B.A. Tortuga's Blog, page 93

What I Worked on This Week

My bestie flies in Monday, so I pushed hard this week.  Active writing: Tag Team: Fais Do Do -- m/m novel. Ah, the falling in love phase. Still going strong. The Terms of Release -- m/m novel. Have already cried twice on this one... Hammer and Tongs -- m/m Western. With kink m/m/f novel (co-write with Julia) -- fun, sexy menage with were cats :D Don't Mess with Hexes -- m/m/f novella -- book two of the Cowbell, Book and Candle series. This is going way faster the second time. :D  In edits/rewrites: The Four Horsemen: Ace and Kitty -- needs rewrites like whoa. O.o  Next up: Thanksgiving and company all week. I don't expect to work much.  ;-) Much love, y'all. BA

Flash Fiction featuring Mating Call

NEXT WEEK!

*grins*

To help celebrate the turkey day season, I've written a flash fic featuring Steph/Jordan/Shaw. :D Totally safe for work.

http://batortugaflashfiction.blogspot.com/2012/11/mating-call-thanksgiving.html

Much love, y'all.

BA

Bittersweet Out Today!

It's here!

Dark, spooky, fast-paced, with vampires, werewolves, demons, a storm-calling immortal psychic with a ghostly sometimes-zombie wife. 

:D

My take on YA!

http://www.prizmbooks.com/zencart/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=2_27&products_id=46&zenid=2760109e0571392b9d7f0ff79f17a698

Official type blurb:

Twins Marcus and Micah have moved all over the country, trying to find a place to run their favorite business. They love their coffee shop, but there's always something, some sort of malevolent presence always ruins it for them. They don't know who or what it is that haunts them, only that they can't seem to escape it.

This time, though, they may have found just the right place to help them exorcise what ails them. Their new hometown has Spook, who has a pregnant friend, a demon belt buckle, and a way with spirits, as well as a host of other folks who are ready to take Marcus and Micah's problem on. Things get complicated quickly, and nothing is what it seems in this fast-paced urban fantasy.

 

Recipe: The Perfect Pot Pie

So, I've had a couple three folks ask for my pot pie recipe -- which is yummy, gluten free, and all mine. :D

Ingredients:

Olive oil

2 boneless, skinless chicken breasts

2 carrots, chopped

1 onion, chopped

3 stalks of celery, chopped

2 garlic cloves, minced

1/2 bag of frozen peas

2 c. chicken stock

salt and pepper

Thyme

1 T. corn starch

1/2 half and half

8 oz cream cheese, softened

1/2 c. butter, softened

1 c. (for me, gluten free) flour

 

Okay, so get you a nice-sized pan. I love the one in the picture because it's wide and shallow and pretty and I can just put it on the table. If you don't have a pretty pan, you can *always* transfer this into anything you want, no stress. If you haven't taken your cream cheese and butter out of the fridge, do that now. 

Drizzle the bottom with a little oil and get your chicken cooking on med high heat. While it's cooking away, cut up all your veggies. When the chicken's done and a pretty golden brown, take it out and let it rest a minute. Get your veggies in the pan to cook for a minute (really, literally, like a minute so you don't burn the garlic), then put in some of your chicken stock. Check to make sure you have corn starch. At this point you still have time to send someone to the store.

Now, you've got 2 cups of chicken stock and you've got 30 minutes of cooking. My head says that you can dump the chicken stock in all at once and all will be well. I don't. I put in some, let it cook down, add more. You've got to stir periodically anyway, so you might as well try it my way. ;-)

Stir.

Now cut up your chicken into pot pie sized for you pieces. Add them to the pot. Stir. Add a little more stock.

Salt and pepper and thyme to taste. I have tried dill too, but we didn't love that. Julia puts rosemary in when she catches me at this point, but I don't like how rosemary gets in my teeth.

Turn your heat to medium, turn your oven to 350.

Now, get your mixer out and mix the hell out of your butter and cream cheese. 

Go stir and add a little stock. 

Put a cup of whatever flour make you and your allergies happy in the butterycreamycheesy stuff and mix it up.

Now get a cookie sheet and cover it with parchment paper (trust me) and plop your dough on it and press it down in approximately the shape you want (or in a square, if you want to cut it at the end and make teeny tiny fancy pot pielets.

Now into the oven for 25 minutes.

Every now and then, stir and add for the next 15 minutes. (I do it maybe twice).

When you have 10 minutes left on the oven, get you a jar with a screw lid (or a bowl and a whisk, whatever) and put your cold half and half (this also works with milk, cream, almond milk, soy milk, evaporated milk, hemp milk, or plain old water in a pinch) in with the corn starch. Put the lid on and shake hard. Stir this slurry into the chicken mixture.

Now your crust should be amazing. Take it out and slide it onto your goo. Or spoon your goo into a serving dish and slide the crust onto that. Or spoon your goo into many individual dishes and cut the crust up and put them on.

Tada.

Perfect pot pie.

Much love.

BA

Mating Call (coming November 23 from Ellora's Cave) Playlist

So, Mating Call is coming! I'm *so* excited and I can't wait for y'all to meet Steph, Jordan and Shaw. Yes, that means m/m/f. It also means werewolves. Witches. Boulder, Colorado. Biting. Fun stuff.

I just put the playlist for this book (hopefully this series, the second book is in my editor's hot little hands) up at http://baswritingplaylists.blogspot.com/2012/11/mating-call-playlist.html

:D

Much love, y'all!

BA

Six Sentence Sunday -- Bittersweet

So, the Queen Bee and all-around pain in the ass bitch had given him twenty dollars and an address, telling him that Lightning McMann -- bum, nutcase, and uber-talented sensitive with a Meth habit -- had been having problems at that new coffee shop on West.

Faboo.

"Why did I move out here again?" The words were not even loud enough to be a whisper, really, because he knew the answer. He'd moved because queer, Goth, psychic club kids with the ability to sniff out evil weren't really necessary in Amarillo.

Or, really, suffered to live.

 

 

This snippet is from my alter-ego's new New Adult book, Bittersweet, coming out Wednesday from Prizm Books.

 

 

Want to play along? It’s fun and easy

1. pick a project – a current WIP, contracted work or even something readers can buy if you’re published

2. pick six sentences

3. post ‘em on your blog or website on SundayThis snippet is from Adam's story, Tag Team, that I'm currently plugging away at. The boys are currently in a pervy position, in fact. :D Want to play along? It’s fun and easy 1. pick a project – a current WIP, contracted work or even something readers can buy if you’re published 2. pick six sentences 3. post ‘em on your blog or website on Sunday

What I Worked on This Week

Allergies are kicking my butt and I only have one more week of normalcy before my best friend shows up for Thanksgiving. O.o  Active writing: Tag Team: Fais Do Do -- m/m novel. Ah, the falling in love phase. The Terms of Release -- m/m novel. Have already cried twice on this one... Hammer and Tongs -- m/m Western. With kink m/m/f novel (co-write with Julia) -- fun, sexy menage with were cats :D Don't Mess with Hexes -- m/m/f novella -- book two of the Cowbell, Book and Candle series. It's due in Jan. 1, so the file is open. This is the second time I've written this one (the first one is a loss). :P  In edits/rewrites: The Four Horsemen: Ace and Kitty -- through with my read, Julia's reading and commenting, then to beta for more before rewrites.  Next up: Same song, same tune. No changes here. ;-) Much love, y'all. BA

2012 Torquere Press Charity Sip Blog Hop

Morning, y'all!

I'm tickled as punch to be part of Torquere Press' annual charity drive. You see, every year we (the authors) pick a charity and then we write a short story on a theme (this year's was leather). Our royalties are donated, and Torquere matches our donated. 

Pretty cool, huh?

This year's charity is NOH8 and I wrote a little short about my cowboys, Beau and Sam. Sam was in a terrible bull riding accident and has a problem talking -- not thinking, speaking -- and his lover is getting tired of the silence.

I get that. 

Silence gets us in trouble sometimes. 

One of the reasons I write romance is that I believe in the happy ending. I also believe readers want that happy ending. We want to believe that love overcomes obstacles, that good intentions win over bad and that, at the end, hate loses.

It was election week and, lord y'all, the hate that was spewing around made my heart sick. People were scared and they were pissed off and they were ugly -- on both sides. 

I voted (of course), then I hid my head in the romantic sand where two men can fall in love and have it be forever. Where two men can fall in love with each other and a woman and live happily ever after.

Where everybody deserves a happy ending.

If you'd like to donate to NOT8 by purchasing the charity sips, rock on. They're available on Torquere Books and Rainbow eBooks

Also, my personal happy ending, Julia Talbot, and I are giving away a Spurs and Shifters goodie bag to one of our commenters. :D

Share your happy ending with me?

Guess what, y'all... I wrote a New Adult story

So, here's the deal. 

Back a while ago I was writing a serial fiction for A Turn of the Screw under my gee-this-is-darker-and-considerably-less-BA-than-normal pen name, Dallas Coleman, and, while the story was good, I had to admit at the end that it wasn't a romance. After sitting on it for a while (like more than a year), I reread it and went, huh.

This is a good book. 

It's scary, fast-paced, has characters I love.  It's urban fantasy, on the dark side, and totally built around young adults.

So, I spent a few months revising and rewriting, then sent it to Prizm and Kristi took it.

Bittersweet is the first book in a series set on the West Coast in a fictional city named Tame Harbor. Tame Harbor is, like many cities on earth, filled with normal folks doing their jobs, doing their day-to-day thing. It's also filled with demons. Vampires. There's been more than one werewolf, and there's a group of young people living in the industrial area of town that spent their time battling the baddies.

The problem is, their den mother is pregnant with twins, two of their members are infected with vampirism, and one of them just came back from a Pack Gathering knocked up.

Not only that, but poor Spook is wearing the demon who destroyed his lover's soul around his waist in a belt buckle and he's pretty sure that the demon that's squatting in the local coffeeshop is a bad ass.

;)

Excerpt:

Spook walked across the room, heading right to the corner. Lola was right. There was something here.

Figured.

God, he was tired. He'd worked all night slinging hash at the Station, then had crawled to the flat, where Lola had been waiting, gauzy fabric draping her, softening the sharp angles and the bulging belly where the babies -- babies, where the fuck were they all going to raise babies? -- were growing. It wasn't really his turn to go tracking, but Harry was down in the sewers looking for a shifter, Kat was working a shift at Jojo's and Greg and Nan were both... well, hibernating.

Right. Hibernating.

Until the sun went down.

Damned blood suckers. Really, Nan was cool, because she was a nurse, but Greg was a bicycle messenger and they didn't work third shift. Damn it.

So, the Queen Bee and all-around pain in the ass bitch had given him twenty dollars and an address, telling him that Lightning McMann -- bum, nutcase, and uber-talented sensitive with a Meth habit -- had been having problems at that new coffee shop on West.

Faboo.

"Why did I move out here again?" The words were not even loud enough to be a whisper, really, because he knew the answer.

He'd moved because queer, Goth, psychic club kids with the ability to sniff out evil weren't really necessary in Amarillo.

Or wanted.

Or, really, suffered to live.

Oh, man. Good coffee.

The coffee shop was nice, though. Freak-friendly, with a safe-for-the-mundane vibe and a couple of the good chairs. Looked like a place for a little band on a pseudo-stage, too. Wicked.

There was a family sticker above the door, which had him eyeing the twins behind the bar with a distant, sort of prurient interest. There wasn't a thing between them, though, barring that normal sibling, you stole my Cheerios and kissed a boy first kind of mucky connection multiplied by dude, we have matching DNA strands.

Pity, because that would be relatively pretty jack-off material.

Something flared across from him, something willful and damned angry, with a connection that felt like being slapped with a bag of used coffee grounds. Well, hello, aren't you awake and aware and a little possessive?

He put his coffee mug down, watching the clouds of milk in it settle out, reflecting the light from the street outside, the people walking by, and...

There. Eyes. Dark eyes.

Wicked.

He grabbed his cell phone, dialed up the Loft.

Lola answered immediately. "Well?"

"Yeah. Lightning was right."

"It is big?"

Spook shrugged. "It's... real. Does that count?"

***

Bittersweet will be available from Prizm Books on November 14. :D

Much love, y'all.

BA

Recipe -- Crockpot Oatmeal for people who hate oatmeal

So, I hate oatmeal.

Slimy. Icky. Nasty stuff.

However, oatmeal is good for you and processed cereal is bad and it can be done in a crockpot, which is all forethought-y and stuff. 

So, I spent a year experiments and going from 'gagging down the oatmeal' to 'I ate it, didn't I?' to 'okay. I can eat this'.

Then I hit, oh. Wow. Okay. YUM!

:D

Crockpot Oatmeal for people who hate oatmeal

Ingredients:

1 c steel cut oatmeal (not the flaky stuff) (if you're gluten free, get gluten free oats)

1 c. vanilla almond milk (I don't drink milk, but I see no reason you couldn't *use* milk)

3 c. apple juice or water or pear juice or coconut water, just make sure it's wet

1 big or 2 little apples, peeled and chopped up

2 big handfuls of dried cranberries

a dollop of maple syrup

cinnamon (we use lots)

Do it:

Put it in the crockpot, stir it up and put the lid on. Cook on low overnight. 

It serves 4 generously and I like to top mine with a spoonful of brown sugar and some walnuts. If it's too thick, pour a little milk on it.

It's yummy.

:D

Much love, y'all.

BA