M.J. Scott's Blog, page 38

Catching up

Sorry for the blog silence but on Monday I finished Book 3 (yippeeee!) and have subsequently been suffering post book finishing frenzy brain. And doing the Blood Kin page proofs. Not sure this is a good combination which is why I am only doing short batches each day.

Yesterday Keri and I headed off to Sydney for the Australian Romance Readers Association Awards Dinner which was great fun. I did not win my category (not that I was expecting to) but I did want to say THANK YOU again to everyone who either nominated Shadow Kin or voted for it (or both). It was wonderful to be nominated for my first book. Congratulations also to all the very talented writers who did win (with a special shout out to my buddy Kelly Hunter for best short contemporary! Yay!!). It's always fun to see friends and talk books with readers and writers alike!

Given that I am still somewhat limited in my mobility options (four months tomorrow since I busted this stoopid ankle) and that the weather in Sydney was both wet and steamy, there was no sight seeing opportunities and we flew back early this morning due to various other factors. So no exciting Sydney pics for pic of the week.

However, on Friday, I did put my poor grubby little car through the automatic car wash thingy, and given going through the car wash involves sitting in a switched off car with big green swirly things thumping around you, I thought I'd pull out the iPhone and see if I could get any cool pictures. There are a couple of either blurry big green swirly things or still big green swirly things and then there was this one…which I like because I like water and the textures it makes. The main thing I've learnt about taking pics in the last few years is that you have to take a lot of pictures to get the good ones!

Pic of the week #5

Snapped on Tuesday. I was in the car park near work and it was all grey grey grey with just one golden gleam of light….

Summer in Melbourne at its finest : )

In other news, writerpalooza continues. I'm getting close now and finally, FINALLY starting to get that feeling where the book kind of pops up in your head with bits and snippets all the time. After wrestling with the damn thing for MONTHS, it's a relief. But would love it to be done, so much typing for the next three days.

Pic of the week, #4

I promised it wouldn't be all pics of cats but tomorrow, according to the RSPCAs best guess at least, is the wee mad torti's second birthday. So I took some "Last day of being 1 pics" of her.

Here's my fave. Shows off her lovely ink splatter nose and her pretty eyes (even if she is wearing her "what are you doing now, crazy hooman?" expression).

Happy birthday for tomorrow, crazy cat! I'll find you a nice box to chew.

Writerpalooza, Day 4 (belated)

Sorry, last night I got distracted by yarny things and Downton Abbey (a rewatch of S1).

Anyway yesterday was very hot and I was sleepy due to a hot night. I finished the other new scene and then had to pause to contemplate what comes next.  Still not entirely sure but I guess I'll find out as I type today.

Last night was hot again and I got up early this morning to do this:

I promise there won't be bread posts  every week but this is my first loaf using just the sourdough starter (no added yeast) so I'm quite chuffed.  I probably could've let it rise in the pan a bit longer (it didn't rise as much in the oven as some bread does) but it tastes delish! Maybe a tiny bit saltier than I like, so I'll reduce the salt quantity next time.  I don't add salt to much food so I notice it when it's there and it has to be there for bread, really.  Lovely chewy crunchy crust. I largely followed this recipe but only used a kilo of flour, so scaled everything down accordingly. Added bonus, virtually no kneading required.

And now on with the rest of the day.

Writerpalooza, Day 3

One of those days that was productive but there wasn't much forward motion to show for it. I revised a chapter and a half, including writing a one new scene I hadn't expected (I'm taking this as a good sign that the girls in the basement are re-engaged and starting another).  I probably wrote around 2000 new words but I probably slashed at least 1000 too.

I'm down to the last 30 odd pages of written bits and, I think I said yesterday, I'm not sure how much of that I'll be keeping…it will largely depend on what turns the plot takes after this next new scene. I'm hopeful I can use some of it but if I do it will have to be tightened up and trimmed (this last bit was what I was writing when I realised the story wasn't quite working the first time round).  Whatever happens, the words still seem to be coming easily enough, so if I can make the plot come together, we should be on the homeward stretch!

In other news, Rawhide on the ukulele sounds quite amusing!

Writerpalooza, Day 2

Good day. Scrivener informs me I added 3216 words for the day, I finished the chapter I needed to backtrack to, which accounted for most of those, plus I revised another chapter and a half.

Which leaves me with about 35 pages of stuff I've already written, some of which will have to be ditched, I think and then it's all new stuff until the end.

Current word count is about 92k, so I've got somewhere between 10-18k to go to finish the draft.

Tomorrow I'll poke at the rest of the existing stuff and see what is useable and and start the charge to the end. Word count may go backwards if I have to cut but that's the joy of writing!

And now I am retiring to the couch to relax with a nice cool cider – my nod to Australia Day (I hate beer except in beer batter, so can't drink that!) Hope my fellow Aussies have had a beaut day!

Writerpalooza, Day 1

Right, final tally for today is one whole chapter revised and half of two others (to finish this book I need to revise about four chapters worth of stuff and write maybe eighty pages). Probably around 40 pages in all. Not bad given I was out for about 5 hours in the middle of the day then had the post big lunch sleepies!

Tomorrow I backtrack to finish another chapter now that I have a better idea what needs to be in it and hopefully revise another chapter or so…

A plan, egad.

Thanks to the wonders of public holidays and  a little judicious shuffling of my day job days, I have the next five days off.  Therefore, the plan (outside of the two or three things that involve leaving the house that I am committed to) it to make like a

fire up the writerly powers of mass word production—which in my head involves something that looks like this…

(More on this bit of cool gadgetry can be found here)

And see just how close to the end of this darn book I can get.  Now, I think actually finishing may be impossible unless I get a truly stupendous last act of book word frenzy going on but I have caffeine, I have chocolate and I have a Macbook Air and I can certainly get myself a good way towards that goal (touch wood, throw salt, sacrifice chocolate to the flying spaghetti monster etc etc). To keep myself honest I shall report in with the daily stats here on the blog. Wish me luck!

Two birds with one stone

aka some further sourdough adventures and a pic of the week!

So Thursday morning, my starter (Seymour) was tasting distinctly sour, so into the fridge he went (refrigeration keeps the development of the starter sort of on hold).

The question then became, what was I going to make with Seymour? I looked around a bit on the web but, in the end, I decided to KISS and go with one of the recipes from How to Bake a Perfect Life. One because the starter recipe is from there, so it seemed a good fit and two, because the recipe still had a teeny bit of yeast added in case Seymour was a dud.

So this morning, Seymour left the fridge so he could warm up to room temperature again. I was happy to see he still had a few bubbles and had developed a liquid layer on top (apparently a good thing…you just stir it back it).  Then I set out to make the Soft and Delicious wheat bread from the book. Only mine was going to be soft and delicious half white half wheat bread as I knew I didn't have the full amount of wholemeal flour I needed.

Bread is a funny beast, you never know how much flour a given amount of liquid will want to absorb on any given day…today is mild, overcast and slightly humid in Melbourne.  The recipe calls for 8-9 cups of flour all up.  I think mine has about 6 cups with maybe another half a cup added in through the kneading process and it's about 4 cups of white flour to 2 cups of wholemeal.

So here's the first step (well the second step after the dough rests for a bit initially)…dough after first batch of kneading ready for the first rise.

And about an hour or so later, here it is all nicely doubled in size (at which point the baker breathes a sigh of relief because the starter seems to be okay).

 

All nice and soft and squishy and full of the gases that help the bread rise.  Which means you have to get rid of some of the gases before you do the second rise. So you tip out the dough and "punch" it down. Though it's really more like pressing unless you've had a no good very bad day (please don't abuse the dough).

After it's punched down, it gets another little rest (to recover from the pummelling as we all need to do), then you knead some more (baking is good for the arm muscles) and then shape the dough. I went with good old fashioned loaves-to-be-baked-in-tins.

The loaves go off for another hour or sough of rising (until they've doubled in size roughly). Which gives you this…

All nice and puffy again, ready for the oven. I heated the oven with a pan of water in it (commercial ovens are generally steamy…this helps get a crunchy crust). My oven is fan forced so I think I used about 170 Celsius rather than 180.  While the bread was baking, I refreshed Seymour (fed him more flour and water to make up for the part of him I used in the bread) and he promptly started to froth and bubble up nicely so apparently he's happy to be used.

I started checking the loaves at about 40 mins as my oven tends to cook fast.  And the smell of baking bread makes me impatient to EAT the bread. Recommended bake time was an hour. Mine were done at about 50…and came out of the oven looking like this…(at this point, I stopped being slack and pulled out the good camera…they were so pretty they deserved the good camera).

That second one is my pic of the week, something about it just makes me happy. (And further proves the joys of a DSLR…exact same lighting, way better pictures!).

Of course, the proof is in the eating.  I womanfully let the bread cool for 15 minutes or so then cut myself a slice.

It is indeed, soft and delicious.  The crust is slightly crunchy, slightly chewy and while there isn't a strong sourdough tang, there's definitely a deeper flavour than you get with yeast alone. The crumb is more like a yeast bread (sour dough would have bigger holes) but it's got a bit of heft to it. Final verdict overall – yum!

So, all in all, the first experiment is successful. I have a long weekend next week, so I'll try a more traditional sourdough recipe with longer rising times etc.

Nominated!

Also, I'm very thrilled to be able to say that Shadow Kin has been nominated for a 2011 Australian Romance Readers Association Award in the Sci Fi, Fantasy and Futuristic category.  Woot! Huge thanks to everyone who nominated me! The list of finalists (Nalini Singh, Ilona Andrews, Patricia Briggs, Eileen Wilks, Rachel Vincent, Erica Hayes, Karen Marie Moning and Sherrilyn Kenyon!) features some of my favourite writers and I'm very honoured to be in their company! Congratulations to the finalists in all the categories, lovely to see lots of great books and authors getting the nod.

If you're an ARRA member, voting is open from tomorrow! Go vote for all your favourite books this year.