Suzie’s House 57: Miranda at the Caribou

You know, Miranda’s a big girl.  Sure she left the Cardinal Bar with a bit of attitude, but that doesn’t mean she HAS to get into trouble.  Does it?

“Come on, Baby.  What’s the matter?  ‘My not good enough for you?”

A month ago, Miranda might have considered the man.  He had a good head of hair, broad shoulders, a nice tan, and strong jaw.  He also had a full compliment of alcoholic fumes. 

 He was already sitting at the bar when she arrived, but moved closer when she tried to get the bartender to talk.  A month ago, she’d have gotten the drunk’s phone number even if she didn’t intend to take him home, but now, she found him repulsive.

She knew what the difference was, and it freaked her out.  She couldn’t take another man seriously because she’d already slept with Vin.  Though right afterward she said it was a mistake, and wouldn’t happen again, she couldn’t help comparing all other men to him.  They didn’t exactly come out on top even when she visualized him sleeping in front of the TV, remote in hand, skin pale and clammy.

“No.”  Miranda turned back to the bartender.  The sooner she got what she needed the sooner she could check up on Vin.  “Are you sure Sean and Joseph have never been here before?”

“No, I didn’t say that.  It isn’t like I take names before I serve beer.  I can tell you this, no one going by those names is a regular.”  He nodded as if pleased to have come up with the comment.

“Have you seen two red haired men, mid-twenties, gray eyes, thin…”

“What are you, a cop?”  The drunk asked.  He leaned forward and tried to look down Miranda’s black, stretch-knit top.

“Want me to take you in?  I’m sure there’s still room in the drunk tank.”  She knew she should have been more polite, but she’d had her nose out of joint since leaving Drew and Suzie hanging all over each other at the Cardinal.

That had certainly backfired.  Instead of Drew staying at the house like she’d expected, he insisted on coming along, which meant they HAD to go to the Cardinal.  Then he’d enjoyed himself pawing Suzie on the dance floor.

Miranda didn’t much care for the Cardinal anymore.  It was a wild and crazy place, which suited her up until a few years ago when she looked around and realized she was the oldest woman there.  Now every time she went there, she felt old and lonely.  And pathetic.  The Cardinal made her feel like a looser.

She sipped her beer as she looked around at the handful of people in The Caribou.  She didn’t much care for it here, either.

Apparently her comment to the drunk about taking him to the drunk tank took a while to get through to the man next to her.  He finally reared back, almost falling from his stool.

“Hey!  You can’t throw me into the drunk tank.  I’m allowed to be drunk here.  Aren’t I Lenny?”  The man blinked owlishly, a slight wrinkle of concern between his unfocused eyes.

“Be nice to the regulars.”  The bartender glowered at her over a glass he dried with a dishrag.

Miranda leveled a look at him.  She might not be a regular, but she was a customer and deserved more respect.  The bartender, a balding, over weight man who probably owned the joint, shifted uncomfortably, and put the glass down.

“So?  Have you seen them?  Two red-haired me.   Brothers.  Christina said I could find them here.”  It wasn’t really a fib.  Christina had said she meet them here, not that Miranda should come here to get them.

“I know the two you’re talking about.  Came in by themselves a couple of weeks ago and left with Christina.”

“They don’t come here all the time?”

“No, can’t say that they do.  Least wise, not while I’m here.”

So Christina had told the truth about something.  But probably not everything.  The thing was, she didn’t seem anything like Miranda’s boss, who was a congenital liar.  She didn’t seem to be lying to make herself look better.  Miranda could sense it, but couldn’t make sense of it.  The one thing Miranda was sure about was that Christina wasn’t the woman’s real name.

They might not even be talking about the same Christina.  Except how many Christina’s hooked up with two redheaded men in the Caribou?

Miranda shook her head at herself.  The point was they were back to square one with no leads on either the man who shot Vin or the one who tried to kidnap Ben.  Miranda took a tentative sip of her beer while she tried to figure out where to go next.

Vin’s face came to the forefront.  He was home, suffering, with no one there to watch out for him.  She was wasting her time here when she could be there.  She slammed down the rest of her beer and stood up.

“Hey Baby!  Where you going?”  The drunk on the stool next to hers seemed to have forgotten all earlier insult.

Miranda cut a look his direction.  She could tell he was the kind of guy who would follow her home.  He was already getting off his bar stool.

“I’m going home to my husband.”  She only said it to get him off her case.  As soon as the words were out of her mouth a cold draft ran down her spine.

The fact was, if she wasn’t careful, it could become the truth.

Miranda turned toward the door.  Two women stepped inside together.  Miranda’s neighbor, Cindy, and Christina.

“Hey, Christina!” the bartender called.  “You know this lady?”  He jerked a thumb toward Miranda.

The previous was Suzie’s House 56: Dancing Around the Subject

This is Suzie’s House 57: Miranda at the Caribou

Next is Suzie’s House 58: At Cross Purposes

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Thursday Thirteen#17: Netflix – Likes and Dislikes

I had a little falling out with my local video store (Crazy Mike’s) when the refused to give me credit for an overdue charge I had already paid. The result was that I thought I’d give Netflix a try.

1. Netflix has dang near everything! I have found things in their inventory I didn’t know existed.

2. It takes three days from when I send a DVD back until I get the next one. Minimum. Longer if I send it Friday or Saturday and much longer if they have to ship from a distant distribution center.

3. With the video store I generally had the video in my hands for a week. For the same amount of money I have a Netflix for an average of three days.

4. Netflix has Anime! I love Anime!

5. I can finally see all of InuYasha all the way from the beginning.

6. Except for disk one, which I wanted to see the most badly and which they seem to have lost.

7. You can download movies to your computer from Netflix

8. Although TV shows are short enough to download reasonably well on dial up, and longer movies will download, they tend to come in 5-minute segments, which makes for funky viewing.

9. You can’t just leave the computer running all night and have a Netflix movie download on dial up so you can watch it in the morning. It will still come in 5-minute segments.

10. I love to be able to pull up the little control bar at the bottom of a downloaded movie to see how far through I am.

11. The controls on downloaded movies aren’t precise enough for me to back it up a few sentences to catch the part I missed when a kid insisted I stop and talk to him or her.

12. Since I’m the one with the account I am queen of what we watch and can lord it over my children. For some reason I haven’t figured out yet, they don’t harass me as much about movies when we pick them over the Internet as they did when we walked through the store together.

13. I get just as much exercise walking to the post office as I did walking to the video store. Sure the postman would pick them up for me – if I had a mail box.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

Be sure to check out Monday’s post this week.

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By George! What is Happening to Daddy Kins?

To recap previous week’s blogs about Priny, the prince has built himself a couple of homes, secretly married Mrs. Fitzherbert, gotten kicked to the couch when he wouldn’t fess up to the world that he’d married her because he didn’t want to lose the throne, weaseled his way back into her good graces, and now runs off to London for some carousing with his brother.  Mr. Al, take it away.

Accompanying the Duke and Prinny to London was the head of the Dukes household, Major-General Richard Grenville. This is what he had to say about the trip. They were “totally guided by the Prince of Wales.” Also that they were “thoroughly initiated into all the extravagances and debaucheries of this most virtuous metropolis.” In for a penny, in for a pound seemed to be Prinny’s view of things.

An M.P. (Member of Parliament) for Sutherlandshire had this to add; “The Prince has taught his brother to drink in the most liberal and copious way, and the Duke, in return, has been equally successful in teaching his brother to lose his money at all sorts of play-quinze, hazard, ect. To the amount, as we are told, of very large sums.” The Prince had found his groove once more.

The timing could hardly have been worse. Although no time was a good time for The Prince to fall off the wagon, this particular episode happened to coincide with another unfortunate event. His Majesty went off his nut. It was October 1788. While it was not the first time the King had had one of his “episodes”, it was by far the worst.

For several weeks he had been in excruciating pain, mainly in his digestive tract; but also in his back and legs. The doctors gave him laudanum, an opium extract, for the pain. This caused constipation, which worsened the intestinal pain. So they gave him castor oil and senna to…um…open the sluice gates again.

More pain. More laudanum. More constipation. More castor oil, ect. As if all this were not enough, the Kings behavior was becoming, to put it mildly, erratic. His sense of duty would not allow him to put off official business. He kept at his paperwork until his handwriting, never his strong point to begin with, became totally unreadable.

On October 24, he insisted at appearing at the levee at St. James Palace to, in his words, “stop further lies and any fall in the stocks.” The stocks would have been better off had he not done so. His Majesty looked like death warmed over a can of sterno.

His clothes were a mess, his coordination was way off, and his speech was fast and slurred. The whites of his eyes had turned yellow, he had a very visible rash and his feet had so swollen that, combined with his bad coordination, he was reeling like a drunken sailor. Or like his eldest child, though I doubt that anyone made that comparison to his face. By the time he returned to Windsor Castle, the stocks, and everyone else, were completely alarmed.

The papers tried to spin it in the most non-alarming way they could. The Morning Post said it was a “dropsical disorder.” But, it added, “By no means of the alarming kind.” Gentleman’s Magazine informed its readers that it was just “A regular fit of the gout.” If only. The people closest to the King and Queen were under no illusions.

Fanny Burney, Queen Charlotte’s Keeper of the Robes, wrote in her journal that his Majesty was “all agitation, all emotion.” He was talking a mile a minute about whatever popped into his head and he couldn’t sleep. Although the Queen tried to put a good face on it, she was at a loss to understand what was happening.

The fact that no doctors could be found who could explain it caused her even greater grief. It is, in fact, still debated what exactly was wrong with George the III. Most experts come down on the side of a hereditary metabolic disorder known as porphyria.

The mother of George the First transmitted it to the Hanoverians. She was the granddaughter of James the First. The Stuarts had been severely afflicted by this disease, which is characterized by severe abdominal pain, discolored urine, neuritis, and weakness of the limbs. Mental manifestations include hysteria, rambling speech, hallucinations and some elements of paranoia and schizophrenia. Those of the 18th century, presented with a person thus afflicted, could be forgiven for thinking that person mad as a hatter.

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Victoria Alexander Chat

Is it so surprising this has been on my mind this week?  This one was kind of my baby.  I winged VA on her way out of the chat session last fall during the big FanLit Forever one year anniversary, and reminded her she said yes this February.  Now if only I’d realized how fast time was passing so I could do a better job of advertising it.Anyway, VA and I may be very lonely in the chatroom.  We could end up talking about chocolate, or frogs, or who knows what!  So come keep us company.

The chat is today at 9pm Eastern Standard time, which translates to 7pm my time.  It’s at http://www.romanceroundtable.com .com  I sure hope to see you there.

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Girl Scout Cookie Contest

 Girls Scout Cookies

 The girl is a Girl Scout.   Needless to say I bought far more cookies than I needed.  That’s all right.  It means those of you who were not buttonholed by the Girl Scouts in your life get a chance to benefit.  Simply leave a comment in any of my blogs posted between now and noon on Wednesday and I’ll include your name in the list from which I will draw a winner.  Comment on Friday and I’ll enter you twice.  I’ll do this each week until all the extra boxes are gone.This week I’m giving away a box of Thin Mints.  Think of all that minty-chocolate goodness, soft chocolate coating around a crunchy cookie middle waiting for someone to claim it.  It could be you!

Drop by next Sunday to see who won.

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Applesauce Spice Cake

I made this yesterday.  I didn’t have quite enough applesauce so I substituted a little milk and ended up with the middle sinking.  I was going to post it under the name “tornado cake” but thought you’d like the real recipe better.

2 1/2 c flour
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/4 tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
1 tsp cinnamon
3/4 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp cloves
1/2 c butter
2 c sugar
2 eggs
1 16-ox can applesauce
3/4 c raisins
1/2 c chopped nuts

grease and lightly four a 13x9x2 inch baking pan.  Combine the first 7 ingredients.  In a mixing bowl beat butter with electric mixer for 30 seconds.  Add sugar and beat till well combined.  Add eggs one at a time.  Add dry ingredients and applesauce alternately to beaten mixture, beating on low speed after each addition. Stir in raisins and nuts.  Turn into pan.  Bake at 350 deg for 45 minutes.

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Wood

Mr. Al's TP party

Ah, yes.  The start of the great Jane and Gumby romance.  It all began when Mr. Al put pictures of TP all over the FanLit Forever board on threads belonging to people who were off at the Romance Writer’s of America national convention, and thus couldn’t protect themselves.  Jane and I sneaked into the office for a little revenge.

Notice, the desk is wooden. 

😀

This was submitted to .

Which can be found here.

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Suzie’s House 56: Dancing Around the Subject

 In last week’s episode Drew caught Suzie and Miranda sneaking out to investigate Sean and Joseph.  He was aware of what they were doing, but believed they would be safe enough, so he didn’t try to stop them.  He joined them instead.

“I thought you said they were at the Caribou.”  Suzie leaned across the little table, and shoved aside an empty beer bottle to hiss in Miranda’s ear.  Actually, yell with restraint so as to be heard over the music but not by the throngs around them.  “What are we doing here?”

“I couldn’t very well tell him where we were really going.”  Miranda nodded toward Drew, who pushed through the crowd of college age kids with a couple of beers in his hands.

“One for you.”  Drew put a beer in front of Miranda.  “One for you.”  He put another in front of Suzie.  “And a Near-beer for me.”  He settled in the chair next to Suzie, then dragged it over so close his seat bumped hers.  “So which is it, 80’s retro night or fetish night?  From the lack of clothes, it’s hard to tell.”

“You can say that again,” Suzie muttered.

Two women standing near the table were busy stripping one another while the bartenders ran around with their butts hanging out.  Had the Cardinal always been like this?  Suzie hadn’t hung out here much before.  She couldn’t remember the last time.

“It’s fetish night,” Miranda answered with confidence.  “No disco balls.”  She took a swig of beer.

Suzie eyed hers with misgivings.  The last time she had a beer it had lead to another, and another, until she was so drunk Rob had to carry her home.  For weeks, no, make that years afterward he reminded her of how bad she’d looked and out of control she’d behaved.  She really didn’t think dancing on top of a table was really so bad in and of itself.  A lot of other girls had been doing it at the time because the dance floor was so full.  But she didn’t want to end up on a tabletop tonight.

“I’ll be the designated driver,” Drew offered with a gentlemanly air, which in Suzie’s book meant he had ulterior motives.

“That’s okay.  I’ll pass.”

“You won’t get drunk off of one beer,” Miranda scoffed, gulping more of hers down. 

Knowing Miranda, it would be easier to take a polite sip than suffer the constant hounding.  Suzie gingerly took a swallow.  When that didn’t make either of her companions look away, she took a deeper draft.

“So, this is what you do for fun.”  Drew quirked an eyebrow at Miranda before giving the teenyboppers in the room a disdainful glance. His eyes were sharp, and maybe a little mocking as they came back to Miranda.

Could he know what they were up to?  Probably.  It wouldn’t take a genius to figure it out.  Still, if he didn’t say something, Suzie wasn’t going to say anything.  He wasn’t going to keep her from running her own investigation until and unless he let her in on his.

“Yes.  This is fun.”  Mirada put her chin out belligerently.  Luckily, Drew didn’t take the bait.

“Let’s dance.”  He grabbed Suzie’s hand and stood.

“No, I couldn’t.”  Suzie tried to pull free, but he held tight.

“Come on.  Let your hair down.  Live a little.”  Drew tugged on her.

“You sound like Vin,” Miranda muttered.  She looked a little put out and a little lonely – not a good combination when it came to Miranda.

Suzie wasn’t in the mood to deal with her.  She told herself that was why she let Drew guide her into the throng, but when he pulled her close, she had to admit there might be another reason too.

“Are we supposed to be slow dancing?”  She didn’t expect him to answer.

“Do you care?” 

In reply, she moved closer, slipping her arms around his neck.

She shouldn’t encourage him, certainly not in a public display of affection, even one so mild as slow dancing to a fast song, but it felt so good to be held.

“So tell me, where were you and Miranda really planning on going?”

Suzie stiffened in his arms, and tried to pull away, but he merely tightened his hold.

“I’m not upset.  Just want to know.”

“Here,” she lied.  “We were coming here, like we said.”

“Mmmm hummmm.”  He said with complete insincerity.  “I believe you.”  He said it against her neck where it buzzed and tickled.

“Would you stop that?”  She scrunched her shoulder up in protest.

“Sure.  So why did you think you’d see them here, anyway?  Got a hot tip I should know about?”

“See who?”  She tried to give him a look of wide-eyed innocence, but couldn’t quite pull it off.

He laughed at her.  Laughed.  She pulled away, but he spun them around like a cowboy doing the two-step, hip to hip and arms steady.  He kept her going, teasing, letting her put some distance between them then closing it through what might have been three songs if the alternative rock band on stage could be said to play songs.

Hot and sweaty, she finally insisted they go back to the table for a drink.  Miranda sat alone, looking more peevish by the second.  A group of Latinos behind her jostled her and she turned around to give them what for only to face a wall of backs.  Knowing Miranda that wouldn’t go down so well.

“I’m going home,” Miranda said as soon as they came close.

Drew’s mouth opened like he was going argue, but nothing came out.  He shrugged.  “All right.  See you there.”

Suzie pulled herself loose to talk to Miranda out of his hearing.  “Drop by the Caribou on the way home, all right?”

“I was already planning on it.”

The previous was Suzie’s House 55: Ladie’s Night Out

This is Suzie’s House 56: Dancing Around the Subject
Next is Suzie’s House 57: Miranda at the Caribou

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Thursday Thirteen #16: Discoveries While Writing A Miss for Mark

 The view out my window

I tried a different technique on the book I just finished writing.  I started with a detailed outline on a spreadsheet that included GMC for hero and heroine, plot, subplot, POV notes, and emotional arcs for each scene.  I was hoping to cut down on plot holes and revisions.  Here’s what I discovered.

1.  For the way I write, 67 scenes is way too many for a 90,000 word book.  I ended up ditching or condensing about 1/3 of the outline.

2.  I need to do a better job with the emotional arcs before I start writing.  I didn’t fill in the entire spreadsheet before hand, and regretted it.

3.  Some of my rows were really only more development of the same scene, and unnecessary.

4.  Every time I significantly strayed from the outline, I ended up deleting however many words I’d written because I wrote myself into a dead end.

5.  I seem to have a fixation with travel in my books.  The characters almost always end up going from one place to another, if not cross country, then across town.  I built this into the outline, then had trouble accommodating it though the emotional development of the characters required it.

6.  Having the GMC down pat before I started made a huge difference, but still left me with a lot of choices as I wrote.  At least I didn’t get lost in the choices the way I do when I’m pantsing.

7.  Google Earth is addictive.  I didn’t find any caves, but had fun looking.

8.  I don’t need to list POV for scenes because I tend to move around so much anyway as to make it a moot point.  Not that I head hop.  I break the scene into segments to accommodate changes in POV.  About a third of the way through the book I stopped paying attention to POV info.

9.  Too much setting detail in the outline actually slowed me down in the rough draft because I would get fixated on making the scene play out the way I had originally visualized it instead of the way that best fit the book as written.  OTOH having the setting helped me keep track of what was coming next.  Don’t know if I’ll keep that column in the future or not.

10.  If I don’t keep my characters clearly in mind as I outline I will end up with a different character on the page.

11.  I need to keep the climax in mind better as I do the outline and as I write.  I’m pretty sure this one is going to get tossed, but I’ve had to toss out the climax in almost every book I’ve written, so no surprise there.

12.  Joining Sweat with Sven,  the Gonzo group, and the 100 day challenge helped a lot, but the bottom line in still just me.

13.  If I set a deadline, then reset it, I don’t work as hard.

As you may have guessed, I’ll certainly be using this technique again.  It did indeed speed up the rough draft and help reduce plot holes.  I won’t know if it helped that much on revisions until after I have tackled them, but what I’ve got so far looks better than a lot of my rough drafts.  I have high hopes.

Get the Thursday Thirteen code here!

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By George! He’s a Model Citizen

Does he look like a bad influence?

 When we left off last week Prinny had gotten everything he wanted and then some.  He didn’t loose his crown, and he wasn’t sleeping on the couch any longer.  Let’s see how he handles it.

 The faux orientalism that one sees at Brighton Pavilion today is not what guests to the first pavilion saw in the late 1780’s That pavilion was “a low Greco-Roman house faced with cream coloured tiles, the centerpiece of which was a domed rotunda encircled by six Ionic columns bearing classical statues. The handsome, bow-fronted wings which flanked the rotunda to the north and south were provided with those decorative iron-work balconies which were soon to become so distinctive a feature of the town.”

The interior was well done up in the French style that was so popular at the time. Hideously expensive, but that couldn’t be helped. And now that he was reconciled with Maria, The Prince was going to behave himself. Drinking and skirt chasing were off the agenda. Even the Morning Post, a paper that never shrank from reporting the grisly details of the Prince’s public behavior, had to inform it’s readers that The Prince was “gaining many hearts by his affability and good humor.”

They even went so far as to report that he “was certainly more sober” and that his company was “much better than it used to be.” High praise indeed! Mrs Fitzherbert received much of the credit for turning the Prince around. Even the Prince’s rakehell friends from London had to behave themselves when they came down to visit. Perhaps there was hope for him yet. Then again, perhaps not.

The Prince’s behavior was exemplary, but anyone who really knew him should have known that he did not have the self-discipline to maintain such a façade of respectability. The Prince was, so to speak, kindling waiting for a spark to set him aflame. That spark was provided by the return, in the summer of 1788, of his brother, the Duke of York.

The Duke had been away in Germany for six years. Part of that time had been spent on his education. But the main reason he had been gone so long was because that’s the way Dad wanted it. All the Prince’s brothers suffered the same type of exile to a lesser or greater extent. The Prince’s sisters suffered exactly the opposite. They were rarely allowed to go anywhere. Even under escort.

This bred resentment toward Mom and Dad in the girls that manifested itself quite differently than it did in the boys. If resentment was more anti-social, pronouncedly so, in the boys, it was only because the boys were given greater freedom of action. The girls were never let off the leash long enough to show how bad they could be. In reading their letters to their brothers one gets the impression that they wouldn’t have minded a little peril, to paraphrase Monty Python.

Not surprisingly, His Majesty was not in the least upset about his children’s feelings toward his paternal policies. He was King. Their duty was to obey. What could be simpler? His Majesty believed that if the Dukes were allowed to lollygag in England, they would turn out as bad as their eldest brother. It never occurred to him that treating them like pariahs as soon as they stopped being babies, shipping them off to foreign countries and forcing them to stay there, was not the ticket to producing model citizens.

Can you imagine getting George the III and his kids on “Oprah?” That would be something to see! Anyway, the Duke of York returned and Prinny was there to greet him. They traveled to Brighton so the Duke could meet Mrs Fitzherbert. He found her most gracious and charming. The two of them got on wonderfully. After a spell of catching up on family news, Prinny announced that he and his brother would be popping up to London for a bit of sport. Without Mrs Fitzherbert. The spark had been struck; the fire was just getting started.  

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Which Way Do You Go Around Your Car?

I did all right this week.  I finished the rough draft of A Miss for Mark, which is why the ticker came down on all the boards where I hang out.  Yay!  It’s so good to have that done.  Now if only it didn’t need so much revision.   We closed the polls on the Best Revisions of 2007 at FanLit Forever.  Yay Natasia for first place.  I started my submission for the next round, though I’m no where near done with it yet.  Let’s see, if I write 100 words a day, then it will be done in…  how many characters does that convert to?  Nevermind.  I’ve decided to go on to revise Caroline’s Folly now, but haven’t cracked the file yet.  Instead I started reading Historicals like Victoria Alexander’s Secrets of a Proper Lady.

Did I mention Victoria Alexander is going to be doing a chat session with the FanLitters?  February 26th at 9pm Eastern Standard Time go to www.RomanceRoundTable.com and click the link we will have set up special for that day.

Otherwise it’s been a normal week except for two things.  First, the boy is no longer grounded as of today.  It’s been so long that our whole way of life changed.  I’m not looking forward to his return to the social whirl.  Second, I noticed something funny about the way I get out of a car.

Which end of the car do pass when you have to go around from the driver’s side to the other?  I just realized I always go around the back end of the car.  I think it’s because I tend to already be going when I close the car door, which means it’s in my way to go around the front.  Then about the time I reach the tail lights I start thinking the front would have been a shorter distance, forgetting the door had been in my way before.  Am I the only one who is weird about this?  Just wondering.

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American Title: My Journey by Helen Scott Taylor

Remember a while back when I mentioned that a friend of mine is in the American Title contest?  Here she is.  Allow me to introduce Helen Scott Taylor.

This could be a scene right out of the book.

Here I am in the fifth and final round of American Title IV with the chance to win a publishing contract for my story The Magic Knot, and I have to admit, I nearly didn’t enter.As the contest is called ‘American Title’, I thought I wouldn’t be eligible because I live in England. A friend told me to send my entry anyway. ‘What’s the worst that can happen,’ she said. ‘You don’t hear anything, and then you’re no worse off than if you hadn’t bothered.’

I took the chance, mailed my three chapters and synopsis in to Dorchester Publishing just before the closing date and forgot about it.

A few months later, a friend of mine who’d also entered received a letter from Dorchester requesting her full manuscript for the contest. I cheered with her and assumed, for whatever reason, The Magic Knot hadn’t made it. I forgot to take account of the extra time it takes for mail to make the leap across the Atlantic. A few days later, my own letter requesting the full manuscript arrived. Obviously, I had been eligible to enter. J

To cut a long story short, a few weeks after I mailed my full I had an email from Romantic Times telling me I was one of the ten finalists and requesting my entries for all five voting rounds.

I tend to be laid back about success and rejection. I wasn’t prepared to be zoned out yet unable to sleep for excitement over the next few days. As I only had a week to return my entries, I pulled myself together and sent them in.

Promoting myself for American Title has been a promotional baptism of fire. There is no doubt it is stressful, two weeks of voting and manic promotion for each round, followed by a two or three week breather to regroup. I’ve coped by keeping busy with other things in my life in between voting. (And with two kids and a business to run, I have no shortage of work to keep me occupied.)

Having supportive friends and family has helped tremendously. I’m grateful to all the wonderful people who’ve taken the time to read my entries and vote for me.

Whatever the final result, I’m delighted to have met the other nine finalists and made a new group of friends. We have set up an American Title IV finalists’ blog together at www.titlemagic.blogspot.com.

To all writers out there, if you get the opportunity to enter American Title, I say go for it. You have to be in it to win it!

If you have time, I’d love you to check out my love scene in the fifth and final round of American Title. Voting runs from February 18th to March 2nd. The entries can be found at www.romantictimes.com/news_amtitle3.php

If you like my entry, I’d love your vote.

For more information about my writing, please go to www.helenscotttaylor.com

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Chipotle-Black Bean Soup

Soup?  Yes.Soup:
1  cup dried black beans (about 6 ounces)
1/2  cup boiling water
1  dried chipotle chile
1  teaspoon olive oil
1/4  cup chopped onion
1  garlic clove, minced
2  cups water
1/4  teaspoon dried oregano
1/8  teaspoon ground cumin
1  (16-ounce) can fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1/4  teaspoon ground red pepper
1  (14.5-ounce) can diced tomatoes and green chiles, undrained

Toppings:
2  (6-inch) corn tortillas, cut into 1/4-inch strips
Cooking spray
1/2  cup plain fat-free yogurt
1/4  cup (1 ounce) finely shredded reduced-fat sharp cheddar cheese

To prepare soup, sort and wash beans; place in a large Dutch oven. Cover with water to 2 inches above beans; bring to a boil, and cook 2 minutes. Remove from heat; cover and let stand 1 hour. Drain.Combine boiling water and chipotle chile in a bowl; let stand 15 minutes or until soft. Drain, seed, and chop.

Heat oil in a large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté 2 minutes or until tender. Add garlic; sauté 1 minute. Add beans, chipotle chile, 2 cups water, oregano, cumin, and broth; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat, and simmer 3 hours or until beans are soft. Place 1 cup of soup in a blender; process until smooth. Return to pan. Stir in pepper and tomatoes; cook until thoroughly heated.

Preheat oven to 350°.

To prepare toppings, place tortilla strips in a single layer on a baking sheet. Lightly coat tortilla strips with cooking spray. Bake at 350° for 12 minutes or until toasted.

Ladle soup into each of 4 bowls; top with tortilla strips, yogurt, and cheese.

Yield: 4 servings (serving size: 1 1/4 cups soup, 2 tablespoons yogurt, 1 tablespoon cheese, and 1/4 cup tortilla strips)

writeNutrient();NUTRITION PER SERVING
CALORIES 276(12% from fat); FAT 3.7g (sat 1.2g,mono 1.4g,poly 0.7g); PROTEIN 15.8g; CHOLESTEROL 5mg; CALCIUM 222mg; SODIUM 769mg; FIBER 7.9g; IRON 3.4mg; CARBOHYDRATE 42.7g

Cooking Light, JUNE 2000

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Freedom? Or Merely Escape?


The boy has a hamster now.  I guess Gerbil TV will have a little something extra.

Run away!  Two minutes later - back in the cage.

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Suzie’s House 55: Ladie’s Night Out

  We left off last week with Drew catching Miranda and Suzie in the kitchen while they were trying to sneak out. 

“Who are you supposed to be?  Emma Peel?”  Drew eyed Miranda’s outfit with mild interest.  She looked like she was playing the part of a cat burglar.  Not a real cat burglar.  A real one wouldn’t wear patent leather.  Too shiny.

“This is the latest fashion down at the Cardinal.”

“You’re going to a bar now?”  Actually, she probably would throw caution to the wind and head off for a night of carousing while two killers stalked the members of this household.

“Why not?”  She squared her shoulders and lifted her chin defiantly.

“Um… because it’s dangerous?”

“I’m not going to drive.  Suzie is.”  Miranda reached into the butler’s pantry and dragged Suzie out.

Suzie was wearing a pair of black jeans and a black T-shirt.  Drew couldn’t remember the last time he saw her in jeans.  She was always wearing skirts and dresses.

“YOU’RE going to the bar?”

“And what’s wrong with that?”  Suzie lifted her chin defiantly, giving Drew a sinking feeling.

“Nothing.  Nothing at all.  Not a thing.”  He shook his head and tightened his lower lip against all the different ways Suzie going to a bar at all, let alone tonight, didn’t add up.  “Only…”  He shouldn’t say anything.  Anything he said now was likely to backfire on him the way things did when you dealt with women.  He wasn’t a talkative man.  Why couldn’t he shut up?  “Are you sure you want to go tonight?”

“Why wouldn’t we?”

Drew bit his lip.  Why indeed.  It wasn’t like they didn’t know about Sean and Joseph.  It was like they were courting danger, just asking the two men to come after them.

Which, come to think of it, maybe they were.

His refusal to let anyone in the house help him with his investigation hadn’t gone down very well.  Looking over the black outfits on both woman, right down to Miranda’s eye makeup, he got the feeling they weren’t going out for a night of carousing so much as gunning for certain men.

Like Hell he was going to let them!  They had no idea how dangerous confronting either Sean or Joseph could be.  Hadn’t Joseph nearly killed Vin already?  He’d have killed Drew in the neighbor’s stairway given half a chance.  If Drew hadn’t shot them

Come to think of it, both men had taken the bullet from Drew’s warning shot.  They’d been mobile, but seriously wounded.  The odds either might be found at any bar so soon afterward were fairly low.

So what the girls planned to do wasn’t exactly safe, but it wasn’t exactly dangerous either.  He could let them go without letting them know he was on to them. 

But what was the fun in that?

“I don’t know,” he said slowly.  “It can be dangerous out there.  Two gorgeous women such as yourselves are bound to attract unwanted attention.”

“Who says it’s unwanted,” Miranda muttered.

Suzie pulled her lower lip in between her teeth and worried it.

“You’re bound to get hit on.  What would Vin think?”  He addressed the comment to Miranda, but kept an eye on Suzie to assess how she’d react to the idea of getting hit on.

Suzie kept chewing on her lower lip, which didn’t tell him nearly as much as he wanted to know.  Miranda started to get the stubborn lift of a chin, then crumpled into a face full of doubts.  Drew wasn’t entirely sure what was going on between Miranda and Vin, but her reaction now told him there was something.

“Maybe you should both stay home,”  he tossed out casually, knowing full well they wouldn’t agree.  He had to work to keep the grin off his face.

“No!”  Suzie said over Miranda’s nearly incoherent sputtering.

“I don’t think I could let the two of you out of the house and still face myself as a man.”  He shook his head slowly, but firmly.

“You can’t stop us!”  Suzie said, crossing her arms.

“We have a right to go if we want to.”  Miranda also crossed her arms.

“All right, then.”  Drew flexed his shoulders, limbering up like a prizefighter.  If he recalled correctly from reading the Isthmus, tonight was a dance band retro-80’s night at the Cardinal; the perfect excuse to get Suzie into his arms.  “We’ll all go.  I haven’t been out for a night on the town in a long time.  This should be fun.”

The previous was Suzie’s House 54: Miranda Takes Steps

This is Suzie’s House 55: Ladie’s Night Out

Next is Suzie’s House 56: Dancing Around the Subject

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