The best of 2016

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 5 Comments

I know year end round ups are the thing to do. Feel free to skip reading mine. I almost skipped writing it. LOL

I tripled my views this year, tripled my visitors, average views per visitor remained the same, I doubled my likes (hrm, that’s disconcerting, more of you come but you like less), and double my comments. All in all I doubled my followers. Thanks for coming to check it out, thanks for staying to see what I do next.

I read 80 books this year. Reviewed all of them here except for the ones I beta’d. Those I will review when the authors are ready.

I failed to publish my sophomore novel.

You all were most amused by my post complaining about my child lying to me.

But that was closely followed by my post explaining what a bitch I am when forced to fill a power vacuum.

Of course T is for Twitter, Happy Birthday Me, and O is for Oops were all a solid third place showing.

My Goals, which I flung out there at the start of the year and then tattled on myself all year long about:

– Participate in one flash fiction challenge per month.

√ ROFLMAO – Not so much. Maybe half the year. Shrug. things got crazy this year and my writing took the brunt of it. More on that later.

– Prepare and teach “Nano to Publish”.

√ I did it. And two people in my seminar published this year. I am continuing the series next year.

– Any time I am not actively working on my 2015 Nano Novel…

I dumped my 2015 novel. I plan to revamp it as a pseudo sequel to my Scripting the Truth, set in post WWII London in a film noir style detective work. The main character in the new novel will be the detective from my 2015 nano novel who happens to be war buddies with Molly’s brother. See the tangential bit. wink wink nudge nudge.

– write 2500 words per week on my spy novel until it is done. (After four years, it’s time to put this mess to bed.)

Done. Went through critique round one, fixed it. Out to beta right now. Planning for early March publication.

Non writing goals

– Prepare and teach two classes at the coop for the 2016-2017 school year.

√ Yes and oh mi god are these kids awesome. 3 of my five Nano students wrote more than 50K in November. And I finally managed to motivate my geography kids into doing their homework. Candy, candy is the answer.

– Take better care of my body, ie. stop compulsively painting, crocheting, and writing until my back or shoulder is so tore I can barely use either.

√ I finally got the hang of this by rotating my compulsions. LOL

– yoga daily.

√ Closest I have ever come in my life. I can say with out a doubt, five days a week on average all year.

Things I did not plan on but survived:

The pool board from hell. (Not to be confused with the condo board of the apocalypse. That is an awesome book.) The pool board from hell was, well, hellish. And not just the members are never grateful and snotty bad. But like fist fights, embezzlement, audits by the state, losing friends bad.

A relapse of Epstein Barr. Considering the above entry I will just say better EB that a stay in the pysche ward.

Health crisis for the hubs.

Inability to read for my seven year old. Which led to testing, therapy, testing and finally an actual diagnosis and solution which is WORKING!

And finally my FIL rerouting Christmas from my house to my SILs. The SIL who doesn’t speak to my hubs or me for that matter. Yeah.

2016 can end now please. I am ready for a new year. I hope your holidays are bright, your family warm, your heart full of love, and your mind ready for the adventure that comes next. Cheers!

 

Book Review: 4th Quarter One Star

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Twas the day after Christmas and all through the house, every creature was reading, even my mouse. We just aren’t reading these books….

Eclair and Present Danger, Laura Bradford.

I wanted to like this book, I did. I love the idea of an emergency dessert squad delivering tasty yummies for every crisis in your life. But…sigh…The main character lives through an occurrence and then tells multiple groups about it. And you get to read it multiple times. By the end of chapter 17 I knew the whole murder plot. And I totally didn’t care. Plus Flipped for Murder by Maddie Day popped up at my local library and I grabbed that to read instead.

Read to Death, Terrie Farley Moran.

I took this with me on my most recent trip. It traveled through Harry Potter land at Universal and went to Legoland with me. But I had to abandon it. It was more or less ok. I can’t make any big complaints. It was just a little tedious. There was some definite ambiguity about the relationship between the two main characters. And I seriously thought for a bit the author was going bold and making them lesbians, in a mainstream cozy mystery, but no. sigh. And then it came, the moms showing up to support in a crisis. Bleh. I was done. No mom love.

Greatest One-Percenter Myths, Mysteries, and Rumors Revealed – Bill Hayes

I was in the library, we were short on time. I was grabbing a book on Houdini for the kiddo and saw this when I turned around. It seemed like it could be interested. Sadly no. There were lots of myth and mysteries and rumors talked about in the book. But no actual truth despite the book promising to reveal all. Essentially it is a demonstration of flawed logic. No actual facts, truths, or secrets come out, the author just makes fun of the “lies” that are circulating. I kept reading long after I was annoyed thinking maybe just maybe something would come to light. Nope. When the library emailed me my 3 weeks were up I happily returned it half read.

High Kicks, Hot Chocolate, and Homicides – Mary McHugh

sigh. I dropped this one 40 pages in. I didn’t care at all about the victim, there wasn’t enough interaction with her prior to her death for me to be concerned. And it was pretty obvious already who dun it. I checked the back of the book and yup I was right. But there were two things that just rubbed me the wrong way hard about the main character, which is why I dropped the book. First she’s having an affair. It might only be an emotional affair but she is. And she keeps going on about how much she loves the affair guy but isn’t going to leave her husband because marriage is for better or worse. Um, then stop making plans to see the affair guy, daily, and work on your marriage. Then in a mental rambling to herself she talks about how if she didn’t have this dancing hobby she would just sit at home and eat chocolate and then she might weigh as much as 150 pounds. Oh the horror. Done with your skinny cheating ass. Buh-bye.

Sunday Sup: Dates

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I realize this is a super easy recipe and if a dozen people hadn’t asked me what I did at the Sinterklaas party we had, I totally wouldn’t have bothered making this a Sunday Sup. But as it was, I was practically as grilled as this dish. LOL

Stuffed Dates

Buy some dates. Make a slice in the top the long way so you can pop out the pit.

Stuff the now empty space with goat cheese.

Wrap the dates in bacon.

Chill them until you are ready too cook them. Over night is fine if you are party prepping. Straight into the oven works too.

Cover a cookie sheet in parchment paper. Bake for img_20161205_12414520-25 minutes at 450. You want the bacon crisp.

Let them cool just a smidge so you don’t burn your mouth on ooey gooey amazing goat cheese.

That’s it. Eat em up.

Merry Christmas if you celebrate.

Fiendish Friday : Unhappiness

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 9 Comments

Not too long ago a friend of mine texted me because she was reading some book about happiness and felt that she was not as happy as she should be. I don’t remember which book because it wasn’t important to me. But our text conversation about the causes of unhappiness did stick with me.

I think the problem is as follows: My generation was told we could do anything we wanted if only we worked hard enough at it. Which somehow as we age has become if I just work harder I can do everything. And of course everything is not actually possible. So we feel like failures and we strive harder. And keeping our nose to the grind stone, all we see is that grindstone. We miss the beauty.

So where did I come by this idea? When I moved here, I knew no one. I had no where I had to go, no obligations I had to fill, no friends I needed to see/help/spend time with. It was just the fam and me. Life got SLOW. Very, very SLOW. So SLOW in fact that dropping everything and going to the lake for the morning was totally possible because I could always do everything later. There was always more time later. I joined the local zoo and we went every week on the way to the grocery store for a couple of hours because it filled our time with beauty. There was always more time.

Of course, eventually I made friends. And the kiddo made friends. And plans started to creep in. And then obligations started to creep in. And then this summer I found myself drowning in chaotic disaster of someone else’s making.  I had to chose what sort of person I wanted to be. Did I want to drop it all and be “happy.” Or did I want to be the sort of person who honors their commitments?

I chose to honor my commitment. Which in the short run was very painful however I got two things out of it in the long run. A) I get to be happy with the person I am. I stuck to my moral guidelines. B) I got a fab reminder why I shouldn’t say yes to everything. Just to some things. And that means I need to say “Let me think about this” first. And then I need to flipping think about it. If it costs me an opportunity, or a friendship, then so be it. Because my soul, my contentment, my ability to smile and say yeah I am happy and mean  it, is worth more than anything else.

Are you happy? Why or why not? How did you figure out how to be happy despite the ups and downs?

Book Review: Dressed to Kilt

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 12 Comments

I know, I know, you’re totally ready to scream enough cozy mysteries, aren’t you? Well guess what, this is the end my friend. I have read or tried to read every cozy mystery on the shelves at six different libraries. Dressed to Kilt by Hannah Reed is the last one to get a full review. Although you will see a number of them on my One Star rehash at the end of fourth quarter.

This was a fun little mystery. Set in a small hamlet in Scotland, I felt like Reed did a good job of giving the book a Scottish flair which I enjoyed. However she did a less good job with really placing her setting. Things floated, if you know what I mean. The accented lines were flavorful but still readable. Reed included a rude idiot American, allowing for lots of Scots terminology and colloquialisms to be explained without a full “as you know bob” going on.

The book includes three mysteries in one. A) the actual murder. B) the story behind her father’s disappearance 30 years earlier. And C) which guy?  I was super on board. Really grooving. Really wondering. And then 180 pages in, it happened. A flaw in the story logic so large I’m surprised it didn’t cause a rip in the time space continuum. As a character is being arrested she insists she has never met a certain person nor been to the local hospital before to the inspector and the deputy. And no one calls her on it. It flies. I had to go back and check but yep the day before the inspector, the same one, had driven this character to the local hospital to visit said person.

I finished the book but the bloom was off. The ending was disappointing. It was all gray. Overcast. Besmirched by bad story logic.

Rating this one is difficult.

Overall: ℘℘, two pages. I finished this book after the logic debacle out of sheer stubbornness. And to see if she hooks up with the inspector who is a much better match for her than the idiot she’s currently dating.

For the plot, characters, and writing: ℘℘℘℘, four pages. Really well done. But that one instance just sticks too far in my craw for me to get over it.

Sunday Sup: Lazy Curry

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This recipe has been modified so many times I am not sure of it’s original parentage, but I  suspect it was a Rachel Ray recipe many, many moons ago. I used to do all my cooking from Rachel Ray recipes. And to be honest she only ever let me down once. That’s a pretty spectacular track record.

So Lazy Curry:

Thinly slice a sweet onion or two if you really like onions. Toss them into a pan with fat of your choice over medium heat.

While the onions caramelize, quarter, then chop a couple of zucchini. Toss them into the pan with the onions, stir everything.

Sometimes I add eggplant. If you want to go that route, dice an eggplant and add that to the pan. It just depends on how lazy I am feeling. I never peel the eggplant first.

When everything is soft and slightly browned, add 2-3 cups of chicken stock. You don’t want soup here, just enough to cook down into a saucy mess. Now stir in 2-3 large tablespoons of Patak’s curry paste. You’ll know how much when you smell it. Now add 2-3 large tablespoons of Patek’s mango chutney. Match the amount of paste you put in. Now a huge handful (or three) of golden raisins. Stir.img_20161129_090134

Add some chopped up chicken. Again I used precooked when I am being super lazy or grill my own when I have a bit more effort to expend.

Stir it occasionally for 5-10 minutes until the chicken is warm and the sauce is thick and rich.

Serve over rice or with naan. Your call.

Fiendish Friday: Stress

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 6 Comments

I suppose you’ve noticed a lot of my posts talk about how busy I have been. How much I have going on.  One legged man in an ass kicking contest. Long tail cat in a room full of rocking chairs. All of this means stress.

My body has a few ways to process stress. I am a stress eater, first and foremost. But after seeing how fat I looked in the legoland pictures, I am doing no sugar, no grains. You just can’t stress eat a steak. It doesn’t work.

I also try to moderate my stress with daily yoga. It helps a lot. Except I stopped yoga because I was spending every spare minute on all the stuff piling up. My spy novel edits, beta read for my nephew, prepping curic for class, painting the trim, cleaning paint from the floors, moving furniture – before the party on the 4th. While handling all the usual: home school the kiddo, keep the house running type stuff.

So my body decided to put a stop to this insanity. First my massage therapist asked about my swollen lymph nodes in my neck. I blew it off, I thought it was left over from the mild head cold I had had the week before. Then I got really tired all the time and needed to nap daily. I had a headache for days at a time. And then I noticed my left hand smelled like garlic. well fuck. It’s back…..

In my 20’s I got Epstein Barr, you might know it as Mono. But some lucky people get CFS from it, which can come back again and again, whenever you get overly stressed. I haven’t had a relapse in years.

sigh…

Book Review: Cheddar off Dead

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 3 Comments

Yes, I know, it has been a long slog of cozy mysteries but every time I go to a different library they have different series and we have 50 some odd libraries for me to choose from. Life is good in the rainy northwest, they know we need many many books when the snow starts to fly, which according to Grey’s Anatomy it does regularly in Seattle. ROFL

Back to Cheddar off Dead by Julia Buckley. I might have skipped this one if I had realized this was the same Julia Buckley who wrote one of the one star books I totally panned in the 4th quarter but I didn’t and I am super glad. This one was good. Funny.

Cheddar is the 2nd in the series starring Lilah as a secret chef. She cooks, you pretend it’s your food. She witnesses a murder. Again. And then because she’s chatty and talks to everyone and people tell her things…she uncovers the murderer. Lilah is likable. Her crazy family is likable.

I want to compliment this book but I don’t want to give away the who dun it. So let me try to phrase this in a way that covers all my bases. I read a lot of murder mysteries. Some cozy, some not so cozy, some true crime. So I know who the most likely suspect is, and Julia totally leads me down the garden path beautifully. I seriously did not know who dun it. Well, not until I was supposed to know.

℘℘℘℘- Four Stars, I totally would have killed it in one day but the kiddo came and demanded cuddles and by the time I got him back to sleep I was too tired to finish it. But I got up and finished it first thing the next morning. I will definitely keep an eye out for more books in this series.

Sunday Sup: Quinoa Salad

~ tahenryauthoress ~ 2 Comments

I’m going to set the scene for you. The hubs is in another state working. I am in a small apartment with the kiddo, a very much younger kiddo, trying to wrap up our three lives so we can all move to the other state the hubs is working in. I finally get the kiddo to bed and because I don’t eat dinosaur chicken nuggets even if they are organic, I am searching the fridge to finally make myself some dinner. I’m not shopping because hello moving to another state. Gotta use up what’s there before it ends up in land fill. I see some left over roast asparagus and some goat cheese. I google. I find a recipe somewhere, I don’t remember where now, and I discover with some hearty substitutions I can kind of sort of make this recipe. I do, it’s delicious, so I keep making it with my substitutions. LOL

Quinoa Salad

Right off the bat you have to decide how much you want to make and how much quinoa you want versus the other ingredients. I usually put 4 cups of water on to boil and then add 2 c quinoa when it’s ready. 12-15 minutes simmering covered should do it. Turn off the heat, leave the lid on for five more minutes.
In the mean time, put some asparagus on a parchment lined cookie sheet, spray with olive oil, broil on high for 5-7 minutes. Just smell for it.
While that’s cooking, chop up some kalamata olives.
Whisk up the sauce. This is again a bit about you. I like red wine vinegar in this recipe, a good 1/2 c worth, 2 tbsp Dijon mustard, 1 tbsp honey, 1/4 olive oil. Whisk until emulsified. You can also use balsamic if that tickles your fancy. You can mix white balsamic and standard in equal measure.
Dump the fluffed quinoa into a large bowl. Pour the sauce on, stir well. The asparagus should be cool enough to cut now. Grab by the woody ends and snip off one inch pieces until the kitchen shears no longer go through the asparagus easily. Toss the woody part.
Now while everything is warm, add the goat cheese. A good 4-6 ounces. Mix it round until the goat cheese melts into the quinoa.
Serve warm.

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FYI this pic is of a half batch because the hubs said he was cutting back on the carbs but when I got home and was ready to eat dinner, there was no salad to be found. Apparently he meant he was cutting back on my carbs. LOL

Fiendish Friday: Bastion of Fear

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I had to make yet another visit to the bastion of fear today. The place of humiliation and sheer terror. Where you are guaranteed to get lost and nothing makes sense. I speak of hell on earth….Home Depot.

Yes, that’s right I entered the lion’s den. I’ve going there a lot lately as we are working on the house. And somehow my husband always talks me into going and getting all the parts we need. I usually manage to avoid conversing with the employees. I just spend the 6 hours necessary to find the random item I need. But today I was sick and just wanted to buy the 6 things I needed and go home to bed. And there was my mistake. I tried to talk to one of the employees.

So I wander into the third electrical section looking for a new dimmer electrical workings. I ask the woman in the aisle for help as I am totally confused by all the crap. She of course doesn’t work in that section but comes back with a guy who does. In between his distracted conversation with another employee and his ringing phone I attempt to explain my dimmer switch has burned out and I need to replace the guts. He says, “I can’t sell you the guts of a dimmer switch.”

“Ok, then what would you do to fix a burned out dimmer switch?” I smile in what I hope is a bewitching manner.

“You can’t fix it.”

deep breathe. “What can you do?”

“You have to replace it.”

I grind my teeth and smile wider. “With what?”

And then he hands me the electrical guts to a dimmer switch.

And I thank him kindly, omitting all the swear words that came to mind.