Annette Lyon's Blog, page 37

Writing Journey: Sliding into Chocolate Homebase

It was the second week of August, and I knew without any doubt that I simply could not get a full manuscript of the chocolate cookbook to Covenant by the end of the month like I'd promised.
The thought was devastating. I'd never, ever missed a deadline, self-imposed or otherwise. I knew they'd be understanding, but I hated to disappoint them. I was disappointed in myself, even though I'd done everything short of moving mountains to get the book done in four months.
I sent an e-mail to Kathy...

WNW: Best Word Ever--Theobroma

Today's WNW is a brief vocabulary lesson . . . with a point.
The word: theobroma
Let's break it down.
Theo comes from the Greek root for "god"
broma means "food"
So basically, theobroma means "food of the gods."
Can you guess what it means? No, not ambrosia. Something even better. Oh, yeah. You know.
Theobroma is the genus name for the cacao plant.

(Here's a picture of cacao pods I took myself at the NY Chocolate Show back in 2003.)
In short, theobroma refers to CHOCOLATE, and one of the main...

Time, Would You Knock It Off?

A few months ago, my son passed up his Grandma Lyon in height. Naturally, being as he's a teenage boy and getting taller than others is one of his missions in life, he was thrilled.
"I wonder if I'm taller than Grandma Luthy," he said.
"You're not," I assured him.
At the time, she was out of the country, remember, so he couldn't check.
"How can you know for sure?" he asked.
It didn't take much to burst his balloon. "Because I'm shorter than my mom, and you're still shorter than I am."
"Oh...

Not That I'm Counting

In the rush of getting Halloween costumes on for school this morning (we've got a cyborg, a cave woman, a half man/half woman, and a cheerleader), the kids forgot to rip off the last link in the paper chain.
There it is above, just waiting to be torn to shreds in celebration, because that final link means one small but significant thing.
This is it. Today is the day.
Mom and Dad (Grandma and Grandpa) are in the air. They land tonight. Five years and two missions are finally over. I get my...

WNW: Every Day or Everyday?

Which do you use? When? What's the difference? Is there one?
The everyday/every day mix-up is easily one of the most common mistakes I see in my editing work and one of the most common questions I'm asked.
Kinda figured it made sense to address it here. I do mention it in There, Their, They're as well, and I think I do a pretty good job of it. But recently, I had a brain flash about how to explain it even better.
I'm hereby using that brain flash in this post and reserving the right to...

I'm Taking It as a Compliment

Last night after dinner, I ended up sitting around the table chatting with my two older girls. (I love that they're old enough for that!)
Their dad walked in and stopped. "Girl talk, huh?"
"Something like that," I said, enjoying myself.
Actually, we weren't talking girl stuff. (Fortunately! They're a little young for that stuff. I hope "girl talk" is a few years off yet.)
We got into talking about a series of books, and they were asking me something about the topic of the series, so I explained...

Writing Journey: Summer of Chocolate

With the writing conference over, I figured I had roughly four months to pull together a chocolate cookbook. I'd told the managing editor I could probably get her a manuscript by the end of August, and this was late April.
Originally they had pictured a number of recipes somewhere in the neighborhood of their last cookbook: 200. I sort of choked. Since that book included appetizers, main dishes, salads, desserts, and all kinds of categories and this was all chocolate, I asked if we could...

WNW: Shibboleths

Shibboleths are fun. Unless you're an Ephraimite, that is.
Just the word makes me smile. Generally speaking, they're a single word that easily distinguishes a person as not belonging to another group because of the way they say it.
It comes from the story in the Bible, in Judges 12, verses 5 & 6. Not a happy story. The Gileadites managed to defeat the Ephraimites in battle. When the refugee Ephraimites tried to cross the Jordan river, they were given the Hebrew word shibboleth to say to prove...

Six Bits of Monday Randomness

Random Bit #1I've been out of town and computer-less since Thursday, spending some much-needed (and enjoyed!) time away with my husband. It. Was. Awesome.
As a result, however, today I opened my Google Reader to find 254 unread posts. Did you get the full impact of that number? Let's spell it out:
TWO HUNDRED FIFTY-FOUR.
Holy schmoly, you people are prolific!
Um . . . I don't think I'll be getting to all those posts. Just a tiny little guess. Don't take it personally or anything. I'm just not...

WNW: Words from My Books

Just for the fun of it (because I know I need to lighten up a bit and laugh), I decided to pull out a few words that have caused problems in old manuscripts for one reason or another. As I came up with this list, it cracked me up to realize that every one of them came from Spires of Stone.
Maybe it's because the entire process of writing, rewriting, editing and just getting that puppy to press was so traumatic (see my Writing Journey series for the whole the whole messy story in parts XI, span