I'm ready for my close-up, Mr. Fessenden
The festival / book signing in Clinton, NJ was great fun. I met a lot of good folks, including Ghost Road Blues author James Maberry.
Here I am with James, wearing the costume sure to haunt the dreams of Clinton for decades, the terrible Wendigo:
Note the horrible, gnashy teeth, that clearly indicates this is not simply a reindeer costume.
Here I am with James, wearing the costume sure to haunt the dreams of Clinton for decades, the terrible Wendigo:
Note the horrible, gnashy teeth, that clearly indicates this is not simply a reindeer costume.
Squampkin Flip Book!
There's a permanant link to this on the intro page to PettyOfficial.com, but it bears repeating:
You can now download, print, cut, and assemble your own "Life Cycle of the Squampkin" Flip Book! This is the animation created for the book by puppet mastermind David Friend. No matter how many computer-made, million-orc armies march across multiplex screens, hand-drawn animation still makes the most endearing, honestly magical moving pictures I see.
Super-secret non-Halloween animation link!
Pumpkin Festival of Clinton, NJ
This Friday, October 27th, I'm going to be taking part in the festivities at the Pumpkin Festival down in Clinton, NJ. There will be a pumpkin carving contest, a haunted mill, a re-animation of the dead followed by some light screaming, and readings and signings from all sorts of spooky authors at the Clinton Book Shop, at 33 Main Street.
To promote "The Squampkin Patch," I will be handing out pumpkin chocolate chip cookies (which were recently blurbed by Bunnicula author James Howe: "WOW! Seriously good cookies"), ultra-spooky Squampkin flip-books, and the souls of deceased, unrepentant sinners (recently blurbed by Aleister Crowley: "CRIPES! Those are some seriously unrepentant sinners!")
And I will be in the most terrifying costume of all time. If anybody mistakes it for Bullwinkle, they're getting keel-hauled.
Books of Wonder
This Sunday, October 22nd, I'm going to be appearing at Books of Wonder from 2-4pm. There will be a whole bevy of creative types there, including "Bunnicula" author James Howe and "Series of Unfortunate Events" illustrator Brett Helquist. Only one of those creative types will be handing out pumpkin chocolate chip cookies. Books of Wonder is at 18 West 18th Street, in New York City between 5th and 6th Avenues.
What I learned in Europe
I haven't posted in two weeks as I was in Naples, then Pompeii, then Northern Italy for a weddings, then Barcelona, then the Mediteranean town of Sitges for a film festival, then Boston for a funeral, and now finally back to beautiful Brooklyn, NY. And the most amazing thing I saw in all of that travel was this:
That's right. It's a vending machine that sells GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES. Truly, Italy is the country that created civilization. I call on all of my fellow Americans to rally around the cause and help me overcome the Italians in the sandwich race. We've been behind for centuries, (they were making panini before we had even thought of the tiny plastic sword) spending our energies on warfare, computing, and ice cream portability. (The Ice Cream Sandwich may be our only sandwich technology leap on Europe, but really, that's more about ice cream than it is about sandwiches.) If we beat the Russians to the moon, we can do this, right?
That's right. It's a vending machine that sells GRILLED CHEESE SANDWICHES. Truly, Italy is the country that created civilization. I call on all of my fellow Americans to rally around the cause and help me overcome the Italians in the sandwich race. We've been behind for centuries, (they were making panini before we had even thought of the tiny plastic sword) spending our energies on warfare, computing, and ice cream portability. (The Ice Cream Sandwich may be our only sandwich technology leap on Europe, but really, that's more about ice cream than it is about sandwiches.) If we beat the Russians to the moon, we can do this, right?