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Posts with videos, created or curated by Kaleb Nation.
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Yes, I am taking trapeze lessons next month, with world-famous celebrity superstar YA author MAUREEN JOHNSON. Wish me luck (and plenty of ropes, nets, supports and cushions).
I am very pleased to present to you the cover for my debut novel BRAN HAMBRIC: THE FARFIELD CURSE, due in stores on 9-9-09.
What can I say? I got my dream illustrator, my dream color design and my dream layout. Everything in this cover is exactly as I hoped it would be, straight from the imagination of our glorious artist Brandon Dorman, with a whole lot of hard work from my publishers and agent to get it perfect.
Check out the entirely new website at BranHambric.com! Giving away of secrets: if you click on the tiny moon next to the links on the front page, there is a special section for Branfans 😀 . Here is a book trailer I worked on for while, which you might enjoy too:
It is quite hard to see the tiniest details of this cover when it is a small image on a website, so today (Saturday, April 18) I will be doing a LIVE BlogTV show on my channel. I don’t exactly know what time (I’ll post it on my Twitter when I do) but it is advisable to get there early. As my shows go, there can be anywhere from 300+ people crammed in, and while everyone can watch, only the first 150 can actually talk to me and ask questions. Hope to see you there!
Visit www.BranHambric.com to see it! There will be another piece tomorrow: and then, the final, full cover for BRAN HAMBRIC: THE FARFIELD CURSE on April 18. Tell me what you think so far in the comments 🙂
Here’s a video I made while in Illinois meeting my publishers, about the trip and the awesome, hi-tech hotel room that had me never wanting to leave 😀
As part of this wonderful Branniversary, I will obviously be posting on my blog three times in a single day! This is a video I made earlier that goes back through parts of writing the book and the different drafts through the years. It’s NOT the big news I mentioned earlier, so check back later today for that post!
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If you are one of the millions of people who visit Youtube.com every day, you might have randomly seen this at some point:
Who's that on mah Youtubes?
Yes, thanks to my huge Twilight Youtube Contest Of Awesome II, my name has been appearing on the front page of Youtube many times throughout the day. This, paired with the fact that I’m giving away a Robert Pattinson autograph, has already landed the video at #1 on most of the Youtube charts (think 56,000 comments and 3,000 video comments in less than 24 hours. Yikes!).
The contest runs for two weeks. If there’s this much buzz before the first day is over, I don’t even know what to expect by the time the contest is done!
I just got back from the Twilight movie premiere a few days ago, and it was honestly a blast. For the trip, I had to be up around 2 AM in order to catch a flight and arrive on time. I was coming a day early so that I could be a panelist at Twilight Live, which was a podcast they were doing before the premiere. People had been lined up around the block for the event since the night before. Lucky for me, I had badges.
There were a lot of firsts on that trip. It was my first movie premiere, my first time to California, and my first time to stand on a red carpet. It was my first time to meet any fans, first time to be recognized in public, first time to be asked for an autograph, and first time to meet actual celebrities. It was also my first time to have passes to a green room, where the stars hang out while waiting for the event to start. I will allow everyone to imagine that it looked like this:
Our Green Room (note the green, hence the name)
During the premiere, I got photos with nearly everyone involved, including the main woman herself, Stephenie Meyer (who I wanted to see more than any of the other stars). I’ve been wanting to meet her in person for a while, after I missed her in an epic fail by not going to her Dallas, TX, book signing (the subsequent emails from people chiding me for not coming when my name was called over the intercom were punishment enough to make me set on being in LA). We even got video and photos together:
Me and Stephenie Meyer
I have loads of photos with people there, which you can see here.
There was so much that happened there, it is impossible to sum it up into words. After the premiere, I was taken to the Twicon afterparty, where I got to hang out with lots more awesome people at the top of the Hotel Angeleno, where a jazz band was playing live music. I got to meet some fans who won a contest for entry and talk to Michael Welch’s made-of-awesome mom, as well as a bunch of people involved in the Twicon planning (at which I will be a special guest next year).
One of the best parts was finally meeting all these people I know online and from Youtube in the Twilight community — of which I have only been a part for 7 months, and yet have been welcomed into so warmly. I was also shocked to find how genuinely nice the movie people and their agents were (I don’t know why I expected everyone in the movie business to be beastly trolls):
Beastly Troll
When we got back to our hotel, we realized there was a desperate demand for videos, so I immediately uploaded my Rob and Stephenie clips (this is only possible through the use of a Flip camera, which is one of the most awesome devices on the face of the earth). The Robert Pattinson interview got about 33,000 views in 1 day, and the Stephenie Meyer one isn’t far behind.
My video blog about the event is here if anyone wants to see footage of the event and exactly how much screaming was going on:
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So it was honestly one of the greatest days of my life, and later on I saw the movie, which was hilarious and far better than I was even expecting (see my review here).
Someone on my other website pointed out to me how strange it was: how I’ve come from writing about how Bella should drive a fire truck, to being on the red carpet for the movie. What would have happened if I had decided to take my blog down months ago, as I had planned? How would things be different for me? It is strange how things happen the way they do.
Just in today: they announced there will be a New Moon movie. I guess that means I have another premiere to look forward to 😀
Yesterday, I was able to talk to Robert Pattinson as a part of an interview conference call, and ask him one question. Rob plays the lead role of Edward Cullen in Twilight, the upcoming film based on the novel by Stephenie Meyer.
My question (and its follow-up) are in the video below or on my Youtube channel:
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It is so funny, since months ago I didn’t know who this person was, and in fact announced my own (fake) part in the Twilight movie just days before he signed on (and months before I even started reading the books). Never thought I would actually get to talk to him on the phone one day.
Starting Monday, I hit the notebooks, staying at the local Pub That Is Not A Pub from morning until near closing time, editing and revising The Farfield Curse. I managed to walk in and get my usual, favorite spot that is one table away from the corner, so that I don’t appear to be hiding in the shadows, my laptop cable will reach the building’s only plug, 
and I can still occasionally get a glimpse of the sun (which is very quickly becoming a faraway memory: the sun? What sun? Where? Surely you jest). I’m almost beginning to feel like an old, reclusive witch <—-
Things have thankfully been going smoothly. I am doing things in an order, first working on a bit of cutting in the length department, so it’s easier later when I need to add certain things that were missing. This is where the writing of the book turns into a labor of love: editing those words is really, really hard, but entirely worth it for the end result.
I have a goal of cutting a certain number of pages. To do this, I must take a fine-toothed comb to every line, trying to cut any odd words and condensing paragraphs in order to save one or two lines. One or two lines do add up. So far, just by combing the first 120 pages, I was able to cut 20 out in the first few days. It was all vicious (and slightly wicked) glee search-and-destroying those superfluous words. I spent almost an hour trying to condense two lines out of one chapter, so that I could cut the last page of it, which only had two puny lines dangling there.
The best part is that it’s like trimming back a big ugly tree into an Edward Scissorhands-esque plant sculpture. By the time we’re through, this book will be loads ahead of where we started out.
While taking a much-needed break, I decided to answer a question put to me recently: what will you do if you become a really famous author? It sounds thrilling, odd, scary and wonderful at the same time. So, I decided to make a video in response, which includes Lemony Snicket’s head, a phone call to J.K.Rowling, the Electric Light Orchestra, my bookshelf and more. Also, sunburn.
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Hope you like it 😀