DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire

25 January 2015

Remembering "Unremembered Things" by Rachel Tsoumbakos

All right, enough with the yawning and dawning! Now the beginning of this new year is old enough for more mature content!

First on my real blog parade--as opposed to my woe-is-me and isn't-life-suckish stuff--is a fellow author and friend at Myrddin Publishing, Rachel Tsoumbakos. Rachel lives in Australia and her books are set there. Her latest is no different, a paranormal romance.

This week I'm featuring Rachel's new novel UNREMEMBERED THINGS. Please take a look and read an excerpt below.

Unremembered Things by Rachel Tsoumbakos

Unremembered Things (Wood Nymph Chronicles #1) by Rachel Tsoumbakos

Age category: New Adult

Release Date: February 10, 2015

Genre: Paranormal Romance

Blurb

One woman, two worlds and nothing but UNREMEMBERED THINGS separating them.

Indiana Shamira has a dark secret that could shatter her version of reality and get her killed in the process. Now if only she could remember what it is…

When Indiana wakes with no memory of her past life and a vampire called Sam hanging from the rafters in her cellar, she knows things are about to get nasty. Not only does Sam know all about her previous life, but he seems intent on seducing her as well. Of course her boyfriend, Kurt, has different ideas – like making her open the portal to hell!

And then there is the nagging suspicion that Indiana is not entirely human, now she can see ghostly images from the Otherworld. Or could it be from the life she can no longer remember? They include the flickering effigy of Kurt and a redwood forest that conjures up deeply repressed magic.

Not only will Indiana have to risk everything to keep the door to another dimension closed, she will have to decide whether she is ready to lose her heart to someone who has more secrets than herself.

Set in the lush Australian bush, UNREMEMBERED THINGS is a fusion of fantasy, paranormal and forbidden romance.

Add to GoodReads

Purchase (Pre-order) : AMAZON

Excerpt

“It is time.” Her voice purred like a kitten, but Indiana suspected she was really a feral animal on the inside.

“For what?” Her voice was raspy, hesitant and unsure if she really wanted to know the answer. Somewhere, deep inside, she suspected she already knew.

“Just remember I’m doing this for us,” Sam whispered into her ear. “So we can be together forever.”

Before Indiana could question him further, she felt a flurry of hands over her body. Indiana tried to open her eyes, but a warm hand reached up and carefully covered them.

Indiana was bitten – hard, and she groaned in pleasure. Shocked by her unexpected display, she clutched her hands outwards. Feeling the writhe of skin on skin, she tried to pull herself free. The tickle of fingers across her neck and down her spine calmed her with their warm familiarity.

“It’s okay, Indiana.”

The feathery words danced across her skin, warm like a summer breeze. She stilled and let Sam’s fingers intertwine with her own, relieved by his simple touch.

Time seemed to move forward and Indiana was presented with brief snippets of fleeting images; Camilla biting Sam, biting her. Indiana enjoying the pain of Camilla’s sharp teeth as they gnashed at her neck, her thighs and her wrist. The flurry of skin and hands and teeth as they writhed together in the height of passion. Pale hands slithered over her own luminescent skin, then Sam’s darker skin brushed against her own, warming her and protecting her but against what she was unsure.

Then Camilla poised over Sam, a knife in her hand. A flash of blood as it splayed out from a gaping neck wound. Indiana’s involuntary gasp and then choking sob at the sight of the cavernous hole. Hungry sucking as Camilla drank her fill. A warm hand, its fingers still laced through hers, slowing turning ice cold.

So what do you think? I know I need this book because I tend to forget everything. If you wish to know more about Rachel and her books, she has many links to click on. I'm already fascinated by METANOIA--mostly because I had to look up that word.

PLUS...Rachel is having a giveaway!

Giveaway

PRIZE (international):

1 x eCopy of Unremembered Things
1 x eCopy of Metanoia
1 x eCopy of The Ring of Lost Souls
1 x $10 Amazon gift card

(If Rafflecopter doesn't work for you, please go to Rachel's own blog page.)

Rachel's Links:

WEBSITE | FACEBOOK | TWITTER
GOODREADS | GOOGLE + | PINTEREST

Unremembered Things now has a Facebook page, too!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2010-2015 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

18 January 2015

A New Year Yawns

Well, it seems it's finally that time of year again. Time for the new semester to begin, for I am, as close followers of this blog may recall, one of those of the teacher persuasion. And, thus, the new semester dawns once more. Or should I say a new year yawns?

Sure, I had the holiday/slash/winter break but it is never enough to recover from a fall semester, as usual, filled with mountains of papers to grade and lessons to prepare and conduct. All part of the plan, of course. And I have accepted that plan. After all, teaching writing is the second best thing I know how to do. Writing itself would be the first best thing. However, even those marks may seem pale compared to many others' marks I have encountered in my life. Nevertheless....

I like to begin a blog year with a reintroduction. To those who know everything already, I beg your indulgence.

This blog has no real rhyme or reason to it; it is more often than not the musings which come into my head and go out my fingertips willy-nilly. On occasion, I endeavor to offer some writing advice, some technique examples, discussions of grammar issues, or similar authorical esoterica. At other times, I will update blog followers on my latest writing efforts or publishing achievements. I may wax poetic on the woes of me whenever the mood strikes me down. Sometimes I will have a guest blogger or share someone else's news or book.

First, you will note the name of this blog. What could it possibly mean? The DeConstruction of the Sekuatean Empire? When I first hammered this blog from hell's own fire and brimstone, I had in mind a place to post the "back material" for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy. Because the trilogy is set in part on another world, the political entity known as the Sekuatean Empire becomes a focal point. Hence, the title of this blog would make sense: taking apart the history, geography, culture and customs of the place where much of the action of the story occurs. However, as time has progressed, other works came to the forefront which had nothing to do with Sekuate or its hard-working rebels.

North and South Sekuate, c. 1481 GP

You will also note the list of book titles with convenient hyperlinks in the upper right corner of this blog page. They are not mere decoration but serve as keys that open doors to my dementia. Experience them and be enlightened forever more! Or, at the least, be entertained. My writing strives to enfold profound truths of the human condition within pages of action and adventure, liberally marbled with sex and romance and sprinkled with pontifications and jokes best left on the cutting room floor. That sounds a lot like a warning, doesn't it? But it's all in jest. I can assure you that 99.9% of the words are spelled correctly and good grammar is always in use==except for the dialog of those characters who have not been well-educated and then only for the sake of authenticity.

To update you now, I am working (more or less) on the revision of my National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) book, a science-fiction tale of the little alien who could, working titled THE MASTERS' RIDDLE. I have no timetable for its completion but I am beginning to enjoy working on it, rather than cranking out pages to win the NaNoWriMo contest--which I did at 55,555 words. In addition, I still want to get two previously written novels up to snuff and made available this coming year: AIKO, a love story/murder mystery set in 1980s Japan, and YEAR OF THE TIGER, an action adventure tale about hunting a man-eating tiger, set in 1986.

Furthermore, I strive to post a new entry once a week, all the better to take advantage of such Twitter hashtag threads as #MondayBlogs. I do not hold to this schedule religiously, however--as this month's fares will attest. But I try. You know how life tends to interfere with your best intentions. Doubly so for writers and teachers. Worst yet if one is both a writer and a teacher. But I'm not complaining.

In keeping with a "best practices" model of book promotion, I shall attempt to keep blatant marketing efforts to a minimum--except when something new is being launched. As always, I expect followers of this blog to read everything I produce and go forth to gather all their family members and friends, coworkers and just about everyone they encounter in their daily lives, and make them also followers of this blog, readers of these books, and all-around nice people who live to love and love to live, helping all of us enjoy this wonderful world we occupy and yet still be prepared to battle the interstellar aliens who will invade us circa 2345. Or not. The choice is yours, as always. But I have high hopes for you.

Thanks for your attention to these matters. Now carry on making the world a better place for me. And I shall return the favor!

04 January 2015

Is this the year for you?

(I seriously doubt it's for me.)

2015. There. I said it. (Actually, I wrote it.)

And so it begins: another year of the blogging virus. Will any of us survive?

On Saturday, I felt a pang in my side. A pang is non-descript, a physical sensation that has no physical cause. A chimera, a mystery, a riddle wrapped in flimsy flesh. But I felt it.

The pang expanded, filled my torso until I almost could not breathe. For a few precious moments I thought that was the end for me, the beginning of not-me, my doppelganger. I checked my daily nutritional consumption to investigate the nature of what may have prompted the pang. I considered events of recent days, dismissing each of them summarily as unlikely causes.

I thought it best to rest, so I laid down. (Grammarians need not be concerned, at this point, for I actually did open a bag of duck feathers and spread them around on the floor.) I was already near the floor, you see, so I took my leisure there, close to the undercarriage of society, and there did I nap.

A resurgent pang awoke me, however, called me to rise and rise I did, like the morning sun in the land of the morning calm. Suddenly, I knew the source of my pang. Regret. It's always about regret. Usually somewhere in the plural. Regrets. And there would be more: a year's worth of them, surely.

The little bird outside, robinesque in its twittering, clenching firmly the bending, bouncing twig, dared suggest that a new day had finally dawned, and so I yawned. Already it was year 2015 on the standard calendar. Such an artificial construct! And I wondered: how had I managed, despite myself, to have reached this date?

I recalled sometime in year 1984 wondering how I could have possibly reached that date, given all I knew or had done (or not done). At the time, I felt as though I had been blessed by a fistful of free hamburger coupons. That exuberance had caused me to reflect deeply on 1975 and the severe dismay I had felt for so many of those months. Much worse than 1962 when all I worried about were toys. Then, in 1999, I again faced the dark abyss and considered whether or not I could make that leap of faith and land sure-footed on the good side of Y2K. (I did.)

And then year 2004 and year 2008 came and went with much hurrah and much sighing, like any good matinee down at the multiplex. Luck of the draw. Everything begins and ends, after all, and you hardly ever see the smoke and the mirrors behind the dog and pony show. You see what you want to see and you get what you pay for. What comes free is always of questionable vintage. The peanuts are free, of course. And the can of soda, too--unless you sit in Business class. There the wine is free.

In fact, this entire holiday period seems drawn from a deep dream. For reason which still remain hidden, I gathered myself into a long box and later awoke and climbed out of that box, rather vampire-like in my proclivities and mannerisms if not for my skin condition. That is not quite how I wished to be, you must understand, but there I was: an automaton driven forth through the streets of some large foreign city, perpetually lost, always on guard and mute, unclear as to my destination. It was a nightmare but without the horse.

It seemed as though I was taken to a temple high on a mountainside and for a brief moment I believed I would be given the opportunity to leap off the top and fly, fly, fly away home. But no, not that. It's never that simple. Instead, the sordid experiments began and for several days there was no technology allowed but for the glasses I always wore. No clothes or shoes, either, only a thin robe and straw sandals. And winter had come. The food was rice and cabbage, and boiled tofu if I was behaving myself. And tea. Lots of tea. But no Q & A. LOL was swiftly punished.

Thus I did not speak, only listened; nobody was saying anything anyway. The world was reduced to birdsong, wind, heartbeats, and the disconcerting creaks of tired timbers along the floor I traversed from morning chant to afternoon meditation to evening sleep. After a couple days, I thought I was imagining everything, as though it were all a dream within a dream within a fortune cookie within a snowball set somewhere safe yet sullen. I was a muffin without a paper wrapper. And coffee was far, far away.

Then the curse broke and I was flying--yes, at long last, like a scrawny, half-starved bird, wax wings holding tight, soaring high to the ancient castle on the top of another, better mountain. And there I was hooked by long talons and wrestled inside through a latticed portal, placed on a davenport of Naugahyde and made to chirp my cute English words as though I were an expert. Or someone's prized pet. Occasionally I would be given a tasty treat. Mostly, I listened, for there was much I did not understand.

Not sure what exactly happened--though fairly certain it was not quite a dream (surely not a sleeping one, that is), but I nevertheless hold out for the possibility that I could have been fully conscious yet simply unaware of what was unfolding and refolding around me, so Laundromat-like in its efficiency, as it were--I chose to accept all of it. Indeed, what else could I do?

And now the waking dream comes to an end--as all realities must at the start of a new page, the first of many: pages filled line by line with regrets, or the occasional cross-out of things that surprisingly went well, day by day. The earth still turns, still bleeds, still crow-caws, and humor is a rare delicacy. But now the pillows have burst, the clocks have been smashed, and the ringing of the school bell awaits. I shun reality like fermented bean paste mixed through with whole dried minnows and a side of kimchi. Because I can. Because I must. Because there is pizza.

If I somehow make it to year 2016, it will be only because of you: my invisible, semi-fictitious, semi-delicious companions on the rocky road to somewhere muffin-warm and marshmallow-soft, sweet and sour like breaded chicken cubes, a rare respite akin to real retirement in the rustic inn along the narrow side of the road, just beneath that crooked, towering mountain covered with ice and snow, and the precariously poised stones tilting there, ready to fall from its heights. Yes, that one.

We are all in it together. Let's make the most of our fresh set of downs!

BTW, FYI, Year of the Lamb!

12 December 2014

Year End Review

Have you ever gotten to the end of a year and stopped to wonder whether January was, like, about five years ago?

Or, perhaps, January was somewhere between yesterday and the blink of your eyes when you read the first sentence of this blog.

Either way, the year is winding down and the final page of the calendar sits ready to be replaced by a Brand New Calendar possibly from your insurance company, who patiently wait for your mishaps to accrue in their carefully arranged actuarial tables. I know mine does.

So for my only blog this month, hence the final blog of the year 2014, I would like to remember some highlights. Forgive me if some of mine are not necessarily some of yours. Then again, I am fully aware that none of these may be highlights to most of you dear, sweet, loyal readers. That's just the nature of serendipity.

I began the year no worse for wear from the previous year--actually, I was sitting rather comfortably in my DREAM LAND TRILOGY pajamas, having finally gotten the third and final volume out of the womb and into the world. The third one was the easiest to push out. No drugs were needed, but the comet did hurt a little.

I began the year by exchanging blog posts with my writer colleague Kate Bitters, author of Elmer Left. I also entertained author Joan Hazel's new book Burdens of a Saint, the second book in The Guardians series, which involves shape-shifting werewolves. Those were good times. Then everything went downhill.

I dared put out my "sexy" "campus" "romance" book A BEAUTIFUL CHILL just in time for Valentine Day but that "sexy" "campus" "romance" trend had sailed. So I ignored all the naughty spanking jokes and waxed poetic on the trials and tribulations of choosing character names as well as a humorous post on making Top 10 lists. I followed those [ahem] "highlights" with a stream of complaining through March about anything and everything, yes, even as I tried foisting books upon hyper-excited Spring Break readers. It was not a pretty picture.

By April I was well-underway on a new novel which eventually became my contemporary Vampire tale set in Oklahoma City. The idea had been boiling for a while, the desperate need to explain to the world the true nature of vampirism, the real disease which exists, and the poor unfortunate protagonist who suffers from it. Thus, more and more of my blog posts revolved around the topic of vampires, blood, skin diseases, and medicated lotions.

In May I got tagged by the blog tagging monster and forced upon pain of pain to write about my writing process. That produced a plethora of paragraphs on purple prose that primarily got me banned for life from the writing life. It got some play. Or, as Gordon Gekko quips in the film Wall Street: "It's good for a five-point pop." If I had a nickel for every penny I have.... No, seriously, it was well-received. In fact, that post garnered the highest number of retweets ever in the history of my lonesome Twitter feed!

By June I had finished the draft of A DRY PATCH OF SKIN and felt pretty good about myself. I had gone from the dreaded "I'll never ever write again" to the smug "Yeah, I can write a 100,000-word novel, no problem." Then came all that revision, editing, and proofreading. The usual game. (I usually win that.) More of the same through the rest of the summer: vampires, blood, skin diseases, scratch scratch. An unhealthy number of juxtapositions between the story line of the book and the real events of my life made it a more or less miserable period.

A couple more posts came in the autumn to remind us that blog posts exist to preach to the choir. Mine addressed such pearls of wisdom as shoving that profound message right on up through the heart of an otherwise fun story. Or why you shouldn't. Or how to slip it in without a reader even feeling it. I also wrote lucid comparisons between the film Dracula Untold and my vampire novel.

Then NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) appeared on the horizon and I jumped into it for the first time and burned through a cheap pulp sci-fi book to win the thing with 55,555 words, give or take. So my blog posts were about that silly sci-fi story and the NaNoWriMo experience.

And that brings us to the end of the year.

Normally I would wish each and every one of you a happy and healthy holiday happening, but this year... Well, all right, I'll go ahead and wish you a happy and healthy holiday happening yet again! Had you worried a moment, didn't I? Sorry. Here's a holiday bunny for you: Scrooge McBun.

As I shall be traveling through time and space for the remainder of the month--not all of it will be interdimensionally, however--I shall not be blogging until next year.

Let us hope that many things about our world improve significantly in the next year. In the meantime, let our personal worlds be filled with joy and bounty! (But not too much bounty; New Year resolutions await.)

See you on the other side, and thanks for the egg nog!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

30 November 2014

Are You a Winner, too?

As many of you know, November has been a particularly arduous month, mostly because I ~~chose~~ was compelled to join in ~~all the fun of~~ the National Novel Writing Month. I've had to decline in previous years because November is a busy month in the academic calendar.

However, this year I needed something to jump-start the writing juices after giving birth to my Vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN--which is still viable even a month after Halloween. (Get it for your loved ones for the holidays; they'll scratch you for it. Makes a great gift for relatives who have skin issues.)

So into #NaNoWriMo I dove with an opening scene and some notes of how it proceeds leftover from junior high school. I started off at a good pace, then that day job and its attendant duties reared its ugly head as I knew it would. I struggled to add a few paragraphs between classes. I worked in the evenings to cobble a few pages more. Weekends were all writing time. Suddenly I was hooked on the story and the writing became an obsession.

My simple sci-fi tale of the little alien guy captured and taken away from his home world for no apparent reason, forced to work hard labor, who learns and grows, and is determined to escape and return home, filled my mind for most of every day. Part of the fun (of making him suffer, ironically) was inventing his home world's landscape, flora and fauna, social life, and religious beliefs. I tried to rethink how this society would see the universe and how they would communicate. I did not want to invent a whole new language as I had done for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy (e.g., Ghoupallean, Zetin, Roue, and Danid). (Makes a great #CyberMonday gift or a nice box to stuff under the tree!)

Inventing a new world slowed down my writing so I gave myself permission to write crap. Just get the story out...err, umm, down. Tell what happens, toss in a scene here and there, charge ahead to that 50,000 word goal line. And so I did. In fact, I hit the 49,999 word mark just three weeks into November and rested with my toes barely touching the line for a couple days. Then I leaped ahead. I always knew I'd have the final week free to write thanks to a full week holiday break from school. I knew no matter what I achieved in the month, I could catch up then. I even dared to edit out a few hundred words, lowering my word count. Cocky, I know.

By the time I entered this extended Thanksgiving break, I was past 50,000 words. I dared take a couple days off. I knew this story would not be finished at 50,000, not even at 55,000 words. I settled at a comfortable total of 55,555 words but upon validation on the NaNoWriMo website, I was credited with only 55,396 words. However, based on where I am in the story, I predict about 75,000 to 80,000 to finish it. And the final two twists will Blow Your Mind! (This is the fun part of writing: blowing readers' minds.)

Originally, I was setting the story on the same world that I used for THE DREAM LAND Trilogy but in its NaNoWriMo incarnation, I made it an entirely new world, a warm, lush, vibrant planet where the indigenous intelligent life runs around half naked. Too bad for our mild-mannered hero Toog that he is taken to a cold, frozen wasteland to labor with a menagerie of beings taken from many different worlds or kept in a frosty stone-walled prison cell until he is needed--or that he must hide in a chilly cave after he escapes the prison and the work camp. Now how will he get off the planet to return home to his family?

That is THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, of course. (Spoiler: It involves an interdimensional doorway, similar to that central trope used in THE DREAM LAND Trilogy.) And if Toog does make it home, what will he find there? Will his society have left him behind? Or will he suffer the same kind of time-differential the astronauts in the film INTERSTELLAR experienced?

Coming to an ebook reading device near you probably sometime in 2015.

And so I won...like everyone does who plays...similar to a youth soccer league, I suppose. And here is my certificate to prove it!

Also available for your #CyberMonday consideration are two non-sci-fi novels that will leave you tearful and distraught by the final page: AFTER ILIUM and A BEAUTIFUL CHILL.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

23 November 2014

'Tis the Time to Tickle the Turkey!

(free recipe included)

This week many will be slouching and slumping and snoring or snorting, content in the afterglow of their gluttonous indulgences and warm family camaraderie they put off for most of the days this year. That is our holiday tradition in the north of America, no matter how the origins and historical developments and political corrections have affected it. I do not indulge much on these holidays; however, I always enjoy a day off from the usual.

I recommend this source of information about Thanksgiving because practically all of it is wrong, or considered wrong to someone somewhere. Or the official source, Plymouth Plantation, if you care to surround yourself with facts and speculations. They may yet be debated, if you have time after dinner and between the games.

A bit of personal connection: I visited the Plymouth site in Massachusetts as a child, gazed down upon the 1621-stamped rock named Plymouth, yet did not travel there in a Plymouth automobile.

Nevertheless, holiday traditions die hard (though turkeys are easy). From time immemorial I and all my relations would gather at the grandparents' residence with food in hand and have a grand feast. I recall dinners with a giant turkey and a giant ham and a hundred side dishes and a thousand desserts. I recall not having much leftovers, either.

Now I can barely finish a turkey sandwich and a side of sweet potato. Then my cousins grew up (and I suppose I did, too) and we all had our own families. By then, the grandparents passed on and Thanksgiving dinners became separate and self-contained. At some point it became pointless to go to the trouble of it, even at the risk of having no leftovers.

Some highlights of Thanksgivings past:

2003. Stuck in my doctoral program in the snowy hills of western Pennsylvania, it made no sense to travel back to Kansas for three days. Especially when I had final papers to write. So I just made burritos and kept typing.

1988 and 1989. I was living in Japan so it wasn't even a holiday. And turkey was an unfamiliar bird in that country. I cannot recall exactly what I ate on those days yet it was likely something with teriyaki sauce on it.

Sometime in my youth I agreed to attend a "starve-in" at a local church. Young people would empathize with the starving masses of the world by not eating Thanksgiving dinner. To help us endure our hunger we played games and had other entertainments. When it was done, I went home and dove into the leftovers my parents had. I only went to that event to impress a girl.

Or, as the early founding chefs decided the menu, stick with venison and lobster! Or, in the alternative, try soybean pudding, sometimes called "tofu." Perhaps a turkey substitute could be created from various local vegetables and exotic fruits. Use your imagination.

No matter what happens this year, indulge in moderation and may your moderation be indulgent. See you on the other side!

And now, as promised, here is the recipe for...

Stephen's Stuffing

[please, no weird puns, ok?]

Ingredients: a loaf of cheap bread, stick of real butter, medium summer sausage, bag of dried apricots, bunch of celery, little jar of sage, a bottle of orange juice, salt & pepper to your tastes. (You could substitute cooked/dried cranberries for the apricots, if you wish; in that case, skip the OJ and use cranberry juice.)

Spread butter over several slices of bread. Tear up the bread into little pieces, putting the pieces into a large bowl.

Cut up the sausage; slice then dice. Put that it the large bowl with the bread pieces. Cut the apricots and celery into little pieces and put the pieces into the large bowl. Shake in a good amount of sage, salt, and pepper. Mix up everything in the large bowl.

Take the mixture from the bowl and put it into a small pan, something like 8x8 inches will do--or 9x9, 10x10, 12x12, whatever fits the size of your appetite. (I do not recommend stuffing the turkey itself because it is rather gross when you think about it and you don't know for sure what is still inside the turkey.)

Sprinkle some sage on top. Pour some orange juice into the pan; not a lot, but get everything wet. The OJ will make it slightly tart; you can skip the OJ if you want to and it will still be good.

Put the pan with the stuffing in it into the oven and bake until it starts to smell good, perhaps 30 to 40 minutes at 350*F. I'm going on memory now, so be careful. Putting foil over the top may help it along. It seems to me that we always put it in with the foil-wrapped potatoes for the same time and temp, so try that.

Or, you could layer each ingredient in the pan: bread pieces first, then the pieces of sausage, celery, apricot, sage, and repeat. Pour the orange juice over the top, let it soak down into the mixture, then bake.

NOTE: I am not, nor have I ever been, a cook, chef, or baker. However, this recipe is a hybrid of recipes I assisted with in my youth, standing alongside one or the other grandmother, so it checks out. You will not get sick from eating it. Enjoy!

Happy End-of-November Holiday!

17 November 2014

Where is Toog today?

Having nothing much to blog about, I thought I'd update you on my progress in the National Novel Writing Month, a.k.a. NaNoWriMo, which I have joined for the first time in my recorded history.

And it goes a little bit like this:

Toog is from planet Sebbol, a member of the race called Aull who sprang from the womb of Great Goddess Aull. One night he awakens with a bad feeling. He goes out of his abode to check on things but is suddenly, as he feared, captured by a mysterious alien race known only as The Masters. (This is totally unrelated to golf, by the way.) They seem to be all-powerful and just as mysterious.

Poor Toog awakens in a dark cell, literally bolted to his bed. Eventually he meets another prisoner who teaches him how to survive. There is more to getting through his ordeal, Toog learns, than simply conversing with his inner Ru. Soon he is at a labor camp in a frozen wilderness, a difficult situation for someone from a tropical world. But there at the work camp he meets beings from across the galaxy. Toog leads a rebellion and...is taken back to the prison. (Yes, NaNoWriMo can be rough on protagonists.)

At the risk of offering spoilers, suffice to say that Toog escapes, rounds up other beings and mounts a full-scale assault on the prison and the Masters. Now what? They seem to be stuck on this prison planet, even though they have escaped from the prison itself. Now they must discover the secret power of the Masters, the way they can go from world to world collecting a diverse alien labor force. Maybe that is the riddle that will show them the way home.

But wait! There's more!

What will Toog find when (if) he makes it back to his home world? Will time have passed him by? Will his mate have waited for him? Will his infant daughter remember him? Yes, I know, shades of Interstellar--where young father returns to find his daughter now in her old age. However, I planned this novel during my teen years and wrote the opening scene plus a couple pages of notes. What is included in the notes is what Toog finds when he returns to his home world (Spoiler, sorry).

So there you have it: NaNoWriMo updated. Word count: 32,233 and climbing!

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

10 November 2014

How NaNoWriMo is like being in Interstellar

I have not fallen off the face of the Earth. It just feels that way. To me and probably to all of you--any of you--well, you know who you are. Feels like I lost 23 years as I fitfully slept last night.

Last time I was pulled to the keyboard by the blog muse, I teased you with news that I had taken a leap of faith into the black hole that is the National Novel Writing Month competition. Competition is really a misnomer because, like youth soccer leagues everywhere, we are all winners--as long as we hit 50,000 words by midnight of November 30 (by time zone). I thought I could crank out 50,000 sorta-good words in a month, even with a day job that requires me to read stacks of student papers on a fairly constant schedule during the month of November. I thought I could be heroic.

Then came the film INTERSTELLAR (official website)(early teaser trailer #1 and trailer #2), which I knew I would see as if my life depended on. I knew that at the instant the first trailer passed my eyes months ago ahead of another, much lesser film. The opportunity finally came on Saturday. But no! Two-thirds through the film--and I was into it hook, line, and quantum physics--it all stopped. The theater went dark, the screen went dark, and for a minute or so all anyone could do was make-out. We all expected the problem would be corrected and the movie would continue.

Not a still from the film INTERSTELLAR but a shot of Iceland where the film was, umm, filmed.

Then emergency lights came on and youthful theater thugs told us to get out. Actually, they asked us to "carefully evacuate." Everyone walked through the bowels of the mall's multiplex to the exterior door--just as the Ranger spacecraft would be docking with the mothership, Endurance, which kinda resembled a bracelet of Pandora ornaments. We feared to exit the safety of our theater for the cold of the parking lot. Outside, there was chaos as people did not know what to do. Wait to be called back in to finish the film? Wait for fireworks? Rush to cars and get in line to exit the mall? It was pandemonium without even a single panda!

Long story short, I had been expecting to piggyback my evening's writing session on the inspiration from that film. I've noticed that seeing a movie or reading a book can spark that part of my brain that I also use for writing stories. It has nothing to do with the kind of story or film, or what the story or film is about, just that it fires neurons in the same part of my brain. But no movie--no conclusion, that is--so no writing session.

Why did I latch my writing session to a film like Endurance?--I mean, Interstellar?

Because my little NaNoWriMo novel is a sci-fi space opera, too. Except there are no humans, no Earthlings in it. (I reserve the right to add a throw-away human later in the book.) In my working-titled novel THE MASTERS' RIDDLE, an ordinary guy, Toog of planet Sebbol, is captured in the middle of the night and awakens in a prison cell. What has he done wrong? he wonders. Lots of time to wonder, bolted to a flat surface in a dark chamber as he is.

I know what happens next, of course; I've worked out the details about that already. But it would be cruel to give you those spoilers. Suffice to say, this story is about a diverse group of beings from across the galaxy who must work together to escape their awful circumstances. The only way to do that is to solve the riddle of who the Masters are and what their power is.

Which brings me to my slacker word count. Granted, there is the day job and its attendant duties, but evenings and weekends are free, one may argue. But it's just not as simple as that. My recently launched anti-vampire novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN was easy to start: I was essentially writing about the quirky things I experienced last spring, then veered off into the Gothic. I even ended up in Hungary, by golly, without ever leaving my computer! But this so-called "easy knock-off" novel is tough going--much like the 130% gravity of the Waterworld our heroic astronauts encounter after passing through the Saturnalian wormhole (Nope, no hints about the Masters' riddle here, ahem!)

So I'm struggling to make the word count each day. As the NaNoWriMo website calculated last night, I will achieve my 50,000 words somewhere after December 5--which is like January 20 in non-NaNoWriMo time! The deeper into November one gets, the slower word count rises. Coincidentally, the faster the month seems to go, too!

If you do not hear from me again, I probably slipped on the ice on some far-off planetary stage and landed head-first in the orchestra pit. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to produce the necessary word count to pull my novel through that *wormhole, kicking and screaming, no matter what the organist is playing, nor the crop burners burning, nor the scientists scienting! As any blight-stressed, dust-choked farmer might say, "I'm gonna getter done!"

Now you are up to date. Expecting a free ticket, I hope to return soon to start the film from the beginning again! Then I shall write a proper review. Your indulgences, please. Thanks.

*If you are interested in learning about interdimensional travel without using a spaceship and cryosleep while transiting to Saturn (as in Interstellar), then you may wish to visit this Facebook page: Interdimensional Travel. Or you may wish to follow the adventures through an interdimensional doorway by reading THE DREAM LAND Trilogy.

---------------------------------------------------------------------
(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

03 November 2014

Why I joined the Nanowrimo cult

It pains me to use the word cult but perhaps that is the most accurate word. Let's try to keep things in perspective, however: it's a good cult.

November is the period of worship in the cult of Nanowrimo (what the uninitiated may call the "National Novel Writing Month"), chiefly for those whose nervous fingers cannot avoid the lusty keys. I have never been able to participate because of its unfortunate scheduling. You see, November is the fattiest meat of the fall semester and tough to cut; it's when I have the most day-job work to do. Sure, I could write a draft of a novel in a month--if I had no day job to tend to, if I had no other disruptions, and if I had the idea in advance. I would like to give it a go one of these years--and so, finally, I have joined!

I finished Halloween with sufficient aplomb, whereby my new vampire romance novel A DRY PATCH OF SKIN went viral like a patient with ebola (Thanks to those who downloaded or purchased it! Please post a review.), and so I lay exhausted and drained of energy, devoid of plot ideas. How could I possibly participate in this festival of wordcraft?

Until, alas, one ancient tale arose in my mushy consciousness late Halloween night not long after several diminutive alien costumes accosted me upon my doorstep, demanding healthy treats! The horror! And so was born the story which shall consume me lo these many nights of November!

The goal for celebrants of NaNoWriMo is to create from sacred mind-fire a 50,000 word book. By definition, that is the minimum length for something called a novel. That seems to be easy enough. My previous novels have been in the 72,000 to 122,000 range. However, let us not forget the time factor: one month--with the day job looming precariously over all.

When we are embroiled in the vagaries of daily life, we cannot simply sit down at a given moment and type out a story!

I, for one, am a slave to my muses. I cannot work unless they approve of the project. And they will not approve of the project until they have been adequately wined and dined, made indolent and subservient through pleasurable stimulations, coaxed and coerced into finally granting their favor upon me.

Once started, however, I can run on fumes until it's finished. Then, when it's finished, I fall into a useless funk, dreading I'll never write anything ever again. Months later I get another idea and run it by my muses to see if it passes muster. I wonder why I ever had doubts about writing again. It is what I do, after all. No matter what month it is.

Therefore, to claw my way out of the grave of vampire novels, I enter this new house of worship with full knowledge of the many sacrifices required of me!

FYI

My NaNoWriMo ritual is titled "The Masters' Riddle"

It is a sci-fi tale of captured aliens trying to escape a barren prison planet. And none of the characters are human.

Stay tuned for the amazing result!