Jenn Reese's Blog, page 8

Event: LA Teen Book Fest, Oct 12

Catch me at the Middle Grade Book Party panel from 12-12:45pm on October 12th, along with Kristen Kittscher, Barbara Brauner, James Iver Mattson, Ned Vizzini, and moderator Cecil Castellucci. Stay for pizza and cupcakes!

Event: WeHo Book Fair, Sept 29

West Hollywood Book Fair celebrates its 12th edition on Sunday, September 29th. This year’s festival will feature literature, art, music, performance and community in an eclectic presentation. A total of twelve outdoor stages and indoor venues, throughout West Hollywood Park and West Hollywood Library, will host literary and arts programming that will appeal to a broad audience of all ages and interests.

In beTWEEN reads: Middle Grade Fiction

12:00pm, Young Readers stage

Aaron Hartzler (Moderator)

Jenn Reese

Theo Baker

Teddy Steinkellner

Robin Mellom

I’ll be talking about Above World and Mirage, and signing afterward. Hope to see some of you there! #SFWAauthors

Farm Box Experiment: First Week

Last Tuesday, I picked up my first farm box since signing up with Savraw. Here’s what I got:

I’d never cooked with most of these things before. Heck, I didn’t even know what some of them were. But the Internet is pretty great for this sort of thing, and so are my friends. I crowdsourced recipe ideas and ended up learning a ton about food.

Chard: Sautéed with garlic and added chickpeas and raisins.

Kale: Kale chips with nutritional yeast (yes) and blended into a morning smoothie (no).

Arugula: Salad with apples, walnuts, and raisins.

Corn: Boiled, rubbed with lime, salted.

Squash: Sautéed squash with garlic, added tomato, served with goat cheese. (My favorite of the week!)

Tomato: Eaten with balsamic and salt.

Grapes, Apples: eaten raw.

Fennel: Baked with parmesan. (Not a fan of this one.)

Anaheim peppers: Charred, skinned, de-seeded and eaten with goat cheese. (Also probably used on sandwiches.)

Limes: Used with corn and in tonic as a drink. Yum.

Eggs: See my last post.

I’ll be honest: I never would have bought most of these things. But because they arrived, already paid for, I was happy to experiment. I tried them all raw first, just so I’d know. I tried most of them cooked. I didn’t like everything (I’m looking at you, fennel), but I loved the process of discovery.

Tomorrow is not only a new day, it’s a new farm box. Can’t wait!

Farm Box Experiment: Farm-fresh Eggs

Inspired by a desire to eat better and support local farms, I joined a CSA/Farm Box organization. The way it works: I signed up and told them what I wanted — a small box of mixed veggies and fruits. (There are large boxes, boxes for juicing, and fruit-only boxes, as other examples.) I added on a loaf of bread and a dozen farm-fresh eggs. Each week, I’ll walk over to the local Aikido school and pick up my box. The website will post a list of each week’s offerings, along with the name of the farm from which they came.

I’ve already been having fun trying new recipes and learning how to use new vegetables, but today I want to talk about the eggs. These are my first farm-fresh eggs ever, and I was shocked at how different they are from store-bought eggs.

The store-bought egg is on the left, with the pale yellow yolk. The farm-fresh egg, although smaller in general, had a larger yolk with a rich golden orange color. The other two farm eggs I opened were the same.

I decided to poach the eggs and see if I could taste a difference after they were cooked:

The farm egg is on the left in this picture, but you probably knew that. The yolk stayed rich and golden and had more viscosity than the store egg. It tasted more flavorful, but I’m not sure if that was actually true, or if I let my eyes do some of the tasting for me.

Regardless, I’m now 100% sold on farm-fresh eggs. If you haven’t tried any, treat yourself to a dozen the next time you can afford to do so. (Mine were twice as expensive as eggs at Trader Joe’s.) They really made breakfast into something magical.

Audio Rights to Book 3 Sold

I’m happy to announce that the audio rights to HORIZON, book 3 of my Above World series, have sold to Candlewick! Candlewick and Brilliance Audio have done an amazing job on books one and two, both read by the award-winning Kate Rudd, and I can’t wait to hear Horizon come to life, too.

Here’s a link to all my current books available on Audible.com, although they’re available on iTunes and in libraries and bookstores as well. (You’ll probably have to order them from the bookstores.)

Thanks to my agent Joe Monti and BGL’s amazing Patricia Ready, as well as to Candlewick and Brilliance. Woot!

Seven Years

Today marks seven years since I met Chris at Worldcon in Anaheim and we started dating. They’ve been the best seven years of my life. We’re celebrating with mini parties for the next month, and with two beautiful new rings:

The inlay of Chris’s ring is a layers of dark gray, whereas mine is inlaid with wood. Similar, but different. Just like us.

Here’s one of my favorite recent pictures: Chris and I with our mouths full at More Than Waffles. (Photo by Rick Engdahl.)

Sale to Daily Science Fiction

Just before I had surgery in June, I wrote two new flash stories. I’m happy to report that the first one, “Gather Your Bones,” has sold to Daily Science Fiction!

Previously, Daily Science Fiction published stories of mine as part of the “Alphabet Quartet,” a series of 26 shorts co-authored by Tim Pratt, Heather Shaw, and Greg van Eekhout.

For those of you unfamiliar with DSF, you can sign up for free and get a new story emailed to you every weekday. The stories appear online for free a week after that. (If you enjoy DSF or appreciate the service they offer, you might consider contributing to their Kickstarter. There are 8 more days to help them reach their goal as of this writing.)

Feels really great to have a new short story coming out, even one only about 500 words long. “Gather Your Bones” was super fun to write, and if you read it, I think you’ll know why.

Inspiration Office

One good thing about having the walls and ceiling of your office space soaked, torn down, and rebuilt is that you get to rethink the space a bit.

For example, I replaced the outdated chandelier — my office would be a dining room for most people — with a ceiling fan with clean, modern lines. I’ll be working at home now, and the extra fan will come in very handy during the summer months (AKA 99% of the year in LA). It also doesn’t hang down, so Chris will stop bumping his head every time he steps into my space.

My work-in-progress office with new clipboard installation.

This time around, and to celebrate my new start as a full-time creative professional, I’ve decided to try a clipboard “inspiration wall.” (I got the idea from the article “The Clipboard Workspace” on Lifehacker.) What I like about this idea:

Cheap: 9 clipboards set me back about $16 on sale.
Constantly changing: I can rotate art as much as want, including magazine clippings, book covers, printouts of fan art, art inspiration, or even finished purchased art. I can make the wall (or any part of it) all about my writing career, my design career, or my nascent attempts at drawing.
Customizable look: in addition to changing the art, there are a ton of different style clipboards out there if you want to spend more money, and most come ready to be hung. For example, sleek shiny black or stainless steel clipboards would give this a much more modern appeal. You could also color-code — some red, orange, yellow, or whatnot.
Minimally damaging to the wall: This required 9 tiny nails. If I decide I don’t like it, I may not even have to patch the wall if I remove the clipboards.
Interactive: I think the act of considering and changing artwork keeps one engaged in the space, and can inspire creative thought. (Usually I hang a piece of art and continue to enjoy it but in a more passive way.)

My external environment has a huge impact on my internal state of mind. A cluttered house equals a cluttered mind. (I know many people for whom this is not the case, so keep in mind that this just applies to me.) I normally favor super clean, minimal walls, so this is a big departure for me, one which I hope brings inspiration and excitement to my work area.

Here’s the wall just after installation, with only a few things clipped. I suspect it will look quite different when I have all the clipboards filled. (I may also add another column on the right, or a nice static piece of art.)

The clipboards will hold fan art, book covers, sketches, magazine clippings, photographs, etc.

Anyone else have ideas or tips that make their writing/work space more inspiring and energizing?

Herb Garden Season 2: CANCELED

In March, I posted about Herb Garden Season 2, my second attempt to grow an herb garden on my tiny apartment porch.

Season 2 opened to great ratings and high marks for quality. I was particularly proud of my sage, as I’d struggled with it during season 1. In season 2, it thrived. Take a look at these greens:

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During the Great Condo Disaster of May and June, Chris attempted to water the plants whenever he came to see the repair crews. Ratings dropped, but we thought the garden might pull through.

And then the flooring installers arrived.

The flooring folks used our tiny porch to cut bamboo flooring and left only death in their wake:

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I don’t yet have the energy to clean out the dead plants, head to the nursery, and start over, but rest assured, I will not give up this easily. There will be an Herb Garden Season 3… different actors, but same storyline.

Beyond June

June: the Bad Version

Well, June was a rough one, no lie. I spent the month recovering from surgery, displaced from my home by the repair crews, while Chris and I dealt with insurance companies, contractors, subcontractors, and lawyers. I got a jury duty summons somewhere in there, and my surgery followup with the doctor took 40 hours of people driving me from Yucaipa to Thousand Oaks and back between their work schedules. (The appointment itself took 10 minutes.) Chris and I only saw each other on weekends, he lived out of a suitcase for a month, and the cats mostly lived under a bed. I developed insomnia, stressed about money, did no reading or writing, and spent a lot of time wondering what exactly had happened to my life.

June: the Good Version

Wow, did my friends and family come through for Chris and I in our time of need! When our condo flooded, several people (local and distant) offered to put us up while the repairs were being made. I ended up moving to Yucaipa, where my mom and her partner Dom gave us a room for our three cats and let me sleep in a separate room, so the cats wouldn’t mess with my recovery by being overzealous in their affection.

Not only did I receive letters and care packages from friends, but also a constant stream of supportive emails, tweets, and Facebook comments. Even during late-night insomnia episodes, I found people online who sympathized, made me laugh, or simply continued being their wonderful, interesting selves. Whatever I’ve been doing with my life up until now, I know I’ve done at least one thing right: I’ve surrounded myself with amazing, generous people. Both my family and my created family circled the wagons and took amazing care of me.

Plus, I got to know my mom and her partner in a way I never expected. They were so generous with their house and their time. They fed me, took me for meds, let me rest as much as I needed, and let me play with their wonderful dogs, Charlie and Calli. We spent many lovely mornings sipping coffee and many cool desert nights in the backyard, eating dinner and sharing stories. My mom and I went clothes shopping together for perhaps the first time in our adult lives… and it was really fun.

I never would have taken that much time out of my life to spend with my mom and her partner. Who would? We all have books to write, jobs to do, goals to achieve, lives to build. As stressed out as I was all month, this was one heck of a silver lining, and I’ll be grateful for this time we had together long after the stress of the events has faded.

July: Where I’m At Now

Last weekend I moved back home and yesterday the repair crews came to finish up the last remaining issues. We have a lot to do to make the house ours again — putting all the books back on their shelves, re-hanging all the pictures, re-arranging the furniture — and we need to hire a “post-disaster” cleaning crew to come in and rid us of the ubiquitous paint and plaster particles.

But this is also a new start. Originally, I’d called June my “chrysalis month,” where I’d rest, read, and get ready to restart my life as a creative professional. I saw it as an internal shift in how I view myself and my life. Now I get to make that shift externally as well. We’re changing up the house, moving things around, getting rid of so much stuff that was weighing us down. The upheaval is an opportunity to rethink what we own, what makes us happy, and what’s essential to help shape the life we want to have going forward.

How often do we get to hit the reset button on our lives? I’ve done it before, but have lost everything and had to rebuild from scratch. This time I get to keep all the most important things: friends, family, passions, and goals. They get to be the foundations from which I build this new thing.

July: Less Dramatically

I’m still recovering from surgery — 2 more weeks of rest, 2 more months without using my abs — but I’m excited to get back into writing, drawing, and creating. I’ve got a copyedit deadline looming, and two new books started but not finished. In August I’m heading east to attend my agency retreat, officially destroying the cocoon I’ve been living in. I can’t wait.