Gillian Polack's Blog, page 4

gillpolack @ 2016-09-23T11:07:00

I said to someone yesterday that I'd like to work in a small town. The person I was chatting with was also Jewish. This is important. His thoughts on me moving somewhere smaller "I know people who live in small towns and no-one even has to know they're Jewish." More and more people are considering hiding their identities as a possible way of achieving everyday safety. I find this terribly depressing.

gillpolack @ 2016-09-22T14:29:00

I gave a lunchtime talk for the Jewish community just now. It was lovely. I lost my notes and tangled my books and cited Maimonides far too often, but people asked a zillion questions and we had a really interesting discussion about what Jewish magic is and how it works in my fiction and how this relates to rabbinical views of magic.

My favourite bit, though, was when someone I knew came up and said "Do you know whose children they were?" (for there were 2 primary school kids in the audience) They were the offspring of someone I had known (and apparently taught origami to!) when I was their age. And they understood everything and told their grandmother the stories they were going to write from the ideas they had because of my talk. I prepared the wrong reading for an audience with children, so I read only a very short bit, but otherwise ... lovely group and it's particularly cool when children keep up with a talk for intelligent adults and take away a bunch of useful ideas and are inspired to write. The other thing is that one of the very bright sparks I taught earlier in the year turned out to be the granddaughter of someone else in the audience. Being able to tell someone's grandmother with total truth how amazing their granddaughter is will never, ever get old. The other, other thing is that it's possible that someone else's ancestor was the rabbi to several of my ancestors a long time ago.

All this is an unexpected good side effect of writing a novel (or two) about people like me (ie Jewish Australians). It's an odd but wonderful argument for diversity in fiction. Everyone should have one perfect and happy audience every now and again. If I'd not written my Jewish novel, I'd not have given this talk and look at what I would have missed out on!

Wednesday morning (and bits of other days)

My end of term excursion has happened.

My students and I went to a small Doctor Who exhibition. Most of them are not SFF fans, so it was new. Lots of "Who did you say this person was?" Between us, we worked out the Doctors and etc, and they took notes and asked more questions over coffee/lunch and are working on fanfiction. During their holidays. On top of the worldbuilding exercise that will help them with story structure, because they wanted chat more than writing today. The fanfiction was the whole purpose of this excursion.

I had to teach them what fanfiction was, first, which was an experience. Eventually, we got to the bit where I showed them the license statement on my best sonic screwdriver. This led us from plastic models to writers' reality. It's all about copyright.

I didn't give them a great deal today, just the basics of what one can and can't do with the world and characters of another writer. Not historical writers, contemporary ones.

This is where teaching my Wednesday class differs significantly in method from teaching a standard undergrad class. These students can deal with the same level of concepts, but need a bit more time for most subjects. This means that they're writing their fanfiction during the holidays and when we return they'll get a revision of what they learned today, plus a bit more Doctor Who (purely because the good Doctor is the fandom I chose to use as my model, because the exhibition was happening, and it is entirely non-related that at least two of my students are now actively seeking TARDIS backpacks). Next term we'll take issues of copyright one step at a time, starting with the work they will have done during the holidays. That, and more skills for short story writing, will be the main content of the term.

And now my task is to choose between a short rest and preparing tomorrow's talk.

I shall not choose. I will do both, sequentially.

My meeting tonight isn't til 7ish and I finished my big edit last night. I've only got an hour's editing to do today, therefore. Everything will fit, just as long as I don't try reading all the books I just borrowed from the library.

This is what I did yesterday. I finished my structural edit and started writing the extraneous matter (this is a good time, I find, to take notes that will make the cover blurb and other PR stuff easier for me and my editor, because I can see the novel most clearly at this point) and read two and a half of the novels I'd borrowed the day before. I returned them today and purely by chance, borrowed another three. I now don't have to go to the library again til Friday, which is good, for there is no time until then. And on Friday I have to collect a parcel of books from the post office. I get to jaunt! Only a short jaunt, alas, for on Friday I'm serious, serious editing mode again, and besides, I'm expecting at least one visitor.

I need to finish this next bout of editing by Tuesday, for I have to spend a full day at the National Library doing researchy stuff and write it into articles before Rosh Hashanah, and that festival is looming.

Doing only 1/4 of this last year made me tired. This year I still need an afternoon rest, but I'm getting my old work patterns back. It's so nice to be able to finish things in reasonable time!

gillpolack @ 2016-09-19T23:51:00

No booklaunch for me. Instead, I was unwell. I am much less unwell now. So much less unwell I am that I'm editing and cooking and catching up on various paperwork. Not quite all at once, but close. I want to get my last structural check for this novel done tomorrow night at the latest, so that I can proceed to the slow edit and get it off my plate before Conflux. The first novel is already ready for the publisher - this is the second. I need writing time and getting big stuff done is the best way to clear space.

What I cooked is a Jewish New Year present for myself. It worked so very wonderfully that I doubt I'll have the courage to make it again. This is the problem with inventing recipes and not measuring or timing things. I'll write what I've done here and maybe it will inspire someone to make it. It's the most amazing thing. It looks like rich black soil and tastes... like nothing I've ever had.

First, I took the pith of my citrus peel (I used kom fruit or sumo fruit, but any orange-y citrus that's sweet and very aromatic would do, I think) and pared it until the inside was clear of any white. Then I diced it as fine as fine can be. I cooked it over a very low heat with honey (a nice dollop), cardamom essence (possibly a half teaspoon, maybe a bit more) and lots of sugar. When it was bubbling at the right rate (ie it had no water left), I tested it and it was just short of hard. I took the mixture off the heat and stirred it into about a bar and a half of very fine chocolate (dark) melted. This mixing was the hardest task. I used a mixture of 50% and 82% chocolate, for that is what I had to hand. I then spread the mixture as thinly as I could on greaseproof paper and put more paper over the top of it and rolled the rolling pin over it then hit it many times with said rolling pin. And that's it.

If anyone wants to create an edible garden over the next 2-3 days, I have the perfect soil. I do not know how long it will last. I won't eat it instantly, for it's very rich and the flavour fills my mouth. But I will eat it. I'm happy to feed it to friends who drop in (except I'm almost out of normal coffee, so coffee drinkers would have to drink it with Turkish or Greek coffee, which is, I know, a great strain).

And now I have just a half hour more editing before bed.

I may still be less than myself, and I certainly have bad days, but... I'm definitely getting there. The garden soil and editing proves it.

gillpolack @ 2016-09-16T22:30:00

I've been quiet again because I've been coping. Some kind friends gave me the current virus, probably at the party I went to when I came back from Melbourne. It's a particularly nasty one (the virus - the party was totally wonderful) and I was surprised to discover that I didn't get the illness as badly as they did. I know I'm almost over it, but I wasn't sure that I had it until tonight. It could have been something more serious (either my breathing or my heart) and I and the after hours doctor were really relieved that it wasn't. I said to her that I was a bit obsessed with the heart and health right now and apologised for calling her in and she said "You are, but that's OK" and checked my scars and reminded me that I had a major operation and that I should do the same whenever I wasn't sure.

This is actually a big moment even though it's about something quite small. So many people have had pneumonia from this virus and if my heart hadn't been healing properly I would've had all sorts of problems from it. It's a really, really nasty virus. I got it (for there are post-viral symptoms) and I'm almost over it and it has affected neither my heart nor my breathing, except for me being tired and a bit puffy. I still have all the aches, but I can do work through them.

Why is this so big? The Evil Virus of the Winter... and I'm through it. And I had it. And I had it much less than the poor people who gave it to me. I'm miserable and sore and haven't done all my work today, but compare that with young and healthy people who couldn't get out of their beds for 2-3 days and had to take antibiotics. My prescription is panadol, hot tea and things to soothe the throat.

This doesn't mean I'll never get sick again, of course, but it means I can mix with normal people doing normal activities and not have to worry about abnormal responses. This gives me such an extraordinary feeling.

And now I must go back to editing. I am editing my own novels this time, for there will be two more out next year (the last of the sequence with Satalyte) and my editor and I have agreed to get them done early so that I have more writing time. I also have two NF articles to write for next year. I want to do all four things before Rosh Hashanah. If I can, I won't have lost any time through illness this year, and that would be amazing. Also, I'm capable of it, physically, since this is a low teaching period (not due to illness, due to changes in systems). The big reason, of course, is so that my desk is free should other work come up.

If I can edit to p. 250 tonight, I get to go to a book launch tomorrow.

The novel I'm editing is post-colonialist, using history to underpin world building (I tested stuff using it), magic as science and science as magic, and a whole bunch of other things. It's also set on another planet. Satalyte are interested in a sequel and I've said "If it sells." I've got the sequel 80% planned, because it was the other novel I did research for when I went to France to investigate things for Langue[dot]doc 1305. Most of the issues are in the novel ie not explained. They're part of it. The big thing for me is that I did cultural development to make this society Western but with some critical differences. My chief protagonist is female, middle-aged, non-White and has held positions of power. She's got the knowledge and experience to save her part of the world... but will anyone let her?

The Wizardry of Jewish Women

My book is out and to celebrate, I blogged a recipe from it on my author's blog. I'm copying it here, for I suspect a few of you might be interested.



A group of enthusiastic cooks and lovely people are making recipes mentioned in my new novel, The Wizardry of Jewish Women. I almost always have recipes lurking beneath my fiction. Even my next novel (which I’m editing this week) contains food which I can cook, and it takes place off-planet! My new novel is set in Australia and I’ve borrowed and adapted over a hundred of my family’s recipes for it. When more recipes are out, I’ll put up a post with links. In the meantime, this is the culinary background to the box of forgotten recipes that appears in the novel. When you’ve read this blog entry you will know more about them than my characters do!

I was lucky with this novel. Very lucky. I’d been researching the difference between Anglo-Australian Jewish and Continental Jewish food because someone asked me to, way back. My family had found me many, many recipes to help with my research and I had the full oral history for them from two aunts and from a cousin. There were no missing years: both aunts had cooked the cuisine (and I’d eaten it at their houses) and my cousin is just enough older than me to know the bits they wouldn’t tell. When my aunt and my mother found recipes notes and even a handwritten cookbook, I had the stories to understand them and to interpret them. My food historian side, in fact, enabled me to work out exactly which bits came into the family and when. Stuffed Monkeys was a favourite dish of my father’s for instance, and they came into the family from the nineteenth century London Jewish community. You can find its history here. If enough people ask, I’ll make the recipe and give a documented version to you, just the way I’m about to do with Cornish meat rolls.

The thing about this cuisine is that it’s missing a lot of ‘standard’ Jewish dishes. Even those parts of the culture that came from Eastern Europe had been transformed, through London and then through Australia. It doesn’t come from Eastern Europe, in fact (though dishes poke their heads through from time to time and say “But I do!”): it is partly a southern English variant of Sephardi cuisine. It has lost many of its most Spanish elements, but maintained a lot of recipes that are easier to make with London and Australian ingredients. In their place one finds very familiar British dishes (like the Cornish Meat Rolls), some local oddities (like Stuffed Monkeys) and a few dishes that look very unJewish. They’re a part of the cuisine. Some of the older English Jewish food is kosher, and some enjoys its bacon. My grandmother knew how to cook all these dishes and according to some relatives she cooked them and according to others she didn’t. What I know for certain is that after my father married, she didn’t cook them for him, for he married into a very kosher-keeping family. This means that, from 1956, one whole strand of recipes was lost, just as, from the moment the family came to Australia (just under a century earlier) the more Sephardi dishes would have been lost.

If you want to know more about how I identified the London Sephardi origins (check my research, argue with it, etc) just ask for a copy of my paper.

I chose the Cornish Meat Rolls because I wanted to see if the family’s pastry can be made with olive oil (since I knew what it was like made with other fats). An olive oil pastry would be very good for my heart, I thought. The pastry was good with olive oil (rather good, in fact) but not perfect. It was too crumbly for my taste, but I’d still do it again, for it had a lovely aroma and if I can solve the crumbliness I have a pareve heart-healthy pastry that takes next to no time to make. I adapted the filling a bit and have put my replacements in brackets. This is because I’ve had this food in my childhood and have made it with dripping at my aunt’s. I wanted to adapt it into a modern Australian version.

The filling took me back to my childhood. The moment I tasted it I knew where it came from. It was tasty and stodgy both at once. Perfect for a Melbourne winter. Also, very easy to make. very hard to turn into something elegant. This is easy food for a big family, basically.

I took a picture, but seem to have lost it. You’re not missing anything. Think of big sausage rolls. Golden and clunky and full of filling. In fact, the filling spills out whenever it’s not properly sealed. The pastry is short and crumbly. I took one look at it and wanted to add tomato sauce and demolish it. I couldn’t get through it all (though I tried for three meals) and gave a slab to a hungry friend. Depending on how hungry the diners are, therefore, this will fill 3 to 6 people. Add chips and salad and it’s terrifyingly Australian.

And now for the recipe:

Cornish Meat Rolls:

Ingredients
¾ topside steak (I used low fat mincemeat)
1 onion
1 large potato
1 tomato
2 cups SR flour (or 2 cups plain plus raising agent)
pinch salt
¾ cup dripping (I used olive oil)
½ cup cold water
1 teaspoon lemon juice
salt and pepper.

Method
Remove fat from steak. Peel potato, tomato and onion, and put through mincer with meat or chop each very finely and mix together. Season with salt and pepper. That’s the original instructions. Me, I boiled my potato and peeled it and cut it finely. I added it to the mincemeat. I then chopped my onion and tomato coarsely and put them through the blender. Then I seasoned the mix. I mixed it until it held together very nicely.

Sift flour, salt and baking powder (or just the flour and salt if you sue SR flour!). Rub in dripping ( or olive oil – oil doesn’t rub in properly, so you need to watch the texture) and add water and lemon juice and mix to a stiff paste. Roll on floured board to oblong shape, about ¼ inch thick. Spread with mixture, and fold into a neat roll.

Bake in a moderate oven 40 to 50 minutes.

gillpolack @ 2016-09-01T09:22:00

My next business is getting the new novel out into the world. I'll be off my blog for a few days, because I'm determined not to overdo things this time. I'll also be off social media mostly, for that means I don't have to race from thither to yon and check in with everything and everyone. I'll report on the far side!!

gillpolack @ 2016-08-31T16:16:00

My cooking spree is almost finished, for I'm almost out of ingredients. I made that purple carrot cake (with pecans and sultanas) and my students thought it was better than their favourite cake from the cafe downstairs. They liked the mandarin cake, too, and my neighbour adored the banana bread (but took home the sad remnants of all the cakes). I' just finishing off cooking with the leftover vegetables. I had such a lot of tomatoes and coriander and a couple of really good red peppers that I was going to make a sauce. In the end, I made two sauces, because the flavour combination of the capsicum and coriander was divine. They were deep red peppers and had a particularly rich flavour, so when I tasted the mix before I added it to the tomato, I decided to leave it. One sauce is cooling and the other has some reducing still to go. This works out very nicely, because I won't have time to shop or serious cooking until the weekend after next.

And now I just need to work my way through my list of things for the rest of today. "Just" is the troublesome word. I woulred solidly til 2 pm and then started cooking and I'm still in cooking mode. i have, alas, run out of things to cook. unless I take the last cucumbers and make a Japanese vinegared cucumber dish, but without the wakame... If I do enough work, then I'm allowed to make it. If I don't, other neighbours will inherit my cucumbers.

gillpolack @ 2016-08-30T13:03:00

I've only got lemons and a single blood orange left. I cooked an extra bit pf preserved citrus this morning, though, because I decided that my cake this Rosh Hashanah needs to be decorated. Officially, that makes 8 recipes from 2 types of fruit.

I do feel better for it, even though it means I'm still in my PJs trying to catch up with work. If I can catch up by 3 pm, then I get to make that purple carrot cake...

From food to fiction - updates

I don't know what came over me today. I had a giant list of things to do and I've only done maybe 25% of them. I've instead found my cooking from wherever it was hiding. Between Saturday and today I made all my meals for the week, created four wholly new sweet dishes using kom fruit (it's a new variety and the grower says I'm the first person to say "I'm cooking with it" and was very delighted to receive some of the liqueur), made two not-new dishes with mandarins and contemplated the possibility of purple carrot cake.

Very little of this is for me. I've always loved cooking sweet things more than eating them. Some of this is for New Year, which is in a few short weeks and which will be busy. I also think my students will get much cake on Wednesday. That still leaves a fair amount of cake. Anyone who wants cake between now and then... I have much. And some of it is very experimental. Not just the kom fruit dishes. I wanted to know how far I could reduce the bad cholesterol in cakes and what one needs to do to replace butter with olive oil. I've stored the flavour and timing issues, but I've still got a couple of textural issues to work through. What this means is my banana bread and muffins are both gorgeous, but my mandarin cake is very wet.

And I do know what's hit me, if I'm honest. Same thing as on August 8. August 8 was the secular anniversary of Dad's death and the religious anniversary started at dusk tonight. My instinct always knows these days. I don't need to check the calendar - I find myself doing things specially, ready.

What I'm pleased about with today was that I could cook. I don't need to eat, but I do need to cook. And the last few years have not been good for cooking sprees. So I got through today with much less grief than usual and I have so much to do tomorrow that I'll get through that as well. And I'll be fine.

Cooking time for me is also thinking time. I fed all my friends throughout my first PhD because I needed loads of thinking time. Most of my friends refused my cooking for the second because they were trying to help me, not realising that they were damming my creative processes. This time I've just done the cooking and not worried about who will eat it, and thus I've done some very solid creative thinking.

Today I made progress with one of the characters for my novel. All the depressing mortality stuff is happening this year and feeding into this novel. This isn't the 17th century novel. I talked to my editor about the latter and he entirely understood that I would have trouble meeting the deadline, so we've cancelled. I will still write it, but it's an energy-intensive novel and I need to heal properly first.

What does this mean for my fiction over the next eighteen months? Nothing for the longer fiction. Those novels are still coming out. They're written and just need final edits. While the 17th century novel was due next April, it wasn't coming out until at least 18 months later. This means I only have 18 months more scheduled publications. Then I'm back to normal, since normal for me has fewer contracts than I've had recently.

For shorter fiction, I've got a couple of pieces without homes, which is very unlike me. This is because I couldn't go hunting homes for tales while I was on death's door and then I forgot I had the stories.

I'm not ready to find them homes yet. Two of them were requests. The first didn't fit the final volume and so was returned to me unencumbered with regrets by everyone. The other is a lovely idea but a complete failure as a story (which is a potential problem when someone asks for a story and I am dreaming of other tales entirely - I really am more comfortable with novels). And the last is rather experimental and I haven't sent it out far because I suspect belongs in a collection dedicated to the alternate history that it expresses. I need to write more stories set in that universe, and then find someone who wants a collection.

The bottom line is that only one of the three stories needs a home and I'll worry about that one when things calm down a bit here. It's set in the same Australia as a novel I want to write one day, and the background for the novel is all planned and bits of the novel are sketched. It's even mentioned in Langue[dot]Doc 1305, so the idea for this pocket universe has been with me for a while. This means that it, too, can wait. If I spot a home for the short story or someone asks to see it, I'll act, but otherwise I'll wait.

I don't normally have short stories sitting around, so I'm enjoying the experience. If it ever becomes a regular experience, I shan't be so untroubled, but right now, it's a first for me. I don't write many short stories and they mostly get published promptly. And people hold them over me forever. 'Horrible Historians' and 'Impractical Magic' both follow me about as if I have them on leashes.

That reminds me, Bob Kuhn (a US/Australian voice actor) kindly did me an audio version of 'Impractical Magic'. I decided to wait until the novel was out before I released it, but publishers fell through for the novel and so it languished, unheard (or mostly unheard, a select few friends in fandom have had access for various reasons). It won't languish too much longer, for the short story's prequel is The Wizardry of Jewish Women and this novel is at the printer and will be launched by this time next week.

What should I do with the audio of the story? My first thought was to put it on my website. I'd really like to raise enough money to get a fan from this part of the world to Helsinki for the Worldcon next year, however, so if anyone you know would like to host my story for up to a year, they can do so for a small donation to GUFF. If more than one person wants to host it, then the largest donation wins. I'll make my decision on the fate of the story tomorrow week.