Monday, March 9, 2009

The Latest with Peter S. Beagle

The February 22 edition of Peter S. Beagle's newsletter, The Raven, made several new announcements. The two that interested me are:

1.) Peter will be at the Scarborough Renaissance Festival on April 11-12 for a booksigning! It is part of what is called "The Peter S. Beagle Central Texas Tour."

2.) Peter has a new book called We Never Talk About My Brother. It has 9 new stories that he has been writting since 2006. Their goal is to try to sell more than 5,500 copies by the end of Match, so if you are interested, buy your copy here!

Peter S. Beagle is one of my favorite authors and I had the great honor of meeting him a couple years ago at A-kon 18. His most popular book (and one of my favorite stories since I was a child) is the The Last Unicorn. He also wrote the screenplay for the animated movie released in 1982, which featured the voice talents of Jeff Bridges, Christopher Lee, Mia Farrow, and Alan Arkin. Another screenplay by Beagle is the 1978 animated version of The Lord of the Rings, which was Peter Jackson's inspiration to read the Tolkien! 

Now onto the sad part, Peter S. Beagle has never seen a dime in royalties for either Lord of the Rings or The Last Unicorn. Hollywood cheated him out of his fair share of the money and others are reaping the rewards of his hard work. Connor Cochran (Peter's manager for over 4 years) and Conlan Press has been working diligently to get Peter the rewards he deserves. 

After much deliberation, Conlan Press and Lionsgate agreed to make the 25th Anniversary Edition of The Last Unicorn and it is now one of their best selling DVDs. But don't buy it from any store! Buy it directly from Peter's booth (if at a signing or convention) or the Conlan Press Website and he gets half the profit.

Right now Peter is fighting a lot of legal battles, and any support would be great! See what you can do at conlanpress.com/youcanhelp. 

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