Mario Acevedo's Blog, page 47

S.H.I.T.

So Happy It's Thursday--


Why, you ask? Because I am SO looking forward to this weekend—I’m off with pal Susan Smith to Fairplay for a writers’ retreat. Goal—finish first draft of my sixth book: Retribution. Three days of nothing to think about except writing. The manager of the place (The Hand Hotel) cooks breakfast for us, puts out wine and goodies in the afternoon and prepares dinners to die for. I always get the same room and though I was at first leery of a room called "Trapper", it's the be

The Sounds of Summer

Mario here:

We've been talking a lot about books and movies but nothing about that other art form: music!

Why is it we can hear a song and it takes us back to a specific time and place?

In my house, the radio was set to the Juarez station XELA so I grew up listening to Mexican tunes. It wasn't until I was in junior high that I was exposed to American pop music.


One of the first songs that wowed me was I Got A Line On You, by Spirit. A really cool tune and their only real hit. It's the kind of son

More female villains..

Great post on female villains—Mario and talked about it at critique group and we added Sharon Stone’s character from Basic Instinct.


A couple off the top of my head, Famke Janssen as Phoenix in X-Men


Meryl Streep in the Devil Wears Prada


Natalie Davis the Miniature Killer on CSI


And Sarah Corvus of BSG.




Well, I guess that was four actually.

I think Photographer Leia summed it up best when she said: As for myself I try to avoid things with female villains b/c they can out creep/ out evil the guys in a

Those bad girls

Mario here:

As a follow up to our recent contest, we noticed that while many women were depicted as heros, there were few female villains. So here at the Biting-Edge world headquarters, we squished our brains together and poured through our extensive pop culture files.

Interestingly, the first female villains that came to mind are from Disney.





Queen Maleficent from Sleeping Beauty.










Cruella DeVille from One Hundred and One Dalmations.









Ursula from The Little Mermaid.





In traditional movies we have:





My fa

Romans du coeur - part one

First point of business—public apology to Gina. We had a coffee date yesterday and I got the day wrong. Hopefully, we’ll be able to do it again. I am so sorry.

Then, for all who have prize packages or other goodies coming, watch the mail. They are winging their way across America as we speak.

Topic this week: Favorite books. I followed with interest those of you who posted on Monday. Unfortunately, just got my galleys for Retribution and since they got lost in the mail and I received them on the

It's in the story

Mario here,

We'll be chatting about novels so chime in.

Last week I attended two literary events. First, a reading and signing by Lily Burana.


She's getting lots of press for her newest book, I Love a Man in Uniform: A Memoir of Love, War, and Other Battles. (C-SPAN recorded her appearance.)


Burana is an former punk rocker/stripper who fell in love with an army officer and married him. The book is a witty, incisive look at life as a military wife. You wanted to hate Burana because she was so bea

We have winners...

WOW—we had so many great entries, I’m glad this was random. It would have been impossible to choose based on content. So after numbering the entries, throwing them in a hat for each category (and believe me that wasn’t easy considering some of you lumped heros and villains together) and allowing for multiple entries (here’s a case where more was definitely better) our winners are:


Winner VILLAIN: Brooke Reviews who chose Freddy Krueger. If I'm not even safe in my dreams, where am I safe?!

Brooke

Hero worship

Mario here:

We got a bunch of great candidates for our villains. Now it's time for our heroes contest. Simply post a comment with your hero's name. Remember, we've got prizes to include a Devil Duck. Winners announced Thursday, May 21.


Let's start with a favorite of Jeanne's--Bond, James Bond.


Bookended here by hunks Daniel Craig and Sean Connery.


High on my heroes list is Hawkeye (played by colonial heart throb Daniel Day-Lewis), from Last of the Mohicans.


I'll throw another rock from the Trekki

Now for the Good Guys--

Lots of good entries for the villain contest, now here’s your second chance to win a bunch of goodies by naming your favorite hero—rules are the same—add a comment here or on Monday and we’ll put all the entries in a hat and draw our two winners next Thursday.

I saw the new Star Trek over the weekend. I have mixed feelings. I think the casting was brilliant and the young actors really did their homework. Voice inflections, physical characteristics, the eyebrow thing—all worked.

Somehow, sadly, fo

I interrupt our regularly scheduled program with this new...

I interrupt our regularly scheduled program with this news flash:

From Rachel Smith. founder of Bitten by Books Paranormal Fiction Review Site:

I hope this email finds you well and busy doing what you love most! May marks the first day of a historical mile stone for our review site. We are celebrating our one year anniversary this month! As part of the celebration, this week we are holding a reader poll to choose which popular shapeshifter will win an award from our site. They were chosen by our r