The Return of Walter White Wednesday!

Ahhh - nothing like a little break over the holidays!  I'm pleased to report that additional progress has been made on Wanna Cook? during my hiatus.  When last I posted a "Walter White Wednesday," Ensley and I had received the manuscript draft to do our final proofread.  I have to tell you - this manuscript looks fabulous!  I think you're really going to like the pictures and graphics that our tireless team at ECW have selected.  And talk about quality control!  On top of Ensley and I both going through the draft with a fine-toothed comb to find the tiny errors (the whoops - need a comma there! sort of thing that can slip by both authors and two editors in the push to get the content tight and whip-smart), there was a professional proofreader going through it as well.  Everyone has had their say, so I think at this point, it's safe to say that the writing portion of the project is done on our end.  Is it perfect?  I'd love to think so and know this - if you spot any mistakes, rest assured that you caught something that got by multiple, very involved, people who looked over this very, very carefully!  Hopefully, of course, there will be absolutely no errors, but - well, you're dealing with people and sometimes "freckles" happen in even the most carefully reviewed of manuscripts.

Also, I'm sure some readers will question why this was left out, or why we didn't mention that and that's okay.  It's the nature of publishing - you have a word count that is strict and sometimes, things you like a lot have to go in order to keep the things you love.  Choices.  Sigh.

I don't think it's sunk in yet that we're done and that now that the text is set, it means that very soon, someone is going to be hunched over their keyboard translating the text into German for simultaneous publication in that language in May.  It's simply astonishing to me that there is that sort of interest, and allow me to get a little giddy over being translated - that hasn't happened before.

So with all this interest, you want to go ahead and pre-order the book!  To help you with that, here are some links you might find handy:

Amazon
Powell's
Books-A-Million
and hey - even Wal-Mart's on the Wanna Cook? bandwagon!

After all, you don't want to miss out on the best guide to this amazing show, which won the Golden Globe for best TV drama this year, beating out (among other worthy contenders) House of Cards and Downton Abbey.

On top of putting the final flourishes on the book, I've been keeping up with this blog on the movie side of things and I'd like to briefly mention Peter Berg's newest - Lone Survivor.  While the title seems to give away some major plot points, the story is compelling enough that you nearly forget that in the midst of watching events unfold.  Based on medic Marcus Luttrell's book of the same title, Lone Survivor details the failed SEAL mission Operation Red Wings that occurred in Afghanistan in 2005.  Faced with communication and other technical problems, as well as terrain that can kindly be called "inhospitable" (remember, even Alexander the Great went around these mountains and it's not for nothing that Afghanistan is called "the graveyard of empires," even if that title might be a tad exaggerated), SEAL Team 10 did not succeed in their assigned mission to capture or kill a major Taliban target and, indeed, suffered extensive casualties.  Lone Survivor takes you inside the training that produces warriors who are scary-prepared, shows you the bond that can be forged under extreme circumstances, and also shows that, no matter how prepared you are, things can go tragically sideways and help can come from the most unexpected of quarters.  (It also shows the desirability of teaching those in the field at least a few concepts of the local culture and some phrases of the local language.)  A good movie and a solid effort from Berg, Lone Survivor cancels out the Hasbro mess Battleship.  Mark Wahlberg is solid as Luttrell, but the breakout performance for me was that of Ben Foster as Axe.  Foster's a long way from Warren "Angel" Worthington in X-Men: The Last Stand here.  The film brutally depicts the reality of a firefight and its aftermath, so it is most certainly not for the young among us.  However, it's a good film that's well worth the watch, regardless of your politics regarding our involvement in Afghanistan.