Kattomic Energy

Fantasy for February--The Silver Summoner's Bell

2012-01-30T21:13:00.000-08:00

You may have read my story "The Smallest of the Summoner's Bells," which originally ran on the Dark Valentine website. There are seven of the Summoner's bells and they all have a story and a history and a past. Eventually, I will write all the stories and collect them in one place. Until then, here's the next story.

THE SILVER SUMMONER’S BELL

I felt my brother die.

Two days later a man collecting dung for fuel found Mac’s teeth in a pile of dragon scat. He cleaned and polished them and returned them to me with his condolences.

I sent him away with a fat reward and a knife of my father’s design that was worth much more than the money I’d given him.

No one ever found my brother’s gun.

That was no surprise. A custom-crafted Turnbull gun would be a prize for any collector and trade in such a weapon would have been conducted in the shadows and off the grid. I had passed the word that I would buy it, no questions asked, should it ever come on the market, but so far there had been no nibbles at my bait.

I had not wanted my brother to go on the dragon hunt. We didn’t need the money and we didn’t need the publicity. We had commissions enough to keep us busy into the next decade. But the hunts were a tradition our grandfather had started and Mac was a sucker for tradition.

And unlike me, he enjoyed being in the public eye. He was the “face” of Turnbull, and our clients were often surprised to find that there were two of us running the business. The dragon hunts were a part of that business.

Mac loved that the events were broadcast live and uncut, pulling in more viewers than the Super Bowl and Discovery Channel’s Shark Week combined.

Hunters vied for the five slots available on the yearly hunt, and demand was so high Mac could have led a hunt every week if he’d wanted to.

The producers were supposed to screen the participants, but all they cared about was ratings, so it wasn’t surprising that they sometimes slipped in a hunter who didn’t really have the qualifications or discipline Mac insisted on.

I thought there was something squirrelly about Tobias Smithson from the moment I met him. I begged Mac to drop him and take one of the alternates instead.

He dismissed my concerns the way he always brushed aside my cautions and my caveats—telling me there was nothing to worry about; assuring me that if Tobias turned out to be difficult, it would only make for an exciting show.

And he was right about that.

Four of the hunters died before they even reached the Dragon Lands, all of them succumbing to what the sponsors called “terrible accidents.” I watched the footage five times and was never able to see the artifice behind the accidents, but I know that Tobias orchestrated them all.

Just as he was responsible for my brother’s death.

The robotic camera recording the hunt malfunctioned soon after my brother and Tobias arrived at the dragon’s lair. When it came back online, my brother was dead and a panic-stricken Tobias was calling for help.

The producers cut the camera feed and sent a chopper to evacuate Tobias before the wounded dragon emerged from his cave to kill him too.

They felt it was too dangerous to try to retrieve my brother’s body, which the dragon had dragged into the cave like a housewife storing meat in a larder.

A week later the wounded dragon flew over the nearest village and incinerated everything in his path.

The Mayor, who had escaped pre-mortem cremation only because he had been visiting his mistress one town over, contacted me with a request to kill the dragon before it did any more damage.

I took the job with one condition—he could not advertise the hunt in any way. He agreed and didn’t even dicker over the price.

It took me a week to make the weapon I would use to kill the dragon, then I closed the shop, claiming grief, and went to the Dragon Lands alone.

It wasn’t hard to find my brother’s nemesis. I could hear his groans and wails of pain from several miles away.

A woman whose arm was charred black from the dragon’s breath gave me directions to a back road that allowed me to sneak up on the cave without the creature scenting my approach.

I had come prepared with several kinds of magic potion, elixirs I’d purchased with the promise of a gift of dragon skin.

I tossed a canister filled with a powerful soporific into the cave, then entered as the colored smoke dissipated.

The dragon was groggy but not quite unconscious. It raised its head as I entered the cave and sniffed deeply.

I know your scent it thought. You re the one who sought to cut out my heart. And then it laughed. But I ate yours instead.

Sharing consciousness with a dragon is not for the faint of heart. They do not think the same way we do or frame their thoughts like a human would. It’s easy to get lost the mirror maze of their minds.

I was desperate for answers though, so I performed the rituals that would allow me to enter his memory and see what happened on the day my brother died. What I saw horrified me.

Tobias had used my brother as bait, staking him out like a goat to the entrance of the cave. When the dragon ventured out to claim its meal, Tobias had sneaked into the cave and rifled through its hoard, stuffing several knapsacks with treasure.

Mac had still been alive when Tobias came out of the cave, and the dragon had paused in its feasting to confront the other hunter.

Tobias had panicked then and shot it, but missed a vital spot and only left it wounded and in pain.

I had felt my brother die before; now I saw his death, surrounded by fire like an Old Testament prophet. It might have been beautiful if it had not been so horrible.

The dragon felt my revulsion and laughed again as his memory faded.

In the old days, they killed dragons with swords and faith. I was not so dainty. I killed him with the gun I’d made myself, a gun that had my brother’s name carved into the stock.

I killed it cleanly with one shot between the eyes, then I used a diamond-edged knife I’d inherited from my father to cut out its heart.

I flayed the dragon and left the skin to dry as I explored his cave.

Even with what Tobias had looted, it was an immense hoard, a fortune in coin and jewels and precious plate. The Turnbulls are rich twice over, so I had no use for such glitter and gilt, but my brother had died for these play-pretties and I raked through the pile, looking for something valuable enough to be worth a man’s life.

I came across a crown that had once been worn by a hero and a sword that had been forged by my grandfather and given to a king. I threw them aside and kept looking.

And then I saw it.

A silver bell. It was small and tarnished but I knew it for what it was—the most valuable thing in a pile of things whose worth was beyond calculation.

It was the second of the seven bells forged by Rhodri the Summoner, the one with the blood of three tyrants mixed in with the molten metal.

Legend says the silver bell summons the dead.

I hope the legends are true.

Because I am going to kill the man who sent my brother to his death.

And then I’m going to ring the bell and bring him back so that I can kill him again.

Review of iBoy by Kevin Brooks

2012-01-29T09:10:00.000-08:00

This is a really smart take on a modern “origin” story for a 21^st century superhero. The model is Spider Man (mentioned more than once) but the hero’s transformation is more like the film Lawnmower Man. It’s somewhat inward (as if he’s internalized the Matrix) but this is the rare story where what’s going on around the “superhero” story is probably stronger than the heroics. The writer does something really cool with point of view and it’s so subtle that it takes awhile to register. Gritty and human and scary, the book has an edge but it also has a heart.

The premise sounds a little … silly … at first. After surviving a brain injury caused by a falling cell phone, an ordinary teenager named Tom discovers he now has the capacity to do anything an iPhone can and more and uses those powers to exact a little vigilante justice. There is nothing silly about how this premise works itself out, or anything candy-coated about iBoy’s mission. He wants justice done and although he doesn’t like the consequences, he can live with the results. (He would fit right into the Watchmen’s pantheon of superheroes with damaged souls.)

The characters are terrific. Tom is only 16 but as he integrates the iBoy powers, he’s forced to confront concepts like “situational ethics” and deal with criminal dynamics way over his head. Tom’s friend Lucy is equally as strong. She undergoes a horrific ordeal and emerges feeling dead and ruined. By the end, though, she has summoned reserves of courage and grace that will stand her in good stead.

The villain of the story, a local gangster named Howard Ellman (nicknamed “The Hell Man”) is a true sociopath and we know he’s capable of anything.

The writer has also done an excellent job of seeding in various elements of the plot that grow to fruition as the story rolls on. He’s not always subtle about this—there’s a patch of waste ground that’s a cell phone sink where iBoy’s powers don’t work and once Tom makes note of that, we’re pretty sure we’re going to see it again.

The council estate where Tom and the other characters live is a bleak place that reflects 21^st century realities. The towers and flats are filled with gang members and even the residents who aren’t a part of the thug life find themselves caught up in it.

While there is a fantastic element to the story, at its heart, everything that happens is very real. A young girl is raped for no better reason than her attackers want to send a message about power. A skinhead psycho keeps younger gang-members in check with ruthless displays of death-dealing. A mischief-making text sent by Tom results in a young man being stabbed—which is what he hoped for but doesn’t completely like.

Brooks is known in the UK for his books Martyn Pig and Being. iBoy is his best book yet.

Review of Watch You Drown by Chris Rhatigan

2012-01-28T08:30:00.000-08:00

Watch You Drown is the first fiction collection from writer Chris Rhatigan, fourteen stories that run the gamut from straight up crime fiction to noir-tinged sci fi.

There are whole novels distilled into some of these stories—hidden histories of loserdom that have brought the characters to one particular moment in time; but we sense that there have been many such moments in their lives and that Rhatigan could have extracted any of those moments and turned it into dark fiction. He has a reporter’s eye for selecting just the right details, and he understands the stresses that have formed and shaped—and in some cases warped—the people he writes about.

These characters are beaten down and fed up and sick to death of being excreted from the world’s asshole. And then one day, despair meets poor impulse control and a bad situation gets worse.

The collection’s opening story, “In the Hard Nowhere” is one such “out of the frying pan into the fire” story and so is “Service With a Smile.” These are stories that seem particularly relevant in today’s economic times, as does “Glug, Glug, Glug,” a tale of a man who did the best he could but failed anyway.

Comfortable writing at length, Rhatigan is equally adept at making a long story short. “Guy with a Barbed Wire Tattoo,” told in kinetic present tense, is a piece of flash fiction as potent as the venom from a cobra bite. “Administrative Segregation” reminds us that even hard men have their limits and the emotion it elicits is not contempt for the protagonist but pity.

Watch You Drown is more than a collection of short stories, it’s a gateway to a world of pulp fiction that Rhatigan rules.

For more about Chris Rhatigan, visit his blog, Death By Killing.

Feminist Fiction Friday--Janet Evanovich

2012-01-26T23:14:00.000-08:00

I’ve always thought that Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum novels were Nancy Drew adventures for big girls. Stephanie is smart, pretty and always solves her mysteries. Instead of just one boyfriend, she has two, and instead of chums like “George,” she hangs around with a former hooker, but she’s

I’m not sure when or why I picked up Janet Evanovich’s first Stephanie Plum novel, One for the Money, but I laughed all the way through it. It was a mystery but it had large dollops of humor and romance, and Stephanie was a Jersey girl with money problems and curly hair that never seemed to want to stay in a pony tail. I liked the character and I loved the book and from then on, I was hooked on the series.

In fact, I always thought the books would make a great television series because Evanovich surrounded Stephanie with a great cast of characters. There are the people at the bail bonds office (including her cousin). Her parents (particularly her long-suffering dad) are always around to offer sympathy and pot roast. And then there’s her Grandma Mazur, whose idea of entertainment is heading over to the local funeral home for viewings. (That funeral home figures prominently in a couple of the books.) And then there are the two men who are both pursuing our heroine.

These are people we could actually know.

And while some of the hijinks in the stories get a little out there, her brand of contemporary romantic suspense set the bar for writers who followed.

She started out writing romance novels, turning to fiction in her 30s and publishing her first book in 1987 when she was 44 years old. One for the Money came out in 1994 and kickstarted a series that includes 18 “by the numbers” books and a couple “between the numbers” novels as well.

And in between she’s written a slew of other books, both alone and with other writers a la James Patterson. (According to Wikipedia, she and the late Stephen J. Cannell were supposed to have written a book together. That would have been one lively romp.) And Castle fans who remember Cannell from the poker playing scenes, wouldn't it be fun to see Rick Castle playing poker with Janet?

You can follow her on Twitter @janetevanovich; like her on Facebook; and sign up for the newsletter on her site.

And you can go to see the movie version of One for the Money today, with Katherine Heigl as Stephanie.

Excerpt Exchange--James Kellogg's E-Force

2012-01-25T08:20:00.000-08:00

There's a dark conspiracy lurking beneath the facade of an eco-terrorist group. The fate of the world is in the balance!

Thriller writer James Kellogg and I are doing an excerpt exchange this month thanks to the social networking on Facebook. The following is from chapter five of his book E-Force. (One of the five-star reviews on Amazon states: The tension in the book builds from chapter to chapter. Kellogg does a wonderful job of developing the characters, holding your attention and delivering a delightful read that once you start you can't put it down.) Check it out for yourself:

Tempers were flaring at the manager’s meeting. Colt was certain that the Salem Witch Trials couldn’t have been more chilling. With the suddenness of an ocean squall, the forum had degenerated into a hostile volley of accusations and defenses. The handwriting on the wall was plain for Colt to see. The days of EcoFriends were numbered.

A female manager turned on the other five women. “I’m not paying the price for the bitch that ratted on us! Everybody knows I’ve put my heart and soul into this organization.”

“You’d sell us out in a heartbeat if you could profit!”One fiery vixen charged at the haughty accuser. “How much is the FBI paying you?”

“That’s right. Fight it out!” A man pumped his fist.

“Let’s make them all take polygraph tests.” One board member stepped between the two potential combatants.

“There’re better ways to get a confession than that,” another person said.

“Enough of this!” Howard Anderson finally took control. “We’re tearing ourselves apart because of one traitor. If we’re going to survive, we’ve got to stick together. The truth is going to come out. Whoever is guilty has one last chance for redemption. I’ll give you until the end of the week to come to me and confess. Then we’ll figure out how to make things right again.”

Adjournment was an armistice in an escalating war. At the reprieve, people scattered. Colt looked for Deb, but she was gone. The air in the building seemed poisoned. He hurried outside where he could breathe.

“Damned horde of barbarians,” Colt muttered on the sidewalk, shaking his head with disgust for the behavior his colleagues had exhibited. The organization was supposedly founded on trust and loyalty, yet every leader was bent on crucifying one of their own.

Anderson has lost his mind. Colt stormed toward the street. It was insane to prop up the terrorist group E-Force as a means to stabilize EcoFriends. It’s like skydiving without a parachute so you didn’t risk getting tangled in the lines. Everybody’s following him into the sea like a bunch of damned lemmings.

Without a doubt, Colt regretted his involvement with EcoFriends. Foolishly, he’d been a complacent passenger in his life and work. It was time to move behind the wheel and take command. EcoFriends was going to be part of the past, not the future.

“Colt, wait for me!” a familiar voice said.

Colt turned to see Deb dart across the street. A car braked to avoid running her down. She drew alongside Colt, ignoring the blaring horn as the vehicle resumed course.

“You almost got killed!” Colt was alarmed by Deb’s reckless action.

“What does it matter?”

“I don’t understand why you would ask that.” Colt evaluated his friend’s pale sickly appearance. “What’s going on? Where’ve you been?”

“Vomiting in the restroom.” Deb’s voice wavered. “We need to have that talk.”

“Let’s get away from the street.” Colt grabbed her by the arm. “I’ll walk you to your car.”

The pair didn’t speak during the brisk trip to a parking lot at the end of the block. When they reached Deb’s vehicle, she couldn’t contain herself any longer.

“Colt, can I trust you to keep a secret?” Deb asked in a hushed tone.

“Of course you can trust me,” Colt said, frowning. “What’s going on Deb?”

“I’m the one who went to the FBI. I told them about the money laundering.”

“So it was you.” Colt’s pulse quickened. “Holy shit. The meeting must have been a nightmare for you.”

“I can’t believe what’s happening.” Tears welled up in Deb’s eyes. “When I called from a payphone, the FBI agent promised my statements were confidential. I don’t know how Anderson found out. Colt, I’m scared.”

“It’s going to be okay.” Colt dabbed a tear from her cheek. “Nobody can pin the leak on you.”

“There’s more to the story.” Deb’s eyes were hollow. “All the dirty money went to E-Force.”

Colt’s heart skipped a beat at the assertion. Deb had uncovered the truth. Months ago, Colt had discovered that tens of thousands were going to E-Force. But he had done nothing. Like a fool, he continued to divert funds from his chapter, knowing the money was being laundered and funneled to E-Force.

“Is that what you told the Feds?” Colt sputtered. “How do you even know that?”

“I overheard a conversation between Anderson and Cain. And, yes, I told the FBI!”

“Deb, keep your voice down.” Colt cast a nervous glance around. “Maybe we should talk inside your car.”

“I haven’t told you the worst part,” Deb said after they were seated in the vehicle with the doors shut. “I’m not sure if I should.”

“What could be worse?” Colt felt as if he was about to be sentenced by a judge.

“Zed Cain is part of E-Force.” Deb was trembling. “If he finds out I know the truth, he’ll do something terrible. Colt, I don’t know what to do.”

“Just calm down.” A shiver rippled through Colt’s body. “This is bad, but I won’t let anyone hurt you. Did you tell the FBI about Cain?”

“Not yet.” Deb was obviously struggling to retain her composure. “But I’m going to. It’s the only way to stop these crimes.”

“But you don’t know who tipped off Anderson.” A light bulb went off in Colt’s head. “Maybe he’s got somebody inside the FBI.”

Deb shook her head with doubt. “We’re talking about Howard Anderson, not some foreign government.”

“Then how did he find out?” Colt’s unease was growing. “That’s a serious question, and we’ve got to find an answer.”

“Once Cain and Anderson are behind bars, it won’t matter. Then I’ll be safe.”

“It’s not going to be that simple.” Colt gripped Deb’s shoulder and looked her in the eye. “Something’s not right. There’s a hidden trap waiting to snare anyone who decides to be a hero.”

“Then what am I supposed to do?” Deb thumped a fist against the steering wheel. Another tear rolled down her cheek.

Colt suddenly felt conspicuous. “I don’t know yet, but we need to continue this conversation at a different time and place.”

“Okay, you’re right.” Deb nodded and reached for a tissue. “I’ll call you when I get back to Boise.”

They hugged for a few seconds before Colt stepped out onto the pavement. Deb ventured a weak smile and waved goodbye. Feeling lost and lonely, Colt looked after her car until it was swallowed in the traffic.

With eyes cast downward, Colt turned and walked away. Before he traveled twenty paces, a shadow crossed his path. Colt looked up to find Zed Cain standing in front of him. The man’s tall figure was imposing. With long black hair, he resembled a fierce Comanche warrior from days of old. Colt stopped dead in his tracks.

“Are you lost?” Cain asked without an ember of warmth.

A chill went down Colt’s spine. Did the alleged E-Force member suspect something? Maybe he overheard part of the conversation with Deb.

Colt managed a dismissive air. “I forgot where I parked. My vehicle’s over there. See you at the next meeting.”

Colt moved past Cain and retreated toward his Land Cruiser. He maintained a casual stride and resisted the urge to cast a backward glance.

More about James Kellogg:

James D. Kellogg holds a B.S. in Biology and a M.S. in Civil Engineering, both from Virginia Tech. His professional engineering experience encompasses ski area development and water resource management in western Colorado. Passion for adventure and imagination was the impetus for his thriller novel, E-Force. James’ life experiences served as catalysts for conception of protagonist, Colt Kelley. An outdoor enthusiast, James enjoys skiing, mountain biking, backpacking, rock climbing, and kayaking. He and his wife Kristen are raising their four kids near Glenwood Springs. Contact James at jameskellogg@comcast.net or visit http://jamesdkellogg.com.

Kattomic Fiction!! New stories

2012-01-24T19:24:00.000-08:00

Over at A Twist of Noir, there's a story from my Misbegotten universe called "Sex Crime." Read it here.
I also have a story up at Shotgun Honey called "Dark-Adapted Eye." It is part of my upcoming Poisoned Teat collection of shorts, due out this summer.

Friday Feminist Fiction--Connie Willis

2012-01-21T12:38:00.000-08:00


Photo by Kyle Cassidy from http://www.sftv.org/cw/

The first time I attended San Diego Comic Con (2008), Connie Willis was one of the guests. She showed up for her seminar looking like a statuesque suburban granny and totally rocked the hour to a packed house of admirers. She told a story about how she met her husband (a retired physicist and how she might not have in response to a question about faith and fate. She talked about her unsentimental treatment of death and how her mother's death when she was a child shaped her world view.
She had brought along her lovely, equally statuesque, daughter and everyone in the room went away feeling like they'd shared some quality time with the woman who has just been named a "Grand Master" (for lifetime achiement) by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America.
I (heart) Connie Willis.
She has won 11 Hugo Awards and seven Nebula Awards and a ton of other awards too. She has won for both novels and short stories. Connie Willis can write anything!
Lincoln's Dreams was the first of Connie's novels I read, a wonderful love story that slipped gracefully between genres. I followed that up with To Say Nothing of the Dog, which delighted me in the way it looped back and forth over itself and is one of her Hugo Award-winning works.
She has talked about the long spaces between books (and pointed to her friend George R. R. Martin as another writer who teastes his fans this way), but while we're waiting for the next novel, there are plenty of her short stories to keep us reading.
Her official website is here.
You can "like" Connie Willis on Facebook.

FRIDAY FEMINIST FICTION--Coming Saturday

2012-01-20T11:25:00.001-08:00

Subject will be Connie Willis. See you tomorrow.

Happy Birthday Christine Pope

2012-01-19T23:06:00.000-08:00

Celebrate writer Christine Pope's birthday Friday by checking out her new collection of stories, Voices From an Empty Room. The eclectic collection includes fiction originally published in Astonishing Adventures Magazine and Dark Valentine Magazine. One of the stories, "The King of Elfland," was a Pushcart Prize Nominee. The cover was designed by Joy Sillesen of indie author services. (Find her here.)

Separated at birth--Oscar Wilde and Benedict Cumberbatch

2012-01-18T23:55:00.000-08:00

Benedict Cumberbatch seems to be the "it" boy of the moment and we certainly approve. We have to ask, though, has anyone noticed his striking resemblance to Oscar Wilde? Cumberbatch famously played Stephen Hawking, but what about a biopic of Wilde? What do you think?

Luck Premieres January 29

2012-01-18T20:27:00.000-08:00

And I'll be there. I'm not a fan of horse racing at all, but the trailer is so chock-full of great actors and style to burn that I just have to give it one watch just because. I haven't seen Dustin Hoffman play this kind of role ever; and Nick Nolte's southern accent is spot on. And it's Michael Mann directing from a David Milch script.

Excerpt Exchange--Lone Wolf by Dellani Oakes

2012-01-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

One of the nice things about being part of online communities like Facebook is that you meet a lot of people you'd never meet otherwise and they enrich your life. Novelist Dellani Oakes has a new book out in what will be a series of sci fi adventures featuring "Lone Wolf" Wil VanLipsig. He's a bit of a rogue, our Wil and when he shows up, we know trouble is at hand. Her five-star reviews on Amazon give you a taste of what this genre-blending story has to offer. "This book is more than a sci fi novel, it's also a mystery with a love triangle. The settings are unique and so are some of the alien species that populate the story."

Dellani and I are participaing in an "excerpt" exchange. Here's a scene from the book, which can be purchased on Amazon and directly from her publisher, Second Wind:

Rubee woke them at 0630 when the Merchant Marine hailed them.

Once he was up and dressed, Marc was all business. It seemed odd for him to be so professional when they had just been so intimate, but she knew something was bothering him.

As Matilda followed Marc to the docking bay where the ship was locking on, she noticed he was armed. The energy weapon he wore was hardly standard Guild issue. On the maximum setting, it could take down a 300 pound man, putting a sizable hole in him.

"Expecting an army? You can kill a xar beast with one of those."

"I wish I had something bigger. If I order you to fire, Commander, you fire. No questions. Is that clear?"

"Yes, sir."

Marc opened the door to the docking bay. The other ship had attached and the airlock was pressurizing. As the door spiraled open, Matilda sensed a shudder pass through Marc. He raised his weapon, covering the entrance.

Slowly, with a casual air, a man entered the airlock. Nearly as tall as Marc, he was leaner of build. His curly, dark brown hair fell to his shoulders. He stood still while Rubee scanned his identification tag before releasing the force shield in front of him.

He wore a black eye patch over his left eye and a scar ran from his left temple to the corner of his lips. It was an old scar, worn and somewhat sunken. A slight stubble of beard shaded the lower half of his face, all but the scar line, leaving a pale crescent in the dark. His uncovered eye glittered, black and dangerous in his ruggedly handsome face. Holding his arms from his sides, he waited as Rubee scanned him for weapons. Finding none, she gave clearance for him to pass.

He stepped forward, lighting a dark, thin object. The pungent odor of a cheroot filled the confined space. Squinting past the smoke, he gazed into Marc's eyes. Marc's weapon remained pointed at the other man's head, his calm expression strangely predatory.

Their visitor sized Matilda up with a glance, dismissing her as non-threatening. He puffed on his cheroot thoughtfully. A crooked grin cracked his face in half, the scar pulling his left lip up at an odd angle.

"Marc, it's been a long time." He held out his hand.

Marc remained aloof, not taking his eyes off the visitor, lowering his weapon or acknowledging the proffered hand.

"Kind of a cold reception, isn't it?" His voice was rasping and low.

The smile was replaced by a slight frown, a hint of sadness in the obsidian eye. Then the same placid expression took its place. Nothing in Marc's face betrayed what he was thinking or feeling.

Marc spoke calmly. "Commander Dulac, please show Colonel VanLipsig to the lounge."

"Of course, sir." Looking puzzled, she did as he asked, feeling his eyes on her.

Marc followed, covering the man from the rear. When they had seated themselves, Matilda ordered three cups of joe from the synthunit. Marc kept his weapon out on his knee with his hand resting upon it. The other fellow leaned back, seemingly unconcerned and at ease. Taking a sip of the joe, he grimaced, glancing down at his cup before matching his gaze with Marc's.

"I know we parted under difficult circumstances, but is this really necessary? I'm here to do a job, nothing more." He carefully kept his hands in plain view, moving slowly, talking with deliberate ease.

Marc looked at him blankly. "I thought you were dead, Wil."

VanLipsig nodded slowly, thoughtfully. "You were sure you killed me." His voice was flat, toneless, unemotional. He shrugged casually, tilting his head to the left. "I got better." There was a flash of a chilling smile.

"The reports...."

"The reports of my death were greatly exaggerated," VanLipsig quipped, dark eye glittering mischievously.

Marc's fist dented the metal table with a furious blow. "Dammit, Wil! Can't you stay dead?"

VanLipsig threw back his head, laughing caustically. The laugh became a long, high pitched, chilling howl. Matilda felt a shiver run through her to the very bone. She did her best not to show it, but a subtle shift of her bearing betrayed her. His gaze penetrated her soul, laying it bare, finding it wanting.

"Aren't you going to introduce me to the lady, Marc?"

"No."

Marc hid his anger, but Matilda knew he was furious. His attitude toward VanLipsig was puzzling. They seemed to have known one another for years, obviously parting on less than amicable terms. Though VanLipsig seemed to harbor no ill will, Marc certainly did.

"May I present myself, ma'am? I'm Colonel Wilhelm VanLipsig, also known as the Lone Wolf. Perhaps you've heard of me?" He attempted to look humble. "Pleased to make your acquaintance." His glance flicked to her name tag and insignia, dark eye lingering hungrily on her chest. "Commander Dulac." His mouth formed the words, enjoying the feel of the consonants on his tongue.

He waited patiently for a response. Getting none, his eye locked with hers, curious, intrigued. "Do you speak?"

Matilda studied him quizzically, raising an eyebrow. "There seemed little to say."

Wil chuckled deep in his throat. It was a seductively menacing sound. He put his feet up on the table between them, relaxed, but all business.

"So, what's this load I'm supposed to pick up?"

Matilda glanced at Marc, his blank face betraying nothing. He gave no indication that he was going to speak, so she took over the conversation.

"Trimagnite."

VanLipsig, who was staring openly at her full breasts, raised an eyebrow. He grinned wolfishly, dragging his gaze to meet hers.

"Really? Nasty stuff." He sounded almost gleeful."How pure?"

She met his eyes with a challenge as his smile became predatory. Her personal scanner showed him the basic specs. His brow furrowed slightly as he read, then he handed it back to her, whistling softly in surprise.

"Show me the full scan." All joking aside, he stood expectantly.

Matilda ushered VanLipsig to a console and typed in the commands. He leaned over her right shoulder, his face mere inches from hers. His scent tantalized her. It was disconcerting, made all the more disturbing because he was dangerously handsome, well built, virile, wickedly seductive and extremely close. Forcing herself to look back at the screen, she felt his warm breath on her neck, tickling her skin in a very sensuous way.

He leaned forward, tapping the console, watching as the view and number readout changed. The very air between them was charged with energy. His shoulder brushed hers from behind, making her shiver

VanLipsig put his hand on her shoulder, brushing her neck slightly with his thumb, leaning in as if to kiss her. He checked himself abruptly, nearly brushing her ear with his lips. His breath stirred wisps of hair, tickling her neck.

"I'm sorry, Commander. Are you cold?" His raspy voice seemed loud, although he whispered.

She ducked out from under his arm, stepping aside. "No, I'm fine. Really. Thank you."

Marc stood a few feet away, his eyes on the other man, saying nothing. The muscle in his jaw worked rapidly, bulging and relaxing as he fought for control.

Wil seemed unaware of them both as he read the screen, making mental calculations; sensuous lips moving as he spoke to himself. He nodded, clearing the screen, turning to them with a dazzling smile.

"No problem," his smile broadened, but didn't reach his eye. "I'll just get my bots to work, then."

He made for the door, but Marc stopped him with a powerful arm across his chest. Wil halted, pressing aggressively against Marc's elbow.

"Old man, you know that's dangerous." Wil's body stiffened defensively.

Marc glared at him, cold fury erupting. "By God, Wil! I killed you, you bastard!" Marc pounded the table next to him, scattering the cups of joe.

Wil didn't even blink. "I told you, I got better."

Marc's huge fist shot out suddenly from shoulder height, all his weight behind it. Wil caught Marc's fist, twisting up and away from his jaw, forcing Marc's arm to bend back on itself, elbow by his ear.

"Don't make me do this, Marc. "

Wil held Marc's arm, their muscles swelling and knotting as they fought for control. Marc tried to free himself from the other man's unyielding grasp. Suddenly changing tactics, he swung at Wil with his left hand. With an audible crack, his enormous fist connected with Wil's face. Neither man seemed to notice. Marc drew back, swinging again from the left.

Wil dropped Marc's right hand in order to block the blow. He grabbed Marc's arm in an elbow lock. Using the force of the attack, he spun Marc to face him, slamming his fist into Marc's abdomen.

Instead of recoiling from the blow, Marc moved in, utilizing Wil's momentum and his own greater weight, to put his opponent off balance. He threw Wil to the floor, hitting him with a bone grinding body slam.

Wil exhaled sharply as he grappled with one hand in Marc's hair. Wil forced Marc's head back at an odd angle. Marc's face grew dark red as he gasped for breath.

Matilda reacted instinctively, her weapon trained on Wil automatically. Stance defiant, her eyes glittered with dark fire.

"Let him go," she spoke quietly, teeth clenched.

Wil held Marc's head, but stopped twisting.

"Why don't you put the gun down, Ma'am, before you hurt yourself?"

Wil's face registered momentary surprise when she didn't immediately comply. Instead, her grip shifted on the weapon, her aim true, right between his eyes. The astonishment was quickly replaced by a placid expression. VanLipsig allowed himself a glance in her direction. Her face held a determination equal to his own. Slowly, he let go of Marc, who straightened up, shaking his head.

"Move away from him."

VanLipsig stood in one fluid motion, taking two steps back. His hands were shoulder height, out from his body. He made no sudden movements, his demeanor passive.

"Now would one of you testosterone glutted males tell me what the hell is going on?" Her dark eyes flashed dangerously.

Dellani Oakes is a former A.P. English teacher and photo journalist. Now working as a substitute teacher and Mary Kay consultant, she can give skin care & makeup advice, correct grammar, take pictures and write an article while controlling a classroom full of rowdy children.

Dellani was making up stories before she could read. Her first really cohesive work began when her older sister started school. Left to entertain herself, she invented an imaginary friend and would regale her mother with tales of Snowy Green and Rainbow School. These stories paved the way for songs and poems in elementary school and short stories in high school and college.

A college theatre major, Dellani took play writing. It became her new love. Scripts being dialog heavy and character driven, this aspect has followed her into her novel writing. She uses verbal exchanges & sparring as a way of revealing both plot and characterization.

Dellani had to set aside her love of writing when she began working as a teacher. Her creative energies were channeled into writing exams to make her students cry—although this wasn't usually intentional. Unfortunately, between that and motherhood, she didn't have time to write.

Once her youngest son started school in 2001, she was able to write full time. Her first novel, Indian Summer, was published in 2008 by Second Wind Publishing. Also from Second Wind, her second novel, Lone Wolf made its debut in September 2011.

Learn more about Dellani and her work at:

http://dellanioakes.wordpress.com/

writersanctuary.blogspot.com

dellanischoice.wordpress.com

Review of The Killing of Emma Gross

2012-01-16T02:13:00.000-08:00

The Killing of Emma Gross by Damien Seaman

March, 1929…a prostitute named Emma Gross is killed in a Dusseldorf hotel room and her body mutilated so the wounds mimic those borne by two other murder victims. Johann Stausberg confesses to all three crimes and is sent to Grafenberg Asylum for the criminally insane. That should have been that, but a year later, the arrest of serienmörder (serial killer) Peter Kürten brings to light certain discrepancies that investigating officer Thomas Klein simply can’t ignore. And it doesn’t hurt that proving Johann Stausberg didn’t kill Emma Gross will humiliate his ex-partner Michael Ritter who has hated him ever since learning of Thomas’ affair with his wife Gisela.

Damien Seaman’s debut novel, The Killing of Emma Gross stuns the reader like a blow from the claw-hammer wielded by one of its characters. The novel is equal parts police procedural, psychological thriller and dramatic deconstruction of a love affair gone very, very wrong. This is a plot that involves secrets and lies buried so deep inside that winkling them out involves blood and pain on an epic scale.

For everyone but Thomas, the question of “Who killed Emma Gross?” is less important than “Who cares who killed Emma Gross?” and the closer Thomas gets to answers, the more questions surface. This is not a simple book and Thomas is not a simple character. A veteran of the Great War, he is scarred inside and out from the experience, but traumatized even more by the death of “Lilli” and his wretched love affair with Ritter’s wife. He is capable of mistreating people in his search for the truth, but he’s also susceptible to moments of what he calls “softness.”

He is utterly appalled and repelled by the bond Peter Kürten wants to forge with him but forced by circumstances to nurture that relationship in order to get information he hopes will save a little girl’s life. Peter is a total sociopath who enjoys his little jokes at Thomas’ expense, and who tries to arrange to have his wife collect the reward money offered for information leading to his arrest.

Everyone wants credit for bringing “the Ripper” to justice, and the game of ambition being played out in the Dusseldorf police station is complicated by the arrival of Ernst Gennat, an investigator from Berlin who suspects that all is not what it seems but who has no interest in upsetting the status quo, at least not openly. He is, however, not above giving Thomas tacit permission to probe all he likes—so long as there’s plausible deniability back at the station.

Some reviewers have compared The Killing of Emma Gross to Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir novels featuring private detective Bernie Gunther, but Seaman’s work most resembles that of novelist/historian Caleb Carr, particularly his third novel Angel of Death. Like Angel of Death and its prequel The Alienist, The Killing of Emma Gross weaves real people—pathologist Karl Berg, murderer Peter Kürten, Chief Inspector Ernst Gennat, victim Emma Gross—into a plot filled with original characters so seamlessly that it’s impossible to tell where invention takes over.

The story plays out against an historical backdrop that is subtle—a comment about the economy here, a description of a decadent nightclub there . The rabid paranoia attached to the Communists becomes part of the plot as the investigative reporter Du Pont embarrasses the police by uncovering their incompetence and pointing fingers at their ineffectual investigations. Thomas, for all his irreverence, is not entirely immune to the zeitgeist. At one point, he tiredly admits to himself that there are arguments for sterilizing “the criminal classes.” Since Thomas is a “good German,” we want to think he’s only joking, but we know what is to come in a decade and so the remark is chilling.

Seaman, who has lived in Germany, salts his dialogue with the kinds of phrases not taught in high school classes, words like the epithet arshloch, a term that needs no translation. The variety of derogatory words his characters use for “prostitute” seems indicative of a culture that was fascinated by illicit sex.

With The Killing of Emma Gross, Seaman turns lurid fact into brilliant fiction.

Disclaimer: I review books for a number of sites as well as here on Kattomic Energy. I receive free review copies from many publishers. I am not paid by these publishers for my reviews, which reflect my honest opinions.

Feminist Fiction Friday: Judith Viorst

2012-01-12T19:31:00.000-08:00

Judith Viorst is a writer who can’t be confined to a genre.

She’s a journalist, a poet, a playwright. She could probably sell her grocery lists if someone drew pictures on them.

As a writer, Judith Viorst has a split personality. She writes wonderful books for children—her most famous are probably Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, NoGood, Very Bad Day and The Tenth GoodThing About Barney (my favorite)—but she also writes non-fiction for adults, her titles ranging from breezy books of poetry about aging (It’s Hard to Be Hip Over Thirty and I’m Too Young to Be Seventy and Other Delusions) as well as thoughtful, scholarly works informed by her studies in psychology. I read her book Necessary Losses after my mother’s death and it helped.

Viorst’s versatility—from serious to silly—is awe-inspiring. Sometimes all she wants to do is entertain, as with her four-line poem “And Then the Prince Knelt Down and Tried to Put the Glass Slipper on Cinderella’s Foot,” a hilarious take on fairy tale endings. (You can find it in Don’t Bet on the Prince. Feminist Fairy Tales in North America and England, but you can also find it here.) But sometimes there’s more going on than kidjinks. The Tenth Good Thing About Barney is the story of a kid whose beloved cat has died and it’s one of the best “circle of life” stories you’ll ever read. I am not ashamed to say that I cried when I read it.

She doesn’t tweet—at least not under @judithviorst—but she does have a fan page on Facebook here.

Her 81^st birthday is coming up next month. Celebrate it!

Naff--my new favorite word

2012-01-11T21:27:00.000-08:00

Mark Satchwill, my arty other half at NoHo Noir, introduced me to this word, British slang (I learned from Urban Dictionary) for "lame."
Naff. It's my new favorite word. I don't understand why it never caught on here in the US, where sillier words have become common currency.
I've been thinking about words a lot lately, specifically slang, because late last year I tried something I'd never done before--writing a story set in swinging 60s London.
I would have felt more comfortable if it were set in 1860s London because there's more of a margin for error and it's not like someone is going to pop in and say, "That's not what we said!" (Well, there are sharp-eyed people who know the 1860s inside and out who would probably let me know if I got it wrong, but you know what I mean.)
It's really hard to be persuasive writing about another time and another culture, and I have a horror of making a misstep especially since I tend to get snarky about writers who don't do their research and get things wrong. (You know the kind of thing I mean--novelists who describe the fields of white marble crosses in Arlington Cemetery not realizing they're describing Flanders Fields and not the garden of stone that is the nation's most-storied national cemetery where all the tombstones are tombstone-shaped.) And language is the trickiest thing.
I have several friends from France whose English is superb--nuanced and slangy and grammatically perfect. The only thing that marks them as non-native speakers, besides their accents, is that instead of saying "last night," they say "yesterday night."
Which reminds me (yes, I know this is a NAFF segue) of a story I once read, probably in EQMM. Set in WWII it was about a German spy who was caught because when he spoke (in English) about the moon, he referred to its gender as male. That's the kind of thing I mean.
Naff.

When Less is More

2012-01-10T12:08:00.000-08:00

I like flash fiction. I like writing it; I like reading it. I really admire writers who can pack a story into a small space and let it uncoil like a jack in the box. The famous one, of course, is Hemingway's six-word story: For sale, baby shoes, never worn.
As I was posting my entry on ShortStory365 today, I was thinking about writers who can pull off the really, really short story. Chris Rhatigan showcased Thomas Pluck's "Faggot" a couple of days ago on SS365 and if you haven't read it, you need to. In fewer than 100 words, he'll take your breath away. Here's the link to the story on Shotgun Honey.
Thinking about short-shorts sent me searching for Somerset Maugham's "The Appointment in Samarra," which I remembered being short. I'd forgotten how short. It's 198 indelible words. Find it here.

I'm in awe.

When you can't even give it away...

2012-01-07T23:37:00.000-08:00

My first fiction collection, Just Another Day in Paradise, has been free on Amazon and Smashwords for a couple of months now. Downloads were extremely brisk at the beginning, and have taken an uptick in the last two weeks for some reason. It's gratifying. Not as gratifying as it would be if all those people were paying for the book, but gratifying nonetheless.
But then...every once in awhile, someone returns one of the downloads of the book.
That's right, they send it back!
Who does that? Seriously? Why not simply delete it from your kindle? Because it's not as if the customer is going to get a refund.
Maybe it's a perceived value issue? Maybe I need to raise the price?
It's a mystery.

Feminist (Non) Fiction Friday--Renny Darling

2012-01-05T19:22:00.000-08:00

Years ago, I attended my first American Book Association convention representing my then-employer, Los Angeles Magazine. At the table to my right was a vivacious, dark-haired woman named Renny Darling who was there to promote her first cookbook, The Joy of Eating. It was oversized and paperbound, and the pages were decorated with little drawings that gave the whole thing a very “cozy” feel that reminded me of looking through my mother’s recipes, which were often adorned with her doodles. (She’d gone to art school and worked as a commercial artist before I was born.)

Renny was one of the friendliest, most upbeat people I have ever met and my one real memory of that convention was when she returned to her table after a short break wearing a pyramid hat because two kids were selling them and a book about pyramid power and the whole thing tickled her.

I loved Renny. She was one of those people you sometimes meet that you just fall in love with and want to befriend. I was too shy to follow up on that so I did the next-best thing, I bought the cookbook.

Even at the time, I had a lot of cookbooks, so I figured I’d read through it and probably never really cook anything from it.

And then I stopped on her recipe for chocolate chip banana bread.

I don’t really like banana bread but I do like chocolate and the recipe was dead easy—one of Renny’s abiding principles is “simple is better”—so I whipped up a batch.

The word “orgasmic” comes to mind.

Right out of the oven, the bread tastes like heaven, with little melty bits of chocolate oozing out of it in lovely little dark specks.

Cold, the bread changes texture into something more like a dense bread pudding.

Men who have eaten this bread have proposed to me.

I always make a few loaves at Christmas and give them to deserving friends.

You want to be one of those friends.

The next recipe I tried was Renny’s pumpkin bread with orange juice and golden raisins. You only think you’ve had pumpkin bread until you have had Renny’s pumpkin bread. Her pumpkin bread kicks your pumpkin bread’s ass.

So I bought her next cookbook and her next and a couple more after that.

I have made soups and quiches and a rice with fruit and nuts side dish that was so sinfully good I had the leftovers for breakfast by themselves.

Once you’ve had one of her cheesecakes (she loves cheesecake and all her books seem to have half a dozen great recipes for cheesecake) you will never again be satisfied by those dry concoctions delis try to pass off as cheesecake.

Every single one of the recipes she shares is unbelievably tasty. I mean…Every. Single. One.

In addition to the books, Renny also had a recipe club with a newsletter offering recipes and cooking tips. (We’re not talking about a wimpy little newsletter either, this mailings ran for some 20 pages.) Rising postal costs shut the newsletter down but then she went online, where she has continued to enhance and expand her brand. Find her site here.

Read her brief memoir on the site and you’ll get an inkling of her warm and chatty style, which is the way she writes her cookbooks.

When you leaf through one of her books, it feels like you’re visiting a good friend who has just printed up the recipe for that amazing muffin you just ate; giving you the secret of the deliciousness because she loves you and wants you to be able to whip up that deliciousness for yourself.

This is a woman who took her love of cooking and turned it into a business and a brand while raising a family and holding a marriage together.

Renny Darling is my heroine.

And she’s written a lot more cookbooks since I last checked in on her.
So I have some catching up to do. And meanwhile, I have the pleasure of browsing through the descriptions of her newest books.
Renny Darling offers free recipes on her site. Here's one.

Renny Darling is on Facebook! Friend her here.

Renny Darling is on Twitter! Follow her @RennyDarling.

Then go buy one of her books.

Any one of her books.

Your life will taste better for it.

Want Some Freebie Publicity?

2012-01-05T08:49:00.000-08:00

Over the holidays, I took advantage of a SuperEReads offer to create some free catalogue pages for two of my ebooks. Response to their offer was tremendous (who doesn't like free publicity?). Now, to thank everyone who took advantage of their offer, Karen Dionne and Christopher Graham, the site's founders, are offering the "early adopters" a deal--another free catalogue page for one of our own books or someone else's.

Would you like to have my catalogue page?

The pages look great and you can add as much info as you want, reviews, book trailers, dancing girls, whatever. Ordinarily, there's a charge for this, but I have a freebie I will give away to the next person who joins this site. Just join and comment here and I will give you the secret password. (Don't dilly-dally, though--the offer expires on January 15th.)

Salt of the Earth

2012-01-05T08:25:00.000-08:00

Okay foodies--you think you're stylin' because your salt shaker contains Hawaiian pink salt? Check out this place. Wholesale gourmet salt that goes way beyond pink, gray and black. (And by black, we mean shiny, coal black lava salt.) And on top of that, this place offers blends that will make you forget you ever heard of lemon pepper salt: wild porcine salt; ghost pepper salt; espresso salt; or our favorite, vintage Merlot salt (pictured).

The TBR pile--to read or not to read?

2012-01-04T12:29:00.000-08:00

I tidied up my office today--always an excellent procrastination technique because you're actually accomplishing something while avoiding some other task--and was forced to confront the reality of my To Be Read pile. Well, my TBR bookcase to be more precise.
I can't keep up.
That's right, it's a case of "too many books, too little time."
It's not that I read slowly; I'm actually a natural-born speed reader, which comes in handy as I make my living reading.
It's not that I lack the will--reading is my absolute favorite leisure time activity.
"Leisure time." A concept I'm familiar with in theory but not so much in reality.
I am in AWE of my GoodReads friends, particularly Kat Laurange, who juggles motherhood, a career, a marriage, charity work and what seems to be a reading rate of several books a day. Every time I look, I'm getting an update on her reading list. I am convinced she never sleeps. (That was probably literally true when her son was just born.)
How do you guys do it? I know I'm not busier than you are...
And you're writing more than I am too. So basically, I envy you your productivity and your ability to keep up with everything. (I'd hate you but I like you too much.)
I consolidated my pile of recent acquisitions and it's taller than I am. (This is true, which tells you how much I REALLY don't want to do the thing I'm putting off.) So clearly, some decisions need to be made. Am I really going to catch up on that series of fat historical fantasies that now numbers three when I haven't read any of them?
Really?
No. I'm not. At least not now or in the near future.
It kills me to admit it. It pains me to say it.
Some of those books have got to go.
They'll go to good homes. But I will always regret having to give them up for adoption.

Judging a Book By Its Cover...

2012-01-03T11:52:00.000-08:00

I am surrounded by talented people who create wonderful book covers and one of my favorites, Joy Sillesen, is offering New Year's discounts for indie authors who need covers (and overall book design too). This is her latest creation, the cover for the debut fiction collection of writer Berkeley Hunt, whose work was first published by Dark Valentine.
If you'd like to talk to Joy about doing a cover for you, contact her here at indie author services.

Long story short

2012-01-02T19:36:00.000-08:00

If you haven't already, you must head over to Brian Lindenmuth's short story challenge. I guarantee you'll find something new to read.
One of the things I'm finding as I search out stories for my own posts is how many writers wrote short stories I new knew about. Virginia Woolf, for example. I knew her as an essayist but not a writer of short fiction. Ditto Mary Shelley. (To be honest, almost the only thing I know about Mary Shelley is that she wrote Frankenstein.)Then there was L. Frank Baum who, in addition to all those Oz novels, wrote short stories and more than 200 poems. Tennessee Williams wrote short stories too. Who knew?

Sparkling Cider Wishes, Down-to-earth dreams

2012-01-01T22:48:00.000-08:00

Photo by PerfumeLa.com

One of my clients gave me a basket of extremely high-end bath products for Christmas, and I broke them out New Year's Eve. They smell fabulous...a sensual "oriental" fragrance that reminds me of some of my favorite perfumes, including Halston Night, which they no longer make. (You can buy used bottles of it on eBay if you want to spend $100 plus.) I used to wear perfume a lot, but now I work at home and it seems kind of silly to fragrance myself up when I'm wearing bike shorts and oversized t-shirts belonging to any number of my friends and family. (I hate shopping for clothes.)
The shampoo lathered up creamy but not bubbly, like the generic brand of shampoo I usually use. And as mentioned, it smelled terrific. As I soaped up with a washcloth I bought at the 99 Cent store (three for 99 cents), I couldn't help but laugh.
The conditioner smelled good too, but left my hair incredibly tangled, so it took me about an hour just to comb it out. That made me cranky, because the conditioner I buy in quart-sized bottles makes my hair soft and extremely comb-able.
What amazed me was that when my hair was blown dry, it looked like spun silk. I'm not kidding. I didn't have hair that beautiful when I was a baby.
So the rich are different from you and me--they have nicer hair products.
I'm not a vain person, usually, but I found myself staring at my hair throughout the day. (I know what you're thinking--good God woman, get a life.)
But here's my point...I can't imagine a level of personal income high enough to make me feel comfortable spending that much money on shampoo. I wash my hair every day--I'd be going through the bottles at a rate of two a month. And there's another problem. A lot of the stories I write are about class warfare--the kind of "us against them" mentality that seems to have infected American politics in the last decade. I'm not sure I could wash my hair in the morning and then come to the computer to write if I used shampoo like that every day.
It was a lovely gift and appreciated but I'll be happy when it's all used up because it's way too easy for luxuries to become necessities. And you know, I don't need shampoo that costs more than a meal for two at a decent restaurant.

Saturday Self-Promotion

2011-12-31T12:18:00.000-08:00

It's the last Saturday of the year, and the last day of 2011 and there's a lot going on.
First, the new story for NoHo Noir is up, a day early. Check it out here. Mark Satchwill and I have big plans for the series, so we hope you'll check it out if you haven't already.
And for those of you who are following our saga, we're still waiting to hear from AOL's lawyers about the disposition of NoHo Noir volume I. It'll be a year in April since we first started inquiring about reprint rights.
Thanks to Joy Sillesen, a properly formatted Twelve Nights of Christmas is now up at Amazon. The cover is by Joanne Renaud, so getting this collection on line was a real Dark Valentine effort.

And speaking of covers...a new company called FoldOut Creative offered a Craig's List contest to design a free book cover as part of their opening marketing splash. I won. (You know my love for the Craig's List.) Here's what they came up for as a cover for The Poisoned Teat (a collection of short fiction coming this spring).
The company officially launches next month, but I couldn't wait to show off the cover. I'l let you know when they're up and running because if you're looking for a great cover, they can deliver.
The Poisoned Teat is one of two fiction collections I hope to publish next year; the other is Twelve More Nights of Christmas. (Once I started coming up with twisted variants on the "twelve days" of the Christmas song, I couldn't stop at just one!
I might squeeze in another compilation of "Tales of the Misbegotten," (aka L.A. Nocturne II), but honestly, I have people in my life who will start to mock me if I do not buckle down and actually finish Misbegotten this year. ("Think of a chapter as a short story," they tell me. I'm going to try that approach.)
I have stories in three 2012 anthologies so far, and stories under consideration at several more places. And I'll continue to submit to the contests and the online fiction sites. I have a list of places I'd like to crack. And in the meantime, I will continue to read and learn from all the short-story practioners out there. I'm participating in the 365 story challenge and while I'll be revisiting some of my very favorite stories and favorite authors, mostly I hope to discover new (to me) writers over the course of a year. (Otherwise it would be too easy to simply reread Harlan Ellison and Tanith Lee and Shirley Jackson and Stephen King and Katherine Anne Porter and Saki.)
I've got big plans for 2012 and I know you do too. I look forward to reading your work. I hope you enjoy mine.
Happy New Year.

Feminist Fiction Friday: Tanith Lee

2011-12-30T13:15:00.000-08:00

Tanith Lee. Isn't that the best writer's name ever? When Joanne Renaud, Joy Sillesen and I created Dark Valentine Magazine, Tanith Lee was our muse. We were all big fans of the writer, whose "dark fiction" we all admired. The cover of our first issue was a painting of the sky goddess Tanit, and one of our fondest hopes was that we might entice Tanith to send us a story. Sigh. Some dreams die hard.
The very first thing I ever read by Tanith Lee was Kill the Dead, a novella that was packaged with another story (Sabella, or the Blood Stone) in an omnibus edition titled Sometimes After Sunset. I liked Sabella but I loved Kill the Dead.
I loved the way Tanith wrote, her love of language was extravagant and she piled up words like a painter piles up pigments and the result was always gorgeous.
By the time I read Kill the Dead, Tanith had already written dozens and dozens of short stories and novels, so as I began making my way through her oeuvre, it seemed like I was always a couple of books behind.
Lee's slowed down a bit of late--I've heard she hasn't been well--but her output still dwarfs most writers. She published her first book, The Dragon Hoard in 1971, when she was 24. Four years later, she published Birthgrave, which is considered her first "adult" book and is the first in a trilogy that concludes with Quest for the White Witch.
She writes series (I'm fond of the books in the Flat-Earth Series) and she writes stand-alones. She writes historical fiction and gothic romance and reimagined fairy tales. (She also reimagines Shakespeare.) Her Silver Metal Lover is a tale of forbidden love that makes Twilight seem like a Jane and Dick reader. She was writing vampires and werewolves long before it was trendy and she plundered Babylonian myth when everyone else was still regurgitating Tolkien.
Her characters are fierce and full-blooded, the women as well as the men. Her fantasy creations have a reality about them that is both otherworldly and ordinary. (Ordinary in the sense that we feel the "rightness" of the characters, even if they aren't the characters next door.)

She has a number of collections of short stories, including one called Women as Demons, which I haven't read. Nor have I read her novel The Blood of Roses (1990), which is one of the hardest to obtain stories out there next to Shiny Metal Grin. Amazon.com has seven used copies of the book available for $47. One of these days I might splash out and buy one. (It's marketed as an epic erotic fantasy of blood and love and vanpires. And how could anyone resist that gorgeous cover?)
If you aren't familiar with Tanith's work or you want to make sure you've read everything there is, check out "Daughter of the Night," an annotated bibliography put together by Jim Pattinson and Paul A. Soanes and continued by Allison Rich. (The most recent update was December 18.)
Here's a link to an old (1994) interview with Tanith.
I'm participating in Brian Lindenmuth's 365 Story Challenge in 2012, so I'll be revisiting some of my favorite Tanith Lee short stories. If you haven't read her, you have a treat in store.

Schedule for Six Questions

2011-12-28T10:18:00.000-08:00

Jim Harrington's Six Questions for...is always a great source for info on markets. Check out who's on tap for January:

Below is the schedule of posts for January at http://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/.

1/02—Six Questions for Mandy Ward, Editor, Welcome to Wherever
1/05—Six Questions for Nicolette Wong, Editor, A-Minor Magazine
1/09—Six Questions for Chris Rhatigan, Editor, All Due Respect
1/12—Six Questions for John Kenyon, Editor, Grift Magazine
1/16—Six Questions for Alec Cizak, Pulp Modern
1/19—Six Questions for Editor, H.O.D. (A Handful of Dust)
1/23—Six Questions for Josh and Jane, Editors, TheNewerYork!
1/26—Six Questions for Krishan Coupland, Editor, Neon Literary Magazine
1/30—Six Questions for Bradley Wonder, Editor-in-Chief, 5X5

If you stop by, leave a comment for the editor/publisher. If you’re an editor or publisher and would like to participate, or know of a publisher who might be interested, please contact me at sixquestionsfor@gmail.com. Finally, please share this information with your subscribers, authors, Facebook and Twitter followers, and writing friends.

Jim Harrington
http://sixquestionsfor.blogspot.com/
http://jpharrington.blogspot.com/

Consider it a Christmas Present for Writers

2011-12-25T14:49:00.000-08:00

Joy Sillesen sent me the link to SuperEReads, a new site that promotes ebooks of all sorts. Authors who sign up get a page per book, and authors can add reviews, videos (book trailers) and what not to the page. The pages look great. Here's the link to my Toxic Reality page and to my L.A. Nocturne page. Right now the service is free in return for spreading the word. Check it out and follow them @SuperEReads. I've seen Allan Guthrie, Kaye George, Christine Pope and half a dozen other colleagues there, so all the cool kids are participating.

Merry Christmas

2011-12-25T13:13:00.000-08:00

The run-up to Christmas this year was fairly exhausting with the three-week catering gig and the deadlines, and so now that it's actually here, I'm enjoying it even more.
Yesterday I sacked out in front of the television, mainlining the Food Network and eating quesadillas.That's festive for me.
Today will be even more relaxing. I wrote the new installment of NoHo Noir (read it here) and then went online to spend the amazon gift card I got late last night. (Thank you Cormac!!)
Later I will make Christmas dinner, and sit down to watch a double feature of Cowboys and Aliens and Fright Night. I'm a traditionalist, as you can tell.
Thank you for being a part of what was a fantastic 2011. I look forward to whatever 2012 brings.
Joys of the season, whichever season you celebrate, and a very Happy New Year.
And let me know if you're participating in the 365 Story Challenge!

Feminist Fiction Friday--Beverly Cleary

2011-12-16T09:55:00.000-08:00

Beverly Cleary is a living legend. (She actually has that title, having been named a "Living Legend" by the Library of Congress in 2000). She's a multi-award-winning writer whose fame is international. She is a promoter of the D.E.A.R. (Drop Everything and Rea) program. And she is also the first author that I remember being a fan of. She has written more than 30 books, and I have read every one (yes, even the latest ones).
One of the reasons I write these Friday posts is to celebrate women writers who write about women. Today the post is about Beverly Cleary, who has been writing YA since before it was cool (and before vampires and aranormal romances hijacked the genre). Her books are funny and warm and smart and while she created indelible male characters like Henry Huggins, she also created Beatrice (Beezus) Quimby and her sister Ramona. (The first book about the sisters, Beezus and Ramona, was published in 1955 and it's still in print, along with many sequels. A movie adaptation of the first book, inexplicably called Ramona and Beezus, came out in 2010.
What I loved about the characters in Cleary's books is that they seemed real in a way that was comforting. Ramona and Beezus and Henry and his dog Ribsy, Otis Spofford and Ellen Tebbits weren't perfect characters but the mischief was harmless and not mean. that's not to say she ignores serious subjects (as in Dear Mr. Henshaw and Strider), but there's always hope.
Reading the books was kind of like watching The Andy Griffith Show. People had problems but they were problems that felt "safe." (At a certain point, that changed in YA, which got grittier and more realistic and a whole lot less FUN.) Cleary's covers changed wtih the times, but the writing endured.
I graduated from Cleary's books to the Nancy Drew boks and from then, never looked back. It never occurred to me that fictional girls weren't as feisty and entertaining as fictional boys. and I owe it to the former librarian. She published her first book in 1950...just in time for baby-boomers. Her most recent book, Ramona's World, was published in 1999, in time to be discovered by the millennial generation.
She's kept up with the times, too, unlike so many writers who end up being mired in the past. Check out her friendly website, which has excerpts from the books, character lists, and a fun and games section in addition to the usual book lists and "about" sections. There's a great video interview with her on the author page.
Cleary was born in 1912, which means she will turn 100 on April 12. I'd love to throw her a party!!
.

Adventures in Catering.

2011-12-13T19:35:00.000-08:00

Ethnic differences?
Religious tension?
Nothing will test your tolerance of alternative lifestyles like catering for a film crew of 30 that includes one militant vegan, one lactose-intolerant eater who thinks that "it" is absorbed through the skin, two self-described vegetarians who also eat turkey but only if it's organic, five coffee drinkers who refuse to use artificial sweeteners like Equal but have no problem pouring three containers of creamy chemicals into every cup they drink.
And then there are the ominivores who just want people to fuss over them.
"Are these egg noodles?"
"No."
"Are there milk solids in this soup?"
"It's homemade tomato rice soup."
"So there's no milk in it?"
"No milk in it."
"Can we have bleu cheese dressing?"
"No."
"I don't like vanilla soy milk, can we have chocolate?"
"Not on this budget."
"How about rice milk?"
"Ditto."
A week into the shoot, the crew was beginning to turn on the vegan because in addition to the entrees for the carnivores and the vegetarians, we had to provide an entree just for her. She was fired Sunday night and I'm convinced it was because the crew couldn't take one more day of steamed veggies with tofu and fried rice without the little pieces of egg. And now there's a slot on the menu for another entree for the majority.
Of course we want to accommodate people's food preferences, but it was getting silly.
"Can we get some Blue Mountain coffee?"
"No."
"Could we have sushi one day?"
"No."
Both my partner and I understand picky eating. He is allergic to mushrooms, allergic to fish, hates eggplant and lima beans and loathes coconut. I'm with him on the eggplant, although I make a decent baba ghanouj, and while he slathers his sandwiches with mayonnaise, I gag at the smell of it. But when you're working a low-budget film, there's not a lot of financial wiggle room to please everyone. If you're allergic to everything under the sun then, with respect, consider packing a lunch.
To be fair, most of the crew members are really appreciative and complimentary. (The bread pudding we served for dessert today was a huge hit and everybody liked the chicken pot pies.) We offer doggie bags for people who want to take leftovers home. And the only time we ever ran out of scrambled eggs at breakfast was the morning one of the crew members took (I'm not kidding) a quadruple portion and then came back for seconds.
The fact is, I'm having a good time, because I love cooking for people, but it gives me real insight into what it must be like dealing with A-list actors and their diets.

Feminist Fiction Friday: The Romance Novelist Edition

2011-12-09T06:19:00.000-08:00

One summer, when I was visiting my Great-Aunt Jinsey (is that not the greatest name ever?) I discovered her stash of Harlequin romance novels. She belonged to a the publisher's book club and they sent her, I think, 12 books a month. She devoured them like chocolates. Aunt Jinsey had had a very hard life. My Uncle Bill had been a hard-rock miner in Appalachia and things haven't really changed much in mining since the 19th century. It's still men hacking coal out of the living earth, back-breaking labor that leaves you old before your time. My Uncle died of black lung (or "the black lung," which is how everyone always refers to it). Black lung is the common name for a nasty disease known medically as "Coal workers pneumoconiosis." It's not a pretty way to die.
Aunt Jinsey was not one to complain--her generation didn't--but that summer she sat in her rocking chair and rubbed her arthritic hands together and told me, "Honey, I'm just plumb wore out." She was living in sunny Pleasanton, California by then, where she never had to face another harsh winter ever again. And she had time to read. And what she wanted to read were ... romance novels.
I was already reading crime fiction by then--devouring Ellery Queen and Nero Wolfe and Agatha Christie's Miss Marple mysteries (although, I have to be honest, I didn't really love her). I wasn't really interested in romance novels.
Then one afternoon as my great-aunt napped, I picked up one of the books with their distinctive white covers and read it. It was all right--an easy, undemanding read. I picked up another and read it too. It was okay.
And then I picked up a book by a writer named Sara Craven. I read the book in something like two hours. And I LOVED it. I went through the shelves picking out all the other books by Sara Craven (there were quite a few). I read them too and loved them.
What was different about Sara Craven's books was that she had interesting and exotic backdrops for her stories and the characters seemed more real and less ... wimpy...than the usual romance heroines. I probably read 40 or 50 romance novels during my visit (seriously, they're short with big margins) and the only writer's name I remember is Sara Craven.
Romance novels have changed a lot since Sara Craven (real name Anne Ashurst) began writing them back in 1975. I spent a year reviewing books for Rachel Smith's wonderful bittenbybooks site, and I was shocked (SHOCKED!!) at how clinical a lot of romance novels had gotten.
And I am not easily shocked. And the thing that's weird is that I have a number of romance writers and romance readers among my friends and not a one will cop to enjoying the more ... anatomical books. And I wonder, who's reading them?
But I digress.
Sara Craven began publishing her novels when she was 37. She has written dozens of different series, both her own and those with multi-authors. She has written more than 61 stand-alones (the latest, Wife in the Shadows, was published this year). She has two new books coming out in January and February.
Her books always have Happy Endings and here's an interview where she explains why.
If you read only one romance novel, read one by Sara Craven.

Holiday Gift Guide Guide

2011-12-08T18:59:00.000-08:00

It used to be that the Neiman-Marcus Christmas Catalogue was the ultimate listing of fantasy presents for the holidays. Now though, every specialized blog out there has its own gift list and there's nothing more entertaining than browsing them in search of the perfect gift for all the characters in your life. Here are some gift guides we really like:
FEARnet: Skull cupcake molds for your favorite Goth foodies; zombie bon bons stuffed with cherry filling; shark oven mitts; snake skin packing tape; a crime scene muffler; Vampire condoms. There's something here for everyone, especially Dexter and True Blood fans.
Ain't It Cool News has one of the most extensive gift guides out there, arranged by category and price. Need recommendations for DVDs and books, AICN's writer Quint has them for you. He'll also hook you up with Portal-themed cookie cutters; a Gran Torino lunch box and light-saber shaped chopsticks.
Think Geek has their "Holiday Station" section on their site offering items like an electronic butterfly in a jar; a Han Solo in Carbonite ice cube tray (our favorite, $9.99); and unicorn chopsticks.

Coolmompicks has holiday gifts for kids ranging from some aleph be blocks to a "paint your own yoyo set."
Tree Hugger has its "Green Gift Guide 2011" divided into sections (DIY, Foodie, Kid, Fashion Buff, Geek,etc.). Suggestions include reclaimed cheeseboards and hand-cranked espresso machines to sushi cat toys and jewelry made out of Viet Nam war scrap metal. You can even buy a wine rack made from recycled railroad track.
Huffington Post has a guide to gifts specially tailored to people obsessed with Chicago. This one is also organized by categories both ordinary (kids, crafts, etc) and unusual (piercing and tattoos) and features items from a wide range of local stores.
Good Morning America has a gift guide for dogs, which is getting a little silly for our tastes, but since it's in a dog's nature to be nothing but good, maybe they deserve a little something for the holidays.
And finally, what holiday would be complete without taking a look at Oprah Winfrey's gift guide from O Magazine? There are chocolate polar bears (not cheap at $12 each); Cupcake Bath Bombs; Dogeared Karma Mantra silver necklaces (complete with discount code); and Jo Malone's Orange Blossom Body Creme ($75).

Preview of Twelve Nights of Christmas

2011-12-08T12:06:00.000-08:00

My new collection of stories--Twelve Nights of Christmas--will be available next week. I'm still tweaking the last two stories. Five stories in the collection have been posted before, but I wrote seven new ones to round out the collection.
Here's a sample:

NINE LADIES DANCING

There were four little cubicles crammed into the basement of Jake Mirzoyan’s club, each with a mirror, a tiny shelf for makeup, a couple of hooks for costumes, and two chairs. On Saturday nights, when all the girls were working, things got a little crowded in the basement. There was only one bathroom down there—the girls weren’t allowed to use the one upstairs, the one the customers used—so if someone ate a bad taco for lunch, everybody knew it.

They all knew about a lot of things—about Reva’s abortion, about Lanelle’s problem with her ex, about Kim’s relapse with the vikes. You get eight women in close quarters and they’re going to be all up in each other’s business. It was kind of like a family that way, a big dysfunctional family with an abusive daddy. The girls knew all about abusive daddies.

Jake was greedy but he wasn’t ambitious and he was bone lazy. He made a lot of money from the club—almost all of it cash, almost all of it untraceable. Girls came and went at the club but there were never more than eight dancers at one time. Eight was enough. Eight was a number he could handle.

And then Suki showed up. Suki with her pale, pale skin and her dark, dark eyes. Suki with the red hair right out of a shampoo commercial. Her real name was probably Susan or something but as far as Jake was concerned, she could call herself Angelina Jolie if she wanted to. She was tall—taller than him—and big-breasted, just the way his customers liked them. And they weren’t fake tits like Jude’s or Kitta’s either.

Even though Jake had a rule about not mixing business with pleasure, he would have chopped off his own dick to dip into Suki’s honey-pot. He wasn’t the only one. Brianna, who’d been dancing at the club since she was an underage runaway, took one look at Suki and fell in love.

Suki was too good for Jake’s little place, but didn’t seem to know it. The girls all knew it, though. They knew Suki could have been working the gentlemen’s clubs in L.A., somewhere she could maybe find a sugar daddy to take care of her. A lot of celebrities go to those clubs for kicks. A lot of money gets thrown around. The girls wondered why Suki would come to a rat-hole like Jake’s club when she had other options. None of the girls who worked for Jake had options. At least, not any more.

Jake let it be known that he would be firing one of the girls to make room for Suki but he didn’t tell them which one and suggested if anyone wanted to discuss the matter privately with him, then he’d be available in his office any time. Jude was the first to climb the stairs to Jake’s office. She had a little one at home that her mother took care of. She supported both of them. She needed the job.

Cheree went next. She’d been on the verge of being bounced for months and the struggle to stay under 120 in the weekly weigh-ins was stressing her out. She smoked two packs of cigarettes a day and her husband was starting to complain she smelled like an ashtray. Of course, he smelled like an unemployed loser, but she never mentioned that.

Kim’s reaction was “fuck it, fuck him,” which was pretty much her reaction to everything since going back to the vicodin. Reva kind of hoped Jake would fire her so she could move on with her life.

Dee didn’t make the climb because she had job security. She knew one thing the other girls didn’t—the number of Jake’s wife’s cell phone. She let the other girls think she was just as freaked out about impending unemployment as they were but inside, she knew there was no way Jake would ever fire her. The consequences were just too dire.

Kitta indulged in magical thinking. Lanelle went into denial. Brianna stood at the back of the club and watched Suki dance, not thinking about all about herself.

And eventually, Jake made up his mind and told Jude that she could work out the weekend but then she’d have to pack up her pasties and g-string and hit the road. He gave her a hundred bucks severance pay and told her he’d be happy to give her a reference if she wanted to try dancing at another club. He suggested she might want to do a little hooking on the side. He told her he’d vouch for her blow-jobs too. She gave a quality hummer.

Jude was stunned almost to the point of being catatonic. The other girls didn’t know what to say to her. They knew about the little one at home. They knew about her mother. And even though they kept their voices down and stopped talking whenever Suki stopped nearby, she got the picture pretty quick.

If it hadn’t been for her, Jude would still have a job.

What happened next surprised everyone. Instead of ignoring the hostile looks and the whispered accusations, Suki took charge. When Jake went out to lunch, she gathered everyone together in the stanky basement of the club and gave them an option.

See, Jake’s wife thought the money that paid for their nice little split-level house and the late-model cars and the vacations in Aruba came from a used car lot Jake owned and kept to launder money through. Mrs. Jake didn’t know about the club at all.

And Suki, who had taken some accounting courses at community college could see what a money-maker the club was even though she’d just been working there a couple of weeks. She suggested a change of ownership and let the other girls do the math.

When Jake came back from lunch, he was very surprised to find his nine dancers waiting for him in his office, naked as the day they were born. It never occurred to him they were all nude because that way trace evidence wouldn’t show up on their clothes and they wouldn’t transfer anything to the surfaces in his office.

The club opened with new management that same night and customers never knew anything had changed. Occasionally someone would ask about Jake and Suki, who now managed the place, would say that he’d moved on to other opportunities. After a month, when no one came looking for Jake, Suki had all his tacky office furniture hauled away and repainted.

The girls were all equal partners now and Jude could bring her baby in to work with her because Suki baby-proofed the office when she had it redecorated. Cheree gave her bozo of a husband the boot and didn’t even flinch when he called her a whore. Reva taught herself Dreamweaver and put up a website for the club. Kim got clean with the help of Lanelle and Kitta. Briana continued to moon over Suki, who was kind to her. Dee, meanwhile, just couldn’t resist making a phone call to Mrs. Jake and discovered that on the day the club changed hands, she’d taken off to Aruba with her pool boy and a chunk of Jake’s money and wouldn’t be coming back.

When Suki heard that she smiled. It made her feel like dancing.

Kristine's Grandmother's Hungarian Cookie Recipe

2011-12-04T09:44:00.000-08:00

Over at the Food Network it's "12 Days of Cookie" time again and they're already four cookies in with Paula's Loaded Oatmeal Cookies and Alton's Ginger Snaps. I'm not nearly that ambitious. Over the years I've focused my holiday baking to one or two crowd-pleasing desserts and that's it. (Pillsbury Peanut Blossoms and Oatmeal Cookies, in case you're interested.) Every once in awhile, though, I come across a cookie that just begs to be added to the repertoire.
Kristine's Grandmother's Hungarian Cookies have just made the cut.
These unbelievably rich cookies are called Kifli (Key-flea) and bear a passing resemblance to rugelach with their cream cheese pastry base. If you're looking for something different to contribute to a holiday cookie exchange, try these. Be sure to bake enough to enjoy yourself.

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

3 cups flour
1/2 pound butter (unsalted)
1/2 pound cream cheese
1 jar Lekvar (Hungarian) Prune Butter
Powdered sugar

If you can't find the prune butter, substitute apricot or raspberry preserves.

Mix flour, margarine and cream cheese thoroughly. Pinch off dough and mold into 50 little balls about the diameter of a 50-cent piece. Refrigerate overnight.

Roll balls out on powered sugared board. Put a small dollop of Lekvar or preserves on each. Fold each over to make a crescent and pinch closed. Bake at 350 degrees for 20-25 minutes.

Kristine's grandmother uses margarine instead of butter but I go for the full monty,

Enjoy.

Feminist Fiction Friday--Shirley Jackson

2011-12-02T17:42:00.000-08:00

The story I've always heard is that Shirley Jackson wrote "The Lottery" because her refrigerator had broken down and she needed money to fix it. I loved that idea, not just because the anecdote epitomizes a professionalism I very much admire--there is no writer's block in freelancing--but also because I love the idea that she was paid more than a pittance for her work.
"The Lottery" is probably my favorite short story EVER. I first read it for a middle school English class along with Jack London's "To Build a Fire," and W.W. Jacobs' "The Monkey's Paw" and Saki's "The Open Window." The story led me to other writers of short fiction, particularly Harlan Ellison, whose "I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream" is my second favorite short story.
I'm pretty sure after reading Jackson's biography on Wikkipedia that the story about the refrigerator is just that, a story. Jackson was vehement about not explaining her work or her process or herself. She famously refused to be interviewed. There are photographs of her, though, and those pictures send a chill through me.
Shirley Jackson and my mother could have been twin sisters. That picture in the upper left? Substitute cats eye glasses and you have my mother. Same eyes, same arched brows, same full lower lip. The hairdo is the same one my mother wore most of her life, a faux tortoise shell comb holding her hair away from her pale brow.
Like Shirley Jackson, my mother was a heavy smoker but she managed to eke out an extra decade on the writer, who died at 48, of a heart attack in her sleep.
I wish Jackson hadn't left the party so early. I loved her novel The Haunting of Hill House so much that I can quote whole chunks of it. The book is one of the best haunted house novels ever written (much stronger than James' Turn of the Screw), and Jackson's portrait of Eleanor, a woman slipping into madness, is profound. Julie Harris played Eleanor in the 1963 movie adaptation (called The Haunting, and not to be confused with the dreadful remake of 1999), and her delicate portrait of a woman whose life has passed her by is haunting indeed. (If you've seen the movie, all I need to say is ... that scene with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom and the door! If you haven't seen the movie, you're in for a treat and if you haven't read the book, go get it now.) You can buy Jackson's novels and collected stories here.

Nine Ladies Dancing

2011-11-30T01:48:00.000-08:00

Cover design by Joanne Renaud

I will be releasing a new collection of stories in the next few weeks, a group of Christmas stories loosely based on "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Joanne Renaud has created the cover for the collection, and I am very pleased with it. You may know Joanne as a writer; or an illustrator; but she is also now designing book covers. Check out her graphic design work here.

Here's a sample story...Nine Ladies Dancing, which originally ran as part of the Dark Valentine "Twelve Days of Christmas" fiction fest last year.

Nine Ladies Dancing

Kitta indulged in magical thinking. Lanelle went into denial. Brianna stood at the back of the club and watched Suki dance, not thinking about all about herself.

If it hadn’t been for her, Jude would still have a job.

When Suki heard that she smiled. It made her feel like dancing.

Chocolate Cheesecake Recipe

2011-11-29T21:47:00.000-08:00

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Kat, seriously, what's with the chocolate? Do you want to turn us all into diabetics? Do you have an evil plan to fatten us up like Hansel and Gretl?

No. I love you too much for that.

What's going on is that I'm not going to do a lot of Christmas baking this year but I will be making this unbelievably rich and satisfying cheesecake. I'd send you all a slice if I could but since I can't, the next best thing is to give you the recipe so you can make it yourself.

Henry Thoreau once said, “Beware of all enterprises that require new clothes.” Generally, I feel the same way about recipes that require special equipment or fancy pans. In the case of this recipe, though, I will make an exception. You absolutely must have a springform pan or you’ll end up with a really delicious dessert you have to scrape out of the pan because it’s sticking to the sides and no amount of Pam is going to unstuck it.

If you don’t have a springform pan, it’s worth buying one just to make this cheesecake. (Sometimes you’ll see mini-springform pans and they’re great because you make several little cheesecakes and give one of them away.)

Simple and Delicious Chocolate Cheesecake Recipe

This is my go-to recipe when I’m asked to bring a dessert to a holiday party. It is really simple to make and quick as well.

The Cookie Crust

Preheat oven to 350.

1 stick of butter, unsalted

1 ½ cups chocolate cookie crumbs

Note: You don’t want to use those crisp little chocolate wafers for the crust. Get a package of soft, fudgy cookies. In fact, you’ll find that the cheaper the cookie, the better. You can use soft-baked, store-bought chocolate chip cookies for the crumbs too.

Melt the butter and combine with the chocolate cookie crumbs.

Press into the bottom of an ungreased 9-inch springform pan.

Bake for five minutes. Set the crust aside to cool but do not turn the oven off.

Chocolate Cheesecake

2 8-oz. packages cream cheese (at room temperature)

1 12-oz. package semisweet chocolate chips

4 large eggs

1 cup heavy cream (whipping cream)

½ cup granulated sugar

2 tsp. vanilla extract

Heat the cream in a small saucepan until just to the boiling point. (Don’t let it scorch.)

Pour in the chocolate chips and stir until the chocolate is melted.

Note: You can use a blender for this—putting the chocolate chips in the blender and then pouring in the hot cream and hitting “blend.” Be careful not to splash the hot cream.

Beat the softened cream cheese (use Neufchatel if you like) and add the eggs, sugar and vanilla. Stir until the mixture is completely blended, then add the hot chocolate cream and mix together.

Pour the cheesecake mixture into the prepared springform pan and bake for 45-55 minutes or until the center is completely baked. (It may crack in cooking.)

Cool the cheesecake in the pan. Refrigerate overnight.

Note: I once served this at a dinner party when I didn't have time to refrigerate it overnight. I spooned the soft filling into little bowls and called it pudding. No one complained...

Holiday Food Blog Appreciation

2011-11-29T15:27:00.000-08:00

Photo by Vivan of Vivian's Blog-o-rama

Cupcakes shaped like sushi. And like burritos. And like pop culture icons like Firefly (with the Serenity on star-glittered chocolate frosting for her husband Keith). Vivian of Vivian's Blogorama creates amazingly inventive and imaginative cupcakes for every possible occasion (beer cupcakes; Canadian cupcakes for her friend). The photos are tasty enough, but she also offers hints on how to replicate her creations yourself (jelly beans for the fish eggs, for instance.) Here's the post for the sushi cupcakes.
She does not post very often (only 1 post this year with her Firefly cupcakes) but there are plenty of archive posts and photos to keep you amused.

Christmas Noir--Wish List

2011-11-26T09:56:00.000-08:00

A slightly different version of this story ran last year as part of the Do Some Damage Christmas Noir Challenge. I pulled it out to get myself into the Christmas as I finish up Twelve Nights of Christmas.

Wish List

Eddie always gets better stuff than I do because our parents love him best. Last year I really, really, really wanted a Bakugan Brawlers Battle Pack and instead I got a Crayola wonder color light brush with a card saying I should explore my inner artist with it. I guess it was a step up from all the “My Little Pony” crap I’d been getting for the last four years.

Hello, I’m 11, not five.

Eddie always makes lists of what he wants and then types it up on the computer with links to where mom and dad can get the stuff he wants. They think it’s cute. He’s nine and they think he’s a genius because he can navigate Google.

Photo by Canna W.

Please. I hacked into mom’s eBay account when I was nine and messed up all her auctions.

She lost out on a vintage 60s dress she really, really, really wanted even though it was a size six and the only size six she wears are her shoes.

Eddie even gets better stuff from grandma than I do because he sucks up to her when she comes over and I don’t. He doesn’t wrinkle his nose when she kisses him and he pretends that he doesn’t mind her old lady smell.

Excuse me, but if I smelled like pee and dead roses, I wouldn’t go around kissing people.

Mom says I’m an ungrateful brat and don’t deserve presents at all if I’m going to complain about what I get. Dad, whose idea of a really great present is a book, doesn’t say anything. But he doesn’t really like kissing grandma either.

Mom picks out books for us to give him; he gives us new copies of books he read and loved as a kid which was like a million years ago. They always have little messages in them.

Robert Francis Weatherbee, the Boy Who Would Not Go to School. Guess what that one’s about.

Eddie’s been making his Christmas list since Halloween, adding to it and subtracting from it. This year he’s drawing pictures of the things he wants, just in case Mom and Dad haven’t seen the ads on television.

A lot of the things he’s asking for sound like totally good things, things that will help him do better in school. Mom and Dad love that. Remember, they think he’s a genius. They don’t know that he used the chemistry set they got him last year to poison the neighbor’s dog.

No, their little genius wouldn’t do something like that.

They don’t know that the Lincoln Logs Red River Express Building Set they paid $60 for got turned into a log prison for a kitten he found. It was too little and weak to break out, so it starved to death. And then he buried it in our mom’s garden.

I told mom about the kitten but she didn’t believe me, not even when I showed her the tiny grave in her garden. When she finally dug it up and found the dead kitten, she blamed me. She called me a jealous little trouble maker and a liar and she slapped me. I heard her tell Dad that she thought I was sick and probably needed some help.

Eddie thought that was funny. Eddie thinks a lot of things are funny.

One of the things on Eddie’s Christmas list this year is a set of big cooking knives. Our parents think that’s adorable and probably figure he just wants to be like the Iron Chefs Mom watches on the food channel.

Seriously. They’re that clueless. They might just buy him that set of cooking knives.

But I have a plan. If I find the knives under the tree, I'll open up the package and take out the largest knife.

Eddie's always on his best behavior right before Christmas.

He's always super nicey-nice to me.

I can get close enough to give him a hug,

Feminist Fiction Friday--Octavia E. Butler

2011-11-25T10:26:00.000-08:00

Science Fiction writer Octavia E. Butler is not mentioned in the Wikipedia entry on women in speculative fiction but Samuel R. Delaney is and so is Robert Silverberg. She's not mentioned in an 1982 New York Times Book Review essay on women and science fiction. That's odd because by 1982, Butler had already published her time-travel novel Kindred and the two Earthseed books: Parable of the Sower and Parable of the Talents. When the Guardian commissioned a poll of readers' favorite science fiction novels, not one of Butler's works was mentioned, though L. Ron Hubbard made the list. (Butler wasn't the only female SF writer who didn't appear--neither did the multi-award-winning Connie Willis or Joan D. Vinge, though her ex-husbamdVernor Vinge made the list multiple times.) In all 500 readers responded and out of 500 books, only 18 were written by women. I thought women writers were invisible in the crime fiction world. Our sisters in Sci Fi have it even worse.
Reading Butler's books now, particularly the Earthseed books, is a bit of a shock because they seem so prophetic. They take place in a world dying of environmental pollution, a place where the underclass is educated just enough to provide employees to run the factories owned by the wealthy. Ordinary services, like electricity, are beyond the reach of most people and only the wealthy have refrigerators. The 1 %, one might say.
Class struggle is a major theme in Parable of the Sower, which was nominated for a Nebula Award for best novel but did not win. (The sequel, Parable of the Talents won the award in 1999.) In the Earthseed books (a third, Parable of the Trickster, was planned but never written), government has broken down and what order exists is a harsh and exclusive Christianity that does not accept any other world view. (Sound familiar?)
Race and sexuality are also constant themes. Butler's first novel, Kindred, a time-travel book she referred to as a "grim fantasy," is a stark portrait of life in bondage and unsentimental in the way its heroine, Dana, is treated. There are beatings and rape and a complex web of inter-dependence between Dana and Rufus, a white man whose existence is keyed to her own. The book was published in 1979.

Her final novel, Fledgling (2005) revolved around Shori, a dark-skinned woman belonging to a benovolent, vampire-like race and touched on race and family and prejudice.
Butler won numerous awards in her lifetime, including the 2000 Lifetime Achievement Award in writing from the PEN American Center. She was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2010.
A scholarship in her name was established to create opportunities for writers of color to attend the Clarion writing workshop. Established by the Carl Brandon Society, the fund has awarded scholarships yearly since 2007.
The Octavia E. Butler Scholarship Fund link is here.

A Thanksgiving Thought

2011-11-24T10:08:00.000-08:00

I hate the phrase "food insecurity." It's a weaselly way to avoid saying "hunger." If you say, "More Americans are food insecure than ever before," it sounds like you're talking about people who wonder if guests at a dinner party are going to like their recipe for chicken in wine sauce.
Ten thousand people lined up in Los Angeles this week for turkey dinners given away by E.L. Jackson of Jackson Limousine. Ten thousand people who would not have had a Thanksgiving dinner without his generosity. (He had help from donors this year, but for many years, Jackson footed the bill himself.)
I have never experienced food insecurity a day in my life and I am profoundly grateful for that. I hope I never forget how lucky that makes me when so many other people are going hungry today.
And if I ever need to rent a limousine, you can bet I'll get it from Jackson.

Benoit Lelievre's Smooth Criminals challenge

2011-11-23T12:05:00.000-08:00

Crime writer Benoit Lelievre is hosting a 2012 reading challenge on his blog, Dead End Follies. Dubbed "Smooth Criminals," the challenge is this--read 8 books (one in each category) and review them between January 1-December 31, 2012. The categories range from classic noir to Gothic and include categories like "prison novel" and "psychopath protagonist." I'll have to think about what to read but I have a few choices already:

Hardboiled Classic: Paul Cain's Fast One. Cain was famous for having a man with a gun come through a door whenever action flagged, and this was his only novel. I'm not sure how easy it will be to track it down, but definitely worth the effort.
Noir Classic: Dorothy Hughes' Ride the Pink Horse. I would say, In a Lonely Place, but I've seen the movie, so that feels like cheating.
Prison Book:I'll have to think about this category. One of the best prison memoirs I ever read was You Got Nothing Coming,
Book written by a writer who did time: If He Hollers Let Him Go--I am a big Chester Himes fan but somehow never read this.
Book with a Psychopath protagonist: Dexter Darkly Dreaming--I'm not a fan of the television series based on the Dexter novels, but I'm very curious.
Gothic Novel: Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray.One of the classics that somehow slipped through the net of my education.
Classic novel where plot revolves around crime: Some of the participants in the challenge have picked very interesting choices here. (Thomas Pluck has put down Crime and Punishment) I'd probably say Beau Geste, except I've already read it. I'll need to think about this one.
Why the Hell am I doing this to myself? No clue what this will be. But it means heading to a bookstore or browsing online and that can never be bad.

Wikipedia--they don't ask for much

2011-11-22T19:30:00.000-08:00

I used to call my local reference librarian so often, she knew me by name. I sent her candy at Christmas as a token of my appreciation. She was awesome. She's long retired but if she weren't, she wouldn't be hearing from me very often. (I once asked her to help me find out the termperature at which blood froze. "Why," she asked me after a long pause, "do you want to know?")
Now the first thing I do when I have a question about something is hit Wikipedia. Sometimes the articles posted there lead me to other articles. Sometimes I get lost in Wikipedia. It's time well spent.
So I sent them some money today. Money well spent. They're making it easy--linking to PayPal for one thing, offering an "other" option if their lowest suggested amount ($10) is too much.
(They even point out that if everyone sent in seven cents, it would be more than enough to fund them.) So, if you have a spare seven cents, or even seven dollars, why not send it to Wikipedia?

The Pizza Recipe of Your Dreams

2011-11-21T17:58:00.000-08:00

It's a cold day in L.A. so I am making pizza.
Why not just order in, you might say?
Because most order-in pizza is totally disgusting. IMHO.
The first time I tasted a piece of store-bought pizza, I couldn't believe how sweet the tomato sauce was or how doughy the crust was. (And I like thick crust.)

Photo by Alex Fiore

Eleanor Trigg's pizza spoiled me for life.
Eleanor was a friend of my mother's, a fellow Army wife who stayed in touch after their husbands' careers took them in different directions.
She shared a lot of recipes with my mother, not all of them awesome. (The lemon-current cake, as I recall, was not a keeper.) This recipe, though, is the best pizza I ever ate. People have proposed marriage to get this recipe.
I know it's Thanksgiving week and the last thing you probably want to do is spend more time in the kitchen, but trust me. It will be worth it.No need to thank me, it's my pleasure.
As I look over the recipe, by the way, I realize that I annotate recipes the same way my mother did. Like mother/like daughter, I guess.

Eleanor Trigg’s Pizza as interpreted by Mickey Tomlinson as handed down to me…

2 pkgs of bulk pork sausage (I use Jimmy Dean’s hot. You can also use turkey sausage)

1 yellow onion, diced

½ cup (or more) dried Parmesan cheese (in the green canister, not fresh)

Garlic to taste

Italian seasoning to taste

2 large cans tomato paste

Lick of olive oil

In a heavy skillet (I use cast iron) with a splash of olive oil, brown the sausage, breaking it up.

Add the onions and cook until translucent.

Add the garlic and seasonings

Add the parmesan cheese (I usually just shake this out of the canister and use a lot)

The cheese will start melting…

Add the two cans of tomato paste and mix everything together.

Set aside while you roll out your dough. (If I have time I make it from scratch but there are some pretty good frozen pizza doughs available.)

Use a paper towel to absorb any liquid fat that pools in the sauce.

Spread the sauce on the pizza dough and bake until pizza dough is golden. At that point if you want to mess up your pizza with pepperoni, peppers, mushrooms, pineapple or other extraneous ingredients, put them on the pie and then cover with mozzarella.

Put the pizza back in the oven for the cheese to melt.

When I make this for parties and people follow me into the kitchen to get pieces fresh from the oven. People have fought over the last piece. You will never feel the same way about Papa John's again.

NoHo Noir is Back!!!

2011-11-20T14:39:00.000-08:00

Yes, the long wait is over. NoHo Noir is now live with the first of the new stories, "Bum's Rush." Check it out and note Mark Satchwill's illustration, done Manga style.
Pictured at left is Christopher Robin Nolan (Rob), a 17-year-old student at North Hollywood High. He and his friend Marcus (nicknamed "Poo") have found a homeless man beaten to death on their way home from school.
Det. Esme Morales is not impressed by their story but then, she's not impressed by much--and that includes her partner, the uniformed cop who was first on the scene, and her ex-boyfriend (but more about him later).
Check out the story here.

The Clown is Coming Back--the return of NoHo Noir

2011-11-19T07:20:00.000-08:00

The first of a new cycle of stories will go up tomorrow on the new NoHo Noir site. Mark and I are tremendously excited about continuing the project. The first story, "Boys will be boys," has a more manga illustration style Mark's trying out. We're still fiddling with the website, adding bits and pieces, but my favorite thing about it is that Mark did portraits of us to run in the "About Katherine" and "About Mark" sections. I always wanted to be a comic book character. Mark did a more "evil queen" version that I liked too.

Feminist Fiction Friday--Miss Eudora Welty

2011-11-17T23:52:00.000-08:00

Eudora Welty won the Pulitzer Prize for her 1973 novel, The Optimist's Daughter. Ten years after her death and almost 40 years after it was published, you can buy a digital copy of The Optimist's Daughter with one click. I hope she'd be pleased. She was a woman ahead of her times in so many ways, I'd like to think she would have embraced the ebook revolution.
The Optimist's Daughter was my introduction to the writer. My mother was reading it at the same time her father's long and painful final illness was coming to an end, and she found it almost unbearable to read.
I didn't have the same personal, viscderal connection to the material, so my reading was an entirely different experience.
It's not a novel with a lot of plot but her characters...her characters were so real and rich and right, that I knew her work was going to set the bar for me in my first fumbling attempts at writing my own stories.
Miss Welty (and such was the force of her personality, that even her most ferocious fans felt self-conscious about first-naming her) began, as so many novelists do, writing short stories.
Two of those stories, "Death of a Traveling Salesman" and "Why I Live at the P.O." should be required reading for anyone who wants to practice short fiction.
Shortly after I moved to Los Angeles, The Robber Bridegroom came to the city on its way to Broadway. An adaptation of Miss Welty's novella of the same name, a romantic fable based on real-life stories of robbers who used to ply their trade along the Natchez Trace. (Miss Welty was from Mississippi.), it was a musical with book by Alfred Uhry (Driving Miss Daisy) and music by Robert Waldman.
I saw the play five times, which probably had more to do with my appreciation of Barry Bostwick, who played the title role, than my love for Southern literature, but the play was charming. (And if you know Bostwick only as the bombastic mayor in Spin City or as Brad in Rocky Horror Picture Show, here's a clip of him performing "Fathers and Sons" in the Studs Terkel musical Working.)

My all-time favorite work by Miss Welty, though, is the quintessentially Southern novella The Ponder Heart. Narrated by Miss Edna Earle Ponder, it's the story of (among other things) the romantic misadventures of her Uncle Daniel Ponder. It also contains one of my favorite insults of all time. Speaking of the trashy young woman Uncle Daniel has taken up with, Edna Earle dismisses her as the kind of woman who "makes the kind of fudge anybody can make."
The Ponder Heart was turned into a play and also into a movie (with David Wayne as Uncle Daniel) and it's the kind of story I'd like to see remade instead of yet another remake of The Three Musketeers.

If you ever used the email program Eudora--it was named for her, which is kind of cool.
If you want to know more about Miss Welty, read her bio on Wikipedia.
Then go over to Amazon and buy one of her short story collections. You can purchase a copy of The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty for two cents plus postage. Two cents!! Can you even still buy a gumball for that?

Whoa....

2011-11-17T21:11:00.000-08:00

Last night I went to the opera and at intermission, my companion was chatting with a couple while I sucked down a bucket-sized iced tea in hopes the caffeine would counteract the effects of the all-nighter I'd pulled finishing up a project. They were discussing Wagner and suddenly, the woman went off on a rant about Armenians, Social Security checks and Lexuses. (Lexi?)
There was no segue for the rant, she just started spewing nonsense. It was odd and unsettling and we quickly retreated into the auditorium.
I was no longer sleepy.
Encounters with whack jobs tend to wake me up.
This afternoon I blogged about a friend of a friend's Kickstarter program and apropos of nothing, a guy calling himself John Rambo (completely without irony) posted a comment that had absolutely nothing to do with the post and everything to do with pathology. (You can read it below, under the Empower an Entrepreneur heading.)
John doesn't like American women. As a group. As a class. As a concept.
He takes special issue with women who are educated and/or in the workplace.
He doesn't think American women want to get married.
He has apparently written a book and posting his anti-woman screed on blogs is his idea of a really great marketing ploy.
Here's a sample of his reasoned discourse:
Over 50 percent of American women are single, without a boyfriend or husband; so the fact is most American men no longer want to marry American women. Let these worthless American women grow old living alone with their 10 cats.

He goes on at some length to explain why foreign-born women are just better.
I say...good luck with those mail-order brides, John.
I think I can also safely say, on behalf of American women everywhere, "Not if you were the last heterosexual on earth, honey."
But you knew that already.

Empower an Entrepreneur

2011-11-17T17:58:00.000-08:00

Writer/Artist Joanne Renaud sends word that Caoimhe Ora Snow's Kickstarter Campaign to fund a startup of her RPG fantasy game Wandering Monsters High School has stalled. She needs $200 more to reach her goal of $1000 before her time runs out in two weeks. Donations are as little as $1, so if you can help a sister out, go here.

Mincemeat Cake Recipe for Thanskgiving

2011-11-17T10:04:00.000-08:00

In the Beginning Was the Recipe…

I was looking for my mother’s recipe for Mincemeat Cake. It was not in the yellow binder where I keep the family recipes copied out by my sister in her meticulous art school handwriting and decorated with whimsical drawings.

The recipe wasn’t in the manila folder where I keep the loose recipe cards and the torn magazine pages and the newspaper clippings and the scribbled instructions on the backs of envelopes, school notebook paper and old invoice forms from my grandfather’s general store. (There’s even a recipe copied out on a soft paper napkin worn to the consistency of Kleenex.)

My mother had a recipe box like all good mid-century housewives and she kept many recipes in that box, but the ones she cherished the most and used the most often were in an old school binder with a coarse cloth cover that was rubbed through to the cardboard beneath. By the time I inherited the binder, it was falling apart and I transferred the contents over to the aforementioned yellow binder.

A lot of the loose recipes in the folder are starting to fade with age. Some of the oldest date back to the early 50s and the paper has browned and the ink lightened until you almost need to be a forensic documents examiner to piece together the instructions. My mother’s recipes are written out the way she talked and almost seem interactive with their asterisks and inserted comments. “I usually use twice the amount of ginger,” she notes on a recipe for ginger snaps, making me wonder why she didn’t just write out her version of the recipe.

Sometimes she addresses the recipient of the recipe directly as she did with all the family recipes she typed out and sent to me in Los Angeles when I first moved here. (“Will feed six unless they are Tomlinsons,” she wrote on her recipe for macaroni and cheese, which is the one I use today and is, without question, the best I’ve ever had.)

Reading some of the recipes is like traveling in a culinary time machine—all those references to “oleo” and directions to melt chocolate in a double boiler, instructions rendered obsolete by the invention of the microwave. The recipes also show a high degree of brand loyalty. It was always “Pet” Evaporated Milk and the 10X brand of confectioner’s sugar. (In fact, that’s what powdered sugar is called in all my mother’s recipes—10X sugar.)

When I finally found the recipe—stuck between the pages of Jane and Michael Stern’s Square Meals, I realized two things right away. It was the recipe I remembered my mother making but it was not her recipe. The instructions were written out in a hand unfamiliar to me. It’s fussy writing, with little circles dotting the Is.

My mother had two kinds of handwriting—the elegant, grown-up penmanship she used to sign her canvases and our report cards and the messy scrawl she used to communicate with herself in grocery lists and refrigerator reminders and notes. She doodled on her notes, a habit my sister inherited.

But she did not circle her Is.

I’ll never know the name of the woman who passed this recipe on to my mother (and considering the time, I'm sure it was a woman), but she would have been a friend. Because sharing the food you love is one of the things friends do.

If you're looking for something to make for next week's feast, something that takes traditional ingredientts and mixes them up in a whole new way, try this cake out. (It's got the same consistency as persimmon pudding.)

Somebody’s Mincemeat Cake Recipe

2 cups (1 jar) prepared mincemeat

2 cups chopped walnuts

1 tsp. vanilla extract

¼ cup rum or cognac

1 tbsp. grated orange rind

¼ cup orange juice

1 cup buttermilk

1 cup mayonnaise

3 cups flour

1 ½ cups flour

¾ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. salt

In a large bowl, mix the mincemeat, walnuts, vanilla, rum (or cognac), orange rind, orange juice, buttermilk and mayonnaise. (Trust me on the mayo. I am practically phobic about avoiding it, but it's really just eggs and oil, and it works here.)

Combine dry ingredients and sift into the wet mixture. Blend thoroughly.

Pour into a greased and floured tube pan (or use one that’s been sprayed with Pam) and bake at 325 degrees for two hours.

Remove from oven and cool on a rack.

Frost with buttercream icing using a cookie press.

Buttercream Icing

¼ cup butter, unsalted

1 ½ cups confectioners’ sugar

1 tbsp. milk

Beat ingredients together. The mixture will be very stiff.
Put into a cookie press and press frosting designs on top of cake.

Garnish with candied fruit. (I know, a lot of people don't like candied fruit, but it's not like I'm asking you to make a fruit cake. And it really does look pretty.)

#OWS Fiction--The Black Card

2011-11-15T13:38:00.000-08:00

This is a story that's been percolating for awhile.

THE BLACK CARD

Peter Loftus prided himself on his street smarts.

He wasn’t too worried when he saw the roving gang of teens ghosting toward him.

Gangs of percenters were always roaming the area, looking for stray onesies they could prey upon, and Peter had taken pains to disguise himself as one of the 99.

Clocking their movements was just a matter of situational awareness, not paranoia and Peter didn’t even break his stride.

Peter was sure the wildlings would pass him by. There was nothing about his demeanor or dress that broadcast his wealth or status.

Still, Peter was glad he was wearing the money belt with the slotted buckle that was large enough to hide his American Express Centurion card. He normally didn’t carry it, but he’d been unable to complete his business online and had had to take the risk of going out on the street with the black card in his possession.

He’d learned from experience that taking the armor-plated Mercedes into the city only invited unwelcome attention. After two attempted carjackings, one that had resulted in the death of his driver, Peter began doing things the old-fashioned way, keeping his head down and going undercover as one of the rabble.

His disguise was flawless, a filthy raincoat over a faded t-shirt worn with jeans that were faded white at the seams and worn thin in the knees. His shoes were unpolished, their heels worn down, the toes scuffed and the leather sides thin and discolored. He’d bought the shoes online from a local Goodwill store and then had them specially sanitized.

The outfit screamed “loser” but was clean enough that he wouldn’t be denied entrance to a bank or business office he needed to access.

The clothes were easy. It was a lot harder to get the physical parts right.

A lot of Peter’s friends were a little too dainty to carry off a successful percenter impersonation.

They had soft, manicured hands that gave them away.

Or they had expensive haircuts that fell just so and never really looked unkempt no matter how they tousled it.

Peter had no vanity and relished the opportunity to literally get his hands dirty.

He planned his excursions—what his virtual assistant called his “street time”—with the precision of a military operation.

The first thing he did was mess up his own expensive manicure by dragging his fingers across the raw concrete walls of the secure parking garage where the Mercedes was housed. Once the nails were broken and cracked, he poured a little motor oil over them as if rubbing in hand sanitizer. Within minutes, his hands were authentically grimy with ground-in dirt in the creases that ordinary hand-washing couldn’t dislodge.

Peter normally paid $300 for his haircuts but before he went out onto the street, he “trimmed” the hair himself with a blunt pair of scissors—deliberately cutting some hanks way too close.

His wife hated it when he returned from what she called his “walkabouts” because his hair always looked, she said, like he’d combed it with an egg-beater.

Not that she’d ever actually seen or touched an egg beater. She didn’t have to. Their cook, an immigrant from Florida made homeless by a hurricane, was a genius in the kitchen, well worth the $250 a week they paid her.

The finishing touch was the grizzled beard Peter adopted and shaved in patches with a blunt safety razor that often left little bloody nicks behind.

Paying attention to details had always been one of Peter’s core competencies. With the beard and the hair and the hands and the dirt, Peter was invisible.

The trick was getting in and out of his building without being seen. There were tunnels constructed beneath the building that led to all sorts of innocuous outlets. The entrance to the tunnels was guarded by doormen who were paid well for their discretion and loyalty. Peter always made sure to slip the guys bottles of single-malt at Christmas.

The trick was not to use the same tunnel outlet too often.

You just couldn’t be too careful.

Peter had been a block from the alley where he emerged from the tunnel when he spotted the teens.

He’d identified the group’s alpha almost immediately—like knows like—and had given him a mad dog stare he’d perfected in the board room, the look that said, You really do not want to fuck with me.

Much to his surprise, the gang leader hadn’t dropped his eyes but instead ramped up the unspoken confrontation by returning the glare. I’ll fuck you up old man, you see if I don’t.

Peter didn’t slow his pace.

“Hey,” the guy said. “You just come from Delancey?”

“No,” Peter said and kept walking.

“You sure?” the leader persisted.

“I saw him come out of the alley at Delancey Hugo,” a rat-faced punk who couldn’t be older than 12 said.

“There you go,” Hugo said. “You calling my boy a liar?”

Oh for God’s sake, Peter thought and kept walking.

But suddenly two of the teens were in front of him, walking backwards. One of them flashed his iPhone and grabbed a picture, which he immediately sent to someone else.

Who did he send that picture to? Peter wondered.

Hugo asked again. “What were you doing on Delancey Street?”

Peter took another look at the alpha; saw the feral gleam in his eyes and something else, something that might have been … intelligence.

“I was taking a piss in the alley. That all right with you?”

Hugo smiled, revealing the diseased gums and broken teeth of meth-mouth.

Christ, Peter thought, a tweaker.

A memory clicked and surfaced…a briefing his assistant had given him on the gangs controlling the area. He’d mentioned a teenage crew that called itself the Dead Rabbits in tribute to one of the 19^th century gangs. Something about the guy who led them.

“Delancey’s my street,” the tweaker said. “But you’re new around here, right? You didn’t know that .”

“That’s right,” Peter said agreeably, wondering if he could activate his panic button without tipping Hugo off.

Whenever he went into the tunnels, he wore a special button on his raincoat that sent a signal the doorman could track. If he got in trouble, the doorman could signal the police and they’d come in rolling like they were crossing the Rhine.

Nothing cops liked better than busting percenters.

Except maybe the tip Peter would hand them for their service.

He casually rubbed his thumb over the special button, as if massaging away a sudden chest pain.

“You all right bro?” one of the teens asked, with insincere solicitude.

“I think he needs a drink,” Hugo said. “Give him a drink Joey.”

The little rat-faced fucker pulled a dirty, unlabeled bottle out of his backpack.

“Here you go guy,” he said.

Peter took the bottle and looked at the cloudy liquid swishing around inside.

I’m going to have to drink this, he thought. Fuck.

The cheap liquor burned. Peter hadn’t had hooch this raw since his undergraduate days and even then it had been cut with the cooler burn of pharmaceutical grade coke.

Hugo grinned as Peter choked it down and offered the bottle back to Joey.

“Nah, I’m good,” the kid said, his eyes glittering. “You finish the bottle.”

Hugo was watching.

He knows Peter thought and it was not a comforting thought.

“Eat the rich,” Peter toasted as he tossed back another gulp of the nasty stuff. He remembered reading stories about bums drinking Sterno filtered through slices of bread. He wondered if he that’s what he was drinking now.

He finished the liquor without gagging and then tossed the bottle over his shoulder, just for the satisfaction of hearing it break. “Gotta go,” he said, slurring his words, which alarmed him.

He pressed the button on his raincoat again.

The cops should have been here by now he thought, trying not to panic.

Where are the fucking cops?

“Gotta go,” he repeated but the two teens blocking his path didn’t move.

The one who’d taken his picture got a text.

He looked at it and nodded at his leader.

“You got a squat?” Hugo asked. “Can you put us up?”

This is going pear-shaped fast, Peter thought. And then without thinking he pivoted and charged right at the little rat-fucker, sending both Joey and Hugo to the sidewalk as he hauled ass for the tunnel entrance.

They were younger but Peter was in better shape and they soon fell behind.

By the time he reached the tunnel entrance, they were nowhere to be seen.

Peter secured the door behind him and then vomited as the backwash of adrenaline overpowered his system. What seemed like a gallon of toxic liquid poured out of his system.

I’d hate to be the one who has to clean that up, he thought.

By the time he got back up to the lobby, Peter’s fear had morphed into frustration overlaid with anger. He hadn’t accomplished his errand and it looked like his GPS transmitter was broken. He wouldn’t be able to go out again until it was fixed.

“Welcome back Mr. Loftus,” the doorman said as Peter emerged from the door in back of the lobby’s concierge desk.

“Thanks Travis,” Peter said.

“I’m Conor, Mr. Loftus,” the doorman said. “Travis is the night man.”

Peter just nodded. “Sorry,” he said.

Peter was passing the desk when he saw a flickering light on the console. He took another step and the light flickered again. It was his GPS signal.

He looked at Conor.

Conor looked at him.

“I don’t drink Mr. Loftus,” he said. “I’d much rather you’d given me money than a bottle of scotch at Christmas.”

Peter was trying to think of a suitably scathing reply when he heard the street door open.

He turned as the wildings sauntered in as if they owned the place.

Hugo nodded at Conor.

“Thanks bro,” he said.

“Any time, Hugo,” the doorman said.

Hugo, rhymes with Yugo—that figures, Peter thought, in one of those brain farts people sometimes get when they’re under extreme stress.

His amusement was short-lived as Hugo and his wildings fell on him.

When Peter was dead the teens searched his body and found the black card hidden in the money belt. The card would be good for a few days with no one to report it stolen.

Peter’s wife was upstate at a spa getting pampered. She wouldn’t know Peter was dead until she got back and found his body dumped on their Italian leather sofa.

By then, Hugo and the others would have done some serious damage with the purloined plastic.

He’d booted up Peter’s computer to do a little online shopping while his boys looted the Sub-Zero fridge in the luxury condo’s kitchen.

It was crammed with packages from Lobel’s.

Hugo called dibs on the steaks.

Hugo hadn’t had meat since Christmas.

Interesting People I Don't Know

2011-11-14T19:17:00.000-08:00

I am a reader who always reads the "author's note" and the "postscripts" and the "why I wrote this story" headers. I read the "about me" in blogs and the "profiles" on Twitter. I like knowing about the writers whose books and stories I read. "Knowing about" is not the same thing as "knowing," of course, but in the era of social media, the lines get blurred.
I was a huge fan of Susan Orlean's The Orchid Thief. I follow her on Twitter and have been extremely entertained by her Tweets. I started reading Dakota Cassidy's hilarious books because she was so damn funny on Facebook. (A former beauty queen, she live-tweeted the Miss America pageant and had me in stitches. If Billy Crystal hadn't stepped up to host the Oscars, she would have been a good choice.)
Last month I read Lauren Oliver's lovely book Liesl and Po and two days later one of her comments showed up in my Twitter stream. I immediately tweeted my love for the book and she thanked me and it felt like an authentic book-geek moment.
Keeping up with social media takes work, and it takes time. Time spent on Twitter is time spent away from the WIP. But as someone who spends most of my life in my home office interacting with my cats and the other human who shares their space, I love the sense of connection.

Melancholy Monday Fiction--Pink Gift

2011-11-14T13:27:00.000-08:00

Who doesn't love freebie fiction? Luna Station Quarterly, a magazine that focuses on speculative fiction by women writers, publishes stories on their site in between issues.
This week's story is Pink Gift by Lindsey Walker . Read it here. Mark your calendar for their annual drabble issue, coming soon and featuring (shameless self-promotion alert) my story "Courtly Love."

NPR's Three-Minute Fiction Contest Winners

2011-11-12T23:59:00.000-08:00

Several months ago, NPR announced the return of their "Three-Minute Fiction" contest for flash fiction that could be read in three minutes (around 600 words). The theme for round 7 was "Arriving and Leaving." The winners were announced tonight and you can read them here.
Here is my entry for the contest:

Exit Strategy

Toby saw the man stumble as he came out of baggage claim hauling a rolling suitcase and hefting a laptop bag over his shoulder.

He looked like he’d slept in his clothes, a white dress shirt that gapped over his belly and black suit pants that badly needed a press.

His face was sickly pale and he moved like he was drunk but Toby couldn’t smell booze on his breath or in his sweat as he walked past him.

That guy looks like a heart attack waiting to happen, Toby thought and then, as if his thought had summoned the action, the guy stumbled again, this time falling heavily against Toby.

“Sorry,” the guy mumbled, and dropped the handle of his suitcase to clutch at his left arm, which had suddenly gone rigid with pain.

“Hurts,” he complained to no one in particular as people around him began to recoil, moving to distance themselves from him, pulling out their phones and pretending to answer nonexistent phone calls. Anything so they didn’t have to make eye contact with him.

They didn’t know what kind of trouble he was in but they knew he was in some kind of trouble and they had schedules to meet and taxis to catch and really didn’t want to be caught up in a stranger’s problems.

“Help,” the guy said and then vomited as the circle of space around him widened.

Jesus, Toby thought, but he didn’t have it in him to just abandon the guy.

“Is there someone I can call?” he asked the man when he finally straightened up. “Are you traveling with anybody today?”

The guy moved his head from left to right, too short of breath to answer.

“Please,” he said to Toby when he was finally able to speak. “I’m sick.” And then he collapsed. He would have kissed the pavement if Toby hadn’t grabbed him and held him up.

Toby muscled the man over to a bench and laid him down. “Someone call 911,” he ordered and a dozen spectators pulled out their phones.

The man doubled over in pain, huffing shallow breaths.

“Is someone meeting you?” Toby asked.

“No one knows I’m here,” the man managed to say.

“He was on my plane,” a fat women in a too-small “I (Heart) New York” t-shirt volunteered. “He flew here from New York.”

“I saw him too,” another woman said. “He seemed really stressed out.”

“Ambulance is on its way,” a random guy announced.

People were starting to gather. The guy’s crisis was morphing into free entertainment.

“Hang in there,” Toby said to the guy, who kept looking up at him with glazed eyes that held a question.

“What?” Toby asked.

“I don’t feel so good,” he said.

“The ambulance is on its way,” Toby said. “You’re going to be okay,”

He’d no sooner made the pointless comment than the guy convulsed and went still.

“Oh my God,” a bystander screamed. “Is he dead?”

Toby put his fingers to the man’s neck and felt for a pulse.

“Yes,” Toby said. “He is.”

Toby stood and took a picture of the dead man with his phone.

“What kind of a ghoul are you?” asked a horrified bystander.

Toby ignored her. He had been headed to New York to kill the man now lying dead in front of him and knew his client would want proof of death.

They’d be pleased he’d made it look like natural causes.

He wouldn’t tell them it was natural causes.

And next time he did a job of work for them, he’d raise his prices 25 percent.

Feminist Fiction Friday

2011-11-11T10:54:00.000-08:00

I'm not much for labels. Defining a person by religious beliefs, political affiliation, sexual orientation or age has always seemed much too simplistic for me. One of the most liberating things about writing for the internet is that you can define yourself, circumventing any artificial limitations that might be placed on you in real life. Which brings me to gender.
I've occasionally written fiction under a male pseudonym, not to hide my gender in specific but to cloak my identity in general. I did it on the Dark Valentine site, for example, so that it didn't look like I was writing every other story in one of our flash fiction challenges. I never really gave it that much thought, frankly. My writing is pretty gender-neutral and I write equal-opportunity criminals and victims.

Laurell K. Hamilton

Lately, though, I've been thinking about gender a lot. I think about it every time I read a script that refers to a flight attendant as a "stewardess" or worse, as a "stew," and every time a female college student is described as a "coed."
I think about it every time someone says "male nurse," as if the job description is gender-exclusive, like "mommy." I think about it when a woman refers--without irony--to her gender as the "fair sex." And I think about it every time I read a story that's set in a future where women apparently don't exist and if they do, it's in a role that has been outdated for at least 60 years. I think about gender when I see news stories about couples about to spawn their 20th child; stories about celebutants famous for their sex tapes; stories about a movement to outlaw abortion for any reason--including rape and incest. (I can't help but think of the famous feminist quote by Ti-Grace Atkinson--"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.")
I know this is a cranky-pants rant but bear with me...I'm getting to the point.
Yesterday Sandra Seamans posted a link to a blog entry by Kat Howard about the invisibility of female heroines in speculative fiction. (Read it here.) I commented on it and Sandra commented back and the next thing I knew, I was scribbling lists of women writers whose books are driven by female protagonists. And I decided that today was a good day to kick off Feminist Fiction Fridays--mini-celebrations of women who write women.

First up, Laurell K. Hamilton. I was thrilled when I stumbled upon Guilty Pleasures, the first of her Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter series. I loved that the story took place in a real-world setting (St.Louis) and featured a sexy, kick-ass heroine. I loved her relationship with the vampire known as "the Master of the City" but I also loved that Hamilton created a world that held all different kinds of supernatural creatures--trolls and fairies and zombies and werewolves. Anita's relationship with the paranormal people in her life was complex and adult, and I loved Hamilton's writing style. I devoured her next eight or nine books like they were fine chocolates, reveling in the action and enjoying the romance and generally absorbing the whole urban fantasy vibe, which was so new it wasn't even a genre yet.
The covers of those first books were really cheesy. I remember my little brother making fun of me when he saw the cover of Guilty Pleasures which looked like someone had scribbled some vampire fangs on a not-very good illustration of a dark and brooding guy. Later, the whole series would get a cover revamp with a series-specific design that was both elegant and subtle. The new edition of Guilty Pleasures came with a neat cover blurb from Jayne Ann Krentz.
I eventually stopped reading the series because I got bored with Anita's angst over being torn between her vampire and werewolf lovers. (This was a woman who raised zombies and faced off with trolls and she got icked out watching her werewolf suitor feeding? I didn't buy it.) It reminded me a bit too much of the way Janet Evanovich has spun out the tension in her triangle of Stephanie Plum, Joe Morelli, and Ranger. (I discovered the series around the same time.) I haven't dipped into Hamilton's fae series about Meredith Gentry (love that the character has the last name of Hamilton's grandmother), but several of the books are on my TBR pile.
A lot of the newer writers in UF owe a debt to Laurell K. Hamilton, and if you like the genre and have never read one of her books, pick up Guilty Pleasures to start from the beginning.
And meanwhile, you can follow Kat Howard @KatWithSword on Twitter. You can read her blog Strange Ink here. Here's an interview with Kat.
Sandra Seamans has a story in the new issue of Pulp Modern. See Chris Rhatigan's review of the issue here.
As Eleanor Roosevelt once said, "It's better to light one small candle than curse the darkness." Consider Feminist Fiction Friday my little light.

A New Home for NoHo Noir!!

2011-11-10T23:21:00.000-08:00

Yes, the evil clown is back! Beginning Sunday, November 20, Mark Satchwill and I will be bringing you Volume II of NoHo Noir. And we'lll be bringing the noir as never before. New characters. New plots. Sex, violence, and dirty words without the asterisks.
The story starts off with a bang as a homeless man is found beaten to death just steps away from the campus of North Hollywood High. The detective investigating the case has her suspicions about who the killer might be but she needs hard evidence. Still, investigating the case gives her a good excuse to leave her family's Thanksgiving dinner early. North Hollywood, California--they don't call it "NoHo nice."
Please check out our new site here to follow us, and follow us @nohonoir while you're at it.

Food Porn! The season of butter and sugar returns

2011-11-10T12:32:00.000-08:00

Most of the year, the food prepared in my kitchen is extremely healthy. The only fat is olive oil; the only grain is quinoa; the only bread-like item is wasa light rye crackers.
I know...it's enough to send you to the nearest store to buy a package of cookies.
Once we hit the autumn solstice, though, all bets are off.
It's not that I go into a food frenzy, but from Thanksgiving on, I cook like my mother did--with butter and cream and the occasional pound of bacon.
Emphasis on the pound.
It's not like I go hog-wild--and I make sure to eat plenty of salad--but when I start putting out side dishes on Thanksgiving, anyone who thinks mashed potatoes, stuffing, sweet potato pudding, and macaroni and cheese add up to too much starch can just leave my table and head over to Denny's for the Turkey Day special.
The food might go to waist but it's not going to waste. I have aluminum foil and I'm not afraid to use it. Guests always go home with enough food to carry them through the weekend.
That's how my mother did it.
That's how my grandmother's did it.
And that's how I do it.
At least twice a year.
And I do it without olive oil.

Olive oil is a wonderful, magical elixir but I've made mashed potatoes with olive oil and it's just not the same.
Ditto for macaroni and cheese.
I shudder to think what sweet potato pudding would be like with olive oil instead of butter.
Here's a recipe for a holiday breakfast treat introduced to the family by my sister's girlfriend. Not that it uses butter and sugar.
Serve it with bacon on the side for the perfect trifecta of treats:

Bubble Loaf

Note, these amounts are approximate. You might run out of sugar, or butter; you might want to double the recipe.

1 loaf frozen bread dough, defrosted

1 cup granulated sugar

1 stick unsalted butter, melted

1 bottle dried orange peel (or lemon peel)

Combine the granulated sugar and about half the bottle of orange peel. (You could, I suppose, use fresh orange peel but I tried that once and ended up with ten naked oranges and not really enough peel.)

First cut the dough into 1-inch squares and roll each into a little ball and dip in melted butter. Then roll the buttery dough ball into a mixture of granulated sugar and orange zest. The sugar mixture gets pretty wet with the butter, so take about a half a cup of the sugar/orange mixture at a time for dipping and rolling and replenish with dry sugar/orange peel as needed.

Place the buttery sugary zesty balls in a single layer in a cake pan, cover with a towel, and let rise until doubled in volume. Bake at about 325 until golden brown and eat as many "bubbles" as you like. When you recover from the coma, eat more.

This post is not about Lindsay Lohan

2011-11-08T15:52:00.000-08:00

I once saw a magazine poll that posted pictures of several male celebrities--Bruce Willis, Will Smith, Jerry Seinfeld, and one other guy I can't remember. The question was, "Would you sleep with this guy if he wasn't a celebrity?" The only guy for whom the answer was an unqualified YES was Will Smith.
I thought of that poll today as I read Brett Ratner's ever-so-classy remarks about the women he's "banged" and how he sends them to his doctor to be tested before he goes all the way with them.
One of the women lucky enough to have shared his affections was (according to him) a very young Lindsay Lohan. (Ratner, who is a decade and a half older than Lohan, apparently snagged her on the rebound from Wilmer Walderrama.)
Readers of Vanity Fair may remember the cover interview in which Lohan discussed how betrayed she felt when the aforementioned Wilmer (who actually bears a slight resemblance to Ratner) trashed her sexual performance in print. She was 18.

I'm tired of reading about Lohan's troubles too but damn, the last thing she needs right now is a celebrity horndog throwing her name around as casually as if he were discussing a puppy he once petted.
Ratner's comments will no doubt be eclipsed by his remark that "rehearsals are for fags," but it seems to me his casual disdain for his bed partners is part and parcel of a kind of casual disrespect for women that's surfacing after a couple of decades of feminism. Maybe I'm just over-reacting to the allegations of sexual harassment being leveled against Herman Cain.
Maybe my sense of humor has been dulled by reading the anniversary issue of MS Magzine. (Does anyone still remember when "You have no sense of humor" vied with "Are you on the rag?" as the kneejerk response to a woman's call for equal rights? Mad Men is not making things up.)
It's not that I think every sexual encounter needs to be a memorable emotional moment between soul mates but damn people. Did you ever hear of discretion? Could you at least not trash the park after your picnic? And could you at least act like you respect her in the morning?

The End is Near--The 5th Horseman has arrived!

2011-11-07T19:05:00.000-08:00

As you may know, I have been a huge fan of horror writer G. Wells Taylor ever since running the first instalment of his serial The Variant Effect in Astonishing Adventures Magazine. His novel Bent Steeple, a character-driven vampire novel, is one of my favorite sanguinary tales. He's got a new book out and it's a humdinger.

I'll be reviewing The Fifth Horseman soon but in the meantime, here's the official press release to whet your appetite. (It's already got one five-star review.)

GUNSLINGERS VERSUS THE LIVING DEAD IN THE FIFTH HORSEMAN

The Apocalypse Trilogy Goes Out with a Bang, Scream and Massacre.

The Apocalypse Trilogy by G. Wells Taylor gallops to its horrifying conclusion in The Fifth Horseman now available for download at online booksellers. This explosive mix of classic western storytelling and gothic horror delivers a terrifying and bloodstained final act to Taylor’s doomsday epic.

Pandora City sits on the cattle trail north to Babylon. One day a wounded rider arrives with death stalking hard on his heels. The legends say that four horsemen will come to burn the earth and one will come to save it. So who is this rider? Over two centuries have passed since events chronicled in The Forsaken. Survivors have climbed out of the ruins and struggle to build a new life on the frontier of a dying world.

Download the Apocalypse Trilogy Book Three: The Fifth Horseman for $3.99 at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony eBookstore, iBookstore and Smashwords where you can get Book One: When Graveyards Yawn for FREE and Book Two: The Forsaken for $3.99. Visit GWellsTaylor.com for links.

The Apocalypse Trilogy is a tale spanning centuries that weaves hard-boiled detectives, immortal children, zombie gangsters, angels, demons, and western gunslingers into a terrifying narrative of divine and human weakness set against a backdrop of decaying cities and radioactive wastelands.

Contact

G. Wells Taylor

gwellstaylor@gwellstaylor.com

(519) 372-1157

http://www.gwellstaylor.com

###

If you’d like more information about this book, review copies or to schedule an interview with G. Wells Taylor, author of The Variant Effect, Bent Steeple and Wildclown’s World of Change books please call 519-372-1157 or email gwellstaylor@gwellstaylor.com.

R.I.P Andy Rooney--the last of a dying breed

2011-11-05T13:47:00.000-07:00

I always thought Andy Rooney looked sort of alike a muppet. It was the eyebrows, I think. And I always kind of got a kick out of his cranky-pants rants, even when I disagreed with him. I hadn't seen many of his broadcasts lately but I always knew he was there, like the irascible uncle at the family reunion who knows all the best stories if only he can be coaxed into focusing on them and not on the shortcomings of the rest of the relatives.
And now Andy Rooney is dead at 92.
I used to be a reporter and I came of age at a time when "reporter" meant people who reported the news for print and broadcast, not people who chronicle celebrity gossip, keep track of movie box office figures, and indulge in public speculation about the sex lives of strangers while creating a cult of personality around their own "brand."
Yes, I know. I sound cranky-pants too. But I've been thinking about this a lot lately, especially in terms of Arianna Huffington's stance on freelance writers.
I have, as they say, "skin in the game."
HuffPost grew into the media power house it became through freelancers, a number of them reporters. Last year, Huffington sold HuffPost to aol for a cool $315 million and was given oversight of aol, including their micro-news sites, collectively known as patch.com. Almost immediately after the sale, Huffington moved to eliminate the few paid writers on HuffPost and began relying on the contributions of freelancers who were free. A month ago, she turned her attention to the patch sites.
Her logic seems to be:
All reporters are writers.
All bloggers are writers.
Therefore, all bloggers are reporters.
But you know what? All bloggers are not reporters and some bloggers aren't even writers. (And seriously, every blogging template out there has a spell-check function. Would it be too much to ask that bloggers use it?)
What does this have to do with me? In October, Mark Satchwill and I were told that freelancers would no longer be paid for their work on patch.com. That meant we wouldn't be paid for our NoHo Noir stories and illos on the North Hollywood/Toluca Lake site. (And believe me when I tell you we weren't being paid much.)
We were invited to continue the stories for free but although we love our editor, we have chosen to break out on our own with the material.
\We'll be setting up a NoHo Noir blog soon to host the new stories and we'll also (pending approval from America Online's lawyers who have been sitting on the matter for four months) be bundling the first volume into an illustrated novel.
And what does this have to do with Andy Rooney?
Nothing much except that it feels like his death marks the end of an era when reporters were valued for their work and paid for it and respected; when stories were researched and objective and fact-checked and edited for spelling and clarity. And most of all, the end of a time when "news" meant what was going on in the nation and the world at large and not which Kardashian spent how much on her wedding.

Happy Birthday Mary

2011-11-02T15:57:00.000-07:00

Shay is playing "the toe game" with Orange Cat, an activity both find endlessly amusing. The object is for the cat to nip one of his toes before he can pull it back and OC often wins. It's his kind of game.
He's a very social cat but not a lap cat. He'll let me pick him up and nuzzle him for a bit but he only tolerates it for awhile before he starts squirming to get down.
What he really loves is lying at my feet when I'm on the computer with his big head wedged into the toe of my sneakers. Being around feet seems to soothe him. And oddly enough, he seems to understand that my toes are not playing. Even though they're dangling there in tooth reach, he leaves them alone.
I inherited Orange Cat from my sister. I wasn't looking to add another animal to my menagerie. I live in an apartment where there's a $500 deposit for each animal, and I already had one illegal cat because moving into the place exhausted my resources and I didn't have an extra $500 to put into a black hole. (I've been here almost 7 years now. In Virginia, landlords have to pay interest on money deposited as deposits. Not so in California.)
I had every intention of finding OC a home as I'd found homes for my sister's tortoise and iguana and snakes and other five cats.
But you know what they say about making plans.
Today is my sister's birthday.
If she were still around, I'd make her a cake with brown-sugar and coconut broiled icing. (She and I shared a love of coconut that no one else in my circle seems to have.)
Instead, I'll celebrate her birthday by loving her cat and giving him one (or two) of the special tuna treats you can buy at PetCo. They're like kitty crack. (Yes, I'm an enabler.) And I'll smile when I see him playing the toe game.

Now you know--Candy Corn Facts

2011-10-30T09:02:00.000-07:00

My friend Roz loves food history and today she sent this from howstuffworks:

Candy corn has been around for more than a century. George Renninger of the Wunderlee Candy Company invented it in the 1880s. It was originally very popular among farmers and its look was revolutionary for the candy industry. The Goelitz Candy Company started making candy corn in 1900 and still makes it today, although the name has changed to the Jelly Belly Candy Company.

Although the recipe for candy corn hasn't changed much since the late 1800s, the way it's made has changed quite a bit. In the early days, workers mixed the main ingredients -- sugar, water and corn syrup -- in large kettles. Then they added fondant (a sweet, creamy icing made from sugar, corn syrup and water) and marshmallow for smoothness. Finally, they poured the entire mixture by hand into molds, one color at a time. Because the work was so tedious, candy corn was only available from March to November.

Today, machines do most of the work. Manufacturers use the "corn starch molding process" to create the signature design. A machine fills a tray of little kernel-shaped holes with cornstarch, which holds the candy corn in shape. Each hole fills partway with sweet white syrup colored with artificial food coloring. Next comes the orange syrup, and finally, the yellow syrup. Then the mold cools and the mixture sits for about 24 hours until it hardens. A machine empties the trays, and the kernels fall into chutes. Any excess cornstarch shakes loose in a big sifter. Then the candy corn gets a glaze to make it shine, and workers package it for shipment to stores.

For more information, go here to howstuffworks.

Barefoot Contessa's Chocolate Cake Recipe

2011-10-29T15:33:00.000-07:00

I was the bellaonline.com site's "Chocolate editor" for more than a year. Somehow, I never ran across Ina Garten's chocolate cake recipe until a friend made it for a dinner party. I watched him make it--pouring coffee into the batter and turned up my nose. I don't like coffee. Not at all. And I was skeptical of the texture of the batter, which was remarkably soupy.
And then it came out of the oven, a deep, dark, luscious cake with no hint of coffee flavor.
And then there was icing.
The Barefoot Contessa's Chocolate Cake recipe is pretty much the best chocolate cake recipe ever.
Ever.
I'm thinking about it because it's a good friend's birthday today and he really loves chocolate. And because I love him, I see a chocolate cake in his future.
If you're too old for trick or treat but want a treat anyway, check out the recipe. Ina has thoughtfully provided it online here.
If you want a nice little extra touch--instead of flouring the cake pans, use sugar.

Halloween Cat

2011-10-27T22:20:00.000-07:00

Photograph by Tomer Kori

When I was 15, my father retired from the army and the family moved to Richmond, Virginia. It was a bit of a culture shock after living in Germany and France, and entering a high school where everyone had known each other since the first grade was a bit daunting. Still, I'd been "the new girl" at nine other schools by that time, so after the usual period of adjustment, I settled into a routine.
Living on an army post is a lot like living in a small town. (Both my grandmothers lived in REALLY small towns, so I know what I'm talking about.) And while Richmond is not a small town, it still had a small-town sensibility in those days, which was both good and bad. The first October 31st we lived there was crisp and cold and there was a full moon with scudding clouds that crossed it every once in awhile. Perfect Halloween weather. (Here in Los Angeles, October is often hot. In fact, a couple of years ago, we had triple digit weather the whole month. THE WHOLE MONTH.)

I was too old to go trick or treating myself. Halloween had not yet turned into the second biggest holiday of the year and anyway, at 15, I had an acute case of wanting to be a grown-up. But my little sister was 7 and I got the duty of taking her door-to-door for sugary swag. And the first house we hit was directly across the street from us. The house belonged to Mr. and Mrs. Ritchie. Mr. Ritchie had a cat (and it was most definitely HIS cat) that doted on him. I don't think I've ever seen a feline/human connection that intense. I can't remember the cat's name, but he was a long-haired orange tabby about the size of a fox. He was beautiful and friendly and floppy. Instead of handing out candy, Mr. Ritchie invited all the trick or treaters inside, where the cat was draped across the big color TV in the living room. And there, we were treated to cups of hot spiced cider and cinnamon cake donuts.
Can you imagine that happening now? Even in a neighborhood where everyone knows everyone?
Mr. Ritchie died that winter, so it never happened again. His big orange cat died two weeks later, after refusing to eat or drink. His death broke everyone's heart. Mrs. Ritchie became a recluse--she'd never been the most social woman--and the whole neighborhood gossiped about what the delivery guys from the local pharmacy might have in the paper bags they left off almost daily. (It wasn't booze. At the time, in Virginia, you could only buy liquor at ABC stores.) The gossip was such a small-town thing, and that was the flip side of Richmond being a place where little old men could invite kids in for cider and donuts without anyone wondering if he was a child molester.
I am not a particularly nostalgic person, but that Halloween when I was 15 is the best Halloween I've ever had.

Chocolate Chess Pie for the Soul

2011-10-19T21:34:00.000-07:00

It’s almost Halloween, which means the candy holiday season is beginning and chocolate cravings are waking. Instead of mainlining Three Musketeers bars this year, why not get your choclate fix from a dense, dark, and deeply delicious piece of chocolate chess pie?

If you’re not from the south, you may not have heard of “chess” pies, which are single-crust pies with translucent fillings. (Think of a pecan pie without the pecans and you’ll have an idea of the consistency of a chess pie.) They’re rather plain-looking pies but the fillings are so rich and satisfying that just a small wedge will satiate even the most ravenous sweet tooth.

Leftover chess pie is also quite good served cold for breakfast.

Chocolate Chess Pie

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

1 heaping tbsp. flour

1 ½ blocks of unsweetened baking chocolate

Pinch salt

½ cup milk (skim is fine)

2 eggs, beaten

1 tsp. vanilla extract

½ stick butter

1 unbaked 10-inch pie shell.

Mix the sugar, flour and salt.

Melt butter and chocolate.

Add the eggs and milk to the dry ingredients.

Add the chocolate/butter mixture and mix well.

Add the vanilla extract.

Note: If you like, you can substitute 2 heaping tablespoons of unsweetened cocoa powder for the melted chocolate. If you do that, simply mix the cocoa powder in with the other dry ingredients.

Pour into the unbaked pie shell.

Bake at 375 for 40 to 45 minutes.

The filling may crack a little in the middle, that’s normal and will just tell people it’s home-made.

Chess pies come in buttermilk and lemon as well as chocolate but it goes without saying that the chocolate version is the best!

Free Download--Here Be Monsters

2011-10-19T12:52:00.000-07:00

Just in time for Halloween, Here Be Monsters, eight tales of vampires, werewolves, demons, zombies and other horrors. The anthology includes the story "Figs" by Jeremy C. Shipp and you can find all the details on his blog.

Still bloodthirsty? Check out John Donald Carlucci's collection 11 Drops of Blood, eleven stories for 99 cents. That's nine cents a story--a bargain in any currency.

Patti Abbott has a new collection of fiction out from Snubnose Press called Monkey Justice. (The title story was originally printed in Dark Valentine with an illustration by Mark Satchwill.) You can find the book (only $2.99) here.

And of course (shameless self-promotion), you can get my first collection, Just Another Day in Paradise free right now on Kindle and Smashwords.

Patti Abbott's Flash Fiction Challenge

2011-10-18T05:36:00.000-07:00

Patti Abbott hosts some terrific flash fiction challenges and this one was irresistible. Choose any work by American artist Reginald Marsh and write a 1000-word story inspired by it. II spent an excellent hour clicking through decades of Marsh's work. All of it was extremely evocative and lively. (See Sandra Seamans' blog about choosing her picture for the challenge.) Here's a link to some of his work to give you an idea. (The painting across the top of the page reminds me a bit of my friend Joanne Renaud's work.)
The painting I finally chose, "Red Buttons," was painted in 1936 in egg tempera on board. Coincidentally, it's now in the Huntington Library's collection, so one day soon, I can visit the original.

My story is called "A Friend in Need" and it's 992 words long. If you go to Patti's site, you'll find links to the other stories participating in the challenge.

A FRIEND IN NEED

Nancy met Bea at Child’s Cafeteria when they both reached for the last piece of lemon meringue pie. “Let’s share it,” Bea suggested, and simple as that they were sitting at a table, talking like old friends.

Bea told Nancy she worked for an insurance company as a comptometer operator, making $28 a week, which sounded like a fortune to Nancy.

Nancy’s father ran a general store back in Ohio and delivered mail as a rural route carrier too. Gas was only ten cents a gallon but there were times when scraping together enough to fill the tank was hard because he let so many people run tabs at his store.

Nancy knew her parents were worried about her living in New York City, even though she was sharing a place with her cousin and her husband.

Nancy’s parents were one generation away from farm folk and had a deep suspicion of the big city.

Still, they knew the only work available to her in Ohio was back-breaking farm labor and they didn’t want that for their only child. Nancy had skills. She could type-write and she knew Gregg shorthand.

They were sure she’d be able to find employment in New York, so they sent her off with their blessing and $48 they’d saved up.

Her father had also sent her off with the admonition to stay away from Harlem—“No good can come of associating with colored people,” he’d told her—and her mother had added her own, vague warnings to avoid “mashers” and “men who only want one thing.”

Bea had laughed when Nancy imitated her mother’s warning about men, and taken another bite of the pie.

“How fast can you type?” Bea asked.

“Seventy words a minute,” Nancy replied proudly. She could actually type a lot faster but if she did, the keys started jamming.

“And you can do shorthand?”

“Yes,” Nancy said, excited by Bea's interest. She’d only had a couple of interviews since arriving in the city and her cousin had started suggesting that she could really use some help with the rent. Nancy knew she was wearing out her welcome.

“Do you know someone who’s looking for a secretary?” Nancy asked hopefully.

“I do,” Bea said with a smile. “Are you doing anything this afternoon? Can you come back with me to meet my boss?”

“Your boss?”

“His secretary is leaving to get married and he needs a new girl.”

“Bea, that would be wonderful,” Nancy said. “Am I dressed all right?”

"I'd hire you," Bea said, reaching out to adjust the little scarf at the neckline of Nancy's red dress.

When she did, she saw the crooked stitching along the top of the bodice.

Nancy was embarrassed. “I made the dress myself,” she admitted shyly.

Bea smiled warmly. “I wish I could sew,” she said. “Store-bought dresses are so expensive.”

“I love the dress you’re wearing,” Nancy said.

“You’re so sweet” Bea said as the two women emerged from the cafeteria.

“How far away is your office?” Nancy asked, wondering if Bea planned on taking a taxi.

“Not far,” Bea said, “and you don’t have to worry. My boyfriend always picks me up after lunch and drives me back to the office.”

Nancy perked up at the mention of a boyfriend. The only boys she’d met at her cousin’s apartment were intense young Jews who wanted to talk about politics and how the Olympics had made a monkey out of Hitler.

"Boyfriend?”

“Joe,” Bea said. “You’ll like him. All the girls do, but he’s mine.” She smiled without showing her teeth, which Nancy thought made her look a little mean. "All mine," she repeated.

Bea looked toward the street. “There he is now,” she said as a sleek black Chrysler touring car slid to the curb.

A dark-haired guy in a snazzy suit jumped out of the car and ran around to open the door for Bea.

“Hiya doll,” he said, kissing her on the cheek and giving Nancy a once-over so thorough she started to blush. “Who’s your friend?”

“Nancy,” Bea said, “meet Joe.”

“Nice to meet you,” he said.

“Nancy’s coming with me back to the office,” Bea said. “I told her about the job working for Mr. Whitehall. She can type and knows shorthand. Mr. Whitehall is going to love her.

“Well, that’s swell,” Joe said.

Joe and Bea chatted all the way back to the office, with Bea gracefully drawing Nancy into the conversation. When Nancy admitted she hadn’t seen the new Humphrey Bogart picture Petrified Forest, Bea exclaimed that she must come to the movies with her and Joe the next time they went.

The invitation made Nancy feel more welcome than she had since she arrived.

The warm feeling lasted until Joe parked outside an old warehouse with the name “Whitehall” on it.

“This is your office?” Nancy asked, a little alarmed.

“I know if doesn’t look like much on the outside,” Bea said.

“Come on,” she added impatiently as Nancy hesitated

Against her better judgment, Nancy followed the other woman through the door.

Into hell.

The warehouse was filled with iron cots separated by curtains. Young women lay on the beds, their ankles shackled to the bed frames.

Nancy turned to bolt but Joe was right behind her.

“No you don’t,” he said as he grabbed her.

Nancy reached for Bea and caught one of the red buttons on her smart yellow dress.

As Joe wrenched Nancy away, the button tore off, pulling a swatch of fabric with it.

“You stupid bitch,” Bea yelled, slapping Nancy.

Holding her dress closed over a graying slip, Bea surveyed the room for an open bed.

“There,” she said, pointing. “Put her there.”

As Joe chained Nancy to the bed, Bea looked down at her with a smirk.

“Your mother was right,” she said, “men just want one thing.”

Bea turned away as Joe pulled the curtain and began unbuckling his belt.

Turn the Page

2011-10-16T00:57:00.000-07:00

Volume I of NoHo Noir comes to an end.

Illustration by Mark Satchwill

A year ago, late on a Sunday night, I answered a Craig's List ad posted by Craig Clough, the newly hired editor of the North Hollywood/Toluca Lake micro-news site patch.com.
The site, owned by AOL, was one of several hundred hyper-local sites springing up across the country. (I think there were 300 when we launched and in the last year more of them have appeared. I live in Valley Village, which is right between North Hollywood and Studio City, which has its own patch.com site.)
Craig had a vision--to publish fiction that featured the area--and I was lucky enough to see the ad before anyone else did. (This was, I think, at one in the morning.) He hired me on Monday and my first story was due Thursday. And I was off.
We started so fast that there wasn't really a chance to plan ahead and I was writing to deadline pretty much the whole year. I had so many characters that weeks would sometimes go by before I got back to them. (And there were at least two times when I spelled a character's name wrong and a couple of "continuity" errors on backstory. There was also one storyline where I painted myself into a corner and resorted to a soap opera gimmick to extricate myself.
Generally speaking, though, I'm pretty proud of what Mark Satchwill and I did on Volume I. We're hoping to publish the stories as a novel sometime soon, with the illustrations. Working with Craig is delightful and collaborating with Mark has been a dream. Going forward, he's going to experiment with a more comic book style, and I can't wait to see how that turns out.
The new stories will have a more focused cast of characters--at least initially--and as I mentioned in an earlier post, they'll be more crime centric. (The column is not called "NoHo Nice.") I want to get more deeply into social issues because frankly, the City of the Angels is falling apart. The center is not holding. One of the most-read stories on the North Hollywood patch site right now is about a man who used to own a flower shop and is now homeless. (Read the story here.)
But there will be love and there will be hope and there will be some fun too.
Hope to see you there. Would love to know what you think about the new direction and the new characters.
The illustration here is from Sunday's story, which won't be posted until later. But here's the link to the site. By breakfast time "Elephant Walk" should be available.

Food For Thought

2011-10-15T18:56:00.000-07:00

Thanksgiving is still more than a month away, but I've already got deadlines related to the holiday so feasting is on my mind. Over the years I've refined my Thanksgiving dinner menu--simplifying it from the Southern extravaganza it was in my mother and grandmother's day. (Ham AND turkey, mashed potatoes and candied yams AND sweet potato pudding AND corn pudding...I could go on.) but what I put on the table still costs a pretty penny, even with coupons. (I could go without the gingered yam souffle, especially since I'm the only one in the house who eats it but since I'm the one masterminding the meal, it stays in.)

Photo by as012a2569/StockXchange

I was doing research on fluctuating food prices when I came across this site. It's a breakdown of what food cost in 1961 and an ad for a three-course restaurant Thanksgiving dinner. Yes, I realize wages weren't that great back in the Mad Man era but still--cranberry sauce was 25 cents for TWO 16-ounce cans? A 20-pound turkey was ... 29 cents a pound. Is there anything in a grocery store you can even buy for 25 cents now? Even the candy bars cost a dollar.

Book Giveaway

2011-10-15T09:35:00.000-07:00

Too Much of a Good Thing is Never a Bad Thing.

Photo by Julia Freeman-Woolpert

I live in an apartment with a lot of books. The bookcase that came from my grfandfather's law office is in the living room, along with another bookcase I bought from an ex-roommate. Both are crammed full and double-shelved. My office has four bookcases, two are birdseye maple, and come from a client who gave them me when he moved (the wood is beautiful), one from Ikea and one salvaged from the trash room when a neighbor moved out. (Yes, I am not too proud to take advantage of freebies. Alas, not everyone in my household shares my gypsy gene.)
The point (and I do have a point in here somewhere) is that I have a lot of books. And more coming in every day. so I've decided to give a bunch of my books away. I took bags full over to my library yesterday but I've put together some packages of books I'd like to give away. Yes, two different batches of books free for the asking. And all I ask is that you follow the blog. If you're already a follower, all I ask is that you comment. Because really, I want these books to have a good home. (A lot of them are brand new because people sent them to me after I'd read them in galleys or ARCS.) Just let me know which package suits you (you can pick both if you like) and next Saturday (October 22), I'll pick winners at random.

Package #1 contains:
City of Ruiins by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Ghost's War
The Falling Machine by Andrew P. Mayer (society of Steam #1)
The Book of Hours by T. Davis bunn
Godmother by Carolyn Turgeon
Kissing the Virgin's Mouth by Dona M. Gershten
The Lover's Knot by Clare O'Donohue
Aphrodite by Isabel Allende
Mirror Maze by Michael Jordan

Package #2 contains:

The Butterfly Farm by Diane Noble
Fragment by Warren Fahey
Never Count Out the Dead by Boston Teran
The Doomsday Key by James Rollnis
Midnight in Sicily by Peter Robb
All She Was Worth by Miyuki Miyabe
Guilt by Association by Marcia Clark
Three Seconds by roslund & Hellstrom

There will be more packages down the road. So if nothing here strikes your fancy, maybe something else will. (Hint, lots more fantasy in the pile.)

Halloween Silliness

2011-10-13T15:51:00.000-07:00

I was researching cheap Halloween costumes for this year's NoHo Noir Halloween story (Volume II begins next week) and ran across this collection of ideas from CBS/Los Angeles blogger Suzanne Marques. Ranging from the clever (Royal Couple) to the questionable (Amy Winehouse), they have a distinctly LA bent.

I also found this website where you can order all kinds of Halloween props to complete your decorating schemes. My neighborhood looks like the Halloween blimp exploded overheard and rained down tacky decor. It's fun but frightening in a way that has nothing to do with ghouls and ghosts.

All the stores are full of big bags of Halloween candy. It's a minefield. I'd get some but it would only mean I was getting it for myself. In the six years we've lived in this apartment building, we've never had a single trick or treater. I miss trick or treaters. My all-time favorite was a little kid who came dressed as Ozzy with his mom dressed as Sharon.

I am so never going to do this but just in case you want to make your own candy corn, Elizabeth LaBau (about.com's Candy editor) has a recipe here.

NoHo Noir gets a facelift

2011-10-09T11:19:00.000-07:00

Photo by Thomas Hawk

"NoHo Noir," the illustrated serial novel that Mark Satchwill and I created, will be a year old next week. We're closing out volume one with two more stories, then introducing a whole new cast of characters for volume two. Mark has created a new (and I think creepier) version of our logo which will debut with our first story. We also hope to use it on the cover of the collected stories when AOL gives us the go-ahead to go forth and publish.
The clown logo for the series is a version of the real-life Circus Liquor clown sign, a North Hollywood landmark for years. The real clown (see photo on the left) is pretty creepy. It looms over the street right across from a bus stop. Mark put the logo together overnight because we were hired the same week the first story posted.
We found a lot of people loved the clown (shudder), so Mark put the logo up in his online shop. Yes, you can get NoHo Noir swag here. I am very fond of his original logo. (See right)
Now, though, as we move into the second year of stories, Mark has come up with a more surreal version, a Bozo-gone-bad image that suits the darker tone the new stories will take. There will be a more crime-centric vibe for the new stories, and the volume will start off with the murder of a homeless man that may or may not have been at the hands of a couple of junior high kids. (That's right, NoHo is not fooling around this year.)
The new logo is below. What do you think?

Baby Boomer Nostalgia Gone Wild

2011-10-07T12:13:00.000-07:00

Yes, the movie/TV reboots and remakes and re-imaginings continue. I can't really make fun of some of the sillier projects coming down the pike because the studios responsible pay my bills but seriously. Mr. Ed? Seriously? Here's the skinny from JoBlo.com.
For every one of these recycled/retro/resurrected projects there are a dozen that were commissioned and paid for that died a horrible death. (And trust me on this--they deserved it.) So every time someone goes off on how "young people" are in charge of the movie-making process, I think, "Please God let it be true." Because you know, it's not the 20- or 30-somethings who are green-lighting big screen versions of television shows from the 60s.
Mr. Ed? Really?

Soup for the Soul

2011-10-05T12:10:00.000-07:00

It is raining in L.A., the kind of sideways, wind-driven rain we usually don't get until January. I'm recovering from a week-long cold and just do not feel like doing any of the work that's sitting on my desk. Days like this, what I really want to do is curl up with oatmeal cookies and hot chocolate but I'm a big girl now, so what I'm going to do instead is make soup.
We're big soup makers here at Casa Tomlinson and the last pot (curried chicken quinoa) has one bowl of its earthy, chickeny goodness left.
I've been craving a different range of flavors though and have pulled out a recipe I normally only make in the spring. (Spring and Fall in Los Angeles are pretty much the same season though, even the Japanese magnolia trees seem to bloom twice a year.)

JADE SOUP

4 cans low sodium chicken broth

1 large carrot, peeled and cut into thin "coins"

3 green onions, diced

2 Tbsp. reduced sodium soy sauce

2 tsp ginger (or 1-inch piece of ginger root, peeled and grated if you have the patience)

20 smallish spinach leaves

Small square firm tofu

1 Tbsp. dark sesame oil

Dash crushed red pepper flakes

Open cans of broth and put in soup pot. If you can’t find low-sodium broth, just use two cans of broth and dilute with two soup cans of water. Add ginger and soy sauce.

Add carrot coins and green onions.

When soup is boiling, add spinach leaves, which will wilt.

Cut the tofu into little chunks and add to the liquid.

Stir in sesame oil and red pepper flakes at this point.

This is a light soup, more of a broth.

I don't like mushrooms, but a handful of enoki mushrooms works well in this soup. I usually also add snow pea pods.