Alex Gordon's Blog, page 2

Yo!

The latest and greatest newsletter went out a couple of days ago. If you’re a subscriber and you haven’t seen it, check your spam or promotions folder as there is a time-limited giveaway contained therein.

::checks calendar::

Year’s going by in a flash, isn’t it?

Slowly but surely getting the Jani books back into trade paperback format. Rules of Conflict will be available from Ingram’s on Feb. 28th, and Amazon should make the connection within a few days. The Law of Survival tpb is available at Amazon and through Ingram’s now, so you can also order it through your favorite bookstore.

Now there’s only Code of Conduct left to go.

Speaking of Code, FYI—it’s available for free over at Book View Café for the next couple of weeks.

 

Jani Omnibus 4-6

Now available everywhere except Apple Books. See this post for an explanation. I’m a Mac person and I’ve always uploaded my books to Apple in the past, but they don’t like my box sets for some reason. I need to work on getting Code, Rules, and Law available in print; after that, I will see about fiddling around with this issue.

Anyway, here’s the universal link to the usual places and the Book View Café link if you’d like to purchase from a writers’ co-op.

Bookshop.org

Bookshop.org is a sales site that helps support indie bookstores. So far, they have the three Jani books that I have updated for print. Note that Contact Imminent will be released on February 7, but is available for preorder.

They’re even offering the books at a slight discount.

Contact Imminent  Endgame  Echoes of War

They haven’t linked up the series very well, but I am hoping that will shake out once I get Code, Rules, and Law uploaded to Ingrams.

They also have ebook reading apps for iPhone and Android, and will eventually be offering ebooks from indie authors as well as trad.

One more step into senior-citizenship

Yesterday I attended a “senior series” talk about the effect that glaciers had on forming the landscape and soil composition of Lake County Illinois. How some lakes formed (huge chunks of ice breaking off and melting, thus forming round “kettle lakes”). Why the soil in various areas contains the materials it does, and why there are so many gravel/rock pits around here. It was really interesting.

The instructor showed this short video. It’s basic, but it covers much of what we discussed.

Now when I drive along an undulating road, I will recall that the rises are called “moraines,” and I will think about how they were formed thousands of years ago by a sheet of ice that scoured the land like a giant wire brush. The reason why no dinosaur bones have been found around here is because the glaciers crushed them all to powder.

 

Jani Omnibus 1-3

A refreshed omnibus containing Code of Conduct, Rules of Conflict, and Law of Survival is now out in the wild everywhere but Apple Books. My ebook formatter and I tried all sorts of things, but the ebook wouldn’t validate in Apple Books’ system, so it won’t be available there for the foreseeable future. It is available everywhere else (Amazon, B&N, Kobo, Book View Café). Book View Café publishes ePubs that can be uploaded to the Books app, so that’s an option.

Store Links (the first is a universal link to the majors):

The Jani Kilian Chronicles: Books 1-3    Book View Café

A volume containing Contact Imminent, Endgame, and Echoes of War will be coming out next month. It won’t be available in Apple Books either unless/until we figure out wth is going on.

New Year, New Story!

I have a new Del & Gia story in this quarter’s edition of Boundary Shock Quarterly. The title is “It’s Not the Face,” and it’s told from Gia’s point of view. The theme of this BSQ edition is “First Contact,” so if you’ve been reading these stories, you can probably figure out what…or with whom…Gia will be making contact with for the first time.

If you’ve never read any of these stories and would like to given them a try, they are listed on my Other Work page. Keep in mind that the characters’ timelines are staggered, with Gia’s running five years ahead of Del’s until “Robin Red,” at which point they mesh.

Foggy Sunday morning

A few days ago, temps hit single digits. Last night it rained. Current temp is in the low 40s—it was fairly foggy earlier but that’s burning off. For relative definitions of “burning.”

IOW, a dreary autumn morning in mid-December.

Blueberry pancakes did brighten things up.

Thinking there may be another batch of soup in the works later. Butternut squash-red lentil, which unfortunately will not make a dent in the Rancho Gordo bean backlog. But it’s a favorite, and since it’s curried I decided to try one of the curry pastes I excavated from the cupboard. Now I’m hunting around online to see which pastes are used where. I have red, green, panang, and massaman—I decided on the panang paste because traditionally it contains ground roasted peanuts and adds a nutty flavor that I think would work well with the soup.

Problem is, the stuff I have doesn’t contain peanuts—I read that they keep it out because allergies.

I do have a jar of roasted unsalted peanuts, so I may be doing some grinding later. Based on this recipe and the fact that the can of paste is 4oz/half a cup, I will add 25 grams of ground peanuts.

(Gentle Reader—I ground those peanuts and made that soup)

Verdict: good wintertime soup. I halved the two small squashes and roasted them first to get a little caramelization going. The panang curry providing just enough heat. Before serving, I added some herbed goat cheese for creaminess. It was a good call.

 

Chickadees

I have three types of feeders set out for the birds. Suet feeders and regular seed feeders in the front and back yards. A finch feeder containing thistle seed and bits of sunflower seed. It’s been cold, so the birds have been busy and I am pretty sure that raccoons and/or possums form raiding parties every so often, so I need to refill every couple of days. I see mostly finches and sparrows. Juncos and woodpeckers. And chickadees.

Over the last couple of months, a single chickadee has shown up when I approach the backyard feeder. It roosts on a nearby branch, calling all the while. As soon as I finish filling, it grabs a seed. Before long, more chickadees show up.

Today, I checked the front yard feeder first. Before long, I heard that distinctive call. No way of knowing if it’s the same chickadee. I filled that feeder, then headed to the back yard, where I was once again greeted. Yup, that feeder was empty, too.

I really do believe the little suckers are on the lookout for me.

SOUP!

One good thing about the cooler seasons is that it’s good Soup Weather—you can leave something on the stove for hours and the heat actually feels good. I’ve also been getting into soups because I joined the Rancho Gordo Bean Club a few months ago and wow, but is a lot of beans, many of which I’d never heard of before much less cooked.

I had some ham that needed to be used up, so today’s project was Ham and Bean Soup. I pretty much followed this recipe, except I didn’t have a ham bone and only half the amount of ham. I tried to make up for it by frying some bacon in the Dutch oven/soup pot and then sautéing the vegetables in the rendered fat instead of olive oil. It worked.

Almost done

 

Instead of my usual navy beans, I took it right to the edge and used Rancho Gordo cassoulet beans instead. I also doubled the garlic, and used some of my homemade bean stock and chicken stock in addition to a carton of vegetable broth. And bay leaves. Four.

 

 

 

While the soup cooked, I got on with the rest of the day. By late afternoon, I decided I had better start the daily workout. It was then I remembered that I’d had a hankerin’ to try a recipe I’d printed out ages ago for cornbread muffins with whole wheat*.  It was getting late** so I took intermittent breaks from treadmilling to set the oven and set up the muffin tin and ingredients.

I never have buttermilk on hand so I went with the usual milk+lemon juice kludge. After treadmilling, I whipped the muffins together and shoved them in the oven, then spent the baking time cleaning up and zapping the soup with the stick blender.***

The grated parm reg atop the soup looks icky but it was good. Happy with the muffins. More meals for the freezer—I love when I can’t think of anything decent to have for dinner and then I remember.

Muffin time!

Dinner time

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*I can hear the cornbread purists howling and that’s fine. You don’t have to eat them—more for me.
**I’m an Old and really don’t like eating full meals after 5pm.
***stick blender, how I love thee