April 20, 2009
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I have, quite simply, the best fans in the world.
Exhibit A: Look at this cake!
It’s by the staggeringly talented Elise Carlson, who created it for the Third Annual University of Florida’s Edible Book Contest. I am deliriously honored that she chose The Order of Odd-Fish for her cake.
And what an amazing cake! Marvel at the mad bug-eyes of the fish as it flops from a delicious ocean onto a scrumptious beach! Behold the torrents of delectable slime coming out of its tasty mouth (and that glistening tongue!) as it spits up a mouth-watering Odd-Fish lodge! Naturally, this cake won the “Most Creative” prize. I am in awe.
Do you live in Gainesville, Florida? This cake is yours for $130, according to Elise’s web site. If my wife wasn’t fixing to give birth any day now, I would make a road trip to Gainesville for the sole purpose of eating this cake.
(By the way, what is it about The Order of Odd-Fish that inspires elaborate confections? Friends of the blog may remember how my Aunt Lorna laboriously hand-frosted a cake to look like the cover of Odd-Fish, and also how Freya, Theo, Georgia, and August made a gingerbread version of Aunt Lily’s ruby palace. Whatever it is, I’m thankful!)
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Exhibit B that I have the most creative fans: the weird and fascinating entries to my Write an ending for The Strange Ship Part II contest!
I recently unearthed and posted on this blog two books I had written when I was seven years old, The Strange Ship and The Strange Ship Part II. The books were about two “moneymen” and their continuing adventures against the monsters of the Strange Ship, including the monsters Carziperes, Diploziperes, and Zarzit.
I had lost the final pages of The Strange Ship Part II, so I invited readers to come up with their own ending . . . to a book I’d begun almost thirty years ago! What an odd feeling of chronological whiplash.
The first “ending” I want to post is from Libby. If you read her intense two-voice Jo / Ichthala poem that I posted a couple weeks ago, you know she’s a formidable writer. (She also let me read the intriguing beginning of her own novel, Cursed, and I’m looking forward to more.)
For the full effect, and to catch all the references, you might want to read The Strange Ship and The Strange Ship Part II before diving in. At the point where it broke off, the monsters were chasing the moneymen, and Carziperes’ leg was blown off.
I don’t want to spoil anything; suffice to say Libby amusingly opts for the postmodern route, including me and Odd-Fish itself in the story. Her illustrations nail the Strange Ship atmosphere perfectly, elaborating and extending in fascinating ways my seven-year-old drawings. And I cracked up at the part with the “poof of neon pink smoke sprinkled with My Little Ponies and smiling stars” . . .
Enough from me! Please enjoy Libby’s hilarious ending to The Strange Ship Part II. Other winners of the contest coming soon (including entries from Mrs. Vivian’s class that I just received)!
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Genius bakers of insane cakes; sharp-witted, talented writers; like I said, The Order of Odd-Fish has the best fans in the world.
