Welcome Gentle Readers

This blog tends to wander from its main purpose -- updates on my fiction. I do have updates and excerpts of my work. But I also write about my obsessions -- food, friends and pop culture and my weird life in Los Angeles. Enjoy!

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Blue Basil, Funky Karaoke and Updates

What's Cookin' and Growin'

Jon and I finally made it to the Mar Vista Farmer's Market . It's really hard to get up and out of the house early on a Sunday. It was even harder to get up and out when it's been raining (sorry, east coast peeps for sounding wimpy). We managed to get there well before noon. I had a plan of sorts – get some eggplant and zucchini and maybe some fennel and leeks. I also wanted some apples or pears to roast. And then there were the ever elusive squash blossoms. I didn't find the eggplant, and I only found the sign for squash blossoms. Now, I know at least one vendor sells them. He said they tend to get snapped up early. I shall try again in the next week or two. Hopefully, I can drag myself over there when the place opens. I really want to have a stuffed and fried squash blossom. Then, things got a little crazy. I did get the leeks and fennel as per the plan, but I also found some green tomatoes. And that's when I spotted the herb vendors. I had been growing chives and dill since Christmas. But this vendor had thyme and Italian oregano and African Blue Basil. Who wouldn't want that? Now, my window sill is full of foliage. And all the while I was shopping, There was this guy in a sixties era tuxedo with a red jacket under a gazebo singing a medley of sixties soul – all by himself with a Karaoke machine. I particularly enjoyed his version of Shot Gun especially when he actually did the jerk (the performer kind of looks like the emcee in this video except in a red tux). Why didn't I have a camera? Ah well, he made shopping a very funky experience. Hopefully, he'll be back next time.

I finally made the roasted eggplant caponata from my Ina Garten cookbook. Of course, it wasn't until I got to the end of the recipe that I noticed that you have to wait at least two hours before serving for the flavors to marry. Oh bother. Well, it's close enough to dinner not to matter anyway. I shall have some as a snack later. It tasted pretty good when I tried it to test for seasoning. I'll make sure to get a proper photo. Now, for dinner, I'm making Aaron McCargo, Jr.'s Buffalo chicken tenders with blue cheese dipping sauce! That may get a photo if I don't eat them too quickly.


Updates

Films

Though I'm still not ready for working on a shoot, that doesn't mean we aren't working on the productions. Right now, I'm trying to find period costumes for my Vampire, Simon Molinar (for the flash backs) and some permanent fangs. I'm also researching locations online. We're also interfacing with our production design and FX peeps on the look of the shows. The plan is to have a lot of the planning finished by the time I'm side effects free, so we can schedule the shoots and get started. We'll be having some of the production design meetings as early as this week. I had a chat with one of our film mentors last week. Much of the discussion was a bit depressing. Our mentor is known for hitting us with cold hard realities. However, he said that the web series ideas are good ones. More and more funding sources and studios are requiring some sort of visual proof of concept. If it has an audience already – that's even better. Though we'd shoot them anyway as we really are itching to shoot something, it's good to know we're on the right track.

Books

My output is increasing with each passing week. I'd say I'm up to a couple of pages – sometimes more – a day. I'll be putting up an excerpt for the Soldiers book this week on its own. I'm doing some homing right now. And we've started working on the Demonspawn book and other publishing issues. We'll have a date for that soon as well. Ideally, we'd like to release it as we're shooting the web series to have some cross promotion.

Stay tuned.



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