Kate Danley's Blog, page 35

A kid in need...

Remember that great musical I did a few years back called R.R.R.E.D.? And that frickin' killer actor, Patrick Livingston, who played G.J.? Remember how you just fell in love with him and thought he was just the best?

Well, Patrick stepped away from acting. Why? Because he and his wife decided to adopt a beautiful little baby girl named Daisy, a little girl who needed them desperately.

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You can catch up with all they've been up to at http://patrickandlindsayliv.blogspot.com/.

I received an email from Patrick and Lindsay this weekend. Daisy's birthmom has decided to give Daisy's older, full blooded biological sibling up for adoption. Patrick and Lindsay would love to welcome her into their family and reunite these sisters.

Unfortunately, this came out of the blue and they need about $6,000 to cover the adoption and legal fees.

Won't you consider giving? You can donate through their blog at http://patrickandlindsayliv.blogspot.com.

I know sometimes it's a little hinky to give money to people you don't know, so I'm also going to be offering this gift with purchase/pledge drive challenge.

The Woodcutter is featured this week on the Reader Views newletter, which means my sales will be up. I hereby pledge to donate all net profits from my book sales this week, and will match said profits dollar for dollar.

So if you don't feel like plunking down cash, how about buying a book?

The Woodcutter
CreateSpace Paperback (slower shipping, but max profit)
Amazon Paperback
Amazon E-Book

It's for a good cause. A really adorabe melt your brain with the cuteness cause.

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Seriously.

Doesn't a kid this great deserve to be reunited with her sister?


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Dear family and friends,

As you all know, we have been immeasurably blessed over the last year and a half by our amazing Daisy. Our experience of adopting Daisy was remarkable and happened both very slowly and very quickly! We met with our first adoption agency in early 2008, and waited for nearly two years for our baby to come. She never did. That was the slow part. In December, 2009, we got proactive, and went out and found a new agency. We were matched with Gail, Daisy's birthmother, in mid-January 2010, and Daisy was born five weeks later, on February 22, 2010. We took our daughter home from the hospital on February 24, spent a few weeks with family in Utah, and then flew back to our little home in New Jersey. Every moment since then has been a treasure; we simply cannot imagine our lives without this incredible girl.

About a month ago, Patrick had a feeling that he should stop into our adoption agency to initiate the process of another adoption. We had discussed our desire to add to our little family, and, since our first adoption took nearly two years to complete, we thought we would have plenty of time to save more money, prepare our home, etc. We should have known better! Two weeks ago, our agency worker contacted us about an "opportunity" -- Daisy's birthmother, had decided to place her other daughter, Daisy's full biological sibling, for adoption, and the agency wanted to know if we would be interested.

We were ecstatic. We have often thought about Daisy's sister (who is 2 1/2 years old, just 14 months older than Daisy), and wished they could know one another. Now we have the absolutely amazing opportunity for Daisy to not only know her sister, but play with her, grow up with her, and be with her always. When we spoke to Gail about this opportunity to welcome Daisy's sister into our family, she was overjoyed that we would be the family to raise these girls together. Gail would like to place on July 17, 2011, which, as you can imagine, is sooner than we were expecting when Patrick went into the agency last month!

Since this situation has taken us by surprise, we are not quite financially ready to take advantage of the opportunity. We have saved a large portion of the money we will need to complete the adoption itself, but we thought we would have several months to save up the rest. And so, humbly, we come to you. We realize that many of you are in financially tight situations yourselves, but hope that, if you can, you will help us bring Daisy's sister home. Currently, we are a little more than $6,000 short. Any kind of monetary donation, no matter how small, will help us build our forever family.

We already feel like this little girl is part of our family, and we have no doubt that she was meant to be in our home. Gail is truly an inspiring woman, and we have the utmost respect for her desire to make a better life for her entire family (of which we are now a part), and we will move mountains to make this happen. We are so thankful for all of you and for your support in this endeavor.

You can catch up on our family at our blog: http://patrickandlindsayliv.blogspot.com. You can donate through our blog by clicking on the button in the upper right corner.

We would have loved to have been able to complete this adoption without asking you all for financial help, but we simply are unable to. We will do anything to make this adoption happen; at this point, that includes reaching out to you! If you know of anyone else who may be interested in helping us bring our daughter home, please let us know or forward this email to them.

Thanks so much to those of you that are able to help make this adoption possible.

Love,
Patrick, Lindsay, and Daisy Livingston

Birthday of the Eclipse

Birthday of the Eclipse, originally uploaded by eyduck.

Buddy, my 8 year old bird, got really sick last night and I had to cancel my birthday today in case he decides he's had enough of this mortal coil.



Also last night, as I was cleaning out Jeri's cage (and letting him fly around), the electricity went out. As I crawled on my hands and knees around my apartment finding matches, terrified I would step on him, all I could hear was the sound of him crashing into walls, being absolutely powerless to help (my childhood parakeet died flying into a wall). He is okay. And I am grateful for every one of those smelly candles people have given me over the years.



I decided NOT to let this be foreshadowing of my year to come, rather a byproduct of that awful eclipse last night.



So I'm sitting in pre-shiva at home when the buzzer rings.



Adam-Adam, visiting from Utah, brought me this, in honor of The Birthday of The Eclipse.



It might be one of the greatest gifts I have ever received.

Woodcutter Contest

Economic times are tough. I totally understand. You've been putting of purchasing The Woodcutter until that next paycheck comes through.

Well, in honor of my birthday on Thursday, I've got a little present for you.

I'm doing a Woodcutter giveaway though Goodreads. Click to enter! Good luck!



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Goodreads Book Giveaway








The Woodcutter


by Kate Danley

Giveaway ends June 24, 2011.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Phoenix Party People!

Who has two thumbs and is hitting the Phoenix Comicon? About 14,268 people. Including this gal!

Out Of Character, creator of the Sock Zombie

Sock Zombie: the Movie! - watch more funny videos
is hosting

Mr. Giddy



Giddy Girlie



And yours truly for a Phoenix Comicon Weekend of AWESOME!

Out of Character's legion of undead foot warmers will be there to take over the world. Hope you have prepared your survival kit! Mr. Giddy will be off signing and inking, so stop by his table for all the low down on Batman. And then Giddy Girlie has been kind enough to share her table with me to host a Woodcutter signing event!



My kid sister has also decided that dogs are pretty super, and deserve their own superhero status, so get a super bow for your super pet! Christy Bows! Doo-doo-dooo-DOOOdle-dooo-DOOO! (that was heroic superhero music being played on a trumpet)



My brain is about to explode from all the awesome That Will Be Had. PREPARE THYSELF!

Next Generation Indie Book Awards

It's officially offical! It is on the internets and they can't take it back now! The Woodcutter has won the Sci-Fi/Fantasy category in the 2011 Next Generation Indie Book Awards! In honor of this proud day, I have updated the cover to reflect the awesomeness!



I'm running out of room. I'm going to have to start wrapping around the margins. It is a glorious problem to have.

As part of this award, I get some stickers and a certificate and a Winner medal I can wear around my neck and a cash prize. I PROMISE to take pictures as soon as those things come in. I hope the cash prize comes as one of those huge novelty checks, because I think that would be TEH BEST IN THE WORLD! I might make one for myself JUST BECAUSE.

And as if that was not enough, the part that pretty much floors me is that my book is now being reviewed for representation. It is being featured in a catalog being distributed next week at New York Book Week. If I didn't have an immovable meeting at work that means having a job or not, there is an awards ceremony at the Plaza Hotel that I was invited to attend. As an honoree.

I just look back at all those years of rejection letters... I look at that rejection letter for my 2nd novel I just got last week. I look at the rejection letters I got for The Woodcutter even after all of these awards.

Shut door after shut door after shut door...

I think about the fact my book sat on my hard drive and if it wasn't for a well timed email and the fact we are living in the future, when a girl can upload her manuscript and be a published author, The Woodcutter would still be living on my hard drive and no one would have ever met these characters that I had fallen in love with, characters that whispered their story into my ears as I would try to sleep or try to get through a day or try to go somewhere. They really wanted their story to be told.

And so I uploaded the book.

And then something remarkable happened that you, yes you reading this, I know who you are, you supported me with your kind words and that geniuine look in your eyes when you said it was not just good, it was really really good. It made you cry. You went back and read it a second time because you wanted to experience it again. You passed on The Woodcutter to your friends. You bought copies as Christmas presents. You brought it to your book club and forced them to read it. You wrote reviews and tagged my book and gave me ratings and tweeted and blogged about it and loved it so much, you asked if you could make an audiobook of it or could you draw the cover.

And I realized you weren't just being polite. That this thing actually WAS good. That maybe The Man didn't know what He was talking about. Maybe He could go flush his head.

And then a little more light came in to dispel the darkness in the form of the Indie Book Awards.


Dear Rest of the World,

Remember how you said that my book The Woodcutter wasn't good enough?

Thanks for sharing.

Signed,
This Indie Book Award Winner & Her Fucking Rad Gang

Just a reminder fellow artists...

No Sleeping, originally uploaded by eyduck.

Once more with feeling

Friday, May 6th (yes, as in tomorrow), we're bringing back Murder by Acme for an encore performance.

Seriously, such a fun show. It is old skool Acme, long form, story driven improv. It's creepy and twisted and the audience hoots and hollers and plays a great big role in the show.

9:00PM
Friday, May 6th
Acme Comedy Theater
135 N. La Brea Ave
Hollywood, CA 90036
Tickets are $8 online
$12 at the door

Burbank Book Festival!

Burbank Book Festival!, originally uploaded by eyduck.

This Saturday, May 7th, from 1:00-4:00PM, I will be doing a book signing of The Woodcutter at the Burbank Book Festival with 100+ other Burbank authors as part of the Burbank Centennial Celebration. Come out! The library is pretty!

Buena Vista Branch Library
300 N. Buena Vista St.
Burbank, CA

www.burbanklibrary.com

The Woodcutter Audio Book

"Hey Kate! Wanna do an audio book?"

That's sort of the summation of an email I received about a month ago from my buddy James Cutts, whom you might know from our Fall of Paul webseries. We had done some of my favorite sketches together at the Acme and his departure to the far reaches of Northern California (which is like, all the way up in the Bay area which I think is like, in Canada or something) was a sad, sad day indeed.

He and some other people (I'm looking at you Adam-Adam) had been asking about when I was going to get my butt in gear and take that next logical step for an out-of-work-actress-turned-author and read my gawddamned book into a frickin' mic and put out an an audio book, gosh darn it.

But, you know, things kept distracting me. You know. Important things like making sure I got caught up on all the 30 Rock episodes before my Hulu Plus membership expired.

But The Masses would not be deterred!

Like the Argentinian people, the public (all two of them) continued their relentless demand. And when faced with riots and revolt, who am I to not step out onto the balcony in my best Eva Peron ballgown? Besides, I really like ballgowns. Stick a tiara on me, and I can clean my house all day. What? Who cleans their house in a tiara? That would be crazy.

So I said to James, "Hellz yes I would do an audio book. Hellz to the yes."

A buddy of his, the super talented Marc Weibel, was wanting to branch out into audio books and it seemed a natural fit. And not natural like LA Beach Body Botox natural. Natural natural fit.

I was flown up to the city, put up at a schwanky hotel, and arrived at the GORGEOUS Studio Trilogy (that rumor has it, a certain star, whose name is a synonym to Woman Goo Goo, was at just a few weeks earlier. See what you get when you read my blog? Name dropping AND word games. You're smart to stick around) and we started a three day recording odyssey in which I learned I have fat cheeks and my lips like to get caught on my teeth.



Gosh, there's a lot of things you learn about yourself when you read aloud for twenty hours. I recommend it to everyone!


(This picture was totally staged. Don't let them fool you. Whenever they disappeared outside the view of my window, I'm pretty sure they were playing foosball and telling fart jokes)

The final printed version of The Woodcutter that I was reading from was ten pounds of paper. For real. TEN. POUNDS. OF. PAPER. 400 pages. And we did it. Start to finish.

I even got an evening to tool around.

I made a promise to my ten year old self that everytime I returned to San Francisco, I would visit The Palace of Fine Arts.


I managed to keep that promise one more time

I got down to Ghirardelli Square and bought myself a celebratory ice cream sundae. I didn't get a picture. Just imagine vanilla ice cream, chocolate covered strawberries and hot fudge. You're welcome.

I then strolled down past the cable car turn around and down to Fisherman's Wharf (which is delightful in the non-tourist season), where I grabbed some street calamari, and then promptly threw it away realizing now was probably not the time to play chicken with a game of food poisoning. It looked like really good FRIED SQUID though (I always get a giggle that folks call it calamari, all fancy like. FRIED SQUID! IT IS FRIED SQUID!)

I then stumbled upon the penny arcade. When I was a kid, this place was in the basement of The Cliff House. But now it's over at Fisherman's Wharf!



So, not to go saying I'm special (subtext: I'M MORE SPECIAL THAN ANYBODY!), but being a military brat and moving around so much, I wasn't around to watch the places from my childhood morph into something else and have the memories grow with the changes. Things are either Still There or Not Still There. End of story. So, it was really cool, after discovering this place was gone a few years back when I was at the Cliff House, to stumbling upon it in the darkness and walking in and seeing things just as they were when I was a kid. It was great to find something that was Still There.

So, anyhoogle. This post is longer than anyone cares about. I will shut up now. I promise. After a brief summary.

In summary, I found the San Francisco climate to be charming and the sights of the city enough to warm any chill brought about by the brief stints of fog...

Who is writing this?

The audio book is gonna be kickass. It should come out mid-to-late May. I'll keep you informed. In the meantime, tell your friends they can release that breath they were holding. IT HAS BEEN RECORDED! BREATHE AGAIN!

Dark this week

The Acme is dark this week, so how about some videos from the vault?