Monthly Archives: November 2009

Nov
25

Oh My! It’s Fruitcake Weather, Buddy!

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Somehow I don’t think Truman Capote was thinking about inflatable fruitcakes when he wrote A Christmas Memory.  However, the holiday season is upon us, and that means eating. And hopefully lots of it. Like Abby, I can’t cook worth a damn – but I can bake when I get in the mood to do so. So in the next few weeks, I’ll start up my annual round of cookies – chocolate chip, mostly, along with my famous meringues. (Which take forever, but are so totally worth it.) For quick and dirty baking, though – I drag out the bread machine and toss it on the Quick Bread setting. And then I make a run to Williams Sonoma and buy a fair number of gourmet bread mixes. 1) It’s easy – just dump it all into the bread machine and turn it on. 2 hours later, and you’ve got an awesome… Read more
Nov
24

No Fate But What We Make

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And yeah, that’s a dorky title. (And @Scopique, I’ll beat you within an inch of your life if you don’t know what that’s from. Promise.) Although it’s pretty to think that we do have control over whatever we might consider to be our manifest destiny, sometimes life really does have an interesting habit of kicking you in the ass. Or, conversely, sometimes it can pass you by. Case in point – Flight 19. My grandfather joined the Navy when he was 16 (World War II era) and became a gunner on planes just like the ones there in the picture. In fact, he was scheduled to be out on Flight 19, and was actually sitting in the cockpit ready to take off when one of his flightmates asked if he could take his place. Turns out the guy needed more training time that week and my grandfather already had his… Read more
Nov
23

…and We’re Off!

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Lots of good things happening, although I have to crank out about 15,000 words for NaNo this week if I’m going to make the final word count. We’ll see what I can do. I was majorly distracted from about last Thursday on (and for good reason, too), so I was lucky if I could manage 1000 words a day. But NaNo is a personal sort of goal, so I’m not going to whine if don’t make it – I’m just over 35,000 words right now as it is, and that’s not bad at all for 3 weeks worth of writing. It will probably be close, though. I also just sent off my entries for the Golden Heart, though if all the stuff that went down last week had happened earlier I probably wouldn’t have bothered. As it stands though, I’ve already paid my entry fee, so I might as well… Read more
Nov
22

Merely Canadian

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see more Epic Fails Wonder what they were doing with those flashlights?… Read more
Nov
22

The Inner StoryTeller

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Been thinking about this for a few days now – mostly questions on what makes a good writer vs a good storyteller. There are plenty of books out there that I’ve read where the mechanics of the writing isn’t always very stellar, but I’m more than willing to overlook the flaws, simply because the characters are great, or the story really is that good. And the flip side of that is that there are also plenty of mechanically perfect writers out there, but if the story isn’t very good then I’m more likely to just set it down. When I was little, I used to tell stories to myself in my head all the time. In fact, when I played with my dolls or stuffed animals, I’d have them act out miniature epics of things I can’t quite remember right now. (But at the time I know the act of… Read more