Stephanie Wardrop's Blog, page 3

DRUMROLL, PLEASE . . .

Announcing the winner of the PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL Scavenger Hunt:

DESNICA KUMAR !!!!!

She’ll be receiving autographed copies of the series so far (the final installment comes out in January) and an Amazon gift card. Congratulations, Desnica, and thanks to all who played the hunt. She totally deserves a crown and a court like this, don’t you think?

Nazarea Andrews’ Beautiful Broken

 Today the blog gets to host Nazarea Andres on her blog tour promoting Beautiful Broken, the second book in the University of Branton series!

Since I have spent almost my entire adult life on college campuses, I was especially intrigued by the idea that Nazarea’s University of Branton series is set at a fictional college. She graciously answered my questions about college as a setting, writing a series, and what she hopes her readers think of her latest offering, BEAUTIFUL BROKEN. My first question was about why she chose her setting. She wrote

I loved college. For some people, high school is THE golden years. For me, I really blossomed in college, and I adored it. With the explosion of the New Adult category, I could write about it. So I did. College setting was a completely natural setting for me, based on that.

 On the question of whether Branton is based on a “real” college, she said

The town of Branton is very (VERY) loosely based on a few towns I grew up in. The college is equally loosely based on the tiny college I went to school at—there’s several scenes when writing, I totally pictured my lecture hall and school library. Of course, nothing very dramatic happened there.

 Since Scout and Dane also appear in This Love, I wondered if she knew as she wrote that book that they would be getting their own in Beautiful Broken.  She said 

I knew Dane would, almost from the first scene he’s in. (Which, is like, the first chapter of This Love). I didn’t know what his story was, but I knew he had a lot of shtuff going on behind that sexy face. When Scout appeared in the book, things started to click and they started clamoring for me to tell their story. I knew they were going to take me a darker place than Avery and Atticus, but I’ll admit that I loved writing their story.

And as for the source of her characters – well, Nazarea might be keeping mum about that

There are personality traits in all my characters that are pulled from people I know. Descriptions, definitely can be influenced by real life. But, no. My characters tend to come straight from my head. Which is good, because Dane and Scout would be a mess to have in my real life. I do hope readers find things to relate to—it’s nice when my readers connect with the characters, right?

 Finally, I like to ask writers what they hope readers will take away from their book, what they want the reader to feel, and I think I like Nazarea’s answer best, so far:

Daaaaayum.

Lol, that’s a reaction, right?? No, I’d love for them to feel. Anything at all, although obviously, it’d be nice to have them LOOOOOVE the book. I’d like them to look past the initial appearance (neither of which is good when looking at Dane and Scout) and see what motivates the choices people make.

1.  What made you decide to place the series at a university? What

 made a university seem like such a greta place to set a series of

 books (and it’s such a great idea I can’t believe that everyone

 doesn’t do it!)

I loved college. For some people, high school is THE golden years. For me, I really blossomed in college, and I adored it. With the explosion of the New Adult category, I could write about it. So I did. College setting was a completely natural setting for me, based on that.

 2. Is Braxton based (even loosely) on a real campus or school? In what

 way?  [And BTW, is it BRAXTON or BRANTON? I see both on the internet,

 and right now my connection is so slow I can't look it up again ]

The town of Branton is very (VERY) loosely based on a few towns I grew up in. The college is equally loosely based on the tiny college I went to school at—there’s several scenes when writing, I totally pictured my lecture hall and school library. Of course, nothing very dramatic happened there.

 3.  What made you want to tell this particular story, the one about

 Scout and Dane? Did you know they were going to get their own book as

 you wrote _This Love_, in which they also appear?

I knew Dane would, almost from the first scene he’s in. (Which, is like, the first chapter of This Love). I didn’t know what his story was, but I knew he had a lot of shtuff going on behind that sexy face. When Scout appeared in the book, things started to click and they started clamoring for me to tell their story. I knew they were going to take me a darker place than Avery and Atticus, but I’ll admit that I loved writing their story.

 4. Do you find that readers, particularly college-aged ones, see

 themselves or people they know in these characters? You seem to have

 created ones that people can easily relate to. Do you base any of your

 characters on real people or people you know? (I like to think I

 don’t, but really, don’t we sort of have to do that, even

 unconsciously? Or else none of the characters would seem remotely

 ”real”.)

There are personality traits in all my characters that are pulled from people I know. Descriptions, definitely can be influenced by real life. But, no. My characters tend to come straight from my head. Which is good, because Dane and Scout would be a mess to have in my real life. I do hope readers find things to relate to—it’s nice when my readers connect with the characters, right?

 5. Finally, what do you hope people think or feel after finishing the

 book? If you could control this, which we writers know we can’t ,

 what would you like people to take away from BEAUTIFUL BROKEN?

Daaaaayum.

Lol, that’s a reaction, right?? No, I’d love for them to feel. Anything at all, although obviously, it’d be nice to have them LOOOOOVE the book. I’d like them to look past the initial appearance (neither of which is good when looking at Dane and Scout) and see what motivates the choices people make.

  Don’t you want to have that reaction, too? So go read the book! It’s available at Amazon as an ebook, or paperback and at Barnes and Noble.  And connect with Nazarea at her site, her blog, on Twitter, and Facebook.

 

Fan Art Friday

and a reminder! This awesome piece of jewelry – “the Vegan Necklace” – was created by Kelly Haggard Olsen of Kinetic Arts and inspired by my character Georgia.

 

 And in December, you’ll have a chance to win it by entering a raffle to raise money to find cures for Leukemia and other blood diseases. I’ll let you know when and how closer to the time of the raffle. But if you can’t wait – or just want an amazing bracelet or earrings to go with your future necklace – check out Kelly’s wares at her Etsy shop!

And while you’re waiting, enter the PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL SCAVENGER HUNT to win signed e-novellas and an Amazon gift card.  Just check out the previous post for the deets!

The Pride and Prep School Scavenger Hunt

Here’s your invitation to play a game, check out some great blogs, and win an autographed copy of the novellas and a $20-dollar gift card from Amazon!

    

First, you’ll have to answer the questions below to find out what you’re looking for.  Then, once you know what objects will be hidden on participating blogs, you’ll have to  visit them (which, trust me, you would want to do anyway). Once you find them, report back here with the answers as comments (tell me what you found and where).

1.  On their first day as bio lab partners, what does Georgia tell Michael she will not be a part of?

2.  Jeremy invented a drink by this name, and he gave a lot of them to Georgia on New Year’s Eve.

3.  Georgia has a pet that likes to bite people a lot.  What is it?

4.  Leigh gets teased for dressing like a member of this “old order” sect that lives primarily in Pennsylvania and Ohio.

5. What literary character does Georgia want to do a class presentation about (though Michael thinks this is a lame idea)?

6. In Pride and Prep School, what does Georgia discover in the Endicott kitchen that makes her think she just might have been wrong about him all along?

7. Georgia, Trey, Michael, and Tori watch a movie about these creatures of the night until Michael can’t stand it any more.

8. In P&PS Michael runs into Georgia in a suburban drug store and is shocked to find her holding this.

9. Georgia is surprised to discover that Michael enjoys listening to the music of this Caribbean artist.

10.  Dave and Gary have a punk band; this animal is part of the name of the band.

Once you know what you’re looking for, you’ll have to look for pictures of these items on these blogs:

 JC Emery:   http://jcemery.com/

The Things That Run Through My Mind: http://monicabsanz.blogspot.com/

Where Fantasy and Love Take Flight: http://nicolezoltack.blogspot.com/

Team Elsker: http://stbende.blogspot.com/

Just Sayin’ : http://nazarea-andrews.blogspot.com/

Jessica: Brooks’ Let Me Tell You A Story: coffeelvnmom.blogspot.com

Adrianne James: http://adriannejames.com/

JayCee DeLorenzo’s blog

A Day in the Crazy Wonderful Beautiful Life: http://rachelbateman.com/

Louise Gornall:  http://bookishblurb.com/blog/

THE CONTEST IS OPEN TO US AND INTERNATIONAL READERS BETWEEN WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16TH, AND SUNDAY, OCTOBER 20TH AT 8:00 PM EASTERN STANDARD TIME. The winner will be chosen randomly from all correct entries and on Monday, October 21st and announced on this blog on Tuesday, October 22d.  Leave a comment with your answers to the questions and where you found them PLUS your email so I can send you your stuff!

GOOD LUCK AND HAPPY READING!

You’ll Catch More Flies with Agave Nectar

Why Georgia’s a Vegan (and answers to other burning questions on my book birthday)

It is aliiiiiiive!

And to celebrate the book’s birthday, I am answering reader questions. (Which I will happily do, any time, by the way).

Last week, a writer friend asked, “Why did you make Georgia a vegan? That’s such a hard diet to follow!” And I guess there is enough Georgia in me, despite my denials, because I thought for about half a second “It’s not a diet. It’s a lifestyle! It’s an ethical choice,” but I would never say that to anyone. It’s snotty and exemplifies why Georgia, despite her best intentions, is a pretty lousy spokesperson for veganism since she turns everyone off with her snarky dismissiveness. You catch more flies with honey than vinegar, I want to tell her.  And if I did, she would say, “Honey is not vegan, moron. Try agave as a substitute.” 

Back to the question. As I told my friend, the short answer to why Georgia is a vegan is that I am one. Mostly. Unlike Georgia, I am not as hardcore and that used to make me feel guilty, like I was a disgrace to the cause or something. But in recent years, I have learned to let up a little. It is hard to find vegan food when you’re out and about, so I will, on occasion, eat a muffin or a scone or even a piece of cheese if I am about to turn into some un-funny version of the Snickers ad in which people are not themselves when they’re hungry.   There’s no score card at the end, as far as I know, and I am still saving animals with 95% of what I eat. I don’t know that Georgia would appreciate that yet, but she’s learning. She’ll get there.

And that’s another reason I made her a vegan. It’s not a very Jane Austen trait to have in a character based on the heroine of Pride and Prejudice. (Although Lucy Briers, the actress who played Mary Bennett in the 1995 BBC version, is a vegan.)

But Elizabeth Bennett was awfully sure she knew what was what and had more than a little bit of a self-righteous streak. So my “Lizzy”, Georgia, has her heart in the right place, and believes in veganism for all the right reasons, but she judges the eating habits of those around her a little too freely. And I can tell you from experience that being a veg*n (vegan or vegetarian) in a community of carnivores causes unintentional tension all the time. The daily decision about what or where to eat can devolve into a three-hour debate during which everyone just gets so tired they end up chewing on raw ramen noodles just to settle the whole thing. And if you think of veganism as being about more than what you choose to eat, but also about how you look at the relationship between people and animals, and even between people and other people, then you’ve got one character with a really disparate worldview from nearly everyone else around her –and especially, in Georgia’s case, very different from the conservative preppie let’s-hit-the-Cape-and-throw-a-lobster-into-the-pot view of her nemesis/love interest/lab partner, Michael.

A last reason Georgia’s a vegan? There are a lot of teenagers who are becoming vegans, either experimenting with it by cutting out meat and animal products, or who embrace the life wholeheartedly for its health benefits as well as for ethical reasons. I wanted to represent them.  And I don’t see a lot of vegans in popular culture, period, but certainly not in YA novels. Carolyn Mackler’s Vegan Virgin Valentine is the only one I can think of, and it disappointed me that for the main character, being vegan turned out to be a temporary fad, something she did in part to punish herself or to gain a sense of control over her life. I know that happens a lot in real life; I know plenty of fine people who sheepishly tell me, when they find out that I’m a vegan, that they tried it, they really tried.  And that’s okay. Again, there’s no score card being kept.  But I wanted to portray a young vegan whose choices were made very consciously, with reason and knowledge, and who has made those choices for life.  She just needs to lighten up about the fact that not everyone’s made the same choice – that’s part of what she has to learn.

In part three of the series, Pride and Prep School, Georgia teaches Michael to make stuffed shells with tofu ricotta

as they both begin to recognize that seeing another point of view can be liberating and fun. And tasty. Check it out now at Amazon, Kobo, and Barnes and Noble.

And if you have any questions about the books or being a veg*n, send them my way! I’m not a proselyte like Georgia – I’m not out on the street corner preaching the gospel of animal-free eating.  But if you want to talk about it, I’m always happy to do that. And if you’re a teenager thinking about going vegan, then check out resources like the Vegetarian Resource Group, which has a great section on their site about Being Vegan and Vegetarian in High School, or PETA or PETA2, which also helps out parents who aren’t sure what they’re kids are getting into. I’ve written elsewhere on this blog about great resources for recipes, and vegan teenagers can join TeenVGN on Twitter. They’re “fueled by compassion!”

   PETA’s sticker and Tshirts rock, and these wristbands are from TeenVGN 

Too Much Work in Progress: Juggling Life and Writing

WIP It Wednesday: Works Not-So-Much in Progress

  (image from abagond.wordpress.com)

I should be writing.

I should be working on the WIP that I haven’t touched in a week.

I should be typing the revisions to the sequel to Snark that I promised an editor and spent the weekend making instead of making progress on the WIP.

I should be outlining the other projects, or getting ahead on blog posts, or working on the scavenger hunt with my Indie Ignites friends to promote PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL, or compiling that list of interesting facts about me for the guest post feature on someone else’s blog.

I AM WRITER. HEAR ME WHINE.

This is, of course, a paraphrase of Helen Reddy’s feminist anthem that rocked the Women’s Movement and was part of the soundtrack of my life as a child of the Seventies. And as a Seventies girl, I grew up, thanks to women like my mom and Helen Reddy and Gloria Steinem and Billie Jean King and

Marlo Thomas and her Free to be You and Me, believing that I would have a full-time fulfilling job as part of my life as an adult woman. And I do, as a professor of writing and literature at a New England university.

So let’s add to the above list:

I should be reading student papers.

I should be reading revisions of student papers.

I should be reading and preparing lecture notes and discussion questions for tomorrow’s classes.

I should be checking in with some students’ advisors to see why they are not attending class or handing in assignments or keeping up with the material.

And don’t get me started on what I should be doing as a wife and mother, like the laundry and mopping the floor and buying onions and figuring out the source of the vaguely unpleasant smell in the living room, all before I pick up the kids, feed the kids, take them to various extracurricular activities and help them with their homework (true confession: I am actually relieved that I cannot be called on to help with some of the homework now, as algebra mystifies me as much now as it did in eighth grade).

This is the universal lament of all writers and all working women (and men, probably) everywhere: I don’t have enough time for it all.

When I was studying nineteenth-century women writers as a grad student, I was struck by the number of those women writers who were unmarried and childless, because it seemed so impossible at the time to be able to be both writer and mother.  The list of those who did’t live long enough to even consider undertaking that juggling act, or lived but did not even attempt to perform it, is pretty impressive: all three of the Bronte sisters, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, George Eliot, Florence Nightingale, Christina Rossetti . . . (the list goes on). Author Elizabeth Gaskell did juggle both jobs, and her journals are filled with her worries about failing at both of her duties as writer and wife/mother – as well as some pretty disgusting sounding recipes for puddings that could be left in the hearth to cook all day and allow Gaskell a little writing time (she may have been the unacknowledged master of the Victorian “crock pot.” And as a child of the seventies, I know about the crock pot).

I don’t know any writer – especially women writers – who don’t feel this way, especially since most of have to work at other demanding jobs in order to have the luxury of writing (in the hope that one day we will be able to sustain ourselves on royalties from that writing). It’s especially hard because by its nature, writing is a pretty solitary job that requires long periods of uninterrupted time to think, to imagine, and to wander around in a completely made-up world until we get our bearings and can render what we see there to others. And that’s hard to do when you have to squeeze it in between your day job, drives to and from dance classes, and all of your other responsibilities.

But I don’t post this just to whine (though thanks for letting me do this a little).  I wrote to ask those of you who find yourselves in this category - trying to write while maintaining another job in or out of the house and trying to be a parent/spouse/partner – if you have any survival strategies you’d want to share.  How do you carve out work time? Keep your sanity? Manage to be the “good enough” mother and writer and worker, to borrow DW Winnicott’s phrase from object-relations theory (psychoanalysis)?

I’ll leave you with one strategy of my own: Have a support network. Mine is the virtual mutual admiration/talk-me-down-off-the-roof society that is Indie Ignites.  Just this morning one of us was freaking out on Facebook about not getting revisions done quickly enough, and within hours we were online offering support, wisdom, cheerleading, and bad jokes when appropriate. Even if we never see each other, we know what it’s like to juggle all of these concerns so we can empathize, sympathize, and even apply a kick in the pants when necessary. It’s amazing how far an online pep talk can go toward keeping you writing and functioning.

Please post your suggestions and strategies in the comments below.  It would be nice to think we’re in this together, wouldn’t it? (How about a little Seventies’ style solidarity? )

What I’m reading:

What I’m listening to:

An (Im)modest Proposal

It’s Teaser Tuesday again, and PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL comes out in a few days (or weeks?)! In trying to decide what to tease you with, plot-wise, before the installment is out, I kept thinking about the first proposal scene in Pride and Prejudice, the one that Mr. Darcy bungles so badly, and how difficult it was recreating a version of that in PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL. Here’s the scene from the 1995 BBC version:

Even before he speaks, you can tell it’s not going to end well. They’re so tense and miserable, and then, of course, he is so arrogant in his admission that despite her being unworthy he still likes her. It’s cringe-worthy viewing for sure.

And it’s a great adaptation of the original, which appears thus:

“In vain I have struggled. It will not do. My feelings will not be repressed. You must allow me to tell you how ardently I admire and love you.”

Elizabeth’s astonishment was beyond expression. She stared, coloured, doubted, and was silent. This he considered sufficient encouragement; and the avowal of all that he felt, and had long felt for her, immediately followed. He spoke well; but there were feelings besides those of the heart to be detailed; and he was not more eloquent on the subject of tenderness than of pride. His sense of her inferiority–of its being a degradation–of the family obstacles which had always opposed to inclination, were dwelt on with a warmth which seemed due to the consequence he was wounding, but was very unlikely to recommend his suit. 

In spite of her deeply-rooted dislike, she could not be insensible to the compliment of such a man’s affection, and though her intentions did not vary for an instant, she was at first sorry for the pain he was to receive; till, roused to resentment by his subsequent language, she lost all compassion in anger. She tried, however, to compose herself to answer him with patience, when he should have done. He concluded with representing to her the strength of that attachment which, in spite of all his endeavours, he had found impossible to conquer; and with expressing his hope that it would now be rewarded by her acceptance of his hand. As he said this, she could easily see that he had no doubt of a favourable answer. He spoke of apprehension and anxiety, but his countenance expressed real security. Such a circumstance could only exasperate farther, and, when he ceased, the colour rose into her cheeks, and she said…

I have to confess that no matter how many times I’ve read the book, it’s actually the dialogue from the BBC version that sticks with me, and I think that’s because in addition to having the lovely visuals to help my memory, the BBC writers just nailed it in terms of the tension between desire and a sense of duty and privilege for Darcy in wanting something you fear you shouldn’t want, and for Elizabeth, the horror of being simultaneously “esteemed” and insulted.

I try to capture that in a scene in P&PS, which I place in Georgia’s kitchen, where many of the most important scenes occur between Georgia and Michael, and where their differences are so pronounced through something as fundamental as what they eat (Georgia’s a pretty hardcore vegan; Michael thinks that’s just nonsense and will never give up lobster). I can only hope I did the scene justice.

For a great comparison of the “First Proposal Scene” in Pride and Prejudice adaptations, see MyPrideAndPrejudice.com. And please check out PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL, the third installment in the SNARK AND CIRCUMSTANCE e-novella series.

Which version of P&P is YOUR favorite? As you can probably tell, I’m a 1995 BBC fan myself.

Fan Art Friday: Dressing the Barrett Sisters

Today I’m (re)posting the fab outfits that CLARY GRACEWOOD created on Polyvore.com for the Barrett sisters in the Snark and Circumstance series. They’re almost too fabulous, because I know for a fact that Georgia’s fashion sense isn’t this sharp and Polyvore doesn’t have too many options in Leigh’s “refugee from a polygamist stronghold” wardrobe line.

Thanks, CLARY G! These are awesome! And Readers, don’t forget last Friday’s fan art necklace, which will be available as a raffle item to benefit research on leukemia and other blood diseases.

                                              

 

                                                                                                                                

Works (Not) Cited Part Two: Literary Influences on the WIP

WIP It Wednesday continues (though sometimes I worry that I should put less time into the blog about the work in progress and more on the work in progress itself).  Last week I posted about the research I’ve done so far (and I just picked up two great tarot books to add to the collection). But this week I’ll focus on the literary works that have influenced the work so far. I’m sure I’m not accounting for all of them because the unconscious is tricky like that but here’s a good-faith effort to present the influences:

Some paranormal/fantasy YA that hasn’t influenced the book directly, but must have, somehow:

Cassandra Clare’s The Mortal Instruments and The Infernal Devices series. I have to admit that I was a somewhat reluctant reader of fantasy, based on what I’ve read before, but once I started these series, I was hooked. Clare creates such strong, varied characters and the relationships between them are so complex and engrossing that I tend to forget the magical stuff going on at times with these Shadowhunters, vampires, werewolves, warlocks, Nephilim, and all. While my book will never be as complex as this series, I think I’m working on my own version of the genre Clare has mastered: the (sub)urban fantasy. I guess I have portals of sorts in my WIP and I admire the way Clare sort of explained how they work, or, at least where they came from through the combined expertise of a scientist/inventor and warlock. And for the record, I am Team Simon, though things are working out nicely as far as I am concerned for Clace. I’ll let you know in May 2014 if I make it to the release of the final book  without gnashing my teeth to little nubs in anticipation.

Jessica Spotswood’s Cahill Witch Chronicles.  My witches are different from Spotswood’s but I love what she has done with them, having them live in a somewhat recognizable past in which a religious right in charge has snuffed out witches and their practice – or so they think.  This feminist view of history and power makes the book especially appealing to me. PLus, I have a wild crush on Finn.  When I asked Spotswood via Twitter whether she would “give [him] a break” in the third and final installment, she tweeted that she would make me no promises. So , Dear Readers, I do not get results, but at least you know that I am out there in the trenches, fighting for you.

I just finished April Genevieve Tucholke’s mesmerizing Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea and while it’s not about witches, it certainly raises some intriguing questions about the nature and definition of evil. River has some formidable powers, and he’s (probably) not the Devil, but to what extent is he responsible for the havoc (murder, suicide, mayhem) he wreaks? And does Violet love him or hate him? How much of her love is the result of being taken in by River’s “glow”? Can you ever trust a guy with supernatural powers? I can’t wait to read the sequel and find out (I googled the date of the sequel as soon as I put down the book, too. (Summer 2014).

 If my book turns out to be even 1/10 as good as these, I will be dancing form the rooftops of my town.

The YA novel that started this whole idea of a 400-year-old witch trapped in the body of a seventeen-year-old many years ago had to be Twilight.  I have to admit that I found the relationship between Bella and Edward more disturbing than enchanting. What I wanted to hear more about was what it was like to be stuck being a teenager forever. That idea entranced me, if only because if you had told me one day as I sat in high school, “This is it. This is where you will stay forever”, I would have run screaming down to the creek and tried to drown myself in it. I was captivated by the idea that Meyer did not explore much of the aching loneliness one would feel, fated to never grow older, to stay the same, in stasis, as everyone around you changed. I was intrigued by the logistics of how that would even work – how often would you have to move, exactly, from town to town before your neighbors noticed that you never, ever looked older.  Could you ever forge  relationship with anybody under those circumstances? I also, to be honest, wanted to present a view of love and sexuality that wasn’t as heavily weighted toward abstinence and the idea that the female is the threat to the male’s chastity and honor (go back and check some of the stuff Edward says to Bella about how she is the one threatening his control). That’s too sexist and last century for me.  But I’m not going to say anything more critical about Twilight because the world has done enough of that already. I’ll just say that despite my reservations expressed above, I wholeheartedly agree with agent Mary Kole’s assessment that the novel is, to paraphrase, 450-plus pages about longing. And that’s a pretty formidable thing.

 

Non-YA influences

Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita gave me the idea of having a really creepy devilish guy who has had his hand in all the awful stuff that’s happened in history, from holocausts to revolutions to political assassinations to everyday persecutions.  And, if I were being truly honest here, I would have to give the Rolling Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil” some due credit here because it’s based on the novel and I’ve heard that song a lot more than I’ve read Bulgakov’s book.  But you should, because it’s really good and because Daniel Radcliffe said he likes it, too. When Harry Potter endorses a book you go read it. I don’t have a big scary black cat in my book, though, because I live with one every day and I fear her wrath.

Apparently Arthur Miller’s play has been used to torture New England high school students for years, but The Crucible is brilliant in presenting the witch hunt as metaphor. He was writing, of course, about the Salem Witch Trials on the surface but really about the HUAC/McCarthy trials of the 1950s and the insidious and very real ways in which a small group of frightened and bigoted people can turn a community into a lynch mob living in terror of being the next one accused. I present this idea in the book with a false murder accusation of a young man who looks like he’s up to no good and makes a very easy scapegoat for the religious right “Family First-ers” in my fictional town.  (I say fictional, but it’s based on a real place and the events are, unfortunately, not pure fiction).

That’s a pretty long assignment, so I’ll stop now and let you get to your reading. Please tell me, in the comments or through Twitter or Facebook, any of the books you’ve loved and been influenced by, especially those dealing with magic, witches, or scapegoating.

Happy reading and writing, everyone!

What I’m re-reading:

 

what I’m reading:

 

What I’m listening to:

P&PS and the NOT Post-Punk Kitchen

Georgia Barrett, the heroine of my Snark and Circumstance e-novella series has been baking her way through this amazing book:

Isa Chandra Moskovitz wrote this and many other amazing vegan cookbooks that will change your world and she is the genius behind the Post Punk Kitchen blog, a site Georgia visits a lot.  Now her friends Dave and Gary, who hosted last week’s post about punk, argue that THERE’S NOTHING “POST” ABOUT PUNK, but they convince Georgia that she’ll get more converts to her “ethical eating” style if she just bakes some kickass cupcakes and other treats and sells them at the Cryptic Pigs form Hell shows.  So she becomes the vegan baker to the stars in PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL.

I’m a vegan baker, too, and I want to assure that there is nothing weird about the vegan part of baking.  You will not be subjected to tasteless sawdust-y cookies if you forego diary and honey.  Nor will you have to lurk in the aisles of exotic and exorbitantly expensive health food stores to secure the ingredients you’ll need to replace the dairy.  Here are some handy substitutes you probably already have around your kitchen, courtesy of Veg News magazine:

 

butter: substitute margarine (the veg fave is Earth Balance), vegetable, canola,  or coconut oil

milk: substitute soy milk, almond milk, rice milk, or coconut milk (coconut is super delicious but it will give everything a slight coconut-y taste, which could be just what you want in some recipes)

eggs: substitute flax eggs: 1 TB of ground flax seeds to 3TB of water for each egg you replace; mashed banana; applesauce; a combo of baking soda and vinegar (as in the recipe below, which features a chemical reaction like your third

grade papier-mache volcano applied to baking)  

 

So, just to show that there is nothing weird or freaky about vegan baking (unless you want there to be, in which case you should check out the Vegan Black Metal Chef on Youtube),

 

I will share a recipe that my family has enjoyed ever since I was a little kid.  It’s from my grandma, who was about as far as you could get from being an vegan and not be some kind of feral animal. Her pot roast was legendary.  If you had told her this cake was vegan, she would not have known what the hell you were talking about.  (Actually, the recipe goes back to the Depression, when cooks had to learn to make due without certain ingredients).  It’s called wacky cake because you make a face in the dry ingredients before pouring in the wet; this little ritual probably did more than anything else to turn me into the fanatical baker that I am today.

Makes an 8X8 cake, so you want to double it

Mix the dry ingredients in a big bowl:

1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup white sugar

4 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

With a spoon, make two small “eye” holes in the dry stuff and one big grinning mouth hole. In one eye, pour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

In the other eye, pour

1 tablespoon cider vinegar
Into the mouth, pour
6 tablespoons vegetable oil
Then dump 1 cup water of water over it all and mix it up.

 Bake at 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) for 30 to 40 minutes, or until tooth pick inserted comes out clean. Frost with your favorite icing. (An easy peasy icing?  In a saucepan or in a glass in the microwave, melt a cup or so of vegan chocolate chips* with some soy or almond creamer and stir together as it melts.  You can add a dollop of peanut butter, too.)

*Most semi-sweet chocolate chips are already vegan. The higher the cacao content, the less milk is added to it, increasing your chances of having vegan chips you don’t have to spend $6 for.

Bake and enjoy!  And look out for PRIDE AND PREP SCHOOL, out this month!