Cookies!

This time of year, my mind doesn’t immediately turn to decorations or gift buying (or getting). I’m not thinking turkey or ham or holiday traffic. My thoughts turn toward cookies. I love to bake. Cake, pie, cookies, you name it. I find it therapeutic. Cookies are my go-to dessert because they’re fast easy and there are so many varieties... which leads me back to why thoughts go to cookies at this time of year.

Christmas cookies.

It’s like an excuse to bake as much as I want, as often as I can, and try as many varieties as possible. I can rarely leave a recipe alone. I like to experiment. What if I added coconut... chocolate, etc.  I have my favorites, and those varieties requested by friends and family, but I love to try out new varieties every year.  I bake them for friends, neighbors, family, and this year I’m even selling them.

I think it would be awesome to participate in a giant cookie exchange, but as that’s kind of problematic, how about an informal cookie recipe exchange?

I’ll give you my favorite sugar cookie recipe and if you have a favorite recipe, post them in the  comments.

 I’ve always loved sugar cookie dough, but this one... the cookies are good without frosting.

½ cup butter, room temperature

4 oz cream cheese, room temperature

1 cup white sugar

1 egg

½ tsp almond extract

2 cups all-purpose flour

½ tsp baking powder

Cream together cream cheese, butter and sugar. Blend until smooth. Add egg and vanilla extract. Mix. Add flour and baking powder and blend together.

Divide the dough in half and wrap in plastic wrap. Refrigerate for at least one hour. (I’ve refrigerated overnight with no problem)

Take half of the dough and roll it to a ¼ inch thick on a well-floured surface. Cut out the cookies and bake them at 350 for 6 to 10 minutes or until golden brown.  (Cooking time depends a lot on what shape you choose for your cookie) If you don’t like the taste of almond, substitute vanilla.

Cool and frost or decorate as you desire.

Let me know what you think of the cookies! I will check the comments and try your recipes too. I may just pick one I like the best and send you a batch of my famous—in my family anyway—lemon cookies. Because who doesn’t love getting cookies?

Not only is my mind full of cookie thoughts,  I’m celebrating my upcoming release, Journey of Wisdom, which is the third book in the Triune Stones series. I don’t think Ilythra ever made a cookie in her life, but she’d probably eat one or two.

Journey of Wisdom comes out December 30^th, just in time for New Year’s reading!

So please, leave your favorite recipe or a link to your favorite recipe in the comments below!

Writing and Contracts

When a writer gets serious about his or her career, he or she begins paying attention to craft. This means polishing a manuscript, looking for other writers to critique or read and, ultimately, trying to attract the notice of the publishing world.

This is the first step away from doing something you love just because you love it. Most writers start writing because we love telling stories, but telling the story is really a very small part of the business of writing. The process is work. Hard work. You’ve heard the phrase, kill your darlings? Yeah, that means when someone you trust tells you that sentence/character/scene just doesn’t work, even though you love it. You hit the delete key. I’d like to tell you it gets easier with time. But at least for me, I still have to take a deep breath and put on my big-girl panties. I'm not even going to mention grammar or pace...well, I guess I just did, didn't I?

Once a writer gets serious about craft, it isn’t much longer before they get serious about pursuing publication. This usually means a contract. The joy of that contract is something I truly can’t convey. But of course I’ll try. I am a writer. *grin* Imagine buying a lottery ticket every day, studying the trends and the statistics faithfully to give yourself the best chance possible. Then one day they read those numbers and yup. You won. All your hard work paid off.  You’re stunned. You’re amazed. You want to call everyone and shout from the rooftops and you want to just sit and enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.

Well, there is one huge flaw in my comparison.

Once you get that contract, the work starts. There are edits, deadlines and promotion. Suddenly you’re writing because you have to. Because it’s a job, not just because you love it. The pressure doesn’t lessen with subsequent contracts. You’re writing to maintain a standard; you’re writing to let your publisher and editor know they were not wrong in putting their faith in you; You’re writing so that wonderful person who gave you a glowing five star review on your last book, will give you another glowing review on your newest book.

You’re writing under pressure. A lot of pressure.

Don’t worry, I’m not going to go all sunshine and butterflies and bring up the coal/diamond thing... Pollyanna I am not.

But I will share something I’ve learned.

When you’re feeling the pressure. When the deadline becomes more important than the story. Stop.

I am not going to tell you to throw everything out and write for fun. Because let’s face it, this is a business and your books are your commodity. It’s not just about you any more. But there is a balance. If you’re not in love with your hero. Stop and daydream about him until you are in love with him.  If the death of your protagonist’s best friend didn’t just bring a tear to your eye. It won’t bring a tear to the reader’s eye either. Stop. Imagine what the protag is feeling. Put yourself in her or his shoes and rewrite it. There must be balance.

I honestly think maintaining this balance is the difference between a successful writer in love with his or her job and a burnt out writer.

I’ve been both.

I like the in love writer a lot better.

Now it’s your turn. Do you have any writerly advice? And if you do, will you share?

And I have to take this opportunity to share my newest release, Journey of Dominion... I will never get tired of looking at this cover. 

Fantasy Week - Epic fantasy: Does it have to be so long?

Do you need 1000 pages to tell an epic fantasy story?

I’ve heard this question a lot lately. Honestly more likely framed as why is epic fantasy so long?

I cut my reading teeth on authors like JRR Tolkien, George RR Martin, CS Lewis. 

(Notice how they all have initials. Honestly that’s why I should have gone SL Thomas.)

Game of Thrones - Clash of Kings at 1006 pages? I honestly won’t bat an eyelash. Bring it on.

But the question remains. Why are these books so long? In today’s fast-paced society, people don’t have patience for a thousand-page book. Novellas and shorts are popular for a reason. Get to the happily ever after in six hundred pages or less, please.

I get that.

So shouldn’t epic fantasy follow the same pattern?

I honestly think it would be a tragedy.

From Merriam Webster -  Epic: extending beyond the usual or ordinary especially in size or scope.

Epic fantasy gives you vistas. Vistas need words. It gives you the history of kings back a hundred generations. It gives you mythologies. It gives ruins of civilizations that lived before the one your heroine is currently fighting for. It tells you not only the color of the king’s hair, but what’s on his banner and why. It gives you not only the names of the characters, but their fathers and grandfathers. Why. What. When. Where.

Good epic fantasy doesn’t just take you to a world; it builds a world from the ground up: Currency, politics, food, geography, history. Nothing is left to chance. Once you enter Martin’s seven kingdoms or Tolkien’s Middle Earth, you will have felt you could navigate the culture, sit at dinner with the commoners or even royalty and not miss a beat or wonder where the spoons are.

So couldn’t you condense this a wee bit... you know to attract more readers. Because not many readers want to dive so deep into a world.

Yes. And no.

I admit, in today's world, not many readers want to pick up a tome. So can we hold on to the tenants of what makes epic fantasy epic without drowning in minutiae? 

It's a fine line. 

My Triune Stones series began as a single book. A single book that is now four books. Journey of Dominion, which will release on May 20^th, is the second in the series.  

And while the series is firmly epic fantasy, when rewriting it for publication, I recognized the need for action. I deleted many musings, many descriptions of beautiful scenery because they just didn’t move the plot forward.  

Even epic fantasy authors must adapt and change with the times. That said, by their very nature, our stories will still be too slow paced for some readers. But if you have patience, the story will weave around your imagination, drawing you into a land where magic happens, where villains desire power, heroes are ordinary people, just like you, who do extraordinary things that not only affect them, but the entire world. There may be dragons, fairies, airydh, magic rings, magic stones, elves, white walkers, secret glens and woven through it all, a sense that it has all been there for time beyond time.  Unless, of course, our hero fails. 

Journey of Dominion - a legend’s fall. 

May 20th, 2013

Don't forget to check out the other awesome posts for Fantasy week!