A flurry of pledges yesterday - THANK YOU, generous new backers!! Your mojo is much appreciated by all the floozies and will, we hope, give a big ol' exhilarating goose to all potential habitues of the Poppy, boulevard strollers, peepers, creepers, and corset-fanciers, and send our project all the way into the green in these last wild hours. Go, Friends of Floozies, go!

It's true, we did indeed have inordinate amounts of fun making the trailer for Under the Poppy the novel, as this video (featuring the never-before-heard "In the Dark" club remix!) shows so well. Glimpsed are our three fine actors, Jonathan, Madison, and Jules, as well as shadow puppet creator Al Bogdan and his talented minions Randy and Fred, as well as minion Kathe. Diane filmed it all, of course .... If this much fun can be generated making a minute-and-change movie, just think what we can do with an HOUR-and-change onstage. In costumes!

Now it's crunch week, Friends of Floozies - we're cantering toward the 15th, we've got only ten days left to meet our goal. For everyone who's waited till the deadline, here it comes .... To all our far-sighted, fun-seeking, early adopter backers, THANK YOU AGAIN. And everyone else - all the fans of Diane's films, of Kathe's writing, of Monika's design - show our production some good floozy love. Make a pledge, repost, spin our Fun viral! Let's get these knickers off the ground for good!

Maestro Joe Stacey's haunting, saucy, broken-hearts-and-bare-bums music (created especially for our production; music and performance by JS, lyrics by Kathe) has been on heavy rotation all day today at Under the Poppy World HQ, sending out musical vibrations to the universe to tip our girls and boys over the top into fancy-dress full funded land. You can hear Joe's signature theme song for the novel's book trailer here -
http://www.underthepoppy.com/under-the-poppy-the-trailer -
and imagine our floozies, and their cavaliers, cavorting beneath the bright dimmed lights, dressed to the nines, thanks to YOU. Come on, universe and donors-to-be, we're all waiting for you Under the Poppy ....

Boys Just Wanna Have Fun, Too

Time to really pull up those knickers and race to the finish line – we have less than a month to go and a bit of filthy lucre yet to raise. Please consider forwarding on our fine floozies to your fun-loving friends: they’ll pledge for us now, and thank you later for giving them the opportunity to be part of the show!

Now, lest the impression last that the girls have all the costume fun Under the Poppy, here’s Monika's take on Vladimir – Laddie to the ladies and lads – who’s got a little Jack Sparrow, a dash of Baryshnikov, and a healthy soupçon of his own stagey verve to burn, as this excerpt from the novel makes clear:

“’What price love,’ says Laddie, half-speech, half-song: he does not have a voice for singing but can place the words as an actor does, giving them weight, aiming them into the darkness before him as behind him Pearl appears, hair loose down her back like an angel’s: but no angel ever twined so naughtily about a mortal man as she does Laddie.

‘What price bliss?’ asks Laddie, louder, and here comes Vera, bare legs and dark lace, she makes a swooning face as she wraps her arms around Laddie from behind, while aiming a sly ankle at her rival, a martial gesture that tweaks a laugh from the audience.

Now Laddie advances to the lip of the stage, to address the audience directly: ‘What price would you pay? For a saucy kiss?’ but before anyone can answer, a lean figure glides forward, as the waltzing piano sprints into a barrelhouse scherzo, and the taunting tenor rises in the dark:

‘A gentleman needs a bit of fun (A bit of fun! A bit of fun!)
For he works all day from sun to sun (He works so hard, he needs his fun!)
So when the time comes for to play (Let the gentleman have his say!)
He needs a taste of fluff afore he’s done!’”

… And away we go with the show, ladies and gentlemen. Coming into the home stretch now, with thanks again to YOU for all your support. Go, Floozies, go!

Thank you again to everyone who’s already taken the plunge and pledged! We do hope you like the scent of sweet violets and smoldering cigars -- and that you’ve got the space reserved on your shelves for the costume print portfolio and your signed copy of UNDER THE POPPY, The Novel. Proud to say that the book’s been getting some excellent pre-publication notice! (Sidebar note: my first novel, THE CIPHER, is now on its way to becoming a feature film: the project’s just gone into development. “Stage AND screen” has a great ring to it. ☺ )

Now … if there’s a bad girl in your life – or if you’re the bad girl in your life – it’s time to meet your soulmate, another of the Floozies, petticoat-poaching, cigarette-stealing, va-va-voom Vera, in her brothel costume as imagined by Monika Essen. Vera doesn’t see why the party ever has to end, and she has an eye for life beyond those rather grungy “receiving rooms” upstairs …. In the novel, Vera really gives it all she’s got onstage:

“It begins with a tinkling tune, sweet and sinister both, with just the slightest breath of heat, the prickling, serious sweat of real desire: and a girl’s dreamy voice, humming, musing to herself: Vera, blue velvet on a black swing, back and forth, alone on the stage as the pianist, curtained off, plays the melody:

‘I want to meet a man/Who wants to meet me, too,
Who wants to do with me/The things I want to do.’

And here enter just such a one, Laddie tricked out as a toff in high hat and curling whiskers, an exaggerated hands-to-heart discovery when he sees luscious Vera, swinging more lustily now, hiking her pretty velvet dress” ….

What happens next? For that, you’ve got to come take a peek Under the Poppy.

Meet Lucy, one of the Floozies who's sighing for some sexy new knickers ... This is one of the costume sketches created by Monika Essen for the character Lucy. In the novel UNDER THE POPPY, Lucy's the first of the brothel-girls we meet, and she has this to say about her situation:

"The avenue is long: up and down the vendors selling everything you could think of, pomade and fruit-cake, boot-blacking and smelling-salts, silver ribs for silk parasols, blue crayons to make the skin look whiter. And theatres ... Do you know, I never even saw a theatre before I came here? At the Gaiety Theatre there are plays, and dancing, and the ladies bright as butterflies in spangles and lace; I saw it on the sign and I thought, If I could only dance, or sing! Wearing lovely costumes, not going with the men unless you wanted to, unless they bought you roses or scent or jewelry, what a life that would be. But I am not so pretty, and I cannot sing or dance. I couldn't even afford a ticket to go inside and watch.

"But that Gaiety, it was how I ended up at the Poppy, really. Omar was there - I didn't know him then, of course, but it was Omar, with his bumpy bald head, standing outside the Gaiety having a smoke and 'Hey,' I said. You could tell he wasn't a trick. 'Hey messire, you work in there?'

'Why? You need a job?' And in the end it was as simple as that, what Jonathan calls the kismet. Omar told me about the Poppy, how it was a kind of theatre, with a stage, and costumes, and plays, private plays for one watcher at a time. 'Mister Rupert is always looking for likely girls,' he said. 'Are you likely?'

'You tell me,' I said and he laughed, and I walked in under that black-flower sign, I walked in Under the Poppy and I never left. I hate Decca's guts and she hates me, but the rest of us get along fine, and Mr. Rupert treats us all very fair. And the shows ...!"

Very special thanks to our early supporters of Lucy and the rest of the floozies - we're half-way to our goal already. Come and join the flash-and-ragged bunch Under the Poppy, with a pledge of support to pull our knickers all the way up!

Lots going on Under the Poppy: first quotes are in on the novel (THANK YOU, Cory Doctorow, Louis Bayard, and Sarah Smith!), and we're planning ahead for the fall with events in New York (at KGB Bar http://www.kgbbar.com/) and in Detroit (where we may be seeing some special surprise Floozy guests). In both locations, fun will definitely be had, a Poppytini or two will be sipped, so brush the lint off that top hat, hike up your skirts, and come join us for some bawdy and literate thrills.

The production continues to take shape, as we continue to meet with cultural allies here in the D, not only to secure funding but to make sure that everyone simpatico with "Under the Poppy" has a chance to help it grow. Meanwhile we keep on assembling the brass tacks and gossamer a show as lovingly detailed as this one absolutely requires: All those knickers to contemplate, all those scratch'n sniff scents to choose from ... this is work! So it's a good thing, the best thing in fact, that our watchword is and always will be FUN.