A Week of Failed Santas, Thursday

Technically, this should be a great Santa. After all, it's a mash-up of the two Christian holiday mascots. Instead, it is confusing, disorienting, even a little nauseating. I present to you:

The Christmas-ter Bunny.

If this thing ever came to my house, I don't care how many baskets of presents it was carrying, I would cower in fear. This is a bad, bad Santa.

In totally unrelated news, I saw Disney's TANGLED last night. People have been telling me how RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE was, "Totally ripped off" I was excited to go and see for myself. There are a few similarities, sure. The one that killed me was how Rapunzel had only three books in her tower that she had to re-read--I think they were even the same size and color as our Rapunzel's tower books. Really, though, they did a fun, and totally different take on the fairy tale, and I really enjoyed it. It definitely does not fall into the "Rip-off" category. I do like to imagine that the Disney folks read RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE and borrowed a few things, just for fun.

Anyway, it was a cute movie and I recommend it to all RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE fans. If Disney does a sequel where Rapunzel and (the guy, forgot his name) go up against giants and beanstalks, then I'll call foul. In the mean time, go check out the movie--or, if you haven't, go pick up a copy of RAPUNZEL'S REVENGE--better yet, give a copy of the book to a TANGLED fan for Christmas. They'd totally dig it.

A Week of Failed Santas, Wednesday

From long forgotten tombs comes Mummy Claus!

Traveling with help from his eight canopic Reindeer jars, Mummy Claus bears ancient gifts, and curses! Thousand year-old curses! Mummy Claus is shuffling to town.

A Week of Failed Santas, Tuesday

Tuesday's bad Santa is...



Santapod, the Giant Isopod Santa! He flies around on his sled pulled by eight sea cucumbers. When you leave a treat out for Santapod, skip the milk and cookies, this Santa would much rather gorge himself on a putrefying whale carcass. He's the jolly giant cockroach of the sea floor!

This is not the first time isopods have appeared on the blog. Click here if you don't know about Chuck the Lazy Isopod. Scroll down until you see some jesters, then stop and read the posts from bottom to top. You'll learn more than you ever wanted to about these cuddly creatures.

A Week of Failed Santas, Monday

So you've probably seen Robo-Santa, I've been talking a lot about him and his 12 BOTS this month. (Buy it! Buy it!) You may also know Santasaurus, the candy-cane-striped Triceratops from The Dinosaurs' Night Before Christmas. (Buy it too!) So far, I've done more books with off-beat Santas than actual Santas. Off-beat Santas are all the rage in picture books right now. There are Evil Santas, Pirate Santas, a whole bunch of Dinosaur Santas (Tyrannoclaus, Santasaurus etc.) Alternative Santas, they are here to stay.

This week, I thought we'd spend some time with some Alternative Santas who will never get a picture book deal.

Monday's Santa is...

Jolly Old St. Dental Claus. He comes down the chimney and performs oral surgery on all good boys and girls. You better watch out.

Geekmom!

This week I did an interview for the Wired blog Geekmom.com. They did a great review of the BOTS as well as an interview with me. Click over and see! There is also a sneak preview of what is to come here on the blog...

Thanks Geekmom! Great write-up! And cool site, I've bookmarked it for the LEGO posts alone!

And the Winning Dragon is...

Percy! By a mile!

Everybody loves Percy! So he is November's Most Favored Dragon! I have a feeling we haven't seen the last of him, there may be a Percy story in the future.

I installed something cool at the Provo Library yesterday. It is something everyone will get to see on the blog here in a week or two, but you can see it early and in person if you live by the library. Check the glass cases on the way to the Children's desk.

Have a great weekend! New story starts Monday!

Name That Drag--Uh oh! It's the NaNoWriMonster!

And the dragon with the most votes is...

Wow! I'm surprised it took him this long to show up. It's Chester the NaNoWriMonster! Long-time readers will recognize him from last November when I was doing NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month.) I didn't participate this year, but I plan to next year. I hope everyone who did finished their novel. Here's the update on the book I was writing during last year's NaNoWriMo: Still not finished. I've sold five book contracts since then, three picture books and two graphic novels, but I never got around to finishing those last 50 pages of my NaNo-novel.

Thanks to Chester's interruption, it looks like we have one more day of voting. Pick that winning dragon! Vote your pick in yesterday's comment section. Or today's if you feel like it.

And to everyone in SLC, tonight is the big holiday author party at The King's English bookstore. It's from 5-7, come say hi, I'll be up to my elbows in BOTS.

Name That Dragon Wrap-up

And our final winning name is...

Ba-ba-ba-bum!

"Behold, this dragon shall be called Lucent! Slithering between worlds and planes of existence, he strikes before you even sense his presence!" (Named by Courtney)

Thanks for playing everyone! I think that was a pretty spectacular run of Name That Dragon. I'd especially like to thank our judges, Uly, Lucy, Shannon and Dean Hale, and final week judge, Jessica Day George. Great job judges!

Now it is your turn to judge. It's time to choose your favorite dragon of them all. Here is a refresher:

Leave your vote in the comments section and we'll see who wins the coveted "Most Favored Dragon" title. The chosen dragon will get a brand new drawing in a different pose.

Votes for "Turkor" will be immediately disqualified.

If you enjoyed this game, please support the blog by purchasing one of my books (I recommend THE TWELVE BOTS OF CHRISTMAS,) leave a review on Amazon (also BOTS,) and join the "Space Station Cadets" by clicking the "Follow" button on the right.

Tomorrow we'll announce the winning dragon and Thursday we start a new story!