Hi Everybody,
As you may have noticed, I wrote a book :).  It’s called Hear My Soul Speak: Wedding Quotations from Shakespeare. It’s a guidebook to quoting Shakespeare at weddings. I compiled a list of all the best quotes I could find that had positive (and sometimes humorous) thoughts on love, romance and marriage. They’re organized by how they might best be used – toasts, vows, father of the bride speech, and so on. Where necessary, they come with explanations (most notably the chapter on sonnet readings). 
It’s actually an e-book right now, that can be read on a Kindle or Apple device (although it’s easier to just say iPad, technically you can read iBooks on any of their devices). It’s also available in plain old PDF format, which can be read on any computer or laptop – and printed. I’m not trying to make a killing on it either, by the way – it costs between $5 and $8 USD, depending on which format you get.  All I’d really like to do, as far as that goes, is make enough to justify getting it printed for real.
The whole theory is that everybody goes to weddings at one point or another – either their own, or they’re a member of the wedding party, or a guest – and on such an occasion, people would like something nice and memorable, and maybe even romantic, to mark the occasion.  I really do think that most people would appreciate more Shakespeare if they simply recognized more Shakespeare. So, I’m filling a need.
Enough of that, you want to know how to get a free book! I need help getting the word out about my little project. I’ve got pretty good access to the Shakespeare fans, but the world of “people who need something to say at a wedding” is much, much larger than that. Right now my mission is to reach that second audience.
Between now and, oh, let’s say the end of Sunday September 26, 2010, I’ll send a PDF version of the book to anybody who meets the following criteria:

#1 comments on this post with a link to their own blog. Does not have to be a Shakespeare blog. Spreading the word far and wide is encouraged. Link is just so I know you have a blog and where to verify rule #2…
#2  Agrees, in good faith, to put up a blog post about the book, with a link.  Not asking you to pimp my book without reading it, you can post after you get it. Naturally you don’t have the book yet so I can’t hold you to it, hence “good faith”. But please keep this in mind if you run a baseball blog and are going to have trouble justifying wedding/Shakespeare content to your readers.
#3 I need a way to contact you, to send you the file. I’ll look on your blog for a Contact the Author link, but if you know I’m not going to find one then please followup your comment with email to duane@shakespearegeek.com mentioning the giveaway, so I have your address.

Sound like a good deal?  I’m very sensitive to appearing too spammy or self-promotional (perhaps to my own detriment?) so hopefully I’ve made my case that this is really about getting more people to know and love Shakespeare.  If you want to help spread the message, then please leave a comment and write about my book on your own blog.  If you don’t have a blog of your own (or don’t particularly want my book), maybe I can beg some Facebook sharing or Twitter retweets?  There’s more than one way to spread the good words!
Thanks!

I actually spotted that headline over at 365 Days of Shakespeare, where it refers to steroid use.  But when I first saw it, being a life-long pro-wrestling fan, thought of juicing in the context of “deliberately cutting yourself with a razor in order to draw real blood.”

What would you do?  Imagine the stage combat director is an old pro-wrestler, and suggests to you that the scene will look more realistic if you take one for the team and drag a thin bit of razorblade across your forehead in the way that he shows you. Would you go for it? Or tell him he’s nuts and call the union?

It may sound like a stupid question, but there are legions of pro-wrestlers out there who do it regularly, and how different are they really from theatre performers? They’ve got a live audience, they do a show every night, they have to at least attempt to tell a story that was written for them. Imagine a play where it’s all fight scenes and later somebody goes back in and throws in some dialogue to tie it together.

Ok, this movie’s been a long, long time coming. I first mentioned this Disney project about red versus blue garden gnomes back in April 2006!

Well it’s four years later and the trailers are here!

I have to say, I’m disappointed.  This looks like it’s got about as much Romeo and Juliet as Camp Rock 2 did. Inspired by? Sure.  But from the trailer it looks more like West Side Story than Shakespeare.

I hope I’m wrong, I hope I discover that the gnomes do occasionally spout actual Shakespearean dialogue. I don’t expect it, of course, but it’ll be a nice treat.  It’s an animated Disney movie, so of course my kids will end up seeing it even without the Shakespeare connection. But it’s going to be very upsetting if we’ve waited 4 years for nothing more than a Shakespearean storyline 🙁

We haven’t spoken of Halloween much, I realize.  Usually because it’s upon me too late and there’s no time to really do anything exciting (with three little ones, I rarely think about any sort of grownup costumes or parties). With over a month to go, anybody got good Halloween ideas?  Doing anything Shakespearey?  My kids keep telling me to dress up like Shakespeare, but I’m not even sure how one would do that without going full out and getting a relatively fancy/expensive costume.  They’ve also told me to dress up like Hamlet (all black, and carry around a skull?) or Romeo (no idea how I’d pull that one off).  My oldest daughter at one point had the idea to go as pasta (ziti, specifically), but she decided that nobody would really get it, and went with the old standby (Wonder Woman) instead.  But that makes me think how genius it would be to dress up like ….. Bacon.  I don’t love that particular costume, but man, if I can keep my eye out for a better looking one?  I might just do it. I could ride on that joke for years.  Could put a little nametag on it, says “Hello! My name is Francis.” UPDATED: Worth promoting, @Bardfilm wrote:

Boy should go as Lear; girls as Regan & Goneril. After each stop, they should "disquantity" him of his candy.

[Context : I have three children, a boy and two girls.  The boy is the youngest.] Both funny and tragic, I can see that whole scene playing out in my house.  “If you want to walk with me, Brendan, you need to give me half your mini-Snickers bars.” “Well then I’ll walk with Elizabeth!” “Half your Snickers bars, eh? That’s a good idea, you have to give me half your Kit-Kats.” I can just imagine my little 4yr old boy stuck in the middle with nowhere to go.  I guess I’d play the Fool? 🙂

Watching Glee with the kids.  For those that don’t recognize it or don’t watch, Glee is one of the most popular shows on tv right now due mostly to the tie-in to the iPod generation.  It’s the story of, well, a Glee club.  So every episode is a bunch of modern cover songs (just showed the kids the Lady Gaga episode), anchoring a terribly stereotyped high school soap opera.  (Seriously, it’s awful.  When it first came on I couldn’t finish an episode, until I realized it’s *supposed* to be bad, and then it got entertaining.  God I hope it’s supposed to be bad…?)   Anyway, every week you’ll find that whatever song the Glee kids sing rapidly climbs to the top of the iTunes download charts, raking in a dollar or so with every download.  It’s genius. Everybody loves a good spin-off, right?  I want to take this exact same formula and make Bard, about the drama club instead of the glee club.  The show works, exactly the same way – every week a theme, a lesson for the kids to learn, and 3 or 4 anchoring “bits” from the source material that show the lesson.  Instead of Gaga week, they have, I dunno, Taming of the Shrew week.  Instead of MP3 files on iTunes, you get video clips. Just dreaming, I know.  But I’d love such a show.  The whole gimmick is that the stereotype for Glee club is that it’s for losers, and the show will change that.  Well, show the drama geeks some love too, huh? (*) For those that have no idea what we’re talking about, the L in the Glee logo is actually a hand making the letter, the universal symbol for “loser”.  I needed something to mimic that, and it’s the best I could come up with :).