The Wizard of Oz Vintage Clothbound Book

(Photo credits - Profiles in History)

The Wizard of Oz vintage clothbound book signed to Jack Haley’s son by virtually entire cast and crew including Judy Garland and Toto ($40,000-$60,000)

The Wizard of Oz vintage clothbound book signed to Jack Haley, Jr. by virtually the entire cast and crew, including Judy Garland and Toto is one of the highlights of Profiles in History's Winter Hollywood Auction, December 17-18. Haley’s father, Jack Haley, who portrayed the Tin Man in the film, brought this copy to the set and had the cast members sign it for his son, who was 5 years old at the time. This would make a great holiday gift for any book collector or fan of The Wizard of Oz. From the estate of Jack Haley, Jr. and never before offered for sale.

Other auction highlights include:· Harrison Ford heavily-annotated complete shooting script for Raiders of the Lost Ark ($50,000-$70,000)· The Wizard of Oz vintage clothbound book signed to Jack Haley’s son by virtually the entire cast and crew, including Judy Garland and Toto! ($40,000-$60,000)· Desi Arnaz “Ricky Ricardo” custom made kimono worn in The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour.($40,000-$60,000)· Michael Jackson’s stage-worn custom jacket from the 1993 American Music Awards ($40,000-$60,000)
· A large panel of Johnny Carson’s memorable monologue curtains from The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson ($40,000-$60,000)
· Screen-used ¼-scale Batmobile filming miniature from Batman Returns.($30,000-$50,000)· Original Martian rocket ship filming miniature from Zombies of the Stratosphere.($20,000-$30,000)
· Carved wood home door knocker from The Munsters ($25,000-$30,000)
· Original “stretch room” painting featured in the Disneyland Haunted Mansion attraction.($30,000-$50,000)· Walter Pidgeon “Dr. Morbius” signature costume from Forbidden Planet ($30,000-$50,000)
· Screen-used “Lex Luthor” rocket filming miniature from Atom Man vs. Superman. ($20,000-$30,000)· Bleeding “Lawgiver” statue from Beneath the Planet of the Apes ($20,000-$30,000)· Michael J. Fox hero hover board with handlebar from Back to the Future II ($20,000-$30,000)· Arnold Schwarzenegger “The Terminator” leather jacket and leather glove from The Terminator ($20,000-$30,000)· Eyvind Earle original concept artwork from Sleeping Beauty ($15,000-$20,000)
· Jimmy Stewart “Charles Lindbergh” leather flight helmet from The Spirit of St. Louis.($8,000-$12,000)· Arnold Schwarzenegger “Conan the Barbarian” Atlantean sword from Conan the Barbarian ($10,000-$12,000)· Bruce Lee signed check payable to “The Green Hornet,” Van Williams! ($12,000-$15,000)· Green Goblin mask worn by Willem Dafoe’s character in Spider-Man ($8,000-$10,000) and...· James Cagney’s “George M. Cohan” tap shoes from Yankee Doodle Dandy.($8,000-$12,000)

*Prices are auction estimates

About Profiles in History:

Founded in 1985 by Joseph Maddalena, Profiles in History is the nation's leading dealer in guaranteed-authentic original historical autographs, letters, documents, vintage signed photographs and manuscripts.  Profiles in History has held some of the most prestigious and successful auctions of Hollywood memorabilia. Their auctions include costumes, props and set pieces from both vintage and contemporary film, television, and rock ‘n roll. Profiles in History’s location in Calabasas Hills, CA– virtually a stone’s throw away from every major Hollywood studio – ensures a constant flow of fantastic and rare collectibles. With an extensive network of dealers, collectors, and institutions, they are proud to play an important role in the preservation of motion picture history.

Prior Profiles in History Hollywood auctions highlights include the "Cowardly Lion" costume from The Wizard of Oz ($805,000); a full-scale model T-800 Endoskeleton from Terminator 2: Judgment Day ($488,750); Marilyn Monroe’s “Diamonds” dress from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes ($356,500); a King Kong six-sheet movie poster ($345,000); the Command Chair from the "U.S.S. Enterprise” ($304,750); the original "Robot" from Lost in Space ($264,500); Luke Skywalker’s lightsaber ($240,000); Margaret Hamilton’s “Wicked Witch” hat from The Wizard of Oz ($230,000); the Black Beauty car from The Green Hornet ($192,000); George Reeves’ Superman costume from The Adventures of Superman ($126,500); the H.R. Giger designed Alien creature suit from Alien ($126,500); a full-scale T-Rex head from Jurassic Park ($126,500), the Leaping Alien Warrior figure from Aliens ($126,500), Christopher Reeve’s ‘Superman’ costume from Superman: The Movie ($115,000), C-3PO’s helmet ($120,000), The Wizard of Oz ‘Winkie’ Guard Costume ($115,000); a “Ming the Merciless” cape from Flash Gordon ($115,000) and the Hydraulic screen-used Velociraptor from The Lost World: Jurassic Park II ($115,000).

Kardashians Walk Out of Book Signing

I don't follow celebrities, or celebrity-wanna-bes who are famous for being famous but I found this news blurb interesting and as an author, amazingly frustrating.  It seems the Kardashian sisters of the reality show Keeping Up With the Kardashians recently published a book.  The book, Kardashian Konfidential, has risen to the top of the charts.  That's not the frustrating part, this is...apparently at a recent book signing, the sisters decided they were tired of signing books and simply left the store.  Yes, they got up and left.  What's worse is that there were approximately 100 people who had already purchased the book, waiting in line to have their books signed.  They didn't leave at the end of their allotted time, but rather, well before the signing was scheduled to end.  Wow, can you imagine that?  First to not support your fans, and just get up and leave?  Leave before the allotted time is up?  Double wow.

Friday Finds

Friday Finds is hosted

by Should Be Reading

Another week - another selection of great books.  Check them out and then stop back soon to read the reviews at Feathered Quill.






















Max and Menna tells the story of two siblings surviving a deplorable home life in the South in the early 1980s. Telling the story from each of their viewpoints, Max and Menna outline their reliance on each other and on Nick, their only friend and a Native American, as they cope with growing up in poverty, living with an alcoholic mother, and having no indication of the other half of their parentage. "A haunting tale: the story unfolds as seamlessly as a memory, but winds like a complicated, aching, longing dream. Its grasp leaves a mark, the kind you've been left by Faulkner, Peter Taylor, and Alice Sebold, from the repeated flares of perfect written moments within the steady flame of a solid narrative." Meri Robie-Craven, author of What Happened to the Miracle "Max and Menna is a heart-felt, heart-rending story of abandoned children who must learn, as best they can, to care for each oher and themselves." Madison Smartt Bell, the author of twelve novels including All Soul's Rising, a National Book Award and PEN/Faulkner Award finalist and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf award for the best book of 1996 dealing with matters of race.

The Fantastic Secret of Owen Jester Owen Jester wishes his family hadn't moved to his grandfather's house in Carter, Georgia, after his dad lost his job at the hardware store. For one thing, his grandfather's live-in nurse, Earlene, sure know how to ruin anyone's idea of a good time. And then there's Viola, the bossy, know-it-all girl next door, who can't ever keep her nose in her own business. Late one night, Owen hears unusual noised coming from the train track in the woods below his grandfather's house. Something mysterious and wonderful has fallen off the train. But when Owen finally discovers what it is, he realizes he just might need a know-it-all after all...Can Viola keep the most fantastic secret to ever tumble into Carter, Georgia?

Another Whole Nother Story The plan was simple. Ethan Cheeseman, along with his three smart, polite, and relatively odor-free children, would travel back in time to end an ancient family curse and save their mother. Now that the LVR (a super-secret time machine) is in working order, it should be easy peasy. Except they didn't account for one basic rule of science: Murphy's Law, where everything that possibly could go wrong, does. So the Cheeseman family finds themselves on another madcap adventure, this time through stormy seas and haunted castles. And though their narrator, Dr. Soup, has a ton of unsolicited advice to offer young readers, he doesn't have much to say to help the Cheesemans. Just this one thing: Good luck!


17 Christmases I thank God for Jesus and family galore, For seventeen Christmases---never a chore. Christmas is full of adventure when the family decides to go on a holiday road trip. They start in California and travel to North Carolina and then to Colorado. And that's only the beginning! New sights and ways to celebrate the birth of Jesus abound. All this plus the special visits with family and friends turn the holidays into seventeen wonderful Christmases.


One Hand, Two Hands Written in rhyming text and illustrated with the charming art of Gaby Hansen, this simple message of God's blessing of hands not only entertains . . . as it teaches what wonderful things our hands can do from scratching, latching, and petting a pup to washing dishes with mommy and putting toys in a box . . . but it also conveys the important message: We can use God's gift of hands to show our love for Him by helping others. The book ends tenderly with a prayer of thanks to God for hands and asks Him to use them again:

One hand, two hands,
Five fingers, ten.
God, thanks, for my hands.
Please, use them again.


Blood Prophecy His name is Jeremiah Fall. A soldier of fortune, he has been fighting his own war for 150 years - ever since the beast in him was born. Shunning daylight and feeding only when he must, he battles the monster who transformed him forever. He can share his deepest secret with no one...not even the beautiful woman he starts to love, the only human who grasps the mysteries of an ebony stone as old as creation itself.

Author Interview with K. Lippi

Today we're talking with K. Lippi, author of 13 Days: The Dark Circle.

FQ: The setting of your story on Black Bird Island at the St. Clara Asylum was so realistic one could almost imagine tendrils of fog surrounding the upper reaches of the buildings. Did you have any real asylum in mind when you created this setting?

Actually no, I combined different scenes from different old movies. I’m an avid movie watcher and I love old black and white movies. St. Clara Asylum was a combination between Hill House from the movie The Haunting, the castle from Young Frankenstein (I adore that movie) and the asylum from Shutter Island.

FQ: For some time now people have been fascinated by reality shows. 13 Daysappears to be a combination of a few of them and especially reminds me of the showSurvivor. In this instance our characters have to survive the demonic influences lurking in the Asylum. If you had to quickly choose one of your characters that you would want to win (even if he or she didn’t) who would you select and why?

I too have been taken over by reality shows, but I’m not addicted – at least – I hope not. I have my favorite reality shows and I make sure not to miss one episode and yes, 13 Dayswas influenced by Survivor, it is one of my top three favorite reality shows, and Big Brother, not on my list of favorite reality shows. I watched the show when it first came out in Germany and never got into the show but the idea was perfect for my book. The different personalities of the cast, I plucked them from different reality shows I regularly watch and if I had to quickly choose one of my characters to win, it would probably be Yolanda Perez. I love her fiery and kind personality. She was based on my best friend back in Middle School. We both arrived in Germany in the same year and we both spoke no German but we were able to communicate through our native tongue. She was from the Dominican Republic and spoke Spanish to me while I replied to her in Italian. In the end, I learned Spanish while she learned Italian and we both learned very little German.

FQ: When we hear that little girl’s voice whispering, we know that one of the characters is about to be eliminated. The effect on the reader is, in short, downright creepy. The hair on my arms went up more than once. Would you tell our readers where the idea of the little girl came from?

From the many horror movies my older cousin forced me to watch as a little girl. Fabrizio, my cousin, had a period in his early teens where he watched gory horror movies from an Italian movie director, Dario Argento, and he wanted to share his passion with his little, cowardly seven year old cousin – me. I was so disturbed that I still remember the director’s name, his movies, and the many horrid scenes he created. One of the movies was so frightening that I couldn’t go to the bathroom for months. I was afraid that the witch in the movie would come and take me away. That year I couldn’t wait for school to start, so I didn’t have to visit my cousin.

FQ: Speaking of creepy, are there any books you’ve read that have a similar effect on you?

It by Stephen King. I couldn’t finish it. I had to stop reading the book when one night I entered the bathroom and imagined glowing, red eyes watching me from the drain. That was it. I wrote about this specific experience in one of the scenes in my book, 13 Days.

FQ: In your book you attribute paranormal gifts (or curses depending on how you care to view it) to several of your characters. Are you psychically gifted in any way or is this simply a topic that interests you? If it is a topic of interest, perhaps you can tell us how you became interested.

I wish I were gifted. I would love to read people's minds, move objects, or see the future, not so much seeing the afterlife though. I had a few friendly encounters that made my skin crawl. Anyway, those encounters pushed me to want to know more about that part of the world and that led to me starting my own investigations. From that moment on, I was captivated by the paranormal.

FQ: When a character was going to be eliminated from the Asylum I could almost imagine hearing the staccato notes from a violin as I watched the story unfold on a movie screen. If you were going to pop some popcorn, grab a soda, and watch a rerun of your favorite horror movie, what would you be watching?

Jaws – most defiantly. I love everything about that movie and still today I’m not able to swim in the ocean. As soon as the water reaches my knees the theme song starts to play in my head and I quickly walk back on the beach.

FQ: You had an amazingly diverse cast of characters that sometimes I admittedly had trouble following, but I did enjoy each and every one of them as I worked my way through the book. I actually dreaded the thought of the next “elimination.” William Hawthorn was the most complex character and most intertwined with the St. Clara Asylum. Will we be seeing William or the likes of him in another book?

Yes and some of the other casts members too. The Dark Circle will be a supernatural, soap opera series. I’ll be starting to write the second book in the spring. I already have the outline written. The biggest problem I have is that I multitask and tend to bounce from project to project. At the moment I’m writing three books at the same time and hope one of the three will pull me in to finish it.

FQ: Your first book, The Awakening, also dealt with the supernatural. Perhaps you can tell us a bit about this book and how and why you decided to work in the specific genre targeted toward the teen and young adult audience.

Awakening was my first book and it was completely unexpected. In 2007 I graduated from College and while I was looking and hoping for a position in one of the animation studios, I begun writing Awakening. The animation job never came, but instead I published my first novel. Never in my life had I imagined writing books or being published. I always wanted to be an animator, but as I began writing the book, the more I wanted to be an author. I love to put my stories and characters down on paper and sharing my unconventional world with others and hope they enjoy it.

I won’t deny it, being an author is not as easy as I thought. I didn’t know much about the profession and down the road I had, and still am, learning a lot, and it is a lot of fun. The best part of the job is encountering new people every day. Awakening is a love story between Emilia Miani, a teenage girl from San Diego and Shin Kurosaki, a Kitsune (a Japanese vampire) assigned by one of her ancestors 500 years ago to be her guardian angel and protect her from her destiny. As they meet, supernatural events begin occurring to Emilia and they continue to escalate, and she soon discovered her many family secrets. Her grandfather was a death angel hired by God and she is his heir, forced to step into his shoes by God and Lucifer. They order her to stop Markus, an ex-death angel set on destroying them in order to become a new god. Emilia also discovers that she has a special blood - a divine blood - running through her veins; a blood that kills anything it comes into contact with, including her. Awakening is a seductive entertaining love tale between a guardian demon and it’s human.

To learn more about 13 Days: The Dark Circle please visit our website and read the review at: Feathered Quill Book Reviews.

Happy Hanukkah

Happy Hanukkah!!!   :-)

Reviewer's Tip - How NOT to Impress Reviewers

Like any good review site, Feathered Quill is inundated with requests for reviews on a daily basis.  Instead of writing about something you should do, I thought I'd be different today and write about what NOT to do.  When sending a query/press release to a review site, you've got just seconds to impress before I go on to the next query.  Here are actual opening lines from queries (they didn't work/we did not request review copies):

• Hey how are you, I hope you had an amazing Thanksgiving...
• PLEASE CONSIDER OUR BOOK FOR REVIEW (my comment - why are you yelling at me?)
• Hi there, How are you?
• Attention please
• [Name Removed] here from [Name Removed] Publishing. Just following up on the previous emails we sent you regarding our newest title... (my comment - nope, you never sent any other emails - this is a common tactic to make - hopefully - reviewers think they've had previous conversations with the publicist)
• Another common ploy - sending the same query to every single reviewer listed on the review site, all sent to the same email address.  Do you really think I'm going to forward each and every email?

I do want to read a short, succinct email/press release telling me why readers will want to learn about your book.  I want to see cover artwork (a small jpg inserted into the press release is fine) and I want to know the publication date, publisher, page length, and a little about the author.  That's it.  A link to a page on your website where there is further information is fine but only as additional information.  If I'm curious and considering the book, I may follow the link to learn more.  If, however, you simply send an email with a link and a "check out my new book," email, you've lost me.

Author Interview with Bob Brink

Today we're talking with Bob Brink, author of Breaking Out

FQ: At a fairly young age, Britt, the protagonist in Breaking Out, is labeled the “black sheep of the family” for what most would consider innocent, childish behavior. Later his teenage angst, which offended his “parents’ religious piety,” led to incarceration in a mental facility. It’s obvious you have studied why young people might end up is such situations with a misdiagnosis. Was this a common occurrence in the 1960s and if so, can you give us your thoughts on the subject?

As with all novelists, I wasn't drawing on a blank slate. There was a background on which I expanded and created, so that Britt's misdiagnosis may not have been a common occurrence. Britt presented a puzzle to the psychiatrist who admitted him to the sanitarium, in that he didn't hear voices and wasn't delusional, salient symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia. But he was agonizingly self-conscious and sensitive, with regard to both his own feelings and those of others. So the psychiatrist made a snap judgment that Britt was schizophrenic. The medical profession operated in a manner similar to the judicial system: It relied on precedent. The misdiagnosis was forwarded to psychiatrists in the next hospital, who, reluctant to question their peers, propagated the mistake. There probably is no way of knowing how often this kind of thing occurred.

FQ: The Rutgerses were apparently descended from a long line of Calvinists, a group whose theological beliefs apparently hung a continual cloud of “irrational feelings of guilt and shame” over Britt’s head. Can you describe your reasoning for selecting this type of socio-familial background for Britt?

Again, I wasn't drawing on a blank slate. I was familiar with this background.

FQ: Britt and many of his other peers in the hospital lived in fear of electroconvulsive shock therapy (ECT). What made you interested in learning about this process and what types of material did you read before writing about it? In between the lines we read of injuries and learn of the mysterious “disappearance” of a fellow patient.

In college in the early 1960s, I considered a psychology major and took a course in abnormal psychology. Watching an old filming of a prefrontal lobotomy performed on a patient, and then one of a shock treatment, the patient convulsing violently, I was appalled. Though I pursued a career in journalism, through the years my eyes were alert to stories by investigative journalists of patients who had undergone shock treatments, and I discovered that some were rendered unable to perform such skills as playing the piano with as few as 10 or 15 ECTs. Broken bones or vertebrae were another side effect for some patients. And what seems incredible is that psychiatrists admitted they didn't know how the shock treatments worked. Furthermore, despite the abundant accumulation of analytical and anecdotal data to the contrary, they insisted, and still insist, that ECTs don't cause brain damage. ECTs are administered differently these days, but some ECT opponents, notably psychiatrist/author Peter Breggin, still condemn their use as barbaric and harmful.

FQ: After several treatments with ECT, Britt’s painful memories of the incident at the bowling alley had disappeared from his memory. At the time he “broke down sobbing” as he was devastated that his friends had hidden his shoes. Much later he discussed that night with Professor Bregman. Does “shock therapy” wipe out some memories in their entirety or just suppress them for a time? Did this therapy actually damage the brains of those who received many treatments?

Most of the memories eliminated by shock treatments return later, but not all. Each patient is different. Some lose their memories of periods up to several years. For some, as with Britt, their memory tends to be scattershot for the rest of their lives. And, as I already noted, some people have reported permanent loss of ability to perform tasks that they previously executed with aplomb.

FQ: Britt was oblivious to the fact that once he had stepped over the threshold of a mental institution he would be forever branded. It was a stigma that he would unfortunately carry for the rest of his life because of a mistaken diagnosis of schizophrenia. Society now claims that mental illness is no different from any other physical illness. This obviously does not ring quite true. Have we really come very far in our view of the mentally ill since the 1950s and 1960s?

I think there has been a greater openness about mental illness since those dark days of the '50s and '60s. For a time, it even seemed to have become something of a status symbol among intellectuals and artists, especially movie stars, to undergo psychoanalysis, which they would banter about at cocktail parties. A number of prominent persons helped remove the curtain of shame by revealing they had undergone shock treatments: Dick Cavett, Kitty Dukakis, Ernest Hemingway, Carrie Fisher, and many others. A host of luminaries have admitted suffering serious bouts of depression, and Mike Wallace confessed to being nearly paralyzed with it. Nonetheless, I think it will always be regarded differently from physical illness and carry a stigma.

FQ: As a journalist you most likely have written about many diverse topics. What in particular drew you to the fictitious town of Mayfield in Midwest Iowa, a town the Calvinist Christian family, the Rutgers, had settled in?

I happen to have grown up in the Midwest, and the religion also was part of my background.

FQ: The background stories of both Miriam and Milton Rutgers were fascinating and give the reader a lot of insight as to why Britt experienced so many problems with his peers and with his parents. This book could easily be the first in a series, but most authors prefer to delve into another topic. Can you give us a hint as to what you are working on now?

I actually did consider writing a novel based on one of the characters in Milton Rutgers' background. However, the opportunity to write an entirely different kind of novel was more pressing because of a time element involved. In 2001, while working for a magazine, I inadvertently discovered shocking information about the 1976 murder of a prominent Palm Beach man, the most sensational murder in the town's history. What makes it especially stunning is the alleged involvement of a very high-ranking national politician at the time. I don't have proof of that, however, so I am writing a roman à clef. I have just finished the first chapter.

To learn more about Breaking Out please visit our website and read the review at:Feathered Quill Book Reviews.