E D Baker's Blog

The Princess & The Frog Premiere

ED Baker — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 01:08:48 +0000

We attended the Disney premiere of The Princess and the Frog this past weekend and had a marvelous time! Disney sent a car for us early Saturday morning. It took us to the airport for our nearly six hour flight to Los Angeles. A driver picked us up at LAX and took us to the hotel in Burbank. There is a three hour time difference between the east coast and the west coast, so although it was four o’clock back home, it was only one o’clock in California and the premiere wasn’t until the next day. We didn’t want to sit around the hotel, so we ended up going to Universal City Walk which is a walkway lined with stores and restaurants near Universal Studio. After eating some of the best Chinese food I’d had in ages, we visited the shops, then went to the theater to see the movie, 2012. After the movie we returned to the hotel for dinner and to collapse.
We spent the next morning getting ready for the premiere, which meant ironing everything that had gotten wrinkled. The driver picked us up around 12:30. He was supposed to pick us up around 1:00, so we arrived at the Disney studio early and had to wait in the car until they were ready to let the early arrivals in. When we finally got out, our escort and a number of Disney characters were waiting for us. Our escort gave us pink passes to wear around our necks. Michael Leon-Wooley was there getting his picture taken. (He did the voice of the alligator in the story.) We had our picture taken with the characters from Up! then walked the red carpet past all the photographers. Our escort led us down the red carpet past jugglers and people walking around on stilts. When I asked about the buildings, he took us into one and showed us the original framed illustrations on the walls. My favorite was the throne room from Sleeping Beauty.
The red carpet ended at a building where people were waiting to greet movie goers, but our escort led us past the red carpet to where froggy footprints marked the route. We followed the footprints to another big building and walked down a corridor to a check point where they took away cameras and cell phones and scanned everyone with a metal detector. They offered to put temporary tattoos on the backs of our hands if we wanted them. I got a froggy tattoo – Prince Naveen in the movie, but he looked like Eadric might have. They gave us bottles of soda or water and a popcorn-filled bucket decorated with characters from the movie. An usher showed us to our seats which were in the middle of the theater. It was a small theater – seating about one hundred twenty-five people. We sat there along with a few other people, but after a while we got up and went back outside. There was a crowd around the entrance to the building where the red carpet ended, so we stood with them for a few minutes and watched the people on stilts. We noticed that the people entering the building had a different colored pass.
The movie was supposed to start at two o’clock, so at ten of two we returned to our theater and went through the security check again. More people had arrived by then. We took our seats and tried to see if we recognized anyone. After a while the front row filled up with teen-aged girls and a few boys. Some of the girls were wearing dresses like you might wear to a party, but a few were wearing short prom dresses. We heard the people around us talking; apparently the girls are in Disney television shows. A woman came in with a little girl and sat at the end of our row. The little girl was wearing a pink outfit with a tutu- like skirt. The woman was also wearing a tutu-like skirt, but her entire top was covered in white beads. I guess they were supposed to look like big pearls. We saw a man we recognized from a TV show and a few other people who looked vaguely familiar, but no one who was in the movie. We decided that they must all be in the big building that we had passed on the way in.
The movie didn’t start until after 2:30. It is the first hand-drawn animation that Disney has done in years and is lovely. Although it is not my story – they say that my story inspired their story – I could see a few things that were in my book. The general basis for the plot is the same. A frog talks a reluctant girl into kissing him and she turns into a frog. They end up in a swamp and seek magical help to turn them back. They learn how to eat like frogs, have trouble with their tongues, and befriend other creatures. If you see the movie, look for the jar of eyeballs. Disney’s jar has two eyeballs, while my jar was full. They also have red, smacking lips. The lips in my story were green and belonged to lizards. Let me know if you see any other similarities.
Although some people got up to leave when the movie was over, quite a few stayed in their seats to watch the credits. (Look for the credit for my book toward the middle.) When we left, our escort was waiting for us in the corridor. He took us back along the froggy path to a big building for the ‘Disney Experience’. We walked into the building to find that all of the Disney princesses were there. Small stages were scattered throughout the room, each one a back drop for a particular princess. The princesses on the stages welcomed people to join them for pictures. We were standing in line waiting to get our pictures taken with the characters from The Princess And The Frog when a man in a white shirt and jeans came up and asked the woman in front of us if another woman and her children could go before her. Afterwards, the woman said to me, “When the president of Disney asks you to let someone go in front of you, you let them.” That was how I learned what the president of Disney looked like.
There were two games at one end of the room, one of which involved tilting a lily pad with a frog on it and letting it go so that the frog smacked into lily pads on the wall. There was a table with cupcakes – lots of icing sprinkled with sugar, and a place where you could choose from three backdrops to get your picture taken.
A man was demonstrating illustration techniques, and they had dresses from previous movies on display. I especially liked Cruella Deville’s elaborate gown. We followed part of the crowd outside to where tables of food were set up. Food plays a big part in this move – the main character wants to open a restaurant and makes gumbo as a child, and later for the other animals in the swamp, so we’d been half expecting that they would have gumbo or other Cajun cooking there. (I heard other people talking about it and they expected it as well.) However, all they had were tiny desserts, only one of which, the beignets, was mentioned in the movie. (Beignets are kind of like small doughnuts sprinkled with sugar.) We sampled a few of the treats and were on our way out when we saw the actor, Terrence Howard, who had done the voice of the main character’s father in the movie. He portrayed a military officer in the movie, Iron Man, which my daughter really liked, so I got up my nerve and asked if he would mind posing for a picture with my daughters.
We left soon after that and returned to the hotel. After changing our clothes, we went downstairs for dinner. We had just taken our seats when Anika Nonni Rose walked in wearing a lovely green dress. She did the voice of the main character, Tiana, in The Princess And The Frog. Tiana looks as if she was drawn with Anika Nonni Rose as the model. Michael Leon Wooley (the voice of the alligator) was already there. I introduced myself to them, and my daughter took a picture of the three of us together. They were both very nice and I was glad I got to meet them.
We went to bed early that night and came home the next morning. All in all, we had a wonderful trip and, to quote a friend, ‘had a great life experience’.

Hooray! Hoorah! Horoo!

ED Baker — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:45:57 +0000

Hooray! Hoorah! Horoo! (The last isn’t a real word, but if a writer can’t make up a word now and then, who can?) I finally finished the story I’ve been working on and sent it to my editor. She and I both think it’s my best book so far. I had a wonderful time writing it, even though it took me longer than most to get started. It was a new story unrelated to any other book I’ve written so far, and I had to get the feeling of the story right in my head before I could get it on paper (or in my computer.) I rewrote the first chapter four times before I really liked it. (I kept telling the story, not showing it.) Sometimes the beginning of the story is the hardest part to write, even if you know exactly how things are going to progress. This story is a fantasy set in the same world as tales of the Frog Princess, although they aren’t related. It’s about a girl who… ah, but that would be telling. The book is due to come out in the summer of 2010.

I’m doing the pre-writing for my next book which will be the eighth in the tales of the Frog Princess. It’s going to be about Millie, Audun and Millie’s family. After that I’m going to write the sequel to Wings. I’m already thinking about the plot for that. (I had one outline written for it, but neither my editor nor I were crazy about it; I’m starting from scratch with a new outline.) I’m trying to write two books a year, so I’m sorry that I don’t blog or get much of my other writing done as often as I’d like.

I read an article recently that mentioned the old adage telling you to write what you know. That’s fine as far as it goes, but can be very limiting. You should write about the things with which you are familiar when you can, but you should also write about the things in which you are interested. You’ll enjoy the research and broaden your knowledge on a topic you already like. When it comes to writing fiction, your imagination is an invaluable tool. I don’t know anyone who has seen an actual fairy or dragon, but I know a lot of people who find them fascinating. Before I write about a new kind of being or creature, I read as much about it as I can, then use the basic rules about that entity in creating the character for my story. I have such a creature in my newest book and it was fun bringing it into the story.

Now that I have the first draft done for my book and am waiting for my editor’s notes before I start the revisions, I have a few things I want to do around the house. 1. Clean my study. The piles of papers are massive– old manuscript pages, notes for the stories I’ve been working on, catalogs I wanted to order stuff from, but never did… Going through them is like an archeological dig – the deeper you go the farther back you go in history. 2. Clean my bedroom. My Newfoundland sleeps in my room and there’s enough of her fur collected under my dresser to make another dog. 3. Make curtains for my bedroom and the kitchen. I’ve had the fabric for who knows how long now. 4. Plant the shrubs I bought that are waiting to get planted. Every time I walk past them they cry out to me in their little plant voices, “Dig a hole! Stick me in!” Instead I water them and hope they’ll survive until I have the time to plant them when it isn’t either raining or too hot to dig holes. Finding the time on a nice day is sort of like waiting for the right alignment of the moon and the planets. It will happen eventually, but can I afford to wait that long?

Speaking about getting things done – it’s time to feed the horses. If I’m lucky and I finish feeding before it’s too hot, I might even be able to plant a shrub or two. One can only hope.

May 11, 2009

ED Baker — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 15:44:30 +0000

Spring is always the busiest season here. Aside from all the foalings, we breed mares for the next year, begin getting horses ready for showing and clean up the farm after the ravages of winter. I declared today a writing day - that means I intend to spend most of the day writing, as opposed to those days when I try to fit writing into everything else I have going on. However, I also intend to load branches into the back of the truck to take to the dump where they grind the branches into mulch. Picking up the branches makes mowing easier, of course – just another chore that never seems to end.
I had my first snake sighting of the year the other day. We were walking a mare and foal back to their stall when I passed some taller grass. A gray snake slithered out from the grass in front of me, making me wonder what else is living there.
We moved the goats recently. We have three wethers – neutered male goats –that do a great job of keeping the underbrush, weeds, etc, under control. They are our mobile foliage processing centers. As they clean up one area, we move them on to the next. Before we had goats, I never realized how much fun they are to watch and how much personality they have. Goats are wonderful to have on a horse farm. Horses often befriend goats and they can keep each other company when there is no other horse around. Goats will also eat things that horses won’t, like thistles, poison ivy and wild roses.
We live in an old farm house, which is why we have three cats living inside. We would have mice in the house if we didn’t have cats. We also have barn cats outside; having grain around attracts mice, so we need the cats to keep down the mice population in and around the barn. We knew a woman who didn’t like cats, and so didn’t have any in her barn. She had rats instead.
One of these days we’re going to move the duck pen to a more level spot. We have two ducks, Quackers and Fromage. They are both boys, which we didn’t know until they grew into their full adult plumage. (Boy ducks have curls in their tails, girl ducks do not.) I love watching the ducks and have learned so much about them. Before we had ducks, I didn’t know that they have claws. I especially like watching them run – their webbed feet go slap! slap! slap!
My daughter told me that I should blog about writing, but I enjoy the animals so much that I thought I’d tell you about them, too. And, in a way, I have been telling you about my writing. Living with so many animals around me has taught me so much that I can and do use in my stories. One day soon I intend to write a horse book. I’m already thinking about the plot. In the meantime, I’m almost finished with the book I’m currently writing and will be starting revisions soon. After the first draft, there’s always a lot to do before I feel it’s ready to send to my editor. The story has to have all the loose ends tied up, the ripples caused by changes seen to, and the characters the way I want them. The story has to feel right to me before I want anyone else to read it. I know that a lot of people don’t like doing revisions, but I enjoy it. I think writing the original story is the hard part. Doing the revisions is more like a mental challenge and very satisfying when you feel you’ve finally gotten it right.
One more thing – for those of you who have asked, I like to name animals after characters from my stories, although occasionally it’s the other way around. My frog Eadric (who died a few years ago) was named after the character. Emma the cat was named after Emma the princess. This year we named a colt Audun, after the dragon in The Dragon Princess, Dragon Kiss and the book I will be writing next in the series. (No, my friends from my message board, I’m not revealing the title yet!) I haven’t named any pet Grumble Belly yet, but it’s always a possibility!

A morning in my life....

ED Baker — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 03:33:27 +0000

I’ve been told that I shouldn’t be so formal in my blog entries, and should let you know more about what my life is like, so I decided to tell you about my day so far – which has been pretty typical.
Last night (this morning?) I wrote until 1:30 before turning off my light - I was falling asleep with my pen in my hand again. Most of my sheets already have ink stains on them.
At 7:00 AM the men came to replace part of our horse fence - which they were supposed to do in October. (They came last week and fenced in our new riding ring, then didn’t come back until today which is Thursday. I was told that most of them had taken off the first few days this week to go hunting. I guess that means that hunting season started again.)
I went outside to talk to them about the new door for the ga-barn. (That’s what we call the building that used to be the garage and had converted into a small barn. It has three stalls and an enormous collection of cob webs in the rafters which are too high for any of us to reach.)
Next, I went down to the bigger barn to help feed the horses. At least two of them have to pee as soon as you walk in the door. I guess it’s their way of saying hello. They then show you exactly where their feed is supposed to go – in the feed pan. Humans are too dense to remember such important information from one day to the next.
I go up to the house and empty the dishwasher, feed the dogs and let them out again while trying to prevent Harry from taking his toy squirrel outside. Harry is pretty good about putting it down next to the door when you remind him, but sometimes we both forget and his squirrel ends up in the garden. He found his favorite outdoor toy buried in some leaves in the garden the other day. Piggie looks like he’d been run over by a tractor and fed to hungry lions – always a sign that a toy is Harry’s favorite.
It is time to go take the horses out of the barn. Not all of them are in the barn – just enough to make more work. We put the filly in the paddock attached to the barn, then put two of the colts out. They start nipping at each other, which is how they announce that they want to play. This is fine as long as you are not still in the field when the colts decide to kick up their heels and run around like lunatics. As this happens every day, it is wise to get out of the field as quickly as possible.
We return to the barn to take out the mares. The filly is trying to take off her blanket with her teeth. The mares are happy to go out, but you have to make sure you take them out in a certain order, otherwise the first one in the field will make it hard for the others to get through the gate – which also means you might get kicked if they are in a particularly difficult mood. This can happen every time it is windy, or raining, or you are putting them out later, or earlier than they are used to, or the man next door is making weird sounds, or an ultra-light plane or hot air balloon is passing overhead, or a mare didn’t get much sleep because she decided that she didn’t like her neighbor and had to kick the wall between them all night just to let everyone know.
When all the horses are out, I return to the house to make breakfast while my daughter starts cleaning stalls – always an exciting job. Some horses are surprisingly neat in their stalls, while others are complete slobs. Unfortunately, on our farm the neat horses are the exceptions. Most of our horses like to stir everything up in their stalls as if they were spoons in big pots of manure soup, which means that there is very little of the stall that isn’t really disgusting.
We eat breakfast, then I go outside to see what the men are doing and to make sure that they know where my shrubs are so they don’t run over them with their machines. This is important because the weeds have grown up so much around my little shrubs that you can hardly see them. They are indigo shrubs, which are kind of spindly and not at all what I’d expected. I got them from the Soil Conservation people a few years ago. I was hoping the shrubs would make a nice hedgerow, but they haven’t done much so far, although a few have gotten tall enough that you can actually see them.
It is now after 10:00 and I have to get to work. My computer is calling me, as are the pages I wrote last night. Going to work means putting on my slippers, walking down the hall to my study, turning on my computer and removing the pile of kittens from my chair. (We have two now, but even two kittens can make a pile when they are curled up together.) Because I have lots to do today, I’ll have to tell you about a typical afternoon in another blog.

Editors, manuscripts & more...

ED Baker — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:07:44 +0000

I sent the revised version of my latest manuscript back to my editor. It will be going to the copy editor next. I used to think that all copy editors do the same thing, but that isn’t necessarily the case. True, they all look for typos, errors in punctuation and grammar, consistency of names and whether or not your time line works, but they also each seem to have their own special thing that they focus on. I had one copy editor who looked at the last word in each sentence and made sure that it wasn’t the same as the word above or below it. (This works only after you have the manuscript pages divided the way they will be in the book.) Another copy editor made sure that I varied the placement of said, asked, etc in each sentence of my dialogue - as in one line would read so and so said, and the next line would read said so and so.
Because each manuscript goes to two copy editors before going to the printers, one would think that there wouldn’t be any mistakes. And this is after my editor and I have gone over it countless times. Even so you may find a mistake here and there. I apologize, but we really did try to catch them all!
The manuscript I sent was the seventh in the tales of the Frog Princess. I’ve already begun my next book which is neither part of the series nor related to Wings. All I can say is that it is another princess story and that I’m already having fun with it. In my opinion, having fun with your story is vital. If the author doesn’t enjoy it, chances are the readers won’t either. (Check out my message board at talesofedbaker.com. I discussed this very subject with one of my fans recently.)
The latest issue of the Greater Greensward is going on the site today or tomorrow. That’s something else I really enjoy, and I hope you do as well.