It always feels good to “win” NaNoWrimo

 

With six days to go in NaNoWriMo, I hit the 50,000 word plateau that brands me a winner and turns my NaNo progress bar purple.  The word count and purple bar shouldn’t mean much.  It doesn’t mean much.  What matters is getting the draft of a novel on paper.  It looks like I’ll need another 20k words for that but we’ll see.  Clearly, though, the end is in site and I’ve got the bones of what I think will be a great story, after a considerable amount of rubbing and polishing on my part.

I hope that your NaNo writing is going well and that you too, will be a winner.

Coexist by Julie Crane

Consider this writing task.  Write a young adult novel with a cast of young girls and the occasional hunky guy.  Have them live in a modern computer world, interacting with each other on Facebook.  Oh, and don’t forget to include an elf war.

How would you do that?  I’d give Julia Crane a call.  She’s got more experience with this than the rest of us and she does an amazing thing: she makes it believable.

Coexist starts with Keegan, an teenage elf and her family who are, not surprisingly, also elves.  Elves have their mates chosen for them and she’s thinking about him, whoever he is.  But elves coexist with normal humans, beings without the powers of elves.  And thus the story begins.

Crane weaves a tale of Keegan’s balancing act between living the life of a human teenager while hiding her elfen heritage, her destiny, and her brother’s destiny, which is to have a role in resolving the impending elven war between the light and dark elves.

I’d like to tell you more but that wouldn’t be fair, would it?  If you enjoy young adult fantasy, get this book.  Read it.  You won’t be disappointed.

I’m An Author – I Make Stuff Up

One of the great things about being a fiction author is that you get to make stuff up, or as Lawrence Block put it, “you get to lie for a living.”  We create worlds, or recreate existing worlds, sculpt characters and provide them situations.  We’re limited only by our imagination.

As authors we’re told to “write what you know” but I write mysteries without having murdered anyone, or even been near a murderer.  I doubt that those writing about knights fighting dragons have experienced their words either.  We make stuff up.

But occasionally this comes back to bite an author.  Sometimes readers believe that we “write what we know.”  And such was the case when my brother and his wife Kathie came to visit (see here for some coverage of that event).  They had both read Her Book of Shadows which made their visit particularly fun.  The setting for my mystery series is Quebec City so as we wandered the town, seeing the sights, I could point out the various scene locations of the book.

Then it happened.  We were walking along my river, the St. Charles River and the topic of cooking came up.  Kathie said, “I need to get your recipe for broccoli chicken.”  Because I’m old and have a hard time remembering my birthday, it took me a few beats to figure out what she was talking about.  Then the light went on.  She was referring to this passage from Her Book of Shadows.

 

From Chapter Seventeen: I chopped the broccoli into small bits, using only the tops of the flower heads. I threw them into a bowl, grated Parmesan into it, added bread crumbs, lemon juice and some olive oil, creating a broccoli paste. I poured myself a glass of wine and added some to my mixture, adding more bread crumbs to maintain the paste consistency.

I sliced into one side of each chicken breast and filled the slot with broccoli paste, closing up the slot and holding it together with a couple toothpicks. I basted the exteriors with a bit of olive oil, sprinkling them with tarragon and a bit of pepper and I set the oven at 350F.

My protagonist, Scott Riker is making dinner for his family and one of the minor themes of the book is that he’s a decent cook.  The problem here is that this “recipe” was a figment of my imagination.  It wasn’t following that advice to “write what you know.”  I was “making stuff up.”  And so I was a bit embarrassed to admit that I’d never made stuffed broccoli chicken, though I was inwardly thrilled that it had seemed so believable.

But I like Kathie a lot.  She likes broccoli and so do I.  So, here’s how to make Riker’s famous Broccoli-stuffed Chicken.  And while I never measure anything when I cook, I did so in this case to provide some quantities:

Ingredients

chicken breasts (3-4)

broccoli (1 cup of broccoli buds)
parmesan cheese (2 tablespoons)
bread crumbs (1 tablespoon)
lemon juice (1 tablespoon)
olive oil (enough to turn the rest into a loose paste)
* I also mixed bread crumbs, parmesan and tarragon for use in coating the exterior of the chicken

The Process

I mixed the broccoli paste in a small bowl.  It doesn’t become a tight paste because of the broccoli but this result can be spooned into chicken breasts that have had a pocket sliced into them.  I apologize that my kitchen isn’t set up for high-quality photography but here’s a photo of the paste to give you an idea of its consistency.

I spooned the paste into the pockets and  basted the chicken breasts with olive oil.  I sprinkled the bread crumb coating* on top.  The chicken was transferred to a lined baking sheet that I’d painted with olive oil so they wouldn’t stick.  This is how they looked as I  stuffed them into a 375F oven.

About 45-minutes later, this is what they looked like.  Within half an hour they had disappeared and my family was all smiles.

I admit that I do cook, so maybe when I’m making stuff up about Scott Riker cooking, I’m also “writing what I know.”

 

Canada Post Strike Over – Author Happy

While I wasn’t happy with the way the Canadian government dealt with the Canada Post strike, it has come to an end.  This is significant to me as just before it happened, Amazon’s CreateSpace had shipped me a box of books…my book, Her Book of Shadows .

This is important because I have people waiting for these books, and they’ve had to be very patient as the books have been sitting in a Canada Post warehouse for several weeks.  But they’re here now and I can start sending them out.

Her Book of Shadows – Canada Day Sale

Canada Day Sale  

 

I’ve decided to have a ‘summer’ sales of my eBook, Her Book of Shadows . I’m doing this to formally launch the book now that it’s hit most of the distribution points.  For a limited time, it will be available for 99 cents here..

If you like to read mysteries without serial killers, sex and lots of violence, you’ll like Her Book of Shadows .  This is a mystery that will let you get to know some great characters, let you visit Quebec City, and, it will make you feel good.

 

Review comments:

“This is such a well written mystery, and full of make you laugh out loud lines. I loved the setting of Quebec City, and the snippets of the French language scattered throughout made it so authentic.” — esldonna

“How refreshing to find that Larry Marshall’s first is a who-dunnit in the best tradition of well crafted stories of crime solving.” — Polystamper

“This is a beautifully crafted book, full of interesting convincing detail and engaging characters.” — Janet Guerrin


Book Description:

In Her Book of Shadows, retired cop, Scott Riker, lives with his wife and daughter in Quebec City where he heads a group of interventionists. Directed by Quebec business mogul and philanthropist, Luc Duchesne, the group uses their talents and resources to stand between people in trouble and the criminal elements who would do them harm.

Riker agrees to find Jodie Burke, a teenage girl whose parents say ran away. But when Jodie’s friend turns up murdered on the Plains of Abraham, it becomes clear that Riker faces something more than just a runaway girl. Time is running out and he must find Jodie and prevent whoever is trying to kill her from succeeding.

Riker struggles with his emotional involvement in the case, caused by the similarities between his daughter and Jodie Burke. This, and his attempts to reconcile his risky business with his role as father and husband add to his internal conflicts but maybe the two roles can be compatible.