M.J. Scott's Blog, page 22

Lazy pizza

Okay, so the ultimate in lazy pizza is picking up the phone and ordering one but even though I love pizza, let’s face it it isn’t the healthiest food in the world. So if I make it myself I can make a slightly healthier version and therefore get to eat it more often. Win win.

The biggest part of home made pizza is figuring out a base that works. I’m yet to find a pre made pizza base that I really like so when I’m after the ultimate quick and healthy-ish pizza base is a pita bread or souvlaki wrap. Top with whatever takes your fancy, whack in the oven at about 400 for about 10 minutes (or until the cheese is nice and melty and going golden) and voila, pizza in a hurry.

But sometimes I feel like a pizza that’s a bit more traditional seeming. I always thought making pizza dough was a bit of a faff. That is, until the brilliant Deb Perelman at the Smitten Kitchen posted about this Lazy Pizza Dough. Seriously, this is pizza dough that anyone can make. The only difficult part is needing to decide either a day or half a day in advance that you want to make pizza. You mix the dough, you leave the dough alone for 6-24 hours, then you shape it, top it with whatever you like cook it.  And get this.

Yum. A couple of tips. The sauce that is mentioned in the Smitten Kitchen post is yummy. But when I can’t be bothered doing that, I revert to a couple of tablespoons of jarred pasta sauce for the sauce. Also, the dough is pretty wet and sticky. You could probably roll it out to make a neater looking pizza but I just kind of stretch it out free form. For me, it makes two pizza bases. They’re fairly thick bases, so the pizza is pretty filling. I usually make 1 Pizza and then cook the other base untopped (for about 12 mins at the same temp as in the post), cool it and freeze it. Defrosted, you can use it as a sort of faux turkish bread to have with soup or dips etc or make pizza with it (you’d need to experiment with the cooking time or maybe if you want to freeze it to make pizza, cook it less but I haven’t tried this yet). You could also use this to make fresh hot faux turkish style bread with minimal effort. Go forth and enjoy some lazy cuisine!

 

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Out and about: Australian Romance Readers Convention 2015

I spent the weekend in Canberra (which is the capital of Australia for non-aussie peeps) hanging out at the Australian Romance Readers Convention run by the awesome Australian Romance Readers Association. Because I have impeccable timing, I had some sort of coldy/fluey thing last week, spent Thursday in bed and then headed off on Friday feeling less than wonderful. Yay for cold and flu medication and Sambucol. Because of that and because I have post-conference brain, I will make this mostly about the pictures but I had a great time and met lots of lovely readers and folks I know online and hadn’t met in person before and got to hang out with writer buddies and met Victoria Dahl, so it was a great weekend!

Things started a little inauspiciously when my flight was delayed for an hour due to some rain. Which wasn’t even bad rain and there was no thunder or lightning so we’re all still confused as to why. At least I had the window seat.

The view improved considerably up in the air (honestly, I never get tired of flying through sunset (or sunrise)…so so pretty.

We arrived at the hotel about 9.30pm on Friday night due to the delay, said hello to a few peeps then I took myself off to bed. Canberra looked pretty good Saturday morning.

My first panel was “Love in Alternate Realms” about writing fantasy romance with Kelley Armstrong, Nicole Murphy and Lillianna Rose which was fun. And moderated by Kate Cuthbert who made us all spill on OTPs and other silliness. And gave us magic wands.

Then I got to hang out (and do some writing as you know, book due end of this month) until the signing. Lovely to meet readers plus I got to sit with Kandy Shepherd and Kylie Scott who are both awesome and had chocolate, so win. And Keri Arthur and Anne Gracie wandered by.

Saturday night was the Awards Dinner where everyone gets dolled up and eats delicious food and cheers on the writers who have kicked romance writing butt during the year.

Obligatory writer buddy selfies with Kelly Hunter:

And Keri, of course:

. Our table had a good night.

Kelly won Favourite Short Contemporary for The Honeymoon Trap.

And Anne Gracie won Favourite Historical for The Winter Bride.

But the real rockstar of the night was Kylie Scott who won best cover and Favourite Contemporary for Play and then Favourite Continuing Series for the Stage Dive series and topped it off with Favourite Author of the Year. Since I love her books and she’s a very cool gal, I can only say, well played, ARRA voters, well played.

Sunday morning I woke up early enough for breakfast (mmm waffles) then, fortified by caffeine, made it to Victoria Dahl’s keynote. She had kind of lost of her voice (what is it with bugs and travel and planes? Get on that, airlines) but her speech about being an unsympathetic heroine in books and life was amazing. And appropriate for International Women’s Day. So good to spend the day with a bunch of women who are doing awesome things with their lives.

Then I snuck off with Sarah Mayberry and her hubby to see the War Memorial which I have never visited before. It’s a beautiful building and a very well done museum but also just heartbreaking. War is stupid. Let’s stop doing that.

This camel agrees with me.

Then I did my second panel A Rich Man’s World on billionaire heroes with Sofia Tate, Sylvia Day and Kelly Hunter, moderated by Kat Mayo which was fun.

The last panel I went to was on Small Town seduction with Victoria Dahl, Margareta Osborn, Barbara Hannay and Cheryl Adnams. Moderated by Kate Cuthbert who went above and beyond her moderator duties to mock up hilarious covers for each of the authors to title and come up with the story for.

After that, because Virgin had cancelled the 7.30pm flight out of Canberra and bumped us all onto the 5pm (thanks, for that), a bunch of us took our weary selves back to Melbourne. No window seat so no pics. Plus I may have napped a little. Luckily no delays on the way home, so was back with the kitties by 7.30 and passed out asleep by about 10.15pm. Thanks, ARRA, see you next time! Also, thank you to all the lovely ARRA peeps who nominated me for awards and voted for me. You are awesome.

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Sunday snippet – The Shattered Court #3

More info and pre-order links here.

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Bookworm thoughts: Magical realism

I’ve have Sarah Addison Allen’s First Frost sitting on my electronic TBR pile and I’ve been reading a couple of other Sarah Addison Allen book’s lately which has got me thinking about magical realism.

Magical realism, for those who don’t read it is a genre that on the fantasy spectrum but where exactly you draw the line is what got me thinking. Generally in magical realism the books are set in our world but there’s a fantastical element which is most often some form of magical/psychic ability that the protagonist or their has or sometimes ghosts play a role in the story. And there’s no real surprise that these abilities exist. Sometimes prejudice towards it but it’s accepted.

It’s a genre that I came across as an adult thanks to Like Water For Chocolate (I think I saw the movie then read the book).

Another well known, thanks to the movie, example is Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman.

And Barbara O’Neal writes women’s fiction that often has a touch of magical realism to it.

I’m not sure exactly why magical realism became a genre. Is it fantasy packaged to not be fantasy perhaps? Fantasy to appeal to those who might not read a ‘fantasy’ book. Fantasy with a literary bent? Urban fantasy also takes place in our world though there’s often a larger fantastical element, the addition of paranormal creatures (though there are urban fantasy that doesn’t have this). UF tends to have more violence and perhaps, higher stakes (more save the world than save the individual). Magical realism stories are often a woman’s journey story whereas UF tends to be procedurals (characters who are investigators or magic cops etc) or quests (or a combination of both). But Practical Magic has witches and a vengeful ghost who needs to be stopped which could be a urban fantasy plot.  I’m just not sure where one might fade into another.I read a lot of older English fantasy such as E.E. Nesbitt and Lucy Boston and Susan Cooper and Diana Wynne Jones as a kid and a lot of that is squarely our world fantasy with various degrees of the fantastical but they are all considered fantasy as far as I know.  It’s one of those interesting publishing categorisations that seem somewhat confusing. And maybe a barrier to readers of it finding other books they might like and readers of fantasy finding it? I don’t know. Because I really enjoy both genres and don’t think they’re so different. Just something that struck me as interesting when I was thinking about it.

Anyone got any deep (or not so deep thoughts) about this?

 

 

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The joys of a good binge watch

Because who hasn’t been up at 1am in the morning thinking ‘just one more episode’ as they hit play on the dvd/iTunes/PVR during a binge watch of their favourite TV show? I love a good marathon hit of my TV loves. Like The West Wing.

How about you? I love seeing the shows uninterrupted by adds and being able to see how the overarching plots and threads come together over a season (much easier to do when watching a show in shorter time period).

I think the first TV show I ever bought on VHS (and back then the series were EXPENSIVE here in Oz) was Buffy.

And I gave those tapes a good workout. In Australia, for a very very long time the TV channels had Aussies over a barrel. We didn’t have iTunes or region free DVD players or broadband and so we had to watch what we were given when we were given it. And TV programmers here are horrible. They move shows around without warning (seriously, even my intelligent record on my PVR has trouble keeping up), they declare episodes to be ‘season finales’ when they’re really episode ten and they’re just breaking for a non ratings period and not giving any hint of when shows might reappear. In the last few years they’ve started to “fast track” shows from the US so we get them a day or so after they air in the US but there’s still lots of shows we don’t get or are several seasons behind on. And shows don’t start up again when they do in the US necessarily once the stations feel they’re not the hot new thing anymore. We get hour upon endless hour of terrible reality TV and everything else is a mess. All this goes triple for anything thats sci fi or fantasy related. Plus pay TV (cable) has been limited to basically one provider who charges a fortune. And sometimes lock down shows so that they don’t appear on free to air or iTunes. They’ve apparently locked down the next season of Game of Thrones so that it won’t be on iTunes (I don’t understand the appeal of this to the company selling the program…why cut off legitimate sales and guarantee that people will pirate the show?) Netflix is arriving in Australia this year, so hopefully that will help break up the monopoly and keep the pay TV prices heading downwards (they have been forced to bring prices down thanks to iTunes in recent years).

Because of all this, these days I tend to wait until a show is on iTunes at a reasonable price or the DVD is out in the US or the UK (yay for region free DVD players) and I can buy it via Amazon or other online stores. The DVDs often come out months before the season starts in Australia and I no longer have to deal with the vagaries of Aussie TV programming (seriously, the networks are big proponents of cutting off your nose to spite your face). And then I settle down with some popcorn and a few spare nights and feed the muse big chunks of story (I believe all writers need to consume story in large quantities and various formats) with delight. The hardest part is hitting the stop button before it’s way past my bedtime. Because who can resist just one more hit of shows like Downton Abbey?

How about you? Who likes a good TV glom?

 

 

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Out and about: Melbourne Zoo

On Saturday I did a photo walk at Melbourne Zoo. Always good to learn some new camera tracks and check out the animals. It was a nice overcast day and didn’t reach the forecast 34 degrees, thank goodness. I have a zoo membership now so am going to try and get there and to the other two Melbourne area zoos a few times this year for sketching and pictures taking. Here are some of my fave pics of the day…I’ve put some more up on my facebook pages (M.J. page here and Melanie page here).

Shot with a Canon DSLR and edited in Snapseed (which is a very handy app to have).

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Sunday Snippet – Lawless in Leather #3

More info and pre-order links here.

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Art adventures: Fashion illustration

Maybe this is the grown up version of playing with paper dolls but I’ve always really liked fashion illustration. I am not really a fashion person in the sense of wanting to spend wodges of money on clothes (though hey, if I ever am in the financial position too, that may change) but I do appreciate looking at a gorgeous frock (red carpet viewing of awards shows is a must) or two that I’ll never be able to afford. I’m never able to stay away from fashion/costume exhibitions at museums etc (seeing the McQueen show at the Met was one of the highlights of my trip to New York a few years back). So armchair fashion appreciation has been a thing. Makes sense I guess. It’s colour and line and prettiness. Those are my visual jam.

And besides looking at the real thing or photos of the real thing, I’ve always liked how fashion illustration suggests the clothes in a simple way. For example:

Illustration by Jessica Durrant.

Illustration by Katie Rodgers.

Illustration by Megan Hess.

Just so pretty. Fashion illustration always makes me think of old school glamour like Audrey Hepburn and Katharine Hepburn and Grace Kelly. So when I saw that Katie Rodgers has a class on watercolour fashion illustration on Skillshare I thought I’d give it a go (really, I am repeating myself but the internet is the best thing ever to happen for learning art). I think a lot of illustrators use markers and other mediums but I do like the way watercolour suggests movement and light and shade in the fabric so beautifully.

It was lots of fun to try. Like the grown up version of paper dolls, maybe. Here are my first couple of attempts. I’m sure there will be more. One day I’ll learn how to draw hands and noses. I hate noses! So tricky. So yay for art forms that are okay with suggestions of features

That one’s is inspired by one of Lady Mary’s dresses in Downton Abbey. And this next one by a wedding dress pic I found somewhere.

I look forward to some more experimenting in the future. And am now adding “pin gorgeous frocks” to my list of Pinterest activities” as well as rekindling the old habit of ripping things out of mags. Sigh. I really do need a clone or two.

So how about you? Like looking at pretty things? Or drawing them?

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Fave things: Fitness stuff

Given I’m trying to move more this year, I thought I’d talk about some of my fave bits and pieces of fitness stuff. Other than a decent pair of sneakers – knees and feet and shins are important, folks – here’s what I almost always use.

Flipbelt – these are great. It’s a stretch tube of fabric essentially with little slits to form pockets so you can slip your phone in and your keys etc. Much more comfortable than arm bands etc or any other sort of belt/fanny pack type deal I’ve tried. Particularly in summer because it’s not easy to find female exercise gear that includes any pockets.

iPod or iPhone – for tunes, podcasts or Cardio Coach. I need sound when I’m exercising on my own. Distraction required! These days it’s usually my iPhone because then I can take the odd snap while I’m out and about.

Fitbit – to remind one that one is not moving enough. I have a flex which I really like. I used to have a one (or maybe it was a zip) but I have always been terrible with clip on type pedometers…I invariably end up washing them when I forget to take them off whatever they were clipped onto or forgetting them. I occasionally forget my flex if it’s been charging or something but not often.

Headphones – I like good old fashioned light over the ears headphones. I’ve never found earbuds that will stay in my ears without hurting, so I stick to my over ear ones. Plus I can still hear what’s going on around me.

My fifth fave is somewhat location dependent.

Outdoors – sun protection. A cap, sunnies and sunscreen will be worn. Likewise a rashie if swimming. My irish/english and scottish ancestors have gifted me with skin that these days will fry at the drop of a hat, so slip, slop, slap is the go.

Indoors – my elliptical trainer. Dodgy knees mean I can’t really run outside or on a treadmill without much pain but I can run on my elliptical. At the moment I’m doing rehab on one cranky knee so I’m stuck with an exercise bike which I really don’t enjoy. Looking forward to getting back to the old elliptical. Otherwise fitness DVDs or these days, the wonders of YouTube and sites like Fitness Blender, Tone it up, Blogilates etc. I haven’t used these a lot yet because at the moment, I’m restricted due to the knee but plan on trying more out when I can.

Now I just need someone to invent the thing that sucks the story ideas that pop into my head when exercising out of my head and into the computer without having to stop to make notes!

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Out and about: A tale of two comedians

I am a big fan of stand up comedy and comedians though I don’t get to see live comedy often enough due to the need to you know, stay home and write words. For a long time, my favourite comedian has been Billy Connolly. I’ve seen him a few times live but not for a while so when I found out he was touring this year, my reaction was SQUEEEEEE and point me to the booking site.

My second favourite comedian is probably Eddie Izzard. When I found out he was also touring this year, I spent about two seconds doing a snoopy dance to thank the comedy tour gods and booked tickets.

(Apparently pinky purple and blue are in colours for comedy shows this year .)

My third favourite comedian is Tim Minchin (hmmm, Eddie and Tim, maybe I have a thing for red headed very funny, very smart guys who rock a bit of eyeliner. Tim also ticks the musician box.). He is also making a rare visit back to Oz this year to do stand up but for one night only in Sydney and I missed out on tickets for that one. Two out of three ain’t bad, I guess. And I did see him in Jesus Christ Superstar last year. So I can wait to see him to stand up. Just.

Anyway, I headed off to see Billy on January 30th and laughed a lot. Though it was a tad bittersweet as Billy is now seventy two and though he is as funny as ever, he is not the same fireball of energy he was when I first saw him in the nineties (and watched via TV since well before then). The energy is still there and the wit and irreverent attitude is still there but he’s just a little calmer. But I shall live in denial that Billy is any older (or that I am for that matter) and hope I get to see him again.

And then I headed off to Eddie on February the ninth and laughed a lot as well. Both Eddie and Billy are both more from the rambling storyteller school of comedy more than jokes. Eddie has a few more set bits than Billie but still goes off on tangents. Plus he gigs in French and German and apparently is learning Spanish. Which is hard to wrap one’s head around. One of my favourite of his sketches has always been Death Star canteen.

And this tour, he did the sequel. Pang! Happy making. Note to self, see some more comedy this year. Also, someone please arrange for Tim to tour Melbourne please.

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