Author: drdoyleeditorial

Now That It’s Cooled Down Enough to Cook

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Here’s another dead-simple recipe for the deadline-beset or otherwise brain-dead writer:

Beef Ribs Cooked In Vermouth And Herbes De Provence

3 lbs. boneless beef ribs
Kosher salt and black pepper
1 carrot, sliced
1 rib celery, diced
1 tsp tomato paste or ketchup
2 tsp herbes de Provence†, crushed
1/2 cup vermouth
1/2 cup double-strength beef stock
1 tsp. honey
1 tsp. vinegar

Put the sliced veggies into the crock pot.

Put meat into crock pot.  Sprinkle herbs, salt, pepper over meat.

Mix the stock, vermouth, honey, vinegar, and tomato paste.

Pour liquid mix over meat and seasonings.

Cook on low 8-10 hours.

If you want, mix a couple of tablespoons of cornstarch into some cool water and stir it into the crock pot 30 minutes or so before dinner.  (Turn the crock pot on high for that bit.)

Serve over egg noodles.

†Usually (as it is in the blend sold at our local IGA) a mix of savory, basil, fennel, thyme, and lavender. Sometimes there are other herbs, such as rosemary; sometimes there isn’t any lavender. I buy it pre-mixed, but there are numerous recipes on-line for the googling.

Making the Rounds

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One of the things I tell myself, when I’ve got a short story out somewhere on submission, is that submitting a story to a market doesn’t mean that you’re asking for an absolute up-or-down verdict on its ultimate worthiness.

When you submit a short story, you’re doing the equivalent of sending it out on a blind date.

And we all know how blind dates work.  A few of them are utter disasters, of the “I’ll never trust So-and-So to set me up with someone ever again” variety; most of them are the sort of forgettable evening that ends with a “let’s not do this another time” handshake and a taxi ride home; and every once in a while, you get fireworks.  (Also, sometimes your best friend has a date with Mr. Forgettable Number 17 and meets the love of her life, because the chemistry between two people is a strange and unpredictable thing.)

So when your story comes back to you with a note saying “We’re sorry, but your submission does not meet our needs at the present time,” for heaven’s sake don’t take it as a polite hint that you should stop writing and take up train-spotting as a hobby instead.  It was just another blind date that turned out to be a dud for reasons that were nobody’s fault.

What to do?  Find another likely market, and send the story out again.  Because — who knows?

Maybe next time, the fireworks.

Hold the Cheese

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This past weekend we saw Pacific Rim, and — unsurprisingly — I have some thoughts about the movie.

At this point, I don’t think it counts as spoilery to say that the plot of Pacific Rim involves using giant armored fighting robots to defend against monsters invading Earth through a dimensional rift in the Pacific Ocean.  As concepts go, it’s exceptionally well-suited for a treatment featuring  a heavy layer of cheese — consider, for example, what Michael Bay did with a similar premise in Transformers.

Michael Bay, though, is the King of Cheese, and Guillermo del Toro, the actual director of Pacific Rim, is something else altogether.  The man who directed Pan’s Labyrinth may do genre, but he does not do cheese, and Pacific Rim is more than just a loud and flashy mecha-and-monsters movie.  At the same time, it doesn’t for a moment pretend that it’s something else —  the film is dedicated to stop-motion animation artist Ray Harryhausen and Godzilla director Ishiro Honda, for heaven’s sake, and contains references and shout-outs to more famous monsters and monster-fights of film and legend than can be conveniently listed here.

What keeps it from being cheesy is that it takes the initial admittedly silly premise–that the obvious and appropriate response to monsters invading from the deep is to construct giant armored robot suits to take them down in single combat–and plays it straight.  It never goes over the edge into parody; and it never gives the audience that “look at how clever I’m being” smirk.  It does give the audience moments of genuine beauty in the midst of all the action (I don’t think there’s an accidentally ugly image in the whole film.)

In short, the movie respects both its audience and itself, and that’s the best way I know of for all art, and not just film-making, to avoid turning into a pot of Velveeta fondue.

Still Too Hot.

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There’s a reason why I don’t read romance novels set in exotic tropical climes:  I hate hot weather, and the tropics have almost nothing else.

I spent three years in the Republic of Panamá, back when my husband/co-author was in the Navy, and every year we spent there, I moved my ideal location for permanent settlement another tier farther north.  One more year down there, and right now I’d probably be living in the Yukon.

Some good did come of it, though.  Get hot enough and bored enough, and you’ll start writing fiction to keep yourself occupied, and the next step after that is selling some of it, and after that, you’re doomed hooked.

I really will post about Pacific Rim real soon now, I promise.  Just not tonight.

Too Hot to Think.

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Readercon was a nice convention this year† (and air-conditioned!), but now we are back home and it was hot enough today  that I count myself accomplished because I managed to get around to paying the electric bill.

That was about it for accomplishment, though.

We saw Pacific Rim while we were down in Massachusetts, and I’ve got some thoughts about it that relate to writing as well as to film . . . but I’ll blog about them tomorrow, maybe.

Tonight it is too hot.

†I’d like to thank all the people who came to my 10:30 AM Sunday reading, and to Jim Macdonald’s 2:30 PM last-of-the-con reading. A good audience is always heartening.

For Those Who Might Have an Interest in Such Things

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From the Twitter feed of Patrick Nielsen Hayden at Tor Books:

James Frenkel is no longer associated with Tor Books. We wish him the best. We’ll be contacting the authors and agents Mr. Frenkel worked with to discuss which editor here they’ll be working with going forward. This process will take some days or even weeks, so please be patient if you don’t hear from us instantly. Finally, if you had something on submission to Tor via Mr. Frenkel, you’ll need to resubmit it via some other Tor editor. If you don’t have a particular editor in mind, you can re-submit it via Diana Pho (diana.pho@tor.com) who will route it appropriately.

This has been, as they say, a public service announcement.

Meanwhile, I’m getting ready for this weekend’s Readercon (in a hotel! with air conditioning! never mind the literature — the air conditioning!)

A Surfeit of Good Advice

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Aspiring and neophyte writers are always looking for advice (though sometimes, I suspect, it’s not so much advice that they’re looking for as company in their struggles, and a sign that somebody out there takes them seriously), and lots of people are happy to give it to them.

People tell them, “Avoid adverbs.”

People tell them, “Don’t use the passive voice.”

People tell them, “Make your prose lean and economical; eschew elegant writing and special effects.”

So they weed out adverbs assiduously from their final drafts, and turn every possible passive sentence into an active one, and put their prose on a fitness regimen guaranteed to take it down to zero per cent body fat.  All of this is hard work, and they are proud of it when they’re done.

And usually, their prose is the better for it, because they were, after all, neophyte writers, and stood to learn a lot from that much intense concentration on their texts.

But then they start hanging out with more rarefied givers of advice, who speak disparagingly of the elimination of nuance by the compulsive eradication of adverbs, and who point out that sometimes the passive voice is just what’s needed to convey the relationship between the subject of the sentence and the action of the verb, and who wax eloquent in their appreciation of leisurely, expansive prose.

And the neophyte writers bury their heads in their manuscripts and weep.   Will nobody, they say, will nobody tell them which side is right?

Alas, no.  Becoming a writer means learning to live with uncertainty.  All I can offer are some general guidelines:  don’t use too many adverbs; don’t overuse the passive voice; and try not to use more words than you need for whatever it is that you want to try.  But don’t stop trying.  It’s better to attempt something new and not have it work right the first time than it is to never try anything new at all.

We didn’t become writers because we were risk-averse.

O My Prophetic Soul!

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I do in fact have the 10:30 AM Sunday reading slot at Readercon next weekend.

My full schedule, for those who may be interested:

Friday July 12
8:00 PM   Kaffeeklatsch. Debra Doyle, James D. Macdonald.

9:00 PM    Autographs. Debra Doyle, James D. Macdonald.

Saturday July 13
10:00 AM       Intellectually Rigorous Fictional Data: Making Up Facts That Are True. Debra Doyle, Alex Dally MacFarlane, Margaret Ronald, Ken Schneyer, Harold Vedeler, Henry Wessells (leader). How do you make up convincing fictional primary sources? No, not for purposes of seeking political office, but because you need to know the facts and how they underpin the world of your fiction and the lives of your characters. Imaginary books and letters are just the beginning, even if they never appear in the narrative. Which fictional data sources matter? How much is enough to make a narrative feel resilient and whole?

Sunday July 14
10:30 AM        Reading: Debra Doyle reads from a forthcoming work.

And my co-author’s schedule:

Friday July 12
8:00 PM        Kaffeeklatsch. Debra Doyle, James D. Macdonald.

9:00 PM        Autographs. Debra Doyle, James D. Macdonald.

Saturday July 13
8:00 PM        The Xanatos Gambit. Jim Freund (moderator), Yoon Ha Lee, Scott Lynch, James D. Macdonald. The tangled webs of schemers both good and bad have always had a presence in imaginative fiction. There are the wily king-killers, the intrigue-fomenting spinsters and widows, the bard who hides the knife beside the harp, the indispensable keeper of secrets, and more. What are the challenges in writing an especially clever character? How has the role of the schemer evolved, and what versions do we no longer see?

Sunday July 14
2:30 PM        Reading: James D. Macdonald reads from a forthcoming work.

More Thought for (Fictional) Food

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Even in the midst of fantastic (or historical, or science-fictional) adventures, your characters are going to have to stop sometimes for a bite to eat.

The late Diana Wynne Jones, in her Tough Guide to Fantasyland, speaks eloquently of the Stew that appears to be the only menu item available in so many of the realm’s inns and taverns.  There’s a certain logic to the idea — if you’re going to be serving hot food at all hours of the day in pre-industrial conditions, a pot of something that can be kept at a low simmer over a slow fire makes a certain amount of sense.  So does going in the opposite direction, with things that can be deep-fried or stir-fried in a hurry when they’re ordered, but it’s not often that you get a party of hungry treasure-seekers settling down at the local tavern for a plate of assorted fried stuff.

(Not chicken, though.  Time was, when any chicken that made it to the dining table was likely to be a stewing hen, retired from the egg-producing game because of age and likely to be tough as an old boot unless given the slow-simmer Stew treatment.  Fried chicken was a luxury, since it required the sacrifice of a young hen still in her egg-producing years.  It’s only in the decades since the middle of the twentieth century that chicken has become cheap and mass-produced.)

But if your characters are going to sit down to a good bowl of Stew, take at least a minute or two to consider exactly what makes that particular stew different from another stew in another place and season.

If it’s a meat stew, what kind of meat is it?  Beef, from a superannuated dairy cow?  Beef, from cattle raised for meat?  Was it purchased from a butcher shop — are they in a town that has a butcher shop, then? — or was the animal raised by the innkeeper and then slaughtered?  Or are your characters travelling through wool-producing country, where the common meat is likely to be mutton or lamb?  Or are they on the edge of the wilderness, where wild game is the commonest meat?

Are your characters traveling through a dairying region, where butter is the common cooking fat?  Or are they in olive oil country?  Or do the local cooks use chicken fat, or lard?

And what time of year is it?  Is it winter?  Before canning (a 19th-century innovation) and before reliable refrigeration (the 20th century), there were no out-of-season vegetables to put into those stews.  Wintertime meals would feature the kind of root vegetables that could be kept in cool dark places until spring — turnips, hard squashes, yellow onions, potatoes — or vegetables that could be dried or salted or pickled (sauerkraut, kim chee, parched corn, dried beans.)  Fresh greens wouldn’t show up again until the coming of spring.

Research — here I am, beating that drum again! — can help you keep your travelers’ tavern meals from becoming bland and generic.