Alison Kent's Blog, page 34

Some memories of food and old kitchens

My mother is a good cook. I've always thought so. Even as a kid (for the most part). My father traveled often, and would bring home recipes from ladies at churches he'd visited around the country. (Church ladies make the best cooks!) One was for a chicken spaghetti casserole that's the best I've had in my life, and yet I've never made it. Not even sure why! One was a jello salad, cherry probably, made with red hots.

Another was a lime jello with pears, pineapple, pecans, and a topping of some ...

Dear Future Me

Back in December, PBW posted a link to FutureMe, a website that allows you to send yourself emails in the future. (The site's creators have also written a book: Dear Future Me: Hopes, Fears, Secrets, Resolutions.) At her blog, PBW posted a letter she wrote to herself a dozen years in the future. Me, I set mine at the end of December to send the last day of January. I'd forgotten about it when it showed up, asking me how I was doing with my two big New Year's goals – walking and words.

Let's...

Familiarity and the breeding of contempt. Or not.

For the first time ever, I'm working on a story that won't tell me how it ends. This isn't really a big deal. I plan to write it through, see what happens. But I need to write a synopsis soon, and that's a real impossibility when so much of where the book will go is up in the air. I haven't faced this before. Everything I've written in the past – romance – has had a built in resolution. Girl gets boy AND a happy ending.

The current WIP isn't going to be so nicely wrapped up. There are any...

THE HUNDREDTH MAN – a review

Bizarre and cryptic messages found on a pair of corpses in Mobile, Alabama, launch junior police detective Carson Ryder and veteran cop Harry Nautilus into a desperate search for a mysterious killer. With the body count rising, Ryder descends into his family's terrifying past by seeking advice from his brother, a violent, taunting psychopath convicted of similarly heinous crimes. Ryder soon confronts not only his past fears and nightmares, but also the knowledge that someone he knows is the...

The Siren Call of the Kindle App

I get it now. I really do. After finishing the book I'd been reading on my iPod Touch yesterday morning, I was SO tempted last night when climbing into bed to download the second in the series. SO tempted. So very VERY tempted. I did NOT give in to temptation as I was already intent on a new ebook ...

An Autobiography

One of the first Websites I hit every morning is Shirt.Woot. For ten bucks and free shipping, you can get a T-shirt with original art. There's a new shirt every day, and if you want it for the ten bucks, that one day's your only guaranteed chance – if you get there before they sell out. Some are fun, some are stupid, some are cheesy, some are great. For me, this one, called Autobiography, fell into the great category.

Artist in Residence

A Note from the Universe & A Writing Challenge

With several funky, confusing, gray, lonely days behind me, I got a kick out of today's timely and much needed butt-kicking Note from the Universe:

What if funky, confusing, gray, lonely days were just part of a "system" that, in turn, created bright, rich, happy, friendly days?

What if they were just meant to give deeper elements of your creativity a rest?

What if they were deliberately crafted holidays, of a sort, devised by your inner psyche to relieve you from the pressure of artificial...

Randomosity: Food, TV, Phones & Dogs

Even though it was 70 degrees out, I made Pioneer Woman's Italian Meatball Soup for dinner on Monday. Yum. @cuppacafe and I ate almost the whole pot between us, with only a bowl leftover for my lunch today! (And we won't talk about making cupcakes out of her Best Chocolate Sheet Cake Ever. But I did. And it is.)

On the not as successful cooking front, a couple of weeks ago, I made this Slow Cooker Chicken Stroganoff after seeing several raves about it on Twitter. Lesson learned? Don't trust...

DEEPER THAN THE DEAD – a review

California, 1985. Four children, running through the woods after their school, stumble upon a partially buried female body, eyes and mouth glued shut. Close behind the children is their teacher, Anne Navarre, shocked by this discovery and heartbroken as she witnesses the end of their innocence. What she doesn't yet realize is that this will mark the end of innocence for an entire community, as the ties that bind families and friends are tested by secrets uncovered in the wake of a serial...