Last Day to Get Festival Madness free on your Kindle Device

My novel,  Festival Madness was inspired by my trips to Burning Man, and working in high-tech Cambridge.

How far would you go for a friend? Put a wrecking ball to your marriage? Endanger your job? Risk your very life?
Boston-based computer security consultant Emma Lee Devens leaves her top-secret project in disarray and jeopardizes her troubled marriage when she rushes to find her missing friend and colleague. Emma’s search takes her to the Black Rock Desert of northern Nevada and the Burning Man Festival where a unique experience of survival, ceremonial fire, danger and transcendence awaits. Anything can happen at Burning Man. Everything Can Happen at Burning Man. 

I’m writing as Judith Copek. 

 Festival Madness on Amazon Kindle Free 1/12/14

 

ASIN: B00E2YO538

Summer Clothes and Winter Clothes

Here in New England, we have seasons, and between seasons and sometimes it's cold when it should be hot.  This means clothing issues. 

When we moved into this house, we had a moderate-sized cedar closet built, which stores out-of-season clothing, luggage and travel items.  No more moth balls!  For several weeks, I have been in the process of putting winter clothing away and getting summer stuff out.  Why do I never hear anyone complain about this task?  It's terrible.  Six closets are involved as well as some underbed boxes and a cedar chest.   Winter scarves, summer scarves.  Winter socks (farewell my lovely Smart Wool socks).  Hats:  away goes winter and out come the straw hats and the visors and the cute baseball caps.  Wool sweaters are machine washed on a special cycle and dried on the guest bed, saving $50-$60.  All the wool stuff is cleaned before putting away.  When I worked and had money, I just bundled everything up and had it cleaned and stored for the season.  No more.  

So this whole business takes weeks of puttering, laundering, cleaning, sorting, making decisions (is this worth keeping for yet another season?)  You have to realize we have a few items that have been around for  30+ years.  New Englanders are a frugal bunch.   I still have clothes to take to a resale shop, now that there's two in our area, one high-end and one "regular."  Of course I always buy something when I go in. 

Last year I ditched a favorite pair of summer shoes because they were totally worn out and disreputable and now I wish I would have done "just one more summer."  I have a dress, a lovely Rodier cotton dress that I bought for a big trip to Europe in 1982.  Still have it.  $50 reduced from $100.  Rodier doesn't seem to be around anymore, like Jaeger.  The dress has a tiny cigarette hole when from I still smoked.  I'll wear it to Burning Man if I go, and otherwise it will be ready for a costume party this fall.  Some stuff is worth hanging onto forever.  Yup. 

So the great clothing exchange is also a trip down memory lane.  And now, it's time to iron that white cotton shirt that's been sitting at the bottom of the ironing basket since October.  Boy, winter went by quickly this year.  I only wore my sheepskin coat once, which means it wasn't that cold.  Clothes hold memories, and sometimes I put stuff I used to wear on one of my heroines, like the chamois-skin top with beads and feathers.  It was so cool back in the day. 

Time to turn on the iron and get that shirt back in the closet.  I need the tablecloth for an up-coming dinner party.  Have cool new napkins from Crate and Barrel.  Even the ironing basket has memories. 

When we were newly-weds, back when God was a boy, my husband had an old pair of chamois-colored shoes that just became uglier and more-worn-out.  I pitched them, and have never heard the end of it.  "My favorite shoes."
So it goes. 

Happy Memorial Day.  I'm making enchiladas verdes with chicken tonight.  Hope the weather improves enough to grill tomorrow.  Go Red Sox!

Burning Man is where many old clothes go to die

Grapeshot

Cool Photos Taken at Burning Man

Earth and Clouds and Sky

Black Rock Desert with Pink Clouds 

 

 

 

How could you not want to be at Burning Man to see nature in her finest displays?

The Man Burns Saturday Night in the Shadow of the Black Rock

From my 2004 Burning Man experience:

The boat carried us out of Black Rock City and moved across the playa always avoiding the people, bicycles, and mutant vehicles that converged on the fixed point of the statue.  In a perfect state of inebriation, I had ridden a horse with no name to a strange but friendly planet of flat alkali desert surrounded by dark mountains. The desert dwellers came to this place and formed an immense circle around the god of fire, who had assumed the mythic shape of a blue neon man, glowing over the desert. Dancers twirling hypnotic flames spun around the statue while ships and dragons and animals belched propane-fueled fire.  Weird and wonderful shapes descended from the sky, lit by a yellow moon that crept above the mountains.  The fire dancers swirled like dervishes, and drums throbbed in the eerie light where glow sticks burned like neon candles.  I was eerily conscious of each detail of this carnival night with its colors, sounds, tastes, smells and the absolute anticipation.   The dancers spun in their circles of fire, and the drums pounded to a crescendo. Alone, the neon man loomed over the desert, canopied by thousands of twinkling stars. 

The ritual began with a massive barrage of shooting rockets and fireworks illuminating the man, then a blaze of fire and a magic conflagration roared to life in a frenzy of heat and flames. The inferno raced up one of the man’s legs and consumed him bit by bit even as his triumphant arms remained raised, as in defiance.  Everyone was yelling and shouting and the air pulsed with music.  In an eruption of galactic grandeur, the Man was burning bright.  The Man was burning.   

God, I wish I could be there again.  

Burning Man and I wasn't there

The Man burned Saturday and the Temple on Sunday, and I wasn't there.  And my name was selected for the airport food service, Bites of Passage.   The Burning Man theme for 2011 was "Rites of Passage."  Ha. Ha.  They always pick a great theme.  50,000 burners.  Hard to imagine.  From space the city was beautiful, so orderly and so neat, but we know the view from the ground was much different.  Ah god, I missed the fire dancers, and the vehicles belching flames and the techno music and waking at dawn half-frozen and center camp and the general ambiance, which must be experienced to be understood.  Not there!  Crap.

And our Internet service was down for 8 of the last 9 days, so I could not query literary agents about Festival Madness, my Burning Man novel. 

However, good things can still happen.  Will happen?  Must happen?  Whatever.

Two happy and Eleven Sad

I've been querying Festival Madness like crazy over the Burning Man Season.  30 queries, and so far 12 rejections.  Man, they are coming back at me like kamikazees.  Form letters, all.  The agents try to create a kind rejection letter, but that is obviously even harder than crafting a good query letter.

In the general gloom of wondering if anyone is ever going to rep this book, I receive a different kind of rejection from a small press publisher.  Yes, it was a form, but it had my name and my book's title  in tiny neat script, very tiny, very neat script and at the bottom was one word.  Sorry!  It was so sweet, because it let me know if came from a real person who maybe understood on a level that a lot of agents do not. It wasn't from the intern or assistant who is the agent's gatekeeper and whose job it is to parse the queries.

So that was a Good Thing, as Martha would say,  to have a small human interaction in this wrenching process.  The other happy thing, a very happy thing, is that when I returned home from a book party tonight (someone else's party, of course), I had a voice mail from a casual friend saying how much he liked The Shadow Warriors.  Totally unexpected.  This is actually someone whose opinion I value.  I don't even know how he got a copy of the book, but I'm so pleased to get a real compliment on my writing.  I've been down about the very snarky, anonymous review someone posted.  You know it's someone you crossed being a bitch, but still. . . it pulls down the average. 

I figure I've logged about a million words by now, and the years go by and writer's come and writer's go and the whole business is pretty crazy. 

In a pensive moment

The suspense novel is almost finished.  The drug lord is on the run to Cuba (and what fun it's been to research that scenario!)  The heroine and the two kids she is watching are menaced by a very bad guy, and her sister is in big trouble down in Panama (more fun research).  Ask me about traveling to Cuba.  Ask me about Panama banking.  Ask me about the Florida current and Hemingway Marina.  I have learned a lot just sitting here with my butt in the chair and  Googling away.  Google some, write some, send out a few more queries.  This is a weird and probably a stupid way to spend one's life. 

The Man Burns Tonight

The boat carried us out of Black Rock City and moved across the playa always avoiding the people, bicycles, and mutant vehicles that converged on the fixed point of the statue.  In a perfect state of inebriation, I had ridden a horse with no name to a strange but friendly planet of flat alkali desert surrounded by dark mountains.
The desert dwellers came to this place and formed an immense circle around the god of fire, who had assumed the mythic shape of a blue neon man, glowing over the desert. Dancers twirling hypnotic flames spun around the statue while ships and dragons and animals belched propane-fueled fire.
Weird and wonderful shapes descended from the sky, lit by a yellow moon that crept above the mountains.  The fire dancers swirled like dervishes, and drums throbbed in the eerie light where glow sticks burned like neon candles.  I was eerily conscious of each detail of this carnival night with its colors, sounds, tastes, smells and the absolute anticipation.   The dancers spun in their circles of fire, and the drums pounded to a crescendo.
Alone, the neon man loomed over the desert, canopied by thousands of twinkling stars. 

The ritual began with a massive barrage of shooting rockets and fireworks illuminating the man, then a blaze of fire and a magic conflagration roared to life in a frenzy of heat and flames. The inferno raced up one of the man’s legs and consumed him bit by bit even as his triumphant arms remained raised, as in defiance.  Everyone was yelling and shouting and the air pulsed with music.  In an eruption of galactic grandeur, the Man was burning bright.  The Man was burning.  

My description of "The Burn" from the manuscript, Festival Madness.

We are blessed that Earl was a bust

Inland, not much going on in the way of a hurricane or even lashing rain and wind.  Just gentle rain last night.  A few already brown leaves on the lawn this a.m.  I did all the laundry yesterday and made sure to run the dishwasher, so if we lost power I would be THAT much ahead.  Now, I've got to carry all the plants back outside.  At least the scented geranium is repotted.

Yesterday when we fed the Highland Scottish cows they were very frisky.  I wonder if they felt the storm coming.  This morning the birds are gone.  Where did THEY hunker down?  Cats did not appear to notice anything.  They mostly notice food, grooming, catnip and each other (jealously).  The orange cat insisted on being brushed when I was trying to get the lumps of fur off Thisbe's lower back.  I think she is too fat to bathe back there.  Life's little dramas.

Beautiful fresh morning.  Ah, they should all be like this.  So thanks, Earl, for bringing a welcome rain and not much else.  Down the road, the golf tourney proceeds apace and the Red Sox play twice today.

Spicy fried rice for dinner.  Another great recipe where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.
Try this recipe

Cooking  never ceases to amaze me.  Open-faced plum tart for dessert.  We can't find any prune plums this year.  WTF?  I know they're in season, but the stores don't have them.  Lots of Italians in Boston, too.   WHERE ARE THE ITALIAN PRUNE PLUMS?   Inquiring minds want to know.  How can I make my beautiful tart?

Onward to more writing.   This is the most difficult ending yet.

The MAN burns tonight. www.burningman.com  Ah, to be there, on the Playa in the shadow of the Black Rock, with the drums, fire dancers, craziness.  Zowie!

Grapeshot                                       

Tricky decisions

I have to bring appetizers and desserts for 25  people for an after memorial service event in NY next weekend.  What to take has proved a challenge, because the dishes have to be a) transportable by auto b) able to be cooked ahead and c) something approved by the hostess who has lots of food phobias.  There will be children from 4 years on up, and most of the people will have fairly sophisticated palates.  After much mulling, I have decided to make a cheesecake with smoked salmon (appetizer of course) which serves 25.  It sounds absolutely delicious and there are few occasions for hors d'oeuvres for so many.  I'm also  making cheese straws with pimenton, which can be baked, frozen, thawed, and placed in the oven to re-crisp.  Made these before and they're quite yummy.  Third hors d'oeuvre will be made on the spot at the request of the hostess, a tried-and-true appetizer from the 70's and 80's, to wit, hot artichoke dip. 

Dessert was even more problematical.  The hostess wanted something not requiring knives and forks, and she doesn't like chocolate, blueberries or poppy seeds.  Kids, this eliminates a whole slough of desserts.  And remember it has to be made ahead.  I settled on a lemon loaf cake, pecan pie bars, and a recipe from today's Boston Globe, a rhubarb crumble cake.  Thank you Globe.  

We have a cooler on wheels that has gone to Burning Man and on many shorter trips including to a family reunion in Georgia and to Tanglewood.  Bless that cooler!  I will let you know if the savory salmon cheese cake tastes as delicious as it sounds.  It has leeks and will be garnished with chives since someone doesn't like parsley. 

I have always been lucky, because Significant Other likes everything but coconut, beets and cinnamon in large quantities.  I eat just about anything except runny eggs and offal.    Sometimes we'll peruse a menu where EVERYTHING sounds delicious.  When I was a kid I was ungodly picky.  Can't tell you how many school lunches where I ate a roll, drank the milk and forewent the rest of the food.  The worst, totally yucko, were stewed tomatoes with saltines in them.  On a par with that was gloppy hamburger gravy served over mashed potatoes.  The only thing I recall liking was the American Chopped Suey we got on Wednesdays. 

Sometime between 18 and 23 I learned to eat practically everything.  Life is better and certainly easier.  So bring on the salmon cheese cake!  Hurrah for rhubarb.  Three cheers for chicken livers!

Yowza!                

And the rains came

Not only is the tennis in NYC rained out, but the baseball in Boston. Major bummer.

I took on an unplanned major task, which was dumb, because I volunteered my skills as someone who could create specs for a web site, and yikes, pretty soon I was the chief cook and bottlewasher. Now I'm doing that, and trying to write my novel, and preparing for publication in an anthology and working on several other committees, and still there are garden tasks (sweet hummingbirds have left for southern climes, I hope) and cooking and cleaning and all the housewifery tasks which don't do themselves. No siree.

Yesterday I was sick, an outrage, because I am NEVER sick, and what was this fever, stomach ache nonsense, which laid me low, outrage and all for almost a day. Not a good week to lose a day. Today, good health returned, I got caught up, even went to the supermarket.

And I ate practically nothing and didn't lose any weight.

Total outrage.

The man burned, and I wasn't there. OMG, a very bad helicopter pilot flew low over Black Rock City with an advertising banner flowing behind. Mega-outrage.

And then, an inexperienced pilot decided to land at Black Rock International Airport in the dark. Folks, this is a two-week runway graded into the alkalai desert with the most primitive conditions and no lights at night. Nada. Somehow the crew at the airport got the plane on the ground. I have no idea how, because they were afraid it would be even more dangerous to send the pilot back over the mountains. Some good thinkers there.

Burning Man rocks and the folks at the airport rock even more. In two more days I'll be the proud possessor of a 2009 airport Burning Man sticker. In Festival Madness, yet unsold, many scenes are set at and around Burning Man and at the airport. We camped there in 2004. So I had big nostalia whiffs last weekend.

Moving along in my novel, and life goes on. I baked a dynamite coffee cake with banana, chocolate and coffee flavors. We'll see if they harmonize. What's not to like? As usual, I forgot to take a photo, and how it's all wrapped in plastic and not too photogenic.

Grapeshot

Mastering the Art of French Cooking

Waaaay Back in the Day.


Back in the day, I used to have elegant dinner parties, usually eight, since that's how many the table held comfortably, and sometimes I'd cook from Julia Child. I believe Veau Prince Orloff is as fancy as I ever got. Sometimes I made that fancy dish where you slather a filet of beef with pate, and then wrap the whole business in pastry, and even cut out little decorative doo-dads out of pastry to put on top. Beef Wellington. A big-assed production to be sure.

When I was whipping up these delectables, I weighed 103 pounds and smoked like a chimney, chased my little boys around, played nonstop tennis and only sat down to eat and read the paper. If we ate like that now, we'd weigh, well, we'd weigh a whole lot more than we already do.

Julia Child's masterwork is now the #1 best seller on the "how to" non-fiction list. As I type, I have the first edition 1961 in front of me. I think it was not such a big best seller back then, because in 1961 I didn't know how to cook and would have been intimidated as hell if someone had given me such a monster treatise on cooking.

So my copy of Julia arrived much later, but still a first edition. The Veau (Veal) Prince Orloff is a production, but there are many recipes which are not labor intensive at all, and don't require a king's ransom in ingredients.

Before I stopped eating veal, I always made Saute de veau Marengo, which was a very simple veal stew with tomatoes, onions and mushrooms. One could even use white vermouth as the wine. It was delicious and perfect for now when one can buy or even grow decent tomatoes.

Julia's recipe for ratatouille will never be beat, but it is a pain in the ass to make, cooking every veggie separately. But it you want to know le vrai ratatouille, whip up a bunch. Again, this season is the perfect time. I love it cold, and it's sooooo good for you.

Another simple recipe, peasant food, really is a Clafouti. A Clafouti (a fruit flan) goes together in minutes with milk, eggs, flour and sugar. Use whatever fruit. I have a fab recipe, not Julia's for bananas. Cherries are traditional. I'm thinking of a nectarine one this evening.

Tonight we're having a shrimp salad with lots of veggies, a Penzey's recipe. We're had a modicum of luck dropping a few pounds with main course salads (skip the cheese), soups and grilled meat and veggies. We eat Insalata Caprese daily. Soooo good. Those home grown tomatoes really up the ante, flavor-wise.

I sent out a bunch of queries, esp. for Festival Madness, and got back a bunch of not-interesteds. Burning Man starts in 3 days, and I was hoping to drum up some interest. Not. Trying to keep a stiff upper lip, as a short story will be published in a couple of months, and I have some other irons in the fire. It's hard, though, character-building one could say.

I am amazed that I'm still writing, still enjoying it. Only a crazy person . . .

Crazy as a loon,

Grapeshot

Queries: the long and the short of it

After my last post, at 10:44 this morning, I tackled the list of agents appearing in the spring at a writing conference. First I had to separate those I had already queried and from which book. I went through their web sites and discovered some didn't take genre writing and others accepted only non-fiction. Some had already rejected one book or another. The list had really shrunk by the time I parsed the whole thing. It also hurts if the agent has no web site. Will they like a so-called high tech novel? I think not.

Went upstairs and made and consumed a turkey sandwich. Ah man! What could be better than thin sliced white meat on thin sliced white bread with slatherings of mayo and sprinkled with salt and pepper with thin sliced tomatoes and a big leaf of lettuce thrown in to salve the conscience? Yum! Add a few slices of Mrs. Fannings pickles and a few potato chips.

When I got on the scale this morning, the first thought was: how can my pajamas have gained four pounds? Then, I thought: no, it has to be water. Lots of water.

Ye gods! I put on my gym clothes with good intentions for a walk or a visit to the gym, but the rains came and the weather was dark and cold and I didn't feel like going to the gym. As evidenced above, I felt like scarfing down some more of the turkey.

Thisbe's diabetes is much improved, and her coat is so much softer. She is eating Atkins for kitties and the fancy high-priced moist food. Yesterday, most unaccountably, she begged for roast turkey while I was slicing it for dinner. Ate some. Ate some more. When I fixed my sandwich she asked for more. And again.

This from a cat who never eats people food. Well, not since yesterday. It's good high-quality protein, I tell myself when Thisbe and I both feel like a bit of a nosh. This is amazing. I wonder if her body knows this is a good thing in her current state of health. My body only knows that it likes to eat.

Back down to the agents: After all was said and done, I found two, one for Festival Madness and one for World of Mirrors. Nobody for Promiscuous mode, which was the whole point of the exercise. So one email and one SnailMail query have gone out. It's 3:45 and the day is gone. Few queries and no exercise.

I will visit my drug lord. Maybe he'll talk to me. And then again . . . .

Grapeshot

The Man Burns and Dances And Burns and Dances

A video of the Man at Burning Man strutting his stuff to "Bring Me To Life."

Holy freakin' crap!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCmXhNBjOYI

The End of the Road

It ain't easy livin' at the end of the road, if you will excuse my Palinism. The folks in Empire and Gerlach, Nevada are finding this out because the little store in Empire that serves both tiny communities has closed due to a dispute.

Now folks have to drive to Reno or Fernley. Reno is 117 miles from Gerlach, over two-lane road, thru Indian reservations where the speed limit dips to 20. There are frequently cows on the road, because the land is open range. The shoulders are soft. Speed at your own risk.

Open range means no fences. Don't Fence Me In. How many of you have driven across Open Range.

If you got a really early start you could get to Reno by 9:30 a.m., spend an hour or more (better have a good, long list) at the supermarket, lug everything into the car and be back in Northern Nevada--Gerlach or Empire or one of the little ranches in the big Area Beyond Reno by 1:00 p.m. if you didn't stop for lunch or coffee or do some other shopping.

Of course if you made it all the way to Reno you might want to go to the drug store, the hardware store, buy a pair of socks and have a bite to eat--there's only one restaurant, Bruno's, in Gerlach (none in Empire) and while Bruno's rocks, a Mexican or Italian meal--a little variety might be good. Of course you would also want to get your teeth cleaned, buy a CD, take Fido to the vet--there are lots of things that aren't available in Gerlach. Did I mention haircut?

Holy freakin' crap! Can all this be done in one day? The end of the road engenders strong people and animals, too.

Is this Palin country? I don't know of any 4th of July parades. There is a kind of live and let live attitude, but people do look out for each other. No more than they would do in a city. Where did this city vs. small town rivalry come from? Guess Caribou Barbie doesn't read the NYTimes Talk of the Town. Of course, she doesn't read much of anything from what we know. Talks like it, too. But onward.

I don't know of Boosterism, at the end of the road, although the high school has a car wash for vehicles leaving Burning Man. This year there was a community garden. Stuff grows in the desert if you water it. You can pick Empire and Reno out ten miles off because there are trees, which bear fruit if you water them. Trees in the desert. A little oasis, and then Gerlach has the restored water tower, compliments of (mostly) city folk who actually do care.

It costs about $45.00 in gas for a round trip unless you drive a vehicle that gets 10 mpg and then it costs $90.00.

Maybe the folks should start a dairy herd and a bakery. And a big greenhouse. I feel sorry for the seniors, and those on disability checks which make up a big part of Gerlach. Empire is a US Gypsun town, but the isolation is still complete. It's a beautiful drive up from Reno. The hills and mountains and weird rock formations and the dry lake beds and little roads to nowhere or mines or ranches--it's a land of mystery and hardscrabble living.

Of course it's hard to eat mountains and beauty and mirages and jack rabbits and someone elses cows.

Life is hard at the end of the road. Read about it in the Reno Gazette.
http://www.rgj.com/article/20081012/NEWS/810120360

The Literary Life

After all the food blogs and the politics blogs, the cat blogs, cow blogs and what have you blogs, you may be wondering if I'm still writing, as in novels.

I am, and now almost 100 pages into the new novel, In Flight, which is coming along all right, and just needs to be written down. I think it's going to be good. Whether it will sell or not is another question. Anyway, it's fun to be in the head of a Columbian drug lord, at least some of the time.

Finally, finally, an agent asked to see some pages of Festival Madness. In the meantime, I have discovered one or two novels about Burning Man are in the works or looking for editors, or what have you. None like mine, of course. What I have to say in defense of my novels is that they are a "fun read," with all sorts of cool stuff. Obviously fun does not make it publishable.

I'm taking a Food Writing course at Brown University. After all the food blogging it seemed a sage thing to do. And there's this short story about a robot fish. Can't tell you anymore, because the fish worked for the CIA. I am not making this up.

Totally 100% afraid to look at the end of the quarter financial statements wending their way to the mailbox. Looked at two, eeeek, and that was two too many. In the meantime, of course, the market has really sh__the bed, and one begins to think of how to scale down expenses rather drastically.

Get thru the winter on the same old clothes. Don't we all have way too many clothes. Maybe it's time to wear some of them out. Yup. Do I dare buy some new pajama bottoms from the Job Lot?

Eat lots of rice and beans and chili. Hey, that doesn't sound so bad. Oatmeal cookies? Yay! Netflix instead of concerts, plays and movies. Yup. Nip out to the 99 instead of the la-di-dah places. I can do that for a while, esp. after a memorable meal at Al Forno.

Shop the sales, yada, yada. I think our TV which is NOT cable ready but we do have cable--anyway the TV appears headed for the great tube tomb. Appliances never crap out at a good time, do they? Usually it's at 5:00 p.m. on the Friday of a three day weekend.

I would not want to give up cable, since that's where the good shows are. Otherwise, one might as well not replace the TV.

Enough gloom and doom. Tomorrow is cat blog day. Will the kitties do something memorable? Bloggable? Or is it the same-old, same-old? Stay tuned.

Grapeshot

Aaaachooo from the end of the road

Aeons ago, I had allergy shots which provided a cure. Now, suddenly, 77 miles from the nearest store my hay fever has gone into high gear. I'm making do with some Tylenol cold medicine which stops the sneezing and runny nose.

We do laundry in an "egg" which works pretty well for small hand laundry stuff like underwear and socks but not towels. For towels and sheets, you go to Bruno's laundromat, all three washers. Bruno's has a monopoly here. Restaurant, gas station, motel, casino, laundromat, rental mobil homes, you name it, Bruno's got it.

If I ever went into the witness protection program, I might consider Northern Nevada.

Last night there was a "talent show' at one of the local watering holes. This town has several bars, including Brunos, of course.

The last of the Burners, the DPW crew were whoopping it up. God, they were young and with attitude and I felt like, well, old, and I left the party to the younger crowd. Some guy knew I had written a book and maybe he said he had it or had read it. In the noise I couldn't hear. Came home and watched CSI Miami, Nip/Tuck and House. Nip/Tuck is one sick weird program, but it compels. House was one I had seen before. So it goes.

The sun is rising and I can see a gazillion ripe pears on a tree a few doors down. My black sweater is drying on the line from yesterday. We made Spanish Rice with the wonderful tomatoes from the garden and some other stuff that was lying around. I like to take a look at what's available in the larder and cook something.

Today we're driving up to the Opal Mine toward Soldier Meadow, so I won't do big cooking.

Greetings and Aaachhhooo from the end of the road.

Grapeshot

Burning Man

Ah, the Man burned last night, and I wasn't there. Every year that I don't go, I'm seized with such a visceral longing to be in the heat and the dust and the art and the anarchic chaos that defines Burning Man. If you've never been there, here is the description of "the burn" from my manuscript, Festival Madness.

The boat carried us out of Black Rock City and moved across the playa always avoiding the people, bicycles, and mutant vehicles that converged on the fixed point of the statue. In a perfect state of inebriation, I had ridden a horse with no name to a strange but friendly planet of flat alkali desert surrounded by dark mountains. The desert dwellers came to this place and formed an immense circle around the god of fire, who had assumed the mythic shape of a blue neon man, glowing over the desert.

Dancers twirling hypnotic flames spun around the statue while ships and dragons and animals belched propane-fueled fire. Weird and wonderful shapes descended from the sky, lit by a yellow moon that crept above the mountains. The fire dancers swirled like dervishes, and drums throbbed in the eerie light where glow sticks burned like neon candles. I was eerily conscious of each detail of this carnival night with its colors, sounds, tastes, smells and the absolute anticipation. The dancers spun in their circles of fire, and the drums pounded to a crescendo. Alone, the neon man loomed over the desert, canopied by thousands of twinkling stars.

The ritual began with a massive barrage of shooting rockets and fireworks illuminating the man, then a blaze of fire and a magic conflagration roared to life in a frenzy of heat and flames. The inferno raced up one of the man’s legs and consumed him bit by bit even as his triumphant arms remained raised, as in defiance. Everyone was yelling and shouting and the air pulsed with music. In an eruption of galactic grandeur, the Man was burning bright. The Man was burning. ©

Issues that no longer worry me

Photo is 2002 at the DPW Parade.

The last Jack Rabbit Speaks before The Man arrived yesterday. I have been sighing a lot and wishing I would be in Black Rock City, Nevada come Monday, but alas, this year it was not meant to be. Maybe next year. That's what I always say.

When I read the articles in the links below, I didn't know whether to laugh or be appalled. I must confess at the mention of "Latex Gloves," I inadvertently thought of rubber gloves, the kind you do dishes with. Hey, I am a suburban housewife, and although the dishwasher powers up at our house once a day, rubber gloves still have their uses, but not the kind mentioned. Ye gods!

Warning: these links are probably not for guys and may cause uncontrollable laughter or some erotic reveries. The Playa is an in-your-face place, and stuff happens there. What happened to me was that I fell off my bike twice, and accidentally served the vegetarians refried beans with lard, but so it goes. Dust storms, hook ups, the farce and frolic of being in the desert for a week with a gentle anarchy. Ahhhhh.

Guys, don't read this. You don't want to know.

http://www.womenscommunityclinic.org/guide.php

http://tinyurl.com/6yuudu

Wired Magazine Rocks!

Holy freaking crap! It worked! Received beaucoup hits yesterday. Wired Magazine rocks! Buzzwords rock! Lego! Linux! Apple! Holy freaking crap! Geek power!

Now we got that out of the way, I can get to the more pedestrian things, like dinner last night.
In the continued effort to conserve gasoline, I try not to run to the grocery all the time, even though it's only 2.5 miles away--that's still 65 cents and one-half hour, and usually some aggro due to experiencing Check-Out-Line-Rage in the so-called quick check out. Is there ever a queue that causes more pain and aggravation?

Did I ever tell you about the woman with the expired $2 coupon for a ham who swore she had the manufacturer's dispensation to go ahead and use the coupon? That sort of thing. People buying ciggies at the last minute and the clerk has to leave the checkout and go and unlock the stupid ass case where the supermarket stashes cigarettes. I mean, it might as well be oxycontin they way they keep them locked up.

O.K. dinner. We had frozen chicken breasts with skin and bones, the real McCoy. I sprinkled same with Penzey's Ozark seasoning, and sauteed in a bit of butter and oil. Meanwhile, I used some oil and olive oil to saute onion, garlic and tomatoes. Tossed in the last of the dried bell pepper flakes and salt and pepper. After that came the Basmati rice, chicken broth, and some yummy gelatinous meat glop from the bottom of the roast chicken container from the store. Added the browned breasts, popped on a lid and cooked until the rice was done. Yowsa! Side dishes were broccoli and a salad made of romaine, white asaparagus, green onion and fresh chopped herbs with some of Annie's Organic Buttermilk dressing. Canned white asparagus makes a decidedly good salad.

The tomatoes (and the rest of the garden) got rain last night, a nice big rain. Ah, nature.

The MAN (Burning Man) Burns in not that many days, and again, I won't be there. Quite frankly, I'm absolutely crushed that Festival Madness has received such a lukewarm reception among the agents (lots of California literary agents) I've queried. Again, no one likes the freaking story, but "the writing has promise." Yeah yeah. For those who don't regularly read this blog, the entire middle of Festival Madness is set at Burning Man. By the way, the photo is the Temple Burning at the Man. 2004, most likely.

Words cannot convey how disheartening it is to have written yet a 5th book, five, count 'em, that gets this lukewarm reception and yada yada, the state of the market, that's right blame everything on the publishers and the readers.

What is totally aggravating, and some days everything is aggravating, (this must be one of them) is that there are countless readers who would gobble this up, the readers of The Shadow Warriors who are waiting for the next book. But since Warriors bears the awful, hideous taint of the self-published and eeeek, POD, since I took it back from the now-disappeared e-publisher and put it in print rather than have an unread e-book sitting there, well, it's kind of like a Muslim girl who ain't a virgin, if you get the drift. Damaged goods. Ah yes.

Hey! I'm sure I'll feel better if I go upstairs and scarf down some breakfast. Raisin Bran. Do you want to know my raisin bran secret? It tastes especially fine with a dollop of heavy cream. Well, there goes the healthy benefits of bran and fiber. Suck It Up.

Eat well, and stay away from novel-writing. These unpublished novels are doing a number on my mental health and sucking it up year after year is no way to live. You shouldn't do that. I'll bear the pain for both of us.

Grapeshot

American Dream

I blog the Burning Man Festival off and on, and this year's theme (2008) is American Dream, so pop on over to the web page and take a look.

The temple burns at the 2004 Burning Man Festival.

http://www.burningman.com/art_of_burningman/bm08_theme.html

Maybe you can design a sticker.

S.O. and I designed one of the stamps in 2004. Hard to grasp that 4 years have passed. Older and probably no wiser.

Grapeshot