DL Warner -- A Work in Progress

The Intern, Jingle Craig and Updates Galore

2012-01-29T17:20:00.000-08:00

I woke up Friday to an early morningserenade by Craig of the jingle for the perfume, Wind Song. That'smade by Prince Matchabelli (a real Prince), don't youknow. It seems someone thought it was a good idea to give Craig aDVD compilation of 1000 classic commercials. That was such a badplan. Craig will be my escort to the longest (and last) diagnostictest I have to do for the six month check-up. I sense there will bemuch in the way of jingle singing in the car and perhaps the waitingarea. I don't know the results of the other tests per se; however, ifsomething were truly amiss, I would have been called in to see mydoctor weeks ago. These facts have not stopped me from having anxietyabout the whole business. I'll have to wait until almost the end ofFebruary for my next appointment. Ah well, it is better than havingto go in every other week.

New Title – The Intern!

Long time production partner,Marguerite Lliteras has completely taken leave of her senses andstarted writing. Her first title is The Intern, an erotic romance setin the tony trenches of Beverly Hills Real Estate. Marguerite halesfrom that high class yet cutthroat background. Like a wise writershould, she wrote what she what she knew in telling this sexy butsweet tale. To summarize:

In the cutthroat world of Beverly Hillsreal estate, Lisa is the undisputed queen. She has a network ofoperatives that would be the envy of the CIA. Though she can see thevaguest signs and portents that will point to a fat commission, Lisadid not see William in her arena until it was too late. Her boss –and former lover – Phil saddled her with an Intern who was allwrong. He was too well put together. He knew too much way too soon.He was way too good looking. And worst of all for Lisa, he seemed tosee beyond her mask and into her soul. Who was William? Whatdid he really want? These questions plague Lisa, but the one thattroubles her most is the one she asks of herself - Why can't she stopthinking about him?

The Intern is available on all formatsat Smashwords .You can also download up to 20 percent of the book as a sample tocheck it out. It's also available on Kindle HERE It's some really tasty fun, and the first of many, we hope. Youshould also check out Marguerite's very amusing blog on Romantica @Sybaritic Press. Check it out! Share it with friends!

Updates

We are still hanging off the same cliffas last week. The only real drag about that is I still can't talkabout what's going on. Everything seems to be on track. The peopleactually overseeing the process are mellow and fairly confident, so Iwill just chill until I can blab. It's going to be awesome though.

Ensnared Volume Two will be out thisweek. If Jon's PC hasn't croaked on me, it should be out tomorrow asan ebook. The paperback will be a week later most likely. I'm dealingwith a lot of mental fatigue this week. I didn't manage to makeanywhere close to the headway on many of the projects on my plate asI had hoped. I made some, but not very much. It's likely that I'mchurning up the stress over the last test and some other things overwhich I have no control. It'll work out. I'll probably sleep a weekafter my next appointment with the Docs. Meanwhile, as long as I'mnot hallucinating much, it's all good.

My Japanese was put to a field testlast week. It was the first time I'd been to Mitsuwa since beforeChristmas. The young clerk who usually scurries away from me walkedup as I was examining produce and wished me a Happy New Year inEnglish. He was very pleased. I responded in English and then askedhim where they'd moved the Miso in Japanese. He was surprised andtickled. We didn't go any further as I also learned the phrase 'Idon't speak much Japanese.' I also said no thank you in Japanese toanother clerk who was offering me a sample of something. That was socool! My reading is getting better, too.

Thanks to a wonderful gift from anInternet Archive bud (thanks, Carrie!), I found a great recipe for buttermilk friedchicken. We had it last night, and it was awesome. I'm going to tryan intriguing recipe from the same magazine for onion bisque. And Icontinue to struggle with basic southern biscuits. But those storiesare for the next blog.

Stay tuned.

Food Feats, Hat Tricks and Teasing Updates

2012-01-22T15:36:00.000-08:00

The Hubs pointed out that I missedsomething really big in my blog last week. I'm a silly billy. Afterposting my fried zucchini flowers on the Facebook, I also tweeted aphoto to Giada DeLaurentiis via the Twitter. She then re-tweeted it toher followers – that's a big compliment! Yes, I'm on Twitter. I'mon almost every social media that my readers and potential readersuse. In Twitter's case, it's also where a lot of my favorite chefshang out. I have kibitz with many of them. This has been my biggestreaction yet. I was really jazzed. I have no idea why I forgot to putit in the blog last week.

Speaking of cooking, I did a lot of itthis week. I don't think I've done this much advanced cooking (thatis cooking done in advance of the week as opposed to cooking thatrequires advanced skills) since April of 2010 prior to my secondsurgery. There was a lull in my editing gigs that coincided with astreak of cool weather for LA. Those occurrences gave me theopportunity. And then, there were some huge sales on all sorts ofmeat. Thus, I made vats of chicken and beef stock and slow roasted alot of meats and even made a big pot of chili. I had really slackedoff on the practice which makes life so much easier day to day wheregetting meals prepared is concerned. Since I cannot predict my energylevels on any given day, being able to defrost a tasty protein ismore than half the battle for meals. And not to sound like too muchof a carnivore, I also soaked and cooked three kinds of beans! Now Ihave to package all that food for the freezer. Geez.

Too Many Hats

I was two kinds of editor last week.There was the prose editing of Marguerite Lliteras' book, The Internand then there was editing manga with Again Tomorrow. They were polaropposites in what they required. Switching between them waschallenging. I'll get into more details about the obstacles I had todeal with in the manga in a separate blog. Let's just say that therea whole lot of ways to interpret the word freeloader, and the context is really important. At least with The Intern, I could call thereally patient author and ask questions. I also had to do a final setof corrections on Ensnared Volume 2. My head was swimming in wordsfrom different eras and cultures. And then I had to wear thescreenwriter hat and the producer hat to figure out how to make achange in shooting location for one of the projects on the frontburner work. On at least two days last week, I was wearing all ofthose hats. Everything I needed to accomplish got finished to mysatisfaction, but I am really mentally exhausted at this writing. Ihaven't even been able to think about the ramifications of the filmproject's progress. That's probably a really good thing. I think Iwould be really freaking out (from happiness and panic). As I havesaid before with film 'Oohh, Aahh, that's how all of this starts, butthen later there's the running and screaming' –Dr. Ian Malcom Jurassic Park- The lost World.

Updates

Somebig ones are coming soon. I have to go now. There's more football,and I need to just veg out for a while.

Staytuned!

Veggie Fun, More on Writing and Scary Updates

2012-01-16T11:44:00.000-08:00

I am not a tightwad. I believe we areon this Earth to live as well as we can and enjoy what life has tooffer. That said, I am not a spendthrift either. Ever since Ireceived my first paycheck at age 15, I understood how to equate apurchase with the number of hours of work it took to buy it. Eatingout on my own was always a matter of considerable thought no matterthe restaurant. I look for quality in every establishment from dinerto haute cuisine. I was lucky to grow up in a city like Philadelphiawhere even the dives are considered worthy of national attention. Myluck continues in our current neighborhood in LA. Aside from a reallygroovy diner in a nearby bowling alley, Pepy's Gallery (I am beyondsurprised that they have a website ), there are some really good eateries that are garnering a lot ofpraise foodie set like The Curious Palate and A-Frame. These arewalking distance from me. A little further away is Ford's FilingStation which is one of the best restaurants I've run into in a longtime. I do enjoy having a fine eating out experience. However, I'venever had the extra cash to try dishes I'm not reasonably sure I'llenjoy.

But eating out is expensive compared toeating at home. And the added issue of deciding on whether to go outor not – especially for Jon – is whether the food will besignificantly better than what he can get at home. I forgot tomention. Jon is a very proud tightwad. And in some instances likefood, I can't blame him. For the price of a check at Ford's, I canget a week's worth of high quality groceries. As I wrote in a blogover the past summer, I had been long curious about lobster rolls.Theoretically, I should love them. They looked awfully tasty on theTV. But I just couldn't bring myself to spend $12 on a sandwich Iwasn't certain I'd enjoy. I got to have three for that price when Imade it at home. This was the situation with fried zucchini flowers.They always looked so good, but were a very pricey appetizer. I knewI like fried zucchini and vegetable tempura, but I've never actuallyeaten a flower. Thus, I was reluctant to order them in a restaurant.I decided to have a go at making them at home.

I decided this roughly two years ago.What in blazes took me so long to make it? Mostly, it was laziness. Iknew that a couple of stalls sold them at the Sunday Farmer's marketnear here, but I couldn't get up and over there early enough to getthem. The New Year rolled around and with it, the pledge to eatbetter. Not that we eat badly, I just want to do more to supportlocal growers. This time, I found a Farmer's market with reasonablehours. If I couldn't make a 3pm start, I could consider myselfpathetic. But lo, I did get off the sofa and hustle my butt to thatmarket. I found the flowers in the second stall I looked at. I boughtsix of them and a beautiful cauliflower for well under 5 dollars. Ialso bought some beets (I've never cooked with those) and some Swisschard (I've never cooked those on purpose though they tasted great inmy pot of collards). It was a great market for a lot of things. Therest of the recipe was simple – a little cream cheese, a littlegoat cheese and a few spring onions. The batter was plain flour andcold club soda. I was all delicious! And we have a bunch of veg forthe rest of the week. All for the cost of the one appetizer in arestaurant. But now, when I next go to eat out, I would order thedish with confidence the next time we eat out.

Slogging Through the Morass

I think the thing I get asked mostabout is how I keep writing if I have a block or I don't feel likewriting. There is this notion about the muse and how creative peopleare slaves to one. This is not the correct way of looking at being awriter. It would be unwise for a football player to take to the fieldafter weeks without workouts or practices. The same would apply to adancer. There are creative muscles, if you will, to writing or anyother art. The way I can keep writing when I don't really feel likeit is that I have practiced a lot over the years. The best thingabout Grad School was being compelled to write a lot every week. Ihad short stories to write for classes and chapters of my thesisnovel to write for my Moderator. I also had to write notes on otherpeople's stories and papers on the books we were reading. We werealways writing something. That put me in the habit of writing. Postgrad school, I wrote spec scripts for TV shows I liked. I startedwriting fanfiction. I had a demanding readership for my fanfictionthat kept me churning out material. Currently, I have an array ofbooks I'm working on in addition to the various blogs I write. Theblogs are very much a writing exercise as well as a way to stay intouch with my readers. A prolific TV writer who was an early landlordof ours advised that a writer should write every day and writeanything. He wrote fan letters to his favorite performers if he hadnothing else to write on a given day. So, when I have a problem withone piece I'm working on, I write something else. Usually, it's ablog. Sometimes, I still write fanfiction (I'll be putting that up onthe old NovaD site at some point). There is always a new script inthe works. Sometimes, I'm foolish enough to start a different pieceof fiction. That's how Ensnared happened. Since it was often the workproviding the least resistance, it was finished before the book I wasworking on. That wasn't a muse issue though. The latest Soldiers bookwas giving me plot problems that I've only recently resolved. One ofmy characters, Simon Molinar from Demon Under Glass, was a difficultfit with my soldiers. During my most recent bout of insomnia, Ifinally figured out how to make him work organically in the Soldier'suniverse. But I digress. The point is that writers who want to dothis professional can't depend on inspiration or a muse to keep themgoing. Those can certainly get you started, but it takes a lot morethan that to write professionally under a deadline. That takesproficiency, and that comes with a lot of practice. So, if you arelooking to become a writer – and I haven't actually said that thatis a good plan – the best route is to write, write and write somemore.

The other thing I'm asked a lot aboutis how to handle rejection. I must admit that I don't handle it well.There is a lot of bad writing that is published and sells millions ofcopies. That makes me angry. I get even angrier when my work isrejected over something I think is drivel. Yes, I know that soundsarrogant. You need a bit of that trait to get anywhere in LA. I dothink there is a lot to be learned from submitting one's work topublishers. It's always a good thing to know how to write a pithysubmission letter or what makes a good book or film presentationpackage. If you are getting the same feedback from most places yousubmit to, that particular piece may need to be re-worked keeping thefeedback in mind. I also believe strongly in independent productionof film, music and books. If a mainstream outlet isn't interested inyour work, there are many venues now to get it seen and find anaudience. A rejection isn't the end of the world for me. What isworse than rejection to me is a phenomena that is particular to theEntertainment Industry in LA. Because no one wants to be blamed (andthen fired) for rejecting a work that goes elsewhere and becomes ahit, they won't actually reject a script. You just never hear fromthat individual again. A casting director said it started with StarWars but became routine in the last decade or so. We have a scriptthat went directly from a very A list actor to his reps nearly 15years ago. We recently learned that they still have it and are stillconsidering it. Infuriating! That's worse than studios paying for ascript to squash it in favor of a similar idea (not that I don't hatethat). At least, the writer gets some cash, and though it can't counton a resume, because the script was not produced, word will getaround that you sold a script to so and so. That will open somedoors. The non-rejection does nothing to advance a career or line thepockets. Why do we do this again?

Updates

The projects are definitely on thefront burner simmering. In a couple of cases, we've gotten fartherthan we ever have before. I'm getting questions about issues that sound like theywill be on a contract. In fact, I'm afraid to go to the bathroom for missing an important call. Usually, I have to find something or someone and get back to our partner immediately. No, I will not take a cell phone there. I'm told I can talk about details once we'rein pre-production. I'm getting really excited but trying to to.

Stay tuned!

Blog Delay -- First of the Year!

2012-01-15T15:26:00.000-08:00

I'm digging my way out of a lot of editing this weekend. The blog is being written, but it's slow going. I probably won't post it until tomorrow. I think it's worth a little wait.

Stay tuned.

Missed Update, Big Thanks and Craig's New Thang

2012-01-08T14:27:00.000-08:00

I wasn't sure there would be a blogthis week. My plan to attempt a fancy crepe dessert (filled withtiramisu cream filling and drizzled with a chocolate and coffeeganache) before today was thwarted along with most of my plans. I washaving one of those rough weeks were a task that required more than akeyboard, a remote or anything I could reach from the sofa, didn'tget done. The projects in motion beyond those parameters still can'tbe discussed. I was thwarted even today. Reading Food Rules and thehorrifying Tomatolandhas made me more determined than ever to support the Farmer's Marketsaround here. But I am still having trouble with pain and sleep, so anearly morning start is not in the cards right now. Truth be told, Inever liked an early start on a Sunday. I always made sure that oneof the says off during my shoots was Sunday. Fortunately, there is aFarmer's Market a short ride from here that doesn't start until 3pmon Tuesdays. That I can handle.

Deb vs Japanese Update

But my readers came to the rescue withan initial topic. I forgot and update in my epic year end round up. How is my Japanese coming along? The short answer is that it iscoming along. I have not been actively practicing since before theholiday craziness began in November before Thanksgiving. However, Ihave been passively working on it. The manga editing has me doing alot more reading of Japanese than I ever thought. Though I'm using ascript that is translated into basic English, there are things thatare untranslated that the Letterer and I have to figure out. Sound FXLike a door slam or a beating heart were often left in Japanese. Thesymbols for the sounds turn up in all sorts of words I see in themanga or Mitsuwa Marketplace. I can hear and understand more and moreas well. Aside from relying less on subtitles when I watch anime, Iwas really excited when I understood what an elderly Japanese ladywas saying. I was in a Ralphs Market (no, there is no apostrophe, that's a family name) I frequent, Iheard the lady ask her son how much some nuts were. That was a reallycool breakthrough for me. I really surprised the pair by reacting atall. Then, I threw in a pardon me and have a good day. That wasunusual as I am very shy about speaking the language. I desperatelydon't be another fangirl mangling the accent. Getting the accentright is tougher with Japanese than it was with French, because Idon't have an instructor to guide me. Still, it's coming along. I'llbe actively studying and practicing again starting this upcomingweek.

Big Thanks

Speaking of readers, I send a big thankyou to all who commented publicly and privately to the last fewblogs. Many of them made me cry and in a happy way! And to thoselooking for another Soldiers excerpt, I'll post something soon.

Updates

As I said above, most of what happenedduring the past week with the film projects is top secret. Allindications are that we're about to be crazy busy. Meanwhile, Iseemed to have volunteered to shoot Craig while he commits his latestart project. Yes, I said commits. However, I have so far refused tofilm him by light of a full moon.

Needless to say, stay tuned.

Geeky Rec' of the Day -- Durarara!!

2012-01-05T15:04:00.000-08:00

Happy New Year! I've been sitting onthis review for a a couple of weeks waiting to see if Adult Swim would repeatthe entire run of the series. Happily it begins again this Saturdaynight or actually 1 am Sunday.

Durarara!! (DRRR!!) is a an anime set in the Ikebukuro district ofTokyo, an area of commercial and entertainment that surrounds a majortrain station – sort of like the neighborhood surrounding the NewYork Port Authority. It's the first place that noobs to the big cityend up. The story follows Mikado, a teen from the country who justmoved to the city to attend a private academy with his long timefriend Masaomi who moved there a few years earlier. Their lives aremuch like any modern teens. They are faced with bullying, stalking,gang violence and the threat of molestation all while trying todesperately to fit in somewhere. This sounds very dark, and sometimesit is. But I don't get drawn in to things that are merely dark. Ithas to up end the usual teen drama for me to give it even fiveminutes of time. Did I mention that the title is a mispronunciationof the word Dullahan shouted in a panic. A Dullahan is a headless fairy that is similar to the grimreaper. She is from Irish folklore. In DRRR!!, her name is Celty, andshe rides a motorcycle. She has a job as an underworld courier, anapartment and a roommate who is a very strange and somewhat creepydoctor. That only begins to explain how very twisted and surprisingthis series is.

There is nothing in the helmet.

I've long had a fascination withcobbled together families. I often do that with characters in mywork. My bizarre family units are not as stabby or homicidal as thegroup in DRRR!! But they are a lot of fun to hang out with though aviewer is often fearing for their survival. I won't say anythingabout the various plot threads. The spoilers are very dangerous. Nocharacter is what they seem – not even the young, country boy,Mikado. I will say that dark themes shadow every character, and thesethreads are not easily tied up. One of the elements of the seriesthat I admire the most is that even with all that mayhem, there istime found to credibly have small, quiet moments with the charactersas individuals or groups. It is clear why they are drawn to eachother and why their little, strange and faintly psychotic family isworth rooting for. The best example of this is Celty herself. Shearrives in Ikebukuro searching for her stolen head. (there is nothingin that motorcycle helmet but black smoke). Somehow, she makesfriends and has some very significant relationships. She has somehighly amusing fears for a death fairy. She even has crushes. She isincredibly dangerous but somehow manages to be sweet and endearing.Likewise, Celty's best bud, the insanely homicidal former bartender,Shizuo. This is a man with frightening anger issues on the one hand.On the other hand, there is a side to him that creates deepattachment and loyalty amongst his many friends. Even the reason forhis choice of bartending attire is incredibly touching. Strangely, hereminds me strongly of Craig (the endearing side, not the ragemonster).

I had heard about DRRR!! a long whilebefore it came to the US. Shizuo and his nemesis Izaya are thesubjects of a great deal of yaoi fanfiction despite the fact thatthey literally try to kill each other every time they meet. Thatspeculation even made it into the show as some hilarious fan serviceboth pro and con about the relationship. This image sums the realityup. That is a traffic barrier. Usually Shizuo prefers traffic signjavelins. So take this ride. It is a rip-snoting good time that isnever dull. Also, DRRR!! has some of the best opening and closingmusic I've ever heard in television. I usually don't like rock in aforeign language, but Theatre Brook's Treacherous Sunset (here's thelink for their official video) is what rock should always be – harddriving and heart felt. Here is the link to the opening (the AdultSwim version has no subtitles). Likewise, I'm not a huge fan ofhippity hop, but I adore YuyaMatsushita's Trust Me. Here's the link to his official video, becausehe's simply adorable. And here is the link to the series' closing. Anyway, that'smy geeky two cents for the day.

2011 in Review, Many Updates and New Works

2012-01-01T13:12:00.000-08:00

It is New Year's Eve as I write this.Last year at this time, I was on my 10^th round of chemo andanxiously taking my temperature every fifteen minutes. I was runninga temperature and did not want to spend the evening in the ER. Well,there was no such luck. I had a fever of 102 and was watching thecount down to the new year in an exam room while a bed was beingprepped for me on the cancer isolation floor. I spent several daysthere while they fought the fever. I left the hospital with nervedamage in my feet from the chemo. The numbness from that persists tothis day though it isn't as bad as it first was. 2011 did not beginwell at all. But I learned a great deal about perspective since mydiagnosis. As bad as that New Year was, it was far better than theone before when I still faced a major operation just months afterthe first one. Chemo loomed after that. I began 2011 damaged butcancer free. I've tried to treat each day of this past year as a giftto be appreciated as much as possible. On the whole, I believe I havesucceeded. I still have a lot of hurdles to overcome physically, andthe spectre of the disease is always lurking in the background. But Ifeel I've turned a corner and am looking forward to an even betteryear to come.

Culinary

Since I still spend a lot of time athome and still have a lot of stress related to recovery, I have theopportunity and motivation to work on my culinary skills. I took onsome really crazy things this year. For the most part, the resultswere good. Some were even great. The baguette still eludes me thoughon the last pass, the flavor and texture were there. I'm still havingtrouble getting it to rise properly. There is something I'm missingsomewhere. I plan to look at more videos and recipes. Strangely, Ithought that either puff pastry or croissants would be moredifficult. They are time consuming recipes for sure, but the resultswere just sublime! The upside to both the croissant and puff pastryis that it freezes perfectly, so there are baked goods for quite sometime after whipping up a batch. The other interesting dish that wasgood though I couldn't call it successful was tiramisu. Incidentally,after searching high and low for lady fingers and ending up at aspecialty shop to find them, we've been finding them everywhere. Lastweek, we found them in a drug store. Jon believes the lady fingersare now mocking us. That could be true. I'm not sure when we'll trythe recipe again. It makes such a big tray. We'll need to have anevent with lots of people to eat it before making it again. In fact,there is a challenge I'd like to beat next year. There are recipesfor souffles and tiramisu that make many servings and do not freeze.I'm searching high and low for recipes that work well for individualservings or that freeze well. I'm open to any suggestions.

Aside from enjoying the food myobsession is producing, I got some recognition that was reallyexciting. My tiramisu effort was recognized by the authors of therecipe, Gabriele Corcos and Debi Mazar of The Cooking Channel'sExtra Virgin. My Sugar Plums – a new treat I made at the lastminute this year – was praised via Twitter by Alton Brown himself!But strangely, it's been the interaction with some Japanese chefsthat has most jazzed me. I think it's because I had never cookedanything in that cuisine before. I was very thrilled that my firsteffort at sushi got a thumbs up viaTwitter from a host of a majorcooking show in Japan, Your Japanese Kitchen. That was really cool,but I've been as jazzed by interactions with Japanese chefs who haveshows on Youtube. They are widely followed there. I've tried manydishes by Ochikeron .She's been very encouraging, and she's been recognized by theoriginal Iron Chefs! And I was beyond thrilled when the wildlypopular host of Cooking with Dog deemed my version of her pumpkin soup delicious.

2011 was a good year in the kitchen forme. In 2012, I see some inevitable things happening. I will try tomake my own pasta from scratch. I've had fresh pasta over the years.There was one spot in Philly's Reading Terminal Market that sold astonishing ravioli and tortellini. But it hasn't beenuntil recently that I've been convinced that it's a recipe I can pulloff. And I can see myself grinding my own meats for burgers andsausages. I was on my way to that practice anyway, because it'sdifficult to find the kinds of coarse grinds in beef that I like forchili. And I have been profoundly influenced by Michael Pollan's FoodRules. He advocates eating foods that are as little commercially processedas possible. Beyond that, I'm exploring two new cookbooks (MicahelSymon's Live to Cookand Anne Burrell's Cook Like a Rock Star ) that strongly recommend making both homemade pasta sausages fortheir recipes. I can't wait to report back with all that I amlearning!

A Quick note on kitchen disasters. Iwill try the mango pitting device suggested by a kind reader thoughI've seen Bobby Flay nearly lose some fingers with one. I am stilldeeply suspicious of mangoes. And I have yet to poach an eggsuccessfully. I've tried so many 'fool proof' tips. Obviously thesechefs have never met me! Still, I will continue to try. There are somany dishes I like which include poached eggs.

Creatively

The year did not begin that wellcreatively. I found that doing even the shortest of shoots was beyondmy reach physically. Some of the difficulty simply comes from beingolder. Wearing that many hats in a production was a lot harder in2011 than it was in 1998. I'm also missing my most trusty productioncoordinators, Randy and Phil. Not that I'm heaping guilt upon them.Even if they were available, there is the second reason that I haveslowed down. In the wake of the two surgeries and ten rounds ofchemo, I have changed. My 'new normal' leaves me far slower at manythings than I used to be. And I can never predict when I will tireeasily or have other, more unpleasant problems. Thus, I had to shelveplans to shoot the web series I had planned. That was a taddepressing. But there was a yin to that yang. I was suddenly writingfiction again. The guys came alive for me in two story lines. I'mstill working on one, but the other – Ensnared Volumes 1&2 –is out and well received. My Soldier boys are giving my Vampire ahard time. It's fun to write though a bit odd for me. More on that onhttp://sybpressyaoi.com . Oh, and a special shout out to my talented cover artist, Adrianna Ferguson. You were the find of the year!

Aside from the books going well, I waschallenged creatively by a solicitation for stories by one theedgiest genre writers I've run across in a very long time. He is bestknown as Made in DNA. His content is way out on the fringe most of the time. Many of thetitles are Not Safe For Work. His work seems offensive at firstblush. But there is so much more going on than cybersex. Brent has away of using the sparest of prose to speak volumes. His worlds areoften as dark and scary as they are sex-charged. But his fiction isalways smart, and it can be wickedly funny. To write for him wasquite a challenge as I am not prone toward darkness. I pushed myselfin directions I had never gone with my work while adhering to a rigidword count. The results were pieces that I would not have thought ofwere it not for the challenge in Brent's guidelines. It was anexasperating and exhilarating experience that left me in a differentspace as a writer. I look forward to pushing myself like that againsometime soon. I'm also very pleased to have found an inspiring andthought provoking writer like Brent.

I found that an awful lot of mycreative experiences and opportunities came from the copious amountof times I spent online in 2011. While I was laying the groundworkfor networking my next books and indulging in my geeky past times, Iwas making some important connections. My late night on linediscussions and diatribes lead to speaking at two really coolconventions. And those events lead to the suggestion that I try for afreelance position at Digital Manga as an editor. This was a hugestep for me, and it is an endlessly fascinating challenge to takesomeone's work and make it sound like natural English yet still havethe author's voice and intent clear in the dialogue. This is donewithout being able to read Japanese fluently – thus I must rely onthe translator – and without ever interacting with the author.Strangely, I am enjoying the process. The conventions also allowed meto meet and have protracted conversations with writers I have longadmired like Jane Espenson, Wendy Pini and HamletMachine. Who knowswhere all these connections will take me creatively, but I can't waitto find out.

Project Updates

The web series (Demon Under Glass andBlood Oath) remain on hold as far as new shoots. Aside from thephysical problems I've already mentioned, Jon's availability is nowvery limited. I haven't figured out how to make that work. I amhoping that the short for Blood Oath will be finished this year. Itrequires new artwork and a lot of focus. With Jon's limitedavailability, I'm not sure how that will work either. In far betternews, there are four films from our catalog that have become activein recent months. One may actually move to pre-production in January.Our partners in Dragoncor/EarthDraggon have had a year ofextraordinary connections as well. Some of them may bear fruit verysoon. I can't give details, because we all had to sign agreements tonot talk about anything. That's quite exciting,

In the book arena, Ensnared Volume Twowill be out in January. There will finally be a third Soldier's bookand a third Surrender book. Both of those series will feature arelaunch of the first two in each series and a big advertising andsocial network push. We will see some new authors in the latestDemonspawn collection along with some favorites. And Sybpress will belaunching a new author in the red hot romantica (romance/erotica)genre. Our very own Marguerite Lliteras will debut the very naughtyThe Intern very soon. You can read all about her history as a writerand the enticing origins of The Intern athttp://sybpressromantica.com.

2012 is going to be fantastic in manyareas.

Stay tuned!

Year End Reflection on an Oft Asked Question

2011-12-31T17:22:00.000-08:00

Why DO you write THAT?

I covered this question when I startedblogging five years ago. That was when I was doing fantasy eroticawith straight couples. The questions have grown more pointed since Istarted putting out yaoi books. I get these questions especiallyafter I've written something detailed about the craft of writing. Ireceived a well written and well thought out note after I had givensome writing advice to one of my blog readers who wondered when I'duse my talents for writing something more literary. I didn't getangry at the note. It was a kind attempt by someone who liked my workwell enough to take the time to write. I hear much the same sentimentquite regularly from some family members. The concern is that I amnot using my talent in a way that could make me real money or realfame or critical acclaim. Thus, I would be more financially secureand less panic stricken. I've even thought such things on occasion –when I'm being mopey.

The flippant answer (which I did notand would not give in response to such a well meaning note) is thatbooks acclaimed by literary critics make money so long as they areassigned reading from some misguided lit professor. And that stillisn't much money. Writers with a lot of fame and money are oftenwriting material that they should be ashamed of if they aren'talready. Why, yes I am thinking about Twilight. Unless the writerhappens to be enjoying that fifteen minutes of fame for some reason,whether or not their book will be a best seller is in the same realmof probability as hitting the lottery. Because of publicationpipelines – like film pipelines – by the time we in the publicsee that a theme has become a trend out of a given set of titles thathit big, it's too late to capitalize on it. In the year and a half itwould take for that new take on angsty teenaged vampires to hit thestores or the theaters (and that is if it is picked up immediatelyafter the six months it takes to write the book/script), the trend ison to angsty middle aged bull fighters(I have dibs on that – it'smine). My point is that trying to write in the hopes of thatlucrative best seller will most likely be an exercise in frustration.

And what is literary anyway? I'mcertain that the intellectuals of Dickens' day didn't consider hisserialized stories high art. I know for certain that the some of theidiots we were reading in grad school are no longer considered worthyof study. I couldn't agree more. I won't even be angry about thecomplete waste of my time so long as no one else has to sufferthrough that pretentious drivel. And no, I won't name names. I don'twant them to have anymore attention than they already have. Therehave been and still are genre books that transcend their niche to beconsidered literary. I'm not going to delve into specifics here.That would turn this blog into writing a paper. I'm not doing that.If you are curious, Google literary science fiction or literaryhorror and read on. For my part, I know that there are many authorsthat I shelved in their genre and in lit when I worked at bookstores.Working at the Archive deepened my belief that what is or is notconsidered serious writing changes with the times. I don't know howmany well thought of and prolific authors of a given era I've scannedthat I have never heard of – and I have a graduate degree in lit. Iwould look them up to find out that they first fell out of fashionand then off the cliff of literary conscience generations ago.

To be a creative person is to be on apath that is often full of pain and self doubt in general. It isinsanity to further burden yourself with trying to compete in anarena that is not a comfortable fit. I am a storyteller. I lovespinning yarns that are enjoyable and engrossing journeys. I put alot of effort into any story that I tell for the page or for thescreen, because there is something fascinating about the charactersor the world I've created or both. Even with titles or scripts thathaven't performed as I'd hoped so far (I never give up on any of mywork), at least I can say that I really enjoyed hanging out in thatuniverse or with those characters. Doing the work itself is its ownreward which is good, because sometimes, that's all I get. I stillwork toward a day when doing something I really enjoy doing will beable to support our household. But I'm okay with really enjoying thework.

The epic year end wrap up will be out tomorrow when we are all more sober.

Stay tuned

Seasons Merriment

2011-12-25T13:14:00.000-08:00

We send you all the sweets with none of the calories this Holiday Season. Jon and I wish you happiness and health. Craig says 'who the hell are all these people???' We're going out galavanting with him tomorrow if he isn't arrested by the Sheriffs in Malibu for trying to spring his girlfriend who has to work at the station. When last we heard from him he was in the parking lot blasting the all meow version of Jingle Bells at the building. The galavanting also depends up whether I've recovered from a really nasty cold. All of this will be detailed in next week's blog which will also include the end of the year wrap up and some major updates. Thus, I must leave you all now to nurse my cold and enjoy the televised yule log. You can get it online, HERE. Of, and for those who are fans of my yaoi writing, you can find the official card HERE. I animated it myself! Enjoy the day, the food and your family and friends. I'll be back next week.

Stay tuned!

Squirrels, Editing Frenzy and Seasonal Viewing

2011-12-18T13:15:00.000-08:00

Upon the requests of several readers, Iasked Craig for a squirrel update. He said that he saw a Doritos bagwith a bushy tail running around his yard a few days ago. He staredat the bag until it became self-conscious. The squirrel backed out ofthe bag and stared at Craig for a while before scampering up hisfavorite tree. Craig is convinced that he had a human involved in hiscare at some point as it is not just unafraid of humans, it alsoseems to expect to be fed by humans and invited into their homes. Hestares at Craig and his neighbors through their windows or frontdoors. For some reason, I have decided that it will be a good ideafor Craig to be Santa's Little Helper this coming week. He's notparticularly jolly. Or he's jolly in a very wrong way. Perhaps, anice, fluffy Santa hat will help [Jon wants to be on the record thatthis is a bad idea]. Anyway, those outings should make for a veryinteresting blog next week.

Time Keeps on Slipping

My Grad school chum and writerextraordinaire, Sarah Freligh [Buy her book, Sort of Gone. It's the perfect gift for that baseball fan in your life], hasoften told me how much focus and energy it takes to edit someone'swork. I still had no idea how much it takes to edit a work whilecarefully keeping the author's voice in tact. I have two projectsthat must be finished fairly soon, so huge chunks of my day are spenton them. It is far different than proof reading, and it is exhaustingto my brain. I'm not saying the works are bad – quite the contrary.Iwouldn't be taking such care to preserve the author's voice andintent, if I thought they were bad pieces. It is quite a challenge,and I am out of practice. I haven't routinely edited this much prosesince I was in grad school. I'll likely get faster as I go along.And, by the way, many thanks to those who have edited me over theyears.

When we were children, it seemed totake forever for Christmas day to arrive. Now, I'm convinced that the space/time continuum speeds up at this time of year. Despite all ofmy carefully laid plans, there will still be a baking frenzy betweennow and Wednesday morning when I ship the cookies out. Some of thedelay had to do with when people would be at their addresses toreceive the cookies and when I had the bucks to sent the cookies. Itstill boils down to a really crazy couple of days. And isn't thatwhat the holidays are all about – running around like a crazed yak?

Seasonal Viewing

On Christmas Eve, aside from watchingsome playoff clinching football, Jon and I will be settling down towatch our favorite holiday films and TV shows. I record the TV showswhen they air in August or whatever unseemly early time they airthese things nowadays and watch them at a far more suitable time.Once again, I'd like to take the opportunity to recommend ourfavorite films for this special time of year. For a classic, westrongly suggest the 1951 British film Scrooge – released in the US as A Christmas Carol starring Alastair Sim andPatrick MacNee (The Avengers, and theoriginal Battlestar Galactica). Of the classic versions of this film(the Dickensian period version), this sticks closest to the wonderfuldialogue as written by Dickens and has the best performance ofScrooge. I must especially compliment the awesome performance of thescullery maid, if it's in keeping with the situation (watch the filmto figure that out). Second, we highly recommend Tokyo Godfathers. Movie critic George Peluranee notes that "Tokyo Godfather isa film that shows the small yet significant ties that each of us havewith supposed strangers, and tells well the story of miracles,family, love, and forgiveness" It is the story of threehomeless people who find an abandoned newborn on Christmas Eve,Incredible comedy and drama ensue. Craig and his lovely girlfriendare disparate in their film tastes. If it's sweet and treacly, sheloves it and he hates it. If it's wrong and horrifying, he loves it.As Craig said after we bought a copy for them to watch, every time itwas so sweet it was about to make me sick, something completely wrongwould happen and make me laugh my ass off. They both love the filmfor entirely different reasons. It has something for everyone!

Updates

I'm saving those for the year end wrapup.

Stay tuned!

Wacky Week, Singing Craig and Fangirl Fun

2011-12-11T12:35:00.001-08:00

Actually, it wasn't my appearance atBent-con that delayed the blog. I had planned on talking about themomentous things that had happened the week prior. But then, Idiscovered that I needed to send a story out by Sunday night. I stillhad a panel to do at Bent-con, and I had to input the corrections my proofreaders sent. Beyondthat, I had to figure out how to use the five or six hundred wordsleft of the ten thousand to create a deeper intimacy for mycharacters that felt realistic and not rushed. [See my blog from lastweek about how I look at word counts]. It didn't help that I wasstarting off wiped out from an exhilarating afternoon hob nobbingwith some amazing talent. (more on that later). By the time Ifinished tinkering with it, my brain was fried. I was in the 'firebad..tree pretty...' state [that is Buffy the Vampire Slayer speakfor I was one brain weary chick]. Under normal circumstances, I wouldhave put the blog up on Monday, but I had other creativeobligations. There is a Sybpress title we're trying to get out assoon as we can. And I have about six weeks of work on my new gig as aManga editor. I had to split my time between the two. I also had ahalf parody/half promo cooking video to put out for my yaoi page. Youcan check it out HERE. It's part of covering all possible social networks to promote thenew title. And I'm learning how to shoot and edit video content on myown. That's aimed at assisting me in many of my filmmaking projects,not the least of which is the cancer documentary. It was a unusuallybusy week. I'm getting an early run at this one by starting onFriday.

The Week That Was 11/27 – 12/3

I get reflective at this time of yearas a matter of course. As one gets more mature – aged if you will –this time of year comes with more and more baggage both good and bad.Since the whole rare cancer thing happening, the holidays have hadquite a spin to them. I'm not maudlin or anything like that. I lookback at the last year now in terms of what have I done with the timegiven to me. Last year, I was looking back at the time since December2009 and how far I had come from the initial diagnosis. From thatholiday through to December 2010, I had had two lengthy hospitalstays, two dangerous surgical procedures [for those who haven't seenthis, CBS did a story on my cancer surgery that is notable in thatthe subject had my cancer and it was a positive story. Click on theLINKto find out why it is called Shake and bake and MOAS – Mother OfAll surgeries] followed by ten rounds of chemo. Wow, I'd almostforgotten what fun that was. Last year my efforts had been focusedalmost solely on getting well. I think I did pretty well with thatwithout being a cranky patient toward the medical team or driving thehubs completely crazy (or crazier than he already is). This yearbegan with another hospital stay caused by a high and persistentfever. However, the year on the whole was far better than 2010. [Note– this is not the official year end introspection. A whole lot ofthat is coming in a few weeks. By then I'll know if I have reached animportant milestone].

I was cancer free throughout 2011 andable to finally start looking at my creative career. Though I havethe usual frustrations with things not moving quickly enough orsometimes, not at all, I have been really happy with what hastranspired during 2011. Something we had tried to do almost 15 yearsago has morphed into a source of incredible contacts. Projects thatwe'd shelved as untenable have roared to life. I don't have to dovery much aside from find the occasional odd file (some of them werevery odd files). That is very exciting, but it is also something thatis going on in the background for me. The big deals for me creativelywere to have stories accepted in two different anthologies and to behired as an editor for Digital Manga. I've always been very proud of my work as an independent publisher,but I had no idea until the past few weeks of the following I haveand how well thought of that work is elsewhere. My gentle readerssure are a quiet bunch. Pipe up now and then, will ya! My work duringthis time off during what I call a medial and writing sabbatical hasnot been a waste. Nor was all that time reading comics and manga andwatching anime. That feels really good. I'm now juggling my editingfor Sybpress with the Manga editing and my own writing, but I'mreally jazzed about it.

Beware Rob Petrie

Craig took me for my latest bloodscans. Though we've talked by phone often – Craig is still lookingfor a nemesis – I haven't seen him in quite some time. It wasinteresting as always. He serenaded the courtyard with The PinaColada Song for a few verses before I could get out the door anddrag him to the car. Life is fairly normal for Craig. The squirrel isstill spying on him, and his father's dog, Hamish, is trying to stealhis girlfriend. Ray Liotta has been scarce, but Craig has had a fewencounters with Dick Van Dyke recently. Apparently, they have hadmany encounters before over the years, especially while Craig workedin an independent bookstore in Malibu. Van Dyke is universally knownas being a very nice man, and Craig does not dispute. It's that thevery tall, gangly man has the ability to appear beside you seeminglyfrom nowhere. Craig doesn't like to be startled – even from thevery happy and friendly. This seems to be happening a lot lately.It's making him real nervous like as he runs through his errands. Istill plan on visiting him at the library there. Maybe he'll turn upnext to me! At any rate, the trip was without incident. I had broughtalong cookies to keep Craig occupied in the parking lot. I couldn'trisk him getting too bored and doing things like rummaging throughpatrol cars that tend to park in that lot.

Fan Girl Freak Out

Bent-con,like Yaoicon, was an event I really wanted to attend last year butcould not because of chemotherapy. I've been posting my nerdier blogson Doorq.com for a few years, and the founder of that site, JodyWheeler, has been a buddy online all that time. There is somethingvery exciting about young conventions [this was Bent-con's secondyear]. Connections with fans and with dealers and even with guestspeakers can happen when the attendance is smaller than the hugeconventions where there are throngs of people all divided up intotheir own cliques of interest. There were a couple of thousandpeople spread over the convention area at the Westin Bonaventure,the iconic Downtown LA hotel. In that regard, I was not disappointed.I talked to many of the dealers and signed up for a few mailing listsand one fan club. I discovered during one of the smallest panels I'veever spoken on that I have fans that still await my fanfiction andmet another fan that was so thrilled to meet me that I was humbledbeyond words – a rare feat for this big mouth.

Just a little Fan Girly!

But it was the lengthy encounters withthree of the guest for which I will be grateful that Bent-con invitedme to be a panel moderator. Everyone who reads my blogs knows howmuch I adore Jane Espenson's work. She blazed a trail on Buffy theVampire Slayer that dragged me from being only mildly interested inthe series to a rabid fan. And I'm still not sure how she did it, butshe brought a new depth, sexiness and humor to Battlestar Galacticawithout taking away from the hard space opera edge. I loved her blogson the trails and the foods she encountered while writing a TVseries. And I now follow her witty observations on Twitter. I've alsobenefited from her Twitter writing sprints where she encouragesfollowers to take some time and work creatively for 30 minutes to anhour.


Brady(left) and Cheeks (right)

Jane was there to talk about theincredibly funny and touching web series, Husbands. It's premise is that on the day after gay marriage becomes legal inthe US, a famous actor (Cheeks) and a Major League Baseball player(Brady) wake up from a drunken celebration to find themselvesmarried. Unwilling to undermine the cause by divorcing, they decideto stick it out for the cause and each other. Comedy and drama ensue.It is amazing how much complexity is packed into those briefepisodes. It has one of the best lines about the nature of marriage Ihave ever heard. It was fascinating for an independent filmmaker whohas worn many hats (most often that of a plumber on set) to hearabout such similar struggles to mine in producing Husbands. Somehow,I thought that if you've had studio resources for the day job, theywould be available for a producer when they did somethingindependent. I'm a silly billy. I could certainly relate to thefatigue I saw in some of the behind the scenes photos. It all lookedvery familiar. As expected, Jane was a fascinating speaker. It was athrill to have that kind of insight into the nuts and bolts of thebusiness from her. And luckily, none of what went on in her personalpanel or the Husbands panel would be repeated territory in my panel.Please, click on the Husbands LINK and watch the episodes. They arebrilliant!

The second of the three people I reallywanted to meet that day was Cheeks. He is not just a character. He'salso a person who acts, writes and sings. I discovered his youtubevideos via a tweet from Jane. They were about his life, the news andpop culture. I saw the first one when I was between major surgeriesand had a zipper of staples up my abdomen. It hurt to laugh, butlaugh I did until endorphins kicked in my brain. It was an upliftingexperience that I repeated every time he posted. Those videos havebeen pulled in favor of Husbands. I hope he puts some of them upagain for all to enjoy. He was an important part of my recovery fromthe first surgery and I was pleased to tell him that – and give himcookies.

The third person I wanted very much tomeet was Wendy Pini. She was already a legend in fandom for Elfquest which she created with her husband, Richard. I had long admired theirwork. But it was for her Wendy Pini's Masque of the Red Death that I wanted very much to speak with her. Masque had everything thatpushes my buttons – beautiful but flawed and potentially tragicmale characters who are drawn toward each other and inevitably bound.Death threatens their love and their lives at almost every turn ofthe page. I love writing about those kinds of characters. I willdigress here – because it's my blog – to expound just a bit. InA Soldier's Choice and A Soldier's Fate there are only two optionsfor Rik and Vincent – love or death as they literally cannot livewithout each other. But it's Ensnared that shares a worship ofhedonism with Masque. The relationship between Darius and Andreasthreatens to upend the social order and endangers them both. [expertsfor all titles mentioned can be found on the left under HotLinks]. There is tragedy in Ensnared, and I punish Andreas forhis beauty and his flaws, but I could not dare what Wendy dared inMasque. And there in lies her brilliance to me.

I am not a fan of tragedy. I know it issaid that to read tragedy is cathartic and therapeutic for the readeror the viewer. This gal is not one of those people. I found Wendy'sartwork compelling, so I thought I could skim Masque and enjoy thatwithout getting involved too deeply. That was impossible after thefirst pages. I was hooked. Despite knowing where the Poe story ledand where this was clearly leading early on, I was so enthralled byAnton and Steffan that I had to take that ride to the end. I wantedto tell Wendy that she was brilliant in how she wrote Masque, but itcame out as a highly exasperated question about the proposed librettofor Broadway based on the webcomic. Thankfully, my reaction was thevery one she had hope to evoke in her readers. Masque is just thekind of well written, accessible story that could introduce yaoithemed content to a wider audience. I'm hoping there is a way to makethat happen. That intimate panel was a wonderful opportunity toconnect with another talented writer I admired.

Sunday's panel on Women Make QueerGenre was a lot like a literary salon of old. The panel includedJane, Wendy and Shelly Doty, the writer/filmmaker/musician behind the intriguing Strange Frame, sci-fi, Lesbian anime. The discussion covered why each panelistswas drawn to Queer genre, the reaction of long time fans both gay andstraight to their works and where they saw Queer Genre developing inthe future. The panel managed to be both highly fannish andscholarly. I could see a paper being written about it. It was anamazing experience enjoyed by the audience and panelists alike. Abig shout out to Mars Homeworld. You are welcome in any panel Imoderate!

I am certain that Bent-con will becomea large convention someday. It absolutely deserves to be. I hope tocontinue to be a part of it as it grows. But the fangirl in me willalways cherish the unique opportunity I enjoyed while the conventionwas young.

Giving Thanks, Word Counts and Updates

2011-11-27T16:09:00.001-08:00

Last Thanksgiving I was very gratefulto have two weeks in a row off from chemo. I had enough of anappetite to enjoy the meal and the leftovers though in vastly smallerquantities than my norm. Two years ago at Thanksgiving, I couldn'teat at all and was days away from being hospitalized with a graveprognosis. So you can imagine how slap happy I was to have a nearlynormal Thanksgiving for us. We didn't have tons of company which ismy true norm, and I wasn't up to going to visit anyone (it's nothingserious – just coping with a flare-up of chemo related sideeffects. It seems one has to cope with the aftermath of the cure morethan one does the disease. At any rate, I have a lot to be thankfulfor this year. And thank you all for continuing to read these crazyblogs and support my work. I'm enjoying some wonderful creativesuccesses with my writing. That is, in large part, because of thegentle encouragement and occasional butt kicking I get from you guys.

The Tyranny of the Word Count

I've been writing short stories forsome anthologies recently. I was invited to do so, and that was verynice. However, in writing for the specs of the publication, I haveencountered having to deal with strict word counts. I am a not awordy writer. The most difficult problem I have in writing erotica ismy difficulty in describing the lovers in something beyond shorthand.The incredible word count for Ensnared was because of all the plotgoing on not endless descriptions of the drawing rooms therein. WhenI was at the archive, we scanned books – mostly memoirsself-published by some titled widow – that spent reams of words ondescriptions of the china used at tea or how the drapes hung. One ofmy beleaguered co-workers tiredly quipped as she scanned her tenthtitle of such dreck in a week, 'I wonder if this one will haveluncheons that happen in the solarium AND the formal dining room.That would be scandalous!' And while I enjoyed learning a lot aboutchemises and pemmican reading romances set in the Wild West, I justcan't write that way.

So, I'm going into this assignment withconstraints that I typically do not write under and the worry abouthow to truncate prose that I feel is written with exactly the numberof words needed. Added to that dilemma is the genre of sci-fi. I mustcreate a world unknown to the readers, establish the conflict and thecharacters and have time for a satisfying, highly erotic story arc in10,000 words or less. Alrighty then! Strangely, it's thescreenwriting experience that came in handy for those stories. I hadto think of a big image that would sum up in one glance how to showthe difference between this fictional world and ours. Once I couldconjure an image like that very clearly, it was relatively easy todescribe it in a short paragraph. The way the characters interactedwith this image told a lot about who they were as people and how theyare different from people in our world.

The bulk of the work was done in myhead as I thought of that singularly telling image for the opening ofthe story. One of the problems in conjuring that image was I havebeen working with Jon for way too long. I had to solve all of the nitpicky problems he would have with the cohesiveness of my universe.Jon tends to think in terms of how things would realistically evolvefrom the Earth we know into some futuristic Earth. While I see thesense in that, I have long maintained that advances in technology canand do happen in sudden leaps and bounds. If I am not giving aspecific time in the future as my setting, it cannot be determinedthat such advances in my story could happen. Or to quote MysteryScience Theater 3000, if you're wondering how he eats and breathes and other sciencefacts, repeat to yourself it's just a show, I should really justrelax. Incidentally, Jon was impressed with both story openings.Beyond that, I that to sketch the story out in skeletal details andthen add only enough detail to tell a very nuanced story. Easy, itwas not, but I was very pleased that I could do it. It is said youonly know how much you've improved at a craft when you try somethingyou've never tried. It's like being able to pull off puff pastryafter working with pie crusts for some time. It's putting butter andflour together but at a whole other level. One story has beenaccepted. I think that comes out in February. I'll post a link whenit is available.

Not Ready for Prime Time

I had a plan that involved filming someof my Thanksgiving cooking and warmly sharing the experience withfriends and family here. Yeah...right... First off, I am far fromcamera ready when I'm cooking on any given day. When I have as muchto do as when I'm making the Thanksgiving feast, how my hair looksand what I'm wearing is way down on the totem pole. And then, therewas the positioning of the food and my hands so the viewer could seeclearly. It was too much. I have a big new respect for the TV chefsthat I never had before. I took some photos during the process. I'lldo a little video slide show for everyone and post it later thisweek.

Updates

I was going to write about how thecharacters from one of my books, Simon Molinar of Demon Under Glass,is having trouble getting along with the characters in my Soldiersbooks. It's causing a huge problem in writing the latest book.However, that short story assignment threw me off further, so Icouldn't really suss out the problem for this blog. It will have towait until next week.

Next week, I'm on a comic conventionpanel with Jane Espenson (Battlestar Galactica, Caprica, Buffy)!

Stay tuned.

Kitchens, Bromances and Other Picture Postcards

2011-11-19T11:20:00.001-08:00

My baking supplies arrived on Friday.Right now (late Saturday afternoon), I'm roasting bones for the firstbatch of turkey stock I'll be making for Thanksgiving. I'm sayingit's the first, because I'll make another big pot full with thecarcass of the turkey after the holiday. The first batch is for thegravy and the stuffing (or dressing). I like a fair bit of gravy tomake sure there is enough for the leftovers! I'll make the pie crustdough on Monday. I may make some cooking videos for my gentle readersto follow along with me. No promises though. Sometimes – oftentimes – I look a might rough around the edges while cooking. Theremay be some colorful language as well. I am not good enough a specialFX editor to make up for all of that. I don't want to frightenpeople!

I roast turkey wings for the firstbatch of stock. The smell of turkey roasting with herbs makes mevery hungry for the real holiday meal or at least a sandwich. Thissort of aroma would drive my gray tabby, Mischief, crazy. She reallydidn't want to hear about the aromas weren't actual meat to eat butfor stock. I'd have to pick meat off the wings to share with her orshe would drive us all crazy. Ah, fun times... I seem to be makingmore and more of the meal from scratch as I get older though Istarted on that path a long time ago. After both parents becamehypertensive, everyone had to watch their sodium intake. The boxed orbagged stuffing or the other ready made stuff was full of sodium. Thefunny thing is that my Mom used to make most of the meal from scratchwhen we were younger. She drifted toward the ready made products aswe got older and she went to working nights. I began reversing thetrend when I got into cooking during my college years. Cooking fromscratch is cheaper, and I really have to watch what I'm eating.


The Baker's Rack of Insanity

Though I must say that say that I amway, way better physically than I was last year. This time last yearI was doing chemo every other week. I'm far more mobile and much lessmiserable. However, I have had to deal with being more easilyfatigued. I used to be able to pull off a holiday meal for a dozenpeople while working a full time job. These days, I have to choose afew chores to do per day, and that is it. This is why we've taken tomaking cookie dough on one day and baking it on another day. Packingand shipping are broken up as well. It's a little disheartening tonot be as active as I once was, but I'm getting things done. Jonoften points out that my full time job is recovering from the pasttwo years. That makes sense, but the limitations still take me abackoccasionally. I'm still not sure if I'll ever be able to do a 17 hourshooting day. Then again, I'm not sure if those were ever a goodidea. I used hallucinate after doing those. I'm okay with the stateof things most days, especially considering where I was two years agoor even at the beginning of this year.

By the way, to the left is the crazy bigbakers rack that takes up a large percentage of the common area inour apartment. As you can see, there are Jon's stacking skills inevidence on the top row. The rest of the shelves contain the majorityof my pantry items and almost all of my cook and bake ware. I knowsome of you will be trying to read the products. I dare you to try!

This past week has been interesting. Isold a short story! It's not a genre of fiction I typically write.It's a lot edgier and disturbing, and the sex is very sexy but it hasextreme consequences. It was very, very nice to be recruited for theproject. I'm actually going to write something closer to my usualfare – also at the behest of the editor. On the heels of beingrecruited as a manga editor and being included in another anthology,it's been a really good year creatively! Mind, I'm behind on manythings that I need to be working on, but it isn't often I getrequests from periodicals. My plan is to get back on track with thethings I need to tick off my long list this week. We'll see. I'llalso be going through the next round of diagnostic tests. It's morelikely that I'll be taking the path of least resistance.

Updates

Most of this blog has been an update. Ican't really add anything more right now.

The following is a blog I did for oneof the pop culture sites I write for occasionally. It was to be apanel topic at an upcoming convention, but one of the main people whowas going to participate had to cancel due to a scheduling conflict.Still, it's a fun and highly geeky topic involving some inappropriatedepictions of TV characters that are moving ever slowly into themainstream. And before anyone gets into an uproar with anyone Imention, I can either back up what I'm saying through independentsources, or I have permission to mention names and characters. So,those who continue – you've been warned. And enjoy!

For everyone else, stay tuned.

From Slash to Bromance -- Moving Beyond Subtext

Recently, I've had the good fortune of having one of my hobbies turn into a freelance job. I'll be editing translated manga into casual English for a major distributor of yaoi titles. In Japan, these homoerotic stories are sold in magazines that can be purchased almost everywhere. There are even anime versions running on TV. That there is enough of a market here for more than one distributor making money importing and translating them is pretty amazing. But times are changing for those of us who have long read and written slash fiction based on TV shows.

Despite popular opinion amongstcritics, slash in fanfiction usually doesn't spring from a vacuum.[Yes, I said usually. I am well aware of pairings that would make astomach turn like Legolas/Sauron or even Jean-Luc Picard/Elrod theElf guy, and I am reminded that there exists Icabod/Horseman slash.Heck, I once did quite a rant on a panel about bizarre pairings thatended with me suggesting that even Opie/Barney Fife was fair game insome Slashers' eyes]. Thankfully, this strangeness is a minor partof Slash Fanfiction. Typically, there is smoke that inspires thatfire in the writers.

They call them Bromances now, but

the phenomena has been around for a long, long time. It's a combination ofwriters writing much stronger parts for male characters than femalecharacters in a series and a very strong personal chemistry betweenthe pair of male actors. For Slashers, this phenomena begins withStar Trek's Kirk and Spock. No matter how many broads were thrown at Captain Kirkor the few that were thrown at Spock, there was never anyone closerto them than each other. Heck, Kirk more or less chose Spock over hisown son. But these Bromances were not confined to Sci-fi in the 70s.Starsky and Hutch had an even hotter Bromance. Executive Producer,Aaron Spelling, called them 'prime time homos' [you should Googlethat, it's hilarious]. However, by and large, the actors told themedia at the time that Dave Starsky and Ken Hutchinson loved each other – likebrothers. And that era being a simpler time in mainstream America,few saw the subtext that was percolating between the characters. Itwas simply beyond the grasp of any regular viewer's imagination.There was no way such subtext would move anywhere past making outafter flub takes that would go on the crew gag reel.

Things got interesting in the 90s forSlashers as it seemed that subtext was inching toward the surface atthe same time that the pleas for openly gay characters (who weren'tsome sort of freaky serial killers) were starting to be heard. In myorbit, there was even the first signs of fan service from media in North America from one show and vehement denial in theface of the obvious from another. Sometime between the original runand 1997 season of due South, series lead and by then Executive Producer and staff writer, PaulGross, was shown some of the slash fiction about the lead charactersin the show during an interview. He was very amused by thisdevelopment. That following season featured a lot of the subtextpeaking through into text on the show. It even ended with the leadingmen literally riding off into the sunset together. Oh, here is one ofthose aforementioned gag reels. But that's Canada. They actually have Gay marriage up there.

South of the border in the US during roughly that same time, therewas UPN's action adventure series, The Sentinel. The first review I read of that series talked about howinordinately close the lead characters were. Of course, hag that Iam, that meant I was totally there. I was not disappointed. Not sinceStarsky and Hutch had I seen characters with that much subtextbetween them. It was so obvious that our normally oblivious, stand upcomedian neighbor thought those guys were doing all sorts of thingshe didn't want to think about – and he never noticed that Mulderand Scully were having a romance. Between season one and two, serieslead Richard Burgi joked that he wouldn't mind if his character, JimEllison's, series sidekick, Blair Sandburg, played by Garett Maggart, moved upstairs into hisroom and they got on with things. That didn't go over well witheither UPN or its affiliates who were already unhappy about thenetwork's weak performance. The next season featured a parade offemale characters to insert between the male leads. It didn't reallyaffect the chemistry between the characters, but it did muddle theshow enough that it fizzled out.

Nearly fifteen years later, it is abrand new world for slashers. Though subtext remains subtext in theshows itself, the showrunners don't try to run away from it. In fact,they really give it some fan service. The most accommodating of theshows is Supernatural. Frankly, that slash makes me queasy as thecharacters are brothers. In the parlance of the genre, I'm beyondsquicked. Somehow, the show has acknowledged the fans without actuallysupporting their fetish or alienating them. They've even found aclever and humorous way to write the fans' obsessions into theseries. I give you episodes entitled The Real Ghost Busters ; The Monster at the end of This Book; and The French Mistake.

I find that development aninconceivable leap from the days where the slash was hidden from allbut trusted insiders of the fandom. Even non sci-fi shows like HawaiiFive-0 are acknowledging the chemistry of their leading men by doingthings like a video that rivals anything a panting fangirl could dream up. And then, I amreminded there were those Lord of the Rings ads on TBS.

I have to think that the day is sooncoming that the passion between a pair of male leads on a TV showwill be subtext no longer. And then what are we fangirls going towrite about??

Baking Strategies, Close Ups and Updates

2011-11-13T15:09:00.001-08:00

Dueling tree lots on either side of the street.

It's that time of year again. Theneighborhood Christmas tree lots are gearing up for an epic staredown from across the street. Questionable covers of classic Christmassongs are playing in stores [Really? It used to be not too many yearsago that the staff was spared that endless loop of cheer until afterThanksgiving. The clerks look hollow eyed and world weary already. Ididn't used to took like that until December 20^th]. Idon't like being forced to think about Christmas shopping ordecorating before it's time. I haven't even done my shopping forThanksgiving [Though we may be accepting a kind invitation to dinnerfrom a dear friend, I always cook at home as well].

The holiday baking season is nigh. Somethings, like the fruit cake, must be baked before the end of themonth. It has to ferment in brandy, you see. And don't wrinkle yournose. I make a non-traditional fruit cake inspired by my late AuntEleanor [She couldn't eat nuts and hated those bizarro candiedthings] by way of Alton Brown. It's more of a spiced cake withreconstituted dried fruits (raisins, craisins and dried apricots).The fruit is reconstituted in rum! I do make a version thatreconstitutes the fruit in orange juice for non-drinkers and minors.And Jon and I have found through year long experimentation that wecan freeze batches of dough and bake them very successfully a coupleof weeks later. This means that we can ship the freshest cookies yetwith far less stress. To do that, I must plan well in advance.Supplies and equipment must be purchased. That shopping must be timedto get the best deals. A lot of thought and planning goes into this.It is fun though. When I smell that fruit cooking with the cinnamonand all the other spices, it really starts feeling festive. And thisyear, I may add a new twist to the backing.

Ready for My Close Up

I've been learning how to shoot videoson my own for the cancer documentary. It's not that I won't have acrew when I do the shoots. I have a camera guy and perhaps a grip. Iwill not have Jon with me on many of the shoots that involve medicalpersonnel. I have to see them when they are available. Jon's scheduleisn't as flexible as it was when we shot the feature film. Thus, Ihave to learn how to shoot, so I can tell the crew I have what I wantand especially what I don't want. To practice, I used what I had onhand – me and the kitchen one camera light, a web cam, a camcorder and a Skype mic. I shot and edited two videos this weekin response to videos made by two chefs I follow on youtube. Chef Ochikeronwanted to know what products I was buying from Mitsuwa Market and howI was using them. So I sent her this RESPONSE. And I really enjoyed a pumpkin soup recipe made by Cooking with Dog (it's not what you think). I responded to that video with THIS. The goal was to see if I could do basic lighting, sound andediting. Jon thought I did fairly well though I need to work on thesound. I agreed. It took me prowling around many of the Microsofthelp forums to find out how to adjust the sound recording function.There is no help menu that I can access in the program itself. I haveto find help online. Oy! I hasn't feeling great last week, so I'mless than pleased with how I look, but I am happy with a first soloeffort. I have more complicated shoots planned for the next fewweeks. I'll post links as they are uploaded. I'm also thinking ofdoing some video blogs as we do the holiday baking. When I lived awayfrom home before, I used to bake while chatting on the phone with myMom or other family. It could be like having everyone here to sharethe experience. I'm not making an absolute promise. But I amseriously considering it.

Updates

There is nothing new to report. I'vedeveloping some thoughts on the editing process. I've been doing agreat deal of that lately. Beyond that, I'm writing some things andplanning others.

Stay tuned.

Craig vs Critters, Deb vs Japanese and Updates

2011-11-06T12:51:00.000-08:00

Craig is being stalked by a squirrel.And Ray Liotta, but that's only intermittently in recent weeks. Thesquirrel has no fear of humans. Inf act, it seems to Craig, that itwants to be invited into neighbor's homes to partake of mac andcheese or other tasty side dishes. He insists that it has stoodlongside of him on the sidewalk listening in on his cell phoneconversations. And Craig notes that his typically oblivious friend,Woody has noticed this behavior to ask 'what's up with thatsquirrel?' I speculated that perhaps in is the reincarnation of thethree legged cricket. Craig did not find that suggestion helpful. Heis now plotting against it. Looks like Jon and I are of the hook ashis nemesis. He would not send me photos of him wearing the Spockhair helmet with ears on Halloween. In response, I may visit himduring his next library shift and pester him about an obscurecookbook written in Esperanto. In tribute to bookstore customersthroughout the years, I will have no title but will know the color ofthe book. I'm kidding. That kind of requests makes Craig squirrelly.

In other news, the solar poweredampersand has been taken down. Replacing it is a Christmas Tree lot.This is extremely silly, because it's way too early to buy aChristmas tree. Then, there is the other Christmas tree lot settingup directly across the street from the first. That one spelled holiday with two Ls.Still, this nonsense is far less infuriating than the solar poweredampersand. Why do I have a problem with this, some have asked. Checkout the video, Top Five Things That Must be Identified as Art courtesy of Roger Ebert.

Deb vs Japanese Part 2

Before I get to my lumbering progresslearning Japanese, I wanted to announce that I have a boss coolfreelance gig as a Manga editor for Digital Manga which imports allkinds of titles from Japan. I won't be translating them – heavens,no. I'll be taking the raw English translation and editing it intomore conversational English and – hopefully – translated into thewriter's voice. This is very exciting for a geeky gal such as myself.One member of the cool team I'm working with lives in Japan who isdoing the initial translation. I've finally had to getSkype. Yes, folks, Deb will be talking on a web cam. Ack. It will have tobe by appointment only, so I can make sure my hair looks right.Perhaps I'll even wear a little make up. Web cam images are awful!But I digress. I am very excited about all of this.

My Japanese is coming along. I'm stillnot very confident about speaking in the language, but then, I'mstill that way with speaking French. My vocabulary is really comingalong. I find myself recognizing more and more of the spoken languagewhen watching anime. That's been encouraging. The written languagewill take a very long time. It involves three different kinds ofwriting. I've just leaned the easiest one – in that I have learnedhow to write each symbol in the easiest set. I have a lot of practicebefore I'm proficient. However, I was very excited during myHalloween trip to Mitsuwa market that I recognized a written word. Itwas only two symbols long. I was standing in produce pointing at asign. 'Persimmon!' I announced. The clerks were only mildlyimpressed. Why do language books teach things that aren't readilyuseful? Shamefully, I have never even eaten a persimmon. The onlysentence Craig can speak in Spanish is 'I have a broken recordplayer.' The phrase has never come in handy for him. Where was I? Oh,yes. In the same market, I called one of the cashiers a pumpkincorrectly. Fortunately, she was dressed as a jack-o-lantern for theholiday. I did make myself useful translating on that visit. I helpedsomeone with a vague understanding of her recipe for shabu-shabu convey what she needed to the clerks. That was satisfying.

I am pressing on with my practicing ofspeaking and writing.

Updates

I hope I haven't given the impressionthat the lack of updates on the film projects mean that nothing ishappening, or we've given up trying. That is not the case. Almostevery film we've ever written is in some stage of negotiation. On anygiven week, I am sending out budgets and schedules or cast wishlists. I'm routinely asked to find a fax from five years ago or acontact I had one e-mail exchange with three years ago. One shouldnever throw anything away when working in the film business. Most ofwhat is going on is confidential, so I haven't been talking about it.The long conversation I had with Jon in San Francisco was about howto best use my limited mobility and stamina in mounting new projects. We're still working that out. Meanwhile, I will soon start makingand posting tiny videos on youtube and Facebook. They are cookingrelated – mostly video responses to other youtube cooks whoserecipes I've tried. I'm doing them to hone my skills as a Director ofPhotography and as a Director. Jon's work schedule will not permit him tobe on a lot of my shoots for the cancer documentary, so I have tolearn to do it myself. He'll be carefully critiquing them. I don't mean just thoroughly. I mean he'll be treading carefully. I willpost links here and elsewhere as well for feedback.

Stay tuned.

Road Trip, Fan Girl Fun and Updates

2011-10-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

When last I blogged here, I was aboutto embark on my first trip away from home that did not involve ahospital stay in over two years. Complicating matters for my nerveswas that I had to make my way to the airport with all of the bags onmy own as Jon can't get off work until his usual time. Our flight wasto leave a little over an hour after that. No pressure! I had thebags and we had boarding passes before leaving home. Jon carriednothing save for his ID and money and the pass. The theory was thathe should be able to easily pass through security and make it beforethe boarding calls began. It was a sound theory. That didn't stop mefrom being wound up in knots about the entire prospect. And that's ontop of my epic anxiety over flying.

But there was nothing that could bedone. I decided that I would be at the airport well before thesuggested two hours prior to boarding in case dealing the the luggageturned out to be more of an ordeal than anticipated. That meant I hadto get my drink on way in advance of the flight. For my newerreaders, I have to fly snockered [Hmmm, spellcheck doesn't have theword snockered. How pedestrian]. I have the intense kind of flyinganxiety that makes me want to open doors while the plane is in theair. The anxiety is so intense that I am usually really sober by thetime I land. Champagne was the drink of choice prior to the cab ride.It wasn't expensive, but it was nice. I suppose sparkling wine ismore accurate. This stuff was not from France. Still, it was tasty. Iwas feeling good during the cab ride. My cabbie remembered me fromour days in Playa del Rey. It seems our complex had to stop beingcondos and go back to rentals because of the downturn. And, I think,because they were evil. That put me in an even better mood.

The baggage thing was easy. I couldcheck them at the curb as I had the boarding pass already. Securitywas a breeze compared to what we've been through traveling overseas.I was at my gate in minutes. My plan was to have a bite to eat andthen more wine. I carefully researched my choices on Yelp.com thenight before. I chose the eatery with the most consistent positivereviews. I don't know where these people were eating, but those werethe worst nachos I've ever had. I was so annoyed that I didn't staythere to drink at the bar. I went to the spot closest to my gate. Ialso made some good nachos when I came home. I did not want those tobe the last ones I remembered. I still had an hour and a half beforeJon arrived. I whiled away the time practicing my Hiragana,the easiest part of written Japanese, while arguing with a mechanicwith Air Alaska about the odds of the 49ers getting back to the superBowl this year. I actually teamed up with a New York Giants fan todebate the man. Oh, and I was still drinking wine. And Jon was ontime!

An hour an a half later, Jon and I hadarrived at the San Francisco Airport Marriott and Yaoi-con. It is anmanga and anime convention primarily though novelists are welcome.Since writing A Solder's Choice, I have been wanting to go to thisconvention. It is a place where I could find a huge audience for myhomoerotica. There was a great deal of networking potential in thistrip. Beyond that, we were going to a really great hotel near a cityI really like. No matter what went one, I was going to have a nicebit of R&R – perhaps even some room service. Jon and I had alot to talk about regarding our projects. This would be a greatsetting away from our every day routines. We were not disappointed.We had all of that and more! We also had travel mascots, Mr.Sizuyki-san, the rubber duckies (from Junjou Romantica, my favoriteyaoi anime), the happy Gorn from Craig and Oscar Wilde (who loves all things writing and naughty)to watch over our room. We also had a wine in a small cube. Abrilliant invention!

From here on I will be posting photosfrom the costumes at the convention. One will depict the characterbeing re-created. The other will be the very cool cosplay version. And check out a great video of the costumes and the location HERE.

There are many perceptions that thepublic has about genre conventions – the costumes, the weirdness.We've all seen in on the news when there is a Comic-con going on. Andwhile that is true, it is no stranger than wearing a foam rubberwedge of cheese on one's head or painting your body and screamingthrough a football game half naked in the freezing cold. There areeven more preconceptions about attendees of conventions like Yaoi-conor slash fiction friendly conventions like Media West or Basecon. Those are that they are mostly socially awkward women who don'thave 'real lives.' I can argue about the skewed view of thoseperceptions, but that is for another day. Yaoi-Con did not even matchthose. I'm fairly sure that almost half of the attendees were men –and not necessarily gay men. Many seemed to be partnered with femaleattendees. There was a wide age range from 18 to my age and beyond.They were a very racially mixed group as well. And they there highly social for the most part. There was that onevery attractive though sad Legolas clone. I'm not sure what hisstory was. I went to the convention with networking in mind, but Ihad also managed to open my yap about a controversial topic and endedup with a panel. While that is an excellent way to introduce myselfto a group of writers and potential fans, it could have also been acomplete disaster caused by my own arrogance. How did that turn out?You'll have to go to my blog Why Can't No Mean No Panel to find out.IIt also has the only photos of me in this shindig!

Beyond the panel, I had fangirlbusiness. I wanted to meet the people behind two of my favorite webcomics. I discovered both of them while I was undergoing chemo andcouldn't sleep. I had never read a web comic before, and I didn'tthink I'd take to them at all. I read both from stem to stern in onesitting. One is Tea House, an adult drama with a gorgeous Art Nouveau design that is based onthe lives of people who work in a brothel. The other is the starklybeautiful and compelling Starfighter, I actually spoke about the incredible skill of Starfighter'swriting in my panel. I will go more deeply into my attraction to bothseries in my Yaoi @ Sybpress blog this week. For now, I will say thatI met all of the wonderful women behind these works and it was awonderful experience.

When we weren't in the hotel enjoyingthe food and the ambiance, we were in lovely nearby Burlingame.It was a really lovely little town that very much reminded us of thequaint but wealthy towns of the Main Line near Philadelphia .We had some great diner food. Sadly, there wasn't time to try one ofthe six Japanese restaurants there. And Jon and I had some very longdiscussions about all of the projects on the blocks. I can't say wecame to any new decisions, but it was good to at least bring some ofthe things that had been troubling me for a time to light.

It was a very good weekend though thetravel and the walking was hard on me. It took some time to recover,but I'm so relieved that I can travel! And we will be going to YaoiCon next year – in Los Angeles! I regret not going back to thebeautiful Bay Area, but not having to pay air fare means a lot moreroom service and souvenirs!

Updates

Ensnared Volume one is now available asa paperback and ebooks. For details, got to http://sybpressyaoi.com. A Soldier's Destiny is now underway once more. The rest of theprojects are in flux. Some things are going on. I'll get into thosenext time. And, hopefully, I'll have a photo of Craig in Spock earsand a story to go with it.

Stay tuned.

Mall Recon, Calypso and Packing Frenzy

2011-10-22T13:24:00.000-07:00

This has been a crazy busy week. One day, due to a maintenance issue at our building, I was out and about for eight hours. That just doesn't happen much anymore unless I have a medical appointment that involves some sort of intimate scan. What to do for that amount of time? I went to the mall and mall walked and did some serious shopping recon. Despite my taste in timeless clothing and an odd penchant for costume jewelry, I have never been much of a shopper. I just never saw the point of whiling away the better part of a day looking for shoes. The internet has made things a lot worse for me in the wanting to shop. That and working many years in retail. Stores generally depress me, and it is easy to find what I want with the click of a mouse.

The exception to this used to be my quarterly recon sweeps through all the shops I tended to buy from. I would check out the trends for clothes and shoes and even housewares without any inclination toward buying. It's been many years since my last recon. I admit that my wardrobe needs a serious update. My yo-yoing size and not working for nearly two years means my closet is a bit threadbare. And the thrift store cookware we've been using for over a decade is falling apart. I had a lot to recon. I was glad that it was early during a work week and not during the holiday season. I prowled the shops for hours looking at everything from bras to saute pans. It was good fun, and I found a lot of bargains that were regular prices. I'm happy to report that A-line skirts and sheath dresses are doing well. I was very, very excited to see that English riding boots are all the rage and thus quite affordable when looking at the department store version. And I found some reasonably priced saute pans. Yay! I even got entertained by a group of toddlers dancing to a steel drum band. It was a Harry Belafonte tune, Jamiaca Farewell. It was the loudest part of the mall, but there is something simply joyous in watching toddlers dance and laugh. I did manage to fill the day with some very productive intelligence gathering.

Incidentally, I believe there is a conspiracy afoot to get The Banana Boat Song in my head. I've seen references several times this week.

Leaving On a Jet Plane

I had to postpone my usually crazy early packing frenzy for the trip to San Francisco because of the work done in the apartment. We had to put everything back in place after moving most of the furniture and everything else to make room for the workman. I feel a bit pressed because I should have been packed a week ago (I did say crazy early). I'm kind of glad Jon is at work, because I'm wackier than I normally am before a trip because of the truncated prep. Did I mention that the trip is only a few days? I'm doubly stressed because I haven't flown in over two years. This is a completely new and unfamiliar convention for me. Oh, and I've managed to get myself assigned a panel on a controversial topic that many there may not like a newbie kibitzing on. More on that in the next blog after the convention. I think my nervousness is justified. I'm making sure that my mask is well in place. It takes a lot of polishing of my appearance, a lot of thorough research on the topic and loosing my inner Dominatrix. I'm rusty at the last one, so I may also require copious amounts of wine.

I'll figure out how to make the trip work. I've been meaning to go to this convention for many years. It has the core audience for both the Soldier's books and Ensnared in one place. The networking opportunity is phenomenal. I also need to prove to myself that I can still travel. It's important to my taking back a normal life, and I will need to travel for the documentary. Besides, Jon and I desperately need a change of scenery that doesn't involve a hospital stay. I don't think we'll have any time to explore San Francisco, but this girl has always loved a stay in a fine hotel. I get that from my mother.

I'm posting this early from the hotel. There will be a whole lot more to tell when I get back.

Stay tuned!

New Blog, New Book and Some Old Chestunts

2011-10-16T12:28:00.000-07:00

I have a confession to make. I havebeen working on a different blog. Oh, don't worry. I'm not cattingout on some strange, random blog. This one is mine as well. You see,in order to properly socially network a project, it must have asearchable tag in the cloud or the interweb tubes (don't I sound verytechie when I have barely a clue). And genres also don't like to intermingle, it seems. So, Ihad to create a blog for the various niche genres I write in. Thisnew blog is Yaoi at Sybaritic Press. Warning: That site is dedicated to homoerotic fiction. The excerpts are quite explicit. Read at your own risk! In that blog, I introduced the new book, Ensnared Volume One. It'snow in two volumes because the 180,000 words was a bit much to fitinto one paperback. The volumes are a rollicking epic filled withintrigue, danger, humor and a big sprinkling of homoerotic D/s fun. Of course, no one is entirely who they appear to be, and eventhe simplest actions can be lethally dangerous. Above all, this is alove story between two people from extremely divergent backgrounds.

Here is the summary from the back coverblurb:

Inthis world, even the most powerful are captives

Lord Darius Galatea seems to have allthe power in the world. He is Leader of the Cosimo or Cosi, those whokeep order in an advanced civilization built upon a strict castesystem. He could have a city razed with one call or have the mosthigh born citizen put to death for the slightest transgression.Andreas Hesper comes from the lowest caste. He used an agile mind andjust the right amount of muscle to become the most successful leaderof an underworld gang. A chance encounter between the two men notonly upends both of their worlds, but also ultimately puts theirlives in jeopardy. It is custom that some of the Elite citizens ofthe world class city of Amara owned their lovers as playthings for atime. But those trained playthings or Damis were from a specificcaste bred for their obedience and loyalty. Never had a gang leaderbecome a Dami and thus privy to the secrets of an all powerful Lord.But there is more to the streetwise young man who agreed to be aplaything despite the objections from his caste and those from hisMaster's world. Andreas felt bound to the Cosi from the moment theymet. He sees and hears more than even Darius himself. Andreas knowsthat they must tread very carefully in both of their worlds or theattraction that so closely binds them together will cause theirdestruction.

For more details, lengthyexcerpts, and details about the characters and how the books werewritten, please visit Yaoi at Sybaritic Press.

Meanwhile, Back at the Ranch

Last week was wonderfully cool. Imanaged to bake some test cookies from new recipes or new techniquesof old recipes. I had hoped to make some soup stocks, but the coolstreak didn't last very long. Still, I managed to figure out how tomake oatmeal cookies without all of them spreading into one large,thin cookie. I also discovered that there are many cookietroubleshooting forums on line. They were very helpful. Jon and I areworking on a production plan for the holiday baking that should beeven more relaxed. And these recipe refinements are producing somevery nice results. Jon's co-workers certainly are enjoying them. I'vegot my lineup fairly well set. I may be very daring and try to makemacarons. [that photo is not of macarons I've made]. I'm not certain they'll make this year's rotation, because I'munsure of how well they hold up (how many days do they last in acookie bag or cookie jar and how well do they travel). I'm also notsure how well I'll execute them. I've done very little work with apiping bag. I've never ground nuts into flour. And that's anotherconsideration. I have to be very careful of people with nutallergies. We already segregate the peanut butter cookies after baking. We acutallymake them separate from the other cookies. And we do a heavy cleaningand disinfecting in between. I may try to make them though. We alsohave to have another whack at diabetic cookies as we have more andmore people that fall into that category. It's not hard work, and Jonloves the resulting research so far.

The rest of the week that was notrelated to getting the book underway was not so great. Some peoplehere have heard enough about my frustrations with automated customerservice, so I won't rehash that saga. I'll just get angry again.Sending a book out into the world is always daunting. I'm actuallydepressed afterward. I find I miss hanging out with my characters.And then there is the terror that either no one will like the book oreveryone with just shrug at it and walk away. I was fighting a coldmuch of the time, so that didn't help my state of mind. I was evenachier than I usually am of late, and I had that vexing scratchy-sorethroat thingy. It is very amusing that even after all I've beenthrough as a cancer patient that I still find a garden variety coldthis annoying. Baking helps with all of those negative feelings forthe most part. But even a very successful round of cookie bakingdidn't quite lift my melancholy and discontent.

And then there is the event loominglargely this upcoming weekend. I am taking my first trip since August2009. It's my first convention since Dragoncon 2008. That's enough tomake me nervous. I also opened my big yap to the convention committeeon a controversial topic. Now, I'm doing a panel for the first timein years. The audience is likely to be hostile. Ah well, I've alwaysliked San Francisco. Hopefully, we'll get to see a little bit morethan the hotel during a short stay. I'll report on the whole shebangnext week. That's just weird that shebang is in spellcheck, but itflags all possessive words with an apostrophe as misspelled. Strange.

Updates

I have none for this week. I'm stillassembling promotional materials for Ensnared and my other works inthat genre for the convention. And I'm about to enter the frenziedOCD phase of my travel preparations. I have lists of my travel lists.I'm out of practice, so I'm extra OCD right now. We'll only be gone afew days, yet my lists are ever so long and detailed. Poor Jon.

Stay tuned.

Delay of Blog

2011-10-10T13:04:00.000-07:00

There will be no blog until Sunday. I'm frantically working to get some Sybpress titles out that must be live within the next week. I'll have a lot to share on Sunday.

Stay tuned.

Celebrations, Syndromes and Updates

2011-10-02T18:28:00.000-07:00

I must do a tiny bit of old businessfirst. I forgot to answer one burning question from the last blog ofreaders' questions. If I still haven't answered a question, it'sbecause I'm not gonna. Anyway, the answer to the missed question isthat Ray Liotta is back in Craig's orbit. From his resume on IMDBpro,he has been filming a lot over the last year. Thus, he was notintersecting with Craig. Now, he is and the chin waves havecommenced. Craig is no longer as paranoid about it. However, he isreally annoyed over all the sitcom actors who have moved into hisneighborhood. I don't know who they are. A description like 'youknow, that fat, balding guy with the hot wife on that show' could beanyone.

I may have to put back the warning Ihad on my blog for a while. It seems that it comes up on thestrangest searches from recipes to images from ancient cartoons. I'mnot sure why people click on a description that has nothing to dowith the search, but some do. Heck, a number of my gentle readershave come from searches that have nothing to do with the primarysubjects of this blog. They have stayed for the hilarity. That'sgreat. I really don't get those who click on and then complain to me,because I'm not writing about what they are looking for. I mean, Ihave a big ol' header on top of this thing, for goodness sake. So, ifthe rate of complaints doesn't ebb, I'll go back to the warnings.

The Bone China Syndrome

I inherited a strange syndrome from myMother. It had no name until the 1980s, I believe. When she wrapped aturkey in puff pastry during her first ever holiday special, Mom knewthat she had Martha Stewart Syndrome – the need to opulentlyentertain no mater how few people are supposed to show up. In herdefense, we never had a holiday where some unexpected guest showed up– family or friend and often with a stranger in tow. Heck, many aSunday dinner featured some sort of guest – expected or not. Momwould scold for not calling ahead, but she never turned anyone away.She was a social soul, so I think she enjoyed entertaining despitethe work involved. She liked it even more as the cooking duties wereceded to me. I didn't know that I had inherited this syndrome untilJon and I were in LA. During that first year, not only wasn't Iobligated to entertain family, we also knew no one to invite over. Iwould still make full blown Sunday dinners that served at least six.I reasoned that we could eat the leftovers. And we did. Things gotreally wacky during our first Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners inLA. Despite our relatively solitary existence, I cooked like we werehaving no fewer than twelve people with big appetites. I still do.It's like I cannot fathom actually cooking a holiday meal for justtwo people. I make the same amount of food down to the two sweetpotato pies even when we're invited out. I really loved the leftoversfor those meals.

I haven't done much entertaining since2009. I was really sick during Thanksgiving. In fact, that was whenI knew something was really and seriously wrong. I couldn't eat thatmeal. I was home by Christmas and I did cook as I usually would, butI was still on a lot of drugs that effect appetite or the taste offood. During 2010, I was not up to having guests. I think that's whyI went a little batty doing the high tea for Marie. I was so ecstaticabout entertaining – and seeing Marie. My knee jerk reaction to Jonand my wedding anniversary is to go absolutely bonkers. I was gong tomake a three tiered wedding cake a la Ina Garten that serves 10-12people. Even Jon can't eat that much cake. Eventually, it sunk intomy brain that Jon is a lot more laid back about celebrations. Imean, that was the reason for the Las Vegas wedding. It was easy – all we had to do was show up. We needn't have dressed up. The Elviswas because we were getting married in Las Vegas and why not? He wasgreat. We split our reception up between an all you can eat seafoodbuffet, Star Trek: the Experience and a dance club at the MGM Grand. It was no fuss but huge fun. So,I kept this year's celebration simple. A steak sandwich (That's whatpeople from Philly call a Philly cheesesteak as it comes with nocheese unless you ask for it, and one wouldn't use the name of thecity you're already in as part of the description). And we had anormal sized layer cake. I also had some bubbly, but then I need verylittle excuse to have that. Being Tuesday usually works. Mind, I maywant a big blow out for the 15 year anniversary. I'm thinking of avow renewal in Paris. Yes, that would be lovely especially since itwould be 20 years that we'll have been together. That deserves a bitof fuss.

Updates

A new Sybpress title comes out thisweek. Meanwhile, I am a week away from releasing a huge new title andre-releasing two other titles. I'll have blogs on three sites nextweek. These previews are for my regular readers only!

Stay tuned!

Readers Ask About Actors, Food and Craig

2011-09-25T19:08:00.000-07:00

It is officially autumn once again.Once again, I sit and ponder the eternal question of why in the hairyheck I think watching football is relaxing??!!! The new neighbors wholive to the right of me and above me are likely wondering things like'Who is cursing like that? It can't be that nice, quiet lady in theapartment just beyond the pool's gate. Maybe she's having some femalefriends over to watch the game like an angry lady longshoreman or aticked off girl trucker. I've never heard epithets used like that.'I've had to turn off the game and watch some cooking show recordings.I don't think punching holes in the wall is good for my knuckles.

Reader Questions

I have a number of new readers lately.Hello, new readers! I imagine that jumping into the blog from anyrandom week is like jumping into the deep end of a pool full ofpiranha wearing clown make-up – scary and confusing. Thus, I havereceived some questions. Answering them will also provide updates. About Craig. Though we have agreed that I am not his nemesis, hestill manages to upend my focus when he calls. This week I've had totalk him out of buying a megaphone, and I've refused to tell himwhich days I tend to visit my local library. However, I'm not sure ifI talked him out of putting a special note in my account file. Isuppose I'll find out when I pick up the next book. About thefingerprints, because of the number of pages we turned while workingfor Internet Archive (archive.org), our fingerprints have rubbed offon certain fingers. Craig found out when he was being printed for thelibrary gig. The print operator said she sees that sort of thing withpeople who handle pineapples for work (I learned that on the originalHawaii Five-O) and people who handle a whole lot of paper. Weaveraged three thousand pages a day for three years. Our printsshould eventually return. I disagreed that his gave us carte blancheto commit high crimes. I mean, it's only a few fingers that areaffected. Besides, I don't care how cool it looks, using a grapplinggun will end in disaster at our ages.

Other Answers. I do not covereverything that happens in a week. I tend to focus on the long arcsin my life and career rather than the highs and lows. On any givenday, things will look incredibly good or incredibly bad at thebeginning or the day and be radically different by the end. That'swhy I don't post dramatic changes on the social networks unless I'mvery certain that the circumstances will remain the same for theforeseeable future. I would make my friends and loved ones crazy onalmost a daily basis. I thus stick to the highlights for the week.Yes, my friends and family do get a heads up when I'm going tomention them in the blog. Craig even knows what conversations willland him in the blog. When I mention my actor friends by name, theyknow it's coming. I don not share most of my interactions with them.Next, I am still learning Japanese – slowly. In fact, I used someduring my visit to Mitsuwa market last week. I was mainly apologizingfor my unruly shopping cart. And I told my long suffering clerk thatI was okay for help. Both he and the elderly lady I spoke to werepleasantly surprised – I think. I do know that I'm understandingmore of what I'm hearing on the anime and cooking videos I watch. Ihave some time before we can consider a trip there, so the learningis going at a good pace. I'm lucky to live in a neighborhood with asignificant Japanese population and a major Japanese super market. Ihaven't even begun to check out Little Tokyo. But I digress. Bewarned, I do that a lot, gentle new readers. Last answer for thisweek: yes, the proofreaders have been sent most of Ensnared. I'mstill fiddling with the last 60 or so pages.. It will be published ontime.

I have one quick note about theupcoming books. In order to more strongly brand them for the searchengines and the social networks, I will have special blogs for theupcoming erotica titles and the yaoi titles. I will still talk aboutwriting in general and my own writing here, but the excerpts andother updates will be on those blogs. It's all about marketing.Hopefully, these moves will result in higher sales.

Kitchen Melange

One of the readers' questions asked ifI combined all the styles of cooking that I'm learning or am Icooking French one week and Italian the next, etc. I do both. I maketraditional Beef Bourguignon when I crave beef stew, but I alsoemploy the method for other slow cooked beef dishes. My Dad now usesthat method to make his beef short ribs. I made them that way when Iwas last home. I believe he has spread the practice to the southernrelatives. I now know how to make Karage fried chicken, but I alsouse the Japanese seasonings like soy sauce, sake, mirin and ginger inthe buttermilk fried chicken I learned to make from my Grandmom. Itmakes such a flavorful marinade without a lot of extra salt. I usekelp in my stock making because it gives it even better mouth feeland extra nutrition. On the reverse, I made this lovely Japanesechicken dish with grated potatoes as a sauce thickener; however, Ibrowned the chicken along with onion, garlic and carrots like I wouldwith a French dish along with the traditional Japanese seasoning. IfI actually make a dish, it is usually because I know I'll use thetechniques in more than just that dish.

I must dash. Those last 60 some oddpages won't fix themselves no matter how much I yell at them. I'vetried!

Stay tuned.

Distractions, Doubts and Other Joys of Writing

2011-09-18T13:37:00.000-07:00

My apologies for flaking out a bit lastweek. I confess to having been super grumpy. I was also reallyrestricting distractions while I finished the last chapters of thebook. I was using every possible distraction as an excuse to walkaway from wrestling with the ending. I even cleaned the oven, forgoodness sake! The oven! I have often said to new writers without thefunds or the time to go to a writing program that they don't need adegree to be a writer. I say that with even more vehemence if ithappens that I am having a flashback of some pompous dullard readingfrom an opus about a writer writing about writers writing. Or theendless and allegedly deep discussions on whether or not a writerneeds to tell a story – can't they find a way to have a reader notread but sense the story on some subconscious level? Wow, thosememories STILL make me want to punch someone in the face twenty yearsafter grad school! Jon is pointing out that I'm still bitter. Ah,well. Where was I?

Deb vs Random Shiny Objects

I was going to make a point about themain thing that the Creative Writing Program gave me – harddeadlines. I knew I had to have a completed story and a chapter of abook finished each week to distribute for feedback. And I knew thatat the end of the program, I had to have a completed novel. Thatreally makes for a disciplined – though often freaked out –writer. I have a lot of time on my hands, and I do try to keep mydays well structured. But the lack of a hard deadline or an editor tobreathe down my neck makes it very easy to get distracted. There area lot of diversions even in our modest household. There are twocooking channels and more cooking on PBS. There is way too much onthe internet that is a distraction. Aside from the feeds on thesocial networks, there are places where I can watch every episode of Starsky and Hutchor all the episodes of Midsomer Murders I missed when it stopped airing in the US. This was bad before Idiscovered the sites where I can catch up on anime I've never seen ormanga I haven't read. Bad all bad. Toward the end of the book, I hadmanaged to filter out all of the obvious distractions because theymade me feel really guilty. That's when I turned to 'practical'distractions like sorting through the ponderous pile of medicalrecords, putting those crates of photos into albums like I alwaysplanned to do, or cleaning the oven. And let's not forget all of thecooking. Only some of that was necessary.

But wait, didn't I turn in a featurescript draft from concept to finished draft in a couple of weeks? Ihad a few people breathing down my neck including a co-producer andan actor. It's hard to ignore them when they can tell you'reonline...or know where you live...or have keys to your house. Thatwasn't a good idea. I have an update on that film later in the blog.Maybe I should find an editor like Ailawa-san, my favorite editor inanime. She is known for busting into a writer's home and beating thestory out of him.

What's the issue? This is one of mynaughty books, after all. How difficult could it be to throw a coupletogether and let nature take its course over and over for pages onend? Well, I never just throw together anything. Even my fanfictionwas some sort of exercise about character arcs or writing styles orgenre themes. In this case, the basic problem was that I knew thebook would be the first of at least a trilogy. Thus, one of theproblems was how to give it a satisfying ending while it was clearthat the story of the couple would continue on. There has to be anobstacle for them to overcome at the end that will compel the readerto read the next installment while not leaving them on a cliffhanger.That really ticks me off as a reader of books and a viewer of films.I finally decided to go with what I like doing with romances, thestory ends shortly after the couple figures out their relationship.From that point forward, only death will tear them apart. That doesnot mean that their adventures are over or the incredible danger tothem has passed, but as a couple, they are a solid union. There areno spoilers to the story here. In my romances, it is the wild ridethe couple takes and whether they survive it that keeps my gentlereaders on the edge of their seats not whether or not the couplestays together.

My couple's arc finishes after onefinal and serious threat to their lives. It is clear that there arestill gravely important tasks yet undone. There is still asignificant threats to their lives ahead. Thus, I'm fairly certain myreaders will want to continue to follow their story. But I hate whenthere isn't a satisfactory amount of denouement. Aside from thecouple, there are some supporting characters who have endured a greatdeal of suffering. They each need a moment or two to gatherthemselves for the next ordeal. In other words, I believe the bookneeds a little time like the end of Star Wars where the charactersare being hailed by the rebels as heroes and perhaps wear reallybitchin' boots. Okay, I know what I should be writing to wrap thisup, but there was still a problem. I had gotten hung up on the book'slength. It's the longest book I've written in one fell swoop at over180,000 words or 375 pages in standard prose format. It took me awhile to get over that. I was looking at the competition whose booksare considerably shorter. I needed to realize that there are still anumber of successful books that aren't sparse in their prose. I'mmean, this is still less than half as long as the later Harry Potternovels. And I don't waste pages describing every piece of furniturein a room or every eyelash on a lid. There is a lot of action in theplot and a whole heaping helping of white hot naughtiness! Afterslapping myself around, I finished Ensnared. At least, I finished thedraft. I have to leave it alone for a few days. Then, I'll adjustsome things before sending it to the proofreaders. I'll have excerptsand the incredible cover artwork up in a couple of weeks. Now, I can chase shinyobject with less guilt.

Updates

Octodemon has been put on a back burnerfor a while. The original plan for shooting it was to wait for lullsin the schedule at Central City Studio which is owned by one of theproducers of the film, Lucy Doty. Well, there have been no real lullsin the schedule there. In fact, the place has been crazy busy. Iteven had the new Batman there last week. It's fabulous for the studiobut not so great for the film. Things will slow down everywhere latein the year. We're going to look at the schedule again in a couple ofmonths and figure out what is doable. There are still plans in theworks to do the Demon Under Glass and Blood Oath web series. And afilm that I very much wanted to do (and came close to getting greenlit more than once) is seeing new life. It's very early, but it lookspromising.

Next week – More on the books andfilms. I'll also discuss why Craig, Jon and I have nearly unreadablefingerprints and why that could be terrifying.

Stay tuned.

2011-09-11T19:01:00.001-07:00

It's been a crazy day with working on websites for the new books and some other craziness while making chicken soup and Bolognese sauce. The upshot is that I've just strated the blog. Most likely, I'll be posting sometime tomorrow.

Update on The Secret Cancer Documentary

2011-09-09T11:43:00.000-07:00

I've updated the blog on the website for The Secret Cancer. I've also revealed a bit more about my treatment and ongoing interactions with my child like doctors. They are all adorable.Got to:

http://Secretcancer.com

Stay tuned.

Birthdays, Baguettes, and Some Updates

2011-09-05T17:12:00.000-07:00

I had thought that the strangest bit ofconversation to pass between Jon and me this past week was 'yes,Michael was wearing the super hero cape and the duct tape when hewent to the ER. I don't think he had on the tool belt though.' Butthen there was: Jon: Sweetie, are you into a new kink that I don'tknow about? Me: What ARE you talking about? Jon: There's a tray ofraw chicken on the bed. Me: Ah, that's where that got to. How myBrother-in-Law ended up at the ER is a long and admittedlyentertaining story, but that would be for him or his wife, Judy toshare publicly. I'll have more on them later. I can, however, explainthe chicken. I was clearing out the fridge to make room for thebirthday cake. I had the big, heavy tray of chicken in hand when Irealized that I needed to get something from the bedroom while Iremembered (a big issue with me anymore). I put the tray down toretrieve the item and left the bedroom. I left the chicken therewhile I sorted out the fridge and counter situation. That's when Joncame back from the laundry room and got very confused. See? It allmakes sense.

Birthday Boy

Speaking of my in-laws, they calledyesterday to wish Jon a happy birthday. Actually, it was mybrother-in-law that called to say that Judy was sending her every 30years birthday wishes to Jon. The idea was for the siblings to talkto each other, but that didn't really work out. Judy got distractedsearching for a photo similar to Jon's Jenga pile of dishes. Shecouldn't find it and that mad her sad, so she decided not to get onthe phone. Jon had on headphones, so he wasn't even aware of the calluntil I jabbed him with my elbow. The upshot was that the siblingsyelled into the phone from across the room at each other whileMichael and I had a very entertaining conversation about ouranti-social spouses. The Cunninghams are delightful people Judy isamong the loveliest women I know. Their parents are wonderfullysocial people. They make you feel like you've known them for decadesduring the first meeting. Their kids are another matter. They arevery odd in social situations until they know you well, yet theyattract extremely social spouses. And we are always entertained bythis phenomenon. I really enjoyed that call and am reminded that weshould get home to see all those zany folks soon.

I can't do much in the way of shoppingfor Jon's birthday. And it's hard to get Jon something fun, becausehe acquires the things that really interest him on his own. He hasbecome a search engine wizard in his efforts to secure the oftenobscure things that are parts of his hobby. And I don't want toalways give him things like new socks or shirts. Though essential,they aren't fun gifts. So, I decided to cook something special. As mymuse, Kim, often says about him 'all he ever wants are noodles andbread.' This is very true. In fact, I usually make him a tuna noodlecasserole for his birthday. But I wanted to do something special fromthe days when we were dating. So, it was a simple linguine with agarlic and olive oil sauce along with French bread and birthday cake.Simple, huh? Well, the ingredients for any given dish and the processwas very simple. It was just that everything was hugely laborintensive. Oy, what a long day of cooking. I've linked to The pages at the top of the Blog -- see the Tabs marked BAKING--to show you some of the process or the results. I've wanted to tacklebaguettes forever, so that was a fun form of kitchen therapy. Theresults were tasty though still a bit off from a bakery baguettes.They were denser than the professionally made ones, but they weren'tsomething that I could knock someone over the head with. Still, Jonfinished everything and seemed to enjoy it, so a good time was had byall.

Updates of Sorts

I'm still in the last throes of writingEnsnared, so I don't have much to talk about there this week. I will have a lot to say about the mechanics of writing this bugger, but I can't just now. Mulling on this ordeal may keep me from finishing. I can't wait to share the astonishing artwork for the cover and ads. All ofthe film stuff is still in flux. I have an update that will go on theblog for The Secret Cancer sometime this week. The rest of the filmstuff is still in flux and I can't talk about most of it stillanyway.

Sunsets, Marmosets, and Machinations

2011-08-28T18:24:00.000-07:00

To my lovely readers on the East coast, I understand if you pooh pooh me when I say that I have had a wacky week. Wackiness is truly relative. While I have had experience with the Earth shaking and I have been in a hurricane that hit Manhattan (Gloria, 1985), I have not managed both feats within one week. It's been embarrassingly balmy and pleasant weather-wise in Southern California. The ground has been behaving itself and remaining still. Weather-wise, it was a delightful week. Where my life gets wacky is when it collides with the Industry.

Sunset Blvd at Sunset

Most of Los Angeles that isn't part of an actual studio complex goes about its business without talking about movies or TV beyond what any other American talks about around the water cooler. However, there are pockets of the city where the movers and shakers move and shake and where others come to see and be seen. Deals do happen in these places. Sunset Blvd is actually a very dangerous place to talk about any kind of project. There are many, many ears about, and they are always listening. I'm not sure if I ever mentioned this on the blog, but the remake of Walking Tall with Dwayne Johnson is Craig's fault. He was blabbing on and on about how that would be a good role for Johnson while in Book Soup, a famous book store on Sunset Blvd. The next thing I know, there is the trailer for said remake. And there has been some thievery of TV projects from other folks I know.No, I can't name names.

Thus, the pretty restaurant on Sunset with the yellow and blue décor so reminiscent of Provence and the gorgeous and attentive staff was a minefield for creative folks. Many want to be seen and heard doing industry business. If one is perceived to be successful, they attract success. They certainly attract attention, especially when still wearing sunglasses after the sun went down. The tourists passing by riding in open air mini buses sure thought they were photo worthy. Jon and I weren't concerned. We were in that part of town to discuss a documentary on a rare cancer – not something anyone would likely steal. Still, we had to be really careful. Jon and I arrived for our meeting really early, so we would be chatting while people watching. So along with talking about stuff we were editing, not planning and never giving any coherent details about anything, we engaged in a game began during our last trip to the Cannes Film Market. You see, the American Pavilion is another dangerous place to talk about active film projects. Everyone with our party was strongly cautioned against this. Marie came up with a clever alternative. We talked about films involving marmosets. Action movies with marmosets, comedies with marmosets, dramas with marmosets – we talked about them all. It was our hope to instigate a string of such films and then laugh about it. There were ears listening last week. I noticed really reactive listeners. Who knows? Maybe something will come of it this time. Meanwhile, Jon and I had a great time eating dinner and discussing the documentary and a number of surprising things. As soon as I can go into more detail, I will. In fact, there has been a whole lot going on that I wish I could share, but it is verboten until there are signed documents. Fiddlesticks!

We had a blast overall, and I realized that I truly need to get out more.

Writing Update

There is a reason I can't get out as much as I'd like in the next few weeks. I'm still wrestling with this danged book. And then there is the conga line of titles Sybaritic Press will be releasing from now until the end of the year. We hadn't planned on a publishing a full slate of titles. Things just sort of happened. Since none of us are stressing about it, I suppose the time was right for the Press to re-launch.

I am closer to the end of the book, Ensnared, than I was last week. However, I am still struggling with the blocking of the ending. It involves some major action with fights and death, but there must be an appropriate amount of build up to make the action seem inevitable. There also must be the right amount of denouement after the last pivotal action scene to bring the narrative to a close without lingering too long. I strongly feel that once all the character issues are settled, the story has come to an end. However, I don't like loose threads hanging around. Also, romances demand a certain amount of afterglow, so to speak. The book is already a lot longer than I had planned, so there is a strong temptation to just stop already. These machinations have slowed my output to a little less than a page a day of late. It's frustrating, but I trudge onward...ever onward. The new book has an astonishing cover. I'll share that next week when I have a full on discussion about the controversial issues the book raises and the fight I plan to start over them.

This one is short, I know. More to come next week.

Stay tuned.

Blog Delay

2011-08-21T16:46:00.000-07:00

I'm taking the week off, blog wise. I have a lot of writing and publishing related things on my plate. I'm having trouble juggling all this stuff. There should be a lot of updates next week.

Stay tuned.

Craig, High Tea, Yoga and Updates

2011-08-14T14:59:00.000-07:00

Today, I visit a long neglected feature of this blog – Conversations with Craig. It's not that I haven't been having conversations with him. We talk a lot. I just haven't detailed them in the blog of late. I need plausible deniability. Of late, we have been talking about Craig being a librarian. To understand the excitement he has with his new gig, one must understand the wondrous experience that was working at Borders Books and Music, Store 93. Craig: So, I had checked in three sets of books when I was told that I needed a break. Me: Had you been shelving? Craig: Nope. Me: Cleaning the shelves? Craig: Nope. Me: So you weren't picking up half cups of ice cream, open cups of coffee or pizza crusts? Craig: We don't have to clean. Me: You don't have to clean the bathrooms? Craig: No. That would be stepping into someone else's job. Me: Wow. You are overworked. Craig: But wait, it gets better. The head Librarian asked me if I had something to read. Me: On your break. Craig: No, at the counter! Me: you were dancing, weren't you? Craig: As soon as I was alone. It was impressive after working at a store where the staff was endless cleaning the wet, drippy or sticky from the shelves. The men's magazines with sticky pages were particularly revolting. And I don't even want to talk about cleaning those bathrooms, and I didn't see nearly as many hairy naked rear ends as Craig has. And no, we weren't allowed to read at the bookstore where we were supposed to be well versed on what was on the shelves and displays. This was really vexing when I worked with new titles in the front end of the store. It was expected that after retreating from demanding and annoying customers that we were supposed to read up on our titles during our break. And that brings me to the biggest thing exciting Craig about his gig. No matter how entitled the library client, there is no deviating from library rules to placate them. The rules are the rules – HA! Thus, most of our conversations begin with 'Deb, you have got to get in on this action!' I am pleased. I'm just not up to being part of a nefarious scheme. Or even knowing about one.

High Tea on Culver Boulevard

One thing I will say for the bizarre hell of working for Borders is that I made friends with some extraordinary people. Aside from Craig, there is my favorite Pikachu, Phil. And then there is the incomparable, Marie. Last week, I got to host a little birthday celebration for her. I decided to let loose my inner five year old and have a tea party. That decision resulted in whiling away far too much time watching youtube videos on the subject. I was astonished that there was one channel on that site that had over sixty episodes on the subject of throwing a proper tea party. I had a blast learning about finger sandwiches and other treats. I also had another go at puff pastry and croissants for the occasion. I didn't have time to get some good Irish butter for the croissants, but I did go crazy and make black berry jam. Two of my Food Network chefs were making easy berry jams the weekend prior to the little party. I thought it was destiny. And I also tried another recipe from my TV chefs. I made a cold hibiscus tea along with a hot black tea. I found bulk dried hibiscus flowers on Amazon for cheap. It was really tasty as well as very healthy. I've become hooked which is good, because I have a big sack of tea. The prep was great fun and wonderful therapy, but it was spending time with Marie that was the real treat. She is witty and funny and very talented. That afternoon reminded me very much of the great times I've spent with my writing circle in grad school. It was a fabulous afternoon.

Deb versus Yoga

The nice lady with the very soothing voice on the yoga DVD keeps making me fall asleep. That must mean that it is very relaxing, but it isn't doing much for stretching my muscles or exercising my joints. Granted, I was viewing while reclining on the sofa. But that isn't because I'm lazy. I like to watch any sort of exercise video all the way through, so I'll know what I'm getting into. I have yet to get through watching the whole thing. So, I finally just went ahead and did the forty-five minute head to toe warm-up. That warm-up even covers the tips of the pinkies. It wasn't strenuous, but it did work a lot of muscles I haven't used in a really long time. Thus, I will be taking my time working my way through the second half of the DVD.I can see how it benefits those with joint pain. The movements are slow and precisely targeted. I'll keep you posted as I get further along.

Updates

We're about to publish a new title by Marie Lecrivain. It's the first of a whole spate of titles coming out between now and the end of the year. I suppose I will thoroughly startle those on the Sybaritic Press blog by actually posting an update. I expect to send out one of mine to the proofreaders next week. Meanwhile, I have meetings about some of our older film projects and the documentary this week.

Stay tuned.

Jenga Piles, Lobster Rolls and Killer Foods

2011-08-07T12:55:00.000-07:00

One of the questions that came from the blog of a couple of weeks ago is what sort of art does Jon do? I think they were wondering if he did anything like an art installation. He does a lot of graphic arts like the covers for Sybaritic Press titles and for my web pages. He hasn't done any sculpting since art school save for the things he creates while doing the dishes. Most women I know would do a huge load of dishes in shifts or wash and dry and then do more. Oh no, not my Hubs. He likes to build intricate piles of dishes, pots and pans. As you can see in the photo, some of these masterpieces are so precarious that I worry about a vibration from closing the refrigerator door will bring the thing crashing to the floor. I never put the dishes away. I look at that Jenga pile with great trepidation. I figure I should leave that to the builder. This is Jon's main outlet for sculpting. I think he could sell the dish Jenga as an art installation.

Killer Foods

I really wanted to try the lobster roll at a very famous gourmet food truck here. And on Thursday, the truck was a ten minute bus ride from my house. We have a gathering of such trucks every day at a parking lot across from Sony Pictures. I was so excited. And then I looked up the price of said lobster roll. It was $12! When you factor in the bus fare and a drink, we're getting close to $20, US! A twenty dollar sandwich should come with a good looking nearly naked man. Unfortunately for the truck, lobster tails were on sale for $5 at my local market and I had a recipe. I made it on Saturday along with some tangy slices of fried green tomato. The new development of our local market selling green tomatoes in the summer has filled me with joy. I should whip up some collards and have them sliced up in a bowl as my Dad liked. Very tangy. At any rate, I completely get the appeal of a lobster roll. It was tender and sweet and a little tangy from the lemon and the onion. It had that wonderful, soul satisfying affect on me that only good shellfish has. I was dancing in my seat. There were no photos, alas. I was eating the thing before I could sit down. Next time. And there will be a next time.

For every cooking success, there is a food out there that I believe is trying to kill me. In July, I became convinced that mangoes meant me ill will. No matter how I tried to imitate the allegedly simple way of getting the mango flesh away from the skin and the big ol' seed, I always ended up coming close to slipping with the very sharp knife and injuring myself. I work with very sharp knives. This month, it's a Kabocha, a Japanese pumpkin. That thing was tougher to take apart than a butternut squash. I won't even try to do more than split one of those. I roast those things halved to get at the flesh. That was the first and last time I try to peel and cut a Kabocha. I'm also certain that I can't just fry pieces of that thing like I saw in the video. It's way too hard to be at all tender by the time the outside is golden brown. I'm going to have to par boil or pre-steam it if I'm going to try to fry it. That's on the agenda as part of Sunday dinner. I'm trying to broaden Jon's vegetable palette or actually have him develop a vegetable palette.

Alas, I must make this blog short and sweet. I have a lot to do today in advance of a very busy week. There are some film meetings on the horizon. I have a new doctor to meet. No worries though. This is some stuff and nonsense that my medical insurance requires – though I do plan to give him an earful about my ongoing symptoms from chemo. And, I'm actually entertaining. Yes, I know you all find me entertaining (silly, fake laughing). I mean, I have someone coming by to partake of food and other refreshments. No worries, I shall tell all next week. I'll also have an update on The Secret Cancer blog sometime during the week. I'll post a link on on this blog as well.

Stay tuned.

Hacks and Character Arcs and other Arguments

2011-07-31T16:42:00.000-07:00

Warning, some spoilers ahead. Also, there are vehemently held opinions of an unrepentant fangirl that may be very different from your own. Do not read if thin skinned. I do not read hate mail or hostile tweets.

Sometimes, in the middle of the night, when I am sleepless, I have lively internet discussions (some may call them arguments) with people who share my interests. For example, I have been slapping around anyone with the notion that the next JJ Abrams abomination titled Star Trek won't stupidly suck as much as the first one. My evidence? They want to try to do Wrath of Khan. The problem with that? Well, to have a wrath of Khan, there has to an initial encounter with Khan. Then, there has to be a perceived betrayal of Khan and a couple decades for the bitterness and hatred to grow. I suppose Khan could go back in time to exact his vengeance on the young and unsuspecting Kirk. Wait, wasn't that the first re-boot film? And if he were going to go back in time, wouldn't he just go back far enough that he was never overthrown? If that hack is going to keep sucking the life from the original series, do The Doomsday Machine , for pity's sake. Arguments like that rage on in the wee small hours of the morning. And as much as I enjoy maligning the current Trek time line, that isn't the argument that interests me most.

It's an old argument amongst fans of any television series no matter the genre. Should the main characters change over the course of the series or should they remain the same? If they remain the same, the adventures of these characters can continue indefinitely. I was going to say that my show references are really old as I'm ancient, but Jon pointed out that they are running on Imdb.com, hulu.com or have aired recently on Syfy. One show is running in LA six nights a week on KDOC, home of obscure shows. Then, I remembered that I have a friend younger than my nephew that speaks fluent Dark Shadows. At any rate, the current series television that I'm attracted to has characters that change over time. I understand the preference for the other type. I really do. There is something comforting in knowing Starsky and Hutch would always have each other's backs and that fascinating unrequited tension. I often wish that Blair Sandburg never finished that dissertation in the Sentinel and that they acted on that unrequited tension. But they were only on three seasons. I love me some original Hawaii 5-O, but twelve seasons of the same McGarrett and Danno gets really tiresome. I think Blair's hair would have been really annoying by around season seven (don't send me hate mail, I won't read it). And I can't see a 40 something year old Starsky sliding over many car hoods. However, even in episodic television that has mostly stand alone episodes, I like the characters to have an arc. It makes sense that the highly dramatic events the characters endure week after week would have some impact on their personalities and their outlooks on life. Naturally, I loved the re-boot of Battlestar Galactica for that. However, there are shows like The Closer where the cast has definite arcs. Eureka is delightful in part because it has a steady arc for its characters aside from obvious things like changes to the time line. But, I watch the CSIs, you say. Well, all three shows have character arcs. They are all dopey, but they have them. CSI: Miami's team has evolved into a death squad. More on that show later. Really, there may be a zombie this year!

Whether the characters should or shouldn't have an arc is not actually the argument I'm having online in the middle of the night. The intense debate is about whether shows that have arcs should be allowed to end. I believe that when the arc is based on whether a relationship will survive or not, at some point, the couple has earned their happiness or at least peace of some sort. I found that unfairness maddening about soap operas. That's why I drifted away from them. No one could have a happily ever after or at least be left in peace. The torment was never ending. Fans of this short run (two seasons) anime series I enjoyed (the title is irrelevant. To see it takes a lot of effort online. And it's too odd for most of my readers. Write me privately, if you really need to know.) desperately wanted a third season or more. I vehemently disagreed. The series was essentially a light hearted romance about a miss matched pair whose families, friends and co-workers disapprove. Somehow, through great effort, they find a happily ever after. They go through a lot of self doubt and some angst and really have to fight for a relationship that shouldn't work but somehow does. In order to do another season, the writer would have to try to tear them apart as a couple. The stakes would have to be higher and the drama darker. Aside from the fact that the author never gets that dark in any of her series, it just wouldn't be fair to make this wonderful couple suffer further. And it's not that I don't appreciate intense drama or even very dark drama. I can really get behind darkness in a series where it's appropriate. In this case, it wasn't. If you love them, let them go! They will live on in your mind, and in some cases, fanfiction.

These arguments do influence how I write my couples driven fiction. A way to get around this problem of the arc that is built around the development of the relationship is to solve the relationship and make the developing stories center around characters or situations around the couple. While the couples do evolve and grow over time, the relationship remains solid – it even grows more so. Whether it's set in the far flung future or in a fantasy past, my issue isn't whether the couple will get together and stay together. I solve their issues as a couple fairly quickly. It's their world that's trying to kill them – literally, in some cases. Niku and Sarianna figure out their relationship quickly in The Gift of Surrender. It's the breaking of the family that's the jeopardy. In the sequel, they are solid as a couple but must face death at the hands of evil while saving the life and soul of Niku's estranged brother. Rik and Vincent are solved as a couple in A Soldier's Choice very early in the book. By the end of A Soldier's Fate they aren't still working through relationship problems, they are trying to survive being enveloped by a death ray. In the current book, they are battling their own kind on several fronts, but never do they battle each other. With Ensnared, the couple takes longer than my norm to solidify the relationship. They have to get their societies to accept an extreme bending of the rules for them to remain together. Beyond those obstacles, there are still forces beyond that that want to kill them. No matter the threats or turmoil around them, my couples always have a refuge of happiness and peace with each other.

Interventions, Food, Friends and Writing Updates

2011-07-31T14:52:00.000-07:00

For some reason, this blog is turning into an epic affair. I think I'm going to split it into two parts. Some of it is going to be cross posted to a pop culture blog that I write for. That part got a bit carried away. Seems that I'm harboring a lot of seething resentment about entertainment trends I find subpar. And there are some things that avid fans want that I really think are bad ideas. Yeah, I think I'll split them.

Food and Friends

I had a few interventions of sorts this week. I was on quite a downswing because of my physical state or the lack of progress in the improvement of my physical state. Mon amis, Sylvette put some things into perspective for me via her own experiences. She also concurred with my contention that one need not climb a mountain to celebrate being cancer free. I admire those that do, mind. I'm also impressed by dragon boat racers. But I've never been that kind of physical. That isn't changing. And Craig's idea of mountain climbing usually ends with him fleeing from a mountain lion or a vulture. Oh, I didn't mention that Craig was trying to cheer me up by offering to help me train to climb a mountain. I told him that my ambitions were aimed toward strolling down Paris boulevards with occasional stops at cafes for a little nibble and some coffee and some people watching. Sylvette told me of how wonderfully peaceful it was to enjoy a freshly baked croissant early in the morning when Paris is barely stirring. That and her advice cheered me up considerably. Oh, and Craig is still a very entertaining librarian. As soon as his schedule stabilizes, I plan to visit his branch. The third intervention was from Ray who scolded me as much as he uplifted me during the trip to and from the hospital this week. He has a highly entertaining way of scolding that only a Brooklyn native has – on top of that, he's an actor. Very amusing even when it's at my expense.

The food front was interesting. After much thought and consideration, I have decided to leave cooking fresh artichokes to the professionals. It's just too much work, and I'm too paranoid about getting a thistle down my throat. I don't need the pressure! The cooking I did this week reminded me of people who introduced me to the food. Making gyoza (potstickers) always reminds me of Ohio peep, Bruce Kline. He introduced me to them when we lived in North Jersey and worked in New York City. My knowledge of Chinese food was very limited back then. I fell in love with the crispy dumpling with the meaty filling. Fond memories. Sauteing mushrooms always reminds me of my favorite foodie hedonist, Nick, in Atlantic City. He was the first to show me how to make them and he had the best technique – same with properly cooking a steak on the stove or grill. But I was just making mushroom soup. Sizzling mushrooms always make me think of Nick and those really crazy cookouts. I finally found a wonderfully huge and really cheap pork shoulder that made delicious pulled pork. That always makes me think of my Dad though he now uses my method of roasting the pork slowly in the oven.. He used to do his in a DIY 55 gallon drum turned smoker. That's a bit elaborate for him nowadays. Mine is done in a very low oven over a whole lot of time. Fond, fond memories and some really good food help with my blue mood this past week.

Activities Updates

Thank you all who ask about how my work outs and other interests are going. I am still shaking my bunda with eh Bollywood workout. I can only manage that one or twice a week. I just received my yoga DVD and will start that tomorrow. It's designed for people with joint pain and mobility issues, so it's what I need. I'm still walking about ten miles a week, but I may shift that from around the neighborhood to the nearby mall as the heat and blazing sunlight isn't a good mix with my meds. I think the reason I was frustrated this week is that I am working very hard on building my strength but the improvement is very slow. Ah, well. As for the Japanese, that's coming along as well. I have books on the basics and put some time into a few times a week. I'm also watching my anime without the subtitles and trying hard to hear the words. I'm not ready to attack anyone at Mitsuwa market yet though. But I am enjoying the process.

Writing Updates

The first draft of Ensnared will be finished sometime this week. I'll leave it alone for a week or two, make some additions and revisions then send it on to my proofreaders. I have another erotica project that will occupy my focus along with finishing the latest Soldier's book. And I have a script to finish. I have a detailed schedule of when I work on each project. The pages are getting done as planned for the most part. My schedule will slow down only when I'm having unusually difficult physical issues.

Meanwhile, Jon is finishing up the work on the Soldier's Choice based, live action short, Blood Oath. That will premier in October along with a publishing frenzy and updates to the websites with excerpts, artwork and more!

Stay tuned!

Craig and Moules, Ampersands and Updates

2011-07-24T14:48:00.000-07:00

Craig became a librarian this week. While that is justifiably terrifying, it's better than the plans he was hatching for world domination. Not that I thought any of those plans had a chance of succeeding further than his getting arrested on some weird harassment charge. Craig has weird harassment plans honed to a very fine art. It just that because I would point out the potential problems in placing art installations made of rotting meat in front of the homes of his enemies – so many enemies – he had decided that I was his nemesis in his plans for world domination. I don't have the energy to be Craig's nemesis. He has far too wiley an imagination. I was very glad that the long layoff ended. The timing was interesting as he returned to dealing with books the same week Borders met its final demise. His first day was reminiscent of any given day at good old store #93 in that there were many arguments amongst angry, drunk homeless men. He amazed the staff by not really getting bothered by all the commotion. I understood his ennui. They had on pants and weren't carrying gasoline. That was counted as a mild disturbance at our store. It made Craig feel right at home.

Speaking of art installations, Jon and I noticed a solar powered ampersand in a vacant lot near one of our supermarkets. As I suspected, it was something that was really annoying. Jon has an art degree, so he understood it and was really annoyed. I just knew it would be something I'd consider silly. The stated explanation was HERE. All in all, I think I'd prefer the rotting meat. At least I understand Craig's motives, diabolical as they are.

Moules no Frites

Usually my kitchen therapy is a carefully planned exercise in trying something new that I've often wanted to attempt. I think a long time about the dish and the process. I thought about croissant baking for every bit of a year. Sometimes though, I find myself making something that is a little bit intricate to work through something very emotional – like blind rage. Let's just say that while doing one's utility paying online can be very convenient, when things go wrong, it is spectacular. And calling customer service is beyond frustrating when the business is vested in keeping things as automated as possible. Thus, all the while I'm navigating through the complicated phone system, it keeps telling me that I would find better and faster service on the web page that has royally screwed up everything in the first place. I finally have punched in my information and reach the correct level of the system when I'm told that customer service is down and to either call back later or go back to the accursed web page. Unfortunately for this utility, they have offices in nearby Santa Monica. It takes a lot to blast me out of the house when I haven't planned on leaving, but adrenaline is an amazing thing. I maintained my ire via a very annoying and ridiculously expensive commute.

Once the errand was completed with no bloodshed or other mayhem, I found I was in downtown Santa Monica on a beautiful summer day. Happiness! So, I first went to Penzey's Spice Shop. I had no plans for visiting that very dangerous place, but I soon realized that my pantry was lacking in some things I needed for upcoming recipes. They weren't very exotic spices either. For instance, I had no celery seeds or dried mustard powder. These items weren't expensive, and now I can make some new dishes. And make some other dishes correctly. It took a great deal of will power to not buy something from every aisle. I had to save some bucks for the even more dangerous establishment I would visit next – Santa Monica Seafood! Boy, did that take a lot of focus and determination. I was only there to buy mussels which are very inexpensive. But the mussels were next to the big, beautiful sea scallops and the bigger and even more beautiful crab legs. They were not anywhere near inexpensive.

When we were in Cannes, there was a restaurant in the middle of the route to our hotel whose specialty is Moules et Frites – Mussels and Fries. The place always smelled of a delicious garlic and wine sauce. I had had wonderful mussels cooked by a grad school chum years – decades ago – and hadn't had them since. That restaurant made my mouth water every time we passed by. It was also always packed. We were usually in a hurry to get to screenings going down to the Festival and too tired to stop for anything on the way back to the hotel. Somehow, in the ten days in Cannes, we just never got there. I was determined to try to duplicate that scent and the taste my friend, Philomena created. The recipe was really simple. Everything was in the prep and the careful execution. It took only a half hour of prep and most of that was waiting for the mussels to soak in salt water. They took less than ten minutes to cook. I had them with some hunks of baguettes smeared with St. Andres cheese and a cold beer. I forgot the entire ordeal with the website and the phone call and the commute. I forgot to take photos. I was transported in time and space. I found bliss. That reminds me, I have to start thinking about baking baguettes.

Updates

The books are coming along well. I have my calendar to silently keep me on track with page output. I've sent specs for new artwork for the revised versions of A Soldier's Choice and A Soldier's Fate and for Ensnared. I've got my marketing campaign for the books planned out. I've been making decent progress on a script that has been years in the making. It's a huge departure from what we normally write, thus the very long development. The writing is going well. The productions are in various states of flux. I've had an exciting development with The Secret Cancer. You can check that out HERE. Octodemon is still working through development issues with FX and currently scheduling. And my web series are all basically waiting for me to be recovered enough from treatment side effects to take on the daily rigors of running a shoot. Since Jon is working, it's fallen more on me to actually run things which I really can't yet. My unscheduled trip to Santa Monica was followed by two days of not doing much of anything save write. It is extremely frustrating, but it isn't uncommon for my cancer treatment. I have to be patient.

Stay tuned!

Bunda Shaking, Creative Baking, and Deadline Mayhem

2011-07-17T19:59:00.000-07:00

After watching Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations Cuba episode (I highly recommend it, if you haven't seen it), there was a special called Dance the World with Jaycee Gossett, a New Jersey ballroom dancer out to learn the dances of the world. She was in Brazil to learn the real way of dancing the Samba. See the explanation of the dance's origin HERE. Key to the dance is shaking the bunda which is Brazilian for booty or groove thing. I think. I'm still not completely sure what a groove thing is, but I am guessing it's the same as the booty. The show was a lot of fun. Hopefully, the Travel Channel will bring it back. At any rate, I was reminded of something that Kirstie Alley said recently about getting into great physical shape. I believe she said when in doubt shake your butt. I remembered that I have my Bollywood Dance Workout. This was good as I've been looking to vary my physical activity. I want to swim, but I just haven't gotten to it yet. I've been taking dance classes off and on since I was in grade school, so this was a natural way for me to work out. I managed to do a thirty minute workout at half time. The steps were fun and most likely funny looking to anyone passing by my living room window. I really felt it the next day, but I'm going to keep at it. I'm also going to order a yoga for beginners DVD. It's clear that I need a lot more stretching and flexibility.

Extrapolation

I found a really neat recipe for honey white bread last week. Then Jon suggests that I make raisin bread with the same recipe. I'm not much for adlibs with my baking, Theoretically, it's just a matter of rolling the dough into a rectangle, spread cinnamon sugar and pre-plumped raisins over it. Then, roll the dough into a tight tube, let it rise in a loaf pan and bake. So, I gave it a try. Let's just say that baking raisin bread smells insanely good. The bread turned out very nicely – though I should have rolled the final dough just a bit tighter. But this section is called extrapolation for a reason. I next took that raisin bread and made French toast! Yowza!! The other extrapolation I tried this week was via a recipe by a finalist on Food Network Star. He is from Brooklyn originally and now lives in Las Vegas. He came up with a wrap sandwich called the Philly-rito. It's a Philly cheesesteak burrito. I told the chef that I found the whole notion was an abomination. However, it also looked pretty tasty. I love a good burrito after all. So, I gave it a try. It had onions and smashed avocado and roasted red peppers along with melted cheese. There was a sauce on the side made with sour cream, garlic and finely chopped cilantro. I have to admit that it was very, very tasty abomination.

Organized Mayhem

I have a lot of writing projects on my plate. Most are mine or the production company's. They are all creative. And they now have hard deadlines. One thing writers get asked over and over – and I still do – is how do you get that muse to work on demand? The very simple answer is practice. The muse doesn't have to be in gear to structure a plot or figure out character arcs. I have found that the inspiration comes far more easily when the structures are in place. Sometimes, I'll give the broadest strokes to a scene or even a chapter to just keep moving the story or the script along. This method makes Jon a little crazy when we're doing a script. He likes to solve everything before he types FADE IN. I believe in getting the storyline basically in place then adding detail or modify during the first re-write. In my novels, I fill in new details before I give it to the proofreaders. Strangely, I often leave the fine details of the love scenes for the second pass. Contrary to popular opinion, I'm not thinking of wildly imaginative sensual acrobatics all the time. I do not. Furthermore, I find it difficult to write those scenes straight away because I don't really know my characters when I'm early in the process. Love scenes are an expression of character for me. I have to know them well at each stage of their arcs to effectively write great love scenes. I do confess that, like authors throughout time, I always seem to be working with my back against deadlines – no matter how much lead time I have. I'm not sure why that is. I suspect it is an expression of creative flakiness. Thus, I often look like Usagi-sensei to my right here when I finish a manuscript. He is my favorite author character in anime. As you can see, he captures the nuttiness of an author quite well. Thus, my readers here will hear me bemoaning my progress or lack thereof frequently in weeks to come.

Updates

Film updates are scarce. Everyone attached to my projects is book with other things. I suspect I will have to chase them down soon for updates. I have a major update for the Cancer documentary that I will announce tomorrow on that blog. I will also cross post here.

Stay tuned.

The Pros of Cons, Civility and Updates

2011-07-10T17:36:00.000-07:00

I had planned to do a super-sized blog last week. However, my body had other plans. It isn't rush to the doctor serious. It's part of what may be the new normal for me post cancer. I had a lot of my insides altered during the two major surgeries. Sometimes, things don't agree with me. I spent a lot of time in the heat and sun. Long story short, I had to go into a convalescing mode. Not a lot got done last week, and it was frustrating. I'm not exactly sure what caused the problem, so I'm not sure how to avoid it happening again. At any rate, Friday brought some improvement. Over the last couple of days, I've picked up more of the usual routine. It seems that I'm back on track. I certainly hope so. I have plans! Among them, is getting more exercise. On a good week, I'm walking at least three miles every other day. I may actually try to swim later today. That's pretty good. In fact, it's more exercise than I used to get before I fell ill. However, I must not counteract the potentially disastrous effects of being home all the time and baking. I found a really doable recipe for Brioche last week. The same diabolical woman, Ina Garten, was making honey white bread this week. And that danged Martha Stewart is making sticky buns on Monday. It's all an evil plan to make me – and Jon, Breadman Cunningham – enormous!

On Civility – A Social Network Dilemma

I see a lot of amusing things on the news feeds that I follow on the social networks. And I have enjoyed passing along the insightful and the silly to the people that follow me. Increasingly, however, I've had huge qualms about sharing links on my pages. The problem is some of the language that peppers these posts. Goodness know, I'm not a prude. For those of you out there who want to expound endlessly on how I'm so not a prude – shut your yaps! And goodness know, I am capable of swearing like a sailor and a longshoreman combined. And for those tempted to testify about that – don't make me murderlize you! At any rate, I find the really coarse language in these otherwise witty and amusing post off putting. For example, there was one called 40 Books You Shouldn't Bother Reading. The article was very funny, and I found I agreed with a number of the authors contentions especially about any thing written by Jack Kerouac or Joyce's Ulysses. It had some dandy thoughts on books like The Rules and the Twilight series as well. It was the kind of article that would have sparked a donneybrook on my page. Fun for everyone! After a lot of thought, I decided against sharing the post. It was unnecessarily profane. Mind, the first thing that pops into my head when I think about Ulysses is a two sentence long string of obscenities. In the past – even the recent past – I have posted links with a warning about salty language. Now, I think it's not right for me to post, because I don't want to be seen as supporting or contributing to the coarsening of public discourse. I'm really puzzled as to why this is considered acceptable in something that is not a personal blog but a feature article. I'll grant that I went to journalism school in the dark ages, but I really don't see the point in dropping F-bombs or using G-D as an adjective in an article. Swearing belongs at football games, especially for Eagles fans and on movie sets, especial for a producer.

The Fangirl-Producer versus Scifi Conventions

I have a long history with Scifi conventions. I attended the second or third Star Trek Convention ever held in the early 70s when I was barely a teenager. The Hubs has been going to Philcon forever, it seems. However, it wasn't until moving to Los Angeles that we really started attending major conventions with any frequency. That wasn't by any design on our part. I had begun the insane writing experiment, The Secret Logs of Mistress Janeway. Because of those stories and later, the webpage, we started getting invitations to speak on panels at conventions. We became even more popular on convention panels after I appeared in the documentary, Trekkies. I was in fangirl heaven for a while. If a convention paid for me to attend, I had money to buy lots of stuff from the vendors. I bought t-shirts and buttons from my favorite shows, and I wore them, gleefully identifying myself as a fangirl. The only things I didn't do was Cosplay though I really wanted to and Filking which I never want to do.

Convention appearances were more complicated for us since we moved to LA. At conventions where actors appeared, it was problematic. Since Jon and I were writing scifi scripts to produce, we were hoping for a professional relationship with some of these actors. Now, I'm not saying that actors are snobs. They meet a great many people during their careers. It makes sense that they would put people they meet into categories as quickly as they can. If I was introduced as a fangirl, I may have had a lovely moment that made me feel like I was the only one they were thinking about. Then, they would have forgotten the meeting or worse, they would remember meeting me in my one of a kind caricature t-shirt of their TV or film character. They would then justifiably refuse to take me seriously about a part I may offering. Thus, I demurred at the notion of meeting them while they were signing things or before their panels. The one exception to that was the bar Toronto Trek. It was at the nexus of corridors and a patron could see everyone passing by. That was where I would hang out and wait for Jon or our friends. I usually was dressed normally while in that bar. Since Canadian fans tended to be far less intense than US fans, actors felt comfortable hanging out there. And it was easier to actually talk for a time in that setting. I actually cast one of them that I met there, Jason Carter, in Demon Under Glass years later.

Things got really weird with actors at Conventions after we made our first pilot presentation, The Privateers. By then, Jon and I were dressing like we were going to a pitch meeting when we attended panels. We didn't know who we might run into – especially conventions with a heavy media presence. We had to dress and conduct ourselves like a business meeting might happen. A few times, they actually did. Not that we were in suits and ties. It was LA business casual – no fun buttons or stickers on our bags. At any rate, one of our Privateers/Demon Under Glass alumni outed us in an autograph room full of actors as film producers. Twenty heads snapped around to where we were standing. That made things really awkward as we weren't hiring at that point in time. Finding a balance is a challenge. At our last visit to Dragon*Con, one of my favorite conventions, Jon and I did a talk about how to attend the Cannes Film Market and Festival on the cheap and get a lot done. We even dressed the way we did most days in Cannes. That same day we had a panel on the viability of fan made productions as an economic model. I was also the lone fangirl on a panel about Trek versus the reboot of Battlestar Galactica. That was a great fun.

We found a balance of sorts with regards to conventions. Though we no longer just go for fun. I regret that sometimes. When we go, we're usually networking at the very least. The next couple of conventions on our horizon are about marketing the upcoming books and web series. It's lots of fun roaming amidst the really cool stuff on the vendor tables or endlessly debating about our favorite shows for the debate's own sake. We just can't justify the time unless it's also work related. One consolation though. I still wear things that identify me as a fangirl. It's just a lot harder to spot. Those vendors do have some amazing stuff.

Updates

Between the holiday and my little set back last week, there is no news on the film front. The books are coming along well. I'm sending one to my readers in the next week or so. I have a new author of romantica (romance meets erotica) that I'm very excited about. Sybpress is going to be putting out a lot of titles, including the next Demon Under Glass anthology this fall. Film production meetings are up for next week.

Stay tuned.

Asterisks, Croissants and Ninjas

2011-07-05T15:24:00.000-07:00

For all of my life, answering the question 'how are you' was simple. I would just say fine. The only variant might be complaining about a cold or allergies. Most of the time, when someone asks that question, they aren't looking for a long answer. A catastrophic illness changes that question. Simply saying 'I'm fine' in response causes a lot of assumptions that aren't true. Yet even with coping with an illness like cancer, the people asking aren't looking for a half hour explanation with all the awful details. So, for those who ask me how I'm doing, 'I'm fine' does not mean that I am completely free of medical problems. For now 'I'm fine' has an asterisk with the further explanation of 'relative of chemo side effects and my usual neuroses. This has come up recently, and I thought I needed to clarify. When I am free of them – and things are improving at a steady pace – I will say, 'I'm great!'

Deb versus Croissants

Puff pastry was a big challenge because of the time commitment required. Croissants are made from a yeast dough, and the prep spans 24 hours. But I found them easier to make. I think that the reason is that croissant dough doesn't require babysitting for hours. Most of the time involved in the prep before rolling out the dough to be cut is letting it proof in the fridge. That's not difficult at all since I'm not really doing anything. And when it came time to cut the dough into the properly shaped triangles, I had the right tool for the job. At some point where my only outlet was shopping on Amazon and Ebay, I ordered a croissant rolling pin. But, Deb, you say. These are simple triangle shapes. Can't you use a ruler and a pizza cutter? That sort of logic works on people who aren't geometry challenged. I am philosophically opposed to reincarnation because I don't want to relive high school geometry. There was just no telling what oddly shaped baked goods I would produce left to my own devices or multiple devices. And there is a perfectly good, affordable device available. Why no use it? It certainly saved me from hours of crying over floury dough and pizza cutters. And the result was just marvelous in every way. They looked great. They smelled amazing – especially while they were baking. And the taste was just not to be believed – especially right after baking. All in all, a very satisfying experience. I even want to do it again.

Language Barrier or I am Not a Ninja

I have been alternating on honing my French skills and learning Japanese. I'm getting more questions about how that's going, so I'll focus on that. I do a lot of very odd searches on Youtube. Those searches result in Youtube suggesting sites I might be interested in. Among them, was a site for teaching Japanese through anime. That made sense as I look at a lot of anime and I had noticed words and phrases that turned up a lot in the subtitled stuff I watched. It is an amusing set of lectures that went over conversation basics in the most casual language. That's a problem with Japanese as in many situations that a tourist would encounter, formality in speech is the norm. I was also learning how to conjugate a lot of swear verbs. Very amusing, but somewhat problematic as well. And then, there are the common words in this teacher's vocabulary. He was primarily using the anime series Naruto. I don't think I've ever uttered the phrase 'There is a village over that hill.' And even on my weirdest days I have never been known to shout 'I am a Ninja' at anyone. Still, I have found these lecture useful in some fashion. I just have to convince Jon that I don't plan to dash over to Mitsuwa Market spewing obscenities and claiming to be a ninja. I am also well aware that I'm not in the least bit ready for a trip to Tokyo. He really needs to relax. I have found some other online sites that offer the more formal conversational Japanese as well as slang. I am beginning to understand more. And I can even say some things – besides swear words. By the way, I seemed to have confused some of my readers. I didn't start trying Japanese recipes because of anime. I started noticing that the food in anime was largely accurate because I'd begun watching Your Japanese Kitchen. Though I confess that it was an anime scene that caused me to make the wiener octopi. They are supposed to be used in Bento box lunches. But I ate them on a hot dog roll. Jon didn't want to have anything to do with them in his lunch. He's no fun sometimes.

End Part One

I am really drained from a day out in the heat and unusual humidity yesterday. So, the updates, the party details and some more geeky musings tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

Blog delay -- Party in the Yard!

2011-07-03T16:28:00.001-07:00

The blog will be delayed until Tuesday. I'm getting ready for a patriotic feast/cancer free celebration among other things tomorrow. It will be a double-sized blog! I might even explain this photo!

Living Big, Fighting Flour and Some Updates

2011-06-26T15:22:00.000-07:00

The past week was an interesting one. As always with me, it is full of duality. On the one hand, I am coping with the 'new normal' of my body after cancer and chemo. On the other hand, I must find a way to make the most of my clean bill of health. I was told by a caregiver of an appendix cancer patient who did not have the advantage of finding treatment that works that I should be living big in all things. His mother would have done incredible things with the reprieve I have been granted. He was right about his mother. She would have done extraordinary things with more time. His was an admonishment that I could not ignore. But how does one live big in all things when walking is often painful and other problems sometimes keep one housebound altogether? I think I have a solution. At least, it worked for me this week. One day, I will go out and walk or do some exploring or do an errand. On those days, I will push myself physically. The next day, I will rest, but I will do something mentally that pushes me or hones an existing skill. Or I'll work on a more rote tasks like those involved in cooking as a meditative thing.

So, each day involves some sort of betterment – even the days where I don't stray far from my sofa. I have decided to work on my French language skills on my non-outing days. To that end, I am watching French news and what television shows I can find on Youtube. For example, the French version of Law and Order: Criminal intent is Paris Enquêtes Criminelles. Very interesting. Watching cooking shows really helps because I can follow along more easily. And to really keep my mind nimble, I'm also learning Japanese. Slowly. Cooking videos help there. As does anime. Luckily, I have a Japanese supermarket close by with staff to practice on. For French practice, I have an international calling plan and a certain someone I can call! And the language study is not just to keep my mind sharp. I have business in both countries. So, I am striving to live big in every way.

Oh, thank you for the kind words of support over the insurance insanity. I realized on Monday that since July was only a week away, I didn't need to go through getting a referral for the B-12 shot. I just changed the date of the appointment. The oncology clinic nurses were very understanding about it. They, too, felt the extra appointment was a little crazy. Thus, the one phone call saved me a considerable amount of consternation last week.

Deb Versus Puff Pastry

When I noticed Martha Stewart gently repairing part of her dough were the butter had seeped through her d ough during the first rolling, I knew that I could succeed. I had been very concerned about the bit of butter that was on my rolling pin after I wrapped the dough to let it rest after the first and second turns [after the butter is incorporated the dough is rolled out to about 19 inches length wise. Then, it's folded in thirds like a letter and turned 45 degrees and rolled out again or wrapped to rest]. The other thing I had to watch was that the dough didn't get covered in too much flour. Between each turn, it had do be carefully and thoroughly dusted off. That was difficult as there was flour everywhere There was so much flour in the air that I wondered about explosions. There was a lot of flour about. That photo was taken after I had cleaned things up a little bit. All the while between rolling out the dough with each turn, I worked on the blog or some other writings. It was a pleasant way to pass the time. Once the dough was finished, I had to let it rest a couple of hours before attempting the palmiers. They were remarkably simple to make. The dough is rolled out onto a surface coated with sugar. Then the edges on either side are rolled toward the middle. Then, the dough is sliced and baked. They were delicious. I was very pleased at how the recipes turned out. I believe that I will try to make croissants this coming week.

Book Updates

I've given this a lot of thought. Since we're planning on new covers and revisions and all sorts of things like new artwork and book trailers, I'm going to wait on excerpts until the books are ready to be published. I want to encourage readers to buy the book after reading the excerpts. I've also had to accept the fact that whatever excerpt I put up will have some sort of spoiler in it. I'll try to keep it to minor ones and I'll give a lot of warning.

There are no film or web series updates this week.

Stay tuned.

Insurance Insanity, Kitchen Therapy and Modest Updates

2011-06-20T14:12:00.000-07:00

Last week was every bit the roller coaster I expected – and a few things that I hadn't expected. In the midst of having the tests to check where I was with the cancer (For those who missed my posts, I am still free of the disease. No new tests are scheduled for six months), I received my shiny new medical card.. Actually, it's cardboard, so it isn't really shiny. I'm excited because I have coverage that will handle anything that arises. I don't have to worry about a sudden cutback in subsidized cases at USC. Apparently, I had completely forgotten what an amazing hassle a health insurance carrier can be. When I enrolled under the state's new managed care program, I was asked to fill out the information for my primary care doc. Which I did. I figured that since I was getting oncology services at a state subsidized facility, and that my primary care doc had already made the referral to said oncologist, I was covered there, too. Not so. And I find this out moments before I'm due to hear the results of my tests. I must take this form two buildings away and several floors up to an office to switch my coverage and – hopefully – get an override for that day's appointment. They said hopefully because I had already received out of plan services that month when I had the CT scan. I hadn't really slept in three days, and I was already half way freaked out. I must have looked very reasonable when I reached the insurance office. Who knows? They did get things underway swiftly with the switch in assigned, care and they did override the denial of services in a little less than an hour. I may have been looking homicidal again.

By the time I got back to my regularly scheduled appointment, my brain was fried. I was barely engaged in the argument between oncology and the pain management doc I'd met during my last ER visit. They were arguing with each other as to whether I was in pain. No one really asked me. I plan to revisit the issue with my primary care doc – whomever that is. Why is there a question? Well, I was assigned one at USC, but that doesn't take effect until July. Meanwhile, I need a referral to get my B-12 shot. So, for a five minute appointment, I have to have a whole other doctor's visit to get a piece of paper. I can't complain. There are far, far worse insurance horror stories on the various appendix cancer group forums. I can only sigh. My tests are clear, and that's the most important thing.

Kitchen Therapy

I took refuge in the kitchen among other, less savory places. Well, not unsavory. I don't want to frighten anyone. Let's just say that they were strange places – even for me to seek refuge. As I was not sleeping, I often found myself in e-mail or chat room debates. I do mean that literally. A chat room would open up, and I'd be in it with someone seeking my opinion on something or agreement with something else. I was not agreeable by and large. I think I've been living with Jon for too long. Not that he's disagreeable. He just likes to debate on an opposing view for the sake of a broader conversation. As I mentioned in last week's blog, producing books or films or anything has complicated my views as a fangirl. So for those who chatted me up at 3 am, I wasn't trying to pick a fight. And I was cranky. Sorry.

The kitchen was safer. I had a lot of practical cooking to do. I bought a lot of meats on sale and had to prep them for freezing or cook some for the week. I made two kinds of soup stock – roasted chicken and mushroom. I really like doing basic cooking. There is something calming about chopping all those veggies and completing tasks I've done hundreds of times before. Roasting garlic makes me really, really hungry for some reason. The scent triggers something. I did a lot of foraging this week with my grocery shopping. Since I'm walking more, I take my little shopping cart and going to all the markets that have significant sales. I was pretending I was marketing each day in Paris. That didn't work at all, but I did get a lot of exercise along with the savings. I made many discoveries during those shopping jaunts. For one, Trader Joe's has a really nice fresh pizza dough at only $1.29. Also, my bargain/ethnic market has three varieties of tahini for half the price of my regular markets! They also have fresh pita from a local vendor. These were very exciting discoveries that warrant further study like Thai red rice and imported fava bean products. Sweet!

I did some fancy cooking this week. I made a pizza with that Trader Joe's dough. Also, I made mayonnaise for the first time. There wasn't enough for the potato salad today. That may happen more often as I liked the taste better than the jarred. I also had another crack at making sushi. The results were as good without nearly as much comedy. I say not nearly as much comedy. There was some. There is always a least a little. I also tried some new Japanese dishes. The one that was the most challenging was Tamagoyaki, a rolled omelet. While viewing the youtube video that taught me how to do that, I learned about bento box lunches in which the Tamagoayki are often featured. With these new found mad skills, I sprung upon Jon the bento breakfast! The sausages are heart shaped and everything. For some reason, I suspect Jon thinks I've gone around the bend. What is so strange about shaping sausages? He should worry when I make him hot dog octopi or rabbit shaped apple for his lunch. No, he really should worry, because I'll have gone bonkers. Oh, and that bento video is really strange, but I can't stop watching that dog.

I made the dough for the new sugar cookies. I plan to bake them off on Monday. I will also attempt puff pastry. It's definitely time. I shall post photos!

The above was written on Sunday. It is now Monday. I'm still exhausted from insomnia, but the puff pastry is underway! I will post details in a separate blog.

Updates

I've been informed that the Special FX Supervisor for Octodemon and the director are working on post production issues. Everything else is in flux. I expect to get more details on where that project stands later in the week. The script for Demon on the Run, the web series based on Demon Under Glass is almost finished. I didn't get much done on it last week because of everything going on. I'm not going to post the script. There are a lot of really fun things that I don't want spoiled in any way.

The books are coming along nicely. I think they will be done by the end of August. I'm re-releasing both Soldiers books when the sequels publish. I've changed some things to reflect the script for Blood Oath. And there will be new covers as well to match the artwork in Blood Oath. My only difficulty is finding excerpts that don't have major spoilers in them. That's what happens when the love scenes are not gratuitous. I'm still sifting through the chapters to find something.

Stay tuned.

Weekday Blog -- Good News

2011-06-17T08:21:00.000-07:00

Good news, everybody! I aced my last set of tests -- even got rid of that pesky anemia for now. No new tests are scheduled for six months! I totally had a martini. There were three olives, and it was dirty. Then, I had a nap. I am out of practice guzzling martinis.

I have to see my regular Doc to discuss managing my side effects and what may have become permanent (or the happier phrase 'new normal') in the next few weeks. But that's for another day. Right now, I'm planning my various celebrations...and a showgirl outfit.

More news on Sunday including food, film and book updates.

Stay tuned.

New Tests, New Recipes and Familiar Foibles

2011-06-12T18:57:00.000-07:00

This week has been very difficult. There are a number of reasons for this. The biggest reason is that I was going through a routine that I haven't had to do for three months. It was back to the lab for blood tests. And then it was back to radiology for the CT scan. And this time, I had to go to the appointments without Jon. He's got a cool new day job that has many things that he enjoys. It is connected to the visual arts. It has a lot of varied detail work that he enjoys. And there are even office cats to occasionally stand on his keyboard and head butt him. The job is a fantastic thing to have happened for both of us. Still, it was daunting to have to go to these appointments on my own again. The CT scan was really a fast appointment, at least. I barely had time to choke down the contrast drink – this time it was 'banana' smoothie flavored – before I was called in. I was out in a never heard of two hours! There was also the scintillating company of Ray Proscia who was kindly shuttling me about. All of that offset the ordeal of having the tests. Now, I have to figure out who not to worry myself into a frenzy before I get the results.

Christmas in June

It's more than six months to the next holiday baking season, but it is time to start planning! I have been watching some new dessert themed TV shows of late, and I believe I may have found a sugar cookie recipe that I like. This one doesn't require rolling the dough and cutting out cookies! The search for a durable but tender chocolate cookie continues, but I think we're going to do sample batches of the sugar cookies. I also think the time has come to try puff pastry. Martha Stewart made a batch and made it look even simpler than the last demo I watched. I want to be able to make this to make Palmiers as a Christmas treat among many other things. The Martha recipe produces three pounds of dough which is enough to make tons of Palmiers, cheese straws and en croute anything that isn't moving. I also want to make croissants. It's a similar recipe to puff pastry, but the dough has yeast in it and needs an extra day to proof. While I also feel that trying that recipe is inevitable, I think I should try the puff pastry. There will be some 'lucky' locals who will get to sample the results. I don't like to ship the goods unless I know they're really good. No worries, non LA peeps, I may ship some out to a few folks for more opinions.

Accidental Genius and Other Writing Foibles

Some of the constants in my genre fiction are very deliberate. The oddest – and the funniest to me – is that in all of the worlds I write in whether they are in some strange future or a fantasy past, the weather is almost always in the fall or winter. Spring and summer fly past in a blink, but I luxuriate in the crispness of fall and the biting cold of winter. The reason for this is not because I like those seasons above others. I actually prefer the spring. Basically, I've lived with the Hubs for far too long. He likes even the most far flung scifi fantasy to make sense in every day moments. Knowing what I know about men, I realized that they would never lounge about in their homes wearing the beautiful silk knit pajamas I often imagine them wearing. Jon has often told me that if I didn't object, he'd be in his boxers or less at his PC. Thus, I couldn't make that work in my head even as fiction. So, I made the environment cold most of the time. Cold environments also require fireplaces and cuddling. Genius!

Other constants are by products of my own interests but have been thought of as a brilliant, deliberate choice. My obsession with food has become a constant in whatever I'm writing. Relationships are forged and shaped around meals, in my opinion. A character's relationship with food says a lot about who they are. In my romances, the first sign of a sensual nature is an appreciation for all aspects of food – taste, texture, smell. Recently, some of my fiction has attracted attention in Japan. I may have my titles published in Japanese! But that is a very long story for another day. One of the things I was praised about was the focus on meals and cooking. Did I know that made my work seem very Japanese. Of course, I did, I replied. Yeah...sure. (The image is from an anime based on a very popular Japanese romance. This would be breakfast.). There is also an appreciation for my twisted sense of humor there that some critics have felt was out of place in a romance. Obviously, those critics have had much more orderly romances in their lives than I've had. Or my friends have had. At any rate, those aspects of my writing were much less planned. I'm really pleased that they work, or I'd be in trouble.

Updates

I don't really have any on the film and web series fronts. I've been a bit distracted last week with the medical tests and panicking about them. I've been taking refuge in my fiction and the latest script. And a shameless amount of anime. I don't expect that to change much until mid-week when I get my results.

Stay tuned.

Mosh Pits, Updates and Defending TPTB

2011-06-05T15:27:00.000-07:00

I was in a mosh pit of sorts on Saturday at the House of Blues on Sunset Blvd.. It was filled with the shortest and most erratic dancers I've ever encountered. Some of them even had pacifiers. The band members in this battle of the bands were pretty short, too. Some of the musicians were the same size as their guitars while others could have used a box to reach their keyboards.

It was the 6^th annual Rockstar Music Education Program Battle of the Bands for kids 12 and under. It was...an experience. Here's a promo for the program which is supported by the rock community in Los Angeles. This was the only venue where pork pie hats were appropriate as they were on the heads of many children. Jon and I attended this pint sized battle of the bands to support young Shelton Lliteras (the one with the red, spikey hair), son of Jasmine, PA extraordinaire on Demon Under Glass. Many of my Facebook readers have wondered whose head that is in my profile picture. Here's the whole photo. Jasmine is in the foreground. Gary Lowrance, grip extraordinaire on Demon Under Glass and very scary ex- special forces, is in the background. Shelton is the grandson of Ralph and Marguerite, our long time partners in the production company and our de facto family in Los Angeles (along with the eclectic collection of friends). Shelton's band, Fergus on Fire (I have no idea why) performed Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple. Shelton was quite focused. He had that 'I live only for my music' look onstage. The rest of the band was just completely adorable. He can't wait until next year. Neither can we.

Updates – Divergent and Various

I'm doing the updates next rather than at the end because I'm going get all geeky in the next segment, and there are some of you who'll want to bail or hurl rather than get dragged along. Shame on you! The essay will feature a thoughtful analysis of why network executives should not be considered minions of Satan for canceling a favorite show.

My apologies for freaking out folks with my blog of last week. I still don't think it had even a hint of a notion that I as abandoning any of the projects because of my problems with chemo side effects. This is not the case at all. For longer term projects like The Secret Cancer, it means that the process will take even longer to complete. I have had to cancel my trip to Philadelphia for the Awareness Walk and the interviews I had planned to shoot during the trip. However, I will get to Philadelphia at some point in the future. My family is there, after all. I'm just not going this month. I will begin my interviews out here with the survivors who've contacted me. There are doctors our here that I think would be relevant to the film, like the ones who saved my hide, for example. And I will likely be shooting the interview with Audrey Hepburn's son in Los Angeles. That project is most certainly moving forward. And I am still seeking support for that film. It would help if my readers would click on the banner at the bottom right of this page and then click on the red FEATURE THIS link at the bottom of the perks on The Secret Cancer's Indiegogo.com page. Even if you do not donate (and I hope you will), clicking FEATURE THIS will get the project on the main page which will most likely help us reach our goal.

The horror film, Octodemon etc. is still moving forward. I don't think my role in the project will have to change at all. Because of the way it's currently scheduled, the demand on me would not be as big as it would be if it were three straight weeks. We're working our way through casting the supporting roles and troubleshooting the FX issues. At this point in time, the current start date remains the same – early July.

The Demon Under Glass web series, Demon on the Run, is back on track. We've got a really fun script in the works now that I've figured out what our assets are. Once that is complete – and I expect that to be finished this week or next – we will finish casting. I've put our a call to my fandom peeps for names of veteran genre actors for parts in the flash back and the fantasy scenes in the episode. Our thinking at present is to shoot sometime in August. It is a relatively short shoot (3 days, max), so that isn't very demanding. Two of the major locations are within walking distance of our place. I will be taking it very easy.

There was a little bit of a slow down with the books last week due to the request from the anthology. I had to get the pages to my two readers. Then I had to input the changes they made – in record time. A big thank you to both of you! I am back on track with both books doing a few pages each night on one of them. Slowly they are adding up to two separate novels that I am very excited about.

From Fangirl to Hyphenate

For the uninitiated, a Hyphenate, in this instance, is an individual with a dual role in a film production. I am a writer-producer, for example. On most of my shoots I am a writer-producter-wardrobe-caterer-janitor with room for a few more titles depending on how small the crew is.

But there was a time when I was primarily a fan of TV and films. And then, I became a fangirl of many things (some of those things could haunt your dreams). The difference is the degree of intensity. A fan is someone who simply likes a show and enjoys discussing it on the day after an episode ends. A fangirl or fanboy takes that quite a bit further – typically to the point that it annoys and/or frightens family, friends and co-workers. The intensity of the interest is most keenly manifested when a beloved program is canceled. The manifestation is some sadness and lots of rage typically aimed at the unfortunate sot who canceled the program.

I have been among the enraged at the cancellation of a beloved show. Because cancellation of sci-fi shows seems to happen at a swifter rate than any other kind of program, I have been among those who express dismay and disgust at networks failing to nurture such programming simply because they don't understand it or they hate science fiction or for both reasons. It doesn't help change that point of view toward the much hated The Powers That Be (TPTB) to find articles in which they actually admit things like The X-Files wouldn't have been given a chance to find an audience if it debuted today.

The change in my point of view toward TPTB began when we did our first short for a pitch to TV. The Pri vateers basically cost us $1000 a minute, but that was under an old SAG contract and getting crew for next to nothing and working everyone like a circus monkey using army surplus costumes for the most part and no alien make-up or hairstyles. You can see the results HERE. In writing the business plan, we had to figure out an average budget per episode. We also had to make an argument that we could attract the minimum number of viewers needed to generate enough revenue to cover the costs. I learned a lot about the cost of a sci-fi show then. I know a whole lot more now – well over a decade later. Yes, incredible advances in software have made insanely difficult special FX possible and more cheaply than even five years ago. Yes, they can be done more cheaply. They cannot be done for free. Almost everything in a sci-fi show is more expensive than other programs. If it is a space based show, then everything save for talent and crew is more expensive. Wardrobe cannot be bought off the rack. Sets are show specific. Then, there is hair and make up. The list is long and daunting.

Despite the blockbuster sci-fi films, TV sci-fi programs have a niche audience. They tend to struggle a lot more than a cop show or a sitcom. Even successful shows have to watch their budgets. On Star Trek: The Next Generation and the Trek shows that followed, an episode with lots of guest stars, new sets or locations were off set by shows that may have a couple or no guests and occur on standing sets. They are called bottle shows. I recall that my change in attitude manifested itself during a panel I was speaking on at a convention. Someone wanted to know why the only aliens on Trek or most other shows were humanoids with something strange on their foreheads. I tried to tell them that the cost of inserting a CGI alien into an episode was cost prohibitive – insanely cost prohibitive. No one wanted to hear it. The audience preferred to rage that TPTB were holding back the creative staff. I actually instigated a panel at Dragoncon about the limits of what fan productions would do as a business model. I argued that they work as a labor of love for all involved. Participants are either donating their time and talent or it is steeply discounted because they want to be involved in the show. Once it becomes a licensed, income generating business, union rates for everything would apply. Such projects would live or die not only from the dedication of those participating, but on the income that it can make to cover real-life expenses. As the panel was filled with producers of such fan content, Jon and I were not popular in that room.

I realized that I had really changed in my world view when I found myself defending SyFy's decision to cancel Caprica. I am not a fan of the SyFy Channel. I have really personal reasons that have nothing to do with being a fangirl. One might even say, I deeply dislike the network. From the fangirl point of view, the network has done little to endear itself to avid viewers. For a number of years, it had a programming director that was widely reported to not like science fiction. I'm sure this dim view of the channels motives was not helped by the inclusion of Professional Wrestling or the sitcom Saved by the Bell in its line up. Saved by the Bell only lasted a short time. The wrestling remains. No love for the network here. And I adored Caprica and everyone involved in the show. I thought it was some of the most sophisticated science fiction ever aired on a weekly basis. I was alarmed that it was on the chopping block. My resentment toward the network didn't help my view of their reasons for even considering axing the program. And then, I was on a live chat with the current programming director. He stated and I later could confirm that the ratings were in the mere hundreds of thousands – not even close to a million. The show would need at least three times the ratings it was drawing to survive. When I heard those numbers, I knew it was over. And it was justifiably over. At the end of the day, this is show business with a capital B. If fans wanted to be enraged, they should be enraged at the Battlestar Galactica fans that stayed away in droves because Caprica didn't have enough space ships. Yes, I have been told that was a reason for not watching the show. It simply was not making enough to cover its bills. They gave it a full season's run and even mounted a Twitter campaign to raise the profile of the final episodes. The fans failed it.

It costs a lot to gamble on producing any new TV program. They take a long time to become profitable. Meanwhile, the money is flowing out. It's an especially expensive gamble on sci-fi shows. Yes, they should find a way to figure out ratings beyond the current systems. And yes, viewers are looking at more content online. The problem with that is that online viewing is still not generating the revenue that broadcast and cable does – not even close yet. When a show gets canceled, it's usually to stop the hemorrhaging of money. So, when my fellow fangirls and fanboys, please keep in mind that programming execs aren't necessarily minions of Satan for canceling a favorite show. It might help the cause to watch it when it airs and on TV.

Stay tuned.

Not So Special FX, More Fun and Updates

2011-05-29T22:47:00.000-07:00

Okay, nobody panic. I'm not going through anything as serious as a relapse. However, the activities of recent weeks has clearly pointed out that I am not quite ready to leap tall buildings in a single bound. On a more practical note, I'm going to have to seriously rethink some of my short term plans. The problems stem from the side effects of the chemo. It's a poison, after all, that I was taking for several months. My primary care Doc pointed out – with great patience – that it would be unreasonable to think that it would take less than several months for the side effects to fade. And that is at minimum. I've also discovered through the support groups I've found that some of the side effects that I thought were related to the chemo are likely permanent internal changes due to the extensive tinkering that occurred during the two surgeries. None of this is life threatening, but it presents some serious challenges with a day to day routine at times. It is really difficult to work myself up to exercise when I wake up with my joints painfully locked up or my feet are either numb or very painful – but most days, I do. For something other than a daily routine, I'm going to have to seriously think about what I can handle during the next few months. This doesn't mean that my plans are canceled by any means. However, I may have to postpone some things. I plan to make decisions and announcements to pertinent people on Tuesday.

Month of fun – Home Stretch

This is some big fun for me. I got an offer to submit a story to an anthology. I just signed the contract a little while ago. This was especially nice since I wasn't sending anything out. And it was good that I had some new material to submit. It's all very exciting. I'll post the title and where to find it when it comes out.

This month's treats were usually some sort of food. There were sweets like chocolate birthday cake (finally found a butter cream icing that worked), brownies and rhubarb compote (my first time cooking with rhubarb) and the Tiramisu. When I wasn't having a home made baked good, I was indulging in the occasional ice cream treat like a Dove bar or a Hagen Das Ice Cream bar – mainly after a long walk. And I've discovered some cheeses I've never had before. One of the nearby supermarkets sells the ends of big wheels or wedges at a steep discount per pound. My favorite new variety was an aged Irish cheddar with Irish whiskey in it somehow. And I've finally indulging in my favorite fruits. Cherries are in season and those mini seedless water melons are prime now. I've even been having mangoes! I don't typically buy them. So, not all of my treats have been calorie laden. And speaking of healthy foods, I've learned how to make sushi! I chickened out on making the inside out sushi rolls where the rice is on the outside. But I made a genuine California roll! But it wasn't inside out. I also used the extra rice to make rice balls rolled in Tobiko. I really love sushi rice and didn't want to waste it. I also managed to make buttermilk biscuits. Food wise, it's been a really fun month.

In the category of miscellaneous fun, I had some odd things published or listed on the internet. I found something really funny online that was also literary. It was a pair of actors from the Broadway play The Importance of Being Ernest reading transcripts from Jersey Shore as it the words had come from Oscar Wilde. It was called Jersey Shore Gone Wilde. I shared it with Roger Ebert and he put it in his widely read newsletter. I was as jazzed by that as I was that I had amused Roger Ebert. And my lengthy rant in defense of being an anime fan was cross posted on imdb.com. That's happened to a number of my pop culture related blogs, but I've finally figured out that I should be keeping track of that sort of thing.

I didn't get to have lunch with everyone I planned on seeing, but I don't have to restrict that to one month. Thanks again for all the kind wishes and encouragement. And don't think I'm done having fun, because June is rolling around. I still have plans. Nefarious plans.

Updates

We're still casting Octodemon: The Alcamagod. I think that's going to run over a few weeks as everyone is fitting the film in around other projects. Beyond that, we're starting to crew up. I think that's going to take some time as well. As far as I know, we keeping the same start date in July. I'll post an official update on that on the film's blog page. I will also post a reminder of where that update is on this blog. As far as the productions I'm working on, I'll be blogging about them later this week. The books are coming along at a nice, regular pace. I promise, promise, promise an excerpt or two next week.

Stay tuned.

Possible Blog Delay -- Fiction Emergency

2011-05-29T15:06:00.000-07:00

The blog may be delayed. I've been asked to submit a piece of fiction to an anthology and the deadline is Tuesday. I have to get something out to my proofreaders today. I do have most a blog, but if it gets too late in the evening, I'll post it tomorrow.

Food Fun, Mega Geekdom and Updates

2011-05-21T21:23:00.000-07:00

I don't usually mind having insomnia. I tend to be nocturnal and I often don't start to write until after 9pm. I write fiction then. Strangely, I write scripts during the day – like a day job. Anyway, I've been up until the wee small hours a lot lately, but I've been too punchy to focus on writing. I get a couple of pages done and then, nothing. I've tried walking a lot during the day to tire myself out. I've tried herbal tea and lavender scented baths. I've even tried going caffeine free, Who knows what's up, but it is just a bit frustrating.

Deb versus Japanese and Other Kitchen Adventures

My cooking has certainly improved over the years, but I still have many misadventures. These typically happen when I push beyond my comfort zone and try a new recipe or a new kind of cooking like dishes from a culture that I haven't tried. I really hate wasting food in general. We really can't afford to waste food currently, so I have to approach new things with a degree of seriousness. However, I don't like to view food as something that is terribly serious. Some of the food blogs I follow can get downright dour. How can you be dour about food? This was especially true on the Food Network's Facebook page. I suspect they have a moderator now as it has become a lot more civil than it had been. To the 'true believers' that were snarking all over that page, the current crop of shows don't reflect 'real cooking.' The exception to this seems to be Good Eats which is widely considered as a brilliant cooking show by fans writing on that page. I think it is as well, and I've used a great number of recipes from that show. Alton Brown, the host, introduced me to pie birds. However, one couldn't call his show serious in tone. He did Sweeney Todd, for goodness sake. And that isn't as crazy as he's been. I like cooking shows that have a sense of humor (Good Eats) as much as the ones that are purely instructional (America's Test Kitchen or Martha Bakes). Thus, I'm really enjoying shows like Bitchin' Kitchen on the Cooking Channel. Host Chef Nadia G has had some good recipes, but I really just enjoy watching the mayhem on her crazy set. Hers is the only cooking show that has ever used the term 'broke ass' in the prattle. And then there is the adorable Extra Virgin -- also on the Cooking Channel that inspired making the Tiramisu. Debi and Gabriele are delightful along with their darling daughters...and the chickens...and the 800 year old poodle named Delores.

The latest show to inspire me and make me go beyond my comfort zone is Your Japanese Kitchen. It's more instructional than funny. The music is weird though. Anyway, I've already made a very successful set of goyza or Chinese fried dumplings. Last week, they were cooking a food I love to get when eating out. So, Saturday, I made shabu shabu [picture not representational though fairly close] which is a hot pot of broth and vegetables that one cooks thinly sliced meat and noodles in to eat with a dipping sauces. Jon was happy because there were noodles, so there was no problem from him. But the ingredients were Japanese. And some of them had names with more than three syllables. So, there I was at Mitsuwa Marketplace, the Japanese supermarket near our home explaining to a very patient young man what I needed. He didn't wince too much at my pronunciations. I must have done okay as he found everything. He was cute with a great voice, too. Oh, where was my Hubs who reads Japanese? Looking at ice cream. Anyway, the process was kind of lengthy with all the slicing and chopping, but I find that peaceful. And the dish was tasty, too. Still, as far as foreign languages go, I should stick to French.

Meanwhile, because someone implied that I might be wasting my time on one of my pursuits.

A Defense for Anime and Manga Geekdom

One of the best things about being a filmmaker is that I have a built in excuse for my admittedly excessive geekdom. Of course, I have to read comics or obscure scifi books and even graphic novels (though my attorney insist that they are just comic books with an uppity attitude). Even a fondness for crappy 1980s era cartoons is understood in the wake of blockbusters like the Transformers franchise in film and the development of projects like Thundercats and Voltron for TV. Even my elderly relatives have conceded that such strange interests may yet result in my supporting myself with my creative work.

All of that understanding evaporates when it comes to anime and manga. Oh, it was okay when I was younger. My fascination with the new wave of cartoons from Japan in the 60s would pass. My mother actually liked Kimba, so she tolerated my devotion to Astro Boy, Prince Planet and Speed Racer. After all, I was very young, and I still played with Barbies. That made me mostly normal. But I was still following what anime I could well into college. I was more wrapped up with Star Blazers than I was with Luke and Laura. My interest didn't diminish as I matured. It grew broader especially as more and more translated or subtitled material became available. My relatives have long given up on trying to figure me out or reason me toward more understandable interests. We have agreed that they will remain confused. After all, we can always talk about sports at family gatherings.

My friends are another matter. I find that I am as puzzled by their lack of interest in anime and manga as they are about my intense interest. Many of these friends work or aspire to work in film. They, above all of my other friends, should not only understand my interest, they should absolutely share it. I started hammering this point home some time ago with the release of the Matrix. This past year's biggest films both critically and financially really pound the point home. Many major Hollywood films lauded for innovative imagery have been heavily influenced by anime. Please note, I am not saying that anyone stole anything from anybody. I'm saying that anime has a profound influence on some prominent Hollywood filmmakers.

Let's start with the Matrix. There really isn't a question here. The Wachowski brothers showed Ghost in the Shell to Joel Silver when they pitched the Matrix. Here is a featurette expounding on this fact that includes comments from Joel Silver. This does not, in my opinion, take away from the amazing feat in imagery and movement the Matrix achieved. The film deserved all the praise that it received. However, the inspiration for that amazingly bad assed stuff came from an anime. Not impressed? The Matrix was all eye candy? How about something that was considered highly cerebral in its theme. I know there was supposed to be this big philosophy behind the Matrix. Forget that noise. It was eye candy. The film that was critically acclaimed everywhere as much for its concept as it was for its visuals was Inception. It has been lauded as the most original idea in films is ages. I looked at the trailer and tweeted one of my favorite critics that it looked like Paprika which came out four years earlier. Christopher Nolan has said that Paprika was an influence on Inception. Still not impressed? Let's try something that was not considered scifi in any fashion. I was looking at an extended trailer for Black Swan. Some of the scenes, I remarked, reminded me strongly of Perfect Blue. Darren Aronosky acknowledges that there were similarities between the films, but it was not an influence. That's confusing to me. He actually owns the rights to Perfect Blue which he bought to recreate a scene for another film, Requiem for a Dream. Whatever. Incidentally, Perfect Blue and Paprika were by the same man, the immensely talented Satoshi Kon who left this world way too soon.

And there you have it. My intensely geeky interest in Anime and Manga is perfectly justified as a filmmaker. Heck, it's justifiable for film fans as well. You could be as annoying as I am when presented with statements like 'the most innovative etc, ect. ever seen' by pointing out you had seen such innovation a few years before. It's a magical moment at a party. Oh, I didn't mention Manga? Well, many of the titles I listed began as manga. But if you want to know the latest Hollywood interest in it, just google for details about the hellacious dust up over the plans for the Leonard DiCaprio/Warner Bros adaptation of Akira. It even has ultra mellow George Takei upset. As for me, what is the anime that is inspiring my Hums and me to write the next blockbuster. I am so not even breathing that title. My Hubs and I have never discussed it outside of our home. Go fourth and watch your own!

Updates

There aren't many right now. I'm still working on the yaoi books. We're having a casting session for the horror film on Wednesday. We also plan on signing our leads this week.

Stay tuned.

Birthdays and Curses and Updates

2011-05-15T00:54:00.000-07:00

Jon and I inadvertently avoided a politician canvassing for votes on our block on Saturday. I'm counting that as a treat to myself. I'm not pleased at politicians turning up in my e-mail inbox. I really wouldn't react well to one showing up at my door. This past week was a tiring one that began with a six and a half hour ordeal to see my surgeon for a follow up. The actual encounter with the doctor lasted literally five minutes. One might even say we got the bum's rush out of the office. And that was during rush hour. And then, there were the two production meetings. I remembered why I really don't like production meetings (and why Jon really does). But more on that later (I promise).

Month of Fun – Birthday Week

Despite my grumbling, last week was really good on a number of levels. The weather was absolutely lovely, so I got out a lot. We had a long walk with Craig and my hat on Tuesday. Craig asked us to read his script and tell him how to trim it from over three hours to under two. Typically, such a request is daunting and really boring. But this is a voyage through what Craig considers entertaining. Oh boy, was that entertaining. It was so much fun to read that we want to read the version that is TWICE as long as this one. I was laughing out loud in the wee small hours of the morning. His use of dialogue is profane and artistic and hilarious. I told him to keep the length and go for an HBO mini-series. It's a plumb leading part for some A-lister. Craig wanted to know who as there were ways of getting the script on their bedroom nightstands. We didn't ask. Deniability is sometimes a very important thing. Did I mention that some ancient panhandler out a curse on Craig? Yeah, that happened. I've never been present when an actual curse was put on someone. Craig yelled back that aliens had stolen his camels. A good time was had by all.

On the birthday itself, there was the second production meeting. That was not loads of fun (they never are for me), but considering that I couldn't have sat through one last year, things are pretty good for me. Last year, I was barely out of the hospital from what the other Appendix Cancer patients call the Mother Of All Surgeries (MOAS). I recall being full of staples. I'm certain I was resentful of the tube still hanging out of me. IV Chemo was a notion that hung over my head like an Acme Anvil. Being cancer free this year is a reason to howl at the moon. I still have a lot of healing to do(I should remember, I get nagged enough about that), but I am well on the way. I have new and exciting work that fulfills me creatively. I even have a cause to fight for. As for the birthday, it was good overall. I spent time time with Marguerite Lliteras, one of our partners, who has a desert dry sense of humor. And then we had time with her wonderful grandson. He is six and a very, very funny, witty child who can spin lengthy tales from thin air that are full of whimsy and wonder during a relatively short ride home. Intelligent children like him are joyful and delightful and a treat to listen to. My darling nephew and my adorable little cousins could brighten my darkest moods at that age by just showing up and telling me about their days. Thus, a little ride with him was a wonderful treat. Beyond that, I roasted a lobster tail and made some pasta with a little olive oil and garlic with a side of lightly sauteed spinach. We bought a slice of fudge cake from the Cheesecake Factory to share. I had a little bubbly. The was really simple to prepare and very, very lovely. I was not in the South of France or even in the South of Philly, but I had a wonderful birthday. Thanks again for all the well wishes!

But there is way more of the month to go. There are recipes to try. This week's were a chocolate birthday cake a la Marcus Samuelsson and stuffed olives a la Chuck Hughes. Both were delicious. Will this be the month I try to bake croissants? Who knows? There are a whole lot of interesting things in my bookmarks. And there are the lovely lunches. I've had two this month, so far. One was with Craig after the lovely walk and curse. Second, was a delightful lunch with dear friend and wonderful actor, Ray Proscia. He has a brutal yet hilarious way of cutting through the crap of any situation which helps when dealing with a sometimes crazy person with a serious illness. He has seen the worst that this particular cancer can dish out with another friend, thus he was the ideal person to deal with me. He has seen me at my worst and could still make me laugh. Lunch was a celebration of victory. And, as always, there was tasty industry gossip!

Updates – Many and Varied

Blast from the Past

Walter Koenig was at Lucy's studio for a shoot last week. I don't think Ralph saw him since Dragoncon nearly ten years ago. Anyway, it was really cool that he remembered working on The Privateers with us all those years ago and remembered us very fondly. that made Jon and I feel really good. We haven't been able to offer much in the way of money to actors, but they always manage to have a good time on our sets.

The Films

The production meeting blog is on the new page for Octodemon: The Alcamagod. There are even photos of some of the locations. My plan is to do as much photo documentation as I can and put them up in a timely fashion. Jon and I plan to be the videographers for this shoot. That footage will be on draggontv.com. We'll probably post that weekly. That will depend on the mayhem going on.

For Demon on the Run, I'm still working a script to fit the resources we have available. It's coming along, but I am admittedly going slowly. I want to make sure that we can shoot everything that I write. Thus, I have to research each scene to make sure I have assets in place to make it work. This is the opposite way line producing usually works. However, this is normal for web series. Those are almost always written around resources and not just around an idea.

The Books

Insomnia has been a good thing for my writing. When I finally get tired of watching late night true crime shows or reruns of Hawaii Five-O, I listen to music and work through character arcs. Despite having a clear plan for my novels, I sometimes find that the arcs of any given character weren't what I expected. A Soldier's Destiny is going very well. It's been difficult to pull an excerpt to put in the blog because there are some serious spoilers before or after any given love scene. Silly me. I need to write more gratuitous love scenes! There is a lovely moment that is developing in my head. I will try to share it soon. The dynamic has shifted between Rik and Vincent where the younger man has become the protector in the relationship. He no longer needs the nurturing he required as a young soldier. He matured through all the experiences on his own and with Rik. The shift is timely as Rik needs to be emotionally protected to do the kind of training the newest and most volatile recruits to date require. That's been interesting as the story remains from Rik's point of view. Hopefully, there will be a scene I feel safe in putting up soon.

Ensnared has been a fascinating trip. It is the first time I've broken up a couple once I put them together. This has been a challenge to deepen a relationship without physical intimacy. There have been a lot of near misses and longing. My leading man, Darius, is the most arrogant character I've ever written, yet I find him amusing and endearing as well as extremely dangerous. Andreas is amazed by his once and future lover's behavior. Andreas believes that Darius has arrogant handwriting. He is amused and befuddled at being blamed for the erotic dreams Darius has while they are apart. It's been a delightful dance for the characters as they make their way back toward each other. I will share a scene from this book soon as well.

Stay tuned.

Blog Part Two Delayed

2011-05-09T20:15:00.000-07:00

We have another production meeting scheduled for Wednesday. I will post updates on the projects after that one. Good news though. There are casting dates and a shoot date for the horror film.

Stay tuned.

Tiramisu, Juleps and Shirtless Hestons

2011-05-07T23:51:00.000-07:00

I'm breaking up the blog into parts this week. Jon and I are having a production meeting about the horror film later today, so I'm thwarted from doing a complete update of the projects right now. I'm hoping that this will be the beginning of an easier week for me. Some days, I feel like I can power walk twenty miles. Some days , it's very hard to get out of bed. Currently, I'm negotiating between taking my time and becoming more active. I do have to push myself to build my strength and flexibility, but I can't push too far. I must confess that I have found the search for balance frustrating. When will I feel normal? What will be normal from now on? Bah! Let's move on!

Month of Fun

This has been, despite my difficulties, an amazing week for fun and food. Well, the fun was mostly food. I ate at one of our favorite diners, The 50s Cafe in Venice. I had some fabulous cheeses. There was a lot of food last week. Well, it wasn't all about food. There was also a great conversation with my Maw-In-Law(she's a hoot). And I spent some time on the road with Craig. That involved a protracted discussion about The Omega Man (too many albino mutants with afros, too much Anthony Zerbe , and way too much shirtless Charlton Heston. That discussion shifted to one about The Last M an on Earth which Craig liked better probably because it lacked those elements of the former. Finally, we rounded things out with a lively debate over I Am Legend, the film not the book . All three films were based on the same book. It was a very strange ride to and from the hospital. All I'm certain of is that Craig hates movie hippies, white afros and shirtless Hestons. And I can laugh until I'm dizzy.

Jon gave me my first present yesterday. I had asked for him to restore two photographs of my mother. This first one is of her(on the right) with her sister, Eleanor. Weren't they fabulous? They were on their way out somewhere on a Saturday night. It's one of my favorite photos of my Mom. Jon is working on the absolute favorite. I'll share it soon.

The most amazing thing about this week is that I'm not suffering through my usual May irritation over not being in France. Not that I don't want to be in France. On any given day since I returned from there, I'd like to be back. This year I'm not irritated about it. One does a lot of walking in France. In Paris, walking often includes walking up and down stairs to the Metro or in the hotel. In Cannes, at the Marche du Film and the Festival, there is a heck of a lot of walking. The market itself is at least the size of a football field while the films are scattered all over the city. Typically, our hotels have been at least a twenty minute walk from the center of the action. The last time, we were twenty minutes away and up a steep, three block long hill that is a foothill to the ALPS. I always eat like a crazy person in that country, yet I always lose weight. This year, I'm not in good enough shape to handle that much walking. And that's good, because it keeps me from being annoyed. Thus, I can better enjoy the month of fun at home.

We found the Lady Fingers! Gabriele had recommended Bay Cities Deli, but I mistook it for Sorrento's Market in Culver City. It's a place frequented by Food Network types and is down the street from where Randy Lived when he was out here. Oh boy, did they have lady fingers. Jon believes that they had a lady finger aisle. He felt that the packages were mocking him. I wouldn't go that far, but there were a buttload of lady fingers to be had there. Thus, it was time to tackle Tiramisu. Basically, it's an egg yolks whipped with sugar which is mixed with egg whites that where whipped with sugar and mixed with mascarpone cheese. There is also a dash of Marsala wine. The lady fingers are dipped in cold espresso coffee then covered with the mixture. Simple, right? NO! The mixture kind of curdled when we mixed the wine into the cream mixture. I had to use a blender to force an emulsion. The pan was too big, so we needed a recipe and a half of everything. We didn't find that out until there wasn't enough of the cream until we were assembling everything. I had to take a break and rest before we could finish. The second batch of cream came together more smoothly by not bringing the Mascarpone cheese to room temperature. It was delicious. I'll try making it again when we get a better sized pan. I do think we did a great job for a first time.

This past week was full of holidays for me. The Kentucky Derby was rolling around, and I still hadn't finished the food and drink from Cinco de Mayo. Yes, the Kentucky Derby is a holiday for me. My mother and I would celebrate Mother's Day and my birthday by having a Kentucky Derby Party. I had to put aside the burrito fixings in favor of making sweet tea, mint juleps and fried chicken with biscuits. Well, Saturday was not a good day. I didn't really get to sleep until 6am. I wasn't sure what I would be able to pull together. My last attempted at biscuits was not very good. I really didn't feel like frying chicken. But when we got to our nearest market, they had fried chicken that's really good. I got some fresh cole slaw fixings and the buttermilk. I had a plan for those biscuits. You see, I had recent found Martha Bakes, a show by Martha Stewart. She did a whole episode on scones and biscuits that showed me where I went wrong the last time. I had handled the dough way too much and rolled it way to thin. Her recipe was simple and it worked well. I had taped the Derby to enjoy with dinner. The race was fun, the julep was great, and the biscuits were not perfect – but they were really good.

The birthday itself is coming up during the coming week. I'm not sure what sort of mayhem will be involved. I'm hoping for seafood and a little bubbly. Updates will be in the next installment either tonight or tomorrow.

Stay tuned.

Big Hat, Big Fun and Big Updates

2011-05-02T22:00:00.000-07:00

I need a hat pin. I have this really big sun bonnet with a brim that likes to catch the breeze. So, if I dont want to make like Sister Bertrill. How many of you knew who she was without clicking on the link? In the interest of complete documentation, here's a Video Link. Where was I? Oh, yeah, the sun bonnet. I didn't mean to get one quite that big though I must confess to wanting one since I was young. There is a straw version called the poolside hat that's just gi-normous. All I'll need is a huge pair of sunglasses and I'll be ready for the Riviera! Last week, Jon, the hat and I went walking from the Santa Monica Pier to Venice Circle. According to my pedometer, it was a three mile walk. It seemed a lot longer to be, but then it was the first time I've walked that kind of distance since I fell ill. The weather was perfect last Friday. It was really bright and sunny, but there was a wonderful, cool breeze. Thus, the need for a hat pin. I wasn't silly enough to look for one in a department store while we were out. It was challenging finding one on line that wasn't 'antique' (expensive). I did find one for under ten dollars on a site called Etsy.com which is an Ebay like site for handmade crafts of all types. And my hat came from a neat site called Coolibar.com. This site specializes in clothing and accessories that protect wearers from the sun. My hat has an spf of 50+. I plan to do two major walks a week to get in shape for the Appendix Cancer Awareness Walk in June and to just get back into better overall shape. Oh, and Venice has finally made it official, it now has an actual freak show to go along what was long thought to be a freak show. It boasts a five legged dog, a two headed pig and something about a lizard. I don't know. Scary.

Month of Fun

It's May once again. It's time for the month long celebration of being on the planet. The original plan was – and is – to do something that's a little special for myself each day of the month. Now, Agent Cooper maintained that you should give yourself a little present every day even if it's just a damn fine cup of coffee. This may be the secret of true happiness (it sounds plausible), but I can only seem to do it consistently for a month. Today was brownies. I made some for Jon and me. It was going to be Tiramisu, but we couldn't find lady fingers. Annoying. I hope I don't have to actually order them from Amazon.com or some other site. There are a few more markets left to try. One of them is a high end market. The odds are pretty good. Since I've never tried to make the dessert at all, I'm sure not going to try to make lady fingers on top of that. I'm supposed to be having a fun time here. [It's now Monday. I've been to three more markets with no luck in the lady fingers department. I finally had to write to Gabriele Corcos, who with his actress wife Debi Mazer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debi_Mazar , is the host of the Cooking Channel show Extra Virgin http://www.cookingchanneltv.com/extra-virgin/index.html . An episode of that show is the reason I was trying to make the dessert. They are based in LA, so I figured they'd know where to find the danged things. They did. Thank you Gabriele and Facebook!] Btw, my present for today was a burger and a cherry coke at my favorite diner, the 50s Diner in Venice, CA. The plans for the rest of the moth are shifting and nebulous. I have no real plans for the actual birthday. I do know we'll be doing casting and pre-production on the horror film. So, in the midst of that, I'll be scheduling lovely lunch encounters with friends. Jon and I will try to make First Friday in Venice to have some gourmet truck food this Friday. Beyond that, I'm winging it.

Updates – Now in More Categories!

The Secret Cancer

I've had over a dozen replies to my calls for patient/survivor/caregiver stories. I am deeply pleased that this many people are willing to share such an intimate and painful chapter of their lives on camera with a complete stranger. I must be careful about these interactions as the stories can be really overwhelming for someone who has been enduring the disease and the treatments. I've had to restrict my work on the film to twice a week at the most. In other news, I've had contact with is Audrey Hepburn's eldest son, Sean H. Ferrer. I can't go into great detail, but it was a wonderful conversation. I look forward to his participation in telling her story. I'm also still raising money for the film . The Indiegogo.com campaign is still new and it needs a higher profile. Please follow the LINK even if you cannot donate. Hits raise our profile and will eventually get us on the front page of the site. This can be accomplished faster by clicking on the tiny red link on the right hand bottom of the page. It says 'feature this.' So, donate and/or spread the word!

The Horror Movie

We're having our first production meeting(s) this week. Out of those, we expect to have a start date. We'll also be finishing the cast selection. So far, everyone is happy with the script, so that makes me happy. Meanwhile, I have to fill out the half inch pile of paperwork for the WGA. I'm letting Ralph handle SAG. As it is, I'm not looking forward to my sixth call to the WGA to clarify their forms. I still can't reveal a lot, but I can say one of our leads is raring to go! He really liked the crazy in the script.

Demon on the Run – The Mini Series

Sometimes, having to delay is not a bad thing. In the case of shows with limited resources, a real surprise can come our way. In this case, it is a location that literally was not available when we originally planned to shoot the first episode of this series. It is being managed by one of our favorite crew guys who worked both The Privateers and Demon Under Glass. It's also a five minute walk for Jon and me and a five minute drive for Garett Maggart. Now, two of our main locations are very close to home. I'm not implying that we're lazy, but not having to deal with freeway traffic to do this shoot is a very, very good thing. Also, I happened to have an opportunity to speak to Garett about a twist we had in mind to doing the flashback scenes with Simon through the ages of Vampire pop culture. He watches a lot of shows and has an eye for what will play well. When he started making suggestions that had me saying 'okay, that's really screwed up.' I knew we were really onto something. Since we don't have lots in the way of money, we have to make sure everything on screen is interesting through character work and storytelling. These twists really play with the form and do both. I was really happy that he not only got it, he could build on it. That script is well underway now. I'm also working on a web page through blogspot.com. There should actually be something on it by the end of the week.

The Novels

Tonight is an exception as I am still working on the blog, but most nights are reserved for working on one of the novels or both of them. I'm making steady progress. I've actually reached the magical moment with them where I can see so much of what is happening that I am merely reporting what is unfolding almost on its own. There have been some very interesting deviations from my original outlines in both cases, but I like where they are going. What's amazing in the Soldiers book is that there are still things for me to discover about Rik and Vincent. That's very exciting for me as a writer. I'm thinking that it will be exciting for my readers. I'm planning on excerpts in the next week or two.

Stay tuned.

Not the Blog Yet

2011-05-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

I was late starting the blog on Sunday. Then, we went grocery shopping later than planned. I finally settled down to write the thing after a really late dinner when THE news broke. I don't look at extended news coverage anymore. I could only stand the coverage of the earthquake in Japan because it was in Japanese. I didn't watch the royal wedding not because of what it was but because news commentators send me up the wall. Though it may be noted, and would make my dear late mother and her sisters very proud, I noted that the bride's dress reminded me strongly of Princess Grace's with but ONE glance. It's a Harris sister thing. Anyway, given the gravity of the news, I couldn't not look at the coverage. Heck, I even delayed watching Last Cake Standing. Due to the nature of the coverage, I couldn't split my focus as I sometimes can. And afterward, I was exhausted for some reason. This is my very long winded way of saying that the blog will be up later today or tonight. There is a for real Freak Show, a gigantic hat, the Month of Fun and Updates.

Stay tuned.

Feasts, Freedom, Fundraising and Updates

2011-04-24T15:47:00.000-07:00

Sandra Lee is doing soul food on TV that is confusing me. I'm not horrified like I was over her Kwanza Cake. But I am confused. Now, she's making grits. Oh, dear. I wasn't even planning on looking at her, but once I start, I can't seem to stop. She's strangely fascinating. Today is a holiday (Happy Easter everyone!), so it's a big food day. I have a lot of ingredients about that I don't typically include in my pantry. Like evaporated milk. Evaporated milk reminds me of the holidays - especially when it's in coffee. That may sound a might strange to you latte and capuccino fans, but I like evaporated milk in my coffee. I buy it at holidays to use in sweet potato pies as my mother did. And, like her, I used the left over evaporated milk in my coffee. There is always some left over, and she didn't like it to go to waste. I associated the taste of the combination with holidays. I'm enjoying a cup right now. Then, I must get back to cooking. The meat and dessert are done. Only the side dishes remain. No, we're not having company for this meal. It's just a holiday habit to cook a feast. Like the Easter 'basket.' Besides, there will be lots of leftovers and minimal cooking during the week. That's very good for me as we have a very busy week.

Tube Free at Last

On Wednesday, almost a year to the day, I had an abdominal catheter removed. It should have been gone a year ago, but that is a long, exasperating story that I'd rather not get go into right now. Aside from being free to enjoy baths again and not just showers, I am now free of anything chemo related inside me. I can really start exercising which will help me mitigate the impact of the chemo side effects. It's just all around good. The next hurdle to clear is to get the docs to let me administer my own B-12 shots. It's the only appointment keeping me going back once a month instead of every three months. It's a really long trip there and back for a ten minute appointment. In the grand scheme of things, it's just an inconvenience. It will become more of an issue when I go back to work full time. But that worry is for another day. Right now, I'm just slap happy to be able to do crunches or take a bubble bath. Hey, I could go crazy and do both! I've come a long, long way. This time last year, I was in the ICU sucking on glycerin sponge pops while watching Judge Mathis. Life is way better now. There is one thing that really troubles me though. Craig has volunteered to be my personal trainer. He's insisted on it, in fact. That is a scary thought.

The Secret Cancer Documentary

While Jon has been and still is working on the re-write of the horror script, I've been working on the documentary. There isn't much in the way of writing like a script, but there is a lot of coordinating and reading. There is a new website. You can find the link HERE. I also launched a fund raising initiative yesterday on a page that helps creative people raise money for all sorts of ventures that don't attract the typical investor. You can find info on the campaign and what we're offering to investors at this LINK or the one on the side of this blog. I also started a Facebook page and a Twitter page. I have to cover all the social media to reach as many people as possible. The set up is time consuming, but I do believe that it's as effective nowadays as a publicist. Oh, and about the fund raising effort. I will be nagging about that here, on my Facebook and on Twitter for 90 days or until we reach our goal. This is a really important initiative and it needs as much support as possible.

I must give a shout out and a big thank you to my volunteer film crew in Philly and in Ohio. Thanks to my darlin' nephew, Brian for agreeing to help me out during the shoot in Philly. And a big thanks to Randy and Ross for agreeing to PA in Cleveland in August. To quote Randy, PA is Latin for circus monkey which is how hard they work. There's a good example of what it's like HERE .

Updates

The Novels – I've been making nice, steady progress on them despite all the goings on. I hope to get them to the proofreader before we head to Philly in June. I've been really tickled with having Colonel Rik Heron put my vampire Simon through the equivalent of boot camp. The other book is shaping up nicely as well.

The Film and Web Series – We're about to complete casting for the film. We've confirmed on lead and are waiting for the other. As soon as I get paperwork back and confirm the start date, I'll formally announce everything. I did set up the blog page for the field notes and photos. We may even put up some of the behind the scenes footage Jon and I will be shooting. The Web Series should have a script soon – in the next week or so.

Stay tuned.

Me and Audrey, New Cause and Updates

2011-04-17T13:15:00.000-07:00

With all this writing I've been doing, my gentle readers have been wondering if I was still cooking. Oh yes, I am. In fact, most of my breaks from the grind were to chop up some veggies (that is like meditating for me somehow) or make a meal. I've actually discovered another cooking show, Your Japanese Kitchen. Now, the music is incongruous and the co-host is odd (here is a sample ), but I've been learning some very interesting tips from her and improved on a dish I really enjoy. I made gyoza , Japanese pan fired dumplings, last week.. It was a simpler recipe than I've tried in the past. I also learned about garlic chives which are tasty in many things. To be fair, I wouldn't even attempt the recipes if I didn't live very close to a Japanese supermarket. I would, however, watch this show. There is something calming about her technique.

I've also had a revelation about making gravies and sauces. The television was watching me early one morning as I had left it on. On it was Chuck's Day Off with Montreal chef Chuck Hughes. He was making a roasted garlic soup using a roux made with roasted garlic, butter and flour. I had a eureka moment. I could add roasted garlic to some of my gravies and sauces. It wouldn't work every situation – like turkey, but it certainly works for beef and pork. This is a delicious combination, in fact. Also, anytime garlic can get in the body, it's a good thing. Oh, I also plan to make the garlic soup. It looked yummy.

Road Less Traveled

Well, less traveled by me. The road is actually crazy traveled all the time. It's just not one that Jon and I use. Olympic Blvd. is about ten minutes away depending on traffic. We had to go to Staples for some paper. It was then that I noticed there was a Trader Joe's a block away. A half a block from that was an enormous Ralphs supermarket. I was ecstatic. I haven't shopped at a Trader Joe's since we moved to this place four years ago. I have missed that store so very much. There are some nice foodie products like truffle oils for great prices. And then there is two buck Chuck, their lovely wine, that sells for $1.99. At least, it did the last time I visited. These stores are easier for us to get there than the Marina on weekends, and I have more options with weekly sales. This was all very exciting.

On Not Making Jon Crazy

I made a difficult decision for a net head when I was diagnosed with cancer. I decided to steer clear of websites about Appendix Cancers – especially the stories from the other patients and survivors. The reason, dear readers, is that I am a bit of a nutter. I will internalize the experience I read about and worry incessantly that I will suffer the same fate. I don't exhibit symptoms I read about. I just worry about them. I am an Olympic caliber worrier. When I worry, I don't sleep or eat – two bad things in a cancer patient. And negative stories about survival were bound to have an impact on my outlook which can be deadly. Of course, I was extremely curious about the cancer – which is formally called: Mucinous Adenocarcinoma of the Appendix and Pseudomyxoma Peritonei or PMP. Info can be found via the links alongside this blog. But I knew it would be more problematic to know more than what the doctors were telling me until I was further along in my treatment. I did it for me so I would have the best chance at survival. And I did it for the Hubs, so I wouldn't make him crazy with worry about my worrying. I also made sure that he was eating (and when I was too weak to keep an eye on that, I had Craig nag him about eating and sleeping). He's come out of all this more stressed than he'd like to admit. I think that the end of the Archive or as we like to view it, a sudden writing grant from California unemployment, has been good for him. I think he's needed the time to vegetate. He's back to his usually squirrely self. Now, I think he's ready to make a film. Actually, two. But more on that later.

A New Community and Cause

When I finally looked at the web pages about PMP, I found a whole community of people with this rare disease. I also found that most of the stories about how they were diagnosed were similar – sometimes identical – to mine. Namely, mistakes were made in diagnosing PMP. Usually, it was multiple mistakes over several months or years before the correct diagnosis was made. PMP is so rare (only 1500 cases a year in the US), that most doctors never come across it over the course of their careers. So, the failure to correctly diagnose is not a matter of negligence, it's lack of awareness. And that is frightening. I was extremely lucky to have had a primary care doc who had been trained by a doc who had been trained by the only expert in PMP in this country. Still, it took all of my symptoms aligning in her head, after three different treatments failed, to make the right diagnosis. I had the version of PMP that was very slow growing and remained localized in my abdomen. Thus, I was still stage one despite having been sick for years – long enough for the tumor to get big enough to rupture my appendix. Despite all of that, my prognosis was excellent. Others I've recently met have the much more aggressive version of the cancer. In the same amount of time, they had made it to stage 3 or 4 and it had invaded lymph nodes or other organs. Time is not the friend of this type of PMP. It was what killed Audrey Hepburn. She too went for quite some time without a correct finding of the cancer.

All of this was distressing. I wanted to do something to help raise awareness among potential patients and among doctors. The first thing I'm doing is participating in an Awareness Walk that happens to be in Philadelphia this June. More info about it can be found HERE. It's too early right now to register for the walk, but I believe you can donate. At any rate, I'll start bugging folks about it starting in May. I'm starting my training this week. I'm hoping for a lot of support. The other way we're helping the cause is by doing the thing we came out here to do. We're making a film. The documentary called 'The Silent Cancer' will begin shooting in June. Aside from the Awareness Walk, there is a conference in Philly that week featuring the doctor who pioneered the treatment for PMP and trained the doc who trained mine. I've also entered into discussions with Audrey Hepburn's sons about howthey will participate in the film. I am thrilled about this as I have been a life long fan of her work. And if you are wondering about how to support that effort, I'll be posting information about that mid-week.

Updates

Meanwhile, I've just been relayed a message from the horror film's director that we're going to start shooting in three weeks. Okay then. Jon is still doing the re-write, but what are you going to do? What I'm going to do when I get back from Trader Joe's is finish the shooting schedule. That should be ready by tomorrow. I'll have a blog page up for the film after every one has signed. My field notes from the shoot will be there, here and on my Facebook page. There sill be more photos on the field note blog though.

While all this is going on, I am back to working on the novels. I've been managing a few pages a night when everything else has gone quite. Time with my gorgeous men is my refuge from all I've gotten myself into during the day.

Stay tuned!

Homework, Stick Work, and Compound Nouns

2011-04-10T19:58:00.000-07:00

It has long been my dream to be able to afford to stay home and write. It's been an even bigger dream to be writing for something that was about to be produced or published. I had imagined just how amazingly awesome that would be. Of course there would be some sort of libation and possibly some nibbles involved. And in the midst of it all, the words and scenes would come as easily as making toast. Have I ever mentioned how often I burn toast?

Like most things in life, writing a script for eminent production is not all that I had imagined it would be. I sat most things in life, because some things in life are better than I had imagined. For example, Vancouver in the dead of winter (incredibly beautiful) or France in the spring (ridiculously beautiful). But writing under deadline like that even without a day job to further crunch the time available is not easy. When we wrote Demon Under Glass, we had a project that already existed in a treatment. We simply had to fill in the script while keeping limited resources in mind. [That was how the cow bloodletting did not make it into the script. For those who don't know about the cow, the short version is we were going to have the captive vampire feed on a live cow in the isolation tank. Before we finished the first draft we found out that renting a real cow – and yes, that's possible – or a mechanical cow – also more available than one would think – would have cost a significant percentage of the budget. In the case of the live cow, our insurance rider would have been enormous and we would have had to have someone from the ASPCA present to make sure no one actually fed on the cow. Also CGI cows weren't as easily obtained as they are now making them as expensive as the other options. ]. And that was the short version. When a detailed treatment exists, writing the script is relatively simple. You always wish for more time to tweak, but it can get done.

The Warehouse Movie (it has a name, but I'll get into that later) was not even a concept six weeks ago. We had a concept for something vaguely similar based on a building our former roommate works in. But this space was completely different. It was so different that we couldn't adapt that other concept to work in the space. Thus, we had to start over. Craig is the reigning king of stories about people doing goofy things that run into something dangerous. I went to him for inspiration. He gave me so many ideas and other assistance that he's getting part of the Story By credit. Of course, collaborating with Craig has its price. More on that later as well.

Typically, after the concept comes a short treatment. For us, that's usually 5 to 10 pages. Then, we like to do a really detailed treatment of 20 to 50 pages when all of the action and transitions are thoroughly worked out and all that remains is writing the dialogue. For Demon Under Glass, we had the short treatment already, so we were able to move on to the longer treatment before working on the actual script. We didn't have that luxury this time. All I had was a vague seven page treatment and a basic character breakdown sheet. And though there wasn't a stated deadline, I was aware that the time that we would have the space to shoot in was limited and a window would be closing in the next couple of months. Basically, it needed to be done now, now, now.

Thus, for the last couple of weeks I've been working full time as a screenplay writer. The first thing I realized is that having a structure really helps. When I had the day job, the structure was writing happened after dinner was consumed and cleared away until the bedtime ritual began. I thought having an expanse of time from morning until after midnight would make me more productive, but that really didn't prove to be the case. I needed a routine to keep focused. The first couple of days suffered as I figured out how to allocate my time.

First, I had to accept that even if I'm not leaving the apartment for anything, I really need two hours to go from sleep to fully functioning. One of the side effects I have to battle is incredible joint pain and stiffness which is especially bad early in my day. After I do the morning rituals and deal with that, I write for a few hours. If I don't make lunch, Jon will work through until dinner with his headphones on editing. Lack of food gives him headaches and makes him cranky, so I make lunch. I usually take that opportunity to do some prep for dinner like put on a pot of collard greens or something else that needs low and slow cooking. Then, it's back to writing until the evening and dinner. The longest stretch of writing is the evening. I might go from 7pm to 1am with only the odd break now and then. The smaller chunks of time writing meant more pages somehow. I never quite mastered writing while having nibbles. Any sort of snack brought the flow of work to a halt. Though I really enjoyed some of those snacks – especially the onion and leek soup alongside french bread smeared with a bit of foie gras. Likewise, libations didn't work well with writing. One glass of wine would make me sleepy and I'd end up napping. So much for being a two fisted drinking writer like the greats of old.

I'm not saying that it was all difficult. As usual, most of the pressure came from me putting it on myself. When I was just letting the pages come as they would, I was having a great time. It helps that we know two of the actors involved very well and that made writing dialogue a real hoot. One actor is a very respectable, self-possessed lady who has long held positions of great responsibility. We decided that she needed a completely evil, salacious side. It was a kind of role she had never played before and would be a lot of fun. The other is an actor who looms largely in most of our productions. He has an amazing and twisted sense of humor. It was fun to figure out what this actor might say if he were in this given situation. It was a lot of fun putting him in those situations. The third actor is known for a certain type of role. Again, we decided that he needed to show a vastly different side. I blended my love of 60s and 70s era cop shows with my warped sense of humor and a very odd horror film hero was born. He has been a whole lot of fun to write. I really can't wait to see him come to life.

But the true joy of writing this script came from my primary research source to all things strange, Craig. I asked him for information on some of the worst things that the LAPD was accused of in the bad old days when it was said that corruption ran rampant. I then learned about things like 'stick work' (use of a baton in ways that were not appropriate) or 'tune ups' (things certain police were said to have done to suspects to get information or punish miscreants). And I kept for getting the name of the mob family in New Jersey that is said to have killed their own don because they discovered he was gay (the DeCavalcantes). Craig is like a very strange and scary wikipedia.

And then, we get to naming the film. I laughed so hard that I cried.

Me: What about Tentacles?

Craig: There is already a film called Tentacles. Jonh Houston and Henry Fonda were in it.

Me: Stop lying!

Craig: It's true. I think the creature had one big eye and a beak. We have got to have one big eye and a beak in ours.

Me: I wanted the monster from It Conquered the World, but I got overruled.

Craig: What about Sharktopus?

Me: You know that's taken, and there's no shark.

Craig: Whatever it is has to have the Alchamagod in it.

Me: What the hell is an Alchamagod?

Craig: One of those made up words they put in the third sequel to a really bad film.

Me: This is the first film, Craig.

Craig: That's what makes it perfect.

It went on like that for quite a while. And in that conversation above are parts of the name of the film. I can't talk about the title or the actors cast quite yet. Everything is still being firmed up. I should have more news on the film and when it will shoot by this time next week. Fingers crossed.

I've also been working on new recipes and techniques!

Stay tuned!

Blog Delay -- Deadlines and Side Effects

2011-04-03T14:02:00.000-07:00

I have a deadline for the Horror Movie (it's now, now, now basically). Meanwhile, my joints have decided to be uncooperative with my deadline concerns.Thus, all my focus has to be on finishing the script. This has become quite an exciting and fun project that has generated a lot of creativity in all of us.

The upside is that there will be a lot to share next week (like who is in the horror film and when we start shooting) including a cooking revelation (it's so obvious but I've never seen it done).

Stay tuned.

Pains & Gains, Irish Butter and Updates

2011-03-28T12:18:00.000-07:00

My reward for taking a long walk to and from the Mar Vista Farmer's Market was an astonishing hunk of fresh baguette with a light, light smear of Irish butter. The crust is perfectly crunchy and the inside is remarkably tender. The butter was sweet and somehow not greasy. Paired together, it was a most delightful snack. The market was a treat on its own. Though I was too late for the squash blossoms again, I found amazing produce like a fat leek with over a foot of white or light leaves. And then there were the huge shallots and big, beautiful tomatoes. Oh, and there was the baguette. All of this was on top of a really beautiful day. Or it was by the time we started walking home. It had been raining mightily earlier and there were still big, dark clouds lurking about when we started out.

The weekend has been wonderful, food and beverage wise. My walk yesterday centered around a trip to Beverage Warehouse, a liquor, wine and beer outlet store in the neighborhood. Friend and former Boders Books colleague, Adam, recommended some wines on his website, PinotNow.com . I found two of the five mentioned in recent blogs on the site. Both wines, Montepulciano d’Abruzzo and Carmenère were only $7.99. I've only tried the d'Abruzzo so far. It was just wonderful. I can't wait to try the Carmenère. I also found a Spanish sparkling wine, Cristalino Brut Cava for the same price. It has excellent reviews. I look forward to trying that as well. Adam is going to walk me through the place at sometime soon to point out the other deals. I'm very pleased and excited with what I've already found.

Gains and Pains

As it is with the ying and yang of life, there are setbacks with progress. I managed to hurt one knee while simply moving around the apartment. The pain from that is enough to put me back on the sofa. When looking at the grand scheme of things, it isn't a terrible set back. Some ice on the knee along with an analgesic and some rest will set it right. I will likely have to push back some of my errands this week, but that won't hurt any of the projects. All of this is reasonable, but I'm usually not reasonable right away. I have a tendency to initially freak out then work my way back to reasonable. Craig (who advised me about the ice) already fussed at me about wanting to do too much to soon. He said I should be eating bon bons on the sofa or be fanned by a Nubian. I was watching Cleopatra at the time. Jon doesn't fuss at me. He knows that I'll get back to sane eventually. However, he does keep me from getting up too much. I'll take it easy tomorrow, but I won't postpone anything yet.

More Palate Perils

After last week's blog, friends pointed out that I've been exposed to other expensive foods with varying impacts on my finances. The most recent is imported Irish butter. I hadn't planned on trying it. It's expensive compared to full price supermarket butter. I pooh poohed the notion of baking cookies with it as suggested by some of my Food Network chefs. I still do pooh pooh that notion. With all the spices and ingredients like chocolate chips, I think it is impossible to taste the difference between regular, domestic butter and Irish butter. So how did I end up spreading it on my baguette? I noticed that it was only a dollar more than the regular butter I buy at Costco for almost the same number of pounds. We tried it as part of our St. Patrick's Day meal. I must say, it is creamier and tastier than regular butter on bread or in mashed potatoes. It's amazing on mashed potatoes. I wouldn't but it every time I shop for butter, but as a once in a while treat, it's definitely worth the money.

The most extravagant palate peril I've had anywhere was Latvian Ossetra Caviar. Our former roommate's family was from Latvia. They visited almost every summer and brought back a lot of gifts. On at least three occasions, one of the gifts was this honking large tin of Ossetra Caviar. I had had it before at the odd New Year's Eve party, but nothing that good. We had it often enough and in such quantities that I considered purchasing a mother of pearl spoon to scoop it with. Alas, the sturgeon population became stressed after a while. These gifts got way too expensive – even for someone buying it in Latvia. We stopped receiving them. There was never an impact to my wallet, because I just never felt a driving need to pay almost $100 an ounce for anything. Nope. Not happening. I will, however, gladly accept gifts.

Updates or Craig vs The Film Industry

Craig has just interrupted me in taking up the blog this Monday morning with a rant about the Jheri Curl. I'm not sure what prompted the rant or where it was headed. I'm still waking up from the affects of pain meds, so not much is making sense. Still, we must press on!

Craig's problems with the film industry have nothing to do with really bad films like Eegah [look, I found the trailer for Eegah ] or Battle LA. Writer's note: These are not my opinion of either film as I have not seen them. These are Craig's strongly held views. Mind, he voluntarily watched both films, so I don't feel sorry for him. At any rate, his latest battle with the film industry goes far beyond yelling at JJ Abrams for begin a hack (he was in Craig's neighborhood quite often for some reason). Craig helped a good buddy of his actively wage war against Film LA over allowing a disruptive number of shoots in his friend's neighborhood. I'm not sure of the details of the battle as it was occurring at about the time I was really getting sick, but I do remember seeing one of the neighborhood meetings on the local news. It was contentious. And I've noticed the results when recently dealing with Film LA. There is a lot of advice offered – no insisted upon – about the community outreach necessary before shooting in a residential neighborhood.

Despite all of this, Craig is very handy to have during pre-production and on a shoot. Since I'm stuck on a sofa, he's been helping me with things like finding production insurance and locations. The latest locale I've been after is a Victorian house. There are quite a number of them near USC and near Downtown LA. Since he's lived all over the city, I knew Craig would know where to find them. Alas, the ones he knew of are, according to him, filled with surfers and dirtbags. He suggested that they would be great extras in a zombie film. No make-up would be necessary. Unfortunately, I needed a non-zombie scene set in the Victorian era. He did give me some good leads though. Craig has also agreed to work with me during the horror film shoot and the Demon Under Glass web series. He's very good at keeping me sane and happy during a shoot. I suspect his goal during these shoots is to keep me from doing too much running around. In exchange for his presence, we've agreed to give him his usual nine seconds of screen time as we did in Demon Under Glass. Thus, on the web series, I have almost all of my location, costume and prop issues resolved. I am now turning my attention to the bureaucracy of a shoot (insurance, guilds, blah blah, blah). Still, it looks like we'll be doing the horror feature first. The first draft of that is nearly finished. We're having a lot of fun with that now, and I'm relieved. It's been far easier to write since we took a more twisted view on the material.

The novels haven't been completely put on the back burner. I've found time to keep both moving usually late, late at night (or actually early morning) when Jon has gone to bed and no more work is being done on the script. There may even be an excerpt coming.

Stay tuned.

Exercise, Palate Perils and Updates

2011-03-20T17:10:00.000-07:00

I haven't started really celebrating my clean bill of health in earnest yet. I was treated to a lovely lunch and wonderful conversation that included a toast or two with some dear friends. That is one of my favorite ways of spending time, and I truly and deeply enjoyed it. There were even presents (I'll get into that later). But I haven't begun to go really nuts yet. I am making plans though...lots and lots of plans. I'm looking forward to traveling back east and to shooting one of the web series and even a feature. Then, there are all the cookbooks I'm working through. I had been reluctant to really make plans for so long. I had been afraid of setting myself up for disappointment. Now, I am thinking of absolutely everything I would like to do and see and accomplish. It's all so exciting that I just don't know where to begin.

Work That Body

For now and the immediate future, my primary job is getting back in shape and mitigating the sometimes considerable impact of the chemo side effects until they completely disappear (2 to 6 months). That seems to mean exercise. I've been doing some exercise since I recovered from the first surgery. The exercise then was in the form of leisurely walking for at best a half an hour. Now, the Docs are talking about more vigorous walking and some training with light weights. They want me to do something everyday, but that isn't working for me yet. I find I'm really tired and sometimes sore between bouts of exercise, so I've been doing something every other day.

On Friday, I was mall walking while Jon was having an interview nearby. Now, I know that proponents of mall walking suggest doing it early in the day when most of the stores are closed and the mall is almost empty. People in my way wasn't a problem during my laps around the place. It was all of the portable food that was making me nuts. There was a million milk shake stand and a Baskin Robins stand and a soft pretzel stand and a popcorn stand. Now, after the first surgery and certainly during chemo, I was encouraged to eat whatever I wanted and as much as I wanted. But that was when I had no appetite and was steadily losing weight. Neither of those is a problem right now. Thus, as much as I am pleased to be able to eat ice cream again, I must show some restraint. I'd like to keep the slimness I've had and perhaps even make it down to the weight my primary care Doc wanted me at before everything went haywire. Thus, I kept to one end of the gigantic mall where there was less temptation. I managed quite a few laps with a backpack of groceries on my back. It's a beginning. I plan to start walking along the beach and logging some actual miles soon. It's a year to go to the next LA Marathon. Who knows? Maybe I'll have a whack at walking it. Though if the weather then is as it is now, I'll be swimming it.

Perils of the Palate

There was a time when my taste in wine ran toward the sickly sweet. I can't remember the labels now. I think I blocked them from my brain in shame for ever putting those substances past my lips. At any rate, I was blissfully happy in my ignorance until I began working in New York City. In another life, in the 1980s, I worked on Park Avenue for an advertising firm. Yep, I had power suits, dresses, and I do believe pajamas that had those big should pads. My hair was really big as well. For my 20 something readers – look it up! Sorry, aging sometimes makes me cranky. Where was I? Right.

The company I worked for only had 8 employees and that included the Vice President of the division. So we had our Christmas party at a very fancy restaurant where the servers were there to pull your chair out or help you back every time you got up. It was the kind of meal that had a wine with each course. My first experience with port was at the end of that amazing meal. The wines during the meal were astonishing to me. I remember telling the VP that I really wished I didn't know what good wines were as I would never be the same again. I wasn't. My life got very expensive. The same thing happened when I worked for Trump Plaza Hotel and Casino as a bartender. I worked room service for the high rollers primarily. I also worked the last hour of bar service for one of the 5 star restaurants. Very often, high rollers would have expensive champagne opened only to send it back untouched to return to the tables. Since the bubbly couldn't be re-sold, it was returned to my bar. We were supposed to pour it down the drain, but my bar had no cameras on it, and I felt that was a terrible waste. Thus, I split it with the servers and the kitchen staff. We all developed quite a taste for champagne that ran $50 and up. Luckily, over the years, I have found wines and champagnes that are very reasonable and quite tasty (I found even more in France – another reason to love that country).

However, I always look at an expansion of my palate as potentially dangerous to my wallet. There was a scare with the aged balsamic, but I have found an excellent vendor that is very reasonable (F. Oliver's Oil and Vinegars) and it lasts for a long time. The latest palate peril this week were presents. One was real French Macarons and the other was real Foie Gras. [Before anyone writes to me about the cruelty involved in making this please see the following video of Anthony Bourdain on Foie Gras. If you have issues with people eating meat period, please do not write me. I just spent 18 months being told that I not only needed meat to right various deficiencies, it was strongly suggested that organ meats be included. And until there is meatless bacon, I am not changing my eating habits.] Both gifts were delicately delicious and really difficult to accurately describe. It won't be easy not to consume them as if I was a vacuum. I want to savor them for as long as I can before looking about to see how much they cost to buy here. Merci pour les cadeaux, ma cher!

Updates

Let start with the novels. I re-read what I've written, decided I hated everything and wanted very much to delete the files. But that was on Monday when I didn't know what my Doctor would tell me. I was a bit cranky and terrified about everything that day. By the second dirty vodka martini (a splash of olive brine is added with the vermouth and 3 olives for me), I had changed my mind. By Wednesday, I was back to producing a couple of pages per day on each book. I'm going to take a week off working on them though to finish the horror script.

The horror script which Jon and I are looking at as more of a comedy than a horror script is coming along. The treatment was approved late last week and I'm more than a third of the way through. We have the leads cast. I won't make announcements until we have signatures and shooting dates. I can tell you that it's a fun cast and that helps with the writing. I expect to turn in the first draft by the end of the week. But first I have to find a name for a demon that has lots of tentacles. And I have to figure out numerous humorous ways of killing people. My life is very strange.

The Demon Under Glass web series is coming along in development as well. I've found three locations and the period costumes for the Victorian era. I'm still looking for 1990s era suits. I plan to solve that problem sometime this week then meet with my FX Diva about some other issues. By next Sunday, I believe I will have a shooting date for the web series.

All of this activity does not mean that I'm ready to run around wearing many hats as I once did. Most of my work has been online or on the phone. I can't see myself doing much more on a shoot than yelling at people from a chair where I'll be planted with my feet propped up. As many have told me this week, I've had some great news, but I still have a ways to go before I'm back to my regular levels of activity. So, no worries, I'm behaving.

Stay tuned.

Big News and What's Cooking

2011-03-17T14:17:00.000-07:00

For those who haven't heard, I am deliriously happy to report that I am officially a cancer survivor! Many thanks for all of the kind thoughts, notes, prayers, Tastykakes, soft pretzels and rain dances. I still have issues to work through, but the major goal has been achieved.

Today, I am cooking very divergent dishes – Corned Beef and Cabbage and Falafel with Hummus. As it is St. Patrick's day and my late mother's Feast Day , I am making corned beef and cabbage. I had considered making an Irish dish like lamb stew or Colcannon, but the Irish-American corned beef and cabbage has a special place in my culinary history. It was, in fact, the first full meal I ever cooked for my family. I was still in high school (shout out to my peeps from Cardinal Dougherty), but that meal was the beginning of my taking over cooking Sunday dinner for the family. Incidentally, my high school alma mater is the reason I can do the Irish Jig. But I digress. The Falafel and Hummus I'm making from scratch using dried chick peas. I saw the recipes for these on Alton Brown's Good Eats. I really love both Falafel and Hummus on their own, but I really enjoy them in a pita sandwich or on a platter with a little Greek salad. I'm even going to make my own Tzatziki sauce. That is a lot easier to do than it used to be, because Greek yogurt is everywhere now. But those dishes are actually for tomorrow as I go meatless on Fridays during Lent. Today, it's all about the corned beef!

Meanwhile, while everything is simmering in the slow cookers, I'm looking up names of demons. I'll explain more about that on Sunday's blog.

Stay tuned.

Pulled Pork, Crazy Cable News and Facing the Future

2011-03-13T19:07:00.000-07:00

As of 11pm Saturday night, the apartment was filled with warmth and the scent of pork shoulder seasoned with Herbs de Provence roasting in the oven filled the air. It is bound for a pulled pork application in Sunday's dinner. I am having a glass of red wine while struggling through a film treatment. More on that later.

24 hour News Idiocy

According to the eleven o'clock local news on Saturday night, the tsunami warning has been lifted on the west coast. Those warnings, what they mean and how the national media covers them became both extremely important and profoundly irritating since the wee small hours of Friday morning. As I have written in a blog of yore, Jon and I live at the edge of a tsunami zone. According to the map we got in a disaster prevention brochure, if we crossed the street, we would be out of the tsunami zone. The brochure implied that there was some magical barrier running between one side of Culver Blvd and the other. Humans could cross, but water and mud could not. That edition of the disaster brochure was very specific in detailing the government response to a tsunami. [Incidentally, this year's edition of disaster brochure covered killer bees, fire ants and deadly mosquitoes. I am not kidding.]

Where was I? Oh, yes. There would be an Emergency Broadcast System (EBS) tsunami warning to the area in general. Those within a mile or so of the ocean would hear the horn sound. I've actually seen two such EBS warnings of tsunami on TV. Each time, friends who lived nearby would call to ask if I, too, saw the warning and if we were evacuating. One friend lived in the Venice canals. I told him that he was likely boned, because he'd never get out of the bottleneck in time. The other lives up a 200 foot cliff in the Palisades. If a tsunami could hit him, we were all done. In neither case did we hear the horn sound. But we know that the EBS does work.

Thus, at 2:30 am when CNN and other cable outlets announced that the west coast of the US was included in the Tsunami warning in the wake of the earthquake in Japan, I wasn't that concerned. We'd know if it was a real problem if the EBS warning came up. But the anchors were whipped up into a frenzy about the waves hitting California that I wondered if they knew something local authorities didn't. Still, no warning came up and the local outlets didn't start their morning coverage early. I began to worry about my relatives seeing the broadcasts. Craig's girlfriend's mother called their place at 3am in hysterics. According to Google maps, they were right next to the ocean and the news was saying it could hit Southern California. She tried to explain to her mother that they were 200 feet above sea level, but the poor woman was about to have a fit. There was no call from back East at our place nor had EBS sounded a warning by 8:30 am when the first wave was to hit. Some beaches and piers were closed mainly to keep idiots from going into the water or getting too far out over it. Even if a big wave didn't come, the currents were unpredictable and a rogue wave was possible. None of the local news outlets ever seemed to think we were in any kind of danger. You'd never know that by the coverage on cable. I called my father just ahead of him calling me. He was getting worried because of the continuing coverage of worst case scenarios. That really ticked me off.

I have drifted from watching cable news coverage of anything but emergencies because of how bad it has become. Maybe it's all the airtime that they have to fill that makes them sound like idiots trying to make more of a story than is necessary. The earthquake was a horrific tragedy on it's own without trying to make the US part of the peril as well. Between the hysteria and the really stupid statements during broadcasts, I think I'd be better off getting my news from Twitter.

The Next Phase

On Tuesday, I find out if I am truly clear of tumors and free to call myself a cancer survivor. I spent a lot of last week giving blood and getting various parts of my body scanned in advance of the appointment. Naturally, I've been worrying myself what ifs. I've actually managed to worry about what would happen if I get the all clear. How on earth would that be a problem? What can I say? I am an expert on worrying. The key is pressing forward despite being wigged out most of the time. Thus, while worrying, I've been making sure to get the exercise suggested to blunt the side effects from Chemo. And I've been eating a diet to correct the deficiencies in my blood. And I am researching the possible day jobs I may take along with the shoots I want to accomplish. I've always thrived on planning and making lists. Such activities naturally force one to focus on the future. And I have a whole lot of lists involving spending time in France. Yes, I am a worry wart, but I have a whole lot of things I plan on doing.

Updates

None for this week. There is a lot going on with the various film projects. And I have some interesting reflections on problems the novels have brought up. And then there is the morning Jon and I spent with Craig en route to hospital tests and dealing with potential tsunamis. It seems that Ray Liotta is the least of his problems with celebrities.

Stay tuned.

Craig, Mardi Gras, Horror and Armani

2011-03-06T22:09:00.000-08:00

Craig came by this morning. He had donuts and a script. The treats were part of a bribe to edit the script. I was afraid of peeking at it right away. The visit was a happening in and of itself. There were no sightings of the Liotta last week. Craig was mostly housebound working on the re-write of the script. Despite the lack of Liotta tales, as it always is with Craig, I was laughing my head off within moments of his arrival and kept laughing until he left. I think the frivolity threw off the rest of my day. I had to get ingredients for Mardi Gras and Ash Wednesday dishes. I'd already made three kinds of stock for these dishes and knew what I wanted to make. Still, it took me a couple a couple hours to focus and figure out what I wanted to do. I'd missed the Farmer's Market again due to the late hour of waking and our visitor. But I still wanted to get in a longish walk to keep up with the exercise therapy. By noon, I figured out where I wanted to go, and what I wanted to get done aside from grocery shopping. But more on that later in the blog.

All You Need to Do

Jon and I have been told on many more than one occasion that all we need to do to kick start our careers is to write a cheap horror movie like the firs Saw or Paranormal Activity . The latter is most often suggested because of how little it cost to shoot. There is a 'how hard can it be?' question that usually goes along with the suggestion. First, Paranormal Activity cost very little in cash, but the filmmaker was already in the Industry and had a whole lot of resources available to him for free or on a deferred basis that we wouldn't have. Second, it isn't easy – at least not for us – to write a slasher film. Neither of us are into or can even tolerate torture porn. It is very, very difficult to write a script in a genre that you truly do not like or respect. Craig agreed adding that it's even hard to crib from other movies and graft something together from the parts. He apparently tried that once and ended up repeatedly shouting 'but that is stupid' at the TV screen and his computer monitor.

So what happens? We get asked to write a horror movie. What can I say? We're in LA and these sorts of things happen. We like and respect the people who asked and if their plan succeeds, it could mean a lot for our careers. But how do we do that after the diatribe above? Well, fortunately the venue this film would be aimed at does allow for a bit of humor around the edges. Sometimes, I've even noticed a bit of wrongness in their films. Jon and I really enjoy injecting wrongness into our work. And we can't help the humor. So, as far as we're concerned, we're writing a comedy with moments of terror and some gore. We really loved the film Hot Fuzz for this sort of mix. That film was one of the most violent films I've ever seen and I couldn't stop laughing. I don't know if we'd get away with that much humor, but there is funny stuff in this script. Even Craig approved before calling us twisted. A high compliment, indeed.

Yes, I know, we made a vampire film (Demon Under Glass). How is that not horror? Well, as far as we're concerned, we made a film noir with a vampire in it. Joe was the poor doomed schlub dragged into a situation that was way over his head, and Simon was the tall, hot blond who dragged him into the situation. Except that he wasn't blond and he was a guy and a vampire.

Other Updates

One of the things that delayed the blog was a trip to the nearby costume house. It's open on Sunday now. So, we were continuing our research for the Demon Under Glass web series by checking out Victorian frock coats and vests. I also took the opportunity to look at head pieces for Vegas Showgirls. That has nothing to do with the web series. It's going to be part of this year's month of fun. Best that's all you know. I think we found a range of acceptable coats and possibly some vests, but we have to make sure that the cut is from the right part of the Victorian era. Yes, that's Jon talking. I would actually smack the person nitpicking about the era of a frock coat if we successfully pull off that flashback scene. I've found that I can get the pants and shirt for the ensemble on ebay. Strangely, dressing the females in the scene is easier. There are a lot more options for rentals or purchase for females somehow. Now, I have to figure out where to find a vintage Versace or Armani suit (circa 1995) that doesn't cost $3000. Yep, I said $3000. I don't think suits, unless they are coated in 24 carat gold, appreciate over twenty years. So I have no idea why I'm running into those prices. But I've solved the Victorian version. I'll find that suit before too long.

Speaking of finding elusive things, I found a location for the bookstore. I'm fairly sure that I'll be able to secure the bar this week. I have a couple of leads on apartments that we'd have to see before making a decision.

The novels are moving along nicely. I manage to work on one or the other of them every day. I'd say that I'm nearing the halfway mark on both. In my head, I have a date for when I'll get them to my reader for editing. But, for now, I'm focusing on forward momentum.

Stay tuned.

Blog Delay

2011-03-06T16:52:00.000-08:00

The blog will be delayed until late tonight or tomorrow. No worries. We're just up to some things that are diverting my attention.

Stay tuned.

Deb vs Cooking, Craig vs Liotta and Updates

2011-02-27T15:40:00.000-08:00

The doppler says we're having gropple. No, I'm not speaking in code. That's what the weather folk are saying this weekend. It's really cold for Southern California (temps in the 30s within the city limits). There has been snow and hail and the gropple (soft hail pellets). We were shocked that there wasn't a 1000 car pile up on the 405 on the rumors of snow. LA drivers don't do well with precipitation. On Friday, the rain was cold and steady. For some reason that messed up the bus schedule. In Philly, buses run in the snow. But because Jon and I were tramping about on foot in the rain, we chanced to see an old gent practicing with a lasso. I was thus inspired to create a Haiku. Ahem.

Codger with lasso
Practicing in pouring rain
LA in winter

Alas, I've been paying for all that running around in the cold rain. I think every one of my joints still hurts. Fortunately, we didn't need to do any running around Saturday. And the forecast for Sunday is clear of rain or snow. All that remains is the cold or relative cold. I'll likely stay in until tomorrow.

Deb vs Madeleines Part Two – The Reckoning

I was thinking of calling the sequel The Bakening, but aside from bakening not being a real word, it sounded too close to bacon. Goodness knows, I really enjoy most things involving bacon, but it really doesn't have anything to do with Madeleines. I figured out what I did wrong in the first recipe. The fault was in the instructions. The eggs and sugar have to be beaten until the mixture is as fluffy as a mousse before the dry ingredients are added. I did not get that from the first recipe I looked at. I could tell the difference in the batter as soon as I spooned it into the pan. It was all way more exciting than it should have been, but I felt quite victorious! Now, I feel that I can move on to more difficult baking recipes. The croissants await!

Recipe Math

So, I was watching my cooking shows last week and got inspired to do some serious meat cooking to refill the freezer. Now, most of the recipes from the shows are geared for the home cook in that their proportions aren't geared toward feeding a battalion of soldiers. So, when I see this really tasty looking meatloaf recipe on the Barefoot Contessa , I decide to give it a try. Jon had mentioned that he'd like to try a meatloaf that wasn't so dependent on ketchup or a tomato sauce. This one had a lot of herbs and aromatics and seemed to keep moist without the ketchup. It was Ina Garten's favorite dish from a local restaurant in the Hamptons , and I noticed that the chef/owner of said restaurant was actually making the dish. Still, I didn't put it together until I had formed the meatloaf on the pan that the recipe was enough for a dinner service at an eatery. Boy, are we good for meatloaf for a while. It was very fortunate that it was, indeed, a very good recipe. Next time though, I'll carefully check the math.

Craig vs Ray Liotta

I got a call from Craig last week with some strange instructions. He said that if anything happened to him, it was Ray Liotta who was behind it and that we should avenge him. My last image of Ray Liotta in person was at our local movie theater. He was with a little

girl wearing a tutu trying to convince the concessions clerk that he wanted nachos without the cheese. It seemed that was how the little girl preferred them. Since he wasn't menacing during what seemed to be a stressful situation (the film was to start very soon), I found it hard to imagine him stalking Craig with ominous intent. So when I stopped laughing, I asked Craig why he thought this was happening. He said he was seeing far too much of the Liotta for it to me an innocent coincidence. Mind, the man does live in the same neighborhood as Craig. But that was cutting no ice with my intensely whacky friend. The final straw came during a contemplative walk through a nearby college campus. Craig was pondering on the fact that he was seeing far too much of the Liotta (his terminology) as he reached the edge of the campus and entered the shopping district. Just then, the Liotta came out of a sun glass store. And this time he chin waived at Craig – a New Jersey acknowledgment that you have indeed seen a lot of each other (both hail from New Jersey). I tried to calm him by explaining that they live in a small enclave that's sort of cut off from the rest of LA. And since both men are between engagements, it's just likely that their paths coincide while running errands. Still, we have our instructions. Thus, Jon and I must be ready to spring into vengeance mode should the need arise. Jon blames me for answering the phone. I found I couldn't watch Goodfellas this week because I was laughing too hard.

Updates

Book wise, I've been making steady progress with both novels. I've been doing two to three pages on each on alternating days. I can't complain about that. However, I'm not going to jinx myself by predicting when they'll be finished especially now that I'm adding pain in my fingers to the other joint pain I've been having.

Film wise, I've been working on a script that I hadn't expected to be writing. It's an entirely new project that I can't really talk about yet. I'm on my own with it for a while as Jon is editing some things that he needs to clear off his slate. I've also been gathering assets (locations, equipment, crew) for the Demon Under Glass Web series. That primarily involves e-mail and phone calls right now. I'm not quite up to running around the county to look at things. Depending on our involvement, which I suspect will be deeply involved, this new film could delay the web series further. We would be working with the actors, but not on what we expected to be shooting. But like finding a codger throwing a lasso in a rainstorm or preparing to exact vengeance on the Liotta, being in Los Angeles means accepting the unexpected.

Stay tuned.

Down Time and Finding Normal

2011-02-20T16:52:00.000-08:00

The house smells of onions and garlic and balsamic vinegar roasting away with a lovely piece of beef brisket in the oven. It's delightful. Mind, I am hours behind schedule getting anything in the oven as we had nothing in the fridge or pantry for Sunday dinner until a couple of hours ago. I've been thrown completely off schedule because of the colds we both had last week. In fact, the roast in the oven has been about the only thing I've accomplished over seven days. Something that smells that yummy deserves buttery mashed potatoes and a hardy veggie. It's so good to be consuming something more than soup. Even if it is good soup – and it was – there's nothing like a good, savory solid meal.

Good, Bad and Really Ugly

The good news about the terrible cold I caught from Jon last week is that my blood counts must be normal. I never spiked a fever, and I was over it pretty much by the end of the week. It was the first cold I've had since November of 2009 before the whole ordeal began. Colds are one of the bogeymen to avoid during chemo. They can delay treatment. Or worse, they can cause a fever which leads to a hospital stay. And the last words from all the various Docs that I see was to avoid getting sick. Those who know the Hubs and I realize that to completely avoid getting sick may involve having Jon live in a small box outside of the apartment. You see, Jon is usually a cold magnet. And as our apartment is very tiny, it is very difficult to avoid each other and surfaces that we may have touched. It's quite amazing that he hadn't had one during this time. Perhaps he knew about my plans for him and that small box.

The bad news about the terrible cold I had last week was other than a perfectly delicious pot of chicken soup, I accomplished nothing. My head was full of wet cotton. I couldn't breath through my nose. Most of the time, I couldn't read. Writing dwindled down to a paragraph or two per day. I didn't even want to talk on the phone. Needless to say, not much was happening other than laying about watching TV or, more often, having the TV watch me sleep. On top of feeling generally miserable and paranoid that I would end up back in an ER, I somehow became convinced that the cold would somehow stop the chemo side effects from going away. It's like the cold somehow pushed a pause button on my recovery. Yes, I know that makes no sense. I'm a creative person, and as such, I'm more than a little touched in the head. Being reduced to a lump on the sofa also gives such a mind far too much time to think strange things. Happily, I'm feeling better now. Breathing is more or less back to normal, and my head doesn't feel like it's full of wet cotton. I actually did a bit of walking for exercise on Saturday.

Degrees of Normal

I get asked how I'm doing a lot, and my replies have been vague. I don't like to list in detail what's going on with me, because it sounds like complaining. I'd never complaining about my current lot, because it could be quite have been a good deal worse. However, I'm quite a ways from being free of chemo side effects. I can't say that I'm close to normal. Apparently, what normal will end up being is anyone's guess right now. I may end up feeling the same as I was before I got sick. I may feel better than I did then. Or I may have a whole new definition of what normal is. It will be several weeks before anything is clear. As for right now, both of my feet are numb. How much of the foot is numb varies day to day. It seems that more and more of the foot is not numb during the day. Why it changes from night to day is a mystery to me. This doesn't keep me from walking though I can't do too much running around. It's mainly weird. My hands have pins and needles sometimes, but not the numbness that's in my feet. I've also got pain in my joints that can get quite intense. Strangely, exercise helps that, so I have to walk and lift things each day. These side effects should fade over time. I'm largely free of nausea though there are still times when my appetite is off or my digestive system is in an uproar. However, I'm managing the side effects well enough to get around with errands and my appointments. I can write and I can cook and I can do some planning for the various projects, so I am content to ride these things out. I still feel that I've been extremely fortunate.

Updates

There aren't many, because I didn't do much last week. We had a production meeting today about an upcoming project. And I made some inquiries about locations for the Demon Under Glass web series. More phone calls on that are up for this week. And it looks like Jon and I have a new script to write.

Next week: The crazies in my life, script writing drama and more updates.

Stay tuned.

DL Warner -- A Work in Progress

The Intern, Jingle Craig and Updates Galore

Food Feats, Hat Tricks and Teasing Updates

Veggie Fun, More on Writing and Scary Updates

Blog Delay -- First of the Year!

Missed Update, Big Thanks and Craig's New Thang

Geeky Rec' of the Day -- Durarara!!

2011 in Review, Many Updates and New Works

Year End Reflection on an Oft Asked Question

Seasons Merriment

Squirrels, Editing Frenzy and Seasonal Viewing

Wacky Week, Singing Craig and Fangirl Fun

Giving Thanks, Word Counts and Updates

Kitchens, Bromances and Other Picture Postcards

Baking Strategies, Close Ups and Updates

Craig vs Critters, Deb vs Japanese and Updates

Road Trip, Fan Girl Fun and Updates

Mall Recon, Calypso and Packing Frenzy

New Blog, New Book and Some Old Chestunts

Delay of Blog

Celebrations, Syndromes and Updates

Readers Ask About Actors, Food and Craig

Distractions, Doubts and Other Joys of Writing

Update on The Secret Cancer Documentary

Birthdays, Baguettes, and Some Updates

Sunsets, Marmosets, and Machinations

Blog Delay

Craig, High Tea, Yoga and Updates

Jenga Piles, Lobster Rolls and Killer Foods

Hacks and Character Arcs and other Arguments

Interventions, Food, Friends and Writing Updates

Craig and Moules, Ampersands and Updates

Bunda Shaking, Creative Baking, and Deadline Mayhem

The Pros of Cons, Civility and Updates

Asterisks, Croissants and Ninjas

Blog delay -- Party in the Yard!

Living Big, Fighting Flour and Some Updates

Insurance Insanity, Kitchen Therapy and Modest Updates

Weekday Blog -- Good News

New Tests, New Recipes and Familiar Foibles

Mosh Pits, Updates and Defending TPTB

Not So Special FX, More Fun and Updates

Possible Blog Delay -- Fiction Emergency

Food Fun, Mega Geekdom and Updates

Birthdays and Curses and Updates

Blog Part Two Delayed

Tiramisu, Juleps and Shirtless Hestons

Big Hat, Big Fun and Big Updates

Not the Blog Yet

Feasts, Freedom, Fundraising and Updates

Me and Audrey, New Cause and Updates

Homework, Stick Work, and Compound Nouns

Blog Delay -- Deadlines and Side Effects

Pains & Gains, Irish Butter and Updates

Exercise, Palate Perils and Updates

Big News and What's Cooking

Pulled Pork, Crazy Cable News and Facing the Future

Craig, Mardi Gras, Horror and Armani

Blog Delay

The blog will be delayed until late tonight or tomorrow. No worries. We're just up to some things that are diverting my attention.

Deb vs Cooking, Craig vs Liotta and Updates

Codger with lassoPracticing in pouring rainLA in winter

Down Time and Finding Normal

Codger with lasso
Practicing in pouring rain
LA in winter