New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author
Since most of you don’t follow my other blog, Mainly Jane, I thought I’d take a break from Storm Talk and Yankee Talk and show you the video trailer for my new book. If there’s a caregiver in your life (or you are one), this is for you!
P.S. Congrats to Cano and Tex for their Gold Glove Awards!!!!! I feel like a proud mother!!!!
When Expanded Books, the producers of the video for YOU’D BETTER NOT DIE OR I’LL KILL YOU, sent me the final version today and posted it on YouTube and elsewhere, I hesitated before putting it up here. There’s so much devastation from Super Storm Sandy that it seemed inappropriate to be plugging my book.
But then I went on Facebook and started reading all the stories of people trying to cope, some of them caregivers to a child, spouse or elderly relative, and I thought…Wait a sec. Why not give everybody a little uplift right now? The book is officially out on Friday, although many have written to tell me they pre-ordered it and have their copies already. So celebrate publication with me and my animated character… whenever and however you can.
In preparation for the video book trailer for “You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill You,” the animators at Expanded Books have been busily creating images for the “characters” in the video. First up: me.
Here’s what I looked like the day of the shoot.
And here’s what I’ll look like as a cartoon.
Want to know four reasons why I love my cartoon self?
Yes, her head is shaped like a melon, but you can’t have everything.
Okay, I’m not exactly Steven Spielberg, and my video trailer for “You’d Better Not Die or I’ll Kill You” will only be about three minutes instead of three hours, but still. As I’ve mentioned, the intro and ending of the trailer will be animated, so today’s task was for me to select actresses to “play” (i.e. do the voice-over work) for the two women in the brief animated scenes.
What fun to listen to all the candidates reading lines from the script I wrote! The gist of the animated scenes is that two women meet in the checkout line at a supermarket and start commiserating about their caregiving experiences. Woman #1 is supposed to sound a bit older and world-weary, while Woman #2 is younger and more surprised by the situation she’s been thrown into.
After careful consideration – and a second opinion from husband Michael – I picked actress Faleena Hopkins for Woman #1…
…and actress Sarah Pesek for Woman #2.
You can listen to their demo reels on their web sites, but I just hope they’re both available to do my trailer because they’re talented ladies.
Of course, now I wish I could be a casting director in my next life. I really did enjoy this part of the process, as limited as it was.
Now, onto the animation part. According to Expanded Books, I should see something in a week or so. Can’t wait.
What a fun day! The crew from Expanded Books came to the house from L.A. to shoot a video trailer for my new book. I wrote a script for the two-plus minute video that I kept revising right down to the last minute. I have new appreciation for actors now, because memorizing every word of that script was hard, as short as it was. But before I delivered my lines, I got made up by a pro named Patrice Ryan, who’s painted the faces of many a movie and TV star.
I told her I wanted to look like me only a whole lot better, and she obliged by giving me eyes that popped but didn’t go all raccoon.
Once we got rolling I really enjoyed the process, probably because I was allowed to “cheat” by glancing at the script every now and then.
The main thing is that I was able to look right into the camera and talk to the 65 million caregivers in America. I wanted to tell them that I wrote “You’d Better Not Die” for them – by sharing my own caregiving story with my husband Michael, by introducing the other resilient caregivers I interviewed and by providing advice from experts. The last line of the script invites viewers of the video to write to me with their own experiences and join the conversation. I sure hope they will.
Oh – in case anyone’s wondering, we shot the video in my office, with me in front of a green screen, because we’ll be using animation. I’ll be “talking” to characters that Expanded Books will create, and I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
Jane Heller is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author. Her fourteen breezy, witty novels of romantic comedy and suspense are now entertaining millions of readers around the world, along with her two books of nonfiction.