Let’s Get Naked Chat at Coffeetime Romance!
Olivia Starke,
Stephanie Beck, Ashlynn Monroe, KT Grant, DL Jackson, Joanne Kenrick, and I are getting naked tonight! Join us, we’ll be talking about The Edge, our giveaways during the blog hop, and whatever other fun topic we can come up with ;;)
Let’s Get Naked Chat
Writing Menage while Making Meatloaf – A blog with a recipe!
This just made me laugh, then frown, then realize how many dinners I’ve burned lately.
Why a woman who is elbows deep, fingers flying in a menage between a sexy Argentine brain surgeon, a lion shifter, and a woman under a wicked stepmother’s spell should be trusted to fry bacon or clean a toilet, I’ll never know! My characters want to keep the action going, and it’s hard enough to keep track of whose toes are in whose navel without having to notice that the water has all boiled away and the nasty smell of scorching potatoes is filling the room!
I love cooking, but not when the muse is in full-speed-ahead mode. Smoke alarms are not sexy! At least my story people don’t seem to think so! That’s why I have taken to coooking things that are more forgiving. Like meatloaf. I’m not an especially precise cook, but here’s how I do it
Meatloaf
2 lbs. ground beef
1 egg
1/2 chopped onion
1 chopped carrot (veggies!)
1 stalk celery chopped
1/2 small sweet pepper chopped (more veggies! It’s a health food fiesta…ok, not)
I handful of cracker crumbs, bread crumbs, oatmeal, or 2 slices actual crumbled bread
garlic salt and pepper to taste
Squish your nice clean hands in the mixture, don’t squish too hard, you don’t want to compact it…then add tomato sauce or ketchup to moisten, a quarter of a cup usually does it.
Pat mixture into greased loaf pan and paint with more ketchup or the rest of that can of tomato sauce. Top with two or three slices of bacon and slide into oven at 350 degrees. It’s nice if you preheated, but you probably didn’t because you are still writing in your head. But it’s fine either way!
Bake about an hour and a half along with a few giant russet potatoes. They take about the same length of time so you don’t have to stop writing again for an hour and a half. By then your husband should be home, have checked the oven and reminded you that it’s looking pretty done. Put him in charge of finding veggies, although we did put quite a few in the meatloaf and I have been known to add more. Even if you forget (and setting a timer is kind of smart) this dinner will survive for a bit longer and has that homemade appeal that all authors’ husbands look for.
After all…we’re home all day eating bon bons, surely we can throw together a little dinner!
Epicon 2012 -Networking, workshops and a haunted hotel!
< I just returned from San Antonio yesterday afternoon. Conferences are amazing. They get authors and editors out of the house and out pajamas and allow us to associate with one another and with readers and bloggers, reviewers…there is no better opportunity for feedback…and hugs!
But the Menger Hotel, where we were treated like royalty, is haunted. Yep, and some of us saw ghosts…I heard one! Standing in an elevator where my partenr in crime Valerie Mann had been aware of a presence the day before I decided to try something. It was about 11 at night and I was all alone in this very old, very slow car when I turned to the corner where the ghost had stood and said “Hello”. My bravery fled when the corner said. “Yes.” No…I didn’t try to claw my way out, but I did begin to stare at the numbers and pray that the elevator wouldn’t break down. Although an hour alone in an elevator with a ghost would have provided an opportunity to as a few questons…
Somebody Else’s Baby
After a year of being a Series Mama to 1Night Stand and now The Edge…I was a little nervous about writing in someone else’s series. After all, I know how protective we are of ours, how careful that the stories be just right and that none of our actual characters lose their personality. We’ve been fortunate to have incredible authors who went with the spirit and wrote story after story that we loved.
But still…think bear mama…cute cubs… yeah.
But when one of my favorite people in the writing world and some of her favorites opened Musa Publishing last fall, I was so excited for them. And when they presented their baby, a brand new series, Wiccan Haus, I was dying to write for it. Still, I wanted to be respectful of the main characters, make use of the wonderful details, and maybe contribute a little something of my own. So…finally…I submitted my story and received a contract! So…I’m involved with someone else’s series and I sure hope my story, An Apple Away, adds to the legends of The Wiccan Haus. Or at least makes readers smile a little.
The Magic Castle
Last night the hubs and I were invited by friends to go to The Magic Castle in Hollywood. It’s a private magicians’ club and that’s the only way you can go..by invitation. It was so much fun! The food was great and the show was awesome. Anyone who watches “Pawn Stars” will recognize the name Murray the magician. He put on a great performance and my husband tried and tried to guess how he did it all. Okay, so did I. But on the way home we found that all four of us were trying and each of us had seen something that made the others’ theories crash and burn.
As an author, everything is inspiration. What do I know about magicians? Nothing. But I love research and this is going to be a lot of fun! It may be a year or two before it goes into a book, but it will eventually. Now, here’s what I’m really wondering…just how flexible does a magician’s assistant have to be? Because if our theory is right, she had to bend like a pretzel to avoid being sawed in half!
Kate's Cravings 