February 2014
Arepas
I was scolded, and rightly so, for not sharing a recipe for arepas with my last post, but fear not and continue reading! These are one of the easiest things you can make; they're so warm and comforting and just yum. I hadn't had them in about two years because I am a slacker who […]
Things You Will Always Carry
Last year, two important-to-me relationships came to their end. One of them was the kind of friendship you think you will always have -- where the other person is like the sister you never biologically had. I've tried to write about this -- fictionally and non-fictionally, and I kept hitting a wall. The right words […]
Orange Blossom
Whenever anything awesome happens, Beth asks me how I'm going to celebrate, or what my reward is going to be. It can be big victories, or small, but she's very big on rewarding oneself for a job well done, and I have come to see this is not a bad system at all. These have […]
Shelfies: The Book of the Dead
Every so often, I get blind-sided by a book that I seemingly should have known about long before its publication. The Book of the Dead (from Jurassic London) is one such book. This book is so in my wheelhouse, because Egypt and history and mummies, and it's a tremendous read. If this book were a […]
Brainstorming
Off the top of my head, not meant to be exhaustive in any way, but it's a good start: Marion Zimmer Bradley Kameron Hurley NK Jemisin Sharon Lee Anne McCaffrey Gwyneth Jones Jacqueline Harpman Andre Norton Karen Traviss Catherine Asaro CL Moore AC Crispin Sharon Shinn Kristine Kathryn Rusch Kathleen Ann Goonan Wendy Wagner Caroline […]
Multipass goes to Fhlostan Paradise
Mondays are hard enough, yes? Especially after weekends full of Internet drama and hijinx. So, here's your multipass to better things. Artist Henrique Naspolini is rocking a fierce lady in some fierce armor. Is her Name Baby Cakes? Cracks me up! Editor Silvia Moreno-Garcia wants to publish an anthology of Lovecraftian fiction written entirely by women, […]
Lucky Thirteen
"Persistence wasn’t an end game. It was the name of the road." --Kameron Hurley I started submitting my fiction seriously in 1999. The first markets I hit included Marion Zimmer Bradley's Fantasy, Realms of Fantasy, The Silver Web, Weird Tales, Pulp Eternity, Asimov's, and The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. The last one […]
LetterMo
A few Februarys ago, Mary decided there should be a letter month, as there is also a novel-writing month. If one wrote 50,000 words on a novel, one could surely send 23 letters in February. Couldn't they? # When I was a wee Elise, my grandfather Tobler showed me a collection of leather-bound books he […]
The Women We Don't See
Friend and writer Christopher DeFilippis recently published his annual round up of books, a thing he has been doing for ages and aeons and will hopefully do for ages and aeons more. Like me, Chris reads a LOT and has opinions about what he reads. But his top five from 2013 struck me as curious […]
Lemonade in February
Sometimes, you just want lemonade, even it's winter. And sometimes you think hey, lemonade cake would be great, because lemonade and cake. But that's often where it falls apart, because most of the time, it doesn't seem like lemonade cake recipes take into account the extra sugar you're getting from the lemonade. They just add […]