Alison Kent's Blah Blog

If you’ve come here expecting to find this sort of food craftery, you’re in the wrong place (but, wowza, isn’t that amazing!) as I save my craftery for the stories I tell. What my baking lacks in pretty, it makes up for in yummy. The recipe I use for shortbread sugar cut out cookies was given the name Love Cookies by one of my co-workers because she said our other co-worker who made these every Valentine’s Day and Easter and Christmas made them with LOVE. She would take a day of vacation to bake for the office, and bring six dozen or so to work, and they were ALL gone by noon (except for the ones we would sneak and hide in our desks for afternoon snacking).

(Because it’s the easiest way to take pictures with messy hands, I used the camera on my Blackberry, ergo, lack of color, focus, depth, clarity, etc. I am no Pioneer Woman.)

As I said on Twitter on Tuesday, I couldn’t find any of my cookie cutters except for an Easter bunny (which I was told was actually a Christmas bunny) so I decided to use a cup to cut simple rounds. Nothing beats a 25 year old Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles mug for cookie cutting. Just be sure to flour well your rolling pin and rolling surface. (And why bother with a pastry sheet when a countertop is just as easy to clean?)

The trick to these cookies is not to over bake. The recipe says 8 – 10 minutes. In my oven, which cooks hot, 6 was perfect. You want the edges of the bottom to be lightly brown. The cookies themselves are pale and naked and boring, but oh the smell of the sugar and vanilla, mmm. (I bought a Secret Ingredient stocking stuffer for @cuppacafe from King Arthur Flour; if it had been open when I made these, I would’ve used it. I’m dying to see if it’s as flavorful and aromatic as the claims make out.)

I set my rack over one side of the sink for glazing and let them cool a few minutes while I cut out another pan’s worth and pop those in to bake. The glaze is thin and will run, but it adheres better when the cookies are barely warm, rather than still hot. In keeping with the Easter and Ninja Turtle theme, I went with green.

I put a plate beneath the cooling rack for obvious reasons. Yes, once the glaze has set and the next batch has come out of the oven, I pour the glaze from the plate back into the bowl. The cookies are smooth so there are no crumbs to mar the glaze.

I doubled the recipe and had to take a break between batches because I’m battling the worst flare up of sciatica I’ve had in years (doing a lot better today, the treadmill is helping, as is the yoga) so this was a long afternoon’s worth of work. I rewarded myself by eating three out of each batch. Then later ate one more. Yum yum YUM!

My co-worker’s cookies glaze perfectly, very neat and clean. Me? I’m all about eating so no need for perfection! A couple of cookies, a cup of tea. Mmm. Nothing beats it!

Earlier this year, PBW introduced me to Poets & Writers Magazine. I subscribed, and have received two copies so far, and have devoured both. I think genre writers can get a lot of inspiration looking outside of their writers orgs and genre specific cons, but we tend to know those best so forget there’s a big wide world out there to fuel our creativity.

The January / February issue has an article about writing a first novel, and the sidebar list, Nine Ways to Begin Writing really caught @cuppacafe’s eye. I recognize a few of them in my own work as being the impetus for getting the story going. My examples below aren’t as in depth or thought provoking as those in the magazine article, but I’ve got cookies to bake and gifts to wrap and a case of sciatica that won’t let me sit and wax esoteric. The treadmill is calling . . .

1) A line

This one is easy. “Call me.” I read that line in a Glamour Magazine article circa 1993ish, and used it as the jumping off point for writing CALL ME. Not an exciting line, but totally Temptation!

2) A list

I don’t think I’ve done this one, but after 40 titles it’s kinda hard to remember everything I have! Susan Wiggs did it in PASSING THROUGH PARADISE to open several chapters and it was great fun. Listmaking was part of her heroine’s character, so which came first, the chicken or the egg, is something only she would know!

3) A title

I’ve got one, but I’m not going to share it as it’s a story I’m working on and I need to keep it safe. *g* I’m the worst when it comes to titles, and the majority of mine have been my editor’s choice and chosen after the fact. This one is a working title that is so perfect it hurts. Now to cross fingers that the story turns out as brilliantly as I see it.

4) A character

Ezra Moore. He showed up (thanks to a brainstorming session with @cuppacafe) in THE SAMMS AGENDA and just would not get out of my head. I brought him back for a cameo in the four stories that followed before giving him his own happily ever after.

5) A situation

A CNN news story I printed and saved of modern day pirates attacking ships in the China Sea was the inspiration for INDISCREET – this in 2003, long before the Maersk Alabama.

6) An event

FOUR MEN & A LADY centered around a fifteenth high school reunion, and allowed me to revisit what I loved so much about the movie FOUR FRIENDS but to give everyone hope when I did – and eventually their own stories!

7) An image

Maybe not this particular image, but any of Jennifer Garner as Sydney Bristow in costume. I loved the outrageousness of her character’s situations and ate up the unbelievable plots. What’s so strange is that though my whole Smithson Group series was inspired by Alias, I never wrote female spies or villains!

8) A subject

Yeah, I’ve got one of these. Tabloid journalism and how the vultures will not let go. I used that in KISS AND TELL to show the impact on both a victim and a perpetrator.

9) An oddity

Did you know there’s a spring fed pool in the desert of West Texas where you can scuba dive – and where fish nibble at you while you swim?

Anyone have others to share?

Thanks again to all of you who offered congratulations for yesterday’s deal news. It’s exciting to be a part of something different and challenging (and trust me, if you could be a fly on the wall while those of us involved hash this out, you’d see just how challenging it’s going to be, but OH so much FUN). This will definitely have me buckling down and dusting off the bunny feet since I’ve gotten into the tortoise way of doing things this year. Not that slow and steady is bad, but sometimes there’s a need for speed built into a project, and this is definitely one of those times. Can’t wait to start!

Since I won’t be starting the VOWS story till January, I’m working on other things, and while waiting to have lunch yesterday with my ex-coworker downtown, I jotted synopsis notes on one of my WIPs. Here’s the thing. I have no problem putting together the relationships that form the heart of a story, but coming up with the external events that “happen” along the way is what gives me grief. This isn’t such a big deal when writing action adventure or suspense as with my SG-5 books, but when the story is not driven by action OR suspense, and is instead a story of character, this is harder for me to do.

There are masters at this. LaVyrle Spencer was the best ever. BITTERSWEET is my favorite contemporary of hers, and my favorite Susan Elizabeth Phillips is AIN’T SHE SWEET? Yes, external things happen, but they are about the characters and their choices and where said choices take them. They are not events that will change the world, and it would be a stretch to call them high concept. Two movies that did this beautifully are DAN IN REAL LIFE and THE FAMILY STONE. I LOVE Steve Carell as the widowed father of three daughters blindsided by his attraction to a woman who should be off limits. You could say nothing much happens in these movies. There are family scenes, revelations of secrets and feelings, but there are no guns or escaped convicts and the only thing that gets murdered, at least per Dan’s daughter, is LOVE!

The key to keeping readers glued to these stories is, of course, character. That’s the part I have no problem with. It’s moving the characters from page to page with more than internalization and dialogue and navel gazing that is hard to do in a synopsis. Especially because so much of the movement develops as the characters come to life in the author’s mind. How do you guys who write handle synopsizing external events in character driven tortoise stories? I mean, there’s the heroine’s journey, the hero’s journey, the journeys of any antagonists in the way of their goals . . . it’s enough to drive an author to drink! Good thing UPS just dropped off a box from Wine.com!

So, I have a sale to announce, but I don’t know much about it. I know I’ll be writing the book after the first of the year. I know it’s due to come out around October. I know the publisher, HCI Books, who is probably best known for their Chicken Soup series. I know it will be a romance, but that’s about all I know. Oh, I know I’ll be involved in this project with two amazing authors who I’ve known forever! One made mention of the project yesterday on her blog. The other author is the fabulous Judith Arnold!

This is going to be so much fun!

Since HCI is a nonfiction publisher, these books will be “faction,” or novelizations of true love stories. The editor is gathering entries through the Take A Vow Contest website. I’m not involved in that side of the project. I just get to write!

My true life love story would probably best be told in instant messages as that’s how @cuppacafe and I communicated for the first few months we knew each other. My parents met through friends of my mother’s sister. And on my father’s side of the family, there is a romance involving a pirate ship. My business partner and her husband, both REM fans, met online. The cool part? She lived in Norway and he lived here. And though @cuppacafe and I met in our thirties, we discovered that I competed in a UIL competition during my senior year of high school that was held at the college he was attending at the time. Ships crossing in the night – what if we had met then?

A woman I once worked with married the ex of a good friend after her divorce, the two couples having hung out as couples do. I’m guessing they’re going on thirty something years now. Another woman I worked with hooked up years later with a guy she’d known in high school when he was coaching her son’s Little League team. They’re now married with four kids between them. The parents of one of the office secretaries there were in their nineties and had married in their teens! Can you imagine?

As much fun as it is to come up with our fictional characters and pull together the details of their lives, there are stories out there deserving to be told. Here’s one that just tickled me to read. Anyone out there have the Greatest Love Story Never Told?

Do you have The Greatest Love Story Never Told? Have you ever read a heart-stopping romance but thought your own real-life version was even better—a personal page turner that would be impossible to put down? If so, then here’s your chance to tell us what makes your story so riveting and unique that it should be recreated into a full-length novel by a bestselling romance author and published by HCI Books.

Did you meet the love of your life under unusual circumstances that defy the laws of nature and/or have a relationship that flourished against all odds of making it to the altar? Did your parents tell you a story so remarkable about themselves that it makes you feel lucky to have ever been born? Are you a military wife who stood by her man while he was oceans away, held down the fort at home, then had to rediscover each other upon his return? Did you lose a great love and think you would never survive, only for fate to deliver an embarrassment of riches a second or even third time around?

Drama, passion, humor, emotional poignancy and a happy ending are the hallmarks of the best romances ever told. Now it’s your turn to tell us a true love story that will tug at the heartstrings of lucky romance readers everywhere! Your name will be featured in conjunction with a novelized version of your story, and sold in major bookstores nationally.

I totally forgot to pull a winner for the RT Best Blaze nominees, so that winner is:

Marsha Jones – comment #2

My JINGLE BELL ROCK winners are at this link, and my NO LIMITS winners are at this link. I’ve heard from some of you, but not all, and I haven’t mailed anything yet but will do so by this weekend! If you’re on the list, send me your mailing address!

Also, the winner of the $250 gift certificate to Amazon that HelenKay Dimon and I gave away was Heather Hart.

These are my fave performances so far and remember. There are NO instruments at all, this is pure a capella. I’ll lay odds these two groups will be the last standing!

The ads for the show calls it a cross between Glee and American Idol. It’s a sing off, as the title suggests, between voice only groups. The Beelzebubs have been a fixture at Tufts University since the sixties, and Nota is a Puerto Rican band with an amazing fusion of sounds. Take a listen to both. (I was going to add a second Beelzebub vid but the other two from the show up on YouTube now are taking way too long to load.)

Laurie Damron of Laurie’s Laudanum sent me an email last night to let me know that there was more to be seen of my cover model for NO LIMITS on Jo Davis’s upcoming release I SPY A WICKED SIN. Fun stuff, huh!

This morning, I ran across a post on Jennifer Crusie’s Argh Ink blog called Ten Tips for Writers and thought it worth sharing here for those of you who write. I especially love the first three and find they resonate with my way of managing writing as a way of life – because, really, it’s way more than just a career. It’s in the air we breathe, in our dreams. We don’t watch news stories without thinking, “What if?” Same with people watching. We steal conversations, we cast roles, we borrow names we love.

1. Get a support group.
Local RWA groups are good for this. You need people who understand the particular insanity that is writing, people who are willing to talk about conflict and character arc and book covers, people who understand that dark night of the soul where it’s always three o’clock in the morning and everything you’re writing is garbage. But . . .

I don’t belong to a local RWA chapter, but I have a super duper group of online friends (most all who I’ve also met in real time) who fill this need. We chat about business, about haircuts, about titles and covers, about stubbing our toes, about the future of publishing, about character arcs, about pets and car trouble and too much time spent following online trainwrecks. If I need to whine, I know where to go. If I need to celebrate, the same. If I’m desperate for a quick read of a scene or an assurance that I’m making the right career move, I know my girls will be there. Ya gotta have some girls (or guys, I suppose) who understand what it means to be a writer. Go get some.

2. Avoid toxic people.
If you have a friend you can’t tell your good news to because it will make her feel bad, if you have a friend who constantly criticizes you and makes you feel like you’re nothing, if you have a friend who depresses the hell out of you, she’s not your friend. It’s okay to kick her to the curb. God did not put you here to be her emotional punching bag. You’ll still be a good person if you block her e-mails. Plus, you’ll be happy.

This is a big one, especially big for those of us online who devote ourselves to relationships that don’t allow for facial expressions or vocal inflections. We may believe what we have is a true give and take friendship, but the person on the other end of the cable is only there to use, something we’re not aware of until the hooks are embedded deep, and we have to free ourselves from the barbs. This isn’t to say online relationships aren’t real. See above, not to mention I married one of mine. But online meltdowns are legendary, and getting involved wastes brain cells better spent on the words we put on the page. If you’re doing all the giving, it’s time to make a break.

3. Know your story.
Before your support group gets a crack at your story, make sure you know what it is. It doesn’t have to be finished, but it does have to be firm in your mind, or your people, with the best intentions in the world, will screw it up for you.

It’s taken me a long LONG time to figure out the value of NOT talking about what I’m working on. You may have noticed I’ve said very little lately about subject matter, only that I’m working on things. (I actually have TWELVE projects I consider viable, but am focusing on three, working between them; when one stalls, I move to another while my subconscious breaks up the logjam.) Susan Elizabeth Phillips calls this protecting the work, and IMO, too many authors forget to do this, but instead, put their thought processes out there to be messed with by the sticky fingers of all and sundry.

Many moons ago I visited the home of a local author, now a way famous bestselling NYT author, for a plotting session with her and three others. I sat, mouth agape, listening as they brainstormed their next plots, questions asked and answered, “what-ifs” tossed out in response. When it was my turn, I was stymied. I knew a couple of things about my hero, his name, his cause, and I knew his connection with the heroine. I knew how the story would open, a bit about the plot, some backstory, but very little about motivation or conflict. I was one of those fly into the mist newbie writers who didn’t understand story structure. I had winged one book, I figured I could wing the rest. But listening to those pros and having no clue when they queried me on story points, I realized I was way out of my league. I didn’t know enough about what it takes to make a book publishable to even have a conversation. The fact that I’d published one was pretty much a fluke. I never finished that story. I still have the little bit of it I did write on a storage disk, but I talked about it before I knew it and it died.

Have I learned my lesson? Uh, no. I brainstorm often with @cuppacafe. He’s a story guy. He gets structure and motivation and conflict. A ton of what you read in my books comes from him, fodder I tweak to fit my needs. Those twelve projects mentioned above? Yeah, I went to him with one of those recently and he shot it down. He’s got a scientific mind, and he didn’t buy my fantasy. I took a lot of what he said and fixed the holes, and I won’t give up on it, but I’m more wary now about going to him to brainstorm. He’ll ask me questions about a project, and I’ll just clam up. I’ve learned that I have to know my story, have it set in my mind before I can talk about it. I don’t like having my idea shredded because I asked for input too soon, knowing something wasn’t working and relying on someone else to fix what was broken. I need to fix it myself, else all the dominoes won’t tumble correctly into the picture I’ve designed.

What about you guys? Do you have girls? Do you avoid soul suckers and trainwrecks? Do you protect your work and not go looking for solutions too soon?