Karen McCullough

This is the Authors In Bloom Blog Post. Scroll down to the end to find out how you can enter to win several prizes.

I love working in my garden. This time of year I wait eagerly for the weather to warm up enough to thaw and dry out the ground so that I can start digging and planning what will go into the garden this year.

We have a comfortable division of gardening duties in our household.  My husband does the vegetable garden. I do the flowers. It’s fine by me. He likes to eat the tomatoes and peppers more than I do anyway, and I’d much rather spend my time cultivating zinnias and strawflowers, lilies and daisies, anyway.

The one gardening tip I give everyone is to be sure you know what you’re planting in your garden. I know from hard experience that it can be a mistake to plant certain things without knowing their habits. A few years ago, my daughter gave me a bunch of spectacular daylilies that had been dug from a friend’s garden. Possibly I should have asked why she’d needed to dig up so many since they pulled up to my house with – literally – a pickup truck full of plants. I know why now, of course. Those things spread like nobody’s business. In just a couple of years they were trying to take over the entire garden area.

And don’t get me started on the morning glories.  My next-door neighbor loves them. I agree that they’re very pretty twining across the fence that separates our yards. They’re not as pretty when the vines reach out and attempt to strangle every other plant in the garden. And I’m forever pulling up morning glory seedlings!

Other plants I’ve regretted either planting myself or living close to include periwinkle, yarrow, and a very thorny rambling rose that insists on rambling over everything within twenty feet of the plant.  No I’m not kidding. Even with a trellis that sucker wants to spread out!

And here is one of my very favorite plants in the garden:

It’s called a black iris, but as you can see, it’s really a deep purple

Now about the prizes:

GRAND PRIZE: We are giving away a Kindle Fire or Nook (winner’s choice) along with a $25 gift card for the same.  We are also giving away a 2nd prize of $25 gift card.  You must visit all the author sites and leave a comment to be eligible.

My PRIZE: I’ll choose from one commenter here to receive a choice of either two ebooks of the winner’s choice from my books available as ebooks or a paperback copy of either A Gift for Murder or A Question of Fire.

Blurb for A Question of Fire: When Catherine Bennett becomes the recipient of a dying man’s last words, she also becomes the target of ruthless killers who think she has something they need.

More info for A Question of Fire here.

Be sure to include your email addie in the post so we can contact the winners!

You can find the list of authors participating here:

I’m wrapping up my observations on The Lego Movie and why I thought it worked so well.  I’ve already talked about the biggest components of good stories: plot, characters, and writing.  There are a few other things that the movie does quite well that add to its appeal.

One of those is all the lovely references to other popular movies. The Star Wars, Star Trek, Matrix, Harry Potter, and Fast and Furious references are so blatant they’re pretty hard to miss. There are lots of Super-heroes showing up here, including WyldStyle’s boyfriend, Batman. I’m sure there are other references that I didn’t get at all. They add spice to an already fun story.

Then there are the lovely little twists and surprises along the way. It’s hard to talk about these without spoiling them, so I’ll just say that some unexpected things happen at various points. I was particularly happy with an interesting little adventure when our heroes have an encounter with the Millennium Falcon. The “Uni-Kitty” is a hilarious mash-up of “Hello Kitty,” unicorns, and “My Little Pony.” But they’re not content to leave the character as a mere running site gag. What they do with her is wonderful. The Good Cop/Bad Cop character, expertly voiced by Liam Neeson, has some particularly interesting developments.

And finally, the world has an amazing internal consistency. Everything is created with legos. Not just the figures and vehicles but buildings, backgrounds and other elements of the story, with just a few exceptions. And the exceptions are important. Again I can’t really talk about what they are because I don’t want to spoil it, but there is a definite element of fun in figuring them out.  One of the most astonishing scenes in the movie occurs when they’re on a ship, sailing over bounding, white-capped waves — all built out of Lego blocks.

One of the big challenges for the makers of The Lego Movie has to have been how to handle characters and characterization.  How do you make a little plastic toy with very limited movements and facial expressions come alive for the movie viewer?

Obviously a great deal depends on the voice actor, who is the primary way that the character is brought to life. They got terrific ones and the voicing went a long way toward making the plastic toys feel like real people.

It needs more, though. Most writers realize that dialogue is more than the spoken word. It includes a wide range of facial expressions and body movements that sometimes convey more information than what’s being said. Someone devised a set of clever motions for the little characters that do a surprisingly good job. When Emmet first meets WyldStyle/Lucy, she twirls her hair around in a way that suggests a woman flipping long hair back off her face. That movement is repeated a couple of times and signals a major change for her. And there are those awesome colorful stripes in her hair. An inspired bit of decoration that says a lot about the character!

Emmet does backflips once or twice and the producers manage to show the entire figure shaking when he’s being interviewed by the Good Cop/Bad Cop. And then there’s the way the movie uses those silly clawed hands of the figures. Frequently, they very nearly touch during moments when characters want to recognize friendship…or more.  It’s more moving then one might expect.

And of course, the faces. They do a lot with changing the big dots that form the eyes, slashes of eyebrows, and the elongated oval mouths. Narrowing the eyes and/or taking ovals out of the circle (like Vitruvius’s below) combined with the various shapes of the mouth (compare the smile on Emmet’s face with the frown on WyldStyle’s in yesterday’s picture.

The changes are frequently subtle (like the way Vitruvius has one eye narrowed in the image in yesterday’s post), but whether or not one is aware of it consciously, we do register the shapes as an expression and react to it as if we were seeing that eye shape on a real person.

Yesterday my hubby dragged me away from the computer to go see The Lego Movie. He’d heard good things about it and wanted to see it. I’d heard “Legos” and wondered why anyone would want to see an extended advertisement for a children’s toy?

Turns out we were both right. It was a surprisingly good and entertaining advertisement for a toy that actually fascinates children and grown-ups alike.

Here’s the official blurb: “The LEGO (R) Movie” is the first-ever, full-length theatrical LEGO (R) adventure. The original 3D computer animated story follows Emmet (Chris Pratt) an ordinary, rules- following, perfectly average LEGO minifigure who is mistakenly identified as the most extraordinary person and the key to saving the world. He is drafted into a fellowship of strangers on an epic quest to stop an evil tyrant, a journey for which Emmet is hopelessly and hilariously underprepared. (c) Warner Bros

The themes were nothing new – how even an average person has some unique abilities; being special depends more on believing in yourself rather than what people think about you; and the quest to resist all change is ultimately futile and destructive.

The development was nothing new either. In fact it was a hodgepodge of scenes from other movies in the action adventure genre, borrowed respectfully and with many knowing winks in the direction of the source materials.

But ultimately the filmmakers did enough things right to keep this film from being boring, cutesy or overly juvenile.

They must have since the movie has a 97% fresh rating over at Rotten Tomatoes.

Mostly for my own self-education as an author, I plan to take a closer look at some of the challenges of making this movie and how the film-makers overcame them.  I’ll be doing a series of posts over the next few days, musing on what made this movie work.

Smashwords is holding one of their periodic ebook promotional events this week, and I’m participating!  This means free and reduced price books.

You can great deals on several of my books.  Use the coupon code on the page to get it free or at the reduced price.

Guardian of the Grimoire, novella length, usually $1.99, is free this week.

The Night Prowlers, a short romantic suspense novel, usually $2.99, is free this week.

Unmasking, a Halloween short story is free.

A Question of Fire, a full length romantic suspense novel usually selling for $3.99 is only $1.00 this week.

The Wizard’s Shield, a full-length romantic urban fantasy novel, usually $3.99 is also only $1.00 this week.

It’s only at Smashwords and only for a week, so don’t wait.

Get ’em while they’re cheap!

And find more books from authors you love on sale at Smashwords at Doranna Durgins’s blog here.