Alex Gordon's Blog, page 6

Banana “Nice” Cream

I had two large ripe bananas that needed dealing with. I didn’t feel like baking anything, so I poked around online for one of those banana “nice cream” recipes that’s basically “Whip the hell out of some sliced frozen bananas.” I found a recipe for a vegan version–I just subbed an equivalent amount of 50:50 whole milk: half n half and 1/8 tsp Burlap & Barrel Vanilla Powder.

Two large bananas, sliced and frozen overnight

It comes out like soft serve, and I think it’s pretty good. But I love bananas, so.

The finished product

I’ll have some later with Coop’s Mocha Fudge topping.

Now with fewer !!!!!!

Code of Conduct, now with many fewer !!!!!!!!!!! and a few other tweaks, is available at the Book View Café bookstore. It will soon be at all the usual ebook stores as soon as I get it uploaded and fill out the forms at Draft2Digital, some great folks who will handle the uploading to individual outlets.

Rereading Code proved really useful. I will need to change some things in Echoes of War because of a few sentences in Chapter 1. I can’t wait to see what I need to change after rereading Rules of Conflict.

Today on Crafting with Kris

I love wreaths. No clue why, I just do. Wreaths on walls, doors, gates. The sight of them makes me happy.

Flower wreaths made of metal have been a thing of late in the decor catalogs. I bought one to hang on the wall of the updated dining room, but it turns out that metal marks up the paint like whoa–any contact leaves a gray streak. I considered attaching the wreath to some sort of backing to keep it from touching the wall, but decided that would ruin its essential ‘wreathiness.’ So I set it aside to hang in the living room—wood walls and stone fireplace, so no marking—and tried to think of what to do with some of the wall space. Shelves? An arrangement of small items from the overflow of SF and fantasy artwork I’ve collected over the years? Decisions.

Years ago, possibly a couple of decades, I bought a 6′ silk flower garland of green leaves and assorted creamy white flowers. Roses. Lily. Maybe apple blossoms. I grabbed it mostly because it was marked down from $12.99 to $3.99, and I wasn’t sure what I would do with it. Turns out I didn’t do anything with it, so eventually I stuck it on a shelf in the basement. I’d look at it every so often and debate whether to throw it out. But I still thought it was pretty so I kept it.

A few months ago, I did get rid of an old wreath. Most of it, anyway. The color had worn off the styrofoam berries and some were crumbling to bits, so I pulled them all off and trashed it. The wreath base, however, consisted of a sturdy brown circle of woven rattan maybe 10-12″ in diameter. Too good to toss.

And that’s when I started to wonder. I brought the garland upstairs, piled it on a chair along with the wreath base, then forgot about it as the renovation commenced, followed by the recovery from the renovation.

A couple of days ago, I finally got around to putting together the wreath. I cut up the garland and stuck the leaves and flowers into the base. I thought I might need a glue gun, but turns out I didn’t—I stuck the plastic stems into the woven wood and everything stayed put. Took less than an hour.

Preconstructed wreath

Voila!

I just hung it up an hour or so ago. I like it a lot. I also may be patting myself on the back because, judging from the wreaths I saw at one of the big boxes today, I may have saved myself at least $30. But mostly I just plain like it.

 

Working…

Over the last week I’ve done something I’ve needed to do for years—I reread Code of Conduct and, well, cleaned it up. The main thing I wanted to do was remove exclamation marks because damn, I tossed them around like I owned them. I used them multiple times in the same paragraph, sometimes combining them with italicized sentences when the italics already indicated stress and emphasis. It actually pained me to reread parts of the book because things would be proceeding merrily along and then WHAT THE HELL IS THAT ! DOING THERE?

::breathe::

So I culled a bunch, leaving the very few that I felt made sense. In his 10 Rules For Good Writing, Elmore Leonard allowed for 2-3 exclamation marks per 100K words. He apparently exceeded that number himself, but not by much. He walked his talk. I can’t promise to hew to his model but I will try, if only because seeing so many !!!!! in past works has made me a little sensitive to them.

In addition to punctuation excision and substitution, I looked for those bits that were at the time meant to be offhand comments/something to fill in the space but which now conflict with later books in the series or where future books are headed. Nothing excessive. No replotting. I removed a few needless sentences and edited some that set up complications/relationships that I never addressed later on. I made up the Haárin and bornsect relationships and languages on the fly because I was a full-blown seat-of-the-pants plotter 25+ years ago (yikes!) and I didn’t yet realize how one-off comments could come back to bite me.

Over the next few weeks, I will be going over the rest of the series in order, removing exclamation marks, assessing details. Also, I’ve forgotten what I wrote at times. Is there a relationship I can develop, a conflict I can build into a plot or subplot, a cool thing I could make more use of? When that’s done, I will have a firmer grounding when it comes time to edit Echoes of War. I already know of a few things that need to be addressed and I am sure there are more waiting to pop out from the weeds.

Series writing is its own challenge. Changes, plot, relationships need to make sense; ideally, they follow the arcs that began in that first work. All the developments should make story sense and character sense even as the details pile up and the room to maneuver grows ever smaller. In fact, part of the fun is looking at a corner in which I painted myself and figuring out how to get out of it. At least, I tell myself it’s fun.

No. It really is fun. Sometimes it’s like triathlon/just-one-more-rep/smiling through gritted teeth, but. It’s what I do.

 

Monday’s the first day of Spring!

Can’t come soon enough.

Winter’s not through yet, though. High temp only hits the 30s today and the 20s tomorrow. Not only are my daffodils up several inches, but the irises and day lilies are poking up through the winter cover as well. I hope everything survives the short blast. Temps rise into the 40s and 50s after that but it doesn’t take much to slaughter a little bud.

For someone who posts a lot about plants and gardening, I did a great job killing off house plants over the last few months. Most of the slaughter happened during the kitchen/bath refresh. I was frazzled and lost track of time, thinking I’d just watered plants when in fact I hadn’t. Then I took a good look at my ficus bonsai and saw way too many yellow leaves. One or two–not unusual. Twenty? Houston, we have a problem.

So I fed it some plant food even though it’s not the season for it and watered it obsessively. Then I checked all the other plants and oh dear. The pink African violet? A goner. One of my mini-roses? Also gone. Prayer plant looked iffy. Both serissa were infested with spider mites, and one of the philodendra in my bedroom is definitely toast.

Violets are known to be touchy and serissa will drop all their leaves if you look at them funny, but it takes talent to lose a heartleaf philodendron.

Anyway, regular frequent waterings have helped my bonsai recover. Multiple sprayings with both homemade and commercial organic insecticides have squelched the mites, and the smaller serissa is starting to sprout new leaves. Growth really does slow during the cold months–I need to keep reminding myself of that. But still, it was in worse shape than in past years and I am crossing my fingers that I have managed to save it. The prayer plant looks a little better. Everything else–the palm, larger philodendra, fern, the three gerbera daisies–all look okay. Looking forward to warmer times when I can put some of them outside.

In closing, here’s a photo of my old lady girl looking quite spiff in her laser goggles. She receives cold laser treatments for arthritis–they’re not too traumatizing (other than the fact we’re at the vet’s office) and they do seem to help.

Gaby Goggle Girl

 

Truth be told, I think she’s dislikes the goggles more than the actual treatment.

New Release Day at Book View Café

It’s been a while.

Nature’s Ways is a two-story collection of SF horror. Both stories first appeared in other publications back in 2021, “Symbiote” in the ZNB anthology Derelict and “Nest” in the Wandering Monsters edition of Boundary Shock Quarterly. They were both changes of pace from my usual space opera with heavy sides of politics and medical stuff, and I enjoyed writing them.

It will be exclusive to Book View Café for the next week or so, at which point it should be available at the usual outlets…barring delays. I will post again after it goes wide.

 

I love this cover so. It’s wonderfully creepy. Many thanks to Matt Seff Barnes for the design.

Breakfast

I think breakfast is my favorite meal of the day. Maybe it’s because I’m pretty much a morning person. And I like to eat. It’s also the coffee—I need to take it easy with caffeine so breakfast is when I have my one fully-charged cup. Also I’m a fruit-and-bread eater, and many breakfasts feature those two items.

Now that the work on my kitchen is done and I have an official breakfast bar, I’ve been enjoying sitting there in the mornings, one eye on the squirrels and birds in the backyard. It’s winter, which means hearty, filling food: oatmeal, pancakes, French toast. Two favorite recipes of late have been for oatmeal baked in a pie plate (it looks like dessert!) and a fruit-filled pancake baked in a half-sheet (this thing is huge).

Of course, I change things. The banana version of the oatmeal pie is fine, but I’ve made versions with 1 cup applesauce plus a couple of chopped apples as well as four liquified pears–both versions are more moist and rise a little higher.

In the case of the sheet pancake, I pretty much followed the recipe. Lot of berries and bananas.

The recipe states six servings, but I stretch it to eight

 

In other news, I’m laid up with the stomach bug that’s going around—yea! I feel bad for Gaby, whose pacing around and could probably use a walk. Not for a couple of days, I’m afraid. Temperature’s up into the mid-30s, which means melting snow and mushy backyard. It’s a little early for Mud Season here in northeast Illinois. I’m betting on more cold and snow later on. February’s good at that.

And my iPhone 7 finally went the way of my ancient Air—its processor would no longer handle some of the code floating around in various websites and apps so it would run hot, burn through memory, and occasionally crash. I probably didn’t help matters by using it while it charged—I didn’t realize it was a bad thing to do, but now I do. Anyway, I now have an SE 2022, which handles the same apps and sites with ease. It’s the same size as the 7, so I could use my old case. Not a huge number of bells and whistles compared to the numbered iPhones, but I still balk at paying major appliance prices for a telephone that upgrades so often that it practically falls into the category of ‘disposable item.’.

It’s 2023!

My last post was in November 2022. December went by in a whirl of reno, appointments, reno, short story struggles, and reno. Now the holidays are past and I’m not sure what day it is since Christmas and New Year’s Day both fell on Sundays so the days off were moved to Mondays and…

…::checks calendar:: Tuesday. Okay.

Bit of news–I’ve a new story out. It’s entitled “Pirate Ship,” and it appears in the latest issue of Boundary Shock Quarterly, the theme of which is Pirates!

 

It’s a prequel to “Breakaway, ” the story that appeared in the Veterans issue last April. The stories are lighter in tone than the Jani books, but there’s still chicanery, plotting, and subterfuge because those are three of my favorite things. I’m planning more stories in that new universe, with at least one in mind for this year.

 

 

So much for November…

…not sure what happened to it, but it’s winding down at speed.

Oh well.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate. It’s a partly sunny day here in NE Illinois. Cool but not cold with dry ground and no snow in the forecast. I’ll take it.

Currently sitting in dining area—it adjoins the kitchen so it isn’t really separate—enjoying the view out of my new, weather-sealed, back door.  Yes, I’m having work done in my house at the start of a Midwest winter. Timing may not be my strong suit, but by the time it’s all over I will have the kitchen and bathroom I’ve wanted for ages and a floor that can stand up to salt, water, and muddy paws (my pup’s, not mine). I’m taking photos as things progress and may even post a few…except then I’ll leave folks wondering how I could’ve lived with the Before stae of things for so long. All I can say is that it’s amazing what you can get used to and even stop seeing after a while.

In closing, be on the lookout for actual writing news over the next few weeks. Yes, I have been writing, not quickly—I’m sure this is news —but writing. I wish I worked faster, but I’ve been doing this since the early 90s and I doubt I will ever change. I am grateful for you readers who have stuck with me through this dry spell. One thing I’ve learned is that I actually can write short stories, which is not something I thought I would ever say. I’m still a novelist at heart, but those quick watercolor works provide a nice break from pushing through the ceiling-spanning project that is a novel.

And with that, I bid you adieu until next time….

 

 

The Last Few Weeks…

Mostly good, for which I’m thankful. Firstly, the Zombies Need Brains’ Kickstarter reached its funding goal, and even hit a couple of stretch goals! If you pledged, thank you. Looks like Kris will be writing a solarpunk story.

Sidebar: there is an open call for submissions that runs though the end of the year. ZNB is a SFWA pro-rate market and a few stories from these anthologies have been nominated for awards, so if you have a story that’s ready to go or feel the urge to write one, why not give it a shot?

My pup, Gaby, who is 15 1/2 ** and was diagnosed earlier this year with canine cognitive dysfunction, is doing okay. She sleeps more now. Eats less. Is a little shaky when she first wakes up. She still has her bouncy moments, but it’s still hard to accept that this time last year she was still her old Gaby self. It can change so fast.

In more medical news, I am now an epi-pen person. Last summer, I was stung by paper wasps three times in a matter of weeks, which can often lead to development of allergies to said stingers. After testing, it was determined that I am allergic to paper wasps, yellow jackets, and white-faced hornets  (which are more closely related to wasps rather than hornets). Further skin testing for yellow faced hornet and honey bee proved negative for which I’m glad because honey bees, come on! Allergy shots are probably in my future.

Sicilian gelato update–my attempt to make a strawberry version, while not a total failure, didn’t succeed particularly well. The grocery store strawberries weren’t the tastiest, and I think I didn’t prepare them properly. Instead of making an uncooked sauce, I should’ve made a cooked sauce with a little sugar and some corn starch. The issue was that the water in the fruit lent a slight grainy, watery mouthfeel to the end product. Corn starch binds water, which is why the plain vanilla version came out pudding-smooth. The next batch–I’m trying to decide between almond and orange flower–will be a return to the old formula and will I hope come out nice and creamy.

 

**This is a guess because she was a rescue.

In closing, here’s a photo of a honeybee, to which I am not allergic, feeding on the volunteer goldenrod in my yard.

Honeybee, to which I am officially not allergic