A six percent chance and the definition of insanity

My entry to a contest for a spot in an anthology has a six percent (6 %) chance of winning.  That is actually better than the odds of being published as a novelist.

At the end of the month, I travel to the Big Apple from Beantown for Edgar's Week.  This year I'll be pushing my suspense novel (hopefully finished by then), the last of my crime fiction writing.  It's been an interesting eighteen (18) years.  This last book wasn't supposed to be, as I had intended to write my Southern California in the late twenties novel, but the damn character came to me, sat on my shoulder and started telling her story.  Of course, she didn't tell all of it, and I had to fill in a lot of blanks.  I have no feeling for how good it is.  My writing group has gone from enthusiasm to neutrality, shall we say.  Significant Other like my earlier novels, but is not all that enthusiastic about this one.  Actually, he liked Promiscuous Mode and the Shadow Warriors.  

I don't know why I stuck with crime fiction for so long. Some time ago I realized that the parts of my novels I enjoyed writing most were not the cop scenes, the action scenes or the crime scenes, but more the stuff of everyday life.  By then I had so much energy tied up in Mystery and Suspense that I kept at it. 

"They" say the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same act, expecting different results.  That's me and my so-called writing career.  So onward, to finish In Flight and then to Such Stuff As Dreams.  


I have some short stories to write, and a decision to make about the last crime fiction story I had to truncate to keep the word count down to the contest level.  I spent 3 weeks cutting words. Should I write the story to its "proper" length?  Dunno.   Looking forward to penning the short stories, some of which are about animals.

Speaking of which, we have a huge red-shouldered hawk in the woods by the slough, stalking the birds.  I shudder for my poor little terrorized gold-finches, titmice and chickadees, to say nothing of the doves, the robins and the sparrows!  And all the other feathered friends.   I know.  I know.  Hawks gotta eat, but they can go to another yard, and  not treat ours as a smorgasbord table.

Loved watching the Masters this week and am still so happy that Phil Mickelson won.  And how about them Red Sox?  Now if Big Papi could just hit a few out of the park. One can waste so much time watching sports.  Still, the drama and conflict and effort remind me of writing fiction.


Wish me luck in my new non-crime writing career.  I can go where my whimsy takes me, and have learned good rules about suspense and conflict and plotting which will serve me  in other genres.  

Sucking it up, as per usual.  Yup. Yup.

Grapeshot

Weirdness Rules the Writing Life

Festival Madness  has advanced to the second round of Amazon's ABNA contest, which is a first for me, after three tries.  Two years ago I was dumb-founded when World of Mirrors didn't go anywhere.  Last year, my great pitch for Promiscuous Mode didn't make it.  I almost didn't submit this year, but in a fit of white heat wrote an over-the-top pitch for Festival Madness.  This year I made the cut.  For now, that is good enough.  Promiscuous Mode is with an agent.  Whether he will take it on is anybody's guess, but at least somebody is reading the manuscript. 

That leaves World of Mirrors, which has a huge problem, in that it has now become a  historical mystery of technology. This is likely a genre whose time has not yet come.  I could do a story within a story like I did for the published Shadow Warriors,  I even have an idea, Of course, then the word count, so excruciatingly pared down) goes up again.  I'm thinking of publishing it online scene by scene in a new blog with photos of the scenes and historical commentary.  

That would be like, well, work.  Worthwhile?  Dunno.  As things stand now, I don't think it's publishable.  The moment has passed.  That's the thing with writing about technology. 


In the meantime, I've been slaving over another short story.  Man, are they ever hard.   It will be a submission to an anthology, and therefore has to have a crime and some other stuff.  I have decided not to solve the crime.  Since, with the exception of the crime, the story is based on some more or less true experiences, it was fun to write.  A good, i.e. exciting and interesting experience can be endlessly milked.  


My WIP, In Flight, is languishing on the computer but I did write two scenes this month, and once the short story is put to bed, I can return to it and  finish before summer.  This has also  been a fun novel and when I go to Reno this spring I can get the final details.  We made a trip to Woods Hole and the boat show for the short story, and again, I find myself writing about technology.  Just can't help it.  Everything revolves around technology now. 

My next work, the 1928 California novel, thank heavens has no technology, well, just the invention of waxed paper and the new Los Angeles city hall.  Not much.  Of course the research is humongous, but I don't have to worry that 1928 Southern California is going to change while I'm writing.  Actually, writing  a historical novel is scary.  I am wondering if it will be literary.  Maybe a little.


Last night I cooked up a steak and potato soup from a recent Gourmet.  Couldn't seem to get enough salt and pepper added.  Finally, at the table, we did.  Leftovers for today, too.  
Steak and Vegetable Soup 
Add some extra seasoning like smoked paprika; we found the soup a little bland.  It was filling and of course all the veggies are good for you.  I chopped up some leftover cabbage fine instead of using the kale.   You could easily double the garlic.   


One of my (few) short stories is going to be nominated for an award.  This is totally unexpected and a great honor.    Sometimes characters just arrived in your head and start talking to you, or else they have been standing around the periphery for ages and step into the spotlight. 

There is no doubt about it.  Writing is weird, but then the inside of one's head is weird.
After all, I've got two women on the run, conflictd drug lord, a crack whore, a pimp and a flapper churing around in my head.  And I manage to live a pretty normal, some would say boring life. 


Nope, not really. 


Grapeshot

The Writing Life

Every February, the Guppies group from Sisters In Crime issues their "Chocolate Challenge."  The idea, February being a mostly dull month, is to write as many words as possible in the month of February, and the winner gets chocolate from the other participants.  Hence the name.  It's sort of like NaNoWriMo with treats.   The challengers also eat chocolate to speed them on their path.

I signed up hoping to get a leg up on the final chapters of In Flight, my fem jep novel.  And indeed I started well and wrote two scenes, one from the drug lord's point of view and another from the main character's.

Then, an idea that had been percolating in my head for years, actually an idea for a novel, came bubbling to the surface and I am writing it as a short story for submission to an anthology.  Probably won't get in, but I can submit it elsewhere.  So I'm 6500 words into the story, endlessly reedited while I write, and have made a winter weekend trip to Cape Cod, and a trip to the New England Boat Show.

I never know anything cold enough to write it off the top of my head.  If I wrote a story about scrubbing floors, I would be in the supermarket cleaning products aisle reading labels.  Maybe this super-picky attention to detail comes from my days as a computer programmer where you sure-as-hell better pay picky attention to detail. 

Anyway, this has been what they used to call a high-forceps birth, not easy in other words, and I've been laboring mightily.  6,000 words in a novel is nothing.  6,000 words in a short story are everything.   

Back to the salt mines.  Of course it is fun.  And gratifying.  I'm not expecting any chocolate for 10,000 words this month.  On the other hand, they may be 10,000 good words or 10,000 words I wouldn't have produced.

Long live chocolate.  The chocolate pound cake was soooo good.    Not too sweet.  The lemon squares are good, too. 

Life is uncertain.  Eat dessert first.

Grapeshot

Bird Watching 101

Thisbe watching birds.  A cat's most cherished activity.  Annie enjoys the same pursuit.  The birds seem oblivious to the presence of a cat just a few feet away.

I haven't been posting, alas and alack.  I've been writing.  I did yet another rewrite of Promiscuous Mode, and it is now (whole MS) with an agent, but no great hope.  I've done some more on In Flight and am almost 5000 words into a crime short story.  Sent another story into a contest.  So the writing goes apace.

Also cooking up a storm.  Big Valentine's Day menu which we ate on for days.  Then S.O.'s birthday dinner of stuffed cabbage.  Finished it last night.  Mega-yum.

I've also been working on a writing group's web site, dieting, working out, working on finances, yada yada.  The diet is just a calorie count diet, which means I have to enter every bite into this web site which helps figure out the calories.  It took a long time at first, but I'm kind of into the hang of it now.  Total loss:  3.5 pounds, but hey, that's something added to the 3.5 pounds I lost before the formal diet.

The thing about a simple calorie count is that no food is forbidden.  A lot of diets say that but weight watchers will penalize you a gazillion points for a tablespoon of butter, but you can eat a whole can of beans.  The more something is portrayed as forbidden, i.e., foodstuffs, the hungrier I get for it.

So I take my lumps with 1/4 cup peanuts and the St. Andre cheese and  eat less of something else.  I haven't been hungry, by the way, in spite of the fact that I'm trying to stay around 1200 calories on days when I don't work out.  Turns out I wasn't eating THAT MUCH to begin with. 

I made my mother's recipe of lemon squares to take to a friend's house.  They are so good I will post them here soon.  And I also made crepes with a sweetened cream cheese filling and a strawberry sauce to go on top.  This gave us dessert for  4 nights, 2 crepes each.  A lot of bang for the buck and also cheap.

Tomorrow I'm baking a chocolate/walnut pound cake to take to another event.  I would rather take a salad but it has to be something easily transportable.   Doesn't sound like a diet, does it?  Small portions are the key.

Tonight, we're back to chicken breast, and I'm doing the Boston Globe Saturday/Sunday recipe with  one main dish and then another made from the leftovers.  Not high cal and very tasty looking.  First Spanish, then Mexican. Spanish Style Chicken

Then you make the Mexican Recipe with the leftovers:
Chicken Chilaquiles

 Off to work on my short story.  It's a lot of fun, and I'm visiting Mattapoisett today for research.

Ta Ta

Grapeshot

King and Kingsolver

The first thing I do on Sunday morning besides drink coffee is read the New York Times Book Review. This week I got Stephen King's On Writing from the library and began reading it last night. A real mashup of happy and sad and poigant and pithy. I laughed out loud at his hijinx with the high school newspaper, because it reminded me so much of my younger self.

The book review featured King's new novel, a 1000+ page behemoth that sounded intriguing and readable. (Under the Dome). The Times' also reviewed a new novel by Barbara Kingsolver. (The Lacuna). I discovered Kingsolver when she was writing about Arizona and what a great writer she has become! The Poisonwood Bible was just terrific. So I can't wait to read the new book, much of which takes place in Mexico with Kahlo, Trotsky and Diego Rivera. We saw the movie recently and enjoyed it immensely. They were all larger than life characters.

Just reading the reviews I had a couple ideas for my WIP, In Flight, and even my California book, not yet written. I'm wondering if that is the book I should plow into and not stop until finished, writing in a fine but unburnished passion, permitting myself to write the "shitty first draft."

It was so heartening to see King leave poverty behind with the paperback sale of Carrie. I hope he made another bundle on the movie. And what a loyal wife who is herself a find poet and writer.

Did I mention Kingsolver's non-fiction? Also great.

Hat's off and raise your glass to Stephen King and Barbara Kingsolver. Let fiction reign.

http://www.nytimes.com/pages/books/index.html

Grapeshot

Red Sox Nation and Jerk Chicken

Tonight we're trekking to Fenway park with tickets for the EMC boxes, great seats that I would never have anticipated plunking my fanny down in. It's supposed to rain, and this will be, I hope, the night the Sox clinch the playoff berth. We have been watching all the games religiously, to the detriment of housework, writing, exercise, reading, well. . . you know. Rabid Red Sox fans. I'll wear my red sweater and maybe even my 2004 World Series shirt.

Yesterday I finished reading my WIP. Was very discouraged about how BAD some of it read, then all of a sudden, the story perked up and the prose was flying, and then it calmed down some, but of course, the good thing is that I can recognize draggy passages and fix them. I also read the first 20 pages of World of Mirrors and still like that book a lot, although it has been a hard sell. I still have hope. Sucking It Up becomes a lifestyle.

I took a main course salad to a meeting yesterday that is worth repeating. It was called a Caribbean Jerk Chicken Salad, and I found the recipe on the Internet. I made my own Jerk Seasoning, and this being New England I didn't grind up any habanera peppers, nope, just good old cayenne. The salad called for mesclun lettuces, baby spinach, apple, blue cheese, raisins, walnuts and red onion. And the chicken. I mean, what's not to like? We had it for dinner (leftovers) last night and also for lunch today. I just keep adding lettuce and baby spinach to the wilted greens in the bottom.


Here is the recipe: http://www.marjacpoultry.com/recipes/recipe-caribbean-jerk-chicken-salad.html

For the Jerk Seasoning, here is the recipezaar recipe:

http://www.recipezaar.com/Dry-Jerk-Seasoning-229443

I had the ingredients on hand, and saved myself a few dollars. Spices and seasonings are always better fresh, but then, you knew that.

I buy dried chive from Penzey's spices, http://www.penzeys.com/

They may even have a Jerk Seasoning if you don't have everything on the list. Penzey's rubs are the best, and I love Barbecue of the Americas and Northwoods Seasoning and a bunch of others.

Yours in soup and salad and fiction,

Grapeshot

Lost in one's own novel

My latest novel, In Flight hit 72,ooo words this week, and of course the book is in my head, but as you can imagine, it's fairly hard to keep all those words in your head.

Last night, I created a calendar, keeping track of the major plot points of the book in a time line, which was a good thing, because then I could mention Father's Day and the 4th of July is coming soon and I think my characters just might want to mosey off the beaten track and do something kookie. Anyway, they will have to observe the day like everyone else.

I'm trying to figure out roughly how many words I need, and of course I can't quite estimate that. Four more big plot points, coming fairly close together. Bam. bam. bam.

So today I printed all 270 pages of the manuscript. Found a bunch of bad sentences. Have to make a major change to the beginning of the book. Was going to wait until I had a draft, but methinks I'll do it now. Nothing difficult, but adding a big dramatic scene. And then I find stuff I thought I had changed but I didn't. What's that all about?

Just managing one of these manuscripts takes some doing. I used to keep all the chapters/scenes in separate docs, but now I use one doc, and it sure does make it easier to find and fix problems.

So: now I have to read the damn thing, with my red pen poised. It's amazing how often you can go over these manuscripts and how often you find writing that can be improved. Work. Work. Work.

A peasant soup from the south of France for dinner--meatless, and quite tasty. Well, all that garlic. . . . We probably reek. Bon soir.

Grapeshot

The Difficulties of the Genre Novel

Naturally you want your crime fiction novel to be exciting. The use of pacing is giving me fits right now.

I have been humming along alternating action and excitement with moving the plot along. There is a budding romance, a road trip, trying to escape from the bad guy, and setting up the story for the next scenes.

Just wrapped up some drama in Jacksonville, FL, and now the characters need to be sitting in the CVS parking lot in a Boston suburb. I don’t want to describe the rest of the trip in any detail, (alas, it's not a Road Novel), but need to tell the reader, notice I said tell, not show, that my trio stopped in Myrtle Beach and that the romantic relationship has now expanded to include sex. That the little girl has got one of her heart’s desires, that the motor home has broken down causing a day’s delay. That a short day's drive has expanded due to a nightmare mess on I-95 in Connecticut, a not uncommon event, making the characters almost late to get to the bank before it closes to get the account number for the Cayman Islands bank where huge gobs of illegal drug money is stashed. Remember this is a crime story. Suspense!

Now the characters have to get to Chicago on the double, but hurry to get to the bank has created a huge PLOT Point.

Man, this writing business is hard work.

So I think what I’m going to do is set the van down in the middle of the traffic jam and let the characters sweat a little and tell us about Myrtle Beach, and the prior two days in a few short paragraphs. Then the race to the bank. All hell breaks loose. Of course the way they’ve been robbing banks in suburban Boston, I could even have a bank robbery. Hey, that’s a good idea. A man with a gun comes through the door. Yowsa! Oh boy! Yes!

Grapeshot, who is closing in on 220 pages and lots of words.

Report on the Kindle

It's actually a lot of fun to read on the Kindle. My first and so far only book is Josephine Tey's Daughter of Time. It's not what I expected, but her writing is sublime and I am enjoying it a lot. No way to lose your place. Shuts off when you get up to do something.

I'm still working on getting my novel downloaded to it, and the learning curve is a little, well, curvier. I'll definitely put another book or two on it before leaving for south Florida. Taking my new notebook as well. A high tech trip, along with the digital camera.

The trip is for research on my WIP. Work In Process to the uninitiated. I have travelled to South Florida for years and years, either on business or pleasure and sometimes both. However, I never thought I would find myself writing about it. Heaven knows, there are so many authors who use the setting, and it's a great setting. Carl Hiaasen comes to mind. John McDonald's Travis Magee (sp?) hung out, as well as many others. The Florida MWA is a large and productive group.

Nevertheless, my character headed to Florida and I followed her, and she went to Miami and Key West, locales I only had a passing acquaintance with, and now I need some telling details. My drug lord lives in Miami and the character makes a crucial trip to the Keys. Again, the plot follows its wimsey, in a controlled way, of course.

The web is good for research, but nothing beats being there. So I'm off. The best thing is the book takes place this time of year, so I should be able to nail weather, sunsets, what's blooming, how wilted one feels, and all that good stuff. Yes!

More anon.

Grapeshot

Got the Blogging Blahs

Yes, even bloggers get the blahs. When none of your topics seems, well, topical. The photo is a chocolate pecan pie I made yesterday. Started out to make cookies, with the requirement being that all the ingredients needed to be on hand. Somehow I landed on the pie. Even the crust is chocolate. The pie is so rich one only needs a mini-slice. Make that a micro-slice.

We're trying to get ready for a European jaunt and I check off four items from the "to do" list and add six more. The cats are a problem, with Thisbe (the shy one) needing insulin twice a day and Annie needing heart meds twice a day. Color them expensive. And you always have to keep the mental health of your cats foremost in mind.

Cats hate change. They love routine. They hate being boarded. They treasure the comforts of home. We took them BOTH to the vet this week. For once, no great traumas getting them into the carriers. At the vet, Thisbe, who is usually nervous Nellie, was pretty calm, and Annie, who is Miss Congeniality was a spitting, growling she-dragon. Go figure.

Little known fact: even indoor cats need rabies shots, in case rabid bats move into your house. It's the law.

I've been spending too much time on Facebook. Just happened. Dunno why. The isolation of winter, although today looks pretty good, and we have been getting out to shop and exercise and tonight we're trekking to Jordan Hall to hear the Baroque Grand Tour.

In Flight, my novel in process is coming along. Big scene in Miami. All this Florida stuff means I'll have to do a soupcon more research next June, which is the month in which the book takes place. All my books are set in the summer, my favorite season. Interesting, no?

We walked around the Patriot Place shops and restaurants last weekend. Couldn't find the wine bar. The burger restaurant was the busy place, crowded with beef lovers, but the seafood restaurant (Skipjack's) also had a decent crowd. Not meal time but mid-afternoon. Stores were empty. Not a good sign.

With the exception of groceries and household products, it's amazing how long was can actually go without buying stuff. Of course socks and underwear, even pajamas do wear out. I just "saved" $11.00 by washing 2 sweaters instead of dry cleaning them. Even the tailor said her business was slow. Logic would dictate (actually, does logic ever dictate?) that people would pay for alterations instead of new clothes. Maybe not. Or maybe because it was the week AFTER school vacations and nobody brought in clothes the previous week.

I am thinking about writing and money and wondering why I never got an advanced degree when so many friends and classmates did. The other thing I've been pondering about if whether so many years of computer programming changed my brain. Please don't laugh. This is serious stuff.

Back to the omnipresent "to do" list. It's time for that most hated activity, the tax workbook that the accountant sends out. Thank heavens MONEY keeps impeccable records. Actually, I keep the records, money just records everything. And produces nice reports. Once a detail-oriented geek, always a dog. Hmmm good. Detail Oriented Geek. DOG.

I'm wondering if I should write more adventure tales of my robot fish. Or maybe even a screen play.

Always wondering,

Grapeshot

Sucking It Up Yet Again

In January and February I was a submitting dervish--novels, short stories, memoir, agents, editors. So many envelopes trundled off to the P.O. Hope is always rampant (maybe that should be my motto or crest or whatever: hope rampant) that this will be the year, the month, the week, that something good happens.

Well, not yet. The first bad news is that the agent who had the whole novel and nothing but the novel did not accept it. I didn't even get a personal letter or any feedback. Major aggro.

There's still the OTHER novel, the Amazon contest (I fear I didn't double space) and the various short story submissions, and all the dumb born writing I sent into the world.

I read some of The Shadow Warriors today and wondered if that wasn't the best book yet. Sad, mad, bad thought. The writing contains a lot of energy, zaniness. Can you write your heart out and then everything that follows is just empty words? Dunno.

So I'm still trundling along with In Flight, and the plot seems to me to have a hole big enough to shoot a bazooka through and still not touch anything. It's kind of stopped talking to me. The sagging middle. Send in a man with a gun. Oh yeah. Good idea.

Grapeshot, who made her delicous poppy seed lemon cake this morning and wonders if she missed her calling as a cook.

When Life Imitates Fiction

My first long-ago never-to-see-the-light-of-day mystery began with a crime in a parking garage. I used the area where I worked, naturally, and parked in that garage day and night without much thought to safety. After all, it was a hop, skip and a jump from the office, well-lighted, yada, yada. Imagine my surprise, nay, horror, when a real crime hit the garage, and someone actually tried to kidnap a woman in broad daylight. It gave me pause.

My next book, The Shadow Warriors, dealth with an info war which has only broken out in minor skirmishes in real life, but that seems destined to happen. Maybe the book will take off when it does, but I really wouldn't hope for such an event, book sales or no.

Wisconsin book, Promiscuous Mode, has not sold, but there have been several mass murders in that neck of the woods. Gives one pause.

Burning Man Book, Festival Madness. So far no murders connected to festivals, at least to my knowledge. Whew!

Current book: In Flight. I picked a physical heroine out of my daily life--someone I knew but not well. Took her profession, too. The real person of course was nothing like my heroine who had had genuinely awful things in her life. Until yesterday, when the model told me of a huge tragedy which had befallen her. I felt almost guily. The issue has been building for years, long before the book was a gleam in my eye, but still . . . One charmed life, no longer.

Fiction and life are in a deadly embrace. That's why it's so tempting to fictionalize a memoir. Don't.

Another post soon. I just put chocolate panna cotta in the fridge to gel, and now I'm off to make the port wine ice cream. Yowza! Like God in France.

Grapeshot

Memories of Kansas

I completed the first assignment for the Food Writing class at Brown, writing about my Kansas grandparents chicken yard, garden and kitchen. It's a memoir piece, and I have to tell you I shed a few tears writing it, and now, of course, the rationalist, the cynic, wonders if it's too sentimental. Only the ending is sentimental, which I try to tie back to the beginning. It's hard to write heartfelt without getting soppy. It is for me. But I think it will be O.K. At least from my other writing, I've learned to appeal to the senses, which food writing should absolutely do, and to create some drama and have a beginning, middle and end.

I wrote another chapter of In Flight, and adding that to my five pages of short story for the Guppy Anthology, this has been a productive week. And in the garden, too, as we brought everything into the house but the geraniums. Winter is a comen in.

We went for a walk today and discovered a path to the swimming pool that we didn't know about. Good walk through the woods. Glorious maples. You just can't beat fall in New England.

And now the Red Sox (sob) are trailing eight-zip, and will have to get their act and their pitching together. I do still miss Manny, and wish Big Pappi would slam a few out of the park. Ah, it's a frustrating sport.

I actually survived not going to Bouchercon. Everyone has posted photos and it looked like loads of fun, but gosh I'm glad I kept that thousand dollar bill in the bank. Everyone around here is having garage sales to raise a bit of cash.

We really did eat beans tonight, navy bean soup and it was so tasty! The recipe called for fresh thyme and rosemary, and the usual bean soup fixins. The bacon was fried, drained and sprinkled on the finished soup. Yum! I halved the recipe which was for twelve, but we won't get three meals out of it, oh my no!

You have yourself a very fine Sunday evening!

Grapeshot

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

In Flight

The working title of my new book is "In Flight," with nothing to do with planes and everything to do with running from scary people who want to kill you. I'm 23,000 words into the book, assuming it will run about 100,000 words, quite normal for a suspense book.

Right now, I'm getting the romance that will be critical to the story off the ground, and introducing the characters. The ex-wife is the last character, and she'll appear about mid-book. I have my first restaurant scene. Not many of those--this will be the only one set in a nice restaurant. Everything else will be road food or eating on the run. Literally.

Did you notice in Da Vinci Code that no one ever stopped to eat or go to the bathroom even though they were travelling all over Europe? Maybe somehow had a supply of granola bars, but I doubt it. When is Dan Brown's latest book coming out? People have almost stopped asking.

I'm learning about the golf tour and teaching swimming and for a short story I'm writing, about a robot fish. No time to query agents lately. Seems futile. They don't answer emails, at least half of them don't. The author never knows where the missive landed, if it did.

An editor has had my book for 10 months now, and in the meantime, I've rewritten part of it. So it goes. I noticed the tiny store in Empire had lots of Burning Man books, calendars, etc., and I figure if the book is ever published, I can sell it at Bruno's in Gerlach and at the Empire store and the Reno Airport and if Reno has a bookstore, there, too. So that would bring in some steady sales.

Still waiting for a signing at the bookstore on Hiddensee off Ruegen. It would have been such an honor and so much fun. Sigh. Pipe dreams.

Grapeshot

Barbequed Brisket

This recipe is from the New York Times, and is a good reason not to be a vegetarian. Make sure the brisket has some fat thereon. You'll chill it and take it all off later.
Here's a link to the web site:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/21/dining/213mrex.html?pagewanted=print

I browned and cooked the meat in a broiler pan that was about 2.5 inches high. It's hard to turn the meat (used turkey lifters), so be careful. I covered it with 2 layers of heavy duty foil. You want to cook it leaving enough time to cool it so you can remove the solid fat (beaucoup) from the sauce). This normally means cooking it one day early.

The recipe text (not included on the web site) mentions not buying two 2.5 pounds instead of one 5 pound. One other thing. This time of year (high summer) many supermarket don't have big briskets, or if so, they are frozen, so you need to allow for defrost time.

Obviously, not something to make spur of the moment. :)

The stuffed mushrooms as appetizer were from the 1976 Gourmet magazine and were something special, although I greatly cut down the amount of butter. They were something of a pain in the ass to make, because in those days Gourmet gave no quarter. But zowie, were they tasty.

I now have 57 pages, count 'em, in my new manuscript, tentatively title, In Flight. Currently I am researching money laundering and banking in the Cayman Islands, and hoping no one is monitoring my Internet searches, as they might get the wrong idea. Once I researched gambling and got SPAM from the gambling sites for years. I researched moonshine stills in the hills of Georgia for a short story, and pimps for another story.

The moral here is that a writer's searches may encompass lots of weird and even illegal stuff. Oh yes, and the transgender research for Festival Madness. The devil is in the details and so it the believability and yea, the writer's authority.

I roamed far from the brisket, another writerly trait that needs reining in. Sometimes.


Grrrrapeshot

Thank God for Leftovers

We got another meal from the dinner party remains. Always a good thing. Last night I made a Southwest Salad, a Penzeys recipe using their southwest seasoning, sent gratis because I am such a good reliable customer. The salad had a dressing of oil, lime juice, garlic and the seasoning, and in the salad was rotini pasta, fresh cooked corn from the cob, black beans, tomato, red bell pepper, scallions and roast chicken meat for the carnivores.

www.penzeys.com

The little vegetarian received a separate salad sans chicken. She liked it and ate thirds.

We saw the new Narnia movie yesterday, Prince Caspian, which I liked a lot. Battles between good and evil are always a ripping good story, as was this, with wonderful special effects, esp. the centaurs. Yowsa!

We want to see the American Girl movie this week, too. Rented Flushed Away and Fly Away Home (four stars!) so I'm getting caught up on my kids movies. Young at heart, and too soon made glad.

Tonight we are making our own pizza with fresh dough from Roche Bros. Toppings will be:
tomatoes, summer squash, red bell pepper, mushrooms, olive, garlic, ricotta, mozzarella, fontina, romano, and I do believe that is all. I should add up the cost of all the cheeses, etc., and determine if this is financially worthwhile, but of course it will taste so good and we will eat any leftover cheese.

I have sent the first 50 pages of Festival Madness to my Guppy's critique group. Another rejection, making nine. Not a lot, but no one has asked for the manuscript. In the meantime, I'm plugging away at--ta da!!! working title: In Flight.

Busy week ahead, with a Pawsox game on the 4th, a trip to Boston's Harbor Islands, and maybe some shopping for school clothes. I know. School was just out, but a young lady has to stop.

Til I drop, no doubt.

Cheers!

Grapeshot