Susan Rooke's Blog, page 9

We’ve Got to Stop Meeting Like This

Before I begin, I’d like to tell all of you about two blog posts from my friends Diana Conces and Carie Juettner. They’ve each written a thoughtful essay in the wake of the calamitous Hurricane Harvey. Diana’s “The Strangeness of Safety” is a poignant memorial to the South Texas Gulf Coast the way it used to be before Harvey transformed it—perhaps forever—into something unrecognizable. Carie’s post, “Be the Rubber Band,” is a meditation on the search for meaning in the mundane, and for peace while the world around us spins into chaos. These women are gifted poets and writers. Diana was my guest blogger September 2016 with her post “Inside the Brown Bag.” Their words written in the wake of the storm moved me, and I want to share them with you. Here are the links:

Diana Conces “The Strangeness of Safety”

Carie Juettner “Be the Rubber Band”

And now I have an announcement, Dear Readers. This will be my last weekly post for the next few months. (And by the way: To everyone who didn’t receive the Thursday afternoon email last week, I apologize. No idea why some of those blog notifications went out late or not at all. The Ether moves in mysterious ways.) But I promise it’s for a good reason. Monday, September 4th, I’m observing Labor Day by resuming work on the second book in The Space Between series. And I can’t tell you how much it thrills me to say that. (It also scares the pants off of me a little.)

The first book, The Space Between: The Prophecy of Faeries, will be released on September 12th. That seems like a small miracle, considering what it took to get to this point. Before I embarked on this adventure, I had no idea how much work goes into prepping a manuscript for publication. Turns out it was a lot, but it was doable. There were the edits:

• by me

• by the developmental editor

• me again

• by the first copy editor

• me again

• by the final copy editor

• me again

• a last, close scrutiny by the final copy editor

• and me . . . AGAIN

It was all meant to craft the book into its best possible self, and to catch any remaining typos/errors. But even then it wasn’t done. After that came the proofing: of the print copy, the e-copy, and then the re-proofing of both when The Daughter threw a monkey wrench into the final 10 pages (see August 17th’s post, “The Space Between: NOW It’s Done“).

I estimate that in the past sixteen months alone I’ve reread that book at least six times. And that doesn’t count all the times I reread it while doing prior revisions in the previous 10.75 years. (Yes, I’m keeping track. Can’t help it.)

But, as I say, it was doable. Then it came time to promote the book. And this is the part that took me by horrified surprise. Start a Facebook page? Open a Twitter account? But I did that already! What do you mean, that’s not enough? I’m making great promotional strides here!

Oh, how naïve I was. There’s much more to promotion than that. So much that I can’t even hold it all in my head at once. (Probably because I’ve got at least fourteen versions of The Space Between in there.) I tried to keep it all straight, but it was like trying to nail Jell-O to the wall. At that point I just kind of threw up my hands and said, “I can’t do this!” Danielle Hartman Acee, wearer of many hats at The Authors’ Assistant, saved my bacon. Again. Thank you, Danielle, for your amazing promotional skills!

And now we arrive at the end of August, and this, my 70th blog post. Summer is creeping along towards fall. It seems like an auspicious time to shift my focus back to writing fiction. Next Monday I’ll return to writing The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis. (That’s the working title. It’s been tweaked a couple of times. This one feels like it should stick, though.) I’m 87,000 words in already, which I call a good start. I’m excited to share little bits and pieces of it with you in the coming months.

Pretty soon my characters will begin speaking to me in dreams again. They’ll give me news of themselves, they’ll judge me, they’ll praise my intuitions, they’ll condemn my inevitable shortcomings. There will be some I’ve never heard from before, and I look forward to cultivating relationships with them.

So, to allow them the freedom they require to set up housekeeping in my subconscious again, I have a proposal for you. I’ve enjoyed our assignations these past 70 weeks very much. Let’s please continue them. With one small change. Could we meet every other week instead?

I’ll be here if you will . . .

SPIDER-PALOOZA

The other day I was noodling around on the internet when I came across this bald, intractable commandment:

You should never kill a spider.

I smiled and shook my head, thinking, “Now there’s a man who needs more spiders in his life.”

For starters, I’d suggest lots more of these:

And you know what? Glen and I are blessed with so many spiders of all kinds. I’d be happy to send this man a whole box of spiders. It would be like a box of puppies, only with more legs (Spiders! FREE to Good Home!). Unfortunately that wouldn’t even make a dent in our population.

I have no problem with the cute little ones like this:

Or this:

But the far less appealing specimens like this?

And the downright gnarly like this?

All I can think when I see one of the scarier sorts is, “What if I got one caught in my hair?” The other day I had a chance to find out what that’s like. I won’t go into details, because they still make me squirm, but I can tell you it was about 1 ½” across, and I could feel the small thud it made (“oof!” said the spider) when it tumbled off the back of my head and landed on my shoulder.

Glen and I are generally more tolerant of insects than we are of arachnids. (And I love moths!) Glen, because it takes more than a bug to rattle him; I, because an entomologist was a longtime friend of the family when I was growing up. Now, living in the middle of a pasture in the countryside, surrounded by cows and their . . . unceasing cow-ness . . . we’re faced with more bugs every day than there are stars in the night sky. I only thought we had bugs when we lived in the city. I had no idea.

Spiders in the city weren’t much of an issue; they weren’t nearly as numerous as the insects (or perhaps they were just more discreet). They’ve always set me on edge, though. They’re so skittery, so fast. And eight legs is, in my view, at least two legs too many. Yes, I enjoyed reading Charlotte’s Web as a child, but it didn’t turn me into a spider-lover. Pigs, on the other hand . . . (Mmm, porkchops.)

Now, however, I seem to have developed a growing fascination with spiders. (This doesn’t extend to most other arachnids. All scorpions and ticks have to die.) Though we have far too many to let them have the run of the house (and here’s a shot of more on the way),

there are spider-friendly zones on the porch and in the garage. In the herb planters, for example, where I spotted this adorable little fellow:

He reminds me of one of the dwarves—maybe Gimli—from The Lord of the Rings.

The herb planters are, in fact, some of the most reliable places to spot all kinds of spiders. Like this beauty:

And this severe, rather plain one (Sister Mary Margaret, is that you?):

Though I don’t want any of them in bed with me at night, all of those examples have their intriguing characteristics. To me, anyway. But the most impressive spider in our herd, hands down, is the one that has set itself a stunning, Sisyphean task. At twilight, this spider constructs a huge web—about 5’x5’—that extends from a porch post up to the porch ceiling. Near dawn, it takes the web down, and by daybreak, neither web nor spider are anywhere to be found.

Every . . . single . . . day.

At first I couldn’t believe it, so I waited several days before pointing it out to Glen. He couldn’t believe it either, until he’d had the opportunity to witness the behavior for himself. This spider is pretty intimidating, and initially Glen was all for getting rid of it. I could see his point. Nobody wants to walk out onto the dark porch at night and get a face-full of spider surprise. But when he saw all the little bugs caught in this creature’s web every night, he agreed to let it be. We’ll just give it a wide berth until its span is done.

Look at that thing. That’s one amazing spider.

Warning: This post contains images that may cause sensitive readers to run screaming around the room while slapping at imaginary spiders in their hair.

Oh, sorry, Katie! I meant to run that banner at the top of the page.

The Space Between: NOW It’s Done

This morning I put on my T-shirt inside out and backwards. Then it took me an hour-and-a-half to notice. Since I’m pretty sure I’m only going to get worse, I need to go on record right now with a disclaimer that should hold up in any court:

From now until the release of The Space Between on September 12th, I cannot be held accountable for my actions, due to diminished capacity.

That sounds legal-ish, doesn’t it?

“I’m sorry, your Honor. Exhilaration made me do it.”

“Understandable, Ms. Rooke. Promise me you’ll stay away from Krispy Kreme in the future and I’ll consider your case dismissed.”

Even in my excitement I’d been managing to keep a lid on myself, but then this came in the mail on Monday:

It’s the proof copy. The one I examine to be certain it’s printed exactly to the specifications. Holding it in my hands (FYI, I don’t have man-hands. Those are Glen’s) just about made me swoon. It took twelve years to bring this baby into the world, and there were many, many days I thought it would never happen.

Needless to say, I’m giddy with delight. Even though I already knew when Glen opened the package that the proof copy was wrong. And it’s all The Daughter’s fault.

A few days before the printed proof copy was shipped, the e-book proof copy was ready. Like the print copy, it also had to be carefully screened for errors. We were pretty confident that typos had been eliminated by that point, but there were persnickety things to screen for, like:

• Text cut off the page or disappearing into the crease

• Images out of place

• Fonts or characters not displaying properly

In other words, every page of the e-book had to be scrutinized to be sure it looked the way it was supposed to.

I had a lot of other things on my plate, so I hired Katie to do the job.

This was the first time she’d read The Space Between since [what I foolishly believed was] its final revision. She loved it. All except for one problem that she couldn’t get past. She believed I had treated cavalierly a character I’d killed off near the end of the book. It distressed her that this character was never mentioned again after I’d snuffed him/her. She wanted me to fix that, believing that the character deserved better, and that it made me look careless and forgetful as the author.

I argued my point with her. I hadn’t forgotten, but the character was so insignificant that I had seen nothing wrong in complete erasure. Besides, I said, it was probably much too late to do anything about it now.

She disagreed with everything I said. The worst part was, I had disappointed her.

I thought it over for all of five seconds before realizing she was right. But what could I do? Quickly I read over the trouble spot, and saw an easy repair. All it would take was the addition of two short lines of dialogue. A total of nine words. The manuscript’s formatting was complete, though. Even adding two lines could make an annoying, troublesome difference, meaning those last ten pages would have to be reformatted.

Enter Danielle.

I’ve told you about Danielle Hartman Acee before. She and Mindy Reed own The Authors’ Assistant. She’s my final copyeditor, as well as my publicist. She’s also responsible for formatting both the e-book and print volume. Here she is:

I fired off a panicky email to Danielle describing the problem and my proposed solution. She responded at once with capable calm. Then, after fiddling with the e-copy for the rest of the afternoon, she fixed it. The two new lines inserted, the reformatting accomplished.

Thank you, Danielle! Katie was hugely relieved and so was I.

Some characters exist only to be killed off: shock value, their sole purpose in a story. This character was so very minor that I had seen nothing wrong in discarding him/her like gnawed chicken bones. Not all characters are created equal. Yes, they can certainly surprise you. Main characters can assume less importance and be sidelined. Minor characters can become the point upon which the story’s climax hinges. But a few characters are there just to up the body count. Even so, they should be treated with respect. I can’t just pretend they never lived at all.

When the kerfuffle broke out, the printed proof copy pictured above was already rolling its way to me. Of course. Therefore, there will be a printed proof copy #2. The final, final revision. In a few days I’ll be opening a new package. The right one.

Thank you, Katie.

Peekaboo, I’ll see you September 12, 2017!

The Water Witch

Yesterday at our house, it rained for ten hours straight. Readers who live in wetter climates might be asking, “Yeah? So?” I’ll explain. Central Texas. August. Summer. Our property was already in the “Moderate Drought” category on the weather maps. So receiving the blessing of ten continuous hours of steady, soaking rain was . . . YUGE.

For weeks I’d been casting a worried eye on the small lake at the back of our property. Lately it had appeared to be shrinking a bit. We’re told by neighbors that it’s been known to go completely dry in times of severe drought. We’ve never had to deal with that, though. In the two years that we’ve lived here, there’s been so much rain that the lake has flooded four or five times, inundating twenty to thirty acres of our bottomland with water up to six feet deep. When this happened in the fall and spring, Glen and I had the surreal treat of watching ducks paddling and fish jumping among the lower branches of my favorite tree, this elm (also yuge):

Shown in its accustomed habitat: dry land

Thanks to the rain, our lake is no longer in immediate danger of vanishing, and I can stop fretting over it. (At least for now.) But that worry is bound to arise again. Water—specifically, having enough of it—is a big deal in much of Texas. It’s such a big deal that people often resort to using supernatural means to locate it underground.

Dowsing: the practice of searching for water, minerals, or other buried/hidden substances with the aid of a divining rod (or rods). Call it bunkum, hooey, pseudoscience, whatever. I call it witching, because that’s what my father called it.

And at this point in our relationship, you probably won’t be surprised to hear I’ve done it.

When I was a child in San Antonio, our house sat on an oversized corner lot of a few acres. We loved to fish, and my mother got the bright idea (much better than her idea of dressing me like a British schoolgirl) that we should put a fishing pond in the yard. For this we needed to drill a well, but how to pinpoint the most likely spot to find water? My father—an engineer, and, to the casual eye, a man of only facts and figures—didn’t want to leave that critical question to a well drilling service. Too chancy; he wanted guaranteed results. So he witched for the water. And he found it in abundance, as if there’d been a big red arrow reading DRILL HERE pointing to the spot.

It wasn’t the first time he’d witched, of course. He’d done it enough to be confident of his ability to source water whenever he needed it. I was only 7, but I remember him inspecting a young fruit tree in the yard, then cutting a slender, flexible branch from it. That was his divining rod. He trimmed and smoothed it to his liking with his razor-sharp pocketknife. The branch was Y-shaped, with the arms somewhat longer than the stem. Then, holding it by the arms with the stem pointing forward, he started pacing across the yard as my mother and I watched.

I was awestruck when I saw the stem tilt abruptly toward the ground, as if tugged by a fish at the end of an invisible line. It seemed magical. It never occurred to me that he might be causing the movement himself. My father was so uncompromising that he could veer into hardnose territory (he sometimes called himself “Iron Pants”).

Then he let me try. First he made sure that I was holding the branch correctly, and then he turned me loose in the yard. Here’s how I described that scene in the last stanza of my poem, “Witching for Water” (which appeared in Kentucky Review in 2014):

[…] he’d pass the fork to me, just

seven years old, but old enough to feel the pulse

beating in the wood, to draw water like

the moon does, calling with my hands the tides.

I’d been right. It was magical: my father the sorcerer, I, his apprentice, wielding the magic wand. Such power!

But recalling it now, I’d say the power was not in my hands, but in the water’s pull. I had to hold tight as that branch tried its best to wrench free of my grip and plunge stem-first into the earth. I ask myself: If I were to reenact the scene today, would the result be the same? Maybe not. Some days I feel I’ve lost my faith. My father never did, though. Magic swirled about him all his life.

The pond was big enough for a short dock and a rowboat. My father, with long experience on the bays of South Texas, taught me how to row. The first fish we stocked? A pet store goldfish, released with great ceremony into the cool, green water. Over the next couple of years it became an enormous golden carp. Every so often we’d see brilliant flashes of gold 20 feet down as we rowed across, like spotting an open treasure chest on the bottom. Sometimes I’d swim out to the middle and dive down in pursuit of that goldfish, but I never found it.

Typing this just now, I looked up to see a V of large white birds crossing the grey sky beyond my office window. I hurried outside with the binoculars, and was able to identify a flock of American White Pelicans. Flying south. Before mid-August. The timing seems a little disconcerting (what signs and portents do they sense that I don’t?), but the sight was a bright spot in a dreary afternoon. Kind of magical. Maybe even (you know it’s coming) yuge.

Leave ’Em Screaming: Two Ice Cream Recipes

It’s always a crapshoot, moving to a different residence and then accommodating overnight guests for the first time. As a host, you have to wonder: Is the bed comfortable? Is the room cool/warm enough? Did I remember to put that extra roll of toilet paper in the bathroom?

In the aftermath of The Daughter’s visit, during which The Son-in-Law was here for the last four nights, the answers are: not especially, yes, yes, and—for a question that hadn’t occured to me—the improperly-installed shower door leaked water all over the guest bathroom floor.

But who can fret too much about such trifles when there’s homemade ice cream?

In this part of Texas, it’s been a warmish summer. Twenty-eight days so far of 100°F or higher, and we still have six weeks to go until fall. Such heat demands (screams for!) ice cream. But not from the grocery store, or from any specialty ice cream shop. No, I’ll make my own, thanks. Why bother? Because it’s so good it leaves store-bought ice cream melting on the sidewalk.

A machine like my Cuisinart here (one of Cuisinart’s more basic models) makes ice cream quickly (in about 25 minutes) and easily, and requires no ice or salt. It has a removable cream can that I store in the back of my freezer so that I’m always ready to take on ice cream emergencies. (Which arise more often than you might think.) With this machine in my pantry, I can walk right by the frozen foods section at the grocery store. And continue on my way to the wine section.

The two recipes I’m sharing today are for uncooked ice cream, which is the easiest of the easy. There’s no custard necessary, just the fundamentals of half-and-half, heavy cream, sugar and a pinch of salt, then the flavorings of your heart’s desires. Here’s what our hearts desired (minus the cinnamon, because it was a honking big bottle from Costco that wouldn’t fit in the frame) when I made them:

These resulted in:

• Coffee Cinnamon: a bowl of assertive, sophisticated ice cream, best enjoyed after dinner with perhaps a small tot of cognac or sherry cask-aged scotch alongside

• Chocolate Pecan Brickle: an uncomplicated, eat-it-straight-from-the-container-with-a-trowel spoon ice cream for chocolate lovers

In the future I’ll share a cheat I use to make a “cooked custard” ice cream without actually cooking anything. Using that method, I make a pistachio ice cream that will roll Glen’s eyes back in his head. But today, it’s straightforward simplicity, no cheating necessary:

COFFEE CINNAMON ICE CREAM

In a large mixing bowl, stir together:

1 c. sugar

3 Tbs. instant powdered coffee (see photo above)

1 ½ tsp. cinnamon

1/8 tsp. salt

Add:

2c. half-and-half

Beat together until the dry ingredients are mostly dissolved. A hand mixer is fine for the job. Then add:

2c. heavy cream

Stir all together until thoroughly blended and pour into the cream can of your ice cream maker. Process according to manufacturer’s instructions, then transfer to a suitable container and finish hardening the ice cream in the freezer. Makes a bit more than 1 ½ quarts.

CHOCOLATE PECAN BRICKLE ICE CREAM

First: Toast ½ c. pecan pieces (broken-up halves) in a 350° oven for about 7-8 minutes, until fragrant. Remove from oven and allow to cool.

In a large mixing bowl, stir together:

1 c. sugar

6 Tbs. Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa (see photo above)

1/8 tsp. salt

Add:

2c. half-and-half

1 ½ tsp. vanilla extract

Beat together until the dry ingredients are mostly dissolved. A hand mixer is fine for the job. Then add:

2c. heavy cream

Stir all together until thoroughly blended and pour into the cream can of your ice cream maker. Process most of the way according to manufacturer’s instructions. About 5 minutes before the ice cream is ready to remove from the cream can, add:

The ½ c. of toasted, cooled pecans

½ c. Heath Brickle bits (see photo above)

Continue processing for the last few minutes, then transfer to a suitable container and finish hardening the ice cream in the freezer. Makes a bit more than 1 ½ quarts.

There are certain basic recipes from which you can create almost endless variations. For instance, I like to say that “anything you like can be quiche.” Not literally true, of course, but if you’ve got a few bits of compatible savory leftovers hanging around in the refrigerator, you might be surprised at what standard proportions of eggs and milk, plus a buttery pie crust can do for them. (Quiche will be a future blog post. I’ve been wanting some.)

It’s the same with ice cream. In the Chocolate Pecan Brickle recipe, even just switching from Hershey’s Special Dark Cocoa to the regular stuff and subbing macadamias for the pecans will yield something very different but equally delicious. Factor in toppings (salted caramel!) and the possibilities boggle the mind.

Katie and Wesley are back in Colorado now. We had a wonderful time, despite their less-than-comfortable bed and the leaky shower door. Glen and I miss them terribly already.

But we know they’ll be back. I said I’d make ice cream.

Chocolate Pecan Brickle left, Coffee Cinnamon right. Enjoy!

The Space Between: From the Tasting Menu

Monday was the birthday of the noted English poet and novelist, Robert Graves. He would have been 122 years old. Graves wrote the historical fiction masterpiece I, Claudius and its sequel, Claudius the God (both of which I loved), and many, many other works. But until reading about him on Monday, I didn’t know just how many. Turns out he wrote more than 120 books.

Now see here, Mr. Graves. You and I both know that’s just showing off.

120 books. Pondering this, I slumped a little deeper into the sofa. I’ve written 2. Or, for those who want to quibble, 1.75.

But then a couple of cheering thoughts occurred to me, which I now respectfully submit for your consideration:

1. Robert Graves didn’t blog.

2. Robert Graves didn’t have a Facebook page.

3. Robert Graves sure as hell didn’t tweet.

Therefore, in a happier frame of mind, I present to you an excerpt wherein our heroine, Mellis, meets Lugo, Master of the Penitents’ Keep. From Chapter Two of my—admittedly—first book, The Space Between. In this, my 65th . . . weekly . . . blog post.

Take that, Mr. Graves.

From Chapter Two: Lugo and the Sibyl—

Mellis heard the crowd stirring behind her. Without knowing how it happened, she realized she was no longer staring into the fire. Instead, she was looking down at a highly polished pair of boots, made of thin, supple oxblood leather. Her eyes flew upward. Standing before her on the hearth was a man of medium height dressed in dark clothing, well-fitted to his form. He was trim and long-limbed, good-looking, with gleaming chestnut hair that fell past his collar. Mellis felt her mouth open, but no sound came out.

With studied grace he approached her. She wanted to step back from him, but forced herself to be still. With his hands clasped behind his back, he slowly looked her up and down, from the top of her russet hair down to her scarlet and gold satin slippers. Only his eyes moved as he examined her. His gaze traveled back up to her face and lingered there. Then his dark eyebrows drew together. Mellis stared at his grey eyes, trying to force them to meet hers, but could not. It was as if he looked at an object rather than a person.

He unclasped his hands, and, without speaking, indicated that she should turn for him, by twirling one finger in a circular motion. The gesture was brusque and imperious, and she disliked him instantly for it. Nevertheless, she obeyed, but evidently turned too quickly to suit him, because he had her do it again. This time she turned more slowly, and when she came around to face him once more, she fixed her eyes on the stone hearth under his elegant boots. She felt her face growing warm at his careless humiliation of her. Nothing she had experienced in this place had prepared her for such treatment. No one had been anything but kind to her and Orlando. He must think he’s better than the rest, just because he’s not deformed. How shallow! She stared at his boots, which looked very expensive. They were perfectly molded to his long, slender feet.

Her eyes moved up his frame as she waited for him to finish his appraisal of her. It was then she saw the two thin little legs that dangled from the back of his left hip. They were clothed in dark, fine silk trousers that matched the others he wore. On the small, useless feet were tiny polished duplicates of the oxblood boots. Mellis looked back down at the hearth quickly. His austere, handsome face and his bearing had misled her. He was not set apart from the others by anything other than his evident importance. In affliction he was the same.

Finally, he spoke, but not to her. “Fetters. Feldspar. Come forward.” At the sound of his voice, Mellis looked at him. His tone was casual, as if he’d been ordering people about all his life.

A nervous voice answered. “Yes sir?”

Feldspar’s long fair hair brushed her shoulder as he and Fetters took their places beside her. They looked uncomfortable.

“I believe you’ve succeeded this time—”

“Oh, thank you—” Fetters began, sounding relieved and eager, but the gentleman cut him off.

“—in bringing us a viable possibility.” His voice was smooth. “I hope to know more after we hear what the sibyl has to say.” He dismissed them with a wave of his hand. Mellis saw an apprehensive look pass between them as they melted back into the crowd.

She tensed. What on earth is a sibyl? And I’m a “viable possibility?” For what? Had she been wrong in believing these people meant her no harm?

In the same careless tone he had used on Fetters and Feldspar, the gentleman spoke again. “Deirdre.”

Deirdre came forward, hunched, and looking weary. Her dress was a somber color, and far plainer than the clothing the others wore. Her iron grey hair hung in its heavy braid.

“Deirdre, if you would, please.” The gentleman extended a long hand with thin pale fingers and beckoned. Mellis saw a silver ring set with a smooth dark stone. It gleamed against his skin.

The old woman nodded and turned to someone beside her, a woman who looked very like her—of the same size and shape, but younger. Her face was unlined next to Deirdre’s creased one. She also was clothed plainly, and a faded rose-colored scarf covered her head. Deidre encouraged her forward, speaking to her softly.

The second woman put her hands up to her throat and began with clumsy movements to untie the knot in the scarf. The gentleman leaned forward, as if wishing to hurry her along. At last she was done, her head bared and her hands hanging at her sides. The rose-colored fabric trailed from her fingers to the floor. Her face was blank, as were her unfocused eyes.

When Mellis saw what the woman had uncovered, her knees buckled underneath her and her mind gave way.

Coming September 12, 2017

The Space Between: A Scene from Chapter Two

Katie, aka The Daughter, arrived Tuesday for a two-week visit! She came bearing gifts:

She came with food requests:

1. Lobster for dinner one night

2. Cinnamon Ice Cream

3. La Louisane Dip (which will have a post to itself someday)

She has essential shopping to do:

1. Jeans

She has nonessential shopping to do:

1. Anything in the greater Central Texas area, up to, but not including, jeans

So for the next two weeks there will be cooking. And mother-daughter shopping. And many, many games of Munchkin. All enhanced by the wearing of flashy socks.

As a result, this post and next week’s will feature snippets of my fantasy novel, The Space Between, coming out later this summer! Today we meet Lugo, Master of the Penitents’ Keep, as he speaks with Deirdre about Mellis, the young human woman kidnapped and taken to the Space Between by the Penitent faery tribe.

From Chapter Two: Lugo and the Sibyl—

“You really believe she’ll do?”

“Yes, I think she will.”

“We’ve been wrong before.”

“The last failure was not because we were wrong.” The speaker put a slight emphasis on “we.”

“We’ll have to guard against mistakes this time.”

“Yes. We will,” Deirdre said. Again she stressed the word a touch.

Her companion was a man. The two were in the center of a large, high-ceilinged chamber, lit only by the logs burning in the two fireplaces at opposite ends of the room. Parts of the chamber were quite dim. Shadows clung to the corners.

“Where is she now?” the man asked without much interest.

“She’s in the same room as . . . as the previous choice. Blodgett and Laurel are taking care of her.” Deirdre paused. “And of her dog.”

“Dog? She was allowed to bring a dog?”

“Well, we couldn’t just the leave the poor thing to fend for itself in the woods. Fetters and Feldspar chose to fetch the two of them together, and I think they acted rightly. The creature’s presence seems to reassure her. The befuddlement charm I used helped too, of course, and the Jerusalem roses are very soothing. She appears to be comfortable, all things considered. More so than any of the others were at first.”

“Of course she’s comfortable—how in Heaven’s name could she not be?”

Deirdre regarded him in silence.

He began to pace about the room in an aimless way, pausing at one wall to touch an enormous tapestry, one of many that decorated the room. He looked at it absently as the fingers of his right hand caressed the silk threads. On his next-to-last finger he wore a silver ring set with a smooth, dark stone freckled with rust-colored spots.

Its dull, firelit gleam caught Deirdre’s eye. Bloodstone. The martyr’s stone. She was thoughtful as her companion continued to stroke the tapestry, which depicted a great, pale reptilian beast: a white dragon. It stood rampant on its hind legs, rearing up with translucent wings spread wide, scarlet flames shooting from its yawning jaws.

“Of course. How could she not be comfortable?” Deirdre said at last in a weary voice.

“When will I see her?” He turned from the tapestry to look at Deirdre. She stood with her rough fingers interlaced, her heavy grey braid draped down her bosom.

“When do you wish to see her?”

“Oh, there’s no real hurry, I suppose. We don’t want to be too hasty. More important to be certain she’s the one.” He waved his hand in vague dismissal, brushing the subject away. The dark stone in his ring glinted. “Whenever you think she’s presentable. And ready, of course.” He turned back to the tapestry and then was struck by a thought. “How is Leucaspis, Deirdre? I haven’t heard much news of him recently.”

Deirdre looked at Lugo, Master of the Penitents’ Keep, for a few moments before answering. “About the same, I’m afraid.”

“Ah. I expected as much.” He sounded bored again—as if he’d lost interest in her reply before she had made it.

He moved away from the tapestry and paced restlessly along the wall. He stopped before a tall, rectangular mirror and turned to scrutinize himself in its face. As he did so, the pair of stunted, supernumerary legs that dangled from his left hip swung outward and flopped against his side with a soft thud. The dark silk trousers that encased them whispered as the legs rubbed limply together. Polished, pliant leather boots, the color of oxblood, covered the tiny feet. He paid them no attention, instead leaning in close to the mirror to watch himself pluck a speck of lint from his silk sleeve.

After waiting a few moments to see if Lugo would decide to speak again, Deirdre withdrew from the room.

Coming September 12, 2017

The Anchor Summer Sour Cocktail, Revisited

Here we are in the hot, sweaty clutches of summer. As it’s known in some English-speaking parts of the world, the silly season. It’s often the time for trivial or frivolous (even outright bogus) stories in the newspapers. Here in the U.S., I think the silly season applies most precisely to television. Michael Phelps in a swim-off against a Great White to kick off Shark Week? (There must be more to that than the commercials make it appear!) Wow. If there weren’t already a Blood in the Water cocktail honoring a previous year’s Shark Week, I’d have to invent it myself.

Today’s post, though, revisits a cocktail that I did invent: the Anchor Summer Sour. Two reasons for this:

1. I’ve been ill. Pretty puny for several days, and incapable of writing my name in the dirt with a stick, much less a new blog post.

2. A couple of months ago, I realized that when I posted the Anchor Summer Sour recipe last year, I made a mistake in one of the ingredients. (Mea culpa!! I’d meant to write 1 oz. of simple syrup, but wrote 1 Tbs.—only half of what the recipe calls for—instead.)

So if you made one last year and your face pruned up at the first sip, here’s the original post from last summer, but with the corrected recipe:

Last year we moved into our farmhouse on July 11th. It wasn’t a particularly brutal July, as Texas summers go, but it was bad enough. For sitting outdoors in the evenings (our favorite part of the day) we wanted something more refreshing than our standard rye or scotch. Something icy cold and maybe a little sweet to sip while watching the cows graze. Glen told me about a likely-looking tipple he’d spotted on a recent trip into town: Deep Eddy Peach Vodka. It looked lusciously peachy in the bottle, and it’s a local company, with a distillery in Dripping Springs, not far from Austin. Let’s try it, Glen said. So I went to the liquor store and picked up a small bottle. Foolish mistake. The next time I went I bought the biggest one they had.

At first we didn’t really know what to do with it. Glen’s idea was to make a riff on the Fuzzy Navel, a beverage (I wouldn’t call it a cocktail) of orange juice, peach schnapps, and often a splash of vodka. We’d enjoyed many a Fuzzy Navel in the early summers of our marriage. But after considering it, I decided it was just too sweet and too 1980s. We needed a better use for the vodka than just subbing it in for the schnapps. So for a time the vodka sat on the pantry shelf. Did it occur to me then to check out the recipes on the Deep Eddy Vodka website (find them here)? No, but it has since, and you might want to take a look at them too.

Around that time our cocktail enthusiast daughter Katie had sent us a recipe for a White Mojito. Thanks to a lack of three of the specified ingredients (in particular the white rum), and a burning desire to stay home instead of driving 20 miles one way to the store, I’d transformed that Mojito recipe into the gold rum-based Machete (see my post from May 19th, 2016, “The Machete: A Cocktail”). The success of that experiment inspired me to attempt another one. Glen and I enjoy sours, with their delicate blend of sweet and tart so perfect for summertime, so why not create a sour with gold rum and the peach vodka? How bad could it be? Well, it’s darn fine.

That’s how our favorite new warm weather drink was born. And just because we could, we named it after our place, Anchor Land & Cattle. Now that summer’s here again (um . . . yay?), I present:

THE ANCHOR SUMMER SOUR

In a cocktail shaker, put:

2 oz. Deep Eddy Peach Vodka (Be sure to shake the vodka before pouring. Yes, it’s that peachy.)

1 oz. gold rum

2 oz. fresh-squeezed lemon juice (not bottled shelf-stable juice)

1 oz. (2 Tbs.) simple syrup (1:1)

1 T. egg white (pasteurized, from a carton)

Add ice to the shaker and shake vigorously for 30 seconds. You want that egg white nice and foamy.

Pour it, ice and all, into a glass. Add more ice. Garnish with a sprig of slightly bruised mint. Makes 1.

Enjoy!

Since Deep Eddy Vodka makes several other delicious-sounding flavors, including cranberry and lemon, I expect inspiration will strike again. (Already I’m feeling a blender dessert drink made with peach vodka and Blue Bell Peaches & Homemade Vanilla ice cream coming on.) I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

The Sewing Basket

Do you remember the days when virtually every household had a sewing basket? How many of you out there still have one in your house? Not a travel-size sewing kit with itsy scissors, three or four colors of thread, replacement buttons and a small pack of needles. A basket. It could be the capacious, old-fashioned kind that stands on four legs like an end table. Or the more portable plastic kind with a handle, plus compartmented storage for sewing notions and a lid that’s padded on the underside so you can pincushion the needles you’ve used.

That’s the kind I have.

And boy, am I a fraud.

At least three times in my life I’ve tried to learn the art of sewing. The mother of a childhood friend (“Long thread, lazy girl,” she’d tell me with a meaningful smile). A professional seamstress holding classes at a local department store. My first mother-in-law. All of them tried to teach me. Each time, with a lot of hands-on guidance, I managed to make some article of clothing. I also learned I have no patience for sewing. You can’t Wite-Out, cross through, type over, or delete your mistakes. You can’t decide they taste flat and punch them up with a splash of lemon juice or a spoonful of pesto. You have to painstakingly cut and pull out the threads of your mistakes and then resew them. Hopefully, this time in the right place. I have enormous admiration for people who can sew. But I’d rather suck on old pennies.

Nevertheless, I own a sewing basket.

I have no idea when I bought this thing. I’m not even sure I did. I’ve had it so many decades that its origins are sunk in the cold, turbid bog of time. It’s possible my mother gave it to me in my late teens, when I first set up housekeeping on my own.

My mother knew a few basics, like sewing on buttons, simple hem repair, or even how to darn socks. Her mother had tried to teach her more, but crafting a garment with zippers or buttonholes or darts remained forever beyond her skills. When I was a little girl, my mother made me two capes: one to wear when I pretended to be a spy (it doubled as a witch cape), one for playing fairytale prince. (I never wanted to be a fairytale princess. Their lives seemed boring: just a lot of sitting around—doubtless passing the time by sewing—and waiting for the prince to show up.) It was so far outside her comfort zone to make these things that I treasured them deeply, and still have them . . . somewhere . . . packed in a moving box in the garage.

Nowadays, since virtually any kind of repair to our clothing can be taken care of cheaply (button replacement is free!) at our cleaners’, I don’t pull out the sewing basket more than two or three times a year. Today, though, I needed it for the first time since moving into our forever home in late February. I had to search in several places before I finally found it.

And it was like opening a time capsule.

Note the cigarette in the bow-tied gentleman’s hand.

It’s been ages since I last looked through the contents. I was kind of shocked to see how old many of the buttons are—at least 60 to 70 years. Once upon a time they probably lived in my grandmother’s sewing basket. The St. Peter’s patch is from a school my big brothers attended when they were little boys. (I think. I’m not sure I was even born yet.) The ornate-looking crown patch is a leftover from the fairytale prince cape.

I can’t foresee a need for those weensy pearl buttons in the last photo. (And good lord, that man’s got a cigarette too!) I don’t do any sort of craftwork, and at this point in my life, can’t really spare the time to learn. In fact, I can’t foresee a need—ever—for nearly all the basket holds. So why do I still box it up and lug it from house to house? What does this basket do for me that a travel-sized sewing kit can’t? Is twice a year enough use to justify keeping it?

Probably not. But I’m not ready to let it go, especially after picking through it today. The upside is, since we’re living in what’s meant to be our last home, at least I shouldn’t have to move it again.

Sometimes we leave a keepsake to our children so they’ll have a cherished item to remember us by. And sometimes we do it so that it’ll be the child’s job to throw the damn thing out.

Lucky Katie. You’ll get a sewing basket some day!

On another note, I hope everyone had a safe and happy 4th of July! I want to say a huge thank-you to all who’ve downloaded Chapter One of The Space Between! If you haven’t yet, but you’d like to, you’ll find the option to download on the Novels page (go to the Works tab in the Menu bar at the top of the page and choose Novels). Publication is just a little over two months away!

Jalapeño Poppers: GOOD Ones

Jalapeño Poppers are ubiquitous in these parts, especially during the warm months of the year. Many grocery stores (at least in Texas) even sell them pre-prepared in the meat department. No muss, no fuss, no lighting your fingertips on fire while cleaning and scraping out the veins of all those jalapeños. All you have to do is buy a package and cook them at home until their little bacon swaddlings turn crisp.

Recipes for them abound in cookbooks and online, but many are just minor variations on “Stuff halved and hollowed fresh jalapeños with cream cheese. Wrap in bacon and secure with a toothpick.” Then, since these morsels are associated with the outdoor grilling season, the recipe might tell you to cook the poppers on the grill. Fine, but if you’re not careful, this is a good way for your cheese filling to end up in the grill instead of on your plate.

Despite the similarity of many of these recipes, I can assure you that not all Jalapeño Poppers are created equal. I’m a fan of each of the basic components—the peppers, the cream cheese, the bacon—but the finished product always seemed blah, and left me underwhelmed. So I never bothered to make them.

Then a few summers ago, our jalapeño bush produced an embarrassing surfeit of peppers, far more than I could use in the normal course of things. I racked my brains over what to do with them. Pour some vinegar on them and make hot pepper sauce? I did that, but it was only a temporary solution. The peppers kept coming, and how much hot pepper sauce can a person really go through every day? Poppers were the only way I could think of to use the quantities of jalapeños we were facing.

Since our chives and thyme and basil plants were also producing their little hearts out, I decided to add all three herbs to the cream cheese filling to give the poppers a flavor upgrade. The parmesan cheese was hanging out in the refrigerator without enough to do, so it went in too. Et voilà! I had a recipe that took poppers from pedestrian blandness to flavorful perfection. One of our favorite summer evening snacks was born. Thank heavens we have an overachieving pepper plant again this year!

JALAPEÑO POPPERS

Filling Mixture (makes enough to fill both halves of about 15 medium-sized fresh jalapeños):

• 8 oz. cream cheese, softened

• ½ c. grated parmesan cheese

• 1 Tbs. minced chives

• 1 Tbs. minced thyme

• 1 Tbs. finely shredded basil

Mix these all together in a medium-sized bowl and refrigerate for a couple of hours to allow the flavors to develop.

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Prepare for Fillling (wear gloves!):

• Cut the stems off the fresh, whole peppers and halve them lengthwise. About 15 medium ones should do it (with maybe a couple extras in reserve) if you’re going to use all the filling at once.

• Scrape out the seeds and veins (I use a paring knife) so you have smooth little green boats to stuff.

• Cut bacon slices (either thick-sliced or regular) in halves or thirds to wrap each popper. It’s hard to be specific about the bacon. You’ll have to judge how much you want to use, but if you have a whole slice of bacon per whole jalapeño, you’ll be sure to have enough.

Fill:

• Fill the pepper boats with the cheese mixture (I use a teaspoon).

• Don’t overfill. It’s tempting, but your excess filling will ooze out and drip onto the sheet pan, going to waste. I fill them level with the top edge of the pepper, or even a tad less.

• Wrap each popper with a piece of bacon and secure with a toothpick.

• They can be refrigerated until you’re ready to bake them. If you’ll be holding them more than an hour, cover the poppers with plastic wrap so the filling doesn’t dry out.

Bake:

• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

• Put a cooling rack on a cookie sheet or half sheet pan and spray both thoroughly with cooking spray.

• Arrange the poppers on the cooling rack and bake them for 25 minutes, then finish briefly under the broiler. Keep an eye on them, as they should already be nicely browning by this point.

Notes:

• For heaven’s sake, DO wear gloves for handling the peppers. I buy the disposable food-safe ones from Costco. They’re usually near the pharmacy section. (Don’t use powdered gloves.) Your eyes will thank you when you remove your contacts that night.

• If you have more filling than jalapeños, no worries. The cheese filling will keep several days in the refrigerator until you can use it up. I haven’t tried it, but it’s probably good on bagels too. Or crostini, with maybe a bit of sundried tomato tapenade on top!

• Store-bought peppers work just fine. They’re usually a lot bigger than homegrown and a lot milder. I think homegrown ones have the better flavor, but maybe that’s because I’m remembering all the watering and coddling that went into them.

• I use thick-sliced bacon, but you certainly can use the regular stuff. Thick-sliced doesn’t stretch to wrap around a pepper as well as thin-sliced, but I like the meatiness of it. Whatever bacon you use, cut the slices in half instead of in thirds if they’re short, or if the jalapeños are large.

• You can definitely grill the poppers outdoors, and it gives them a nice flavor. However, I recommend putting foil on the grill to prevent losing a.) the filling, or b.) the whole popper to the flames. Also, it’s hard to get the entire length of bacon to crisp properly (since you can’t flip the peppers over without losing the cheese). The oven, on the other hand, produces excellent, predictable results.

Enjoy!