Kevin L. O'Brien's Blog: Songs of the Seanchaí, page 32

New eBook: In an Octopus's Garden

I have just published my latest ebook:

In an Octopus's Garden

Joshua and Victoria Matisse are a young couple who, after five years of connubial bliss, remain childless, though not for lack of trying. Their doctor believes their failure is due to stress, so on his advice they decide to take an extended vacation cruise through the island chains of the South Pacific. As an added bonus, they rent a deserted atoll for a month, so they can spend time alone, wearing nothing but suntan lotion and doing nothing except have sex and dive the lagoon's reef.

However, soon after their arrival, Josh and Vicki begin to have vivid erotic dreams involving the octopi that inhabit the lagoon. In time they learn they have been selected to conceive and bear the avatar of the atoll's cephalopod god, slumbering imprisoned in a tomb at the bottom of an abyssal pit. Their dreams climax in a ceremony in which Vicki is impregnated with an egg that Josh fertilizes. Afterwards, they cannot shake the feeling it had all been real, even as they hope it wasn't.

But there is one way they can discover the truth: find the tomb and see if it was occupied.

This story contains foul language, sexual situations, and scenes of intense violence. Reader discretion is advised.

This ebook is free and can be downloaded from Smashwords.

Fan Fiction

As I explained in a previous series of posts, my method of writing involves working on a number of stories all at once. I don't mean that literally. I actually only write one at a time, but not exclusively. Unless it's an usually short piece, like flash or drabble, I am rarely able to finish the one I'm currently working on before I get bored, or I hit a bit of writer's block and can't figure out how to proceed. At that point I move on to another story and work on it until the same thing happens. At which point I move on to yet another story.

And so on.

This does, however, necessitate that I have a large reserve of stories, otherwise I could run out before I'm ready to go back to a previous story. Fortunately, that's not a problem. I have more ideas than I have time to work on, and more come to me every day, so I am in no danger of finding myself with nothing to work on.

The thing I like best about about my current characters -- Medb hErenn, Eile and Sunny of Team Girl, and Sir Differel Van Helsing -- is that they need not be restricted to their own worlds. They live in a fictional version of our world during the late 20th/early 21st centuries and many of their stories take place in that world during that time.

However, the very nature of their characterizations allow me greater latitude. Medb is essentially a female Conan, with all that that implies. And I do mean all. Team Girl's motto is ONWARD TO ADVENTURE!!!, while Differel is head of the UK's premier monster-hunting organization. As a result, I can put them in more than just straightforward fantasy, adventure, or supernatural stories; they would also fit into thriller, mystery, science fiction, crime, or even modern western stories. And I can put them anywhere in their fictional world I choose.

But I can still go further afield. Medb was born in 1515 BC, and through magical means was able to keep herself alive at least though 2500 AD. She also spent two periods of her life wandering, once across the face of the Earth, another journeying to other worlds throughout the multiverse. Meanwhile, Team Girl and Differel have a mad scientist friend who can send them into the past using a time machine or to other worlds in the universe using a transdimensional gateway. Plus, Differel has her own personal Mister Mxyzptlk in the form of the Princess in Orange, who loves to do to her what the famous Imp did to Superman. As such, I can put them into situations that otherwise would not be possible given their normal contemporary setting.

But that still doesn't exhaust the possibilities. Team Girl and Sir Differel especially, but to some extent Medb as well, lend themselves well to stories that place them in entirely different lives. I call these Alternative Reality stories. The characters are essentially the same, but they are portrayed in a different manner. For example, in one story Team Girl are bomber pilots sent on a mission to destroy an alien robot bent on exterminating mankind; in another, Eile is a noir detective investigating the disappearance of Sunny's parents, who might have been done in by crime boss Differel; in still another, Team Girl and Differel are bridge officers on a starship sent into battle against a deadly and implacable enemy. And so on.

The point is, the Alternative Reality stories allow for an almost infinite variety of story plots.

But that's still not the end.

Ramsey Campbell has stated that many writers write fan fiction during their careers, and I suspect more do it than are willing to admit it. Though professionally questionable (unless commissioned to do it), there is an allure to contributing your own ideas to a body of work you really enjoy, and since many writers do accept commissions to write fan fiction, my suspicion may have some validity.

Regardless, I have succumb to the lure myself. I cut my teeth writing Cthulhu Mythos stories, I've dabbled in Star Trek and Star Wars fiction, and I once paired Medb against a Predator. I've watched my fan fiction evolve from using existing characters and settings, to creating my own, and then to cloning an existing franchise and modifying it into my own conception.

Though I have been concentrating on writing stories based in my own universe for the past 12 years, I still write fan fiction. However, I now prefer crossover stories to the ones I mentioned above. Crossovers are at least borderline acceptable, though still questionable professionally.

I write two types: one where I bring characters and creatures from other franchises into my own universe, and one where I put my own characters into a franchise universe. An example of the first is a story I'm working on in which a Predator recruits Sir Differel to help it destroy an alien threat even it cannot handle alone. An example of the second is another story in which Differel and Team Girl operate their own interstellar freighter in the Alien franchise universe.

A legitimate question would be, if I can't sell these stories, why even write them? Ignoring for the moment the fact that they fascinate me and I just can't help it, I do it for two reasons.

The first is that they help me with my ADD problem. They form part of the reserve of stories I can work on when I get bored with whatever I happen to be writing at the moment. The second is that they make good choices for posting free stories on sites such as Wattpad. Success in self-publishing requires a large dedicated readership, but to get that you need to make your work available in as many places on the web as you can. It is always problematic offering a story for free, because if it proves to be popular you could have made a fair amount of money off it. Since I can't sell my crossover stories, they make ideal choices for free stories.

Food Processing in the Dreamlands

The epitome of industrialization is the manufacturing of food. This takes two forms. One is the mechanized creation of meals normally made by hand; the other is processing raw foodstuffs into a novel form. By definition, any method that alters raw foodstuffs is processing, even cooking or preservation, or just cleaning vegetables and cutting them up into bite-sized pieces. However, practically speaking, processing is limited to the creation of foods that do not occur naturally and are not complete meals in and of themselves. Also, many techniques of preservation started out as methods to process food into different forms; for more information, see the post on food preservation. In fact, it is problematic as to whether the processing of certain foodstuffs was done solely to create a unique, enjoyable food, or also with an eye towards extending its self life. Being as mechanization on an industrial scale cannot exist in the Dreamlands, however, processing is performed by hand, using at best very simple machines to aid in the process.

Because each and every processed food has its own unique procedure, this essay will not be a general discussion of common methods, but instead will be a survey of commonly found processed foods and how they are made. Also, this list is not exhaustive; there are many more than be conveniently discussed in a short essay.

There are, however, a number of food-related products that are not considered processed, despite being extensively worked from their original, raw form. Two of the most widespread are grain processing and alcohol production. Alcohol is not considered a form of food, per se, while grain processing, which includes making flour, porridge, and gruel, generally leads to a complete meal (while "complete" is a relative term, there are many people in the Dreamlands whose diet consists almost entirely of bread and/or grain soup, and beer). Besides, aside from grinding the grain or roasting and cracking it, most of the preparation involves some form of cooking, which is generally not considered a method of processing.

Fruit juice processing is borderline. Some scholars accept it as a form of food processing, while others believe it is just a method to make it easier to transport. Whole fruit are notoriously inefficient to ship; they not only take up a lot of room, they are also prone to spoil quickly. Except for unripe fruit or particularly hardy species, fruit not meant for local consumption is pulped to remove its juice. That which is not used to make alcoholic beverages is concentrated through evaporation or boiled into syrup. These liquid forms are more efficient, because more can be shipped with less room, and if properly packaged have a longer shelf life. However, there is considerable dispute as to whether these constitute a true different form of food, or just a different form of fruit juice.

Perhaps the most familiar type of processed food is cheese. It serves as a way to preserve milk to extend its shelf life as long as possible, but cheese is ultimately derived from the true processed form of milk, curds and whey. Curds are the insoluble milk proteins suspended in the liquid phase, most of which are caseins, large structural proteins, plus the fat if it has not already been separated. Whey is the liquid phase, containing the dissolved proteins and the milk sugar. Separating these two components can be handled in a number of different ways.

One is to use a crude rennet (a complex of enzymes) preparation from young calf stomachs, or certain vegetable sources such as caper leaves, nettles, thistles, mallow, and ground ivy. Certain types of cultured molds can also produce rennet-like enzymes. Another way is the use of some form of edible acid, such as gluconic acid, tartaric acid, vinegar, lemon, lime, or fig juice, or wine. Bacteria can also be added to ferment the milk sugars into lactic acid. Boiling water often helps the acid coagulate, or curdle, the insoluble proteins. A third is to let whole milk go sour. The curds are then strained from the whey using cheesecloth.

Curds are used primarily to create cheese. Though the exact procedure varies considerably depending upon the variety of cheese to be made, the basic procedure common to nearly all cheeses starts with allowing the strained curds to set into a firm gel. A number of soft cheeses are finished at this point; for the rest further processing is required. In some cases, salt is mixed in before the gel completely sets, along with optional spices or berries. Other techniques include stretching and needing the curd in hot water, or washing in warm water to reduce its acidity. Once the curd gel sets, it is cut into small cubes to facilitate water drainage. These can be salted with dry salt or brine washes if salt wasn't added to the curd first.

For some hard cheeses, the cubes are heated to a range of 95–131 ºF to drive out the remaining whey. In a process known as cheddaring, the set curd is cut into larger pieces called loaves, which are turned and stacked numerous times. Afterwards, it is milled into smaller cubes. Regardless of how it gets to this point, the curd is packed into moulds and pressed to drive out excess moisture. The more pressure is applied, the harder the final cheese. The cheese is then removed from the moulds and ripened by being allowed to age under specific conditions while bacteria and mold transform the texture and intensify the flavour by breaking down proteins and milkfat into amino acids, amines, and fatty acids. The action of microorganisms can also produce a crusty edible covering called a rind that can protect the cheese from spoilage, while other cheeses can be dipped in wax or wrapped in canvas or burlap.

Curds can also be used to make various kinds of yogurt or desserts. When dried, they can be added to flour and other milled or ground grains to increase the protein content. They can even be eaten by themselves, or mixed with whey. Whey can be drunk as a beverage, substituted for water or milk in cooking, made into certain kinds of cheeses, used as a nutritional supplement, or even added as a fertilizer to acid-loving plants. Cream can also be skimmed off whey and used to make butter, both of which can serve as a cheaper substitute for sweet cream or butter, or to add a buttery flavor to cooked foods.

Speaking of yogurt, it rivals cheese as the first processed food derived from milk, but it is not made in the same way. Both require that milk proteins be curdled, but whereas cheese separates the curds from the whey, yogurt leaves them mixed together. Acid and salts will cause curds to settle out of the liquid phase, but yogurt begins by heating the milk to 176 ºF. This not only kills off any harmful bacteria, it also curdles the proteins, but in a way that keeps them in suspension so they do not settle out. The result is a thickened milk that more closely resembles cream. The milk is allowed to cool to 112 ºF and bacteria are added to ferment the milk sugars into lactic acid. The acidity helps preserve yogurt, though salt is often added to increase its shelf life.

Tofu is made in a manner similar to cheese, except that it derives from soybean milk. Dried soybeans are rehydrated in water, then ground wet, boiled, and filtered. Soybean milk, or simply soy milk, can be used as a substitute for animal milk, but if mixed with edible acids, gypsum (calcium sulfate), or nigari (magnesium chloride obtained from seaweed), the proteins will coagulate to form curds. These are then separated from the soy whey and pressed into a soft cake. Tofu can be further processed by being dried or fermented for longer shelf life.

Though most raw foods can be processed in one form or another, meat is probably the type of food most often processed, with milk a close second. The reason is that meat tends to spoil faster than most other foods. While most forms of "processing" are in fact methods of preservation, some qualify as true processing, and other techniques process the meat into a different form without actually preserving it.

After cheese, sausages are another extremely familiar example of processed food, but like cheese they are mostly meant as a way to preserve meat. Sausage making actually uses a number of different methods, being an example of 'hurdle technology'. As such, 'sausage' refers to the final food product, not the preservation process. Though the type, number, and sequence of steps can vary considerably, making sausage involves grinding or cutting meat into very small chunks, mixing it with spices, wine, vinegar, salt, and other ingredients, and stuffing it into casings to contain it. In addition to the salting and fermentation taking place, the meat can also be smoked, dried, and/or cooked. Though one of the few processed foods that most closely resembles the raw food it's made from, many sausages can in fact look very different from meat.

Another form of preservation that is considered processing is jerking, the technique of drying thin strips of salted meat to form jerky. Virtually any meat can be jerked, provided it can be cut into thin strips and trimmed of fat. It is then coated with salt and subjected to low heat drying, such as over a weak fire or exposed to the sun. The salt inhibits bacterial growth until sufficient moisture has been removed to cure it. Often times it is also smoked, both to drive away insects and to further protect against bacteria, as well as impart flavouring. While standard jerky is not truly processed, other forms are marinated in seasoned spice rubs or liquids, or even ground and mixed with seasonings before being pressed into shapes. Jerky compliments hardtack as the quintessential travel/adventuring foods.

Similar to jerky is pork rinds. The skin of pigs and most other animals is usually made into leather; however, skin which is boiled to render its fat into lard is soft enough to cut into pieces. These can then be roasted or fried, which causes them to expand into a crispy consistency not unlike potato chips. They have almost no carbohydrates; their fat content can be high, but it's mostly unsaturated or even healthy, or at least innocuous. They make a good high-protein snack compared to potato or corn chips, and they can be flavoured before cooking.

Spam is similar to sausage, except it is precooked and canned. The name is a portmanteau of "spiced" and "ham", and is a mixture of chopped cooked pork shoulder and ham with salt, water, sodium nitrite as a preservative, and potato starch as a binder, pressed into loaves. As it cools, it acquires a glaze of aspic, a gelatinous substance derived from cooled meat stock. Additional ingredients can impart different flavours, while meats other than pork can be added or substituted. The mix can even be made into a paste for spreading instead of slicing. Spam rivals sausages as the most convenient form of meat for regular use, but whereas adventurers and travelers tend to use sausages, homemakers prefer Spam.

Spam is one way to render otherwise tougher cuts of meat, or low-quality meat gleaned from nonstandard portions of a carcass, into an appetizing form. Another method is making forcemeat. This involves emulsifying ground meat with fat. The 'straight' method involves grinding meat and fat together into a smooth consistency that can be sliced. 'Country-style' adds liver and various garnish ingredients, and renders it into a coarser consistency. 'Gratin' involves browning the meat before grinding, whereas 'mousseline' uses lighter, smoother meats mixed with eggs and cream to form a mousse-like consistency.

Pâté is simply 'straight' forcemeat mixed with vegetables, herbs, spices, and wine, cognac, Armagnac, or brandy, and ground into a spreadable paste. A terrine is an even coarser version of 'country-style' forcemeat, except the mix is gelatinized by aspic, which is cooled meat stock. Head cheese, also known as brawn, is a special type of terrine made from animal heads, minus the brains, eyes, and ears. Whole chunks of meat are used instead of ground, and the aspic forms a more extensive and obvious part of the whole composition.

Similar to forcemeat is pemmican, except that instead of grinding the meat and fat together, the meat is first dried, then pulverized into tiny pieces, almost like a powder. It is then mixed with melted fat (the best is from bone marrow) in a 1:1 ratio and allowed to cool and set. Crushed dried berries, herbs, and spices can also be added.

Pemmican has two major advantages over forcemeat. The first is that it has a long shelf life. If properly prepared and stored in leather or canvas pouches, it can last for weeks, even months. The other is that it offers a convenient way of rendering a freshly killed carcass into well preserved portable rations. Though it takes time to thoroughly cure the meat, it can reduce the mass needed to carry by 75% as well as allow it to be packaged for easier transport.

In many wild areas, the trade in pemmican is as important as that in furs, hides, and ivory. In fact, animals killed for their hides and horns are usually rendered into pemmican as well. Though of little use as a staple food, it rivals sausages and jerky as travel or adventuring food, it can serve as a survival ration (with chocolate to provide a source of carbohydrates), and it is often eaten as a famine food.

There are many ways to prepare meat for consumption, but two common methods found throughout the Dreamlands are also considered true processing techniques. One is the pasty. Literally a cross between a pie and a pocket sandwich, it consists of an unbaked pastry crust filled with meat and vegetables, then folded closed and crimped along the edges to form a seal. It is then baked without a dish. The filling can be made of just about anything, and it is usually a good way to make use of dried or salted meats. Though not a form of preservation, a well cooked pasty can, if properly stored, keep for a day or so, and they are often purchased by travelers and adventurers in the morning to be eaten for lunch. They also make a good method of preparing lower quality meat, offal, tripe, and famine food into an appetizing form.

Despite being the butt of jokes and the stuff of gastronomic nightmares, haggis is actually quite popular in the Dreamlands. It consists of the heart, lungs, and liver, called the pluck, usually of a sheep, though other animal sources can be used. The organs are minced with onion, oatmeal, suet, spices, and salt, mixed with stock, and simmered in the stomach. Despite the unappetizing description, the result has a nutty texture and a robust, savory flavour, though it can take some convincing to get neophytes to try it.

One misconception is that the finished dish is sliced like a roast, but this also assumes that the stomach is itself eaten; squeamish readers will be happy to note that it is not, it serves merely as a container. In fact, many haggis makers stuff the filling into sausage casings. Instead, the stomach is cut open and the filling scooped out. A common fable told to new Dreamers is that the haggis is actually a small mammal native to the many hills and mountain ranges that dot the Lands, explaining the ubiquity of the dish, but this sometimes backfires when the Dreamer turns out to be a proper Scotsman. One reason for this ubiquity is that, like a pasty, haggis is a good way to prepare cheaper, lower quality meat or preserved meat, but in fact the filling can include anything, provided some form of grain meal and animal or vegetable suet is included.

Haggis is properly classified as a pudding; in fact, it is called the "Great Chieftain o' the Puddin'-Race" in a poem by Robert Burns, Address to a Haggis. It features as the main dish of a Burns Supper, along with neeps and tatties, and a dram. However, this is not the kind of pudding that modern American Dreamers are familiar with. Technically, a pudding is any dish that incorporates a source of starch and fat, usually in the form of grain flour and suet, though sugar, cream, and eggs can substitute.

There are two general types: savory puddings, which use meat (which can be left out or substituted with vegetables) and are served as main or side dishes, and cream or sweet puddings, that are served as desserts. Puddings can almost literally be made out of anything. Dessert puddings typically use cornstarch, gelatin, eggs, rice, or tapioca to thicken a mix of sugar and milk or cream, and can have flavourings added, such as bread, chocolate, fresh and dried fruit, treacle or syrup, honey, molasses, fruit juices, alcoholic beverages, and nuts.

Several types of dishes that are sometimes called puddings but are not, are pottage, polenta, and mush. Pottages are more like thick stews or soups and are made out of whatever is available. Pottages often sit on the fire for days with new ingredients added as it is consumed. Mush is essentially cornbread that is boiled rather than baked, and allowed to set into a gel. Polenta can be made from corn, but also from wheat, millet, spelt, chickpeas, or chestnuts. It is boiled to a paste, then baked, fried, or grilled. Mush and polenta are also sometimes called porridge.

The last processed food to be discussed is gelatin. Gelatin is the name for a preparation of collagen, a major animal structural protein. It is normally obtained by boiling bones and skin as well as cartilage. If left dilute, the jelly-like substance that congeals as the liquid cools is called aspic, but it can be concentrated using filtration and evaporation, at which point it forms the denser gelatin. It can then be dried, ground into powder, and shifted for storage. A more industrial approach is to first treat skin and bones with a dilute acid solution to desalt them, then treat them repeatedly with hot water to degrease them, removing as much fat as possible. They are then treated for a longer period with a stronger acid or alkali solution to partially dissolve the collagen.

Extraction is achieved using water or acid plus heat. This is a multistage process where both the heat and the acidity are gradually increased. Once dried and ground, sugar and flavouring can be added to the gelatin powder, which can be reconstituted with hot water and then allowed to set as it cools. An alcoholic beverage can also be substituted for some of the water. One advantage of gelatin is that it can be poured into decorative moulds. Also, especially hard gelatins made with a minimum of water have a long shelf life if keep clean and dry. Substitutes for gelatin include agar and carrageenan, obtained from seaweed, konjac obtained from the plant of the same name, and cornstarch.

As a final note, processed foods are not the same as convenience foods. While many convenience foods are, or can be derived from, processed foods, many are also simply preserved or specially packaged forms of regular or raw foods. Examples of this kind of convenience food are nuts, candy, and pickled eggs, vegetables, and fruit. Other common convenience foods are dried soup "paste" (soup that has had the bulk of its water removed until it forms a thick gel-like consistency), sandwich wraps, and stews or pot roasts stored in pots or wrapped in sealed wax paper or leather bags and boiled in water.

Caerleon Order Personal Weapons

The personal weapons of the Caerleon Order are those that can be carried and operated by one person. They are the primary piece of equipment carried by all Order personnel, whatever else they may have. For soldiers, they are the tools of their trade: destroying monsters. For agents, they are a means of self-defense, but they can be used for assassination as well.

Jump to the webpage.

Assassin Team Janus

Team Janus --- Independent Contract Assassins

Eile Chica is an ex-special forces operative, an expert in guns, explosives, and hand-to-hand combat, plus surveillance, stealth, and electronics. Her team had been sent in to destroy a terrorist lab making biological toxins, but it was betrayed when the Administration made a deal with the terrorists to get ahold of stolen nuclear material. They were all killed except Eile. She destroyed the lab, but went underground and became a freelance assassin. She is a consummate professional, who always reduces the risks to as low as possible.

Sonne Hiver is an ex-medical scientist, an expert in drugs, poisons, and diseases, plus computers. She worked as civilian scientist at USAMRIID, specializing in highly-virulent diseases, especially those that had been modified for weapons use. Budget cuts threatened her position, so she sent letters laced with anthrax spores to various government, media, and entertainment personalities to make it look like a terrorist attack. It succeeded, and she got more funding, but she was soon found out and she went underground. She became a freelance assassin, using her medical knowledge to kill her targets. She is a thrill killer, who gets a rush out of risky capers, the riskier the better.

They first meet when they are contracted to go after the same target. Sunny kills the target first, in a spectacular fashion that calls too much attention to it, threatening Eile's contractor, so he sends her after Sunny. However, the contractor betrays Eile to save himself, and she and Sunny must work together to avoid being caught. When they find out how well they work together, they become partners and form Janus.

They are totally apolitical, and do not discriminate as to ideology. They don't care why someone wants someone else dead, as long as they get paid. They would gladly accept a contract from Al-Qaeda on Monday to kill the Director of the CIA, then take a contract from the CIA on Wednesday to kill Bin Laden. they have only three scruples:

First, they do not accept contracts made against kids. They don't care what they're suppose to have done, kids are too innocent to understand what they've gotten involved in.

Second, they do not accept contracts for hits in Colorado by domestic contractors, or in the USA offered by international contractors. They have to have a safe haven to go home to after they've completed a hit.

And third, they do not kill innocents. Nothing gets law enforcement and the general public enraged faster than blood and bodies all over the street. So they plan their hits to do as little collateral damage as possible, even if it increases their own risk.

Parallel Universes

I call the fictional world in which my stories occur the Medb hErenn Universe. I chose that name because Medb was the first character to reside in that universe, but it is also the home of Eile and Sunny of Team Girl, and Sir Differel Van Helsing.

Like all fictional universes, it has certain rules that it must adhere to, and since it is very much the same as our primary universe, it obeys the same physiochemical laws. This is the first of a series of posts in which I describe some of these laws to show what the MhE Universe, and our own, is like.

Long a staple of certain forms of science fiction and fantasy, parallel universes, or multiverses as they now tend to be called, are gaining scientific respectability as evidence for their existence mounts. This essay will describe the basic ideas behind the concept in a way that hopefully will make them easy to understand.

There was a time when multiverses were thought to be separated by higher dimensions, such that there might be many other universes in existence, but we could never find them because we could not see through the dimensional barriers. New evidence has, however, largely changed all that. Gone are the higher dimensional planes for the most part; parallel universes are now separated by extreme distance and the expansion of the universe.

Read the rest of the article.

Next eBook: In an Octopus's Garden

The next story in my schedule to be published through Smashwords will be:

In an Octopus's Garden

A young childless couple take an extended vacation cruise in the South Pacific, hoping to conceive a baby, but beings older than Man target them for their own related purpose.

This will be another free ebook.

New eBook: One-Percenter Vendetta

I have just published my latest ebook:

One-Percenter Vendetta

Sir Differel Van Helsing once believed she would never have a family of her own. It just seemed inconceivable that she would ever forge an emotional tie to another human being that could leave her vulnerable and thus compromise her ability to run the Caerleon Order.

Then she met a good man who genuinely liked her for herself. Despite her attempts to resist, she eventually fell in love with him. They married and conceived a child, and she came to believe they would be together forever.

When he was assassinated by a rival monster-hunting organization, her whole world fell apart. Though she recovered in time, she came to question her commitment to running the Order. She knew she could not be an effective director if she had any doubts, so she decided to take some time off to reconsider her life's choices.

Taking a cue from her parents' premarital activities, she bought and refurbished an antique motorcycle so she could tour the English country back-roads alone as an outlaw biker. She plans to spend whatever time she needs to work through her dilemma, because she realizes that whatever decision she makes will be final and irrevocable for the rest of her life, and she wants to make sure it is the right one.

Unfortunately, paranormal threats are everywhere, and try as she might she cannot ignore them, or her duty.

This ebook is free and can be downloaded from Smashwords.

The One True and Only Way -- To Become Published (Part 3)

Continued from Part 2:

The reason why the HWA's One True Method doesn't work for me is that I have Attention Deficit Disorder. I was diagnosed at a young age, and with the help of medication and therapy I learned how to deal with it, but no one can be cured of it, so I still have it and it still affects me. One aspect of ADD is difficulty concentrating on the task at hand. People with ADD are easily distracted and are more susceptible to boredom and frustration. They too readily abandon current projects to pursue new ideas.

Though I've know I've had ADD all my life, I didn't equate it with my writing problem until I saw a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci on The History Channel, and one historian speculated that he may have had some form of ADD because of his lifelong penchant for abandoning projects unfinished. As he described it, once Da Vinci had found a solution for whatever artistic problem he was working on, he lost interest in finishing the work because it became drudgery that bored him.

That described my problem practically to a tee. I would get an idea for a story and start working on it, but when the excitement wore off and the writing became drudgery, I would lose interest, and I was easily distracted by the next story idea that inspired me. Once I understood that, the solution was obvious: work on more than one story simultaneously instead of one at a time. The idea was that, if I got tired with one story, I would work on another, and when I get tired with it, I would go back to the first. And so on.

I didn't know whether it would work, and for awhile I doubted it would. But the first sign of success was when I didn't completely abandon old stories but went back to them with renewed excitement. Then I actually finished a story, then another, and then another, all the while starting on new projects with no sense of abandoning the old ones. By the time I had joined the HWA, I had completed six stories, one of which I sold for a cent a word, which qualified me for Affiliate membership.

My reason for joining was because the HWA website advertised the discussion board as a place for inexperienced writers to learn from experienced ones how to be professional writers. I hoped that now that I was finishing stories I could become commercially published. Unfortunately, it didn't take me long to discover that all the Actives could do was teach Affiliates how to qualify as Active members, and the only way they could do that was promote the One True Method and certain small specialty horror presses. The only thing else they did was boast of their own successes and stroke each others' egos. And denigrate Affiliates who didn't show what they thought should be the proper deferential respect for Actives.

A case in point was when another Affiliate asked for help with his inability to discipline himself to write. The problem he described resembled mine, so I told him what I did to get around it. Another member told him writing was a job, like mowing the lawn, and that he should stop whining and just do it if he was really serious. In his reply he thanked us both, but then he stated that it sounded like I had the right insight into his problem and he was going to try my idea. That prompted the other member to say that I was just an Affiliate and I didn't know what I was talking about. When I explained that my method was working well for me, he compared his publishing credentials to mine, pointing out that he was professionally published whereas I was not, and concluded by saying that I should just keep my mouth shut and follow his advice. Other members who added their opinions didn't criticize him for his rudeness, but did criticize me for "disrespecting" him.

And that was pretty much par for the course as far as discussions on the board were concerned. I stuck it out as long as I could, but I finally got fed up with the elitism and left the HWA. Since then, I still haven't been professionally published, and now I'm self-publishing, but I am still completing stories. I don't claim my method will work for everyone, but it is the One True Method for me.

Postscript: Since I originally wrote that, I have self-published 27 ebooks (#28 tomorrow), and readers have downloaded 2000 copies total so far. That may not sound like much, but the average print run for the hardcover edition of a new author's first book is only a few thousand copies, so in less than a year I have "sold" nearly as many copies. Granted, the analogy is not perfect: ebooks are more like paperbacks, and that 2000 copies is spread over all 27 ebooks. However, people are still downloading all my ebooks, even those published six months ago. So self-publishing seems to work for me; at least, people are able to read my stuff now.

I haven't given up on traditional publishing. Over the summer I submitted to a horror anthology (the story was ultimately rejected; no big surprise) and I have recently submitted to Tor.com and Lovecraft eZine. But so far my "luck" is holding; I have not yet seen any of my stories commercially published.

Why is the subject for another post.

Food Preservation in the Dreamlands

Because the Dreamlands lack refrigeration, many modern Dreamers assume that food preservation is non-existent, or at best fairly primitive, limited to salting and smoking. As such, they tend to be quite surprised when they discover that food preservation is not only prevalent, but also quite sophisticated. Part of the problem is that refrigeration tends to spoil people. Most of them do not understand that even as recent as the 1960s in America many people still canned food, even in suburban areas. Much of this may have stemmed from the fact that they grew up during the Depression and carried over old habits into the 'modern' age. Certainly very few of their children followed their example, though the Counterculture may have had a great deal of influence in that regard. Be that as it may, in post-sixties America people tended to buy fresh food at the grocery store and stored it in the refrigerator until they were ready to eat it, rather than tried to preserve it against future need. Granted, there seemed little point in doing the latter when food was so abundant and readily available, but these same people also did not understand that the processed foods they bought were themselves preserved, using chemicals, to extend their shelf life beyond what would normally be possible, both at room temperature and in the refrigerator. All most people knew was that if they put leftovers in the 'frig', they could stay edible for days, even more than a week, and if they froze them, they could be stored for weeks, even months.

Historically, the purpose of preservation was to stop or slow down the loss of quality, edibility, and nutritional value of food through spoilage, by preventing the growth of microorganisms as well as retarding the oxidation of fats which cause rancidity, so it could be stored for longer periods. Typically, this occurred right after the fall harvest, to provide food for the coming year until the next harvest. Later, preservation made it possible to use food as a trade good and ship it over great distances. Both are also true of the Dreamlands, except that other technologies have both increased harvest yields and allowed for food production throughout the year, making food both abundant and easily accessible even in rather remote areas. Nonetheless, preservation also makes it possible to store food once it is acquired and placed in the pantry.

Read the rest of the article.