Today the gorgeous ice cube magnets from HipNest promised to the backers who opted-in were placed in my grateful hands. I had to try them out right away (of course) and as you can see even Spiderman loves the MIJ magnets that HipNest made for me.

The photo above does the cube effect no justice...the birds come alive behind the glass. (If you'd like to see a bigger version, click the image.) These magnets are a custom package -- just for MIJ, and non-backers will be able to purchase them on the MIJ website soon.

I'm so happy with the product that HipNest made for me. They have a huge variety of ice cube magnet designs for sale on their website, not to mention lots of other beautiful and one-of-a-kind glass art.

I'll ship these babies out soon, my dears...soon. And I hope you love them as much as Spidey and I do :)

♥ mediaChick

Just a week ago today, Sarah and I boarded a plane home to Portland, Oregon from the media-gathering research trip to Europe that hundreds of you made possible. We kept our promise and embraced our opportunity and created once-in-a-lifetime experiences.

Every day we felt the significance of the reason we could embark on this journey. And we worked very hard to bring home more than 1,500 photographs, 5 hours of video, and a few “atmospheric” audio recordings of places significant to the story The Miracle in July. We even captured media of things we never could have guessed we'd see, such as video of Danish hip-hop dancers busking on the main Strøget in Copenhagen and a glimpse of a swan’s hatching egg on the bank of the Skt. Jørgens Sø.

Suffice to say, I‘m ecstatic about the amount and quality of the media we collected on this trip! You can peruse the first batch of photos taken in Denmark I’ve uploaded to Flickr (each photo has a detailed description): http://www.flickr.com/photos/themiracleinjuly/sets/72157624135207307/
I’m also adding all the photos to a really cool interactive Flickr map: http://www.flickr.com/photos/themiracleinjuly/sets/72157624135207307/map/
Media collecting and revisiting the past wasn’t the only thing on the Destination DK itinerary, of course. There were people to meet and business cards to pass out. These things we did with the collective strength of the community who sent us there to do it. I met SO MANY people on this trip! Here are just three of them (some of my very favorites!):

Kasper and Rune of the Danish band Tetris = Therapy. I wrote about them here, on Kickstarter: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/iheartmedia/destination-denmark-fund-the-future-of-storytellin/posts/16516 You can watch the band Tetris = Therapy play acoustic for me here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tiFDDsaB1zQI.

Murphy Lewis is the founder and Executive Director of the Global Voice Foundation. She's an American woman living in Copenhagen, a former rising star of the fashion world who tossed it all to start a foundation that produces documentaries and publish books exploring how cultures use stories to hold a society together. Murphy concentrates on the San Bushmen and Maasai Warrior communities in Africa. Really. WOW!

Susanne Skjoedt, the power behind an online news/entertainment/lifestyle portal born in Santa Monica called The City Hour. The website is meant to expose Danes -- specifically Danes in Copenhagen -- to the culture of the world through entertainment, books, news and the like. Susanne is a Dane who’s lived on both coasts of America. She now lives in Copenhagen.

I met a lot of other people in an unexpected way, as well. Sometimes I had some explaining to do when photos were being taken, which provided more opportunities to share my publishing experiment with lots of new people, off Twitter and off Facebook and offline...Internationally! I must admit it was great fun to ply the usually reserved Danes with all kinds of questions about Danish culture and life. Fantastic conversations with Danish strangers happened at a multitude of places, such as the Arnold Busck bookstore, the Galathea Kroen, Summerbird Chokolades, Cafe Retro, the Copenhagen Central Station, and the Start! Festival, where I managed to score a press pass to hear a slew of up-and-coming Danish bands.

We had such a marvelous time that the blisters, torrential storms, bruises, sunburns, and sleep deprivation never once broke our stride! And now Sarah and I are back home, armed with documentation and bolstered with purpose. I made so many discoveries on this journey, both personal and professional, that after I got my first solid night’s sleep I woke nearly bursting to again rearrange the words in the 1st draft of The Miracle in July. The story -- as it should exist -- has revealed itself slowly during the walking and thinking and discussing that goes with a research trip like Destination DK.

In the 2nd draft of MIJ you can expect major changes in Act One, heavy edits in all “future” parts of the story, and a better balance of sub-plot development. I might ditch a character and create another one or two based on people I met on my trip. Also, because the story is being edited into a version for continuous reading (as opposed to the online serial reading version), I’ll be removing a lot of repetitive sections. To say that I can't wait to see how it turns out is a gross understatement. :)

I’ve been editing and writing since I came home, and have already published a 2nd draft version of the Prologue. You can see both versions, the 1st draft called Prologue: Big Tasty and the 2nd draft called Prologue: A Lack of Concentration here: http://themiracleinjuly.com/story/mij-manuscript/prologue/ Besides polishing The Miracle in July to perfection (and going back to work) Sarah and I are also working on fulfilling our Kickstarter reward promises, finishing our travel blog entries, populating our Flickr map, staying in contact with our new friends, and continuously...PROFUSELY...thanking everyone who made the trip possible.

We couldn’t have had this once-in-a-lifetime experience without you!

♥ mediaChick and Dr. Say

P.S. The MIJ Epilogue will be published July 6, 2010...exactly a year from the day I published the 1st draft of the Prologue. I hope you like it!

On June 10th, my Girl Everything and I leave on our journey to Denmark. Sarah and I aim to squeeze every once of opportunity out of our trip. There are Google docs full of lists and scenarios and in constant revision. Emails are flying, plans are hatching, and come Thursday at 1:15pm, the Destination Denmark adventure officially begins. AND BOY ARE WE EXCITED!

As the hours to our departure wind down, and despite all the craziness involved with last-minute travel, I've began to daydream about the days ahead of us, of Scandinavia. And as much as I'm going to enjoy eating another ridiculous Danish hot dog or shooting video of Frederiks Kirke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick%27s_Church/ ), what I am most looking forward to is meeting some Danes! There are film people, publishing people, PR people, and music people who live and love Denmark that I want to introduce to The Miracle in July. And some Danes I just wanna meet!

The Danish band Tetris = Therapy, for instance, is one group of Danes I plan to hang out with. I discovered T=T a long time ago and instantly loved their sound. And when I found out how young they were (at the time the guys were still in the Danish equivalent of high school) I was totally blown away. Discovering this unknown, under-appreciated group of musicians felt like I had uncovered a secret. Their music inspired me. I wrote about them (http://iheartmedia.vox.com/library/post/mediapick-tetris-therapy.html/) and shared their mp3s to my music-loving friends.

I sent the band a message to let them know how much I loved their music, and asked to be contacted when T=T produced an official album. Kasper, the band's ring-leader, wrote back an enthusiastic thanks and promised to keep in touch.

Years later, when I published the very first part to my story, the Prologue, I featured a Tetris = Therapy song called Big Tasty as the title track. (http://themiracleinjuly.com/story/2009/07/06/prologue-big-tasty/)

You see, in the online draft on MIJ, each chapter starts with a couple of lines of lyrics to a song that is loaded in a music player embedded within the chapter page. In each chapter I featured several songs, and linked to them in as many ways as possible. But only one song gets to be the title track, a special song that encapsulates the chapter. When I contacted Kasper to let him know Big Tasty was part of MIJ he was very pleased, indeed! (http://tetristherapy.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/the-miracle-in-july/)

Kasper also told me that the song Big Tasty was now called A Lack of Concentration as track 4 on their debut album Acquaintances! (I highly recommend you listen to -- and purchase -- the entire album here: http://tetristherapy.bandcamp.com/)

And now, thanks to the success of the Destination Denmark campaign, I get to meet the band Tetris = Therapy! We'll discuss how the band might be featured in future reiterations of MIJ, and perhaps they will play for me while I shoot some video and take some photos. Also, Kasper and I are going to Start! Festival http://www.startfestival.dk/, an event that showcases up-and-coming Danish bands, to hear new music and meet music industry folks.

In an email I received not too long ago, Kasper asked how I came to find T=T's music in the first place. It was on a music blog, I said, and went on to explain that when the idea of The Miracle in July started to formulate, I began listening to T=T and lots other music that inspired me while I wrote. Kasper wrote back:

"One of the things I love the most about that story, and that song, is that I actually wrote the lyrics 'a big lack of tasty concentration' after some of our first rehearsals as a band, in probably about 2 minutes... I was very tired and I had been walking home through heavy mist, and I had to do these few lines in anticipation of our first gig. The lyrics just came as a sort of an acknowledgment of the fact that I didn't know what to write... it was sort of a 'sit down and plot something out' thing. So I basically ended up writing about not knowing what to write, really!

I just love how that pointless frustration ended up serving as an inspiration to another writer. I remember feeling very drained and lazy writing it, but also feeling like it was a good way to sum up my fatigue and lack of focus in a positive, short-formed way. So for me it ended up being positive, but you know, just to know that it also inspired other people is amazing.

Here's hoping good karma from sharing our words and our art will bring us both further towards whatever goals we might have with our projects."

How freaking cool is that?? (Answer: Too freaking cool to quantify!!)

On Thursday, I'll bring my good karma with me to Denmark. I'll talk too much, too loudly, and with excitement about my publishing experiment The Miracle in July. And hopefully I'll find myself inspired and inspiring a whole new country of artists, readers, and writers. Bliss!

♥ mediaChick