Baking Satan

Yesterday I got to spend the day with a few of my favorite teens. Niether of them are mine or related to me in any legal or DNA-based sense, but they seem to like it at our house.  I've been teaching both of them to bake some of my favorite treats and we bake something every time they're here.

I was having the kids whip up a batch of Snickerdoodles, which are evil by themselves, in anticipation of the Dance Central Dance-off that they'd challenged Andrea Dickinson and myself to at the last GRRWG meeting.  I'd been promising to teach them what I've labelled Snickerdoodle muffins (a.k.a French Breakfast Puffs slightly modified) so I whipped up a quick batch before they started ont he cookies so I could show them how easy they are to put together.

The muffins came out of the oven just in time to put the Snickerdoodles in.  I quickly put the finishing touches on the batch and had one of the kids run a muffin down to my hubby.  Then they got to taste them for the first time.

They're so evilly delicious the first comment was "Oh my God, this is Satan!". Which had me laughing. A mother was called and told "I ate Satan today".  I can only imagine the look on her face. The reaction had me laughing, they are so yummy I can eat an entire batch by myself.

This morning I baked Satan again to feed the one kid that spent the night. I brought one to his mom when I returned him home. She likes them so much that now "he" has been requested as part of their Christmas breakfast.

I wonder if I can blame my weight on "Satan", seeing as how most of my excess is due to my own baked goods?

Inspiration for Self-Publishing

I attended a free webinar courtesy of Writer's Digest last week on editing. I was hoping for some tips, which I got plenty of, what I didn't expect was to have enough confidence to decide to go the self-published route.

Currently, I have my dear hubby researching formatting requirements and methods for Kindle and Nook formats. I am doing my last round of edits on the first Jess book before asking for some first readers. (If you're interested, shoot me an email to jc_hanks@yahoo.com). I will end up locating an editor willing to take on the job of final editing to make it marketable. While that is going, I'll tie up the loose ends and restructuring needs of the second book in the Jess series to have that ready to go to an editor and readers so I can get it out quickly.

My goal is to have them ready by the end of Q2/2013. Cover Art may end up being my biggest challenge. I have a definite idea of what I want and for that I need a real artists to do some vector drawings for me, because I can't draw worth a damn.

I can't believe I'm actually deciding to go this route, but things are changing so fast in publishing it may be the best route for me at this point. I'll still be sending out letters to agents to see if I can find one, but in the meantime, Jess Barker needs to get out into the bigger world outside of my head.