Nicole's Bernard Pivot Blogfest

Thanks to Nicole at One Significant Moment for having this blogfest. I've been looking at the entries and it is fascinating how much you can learn from ten simple answers.

And don't forget to go check out the others here.

1.What is your favorite word?
     Peace. Makes me calm just thinking it.
2.What is your least favorite word?
     Maw...gaping, dripping, foul...just, yuck.
3.What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?
     Creatively, someone's superior efforts. Inspires me to try harder
4.What turns you off?
     A 'victim' attitude.
5.What is your favorite curse word?
     For Fuck's Sake, said with a Scottish accent
6.What sound or noise do you love?
     The sound of a creek
7.What sound or noise do you hate?
     The squealing of guinea pigs
8.What profession other than your own would you like to attempt?
     Teaching writing at college level
9.What profession would you not like to do?
     Dentist (maybe it has something to do with the maw thing)
10.If Heaven exists, what would you like to hear God say when you arrive at the Pearly Gates?
     They're waiting for you over there....

Fun!!! What a great blogfest. It really made me think about things. I'll be making the rounds of the other entries of the next couple of days.

(And if you have a moment, I'd be really grateful if you could go vote for my story "Intent and Intensity" (#74) at the Jane Austen Made Me Do It Short Story Contest. Thanks!)

Everyone needs an anthem

I've just jumped on Alex J. Cavenaugh's Music Blogfest bandwagon (don't forget to go check out the other entries), but I'm going to break the rules a little bit. You see, I don't listen to music when I'm writing (I have enough words inside my head... adding lyrics just makes it hard to hear them).

I'm going to talk about one song. It's the song that I listen to when this writing business gets really hard (which, of course, seems like most of the time). It's The Climb by Mylie Cyrus (or Hannah Montana).

OK, get the laughs out now. I'll wait.

Done? OK, good. Now I am a thirty-something wife and mother-of-two. I grew up listening to 80s music. I'm married to a former metal head and current electric guitar enthusiast. So I get a lot of stick when this comes booming through the iPod dock at home. (And it happened once when our hip-hop music-producing neighbor was over for dinner).

My reaction? (and I quote...)

Everybody needs an anthem, some piece of music that inspires or speaks to them. And when it feels like you are facing some form of rejection every other day, you take your inspiration where you can get it. Don't diss the Mylie.

So without further ado, here are the lyrics. You be the judge...

The Climb

Mylie Cyrus

I can almost see it
That dream I am dreaming
But there's a voice inside my head saying
"You'll never reach it"

Every step I'm taking
Every move I make feels
Lost with no direction
My faith is shaking

But I gotta keep trying
Gotta keep my head held high

There's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Ain't about how fast I get there
Ain't about what's waiting on the other side
It's the climb

The struggles I'm facing
The chances I'm taking
Sometimes might knock me down
But no, I'm not breaking

I may not know it
But these are the moments that
I'm gonna remember most, yeah
Just gotta keep going

And I, I got to be strong
Just keep pushing on
'Cause there's always gonna be another mountain
I'm always gonna wanna make it move
Always gonna be a uphill battle
Sometimes I'm gonna have to lose

Keep on moving, keep climbing
Keep the faith, baby
It's all about, it's all about the climb
Keep the faith, keep your faith, whoa

Songwriters: Alexander, J; Mabe, J;
© HOPELESS ROSE MUSIC; VISTAVILLE MUSIC;

I haven't figured out how to embed the audio file so I'll give you the music video (just listen with your eyes closed).

To me, this song perfectly captures how I feel about working toward publication. I might never get there but I am so blessed to have the opportunity to try. Hard or not, this is a journey worth making.

Blogfeast, San Antonio style

I hadn't planned on posting today but I found out about Angela McAllister's Food blogfest and just couldn't resist. Why don't you head over to Angela's and check out the other entries -- guaranteed to make you hungry!

But before you go, here's my own entry, taken from "La Luna," the serial short fiction that ran in Woman's Weekly in the UK from August 10-August 31. The story is about Serina, the chef/owner of a restaurant on San Antonio's Riverwalk.

Soon she was weeping over piles of chopped onions, though she smiled broadly and hummed “Celito Lindo” in absence of the mariachis. The pork simmered in its red chile sauce, raising a fragrant haze in the kitchen. She lost herself in the preparation, soaking the dried corn husks, roasting peppers, grating the potato-like jicama for the slaw.

When the meat was ready, she began making the tamales. She spread the fluffy corn masa on the softened husk, topping it with a large dollop of shredded pork, and rolling it together so the meat was enclosed like a prize within the package. She tied it shut with a strip of corn husk and started on the next. Though pyramids of tamales grew before her, it would take her another hour to finish them all. With the back of her hand, she brushed away a loose strand of hair and stretched her back, remembering the tamaladas at Christmas time, the traditional tamale-making party where her mother and aunts and grandmother would roll up their sleeves and make hundreds of tamales for the holidays. She smiled to think of the contests to see who could make the most, the laughter when someone was caught out for skimping on the filling or splitting a husk. In face of those memories, Serina’s kitchen seemed very empty, the only sound the rain pinging on the metal vent above the stove. She shoved the pang of loneliness away and continued her tasks, stopping only briefly to flick on the radio to drown out the silence.

The group arrived early, shaking the rain of jackets and umbrellas. Serina noted immediately the absence of any women in the party and chided herself for feeling relieved; she’d secretly feared Eric would bring a date. Once the guests were settled with their drinks, however, she almost wished for the presence of another woman to dilute their attentions. The men – some very young, some older, all charming – were quick to wink, touch her arm, even pat her hip as she walked by. To occupy their hands and thoughts, she quickly brought out the first course of squash soup with roasted corn and poblanos, crowned with a complicated nest of tortilla strips.

The wine began to flow and with each course – chile-fried Gulf oysters, mesquite-grilled prawns on jicama-mango slaw – the men grew louder and more effusive in their complements. At Eric’s pressing, she bent her own rule and joined them in a glass of Argentine Zinfandel, as red and rich as liquid rubies. When the tamales were unwrapped like gifts at Christmas, the men broke into applause and Serina finally fled to the kitchen, her face aflame and heart afire from pleasure of a meal so well appreciated.

What can I say? I love the food of San Antonio!

So now go check out Angela at Jaded Love Junkie and all the other entries. I'm going to do the same, but first I need some breakfast. All this food talk has made my stomach rumble.

Word Paint Blogfest

I haven't participated in a blogfest in a long time, but I was really drawn to Dawn Ember's Word Paint blogfest. The following is an excerpt from my current serial-in-progress "Continental Drift," a story where a recently-widowed woman drives across country to reconnect with a group of friends from college.

I stopped the car at a small sign announcing the continental divide and learned I was standing on the line that marked where the rainfall would drain – to the west it drained to the Pacific, to the east, the Atlantic. So now if I cried, my tears would be going to a different ocean. I decided right then and there that Pacific was salty enough without my contribution, so I would permit no more to fall.


When I got back into the car, I found myself refreshed, able to keep driving despite how many miles I’d done. The setting sun painted the sky with a wash of reds, purples and golds. Watching it through the massive windscreen, I felt as though I was sitting in a movie theatre seeing it on the big screen, though I doubted film could ever capture those colours.

I drove until chips of stars blazed across the indigo sky. And though it felt like a betrayal of the beautiful state to sleep in some generic hotel chain, it was the only thing I could find. The commonness of the hotel was excused, however, when I enjoyed my morning coffee while looking at the blushing mesas.

Several more hours driving brought me to Arizona, where beautiful painted cliffs rose just inside the state line. I prepared myself for more beauty but I soon passed beyond the painted cliffs into the desert proper. The Arizona desert was not what I expected. At first, the stark beauty was breathtaking, all sharp silhouettes and shades of earth that designers covet. But after an hour, my senses rebelled. I was raised among the green trees and gentle slopes of the northeast. The desert landscape was too alien. Hard white skies stretched above, shimmers rose from the endless grey road, and heat transmitted through the roof, the windows and up from the ground through the car until I felt like I was in an oven. All those things went supernova in my head until a razor-sharp headache pierced the centre of my brain.

The drive went on for hours until I could stand it no more. I finally pulled into the car park of a motor lodge, a throwback to the Fifties when Americans thought of road travel as fun and wanted to take their time getting somewhere. When I stepped out of my mobile living room, the heat was so fierce that the inside of my nose burned, my mouth went dry, and my sandals sank half an inch into the molten blacktop. I was clearly a fool to enter Arizona in August.

Drifting in a heat-induced haze, I soon found myself in a room that reeked of dusty potpourri but was as cold as a refrigerator. After downing three glasses of lukewarm water, I pulled the roadmap from my bag and spread it on the bed. The country was bisected by a grid of folds so worn that the paper was cobweb thin. I uncapped a black fibre pen and methodically started colouring in Arizona, making it black from edge to edge. I decided right then and there that if I ever do the cross-country drive again, I would find some route that did not include this state. When I ventured out to dinner at the diner across the car park, my breath came short and my shirt was instantly damp where it touched my skin. But the sky was lit up with a sunset of mythical proportions and I forgave Arizona briefly for its evil summer.

If you haven't seen this blogest yet, go check out Dawn's blog and follow the links to the other entries. And if you are participating in the blogfest, my plan is to visit you all over the weekend. I can't wait to read your Word Paintings!

Flirty Blogfest

I thought it would be fun to participate in Critique_This_WIP's Flirty Blogfest. My entry comes from Woman Overboard, my chick-lit WIP (which, in all honesty, has been IP for a long time). The MC, Junia, is on a cruise, trying to change her patterns of falling for bad men.

       I took off my shoes and slid my feet into the turquoise pool. The water was warm, and the ripples I created threw lights all around. It was hypnotic. For a moment, I did nothing but watch the glowing water. I reached into my bag and took out the pack of paper that I always carried for origami emergencies. I folded a little duck and released it across the pool. As it rocked on the waves, I folded another and sent it on its way. Before long, there were six little ducks serenely floating on the now-still water.
      “You're going to block the filter with those.”
     A voice in the dark made me jump so high I almost fell in. I looked around and saw a man in a staff uniform moving toward me. I was about to apologize when I saw him give me the up-and-down, lingering for a moment on my cleavage, which he had a good view of from his position above me. I deliberately gave him the up-and-down. What I saw was worth looking at. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with dark hair that curled up just a bit where it brushed his white collar. His blue eyes matched the glowing water and he watched me with a slightly arrogant smile. I knew his type. There was something about the glint in his eye that told me he was used to women checking him out.
     “I'll retrieve them.”
     “Even that one?” he asked, pointing to one at the middle of the pool.
     “Even if I have to swim for it.”
     “In that?" he nodded at the satin skirt I'd hiked up around my knees.
     “No, I guess I'll just have to take it off.” I held his gaze.
     “Now there's an idea,” he said with a different glint in his eye. He sat down on a deck chair and held out his hand. “I'm Max.”
     “My name is Junia,” I said. When I took his hand, warmth shot up my arm and through my body. I swear the water around my legs almost started boiling. But there was no way I was going to show him that. I quickly folded a boat and launched it toward the flock.
     “Neat trick,” he said.
     “Origami.”
     “You're welcome. Will you make me one?”
     I studied him for a moment, trying to decide what to make. I took a sheet and carefully, willing my hands to be steady as rocks, folded and refolded it. I handed the shark to him, which he took with a smile.
     “And what about you?” he asked.
     Again, I studied him silently before starting on another sheet. It took quite a few steps plus another sheet of paper; he watched me without speaking. I plucked my little boat out of the water and added the new figure before holding it up. He took one look at the man holding the spear and burst out laughing before falling back on the lounge chair, hand to chest as though he'd been speared himself.
     “Are you trying to tell me something?” he asked, propping himself up on one elbow. He looked gorgeous. Must resist!
     “Not at all,” I said sweetly. “Now if you'll excuse me,” I said, standing up and gathering my skirt in my hands, “I have some waterfowl to retrieve.”
     “Allow me,” Max said, and in one move, was off the lounger and dove into the pool, shoes and all. He surfaced, gathering the bobbing birds carefully while treading water. He swam back to the edge and held them up to me.
     “You know,” he said, shaking the water from his thick hair and chiselled cheekbones, “there aren't many women who could get me to jump in a pool with all my clothes on.” He stood up and his white shirt clung to him, showing a stomach a six-pack would be jealous of.
     “That's me,” I said with a coolness that belied the heat I felt inside. “Junia Wetherby, manipulator of men and paper.” With that, I turned and walked away from the pool, leaving him laughing in the cool, blue water.

Baking Blogfest

I'm taking part in Charity Bradford's Baking Blogfest. Since my MC in THE SHADOW SCRIBE is a recipe developer (and so am I - see this post on how recipe development works), this is right up my alley. Here's a scene where Lara is working on a project, preparing recipes and photographs to appear on the back of a cake mix package.

     Once again talking to myself, I brainstormed a few quick ideas. “One stir-in recipe…maybe almonds and coconut. Bar cookies…a variation on millionaire’s shortbread? Something healthy, maybe with fruit?”
     After translating the ideas into rough recipes, I gathered the ingredients for the first recipe and turned on the voice recognition software, setting the laptop off to the side of the work area where it wouldn’t be splashed by anything.
     “One box cake mix, a half-cup chopped toasted almonds, a half-cup shredded coconut, two tablespoons vegetable oil, a quarter-cup water...”
     “You say something, love?”
     “Oh!” I jumped a foot and splashed water down my front. My lack of sleep made me very twitchy. The plumber stood in the doorway.
     “No, sorry, I was working,” I explained, gesturing at the laptop.
     “Right, sorry about that,” he said and walked off toward the front door, avoiding Mike coming in with the wheelbarrow. I closed the door and then went over to the laptop to delete the last exchange from the screen.
     Four hours later, the smell of chocolate filled the kitchen and dirty bowls and desserts of varying degrees of edibility covered the counters. The coconut almond cake was delicious, the bar cookies tasty but too sticky, and the so-called healthy recipe with raisins and bran cereal was disgusting. Recipe development was not a job with immediate gratification. Some projects – like this one – took me five, ten, even twenty tries to get the recipe perfect. The bedroom, my makeshift studio for the day, was in an even worse state. Plates of mauled and mangled food were everywhere, the victims of my attempts for visual culinary perfection. My hero – the food actually photographed – still sat beneath the lights getting dry and stale, looking less than appetizing.

I've done recipe development for baking and for culinary applications, but my true love is baking. When I was in culinary school, our instructor said to the class on the first day, "Some of you are chefs and some of you are bakers. Here, you will do both, but you will find you are drawn to one side or another." And I found that to be true, both for myself and the other students in my class. Why the difference, you might ask?

Cooking is on the fly, meaning that for the most part, you can change and adapt as you go on. You taste, you adjust, you immediately taste again. Many chefs don't use recipes, but go by instinct and feel. Or they start with a recipe and immediately change course to make it even better.

Baking is precision. Consider this: cookies, cakes, and pastries are all made from the same basic ingredients. Flour, sugar, butter, eggs, raising agents. But you change the proportions and you get a totally different result. If you don't balance your recipe perfectly, you do not get the results you expect. And you usually have to wait for some time to find that out (an hour or so for it to bake).

UH-OH! Analogy alert! You could compare this to the difference between pantsers and plotters, right?

Which are you -- a baker or a chef?