot Code so a fantasy novel wouldn't be out of the question.

Let's see, what else? Last week at work I interviewed actress Julianne Moore. She was very nice and down-to-Earth. She was talking about her new children's picture book, Strawberry Freckleface. Wonder who that was based on? *smile*

This weekend is BEA - The Book Expo of America. I'm going to attend on Friday for my day job to see what I can find for books/story ideas for the next year. Should be fun. One of the media breakfasts I'm going to has both author Meg Cabot and actress Julie Andrews.

And then on Saturday Jacob and I are having people over for a THANKSGIVING IN MAY party. Which is basically just as it sounds. We'll be cooking a turkey with all the trimmings. Cause really, Thanksgiving is too good not to come twice a year. It'll also be kind of a housewarming party for the new apartment. Hopefully we'll have good weather so people can hang out on the balcony.

Then the following weekend we're going to the horror convention FANGORIA and then the following weekend after that Jacob's parents are coming for a visit. So lots of great summer stuff coming up.

OK I'm off! Happy Memorial Day Weekend!!
MARIANNE

Florida Fun!

This past weekend Jacob and I headed down to Hobe Sound, Florida to spend some time with my mom on her birthday. She lives about a mile from the beach and it was great to relax and enjoy some warm, non-rainy weather for once.

We stayed at a great hotel called The Jupiter Beach Hotel which was right on the water. Two thumbs up. Except that their waffles tasted like vinegar. Or maybe orange juice. Bad after taste, whatever they were.

ANYWAY...

We swam in the ocean, ate out at my favorite chain steakhouse, Longhorns, danced to a 60s/70s cover band at a local bar, and I even signed books at a local Barnes and Noble. A very good time!!

Some photos:

The beautiful, greenish waters of the Atlantic, right outside our hotel.

And there was also a nice pool.





Doesn't Jacob look relaxed?




That was before he had to fix Mom's computer!





Me, reading a book at Mom's. Ravens of Avalon by Diana Paxon, in case you're wondering. Pre-Arthurian fantasy.





Mom and I outside the hotel.





Signing books at Barnes and Noble. They get more excited when you come down south to sign books. Most NYC booksellers could care less about authors. I guess they're a dime a dozen here.





My mom found it amusing that I wanted to go in Hot Topic. I have to admit, I did feel like a bit of a narc in there. But hey - it's research. And besides, I bought some awesome flip flops.





Of course no visit to the 'burbs can be complete without a visit to Dairy Queen! Oh Blizard - I love you so!





All in all, it was a great trip! Happy birthday, Mom!

Teen Read Night

Last night I went to the monthly Teen Read Night at the Jefferson Market NYPL in the Village. (Great library, btw. It's like a freaking castle.) These nights, hosted by the amazing David Leviathan of Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist fame (as well as Executive Editor (or some similiar such title) at Scholastic). David was the BEST moderator. He was funny and interesting and, most importantly, kept it all on track and on time.

The authors reading were also great. All funny, contemporary stories, which was refreshing, seeing the current overload of dark paranormal. (Author Melissa Walker, who was also there, said these nights are often full of contemp authors and suggested perhaps the dark fantasy authors live somewhere else? An interesting theory, to say the least...)

My favorite read of the night was for my Dutton sister author, Sarah Cross, and her book DULL BOY(just released today!) I've been hearing a lot of buzz on this book, but had no idea how awesome would actually be. So funny! I totally need to pick up a copy this afternoon.

Also there were Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus - authors of "The Nanny Diaries" who evidently are writing YA now. Their first book, The Real Real, is about a reality show. Or behind the scenes of one, I guess. The authors were fun and down to earth, esp considering their high profile status. And the excerpt was funny.

Other authors included Nick Burd, The Vast Fields of Ordinary - a gay coming of age story. Susane Colasanti, Waiting for You. (I liked that Susane told us (when someone asked how did she know how to speak YA) "My internal age is 16." I'm going to have to use that from now.) Jenny Han, The Summer I Turned Pretty and Kieran Scott, Geek Magnet. There wasn't one bad book in the bunch!!

After the reading, Leanna and I went and grabbed Thai food and caught up. All in all a very fun night! I'm definitely going to go again next month!

MARIANNE

Romantic Times Convention Recap Video

Liz and I put together a little 10 minute documentary on the Romantic Times Convention that took place in Orlando, Florida last month. Take a look!

Romantic Times Convention Recap from Marianne Mancusi on Vimeo.

Molly's new haircut

Everyone keeps asking for pics of MY new haircut. But to hold you over - here's Molly's!! :) And yes, I made her howl for the video!

It's her birthday on Monday - she'll be 13 years old! Quite the old lady. But everyone (and I mean EVERYONE) asks if she's a puppy when we go on walks.

:)
Marianne

My deck view

This video's for my dad, who wanted to see my Statue of Liberty deck view. (And anyone else who's curious.) They've been shooting fireworks over it every Saturday night. Maybe one weekend I'll have motivation enough to set up my videocamera to catch them!

Pardon the wind noise on the video - windy morning on the water!

Friday

It's Friday! And I figure I haven't blogged in a while and should do a quick update before my family thinks I'm dead.

NEWS IN MY WORLD:

Got a grill! It's a Weber Q 200 which is perfect size for our balcony. I believe my dad has the same one. Works great and Jacob's already fired it up several times this week. We've had steak and chicken and hot dogs on it and all were delish. Of course most nights he's bbq'ing in the rain - hopefully the weather will clear up SOMEDAY and we'll be able to sit out on the balcony to eat. Hmm...maybe tonight.

Speaking of the balcony - saw some great fireworks over the Statue of Liberty from it last weekend. It's going to be the perfect Fourth of July party pad.

This week's surprise in the writing world - I saw a big jump in booksales for my vampire series and when I investigated, I discovered Barnes and Noble had done a huge nationwide buy for all three books in the series. Which is awesome, seeing as these are the old covers and it's not even re-release time! I chalk it up to vampires being so hot right now. In any case, I checked out three Barnes and Nobles in my area and in each one all three books were displayed prominently on walls that advertised "VAMPIRE BOOKS". Yay! It makes me so happy cause this is what I always wanted for the series - good distribution and placement - and could never seem to get. I admit in the past I always felt a little envious passing through the YA sections and seeing the vampire wall without any of my books on it. So it's so nice to be included at last! :) Fingers crossed they do well - I so want to write a fifth book in the series!

Celebs I interviewed this week: Peter Farrow (of Peter, Paul and Mary), Ivanka Trump, and two of the Real Housewives of NJ. Thumbs up on Peter and Real Housewives. Thumbs way, way down on Ivanka.

Molly got a cute summer haircut today. We used a mobile groomer - meaning they come to your dog and pick the dog up and do the whole thing right in the van. She looks adorable and like a puppy again!

That's all I can think of right now! Happy weekend everyone!

Marianne

Fan Art

I like to check Deviant Art sometimes to see what people have drawn based on my books. Here are some I've found recently. If YOU have a drawing, you can always send it directly to me!! :) I love to get them!

Gamer Girl by Mari Mancusi by ~BlueFireFoxChibi on deviantART

Gamer girl cover by ~Darkness-Rakiri on deviantART

More Romantic Times Convention

A couple more pics from the Romantic Times Convention in Orlando.

What romance book covers looked like in the eighties. Ew!! Mustache!!

ME - as RAYNIE THE VAMPIRE SLAYER!! w00t!!! (With and without mask...)








Staking author Leanna Hieber as she attempts to do her edits.





Texting fairies

Back from the Romantic Times Convention

I'm back from the Romantic Times Booklovers Convention where I spent a week hanging out with readers and writers - giving workshops and going to costume parties. So much fun! Plus it was in Orlando so the weather was amazing! Got to go swimming and on my last day I went to Disney World! w00t!

I'm waiting for my friend Liz to post pics so I'll have more to show you. Here's a couple I found from other people's sites. The first is me and Liz dressed as gothic lolita fairies. (Everyone thought I was a french maid though!)

And here's me - much more conservatively dressed! - at the booksigning.




I moderated the Young Adult Writing Panel and had some terrific panelists. Melissa Marr, Rachel Vincent, Stacey Kade, Jennifer Lynne Barnes, Lucienne Diver, and Caitlin Kittredge. I love when I am on panels where I learn something myself!

There was also a great urban fantasy panel I participated in, moderated by Richelle Mead of Vampire Academy fame. She is so pretty - I love her red hair! It was a fun panel as well.

Speaking of hair, Caitlin Kittredge had amazing pink streaks in hers. Which was completely awesome. She's working on a Steampunk book for teens - can't wait for that!

Melissa Marr told me when she grew up she wanted to dress just like me. Which was funny since a few hours before I said to my friend, "When I grow up I want to write just like Melissa Marr." I think she has a better chance of my wardrobe than I do of equaling her literary prowess, but oh well. She was so nice and interesting and smart. I would have loved to take her class back when she was teaching. I'm reading her third fairy book - Fragile Eternity - now. If you haven't started reading this series, you really should!

More to come soon...including video!!! :) For now, I'm exhausted and glad to be home! Still - I can't wait for next year!

MARIANNE

Went hiking yesterday up by Cold Spring, NY. It was a 5.9 loop that followed the Three Lakes trail and part of the Appalachian Mountain Trail. It was a decent hike, but I think if I did it a second time, I'd do it backwards. The first part was very beautiful, with a nice large lake to sit by and let Molly swim in. The second part was more hilly and rocky and less scenic. You don't want your major climb to be at the end of your hike. But in all, it was very nice - beautiful weather, too! Couldn't ask for a better day. Molly got very muddy so we gave her a bath afterwards. She wasn't thrilled.



We got home and ordered pizza (Jacob gets his with no cheese!) and watched Return of the Living Dead Part 3, which was actually a decent horror movie. Much better than the first two, which tried to be funny and ended up just being silly/cheesy. It's okay if horror movies are unintentionally funny cause they're just so bad - but when they TRY to make them funny, they just fall flat. With the exception of Shaun of the Dead. That was truly funny. Oh and Evil Dead is pretty funny, too. In any case, we're going through all the zombie films because I'm currently writing a zombie story for a romantic comedy anthology called "My Zombie Valentine" which will be out in January. My story takes place on the set of a zombie film.

It's supposed to be yucky and overcast today - I guess we get only one day of good weather at a time. At least I'm going to Orlando on Tuesday for the Romantic Times Convention. Of course you know the second I get there, the weather in New York will get nice. That's always how it happens. But hey, then at least Jacob can benefit!

Marianne

Eileen Fulton

Also wanted to post this Eileen Fulton of As the World Turns segment I did for Better TV, as I talked about it before. Got to love the old time soap clips!

Weekly wrap-up

Sorry for the lack of blog updates. I think my twitter obsession is making blogging feel like a chore. I mean, why write a whole post when I can just update with a one-liner on Twitter? Which reminds me, I'm mariannemancusi on Twitter if you want to follow me. :)

For those of you following old skool style on the blog, here's my week in a nutshell.

Easter - good. Bought a honey baked ham and brought it to Chris's for dinner. For the record, I don't like ham. But I know everyone else does and so I made the ham sacrifice. I filled up on delicious potatoes and vegetables and two helpings of ice cream sundaes so don't feel bad for me! :)

Tuesday I shot a segment at Rosa Mexicano on Cinco de Mayo food and drinks. Yum! They made some Ceviche with tuna that was extremely delish! I love that place - Jacob and I last went there for Valentine's Day. Dying to go back already!

Tuesday night I met up with Leanna and we went to Vynl - this hipster diner on the west side that features classic musical memorabilia. The menus are made out of old record covers and the bathrooms are shrines to various musicians like Elvis or Boy George. (They even play a song by the featured musician in the stall!)

Tuesday was the only night I didn't go to the gym, by the way. Have turned into a regular gym rat with the fitness center right downstairs from my apartment. I ran five miles on Monday! Signed up for a 5k race in June through my company, too.

Jacob's been going to the gym with me too. Except for last night, after him and his friends had a contest as to who could eat a triple king Fatburger the fastest. That's 1.5 pounds of hamburger, people! Jacob got third place and was kind of ill the rest of the evening. I feel sick even thinking about it!

This weekend we're going to try to go hiking up in the Cold Spring area on Saturday since we FINALLY have some good weather on the way!! It's supposed to be 70 and sunny. Fingers crossed! Molly will definitely enjoy a romp in the woods.

Speaking of Molly, she's been a vast help at devouring the leftover honey baked ham. I guess I owe her one!

That's about all for now! I'll try to post again soon!

Marianne

Friday!

And it's good. ;-)

Been a busy week, but what else is new, right? I've also been working out a storm these last few weeks. Doing five workouts a week down in my apartment's fitness center. Today I went and took a spin class at lunch at Equinox. Man, my thighs are jello now! Makes me realize I need to not cross-train a bit more.

Today I'm participating in a makeover segment for my show. Going to get my hair cut and colored. And guess what? I'm totally chopping it all off. I'm sick of long hair and need a change. Will post some pics when it's done.

Things have been going swimmingly for The Camelot Code 3.0 - my agent says it's my best work yet! It's a challenge, that's for sure, but I'm feeling good about it - learning a lot! It's funny - some books are so easy to write and some are just bears. This is a bear. A grizzly. But it may just end up being my best book. Yay!

Less than two weeks for the RT Convetion in Orlando. Can not WAIT. Not only do I love the RT convention, but I love my friends who live in Orlando even more.

That's about all for now - wish me luck on the haircut!! :)

HAPPY EASTER! May the Easter bunny bring you lots of peeps! (He already sent me some in the mail!! Thank you Easter Bunny!!!)

MARIANNE

Just ordered this Gothic Lolita dress...

For the RT Convention. Most likely will wear it to the vampire party.

You like? Will post pics of me actually wearing it when I get to the con.

MARI

Dog Abuse

This makes me LOL.

Disappointed Dogs in Star Wars Costumes - watch more funny videos

As the World Turns

Today I got the special treat of interviewing Eileen Fulton who has played bad girl Lisa on the As the World Turns soap for nearly fifty years. Eileen lives in a gorgeous apartment on the Upper East Side and insisted we have tea and cookies before we began our shoot. (Which was absolutely fine with my cameraman and I!)

She told tales of what it was like in the old days of soaps where married couples had to sleep in twin beds and you couldn't say the word "pregnant" on the air. (She threatened to say it once - insisting her character wouldn't say "since I'm with Bob's child" when talking to her on-screen mother in real life. She got the suits all in a fuss - remember it was live TV back then! - and it could have gotten them taken off air.) She also talked about how fans, especially back in the early days, couldn't recognize that the actors weren't actually their characters in real life and how that led to her getting punched in the face by a woman in a Chanel suit who didn't like Lisa's bad girl antics.

Anyway, it was fascinating to hear her stories - many of which were similar to those I've heard in the past from my own step-grandmother, Kathryn Hays, who incidentally has also been on As the World Turns for more than thirty-five years.

It's sad to think that soaps are a dying institution (Guiding Light being the latest casualty) and the cheaper reality TV is fast taking their place. I guess why bother paying writers for storylines when you can just point a camera at someone and they'll conjure up real life, unscripted drama at the drop of a hat. Yet, there was a certain glamour to the soaps that is not easily replicated by reality stars and I hope someday things will turn around again and make them relevent to a new generation.

Marianne

Gamer Girl in Associated Press article!

Gamer Girl got a nice mention in an AP article today on Scholastic Book Fairs. Pretty cool!

You can read the whole article here. But here's the blurb for my part:

They purchased Stephenie Meyer's "Twilight" novels, the latest "Diary of a Wimpy Kid" and Linda Gerber's "Death by Latte," a mystery set in part at a Seattle coffee shop. Ashley Zhang, another seventh grader, bought Mari Mancusi's "Gamer Girl," featuring a lonely high-schooler who becomes a star when playing online games.

"I borrowed it from a friend and thought it was fascinating. I like that it's about a girl who really wants to fit into the world," Zhang says.

:)
MARI

Zombie Shoes!!

Megan sent me a link to these! LOVE! I wish they had my size...