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!

Friday, February 26, 2016

Still Juggling and Still Writing

Hello, yes, it's been a while...

I'm not sure what happened with the blog thing. I think I may have gotten to a point where I felt like all I could do was complain. I'm not entirely sure. Anyway, I'm back. We'll see how it goes.

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I had to rescue a souffle recipe yesterday. I rescued it like a champ in under five minutes – so worthy sauce pot. Put the whole mix back into the prepared ramekins and into the oven. It and the meal turned out beautifully. Alexandra Guarnaschelli would have been proud, I think. Of course, I'm the reason the soufflés were in peril in the first place.
The souffles going into the oven for real.
of Chopped! I had to dump the contents of the ramekins back into the sauce pot and put the mixture on low heat whilst I washed and dried the ramekins, buttered them then added crumbled feta in the bottoms. Then, I whisked up the stiff egg whites that were in the fridge. I folded the egg whites into the egg yolk, milk and goat cheese mixture in the


The finished souffle for dinner.
I'm not as good at juggling as I once was. Now that we depend on the money I make from the Kindle titles for part of our income, I have to always be writing the next one. The money is reliable (though less than I'd like). Everything else is speculation. I really have to weigh the value of anything that would take me away from writing for a significant length of time. But we still live in Los Angeles and still have many irons in all kinds of fires. Beyond the books, I'm taking a class on comic design for a webcomic we want to launch. On top of that, I'm still struggling to get back some of my mobility. Any day that I work out (now includes the actual gym along with the pool), I have trouble thinking let alone juggling. But requests for re-writes of scripts or business plans or website updates keep coming when I least expect.

The latest unplanned project is an online cooking show. It was proposed by some colleagues of our film partners at Central City Stages. I'm all for anything that gives me an excuse to experiment with and expand my cooking skills. I have a fun concept that is a little different from other such shows and even have a slate of recipes. The problem is that I have become the queen of spreading the making of most recipes to at least two days. One took me five days to finish. I tend to run out of energy fast. Typically, these shows tape a bunch of episodes in one session and then release them over time. I certainly don't want to lose more than a whole day when I could be writing. It's been a challenge finding a day when I have the energy to make the trip to our partners' new sound stage and have the time. I'm really going to make sure to have the meeting sometime next.

I am pleased about the possibility of doing some fancy cooking for the show. There is something soothing about the motions of chopping and stirring and especially kneading. Working with dough is especially satisfying. From the touch of the doughs in various states to the scents of raw and baking breads, it all lulls me. Cooking requires just the right amount of focus that it distracts me from all the many things buzzing through my mind and sometimes orders them in a much better way.

That's it for now. As always Stay Tuned!

For those interested in my erotic titles, the current one is:

Ensnared Volume 2 – Ambush at the Sit Down
Andreas is more in love and in more danger than ever. He's never felt more alive than when he is overwhelmed body, mind and will by Lord Darius Galatea, the most powerful being in the known universe. Their lives, however, are far from simple or idyllic. Scientific evidence is mounting that the capital city from The Time That Was exists in the barren wastelands. News from the Cosi Compound convinces Darius and Mykos that their predecessors misled them about the extreme danger looming over their civilization and that a faction there is actively working against them finding answers. In spite of all of this turmoil, Andreas, Darius and Mykos are determined to have a Sit Down with the most unstable hostiles under Cosi rule far from safety where unknown elements are in play. 

Cover art is by yours truly!

For links to all of my titles on amazon Kindle (which you can read without a device on a PC or Mac), go here for my Author Page: