A few weeks ago, I wanted to make a dozen muffins with it, so I cut the recipe in half. Then I discovered I had only 1 cup of the 1.5 cups banana needed. To make up the difference, I chopped some prunes to a mash. The results were muffins with just as much banana flavor and moistness, with added dark, plummy sweetness. So good I've made them several times since. Try them! I want to make them w/ Ladybug next week; I'll try to take photos to post the shenanigans.
A few recent goodies from Dave:
BLT w/ cucumber ribbons in place of lettuce, home-grown tomatoes, heritage bacon, avocado, and mayo on a whole-grain demi-baguette...
Fresh spring rolls loaded w/ veg, plus sides...
Homemade bread-and-butter pickles...
Happy weekend, everyone! If you have a favorite muffin recipe, feel free to link in the comments...
As in other than
sleeping,
movie-watching,
reading,
window-gazing,
working,
peanut-eating,
or barfing.
That's the normal stuff. (Ho-hum.) Why not branch out?
Here are 7 other things to try on your next flight...
1. Count the seconds between toddler freak-outs.
It's like with lightning and thunder. The closer the freak-outs get, the nearer you are to insanity. Science, baby.
2. Make up wild backstories for the stewardesses.
And since their your stories, you can call them stewardesses. They'll never know. And don't leave out the senior one; she's been around since they wore short shorts and passed out cigarettes. Just know that whatever you make up for her won't even bump the iceberg.
3. Re-enact the Shatner Twilight Zone.
You may be asked to switch any further travel to another airline.
4. Do In-Seat Exercises
You know: the ones you're supposed to do anyway? But you don't, because your seatmates might wonder why you keep clenching your butt cheeks, even though, as you sit there, your veins and arteries are slowly collapsing, your blood thickening and forming teeny-tiny clots that -- as soon as you get to the head of the very long taxi line at the next airport -- will stroke out your brain? Clench your butt cheeks. Your life and taxi-line status depend on it.
5. Proofread the in-flight magazine.
If they're charging you for every bag, you can bet they've got chimps editing the mag, so have at it. Be sure to follow up your work with an email to the airline president, with excruciating detail. There's no excuse for a misplaced apostrophe, no matter what species of primate produced it.
6. Tabulate the toilet visitation habits of the people in your cabin.
One advantage to being in coach: the number of passengers makes a good sample size! (Sadly, this is the only advantage to being in coach, so you might as well do this one.) Make a grid (men, women, boys, girls, unknown) and add a tick every time someone visits the can. For bonus points, note each person's apparent age, proximity to the toilet, and level of desperation. Time the intervals between visits. Use a clickity pen to make your notes, and periodically say, "A-ha! Just as I thought!" Later, write up your findings, complete with graphs, and send them to an aerospace journal. They'll eat them up.
7. "Interview" your seatmates for your "blog" and/or "podcast."
If you have to define any of those words, you've got fake-interview gold on your hands. Use your best Edward R Murrow voice to pry loose their secrets, then scribble them down like they're giving you the biggest scoop in the history of ever. Exclaim over the exciting bits, giggle at the titillating bits, and give them a sympathetic pat for the tragic bits. And thank them afterward, since you're being a misleading turd.
There's the sense of losing power and therefore the ability to produce. Yet everyone I know who occasionally "unplugs" from online channels for a time does so to recharge.
That's what I'm doing next week. Gonna spend time with family and refresh the well, so to speak.
I won't be without devices, will carry a phone (for can't-wait calls), iPod touch (for reading), and camera (for shots, if I remember to take them).
For the first time in a while, though, I won't have my laptop with me. Dwayne has one if I can't wait to get a scene written, but if history serves, when the niece and nephew nap, so do I. And now that I get up early to run, there won't be any late-night writing sessions.
So, blog posts will resume the following week, as will Tweets.
How about you -- do you periodically unplug from online activities? Do you do a limited unplug or go full man-on-the-mountain? Either way, what motivates you to do so?
Yesterday, I recommitted to making brave writing decisions.
I told myself I'd better be following my own advice to take chances. Because when I don't, everything gets predictable: character reactions, word choice, plot lines. A, then B, then C, then D...
When I read, I love thinking E comes next, only to turn the page onto W. Or 49, or @. Some of the bravest writing decisions I've witnessed involved children. What Stephen King did to Georgie Denbrough in the first 20 pages of IT took my breath away. That George R R Martin had an adult character push a child off a tower in GAME OF THRONES hooked me for the series. In THE DEATHDAY LETTER, Shaun Hutchinson tells us right off the bat: Don't get your hopes up; Oliver's going to die -- get over it.
I've encountered resistance from editors to some of the darker elements in BRIAR-BOUND, and it made me think children's publishing shies from those things right now. But then I reconsidered.
Every single one of those stories was compelling. Publishing wants them. Readers crave them. My dark moments are fine if I back them up with purpose, truth, solid writing, and a smidge of hope.
So I'm not going to start killing all my child characters willy-nilly.
Put 'em through an emotional woodchipper? You betcha.
In retrospect, this should have been part of my writer's manifesto, so I'm adding it now.
Now it's your turn: Have you pulled yourself up by the bootstraps lately? Share in the comments...
The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Agricultural Marketing Service has a search tool to find farmers' markets. (I had best results searching by county.)
Local Harvest also has a search tool for organic farmers' markets.
For your convenience and good health, I've added Culinate's Farmers' Market Finder widget to the right sidebar here at daily pie.
Happy market-going!
Do you have a favorite farmers' market? What do you love about it?
Finalized plans to visit my youngest niece and nephew over July 4th weekend. The niece has always been Ladybug here. I haven't settled on a blogly name for the nephew yet, but he's solid and he's busy, so for now he's Tonka Truck.
I'm very possibly overexcited.
Oh yeah, we'll see Dwayne & Kristi, Dad & Eva, and Mom & Chuck, too.
Pretty sure it's because Mom was a teacher, and when she made our job charts for home, we got a gold star for every completed chore on a given day.
I can still see my job chart from when I was seven. It was flashy.
So I had my follow-up consult with the cardiologist a couple weeks ago.
He said everything came back good...
*gold star*
...that the monitor showed "very few skipped beats."
*gold star*
He asked if I was jumping off the roof around 7:00 a.m., so I told him about our hill repeats, of which I'd done four wearing the monitor. He said my heart rate topped out at the same level as it did on his treadmill...
*gold star*
...(where he said I went as fast as a 17-year-old should be able to go).
*gold star*
He said my pulse gets "a little low" at night.
"How low is a little low?" I asked.
"Thirty-nine beats per minute."
*GOLD STAR*
When I followed up with my regular doc, she said I'd been the highlight of the cardio doc's week.
I giggled as I laid all this on Dave. Then I swanned around singing "Teacher's Pet."
Hey, you take your gold stars where you can get them, right?
Have you snagged some gold stars recently? BRAG ABOUT 'EM!
Ollie can’t be bothered to care about anything but food, girls, and games until he gets his Deathday Letter and learns he’s going to die in twenty-four hours. Bummer.
Ollie does what he does best: nothing. Then his best friend convinces him to live a little, and go after Ronnie, the girl who recently trampled his about-to-expire heart. Ollie turns to carloads of pudding and over-the-top declarations, but even playing the death card doesn’t work. All he wants is to set things right with the girl of his dreams. It’s now or never...
Welcome (back) to Daily Pie, Shaun!
In THE DEATHDAY LETTER, people are warned of their impending deaths 24 hours in advance by letter. Why did you choose to use a physical letter over, say, a phone call or email?
You know, I hate telephones. I held out on getting a cell phone for ages and I'd probably toss it in a heartbeat if I could get away with it. I sort of feel the same way about email. But also, there's something romantic about handwritten letters. They're more personal, there's more of a connection to the words. Getting a Deathday Letter is a monumental event. I wanted readers to feel the gravity of it. You can't hold an email or a phone call. You can't stuff those things in your pocket or shove them in people's faces. I suppose in the end, the letter simply felt more real.
I often envy the daily word counts you post online. How do you achieve the "flow" state that results in a 4,000-word session?
Ha! The truth is that I wake up, walk my dog, and then sit down to work. I do it before the outside world has a chance to intrude. I can usually hold onto that for two hours. After that, my concentration begins to fade and I start thinking about emails and bills and the chores I need do. For me, it's really about shutting out the world, which is easiest to do when I'm still in that morning stupor. Either way, don't be envious, about half of that usually ends up under the unforgiving revision chainsaw.
What were the major, big-picture changes in TDL's manuscript at different stages of the process (pre-query revisions, revisions with agent, revisions with editor). For instance, did characters change most during a given stage, or plot structure, descriptions, etc?
Gosh. It's funny to think about this. When I first began DEATHDAY it was just under 2 years ago. I wrote about 6 chapters and then had to delete five of them. I realized I'd gone completely off the rails when I had Ollie and his friends waiting in the house of a stay-at-home mom who was also a high-class prostitute. I was trying to evoke one of my favorite scenes of all time (the scene from Biloxi Blues when Matthew Broderick and friends visit the prostitute) but it all went terribly wrong. Also, it didn't help that the original age of the characters was 13.
When Chris got ahold of it, he had some really amazing ideas and he was totally able to call me out on at least one pretty glaring mistake. But it wasn't until I signed with Simon Pulse that huge changes took place. I had the opportunity to work with two stellar people at Simon Pulse. Anica Rissi got me to really streamline my plot and she helped draw out some elements that I'd only hinted at. She got me to look at the big picture and then helped me bring it into focus. Then Emilia Rhodes was with me on the day-to-day stuff, guiding through the pitfalls of revisions. DEATHDAY really owes a lot to Chris, Anica, and Emilia. Without them, you might have been subjected to a scene where Ollie storms a post office and holds the occupants hostage with a limp windshield wiper.
Pretty much the only thing that really changed about characters though were their ages. We aged them up a little so that they could realistically do some of the stuff I wanted them to do. But the core of who they are, was consistent throughout.
You're working on a project that will bring great books to boys at a grassroots level. Imagine a boy who's never read for pleasure, and would balk at any of the currently popular paranormal YAs. What would you recommend for him?
I'm so excited about this. I bit off more than I could chew, but once the book releases, I look forward to turning my attention this.
For younger guys, I'd definitely recommend Susan Cooper's THE DARK IS RISING Sequence. They're such an imaginative, timeless series that really spoke to me at that age.
I also had the pleasure to recently read the soon-relased JACK BLANK AND THE IMAGINE NATION by Matt Myklusch. It has action and zombie robots and comic books and heroes. It's like Matt took every awesome thing and put it into one stellar book.
For older guys I'd put SPANKING SHAKESPEARE into their hands without hesitation. It's raunchy and funny and so true to what being a teen boy is like. I think, upon hitting puberty, every boy should be given a shaving razor and a copy of that book.
Cory Doctorow's LITTLE BROTHER is also great for the reluctant reader because it's all so scarily plausible. What I like about Doctorow is that he makes his political statements sexy and fun but never preaches.
Though the size might be intimidating, I think Patrick' Ness' THE KNIFE OF NEVER LETTING GO is one of the best teen books out there right now. I think it's just right for the kind of guy who believes there's nothing in YA for him and would go to genre literature instead. I WAS that guy. At about ten, I jumped ship and read adult books almost exclusively. It wasn't until HARRY POTTER that I realized how great YA had become.
You were one of Super-Agent Chris Richman's first clients. Which, of course, means you'll be early to the podium when we roast him in 40 years. Can you give us a preview?
Every time I've ever gotten upset or frustrated with Chris, it's because I know he's right. He's pretty infuriating that way. That's what makes him such a great agent. He knows what's going to piss me off and he tells me anyway because he knows it'll make me better. Chris surprises me all the time. I didn't know what to expect out of an agent. Chris has proven time and time again that he's the guy who goes the extra TEN miles to make things happen. Everything in this business is hard work and there are agents who might be inclined to give up when the going gets tough, but I don't think Chris knows the meaning. Sometimes I feel like I got more than an agent. I got a cheerleader too. Thankfully, he doesn't wear a skirt...that I know of.
For fun: What would be your Deathday meal(s)? Don't forget dessert!
Oh! Well Ollie's last meal is really my last meal. My mom's fried chicken and mashed potatoes and macaroni and cheese would have to be on the list. Also, my dad's marinara sauce with meatballs and sausage. For dessert there would have to be lemon meringue pie. My mom's lemon meringue pie is worth dying for.
Old Ms. McMartin is definitely dead. Now her crumbling Victorian mansion lies vacant. When eleven-year-old Olive and her dippy mathematician parents move in, she knows there's something odd about the place - not the least the walls covered in strange antique paintings. But when Olive finds a pair of old spectacles in a drawer, she discovers the most peculiar thing yet: She can travel inside these paintings to a world that's strangely quiet... and eerily like her own. Yet Elsewhere harbors dark secrets - and Morton, an undersize boy with an outsize temper.
As she and Morton form an uneasy alliance, Olive finds herself ensnared in a plan darker and more dangerous than she could have imagined, confronting a power that wants to be rid of her by any means necessary. It's up to Olive to save the house from the dark shadows, before the lights go out for good.
Welcome to Daily Pie, Jacqueline!
THE SHADOWS is the first volume of your series THE BOOKS OF ELSEWHERE. At what point in the creation process did you know you wanted to write a series? How many volumes do you envision?
I feel a bit ridiculous admitting this, but I didn’t consciously think of The Shadows as the potential start of a series until my agent suggested it. I was too astonished that someone wanted to publish my work to imagine that they would immediately want more. However – and this sounds ridiculous, too – although I had written The Shadows as a stand-alone novel, there was nothing in it that needed to be modified in order to make it the start of a series. When I started working on Volume Two, I wondered if I had subconsciously left a lot of doors open – or at least unlocked – in Volume One. The Shadows has a conclusive ending, but several issues are left partially unresolved, and the final line of the book practically screams, “Sequel Coming!” even though I wrote it not knowing that there would be a sequel. (See? Ridiculous.)
At this point, I envision at least four volumes. Volume Two is written, I have Volume Three planned out in detail, and I know what happens at the end of the series. Whether a few more major twists pop up, mushroom-like, in the middle and surprise me is yet to be seen.
In your interview with The Tuesday Visitor, you said that the first inkling of TBOE to come to you was the setting: a mysterious old house. Have you mapped the house and its features, for yourself or your agent, editor, or illustrator?
Nope, nope, and nope. I prefer to leave the visualizing to the reader – and of course to the illustrator (I was lucky enough to be paired with the brilliant Poly Bernatene, who I trust completely). I have a very clear vision of the old stone house on Linden Street in my head, but I appreciate the fact that everyone who reads the book will have a slightly different vision. I think we all have a certain creepy old house somewhere in our imaginations or memories, and I hope readers will use their own creepy old houses as reference points. After all, what is creepy to one person is cozy to another. Plus, leaving the house in the abstract gives me more freedom to play with the setting – to add or adjust things as necessary.
Then again, I have drawn a very detailed map for the project I’m working on now, which is not part of the Elsewhere series, and I reference it constantly, and I’ll probably include it if and when I send the book off to my agent. I guess the lesson is not to claim that I have any hard and fast rules, because I’ll only feel foolish when I break them.
We love Super-Agent Chris Richman here at Daily Pie. You were the first author to sign with him. Some might say that was a brave choice. What factors played a role in your decision?
Well, I didn’t know I was the very first author to sign with him when I did. I don’t think I even asked. I’d sent my query to a senior agent at his previous agency, and Chris, as a junior agent, plucked it out of obscurity, which is the dream situation for a writer with no connections and no notoriety. I was utterly naïve about the publishing world (I’m a smidgeon less naïve now), and I was delighted to find someone who believed in my book and who seemed to understand me and my work so completely. And then, as I got to know Chris, more and more of our similarities came to light: We have an identical list of favorite authors, we’ve worked the same unusual jobs, we’re dorkily obsessed with the same shows. When he was featured in the “Ask the Pro” column in Writer’s Digest, I read his answers and thought, “Man, if he wasn’t already my agent, he’s exactly the agent I would want.” He’s the ideal advocate and adviser for me. Of course, now he’s a big important Super-Agent, and I feel incredibly lucky that I got to him before the deluge.
By the end of June, you'll have had two book birthdays this year! Cherma, your book of poetry inspired by a Bohemian settlement in western Wisconsin, was published in March by Parallel Press. How did you encounter the Cherma settlement?
The Cherma cemetery is where my great- and great-great-grandfathers are buried. It’s situated just a couple of country blocks from my parents’ house, and I first explored it as a teenager. I have a bit of a cemetery obsession, and I love immigrant history and family lore, so that location and its story were what inspired me when I began work on a poetry series as part of a college writing workshop. As a kid, I was always begging to hear more family stories (I guess I’m the inverse of a lot of jokes; I actually wanted to hear my parents and grandparents tell me all about how things were when they were my age), and when I began working on Cherma, I started taking notes, asking my parents and grandparents more about what they could remember, and researching historical records and documents.
A process question: Is there anything you absolutely need before you can write (e.g. music, silence, coffee, to walk the dog, mantra, etc.)?
The dog wishes I needed to walk him before I start writing. As it is, he has to wait for the end of the writing day, contenting himself by prodding me intermittently with his nose. I do have a general routine: I make coffee, eat breakfast, watch The Daily Show on Hulu, and then get down to work. Does that make “Welcome to The Daily Show! My name is Jon Stewart!” my mantra?
For fun: You come upon a dark, crumbling mansion. The front door is unlocked. Which do you explore first: the basement or the attic?
The attic, absolutely. I would never explore a dark basement on my own.
Thanks so much for taking part, Jacqueline, and best of luck with your launch!
Readers, check out this great book trailer for THE SHADOWS:
From where do you get your inspiration for stories? Give me the oddest, coolest things that have inspired you.
My work-in-progress was inspired by a brief story my grandmother told me once. When she was little, her friend's father was a mortician, and the family business was in their house (not uncommon then, the 20s-30s). What she said that stuck with me was:
"If we were playing in the back yard and came into the house through the wrong door, we had to walk past the slab."
Ooo, heebies and jeebies! Gotta remember which is the right door! But then I started thinking about the little girl who lived there, and how different her viewpoint on death must have been from her friends'. How she might have grown up taking part in the family business. How that might have isolated her from her peers. And my character Livy was born: a mortician's daughter who longs so much to learn about her own dead mother, of whom her father will say nothing, that she starts asking their deceased clients.
The actual house still stands. After the funeral home closed, it became headquarters for several labor unions. Now it's an antique store. Check it out. Creepy, right? When I knew I wanted to write Livy's story, I stopped in and asked the owner if I could look around. Like the mortician's family did, she lives in some of the rooms, so she asked me to stick to the public ones (which I did... mostly). She was kind enough to show me the basement, too, which is where any mortuary work would've happened (Indiana in summer, pre-air conditioning, was no place for dead folks -- embalming would've been done in the coolest room available).
Needless to say, being in the house was further inspiration. While I've reworked the floor plan to suit my needs, the exterior and the house's location remain the same in my story. One room upstairs (in which it's possible I was not supposed to go...maybe...perhaps...) there was a short, arched, wooden door in the wall, exactly where one might build access to the attic.
It didn't budge.
It did inspire the end of my story.
Be sure to check out Cole's answer before me, and Kate's tomorrow.
Our dinner last night: hummus of cannellini and kidney beans; couscous with tomato, cucumber, feta, mint, and cilantro; homegrown tomato slices; marcona almonds; chili-marinated kalamatas; salami-wrapped feta cubes; and watermelon (sea salt on mine, nothing on Dave's)...
And it's true: the watermelon was so light and juicy it was perfect to cut the strong, salty flavors of the other dishes when moving from one to another. We did not finish everything here; had leftovers of most of the things down the middle of the platter.
This is what a lot of our summer dinners look like -- cool, strong-flavored bites, washed down with Pacifico. Satisfies the tastebuds without filling you up or heating the kitchen.
There are things that make my fitness life (and the rest of my life) awesome, so I thought I'd share them. Let's get the unmentionables out of the way first...
Patagonia Active Briefs (W)
THEY STAY PUT. Also, they're synthetic and very light, but mostly THEY DON'T TRAVEL WHERE THEY SHOULDN'T.
Thorlos Experia CoolMax Socks (unisex)
Pads for your heels and toes, snug support for your arch, and protection for your Achilles tendon. I thought they'd slip down into my shoes, but they didn't. Very light.
Moving Comfort Endurance Long Sleeve (W)
I have three of these (blue, green, violet). They were pretty much all I wore this past winter. Light, durable tech fabric. Nifty thumb holes in the sleeves for cold weather.
SanDisk Sansa Clip+ MP3 Player
Clip it to the back of your collar and forget about it. We found iPods too heavy to run with, but not this little guy. Watch for it on Woot -- we got these there (reconditioned) for $20 each.
"What do you do to keep yourself motivated when you feel like you're not making an progress in your writing career?"
My carrot -- sweet, orange, crunchy, and homegrown, yet as common as they come -- is to make my living as a fiction writer. To be able to do that work from anywhere, so long as I can email the product to agent and editor. To make connections with readers young and old and in between. To attain, over and over, the satisfaction of putting the flesh of story on the bones of an idea.
When I flag, I remind myself of those things: independence, mobility, connectivity, and wonder.
That's not to say it always works. I've had a project go on submission to editors twice, and have struggled to work on something else during those periods. I find I'm able to plan another project -- work on outlines, etc -- but putting words on the page is tough. Fresh off Revision Mode for the submitted project, shutting down the internal editor is especially hard.
Lucky for me, the stick that holds my carrot is a knotty, stubborn thing. It came from a tree that came from a sapling that came from a seed planted by my parents. They watered it with encouragement and pruned it with discipline, until they had a tree that thought it could shade anything, be home to any animal, grow as tall and as broad as any tree, ever.
For me, the motivation is only part of the whole. The structure supporting it is just as important. These days, my parents are enjoying the fruits of their labor and have passed on the caretaking of the tree to others: my husband, my friends, my colleagues, my readers, and, of course, me. The deep-seated, long-nurtured belief that I can achieve anything is what holds up my motivation.
So, I long for the carrot. But it would fall underfoot without the stick that holds it.
Be sure to check out Rebecca's blog chain post from yesterday, then Kate's tomorrow.
Motivation. Where does yours come from? How do you use it? What supports it?
Check out these trellises Dave built for the tomatoes. They remind me of boats, hence the Googly-translated post title ("ship garden" in Norwegian...perhaps)...
Those pics are a few weeks old. Here's a shot from today -- note the new height on the tomatoes. Also the crazy cucumber plant beside the left-hand trellis -- it's higher than my head. Cucumber salad for dinner...
I came upon this NYT article recently, and it's changing how I stretch before running.
Once upon a time, I did a lot of static stretches before a run. You know the kind: you sit with one leg in front of you and hold your toes for 20 seconds, then switch legs.
Then I read that static-stretching cold muscles is potentially harmful, that it's better to stretch after you've warmed up, and best at the end of your workout.
The NYT article promotes dynamic stretching, or movements that warm your muscles, tendons, and ligaments, readying them for the work ahead. And they're just that: movements -- nothing static about them. I was impressed by the professionals interviewed, and have begun to practice dynamic stretching before my runs.
I've only done two runs since i read the article, and I totally feel like a Minister of Silly Walks, but it's a good warm-up. Such a better transition from stillness to running than I had before.
