Thursday, February 18, 2010

13 Favorite Desserts




1. 1. Chocolate covered cherries - My mother only makes these once a year at Christmas, and they are SOOO good. All my friends wait for them. I've suggested she start an online business selling them, but she says no.

2. Cheesecake pie - Check out my website, and download a free Red Rose author cookbook to get the recipe. This is the best thing ever, and unlike regular cheesecake it requires no baking, and very little prep-time: http://honoriaravena.com/free-reads

3. Lemon Meringue pie

4. Russian Tea Cakes - These have a lot of different names, but they're round cookies, with pecans in them, and they're covered in powdered sugar.

5. Peanut butter cookies

6. Coconut cream pie

7. Banana cream pie with a coconut crust

8. Pumpkin pie - Wow, a lot of pies make the list.

9. Oatmeal cookies

10. Sugar cookies - A classic. The only thing I don't like now is mom won't let me put frosting and sprinkles on them anymore. When I was little she let me decorate them, but not now. She says frosting is gross. *Sigh* Lol, and now I'm feeling inspired. I'm going to make sugar cookies with frosting some time soon.

11. Rice pudding

12. Eggnog cookies - another Christmas favorite. Basically sugar cookies with eggnog.

13. Chocolate chip cookies - another classic.

Gees, looking through mother's recipe book to do this Thursday 13 has made me even hungrier than I was. We're having turkey for dinner, and so that's all I've smelled for the last 3 hours. That's the terrible thing about turkey dinners. They smell good as soon as you sauté the onions and celery.

Maybe one day I'll put some of these recipes up on my website.




Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!



The purpose of the meme is to get to know everyone who participates a little bit better every Thursday. Visiting fellow Thirteeners is encouraged! If you participate, leave the link to your Thirteen in others’ comments. It’s easy, and fun!



Trackbacks, pings, comment links accepted!

View More Thursday Thirteen Participants

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Why Do I Write by Angela Kay Austin

I still have my very first pink and white diary. I don’t remember what age I was when I got it, but I remember the feeling. I can’t explain it in any other way than to say…relief.

I don’t know if that makes since, so, let me try to explain.

Like so many other African-Americans born in the seventies. I was bused from my urban neighborhood to attend school in neighborhoods that were different from mine in every way: economically, racially, and at times culturally. And, even though you were in such foreign surroundings, no one told you how to ‘fit in’. So, I didn’t. Don’t worry; I had friends, but not many. It’s weird how that also affected my life in my neighborhood. I didn’t get to hang out in the lunchroom with the kids from my neighborhood because we weren’t in the same place. It’s kind of like going to work every day for years with the same people, and then you change jobs. How do those ‘work’ friendships fair? Well, it was the same for me. So, books became my best friends. Back then, Reading is Fundamental was incredibly strong in schools. One day, I came across Judy Blume’s, Are You There God It’s Me, Margaret? Could I have picked a more appropriate book? Aside from a crazy connection with Margaret, I connected with Judy Blume. I wanted to write!

I took that little pink and white diary, and I wrote everything I could. I didn’t know what to do with it, but I wrote. In my mom’s magazines, I saw stuff about contests and short stories. So, I entered. Nothing happened. So, I asked her for my own magazines. I entered their contests. Nothing happened. Over the past twenty years, I’ve written and submitted. February 11th, 2010, my first novella—Love’s Chance—will be released by Red Rose Publishing.

So, when I say relief, I don’t know how else to explain finding your calling. Even if Love’s Chance wasn’t being released, I’d still be writing and submitting. No matter what, I’d still write: poetry, women’s fiction, romance, and more.

So, it’s funny, as I type this, the other half of my brain is working on a scene from a manuscript I’m working on. I can’t turn it off. No, not voices in my head…well, maybe a few. I don’t think I could stop writing even if I were forced. Writing allows me to cry, laugh, explore, share, and so much more. Free therapy, who could ask for more!


Bio: I am an author of contemporary romance novels. My books feature strong African-American women whose love can not be bound by race, bank accounts, age, religion or gender.

Additionally, I write for www.eHOW.com, and www.Examiner.com/dc. My first novella, Love’s Chance, will be released in 2010 by Red Rose Publishing.

Website


Book blurb: To pay back her parents and prevent the loss of their family business, Sinclair Mosley leaves her family and friends behind. Pennsylvania doesn’t welcome her with open arms, but Chance O’Malley does. At the risk of losing everything that brought her to Pennsylvania, including her family’s restaurant, Sinclair must decide if she’s willing to take a chance on love.

Monday, February 8, 2010

An Incredible Beginning by Lynn Crain


Every day I sit down and write but it isn’t every day that I start a book. A book’s beginning is something that can make or break a writer. It is very important to the book as a whole. Even when my mother read me fairy tales growing up, I realized books had to have an incredible beginning or people just wouldn’t read the rest.

Since I started to learn about writing, I understood the power of a great hook. And I went to every hook class I could find whether it be at a local or national convention, I went to workshops discussing a book’s very first line for many years. Apparently, something must have sunk in because I’ve been told more than once I have good hooks.

Here are some great hooks from other people’s books. Now the thought isn’t to try and recognize the book...if you do...great, I’m sure the authors would be ecstatic. What I want you to see if just how compelling each of the listed hooks are. Here’s my top ten list of best hooks in the world. The answers are listed below. They are in no particular order:

1. Hunting vampires was a bitch.

2. He was running for his life.

3. It was a dark and stormy night.

4. It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.

5. Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were.

6. Marley was dead: to begin with.

7. When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton.

8. It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance.

9. Somewhere in the world, time no doubt whistled by on taut and widespread wings, but here in the English countryside it plodded slowly, painfully, as if it trod the rutted road that stretched across the moors on blistered feet.

10. The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane.

Each one of those have special meaning for me as I read each of those books at a different time in my life. Realize that this list ebbs and flows like a river, changing with time and never standing still. Notice there is a mix of classic and contemporary pieces. Some are romance and some are not. But each of them have something so compelling which makes me want to read more. And read them I did, some more than once and a few of them I still read yearly if I can remember just where I left my latest copy. LOL!

So what comprises a good hook? Notice that with the ones I listed, there is not one standard theme. Some come from a character’s point of view and some don’t, some involve something personal and some don’t. So just what is it?

There are some constant elements each and every hook must have. They are:

·It must be compelling

·Should be a beginning – The reason I say should here is because some books have started with the ending and been quite successful.

·It can start with dialogue.

·It can start with action.

·It could be a contrast or something totally unexpected.

·It could be a character description or a description of a setting.

·It could be a humorous question or exclamation or even a regular question or exclamation.

Let’s look at some of mine now and see just what I do. The first is from a WIP called “Where’s My Underwear Anyway?” and it is a fun romp. It’s direct, to the point and immediately brings you into the action.

“So…you really don’t know where your underwear might be?”

There are groups out that who say never start your novel with a question. But this question just begged for an answer. It puts the reader immediately on a quest for the missing underwear. It also brings to mind other questions: who has the underwear? how was the underwear lost? was the underwear misplaced? I could go on forever.

Suddenly, a reader wants to know the answer to those questions.
Here’s another of my first lines. This is from a completed book which is part of the Blue Moon Magic world.

He had always been in this cage in one way or another. It was only recently they had decided to make it his permanent room.

Again, this one takes you immediately into a dilemma. You know someone is in a cage. You don’t know the how’s or the why’s but it just begs those questions.
Here’s another from my Santa’s Elves series. This is from one of my Christmas books, The Thing About Elves.

That human woman drove him crazy.

From just this first line, you know the person thinking is a man and that he isn’t human. Still, you wonder just what the human woman is doing to drive him crazy. It must be something good or he wouldn’t be thinking about it.

This last one is from another WIP called “Avenging Aingeal” and is a story of elemental magic with just a twinge of science.

No one knows where we came from really. We just…are. And there are so very few of us, roaming the earth, protecting the inhabitants these days.

This is from an omniscient POV but is still interesting in its own way. We want to know just who ‘they’ are and why we need protecting. Then one might want to know just how long have ‘they’ been protecting us because the way the sentence is constructed, it is implied that ‘they’ have been here for a long, long time. But one must read the story to know the all answers.

And this one has always been one of my personal favorites as it won quite a few contests with the most notable being at the Hawaii RWA conference. Leslie Wanger picked it as one of five from the whole room full of people.

“Damn, I’m going to lose another one.”

This from my complete book, Midnight Run about a woman off-road racer. It was my first book ever, all 72K of it. It has a great hook but a saggy middle with a kick-ass end. But that’s left for another blog. LOL!

Here’s the books those fabulous first lines came from and if you haven’t read these, you should if you want to learn about great fiction. Each of them starts with a wonderful hook and keeps you entertained until the last line.

1.Hunting vampires was a bitch. – Minion – L.A. Banks

2.He was running for his life. – Hot Ice – Nora Roberts

3.It was a dark and stormy night. – Paul Clifford – Edward Bulwer-Lytton

4.It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. - Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

5.Scarlett O’Hara was not beautiful, but men seldom realized it when caught by her charm as the Tarleton twins were. - Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell

6.Marley was dead: to begin with. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

7.When Mr. Bilbo Baggins of Bag End announced that he would shortly be celebrating his eleventy-first birthday with a party of special magnificence, there was much talk and excitement in Hobbiton. Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring – J.R.R. Tolkein

8.It wasn’t a very likely place for disappearances, at least at first glance - Outlander – Diana Galbadon

9.Somewhere in the world, time no doubt whistled by on taut and widespread wings, but here in the English countryside it plodded slowly, painfully, as if it trod the rutted road that stretched across the moors on blistered feet. - The Flame and the Flower – Kathleen Woodiweiss

10.The two men appeared out of nowhere, a few yards apart in the narrow, moonlit lane. - Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – J.K. Rowling

After all, isn’t that what a hook is meant to do? Make you as the reader want to read the book?

You betcha!

Lynn

Website