Gin Phillips's Blog, page 5

Edible Books

I’ve spent a lovely couple of days in Toronto thank to Penguin Random House Canada, but this may be the highlight: cookie versions of Fierce Kingdom. So tasty, too.

Book cookies

 

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Coming to A City Near You

I’ve just firmed up the first leg of my FIERCE KINGDOM tour schedule in the U.S., although I hope to add a few more Southern cities in the following weeks. But here’s what I’ve got so far…come by and visit!

July 11–Foxtale Book Shoppe in Woodstock, GA (outside Atlanta)

July 12–Alabama Booksmith in Homewood (Birmingham)

July 13–Square Books in Oxford, Miss.

July 14–Lemuria Books in Jackson, Miss.

July 17–Page & Palette in Fairhope, Al.

July 18–Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale, Az.

July 19–Vroman’s in Pasadena, Calif.

July 20–Town Center Books in Pleasanton, Calif. (Bay Area)

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Possibly The Best Cover Ever

I’ve been lucky with book covers…I’ve liked every one of them for all five of my books, and I’ve loved most of them. (It’s a bit of a different thing in terms of foreign covers. There was an Italian–or was it German?–version of The Well and the Mine done in black and red tones with an apocalyptic-looking cornfield that left me really perplexed.)

I think this FIERCE KINGDOM cover might have just edged itself into the#1 slot, though. (Which bumps Come in and Cover Me down to #2.)

You can’t fully appreciate the 3D effect in this digital version.

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The Tradition of Rudolph

So we have a lot of odd Christmas traditions around my house–we like our traditions to be a little off-kilter. For instance, we make a gingerbread structure each year that is never just a house…one year we did Loch Ness. And we also always watch the old clay-mation  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which we accompany with a reindeer-themed meal.

Spaghetti Rudolph (2014)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pancake Rudolph (2015)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Southern Rudolph with cornbread head, okra eyes, and sweet potato ears (2016)

 

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First Time I’ve Ever Been in Variety

 

Margot Robbie Developing Thriller ‘Beautiful Things’ for Warner Bros.

 

 

 

Margot Robbie Developing Thriller ‘Beautiful Things’ for Warner Bros.

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Halloween: Bad Decisions

So, first of all I love Halloween. Every part of it. Big gaudy decorations and scary movies and trick-or-treating. For a long time I had a huge collection of hideously tacky Halloween earrings–plastic rats and spiders and light-up ghosts. But several years ago a burglar broke into my house while I was out of town, although he was immediately spotted by neighbors who began shouting and banging on windows. Pressed for time, the burglar apparently had time to grab only one thing and make a mad dash for it…and he chose my jewelry box full of plastic Halloween earrings. (In fairness, it was a nice-looking jewelry box.) I have passed many happy minutes imagining the moments after he finally stopped running and opened his prize…and found those plastic rats. Surely the least valuable haul he ever made.

Anyway, of all the things I enjoy about Halloween, costumes are my favorite part. We had our annual Halloween costume party this past weekend, and this year’s theme was BAD DECISIONS.

I should have taken way more photos. We had Donald Trumps, Hillary (and Hillary e-mails), Billy Bush, Blind Man with Seeing-Eye Ferrett, a couple from the Titanic, Aggressive Bible Thumpers, Cat Glitter, Boy With A Pet Alligator, Las Vegas, Woman with 1990s Parrot, Samsung 7, Face Tattoos, 1970s, 1980s, a Hoverboard rider, and surely many other costumes I can’t remember.

Here I am (as the entire 1980s) with a boy with a pet alligator.

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New Book Coming Out!

I’ve just sold my next novel, Beautiful Things, to Viking! My editor will be the wonderful Laura Tisdel, and here is the most shocking part: they plan to release the novel in MAY 2017! That’s an eight-month turn-around from the signing of the contract to the actual book in customer’s hands, which is, oh, maybe half the time it normally takes. And–hey, did I say the release date was the most shocking part?–the book is being released simultaneously in the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.

Crazy. In a really good way.

Here’s a summary of the book:

 

The zoo is nearly empty late one afternoon as Joan and her four-year-old son, Lincoln, soak up the last few minutes of the day. They are playing in a sandpit, half-hidden by tall trees, with the shadows and sunlight shifting over the gravel paths as Lincoln’s action figures announce evil plans and secret weapons. It is something close to perfect. So when Joan hears shots crack through the air, it seems foolish to think the distant sounds are anything other than construction work or practice fireworks for a Halloween celebration.

But as Joan rushes to the zoo exit to make it through the gate before closing time, she freezes at the sight of limp bodies on the ground and a lone, dark figure with a gun. She grabs her son and runs. And for the next three hours—the entire scope of the novel—she keeps on running. She races through the thatched roofs and bamboo fences of the African exhibits, eventually discovering an almost-perfect hiding place. With each passing minute, she deals with distracting a four-year-old at the same time that silence and stillness are essential to survival. It is the first time she has ever felt that keeping her child happy might be at odds with keeping him alive.

Eventually she’s driven into a moonlit zoo full of animal carcasses and glowing moss and the sound of a baby crying. Along the way, she crosses the paths of fellow survivors. And then there are the gunmen themselves, who Joan is determined to analyze and solve. Perhaps if she dissects them thoroughly, she can figure out how to outsmart them.

Ultimately, this story is about the bond between a mother and child. It’s a look at what it means to be a parent—and what it means to be human. It is, more than that, a look at the ways we are bound together, whether we are strangers or family.

 

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A Little Hamilton Lip Sync

For anyone who is obsessed with Hamilton as my entire family is….or, really, for anyone who likes seeing five-year-olds pretend to be singing Founding Fathers….

Here’s a little video.

 

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Top Ten Best Things in San Francisco *

What I Loved About San Francisco in January (in no particular order)…

10) The playground at Mission Dolores Park–When traveling with a four-year-old, you learn about good playgrounds in a city. This one is SPECTACULAR, even though we went there in the rain. And here’s a thing that I learned: did you know that if you slide down a metal slide that is wet, that slide is actually much faster than when it’s dry? Did you know that if you are a full-grown woman, it is possible to actually skip like a stone across the ground for a good ten feet?

This slide is serious when wet.

9) Burma Superstar–Ah, Pumpkin Pork Stew. Ahhhh, Tea Leaf Salad. My new favorite restaurant in the country, I think, maybe displacing Andina in Portland, Ore.

8) Swing Dancing–Okay, so from now on, I am going to try to find a swing dancing club in every city. My husband and I went to the Tuesday Night Hop at the Verdi Club, which felt like the least touristy thing possible as we traded partners all around a circle, trying out moves with a bunch of people who were much better dancers than we are. Live band featuring someone named Stompy Jones. Martinis. Step, step, rock step. A fine, fine evening.

7) Lindy in the Park in Golden Gate Park–So we were biking in Golden Gate Park and could not actually stop to dance, but just the SIGHT of swing dancing in the park was a beautiful thing.

6) Chocolate Morning Bun at Noe Valley Bakery–As tasty a pastry as exists on this planet. Also, this bakery has Golden State Warriors cupcakes! (Also, there is no way this is last food item on my list. Food usually makes up, like, eight of my top ten in any given city.)

5) Turkish Coffee Milkshake at Barney’s Gourmet Hamburgers in Noe Valley–I mean, it’s Turkish coffee. In a milkshake.

4) Noe Valley. All of it.–I am convinced there’s no more lovely neighborhood in the world.

3) The Graveyard at Mission Dolores–I like graveyards. This is a beautiful cemetery, and it was featured in Vertigo. My son played with his football action figures amongst the headstones, and I wandered through the shadows and sunlight.

2)Dog Twins--This is something I would have missed without my son: the city is swarming with people who have purchased identical dogs. We saw a ton of people walking a matched set of dogs–two white poodles or two Labradors or two Saint Bernards, whatever–and this led to my boy screaming”DOG TWINS!” fairly often.

1)Cheese shops–I’ve visited these in Europe, but, man, I can explore cheese much more effectively without a language barrier.

* I feel compelled to mention that my sister-in-law is, actually, at the top of the list.

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Ah, X-Files, I Loved You So

Mulder and Scully. Oh, how I loved you.

A rare moment of resolved sexual tension (RST).

 

Was anyone else out there super-pumped about this new X-Files miniseries? For me it brought up very fond memories, not only of the characters, but of actual real life. Back when I was in my twenties and all my friends were single and there was no DVR-ing, and these things came together with weekly Sunday night suppers and X-Files watching at my house. (Okay, my roommate’s house.) We’d all sit around the TV and squeal every time Mulder put his hand on Scully’s back or leaned in close or took her hand–every time Mulder showed his bare arms or wore a gray T-shirt. Ah, Mulder in a gray T-shirt. (Did I say I was in my twenties? Could I convince you that instead I was in middle school?) We would scream at terrible lines and techno-babble mumbo jumbo and we would poke holes in the show’s ridiculous mythology, and we would in general get far too invested in make-believe people. And then there would be the after-episode rehash, where we sometimes replayed scenes we liked or where we complained about the ways Chris Carter was torturing us or theorized about what might happen next week.

I am not embarrassed to say I was utterly obsessed–this was the first show where I discovered the existence of fan fiction, which had very relevant terms like “shippers” (pro-relationshippers, of course, which was not in the common lexicon back then and had definitely not become a verb) and “UST” (unresolved sexual tension.) But as I look back on the show, I miss those Sunday nights more than the show itself. I can’t think of the last time I watched a show with a half dozen people around, listening to every line and then sitting around for a post-show analysis. (Okay, family, there were those Buffy episodes at Christmas time, but I mean a show airing in real time. Where waiting a whole week until the next episode was part of the pleasure and the fury.)

These new X-Files episodes have brought that back that sense a bit–thanks, all you friends from those Sundays nights who have texted and e-mailed with me in all of our shared frustrations and bitterness over what we watched this past Sunday and Monday night. At least we’re frustrated together.

Inserting length diatribe about miniseries….I mean, come one–we wait for over a decade for these people to get together, which happens in one truly terrible movie where Scully learns to perform brain surgery from the Internet, and the ONLY good thing about that movie was Scully and Mulder in bed together and then–AND THEN–we wait years longer and when we see them again, you’ve broken them up?! And also, as always, the mythology is nonsensical. So now there are no bad aliens or warring factions, and in fact a group of elites is controlling everything from fast food to global warming to wars, assisted by stolen alien technology? And everyone talks about this with a straight face? Where is the playfulness and sheer weirdness? Where is the whimsy? I want whimsy. If you’re going to string together this stupid theory of elites using McDonalds in the name of world domination, give me some friggin’ whimsy with it!

That’s all. But it would be more fun to rant in my roommate’s old basement, everyone talking over each other, curled up on the sofas, drowning our sorrows in bread pudding, hoping the next episode will treat us more kindly next week.

 

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