Catch Roadhouse Joe Blues Band This Weekend

Two full nights of live gritty hard blues with Roadhouse Joe. Catch them tonight at Denver's hottest new venue in NoDo, Casselman's Bar & Venue, 2620 Walnut St., Denver. Benjamin Wells will open the show at 8pm and Roadhouse Joe will take the stage at 10pm. The venue is promoting the show at the Rockies game only 5 blocks away, so when the game ends the music begins. Bring your Rockies ticket stub for a free beer!

Then tomorrow night head on over to Zephyr Lounge, 11940 E. Colfax Ave in Aurora as Roadhouse Joe rocks down the house at 9pm.

Both shows have no cover charge, must be 21+.

Roadhouse Joe at the Little Bear Saloon

Since the Nuggets are off tonight why not head up to the Little Bear Saloon in Evergreen for some hard blues and full tilt boogie with Roadhouse Joe. The blues start at 8pm, for more information and directions visit Roadhouse Joe's website, roadhousejoe.com.

They had the house rockin' at The Barking Goat last Friday night.

Roadhouse Joe Buffalo Rose Snapshots

A few "blue" snapshots of the blues band Roadhouse Joe at the Buffalo Rose in Golden CO, last Thursday night. Great music, crowd and spirits. If you are going to be in the Denver area this Friday, come check out Roadhouse Joe for some hard blues and full tilt boogie at The Barking Goat Tavern, 363 Village Square Lance, Castle Rock, no cover.

Free Kibble

I received an email today from Free Kibble that their site has generated enough kibble to feed over 500,000 nutritious meals to homeless dogs and cats across the country. If you are not familiar with this site, freekibble.com, was created by Mimi Ausland, an Oregon 12-year old, who wanted to help feed hungry animals. Every day you can go to freekibble.com and answer a trivia question (Bow Wow Trivia) and they will donate 10 pieces of kibble to animal shelters to feed hungry dogs. Then you can go to freekibblekat.com and play Meow Trivia to help shelters feed hungry cats.



If you haven't been to this site, check it out. It is a fun and wonderful way to support our loving fine furry friends.

Pygmy Hippo

I heard about this on the news last night, I had no idea there even were pygmy hippos, but my gosh, how CUTE!!! My sister said that her beagles would be bigger than this.

Sister's Halloween Party

Still recovering from the Annual Martin Macabre All Hallows Eve Ball from this past weekend. My sister puts it on and it is always a “spooktacular” event from the intriguing invitations to the eerie edibles.

She totally out did herself on the invites, which were coffins...and not the kind out of paper. They were decorated miniature wooden coffins with the invites inside. And did I mention they glowed in the dark? Oh yes my fine fiendish friends, they so glowed in the dark.

She served spider-spun confections, phantom pizza pies, and chilling desserts. Her table decorations were simply sinister and I was quite impressed with the feature she had at the head of the table, though it was not.




After devouring our feast, we all gathered around and watched the lyrical tale of personal hygiene gone awry, Sweeney Todd.

It was a marvelously macabre evening.



Here is one of the awesome invitations she made:

Happy Halloween!!!

The Night of All Hallows Eve
by IHN

Twas the night of All Hallow’s Eve, when all through the cemetery
All the creatures were stirring, and all quite merry.
Shrunken heads were hung on tree branches with care,
In hopes that a great demon would soon be there.

The witches were starting to rise out of their beds,
While visions of spells and magic danced in their heads.
The mummy was nestled all snug in his wrap
As he began to awake from his eternal nap.

When out by the crypt there arose such a clatter,
They all hovered over to see what was the matter.
When, what to their demonic eyes should transpire,
But a flying black hearse and a very well dressed vampire.

With a skeleton driver, so lively and quick,
They knew in a moment it must be Vampire Nick.
More rapid than vultures his bats they came,
And he moaned, and wailed, and called them by name!

“Now Dagger! Now, Slasher! Now, Lasher and Scratchen.
On, Blade! On, Spade! On, on Slicer, and Gashen.
To the top of the tombstones! To the top of the cemetery walls!
Now hunt away! Hunt away! Hunt away all!”

Then like those bats that vampire did fly
Like a soaring eagle against a moonlit sky.
So up to the crypt-top he flew
With his undead driver and his bats too.

They landed on the crypt in a furious gale
And you could hear the screeching of each little nail.
As the shrunken heads screamed and turn around
Down the crypt Vampire Nick came with a bound.

He was dressed in black from his cape to his shoes
And on his spiked collar dripped liquid red ooze.
A bundle of oddities flung on his back,
And he looked like a wolf just about to attack

He reached is long fingers into the pocket of his suit
And his hand reappeared holding fresh eye of newt.
The witches were thrilled as they grabbed their brooms.
They chanted spells as they danced on the tombs.

The zombies started to arise from their graves
And the night dwellers emerged from their caves.
A banshee played harp and began her song
As a trio of bridge trolls sang along.

Then he presented the werewolf with a giant bone
And the mummy a purple velvet lined casket of his very own.
The cemetery was filled with eerie laughter and shrills
All the creatures of the night were getting their thrills.

They shrieked and danced and partied away,
The zombies all got new limbs for the ones lost from decay.
All the undead received brand new toys
And one was given a couple of obnoxious teenage boys.

Then Vampire Nick reached into his cape and without a word
Pulled out an extraordinary beautiful raven black bird.
You could hear it call as it flew into the moonlit sky out of sight
“Happy All Hallows Eve, and to all a very frightening night!”

Cameras, Grave Stones, Comic Books and Cereal

As this weekend starts, I feel I am still recovering from the past weekend’s activities. Last Friday the illustrious illustrator, Pamela McCarville, and I went to a taping of Off The Page to talk about our children’s book, Willow May Goes to the Midnight Carnival. This will be our first big TV debut and even though I tried real hard not to be, yes, I was incredibly nervous. Luckily, Off The Page has the most gracious host, Stacy McKenzie, which help put us to ease. We were both quite impressed with her production and found the whole filming process fascinating.

I still feel I came across nervous, but I think maybe my hair will distract viewers from that fact. It had been warm and dry all week, but of course on the day of filming, it was cold and wet with 100% humidity, which natural curly hair just loves....NOT! I believe my hair took up another zip code that day and I am sure it not only frightened the camera crew and host, but also the illustrator sitting next to me who was probably afraid it was going to take over her seat at any moment.

The program will air on Broomfield Public Access TV, Channel 8, starting in October. We will be getting a DVD of the show and Stacy said we could put it up on our blog or website, so I will try to do that. I asked her if it would be okay if I had the illustrator Photoshop Jennifer Aniston in for me, but she seemed to frown upon that idea. I do want to thank her and the crew for putting together a great show that supports local Colorado authors and illustrators.

The next morning a project that my sister and I are working on took us to the Riverside Cemetery. Founded in 1876, this is the oldest operating cemetery in Denver. In its heyday the cemetery use to be quite lavish sitting next to the South Platte River with green lawns, trees, flowers and shrubs. Now it is in the middle of an industrial park right next to the railroad tracks where we had to wait for the longest and slowest coal train to pass by before we could drive through the gates. The cemetery is no longer being watered or regularly maintained and was vandalized a few years ago, which is sad considering the wealth of Colorado history that is beneath its grounds and the art above. The cemetery statuary is amazing. Since I feel this post is getting a bit long winded, I will post more in the coming days on our morning’s journey through stones of Riverside and the stories that reside with them.

From the cemetery we made our way to Mile High Comics to get our comic and graphic novel fix. I got an eclectic grouping consisting of Igor, Hell Boy, The Surreal Adventures of Edgar Allan Poo, The Umbrella Academy and a few others of varying genres. Should be some interesting reading (if I can just find the time). After that we stopped at our favorite eating place, The Shoppe, to fortify up with a big bowl of cereal and fruit. Next we stopped at the Tattered Cover to stock up on even more reading material. Finally after a few more stops and a harrowing near miss by a red car that did its darnedest to hit us, we arrived back home and collapsed on the couch for the rest of the evening. Who knew cemeteries and comic books would be so exhausting.

Here are a few of the photos from Riverside:

Eddie Izzard

My sister and I treated ourselves to a night on the town last Wednesday night with dinner at the Paramount Cafe and then a EDDIE IZZARD show!! It was fantastico!

With bits on Noah's Arc and The Ten Commandments, he exceeded our expectations and added about 20 more laugh lines to our faces. I hope he will come back for future shows considering the record breaking heat here in Denver (going on 22+ days over 90 degrees, and a handful of those have been over 100). But despite the heat we had an awesome time and can't wait until the DVD comes out to relive the hysterical magic!

GUD Issue 3 Pre-launch Contest

On the Monster Librarian blog they announced a contest from GUD (Greatest Uncommon Denominator) magazine, who I had recently added as a friend on Goodreads. What a small cyber world we live in. GUD magazine is full of entertaining stories, art and poetry. The Issue 3 Pre-launch Buzz Contest is basically what I am doing here. You post about their contest with a link back to the GUD Issue 3 Pre-launch Contest post, then leave a comment on the GUD Issue 3 Pre-launch Contest post that you did in fact post on their the GUD Issue 3 Pre-launch Contest, then you will be entered to win a full set of GUD, Hardcopy Issues 0-3.

They are also offering 2 bonuses. Bonus #1 is the first 10 entries win a PDF of Issue 3, and sorry, but my guess is that train has long since taxied and taken off the runway. However, Bonus #2 is if you create an account by signing up you get a freebie from Issue 3. Hopefully I will not get in trouble for this, but my freebie was a short story The Dragon’s Thorn, Sword of Kings [& Fred]. I am currently reading The Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, and I thought this story had a bit of that Pratchett humor in it. The story was a fun and amusing quick read. But, here is where I let the cat out of the bag or should I say bat, and how they are going to lure you in. Oh yes, that cool looking cover you see above...is a diagram of a steam bat model! And they say they have instructions on page 205 of the magazine. If that doesn’t cry hours of electrifying entertainment I don’t know what does?

Please go take a look at their site, if you don’t want to take part in the Issue 3 Pre-launch Contest, you can still sign-up for an account, read your free sample story, get hooked and then back for the full issue (which is also available in a PDF downloadable format).

Hmmm, wonder if there are any steam bat races? Because I am sure with a few minor tweaks, steam bat model could easily be turned into the super turbo steam bat model. Though I am sure liability waivers would have to be signed.

The Shoppe and Tattered Cover

My sister was down last weekend and we decided to go have brunch at our new favorite cafe, The Shoppe. This time my husband chauffeured us and we all opted for the cornflakes. We also all went a little wild and threw in some bananas. My husband totally enjoyed himself, he later said he loved the atmosphere and they had great coffee. We planned for our next stop to be All In A Dream Comics, but unfortunately they did not open until noon and our chauffeur had places to be that afternoon. From there we headed over to the Tattered Cover Bookstore. After perusing their magazine selection, we headed over to the graphic novels where I grabbed a couple of Neil Gaiman but then ended up relinquishing one to my sister who also picked up a Terry Pratchertt. On our way to the children’s section we passed the humor books and I could not resist adding another book to my Edward Gorey collection, The Secrets: Volume One, The Other Statue. I think we know I will also need Volume Two, The Night Bandage.

Next we headed downstairs to the children’s section when what to our wondering eyes should appear....WILLOW MAY!!!!

I don’t think anybody thought it was strange for us to be taking our pictures next to it, do you?

The Movie Iron Man

My sister and I went to see Iron Man this last weekend and I must award it 4.5 out of 5 cat whiskers. It had the perfect mixture of action interlaced with humor, not to mention an awesome sound track.

Tony Stark (Robert Downey Jr.) is the CEO of Stark Industries, which produces advance weapon systems for the U.S. military. He is also a billionaire self-obsessed playboy who happens to be a genius when it comes to inventing technical gadgets. And let me just stop here to say that both my sister and I need his work lab and equipment, there is no way we can build us a super-power suit with our current set ups. Any way, Tony flies to Afghanistan to demonstrate a new weapon. On his way back terrorist using the same weapons he created attacks his convoy. He is wounded and held captive but builds a suit of armor to escape. Back in the states, he perfects his suit only to find out he is being betrayed by his own company.

I thought Robert Downey Jr’s comic timing was impeccable and I enjoyed the humorous chemistry between him and his personal assistant (Gwyneth Paltrow). There were several LOL’s.

I highly recommend this movie and will eagerly await Iron Man II due out in 2010.

An Engineer's Guide to Cats

My sister sent me this video with a comment about it being a bit long at 7 minutes and inquiring why someone would even do it, but as a cat lover I found it to be a fascinating documentary on the feline species:

Mad Creator Productions New Book

Besides the The Dangerous Alphabet book with Neil Gaiman, Gris Grimly has another book with Kelly Dipucchio coming out in May, Sipping Spiders Through A Straw Campfire Songs for Monsters:

"In this howlishly fun collection of campfire songs, little monsters everywhere will love singing along to their favorite campfire tunes which have been altered for optimal gross-out effect by the ghoulish Kelly DiPucchio and illustrated by the Master of Creep, Gris Grimly. Disgusting highlights include "If You're Scary and You Know It," "99 Bottles of Blood on the Wall," and the classic in the making, "Do Your Guts Hang Low?" Gather your creepy, crawly friends and get ready to slither and slink and howl and stink!"

For those of you in LA and going to the LA Times Festival of Books, Gris Grisly will be there signing books on Saturday, April 26th at the A Whale of a Tale booth from 11-12pm. He warns that this is in the children's area so beware of ragamuffins. On Sunday he will be signing his Wicked Nursery Rhymes 1 at the Baby Tattoo Books booth from 2-3pm. However, you can also catch him from 2-4pm on Saturday and 5-7pm Sunday at the Mad Creator Productions booth at the Fangoria Weekend of Horrors.

Englewood Public Library Author Open House

To kick off National Library week, the Englewood Public Library hosted an Author Open House this past Sunday with over 50 Colorado writers and illustrators. The illustrious illustrator, Pamela McCarville and I had a fabulous day. It started off with us being escorted to our table where two book bags, pens and thank you notes were awaiting us. Then we had our photo ops with the children's librarian, Karin Martin. Talk about the star treatment. Next we were called into the reception room for quite the spread. I wish I had taken a picture but trust me; it would have made your mouth water. But that is not all; we also had a harpist serenade us all through the day.

We dressed up our table with a mini version of our ringmaster Victor Grimsby in his purple feather coat and three of his little rats in hats friends (the rats ended up stealing the show from the raven ringmaster). We handed out Willow May bookmarks and coloring sheets with some of the characters from the book as well as a small box of crayons with a sticker of one of the characters on the box. Those were a big hit with the kids. For those who bought our book we gave them a Willow May bookplate and button. We also had postcards of our next Willow May midnight adventure, Willow May Goes to the Midnight Zoo and postcards for a Graphic Novel Pamela is illustrating, Dark Wisdom. Then we also had a sign-up sheet, but only three people signed up. Kept forgetting to point it out to people and we mainly had kids coming to our table. We also got too busy and only took a couple of pictures between us; we almost needed a 3rd person for photo taking detail. We thought we had about every aspect of the promo thing covered but in looking around at the other writer's tables, we saw that one writer had made print outs of their book reviews for people to see. What a great idea!

It was fun to visit with everybody and it was really fun to shop around for some great reads. Needless to say, we put those book bags to use.

I received an email from the library yesterday that 450 people came to the event. Wow, what a turn out, no wonder why I am still exhausted. I can't say enough about this fantastic event the Englewood Library hosted and if you missed this years please plan to attend their 10th annual open house next year to kick off National Library Week.

Visit the library's website to see what other fun events are taking place this month.

National Poetry Month

April is National Poetry month and you can celebrate with Shel Silverstein. On his site there is a special section with activities and games for National Poetry month. You can watch Shel Silverstein animation, play games, practice being a poet, sent poetry month e-cards, find classroom activities and suggestions, print out a poster, and more.


One of my favorite books was Where the Sidewalk Ends. I won't remember the words exactly, but one of the poems I enjoyed was My brother said it was a hat so I put it on / Now my Dad is yelling "Where in the heck has the toilet plunger gone."

For some reason that just reminded me of something my sister would tell me to do.

New Keyboard

My sister forwarded me an email from DailyCandy with an article about custom made keyboards from Datamancer. I thought I was suffering from writer's block, but now I realize that is not the cast. Instead it is I just don't have the right keyboard for the right story...or laptop.











P.S. Are you wearing your sweater?

Mister Rogers' Neighborhood Sweater Tribute

I read a small article in the Rocky Mountain News that tomorrow, 3/20, has been named "Sweater Day" to honor what would have been Fred Rogers 80th birthday. Mr. McFeely, aka David Newell the speedy delivery man, who is now the public relations director for Family Communications, Inc, a non-profit company founded in 1971 by Fred Rogers, is asking everyone to wear their favorite sweater tomorrow. He says it doesn't have to be a zipper down one in the front like the one Mister Rogers wore, just one that is special to you.

Here is Mr. McFeely's YouTube video 'Won't you wear a sweater?'



To learn more about Mister Rogers' Neighborhood you can visit PBS Kids. Now if you will excuse me, I need to go find my favorite sweater.

The Movie: 10000 B.C.

My husband is a big history buff and the moment they started advertising the movie 10,000 B.C., he wanted to see it. I tried to explain to him that I did not believe it was a historical documentary, but it did not matter, this was a movie we must see and we must see it in the theater on the big screen. As a chef, he normally works evenings and weekends, but he had this past weekend off, so we took in a Saturday matinee.

10,000 B.C. is a feast for the eyes to say the least. The aerial views were fantastic and the cinematography was stunning. A couple of weeks ago, I watched for the "severalth" time, Chocolat, with Juliette Binoche. I loved how they played with color in that film, basically an unobtrusive setting of bluish greys but then they throw in a brilliant splash of red with her shoes. They play with color the exact same way in this movie, but it is a sea of sand with a burst of red flowing through it. That was my favorite part of the whole show. The special effects with the prehistoric creatures were also amazing. Although, where I thought they did a great job making the woolly mammoths stampedes look real, for some reason the scenes with the saber tooth tiger did not appear as realistic to me, like a Photoshop scene gone bad. I am sure there is some graphical reasoning on why it was harder to work the saber tooth tiger animation in vs. the woolly mammoths, one of which once my illustrator reads this will try to explain it to me. But overall, like I had heard, it was very much an eye-candy movie.

Now as far as historic relevance, in the whole reason my husband wanted to go see it, uh, yeah. For those of you who feel that even a fictional story of prehistoric times should have some bearing on fact and/or geography, perhaps this would not be a movie for you (my husband would fall into this camp), for others who can bypass facts for fantasy and enjoy a good B flick movie every now and then, than here is one your eyes will also enjoy.

10,000 B.C. centers around a tribe that my husband and I referred to as the Dreadlock clan, who were mighty woolly mammoth hunters, and may I add, at times, spoke remarkable modern day English. This clan’s leader was “mother”, a woman who has visions of the future and when a blue-eyed orphan girl, Evolet, was brought to her, “mother” knew the girl was destined to fulfill a prophecy to save her people. At the same time a small boy of the clan, D’Leh, falls in love with Evolet. Many moons passed quickly and the boy and girl are now grown.

Then, whom my husband and I referred to as the Medieval Knight clan, arrived in the dead of winter on their 4-eyed demons and ransacked the village, capturing several of the Dreadlock clan including Evolet. Despite “mother” not thinking he is brave enough, D’Leh took off with the remaining Dreadlock clansmen to rescue his true love and unknowing to him, become part of the prophecy.

His pursuit led him over snow packed mountains in blizzard conditions, through a tropical rainforest where he was attacked by giant ostriches, and to a desert where he was almost eaten by a saber tooth tiger before being joined by the Balled Headed clan, the Weird Tree Mask clan, the Huge Horn in the Chin clan and the Bamboo Wearing clan. These clans had also been invaded by the Medieval Knight clan, and joined D’Leh on his mission to rescue all their people.

After being lost in the desert for days, they finally arrived at their enemy’s doorstep. Turns out the Medieval Knight clan were working for the Dynasty Emperor clan. They were bringing them slaves to build the evil emperor a great pyramid.

Again, if you are going to be a stickler for historical time frames and geography in addition to perhaps frowning upon a little sprinkling of supernatural in here and there, this might not be your movie. However, if you enjoy a little fun or in my husband’s words, cheesy fantasy, once in awhile as well as incredible cinematography, then this might be one to check out.

As we were leaving the theater, we over heard one guy say to the other it was not worth the $5, maybe $2.50, but not $5; the other guy disagreed and thought it was well worth the $5. I enjoyed it, but I will admit, part of my enjoyment was just watching my history buff husband’s expressions all during the show.