S.A. Meade's Blog, page 3

It's Saturday Snark Revived.

I'm happy to see that Marie Sexton has revived her 'Saturday Snark' blog hop .
It's a chance to post some snark and read other offerings from other writers.

This week's excerpt isn't so much snark as it is an out and out political argument from  my work in progress, the new second book in the Endersley series.

The scene involves the narrator, Nikolai Denisov, a doctor from a bourgeois Russian family who decided to run a small practice in the Vyborg District of Petrograd, and Alexi Sholokov, a Bolshevik in the making. As you know, nothing good can come of talking politics.

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Sholokov sat back. Resentment bristled around him. It was like sharing the kitchen with an angry dog. “You’re only doing it to salve your conscience. You’re doing this so you can feel good about yourself. To tell your God that you’ve done your bit to get into heaven.”

“Oh, for the love of… That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. Don’t you get it, Sholokov? I love these people. They mean more to me than any of my parents’ friends ever did. I don’t think they deserve to be left to rot in these tenements any more than you do. But instead of talking and writing screeds that no one will ever read, I rolled up my sleeves and did something. I’ve put my money where my mouth is and I’m doing my small bit to help, my small realistic bit.”

“Fine, you keep telling yourself that. You never be one of us. You can try as hard as you like to ‘lower yourself’ and live amongst us, but you were born in a different world and you’ll never be part of ours.”

“So much for all of us being equal eh? You’ve just made a liar of yourself. Your intolerance of my background is no different than my alleged intolerance of yours. What happens when this ‘People’s Government’ comes to power? Do the undesirable classes get purged? Do you do the same to us that we’re supposed to have done to you? You’re not making much sense and you’re not doing a very good job of convincing me that your workers’ paradise is going to do this country any good.”

He pushed the chair back and stood up. “I can see that we’re not going to agree on this.”

“No, because you know I’m right.”

“Of course, you’re a bourgeois doctor, of course you’re right. You’ll always think you’re right. You’ll go to your grave thinking that way.”

“I’ll go to my grave knowing that I’ve done the best that I can with the advantage my birth gave me. I could’ve easily left with my parents. I have a big house with acres and acres of land that will be mine. I’ve never even seen it. I have no desire to see it. It’s not my home and I am not one for sitting idle, living off the backs of others. That is why I’m here.” I jabbed at my chest, lost in a righteous fury. Knowing that I was the one who was right.”

“Think what you will.” He strode toward the hallway. “We will win. This country will be ours.”

“I suppose that means I’ll have to leave, if that happens. I won’t rush to pack my bags just yet.”

“Spare me the sarcasm, doctor.” Sholokov’s eyes were dark. His chest rose and fell with the deep breath he took and his fingers were white where he clutched the door frame. “Excuse me.” He retreated to his room, sealing the end of the discussion with a loud slam.

Idiot.

I took a bowl from the cupboard and helped myself to some shchi from the pot. Not sure whether I’d intended that silent ‘idiot’ for him or me.

Don't forget to check out more snark HERE

Would you like a little slice of real life with your Romance?

I wrote a book. It's called Mourning Jack.

My original intention was for Ade, the narrator to end up with Cal, the man that his dead best friend, Jack,  had asked him to look after, if he was killed in Afghanistan. The story didn't end that way. Sorry. I tried to write Cal back into Ade's life but it just didn't work. The story lost its soul and its spark. I came up with another idea. The story has the All Important Happy Ending but, apparently, it's not the happy ending that some people expect.

There is a rule, it seems, that Character A must have the All Important Happy Ending with Character B. Sorry, but no. Life doesn't always work out like that. I'm an author, I've been kicking around on this old planet for quite a while. I've experienced some horrible lows and some amazing highs and everything in between. I've experienced life. So, when I write my stories, I try to make sure that they reflect real life and real people as much as possible.

Sometimes you meet someone, you fall in love and you think that you'll spend the rest of your life with them, in a little rose-covered cottage in some wonderful, bucolic hideaway. Yes, it happens but, there are plenty of times when it doesn't. That first flush of shag-each-other-senseless passion fades and you may wake up one morning and realise that it ain't gonna work. The person you love doesn't really love you in the way you need or want to be loved. So, you take a deep breath, take that leap in the dark and move on. You find someone that you can spend the rest of your life with. So, instead of Character A sticking with Character B, Character A falls in love with Character C and gets their All Important Happy Ending.

All right, so Character B is at a bit of a loose end, but it happens. Life happens.

Romance shouldn't be all about the All Important Formula. Yes, it's nice, but...let's face it, if you know that Character A and Character B are going to end up together, having survived a breakup, a misunderstanding, a nasty ex, an earthquake, an attack of rabid ferrets...where's the satisfaction in that? Not every couple survives a breakup, a misunderstanding, a nasty ex, an earthquake or an attack of rabid ferrets.

So, Gentle Reader, take that leap in the dark and read something that gives you a glimpse of real life. Who knows? You might like it.

We have a winner!

Congratulations to Amy, who posted on the 'French Onion Soup' blog. The Random Number Generator zeroed in on her and she has requested a signed copy of 'Mourning Jack',

Many thanks to all of you for taking part, leaving a comment and having a look at the recipes. If any of you decide to give them a try, let me know how you got on!

S.A.Meade
(Sue)

xxxx

The last recipe! Mourning Jack Give away.

Good evening, everyone. Today's dish is linguine with Italian sausage. Ade had this on the menu at 'The Bay Horse'. It's a nice comforting, hearty dish. Sadly, I have yet to find any Italian sausage in the UK (no jokes please). So this recipe will make me weep with longing as I type it.

Tomorrow night, the lucky winner will be announced. ;)

For the sauce:
1 small onion, very finely chopped
1 carton of passata
About 1/2 cup of water (I add it to the empty passata carton and swish it around to get the last bits of sauce)
oregano
garlic powder
basil
parsley
brown sugar
Italian sausage, cooked and chopped.

Soften onion until transparent, in olive  oil. Pour in the passata, add 1 teaspoon of oregano, garlic powder, basil and parsley.  Simmer for a little while. Add enough brown sugar to take the acid 'edge' off the tomato-based sauce. Add the chopped sausage and simmer a little more.

Serve over linguine with plenty of freshly grated Parmesan or Romano cheese.

Don't forget to leave a comment and you could win a copy of 'Mourning Jack'.

You can find my books here

Give-away - Today's recipe.

Hello and welcome to today's recipe. This is a dish that Cal made for Ade. It's a great summer main course, although I've been known to make it as an alternative Christmas Dinner when the prospect of wrestling a turkey into an oven was just too much.

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Tuna steaks - Cal style. (serves 2)

2 tuna steaks
Juice from one lime
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
1 tin of chopped tomatoes
1 red bell pepper, finely chopped
oregano
basil
salt.

Marinate the tuna in a mixture of the lime juice, olive oil and garlic. The longer the better.

Saute the pepper until at the desired consistency. I like a bit of crunch to mine because overcooked bell pepper squicks me out. Pour in the tomatoes, add about a teaspoon of the oregano and basil and salt to taste. Simmer.

While the sauce is simmering, grill the tuna steaks.

Serve the steaks with a bit of the sauce on top. As much or as little as you like. Nice with a green salad and baked potato.

Don't forget. Leave a comment and you could win a signed copy of 'Mourning Jack' or a PDF copy, whichever floats your boat.

You can buy my books here

Ade's Dish of the Day - Give away.

Today, it's raining and miserable here. Not that I'm complaining. It's better than 110F and not a cloud in sight. As promised, here's another dish from 'Mourning Jack'. Feel free to leave a comment and you could win either a PDF copy of the book or a signed print copy.

One of Ade's dishes from 'The Bay Horse' menu was 'Chicken Paprika'. It's a Hungarian dish and it's a favourite in this house.

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4 boneless, skinless chicken breasts;
1 onion, finely chopped;
chicken stock or vegetable stock;
Paprika;
Caraway seeds;
Sour cream:

Cut the chicken into bite-sized morsels, saute until lightly browned. Remove from pan and set to one side.
Saute the onion until soft and transparent. Add about a tablespoon of paprika and about a teaspoon of caraway seeds. Stir and cook for a minute. Return the chicken to the pan and simmer for about 20 minutes to 30 minutes. Remove the chicken from the pan again and set to one side, keep warm. If the sauce is still a bit runny, turn up the heat and simmer until the sauce has reduced a bit. Add sour cream, enough to turn the sauce to a nice rosy pink. Return the chicken, stir. Then serve. I like it with pasta or if I'm in the mood, I'll make spaetzle.

Enjoy!

You can find my books here

Giveaway - Day Two - A fishy Dish

Sorry for the delayed post today, life got in the way. While I'm here, I want to say thank you to the lovely readers who buy my books. I can't even find the words to thank you enough. I do know that your support means the world to me. So, because I'm happy, here's another easy recipe.

Today's recipe is one of the dishes Ade prepares at 'The Bay Horse'. If you happen to come by a nice slab of salmon then this is the recipe for you.

Salmon with a Dill Cream sauce.

Salmon fillets
Butter
Lemon
Fresh Dill
Double cream (half and half if you live in the US).
Salt and Pepper

For the sauce:
One oz butter
One tablespoon plain (all purpose) flour
Double cream
More fresh dill, finely chopped.

Brush aluminium foil lightly with some olive oil.
Place salmon fillet(s) on foil. (If cooking more than one fillet, they each get their own foil package)
Dot fillet with butter (as much or as little as you like - it's your cholesterol)
Sprinkle with lemon juice, salt and pepper.
Place as much or as little fresh dill on the fish as you like.
Wrap parcel so that there's a little room for steam do develop while the fish cooks.

Place in 180C oven.

While fish is cooking, make a roux with the butter and flour. Slowly stir in the cream until the sauce reaches the desired consistency. When you've got it where you want it, stir in the finely chopped dill.

Remove fish from oven, add the sauce and...enjoy.
Goes beautifully with fresh green  beans and lovely little new potatoes.

Don't forget to leave a comment! You could win a signed print copy of 'Mourning Jack' or a PDF, whatever floats your boat. :)

You can find my books here

Food and a give-away!

To celebrate 'Mourning Jack' being released in paperback, I thought it would be fun to indulge in the food porn side of the story. Ade, the narrator, is a chef and he does a fair bit of cooking during the course of the book. So, this week, I'll be posting one of Ade's recipes every day. Then, on Friday, you can vote on which dish you'd love to eat or make and give your reason why you'd like to try that dish. On Saturday I'll choose a winner who can pick either a PDF of 'Mourning Jack' or a signed print copy.

Today's recipe is Ade's French Onion Soup. It's dead easy to make and it's not pricey. A great lunch for a cold rainy day.

3 medium or 2 large onions, quartered, then cut into thin slices.
1 small leek, finely chopped.
1 tablespoon flour
2 beef stock cubes
Worcestershire sauce (to taste)
salt and pepper

French bread
Grated cheese

Saute the onions and leek in butter and olive oil until soft and transparent.
Stir in flour and cook for one minute.
Stir in a kettle and a  half of boiling water.
Crumble in stock cubes, stir until cubes dissolved.
Add Worcestershire sauce to taste (some like loads, some don't)
Salt and pepper.

Simmer for at least 30 minutes.

Prior to serving, toast one side of bread under grill. Turn over, sprinkle with grated cheese.
When cheese melted and bubbling. Spoon soup into bowls, add the toast to each bowl.
Serve.

My books can be found here

A guest post - Hawaiian Culture is about so much more than Tiki lamps and hula dancing.

Good morning from a very rainy England.

Today, my thoughts are straying longingly to Hawaii. No surprise given that the guest post is written by Violetta Vane and Heidi Belleau, authors of 'Hawaiian Gothic', which was released this week by Loose Id. I am blown away by these authors who really are a much-needed breath of fresh air for the M/M genre so I was more than happy to offer them my blog as part of their Hawaiian Gothic blog tour.

If you haven't read any of their work, I suggest you do so...now!

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Hawaiian Pidgin - Language of the Heart

“Today my teacher said we got to learn ‘proper’ English, so we can study things like math and science. Ho, man! Kids got plenty angry. Everybody yelling. “How we going talk to parents widdout Pidgin? Pidgin same as English.’”
She played with her fork, slightly embarrassed. “I raised my hand and said Pidgin is not the same as English. It’s not an inferior kind of English. It’s a different language from English. Like French, or Spanish. Like Hawaiian Mother Tongue...”
(House of Many Gods by Kiana Davenport, p. 52)

English is a pretty amazing language, when you think about it: a strange hybrid bastard beast of a language that now thrives all over the world in thousands of forms, all unique to the people who speak it and the places they come from. And it’s changing and evolving every single day.

It’s more than just accents that set one form of English apart from another: it’s grammatical constructions and even vocabulary. Sometimes these divisions happen along race lines, ethnic lines, lines of class and country. Sometimes these differences are celebrated (think our love for Hugh Jackman’s Aussie accent!), and sometimes (especially when a particular dialect is associated with poor non-white people) they’re denigrated. What’s merely different and what’s “incorrect”? Some of us are told not to speak our own particular version of English. Some of us voluntarily leave it behind in order to assimilate or hide our origins.

In Hawaii, the language of Pidgin developed on the plantations as workers struggled to speak to other across their many language barriers. There were native Hawaiians, Portuguese, Chinese, Japanese, Filipinos. The non-Hawaiians had come across vast oceans, leaving everything behind to start a new life on the island, prepared to spend the best years of their lives as indentured workers doing backbreaking labor so that their children would have a better chance in life. And these children lived together, played together, worked together, and invented a common tongue in the process.

So today, if you go to Hawaii, you might talk to people whose heritage, let’s say, is 100% ethnic Japanese, but their family hasn’t spoken Japanese for four generations. Their languages are English and pidgin. They can switch between the two easily, like Ana in Kiana Davenport’s House of the Gods, but pidgin is closest to their hearts. Watch the people in this introduction smile when they talk about that...

Hawaiian Pidgin

When we wrote Hawaiian Gothic, we did a lot of research to make sure the pidgin was as accurate as possible. It’s not just a matter of dropping “be” and adding in a lot of “da kine”. Ultimately, though there’s really not a lot of pidgin dialogue in the book, because both our characters are code switchers. They speak in “proper” English, occasionally in pidgin-inflected English, and only sometimes in this language of the heart...

“Aloha, sleepyhead.” Kalani’s warm breath in his ear. Heavenly.

“How did you do it?” Ori twisted to raise himself on an elbow for a better view of Kalani’s beaming smile. Ori’s other hand brushed against Kalani’s, and their fingers slipped together easily. “You look amazing. Like you were never in a coma. Did you have to sneak out of the hospital?”

Kalani’s smile fell at one corner, and there was a sudden tightness to his eyes. “Ori, I’m still there. My body…”

Ori jerked away from him like he was scalding hot. “So this isn’t real? Am I…are you…are you like a figment of my imagination or something?”

“Would a figment of your imagination be able to tell you—fuck, I guess a figment could tell you anything you wanted to hear.” Kalani hissed. “Scratch that. But I’m real. I’m an ‘uhane, a wandering spirit. I don’t know how it happened. I’m sorry. I should have told you last night. You know, before you got your hopes up.”

“You’re a ghost!” Ori scrambled off the edge of the bed, hit the floor, and crab-walked backward until he crashed into the wall and jumped to his feet. This couldn’t be happening. A rush of terror had his skin crawling and Kalani’s form wavering at the edges. He thought about praying. Thought about the rich, gory tapestry of ghost stories his grandmother would spin in Tagalog, like the one of the multo who had to kill to live again.

“Don’t be scared. Please. Look, the worst I could do was rattle some blinds. I can only stay solid for you. I don’t know why. Maybe because you never gave up on me. Not that I blame Anela. And Julie, maybe I could stay solid for her, but she’d be so afraid, she’d try to cast me out.” His lips twitched and his eyes shone, not with ghostlight but with the onset of tears. “Eh, no make like dat, brah. All hamajang, dis.”


~~~

Where to Buy: Hawaiian Gothic - Loose Id
Website with First Chapter Excerpt & Multimedia Extras: Hawaiian Gothic
The Writers: ViolettaVane.com & HeidiBelleau.com



Blurb: For Ori Reyes, coming home to Hawaii is hell. His Army Ranger career ended in dishonorable discharge, a prison term and disgrace in the eyes of his family. As for his childhood friend Kalani—well, Kalani could never love him back, not the way Ori wanted to be loved. And it’s too late for Ori to tell Kalani how he really feels, because Kalani’s in a coma that all the doctors say is terminal.

Then Kalani shows up to welcome him home.

Even though Kalani's body is unresponsive, his spirit roams free, and for the first time he's able to reveal the true depth of his feelings for Ori. They set out to solve the mystery of Kalani’s dark family history, a journey of redemption that leads deep into the ancient Hawaiian spirit world. For Ori, taking on monstrous ghost-guardians is easier than facing the hardest choice of all: that he might have to let Kalani go.

Reasons to be British, Part 27 and a half: The Derby

Summer has arrived on our damp, green little island. From the dreaming spires of Oxford to the Epsom Downs, people will be hoping for good weather, for England to do well at Euro 2012 and for enough Pimms to see them through the long Jubilee weekend.

There are many things I love about an English summer and one of my favourite things is the horse racing. We Brits love our horses. Hell, even Shakespeare acknowledged that when he had Richard the Third shouting for a horse during the Battle of Bosworth. We're talking proper racing here with jockeys who ride with their brains and not with their whips. We're talking about one of the most beautifully bred, exquisite, temperamental creatures on the planet - the English Thoroughbred. I love them. I love their quirks, their beauty and their courage. I love the history and the pedigrees and the fact that today's thoroughbreds can all be traced back to a handful of scrappy stallions. It's the one thing I have in common with our Queen, this love and fascination for horses.

The Queen, bless her, takes her racing very seriously. She breeds race horses, she knows their pedigrees inside out, she names her horses, and let me tell you, she's very clever at naming them. Even when she's in the midst of the craziness surrounding the Diamond Jubilee, she still finds the time to enjoy her racing.  Today's big race is a prime example. It's the Epsom Derby, the original Derby. No Mint Juleps and red roses here. This race has been running since 1780.


It's a huge occasion. People come by the bus load. They fill the massive stands or crowd into the infield where proceedings are less formal. It's the second race in the British 'Triple Crown' for three-year olds. It's handy that it falls during the Diamond Jubilee celebrations because it'll be an even bigger occasion than usual. The Queen will be there. She doesn't have a runner this year, but she loves her racing and it must be a nice little 'break' from the hectic itinerary she's been keeping this year.

I'll be watching. It's the end of an era today. It's the last time we'll be able to watch it on the BBC, because from next year, another channel will be covering the race. But it's the British thing to do.

Speaking of which.  Today marks the launch of a new blog. UK M/M Romance . To celebrate this most British of occasions, me and my fellow Brit Authors - Sue Brown, Chris Quinton, R J Scott and Lisa Worrall are holding a competition to win:


a $30 gift certificate to spend with Silver Publishing
The choice of an ebook from the back catalogues of:Sue Brown, Lisa Worrall, Chris Quinton, SA Meade & RJ Scott

All you have to do is visit the main blog, check out our questions, then visit each of our blogs to find the clues.

Sue Brown
Chris Quinton
R J Scott
Lisa Worrall

So, pour yourself a Pimms, tuck into those strawberries and have some fun. Happy clue hunting!