Amanda A. Allen's Blog, page 6

The Great Cake Debate

My baby is turning two.  2!  *Sniff, sniff*

And in turning two, she’s too little to tell me what kind of cake she wants for her party.  The tradition in my family is cherry chip cake.  Or chocolate.  Or carrot cake if you were my dad.  Last year, I made her the Ultimate Vanilla Cupakes from cupcakeproject.com.  I added chopped up marachino cherries.  They were damn good.

You’d think it wouldn’t be a debate right?  Those were so good.  Like possibly the best cupcakes I have ever made, and certainly close to the best cupcakes I have ever eaten. Possibly not the best I’ve ever eaten.  But close.  Close.

But here’s the deal.  I LOVE to bake.  Like LUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRVVVVVVVVVVVVVEEEEEEEEEEEE it.

But I’m a single parent, with three babies, and I work full-time while also trying to make a career as a writer of fiction.  I don’t watch T.V.  I have gone from seeing every single movie I wanted to see in the theater to the marvel movies only.  And only if I’m lucky.  I listen to audio books because I don’t have time to sit and read.  Ever.

So, chances to bake are RARE.  Opportunities to justify baking are RARE.  My son knew exactly what he wanted.  “Chocolate cupcakes with red frosting!”  I made him the Ultimate Chocolate Cupcake from cupcakeproject.com with cream cheese frosting that had cherry jam and maraschino cherries in it.  He loved them.

But baby girl can’t tell me what she wants.  It’s like I have an ocean of opportunities.  And I have to decide ASAP.

How freaking pretty is that?

Um….maybe!  Maybe!!

Dude.  I have wanted to make this cake for years!

Maybe for my baby-baby.  She’s one year old in late spring.  So I get to, tee-hee, choose for her too.

Possibly for baby-baby too.  That’s a perfect smash cake!

My bigger baby was born in February.  So perhaps.

Possibly for baby-baby too.

Yesterday, I gave the kids ice cream floats with strawberry soda.  Given big baby’s grins as she ate it, that is what I *should* provide for her birthday.  BUT…

That’s not baking.  Sigh.  Also other children + red soda = no go.

Not sure.  Oh the trials of life of a spoiled middle-class American.

Amanda

A sad truth…

In my day job, I talk to people that I expect to lie to me.

And, I talk to people who have been lied to about the things that are most important.  Then I get to tell them that the person (fictitious person) that they love is a lie.  And that the person enacting that lie is the worst type of liar–one who will prey on the innocent, weak, elderly, naive, and desperate.  Like them.  Usually I leave the “like them” out of it.

Many times the people that I tell they’re being scammed prefer to believe the lie rather than to be wrong.

My friend has asked me many times if I think that I could even fall in love after this work because I have become full-time suspicious.

I, honestly, doubt it.

I think I might be getting full of it all.  The lies.  There is a surfeit of lies in my life.  And I’m vomitous.  I’d like to go back to the time when I didn’t expect every single person I talk to–for my suspicious nature has extended far beyond my job–to lie to me.  I’d like to believe that some people, generally, tell the truth.

I wish my brain would stop catching little inconsistencies.  There was a time in my life when I genuinely liked the human race.  In general, not in specific.  I miss that version of Amanda.  I love the human race in specific, for it includes my daughters and son.  My mother.  My sister and brothers and nephews and nieces and friends.  Wonderful, generous friends.

Who I would not like to immediately believe are lying to me.

It’s an attitude in general life.  Today, I read an article about this badass, 115 year old woman in Italy.  She attributes her long life to being single (God bless her!) and eating 3 raw eggs a day.  (Ew!)  The article says this,

Assuming she has been true to her word, Ms. Morano would have consumed

around 100,000 eggs in her lifetime, give or take a thousand, cholesterol be damned.

Did you catch that?  The writer of the article insinuates that this 115 year old woman who has no reason to lie is full of shit.  OR maybe full of shit.  Possibly there’s enough shit that they have to provide the edge of doubt as if to say, “Hey man, I didn’t believe her.  But that’s what she said.”

Sigh.

Sigh and alas.

I assume she’s lived to 115 because she’s a feisty lady.

Sometimes I’m grateful for my dogs.  They’re such good, furry, little beasts who–when they’re mad at you, don’t lay down next to you.  Or they bark at you.  Or, if you’re my evil Sookie latey, get in my lap and pee on me.  (She only did it once.  I had very explicit words at her.  I assume she understood them since it has been kisses full time since then.)  Thank goodness for the blanket on my lap.

But…

At least I knew she was pissed.  (Mwa mwwaaaa)

Anyhoosen, when I helped with the compassionate service part of my church, I was asked to do things for people that I sometimes felt were unnecessary.  I explained to my mother my doubts, and she listened like she does, for she is a good and attentive mother.  And then I told her, I think that it is better to err on the side of generosity.  To give more than is necessary rather than when you assume something isn’t needed and then be wrong.

This is the attitude I have determined to adopt (outside of work for I can’t stop being good at my job).  I am going to assume that you are telling me the truth.  And then I am going to catch those inconsistencies because it is what I do.  And when I catch them, I am going to say, that’s still the truth, Amanda.  You just don’t have the whole story which is why it seems like it could be wrong.

And then I’m going to believe my friends and family and the random chick at the grocery store who has no reason to lie to me.  And if I am lied to, I am lied to.  I’d rather believe the best of people than the worst.

That is all.

~Amanda

Oick

I totally wrote a blog post out and then lost it.  Sigh and alas.

It was about reading.

And writing.

It wasn’t about squirrels.  Not even this one:

In other news, my baby girl turned two.  She’s a stink.

She’s also spoiled.

SPOILED.

We’re having a Frozen themed birthday party because my baby’s first passion is Elsa!  Anna!  Her few words include those two.

All three of my babies are, btws, spoiled.  It’s how I roll.

So…I’m reading The Life of Pi.  It’s my book a friend recommended for the Popsugar challenge.  I plan on reading more Steinbeck books.  I might actually re-read The Grapes of Wrath soon.  But, next, it’s The Pearl for me.  My friend recommended it to me–she’s read them all.

And as far as my writing is going, my Snow White is feeling more and more finished and should be out in March.  I’m working on the sequels to Song of Sorrow, Snow White, and Compelled by Love.  Song of Loss, Rose Red, and Bewildered by Love.  I’m also working on a cozy mystery about witches who are *terrible* at magic.  And also lazy.  Being suspected of murder really fouls their nap schedule.  (I’m writing this with Auburn Seal who also wrote Goodbye Love in the same world as Compelled by Love.)

Compelled by Love is doing well for me sales wise.  Here’s hoping that each subsequent book will do better than the one before it.  I think the reason it’s doing well is because 1) that cover is awesome and 2) I let it be what it was… which was a fun little romance story which was supposed to be and allowed to be only that.  I might love it.  I’m pretty sure I do.  Okay, okay–I love it.  

Amanda

PS–on Valentine’s Day, I went with a friend to Pine State Biscuits.  It was freaking delish.  Here’s a little view.

If you’re in Portland and you’ve never gone… GO!

The Grapes of Wrath, Part 2

And Tom later, when it’s blowed over, you’ll come back?  You’ll find us?

There’s a lot to be said about The Grapes of Wrath, but that is my favorite line.  It encompasses everything that is beautiful about the story.  The ever-living hope.  The willingness to believe that though life is crap now, it’ll be better.

When it’s blowed over–it doesn’t matter what part of her troubles she’s referring to, Ma Joad hasn’t given up hope.  Or the belief that humans will behave with humanity again.  When it’s blowed over–you’ll come back.  We can be together again.  We can love and be a family.  We can hope and dream of better times and work hard through these hard times.

In many ways, The Grapes of Wrath is a love story.  I know that sounds crazy when you think about it being a story with the intention of shaming those who caused the Great Depression.

But the love story is the love for a mother and her family.  Her love for her son, Tom.  It doesn’t matter that he kills two men, she loves him.  Now and forever.  She has faith in his goodness and can accept that a man who defends himself and others isn’t a bad man.

She loves her son, Noah.  Her willingness to accept that he isn’t quite normal and to let him be when he goes to live on the river.

Her love for her daughter, Rose of Sharon, who is left a single mother during the middle of the depression and is scared, lonely, and a little paranoid.  Ma has the ability to goad and Rose through the hard times.

Ma’s ability to see and accept Uncle John as a drinker but to keep him close, forgive him his mistakes and foibles.  Her ability to take on Pa Joad and take leadership of the family–whatever is necessary to keep her family together.

Ma’s love for Ruthie even though she tells on Tom.  Ma understands her children where they’re at–Ruthie who’s little and naive and makes a terrible mistake when she doesn’t mean to.

And most of all, Ma’s love for people.  She clearly promises to take care of the little boy at the end of the book.  And she helps Rose of Sharon to save the boy’s father by giving something only Rose of Sharon can give.

The Grapes of Wrath is more than that love story though.  It’s Steinbeck’s love story of the poor.  He wrote a whole book illustrating the crime that had been done and done and done again.  He illustrated the underserved hatred to tell the story of a people who needed to be loved and helped.  The story of good people doing their best.  He looked at the poor of America, struggling through one of the most devastating financial times our country has ever seen, and he made sure that the terrible things that happened during those times were things that would be remembered and would, hopefully, haunt those who committed the crimes.  I hope, I so hope, The Grapes of Wrath haunted those who contributed to the suffering.

I hope that we, as a people and a country, are self-aware enough–now–to never let it happen again.

~Amanda

PS–My grandparents lived through the Depression in Kansas.  They were there throughout the dust bowl and left after my Uncle died in the forties.  My Uncle was just a little boy.  I remember my Dad saying Grandma never fully recovered from the loss of her son.  When my Dad spoke of his mother–he often teared up.  Dad adored his Mother.  So the family love stories cross generations and are told with written word and with stories from one person to another.

The Grapes of Wrath

So….

I have this vague sort of memory of reading Of Mice and Men in high school.

I didn’t like it, and I have never wanted to read another Steinbeck novel.  But…my classic a month challenge is about challenging my reading, and it was the most appealing of the Pulizier Prize Winning books for my Pop Sugar Book Challenge.  I’m about 75% through.

And I’m pissed.

Steinbeck said, “I want to put a tag of shame on the greedy bastards who are responsible for this [the Great Depression and its effects]. I’ve done my damndest to rip a reader’s nerves to rags.”

Goodness.  How true it is.  My nerves are ripped to rags.  My grandparents left Kansas and settled in Wyoming.  How I wish I could talk to my Dad about them.  Was it the Depression that made them move?  Why Wyoming?  Did they just not have enough to reach California?  Did they know California was over-burdened?  How did they survive?  How did they make it? It’s so sad.

I can’t talk to my Dad about my grandparents.  He’s not here anymore.  Why didn’t I read this book a year ago?  Why didn’t I think to ask him more questions?  I remember him talking of his mother–of her feeding people who were hungry.  Of her kindness and goodness.  But I never asked why Wyoming.

When I see these pictures, I can’t help but wonder…was my Grandmother, whom I love, in a similar situation?  Could that have been my Dad if he’d been born earlier?  Maybe my Grandparents left Kansas for other reasons.  Maybe the left after the Depression.  They were very young during it, I believe.  So, maybe the depression wasn’t what brought them across country.  Maybe I’m taking this novel and its portrayal of these people too personally.  After all, I can’t help but put the faces of those I love on the characters I’ve come to love.

Steinbeck is effing brilliant.  He makes the world so vivid–so dusty and hard and hungry and real that the Joads are your people.  They all are.  Don’t you just love Ma Joad?  Don’t you want to help her?  To feed those babies in the Hooverville?  They’re fictional babies.

But they’re based off of real children who suffered.

And now when I see this woman with babies curled into her side, it’s not her babies it’s seeing.  It’s mine.  Because I have babies, and I love them. And if I had to, I’d work for $0.20 an hour to feed them.  So yeah, Steinbeck was sucessful in tearing my nerves to rags.  This book has made it hard for me to be happy this week.  It’s just so sad.  So wrong.  So real.  And it happened.

So maybe it’s too late to be so angry about what happened.

But maybe it’s not.  Maybe it’s important that we remember the atrocities that have occurred among mankind, so we can be sure to never let it happen again.

So…there will be other Steinbeck novels this year.  Perhaps 15 was too young for the realities that Steinbeck had to offer.  Perhaps it was just that the dude with the mice creeped me out, but I think I’ll be reading all of Steinbeck shortly and looking at the world through his eyes–eyes that were colored by the suffering he saw, witnessed, cataloged for coming generations, and taught what should be–

What should be is kindness, generosity, and a willingness to look at another human face and see the suffering there with a desire to alleviate it.

~Amanda

Popsugar Book Challenge Update Part Another

Popsugar Book Challenge so far….

A book with more than 500 pages  — Can You Forgive Her? By Anthony Trollope

A classic romance – The Grand Sophy by Georgette Heyer

A mystery or thriller – A Blunt Instrument by Georgette Heyer

A popular author’s first book —  Looking for Alaska by John Green

A Pulitzer Prize-winning book – The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

A book at the bottom of your to-read list — The Road by Cormac McCarthy

A book you can finish in a day – Chitty Chitty Bang Bang by Ian Fleming

A book with antonyms in the name — The School for Good and Evil by Soman Chainani

A book with a color in the title – Blue Lily, Lily Blue by Maggie Stiefvater

A banned book – The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

A book of man-cheese – Casino Royale by Ian Fleming

Classic Novel a Month Goal

January –  Can You Forgive Her? By Anthony Trollope, The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

February –  The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

I’m currently reading The Grapes of Wrath.  It was a hard choice what to read as far as Pulitzer Prize Winner’s go and I’m thinking very seriously of reading Lonesome Dove and The Caine Mutiny simply because I was shocked that they were in the list.

It’s somewhat weird to read books not by what I would randomly choose to read next but to narrow down to some arbitrary category and then find something I think I could tolerate.  For example, the Pulitzer Prize choice was pretty difficult choice to make–given that my reading time is so limited.  The only books I’ve been reading in print lately are board books for my toddlers.  They’re big fans of the superhero ones (my son) and the tiny 3 inch by 3 inch ones (my daughter).  She likes the size more than what is in there, but she’s got some pony ones coming simply because I love her and she loves them.  My son has Superman Fights for Truth! coming for the same reason.  And more importantly, I love how each of them curls up on either side and loves it when I read whatever they bring me to read them.

Anyhoosen.

I’m working through my Snow White edits.  I find with each rewrite that I love the story more.  And the act of writing ever more.  I always told myself stories and worked out little worlds and characters in my head.  Sometimes when I go to sleep, I sink into one of those stories and when I am very lucky, dream in that world.

There is a magic in stories whether you’re tiny, like my son, and telling me stories of laser sharks that shoot down airplanes for breakfast or my daughter whose imagination is set running by Elsa and magic and Olaf.

I love the magical new worlds and the joy of reading and writing

~Amanda

For your viewing pleasure:

Hurray! Celebration! Woot! Hurrah!

It’s done.  It’s out!  It’s available!  It’s so freaking fun!  You can get it here!

I LOVE this book, this world, the ladies I wrote with in Kendawyn.  I love it all.  LOVE it.  Luuuurrrrve it.

Isn’t that cover pretty?  Isn’t it?  It is.. It’s okay.  You don’t have to tell me.  I know it is. Tee hee.

Look at this one!  Auburn Seal wrote it.  I’m so excited.  I think you’ll love it!  You can get it here!

Hurray!  It’s a party.  It’s a party in my blog and in my head.  Let’s all put on party hats!

Except I’m not gonna put on the hat.  I’m gonna be the Princess of Power instead!

imma go ahead and get on my flying horse with my weird ass tiara and fly a time or two around a rainbow.  Or whatever!  It’s a party.  I do what I want!

I hope you love Compelled!  For those of you that found The Destruction of Prince Xavier dark, (I’m looking at you Jill, my love.) I think you’ll like this one.

~Amanda

Looking for….

Boarding school books?

I’m currently reading Looking for Alaska by John Green.  It’s for the popsugar challenge.  I am utterly un-surprised to find that I am enjoying it.  But then again, HAVE YOU READ The Fault in Our Stars?  Because, Holy Moses, that’s an awesome, amazing, heart-jerking, terrible, wonderful, hysterical cancer book.  I also super enjoyed The Abundance of Katherines and Paper Towns.

Anyhoosen.

Boarding school books.  There’s the obvious–the combination the magic of boarding schools with magic.

And there’s Worst Witch.

And there’s…um….

The Vampire Academy.

And there’s that other vampire book.  Where all the students. except a few. are vampires.  Meh.

And there’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks.  And Anna and the French Kiss.

The thing is there is something magical about boarding school books and the world of children when the adults are few and far between.  So…Looking for Alaska.  Not done yet, but I’m loving it.

If you’re looking for a fun book, I’d have to recommend the Frankie Landau-Banks book.  That was full of epic pranks and delightfulness.  If you’re looking for a John Green book or trying John Green, Looking for Alaska is a perfectly traditional place to start, but once something like The Fault in Our Stars is published–every other book by him, good or not–is not The Fault in Our Stars.

~Amanda

PS.  I have no idea what I’ll read next.  I’m in Numbers in the Old Testament.  Honestly, except Genesis, the books of Moses are a long slog of sloggful slogs.  Is it cool to skip whole sections of the Old Testament and still claim to have read it?  Since the answer is no for everything else, I’m guesing not.

Imma tell you a secret

I wrote a short story.  And…if you wanted to, you could buy it and get a glimpse into the life of the Witch Queen of Pareon villain of my upcoming series Curses of the Witch Queen.

Anyhoosen.  It’s a *short* story.  I had fun writing it.  I hope you have fun reading it.  You can find The Destruction of Prince Xavier here.

~Amanda

Here’s a true story….

My title makes me giggle.  Like when I tell people it, first I have to laugh.  I’m utterly proud of this book.  I honestly love it.  But the title does make me giggle like a little girl.

BUT……

I think I promised you the cover.  And here it is!

The cover doesn’t make me giggle though.  I think it’s LOVELY.

Here’s the blurb:

Alice lives a quiet life in a small hamlet of Kendawyn until she risks everything to save a hunted man.

Will that choice give her everything she’s ever wanted or ruin her life?

~Amanda

PS… before you think I won’t write a second book in a series ever, Snow White (in the same world as Song of Sorrow) and Song of Loss should be available in the next little smidge.