Book Cover Release: DUSTY by Mary Elizabeth & Sarah Elizabeth

 

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Releasing July 14, 2014

 

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Synopsis

Bliss knows all about bad choices but has yet to make them herself. With an innocent heart, she searches for freedom and finds it in the delinquent down the hall.

Dusty is a foul-mouthed troublemaker, tear-maker and heartbreaker. The boy with summer sky-blue eyes knows to stay away, but he can’t resist the girl who made his house a home.

She’s his reason, but he might not catch her when she falls.

She loves him. He loves her crazy.

This is what happens when a love made of secrets is kept with rules instead of promises.

 

Excerpt

Chapter Ten

Buried beneath the blankets, I press the phone to my ear. Dusty doesn’t realize I’m back on, so I listen to him smoke: light, inhale, exhale, sigh, laugh. Hearing it is almost as good as actually seeing his lips around the end of a joint.

“I’m back,” I whisper.

“Beautiful, beautiful, baby Bliss. Baby, baby Bliss.” He laughs, taking a hit.

My dad’s a juvenile court judge. Our dinner table talk usually consists of him complaining about the kids he sees coming in and out of his courtroom. It’s an epidemic, he says. Children Bliss’ age using drugs. And it always ends with, Bliss, never give into peer pressure. It starts with a little grass.

Maybe it is some kind sweeping epidemic, but weed doesn’t sway Dusty the way my dad claims it does other people. It soothes him. It makes him funny and honest and tolerable.

My dad doesn’t know everything.

“I thought about you all day,” Dusty says softly, lazily. “I miss your face. I miss your candy wrappers all over my room. I miss your cold toes on my legs under the covers.”

“Oh, yeah?” I grip the phone tighter, pressing my knees together. The sound of his low voice sends chills up and down my arms. I bite my bottom lip and curl my toes.

“Come over,” he exhales.

I roll onto my side and turn my face into the hoodie’s hood, inhaling the faint sent of vanilla. I’m lit up, full of crazy butterflies and overriding happiness. This boy makes me smile bright.

“I’ll take my mom’s car. I’ll come get you.” He’s only half-kidding. “Say yes.”

“You’ll drive high?”

“I’m not high.” There’s a moment of silence before he chokes on his laughter. “I’m so fucking high.”

I revel in his tone, and his voice, and his silly, half-slurred words while I lie in the dark pretending he’s close.

“I’m so hungry, Bliss baby. If you were here, I’d probably eat your elbow. I’d eat your—”

“Dusty,” I cut him off. “Tell me a secret.”

“I love you,” he says.

 

 

MeetTheAuthor

 

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FACEBOOK * GOODREADS * TWITTER * WEBSITE * DUO FACEBOOK PAGE

Mary Elizabeth is an up and coming author who finds words in chaos, writing stories about the skeletons hanging in your closets. Known as The Realist, she is one half of The Elizabeths—a duo brave enough to never hide the truth. Born and raised in Southern California, she’s a wife, mother of four beautiful children, and dog tamer to one enthusiastic Pit Bull and a prissy Chihuahua. She’s a hairstylist by day but contemporary fiction, new adult author by night. Mary can often be found finger twirling her hair and chewing on a stick of licorice while writing and rewriting a sentence over and over until it’s perfect. She discovered her talent for tale-telling accidentally, but literature is in her stranglehold. And she’s not letting go until every story is told.

To follow Mary’s upcoming solo and collaborative projects, she can be found at her website http://www.maryelizabethlit.com/.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.

If you’d like to contact The Elizabeths, they can be located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheElizabethsDusty?ref=hl.

Sarah Author Pic

GOODREADS * TWITTER * WEBSITE * FACEBOOK * DUO’S FACEBOOK PAGE

Listener, messenger, secret keeper, Elizabeth, and TrueLove, Sarah works two jobs by day so that she’s able to really work by night. She’s written since she was old enough to hold a marker, and her writing bridges the sacred and profane, from first love to forbidden, with a longing for truth and a passion for hearts. She is currently based in Kansas City where her army is comprised of one little buffalo. Her best friends are girls named Moses and Bunny. Her hero is a boy named Bishop, and the one she loves has ocean eyes. In addition to Dusty, Sarah also has a collaborative novella, Light and Wine, due to be released on June 8th, and her solo work will be featured in the anthology Branded, this August.

Brought together by their love of storytelling, Mary and Sarah Elizabeth are a pair of dedicated writers with complementary strengths who’ve cultivated a literary style that captures a Realist’s brutality with a Poet’s grace, uncovering the self-seeking side of tenderness and the undisguised truth of honesty. Inspired by the lyrics of a song, Dusty was born between emails and long G-chats before a single chapter was ever typed. A short story turned into a monster, and more than four years and several edits later, the first half of their collaboration, Innocents, will be released on July 14, 2014. And its conclusion, Delinquents, is set to release on October 23, 2014.

If you’d like to contact The Elizabeths, they can be located on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/TheElizabethsDusty?ref=hl.

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HOSTED BY:

EJ Button

WATCH: This Little Boy Says Every Bad Word He knows

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[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=2BoKJ0Kq-1Y]

Fox 2000 To Adapt John Green Novel:Paper Towns

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Fox 2000 is all about John Green right now! After having completed production on The Fault In Our Stars, coming out June 6th 2014,  Deadline is reporting that they made a deal to adapt another Green book, Paper Towns (2008). Apparently they are planning to grab the screenwriters and producers from TFIOS along with one of the actors, Nat Wolff, to star in Paper Towns.  Yes, you read that right, Issac from TFIOS will be Quentin too! What are your thoughts on that?

When Margo Roth Spiegelman beckons Quentin Jacobsen in the middle of the night—dressed like a ninja and plotting an ingenious campaign of revenge—he follows her. Margo’s always planned extravagantly, and, until now, she’s always planned solo. After a lifetime of loving Margo from afar, things are finally looking up for Q . . . until day breaks and she has vanished. Always an enigma, Margo has now become a mystery. But there are clues. And they’re for Q.

 Purchase Paper Towns on Amazon!

Have you read Paper Towns?

WATCH: THE GIVER Trailer

The haunting story of THE GIVER centers on Jonas, who lives in a seemingly ideal, if colorless, world of conformity and contentment. Not until he is given his life assignment as the Receiver of Memory does he begin to understand the dark, complex secrets behind his fragile community. The film is based on Lois Lowry’s beloved young adult novel of the same name, which was the winner the 1994 Newbury Medal and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide.

THE GIVER hits theaters August 15th 2014!

[youtube http://youtu.be/iJNNugNe0Wo]

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with “COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey” Animation Producer, Kara Vallow

We had the amazing opportunity to speak with the animation producer of the 13 part series “COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey” this past week. The first episode of this epic science documentary aired Sunday, March 9th on Fox and 10 other US networks including National Geographic Channel, FX, FXX, FXM, Fox Sports 1, Fox Sports 2, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Mundo and Fox Life. Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson, COSMOS is the first documentary series to be broadcast on commercial networks.  Approximately 40% of this show is animation, so it’s a big factor in the success and feel of each episode. Kara Vallow, the animation producer, along with her team, and 6 Point Harness, worked extremely hard to create an animated world for the show to thrive in.

You may have heard of Kara from her relationship with Seth MacFarlane, she’s been his producing partner for over a decade on shows like “Family Guy”, “American Dad!” and “The Cleveland Show”.  At one time she was responsible for three half hour shows on Fox’s primetime Sunday night lineup (except for “The Simpsons”), she has created award-winning animation and has been nominated for five Emmys.  Oh and did I mention she also runs two popular blogs on teensleuth.com? To say I’m extremely impressed with her is an understatement.

Check out our interview with Kara below!

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How long did the process take from inception to TV screen?
About 18 months.

How involved in the concept and pre-production were you? (Focused on animation, not entire show)
Seth basically came to me and asked me to create the animation that would serve as the narrative portion of the series, so intimately.

Having this be targeted at the general public how did that affect your decision making / design?
The animation needed to be presented in the most engaging and vibrant way possible to compete with the rest of the episode. We had to keep people engaged when we transitioned to the “unreal” world. We needed to impress the viewer with the vast scale of the universe but also create a mode of scientific storytelling through a style that was sophisticated but uncomplicated. When it came to designing the character style, thee supervising director, Brent Woods, and I first discussed using silhouettes, but later changed our minds in order for the audience members to be able to relate more easily to the characters.

How did you decide what to make the animation look like? Were Ann and Seth involved with that?
Seth told me that he wanted the style of animation to be something that felt “adult” and sophisticated as opposed to what we produce on a weekly basis for Family Guy and American Dad. Seth gave me complete freedom to create this universe, which was an enormous gift. Ann gave me the courage to follow through with it.

I watched many, many films to gain some inspiration. The Secret of the Kells was one of them – it is lushly beautiful without relying on 3-D bells and whistles. It’s deliberately flat, elements are stylized and the movement primitive. They invoke pictures in a medieval manuscript. Another was a short film called Invention of Love by an animator named Andrey Shuskov. It is so simple, no words, just music and blue and gray and black silhouettes moving acres floating cities and country sides, yet the resulting narrative is heartbreaking. Another inspiration was a film called “The Adventures of Prince Achmed”, an animated feature film from 1926 by a German animator name Lottie Reiniger. It’s all done is silhouettes, like Indonesian shadow puppets and is insanely beautiful. I was looking for ways in which animators have used non traditional, non literal modes to convey story and deep feeling.

Did Seth and Ann give you creative freedom with the characters and the emotion or did they have specific ideas and direction?
Ann is so intimately engaged with the characters and their stories that we had the luxury of getting very specific and intimate points of reference. Her insights were essential to understanding the characters.

I was truly enthralled – and emotional – with the Giodarno Bruno segment in the first episode, can you tell me about the process behind it?
First of all, THANK YOU. My animation team (Allie Crane, Brent Woods, Lucas Gray and Andrew Brandou), had become intimately acquainted with Bruno, beyond his role as the first modern European thinker to disseminate the idea that the Sun is just one star among many. We needed get to the point where we felt his struggle and his pain. Before we delved into bringing Bruno’s story to life, I reread a lot of Carl’s words. I was struck by his poetry, his language heavy with lyricism and affection, he is like an evangelist. I wanted to bring this feeling to the Bruno set pieces. I have two passages hanging in my office: “Over the dying embers of the campfire, on a moonless night, we watched the stars”, and “this cosmos, in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky”. One of my directors, Andrew Brandou, created the beautiful vistas that Bruno lives so seamlessly in, and that seem to have existed since ancient times.

What challenges did you face?
The biggest challenges were 1) developing an animation style that was worthy of Cosmos 2) shouldering the responsibility of ensuring viewers understand what were often complicated modern theories of science – via imaginary journeys across time and space using animation. The narrative needed to be advanced and the narratives were going to include profound scientific concepts and demonstrating of experiments that needed to be presented with clarity. 3) Devising a narrative, beautifully and economically told in a style that would be arresting yet transition seamlessly from the live action settings. We couldn’t have those transitions be jarring to the viewer, so we chose to portray the landscapes as “real”, using layering of photographic elements and physical textures, shading and lighting that helped create an illusion of depth and drama and perspective.

What episode is your favorite?
My favorite episode will always be episode 1.

Three words to describe Cosmos?
all there is

 

You can catch “COSMOS: A Spacetime Odyssey” every Sunday at 9pm on FOX.

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If you’re interested in checking out a Q&A that was held after the industry show premiere a couple weeks ago, at the Griffith observatory, you can watch it below. The panel included:  Cosmos: host Neil deGrasse Tyson, writer/executive producer/director Ann Druyan, executive producer Seth MacFarlane, executive producer Mitchell Cannold, executive producer/director Brannon Braga, and co-executive producer Jason Clark.

WATCH: “Let It Go” Performed in Over 20 Disney / Pixar Character Voices

It feels like everyone is doing a cover of “Let It Go” from Disney’s FROZEN but I think we can all agree, this guy wins.

With so many covers of Let it Go coming out, people may forget the original Disney magic that this song has, so what better way to preserve that magic with other Disney and Pixar characters singing the song! So enjoy this Disney and Pixar Mashup! Performer is me, Brian Hull and the audio is recorded and produced by Seth O’Neal

[youtube http://youtu.be/hjbPszSt5Pc]

WATCH: New CAPTAIN AMERICA: THE WINTER SOLDIER Clip

Captain America (Chris Evans) chases after the Winter Soldier in this new clip! Watch below!

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