Marian Allen's Blog, page 479

Ash Wednesday – What's a Vegetarian to Do?

Ash Wednesday, for those not in the pew which observes Ash Wednesday, is the first day of Lent, and a day of fast and abstinence. Although that can mean a dreary day of self-denial spent dreaming of excess, it can also be a strongly rewarding day of spiritual concentration. I've burdened myself with the first and been blessed with the second in various years.

I no longer observe Ash Wednesday, or days of fast or abstinence, and that isn't why I'm so fat, because I've always GAINED weight during Lent. I think I must be a throwback to Primitive Woman, who put on weight under every possible circumstance so she'd have plenty to live on during IMpossible circumstances. Yeah, that's it. That's the ticket. I'm the reincarnation of Lucy. I'm so proud.

Okay, so a day of fast means you only have one full meal. It used to mean you didn't eat anything, but now it means one full meal and nothing or light food the rest of the day. A day of abstinence means no meat.

So, if you don't eat meat ANYWAY, and it's Lent and you've given up something for the forty days as an act of devotion and penitence, what do you do on a day of abstinence? Abstain from tofu?

Anyway, I did NOT have crepes with Nutella yesterday. Time did not permit. But I did make chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast. Here is the recipe:

CHOCOLATE CHIP PANCAKES

Make up pancake batter and put in … wait for it … chocolate chips.

Top with warm orange marmalade.

Tonight, I think we're going to have Aztec casserole, vegetarian version:

AZTEC CASSEROLE, VEGETARIAN

15 ounce can black beans, drained

15 ounce can diced tomatoes
1 cup salsa (more or less)
1 cup frozen corn kernels
1/2 tsp cumin
salt to taste
1 1/2 cups grated cheese or soy cheese or soft tofu + salsa
8 to 12 corn tortillas (I use flour tortillas)
Avocado slices

Preheat oven to 400F. Lightly oil a medium-sized casserole dish. In a large bowl, combine beans, tomatoes, salsa, corn, cumin and salt. Place a layer of 4 to 6 tortillas to cover the bottom of the casserole dish, overlapping the edges. (NOTE: I tear the tortillas into bite-sized pieces and scatter them over the bottom of the casserole dish.) Cover tortilla layer with half of the beans and half of the cheese or tofu, then repeat the layering until all ingredients are used. Bake for about 20 minutes. Remove casserole, cover, and let cool for at least 15 minutes before serving.

In honor of the day, I shall leave off the avocado.

WRITING PROMPT: What would your main character give up as a sign of devotion and penitence?

MA

Fat Tuesday aka Mardi Gras aka Pancake Day

I'm posting at Fatal Foodies today, where I say Fat Tuesday, Schmat Tuesday. Meanwhile, over here, I'm using the term Pancake Day, because it's a tradition to use up all the sugar and fat in making rich foods–like big fat pancakes.

Picture from L. A. Times web site

The L.A. Times has a series of Mardi Gras recipes. Crawfish and gumbo (okra–yecchh) which didn't appeal to me, but this one grabbed me hard: Crepes WITH NUTELLA! It also has bananas (which I have not got) and cognac sauce (if I had it, I'd drink it, you get me?), but, toppings aside…. Crepes! With! Nutella!

If you don't know what Nutella is, I pity you. Go thou forth and have some–so long as you aren't allergic. Nutella is heaven's own blend of chocolate and hazelnuts. I would eat my keyboard, if it had Nutella on it. Good stuff.

WRITING PROMPT: Does your main character observe the church seasons, whatever church may be ascendant in his or her society? Why or why not?

MA

 

Early Easter

 

Got a promo email from Joseph Robert Lewis yesterday I wanted to share with you. I've been bragging on this guy's writing, and now you can see for yourself for cheapers.

Hello friends and readers,

I'm pleased to announce the release of Heirs of Mars: Preludes. This short story collection explores the world of the novel Heirs of Mars before the events of the novel itself. These three stories present three new perspectives on Venus, Earth, and Mars in the years and days before the novel begins. This collection also includes the complete first chapter of the novel.

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To Reign in Heaven (19 years before the novel) – India is a synthetic woman in love, passing a blissful year studying Venus and reveling in a shared dreamspace with her silksteel lover. But when her Mother chooses to sacrifice her children, India's memory of love is her only weapon to save her brothers and sisters.

To Walk the Earth (18 years before the novel) – Victoria is ready to move into the wilderness, far away from the manufactured monotony of modern life. But her boyfriend decides to go to Mars instead, leaving her to enjoy one last motorcycle ride all alone.

To Serve in Hell (1 day before the novel) – Neil is just a man struggling to get through another day on Mars: lousy food, cramped quarters, and a child who doesn't understand why he can't have a puppy. But when a cloner arrives, Neil has a chance to take control of something for once in his life, and to avenge the death of his parents.

Available at: Amazon.com | Amazon.co.uk | Smashwords | Barnes & Noble

This will probably be my last announcement until the completion of The Broken Sword (the sequel to The Burning Sky) around May or June.

Other News

I've recently made the decision that all of my novels that are the first installments in a given series will be priced at discount rate of $0.99 for the foreseeable future, with sequels priced at the standard rate of $2.99. This means that The Burning Sky and Heirs of Mars are now (and will remain) $0.99. Tell your friends!

Easter Egg: This also means that Heirs of Mars has a sequel in the works!

So go get yourself some good books for less than I paid for one of them!

Meanwhile, I'm invigorating my prose in FORCE OF HABIT and reacquainting myself with the world and the characters. Only one character from the book–so far–is appearing in the short story I'm working on to promote the novel. Pel Darzin, of the Meadow of Flowers precinct constabulary, who looks like a young Peter Lorre, is in both book and story. I'm eager to finish my edits so I can get back to the story. New! Shiny!

WRITING PROMPT: If you've written or are working on a novel, think of a short story you could connect to it.

MA

Sample Sunday, A Journey of a Thousand Miles

This story won First Place in the 2003 Green River Writers Green River Lean contest for flash fiction

A Journey of a Thousand Miles

by

Marian Allen

"Turn back the clock, Evan. Can't you turn back the clock?"

If absolute power corrupts, and time heals all wounds, what would absolute power over time do? Corrupt time? Heal absolutely?

My windshield wipers tick like pendulums. Frank Sinatra informs me enthusiastically that he did it his way. I wonder what "it" was. I wonder if I should do "it" his way, too, and what, exactly, his way was. Maybe I should buy the CD. Maybe the answers are in the liner notes.

#

"Turn back the clock, Evan."

My mother's voice over the phone. In a way, I wasn't surprised she'd found me; she could be very efficient when you didn't want her to be. Depressing, that I recognized her voice immediately, after all these years. It was ten thousand whiskies and a quarter-million Marlboros huskier, but I knew it from the first rasping intake of breath.

"Moze died last year–," Moze, the pathetic step-father who did nothing to stop her destroying their health and my sanity, "–with lungs. Me, it's throat."

Cancer, she meant.

#

She looks like ET in the hospital bed: skin gray, arms emaciated, eyes huge, head bulging — in her case, from a helmet of tight gray ringlets. A wig, I suddenly realize.

I hold out flowers. I had been tempted to get four roses, but decided on tinted asters and eucalyptus, garish and heavily-scented.

Can't you turn back the clock?

I step into the room.

Oh, God. Oh, Mommy. If I only could.

WRITING PROMPT: If your main character could turn back the clock, how far would he/she turn it back and to change what?

MA

Four Happy Things

MomGoth is singing happy little songs today because of four happy things that happened yesterday.

I got my first royalty check from Amazon for the short story collections I self-published for Kindle (and at Smashwords, but Smashwords hasn't sent me a check so NO DANCE FOR YOU, SMASHWORDS! It wasn't a big check, unless you thing $10.41 is big, but I'm being all Four Yorkshiremen about it and saying, "Boot it were a check to oos." And here's the original sketch o' that, for all you yoong people:

The fabulous, fabulous Amanda Borenstadt, steampunk queen supreme, reminded me of word clouds at Wordle, and I did one for EEL'S REVERENCE:

I got a call inviting me to present awards at a local middle school's Young Authors Celebration. Not only is it an honor, it's a pleasure to get to encourage young people toward rewarding and enriching careers as authors, so that they, too, can go to the mailbox some day and find they have received checks for $10.41 for six months' sales.
My editor at Echelon Press tells me she's within hours of getting my edits on FORCE OF HABIT to me, and that she thinks they'll be easy ones. On the same subject (FORCE OF HABIT), I'm having tons of fun writing "By the Book", the short story accompanying it. I told my 10-year-old grandson the premise and he was most amused.

Busy day today, working the concession stand for my church at an auction (that's conCession, not conFession–I'm Disciples of Christ, not Catholic), then going to the Presbyterian Church for a Mardi Gras feast. They give away beads, but you don't have to show anything but money for charity.

WRITING PROMPT: List four happenings that made your main character happy.

MA

Friday Recommends

The photogenic Sara Glenn did a super post about setting up your #ff lists on Twitter. If that sounds like I just said, "Franistan your fortisfree flange and brabintangle your megitranistor," ignore it and proceed to the next item on the list.

Benjamen Kirby has been doing some excellent stuff–fiction and non-fiction–over at The Clintonaut.

The fabulous fabulous Merrill Markoe posted this about Urban Outfitter's latest catalog. I don't get UO's catalog, but Markoe always cracks me up.

Speaking of cracking up, here is the happiest video ever! EVER!

So there you have it for Friday. Enjoy!

WRITING PROMPT: What makes you laugh like that baby?

MA

Drinking With Dickens

My mother and I have been watching DVD's of the BBC's LD by CD–I mean, Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens. I watched it with Charlie, so I can give Mom some hints as to who's who and what's what and what they're saying. Charlie and I watched it with the English subtitles on so we could decipher the accents. Some day, somebody is going to add American subtitles, so when somebody says, "'P'n m' w'd, m'm!" the subtitle will say, "Dang, gal!"

Anyway, Dickens is the king of the character, and of the character tag. Mom's favorite, so far, is Flintwinch, who shuffles around like Frankenstein's monster with rickets and who's character tag is an impressive variety of expressive grunts. Charlie's was Mr. Panks, who has an equally impressive variety of equally expressive snorts. My favorite is … I dare not say his name. People who even hear his name end up dead. Here's his picture, and here's something about him.

I am currently reading a review of the series on boston.com called Dickens Meets 'Lost' in hopes of untangling some threads that left us going, "Wait. What?" but, since the writer misused the word "pendulous" I have my doubts of being much assisted.

This, on dickenslit.com, helps explain one bit, and The Victorian Web sort of explains some of another bit, if you scroll down to the entry for Miss Wade. Even more interesting is this article from The Daily Mail about the inspiration for the character of Little Dorrit herself.

"But what about the drinking?" I hear you cry. "Get to the drinking!"

I've already gotten to it. Did you miss it? You missed  it, didn't you? No, don't bother to go back and reread, I'll tell you. Dickens loves to use character tags. If Mr. Meagles told Tattycoram to count to five-and-twenty once, he must have told her five-and-twenty times. If you knocked back a shot of bourbon every time he said, "Five-and-twenty," you'd be barfing your socks up in no time. What larks, eh? What larks.

Character tags are probably more irritating in the reduced medium of a film or miniseries than in a novel, where they're more diffused; and small, understated ones are generally better than obtrusive ones. "Five-and-twenty, Tattycoram, five-and-twenty!" trumpeted at full volume gets old real fast. On the other hand, especially effective in film, are musical tags. That bad boy I'm afraid to name sings snatches of "Qu'est que passe ici si tarde" a few times, then whistles it. After his first few appearances, every time you hear a whistle, your skin creeps.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on character tags.

WRITING PROMPT: Come up with a character who has a distinguishing bit of business or way of talking or much-used phrase or gesture.

MA

I think I need to read the book. I'm downloading it for free from Project Gutenberg to read on my Kindle for PC, but it's available in many formats.

March Update, With Food

I was supposed to do this yesterday, but I had a guest, so I'm doing it today. It's MY blog, right, and I can update it on the second instead of the first if I want to, yeah? Yeah. So it's update day, and I've put up a new Hot Flash. Click here to read it. Scroll down that page for January's and February's, and links to previous years'.

Now to the food. Because Wednesday is supposed to be food day here, although IT IS MY BLOG RIGHT AND I CAN DO FOOD OR NOT DO FOOD WHENEVER I WANT TO YEAH. Anyway. Food.

Last night, we had this.

The white speckled stuff in the bowl is grated raw turnip and sunflower kernels. Sounds ick, but it's really really good. Sometimes I put French dressing on it, but Charlie has persuaded me that it's better plain. Trust me, it's good.

We had a stir fry of bokchoy, mushrooms, turnips and turnip greens. I heated some olive oil, cooked a garlic clove and a lump of ginger long enough to infuse the oil, took those out, cooked the bokchoy until it was just a little bit seared, then added the mushrooms (white and portobello) and the leftover turnip stuff. Cooked it down and dressed it with a little sesame oil.

Got one of those steam-in-a-bag salmon fillets and … well … steamed it in a bag. Meanwhile, heated a lump of butter until it browned, then added cut-up Meyer lemon and some capers. The lemon was supposed to be in thin slices, but somebody peeled one and ate a bit, so I had to make do with lumps and squidges rather than pretty little slices. The slices would have been nicer, because the squidges were much too strong. Pretty nice, anyway.

So that's my food post. Enjoy!

WRITING PROMPT: How OCD is your main character, on a scale ranging from Mr. Monk (very OCD) to Charlie Sheen (not)?

MA

Fun With Gasbags

Er… Perhaps I should retitle that. What I have today is a guest post by JOSEPH ROBERT LEWIS! Yes, THAT Joseph Robert Lewis! The one I'm all "Read this! and this!" about.

HE isn't a gasbag and I'm not… never mind. What I mean to say is, I'm talking about the airships in his Halcyon series. So here he is:

I love stories. All types of stories. Drama and tragedy and comedy. Science fiction, fantasy, steampunk, paranormal, romance, western, and probably an epic poem or two. I love reading them and I love writing them. But writing can be a lot of work.



Especially in the various flavors of fantasy (which include most of the genres I listed above), a lot of a writer's time can be spent building the world in which the story will be told. What does the world look like, sound like, smell like? What about the people, food, religion, clothing, holidays, breakfast cereals, and adorable fluffy pets? What are the rules of the world, or its societies and cultures?

Sometimes writers can turn to research and sometimes writers can turn to their imaginations to build their worlds. But in the end, world-building is a lot of work, because the world itself has to work. It has to make sense, at least within itself.

What's worse is that, most of the time, different genres and styles of story-telling require different worlds. Science fiction is "supposed" to look and feel futuristic, and fantasy is "supposed" to look and feel like medieval Europe, and westerns are "supposed" to look and feel like Texas, and so on. There are expectations. Assumptions. Stereotypes.

And if you are a writer like me who wants to tell lots of different stories, you're confronted with the daunting task of creating lots of different worlds, the task of doing a lot of work before you ever get to start telling your stories. And that's no fun.

So I cheated.

Instead of planning to write lots of separate novels or trilogies in different genres in different worlds, I wove them all together. I created one world, which I very creatively named the Other Earth, in which I can tell all my stories in one place.

I cheated on a lot of other things too. I got my fantasy map from an atlas, and I got most of my historical back-stories from "history" and I even stole some characters from "reality." And now you're asking, what's so fantastical about that? Well, I made a few tweaks.

First, I plunged our lovely blue world into an Ice Age, or more specifically, I never let us emerge from the last one. So the northern hemisphere is mostly snow and ice, and the unpleasantly warm places like the Sahara desert are now green and fertile and lovely to visit or to build an empire. This was a simple change that completely altered the entire planet.

Second, I re-arranged the levels of technology all around the world, partly based on things like trade routes and natural resources. I also tweaked this so I would get all the toys I wanted, like Industrial Age trains and airships and steamships, western-style revolvers, Age of Sail galleons and swordplay, and ancient stone temples, mega-cities, and necropolises. Necropoli? Necropolum?

Third, I made up some new rules regarding death, the soul, and the existence and role of ghosts in day to day life. I won't tell you those rules now, but suffice it to say that these rules make life more interesting for everyone, particularly the people who choose to pay attention to the revenants wandering among us.

Lastly, it was important to me to create and showcase some less stereotypical heroes, particularly for my daughter to read one day (she's still a little bit on the toddler side right now). I wanted alpha males who weren't jerks, and beta males who didn't morph into alphas, and women who kicked butt without morphing into alpha males, and women who were feminine without being weak.

(This is not to say there are no stereotypes or cookie-cutters in my books. I might even have a "dark and gritty brooding anti-hero" in there somewhere. But for my core characters, I was aiming much higher.)

So what is the result of all this? A genre-bending muddle? It could lead that way, I admit, but I didn't build this playground so I could play with all my toys at once. I did it so I could play with all my toys in the same place.

For example, my in-progress Halcyon trilogy (set in Morocco and Spain) is a swashbuckling, steampunky, western adventure series. It's mostly about good guys chasing bad guys, sword fights and gun fights, and action. It's a fun cocktail of The Three Musketeers, The Princess Bride, Firefly, Farscape, and Jules Verne.

Meanwhile, my in-progress Asha series (set in India) is a long, quiet journey punctuated by paranormal mysteries and strange encounters. It's about tragedy and other-worldliness, about death and perseverence and exploration of the bizarre and hidden wonders in this world. (Have you seen Mushi-shi? Yeah, it's like that.)

Also, my future Yslander trilogy will be a dark heroic fantasy about big brawny people with swords fighting big brawny monsters, also possibly with swords. (Think Conan the Barbarian mixed with Eastern European folklore, spiced with a little Hellboy.)

This is all in the same world, playing by the same rules. Now, I didn't create this complex world just to save time on world-building. I also did it so I could create a series-of-series books. My standalone books, short stories, and trilogies can each be read in a vacuum by the people who like one or another brand of fantasy. But for those of you who have broader tastes (think Stephen King's Dark Tower series), you'll have at least seven books that all tie together into one uber-story.

Like me the author, you the reader only have to invest in one fantasy world to enjoy lots of stories about lots of characters. And the payoff at the end is much greater.

So if this sounds at all like your cup of tea, I invite you to check out the samples of the first Halcyon novel (The Burning Sky) and the first Asha short story collection (Death).

The second Halcyon book, The Broken Sword, will be released later this spring.

The Burning Sky (Halcyon #1)
The Tale of Asha, Volume 1: Death

So there you have him: the awesomely awesome Joseph Robert Lewis. I'm reading Burning Sky now, and I can tell you that the world feels, looks, tastes, smells and… ~MA counts senses~ oh, yeah, sounds real.

WRITING PROMPT: Take a scene from a children's story (Three Little Pigs, for example) and rewrite it, including all (counting again) five senses.

MA

p.s. I'm posting today at Fatal Foodies on the subject of The Man Who Did Not Read.

Free For Nothing

Gots another free story for you. Had one up yesterday for Sample Sunday and there's one up today at Dark Valentine Magazine. Called "Dry As Dust", it's a creepy one.

I'm also guest ranting… er, posting on Karen Syed's Life As A Publisher. The topic is bad literary fiction, but it goes for bad fiction of all sorts and styles, as well.

And another thing: I was doing my rainbow edits–where one highlights problem words and then goes through and rewrites to eliminate them where one can–and came across some places in which I left out an open quote or close quote. More important was the place in which I had left out a big chunk of text. Yes.

This was a book WHICH HAD BEEN PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED. I took the manuscript I sent to Echelon from the one sent to me as published by a previous publisher. Looks like SOMEONE didn't look at her proofs very carefully before. Fortunately, I had backup files so old they're on little old floppy disks in txt format, so I was able to recover the lost bit.

When you get your proofs, read them. Carefully. It isn't that you don't trust your editor or typesetter. It's that the quality of the proof you turn in as ready to go is YOUR responsibility. Don't embarrass yourself the way I did.

WRITING PROMPT: If you have a finished story, read it again as if someone else had written it.

MA