Hunger Games vs. Dinosaurs vs. Aliens

I will appear on Hunger Games Fireside Chat (Episode 8) on Monday, May 23rd at 10:25pm Eastern/7:25pm Pacific:



Fireside Chat is the #1 Hunger Games weekly podcast. I will discuss my essay "Reality Hunger" that appeared in the Hunger Games anthology The Girl Who Was on Fire from Smart Pop Books.

Fireside Chat has a pretty incredible lineup for the whole show and you'll have a good listen even if you're only halfway into the Hunger Games, which just appeared on the cover of Entertainment Weekly (!):




Speaking of big-budget films, Marty Beckerman sent me the following link from Deadline.com, to my un-surprise:

"How Would Aliens Fare Against Dinosaurs? Barry Sonnenfeld Aims To Find Out"



It seems Barry Sonnenfeld (director of Wild Wild West and the MIB soon-to-be-trilogy) has signed a deal with Grant Morrison (comic-book writer, Batman and The Invisibles) to develop a comic and film centered around the concept of dinosaurs battling aliens:

"The graphic novel will chronicle a secret prehistoric world war battle. When an alien invasion attacks Earth in the age of the dinosaurs, the planet's only hope is the giants that roam the planet with, it turns out, a lot more intelligence than previously realized."

Now, in 2003 Marty Beckerman and I came up with a movie concept called DINOSAURS VS. ALIENS:


Dinosaurs Vs. Aliens by Ned Vizzini

I registered the idea myself with the Writer's Guild of America. I didn't put Marty's name on it because I got the impression he thought it was too stupid to go anywhere. In my DINOSAURS VS. ALIENS, we enter a prehistoric world where humans co-exist with dinosaurs, like Creationism or the Flintstones, and humans and intelligent dinos band together to fight an alien invasion. It's JURASSIC PARK meets INDEPENDENCE DAY. This isn't rocket science. Well, there might be some rocket science involved.

I called the WGA today. They confirmed that this idea is registered in my name until July 21, 2013. Barry Sonnenfeld's DINOSAURS VS. ALIENS film will be packaged by WME, the same agency that represents me, so I'm not trying to rock the boat (besides, I love Wild Wild West); I'm just trying to illustrate what Nick Antosca calls the Stephen King Rule:

If you have great idea for a book and you don't write it, Stephen King will write it.

Anybody out there who is sitting on a great movie idea: it will get made, at some point, so you might as well write it.





I answered a new question from 16-year-old writer Lydia for the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers' "Ask A Writer":

"I want to be published some day- and hopefully someday I can turn my short story into a novel. How old do you have to be for all of that to work?"

Read my answer here.



I recently had to change my email-answering policies since I no longer have time to answer all reader mail. (I did answer every single reader mail I received from 2000 to 2011, resulting in situations like this!) From now on I will be answering selected reader mail in my blog entries.

Today's reader mail comes from Alexandra, who writes:

Hello,

I'm an avid reader of your books, and I am writing to invite you to join Goodreads.com, which is the largest community of book lovers online. Because you are a published author, you already have a profile on Goodreads...

PS- I know I just kind of copy-pasted this from the website... but I had no idea how to formulate the request.

Alexandra, you're in luck, as thanks to your request I have joined Goodreads!



I am going to use it to keep a running tally of books I've read. I'm not going to be reviewing things. Not even stars. That's just asking for trouble.