The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the Original Houston Line Party

Michael Martinez, author of Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, 3rd Edition, will be speaking at the Pasadena, TX Waldenbooks and participating in the 3rd annual original Houston Lord of the Rings Line Party on December 16 and 17.

Houston, TX - November 24, 2003 -- Michael Martinez, author of Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, 3rd Edition, will be speaking at the Pasadena, TX Waldenbooks and participating in the 3rd annual original Houston Lord of the Rings Line Party on December 16 and 17.

Martinez will be talking about his latest book, Understanding Middle-earth, which has just been published by Vivisphere (http://www.vivisphere.com/), at the Pasadena, TX Waldenbooks (272 Pasadena Town Square, 713-473-4439) from 5PM to 8PM on Tuesday, December 16. He will join several thousand fans of The Lord of the Rings at the AMC Gulf Pointe 30 theater (11801 S Sam Houston Pkwy E, 281-319-4262) on Wednesday, December 17 to celebrate the opening of Peter Jackson's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King".

Parma Endorion: Essays on Middle-earth, with more than 460,000 downloads since January 5, 2002 (including approximately 64,000 Spanish language downloads), is currently one of the most popular eBooks available on the Internet. Parma Endorion was proclaimed the top download of 2002 by eBooks'n'Bytes (http://www.ebooksnbytes.com/) and declared one of the leading scholarly resources on the works of J.R.R. Tolkien by the former Yahoo! Internet Life Web site.

The original Houston area Lord of the Rings line party, organized by Vince Smith with the AMC Gulf Pointe 30 through a database located at TheOneRing.Net, began in 2001 with the opening of "The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring". More than 1,000 fans attended the midnight showing of the first of Peter Jackson's three movies. Door prizes and free giveaways were distributed to hundreds of fans, many of whom showed up in costume. The second line party, held on December 18, 2002, for "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers", drew more than 2,500 fans for the midnight opening. The event included a costume contest, trivia game, and more.

Organizers of this year's line party at the AMC Gulf Pointe 30 are looking for an even larger crowd as "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" wraps up Peter Jackson's trilogy based on the book by J.R.R. Tolkien. More information will be made available at the Houston Tolkien Literary Group's Web site (http://www.houstontlg.org/). Martinez and Smith are founding members of the Houston Tolkien Literary Group, a non-profit organization established to promote literacy through the appreciation of fantasy literature such as J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.