Superstars Writing Seminar: Recap 2

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What I’m read­ing: The King’s Plea­sure, by Heather Gra­ham (Nook); The Texan, by Joan John­ston (print)

huge-stack-of-papersI’m con­tin­u­ing my recap of sem­i­nars given at the Super­stars Writ­ing Con­fer­ence. Today, it’s Kevin J. Anderson’s Eleven Steps to Productivity.

1. Shut up and write.

2. Defy the empty page.

3. Dare to be bad. (at first)

And, because it’s my day to post at The Blood-Red Pen­cil, you can find the other 8 tips over there.

Also, I’ve decided to match bids, up to $200, for my dona­tion to Brenda Novak’s auc­tion. It’s for a great cause, so please spread the word.

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What’s Cooking Wednesday — Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

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Hub­ster is get­ting more adven­ture­some with his cook­ing and recipe vari­a­tions. Here’s one he made a while back. (He’s respon­si­ble for din­ner every Friday.)

Hubster’s Stuffed Spaghetti Squash

Stuffed Spaghetti SquashIngre­di­ents:
1 spaghetti squash
½ T olive oil
½ t minced gar­lic
½ c diced onion
2 cel­ery stalks, sliced
4–5 baby car­rots, sliced
½ c chopped bell pep­per
1 T chopped pick­led Jalapeno
2 slices turkey bacon
1 c zuc­chini
1 c fresh spinach leaves
½ c diced toma­toes (canned or fresh)
¼ c bread­crumbs
¾ c Mari­nara sauce
½ c Moz­zarella cheese + more for top­ping
Parme­san cheese
basil
salt, pep­per to taste

Instruc­tions:
Cook the spaghetti squash. Eas­i­est method for me is to stab it a few times, nuke it about 5–10 min­utes until it’s ten­der enough to slice length­wise. Scoop out the seeds and con­tinue cook­ing until it’s ten­der all the way through. Let it cool.

In a large skil­let, saute the gar­lic and onion in the olive oil. Add the cel­ery, car­rots, pep­pers, and bacon. Cook until soft­ened. Add the zuc­chini, toma­toes and spinach. Cook an addi­tional 5 minutes.

Scrape the ‘meat’ out of the spaghetti squash into a large bowl. Save the shells! Add the sautéed veg­eta­bles, bread­crumbs, Mari­nara, and sea­son­ings. Mix and stuff into the spaghetti squash shells. Top with extra Mari­nara, Moz­zarella, and Parme­san cheese.

Bake at 375 until the cheese is melted and the top­ping is bubbly.

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Busting Doors or Writing Crime Fiction

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Chief Silverii SWATToday I wel­come Chief of Police Scott Sil­verii, PhD,l to Terry’s Place. Chief Sil­verii is a highly dec­o­rated offi­cer with over 23 years in polic­ing. Many of those were served work­ing under­cover nar­cotics and SWAT oper­a­tions. He is now in the process of writ­ing his first police pro­ce­dural, and thinks it may pos­si­bly be more fright­en­ing than bust­ing down drug dealer’s doors!

Hi every­one, I appre­ci­ate the invi­ta­tion to Terry’s Place. While I am thank­ful for her oppor­tu­nity, I fear that Terry has led me into some­thing more dan­ger­ous than run­ning as “point man” on a drug house raid. Yes, writ­ing crime fiction!
While get­ting to know Lee Lofland at the Grave­yard Shift, he sug­gested going back through all the crime fic­tion I read to find styles best suit­ing my per­son­al­ity. I con­fess. I’ve never read one.
Terry’s “Deadly Secrets, A Maple­ton Mys­tery” is high­lighted at the Grave­yard Shift’s site, and we began com­mu­ni­cat­ing. I was excited to make her my first; crime fic­tion read­ing that is. Ya’ll are bad!
Tak­ing on the label of author, I real­ize what a strange path it’s been lead­ing up to typ­ing that first sen­tence of my man­u­script. I began polic­ing after under­grad­u­ate stud­ies and was told my reports read too much like a col­lege term paper.
About decades later, I entered grad­u­ate school only to be told my writ­ing was hor­ri­ble and too sim­i­lar to a police report. Com­plet­ing my PhD and doc­toral dis­ser­ta­tion, I was then told my pub­lished book, A Darker Shade of Blue; From Pub­lic Ser­vant to Pro­fes­sional Deviant read too much like an aca­d­e­mic journal.
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Superstars Writing Conference: Recap 1

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What I’m read­ing: Almost a Bride, by Patri­cia McLinn

Don’t for­get the Brenda Novak Auc­tion, and my box of books give­away. I’ve got over­flow­ing book­shelves, but I’m not going to open the con­test until I have 1500 Likes on my Face­book Page. Tell your friends!

SuperStars Writing SeminarsAs I men­tioned last week, I had the good for­tune to win one of two Kobo schol­ar­ships to a writ­ing con­fer­ence held in Col­orado Springs: Super­stars Writ­ing Sem­i­nars. This turned out to be a fas­ci­nat­ing expe­ri­ence. First, it was a business-focused three days, some­thing that’s nor­mally cov­ered in a panel or work­shop or two, but not for three inten­sive days. It was also geared toward the aspiring-to-get-published crowd, and there were a lot of moti­va­tional talks as well as the ‘how-to” vari­ety. And, lastly, it was attended and led by authors who write in the realm of fan­tasy and sci­ence fic­tion, with the related sub-genres. Not the world I’m used to.

As some­one com­ing from mys­tery and romance based con­fer­ences, it was a quick real­ity check. The speak­ers were all renowned, multi-published authors, but our busi­ness is so com­part­men­tal­ized that I hadn’t heard of any of them. Nor had they heard of me. They did invite one “out­sider” to speak. Romance author Joan John­ston, whose sales prob­a­bly sur­pass the com­bined total of all the pan­elists, spoke about her expe­ri­ences as a tra­di­tion­ally pub­lished romance writer. Her advice holds for any­one want­ing to get pub­lished, regard­less of genre, and I’ll share some of the points she made.

Read like a crazy per­son. Before she wrote her first book, she read every sin­gle title in the imprint she was tar­get­ing. (If you’re a writer, movies are research–think tax deduction–because they’re stories.)

Go to Craft Con­fer­ences – buy the tapes. Lis­ten to them—many times.
She also stressed NOT pitch­ing to edi­tors or agents while net­work­ing. Make your­self mem­o­rable as a per­son, and then when you’re going to sub­mit, you can say, “We met at such and such a con­fer­ence and we talked about rais­ing poodles”—anything to remind them of you, but they’ll never remem­ber you from the other hun­dreds of peo­ple try­ing to pitch their own book. Just talk.

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Friday Field Trip — Geology

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Hub­ster has been tak­ing a geol­ogy class about the local ‘rocks and stuff’ for the past month or so. The class went on a field trip to rein­force what the instruc­tor had been talk­ing about. I told him sug­gested he share his pic­tures. Here they are. Enjoy.

Boudan, courtesy of Daniel K. Odell

Boudan

 

Oil Creek Fault Face, courtesy of Daniel K. Odell

Oil Creek Fault Face

 

Dome Rock, courtesy of Daniel K. Odell

Dome Rock

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A Pitfall of Going Green

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taxesFor a change of pace, I thought I’d share one of those “life’s embar­rass­ing moments” today.

I know I’ve men­tioned that I print out hard copies of scenes as I fin­ish them, because read­ing a printed page is dif­fer­ent from read­ing on a com­puter screen. New and dif­fer­ent things pop out. It’s also a way for me to get a jump start on the next day’s work as I make the changes I’ve noted on the hard copy read.

Nor­mally, once I’ve marked up the pages and made my changes, I put them into my husband’s printer because it’s got 2 trays, and unless some­thing is impor­tant, we’ll print the day to day stuff from the ‘recy­cle’ tray. Doing our part to keep green.

So, a few weeks ago, I was talk­ing to our accoun­tant. He men­tioned enjoy­ing one of the ‘scraps of paper’ I’d included in the paper­work I’d given him. I couldn’t remem­ber giv­ing him any scraps of paper, so I asked him what he meant. He clar­i­fied by say­ing I’d printed out a copy of one of the forms—I can’t remem­ber the form num­ber, but it was one of those forms where some­one you’ve paid over $600 has to fill out, a form they emailed to me, and I printed out a copy for my records.

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What’s Cooking Wednesday — Simple Pecan Pie

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Savannah squares

As promised, Duffy Brown is shar­ing a recipe she picked up in Savannah–a tra­di­tional dessert: pecan pie. Be sure to scroll down to yesterday’s post for a chance to win a Tote.

 

 

Sim­ple Savan­nah Pecan Pie

9″ unbaked pie crust
1 c light corn syrup
1 c firmly packed dark brown sugar
3 eggs slightly beaten
1/3 c but­ter, melted
½ tsp salt
1 tsp vanilla
1 cup pecan halves (or walnuts)

Heat oven to 350. Com­bine corn syrup, sugar, eggs, but­ter, salt, vanilla and mix well. Pour into crust, sprin­kle with nuts and bake for 50 min till knife comes out clean. Cool. Add whipped cream, ice cream etc.

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North vs South…the best food-fight of all

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Today I wel­come Duffy Brown to Terry’s Place. Duffy is the author of the Con­sign­ment: Mur­der series. She’s giv­ing away two “Killer in Crino­lines” totes***, so be sure to leave a com­ment. You have until Fri­day: win­ners announced over the weekend.

Killer in Crinolines Tote(***Cat not included***)

I’m a foodie. Guess that’s why I’m on a for­ever diet. Didn’t say I kept it, just that I was on it.
I live in Cincin­nati, where North meets South…or North is sep­a­rated from  South, depend­ing on your point of view. If it’s fire­works over the Ohio River or root­ing for the Cincin­nati Reds, we meet. If it’s food…not so much.  For exam­ple, in Cincy we get iced tea. If we cross the Ohio River, a whop­ping one-minute drive away, we get sweet tea. You can’t get sweet tea in Cincy. Ask for it at a restau­rant and they hand you a packet of sugar.
In Cincy we grill. Over there, they have a cook­out. Cincy does steaks and brats and this stuff called goetta (we’re just a lit­tle bit Ger­man, you see.) On the other side it’s bar­be­cued pork that’s shred­ded, diced, sliced or pulled.
My mother used Crisco back-in-the-day; my husband’s mother had pan drip­pings on her stove. I ate pasta and Dave had grits. My veg­eta­bles were green beans and zuc­chini, Dave had fried green toma­toes, corn pud­ding and mint Julep (hey, that’s green, right).

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Without Readers, Writing Would Be Easy

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I had the good for­tune of win­ning a schol­ar­ship to a local writ­ing con­fer­ence, so I’ll be gone most of this week. Thanks to Kobo for donat­ing two reg­is­tra­tion fees. As always, I hope to pick up some good infor­ma­tion, which I’ll share after I get back.

While I’m gone, a few things for your to-do lists:

Win some of these books!

Like my Face­book page. I’m get­ting close to my 1500 “Likes” mile­stone, and when I hit it, I’ll give away another box of books.
Enter the Booklover’s Bench give­away. Who can’t use a $25 gift card? Con­test ends the 18th.
Bid on some­thing at Brenda Novak’s auc­tion. Doesn’t have to be my dona­tion (but it’s look­ing very lonely with so few bids). Every­thing helps the cause.
Have a police pro­ce­dural ques­tion? My guest next week is Police Chief Scott Sil­verii and he said he’d be glad to answer ques­tions. Be think­ing of them, or email them to me using the con­tact form. Put “Police Ques­tions” in the sub­ject line.

And back to your reg­u­larly sched­uled blog post.

A while back, I was read­ing a book that I had to judge for a con­test. I try to be as fair as pos­si­ble, so when I saw a gram­mat­i­cal con­struc­tion that shouted, “Wrong punc­tu­a­tion” hap­pen­ing over and over through­out the book, I asked the folks at The Blood-Red Pen­cil to con­firm my impres­sion before I dinged the author. (Those folks are SO much eas­ier to under­stand than the Chicago Man­ual of Style.) They con­firmed what I thought—that you do need a comma to sep­a­rate the clauses in a sen­tence con­struc­tion such as: Walk­ing to the store (comma) John tripped and broke his leg.

Con­tinue read­ing →

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