Catching Up

Still revisiting the year-end bookkeeping so everything will be ready for the accountants to do W-9s.

EASTERN SHORE LIFE AND LURE went back to press for the third time, to correct problems with the cover, but that's about all I did this week.

Galleys went out to Terry L. White for VIENNA PRIDE.

New books are up on the Website for January.

Have the best of success for all of us in the coming year.

arline

Black-eyed Peas for New Years - Recipe

Maggie Dix’s Heart-Healthy Black-eyed Pea Soup

2 ½ cups dried black-eyed peas (1 pkg)

2 tsp. vegetable oil

1 tbsp. imitation bacon flavored pieces

1 handful of dried cholesterol-free (No Yolks) dumplings

Dash of salt

Pepper to taste

Water to cover plus one inch. If water has cooked away, add water to cover plus 1/2 inch and bring back to a simmer before adding dumplings.

Place all ingredients except dumplings in a 2 quart pot. Cover with water. Boil fast for 15 minutes, then simmer until peas are tender. Add dumplings. Cover and Simmer 10 more minutes. Serves four. This works equally well with lima beans or other dried beans.

Traditionally, one uses cubes of ham and ham fat for the flavoring, but Maggie's recipe tastes almost as good and helps cut down on the cholesterol.

Maggie Dix is not an author, but is the artist who does our covers. We just couldn’t leave her out

Free Promotional E-Books sites - Writing tip

BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU FALL FOR.

I received an e-mail today from an author telling me she could get free promotion for her book if she'd send a copy to a site that gave e-books away for free. It's only one copy and the site has lots of traffic and they "pay 70%." Isn't that good? she asked.

It didn't seem to occur to her that the "only one copy" of her whole book would be copied and given out as many times as someone clicked on the button, all while earning her nothing. I did wonder how they could pay 70% of nothing, for if they were giving the books away free, then sales would earn nothing. After checking the site, I discovered that the payment was for advertising, which they were perfectly will to sell me, if I'd give them my books for -- well, for nothing.

The author is the copyright holder. I cannot legally stop her from doing this and creating a site where people can get for free, what I'm trying to sell on various distributor sites so as to make her money. Worse, this web site isn't even a "pirate" because they ask permission of the authors and so what they're doing is perfectly legal.

Now, if they have her permission to post her book, and if she sends it to them it constitutes permission, they have a perfectly legal right to give it away as many times as they want to. Setting it up in competition with any and all legitimate outlets that pay us.

This is not promotion folks -- it's just another way for a web site to take advantage of authors, especially inexperienced and self-published authors.

This web site has been recommended on some of the authors lists as a good place to promote and authors appear to believe they are a legitimate market.

Please, please don't fall for this kind of scam.

No Wrong Way to Do It - writing tip

Someone responded to my blog on outlines, by emailing me to ask how I could write a story without knowing what was going to happen first?

That's a good question. Well, I never have a detailed outline, or even a Triple-O. But I do know what the main character wants and usually what the general outcome will be. If I know that, I can sit down and write and the sub-conscious will take over and create the obstacles and bleak moment that shape the story.

If toward the end of the story, I find I need a "telling detail" to foreshadow something that happens later, I just go back and put that in.

Other, and usually more productive, people have to know all the details before they start. THEY never end up with drawers full of half-finished projects where they lost the thread, either, but we all do it however we can. One way or the other, it's born in us. It may be a "right-brain" thing.

I'm reminded of that old question from Psych 101, where the professor said, "A kid is lost in the woods. I can give you beaters to comb the brush, or a helicoptor to try to spot him from the air, which would you choose?"

About 90 percent of the class chose the beaters. Those of us who took the arial view were told we were "right brain" creative people, but lacked logic, because the woods might be too dense to see our kid from the air, while the beaters would search every inch.

The "beaters" were told they were "left brain" people who had little imagination. They looked at life logically and took things one step at a time, but they lacked the ability to see the whole or the end result, rather than just the first immediate next step.

I don't believe those who are "left-brain" lack in creativity or imagination. I know some wonderful writers who are able to outline in detail and who write two to five books a year. I also know how hard I've tried to do that and how flat my efforts have fallen.

The important part of this tip is -- there's no wrong way to do it. Write using whatever method works best for your individual talent. Don't force yourself into a mold created by someone else's expectations of how it "should be" done.

Ginger Cookies - recipe

Brenda Boldin’s Ginger Cookies

2 cups self rising flour

(OR 2c. flour, 1tsp. baking powder, ½ tsp. baking soda, ½ tsp. salt)

1 tsp. ginger

11/2 tsp. cinnamon

1 tsp. ground cloves

½ tsp nutmeg

1/2 cup sugar

½ cup shortening

½ cup molasses

1 egg yolk

Mix sugar and shortening; add molasses and egg yolk. Sir in dry ingredients. Roll on lightly floured surface, 1/4 inch thick. Cut out shapes. Bake on lightly greased cookie sheets at 350-F or 177-C degrees for 10 minutes.

Cool before removing from cookie sheet.

Makes approx. 30 cookies.

Contributed by Brenda Boldin, author of the Alex Masters Series, Dead Birds Don’t Sing, Jailbird, and A Bird by Any Other Name...Alex Masters is back, calling herself “Lexi” now, and working a real job in her brother’s software company. Money disappears, disks go missing, then a dead body turns up, and once again Alex/Lexi is suspect Number One.

Will be taking a few days off.

Happy Holidays, everyone. May each of you be blessed and enjoy success in the coming year.

See you on Monday.

Continuity needs work - writing tip

A former student e-mails: I received a comment in a critique that the "continuity needs work." What does that mean in terms of a short story? I can't see anything I did wrong, but don't want to argue.

Answer: In simple terms, continuity is not getting the horse behind the cart. People shouldn't arrive at their destination before they leave. If someone answers the phone, it should ring first, not after it is answered. If someone lights a cigarette, they should put it out before they light another. No one should go upstairs when they already ARE upstairs. Don’t laugh, I’ve seen all of those happen, and in published work, too!