Robin McKinley's Blog, page 182

PEGASUS Monday

 

AKA Dead person walking.  Well, comatose person sitting in a chair.  The hour and a half I spent staring at one paragraph yesterday is still a personal worst, but there's always tomorrow.*

            Meanwhile.  It's February**, it's cold, dark, nasty, I have another frellingest of frelling deadlines*** in two days, and I want roses.  And then I'm going to bed again, which is a standard recourse for tired and late at night, although this works better for some people than others.  Lately the ...

PEGASUS Sunday

 

I am brain dead.  I am way beyond brain dead . . . and I still have over two hundred pages of the copyedited PEGASUS to go.

            So let's have another glimpse of the beast in question this evening, and I'm going to spend a pleasant hour or two cruising on-line plant catalogues* and then I am going to bed early. 

             In case you want to remind yourself where you are, the first two snippets of the beginning of PEGASUS are here:

http://robinmckinleysblog.com/2009/05/31/done-2/

Guest blog by B-Twin

Making a Wedding Cake

 

Part 1B: The Cake – Covering

Continuing on from Part 1A – Baking we now move to covering the cake. The purpose of covering the cake in this case is to make the cake a suitable base for decorations.

There are several common ways to cover cakes. The term "icing" (as a noun) gets flung about very easily. It could mean ganache (chocolate + cream), basic icing (icing sugar + water), frosting (icing sugar + milk/water + butter etc), fondant (icing sugar + glucose syrup + other s...

PEGASUS Friday

 

             I was late giving hellhounds their final hurtle this evening and was therefore streaking around town because I was going to go bell ringing, I don't care if PEGASUS is 6,723,598 pages long.*  As we were bolting uphill on Market Street, which is one of those extra-wide streets from the days of farmers' markets that involved entire flocks of sheep, a woman came out of her front door on the opposite side of the street.  This happens.  People live here, and they do things like go...

Look at what arrived in the post today:

 

 

Another writer friend—let's call her Rosalind—sent it, saying that I could take notes on PEG II in it, and included a bookmark with a teeny weeny pegasus on it.*  And if you want such a notebook, you can get it here:  http://longbarnbooks.com/ , where indeed it appears in a number of guises.  Oooh.  I may have to have the tea mug too.**

This is the same friend who gave me a tote bag*** with Erasmus' deathless remark on it: 'When I get a little money, I buy books.  And if there is any left...

Guest blog by B-Twin

How to make a wedding cake.

It is well established, I suspect, that I like making cakes. I dabble a little in the decorating side of things as well. Consequently all of my siblings have had wedding cakes that were made by me.

For some reason I was aware that Robin would be on the lookout for more Guest Blogs. (!) This topic will take more than one entry but here is a little insight as to what goes into making a fairly simple wedding cake (in case you wondered why they are so highly priced…)

span

Havoc, various and extreme

 

My editor's assistant is very on the spot, bless her, and while the copyedited ms of PEGASUS in all its red-pencilled, Post-Itted glory* isn't due to arrive till Thursday**, she sent me the copyeditor's queries last night so I can at least get started on the more or less substantive stuff, as opposed to the melting-down-over-the-question-of-semicolons stuff, which will have to await arrival of the large square boulder of typescript.  Or printerscript.

            I am, of course...

Bookshelves and reality

 

A few days ago this email conversation occurred with my friend Tasmin, who is another writer.  Another somewhat (ahem) book- and space-challenged writer.*  She's spent a lot of time (and money) over the last year or so in turning the second parlour in her old farmhouse into a library**, and now, finally, with the shelves in, she is beginning to unpack. 

I asked her if I could use her email and my reply as a blog entry because I felt that rather a lot of you would understand what happened...

Not One of My Better Sundays

 

 

In the first place, despite the parlous state of my internal economy* the world is (surprisingly) not utterly cold, barren and friendless.**   While I was clearing off the kitchen table *** I re-unearthed the latest catalogue from the company that had sold me the infamous Melting Vacuum Cleaner.  In large brazen print the catalogue declares, Our phone lines are open 24 hours every day!  So I rang them up at 3 o'clock on a Sunday afternoon, and said, I bought a vacuum cleaner from you...

Blogmom needs your help

Hi, all – the mods and I have been trying to contact the page admin for this older Facebook page but without success. If you know the admin or, better yet, are the admin, please email me at blogmom@robinmckinleysblog.com.

As you no doubt know by now, this is Robin's new and shiny official Facebook page.  Thanks for your help!