C.M. Simpson's Blog, page 170

Spiders Visitng my House in February 2015

In addition to the cute, we have the not so cute, and while I don't mind these guys outside, I have a problem with many of them being inside. This doesn't necessarily mean they get squished, but most get an assist in finding the great outdoors again.

...Unless, of course, you are a white tail - and a big one at that. This little lady was sitting above the kitchen door. She was just over an inch long.

I've been told these are spider hunters, which may explain why she was working her way through a web.




These guys and gals, however, almost always get a lift outside... usually in a plastic container.


... usually after they've finished stuffing their faces.

Recipe - Creamy Chicken, Pumpkin and Pine Nut Pasta

So, Friday night's dinner consisted of a recipe made up on the fly: creamy chicken, pumpkin and pine nut pasta:

Creamy chicken, pumpkin and pine nut pastaThis recipe successfully fed three, but would comfortably feed four and stretch to six.

Ingredients:Pasta of your choice

Prior to preparing the ingredients for the sauce, put the pasta water on to boil. While it is heating, prepare the following ingredients.


olive oil - approximately 2 tablespoons (or enough for a thin layer in the bottom of your frypan)

approximately 100 gm of pine nuts - more or less as you prefer3 cloves of garlic - finely diced or crushed1/2 teaspoon of ground black peppe

2 chicken breasts - diced to 2cm or 1 inch cubes

2 slices of butternut pumpkin (approximately 1 1/2cm or 1/2 inch thick) - diced into cubes


6-8 mushrooms ( with caps up to about 5cm or 2 inches in diameter) - sliced

1/2 red capsicum (pepper if you're in the States) - diced to approximately 1cm or 1/4 inch squares




250gms (or thereabouts) of cheese - grated250-300mls of thickened cream
The water for the pasta should now be boiling. Add the pasta to the water and cook as normal, while preparing the sauce as follows:
Process 1. Place the oil in a deep pan, or pot and heat gently.


2. Add pine nuts, pepper and garlic3. Add diced chicken and brown, increasing heat to medium

4. Add pumpkin and mushroom and cook together

5. When the pumpkin is cooked through, add the cheese and the thickened cream
6. Stir the cream and the cheese through the chicken and pumpkin mix, until the cheese has melted and the cream blended through.


7. Allow to simmer, stirring occasionally to prevent cheese mix sticking to the bottom of the pan.

 8. Serve when ready. (I like to put the pasta in the bowl and then top with the sauce, but you may wish to do this differently. You may also like to have extra grated cheese to add.)

Insects Visiting my Garden in February 2015

I sometimes get out in the garden and photograph the creatures I find. Here are few of the visitors I photographed in February this year:

Butterflies went nuts over one of the bushes flowering in our back yard but this was the only one that would settle long enough for me to catch.

Blogs Read in March 2015

I made a concerted effort to read more blogs this month. I read these from start to finish - in two sittings:

Writing and the Writing Industry http://kriswrites.com/2015/02/11/business-musings-weird-misinformation/: Kristine Kathryn Rusch on changes in the writing industry and misinformation; http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/01/welcome-to-2015.html: J.A. Konrath on New Year's resolutions, indie publishing, Scott Turow and other bits;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/my-thoughts-on-amazon-debate.html: J.A. Konrath's thoughts on the shared worlds of Amazon and whether or not it's good for publishing;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/jack-daniels-associates-kindle-worlds.html: J.A. Konrath on his new setting for Amazon worlds;http://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/on-copyright-again.html: J.A. Konrath on what changes might need to be considered to bring copyright laws into the 21st century;http://kriswrites.com/2015/02/18/business-musings-a-year-of-experiments/: Kristine Kathryn Rusch on trying something new in writing and publishing;http://kriswrites.com/2015/02/25/business-musings-indispensable/: Kristine Kathryn Rusch on the craft of writing and writing itselfhttp://kriswrites.com/2015/03/04/business-musings-getting-by/: Kristine Kathryn Rusch on the importance of work ethicshttp://kriswrites.com/2015/03/20/i-wasted-time/#sthash.QYGLCNJC.dpbshttp://kriswrites.com/2015/03/18/business-musings-beginners-luck/#sthash.VsvBdz3d.dpbshttp://kriswrites.com/2015/03/25/business-musings-controlling-the-creatives/#sthash.HJ6gCBuo.dpbshttp://www.deanwesleysmith.com/writing-in-public-year-2-month-8-day-26/Marketshttp://jakonrath.blogspot.com.au/2015/03/ebooks-for-libraries.html

Birds Visiting my Garden in February and March 2015

The birds continue to come to my garden to visit. Here are some of the beautiful visitors who arrived stopped by to take advantage of the bird seed and garden bounty during February and March of 2015:

Some were young.
And some were quite surprised to see me.

Others weren't going to let the presence of a camera spoil a perfectly good meal.

And there was plenty on the tree for all.

Anna and the Rock Dragons Now Available in Print on Demand

Anna and the Rock Dragons is now available in normal-print from the CreateSpace bookstore.




When Anna heads out to her family’s country cottage for the holidays, she has no idea what lies in store. Chosen as the Key Bearer and Door Finder for a race of exiled dragons, Anna soon finds herself in a race against a mining magnate set to make his fortunes by turning the dragons into crystal, while being hunted by a nightmare from local legend. Will she survive long enough to find both key and door in time to help the dragons escape, and then live to tell the tale?

New Cover for Ducky!

The new cover for my speculative disaster story, Ducky , has arrived!

2015—The Year of Finishing What’s Been Started

At the very end of 2014, I wanted to have a goal for 2015, but I didn’t want something general like ‘write more books’ or ‘spend more time publishing’, and choosing something realistic and specific was hard to do without knowing what time constraints I faced.
In the end, I went with ‘finishing what I’ve started’.
This might sound like an easy goal, but I’ve been writing for over twenty years, and there is a lot of stuff I didn’t finish because I didn’t have a definite profit from it, or because life intervened and I moved or … whatever. Anyway, there’s a lot to finish, and by ‘finish’ I mean complete the writing of and publish, so I had to prioritise.
This did not mean I sat down and found every piece I’d started and write it down—that’s an ongoing process and one I’d need a couple of weeks to do. I try to type up a couple of notebooks a month for that. I have already started a list and on are the older works that I’ve put the most time into and either completed, almost completed, or made a good start on, and then I added the new ideas that had arrived since starting the list.
So, the goal is to finish as many of the works on this list as I can, design covers for them, and then edit, format and publish them. There are currently 611 items on that list. This year, I have completed the following:

Anna and the Rock Dragons : a young adult novel under the Carlie Simonsen pen name (IN FINAL EDITS); Basofi’s Choosing : a science fiction short story as C.M. Simpson (RELEASED); Ducky : a speculative short story as C.M. Simpson (AWAITING EDITS); Orb Wielder : a young adult fantasy novel under the Carlie Simonsen pen name (AWAITING EDITS); Pyrie : a young adult fantasy novel under the Carlie Simonsen pen name (AWAITING EDITS); andFreeman’s Choice: a science fiction-fantasy crossover novel as C.M. Simpson (AWAITING EDITS).

I am currently working on Andromeda’s Pledge , a young adult science fiction novel started way too many years ago—and I love it as much now, as I did then. After that, I have the young adult urban fantasy novel I started for NaNo last year, a short story, and a zombie compilation that I started in 2012 and have been writing on and off since then. This year, those three, at least will be finished, along with Wheelchair Mermaid , which I have been promising to complete for a while now.
So, here’s to a year of finishing what I’ve started the new, the old, and the in-between. Wish me luck and fortune’s blessing.

Progress Report: Week 2, February 2015

I focussed on releasing what I had written and studied much harder than I originally intended, and got very little writing done. 

 
OverviewNew words produced: 3,619Old words revised: 0Works completed: 0Works revised: 0Covers created: 0Works published: 0Works submitted: 0Competitions Entered: 0Bloggery: 1,992



   Publishing TasksCreated 2 blog posts for this blog;Created 1 blog post for the C.M. Simpson Publishing blog;Created 1 blog post for the C.M. Simpson Art and Photography blog;Reworked Anna and the Rock Dragons cover;Formatted, edited and released the large-print version of Anna and the Rock Dragons in print-on-demand format via CreateSpace;Formatted, edited and released C.M. Simpson: Short Stories and Poems from 2013, Volume 2 (The Year Just Gone) in print-on-demand format via CreateSpace.  New ArrivalsThe following poems arrived last week:
Nil

Basofi's Choosing and Volume 2 of the 2013 Short Story and Poetry Collection Now Available at Omnilit

The science fiction short story, Basofi's Choosing , and Volume 2 of my 2013 poetry and short story collection, The Year Just Gone have just gone live at OmniLit.