wednesday words 7.26

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Thanks in large part to a baby sitter who didn’t go away for the summer this year, I am done editing my spy novel. Woot!

Next steps:

Oral read through with the hubs. I do this with every novel. It’s pain staking and time consuming but I know from experience it’s worth every minute.

But that means: new projects!! First up is to take a left over scene from that murder mystery I wrote and then hated a few years back and work it up into a fun short for the convention that’s coming up.

But Dan Alatorre is putting together an anthology, a scary/spooky/creepy anthology he wants to publish October 1st. Ouch. I told I would tell him yes or no by Friday. I need a new idea and a story written and edited by end of August to make that time line. Essentially working both shorts at the same time with the same due date.

Realistically I manage to scrape together 5 hours a week to write.

Is that really enough time?? What say you dear readers?

Book Review: My (Not So) Perfect Life

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Creme Caramel for the brain. Sometimes you just want to indulge. You want a bit more than vanilla pudding but you don’t want to be confronted with things that make you angry or think. Laughing, I feel like I should do a whole rating system on indulgence reading. My (Not So) Perfect Life by Sophie Kinsella, I waited months to get my hands on it and then breezed through in mere hours.

In one of my all time favorite themes, the main character is trying to find her way in the world hampered by society which sees her one way, her family, which wants her to be another thing, and her own desperate desire to be who she wants to be, which she thinks needs to be more than she is. Did that make sense? I hope so. It’s one of my favorite themes, the struggle to find oneself and then be oneself. I explore it in all my own novels. I explore it in all my own lives. LOL

The main character is fun, witty, and pretty savvy when it comes to her chosen profession but doesn’t apply any of that knowledge to her own life. She’s in marketing and branding and demonstrates amazing ability to figure out what people want and how they think in work related matters but is incapable of looking at those around her and applying the same.  I suppose we all have our blind spots.

There’s a nice dash of stop judging people by their outsides and pay attention to their insides. Things are rarely what they seem. And in case you miss it a character or twenty really pounds that home in dialogue. smiles.

℘℘℘℘℘ – Five Pages. Fast, fun read. I rarely dislike anything Kinsella writes.

Sunday Sup: Jalapeño Poppers

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I don’t know how I haven’t posted this one before. Maybe I just haven’t made them in the months I have been posting recipes? That could be possible. Anyway, Fourth of July I went to a BBQ at my back neighbors. They do this BBQ potluck and fireworks thing every year. Anyway, this year my neighbor asked me to bring baked beans. Ok, I made those, and I threw together a fruit salad, yes, that fruit salad on the recipe list.

But then at dinner, I almost got lynched. Where were the poppers? How dare I come without poppers?

Oh mi. So I made them that weekend.

Jalapeño Poppers

Grab some jalapeños. As many as you like. I usually make a huge batch because once I am prepping this mess, I might as well fill the pan.

If you have sensitive skin, use gloves.

Cut the stem end off, slice them in half, scrape out the seeds. Now I usually cut the jalapeño down to bite size but you can leave them as large as you like.

Fill the available space with cream cheese. Use good cream cheese. Not chemically laced Philly.

Wrap the pepper in bacon. I like to cut a strip of bacon in half the long way so that I can wrap it many times, thinly with little over lap.

Fill your rimmed cookie sheet. Bake at 250 for 3 to 4 hours. You want the bacon fully crisped and the pepper wrinkled into softness. I know 3-4 hours is a wide range but size of pepper and thickness of bacon will really effect cooking time. You’ll want to pull them out of the pan of bacon grease pretty quick after taking them out of the oven.

So I was pretty lax in numbers here. It depends so much on the size of the pepper. But let’s say 10 whole large peppers will take 12 oz cream cheese and a pound of bacon, give or take a little.

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Fiendish Friday: Fitted Sheets

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I keep seeing all these videos for “the easiest way to fold fitted sheets.” Um, ok. Except the videos are like 5 or 6 minutes long. Seriously? 5 or 6 minutes to fold one sheet? I did actually watch one. It was kind of funny, but after a typical day in my house(4 hours home school, 5 errands, 3 hours in traffic, most of it with the kiddo, make dinner, write a blog, consider working on my own novel, exhaustedly fall into bed with a book for review), five minutes to fold one sheet is crazy.

So to save you all some trauma and time, here is my method for folding a fitted sheet.

Grab a corner, check for the pillow case that will be hiding inside.

Repeat will the other three corners.

You should now have four corners in one hand.

Use your other hand to grab all the rest of the hanging material, fold it towards the hand with the corners, place on a shelf.

Bam, 16 seconds. Beat my record, I dare you.

PS. Points will be deducted if you miss one of the pillowcases in the corners.

Wednesday Words 7.19

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I have friends in town. That usually makes for very little writing time. But….

The hubs is working on his dissertation. The wife is getting yet another Masters. And the son is doing camp nano.

Woot. Off to write in we went. 7 chapters in 3 hours. I love the pressure of a group write. Everyone head down and pressure on.

I can still see the join between the chapters I wrote several years ago and the ones I wrote last year. There is such a quality difference, which equals a real difference in the number of hours each chapter takes to be made amusing. But I’m moving forward.

Book Review: Confessions of a Domestic Failure

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With a title like Confessions of a Domestic Failure, how could I leave Bunmi Laditan’s debut novel on the shelf? She certainly knew how to attract her target audience, which I am guessing is moms whose children are old enough they have time to read again but young enough they still remember the pain of the first three years. LOL

I read this on a Saturday where I bailed everything I was supposed to do, except pick up my son’s prescription, that I did. I bailed everything else. We cuddled on the couch and I read. He played video games and I read. He napped and I read. Good read for a lazy Saturday.

Ashley is a new mom. She struggles to keep her world functioning with a baby in tow. The problem is, Ashley has unrealistic expectations about motherhood. Don’t we all. And she fails to follow the first year axiom, sleep when the baby sleeps, because she is so worried about the mess that her home is. But she also fails to clean up said mess while the baby sleeps. LOL.

I could really relate to the struggle with her hubs. She feels like he doesn’t understand what it is like to stay home with a baby all day. I sometimes struggle with this myself. Yes, my kiddo is now 8 but you try caring for a special needs child, day in, day out, 365 days a year. And I home school. Yeah, No Reprieve.

On the other hand Ashley has no concept of how hard it is to be the sole breadwinner for a family. The pressure that can put on the hubs. Actually, that might be a good way to describe Ashley, she is clueless about other people’s feelings and realities.

℘℘℘℘ – Solid four page book. It inspired me to get up and occasionally take care of a few things, like cleaning my master bathroom and doing the dishes. LOL Well written, amusing.

Sunday Sup: Beef, it’s what’s for dinner

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Anyone remember those commercials from back in the day? oh man. It’s summer, so I’ve been purging the house. I stacked up quite a few cookbooks I never use to be sold to the used bookstore. I cherry picked a few recipes that looked ok for an attempt to justify the cookbook’s existence. LOL.

This one is called Beef en daube from the “you’re dumb and fat” cookbook my mum gave me years ago.

Preheat oven to 350.

Get out your dutch oven if you have one or any other pot that goes in the oven and on the stove, otherwise use a skillet and casserole dish.

Brown 1 1/2 pounds stew meat in the dutch oven/skillet. Toss in 8-10 shallots, peeled but whole, depending on size as the meat is browning. 4-5 minutes total. If you’re using a dutch oven, carry on, otherwise transfer meat and shallot to your casserole dish.

Add: 1 c red wine, 1/2 c chicken stock, 1 medium tomato chopped, 1 tsp minced garlic, 2 c sliced mushrooms, 10 baby potatoes chopped as small as the meat. Cover and pop into the oven.

Cook about an hour. I checked after 45 minutes and felt it needed another 15.

When done, drain the juice into the skillet, warm over medium heat and add a small amount of corn starch slurry until it thickens slightly. (corn starch slurry: remove a small amount of the juice, add 1 tsp corn starch, stir til smooth, add back to the pan.)

Serve meat and veg with sauce you just made. I forgot to take pictures, we were watching The Peanuts Movie, and I was distracted.

Fiendish Friday: Again

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I went into the bastion of hell again yesterday…Home Depot. I know, I know. Why do I do it? I suppose it comes down to this; I needed potting soil for succulents, more succulents, additional plants, paint samples, door stops, blinds, and Vormax replacement fluid for my self cleaning toilet (which is the bomb, BTW).

Where do you go for a list like that? Don’t say Amazon, you can’t buy plants on Amazon. LOL

So it’s Home Depot or Lowe’s. And do you know why I pick HD? Two reasons.

A) They have awesome classes free to the public. You or your kid, they have several types, get to go in and have someone teach you how to do something construction related.  The best part…they’ll answer your dumbass questions, even the ones that are only tangentially related.

B) The Olympic Athlete program. That is just bad ass. It opens the world of competitive athletics to those who aren’t rich.

So I go to HD, even though, it sucks. LOL.

I started with the toilet cleaner, the hubs SAID it was right in the same aisle as the toilets. Nope. I found an employee. Nope. They don’t carry it, even though they carry the toilets. This set of sentences makes it sound all quick and easy but really it took 23 minutes.

I move onto to paint samples. This actually goes just fine. LOL.

The blinds. They have what I want but only in custom made and for 225 a piece. Not on your life.

Plants. I have to say they had a fun selection. And everything is super well labeled, so if you’re a plant idiot like me, you can actually figure out what to buy. But of course they have the water hoses all over the plant area so you couldn’t actually roll your cart around and what I wanted was at the farthest point from where I could park my cart. Grrr. Lots of back and forth with wet muddy plants.

Which brings me to door stops. I finally find them in the plumbing section. ROFL. I like exactly 2 styles. One is completely sold out. The other has 4 left. sigh. I buy them, thus ensuring I will now have to go to another bastion of hell to find the rest….

Wednesday Words 7.12

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Hello my fellow writers. It is camp Nano time. I usually don’t do the camp ones but they have really changed up the process. So this year I joined a private cabin with my local writing mates and set my goal to the number of minutes spent editing. Yup, you can set goals different from words written. Love this camp thing.

Despite a mad amount of work I got done this last week, I readjusted my camp goal down. Yeah, they let you adjust your camp nano goal. Shocking right? I just lost too much time when the kiddo and then the husband got the grunge that was going around.

Anyway, 7 more chapters edited. I’ve been cleaning up all my justs and buts. Weaving in little bits I had left dangling. For example, in one chapter while Talon is on his way to Moscow Penelope tells him not to drink Siberian Siren vodka, he won’t like how it’s made. I realized I never followed that up. It’s only funny if you know how it’s made. So I found the perfect place to weave it into the story so the reader gets the joke.

How is it made you ask? snort. You’ll just have to wait to get your hands on my novel. Release date in December…..

Book Review: Truly Madly Guilty

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Truly Madly Guilty is another Liane Moriarty book. One I sought out after reading Big Little Lies.

On one hand I read the book in one evening. The hubs and kiddo were playing PS4 so I opened it to hang out with them in the living room and not be too distracted. Eventually, the kiddo went to bed and I went on reading.

On the other hand, it’s super predictable. I seriously found myself saying “I bet x is what happened there. I bet Y is why there.” I was always right. Always. Lots of cliches. Lots of predictable. Lots of “this is pointless.”

It’s the same back and forth in time, multiple point of view type story of BLL.  Which I like. It’s an easy way to build suspense. But the same attention to detail is missing. Example: dialogue tag to a character who isn’t actually in the car. And no, this isn’t a disembodied voice kind of story. LOL

So what kind of story is it? Two friends. Their interactions. How those interactions, interact with those around them. Slice of life type stuff.

℘℘℘ – Three Pages. Despite reading it in one night, I just can’t bring any joy to mind over the book. I wouldn’t push it on friends the way I did BLL. And I certainly won’t go looking for more of Moriarty’s books. If one crosses my path I might pick it up though. LOL.