Anyway, 3-almost-4-year-old XY Tax Deduction and I went to Hy-Vee for lunch to kill some time. I love Hy-Vee’s salad bar (best grilled chicken EVER!) and XY TD loves their pizza. And cantaloupe. On the same plate.
It has been my observation that on weekday mornings at Hy-Vee, there is a large number of post-retirement gentlemen sitting around, eating their farmer’s breakfasts and gossiping shooting the breeze, cussing and discussing. They seem to be mostly together, but because of tables and space, they self-select their table companions.
It has been my observation that on weekends when we go see my in-laws in southern Missouri, and we go to the local cafe for breakfast, there is a gathering of four to 10 post-retirement gentlemen sitting around, eating their farmer’s breakfasts and gossiping shooting the breeze, cussing and discussing.
It has been my observation in re-reading the Little House books for the purpose of writing Stay, Pa Ingalls, in the winter, would head out of the house and across the street to the grocery where he would watch off-season farmers play checkers and, I assume, gossip shoot the breeze, cuss and discuss.
Men don’t gossip. They shoot the breeze.
Women have these little conclaves, too, but other than in a church-and-crafts context, I can’t think of anything comparable to men-and-their-morning-cafe-routine.
Every time I witness this, I think, “This is the internet before there was the internet.” And it still seems to be going strong. I love it. I think it’s profound in a lot of different ways, most of which I can’t articulate.
Too bad you have to be retired (or in the off season) to have it and enjoy it.
I haven’t used my eBookwise in a while. I’ve been reading *gasp* paper and on my Asus eeePC in my recliner. So last night I went back to my eBookwise.
It’s cold here (well, for early October, it is). It was toasty warm in my bed. I ducked under the covers and read my eBookwise, holding it in one hand (and the ergonomics on this are prescient).
Some time back ago, I said I wanted an Asus EeePC to read digital books because it was kind of an all-purpose device. As time went on, I decided maybe I’d rather have an iPhone or a BlackBerry, but then I found out about their mandatory data plans and I’m a cheap bitch, so no thanks. I wanted something reasonably portable that I could 1) read digital books on in any format I wanted; 2) listen to music; 3) keep my personal data on (now that I have this awesome personal information management standalone app); and 4) to basically be able to haul my brain around with me. I don’t like talking on the phone, so I would rather not have one at all, but must. I want to keep the phone separate from my other tasks.
Anyhoo, money’s been a little too tight for frills, but then our old (you don’t want to know HOW old) desktops (all three) started nickel’n’diming us to death, so we bit the bullet. I have been given an assignment to return and report the specs and my digital reading experience.
The assignment:
On the Asus, install:
Adobe Reader
Adobe AIR
Adobe Digital Editions (requires AIR, hence 2)
Microsoft Reader
MobiPocket Desktop
Sony eBook Library
FBReader
Then BLOG wtf it’s like to use them on that Atom CPU. (You DO have ATOM, right, not Celeron?)
ADDITIONAL: Try a GOOGLE BOOKS PDF!!
Here are the specs:
Asus EeePC 901 (black, if you care)
Intel Atom
CPU N270
1.6 GHz
1.99 GB RAM
Windows XP Home
2-1/2 pounds (about the weight of Atlas Shrugged, I believe)
~5 hours battery life (>2 hours better than my Dell laptop)
Here’s a gallery with examples of Adobe Reader, ADE, Microsoft Reader, MobiPocket, and FBReader. I have no reason to care about Sony Reader, but will do later, and I haven’t done a Google Books PDF yet.
In normal computer-user mode.
Closeup
Microsoft Reader (LIT). Netbook rotated for reading as a book.
Microsoft Reader (LIT). Netbook rotated for reading as a book.
Closeup Microsoft Reader (LIT). Netbook rotated for reading as a book.
Adobe Reader (PDF). Netbook in normal computer-user mode.
Adobe Reader (PDF). Netbook rotated for reading as a book.
Mobipocket (PRC/MOBI). Netbook in normal computer-user mode.
Mobipocket (PRC/MOBI). Netbook rotated for reading as a book.
FBReader reading EPUB. Netbook in normal computer-user mode.
FBReader reading EPUB. Netbook rotated for reading as a book.
Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) reading EPUB. Netbook in normal computer-user mode.
Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) reading EPUB. Netbook rotated for reading as a book.
So, for the reading part. Thus far, I’ve just been on MobiPocket, reading Soul Identity by Dennis Batchelder, in my recliner. For regular reading, it’s a bit heavy, but if you find your “sweet spot” where you can press the arrow with your thumb and still be comfortable holding it, you get used to it. Naturally, the back light is sweet in the dark.
The only real annoyance I have (besides the weight) so far is how long it takes to turn it on and off. It’s not like my eBookWise, where it’s one button and on, it turns itself off after 15 minutes (or whatever you set). The Asus acts like a computer because, well, it is.
More later after I’ve had a little more time with it.
I have an “official” recipe that I kinda sorta follow sometimes if I feel like it, but usually I have way more hamburger than the amount called for in the official recipe (we buy one cow a year and have most of it, minus the excellent cuts [about which I am very specific] ground into hamburger). This is how I made it last night:
2-1/2 lb hamburger
1-1/2 c bread crumbs (combined my own dried/crumbled with boughten seasoned)
1 c milk
1/2 c yellow onion, chopped
2 eggs
2 T Worcestershire sauce (this is the key to a good meatloaf, IMO)
1 tsp salt
1 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp pepper
1/2 tsp ground sage
Mix all ingredients (knead it with your hands as you would bread dough) and put into a springform pan. Put on an aluminum-foil-lined cookie sheet. Cook at 350F for 1 hour.
Add ketchup as needed.
NOTE: For low-carb version, substitute bread crumbs with chopped mushrooms (not the kind from the can).
If you’re easily squicked about meat and the eating thereof, you may stop reading right here.
I love steak tartare. If you don’t know what that is, it’s raw ground sirloin with egg and capons and a bunch of spices in it. I eat this meatloaf raw once I get all the spices worked in and settled. Sometimes I’ll add a little extra Worcestershire sauce. Poor woman’s tartare.
Here’s to me and Dude, who got married 7 years ago in the LDS Nauvoo, Illinois temple (very soon after it re-opened). Yeah, we got married on a Friday. The 13th. On purpose.
And in case you think you’re seeing things, yes, this is what I posted last year. Because it’s been over a year blogging and I love him more now than I did last year.
I have nothing to say and too much to do. I meant to get my edits on Stay finished this weekend, but the widespread WordPress attack [dead link] hit theproviso.com and I spent my weekend, instead, cleaning up after that mess. And I still have a bunch to do before I’m satisfied with my sites.
The blog I just linked made the assertion that we should’ve upgraded. I made a deliberate decision not to because the last time I auto-upgraded, it broke my shopping cart and photo gallery plugins. I had to rebuild Peculiar Page’s shopping cart twice (which still doesn’t work and redirects to B10 Mediaworx), and B10 Mediaworx’s once, which, thankfully, works. To me, it was a no-win situation and in hindsight, I see that I would’ve had to waste all that time anyway.
There was one thing that kept me from being hit on all my other sites, and that was the fact that I didn’t have “Anyone can register” checked. Only on theproviso.com did I have that, and sure enough, that was the one that went down.
I made a Zazzle store for products with quotable quotes from or inspired by The Proviso and Stay. Culled them from fans, and I’m nowhere close to finished, but I’m trying to be more like the musicians who can merchandise the hell out of their music. Now, if I could figure out a way to go on tour …
In other news, Mrs. Giggles says she’s bored with romance bloggerland [dead link]. So’m I, for all the reasons she listed. And you know, as much as I hate feeling like every time I post somewhere or tweet, it’s self-promotion (because it is, except most of my Twitterstream is me being completely silly stoopid or whining about something), at least I don’t have 90 days or fewer to make certain my sales numbers are enough to sell another book. That’s not a brag. It’s a statement of gratitude. I’m bored of most of all the rest of my regular blogs, too.
I also won’t be reading much of anything for pleasure.
Anyhoo, I’m making my blog vacation official since, you know, I haven’t actually said anything in a week or so because I tend to not speak when I have nothing new to say. Check my archives. Whatever it is, I’ve said it already. Twice.
I have much to do before Thanksgiving and I intend to get it all done.
I’ve taken a lot of heat the last couple of months because I dared to say that the bodice ripper romance was a product of its time and thus needed to be considered for the time in which it was written. Is the forced seduction PC? No, and never was. It was a fantasy, a fantasy that, if the contemporary nonfiction literature at the time is to be believed (both anecdotal and academic), was common. Considering the number of those written and sold, I’d say it was a pretty popular one, all dressed up in period clothing and the mores that clothing represented.
Also lately, around the romance blogs, historical and contemporary romance/erotic romance with bodice-ripper elements have been ridiculed, maybe rightly, maybe not. But in a romance reading public that’s taking to male/male romance and BDSM romance, this abhorrence of the longest-running sexual fantasy in romance is bewildering to me. Women have their fantasies. Some of them involve the forced seduction. Is it PC? Absolutely not. Is it valid? Yes.
Genre romance has always thrived on the power imbalance between the male and female, but this has its caveats, and the caveats make up the majority of the fantasy:
The heroine is always clearly superior to any male in her milieu except for the hero, who is the only male strong enough to conquer her.
The heroine is always isolated from female companionship for many reasons, one of which is that she is superior to all other females and thus, the object of female derision/jealousy. If there is a female, she takes on a mentor/sister/mother/fairy godmother persona.
She’s already attracted to him and he gets her off.
The “asshole alpha”’s transformation into acceptable mate material depends on whether his eventual groveling is equivalent to his previous assholishness.
He better damn well grovel and do it right.
At the end of the book, the reader knows that while the heroine can go on and live without the hero, the hero cannot live without the heroine. He always winds up more dependent on the heroine’s love and presence than she is on his, turning the power imbalance 180 degrees.
It’s all about the groveling.
Other than the innumerable authors who write the six Harlequin Presents novels every month, I can’t really name any contemporary romance authors who write the “asshole alpha” except, perhaps Susan Elizabeth Phillips, and boy does she write good groveling, viz. Kiss an Angel, which is one of only five romances on my DIK list1 (and the only contemporary).
Lately, Anna Campbell and others have come back with the bodice ripper, but again, they write historical and I don’t think it does anybody any good to pretend that some of these characters are a century or two more enlightened than the people around them at the time.
The power imbalances in my own book have been pointed out to me with startling clarity, and I’ve been chewing on this for days, not because I disagree in the case of Knox and Justice (an homage to the Harlequin Presents line of books I cut my teeth on and my best crack at writing an anti-hero), but because I do disagree in the cases of Giselle and Bryce, and Sebastian and Eilis. I’m not going to go into why because that entails spoilers.
What ultimately brings me to write this post, though, is because lately, despite my professed ambivalence (possibly distaste) for paranormal romance and urban fantasy, I’ve been reading a few books (that I liked!) that have led me to a conclusion:
The asshole alpha still lives and breathes, as assholish as he ever was. The bodice ripper hasn’t gone away. The forced seduction hasn’t lost its appeal.
It’s morphed.
Into demons, werebeasts, vampires, ghosts, ghouls, goblins, and things that go bump in the night. In many, many cases it’s further disguised as the (overused) “one true mate and nature has given us no choice” device.
Only now, because it’s dressed up in con clothes and otherworldly window decoration, it’s perfectly acceptable. Except … some of us don’t care for the window dressing.
I also made a statement a while back that a lot of Mormon authors write our basic tenets and philosophies and beliefs and religious history in science fiction and fantasy, where it’s almost or fully unrecognizable to non Mormons. I said that I thought it was cowardly. I was told by one author that his first instinct was to write science fiction/fantasy and that the incorporation of our doctrine, traditions, and culture was secondary. I believe that—for that author. I don’t believe it across the board.
Why does this happen? Perhaps because suddenly, one person’s fantasy/message is another person’s call to battle?
I don’t write that way. I can’t wrap the bodice ripper up in paranormal and urban fantasy paper and put a shibari bow on it because that doesn’t appeal to me, although the sex probably will. I can’t put a pretty dress on what is, to many readers, an ugly philosophy/belief system in science fiction and fantasy because that doesn’t appeal to me, although the philosophy will.
This is why I like erotica, because, by its very nature and reader expectations, it’s bald. It’s honest. It’s also why I did actually appreciate The Actor and the Housewife for one thing: It put our culture and beliefs and jargon out in the open honestly, naturally, with no apology or preaching.
I want it straight and I write it that way. I call it what it is because that appeals to me, the honesty of it, the setting of human-as-animal in a contemporary world where our baser wants and needs are not only taboo, but ignored as if they don’t exist. And likewise, where our spirituality/religious beliefs offend a whole lot of people, and short shrift is given to the struggle between the natural (human) man and the enlightened (human) one, who attempts to control himself and sometimes simply doesn’t.
I have no issue with control, losing it, struggling with it, conquering the natural man. After all, that’s why we’re here, right? To vanquish the natural man?
But I’m interested in the process.
And the groveling.
I don’t expect a non genre romance reader to get this, so the objections I’ve received have only made me think about the genre, think about why women read romance, the vast subgenres of romance, and why some women despise genre romance altogether.
Whatever universal truths are revealed in fiction, no matter how they’re portrayed, I don’t give a shit about vampires or demons trying to overcome their natures to be moral creatures because vampires and demons don’t exist.
I don’t give a shit about a being (possibly alien) who drives a spaceship for a living (or who has some fantastical adventure) who’s going through some vague spiritual struggle that Mormons can drill down to the most minute nuance, and might kinda look like Mormonism to anybody with a passing familiarity, because I can’t relate to that.
I can relate to asshole people whose feet are planted on earth, who don’t have regular contact with the boogeyman or aliens, who have no magic or fae blood, no superpowers, who strive and fall and fail and lose themselves in their baser natures, who want something better for themselves but may not know how to get it, who make bad choices and know it even while they’re doing it, who depend on other people or a religion or a deity or a philosophy to help “fix” them.
We all need fixed in one way or another, and there is always a power imbalance in a relationship. It shifts and it changes and it morphs and it takes time to level out as much as it’s ever going to. It’s a neverending process, and sometimes it seems like being on a hamster wheel.
How do I know this?
’Cause I’m an asshole and I strive and I fall and I fail and I lose myself in my baser nature, trying, always striving, for enlightenment. And because I need my husband to “fix” me, and I daresay he needs me to “fix” him, too.
And we both have to grovel.
But please, can we stop pretending the forced seduction romance, and the inherent power imbalance the male has over the female is gone? It’s not. It never will be. We like it too much, and, as a fantasy, it’s no less valid than the up-and-coming PC fantasies of male/male romance or BDSM romance in all its incarnations.
It’s just been driven into the closet.
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1. A DIK, otherwise known as a Desert Isle Keeper, is the kind of book you’d want with you if your ship went down at sea.
Continuing with the theme of what Mojo cooks because she hates to, and this is what her mother cooked and so she likes it enough to cook it:
This should probably fall under the heading “no brainer,” but these are the best enchiladas I’ve ever had, bar none.
I got 27 enchiladas out of this today:
3 Tb flour
3 Tb shortening (probably really should use lard, but I didn’t have any)
3 c water
12 oz taco seasoning1
32-oz bag of finely grated cheese (I like sharp cheddar)
3 medium yellow onions, finely chopped2
corn tortillas
Oven to 350F.
Melt flour and shortening/lard together in a huge skillet and/or wok-like pan, and stir until smooth and bubbly. Add water and taco seasoning, then cook until thick. Turn burner to low or off.
Coat the tortillas in the sauce, then roll up with cheese and onions. Pack them in a jelly roll pan or something equally large. You may have to add some water to the sauce to thin it out, as it will get thicker as it sits. Save enough sauce to coat a full pan of enchiladas, then do so. Sprinkle the extra cheese and onions over all.
Put in the oven for 20-25 minutes.
This isn’t hard, but the prep time (especially if you hand grate the cheese and dice the onions by hand instead of the handy-dandy chopper I adore) is a killer.
Obviously, you can substitute any meat you like, but I prefer plain cheese and onions.
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1. Pimp moment of the day: My mother always used to use Lil Guy taco seasoning (not the enchilada one). It came in a 12-ounce glass jar glass jar that said “12 oz” on it. [2025-07-24: Someone asked me if that was by weight or volume, but I honestly don’t know.]Their website says it’s discontinued. Now, I haven’t looked to see if they still carry it in the grocery stores the way I remember it, but I don’t use this because now I go to Planter’s in River Market (downtown Kansas City) and get their mix. The seasonings you use make all the difference, so experiment. By the way, Planter’s is one of the businesses I mentioned in The Proviso [2025-07-24: First Edition]. I mention a lot of local businesses in my book(s).
2. If you don’t have one of these, get one. Right now. I believe we got ours at Walgreen’s for like, $5. Best kitchen tool buy ever.
I read Where Serpents Sleep by C.S. Harris and found it a bit hollow, particularly the end, where the heroine, Hero (I’d find that funnier if I didn’t know it was a Shakes reference), is kind of … forgotten. Hello! She lost her virginity. A teensy bit of half of a resolution would have been nice to ease me into the next book in the series. Actually, (please mark your calendars) I didn’t think the token sex scene was at all necessary (nor was it in character for either of them) and for me, that scene was a WTF? It made me wonder if the editor made her insert the de-virginization scene. Because without more emotional preparation before or reflection after by either of the characters, it made it superfluous. It was like a question that didn’t get completely asked, much less answered.
I’m 100 pages into Tribute by Nora Roberts. It’s going back to the library tomorrow with the rest of the list.
I have no interest in any of these books and I wouldn’t have picked them up in the first place, and my hypothesis will thus officially remain a hypothesis because I’m so not interested in proving it.
I have to finish beta-reading for a friend (this is not a chore, believe me and plug: her debut novel, On These Silken Sheets, is out on September 8—go preorder right now!), I am caught up in Seabird of Sanematsu and Fight Club so I need to finish those, and I want to glom some Victoria Dahl.
Deadly Treasure by Jillayne Clements (look at that gorgeous cover!)
Not in digital formats? (Not even Kindle.)
No sale.
Sorry.
Question: Do you LDS publishers realize how many members read their scriptures on their PDAs, SmartPhones, and iPhones? No? The Church gets it. Why don’t you? Maybe you need to venture forth east of the safety of the Rocky Mountains and attend a few wards to find out.
You have no idea how many sales you’re missing out on.
You lost two just with me.
At least, at the very least, get them into Kindle.
You have to come to it on your own, through hardship and fear. You have to know who you are and what you believe and you have to take stock of that every day. You have to walk barefoot through fire on broken glass. You have to stand up to people who frighten you under conditions that terrify you. You have to be honest with yourself about what you really want. You have to be willing to fail.
Power is acquired, earned. You’ll have many opportunities in your life to earn bits and pieces of it. You’ll make bad choices; learn from them and do the best you can with them. Do not, under any circumstances, dither over what the right choice might be every single time you’re presented with one. It won’t teach you anything and you’ll be a bore at cocktail parties.
Acquiring power is a never-ending process. Every day you have to wake up and prove to the world all over again that you deserve it. There should never come a day when you wake up and say, ‘Okay, I’m powerful now; I’m done.’ Never.
In case nobody’s noticed, my Perfect Bookstore post has garnered a wee bit of attention here and there around the interwebz, thanks to @RonHogan who linked me in GalleyCat and then Teleread picked me up.
I’ve been to very few of the pingbacks, but of the ones I have, quite a few of them described the post as cheeky.1 I like that. I like that they recognized that instead of presenting it like I was completely serious and the plan/design was complete. I have lots of ideas about a whole lot of things. Most of them are half-assed.
______________________________
1. My vision of “cheeky” is Mary Poppins standing in front of her mirror and lightly chastising her reflection for one-upping her. So, um, for non-regular visitors to the blog, I’m pretty cheeky about everything.
064)Stay by Moriah Jovan (MS POLICY), finished July 15.
My faith that I put in Moriah after reading The Proviso was justified. This book is good. Parts of it are excellent. And it’s still only a draft. It still has explicit sex (though not as much) but you should have no other qualms about checking this one out when it’s released in a few months.
Congratulations, Moriah, on a great book. Keep ’em coming.
Saturday night was the “Oscars” for romance, which is called RITA (no idea what that stands for, if anything). I saw something interesting in the results that made me form a hypothesis, and I want to test my hypothesis, so I’ll be reading the following books in August, which are the nominees for the “Novel with Strong Romantic Elements” category:
Last Dance At Jitterbug Lounge by Pamela Morsi The House on Tradd Street by Karen White The Paper Marriage by Susan Kay Law The Shape of Mercy by Susan Meissner (must ILL this one) The Winter Sea by Susanna Kearsley Tribute by Nora Roberts Where Serpents Sleep by C.S. Harris
Aside: I was going to buy all these in ebook, but I had put the first three in my basket at BooksOnBoard and they were all just too damned expensive. So helloooooo Mid-Continent Public Library. I’ll read paper for free before I’ll plunk down $13+ for an ebook. Bite me, publishers. This is how you encourage pirates to steal your authors’ work and take money away from them. Please note deliberate sentence construction.
Also, I am on schedule (actually ahead of) for my July reading list.
If you read The Proviso, you know that the protagonist of “John 3:16,” Leah, lives with Knox for five years and that, at the beginning of The Proviso, she and Knox are about to get married.
I feel like I just got jerked around in an extremely passive-aggressive manner by a narcissistic fuckwad.
I can’t tell you how pissed off I am at this moment.
No review. No more crit. You can see previous entries here and here. It’s completely irrelevant.
Tell you what. I’ll read Stephenie Meyer again before I’ll read anything else this author’s ever written. I can’t imagine Breaking Dawn is a worse betrayal by an author than this.
ETA:
I’ve gotten a bunch of emails about what actually happened, so here you go. Spoiler warning.
Click to reveal the spoiler
Okay, here was the deal:
All the way through this book, Felix is in love with Becky. Almost painfully so. Obviously so (which is its own irritation that nobody picks up on this). He’s a very nice guy and fairly fleshed out and he’s only an ass for maybe 5 pages of the whole book.
Okay.
Her husband dies at the 2/3 mark. So, for 2/3 of the book she’s all about Felix when her husband’s around. Then, for the last 1/3, she’s all mourning her husband for two years, and Felix is there, wanting to marry her, tells her he’s been in love with her (and oh, this comes as a complete shock to her, right? Pfffttt), and now she’s all about her husband. So for pages and pages and pages and pages she’s all, “NO I’M STILL MARRIED TO MIKE!!!” (this is after 2 years of widowhood, remember) and breaking Felix’s heart, then she finally decides, yeah, okay, I can marry him. He’s my best friend after all. I’m 45 and my kids are way grown (youngest is 13 or something and oldest 2 are gone) and Felix and I can grow old together, so yeah, I think maybe I’ll think about marrying him after all.
And then they go away for a while so they can kiss uninterrupted. So they do.
And it is (I quote), “a belly-flop” of a kiss. No passion. So that’s it. They go their separate ways, I guess still being best pals on the phone or whatever.
Cuz they aren’t made for each other after all.
Because they didn’t get horny when they kissed for the first time.
Happy happy joy joy.
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME? AFTER ALL THAT FUCKING ANGST? HOW DO YOU NOT GET HORNY ABOUT THE PERSON YOU’VE BEEN IN LOVE WITH FOR ELEVEN YEARS???
She spends the first 2/3 thirds of the book w/her husband being all about Felix and the last 1/3 with Felix being all about her husband
I have no way to reconcile any of this to any reality, writerly or Mormonly or humanly. None. It makes no sense on any level.
Got a request for my recipe for beef stroganoff, so I’m going to add a new category of comfort food. These are adapted from recipes my mother used, the food I grew up on and while some of it’s expensive to make, some of it’s not. It’s not fancy. The reason I don’t cook is that my mother made everything from scratch (even egg noodles) and so it wouldn’t occur to me to go get, say, a jar of Ragu for spaghetti sauce (and the one time I did I gagged). However, when I do cook, I cook from scratch.
I very rarely measure anything unless I’m baking, so you’ll have to adjust for your own tastes. I have tried this stroganoff with stew meat or cutting up a cheap steak (say, chuck), but I don’t like it that way, as the flavors don’t blend as well. Liberal use of pepper is the key to a good batch of stroganoff.
The measurements for this beef stroganoff are written per 1 pound of hamburger.
1 pound hamburger
1 diced medium yellow onion (Get one of these gizmos.)
minced garlic (I buy it in the jars, usually in produce section by the onions.)
salt to taste
coarse-ground black pepper to taste, maybe 2 tsp
parsley to taste, maybe 1 Tb of dried
1 to 2 4-ounce cans of mushroom stems and pieces, drained
Cook up the hamburger with all the above ingredients on medium high heat, enough to barely cook the meat and make the onions translucent. Stir well, and let it simmer for about 10 minutes to let the flavors settle in. Drain, put it back in the pan, and put it back on the stove.
Into the drained meat, stir in (very well):
1 can cream of chicken soup
Let that simmer on low for about 15 minutes. While that’s cooking, cook up:
egg noodles
Remove the stroganoff from the heat. Add:
8 oz sour cream
Stir it in well and let the whole thing sit for about 10 minutes.
Drain your egg noodles and put them on a plate.
Then top with the stroganoff mixture.
That’s it. Only takes me about 1/2 hour, no matter how much I make, and I make it in batches of about 5 pounds of hamburger. It never lasts long enough to be able to freeze any of it, but it is freezable.
The only thing wrong with this book is the cover. Blech. (Although the irony is cute.)
But I didn’t beg the author to point me to an e-copy (which she so obligingly sent me in a format I could use, yay customer service!) because or in spite of it. (It’s only currently available in dead-tree version; I expect it’ll show up on Fictionwise soon.)
Here’s the official blurb:
The king is dead, long live the queen!
Well, not if the King of Nadwich and the dead monarch’s three royal ministers have anything to say about it.
It’s up to Sir Christopher Evergild, the Royal Champion, to see that the new queen survives to take her throne—even if she is so ugly she’s been locked away for twenty years with only trolls for company. Chris is prepared to do his duty, even if The Ugly Princess does turn out to be the lunatic she’s always been rumored to be.
What he isn’t ready for is having his entire world turned upside down and inside out—and having to decide between love and the fear that has haunted him most of his life.
This is going to be a short review because, well, I loved everything about it. After speaking with the author, however, I have a feeling she and I share sensibilities in our stories, so take everything I say with that in mind. Or not.
This is a fantasy with sweet romantic elements and I love the sweet stories as much as I love the hawt ones. There is no swearing or sex (oh, maybe a “damn” or “hell” here and there, but I can’t remember). It’s set in the imaginary world of Karlathia, which I envision as a fairy-tale village whose battle technology is a weird mix of firearms and medieval hand-to-hand combat.
It has two narrators (Bertram, the kingdom’s seneschal, and Christopher, its army’s chief general), and is split into first and third person, which I love. In the almost-omniscient first person, the prose is loose and funny, yet cozy because it breaks the fourth wall, yet is more formal and intense (and removed, natch) in third person. Both suit the respective narrators’ personalities very well.
Descriptions as seen through the seneschal’s first-person point of view were sharp:
He [evil monarch] cut his food into tiny bites, chewing each one thoroughly before swallowing. He did not mix the fare on his plate, finishing one item entirely before proceeding to the next.
Those two brief sentences tell me a whole lot about that character.
Bertram’s overstated understatements and asides make me smile and laugh (in fact, I’d go so far as to say he upstages Christopher, but that is not to the story’s detriment):
Going to the aforementioned clothes press, I discovered my host had an exceedingly eclectic wardrobe–everything from complete Court regalia to a set of rags that seemed held together mostly by optimism.
Demtri [idiot nephew of evil monarch], seemingly oblivious to what was happening, sat on the throne with a large bowl of grapes on his lap, tossing them in the air and attempting to catch them in his mouth. His aim was not particularly commendable.
At this point I struggled not to draw my pistol and punctuate Niklaes’s arrogance with a lead period.
It was a very fun and funny read. Bonus! I learned a new word: eldritch.
Liz, give me your Paypal address because I want to pay you for this.
It has been my observation that on weekends when we go see my in-laws in southern Missouri, and we go to the local cafe for breakfast, there is a gathering of four to 10 post-retirement gentlemen sitting around, eating their farmer’s breakfasts and gossiping shooting the breeze, cussing and discussing.
![Tweets between me and @RonHogan on July 7, 2009. Tweet from me: “@RonHogan Dude, you put me on about a gazillion print-book lovers’ hit lists. Heeeee!!!” Reply from @RonHogan: “Heh. And that was after I decided AGAINST titling the post ‘Who is Morian [sic] Jovan And Why Does She Hate Paper Books So Much?’”](https://moriahjovan.com/talesofdunham/wp-content/uploads/2009/07/20090729_ronhogantweet.jpg)
