Amazon, a Reader, & SERVANT

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Holy smokes! I just saw that Amazon put SERVANT on sale. I don’t know when this started, but they have the mass market paperback listed for $1.75. That’s cheaper than I can buy it!

http://www.amazon.com/Servant-Dark-God-Tor-Fantasy/dp/0765362309/ref=tmm_mmp_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1315490465&sr=8-1 

Maybe the Dark God had something to do with it . . .

Something else of note happened this week. I often get emails from readers expressing how much they enjoyed SERVANT and asking questions about the story. I simply love receiving those emails. What author wouldn’t? One email in particular this week, though, especially pleased me. You can see the review the reader wrote here: http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/146860447, but there was one thing the reader wrote in his email to me that wasn’t in the review that make me exclaim “Yes!”

One thing I didn’t squeeze into the review was how much I enjoyed the little details–names of farm implements, invented words like dreadmen, terminology for the parts of the ship, etc.  It all added to the suspension of disbelief factor very nicely.

Finding and adding those details were one of the things I loved about writing SERVANT.  I’m so happy to hear they paid off. I don’t think all readers will notice them. In fact, I hope they don’t. But it’s clear they’re doing their part to make the experience work for a lot of folks. And that makes me happy.

2 Great Cook’s Country Recipes

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Yeah, I know–I should be writing. But I promised you two wonderful recipes from my experiments with the Cook’s Country June/July 2011 issue. There were a whole bunch of other recipes we tried that worked out well, but these were our favorites and good enough to get me to subscribe.

By the way, I found these recipes were not only tasty, but they were great to do on a date (in this case, with my daughters). Why just eat when you can enjoy the time together as well?  Besides, two people working together make these recipes a breeze.

Chocolate Eclair Cake

Chocolate, vanilla pudding, whipped cream, and graham crackers–baby, is this good!  I found I liked the cake best with HALF of the pudding and whip cream mixture. You’ll see the half amounts in parentheses. That way I got a taste of the pudding, graham, and ganache in every bite. The directions make it look like there’s a lot of steps, but they all go quickly.

INGREDIENTS

Pudding Mixture

  • 1 ¼ C sugar (1/2 + 1/8 C)
  • 6 T cornstarch (3 T)
  • 1 tsp salt (1/2 tsp)
  • 5 C whole milk (2.5 C)
  • 4 T unsalted butter cut into chunks (2 T)
  • 5 tsp vanilla (2.5 tsp)

 Whip Cream Mixture

  • 2 T water (1 T)
  • 1 ¼  tsp unflavored gelatin (1/2 + 1/8 tsp)
  • 2 C heavy cream (1 + ¼ +1/8 C)

Graham Crackers

14 ounces of Nabisco Honey Maid graham crackers

Ganache topping

  • ¾ C  heavy cream
  • 1 C semisweet chocolate chips
  • 5 T light corn syrup

 DIRECTIONS

 Make Pudding

  1. Combine sugar, cornstarch, and salt in large saucepan
  2. Wisk milk into sugar mixture and bring to boil over medium-high heat, scraping bottom with rubber spatula.
  3. Immediately reduce heat to medium-low and continue to cook and scrape until thick bubbles appear on surface, about 4-6 minutes
  4. Take off heat and wisk in butter and vanilla.
  5. Transfer hot pudding to large bowl and place plastic wrap directly on surface.
  6. Refrigerate for about 2 hours until cool.

 Make Whip Cream Mixture

  1. Stir water and gelatin together and let sit for 5 minutes.
  2. Microwave until gelatin dissolves and mixture gets bubbly around the edges, 15-30 seconds
  3. Whip 2 cups of cream on medium-low for about 1 minute, until foamy.
  4. Increase to high and whip for 2 minutes, until soft peaks form
  5. Add gelatin mixture and whip for 1 minute, until stiff peaks form

 Combine Pudding and Whip Cream Mixture

  1. Wisk one-third of whipped cream into chilled pudding.
  2. Fold remaining whipped cream into pudding.

 Layer Pudding Whip Cream Mixture with Graham Crackers

  1. Line bottom of 13 x 9 inch baking dish with a layer of graham crackers. Break and cut crackers if you have to.
  2. Top the bottom layer of crackers with ½ of the pudding whip cream mixture
  3. Place another layer of crackers over the pudding.
  4. Top that layer with the rest of the pudding whip cream mixture
  5. Place one last layer of crackers over the second layer of pudding whip cream mixture

 Make Ganache and Pour Over

  1. Microwave chocolate chips, ¾ C cream, and corn syrup in bowl 1-2 minutes, stirring occasionally.
  2. Cool for 10 minutes to room temperature
  3. Cover top layer of graham crackers with glaze
  4. Refrigerate cake for 6 – 24 hours. Then serve.

 

Dill Potato Salad

A potato salad with a perfect dill zing. Everybody in the Brown household loved this. Super wife especially loved it because she does not like eggs. Please note that there’s fresh dill used in all three parts. So when you shop, make sure you get enough for all three.

 INGREDIENTS

 Dill Vinegar

  • ¼ C white wine vinegar
  • 1 T minced fresh dill

 Boiling Mixture

  • 1 disposable coffee filter
  • ½ C coarsely chopped dill leaves and stems
  • 3 pounds Yukon Gold potatoes (don’t get any other type), peeled and cut into ¾ inch pieces
  • 1 T salt

 Dressing

  • ½ C mayonnaise
  • ¼ C sour cream
  • 1 T Dijon mustard
  • ½ tsp salt
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • 2 T minced fresh dill
  • 3 scallions (green onions) green parts only sliced thin

 DIRECTIONS

 Make Dill Vinegar

  1. Combine vinegar and 1 T minced dill in bowl and microwave until steaming, 30-60 seconds
  2. Cool at room temperature for 15-20 minutes

 Boil Potatoes

  1. Place chopped dill inside disposable coffee filter and time with thread.
  2. Put potatoes, dill sachet, and salt into large pot with enough water to cover the potatoes by 1 inch.
  3. Bring to boil on high heat then reduce heat to medium and simmer until potatoes are tender, 10 minutes

 Cool and Soak Potatoes

  1. Drain potatoes thoroughly and throw away dill sachet
  2. Drizzle 2 T of the dill vinegar over hot potatoes and gently toss until evenly coated
  3. Refrigerate until cooled, 30 minutes. This allows the Yukon potatoes to suck up the dill vinegar.

 Make dressing and Combine with Potatoes

  1. Wisk mayonnaise, sour cream, remaining dill vinegar, mustard, salt, and pepper until smooth
  2. Add dressing to cooled potatoes
  3. Stir in scallions and 2 T minced dill.
  4. Cover and refrigerate to let flavors meld, 30 minutes.
  5. Serve with salt and pepper to taste.

 EDIT 9/7: Somehow I deleted four of the dressing ingredients when I posted. They’ve been added back 🙂

Update on CURSE OF A DARK GOD – just finished numba 40

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For those who haven’t noticed, I just finished chapter 40 of 60 on this draft of Curse of a Dark God. My original target was September 5th to finish the draft. I’m closer in my projections than I have been in the past, but I’m clearly not going to make that date. However, I’m going to see what I can do these next three weeks and hopefully pull it off by the end of September. 

This is possible.  Author James Maxey just finished a novel of almost 60,000 words in one week. Yes, you heard that right. ONE WEEK! Here are his tips for doing this and here was his master plan when he started. I got to read his updates a few times each day. It was simply amazing.

Of course, there’s no way I can write 60,000 words in one week. Not because I think it’s impossible. But because it takes time. James had a week off and spent like 10 hours a day at it.  I can’t take a week off.  But even if I could, I don’t write as fast as James. But hopefully I can structure things to get more time and finish it in three weeks. We’ll see. I’ve been working on this draft for the last four months and have put in about 240 hours on it, roughly 12.5 per week.  My slow 500 words per hour that I can’t seem to budge (yes, some is writing and some is revising as I go along).  I wanted to get a solid 20 hours in each week–that’s really the key–and am disappointed I haven’t managed to do this.  Of course, it’s hard with a full-time job and family and a daughter going off to college and life.  Waa, waa, waa. But I’m going to see what I can do to boost that to 25 hours per week for the next few weeks.  The good thing is that I’m really enjoying the story on the page.

As for manuscript size, the issue with the last draft, right now the manuscript is 123,000 words. The target is around 170,000. I’m roughly on track to hit that. I’m trying to keep my chapters around 2,500 words.  We’ll see how close I get.

Gladwell, Dish Cloths, and Higher Technology for Tuna

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The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell

After reading Made to Stick, I decided to read the book that inspired it—The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell. I’d read Blink and Outliers by the same author and found both fascinating.  I’m happy to report The Tipping Point is just as good. In it, Gladwell examines what conditions cause ideas, behaviors, messages, and products to spread like outbreaks of infectious disease. 

In the book he shares a number of situations and studies, including the sudden drop in crime in New York city in the 1990’s (which started by attacking graffiti in the subway), the dramatic popularity of the Blue’s Clues TV program with pre-schoolers, Paul Revere’s success in rousing the citizens along his route (versus the almost total failure of the other guy who rode that night), the resurgence of Hush Puppies shoes, syphilis in Baltimore, Columbia Record’s amazingly effective golden box ad campaign, and a dozen other outbreaks.  From all of these, he extrapolates three rules of social epidemics—The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context.  

The arguments Gladwell presents are thought-provoking and powerful, but what makes him such a treat to read is how he writes.  Like the best science writers (in fact, I think he IS one of the best), he tells great stories with interesting characters.  He puts the reader on the edge of the seat with mystery, insight, and humor. He makes things that could be incredibly complex seem like first grade math. It’s as if he’s standing right there with you chatting about the subject. Moreover, he does all this from page one.

Here’s what I mean. I left the book out on the kitchen table one night after reading a few chapters.  The next morning Super Wife came down to quickly eat breakfast and get herself to a meeting.  She made the mistake of opening the book to glance at the first page. Twenty-five minutes later she came up for air and realized she was going to be late and dashed out the door. The writing is pure mind control.  And I loved every minute of it.

If you’re at all interested in advertising or how fads and movements start, if you want to affect the behavior of customers or local teens, if you just like to read how things work, I think you’ll love this book.

Sunflower Dish Cloths

I used to suffer along with subpar dish cloths.  There were the dish cloths with mesh on one side that were so small you had to rinse them after every wiping stroke.  There were the hand cloths made of terri that belonged in a bathroom but were repurposed and were far too big. Then were the cloths that had some slippery crap in the thread that refused to soak up water.  And there were the crocheted things that I think we should have put out of their misery when we first got them. Folks suggested we go to sponges. So we did sponges and had similar results.

Oh, woe, woe, woe.

Then a kind and loving friend gave us a set of mystery cloths that were incredible.  They were large enough that we didn’t need to rinse with every wipe.  They had this fantastic weave that was open, yet absorbent, and dried quickly.  And the weave had enough of a texture that you could use it to scrub.  We received those back in 1999.  They lasted us for years and gave us much kitchen cleaning joy.  But, alas, like all of mortality, those brave cloths finally began to give up the ghost. 

My problem was that I didn’t know who had made those cloths and where I could get more.  We looked all over and couldn’t find them.  And then, at this year’s Garden City Raspberry Days craft fair, we saw them nestled amidst all the kitsch!  We bought as many as we could afford, and went our way rejoicing, fully expecting these to last us until we have grandchildren.  Maybe we’ll pass them down as priceless heirlooms.  Maybe some day they’ll be featured on Antique Roadshow.  Maybe they’ll be resurrected with us and become the official dish cloth of the Millennium when the world is renewed (it could happen).

If you’re sick and tired of sponges and crappy dish cloths, let me suggest you pick up some Sunflower Dish Cloths made by Sangamon Mill. You can order them in bulk at http://www.sangamonmill.com/ , or in smaller quantities online from places like Amazon.

Everiholder’s Veggie & Tuna Press & Strainer

Do you eat tuna? If so, you know the biggest pain is draining the can. But you don’t have to suffer along any longer using the lid, which doesn’t do a good job at all anyway.  There’s a better solution, which Super Wife discovered. It’s called the Tuna and Veggies Press and Strainer by Evriholder: http://www.evriholder.com/Tuna-Veggie-Press.asp.  With this little blue piece of higher technology you easily and quickly press all the juices away, and nothing slips out the sides. We love our.  You can order it online, although Super Wife found it at our local evil empire Wal-Mart store.

That’s it for now.  In the next review, I’m going to reveal two killer recipes over which all who partake will salivate and drool—Chocolate Éclair Cake and Dill Potato Salad.