Writing

Upcoming Publications!

Today, I have an update on my writing ventures, specifically, on two writing ventures that are coming up in the next two months! At the end of March, my romance novelette, Maya’s Vacation, will be released by Astraea Press! It will be available in e-book formats only, but Astraea hopes to add print-on-demand to their repertoire in the future. Regardless, I’m super excited to have signed with them and to have Maya’s Vacation out in the world soon.

I’m posting the synopsis in a moment, but I think this novelette will be great reading if you’re a fan of this blog—my years of writing and pondering food and wine play a huge role in the story’s concept. If you enjoy how I describe a dish or beverage, I hope you’ll buy a copy and delve in! It’ll be a fast read and safe for anyone who enjoys passionate characters without the busom-busting to go along with them. Astraea only publishes nonerotic fiction, which is one of the many reasons they and Maya’s Vacation are a great fit. Here’s that synopsis.

Twenty-year-old Maya knew, as she watched Dean walk away from her front door, distraught at her silence and her father’s threats, that she would never love anyone with the intensity that she loved him. He was her painter, her artist, her soul mate and being apart from him hurt too much. She tucked those feelings away, determined to enjoy the safe and secure life her parents approved of: business school and a marriage to Chuck, a successful real estate agent.

Thirty years later, Chuck has cheated on and divorced her. But when he comes back, begging for reconciliation, Maya follows her intuition and takes a vacation to think it over. Her love of art, food, and wine combine at this retreat in the woods, and she prepares for a week of making new friends, tasting exquisite wines, and learning to paint again. What she hasn’t prepared for is the familiar voice she hears the first morning at camp . . . a voice that makes her skin tingle and brings back memories of who she used to be before Chuck. Has Maya buried her passion too deep to find love with Dean again?

In other news, the fifth issue of Bull Spec is set to to appear on April 15, with my short story, Bother, in the fiction section. Woo hoo! The release party for Issue #5 will be at Quail Ridge Books in Raleigh on the same date.

As part of the festivities, I’ll be reading from Bother. Be prepared for urban marital angst and dragons! If you don’t want to miss my short story or you’re just a fan of speculative fiction, you should definitely subscribe to Bull Spec now. It’s a gorgeous print magazine, but if you prefer reading online, e-subscriptions are available too.

Don’t worry, I’ll be posting reminders as the dates draw near, and I will definitely keep you posted on any release night plans I come up with for Maya’s Vacation. My family will be in town, so dinner out, at the very least, will be in order!

I’m in Durham Magazine!

More specifically, one of the websites I blog for is in Durham Magazine, a local publication that talks all things Durham-related. Here’s the announcement I posted on Carpe Durham about the article, since I’m just not going to think of something new and exciting to say in its place here:

Our website has been profiled in the new issue of Durham Magazine, the Foodie issue!

Pick up a copy, and you will learn the history of how RPP and YAR started Carpe Durham (including their and some of our real names–ooh, ahh!), the basic premise behind how a restaurant gets written up (it’s not complicated, folks), and how you—the active, opinionated, and fantastic readers and commentators here—have made this site a success.

In addition to some of our regular bloggers’ thoughts, comments by Lysistrata, 9/9, and burgeoningfoodie on past posts have also been printed to showcase those lively debates we have.

Besides the article on Carpe Durham, you really should pick up this issue of Durham Magazine. There are wonderful pictures of many favorite dishes at local restaurants that an amateur photographer like myself could only dream of taking, an article on the supper clubs cropping up around Durham, and profiles on beloved restaurant staff.

Durham Magazine is $4 and available at Parker & Otis, The Regulator Bookshop, Barnes & Noble at Southpoint and New Hope Commons, Sweets and News at Northgate Mall, Gurley Pharmacy, Whole Foods, and Sam’s Quik Shop.

So if you live locally, pick it up!

Loki’s New Favorite Thing and RSS Updates

Hello lovely readers,

I’m going to be migrating all of my posts done previously to using WordPress software into the WordPress system over the next few days (hopefully, that’s all it will take). I’m going to try and figure out if I can stop the RSS from updating for each of these since there’ll be at least 100, I think, but I’m less than certain I’ll be successful at stopping the feed updates for them, so your stream may soon be flooding with The Gourmez posts. Apologies, if so!

To make up for this hardship, please be calmed by these new photos of the kitty gods of Woodcroft. Loki has discovered a new way to demand his tribute.

Loki and the foodbag

He’s quite pleased with himself about it.

Loki Pleased

And now, you can see all three cats in their natural atmosphere.

Mazu on chair. Dandi on the floor.

One-eyed wonder

Kittens on the march, err, lie down.

As always, more pictures of the cats for those that just can’t get enough of Loki, Mazu, and Verdandi (namely, me) are available at our photo website.

Interview at The Muffin Blog and New Year’s Blog Resolutions

Last week, as part of winning 3rd place in Women on Writing’s Summer ’09 Flash Fiction contest, I was interviewed on The Muffin Blog. We covered my inspiration for Last Complaint, how and why the character came to be the selfish yet somehow human character that she is, my food/wine/cocktail reviews, my lifelong obsession with General Hospital, for which I write a weekly column at Eye on Soaps, and my fantasy novel. So if you’d like to read more about any of the above, wander on over! I’d love to hear your comments on it, either over there or over here.

Interview with me.

Switching gears, I’m mulling over any blog-related resolutions I might want to make this year. In the past year, I’ve gone from the occasional post to nearly daily ones, increased my traffic around 100%, and added in other blogger’s thoughts on wines, in addition to some smaller changes. I think that what I’m missing is more communication with other blogs! But how to fit that in with a schedule where I really don’t just plain write as much as I should? Hmm. Must think it over. If you have a blog that you don’t think I visit, though, please leave the link in the comments and I will add it to my roster!

On my fiction/creative nonfiction goals, I plan to submit at least one piece a week to either a contest or magazine/journal, as long as I have finished ones ready to go. That shouldn’t be too hard to do, right?

The Hunt for the Mantress

Lately, I’ve been on a kick to find good words to use as slurs against men, such as bitch, cunt, whore, slut, etc.  Specifically, I wanted terms that don’t stem from female roots, such as son of a bitch or douche bag, but carry the same weight, mainly to satisfy my curiosity about how many words exist that don’t also demean women in the same breath that they are used to insult men.

Name calling generates a lot of interest on Facebook and Twitter, apparently, because I was supplied with a number of good options, most notably jerk and asshole. I’m still not sure that these are quite as cutting of a name as the female options I listed above, but they do serve the purpose.

Friday, on NPR, I listened to an interview with a woman who chronically has affairs. It struck me, as she referred to herself as a mistress, that she hadn’t actually called the men with whom she cheated anything equivalent to that word (both parties were often married). The fourth definition of mistress, which is how I am exploring the word, as found in Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate 11, is a woman other than his wife with whom a married man has a continuing sexual relationship. So I asked my friends and tweeps if they knew of a word for a man other than her husband with whom a married woman has a continuing sexual relationship.  And you gave me plenty of suggestions but I’m still not sure if any of them capture quite the same thing as mistress:

  • mister
  • manwhore
  • mimbo
  • lover/luvah
  • boytoy
  • kept man
  • sancho (Spanish, so it’s cheating)

There were also some great joke options:

  • mattress
  • pool boy
  • not for you (from my husband)

My sister also pointed me to this article on Daily Writing Tips that discusses the same subject and offers gigolo as a possibility but like kept man, that word doesn’t imply adultery in the same way that mistress does, in my opinion. I’m not sure myself, but I’m thinking kept man is probably the closest option of these.  What do you think, dear reader? Are any of these good male approximations of mistress? Do you have something else to add to the list?

North Carolina Literary Festival

My weekend was what some would call a writer’s paradise.  I spent it attending various authors’ sessions at the North Carolina Literary Festival held at UNC Chapel Hill, which happened to be free!  Yay!  I would say, however, that a writer’s paradise would be to sit on the other side of the table from where I sat, as an author with published works.  Someday, someday.

Anyhow, I had a great time at the sessions I attended, which featured a mix of well-known and newly published authors, almost all with some sort of connection to the state.  The first I went to was “The World of Sci-Fi and Fantasy,” which featured John Kessel, Warren Rochelle, and Mur Lafferty.  I enjoyed the readings, Lafferty’s especially, and will likely buy Playing for Keeps soon, which is her superhero novel about a woman who has something both the jock-like superheroes and nice guy villains want. Lafferty is a friend of a friend and also runs a writing resource website called I Should Be Writing.

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Book Signing and Discussion with Michael Lux

Last night, I finally made it out to an event sponsored by Traction, a Triangle organization dedicated to discussing and promoting progressive issues in politics.   I’ve wanted to many times before but the stars just never aligned until now.  So I headed on over to The Regulator Bookshop and decided to learn a little more about this movement that I believe I ‘d like to be a part of.  Michael Lux, author of The Progressive Revolution:  How the Best in America Came to Be, was giving a discussion of progressive politics and signing his new book.

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30 Threads Blogger Bash

Last night, I dragged my husband with me to the 30 Threads Blogger Bash at the Durham Performing Arts Center (DPAC).  For those of you unfamiliar with 30 Threads, it’s a website run by Ginny Skalski, a journalist based in Raleigh, and exists to help us get the goods on which Triangle area websites and blogs are worth a click.  As a subscriber to the site, I was already planning to attend this bash and take advantage of the chance to meet bloggers whose sites I’ve enjoyed reading and drum up some more readers for my own.  You know, that whole networking thing people talk about.  But then, I actually got a nod on 30 Threads this past week, so I was even more excited to go.  Being profiled is fun!

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Strength of Character

Caution, for those not up-to-date with Battlestar Galactica, you may not want to read this.

I’ve been browsing through my copy of Writer’s Market, marking the listings for magazines that might be a good fit for my work so I can research them to find out.  A good number of the magazines that publish fiction stress the importance of well-formed characters.  Of course, any creative writing instructor will tell you that and I have been instructed in a number of techniques for creating characters in the past, mostly doing free writes on their background or conducting an interview with the character in your head.  I’ve even forced groups of junior and upper high schoolers to complete character free writes and questionnaires while prepping for drama group practices back in the day.

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