Sparks Trailer!

Here's the video trailer for SPARKS, coming November 8 from Flux Books.





You can also see it, and download the song from the background, on the new downloads page.

Trailer Stills

Here are some stills from yesterday's trailer shoot:

Julie Kostynick as Debbie and Ava Raddatz as Emma Wolf.  We filmed this scene at the same high school that was used for Mean Girls, just to say that we did. It probably won't make the final cut.

Emma and Tim (Tyler Streb) kick old ladies' butts at bingo.

Bluddha, the current mascot of the Church of Blue (it WAS Emma's car, but you just can't have a deity that stalls out on you every day).

Emma and Tim complete their Holy Quest Goal of finding someone with the same name as a US president by meeting Andrew Johnson, who is just THRILLED.

Keeping an eye on Adam today - he's reading up on mummy "unwrapping parties" that were popular in the Victorian era, and something tells me he's going to want to try it out....but we drill for this sort of thing around here.

The Ragged Glory: Debbie Does Detention playlist

From the feverish days of trying to write the first draft in two weeks back in 2007 through two weeks ago, when the last of the edits were finalized, the RAGGED GLORY playlist has been the heart and soul of SPARKS. I took the term from Will McRobb and Chris Viscardi, who said they wanted their TV show, The Adventures of Pete and Pete, to have a sense of ragged glory in their DVD commentary. I want all of my stuff to have that, too. They borrowed the term from a Neil Young record.

Over time I've added a bit to the list, so some things are from post-2007. But now you can listen to most of it yourself on spotify!

Click to open spottily behold the ragged glory!

Three months out...

Just a few months until SPARKS is unleashed upon the world. I turned in all of the last round of changes and fixes on Monday morning, wrapping up four years of work on this project. The last song to be added to the "Ragged Glory" playlist was "Chesire Kitten" by SJ Tucker (she pronounced SJ as "Sooj." I go by "Sij.")

We're knee-deep in work for the video trailer(s) now. I wonder if Flux would mind if we ended by saying "Flux Books. YA Lit with 50% fewer dumbasses than the next leading brand..."

Now that the main body of work on SPARKS is done, I'm going full time on the new launch of the Smart Aleck's Guide series. You can help us get launched at kickstarter.com!

Theme from Sparks

A new band called The Holy Quests came by Smart Aleck Staff HQ to record some incidental music for the book trailer we're putting together for Sparks (using one of Adam's old songs). The trailer is going to be GREAT! We've got a really cool cast lined up. Here's a free mp3 of the "theme song."

New York Rain (Theme from Sparks) by scapegoat95