Time Traveling Blog

I can time travel! At least my blog posts can, thanks to being able to back date posts.  :)

It took me awhile to figure out what to post this month. I've been a bit preoccupied with a bazillion different life interruptions, including the banking issues in Cypress and the gun control talks in DC. Both of those events have affected my writing though.

One of my characters is a former UK spy for the US during World War II. In my "version" of WWII, he became one of Hitler's inner circle and is still on a quest to kill off Hitler, who's still alive and protected in the USA. I've been doing a lot of research for this series and can see us repeating some mistakes from the past, especially when it comes to our current financial situations - both global and domestic. Humans are fickle creatures, we want we want and when we want. Patience is not something we seem to be good at (myself included) and credit cards make it too easy to feed our desires.

The most interesting part of my research is comparing the media from back then to the media now, and to be able to see where the extremes are drawing their comparisons (or denial of any comparisons) of current governments to the former Nazi movement. Extreme views in either direction existed then as they do now and it's interesting to see how little they've changed over the decades, the bigger difference is in the language used then. Lucky for me, I actually have some original papers from back then.

It is no surprise to me to hear that some journalist from today called someone else an "idiot", "moron" or something even more foul, or to hear them berate guests during their shows in today's media. Not that it didn't happen back then, but the language used was far more clever, and more polite than in today's media.  I really miss the creative use of language to show their disapproval or disdain for another's work.

I'm enjoying my time travels back to that bleak time in human history as it makes me thankful for what we have now. Things may be rough today, but we still have it so much better than the world did back then. Things may be expensive, but food is plentiful, new methods of communication pop up everyday (social media anyone?), our water supply is relatively safe, and we're not having to ration energy. Better yet, more of the world is tapped into each other, providing us an opportunity to - hopefully - prevent such atrocities from happening again.

Dragon Dreaming

No, I'm not referring to dragons as in a new book direction, but rather the Dragon software by Nuance (formerly Dragon Naturally Speaking).  I was a tester back in the dinosaur age of computers for voice recognition software. It worked well, but had difficulty understanding my cadence and occasionally dropping of a consonant when speaking.

Fast forward from ancient history to today and I'm a happy camper. I picked up the home version for less than $100 on sale before the end of the year.  After just 10 minutes I had it installed, trained and ready to go. This time it understands me just fine, performance is greatly enhanced by newer hardware and the headset doesn't require batteries, yay!!

If you're a writer who has arthritis and who's hands hurt when it's cold out (like me), I'd strongly recommend picking it up. The software is very powerful, but to just to basic dictation doesn't require a degree in IT...in fact I think this software would be easy enough for my mother to use, which is saying a lot!

The trouble I have now is finding the time to actually sit and write with it. My poor phone has several voice recordings of ideas to transfer over (yes, it will take a recording from your smart phone and translate it!) and I'm itching to test it out, but first I must finish my tech writing contract.

Blaming the Pounds on Writing

I decided to put together a cookbook as my first self published eBook. Since then I've been testing out a few different recipes that are inspired by a single cookie. Luckily, I have some taste-testers to help out, but I've gained several pounds while testing the mixes as I go along.

The cookbook has been requested by friends and family to assemble all my cookies, muffin, and bread recipes together. I don't expect it to sell even 100 copies, but making it available by eBook will make it easier for everyone who's had a particular cookie or muffin to get the recipes in one fell swoop. It will also be a nice exercise in formatting for the various sites.

Baking is my hobby, not my profession, nevertheless I've been told I make “evil” goodies. They are evil in the sense that they will call you from the kitchen to come eat them and you can't possibly eat just one. Some of my favorite recipes have been nicknamed “Satan” and one of my newest recipes has been called “Heaven”. It will be fun to include all the nicknames that the recipes have been given.

I wish there was a way to deduct my pounds like I can deduct expenses from my taxes. The tax man would probably want proof of my weight before and weight after with increases along the way attributed to each trial. Maybe if I gave each pound a name I could deduct them as dependents?

Nah! That's too much work, think I'll make another batch of cookies instead.

A Temporary Change of Direction

So, I'm taking a quick detour off of my Jess Barker series to do a cookbook. Yes, I am aware there are 300 gazillion or so cookbooks out there. This one is being done at the bequest of many friends and family members who've asked for recipes like the "Satan" muffins, my banana bread, and several cookie recipes.

I did ask first. And the consensus was most would buy at least one copy for $0.99 on Amazon. My mother want's a print copy so I will have to format it for print-on-demand as well.  The formatting will be a learning experience for certain. Not sure how I'm going to make that work, but I'll figure it out.

Stories on some key recipes and my "philosophies" on making the particular recipe sets will be added in as part of the book. My great-grandmother used to just take handfuls of flour, sugar, and whatever else until it was "just right", she didn't measure. I take after her a little bit on some things, but for the most part I have all the measurements down.

There will be one component lacking though, and that is pictures. Because to do pictures means I have to make a batch of every cookie, muffin, and bread recipe I include. That's a lot of pictures and I'm most definitely NOT a good photographer.  I might be able to sweet talk a friend into doing a photo shoot for me, but I'll have to have everything made up and trek it to his studio.  And then I'd have to figure out how to include them in the electronic and POD copies.

Too bad I have a full time job, these is going to take a lot of research!

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.

Older Women + Purple = Perfect Match

For whatever reason, I have found that older women and the color purple just seem to go together.
Perhaps it's because purple has long been associated with royalty and goddesses. Perhaps we're trying to reconnect with our inner goddess. Or perhaps it's because of the Red Hat Society and that now infamous poem of "When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat that doesn't go, and doesn't suit me..."

Whatever the reason, I find it comforting to know that women of all ages have a fondness for purple. I've loved purple since I was a kid. My favorite colors were blues and purples, perhaps some greens. Always the deep rich warm colors, not the pastelly-girly stuff, but the serious stronger colors.  It is only now, that I have reached a certain age point and comfort in my career, do I really reach for the purple in my clothes. I have always tried to dress for comfort, even when working under strict dress codes, but my current job allows for a bit more "laxness" in clothing choices, so my most favorite purple shoes ever surround my feet in cozy, sqooshy, warm comfort on a chilly day.

You see, today I have on my F-Ughs (Fake Ughs) that I bought yesterday; they are uber cool because they are purple. And a pretty purple I might add.  All the older women in my office noticed them right away and talked about the color, asked if they were comfy and where I got them. The guys all asked "are those slippers?". No boys, they are not slippers. They are acceptable footwear - if you stretch the dress code hard enough.

They make me smile, and right now that's a good thing.  My  test results came back fine, but unfortunately for my dear friend the news got worse, rather than staying stable or getting better. In a show of support - she is family to us after all - my dear hubby shaved his head and got his one-and-only tattoo. On the back of his head. Apparently one of the toughest spots to get one. The big guy now sports a bald head, a goatee, and a pretty pink ribbon tattoo with her initials on the back of his head and I couldn't be prouder of him. And no, I do not mind that he has another woman's initials on the back of his head; even though for totally unselfish reasons I wish they were mine instead of hers, so I could tackle the hardship of chemo on her behalf and have her be left healthy and whole.