Beth Cato's Blog, page 103

I survived San Diego Comic-Con

I was at San Diego Comic-Con all of one day and I am still recovering three days later. It’s that intense. That crazy.

I arrived at the convention center about 2pm on Thursday. I had a signing at the Harper Collins booth at 4pm, and I knew the intervening hours would be my best chance to wander the convention floor. So I did just that. I quickly found that the blockbuster media area was way too loud and crowded for my taste. I had to make a brief stop at the Square Enix booth, though. I was happy to see that Dragon Quest Heroes had a major presence and playable games, though I was indignant that the attached Square Enix store sold no Dragon Quest slimes. This didn’t surprise me. Sadly, it’s a snub that has dragged on for years. Slimes need love, dangit.

My signing at the booth was exciting. They pulled out a whole box of Clockwork Dagger books and handed them out to people. Of course, a lot of folks were there because, “Hey, free book!” but a few people had the book on their wishlist already and had made a point of showing up. THIS GAVE ME ALL THE HAPPY FEELINGS. Plus, Harper Collins shocked me by presenting Clockwork Crown fans! Holy moley, I had con swag!

That evening I went with friends into the Gaslamp District as we prowled for sustenance. I witnessed one of the crazy promotional events that Comic-Con is known for: a Sharknado parade.

Friday was my really cram-packed day. I dashed from a Harper Collins breakfast to my Romantic Adventure panel to the group signing afterward. The panel was great–good food for thought on world-building and romance and the nature of villains.

I sure loved the weather in San Diego. The convention center is right on the water, and the views are amazing! It was overcast at times, but the afternoons stayed sunny with the high in the 70s. Considering that the LOW is Arizona right now is the mid-80s… yeah. I enjoyed the coastal coolness.

Once the signing was done, I lingered a while longer to do an interview, and then it was time to head back to the airport! I had bought a Handbag of Holding from Think Geek for this trip because I knew I’d be at the con most of the time. It was really hard to pare down to the essentials, but the minimal space also made me picky about what I bought. Right before I left, I was offered two ARCs I couldn’t say no to, and at that point my purse was at about exploding point.

The whole experience was a blast. I’m sad that I left after just a day, but kind of relieved, too. It would have been nice to attend some panels other than my own. It would have been nifty to have some celebrity sightings, too.

There’s always next time, right?

Catching up on June

I’m an introvert. I like my cozy cave and routine. June was filled with book release and family and travel, and I feel like I’m still picking out things from rubble. Therefore, here are publications I had going back to June (other than Clockwork Crown) and other stuff.

At the Holy Taco Church:

– my recipe for this month is Porter Beer Chicken Thighs in the Slow Cooker!

From Phoenix Comicon:

– I posed for a picture for the great group Kids Need to Read. (Of all the shirts I had to wear that day…)

In the media:

– Michele Brittany wrote up a great article on my San Diego Comic-Con “Romantic Adventure” panel for Bleeding Cool.

At SF Signal:

– I took part in a Mind Meld on great detectives stories in speculative fiction! If you love mysteries mixed with scifi and magic, check this out and add to your to-read pile.

New story:

– “Headspace” in the Cats in Space anthology; on Amazon and Barnes & Noble. This story is pure fun: about a kitten named Trouble who ends up on a very interesting ride through deep space.

New poetry:

– “What Happened Among the Stars” in the latest Niteblade; my poem is also featured as the cover illustration!

– “Leaf Dragon” in New Myths

Sunday Quote survived San Diego

“After nourishment, shelter and companionship, stories are the thing we need most in the world.”

~Philip Pullman

CORVIDAE is out!

My friend and editor Rhonda Parrish has a new book out this week called Corvidae. I don’t have a story in this anthology (though I do have one in her previous Magical Menagerie book, FAE), which meant I had the opportunity to read the book early for the purposes of providing a blurb. I was very happy to do so!

“Corvidae evokes the majesty and mischief of corvid mythologies worldwide–and beyond our world–in a collection that is fresh and thoroughly enjoyable.”

– Beth Cato, author of The Clockwork Dagger

Here’s more about the book:

Associated with life and death, disease and luck, corvids have long captured mankind’s attention, showing up in mythology as the companions or manifestations of deities, and starring in stories from Aesop to Poe and beyond.

In Corvidae birds are born of blood and pain, trickster ravens live up to their names, magpies take human form, blue jays battle evil forces, and choughs become prisoners of war. These stories will take you to the Great War, research facilities, frozen mountaintops, steam-powered worlds, remote forest homes, and deep into fairy tales. One thing is for certain, after reading this anthology, you’ll never look the same way at the corvid outside your window.

Edited by Rhonda Parrish

“Introduction” by Rhonda Parrish

“A Murder of Crows” by Jane Yolen

“Whistles and Trills” by Kat Otis

“The Valravn” by Megan Fennell

“A Mischief of Seven” by Leslie Van Zwol

“Visiting Hours” by Michael S. Pack

“The Rookery of Sainte-Mère-Église” by Tim Deal

“The Cruelest Team Will Win” by Mike Allen

“What Is Owed” by C.S.E. Cooney

“Raven No More” by Adria Laycraft

“The Tell-Tale Heart of Existence” by Michael M. Rader

“Sanctuary” by Laura VanArendonk Baugh

“Knife Collection, Blood Museum, Birds (Scarecrow Remix)” by Sara Puls

“Flying the Coop” by M.L.D. Curelas

“Postcards from the Abyss” by Jane Yolen

“Bazyli Conjures a Blackbird” by Mark Rapacz

“Seven for a Secret” by Megan Engelhardt

“Flight” by Angela Slatter

Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and directly from World Weaver Press (with links to more vendors, too).

Bready or Not: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins

Let’s follow up CAKE MONTH with a healthier breakfast treat: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins!

These dense muffins actually taste just like chocolate chip oatmeal, though in a much more convenient form. They’re handy to take on the go, they keep well for days in a sealed container, and they can be frozen for months and taken out when desired.

If you want to make these even healthier, you can mix in some whole wheat flour, or omit some chocolate chips and add nuts or dried fruit instead.

After all, you need to eat a healthy breakfast to offset all that cake in June.

Modified from Dinners, Dishes, and Desserts

Bready or Not: Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Muffins





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These dense, chewy muffins present a healthy and portable breakfast option, and they taste like chocolate chip oatmeal!

1 cup old fashioned (rolled) oats
1 cup milk, divided (almond milk works)
1 egg
1/3 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup applesauce
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup all-purpose flour (or do half whole wheat)
1/4 cup ground flax seeds or wheat germ
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 heaping teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup chocolate chips
turbinado sugar for tops (optional)

Preheat oven to 350-degrees. Prepare a 12 cup muffin pan with liners and apply nonstick spray.

In a small bowl, combine the 1 cup of oats with 1/2 cup milk. Let the oats soak for 5 to 10 minutes.

In a big bowl, blend the egg, brown sugar, applesauce, and vanilla until smooth. Slowly mix in the flour, soaked oats, flax seeds, baking soda, salt and cinnamon. Add the last 1/2 cup milk. Fold in chocolate chips; take care not to over mix.

Fill the muffin cups with batter. Sprinkle some turbinado sugar on top, if desired. Bake for 15-18 minutes, until they pass the toothpick test. Best served warm.

Store them in a sealed container. Heat in microwave (maybe add a pat of butter, to make them slightly less healthy) to warm.

Muffins can be frozen; remove the liners first, and store in a sealed container or bag.

OM NOM NOM!

Sunday Quote is overheated

“Read, read, read. Read everything — trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master. Read! You’ll absorb it.

Then write. If it’s good, you’ll find out. If it’s not, throw it out of the window.”

~William Faulkner

A.F.E. Smith’s DARKHAVEN Blog Tour: Excerpt plus Giveaway!

I’m happy to welcome fellow Harper Voyager author A.F.E. Smith to my blog today! Her fantasy novel Darkhaven came out yesterday in ebook and will be in paperback on January 14th 2016. Isn’t her cover awesome? Here’s a lot more info about the book… as well as a Rafflecopter giveaway and scavenger hunt clue!

Ayla Nightshade never wanted to rule Darkhaven. But her half-brother Myrren – true heir to the throne – hasn’t inherited their family gift, forcing her to take his place.

When this gift leads to Ayla being accused of killing her father, Myrren is the only one to believe her innocent. Does something more sinister than the power to shapeshift lie at the heart of the Nightshade family line?

Now on the run, Ayla must fight to clear her name if she is ever to wear the crown she never wanted and be allowed to return to the home she has always loved.

HarperCollins

Amazon (global link)

Barnes & Noble

Google Play

iBooks

Kobo

Excerpt

Ayla descended a short flight of steps cut into a sheer rock face, and found herself on a ledge overlooking the lower rings of the city. Tiered roofs stretched down and out, red tiles and golden wood and grey-blue slate. She identified the dark smoke rising from the factories, as well as several lighter puffs of steam – travelling fast – which must be the trams that partly circled the lower rings. Even from here, with four rings behind her and only two ahead, the city merged into the horizon. She couldn’t make out where Arkannen ended and the rest of Mirrorvale began.

Of course, she had seen the city many times from the air, at night, but the sheer scale of it had never impressed itself upon her as it did now. From above, Arkannen was orderly and structured, seven neat rings descending in sequence. She hadn’t realised how much bigger and more complicated it would appear when she was actually in it. It was daunting, but it was also encouraging. As long as she was careful and didn’t draw attention to herself, she didn’t see how anyone would ever find her.

Dragging herself away from the view, she plunged into the darkness of the narrow passage that cut into the rock behind her. She emerged into a spacious, paved square with various streets and staircases joining it on three sides. On the fourth side stood a high-arched gateway, the sole route into the second ring: the Gate of Wind. Although each of the gates Ayla had passed through so far had been impressive, she thought this one might be the most spectacular of all. The arch was carved from pale, translucent marble, a series of abstract curved shapes swirling around each other like the patterns of the breeze; in every gap hung delicate crystals that tinkled with the slightest movement of the air, so that the gate was never silent. In the centre of the square, a three-bladed sail on a long pole turned with the currents, marking wind speed and direction for the captains of the airships.

None of the other gates had posed a problem, but even so, Ayla pulled her hood forward to hide her face before she joined the workers who were converging on the gate from all directions. It was even busier down here than it had been in the higher rings. An elbow caught her in the ribs; she stumbled, and someone trod on her foot. Then, as she passed under the archway itself in a squeeze of tight-knit crowd, she overheard a snippet of conversation.

‘Murdered in his bed … the old Changer …’

In an instant, the press of people around her – their heat and smell – became unbearable. She tried to keep up with the two men who were talking, but they were borne away from her like twigs in the relentless current. The many voices of the crowd became a tumult, a hundred different words competing for attention. Ayla snatched at one sentence, then another, letting each one slip away as she became aware of the next. But she heard nothing more about her father. Perhaps her overwhelmed brain had conjured up a phantom.

 

More about A.F.E.:

A.F.E. Smith is an editor of academic texts by day and a fantasy writer by night. So far, she hasn’t mixed up the two. She lives with her husband and their two young children in a house that someone built to be as creaky as possible – getting to bed without waking the baby is like crossing a nightingale floor. Though she doesn’t have much spare time, she makes space for reading, mainly by not getting enough sleep (she’s powered by chocolate). Her physical bookshelves were stacked two deep long ago, so now she’s busy filling up her e-reader.

What A.F.E. stands for is a closely guarded secret, but you might get it out of her if you offer her enough snacks.

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DARKHAVEN on Goodreads

 

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Scavenger hunt clue:

San Diego Bound

One week from today, I will be doing something gloriously geeky: attending San Diego Comic Con! Not just attending, though. I have two signings and a panel! I’m Someone with a badge!

I have never been to San Diego Comic Con before. Actually, I’m a native Californian who has never been to San Diego at all! This is a really fast trip, too, but I hope to have a couple of hours in there to wander the infamous Comic Con floor where I will hopefully not be stampeded by fangirls/boys in pursuit of a celebrity.

Here’s where you can find me!

Thursday, July 9th

4:00 PM – 4:30 PM

IN BOOTH HarperCollins Publishers #1029: Beth Cato Free Signing + Clockwork Crown promo giveaway

That’s right. I’ll sign stuff AND you might just get a free book. Which I can then sign.

Friday July 10, 2015

10:00am – 11:00am

Romantic Adventure

SFF fans are always down for an adventure, from a daring airship expedition to space-age exploration, but what’s the fun in an adventure if there’s no one to share it with? Some of the most compelling stories in genre fiction spring out of the relationships between two equally awesome characters when they’re thrown together in an out-of-this-world situation. Come discuss the lure of romantic adventure with Chloe Neil (The Devil’s Isle series), Sam Sykes (The City Stained Red), Beth Cato (The Clockwork Crown), Suzanne Young (The Remedy), Gena Showalter (Alice in Zombieland), and Mary E. Pearson (The Heart of Betrayal). Moderated by S. J. Harper (Reckoning).

Room 32AB

Link to the Comic Con scheduler

11:30 AM – 12:30 PM

Panel Signing: Romantic Adventure

Room AA09

I’ll sign stuff! Books! Anthologies! Napkins! Scones!

If you’re at Comic Con, please drop by to say hi!

Bready or Not: Custard/Pudding Powder Chocolate Chip Cookies

Happy Canada Day! Celebrate with some luscious chocolate chip cookies that have custard powder or pudding powder right in the dough.

See, I have a container of Bird’s Custard Powder sitting in my pantry that I want to use up. This stuff is great for Nanaimo Bars (a very appropriate recipe for Canada Day) but I wanted to use it for something less labor intensive.

Custard powder isn’t common in the States. It’s very much a Canadian/British thing. When I read up on Nanaimo Bar recipes ages ago, a lot of them said that regular Jell-O pudding powder could be used as a substitution for the custard layer. I got to thinking… I have made a number of cookie recipes that use pudding mix powder. Why not try it with custard powder instead?

I did. They turned out AMAZING. These pictures you see here were done without chilling the dough, which is what I usually do to create thicker cookies. It’s not necessary here, though the dough can still be chilled or frozen for later, if needed.

So, what does custard powder or pudding powder do?

– embodies cookies with a richer vanilla flavor

– makes thicker, more cakey result (like corn starch in the dough, but with the flavor oomph)

– seems to keep them fresh longer, too

Whatever your nationality, whatever your powder of choice, give these a try. Live deliciously.

Bready or Not: Custard/Pudding Powder Chocolate Chip Cookies





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Custard powder or pudding powder in the dough creates a vanilla-rich cookie that will make your taste buds sing. A Bready or Not Original.

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature
1 cup white sugar
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 eggs, room temperature
2 tsp vanilla extract
3 cups all-purpose flour
6 Tablespoons custard powder or instant vanilla pudding powder
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt
11 ounces (1 bag's worth) chocolate chips/peanut butter chips etc

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

In a large bowl, cream together the butter and both sugars. Mix in the eggs, one at a time, and the vanilla extract.

In another bowl, stir together the flour, custard powder, baking soda, and salt. Slowly blend the dry ingredients with the butter mix. Add the chocolate chips.

Use a tablespoon scoop to place dough onto a greased or parchment-lined cookie sheet. Bake for 10-12 minutes. Let cool on sheet for 10-15 minutes before transferring to a rack to cool completely.

OM NOM NOM!

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cook time: 10 minutes

Total time: 1 hour +

Sunday Quote loves air conditioning

“If you don’t have time to read, you don’t have the time (or the tools) to write. Simple as that.”

~Stephen King