The Wolfblade paperback is out in North America this week. Which means Warrior is due at the end of the month in hardcover. I just found out the publication dates for the rest of the US releases, too, up to and including The Immortal Prince.

Did I find all this vital information out because the publishers emailed me? No. Because they rang me? Hah! We live in opposing time zones! Talking to my editor in New York means staying up until 3.00 am, and we don't even do that when the books are being edited.

No, I found out through Amazon.

Not the US Amazon, mind you, the Canadian site.

I have no idea why this happens. And it’s not the first time. They have release dates and ISBNs and all sorts of other guff, waaay before Barnes & Noble, or Amazon US and sometimes have DVD releases months before you can buy them in the US, which often puts them years ahead of their Australian release dates (I’m talking DVD’s here, not books, where the reverse is often the case).

Anyway, thanks to the efficiency of amazon.ca, below are the North American/UK* release dates for the rest of the Hythrun Chronicles and the first book of the Tide Lords.

God Bless Canada:)

With a population of just on 200,000 spread out over an area roughly equal to France, Spain and Italy combined, here in the Northern Territory of Australia we don’t have a vast depth of talent to call on when it comes to producing national champions.

That’s not to say we don’t produce them. Hey, I coached Firstborn to a National Levels Championship in Gymnastics in 1995, but as a rule, we don’t have many of them, so we get pretty excited when we find a new one.

In light of this, it is my honour to announce that the Australian Rock Paper Scissors Champion comes from where else but... *drumroll please*... Alice Springs .

Better yet, the new national champion, 32 year old Melissa Glasscock, who works as an Outreach Coordinator for the Mental Health Association in Alice (I wonder if that's a co-incidence) is on her way to Toronto for the Rock Paper Scissors World Championships in November 2006.

Does it get any better than this?

Well, yes it does get better. On further investigation, I have discovered there is actually a World Rock Paper Scissors Society whose motto is “Serving the needs of decision makers since 1918”.

I feel so relieved that in this harrowing time of terrorism, Australia’s worst drought on record, and K-Fed releasing a single, the world has time for something as profoundly philosophical as a tournament calendar, strategy guide and high tension finals conducted to the soundtrack from Rocky devoted to a sport as important to the future of humanity as Rock Paper Scissors.

I bet you’ll all sleep better tonight knowing this, too.

I know I’m harping on this whole Snakes on a Plane thing, but Secondborn made a very valid point last night. All films should be named like this. You wouldn’t need a trailer or a synopsis. The title would tell it all and you could decide, just by looking at the names, what the movie was about, and whether or not you wanted to spend $14.50 and two hours of your life you’ll never get back, watching it.

So, I’ve been thinking up a few more movies that would benefit from “re-branding”:

• Rambo – Boy with Guns
• Seven – Brad Pitt
• Titanic – Big Ship with Icebergs
• Miami Vice – Two Boys with Guns
• Lord of the Rings – Midgets with Jewellery
• Legends of the Fall – Brad Pitt
• Hamlet – Boy’s Evil Uncle Kills Father and Marries Mother
• Lion King – Boy’s Evil Uncle Kills Father and Marries Mother
• The Sentinel – Old Action Heroes Trying Too Hard
• Star Wars – Boys with Shiny Swords in Space
• Star Wars Ep 1,2 & 3 - Boys with Too Much Money and their Own Production Company
  
• Apocalypse Now – Boys with Napalm
• Clueless – Girls with Credit Cards
• Indiana Jones: Boy with Tertiary Education and Guns
• The Magnificent Seven – Seven Boys with Guns
• ET – Boy with Alien
• Erin Brokovich – Tart with Law Books
• Oceans Eleven – Eleven Boys with Excellent Dental Work (or Brad Pitt – either works for me)
• V for Vendetta – Alliteration with Explosions
• Dukes of Hazzard – Boys with Cars
• Fight Club – Brad Pitt
• Charlie’s Angels – Girls with Guns
• Pirates of the Caribbean – Boys with Eyeliner
• Poseidon – Big Ship Tips Over
• Mr and Mrs Smith – Beautiful People with Guns (or Brad Pitt)

I’m on a roll here…I mean Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? Please! How about: Boy forgets Girl on Purpose?

Not at as poetic, I’ll admit, but hey, it does the job.

I saw Snakes on a Plane last night which I had to review for the ABC. Having seen it, I was struck by how completely whacked the whole premise of the film was, based, I fear, on the assumption that “nobody knows anything about snakes” so we’re gonna get away with it.

Why is it people get paid to millions to write, act and or direct movies that are so factually incorrect that they ought be classified as fantasy?

Worse, I write fantasy, and I was even half as careless of the basic laws of nature, I’d never make it off a slush pile.

Why don’t they apply the same rules to movies as they do to books?

Seriously, in this film, they had people sucking the venom out of snake bites (a first aid method they discarded about they same time they started making movies in Technicolor). They had snakes leaping about the plane as if they’d all eaten kryptonite for breakfast and been turned into little supersnakes. One of the pythons even had a row of teeth!!!

Clearly, they'd all been selected because of their pretty colours. Didn't see a single Oxyuranus Microlepidotus (Inland Taipan, in case you're wondering), in the film, the deadliest snake in the world. Why? because it's a boring old brown-green colour.

And why would any self-respecting snake hone in on the sexual organs of its prey if it's hungry, when there are other extremities closer and easier to get to?

I’ll tell you why... because in Hollywood movies minor characters who have sex out of wedlock must die. It's as inevitable as the death that comes with being the unnamed ensign in Star Trek.

I am sure there is a list out there somewhere, which all scriptwriters have access to, entitled Characters Who Must Die Before Act Three.

It will include:

• All pilots if the story is set on a plane
• The fat, ugly, middle-aged woman
• Any character wearing too much make-up
  
• Anybody on their last shift, due to be shipped home, about to retire, who just refused early retirement, or who makes the mistake of showing a photo of the wife/kids/girlfriend around in the first fifteen minutes of the film
• Rude businessmen
• Characters played by actors whose names appear after the title, not before
• Unwed characters engaged in gratuitous sex (preferably while they’re engaged in said gratuitous sex if it’s a horror film)
• And small irritating dogs.

Large, loveable dogs are invulnerable to everything, up to and including a nuclear attack, however, as are cute children, virgins and any actor with his name over the title in the credits.

So, having worked that out, once I’m done writing my text book, I think I’ll become a screen writer.

Piece of cake:)

Well… finally The Gods of Amyrantha has been sent off to all the little minions, fellow authors and my Masters Cohort, who will read it and find any gaping plot holes I left… (please, please find the gaping plot holes...) So if you’re on the Minion Mailing List and you’ve haven’t got an email from me in the last few hours with 4MB of attachments, email me and let me know, would you?

On the upside, this means tomorrow I can do the last few corrections to The Immortal Prince line edit and send that off to HarperCollins, and then I don’t have to write another word for a couple of months.

On the down side, I can no longer put off sorting out my tax receipts.

Oh well…

I was able to get this finished this afternoon because we finished Stargate-ing on the stroke of midnight last night. Probably would have finished sooner only we had to stop for Dace’s rock concert.

This involved watching Dace sing a number of songs that he was making up as he went along (complete with rhyming lyrics, I have to say) to the accompaniment of the piano, which he doesn’t actually know how to play.

The songs seemed to be about weapons stashes, shooting bad guys and dinosaurs, for the most part, and every one of them was accompanied by a major chord and a loud Ta da! at the end, so we’d know when to applaud.

This would have been funny enough, except at the end of the concert, he made us all line up while he signed autographs. Then (and I swear… I don’t make this stuff up) he faked a collapse and insisted we pretend he had to be taken from the stadium in an ambulance, after which we were told to tell the audience he was just suffering from exhaustion..

Apparently, according to Dace, that’s what rock stars do.