Monday, November 29, 2010

Recipe: Chili Con Carne

I'm new at chili-making, but after a few different approaches I've cobbled together a recipe I like. It's low in fat, high in fiber, freezes for extra meals, and feeds the manfriend via a Thermos when he's off battling the forces of evil in his office in downtown Boston.

Prep note, this recipe requires you to soak dried beans overnight, so there is some minor planning involved.

What you need:

1½ cups dried kidney beans
¾ cup dried white or pinto beans
8 oz. ground beef (grass-fed organic if you want to go to heaven) or ground buffalo, turkey, chicken, etc.
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup frozen corn
1 14.5 oz. can of stewed and diced tomatoes
1 6 oz. can tomato paste
tomato sauce, as needed (marinara is fine, but the simpler the better)
2 bell peppers, any color, diced
chili powder
salt
black pepper
red pepper flakes

What to do:

1. The night before, put dried beans in a large sauce pan or a stew pot and cover with lots of cold water—enough water that the beans will still be submerged after they've expanded to three times their dried size. Cover and let sit at room temperature until you begin cooking the next day.

2. Remove any beans floating on the surface. Drain and rinse the beans and re-cover with fresh water. Simmer them on medium-low heat for about an hour, or until beans are nearly cooked (when they're fully cooked, they shouldn't have a mealy or chalky texture). If you aren't sure if they're ready, that's okay—you'll just cook them longer later in the recipe. Also, do not add any salt during this step—it affects the way the beans cook.

3. Drain the beans in a sieve. In the now empty pot, brown the beef and the chopped onion. If you're using ground chicken or turkey, add olive oil as needed. Drain the fat for a leaner dish, or keep it in for flavor.

4. Add in the beans, corn, the stewed tomatoes, and the tomato paste, and stir. If the dish looks too bean-heavy and you'd like a stronger tomato base, add tomato sauce until the consistency is to your taste. Turn heat to low and simmer for another hour, stirring and scraping the bottom of the pan every 10–15 minutes.

5. Taste a few beans to make sure they're fully cooked. If not, keep simmering. If they're done, keep everything simmering and add the diced peppers. Add salt, black pepper, chili powder, and red pepper flakes to taste. Cook until peppers are soft.

Makes 4 meal-sizes servings. Freezes and reheats like a dream.

Sunday, November 28, 2010

Sunday Confessional: My Favorite Bad Music

Obviously, music is far too subjective for us to really label anything irrefutably good or bad, but you know what I mean. I went to art school, where the majority tends to turn up its collective nose at manufactured pop tunes, that strain of music designed to be ear-wormish and profitable, to trick listeners into mistaking its catchiness for quality. Sort of the way fast food joints trick us into thinking their delicious fatty fare is preferable to nutritious, less exploding-in-my-mouth-with-flavors-spawned-just-off-the-New-Jersey-Turnpike options.

But I'll own it—I love shitty pop music. It started with Elvis Costello. My boy Elvis is not shitty by any stretch of the imagination, but when I heard "The Other Side of Summer" for the first time in eleventh grade whilst working at my local record store, I was hooked. Glib message or not, it was undeniably pop, yet I adored it. I'd long ago denounced the genre and had spent the years following that shift freebasing Nine Inch Nails and Tool and other dirgey, mopey, restless rock, and I was finally ready to enjoy some chirpy, commercial pop.

As I grew older and got more into exercising, I gravitated toward pop to accent my workouts. It's no fun jogging to Tori Amos. Also as I got older, I began to yearn for my favorite childhood albums, ones wrapped up in memories of my mom dancing me around the living room—The Monkees, Olivia Newton John, the Bee Gees, Debbie Gibson, Phil Collins, Tina Turner. Those examples are all on my iPod now and I listen to them regularly, probably driving my manfriend up the wall. I've also added some artists not favored by my parents, but burned into my earliest cultural memories nevertheless, such as ABBA and Prince.

My pod is equally rife with more current pop offenders, like Lady Gaga, Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, Rhianna, BeyoncĂ©… Then a few that are suspended somewhere between new and nostalgic—Eminem, Destiny's Child, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, NSYNC. Those are the ones I probably secretly liked when I was in college and TRL was still reflecting (or perhaps dictating) the popular tastes, but I refused to admit my enjoyment of them to myself or my peers. Thank goodness I've since gotten over myself.

Let me scan my pod and see what other dark confessions lurk in my Artists list… Ah yes! Anastacia, Craig David, Elton John, the Fugees, George Michael, Jamiroquai, John Denver, Kylie Minogue (a LOT of Kylie Minogue), Ludacris, Mariah Carey, Missy Elliot (a LOOOT of Missy Elliot), Nelly, ODB, Salt-n-Pepa, Sean Paul, Shakira, the Spice Girls, Usher, Will Smith…

So, I've shown you mine. Now show me yours. What dirty little secrets is your iPod harboring?

Sunday Puzzle

It's Sunday again, and you know what that means—time for me to rip off the puzzle segment from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday!

Mustachioed enigmatologist
extraordinaire, Will Shortz
If you're a newcomer, each week on Weekend Edition Sunday, Will Shortz (the hardcore crossword puzzlers' almighty God) comes on the radio to do three things: share the solution to the previous week's puzzle, invite a winner who entered the correct answer to play another puzzle (usually word-related) on the air for word-nerdy prizes, and present everyone with the next week's puzzle (answers due in by Thursday afternoon via the WES website if you want a chance to play on the air).

Note: I never post the solutions on this blog. I see lots of keyword traffic coming from people looking for the answers, which is at best impatient, and at worst, cheating. For shame.

Now without further ado, here's this week's new puzzle:

Name the setting for an old television show that was also a series of popular movies. The answer consists of two words, with five letters in each word. The last three letters of the last word plus the first three letters of the first word, in that order, name a country. What country is it?

Click here to see the original puzzle posting, check the answer to last week's challenge, listen to the segment, or find the link to enter your answer.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

Thrusty Thanksgiving

Thanks, Turkey!
Sorry for a glaring lack of posting this week, but I hurt my shoulder and can only type with one hand. But I haven't missed a Thrusty Thursday yet, so this injury shan't stop me.

For you, I Googled "sexy man thanksgiving" and "sexy man turkey". I did this so that you would not be subjected to the resulting images. You're welcome. Still, I came up short. Shock of shocks, there isn't a wide selection of sexy male celebrities holding out golden brown roast turkeys. So instead, I found a sexy man from Turkey—John Gidding. Enjoy!

A safe and happy holiday to all my fellow Yanks! And a safe and happy regular old Thursday to everyone else.

Sunday, November 21, 2010

Sunday Puzzle

It's Sunday again, and you know what that means—time for me to rip off the puzzle segment from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday!

Mustachioed enigmatologist
extraordinaire, Will Shortz
If you're a newcomer, each week on Weekend Edition Sunday, Will Shortz (the hardcore crossword puzzlers' almighty God) comes on the radio to do three things: share the solution to the previous week's puzzle, invite a winner who entered the correct answer to play another puzzle (usually word-related) on the air for word-nerdy prizes, and present everyone with the next week's puzzle (answers due in by Thursday afternoon via the WES website if you want a chance to play on the air).

Note: I never post the solutions on this blog. I see lots of keyword traffic coming from people looking for the answers, which is at best impatient, and at worst, cheating. For shame.

Now without further ado, here's this week's new puzzle:

From Ray Hamill of Madison, Wis.: What two world capitals can be found by rearranging the letters in the phrase "serial number"?

Click here to see the original puzzle posting, check the answer to last week's challenge, listen to the segment, or find the link to enter your answer.

Friday, November 19, 2010

Thursday, November 18, 2010

Thrusty Thursday: Santino Rice

As I write this, the manfriend is out for the evening. I have been mired in a creative funk for the better half of a fortnight. I am just a bit self-pitiful, and just a bit tipsy. And as such, I am watching a Netflix-supplied marathon of the second season of Project Runway. I never saw this season when it was new, and it was incredibly harrowing attempting to do any research on this week's Thrusty Thursday honoree without risking spoilerizing the show for myself…and so I didn't do any research.

But travel back in time with me to 2005. In classic unlikely-lust-object Thrusty Thursday style, Santino Rice has a few strikes against him in the conventionally-sexy department. Balding, yet he sports a ponytail. Decidedly odd-looking. Not rippling with muscles or gifted with a suave voice. No clue which team he bats for, since again, I didn't do my homework. And yet…damn, he be sexy. This one of those cases of charisma (and dress sense) conquering all obstacles to create the sextasticalz. He's got that unapologetic fuck-all-y'all allure that makes me weak. Plus I'm just a sucker for a man in a fedora.

Sorry, no clip this week—can't risk ruining the season's five-years-past-current result for myself. If you want some video samples of Santino's patented breed of dry, cocky anti-charm, you're on your own. Oh and before you consider spoiling the show's result in the comments—please, think of your karma.

Wednesday, November 17, 2010

Brain-Body Balance…

…I does not have it.

This is more a rant than a blog post, so bear with me, or go elsewhere until I return tomorrow with a regularly scheduled angst-free installment of Thrusty Thursday.

I think there's such a thing as a healthy brain-body balance. I mean those days or even weeks when your body and mind are both feeling settled and performing capably. I think more often than not, I have this balance, or something approaching it. But this week…and indeed last week… Dear God, I don't. Not even close.

I don't know what's up with me. My brain is burned out, largely from being stuck on a romance proposal that I just cannot seem to tailor to get my editor on board. I want to be successful, so I'm thinking of ways to fix it, non-stop. It's exhausting, and naturally the franticness isn't actually helping to generate anything new and fresh. After today I'm just taking a break and switching to edits and admin until next week, lest I give myself a nervous breakdown.

Body-wise, I would hope that if my brain's doing crappily, my body's at least in decent working order. It's so not. I've been jittery and irritable, and sleeping terribly (which is not like me). I'm also blessed a sort of low-level but chronic stomach issue, which gets set off by stress. It leads to abdominal and back pain. Oh joy! Jittery, under-rested, and achy all over.

On the other hand, now that it's getting to be too cold to run outside, I joined my local gym. And I love it! My body may not be feeling stellar, but I'll give it credit for performing. I've been using the elliptical machine and treadmill and today I took my first Pilates class in several years (man, there are some muscles in my core I haven't dusted off in ages) and my body's largely cooperating. And I do think all the exercise refreshes the brain a bit…though I've still yet to wow my editor.

Like a bad mood or a shitty weather pattern, I'll just have to wait this out, I suppose. Though I hope it moves on soon—us writers get mental constipation when our creativity stays blocked for too long.

Sunday, November 14, 2010

Sunday Puzzle

It's Sunday again, and you know what that means—time for me to rip off the puzzle segment from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday!

Mustachioed enigmatologist
extraordinaire, Will Shortz
If you're a newcomer, each week on Weekend Edition Sunday, Will Shortz (the hardcore crossword puzzlers' almighty God) comes on the radio to do three things: share the solution to the previous week's puzzle, invite a winner who entered the correct answer to play another puzzle (usually word-related) on the air for word-nerdy prizes, and present everyone with the next week's puzzle (answers due in by Thursday afternoon via the WES website if you want a chance to play on the air).

Note: I never post the solutions on this blog. I see lots of keyword traffic coming from people looking for the answers, which is at best impatient, and at worst, cheating. For shame.

Now without further ado, here's this week's new puzzle:

What is the longest familiar phrase title, or name in which the only consonants are N and T, repeated as often as necessary? The other letters are vowels.

Click here to see the original puzzle posting, check the answer to last week's challenge, listen to the segment, or find the link to enter your answer.

Sunday Confessional: Attempted Irony

This week's confession: the time I attempted to shoplift from a popular leather goods chain store.

Let us flashback, after school special style. It's September 1996, small town New England. Meg is seventeen. On the surface, she seems to have it all. She's just started her junior year, she's got her license and access to a car, and has recently begun seeing her first boyfriend (with whom she ultimately does little aside from listening to Nine Inch Nails in his room and prudishly rebuffing his attempts to get to second base.) She's also got the coolest job possible in her hometown, working as a clerk in the record and video store, surrounded by worldly, over-it-all twenty-somethings.

Waving away the hazy flashback clouds. So yeah, my first real job. I was stoked. I was making $4.75 an hour, mad money compared to my allowance, which had crept year by year to a dispiriting $2.50 a week between the ages of five and seventeen. I couldn't even buy a copy of Glamour with that! But no matter—I was part of the jet set now. I very proudly drove my excellent, jointly-owned-with-my-brother 1993 two-door Tercel to my new job and raked in upwards of eighty bucks a week.

But how to store all this crazy money? I had been introduced to a small sect of cool people—cool meaning they didn't live at home and were done with all the bull of high school—and I wanted to emulate them. Cool, grown-up people had wallets, proper leather ones. I wanted a grown-up leather wallet, too, in which to store the eighty dollars a week I was now raking in.

My mission took me to the Maine Mall, where I probably wandered around and spotted something that cost close to eighty dollars at the Gap or Express that I needed to have. I needed to have whatever it was, because I'd been wearing thrift store clothes most of my life, and though it fit my fuck-all-y'all artist persona, now that I had funds, the allure of dressing more like my classmates had tremendous pull on my psyche. So I'd found some now superior object of desire, worthy of my entire paycheck, and planned to buy it. But I still wanted a wallet. Still, how expensive could one be? They're so small.

As it turns out, your no-frills starter wallet from the aforementioned chain leather goods store costs $19.95. Hold up, dude, that's a fourth of my hard-earned paycheck! Perhaps it was time for me to pass another teenage milestone and learn how to shoplift.

Has the irony hit you yet? I needed to steal a wallet in order to house the money I no longer really had because I'd already resolved to spend it elsewhere, thereby necessitating that I steal. I don't call many phenomena ironic, but come on, that's got to qualify.

I knew from my new job at the record store that thievery is lame, but deep material desire set the needle in my moral compass flying around in strange directions. I also knew from my new job that stores use security tags and stickers to bust the thieving asses of douchebag teenagers, the type of young person I was fretting over how best to become. All while affecting casual browsing (you get good at casual browsing when you never have money and can only hope to touch the things you shall never actually own) I carried around my new Precious, the plain black leather men's wallet. I found its security tag, a simple circuit board-sealed-in-paper affair, and I removed it. I hid it somewhere, perhaps in the pocket of a leather jacket I was pretending to be interested in. Now, how to sneak the wallet out of the store…

Because I grew up in Maine, it was acceptable fashion during this grungy era to sport wool L.L. Bean socks and Birkenstocks. Especially coupled with a tie-dyed Grateful Dead tee, which I did not own. I was not a filthy hippie…sandals and corduroys notwithstanding. I didn't own real Birks (or indeed real Bean socks) but I was rocking a pair of maroon knock-offs that evening at the mall. I dropped the wallet discreetly on the floor, finagled it between my foot and the bed of the sandal, and went to work sweating bullets.

The crime seemed assured. Security disabled. Item craftily stowed, so that even if the alarm went off, prhaps I'd stand a chance of getting searched and coming up clean. I was covering my bases. But actually walking through the doors and their scanners…

I browsed like no seventeen-year-old girl has ever browsed in a popular chain leather goods store before. I honestly bet I walked around with the wallet under my stinky sock for forty minutes, as though the balls required to walk through the door were hidden among the briefcases or driving gloves. Not suspicious. Not at all. And after all that…I pussied out. I slipped the wallet from my fake Birk as stealthily as I'd hidden it there. My foot ached from walking for a half hour upon the object of my corrupt desire. I picked it up at some opportune moment, walked to the register, and paid for it.

So in the end, I didn't steal…not then anyhow, but the harrowing story of how on another occasion I did manage to steal a bottle of nail polish from Contempo Casuals will just have to keep. I don't think my morals won out that night in the leather store, merely my fear of getting busted. It also wrecked my shopping buzz, so I left with the sixty remaining bucks to fill in my new, paid-in-full leather-and-sweaty-wool-sock-smelling wallet. I'm sure the cash lasted all of two days before I blew it on striped socks or magazines or sparkly eyeshadow. But ultimately, fear was good. Fear protected me from guilt that evening, and I loved that wallet. My first purchase with my big-girl paycheck. I bet I wouldn't have loved it if I hadn't paid for it.

Apologies to any schadenfreude fans who'd hoped that story would end in my parents getting called by mall security. But I was generally a good kid, nefarious schemes like this one notwithstanding, and most of my confessions are doomed to be more humbling than properly scandalous. Plus if I'd done anything really bad…do you honestly think I'd share it on this little no-name blog?

Friday, November 12, 2010

Recipe: Oatmeal Raisin Cookies

Photo stolen and misrepresented with my 
thanks to theveganfoodie.wordpress.com
Mutated from my Unbeatable Chocolate Chunk Cookies recipe and made more autumntasticals.

Preheat oven to 325°.

Use a mixer or a strong hand with a fork in it to thoroughly blend:
2 sticks softened butter (definitely not margarine)
1 cup packed brown sugar
½ cup white sugar

Then thoroughly stir in:
1 tsp. vanilla extract (or facsimile)
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. ginger
2 large eggs
½ tsp. salt
1 rounded tsp. baking soda

Then stir in by hand:
1 cup raisins (or dried cranberries, or a mix)
2½ cups white flour
1 cup quick oats

Drop onto ungreased cookie sheet in cotton ball-sized blobs…I usually get a dozen or so on a standard sheet. Bake for about 7–10 minutes, or until just golden brown. Remove from sheet once cool and store in an air-tight container. Any unused dough can be frozen for later, or used to bribe strangers into performing degrading chores around your house.

Thursday, November 11, 2010

Thrusty Thursday: Steven Brand

As the quality of this image suggests, it's not easy finding photos of Steven Brand. It's actually more effective to Google The Scorpion King, Memnon—Memnon's the name of the baddie he played opposite Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson in that hokey-but-fun 2002 movie. This is not for a lack of acting experience, either. A quick trip to Brand's IMDb filmography shows he's been in dozens of films and TV shows. And why not? He's a fox. A Scottish fox.

The other night the manfriend and I were poised to watch a Kung Fu movie, per my predictable request. We realized as it started up that it was nearly three hours long. For thirty-somethings, we are old fogeys, and that would have kept us up way past our bedtimes. We clicked back to the previous screen on Netflix Instant Watcher and lo and behold, the next recommended title was The Scorpion King. I said, "Let's watch it! It'll be fun and cheesy, and it's only ninety minutes long." We sat through thirty-four Jean-Claude Van Damme movies this past winter, so our threshold for cheesy-fun action movies is high. We went for it.

It's a fun movie. I liked it better than The Mummy, let's put it like that. Cinematic cookie dough, not too gorey. But whatever it may have lacked in writing or cleverness, it made up for in Steven Brandfulness. Lookie!

He had a sort of mohawk mullet in this movie, but it totally worked. Though IMDb tells us he's six foot two (and his fan site says five eleven), no one looks huge and manful when plunked beside The Rock's giganticness…but that's okay. I think he's got charisma. He reminded me of another Thrusty Thursday honoree —martial artist John Wayne Parr. For a few delusional moments I imagined Parr had learned to act and to speak in a convincing British accent and scored himself a movie role. But no. At first, sadness. Then delight—two distinct foxes are undoubtedly better than one.

Other random facts I sleuthed out: Brand grew up in eastern Africa, he may have been married to a member of Bananarama at some point (there seems to be a debate going on this point), he once did a bit of miming in Paris, and he plays cricket. Versatile!

Without further ado, here's the trailer for The Scorpion King. Brand gets quite a bit of play in it—see if you can spot his mighty mullhawk!

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

Reliable as meteorology

I'm speaking of my chosen profession—writing. Just a quick rant from me on the topic of weather and wordsmithery and mood.

I live in New England, a region infamous for its bipolar weather patterns. November is particularly unpredictable, when it could be 34°, gusting and sunny one day, 59° and drizzly the next, haling the day after. Moods can feel that way too. Cheerful and productive yesterday, gloomy and uninspired tomorrow. I'm a pretty moody bastard, but my outlook tends to swing in intervals of several days. Three or four productive, upbeat days when I write three thousand words each morning and tackle my paperwork diligently, followed by two where it feels like five hundred tooth extractions getting as many lackluster words on the digital page.

Sometimes I think the weather feeds into my mood. A week of clouds and rain suck the life out of me, and a walk in the sun can shift me out of a funk. But other times, the storms or sunshine in my head feel as random as the ones outside.

I know I'm not the only one at the mercy their moods. Like forecast blurbs, I notice from day to day on Twitter as my fellow writers fluctuate. One day they're chatty and excited, tweeting about their excellent word count or new story idea. The next they're grumbly, in need of commiseration and a kick in the butt just to open up the work-in-progress. Why are we so inconsistent? Why is out chemistry seemingly designed to vary so much from day to day?

Over the years I've been fortunate in gaining a lot of self awareness on this topic (thanks, awesome psychotherapist mom!) When I was in my teens and early twenties I was pretty much at the mercy of my moods, then I got fed up with that and read a lot of Gary Zukav, learned to see my moods as physical manifestations in my body, rather than proof that there was something to feel angry or sad or maniacally happy about. Awesome tool. Now I feel jealous and I think, "Hmm, I feel a sour sensation in my solar plexus. My body is reacting to a feeling of jealousy. Oh well, it'll pass." I don't think, "Goddamn it, Jane just got a new book contract and I haven't had one in months! It's not fair! Why do I bother? I must suck!" To be fair to myself, I was never that petulant, but you see what I mean. Foul moods, like foul weather, will pass, if we're patient and rational and wait it out.

I'm cool with my moods being what they are, but as calm and non-reactionary as I usually manage to be about them, that doesn't help me tweeze the words out on a day when each letter and apostrophe and space feels like water torture. I couldn't tell you yet which mood I'm in today, but I'd guess it's somewhere in the middle. This post is flowing easily, yet I suspect I wrote it so I could put off some rewrites that intimidate me. Well, I'm shit out of luck now. Time to face the storm.

Sunday, November 7, 2010

Sunday Puzzle

It's Sunday again, and you know what that means—time for me to rip off the puzzle segment from NPR's Weekend Edition Sunday!

Mustachioed enigmatologist
extraordinaire, Will Shortz
If you're a newcomer, each week on Weekend Edition Sunday, Will Shortz (the hardcore crossword puzzlers' almighty God) comes on the radio to do three things: share the solution to the previous week's puzzle, invite a winner who entered the correct answer to play another puzzle (usually word-related) on the air for word-nerdy prizes, and present everyone with the next week's puzzle (answers due in by Thursday afternoon via the WES website if you want a chance to play on the air).

Note: I never post the solutions on this blog. I see lots of keyword traffic coming from people looking for the answers, which is at best impatient, and at worst, cheating. For shame.

Now without further ado, here's this week's new puzzle:

From the 2011 calendar "Mensa 365 Brain Puzzlers" by Mark Danna and Fraser Simpson: Write out the 26 letters of the alphabet. Take a sequence of seven letters, change one letter in that sequence to a U, and rearrange the result to name something you might find in your refrigerator. Hint: The answer is a two-word phrase.

Click here to see the original puzzle posting, check the answer to last week's challenge, listen to the segment, or find the link to enter your answer.

Friday, November 5, 2010

Friday Night Fu Review: Ong-Bak 2

Ong-Bak 2 ★ ½ 
Pretty and gritty, but no 
match for the original. 
A few weeks ago I posted my review of the original Ong-Bak, a film that blew my mind clean out of my skull. It was with high hopes that I recently watched its prequel, Ong-Bak 2: The Beginning (2008). I will admit, I was disappointed.

The Beginning had a few things going for it. To start with, it too starred Tony Jaa. Score. It had better production quality than the first installment—crisp, beautiful shots (looked fab even via Instant Watcher on our laptop), some smooth special effects, amazing costumes and sets. It also had some great combat sequences, especially the second-to-last fight scene, and two instances of the most creative uses of an elephant I've ever seen in any film.

What it lacked, however, was the charm of the original. The first film was wittier, spunkier, quirkier, more charismatic…simpler but undoubtedly awesomer. This one didn't feel like the same franchise at all. To be fair, the story was only very loosely tied with the original. Jaa plays a different character and the story is set centuries before the contemporary original, and you don't get exciting Bangkok as the story's backdrop. But it's called Ong Bak 2…I didn't follow how these were part of the same legacy. One is quest storytelling at its best, relying on clever stunts and a simple plot. The second a dark, gruesome, rather depressing saga, with far more gore. Everybody gets it in the throat in this movie, whereas the first Ong-Bak hardly had any casualties, and the baddies who did die did so by their own incompetence.

And for reasons unclear to me, I simply wasn't grabbed by this movie. The pacing managed to be sluggish, despite all the action and violence. However, I will leave you with a tiny taste of the aforementioned genius use of an elephant:

Thursday, November 4, 2010

Thrusty Thursday: Ken Leung

Best known as Miles from Lost, I've had Ken Leung on the brain. Or rather, my erotica-writing alter ego has. If I ever wrap up my latest romance proposal and current edits, she gets to work on her ridiculous "Stanford Prison Experiment meets Survivor" manuscript, the one that involves funky POV and seven main characters in a weird battle royale psychological mindfuck, and much boinking, predictably. Her current favorite of those seven main characters is Pike, a surly half-Korean army medic from Detroit with Ken Leung's face. Thanks, Ken! What would us writers do without you poor unsuspecting actors and actresses lending us your bits and pieces? Here's a bit of Ken as Miles, showcasing a taste of that patented snark he's so damn good at:

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

Mike Myers presents…


Remember a couple of weeks ago when everyone's favorite one-man blog harem stopped by to announce his intentions to pen an entry for our chapter's unpublished writers' contest? Well, wouldn't you know it, Mike's got an update for us! And make no mistake, he's earned the title of High Exalted Procrastinator yet again…
PART III: Contest Edition! 

Welcome to a special Procrastinator’s Guide to Writing—Contest Edition! My local RWA chapter holds an annual First Kiss Contest for unpublished writers. I’ve submitted each of the past two years and have yet to final. “How can that be?” you are probably asking yourself, right? The answer could be anything from getting assigned judges who were just having bad days (doubtful), the writing wasn’t up to snuff (likely) but I’m guessing the biggest culprit is that for two years running I’ve waited until the last possible day submissions are accepted to put pen to paper and write the darned things. And surprise, surprise, here we find ourselves at our Third Annual What Do You Mean the Submission Is Due Today? Day.

Some of you might suggest I blow the contest off but that’s just not an option. First of all I committed to entering, and while I am notoriously unreliable in keeping personal deadlines, I’d like to think that when I commit to someone other than myself I come through in most cases. Secondly I am entering because the contest is run by great friend Jennie Brown and it would be criminal of me not to take advantage of the opportunity her hard work (as well as that of the volunteer judges) provides. Third reason for putting myself through this? Because I really, really would like to final one of these times. And yes, I realize it would seem if I really wanted to final so badly I’d put a little more effort into crafting my entry. The issue is that putting that much effort into a single aspect of my book would run counter to my current “just write it and worry about it later” mindset, or at least that’s the justification I’m using, so please just indulge me this one delusion.

Okay, so you’ve been brought up to date. I’m off to work where I’ll brainstorm during the commute and start writing during my lunch break. By then we’ll be down to about twelve hours until the submission deadline having yet to write word one of my entry. Hope the muse has her thinking cap on.

* * *

Deadline—12 hours: Lunchtime at work. Had a co-worker pick up an Italian sub so I wouldn’t have to go out myself and therefore can use the entire thirty minutes writing (hey, you don’t get this kind of inside info in just any blog post). Wish me luck. (BTW, has anyone seen my muse milling about? She was supposed to meet me here ten minutes ago. Lazy good for nothing <inaudible grumbling and questionable cuss words omitted>...

Deadline—9 hours: Operation Lunchtime/Crunchtime Writing session didn’t go as smoothly as planned (I know, who’d have thunk it) as an emergency came up at work that’s kept me busy until now. So as of this minute, Hours Remaining: 9  Words Written: 0

I have to admit I’m not all warm and fuzzy on the productivity front thus far. And on another side note, should I be worried that I found a picture of my muse on the side of my lunchtime milk carton? That can’t be good. Oh well, let’s give this another shot. Well hello blank page...we meet again.

Deadline—3 hours: Better progress on Lunchtime/Crunchtime Take 2. Words were actually written which I’m assuming is an improvement over my earlier attempts of utter failure, so now I have a couple hundred words to get me started. Kids are finished fighting (please let them be finished fighting) and watching a movie. Dinner is ready and a quick TP run to the market (we were down to half a roll) has been crossed off the to do list. Time to get cracking. Down to one hundred and eighty minutes to get this puppy in the Sent Mail folder.

Deadline—2 hours: I’m actually happy with the progress so far. Miss Muse decided to stop by for a visit after all and since I was too focused on deadline to ground her for abandoning me earlier today I let her go about her business and assist in transforming my drab pile of monosyllabic words just the slightest bit more interesting. Had to take a break to put the kiddos to bed. I read them part of the scene and they laughed in all the right places, so that’s got to be a good sign, right? Now back to work.

Deadline—1 hour: Starting to get a tad worried. I think I can tie it all together but I just remembered there’s also an entry form to fill out as well as a set-up page to write. This is going to be tough. Can’t stop now, gotta write...

Deadline passed: Wow, what a wild and crazy three hours that turned out to be. In the end I finished the scene, with a whole seven minutes to complete the entry form and write the overview leading up to the scene. In the end I e-mailed it at the very last minute. Can’t procrastinate any better than that right? Or maybe, “Can’t procrastinate any worse than that” would be more appropriate.

For those of you who enter contests in the future, please let this be a lesson to you. Mark the deadline for the contest on your calendar, then schedule dates for each part of the creation process. First draft, read-through, second draft, read-through, polishing, feedback, and for heaven’s sake make sure you have the paperwork and set-up sheet filled in before the clock’s striking midnight. My heart is still racing.
Whew, mine too. Whenever I read Mike's posts I get violent flashbacks to that opening scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark. Watch out for those angry natives, Mike. As always, everyone be sure to follow and stalk Mike on Twitter @MikeMyersWriter. Harass and distract him ad nauseum, because as we know, it's what he loves best.

Monday, November 1, 2010

Lemme in yo' ears!

It's up, the first podcast for Harlequin's So You Think You Can Write? event, and I'm in it! Talk about good company—I was interviewed along with Maisey Yates and Jeannie Lin! Listen to us talk about our paths to publishing with Harlequin right here:

Harlequin's So You Think You Can Write?

Today's the first day of Harlequin's week-long So You Think You Can Write? event, and it is on like Donkey Kong!

If you've ever dreamed of writing for Harlequin, do not not not miss out! Every hour they're posting editor and author interviews and tips, writing challenges, and tons more. For an overview and a glance at the schedule, go here. To see what's been posted so far, head on over here. Also, the podcast I took part in will be available this afternoon at 3pm EST. Ooh la la!

Good luck, everyone!