Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 388

Writing Spanish-speaking characters

Great post here by Lisa Bradley, and thanks to Sarah Prineas for the tip.

“If you don’t speak Spanish and your characters do, you absolutely need a fluent Spanish speaker to beta read your story. What’s more, you need a reader familiar with your character’s particular dialect. If you don’t have a real person who can do this for you, you are not equipped to write the story.”

I suspect this is true. Since I don’t speak any Spanish at all, I am fortunately not the least bit tempted to skip this step. If I hadn’t had a friend who speaks colloquial Mexican Spanish, I would probably not have written BLACK DOG with Hispanic protagonists. I tried hard never to touch any word or phrase or sentence after Abi fixed it for me, but for the first time I really get that standard “Any errors are totally my fault” disclaimer you always see. Because they are!

I use online translators, too. But those are to put sort of symbolic Spanish into the text so it “reads right” to my eye. I sure wouldn’t dare want to send the manuscript to my actual editor until a real person fixed it up!

My favorite paragraph from this post:

“Likewise, I don’t translate the Spanish words I choose to use, especially not in dialog. We only use that sort of repetition when we’re consciously trying to accommodate for language differences, as when we’re teaching a child a new language. I am trying to depict, authentically, my characters. I’m not teaching Spanish. When I was growing up, I read plenty of books with French, Latin, and Greek sprinkled throughout the text, with the unwritten understanding that an educated person would know multiple languages or be able to figure it out.”

I used to love and admire untranslated snippets in other books. I do translate some of my Spanish, but lots of it I don’t. I’m going to remember that I’m not teaching Spanish phrase in case someone asks me why not.

Exciting weekend here –

– The weekend went like this:

Friday: Freezing rain. Sleet. Snow. Snow. Snow. SNOW. (We wound up with a foot, which is more than anyone else in the immediate area.)

Friday night: Call Deb and ask if Laura and Shawn made it out of Springfield. Is there still going to be a major at the show outside of St. Louis? Would I be breaking the major if I don’t make it? How is the weather up there? The answers were Yes, Yes, Yes, and Not Bad.

Breaking a major when your friends are showing counts as Letting Down The Team. Deb volunteers to bring her big all-weather SUV out to get me if I can’t get my car out — a four-hour round trip for her.

Saturday predawn: Bathe Honey.

Saturday at dawn: Sweeping 200 square feet of snow away from in front my parents’ garage (I park there in bad weather, which this certainly qualifies as) in the hope that I would be able to get the car backed out and started forward with enough oomph to get all the way out of the driveway, which has a very slight but noticeable upward slope.

Saturday at 7:30 AM: I succeed in getting the car out, impressing my Dad, who didn’t think I could do it. I call Deb and tell her she doesn’t need to come but I am not totally, absolutely sure I can get my car the last little bit out of the driveway, where the snowplow kicked up a noticeable barrier.

Saturday at 8:00 AM: Bathe Kenya. Load car.

Saturday at 9:00 AM: Get the car out of the driveway, after a 40 minute struggle involving shovels, cat litter, and a hefty shove from behind.

Saturday at 9:30 AM: Succeed in creeping down Highway B without skidding off the curvy, steep, shoulder-less road. Succeed in getting down Highway 32, which shows no signs anybody salted it and is a sheet of packed ice, but at least a flatter, straighter, wider sheet of ice than Highway B.

Saturday at 11:00 AM: Arrive at the show site. The rest of the drive was without incident, all the bigger highways being nearly normal.

Saturday at 12:50 PM: Kenya gets second in her class (Laura’s girl wins the class, Deb’s Natalie gets third). Honey wins Winners Bitch, Best of Winners, Best of Opposite Sex. Her second major! Yay!

All of the Cavalier people at this show are friends, so we all go to dinner together. Then out to walk dogs in the eight-degree weather. I go to bed very early. The dogs and I are really tired.

Sunday at 5:00 AM: Going to bed early means we’re up early. Walk dogs. Notice it has snowed again during the night, but not too much.

Sunday at 8:00 AM: Touch up Honey’s ears. Then Kenya’s ears. Mist Kenya’s coat and put the drying coat back on her to flatter her coat. Pack up car.

Sunday at 9:15 AM: At show. It’s way early (Cavaliers go in the ring at 10:20 AM). I watch Akitas, Cardigan Welsh Corgis, Norwich Terriers, Whippets, etc.

Sunday at 10:00 AM: I get the girls ready.

Sunday at 10:35 AM: Kenya gets third in her class (sigh). Laura’s girl gets second, Deb’s Natalie wins the class. Honey then gets Winners Bitch and Best of Opposite Sex. A third major! She now has nine points and is almost caught up to her mother. Yay!

Sunday at 1:00 PM: I arrive home, having found that there’s no sign that anybody ever treated Highway 32, much less Highway B. You have to take Highway B at nearly twenty miles an hour to make it up the hills. Whew! Glad to be home.

Not sure if MAC will be closed tomorrow or not. Even if MAC has classes, I may not go. Risking an embarrassing slide into a ditch or death on the highway is one thing for a dog show, but quite another if it’s just a question of making it to work. Right?

Recent Reading: WINTER’S CHILD by Margaret Maron

I rather like the Deborah Knott mysteries, which I just started reading this year. Or last year, whatever, it all starts to blur together a bit by December.

BOOTLEGGER’S DAUGHTER is the first in the series, but actually, I started with SLOW DOLLAR and have gradually made my way forward in the series; hence I’m on WINTER’S CHILD, my fourth foray into this series.

I like the characters, including the vast extended family of our protagonist, Deborah Knott. Especially her father, who, yes, used to be an infamous bootlegger and, I gather, never got caught. (I like him a LOT.) I also like the somewhat unusual romance that started in SLOW DOLLAR and took a couple of books to work itself out, where the marriage was proposed as a marriage of convenience but actually he was always in love with her but she never knew and then she develops true feelings for him and . . . okay, probably you don’t need the whole relationship arc. But it is very different from the Instant Realization That (He) She Is THE ONE that we find in, say, Laura Florand’s romances. Obviously I’m not knocking those, I’m sure you know that, but I definitely enjoy a relationship that is slower to develop.

I like the setting for these mysteries, too. Bootlegger country (or it used to be); small-town. I like that Judge Deborah Knott is a minor court judge, whatever that is called, I mean the kind of judge who hears DUI cases and cases involving teenage vandalism and whatever. Little stuff, low-profile stuff, nothing involving celebrity lawyers and flashy crimes. I like the everyday feel to the stories, the ordinary people who move through them.

And until now, I believe I’ve sort of liked the mysteries themselves, though to me the mystery is always definitely secondary to character and setting. Which is a good thing, because I did find myself sort of rolling my eyes a bit at the mystery in WINTER’S CHILD.

Let me see, when someone kidnaps an eight-year-old, and that person

a) is mistaken at a distance for the kid’s mother,

b) the kid is seen to go with the kidnapper a bit reluctantly, but more or less willingly,

c) the dog does not bark and alert the household when the kidnapper comes back to fetch the kid’s teddy bear (!),

d) the kidnapper appears to enter the house easily and repeatedly, and seems to probably wear gardenia perfume, known to be favored by the women in the family,

Then naturally you would immediately suspect:

a) a random completely unknown stranger with an unguessable but no-doubt scary motive

b) the mother’s sister, known to be emotionally or mentally disturbed

c) the mother’s tottery old mother who barely leaves her house, though she has no motive whatsoever for kidnapping the kid

d) the mother’s sister, known to be emotionally or mentally disturbed

e) oh, maybe the mother was blackmailing someone, maybe that is the guy who took the kid?

f) the mother’s sister, known to be emotionally or mentally disturbed

g) aliens

h) the mother’s sister, known to be emotionally or mentally disturbed

If you’re guessing b, d, f, and h you win a prize! I thought, Maybe this is too super-obvious and it will turn out not to be the sister? It will turn out I wasn’t reading very carefully and missed some obvious reason it can’t be the sister?



But, no. It was the sister, who turns out to be actually schizophrenic and delusional. She thought she was protecting the kid. I feel just fine revealing this to you all BECAUSE IT IS COMPLETELY OBVIOUS.

The possibility does not even dawn on the protagonists until p. 220. (I made a note.) They have to almost literally be whapped over the head with a two-by-four to figure this out.

Sigh. It’s a good thing I don’t primarily read mysteries for the actual mystery. Or the suspense. It never crossed my mind that the kid might be harmed. I’ll just go on with the spoilers and let you all know that indeed, the kid is just fine.

This is the last Deborah Knott mystery I have, and certainly the least impressive I’ve read to date, though I did enjoy it. Now I have to decide whether to go back to the beginning, or go on. I’m leaning toward trying the first book. It probably has a bigger role for the father, who is a fabulous secondary character.

Alternate history

Here’s an interesting post about alternate history, over at Fantasy Faction.

The post points out that creating a point of divergence is easy, but developing a rounded story from that point is difficult.

Let me just mention that if you want to see a set of fully-developed worlds based on alternate histories, you could do worse than to look up the GURPS Alternate Earths supplements.

These are fun to read even if, like me, you are neither a gamer nor actually planning to write an alternate history. I mean, I guess BLACK DOG is an alternate history in a way, because supernatural stuff has been influencing history all along, but really it’s not — there’s no point of divergence or anything.

Craig says that you can make absolutely any alternate history seem inevitable if you do it right. The scenarios presented in these GURPS supplements totally establish the truth of that claim.

Craig, the author of the linked post argues that JONATHON STRANGE AND MR NORRIL by Suzanna Clarke is the best-ever alternate history. Since you’ve basically read all alternate history stories ever, which one would you vote for?

Cookies, cookies, cookies

Or at least one recipe, because here is what I am making this morning, since schools are closed in this area. (Snow! Very beautiful. Not often we get ten inches or so before Christmas. I’m just guessing about the final amount because it’s still coming down.)

Anyway, here is an appropriate recipe for a snowy winter day:

Scandinavian Brown-Butter Cardamom Cookies

2 sticks unsalted butter

3/4 C sugar

2 tsp vanilla

1 egg yolk

1/2 tsp ground cardamom

1 1/2 to 2 C flour

1 egg white

64 pecan halves

Powdered sugar

Okay, brown the butter first. Browning changes both the flavor and how the butter behaves in the cookie (it gives the cookies a sandier texture than you may be used to). You can skip this step, but it will dramatically alter the cookie. Plus, browning butter is perfectly simple.

Put the butter in a small saucepan, melt over med-low heat, and simmer until butter solids have browned, about 15 minutes or so. Pour the clarified butter through a fine-mesh strainer into a large bowl and chill until firm.

Add the sugar, egg yolk, vanilla and cardamom to the clarified butter and beat until light and fluffy. Gradually add enough flour to make a smooth dough. For me this is close to 2 C. of flour.

Divide the dough into fourths and then eights. Shape each portion into eight smooth balls. Obviously you will have 64 cookies. Place the balls on parchment-lined cookie sheets. Beat the egg whites in a small bowl until frothy. Dip the pecan halves in the egg whites and press one pecan half onto each ball, flattening the balls slightly.

Bake at 350 degrees for 12 to 15 minutes, until set but not brown. Cool on racks. Dust lightly with powdered sugar.

In my opinion, these are at their very, very best the same day they are made. However, I will certainly freeze most of them and they will be fine when thawed. If you freeze them, they will be at their prettiest if you wait with the powdered sugar dusting till right before you serve them.

Reading Lists for 2014

You know what’s starting to appear here and there around the book portion of the blogosphere? Exciting titles coming out in 2014. (Like we’re caught up for 2013, right?)

For example, here’s Chachic’s list. And here’s Maureen’s list. I expect I would probably like all the titles on either list, so that does give me a lot of titles to keep track of. Especially since these two lists intersect only on the third RAVEN BOYS title from Maggie Stiefvater.

Well, and they also intersect on BLACK DOG. There’s a reason I’m particularly sure I share both Chachic’s and Maureen’s taste in books, eh?

I’m personally really longing for MAGIC BREAKS by Ilona Andrews — you know, there is a problem with titles that are all so similar; I will never, ever be able to keep this series straight without looking at the dates of publication. Anyway, LOST LAKE by Sarah Addison Allen. THE CHOCOLATE TEMPTATION by Laura Florand. I’m there on the RAVEN BOYS series, but honestly I think for me it can wait till the series is all the way complete. It’s not like I don’t have anything else to read in the meantime. All those are from Chachic’s list.

Then, Maureen mentions that Elizabeth Wein may have another book coming out — SWORD DANCER. I’m all over that, even knowing nothing at all about the title. Plus, Maureen reminds me of something I knew perfectly well, which is that Merrie Haskell’s CASTLE BEHIND THORNS is also due out soon. I’m longing to read that, not only because I loved it the first time I read it, but because I’m really interested to see how the final version differs from the version I read.

Okay, a few other titles are on my personal list, even though I hardly know what all might be due out in 2014. But one I do know about:

CJ Cherryh’s next Foreigner novel is supposed to be out next year: PEACEMAKER. I’m sure I’ll read that as soon as it’s available. Well, almost sure. If I’m deep in a project of my own, maybe it’ll have to wait. But still.

Also, STELES OF THE SKY is coming out — the third Eternal Sky book by Elizabeth Bear. I loved the first book and really look forward to reading the second and third. I’ll have to read the first again by then, I expect, but that’s hardly a problem.

Naturally I’ll also be doing my best just to get through some of the fantastic books published this year, or earlier, that have been sitting for months and years on my TBR pile. Chief among those will be ROSE UNDER FIRE and CODE NAME VERITY by Elizabeth Wein. After that, seriously, I have no idea.

So many books already on my TBR pile. So many can’t-resist-it titles coming along to add. Anything anyone else is especially looking forward to?

Recent Reading: The Chocolate Heart by (of course) Laura Florand

Okay, for me, this one was significantly slower to get into than the previous Chocolate romances. I think this was a) because I really, really loved The Chocolate Touch, right from the first moment in fact, and anything would have been harder to get into after that. But also it was probably because b) I just did not really like Summer very much at first, and c) there was essentially zero chance that I would love Luc as much as I loved Dom.

So this book had quite an uphill battle to grab me.

Somewhere in there, though, I was hooked.

It might have been when Luc and Summer and Dom and Jamie and Sylvain and Cade all get together for dinner. That’s one place where Florand really showed that there truly is more to Summer than beauty and vulnerability. It’s also, I think, where I was finally convinced that the luminously beautiful and super-rich Summer does have problems that are genuinely hard to overcome. That was kind of a hard sell. Despite her dreadful father.

Plus, for me, it was hard to like Luc until he started to really grasp that maybe Summer could be hurt and that maybe he should stop hurting her. That also really turned around for Luc during that same dinner scene. From there, we get more and more details about Summer’s past and I started finding her really sympathetic; and Luc also gets a far better sense of her, which makes him a lot more sympathetic as well.

AND at about the same time that I started to truly engage with Summer and Luc, I was just delighted to realize that The Chocolate Heart actually contains echoes of the story of Persephone. I was amazingly slow to realize that. Like this:

With a look of grave disapproval [because Summer wouldn't taste a very special dessert], the waiter left, dragging his feet as if he was going off to face the Lord of Hell with the news that he had failed to bring back any more souls.

I mean, the Lord of Hell, Summer Corey, a refusal to taste the food of the underworld, what does it take?

I did have it long before the pomegranate seeds appeared, at least. I just LOVED it once I finally twigged. There are so many perfect little details once you do get it. That’s why I’m not hesitating to give this away here, because I bet you will just love seeing the hints and echoes right from the beginning, even if you that means you don’t have the chance to figure it out for yourself.

In case you’re interested, though, Florand says she has worked echoes of fairy tales into five stories: The Chocolate Heart, The Chocolate Rose, “Snow-Kissed,” “Rose in Winter,” and “All’s Fair.” I haven’t read the latter two stories, but I missed it in “Snow-Kissed.” It’s not my fault, though; “Snow-Kissed is a really intense novella and I wasn’t thinking about fairy tales at all when I read it. But now I’m going to have to read that one again and see if I can figure it out. If you already know, don’t tell me. If I give up, I know who to ask.

So, fairy tale echoes; one more reason to try a story by Laura Florand, if you haven’t already.

While on the subject of food –

I’ve recently been entertaining myself with a cookbook I got recently:

What makes this particular cookbook actually entertaining?

Well, it was written by a couple of bloggers, including Stephanie Stiavetti of The Culinary Life and Garrett McCord of VanillaGarlic. So one expects a certain zippiness of style, which MELT delivers. Like this, about Buffalo Chicken Macaroni:

“Plus,” she [Stephanie] insisted, “it would taste outrageously good.” I thought the idea had all the charm of a dilapidated Hooters bar . . .”

Obviously Stephanie won, right? Because here is the recipe after all. I haven’t tried it, but it sounds pretty good. Though it involves a CUP of buffalo wing sauce, which must pack quite a wallop.

Plus, no question about it, this is a beautiful book, and beautifully designed. There’s an inviting paragraph or two about every recipe, and plenty of pretty pictures, so you could find yourself kind of inclined to try this one . . . and then this one . . . well, fine, winter is a good time for pasta dishes, right?

Sections are sensibly arranged, with one on pasta salads, then dishes made completely on the stovetop, then baked dishes — like that. Paneer, pineapple, and cucumber pasta salad? Sounds good, but definitely not for December. But here’s a stovetop dish with scallions and artichoke hearts; that sounds really good. And a cauliflower and gruyere macaroni gratin sounds inviting, too.

Now, you should keep in mind, this is all about gourmet mac ‘n’ cheese. Some of the ingredients are definitely not in my mother’s kitchen. Or even mine. I do have truffle oil. But I had NO IDEA there was such a thing as chocolate pasta. Who thought of that one, I wonder?

There’s an extensive explanation of types of cheeses, as you’d expect for a book this specialized. I have to say, wow, there are a lot of specialized artisanal cheeses out there, and they are very, very pricy compared to normal supermarket cheeses. Stiavetti and McCord use them freely and give references so that you could track them down, and I did some looking, and wow. Lots of them are in the $35 per pound range. I may try one or two of those . . . sometime . . . as a special treat.

But! In the meantime, as a public service, I tried out some of the recipes with ordinary cheeses. This, among other things, led to my discovering that I really like gruyere (I sort of thought I remembered hating it, but that must have been some other cheese. Or a past self with different tastes.)

So, for example, I tried Montgomery Cheddar Macaroni with Baked Apples. I used 20 oz of ordinary cheddar, the sharpest I could find in the store, and, as directed, 6 oz of gruyere. This was — you can probably see this coming — very, very rich. The apples were totally necessary to cut the richness of the macaroni and cheese and even there, I definitely would suggest small servings.

And I know I made something with gouda. Oh, right, it was this stovetop mac ‘n’ cheese with gouda, golden raisins, and pine nuts. Yeah, I remember that, all right: I burned the pine nuts and was really mad and threw them out and used walnuts. I don’t know why I was so mad, I like walnuts better anyway. But it was good. Of course, I already knew I liked gouda, and I do like golden raisins in things, usually. Again, small servings, here.

But for me so far? The clear winner so far is this recipe, which I will give here, with comments, and I hope Stiavetti and McCord don’t mind.

Rogue River Blue with Crab Sauce over Fettucine

16 oz fettucine

12 oz cream cheese

1/4 C mayonnaise

1 tsp mustard powder

1 tsp smoked paprika (I just gave the last of my smoked paprika to my mother, so I used Aleppo pepper)

1/2 tsp cayenne

1/2 tsp sea salt (I left this out and didn’t miss it, even though I like salt)

2 cloves garlic, minced

Zest of 1 lemon (I left this out, because I had zested this lemon days ago for something else)

Juice of 1 lemon

1/4 C milk

1/3 C dry white wine (I left this out and added the liquid from the canned crab)

2 Tbsp Worchestershire sauce (sigh, I was out, and used a bit of fish sauce instead, which I don’t actually suggest, but that’s what I did.)

3 scallions, chopped

1 lb crab, fresh or canned

8 oz Rogue River Blue cheese (or gorgonzola)

Now, let me smooth out the timing for you, which will mean taking ingredients out of order.

Got your scallions sliced? Do that first and set them aside.

Zest and juice the lemon.

Mince the garlic and set that aside.

Open the cans of crab.

Measure out the spices and put those aside.

Now you’re ready to whisk this together in no time and get it on the table. Me, I’d suggest a green salad or something to accompany this dish, not that I bothered, but if you’re going to make something like that, do that first because this dish is going to come together fast.

Okay, get a big pot of water boiling and in the meantime set a pan over low heat or over a double boiler. Drop the fettuccine in the boiling water and cook for 12 minutes, and if you are brisk about other tasks, you can pretty well prepare the sauce while the pasta cooks. Like so:

Put the cream cheese and mayo in the pan over low heat. The authors suggest a double boiler. I have an induction stovetop and set the heat at 4.5 for a bit and then dropped it down to 3.5 and had no trouble. I cook rice at 2.4 if that give you an idea of temperatures for my stovetop.

Anyway, added the spices and garlic and stir until the cream cheese is melted. Add the milk, lemon juice (and zest, obviously, if you have that), and wine, if you’re using it. And the Worchestershire sauce. Whisk until smooth. Add the scallions and crab and whisk again.

Just about at the time the sauce comes together, the pasta will be done. Dump it into a colander and then divide between serving bowls. Ladle on the sauce and sprinkle an ounce of gorgonzola over each serving; toss. You want the blue cheese to sort of melt into the pasta without being fully incorporated.

This was really good. I would definitely try this again — with smoked paprika and lemon zest, but probably not the wine, which I don’t think I’d like here. I’m not a big blue-cheese fan, so if you’re not either, you might like to know that this really was good, but I think the sauce would be quite good without the blue cheese, too.

Anyway, now I really ought to go wash the dishes.

A post after my own heart: literary food

No recipes this time, but books that will make you long for recipes. Or for a budget that stretches to include gourmet chocolate and macarons and stuff. Or for a magic touch with flower petals!

In other words, it’s a roundup of foodie reads from Chachic, starting with Laura Florand’s wonderful chocolate romances and proceeding through this and that to GARDEN SPELLS by another wonderful author, Sarah Addison Allen.

This may also be a good time to point out that Laura Florand has her newest book out, THE CHOCOLATE TOUCH. Also that Sarah Addison Allen’s LOST LAKE is due out in January.

Also, I hadn’t heard of this before and don’t know anything about it, but WAKING KATE, a story or novella or novel or something from Sarah Addison Allen, is free on Kindle right now. It’s officially out tomorrow, whatever it is.

Nice column by Merrie Haskell –

Over at The Book Smugglers.

I wouldn’t dare do a best-of list yet because actually, (YAY), I just finished this current revision of PURE MAGIC. (Did I mention YAY?) So now I definitely want to tear into my TBR pile just for a week or so before picking up my actual WIP (the HOUSE OF SHADOWS sequel). Though it will be hard to tear myself away from re-reading bits of the Foreigner series. But still.

Not sure what I’m in the mood for, though. Something light and fun? Something deep and profound? Possibly something off Merrie Haskell’s list?

She breaks her list up: Happy Conclusions, Futurism, Books published before 2013, Books she’s in the middle of right now, Books she’s looking forward to.

I must say, finishing Rae Carson’s trilogy, from the Happy Conclusion’s list, seems like a good thing to do. The last book, THE BITTER KINGDOM, came out this year, right? I haven’t read the second book either, and in fact would have to go back and re-read the first book. Maybe I should do that?

But then, graphic novels about a wombat? Who knew? Maybe my life will not be complete without trying these?

Merrie also says, “I’m keen to read the conclusion of Sarah Zettel’s American fairy trilogy; I think it’s just a brilliant concept, fairies in the Dust Bowl.” And seriously? Fairies in the Dust Bowl? How did I not know about this?

Also, let me just mention, The Book Smugglers are running a giveaway for Merrie’s upcoming book CASTLE BEHIND THORNS, so you may want to click over and enter that.