Unfettered Brilliance: Walter White Wednesday 100!

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Walter White Wednesday 100!

Ready for signing!

It's been a long time coming, but finally I can announce that Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad has been successfully launched! Ensley wrote about the launch over on his blog, but I'd like to say a few things here as well. First off, THANK YOU! to everyone who supported this event! That includes a bevy of local businesses here in our hometown who deserve a public shout-out:

Dragonfly Wine Market, who provided the wine for the event (no Schraderbrau, but you can't have everything, can you? Wink!)
Holly's Flowers, who provided us with a delicate (and deadly!) bouquet of lily-of-the-valley for the signing table
Joe's Place, who offered customers who came in with a signed copy a free dessert the night of the signing
Lily Bean's Micro-Roasted Coffee, who provided coffee and "Blue Sky" mini cupcakes for the launch and also offered the "Lydia Special" the day of the launch
Newt's Pub Burgers, who offered the "Heisenburger" and "Jesse's Blue Chips" the day of the launch, along with the special Crystal Blue Shake
Ni Fen Bistro, who provided awesome food for the launch, as well as offering customers who came in with a signed copy of the book a free order of fantastic potstickers
Pleasant City Wood Fired Grille, who offered customers who came in with a signed copy of the book a 10% discount on their order that night
. . . and of course, an extra round of applause for Fireside Books & Gifts, who hosted the event!

Really, I don't have the words (funny, being a writer and all) to explain how wonderful the night was. Two years of extremely hard work - don't let anyone tell you that writing isn't work - came together in a marvelous evening that was marked by an outpouring of love, support, and excitement over Breaking Bad.

Great crowd!

Checking the purity!

Longtime fan!

How's the book doing, you ask? Quite well - this morning, Wanna Cook? was ranked at #8 in a sub-sub category on Amazon (okay, add another "sub" to that). Our publisher, ECW Press, seems quite happy with the initial reception and our UK publisher (Myrmidon) is posting pictures from the launch on their Twitter feed. We're getting nice press locally, on book lovers blogs, and on review sites. So really - buy a copy or three!

Still not sure what makes Breaking Bad so special? I think this tribute by Alexandre Gasulla sums it up beautifully . . .

And an extra-large congratulations! to Bryan Cranston on his Tony nomination for Best Actor for his portrayal of LBJ in All the Way. The play also was nominated for Best Play - quite an achievement!

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Unfettered Brilliance by K. Dale Koontz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Points of Interest

Lurker's Guide - Excellent fan-run resource guide for Babylon 5

Breaking Bad - The official AMC site for news and recaps about the best show on television

Mockingbird's Nest - What I do outside of my day job

Ensley Guffey's Blog - Musings and links worth noticing

Nik At Night's Blog - Most things TV, including the 2011 Rewatch

TV Tropes - What you've seen, over and over and why it matters

Slayage - Whedon given the scholarly treatment

Whedonesque - Clearinghouse of all things Whedon

BuffyWorld - Shooting scripts, screenshots, and more

Who?

K. Dale Koontz may have watched too much television as a child. She learned to count via Sesame Street and first learned that genres could cross-pollinate through M*A*S*H. When she discovered Joss Whedon's Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the die was cast. In 2008, McFarland published her book Faith and Choice in the Work of Joss Whedon which focused on themes such as redemption, choice, and consequences in Whedon's work up to that point. (She's fairly sure Volume 2 could be written to include Dr. Horrible, Dollhouse, and The Avengers.) She is a founding member of the Whedon Studies Association (a great group of people, but don't mention Twilight. Just sayin'). She has presented original work on the Rossum Corporation in Dollhouse, Kitty Pryde, and Japanese anime. In 2014, she and co-author Ensley F. Guffey worked with ECW Press to publish the critically-acclaimed Wanna Cook? The Complete, Unofficial Companion to Breaking Bad. Her most recent project was to team again with Ensley and ECW to publish A Dream Given Form, which is the only guide to all the canonical works in the Babylon 5 universe. That book is currently available for preorder and will be released in September of 2017. Dale is available for speaking engagements and only occasionally uses puppets in her presentations.

What?

I have long been interested in storytelling - how we do it, why we do it, and what happens when we mix things up. This interest might be the result of being born and raised in the American South, a region that has long celebrated the involved story over the quick answer. Television - the good stuff, anyway - does this brilliantly. Far from being film's red-headed tacky cousin, good TV lets characters and relationships build slowly and often mixes up genres, so horror is next door to humor and fantasy rubs shoulders with procedurals. This blog focuses on both the "good stuff" being broadcast that catches my fancy (with a special emphasis on Babylon 5, since that's the book that's in the process of being written right now) as well as film. The films are usually new releases being watched for TV19's weekly Meet Me at the Movies, although I reserve the right to veer off into classics and under-appreciated gems as well. Older posts cover what my introduction to film class was up to - currently, I'm not teaching that course, but who knows what the future may hold.

Notable Whedon Work