S.L. Armstrong's Blog, page 12

300th Blog Post Giveaway Winner!

We have a winner! Congrats to Melaniem!

Thank you to everyone who commented. It seems I should offer more of my creative process and pictures for my recipes. We’ll see what I can do about the pictures. I look forward to the next 300 posts!

“Immortal Symphony” Serial Fiction Coming January 2013

In January, I’m going to be trying something new. Storm Moon Press has begun to advertise our new serial line that will go live during our three year anniversary. I’ll be honest, I’ve been very again serial fiction for a long, long time. I’ve never understood the appeal of paying for installments of a story that, when it’s all said and done, would cost me more than if the author had simply written and published the novel in one go. I still don’t get the draw of that particular type of serial fiction, but hey, to each their own, I say!

Storm Moon Press, though, is doing something very different. It’s more in line with those old radio shows or modern episodic television. Once we thought of it in that model, it gelled wonderfully in our brains, and it was a serial model I could really get behind. There’s no gouging of our readers. There are three ways to enjoy the serial, three way to pay. It’s very exciting!

K. and I will be debuting a serial called Immortal Symphony, and right now, it’s planned out as five seasons (each season will contain six episodes, each episode being between 15,000 and 20,000 words). We’ve already plotted out the first three episodes and, by the end of the weekend, I’m hoping to have the entire first season ready to write! Season One is called Overture, and the first four episodes are called A Meeting of Fate, Life of the Party, Ghost in the Closet, and Shadow from the Past. Now that I’ve shared that, I’ll share the blurb.

You think you know the story of Dorian Gray, but you’re wrong. The real story didn’t end the way Oscar Wilde penned; in fact, it hasn’t ended at all. The ageless beauty of Dorian Gray walks now in our world of cellphones and lattes and internet porn. His latest conquest is Gabriel Lawrence, a paranormal investigator with a secret or two of his own. But the trouble with a life as long as Dorian’s is that the skeletons are threatening to overrun the closet… and not all of them want to stay dead.

The first episode should be available January 11th, 2012 (which is the second Friday of the month, which is when each episode will drop). All first episodes will be priced at $0.99, and then all subsequent episodes are priced based on length. If a reader is a fan, though, and know they’d want to read all of Overture, they can buy a Season Pass for $13.99. I can hear the complaints now, though. It’s $13.99. Well, there’s added value in the Season Pass. Season Pass holders will be able to access bonus content and will receive the final ebook at no extra charge. In the case of Immortal Symphony, K. and I plan to offer the kinkier sex scenes that would otherwise slow down the pace of the story proper and some glimpses into Gabriel’s past lives with Dorian. So, with this, readers get 120,000 word novel and probably an additional 40,000 words in short stories and bonus scenes.

I’m really pumped about this. It’s new, it’s different, and I think it’ll give K. and I an awesome opportunity to offer some really great fiction. I hope my readers are behind me on this one. >.> I promise, you won’t be disappointed.

My 300th Blog Post! Giveaway Time!

Guess what today’s post is?

It’s my 300th blog post! Yep, it’s been 300 blog posts. I began writing in this blog on November 21, 2009 where I talked about . I’ve come a long way! I’m so thrilled, so happy. It’s been a wonderful journey, and I look forward to the next 300 posts.

But, to celebrate my 300th post, I’m going to do a giveaway. For the next 72 hours, you can comment here to be entered into a giveaway for some fun stuff.

You’ll win:

Bookmarks for some of my titles

A signed copy of any of my print titles (The Keeper, Rachmaninoff, Catalyst, or Other Side of Night: Bastian & Riley)

Four Japanese candy kits (and I can include instructions how to use them if you need them)

This does require that you’re open to giving me your address so I can ship the prizes, but I promise not to share it.

What candy kits? These are fun, let me tell you.

Fluffy Bubble Shake (ramune flavor)

Nerunerunerune (grape flavor)

Gummy Tsureta (ramune flavor)

Gummy Tsureta (grape flavor)

They’re fun to play with, even if the taste leaves something to be desired. But it’s fun! And you get a book signed by K. Piet and me. So… comment! Tell me what you’ve liked about the blog, what you might like to see more of in the future. I’m all ears!

Recipe Monday: Green Goddess Dip/Dressing

There is a ‘dressing’ in my household that I get asked to make a lot. It’s my Green Goddess dressing. It’s a basic dip, actually, that came from a recipe from The Melting Pot. It’s awesome and yummy, very versatile. We have it over chicken, as a pasta sauce, thinned as a dressing, stuffed into mushroom caps and baked… oh, the possibilities are endless.

Ingredients

16oz room temperature cream cheese

1/2C sour cream

1/4C minced shallot

1/4C minced chives

1/4C minced parsley

salt

pepper

In a saucepan, heat the cream cheese until it’s smooth and creamy. Take it off the heat and add your shallots and sour cream. Let it cool slightly, and then add salt, pepper, and herbs. Mix thoroughly and chill for two hours.

Cold like this, it’s a great dip for veggies. Spoon this into mushroom caps and bake at 350 for 10 minutes, and you have great stuffed mushrooms. Toss 1/2C of it with spaghetti and top with parmesan. Pour it over cooked chicken. Thin it with milk or cream and have it over salad. You can also mix up the herbs. For a salad dressing, I like adding tarragon and dill. I know some people love adding basil, but I’m not a fan of basil. You’ll want to use fresh, tender herbs, not the woody ones, but this is one customizable dip/dressing, and it’s a staple here in our house.

New Cover Art: Morningstar

This is the new cover art for Morningstar. It’s absolutely beautiful. Nathie really knocked this one out of the ballpark! I plan to rework the original story of Morningstar, make it longer, cleaner, better. It’s with the editor at the moment for some developmental feedback. It’s hard to know how to change something when you only know how it’s always been.

I’d thought to morph this into a M/M/M story, bringing Michael down from Heaven so he could be with Morningstar and Radueriel. Not sure if that will happen or not. It’s just a thought in my head. But, I love this story, these characters, and I want to see them doing better than they have been. So, you have that to look forward to! I hope to have this out late winter 2012/spring 2013. We shall see, but I have high hopes, and I want to do Nathie’s artwork justice.

The Myth of the One True Experience

Something I see a lot is criticism leveled at authors about how they haven’t written an experience authentically. What do I mean?

Straight women can’t write the Gay Experience.

White men can’t write the Black Experience.

An atheist can’t write the Muslim Experience.

On and on it goes. From the Trans* Experience to the Christian Experience to the Woman Experience, everyone is accused of not being able to write authentically. This really bothers me as an author, mainly because I watch authors backed into corners where there is no answer that won’t dig them in deeper for assumed sins. This boils down to Fiction Is Fiction, in my opinion, and with fiction, there is a lot of leeway. Especially if you aren’t writing contemporary fiction. But, for a segment of readers, authors who write anything other than their own life experiences are committing the worst crime imaginable.

I disagree. Why? Because, quite simply, there is no One True Experience. There just isn’t. My experience as a pagan-bisexual-woman will not be the same experience as another pagan-bisexual-woman. We may have similar experiences, but in the end, they are not related to one another in the slightest because we both experienced something different.

From what I’ve observed, the outcries of the One True Experience seem offended that anyone other than those they approve of are writing about aspect of their everyday lives. Well, tough. That’s life. A factual error is all well and good to point out, but writing thousands of vitriolic words because someone wrote a black character who happened to be well-educated and wealthy doesn’t mean they’ve done a disservice to the lives of black people. There are well-educated, wealthy black people in the world, and their experiences are just as valid as a poverty-stricken, struggling black character.

Same with any other type of character. For people screaming for authors to step away from harmful stereotypes, I feel that a lot of the conversation is, in essence, readers demanding authors write socially acceptable stereotypes. While stereotypes are fine in general terms, as they do exist and there’s a reason why they exist, perpetuating that there is only one valid way to experience a life is just… narrow-minded and silly.

There is no One True Experience. It doesn’t exist. There are millions of experiences, all of them different with different results, and it would be nice to celebrate that diversity rather than stomp our feet and demand authors conform to unnecessary restrictions in how to write their characters.

Recipe Monday: Banana Bread

A favorite quick bread of ours is my banana bread. It’s just… absolutely delicious. It’s moist, dense, and banana-y. I’m not a fan of bananas usually, unless they’re sliced into a bowl of cream and sugar, but this bread… ooo. Oddly, I like it the next day, sliced thickly, with a thick layer of cool (not cold) butter. XD Now, I want to make banana bread.

Ingredients

2C flour

1tsp baking soda

1/4tsp salt

1/2C butter, softened

3/4C brown sugar

1/4C raw sugar

1/2tsp cinnamon

3 eggs

3C mashed bananas

Preheat your oven to 350F and prep your loaf pan (this works best in a 9″x5″ loaf pan). I tend to butter and flour my pan, as it adds a lovely crust to the loaf, but you could use an oil spray.

In a bowl, combine the butter and two sugars. Cream together until the butter is light and fluffy. I use my hand mixer or my KitchenAid to do this. Creaming butter and sugar by hand is a pain in the ass. Add the eggs and bananas, mix thoroughly. Add all the dry ingredients and stir until just combined. Don’t over mix the quick bread. Pour the batter into the waiting pan. I like to top mine with some more raw sugar to give the top crust a sweet crunch.

Bake for an hour, and then check the loaf with a skewer. If the skewer comes out clean, it’s done. If not, leave it in, checking every five minutes until the loaf is cooked. Let cook half an hour in the pan, turn it out, and cool completely on a cooling rack. The loaf, wrapped in plastic cling, will keep about five days, but it’s best the day of or the day after baking.

Free Fiction Friday: Crash and Burn

Eventually, K. and I plan to write a series that stars Dorian Gray. It’s actually a paranormal romance, as there’s magic and bad guys and all sorts of sex (this is Dorian Gray, after all). The key to this romance is that Basil Hallward, the artist who originally painted Dorian’s portrait, keeps coming back. He’s reincarnated three times between the original life and the lifetime we meet him at in the story proper. Dorian’s life is one full of black moments, where he has been held captive, tortured, killed, and has endured all manner of humiliation. In between these bouts in his life, he reconnects with Basil in the new lives, though each life always ends in tragedy within a few short years.

One such like is Victor Durand, a French poet he falls in love with in 1953 Paris. The trick about Victor, though, is that the memories of Basil’s life returned to him much sooner than any life before. As a young boy, Basil’s memories asserted themselves and drove Victor on a life bent on revenge. His life wasn’t a happy one, and most of his relationship with Dorian wasn’t pleasant, either. He wanted to make Dorian pay for all the selfish, arrogant actions of the past. It’s a passionate love-hate relationship, as Victor/Basil loves Dorian as much as he hates him. It’s a story K. and I are just itching to tell, and we plan on novel–after the series itself is complete–that visit that time in Dorian’s life: the meeting, loving, and losing of Victor.

As I listened to Hurricane by 30 Seconds to Mars, with Victor and Dorian swirling through my mind, I wrote this small scene to their story. It will eventually be folded into their novel, but I thought I’d share it here, now. It may not make tons of sense, but I think it can be enjoyed by anyone who loves tragic angst.

—

Supper had been tense. Victor was seated at the head of the table, and Dorian at the other end. The meal served, the wine poured, they’d eaten in silence. A storm brewed in the room, the air pregnant with the silent fury each man felt for the other. Old wounds opened, bleeding between them. Infection set deep in the soul, and there was no cure. Dorian’s eyes never left Victor’s face. He watched every movement, his own body unmoving in his chair. How could he hate someone he loved so much? How could he want someone who loved to punish him over and over for sins he simply didn’t remember committing?

Victor lifted his cigarette case and plucked one from inside. In an elegant move, he flicked a match against the striking pad and lit the cigarette, the scent of clove and tobacco wafting across the room. Through the haze of smoke, Victor’s eyes shined like honey and fire in the yellowed electric light of their home. Dorian still couldn’t believe with a flip of a switch they had light. A modern convenience that complemented Victor’s coloring. His fingers itched to comb through Victor’s thick, birch-colored hair. He wanted to tangle them in the long strands, twist and pull, make Victor scream the way Victor liked to make him scream.

It was a game. Everything was a game with Victor. It broke Dorian’s heart. Over and over, he tried to make a step toward intimacy, toward knowing the man who had shared his bed and home for the last three years. Each attempt, though, only reinforced the fact that Victor didn’t want intimacy. He wanted to punish Dorian. Not that Dorian knew why, only that it was the fact of their relationship. Words of love were always coated with derision, hatred, humiliation. His poet could wind him up until he snapped, and there would be no soft hands to put him back together again. Anger bubbled in Dorian, anguish he hadn’t felt since Basil’s death. There was no outlet. No way to bleed it out. Dorian thought this was how one lost their mind. His hands ached where they gripped the arms of his chair, his knuckles white and fingers nearly numb.

After Victor took another drag off his cigarette, he smiled at Dorian. “Something the matter, ma loutre?”

Dorian narrowed his eyes, the pet name both endearing and enraging. “You know what upsets me.” There was no possible way Victor hadn’t intended to piss him off with last night’s antics. “You owe me an apology.”

Victor snorted. “I owe you nothing.” He stood up, snubbed his cigarette out in the ashtray. “You said you wanted to play with that tender boy, and I allowed it.”

“You did no such thing!” Dorian’s cheeks heated with embarrassment. Christ, he was too old, too debauched to be embarrassed, but somehow, Victor managed it. “You bloody well tied me up and left me like that as you played with him.”

“Dorian.” Victor said his name with an edge Dorian had learned meant Victor’s amusement with the situation was waning. “You did not give specifics. Perhaps this will teach you to speak your desires plainly to me.”

The hurt and rage and need erupted from Dorian in a broken scream as he shot to his feet. Before he could stop himself, he’d shoved everything covering his third of the table to the floor, fine crystal and porcelain crashing to the wood below. It did nothing to ease the fury, and so he turned to sideboard and shoved the silver service set with its food to the floor. The liquor cabinet was next, but Victor grabbed and slammed him into the wall. It knocked the air out of his lungs, but it didn’t matter. He didn’t think he could breathe anyway. Everything hurt. There was no right move. There was no way to make Victor love him. He’d done something, Dorian was certain, but what the crime was, he’d never figured out.

“That is enough,” Victor snarled into his face. “You will clean this mess up, and then you will come up to the bedroom, nightingale. You will take the strap tonight, I think.” He let Dorian go. “You have half an hour,” he said, and then he was gone, his footsteps ringing with a harsh finality on the back staircase.

With each step, Dorian heard that word again and again.

Nightingale.

Nightingale.

Nightingale.

Tears stung his eyes as he stared at the mess he’d made. His heart hammered, and supper threatened to make another appearance as his stomach roiled.

Nightingale.

He closed his eyes, the tears streaking down his cheeks.

Dorian knew his crime, after all.

One word, and he knew his crime.

Nightingale.

The mess was forgotten. He left it on the dining room floor and mounted the stairs two at a time, fear mingling with his anger, grief all but strangling him. He burst into their bedroom on the fourth floor. Victor stood in the middle of the room dressed in only his smoky trousers, and those honey eyes turned to him with displeasure. The fire in those eyes wasn’t passion. It wasn’t lust. It was vengeance.

Nightingale.

Dorian slammed the door. “Three years. You’ve been with me three years,” he shouted. “Did you always know? Did you always remember?”

“You’re mad,” Victor dismissed. He tossed his watch to the dresser top. “Go clean up your mess.”

“No!” Dorian pointed at him. “You called me nightingale. No one but Basil ever called me that. You call me your otter, not your nightingale. Only Basil. Only Basil!”

A slow, dark smile curved Victor’s beautiful lips. “A slip of the tongue, ma loutre.”

“No.” Dorian shook his head. “No, it wasn’t. I killed Basil. He came back. He came back to me as a sweet, gorgeous Welsh dancer. But when Kenneth remembered, he went mad. He killed himself. I buried him.” The heartbreak was just as fresh now as it had been then. “And then Joshua. Basil returned as Joshua. The memories tore him apart!”

Victor crossed his arms over his chest. “And you killed him.”

“I didn’t mean to!” But the words confirmed Dorian’s worst fears. No one knew what had killed Joshua. No one knew his hands had strangled the life from the innocent sculptor who had merely wanted to love him. “And now you.”

“And now me.”

Dorian swallowed against the bile rising in his throat. “My prudish painter has become a whorish Frenchman who takes great pleasure in torturing me.”

“You deserve it!” Victor raged at him. “You stole my life! You stole all our lives because you’re a selfish, arrogant child. You stole everything from me, and I will have justice!”

“I love you.” Dorian knew that deep in his soul. He’d loved Basil, no matter how he came to him. It never changed, never stopped. The wounds fresh on his soul, bleeding out, making his knees weak.

“You love yourself.” Victor’s hand tangled in Dorian’s hair, yanked his head back. The pain exploded through Dorian as he stared into the furious gaze. “You’ve only ever loved yourself since Harry’s touch. There is no room for me.”

The tears returned, lacing Dorian’s eyes and blurring Victor’s face in front of him. “Please…”

“Please what, nightingale?”

“Just kill me.” Dorian wasn’t sure if he could die—he hadn’t yet—but if anyone could do it, he was certain it would be Basil.

Victor stared down into his face for a long time. “Killing you right now would be a mercy,” he murmured, voice dark and rough. “I don’t feel merciful. You’ll pay for your crimes, Dorian, time and again, until your debt is paid in full. Then, perhaps, I will end your miserable, tainted existence and save the young men and women you’d corrupt from your touch. Save the world from your wickedness.” He released Dorian then, shoved him toward the door. “Now, go clean up your mess.”

Dorian grabbed onto the doorknob, swallowing several times as his scalp throbbed with pain. “Victor—”

“You have twenty minutes now. If it isn’t done, you will regret it, Dorian.” Victor’s face was unreadable, eyes shuttered. When Dorian didn’t move, Victor purred, “Test me if you think I’m lying.”

A shiver of fear, of anticipation, of sorrow ran down Dorian’s spine. He couldn’t send Victor away. He didn’t really want to. If Victor was Basil as well as Victor, then this was a man he’d loved for over a hundred years across three lifetimes. Even if the rest of his life was absolutely miserable, at least he had the soul he loved. At least he had something, even if it was a double-edge sword he gripped with both bloody hands.

Dorian wiped the tears from his cheeks, turned his back to Victor, and opened the door. He wasn’t sure he could clean up the dining room in twenty minutes, but he was going to try. He had to try. Maybe, in trying, he could somehow show Victor—and through Victor, Basil—just how sorry he was.

And maybe, just maybe, he’d be looking into Victor’s eyes when the man plunged the knife home and finally ended his life instead of being stabbed in the back. As he shut the door, he heard a match strike, smelled the scent of tobacco and cloves.

New Release: Fraternal Devotion

I’m a bit late with today’s blog post. Usually, I bank blog entries, but… wow. This past week has just wiped me out. The weekend was spent dealing with a sick husband-thing and co-author-thing, a lot of press business, and then today we had a sick cat. Poor Rada has viral conjunctivitis, which she’s had all her life (though we didn’t even know that!). We’re working on getting her feeling better, but, yeah, the past week has thrown me completely off my game.

But, I come today with a new release! Fraternal Devotion is the newest anthology containing a short story from K. Piet and me. We have the short On the Edge in this anthology, about fraternal twins Andrew and Ben, who have been struggling with their unconventional relationship since they were fourteen. I’m very proud of this short, and I hope reader enjoy it.

You can only buy it in three outlets: Storm Moon Press, Barnes and Noble, and Rainbow eBooks. This is mainly due to the content. It’s sad that consensual love stories between brothers will be denied distribution while rape and torture and violence can be widely and easily distributed, but I’ve made peace with the unfair field of fiction distribution. I’m glad the title can be found in the couple of places it currently is.

If you enjoy brocest/twincest, check out Fraternal Devotion. It’s $6.99 for ebook, $13.99 for print. I leave you with a new little excerpt to whet your appetites.

—

Andrew couldn’t sleep. He never slept well after a fight with Ben. A few shots of vodka hadn’t calmed him down or made sleep easier. One look at his small heroin kit had been enough for him to stash it back in the closet with an angry shove. Sure, the heroin would take him away from all this bullshit, but wasn’t that the very thing Ben hated about him? Ben hated the drugs, hated that he spent most of their extra cash to buy them for their weekends, when he could cut loose and fly high enough to fuck Ben without thinking. It wasn’t Ben’s fault he had hang-ups, but dammit, how could Ben blame him? They were brothers—twins—and there wasn’t exactly any way of getting around that.

Fuck trying to sleep. He wouldn’t fall back into the musical dreams of his subconscious at this rate. He pulled on a pair of boxers and stalked out into the living room. He left the lights off. Emo? Yeah, but he didn’t give a fuck. If he was going to ride out the rest of the night in a bad mood, he was going to make the best of it. Or, at the very least, make the worst of it work for him. If Ben made it so the music wouldn’t come back to him, then he’d find the tunes on his own, the hard way. It only took a minute to set up his keyboard and pull out his blank pads of lined music paper. He lit a single candle to see by, setting it in a glass holder so it wouldn’t bleed all over his keyboard.

The electric hum of his keyboard was usually a soothing thing, but tonight, it just felt like that palpable charge in the air before a fight. That’s what this was, wasn’t it? A fight over what he could and couldn’t do. What he could and couldn’t handle. Who was Ben to dictate what he was supposed to do and where their relationship was supposed to go? Who decided Ben’s pace was the end all, be all? No one, he told himself, but his inner voice wasn’t kind and added, but he deserves better than the shitty treatment he gets from you.

Recipe Monday: Cranberry Green Beans

In our house, this is a staple side dish for my cranberry brie chicken. I’ll share that recipe later. This one is simple and delicious. It serves four with no problem.

Ingredients

1lbs fresh green beans, tips removed

1C dried cranberries

1/2C 100% cranberry juice

4TBSP butter

salt and pepper to taste

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt the butter. Add dried cranberries and cranberry juice. Cook for two minutes. Add green beans, salt, and pepper. Reduce heat to medium-low. Cook for 5-7 minutes, until green beans are crisp tender. Don’t overcook your green beans. It’s such a sad thing to have limp green beans. Serve immediately with any main dish you like.

I definitely plan to make these for Thanksgiving and Christmas this year for my family.