Ada Maria Soto's Blog, page 4

Pack Up Your Troubles by A. M. Soto

There are authors out there who are brimming with so many ideas they are able to write every single one of their books in the exact same genre. I actually heard one author of my acquaintance say ‘I’ve got a great idea but it’s not in my genre’. I’m not one of those authors. My plot bunnies are sporadic and jump across the literary spectrum with no care for my sanity or attempts to build readership.

To make things a little easier for current and future readers I publish different genre’s under slight variations of my name.  Most of you know my romantic work under Ada Maria Soto.  Well, I occasionally publish Science Fiction or Fantasy as A. M. Soto, and that is what I am announce here.

Pack Up Your Troubles, my new Science Fiction short, is currently available in Issue 15 of Pulp Literature!

Pack Up Your Troubles

He tried to warn them about humans.  They breed fast, learn quick, and they sing songs about war.

Free Read – Life Saving Dal

I have a new free short story available on Instafreebie. It’s romantic, sexy, MM, and did I mention Free?

Life Saving Dal

Nathan has been divorced for a year and is hoping for a grand romantic gesture to change his life. Kris isn’t what he’s waiting for but might be something better.

His Quiet Agent: Actual, Official, Kindle Release

Somewhere in the latter half of 2011, while standing in the shower I had a flash of an image. These happen on occasion, I usually get the start of stories out of them. In this freeze frame image a

Here’s the info from the oldest draft on I could find.

man in a suit sat on the edge of a hospital bed, looking away from the other man lying in it. I decided I wanted to know who these men my brain had tossed up were, and how they got there.

I began teasing out a story of rough character sketches, random paragraphs, and wonky outlines. I started and restarted, abandoned and picked up, had long talks with my characters, and somewhere in there quit my job, had a kid, and wrote three other books.

Why I don’t do my own cover art.

In the end I got 33,000 words in what will probably go down as my minimalism phase. It was called The Agency up until a few weeks back when William Gibson had to go and put out a book called Agency. Plus, everyone told me The Agency wasn’t a good name for a romance novel. I was planning on doing my own cover art but found out I sucked

at it so got the wonderful Tiferet Design in instead. I worked out how to do kindle formatting on Scrivener. And knowing nothing about how Amazon works when they said it would take up to 72 hours to review my document I thought it would take 72 hours, not four, which is why this official release is happening several days after it went up for sale.

I’m flying without a publisher on this one for various reasons so I really need word of mouth if you enjoy it. Those little stars on Goodreads and Amazon mean more to authors, and their bank accounts, than I think readers realize. If you don’t do the Amazon thing, stay tuned, I’m going to ‘go wide’ with the story in a couple of months.

This is different from anything else I’ve ever put out and I’m scared shitless. I hope you all enjoy it.

Amazon and KU

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Arthur Drams works for a secret government security agency, but all he really does is spend his days in a cubical writing reports no one reads. After getting another “lateral promotion” by a supervisor who barely remembers his name, it’s suggested that Arthur try to ‘make friends’ and ‘get noticed’ in order to move up the ladder. It’s like high school all over again: his attempts to be friendly come across as awkward and creepy, and no one wants to sit at the same table with him at lunch.

In a last-ditch attempt to be seen as friendly and outgoing, he decides to make friends with The Alien, aka Agent Martin Grove, known for his strange eating habits, unusual reading choices, and the fact that no one has spoken to him in three years.

Starting with a short, surprisingly interesting conversation on sociology books, Arthur slowly begins to chip away at The Alien’s walls using home-cooked meals to lure the secretive agent out of his abrasive shell. Except Martin just might be something closer to an actual secret agent than paper-pusher Arthur is, and it might be more than hearts at risk when something more than friendship begins to develop.

Please note this book has a Heat Rating of zero.

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IT HAD been a long time since Arthur had anyone to cook for. Even then, most of that cooking had been done in Hanh’s restaurant under the sharp eyes of his sisters before he left home for good.

He’d impressed a few guys and even a couple of girls in college by putting together non-instant meals using little more than a two-burner hotplate in his dorm room. But those relationships had never lasted long. He’d always had grand ideas of meetings of minds or souls, someone who fit grandly into the empty places of his heart, but that dream never materialized. The sex, what there was, always felt flat and mechanical, never spurring him on to something deeper.

There had been some dates, once he joined the Agency, but having to lie about his work put early strain on possible relationships before he ever got to ‘come back to my place and let me cook.’

But now he had someone to cook for. Sort of. He had someone to bring very small portions of lite foods, during lunch, so whatever he made had to be small, portable, and maintain quality after sitting in a lunch box for five hours.

He made sandwiches, cut down to fancy party hors d’oeuvre size on Tuesday. He also brought his own book; Walden and Civil Disobedience which had been on his ‘to read’ list for a decade. On Wednesday, he pushed a little too far with a slice of sticky rice cake. Martin took a bite. There was a slight tightening around his eyes and he didn’t finish the rest. Arthur supposed it was an acquired taste.

By Friday he was halfway through Walden, had probably gotten close to a thousand extra calories into Martin, along with fresh vitamins and minerals, and aside from telling him what each thing was, they hadn’t spoken a word.

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Cover Reveal for His Quiet Agent!

Created by the amazing Tiferet Design.

Arthur Drams works for a secret government security agency, but all he really does is spend his days in a cubical writing reports no one reads. After getting another “lateral promotion” by a supervisor who barely remembers his name, it’s suggested that Arthur try to ‘make friends’ and ‘get noticed’ in order to move up the ladder. It’s like high school all over again: his attempts to be friendly come across as awkward and creepy, and no one wants to sit at the same table with him at lunch. In a last-ditch attempt to be seen as friendly and outgoing, he decides to make friends with The Alien, aka Agent Martin Grove, known for his strange eating habits, unusual reading choices, and the fact that no one has spoken to him in three years.

Starting with a short, surprisingly interesting conversation on sociology books, Arthur slowly begins to chip away at The Alien’s walls using home-cooked meals to lure the secretive agent out of his abrasive shell. Except Martin just might be something closer to an actual secret agent than paper-pusher Arthur is, and it might be more than hearts at risk when something more than friendship begins to develop.

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Same Gender Romantic Heroines

Originally written by request for Heart to Heart, Romance Writers of New Zealand, April 2017, ISSN:1178-3929, Heroines Special Edition.

I was once asked how I write same-gender romances. It was the Sunday of conference, I was tired and more than a little hungover so I quite glibly answered ‘pick a gender and write it twice’. I apologize to that person. Consider this a better answer.

First, when writing any heroine, you run into the same problems as being a woman: You can’t win. If you write her strong, she’s cold and unapproachable. Empathetic equals weak. Too intelligent? Not relatable. Average intelligence? Reinforcing stereotypes. Tragic back story? Why does a woman have to have something bad happen to her to be interesting? But no tragic backstory is uninteresting. Competent and liked by everyone? Unbelievable Mary Sue. Not as competent? Poorly representing women. Sexual, slut; not sexual, frigid. Wants kids? Stereotype. No kids? What’s wrong with her? Swoons over the hero? Why can’t she be a strong independent woman who doesn’t need no man? …return to start.

Make her lesbian and you get another level. Butch? Stereotype. Fem? Just there for titillation. Manage a mid-ground and you’re taking the easy route and not really representing the community. A bisexual woman is a selfish confused slut. If she ends up with a man it’s reinforcing the heteronormative patriarchy (see Kissing Jessica Stein). If she ends up with a woman then she was a lesbian all along. And as anyone who has spent time in a same gender relationship can tell you: eventually someone is going to ask ‘which one is the man?’ It’s like looking at a pair of chopsticks and asking which one is the fork. (And so much of this criticism comes from other women, but that’s a whole other rant.)

So why even bother if you’re going to get so much grief? First, because you have a story to tell. Stories that sit in your head and never make it onto the page rot and twist around. They keep you up at night and drive you mad. That’s why we’re writers to begin with. The second reason is because someone out there needs your book. With the world as it is, there is someone out there who is desperate to see themselves reflected on the page and to know that someone out there believes that someone like themselves is capable of a happy ever after can be that ray of light that gets them through the darkest of times. Your book can truly mean something to someone. I got that letter from a reader. I cried for half an hour.

Now the question is, how? To quote Margaret Stohl who writes Mighty Captain Marvel for Marvel comics: ‘Start by writing a human’. That is truly the best advice. Strip the titles, genders, and assumptions and start with an interesting person. You don’t need to look between their legs and decide female or male. Gender is more complicated and less binary than that. Sexuality is more complicated and less binary than that. Once you have a couple of interesting people, go with an interesting story. The characters and the story might change in ways you didn’t expect. If you are writing a more traditional romance that just isn’t working, maybe step back and look at your characters, talk to them. Are they the gender, sexuality, race or nationality you thought they were when you started? Possibly not. Just because your last fifty books featured a straight white female and a straight white male doesn’t mean your work in progress needs to.

Only then, when you have an engaging human, can you build her story. We can get so wrapped up in writing a heroine we forget she is a hero. She might be strapping on a skin-tight costume and taking on Thanos, a destroyer of worlds. She might be taking care of two kids, holding down a full-time career, and keeping her household in order. Personally, I’d rather take on Thanos than face the pile of dishes in my sink, but she needs to be the hero of her own story, free of all the baggage the word ‘heroine’ might come with.

In the end you just need to tell a good story, fill it with interesting people, and don’t try to force it into the shape of what came before. The readers who need to find you will find you, and will love you for the stories you tell.

~

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Guest Post: The Love Triangle as a Complete Circuit By K.C. York

In electrical science, a “complete circuit” refers to the flow of electrons from the source (a battery) to the load (bulb in a flashlight) and then back to the source.

That seems like a very heavy-handed way to start a blog post about writing a romance novel, but think about it in terms of the traditional “love triangle”, where one person is in love with/loved by two others, and must choose between them. Some of the greatest romance stories of all time feature this particular trope, and it remains popular in books and cinema to this day.

But what if the three points were a complete circuit? What if the main heroine falls in love with the two men who are both in love with her and also each other?

For me, this always made so much more sense. Why should one person be devastated (the one not chosen) and the heroine left with only half of what she wants? Even as a young girl watching Casablanca, I remember asking mother why Ilsa (Ingrid Berman’s character) had to choose. Couldn’t Rick and Victor fall in love too? They all seemed pretty well matched to me. (…as you might guess, I grew up in a fairly liberated household!)

That sentiment never left me, and at a much older age I discovered the concept of polyamory. While I, personally, have not been in a polyamorous relationship, it has a very romantic appeal to me, much stronger than most monogamy-based plotlines. Some of that was directed into my love of “slash” fanfic, where the romantic relationship is between two men. Still, I often returned to the idea of a “love triangle” where three people fall in love with each other.

When I sat down to write my book Wolves of Harmony Heights, I decided to do it differently. It has a love triangle in it, but unlike a lot (most?) books with a romance centered on a strong female character and the two attractive, single, and desirable men pursuing her, my book ends up with all three of them together in a polyamorous relationship.

That’s right: together. They are a closed circuit of three points.

This was a bit of a risk, as there are not a lot of romance books with this kind of polyamorous relationship as the focus. It’s popular in erotica, but not quite as popular in romance. Even in erotica, though, it is usually more of a “V” where the woman is in the center, and she has two men, but the men only each have access to (and desire for) her. She is always between the men, figuratively and literally, and there is absolutely no man-on-man action in those stories. Often when you see “threesome” or “ménage” listed on a book’s description, this is what is meant unless accompanied by tags such as “bisexual” or “M/M/F” (M/M/F means male/male/female).

What I wanted to write, on the other hand, was a story where the three characters are all wrapped up together in all the ways that matter, a closed circuit. It is actually pretty rare to find a book like this in the romance section.

The question is whether that’s because people don’t want to read it, or because it’s an underserved market?

I don’t have an answer for that.

But, I also don’t care. This is the kind of story I’ve been wanting to read for most of my life. I’ve longed to see the romantic fantasies I harbor reflected in the books and movies I enjoy. I know it’s still considered a “kink” or a “fringe lifestyle” by the majority of people, but again: don’t care.

Of course when writing Wolves of Harmony Heights, I had my self-doubts. I was writing a massive, long story about a single mother and her bi-racial son and her estranged father and a small town with a long, secret history involving werewolves and witches. It’s a romance story, no question, but it is so much more than that, and I worried that readers would not become absorbed in the world building if they were turned off by the closed-circuit love triangle.

I also had to decide how to handle the polygamy as a relationship option – would the characters themselves be shocked and appalled at first? I think it’s a cliché of queer literature to drag out the “self-realization/coming out” story, and while that can make for incredibly powerful storytelling, I did not want my book to be about the characters discovering polyamory. I wanted to be simply an option on the table, one of many.

That, to me, makes the story much more radical. While the characters know that getting into a long-term threesome romance with each other is unusual, there is very little quandary and self-doubt about it. In fact, the bisexuality of the men is treated with less drama than the fact that witches are a thing that exists (in the book, anyway!). This is not something that is common at all, in polyamorous stories, especially ones set in a “contemporary” time and place. It’s easy to make polyamory a common and socially accepted option when your story is set 200 years in the future, but I did not want my characters to wait that long.

In a lot of ways depictions of successful/happy polyamorous relationships is behind the queer curve, but it’s catching up fast. It took decades for gay fiction to move past the often depressing and tragic “stuck in the closet” storyline, and then a few more years to get beyond the “every story is a dramatic coming out story” theme to the point where a story could simply be about queer characters falling in love or solving mysteries or coming of age.

I’m hopscotching over both those earlier eras in regards to polyamory, with “being in the closet” not even considered by the characters and with no explosive coming out drama in the plot anywhere. The romantic plot line is about whether these three people believe they can make a go of it together, and what that would mean in the context of the story’s main plot which is a deadly conflict between werewolves and witches. There is some discussion of it being an unusual option, but at no point does anyone believe it is an impossible option.

I think it’s possible I created a much larger story arc than I originally intended simply in order to make the eventual threesome more organic – perhaps in the hope that people would become so engrossed in the story of the family at the heart of the novel that they could suspend any disbelief they have over the polyamory. Which, I think, says a lot about the tenor of social acceptance of it at this point in time: I was not at all concerned about whether readers could suspend disbelief enough to enjoy reading about magical witches, werewolves, and a baba-yaga, but polyamory? That I needed to set up very carefully to be believable!

I’m happy with the result, and I hope readers are too. I doubt that Wolves of Harmony Heights will be my last polyamorous romance story, and I not-so-secretly hope it is part of a growing niche.

 

Wolves of Harmony Heights is now available on Amazon.

Audiobooks Aren’t Cheating

This morning I went to see my chiropractor. He’s a generally nice guy, we’ve got kids about the same age. He knows what I do and asks me if it’s going to be a slouching over my desk day, or chasing after a large, strong, active, three-year-old day. Basically, how am I going to undo all his work.

Today he mentioned that he doesn’t read fiction much. He told me he appreciates it but in the free time he’s got he’d rather be running or biking or out on his kayak. He just doesn’t handle sitting still for any more than a few minutes, not long enough to really get into a book. Such a harsh thing to say to a writer when you have your thumbs jabbed into their lower back.

I mentioned audiobooks and his comment was ‘that feels like cheating’ which really summed up a lot of the underlying bias against audiobooks, while ignoring the last 100,000 years of human evolution.

For a long time, audiobooks were considered only for the elderly, the visually impaired, or long distance truck drivers. So ageism, ableism, or socioeconomic profiling.* Basically, if you listened to an audio book it meant you couldn’t read and something was wrong with you.** And if you could read and listened to audiobooks, well that was cheating.

In the last few years publishing has finally caught up with the music industry and realized that everyone is walking around with a supercomputer capable of storing thousands of minutes of audio files. No longer forced to put out big plastic binders with tapes or CDs, audiobooks have become big business. Even small publishers are putting out the money to get their top sellers converted into audiobooks.

But even there, audiobooks seem to have fallen into the cult of efficiency and missed that 100,000 years of evolution. Do to my partner’s work I was able to get my kid into a nice preschool. Maybe not Manhattan, millionaire, five year waiting list, nice but still pretty nice. However, this means her friend’s parents are not ‘my kind of people’. The other moms do pickups in power suits and five inch heels.*** I’m in my Doctor Who t-shirts, jeans, and obviously don’t have a haircare regime.

From the quick, polite, small talk conversations I’ve had while waiting for the kids to get their shoes on many of these moms don’t read books and they have a weird pride in that. They listen to audiobooks while they’re at the gym, or jogging, or preparing their fancy, organic, paleo, locally sourced smoothies in the morning. The implication being that just ‘reading a book’ is somehow an inefficient use of time.****

And the storyteller in me quietly screams. And we come back to my argument with my chiropractor. Audiobooks aren’t cheating. Out of 4 million years of human evolution and roughly, debatably, 100,000 years of what could be considered modern speech, reading and writing only popped up about five thousand years ago, and the concept of universal literacy is only a hundred years old.

We have not evolved to read. We have evolved to listen to stories. To sit around a campfire and be told stories, focused on only that, then turn around and tell our own. Terry Pratchett commented that once he could no longer type that simply speaking his stories to his assistants or even the computer felt very natural. It is after all how people have been telling stories for a hundred thousand years.

And it’s how we’ve been ingesting and gathering our stories for just as long. So, no, audiobooks aren’t cheating. They’re not for ‘a certain type of person’. They are merely a small modern twist on something very, very old.

~

*I like my chiropractor but he’s an upper middleclass, white, South African, male. There are a lot of little unconscious -isms we’re working on. Got to use baby steps, especially while in the middle of having your neck adjusted.

**As a dyslexic the fact that audiobooks seemed limited only to things my grandmother would like drove me nuts.

***Most of the dads seem to be building contractors. Lots of white trucks with business names that involve the word Luxury followed by some room in the house.

****If you are a book lover you’ve probably had this conversation, at least in your head. “What are you doing this weekend?” “Reading.” “Just reading?” “Yes.” “Oh. I’m going to the gym/shops/party/mountain biking.” “I’m going to Alqualondë. Fuck you. I win.”

Meta Monday: The Tragic Story of Dug the Dog

If you have never seen the movie UP go watch it now. Are you done crying?

Here’s my question, where did Dug the dog come from?

This is my best guess. Dug is a Golden Retriever. As far as I can tell the rest of the dogs in Muntz’ pack are Rottweilers, Bulldogs, and Alpha who is a Doberman Pinscher. These dog breeds don’t always have the best reputation and are very hard looking dogs. Muntz has obviously bread them carefully for intelligence over multiple generations. They can fly airplanes and cook.

On the other hand Dug is shown as being if not dumb then gullible. In the short included on the UP DVD, called Dug’s Special Mission, which takes place just before he meets Russell and Carl, he is bullied by the other dogs, especially Alpha. They blame Dug for another failed attempt to catch the bird and with taunts and threats send Dug running from the airship. They also wish Dug a happy birthday. Dug is obviously not a solid member of the pack and is unlikely to have been bred by Muntz.

It’s shown that Muntz loves dogs. In his obsession he will gladly kill anyone but I doubt that Muntz would kill a dog. Muntz surely isn’t the only person to travel with his dogs so somewhere along the line he kills some poor adventurer, finds Dug’s mother (probably already pregnant), and brings her back to the ship. In a tightknit, pseudo-militaristic pack, I can’t see that going well. Muntz could have ordered the pack to take her in but that doesn’t mean they’d be nice about it.

Whatever happened after that was dramatic enough that Alpha, who hates Dug, remembers his exact birthday. In Dug’s Special Mission he says his birthday wish is for a new master which implies that Muntz is either unaware or complacent in Dug’s poor treatment by Alpha and the rest of the pack. There is no evidence of Dug’s mother or of any littermates he might have had, suggesting he is possibly the only survivor, either chosen by Muntz or Muntz stopping whatever event was dramatic enough to make his birthdate memorable.

The All Romance Ebooks Meltdown for The Readers

If you read romance novels with any regularity you’re probably aware of the shutdown of All Romance Ebooks. If you’re not here’s a quick summary. One of the largest retailers of romance ebooks outside of Amazon went dark on December 31 giving only three days notice.

For authors and publishers this has been, what can only be described as, a cluster fuck. A letter went out to all the independent authors saying they would only get paid 10 cents on the dollar for the Q4 royalties and only if they promised no legal action. As I’m sure you can imagine the lawyers have descended. In the last 12 days, all kinds of ugly has been dug up. There are reports that Lori James (who writes as Samantha Sommersby and as part of a pair under the name S.J Harper), may have used some really nasty tactics to push out her partner in 2014. There are questions as to the accuracy of accounts since then. There is speculation she might be behind some copywrite claim jumping on Amazon. And authors are being encouraged to make complaints to the Florida AG and even the DoJ. I’ll put the links to all this stuff at the bottom of the post because everyone needs one more thing to be angry about.

While writers, some of whom are out thousands of dollars, and publishers out hundreds of thousands, have circled the wagons I know readers have been asking questions and feeling a bit screwed over as well. Readers were only given three days to download their libraries, someone of them containing thousands of books (bless you), while the site was crashing and publishers were yanking their books down. As a reader as well I know nothing hurts like losing a book. If you bought one of mine (thank you so much) and weren’t able to save it Dreamspinner Press is replacing lost books and honouring presales of their works if you send them proof of purchase. You can contact them at office@dreamspinnerpress.com. Give them a bit of time to get back. They’re a little swamped. I’ve heard Less Than Three, Riptide, and a lot of the other smaller presses are doing something similar so it won’t hurt to ask.

In the more long-term I’ve heard ‘Where shall we buy our books now I don’t want to but from Amazon?’

I get that. I really do. I feel guilty every time I click that little button, unfortunately I live in New Zealand where bookselling is a sad business and I sort of have to go where I can get the best shipping deals. There is also google books, kobo, and ibooks, but again these are the Big Guys.

Now I know money is tight for a lot of people. Oh god do I know this. There are maybe a dozen writers on Earth who don’t worry about money. And we all appreciate that some money is better than none (unless we’re getting offered ten cents on the dollar), but if and only if you believe you can afford it please consider just buying direct from the publishers. I know it’s not nearly as convenient, but even when you’re buying a sale item more money is going to get to the author which will get them closer to quitting their day job so they can write more books for you.

Most publishers have a mailing list of some sort as well as social media accounts that will keep you updated as to sales, pre-orders, and special deals. Dreamspinner gives you a free ecopy of any book you buy in paperback. If an author you like has a mailing list that can also be a good way to know when their new stuff is coming up.

The ARe fiasco has given the entire romance writing community a nasty kick, financially and emotionally. We are hurt, angry, and hell hath no fury like a writer screwed out of royalties. If you are a reader of any kind of romance we thank you. It’s often mocked and not considered socially acceptable in many places. In the past there have been conflicts over the lines between writers and readers but this is the point when we all need to band together. Even if you can’t afford to buy books any place but the bargain bin please take a couple of minutes to leave ratings and reviews. Those little stars on Amazon and Goodreads can actually have a solid impact on our bank accounts. Recommend authors you like to your friends. If your local library doesn’t carry them suggest that they do. And when people make fun your reading choice stand up for it. Those assholes probably don’t read anyway.

~

Court Documents Regarding All Romance E-Books’ Disturbing Business Practices Surface

Authors Be Warned: The Ongoing Impact of the All Romance Ebooks Debacle

Business Musings: All Romance Ebooks & Visions of The Future: Part One

Publisher All Romance Ebooks: Closing Hits New Low In Stealing From Authors

Florida Attorney General e-Service Information Page

United States Department of Justice REPORTING COMPUTER, INTERNET-RELATED, OR INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY CRIME

P*ssed Off (former) ARe Authors Facebook Group

The Sacred Recipes

Food is sacred. Food is culture, religion, tradition, civilization. Few rituals don’t involve food in some definition. It might be as simple as a pinch of saffron or a sip of wine. It might be grand meals of celebration. It might be the self-denial of food making the return all that more important. That makes the creation of the food and the recipes involved as holy as any breviary.

Everyone has recipes, even people who think they don’t. It might be cooking instant noodles a few minutes longer than it says on the pack or putting a sprinkle of tabasco sauce on top of instant Mac and Cheese. It’s something wilfully changed by, and therefor important to, the person who is making it.

This holiday season is the first without any of my grandparents living. In truth my grandmother had been gone for quite a while. She would occasionally ask when her brother’s flight squadron was being disbanded so he could come home. He crashed his plane in 1945. In her married years, she was the perfect housewife hostess. After she was widowed she would bring out those skills every possible holiday of the year. When she passed in August of this year I inherited 37 mismatched china tea cups, a 70’s Steinway piano, and a set of cut glass bowls. I’ve been thinking a lot about what she used to put in those bowls.

For her funeral lunch my sister and I decided to make the things she would make for us that we would never make for ourselves. Processed ham sandwiches with margarine and iceberg lettuce on ‘brown’ bread. Imitation king crab salad sandwiches made with miracle whip on white bread. Green Jell-O pineapple “salad” served on a piece of iceberg lettuce which was made every holiday and only my father ever ate. My sister and I had to dig for that recipe. Everyone we found was wrong since my grandmother, who was usually slavish to back of the box recipes, decided to change that one. No whipped cream, no nuts or cherries, extra pineapple and a double batch to fill the large brass Jell-O mold. It’s about the same level as putting the spice pack into the water first so it boils the flavour into the instant noodles but it was hers.

At Christmas those cut-glass bowls were filled with onion dip, seafood dip, and Chex Mix. This year I am hosting Christmas dinner for my in-laws. My sister-in-law and I switch years. I will never be the perfect hostess my grandmother or even sister-in-law was and is. I don’t have matched china and silver, I hate cleaning, and have a heat ring on my dining room table. I do however put out a damn good meal. I can do a lamb roast like you wouldn’t believe and buttermilk biscuits nearly as flaky as a croissant. And this year I feel a need to put those cut-glass bowls to their intended use for the first time in probably 15 years.

I’ve been on the phone with my sister three times today trying to reverse engineer the seafood dip. It involved little canned shrimp, and canned oysters we think. The Chex mix is also proving harder than it should. The official recipe involves making it in the microwave. No. And has bagel chips. Hell no. It’s also really hard to find Chex in New Zealand and you can only get one variety. I’ll manage it somehow. Might have to make a few substitutions, drive out to specialty shops, but I’m going to have oyster dip probably no one will eat and Chex mix without bagel chips sitting on the coffee table when everyone comes over for Christmas.