On all sorts of Teasers

Some of the cast and all of the crew of Teaser, the video

At the Providence Journal, where I used to work, the union put on an annual production called The Follies, a spoof of the news, that drew a minimum audience of one thousand.

One year, I played one of the Brown University students who were nabbed in an Ivy League prostitution ring in the mid-eighties. Another year, I sang in a chorus of hookers. As my husband noted, I got cast as a floozie of some sort pretty much every year.

Until that great day when the director noticed that I looked exactly just like Claudine Schneider, a Republican US Congresswoman.

A star was born.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration. I wasn’t exactly Tina Fey playing Sarah Palin, but Claudine Schneider did come up to me afterward to congratulate me on my performance and said something like, “Oh my God. You DO look just like me.”

Unfortunately for my acting career, Claudine retired from politics. Then I left the newspaper.

Fast forward more than ten years. My fourth book is coming out and I’ve decided to do a book trailer. A teaser for Teaser.

Most authors do slide shows or animation. Because I almost never do things the easy way, I decided I need a real production with real live actors and actresses. Luckily for me, I had a friend with a production company. Dave Emmerling, founder and a partner in Midnight Media Group of Millburn, New Jersey. He offered to help me -- making me the luckiest author on the planet.

This was the deal. I would write the script, site the scenes, cast the actors, and provide costume and props. I wrote one script, realized what it would require in locating and getting permission to shoot the sites, and immediately rewrote the script. I scoured I-Party and second-hand shops for props. I cast the actors through Craig’s List and by calling local colleges and universities. The hardest part was casting the teenagers.

There were nights when I woke up at 2 in the morning worrying that I’d never find those teenagers, or the wigs ,or the Catholic School kilt. And what if no one showed up after Dave drove all the way to Massachusetts from New Jersey? I was dealing with people I’d only met over the Internet for goodness sakes.

But there's no business like show business. The actors not only showed up exactly on time, but were professional and prepared. They either looked just like the characters I’d envisioned in my head – or a little better. The Russian accents required were dead-on. Everyone took direction. I even got a bit role.

Our makeup artist, Vera, made everyone feel relaxed. And Dave did his magic with his high definition cameras and lighting and duvateen. Just like a night at the Follies, we felt a bond as the curtain came down. I was high for days.

So take a look and tell me what you think. Do I have a new career in Hollywood? Maybe not. But was it one of the most fun and rewarding experiences of my life?? You betcha.

Bah Humbug!

Rhys here on a cold Friday morning:

I've come to a conclusion: let's do away with Christmas!Before you click to another, friendlier, website, let me state that I love Christmas. I adore any kind of holiday with the family together, laughter, silly games and the spiritual element as well. But I can't stand what Christmas has become.

When I was a child Christmas carol singers started appearing on street corners about a week before Dec 25. The shops started looking festive about that time. Turkeys appeared, so did Christmas trees. A couple of days before the holiday I took my pocket money and went to town alone to buy gifts for my family (awful perfume for one aunt, I remember. At least it must have been awful because it only cost about twenty cents). Then on Christmas Eve we all piled into the car, loaded to the gills with food and a tree tied to the roof and drove to my grandmother's house. We decorated the tree, and when I was considered old enough I went to Midnight Mass with the grownups. Christmas morning we examined our stockings. We ate a huge turkey lunch, then tea with an iced cake made to look like a snow scene. There were more small presents tied to the tree. We played charades, sat around the fire, talked and went to bed.

Sounds boring, right? But to me it was perfect--and full of real treats. Turkeys only apeared in the stores for Christmas so eating turkey was a treat. Tangerines dates and nuts appeared at the same time so we ate things that were special. The presents were horribly simple by our standards. I got a book, or a puzzle or a new sweater. There was usually a family game to play. But we expected less.

So now that the Christmas music starts blaring out the day after Halloween and the presents under the tree include a BMW everyone should be that much happier. But they're not. It's as if the hype is raised every year to try and convince us that it's a fun and jolly time, but it's not. And why? Because we have too much the rest of the year. It's no treat to eat turkey if we can buy it for 43 cents a pound any time we want. There is no treat in feasting when we eat our fill every day of the year. It's hard to know what presents to buy for kids when they already have everything they could desire.

The holiday has been taken over by Santa and flying reindeer and Frosty to the point that we have forgotten we are celebrating someone's birthday. And it must be truly annoying for non-Christians to have all the Christmas hype blasted at them wherever they go. So I've got a suggestion: Nobody knows when Jesus was born, so why don't we move his birthday to another, quieter time and turn this into Winterfest, so that Santa can bring presents from the North Pole to all good boys and girls with no religious overtones?
Just a thought. What do you think? What memories do you have of holidays past?

RO: I think it's already been turned into Winterfest. I don't mind that I start hearing Burl Ives (Holly Jolly Christmas)and Brenda Lee (Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree) earlier and earlier each year. Maybe if I had kids I'd be more concerned about the commercialism and the ever-escalating gift list, but for me it's the food, the decorations, the general feeling that people are happy and celebrating having gotten through another year!
Your memories sound idyllic. Mine were a little less Currier and Ives, but just as wonderful for me. My mother was one of eight and my father one of nine, so I have more cousins than, oh, Hank has black shoes! (Okay maybe not THAT many) And we'd hang out at my grandmothers in Brooklyn eating Italian specialities that my mother baked, and the seven different kinds of seafood that Neapolitans have on Christmas Eve.When I was a teenager we'd pile into someone's car and drive around looking for the houses with the most garish displays of lights. That used to be quite a contest in our neighborhood. There was a Danny DeVito movie a few years back called Deck the Halls about a guy who wants his decorated house to be seen from outer space..it reminds me of those guys in Brooklyn with their over-the-top decorations.

Mary Stanton on Angels and Goats

RHYS: My first interview as a Jungle Red Hot Babe is with fellow mystery writer, and my good friend, Mary Stanton, whom many of you will know as Claudia Bishop of Hemlock Falls fame. Mary/Claudia now divides her time between upstate New York, where she breeds these adorable goats, and Florida. She is a true workaholic, always juggling several books a year, but she took time to answer my questions:

RHYS: The mystery world knows you as Claudia Bishop. So who is Mary Stanton and why did you decide to write in that name?

MARY: Mary Stanton is the Real Me. I began writing twenty-some years ago under my given name, and I published fantasy. My first two novels were beast fables, like WATERSHIP DOWN, and the characters were horses. I then wrote a middle grade fantasy series called THE UNICORNS OF BALINOR for Scholastic. And I did a Saturday-morning-cartoon stint for a series about unicorns. When I turned to mysteries, both my Berkely editor and my then-agent agreed a name-change was in order. We didn't want to confuse the fantasy readers. So I morphed into Claudia Bishop.

RHYS: Tell us about your new series.

MARY: The series title is BEAUFORT & COMPANY, and the first in the series is titled Defending Angels.My heroine is Brianna Winston-Beaufort, a young lawyer who discovers that her vocation is to handle appeals for the dead. She's supported by a company of angels who help her address the difficulties that arise when she deals with the Celestial Court system and the prosecuting lawyers from Hell.

RHYS: What made you decide to write a paranormal story--have you always been fascinated with angels and demons? MARY: I'm not sure how I got into writing this series! I've read fantasy ever since I was a little kid and I love it. And in my own mind, Defending Angels is an urban fantasy, in the tradition of Neil Gaiman and Charles deLint. But yes, you're right, the marketplace does consider the Beaufort & Company series as paranormal mysteries. And the rich medieval tradition behind the concept of angels and demons was a pull for me, too.

RHYS: You create a wonderful picture of Savannah. Were you raised in the deep south?

MARY: I was SO anxious about getting Savannah right! And no, I'm not a Southerner. I'm not even a continental American. Although I was born in Florida, I grew up in Hawaii, at a time when we were still a territory and not a state. When I came to the continental United States as an undergraduate, I fell in love with incredible diversity of the continent--the South in particular.

RHYS: So what is next for Mary Stanton and/or Claudia Bishop?

MARY: Mary just finished Angel's Advocate, the second in the BEAUFORT & COMPANY series. Claudia is in the middle of the first of a new series titled THE GROUCHY GOURMET, Another Man's Poison. Both are for Berkely.

RHYS: Lastly a little game we play.
tell us four amazing or outrageous things, one of which is true.And I mean really outrageous that your fans would love to knowAnd then our readers will vote on which one is true.

MARY: How's about which one is false? All the outrageous stuff I can think of that I haven't done has to do with sex.

1. I can castrate a goat.

2. I won fifty dollars discriminating between five different vodkas in a blind taste test.

3. I got fired from my job as a night club singer because I can't dance.

4. I can talk to horses.
RHYS:So many thanks to Mary. Defending Angels is now in a store near you, and will make a great stocking stuffer! And let's see if we can decide which ourtrageous thing Mary is lying about!