Pre-heat oven to 325 F / 170 C.

Grease and flour a large 10-inch tube-pan/funnel pan/ring tin/bundt pan.

With a mixer on high, cream together in a large mixing bowl:
1 1/2 cups (325 g) butter
2 1/2 cups sugar

Add:
2 teaspoons vanilla

Add, one at a time, on high:
5 eggs

In another bowl, sift together:
2 cups flour
1 cup cocoa powder
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt

Into a measuring cup, put 1 1/4 cup milk.

With the mixer on low, add some of the flour/cocoa, then some milk, then some flour/cocoa, then some milk, then some flour/cocoa, then some milk, then the last of the flour/cocoa. Mix until well-blended. (Make sure you don't have flour gunked onto the bottom of the bowl.)

Pour batter into prepared pan. Bake 60 - 70 minutes until an inserted toothpick comes out clean. After removing cake from oven, wait about 15 minutes before removing the ring from the cake pan. No need to frost this cake or sift sugar over it; it's rich and moist and just sweet enough on its own.

Corned beef (aka corned silverside) can be turned into total awesomeness thusly:

Cook your corned beef as per normal in a pot of water (with potatoes, onions, bay leaves, whatever you fancy).

Mix together 1/2 cup bourbon or brandy, 1 cup brown sugar, 2 tablespoons mustard, and 1/2 cup apple juice or thin applesauce. Preheat oven to 400 F / 200 C.

Remove beef from pot of water and put into a roasting pan, preferably on a rack. Baste with several spoonfuls of the bourbon/apple sauce. Pop beef into oven. Every 5 - 10 minutes for a half-hour period, baste the beef with more sauce. At the end you should have about half the sauce left.

Remove beef from oven, slice, and serve with leftover sauce poured over slices of beef.

Your lj, your rules. My lj, my rules. (It's taken me a few weeks to realise that. Yeah, I'm slow.)

Comments are welcome on this lj. I don't need to know who you are. I don't care if other readers of this lj know who you are. It's what you say that's important. Make me think, make me learn, make me consider another point of view.

FOC = Fen of Colour = genre fans who do not identify as Caucasian.

FOC_U = fen of colour who would like to remind the rest of the world that they do exist, they have been around just as long as any other type of fen, their opinions do matter, and they are not just disposable rags to be used by authors and publishers for polishing their white-privilege swords and ray guns.

Go here for info: http://neo-prodigy.livejournal.com/670385.html (sorry, can't remember how to add links!). FOC, make your voices heard.

----------------------------------------

This public message has been brought to you by a colourless fen who fully supports FOC_U.

...it's a mixture of confusion and frustration and enlightenment.

I haven't quite figured out how White Author Writes POC Characters Poorly became Don't Diss White Writers Cuz Grumpy Editors Are Taking Names, or where Racist Jerk Maliciously Outs Someone Who Uses A Pseudonym came in, or how that turned into Asshat Who Has Arranged His Life So That He Doesn't Pay Taxes, But Happily Accepts Lots Of Tax-Funded Benefits, Claims To Be Morally Superior To The Rest Of The World. Nor do I want to know.

The whole ugly mess has made me think, though, and it's been enlightening. There are white-person privileges I have taken for granted without being aware of it -- and now my awareness is heightened. There are opinions and experiences of my own that I have assumed would be shared by others -- now I realise they are unique to me. I cannot assume that just because I don't care if a man or straight woman writes lesbian characters, that means other lesbians feel the same way, or that POC don't care if white authors write POC characters. I cannot assume that because I've been discriminated against as a lesbian, I know what it might feel like to be discriminated against as a POC.

beth_bernobich said it very well:

Racism is wrong. Outing is wrong. Silencing is wrong.
(This admonishment is for me, too.)

Please continue the discussions. Some of us are listening and learning.

...or has Absolute Write been down for a few days?

...The story ideas just keep coming and coming! (Yeah. I know. Bad, bad joke.)

Thanks, y'all, for the good thoughts. The story's been submitted, and hopefully I'll start writing yet another new one this weekend.

Two sales this weekend: a flash story, and a story from waaaaaaay back (my VP story, in fact) that I'd despaired of finding a home for. Plus, the cheque from Three Crows Press arrived this morning.

Yay for nice editors, and yay for money!

Tomorrow I send a story to Cecilia Tan, and cross my fingers, toes, and eyes.....

Recently, someone in a writers/readers group commented that "many readers assume that if a story is written in the first person, then the main character and the author are one and the same." Another member agreed that the reader "can't help but begin to identify the story with the writer to a certain extent and wonder how much comes from real life." In a second online group, writers discussed how a Bad Attitude (of the No One In Publishing Recognises My Genius Because All They Want Is To Publish Mindless Books For Mindless Readers kind) can taint an author's prose to the point that everyone -- readers, editors, agents -- except the author himself can see it.

And I think -- maybe -- that this all boils down to point of view. Whether it's a tight first or third POV, in which every word of the narrative comes from the character, or an omniscient POV where an external narrator tells the entire story, the POV requires that the author subsume his own personality and let the character/narrator tell the story. If a first person POV seems so real to the reader that she assumes character = author, the author is doing it right, so who cares if readers you'll never meet assume that you are that sarcastic bitch or irreverent android or serial killer? An external narrator can be an extension of the author -- assuming that the author himself has a likeable/entertaining/fascinating voice -- but surely the author must be willing and able, if necessary, to adjust that narrator as needed to fit the story. (Subsume, subsume, subsume. What a delicious word.)

An author who is annoyingly unlikeable and cannot remove her own POV from the prose is, I think, automatically doomed to remain unpublished.

Edited to add: This also seems to fit with the words of wisdom from cathellison: Having to be emotionally honest while writing in first person is...painful. Ugly....The more I give myself over to the awfulness of how people think, the better the writing seems to be.

Yeah. There's just not much room for the author in a story.

Nominations are open from December 12, 2008 to January 31, 2009 for lesbian short stories to be considered for the 2008 Year’s Best Lesbian Fiction. This anthology celebrates lesbian fiction, the short story form, and the editors who publish these stories. As the collection is intended to complement rather than overlap with the existing Year’s Best Lesbian Erotica and Lesbian Romance anthologies, we are not seeking to reprint stories that are purely erotica or romance.

Story Eligibility: Short stories to 12,500 words, with a lesbian character or theme, first published in an edited market in the 2008 calendar year.
Anthology Editor: Fran Walker
Guest Judges: Lynn Pierce (Lesfic_Unbound forum moderator) and Joan Opyr (author of “Idaho Code”)
Publisher: Bedazzled Ink
Publication: June 2009, in trade paperback
Payment: $25 + 1 cc

For more information or to nominate stories, go to: http://www.bedazzledink.com/nuance/yblf2008.html

***feel free to cross-post widely***

My short story "Look But Don't Touch" has sold to the very nice people at Three Crows Press ezine. Yay! And their turnaround time was less than a week. Double yay!

Last week, a young woman in Somalia was forced into a hole, buried up to her neck, and stoned to death by about 50 men, in front of a crowd of 1000 onlookers. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/7708169.stm)

Her father says she was a 13 year old girl who'd been raped by three men. Others claim she was an adult woman who'd confessed to adultury. Either way -- her society's religion (Islam) didn't approve of the fact that she'd had sex (willingly or not) with a man (or men), and so they took away a basic right: her life.

Yesterday, millions of Californians whose religion(s) disapprove of an adult wanting to love, make a life with, and marry another adult when those two adults are of the same sex, took away their basic right to marry the person they love and nullified the legal marriages of thousands of Californians.

I could just say, "Well, you have to live with yourself, and with the decision you made when you voted for Prop 8, and with the consequences of that vote that you've forced on other people." But I'm not that gracious. I am, in fact, one of those "other people". So, to all you Californians who voted Yes on Prop 8: your choice was disgusting, cruel, and hateful, and I despise you for it.

Charles de Lint. Robin Hobb. Barbara Hambly.

What authors are you currently lovin' on?

Yez i can!

::pets shiny email from editor saying nice things about my story::
::crosses fingers that my story makes the final cut::

Yez I can!

::dies of happiness::
::goes off to cook something in new kitchen::

Just in case you were wallowing in a fit of optimism and hoped that Lanaia Lee and Cheryl Pillsbury had learned their lesson, obtained a conscience, and/or crawled off into the woodwork: sorry, it hasn't happened.

From Lanaia Lee's free-to-read Yahoo group

Michael G posts one of his poems.

Cheryl responds: "Beautiful, love it."

Lanaia adds: "Michael, you have such a flair for poetry, you really need to go out on your own, I think you are that good!"

Cheryl chimes in on cue: "Michael, please sign a contract and the world savor your words as we do, please!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Michael says: "Thank you very much for your kind words i am considering doing that", followed by "Hmmmm well can you e-mail me a contract offer?."

Cheryl wastes no time, and nine minutes later, she posts: "Already sent, look at and ask me anything."

Michael: "I have a question, with the 550.00 option does that include the book being edited?."

::oh, dear::

But at least he didn't jump at the opportunity to throw his money away (yet); two days later, Cheryl posted: "Michael, have you decided yet?"

I've been reading fantasy for decades. And I think maybe there's been a shift. Twenty years ago the stories had generic standard-fantasy-plots and fairly invisible prose -- books like Eddings and Lackey and the author of those Sword of Shanarra (sp?) books. A decade later the plots got more convoluted and unpredictable, and the worlds got more vivid: B Hambley, A McCaffrey, etc, though the prose wasn't particularly memorable. Nowadays the plots continue to be strong, and the worlds unusual and fascinating, but the prose has also take a step up. Invisible, servicable prose has been out-muscled by writers who have lyrical, haunting, distinctive voices: Jo Walton, Ellen Kushner, and the newest writers on the block, beth_bernobich and cathellison.

Is there a real pattern here, do you think, or has my reading been too selective and erratic to draw any conclusions?

More noodling on the subject: how much of the author makes it into their prose?

( Read more... )

Coneycat's recent lj post (here, since I forgot how to do links: http://coneycat.livejournal.com/577224.html?view=1239496#t1239496) has got me thinking. Can you tell a fiction writer's style from their blog posts? Do short, witty, concise posts equate to a good short story writer? Do thorough, insightful, well-structured arguments indicate a good novelist? Is pretentiously annoying fiction the inevitable result of a lj user whose blog posts consist of "I am smarter than everyone else" followed by "oh, but I didn't mean to insult anyone by that, I don't mean that other people are stupid, just that I can't understand why no one recognises my genius or sees that I am always right and they're all wrong"?

Dunno. From the few writers for whom I'm familiar with both their fiction and blog posts, I think maybe, yes, it's true. Sadly, I have to admit that my infrequent lj posts are reflected in my inability to Apply Butt to Chair when it comes to fiction writing.

What do y'all think?

Thankfully, it's Friday.

It'll be a busy weekend. Apple harvesting, chicken coop building, and something else that I can't remember right now. Plus, I've got hob an lam to read, and after that, Year's Best Fantasy And Horror, which just arrived in the mail this morning. (The mailman nearly fell off the porch because his gaze was riveted to my slippers, which are plush killer whales. Jealousy on his part, no doubt.)

In other news, I'm told that my short story in an upcoming anthology will share a ToC with Nicola Griffith. Is it possible to die of intimidation?