I love summer movie season. I mentioned before that I’d been waiting for months to see Wolverine, and the same can be said for the new J.J. Abrams-helmed Star Trek. Considering I really like other Abrams productions like LOST and Fringe, I had a good feeling about this movie. And was I ever right!

I’ve started watching the original Star Trek in reruns back in the ’70s when I was a kid. I was also a devoted Star Trek: The Next Generation fan. I watched Deep Space Nine (my least favorite Trek spin-off), Voyager (hubby’s least favorite; he hates Chakotay) and Enterprise some, but the Star Trek franchise had waned in recent years. Well, Abrams has brought it back with some excellent casting and lots of fun, summer-popcorn movie boom.

I can’t say enough about the casting. I think all the actors have done a wonderful job of capturing the essence of the original characters but putting their own spin on what they would have been like when they were much younger. I particularly like Chris Pine as Captin Kirk, Zachary Quinto as Spock and Karl Urban as Bones. I think Urban totally nailed Bones, and I think that’s because of how he watched Star Trek every Saturday when he was a kid. I loved his interplay with Pine’s Kirk. Very fun! And it was such fun to see Quinto playing a good guy, and not the disturbing (but excellently acted) Sylar on Heroes. By contrast, we saw Eric Bana (normally a good guy) playing a very bad Romulan, Nero. It’s a testament to the makeup people that they’ve rendered Eric (normally very nice to look at) not at all attractive. It’s hard to even tell at a glance that it’s him

There are fun shout-outs to the original: Leonard Nimoy’s “These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise” voiceover, the original theme music, Chekov’s thick Russian accent being incomprehensible to the ship’s computer, Bones’ “Damn it, Jim” moments, and others I’m sure I’m forgetting. And it was fun to see a bit part played by Paul McGillion from Stargate: Atlantis.

If you’ve seen it, tell me what you thought. If not, put it on your weekend agenda. I think even people who were never really into Trek and don’t know much beyond the names Kirk and Spock will enjoy it. Until you see it, enjoy this awesome trailer:

I’ve been waiting for months, well actually ever since I heard they were going to make a Wolverine movie, to see X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Geek girl that I am, I’m a big fan of the X-Men. And Wolverine has always been one of my favorite characters, along with Gambit, who also is introduced in this film. I wanted to see more of Gambit (Taylor Kitsch), but since this was mainly a movie about Wolverine and Sabretooth, I understand why he didn’t have more screen time. So, without spoilers, here are some of the things I liked:

1. Hugh Jackman — I mean, seriously, what’s not to like? He’s so easy to look at, and he plays the cigar-chomping Wolverine with intensity. Here he is pictured with, from left, Ryan Reynolds (Wade Wilson/Deadpool), Taylor Kitsch (Remy LeBeau/Gambit), Liev Schreiber (Victor Creed/Sabretooth) and Lynn Collins (Kayla Silverfox).

2. Liev Schreiber was an excellent Sabretooth. I now wish he’d been Sabretooth in the X-Men trilogy.

3. Taylor Kitsch as Gambit. I want me some more Gambit! I hope they make an Origins movie about him too.

4. The boom and fighting factors. What can I say? I’m a girl who likes action movies.

May always seems to have a lot of great movies, the beginning of the summer movie season. I’m already planning an outing to see the new Star Trek this Friday. Geek girl strikes again! I think this trailer looks awesome.

I’ve been up to my eyeballs in revisions lately, for my second YA novel, Ice and Desire. I like how they’re coming, and I’m beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Hopefully, I can send them to my editor by the end of the week. Since I’m headed to California a week from today, I’ve got a lot to get done between now and then:

1. Finish the Ice and Desire revisions
2. Finish judging entries in the RITA contest — 5 books left!
3. Read my agenda packet for the RWA board meeting
4. Do a freelance article for my contract job
5. Misc. paperwork
6. Print out what I’ve written of Flirting with Forever, the Harlequin American book that is due April 1, so I can work on it on the train to Cali.

While I’m working on all that, I thought I’d share a fun fan video I found recently, for one of the shows I enjoy, Legend of the Seeker. The video is about Kahlen and Richard’s relationship, and it includes a verra nice kiss. Plus, I like the Hinder song it’s set to.

I’m blogging at the Harlequin American blog about seeing Wicked last week. There are even videos of two of my favorite songs from the play.

Hola, peeps!

I’ve been so busy the last few days, I’ve not managed to blog. Monday, I drove to Virginia. Tuesday, I took the train into New York City and saw the play Wicked with my agent. It was fabulous! We both loved it, and I was singing some of the songs for the next few days. If you get the chance to see it either on Broadway or with the touring company, go!

Wednesday, my agent and I met my two editors from Razorbill, my young adult publisher. My main editor’s office overlooks New York Harbor and the Statue of Liberty. How cool is that? We had a good lunch and chat about business and just fun chitchat. My agent had some other meetings, so I went back to the hotel and worked. If it hadn’t been so brutally cold and windy, I would have gotten out and done something during the afternoon. But it was just miserable outside.

Thursday, I caught the train to Washington, D.C., for the RWA board meeting, which we just finished up about 6 p.m. tonight. In celebration of being finished for this time and having waited forever to see it, three of us from the board (Stephanie Feagan, Sara Reinke and moi) along with my good friend Michelle, who is from the D.C. area, took the Metro to a movie theater and saw Twilight.

I’ve been eagerly anticipating this movie and wasn’t disappointed — at least no further than with any book adapted to screen when you wish the movie was longer so you could see more of the story you first fell in love with. I know there have been criticisms of it and some of the actors, but I was pleased. I wish Jasper had had more dialogue because he’s getting some bad chatter for his acting ability, but he just didn’t have many lines and his expressions were what they were to express he’s the youngest of the Cullen vampire clan and struggles the most with not attacking humans. You could see him physically holding himself back, trying not to inhale Bella’s human scent. Jasper is one of my favorite characters, so I hope to see more of him in the upcoming movies. I read that the second in the series, New Moon, has already been greenlit. I’m happy to see that Twilight has made close to $75 million this weekend, ensuring follow-ups — unlike the first of what was supposed to be another series based on books I liked, The Golden Compass.

Anyone else see Twilight? What did you think?

I hope everyone had a great 4th. Having done our cookout and partying last weekend, we didn’t even leave the house except to step out onto the front porch to watch the neighbors shoot off fireworks. And as you can tell from my lack of blogging the past couple of days, I’ve been in the writing cave. I’ve written 33 pages in the past two days. I’m really pushing to have a rough draft done by the time I head to San Fran so I can do editing on the train.

You know how you get those meme things in e-mail and are tagged by other bloggers all the time. You know the ones that ask things like — tell us six random things about you? Well, I’ve decided to start my own and see how long it takes the world of the Internet to send it back to me. So, here goes:

Famous People Meme — Which famous person in each of the following categories would you like to meet?

Author — J.K. Rowling

Movie Actor — Orlando Bloom

TV Actor — Jared Padalecki and Jensen Ackles, also Sarah Michelle Gellar

Musician/Singer — Bon Jovi

Historical Figure — Queen Elizabeth I and Sacajawea

Fictional Book Character — J.R. Ward’s Black Dagger Brotherhood brothers

Fictional Movie or TV Character — Buffy Sommers

Okay, if you have a blog, go forth and blog. Everyone, including the bloggers, share your answers in the comments section. I’m verrry curious.

Did you hear the sigh of relief today? That was me after I finished my chapter outline for my new YA book. I’ve now sent it off to my friend Monica for a read before I make final edits and send it to my editor. Yay! Of course, then it’s on to revisions on my second Harlequin American and my Supernatural essay. I did get good news from my YA editor. Heartbreak River came back from the copyeditor so clean that it’s now off to the printer! I may have bound galleys next month!

Thursday was my birthday, so I took that day off. Hubby took the day off from work. I had lunch with friends, then hubby and I went to see Prince Caspian, which I really enjoyed. In fact, I’m basing the hero in this new YA on Ben Barnes, who plays Caspian. Then I zipped into Books-a-Million to pick up my friend Jeanne Adams’ debut novel, Dark and Dangerous. Finally, we went out to dinner at Olive Garden, which was yummy. It was nice to have a day off to just play in the middle of hectic deadlines, and I think it actually helped me be fresh enough to power through to the end of my outline last night.

Okay, I’ve mentioned before how much I LOVE Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series and how I’m eagerly anticipating the movie Twilight this December. So, I did a little squee when I saw the gorgeous new poster for the movie and discovered there’s a new trailer available for viewing. You can see these at the movie’s new Web site, and you can also download the poster image as your computer’s wallpaper, like I did. Now the image below of Bella and Edward will greet me each time I turn on my computer.

I’m working on an essay for Benbella Books, for a compilation they’re doing for their SmartPop series on the show Supernatural, my favorite show on TV. So, I’ve been re-watching the first two seasons, taking notes to support the theme of my essay. It’s interesting what you catch when you’re watching something analytically versus just for fun. And though I already knew it, it’s striking me again just how good this show really is — great writing, great acting, totally fun and believable relationship between the brothers. Thank you, Eric Kripke!

I was talking to my husband yesterday about how different our TV viewing choices are. I like certain shows and don’t want to miss a single episode. That’s because I like shows that have a developing story arc over time. If you miss an episode, you miss a valuable part of the arc. Hubby, on the other hand, watches programs at random as he’s surfing, stuff you can miss and it won’t matter. For instance: Me (Supernatural or Moonlight) versus Hubby (South Park or The Colbert Report). I think our viewing choices are also reflected in our reading choices. Hubby watches Book TV on C-SPAN on the weekends, which makes sense because he’s almost exclusively a nonfiction reader (and really smart dude). I like shows that have stories to tell, just like my preference for fiction. I do think I’m more likely to read a nonfiction work than he is a fiction work, though he will be reading my published books — good hubby that he is. Same goes for TV. I’ve watched some Book TV, and I really enjoy The Daily Show. But I don’t see hubby giving in to weekly watching of Bones anytime soon.

Pretty much everyone has heard of the conspiracy theories involving aliens, the U.S. government and Roswell, New Mexico. In these theories, the aliens are usually of the little green men variety. But what if there really were aliens from the Roswell crash among us and they looked like high school students? That’s the premise behind Roswell, a teen-targeted TV show that ran from 1999-2002. It’s another of those teen shows (like Buffy) that I missed when it was in first-runs. But I watched the entire three seasons recently and really enjoyed it. Like most teen-centered shows I watch, it caused ideas for future YA books to start crackling in my head. Nothing about Roswell itself or aliens, but it was a jumping-off point for my imagination.

I like how the show took the idea of star-crossed lovers to a whole different level. As Liz Parker (Shiri Appleby), one of the leads, said in one of the promos: “Romeo and Juliet came from two different worlds. Max and I have them beat. We come from two different planets.”

The story revolves around Max (Jason Behr), his sister Isabel (Katherine Heigl, before Grey’s Anatomy fame), and their friend Michael (Brenden Fehr), all three aliens from a planet they can’t remember. They were in the 1947 crash at Roswell, but they remained in incubation pods until they popped out in time to be teenagers for the show. Max and Isabel were adopted by a loving family, but Michael got stuck in the foster care system. They lead pretty normal teenage lives in Roswell, but they’re always aware that if anyone becomes aware of who and what they are, they’ll have to leave and not come back. They tell no one their secret — until Max has to save Liz with his super-duper alien healing powers. Thus begins the love story of Max and Liz. It’s definitely not an easy one as they try to figure out if they can even be together.

I enjoyed the Max/Liz story, but I was at least equally attracted to the love story between Michael and Maria (Majandra Delfino), Liz’s best friend. Their relationship is more bumpy, even when they’re together, but there’s a vulnerability about Michael behind all his macho bluster that made Maria’s love for him all that more powerful. He was this wounded guy, and Maria was what he needed to heal, even though he didn’t realize it for awhile. He’s not exactly introspective guy.

You know how Buffy had the Scoobies? Well, the aliens have a small circle of human friends who are in the know — Liz and Maria initially, then their friend Alex (Colin Hanks, Tom’s son), then Sheriff Valenti and his son, Kyle. This group often works together to foil the efforts of the feds and other various baddies who are after the aliens for horrible lab purposes.

Since you know I love YouTube fan vids, here are a couple for Roswell. The first is for Max and Liz, set to Dido’s “Here With Me,” which was the show’s theme song. The second is for Michael and Maria, set to “Ice Dance” from the movie Edward Scissorhands.

I’m a total sucker for stories of star-crossed lovers, even though those types of relationships are typically doomed from the start. The trouble is I always want to rewrite them so that the couple in love gets their happily ever after. Hey, that’s why I write romance. There are classic examples like Romeo and Juliet, Tristan and Isolde, Lancelot and Guinevere. Newer examples are Buffy and Angel in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Jack and Rose from Titanic, and Anakin and Padme in Star Wars: Attack of the Clones and Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.

That last example is freshest in my mind because hubby and I finally got around to watching Revenge of the Sith on Friday night. Padme and Anakin’s story broke my heart. In the original three Star Wars movies that came out when I was a kid, Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker) was just a bad guy — bad, bad, bad. At least until the end of Return of the Jedi when he’s redeemed by killing Emperor Palpatine before the emperor can kill Luke. All we ever see of Anakin is his Darth Vader mask, until at the very end when he’s dying and asks Luke to remove it. We see a scarred, shriveled old man, and at least to my recollection we don’t know why he has to wear the mask and the rest of his black armor.

(Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen Revenge of the Sith.)

In the new trilogy, we get Anakin’s backstory, the harshness and loss he dealt with as a youth, how he constantly struggled with the incredible power within him, how he was manipulated by Palpatine, and how even though Jedi were forbidden to do so, he fell in love. In fact, one of the main reasons he went to the dark side was because of his incredible love for Padme and desire to protect her at all costs. So he wasn’t one-dimensional and evil to the core. He loved and was loved, so much so that when he was lost, Padme lost the desire to live. She gives birth to Luke and Leia, then dies — just as a near-death Anakin is reborn as Darth Vader in the mask we all know from those early Star Wars movies. Even as she takes her last breaths, though, she still loves and believes in her Ani. She tells Obi-Wan that she knows there’s still good in him — a sentiment that is echoed by Luke in Return of the Jedi. Because the two trilogies were made out of order and so far apart in years, we only hear one vague reference to Padme in the earlier films, and that from Leia. It would have been more satisfying if as Anakin was dying he’d said something about Padme, or when Luke sees Anakin’s image at the celebration on Endor at the end of Return of the Jedi, it would have been fitting to see Padme beside him (though I know the reason she wasn’t was because she wasn’t a Jedi).

The Star Wars series wouldn’t have played out as it did had Anakin and Padme gotten their happily ever after, but I can’t help wishing they had. Yes, I’m a total sap.

Here are a couple of good YouTube fan videos about Padme and Anakin. The first is more about them falling in love during Attack of the Clones. The second is darker, fitting the tone of Revenge of the Sith as Anakin begins to lose his battle to remain good and descends into the dark side.