The boys of Tinseltown rock my world!

Let me preface this post by saying that I do not live in a very exciting locale. Our claim to fame is that we are the soybean capital of the world. I know, right? So when Matt Damon, Scott Bakula, Joel McHale, and Stephen Soderbergh show up in town to film a movie, it kind of shakes things up a bit.

The film is called The Informant. Here is an excerpt of the book by Kurt Eichenwald that the movie is based on.

"The FBI was ready to take down America's most politically powerful corporation. But there was one thing they didn't count on."
So reads the cover of this high-powered true crime story, an accurate teaser to a bizarre financial scandal with more plot twists than a John Grisham novel. In 1992 the FBI stumbled upon Mark Whitacre, a top executive at the Archer Daniels Midland corporation who was willing to act as a government witness to a vast international price-fixing conspiracy. ADM, which advertises itself as "The Supermarket to the World," processes grains and other farm staples into oils, flours, and fibers for products that fill America's shelves, from Jell-O pudding to StarKist tuna. The company's chairman and chief executive, Dwayne Andreas, was so influential that he introduced Ronald Reagan to Mikhail Gorbachev, and it was his maneuvering that ensured that high fructose corn syrup would replace sugar in most foods (ever wondered why Coke and Pepsi don't taste quite like they used to?). There were two mottoes at ADM: "The competitors are our friends, and the customers are our enemies" and "We know when we're lying." And lie they did. With the help of Whitacre, the FBI made hundreds of tapes and videos of ADM executives making price-fixing deals with their corrivals from Japan, Korea, and Canada, all while drinking coffee and laughing about their crimes. The tapes should have cinched the case, but there was one problem: Their star witness was manipulative, deceitful, and unstable. Nothing was as it seemed, and the investigation into one of the most astounding white-collar crime cases in history had only just begun.

The universe would conspire against me and put so many obstacles in my way the ten days they were in town that I would not be able to stalk Matt properly. I mean, see him face to face. But I have the whole two degrees of Matt Damon going on with several close friends. Everyone has gone on and on about how friendly Matt and the entire crew were. Here he is at the local mall with my friend Erin.

It was fascinating to all of us how snowdrifts could be made on an eighty degree day. How a Firestone tire store could be transformed into an exotic car lot in just a few hours. How every tiny detail was thought of for a scene to make it perfect. And most of all, how on earth could Matt Damon ever be made to look sort of geeky?

I can't even imagine how many pictures Matt stopped to take with fans, or how many hundreds of autographs he stopped to take the time to sign. He was truly gracious and Decatur, Illinois will never forget it.

And in very exciting news that has nothing to do with Matt Damon, unless he wants to buy the movie rights and star as the dad, I recently sold a new book. I'm very excited about this one.

Here is the deal posting.

Steph Hale's THE ALPHA BET, in which a super-smart sixteen-year-old starts college early as a way to escape her hyperactive parents and gets in over her head when she decides to pledge a sorority, to Andrew Karre at Flux, by Jenny Bent at Trident Media Group (NA).

I'm very excited to be a part of the Flux family.

To celebrate I'm giving away three copies of my new release, TWISTED SISTERS, to random commenters. So comment away. You have until midnight tonight (Central time)And happy weekend!

xo,

Stephanie

www.stephaniehale.com