I've been invited to guest blog!

Delilah Devlin is off on a cruise, the lucky woman! Unlike this scatterbrained writer, she never abandons her readers (of course her children are grown and they don't need snacks and referees), so she's set up guest bloggers to fill the space.

That works out just fine for me, because when I promise a friend I'll write something, I kind of feel obligated to do it... And then I post on MY blog as well. It all works just fine.

So tomorrow, December 15, I'll be at Delilah Devlin's blog talking about a fascinating aspect of her writing you probably didn't notice. Mind you, she's a great storyteller, so you shouldn't notice, but hey, folk tales and legends are my thing, so...

And while you're there, check out the post by her other guests.

Cooking Day

I don't do this so much anymore. Maybe I have too much time to sit and think and I don't have to be on my feet running around after a small child bent on mischief. Maybe it's just that others have taken over the kitchen. Or maybe I'm just old(er).

Or maybe I just lost the habit of long, complex dinner in the years I worked a full-time, 8-5 job with a long commute.

Anyway, yesterday, I went all out on traditional Russian cooking. Of course, it was at the request of my kids, and they did promise to help.

Well, help is as help does, but I must admit that they did a lot. Because making pirozhki ([pee-rohzh-KEE], singular pirozhok [pee-roh-ZHOHK]) one by one by hand (take small amount of yeast dough, add spoonfull of meat filling, wrap and seal) is time consuming. But they did it. While I did the other stuff.

So we had pel'meni last night (pehl-MEH-nee, the Russian answer to ravioli: meat-filled pasta served with sour cream and a vinaigrette dressing) which we ate with a side of cucumber-and-sour cream salad.

One thing you have to understand about Russian cooking: it comes with sour cream. Everything is better with sour cream. Sour cream gets added pretty much to everything, and then served on the side.

As salad dressing, with salt. As flavoring in pastries, cookies, and bread. In your soup. On the side with almost every dish. As a dip. On bread (why not? on a nice, thick slice of rich, dark bread -- and it's a spoonful of thick, creamy sour cream, not the runny "light" stuff -- you have to eat right!). A little sour cream in your shortbread heightens the flavor. You say buttermilk pancakes, I say sour cream olad'i (oh-LAH-d'yi).

And today? Today we will have BORSHCH.

Not Borsht. Not the dark pink canned beet product you find in stores. Nope. That's not the traditional Russian dish. No more than sweet-and-sour chicken is a traditional Chinese delicacy.

No. Borschch. Don't-call-it-soup Borshch. It's LIKE soup, but not soup. It's LIKE stew, but not stew. It's Borshch, and that's what Russians call it.

It's cabbage-based, with other root vegetables, including beets, carrots, turnips, leeks, and/or onions, potatoes and/or beans. It can be beef-stock based and contain beef chunks, or it can be a Lenten dish and be strictly vegetarian. It's tasty, filling, versatile, it has a million variants, and even though I use my mother's recipe, mine does not taste like hers. Close, very close, but not quite. Anyone would recognize the flavor and aroma of Borshch but each cook, each household has its own variant.

The magic of true Russian Borshch.

That's what we're having tonight. And while the kids don't particularly like soup, they've been asking for Borshch. Because, and it bears repeating, Borshch is not soup. It's just Borshch.

It can be served with thick slices of hearty bread slathered with butter, or, like we're going to do tonight, with pirozhki.

Because we were in a cooking frenzy, we only have meat pastries (meat-filled pirozhki), but you could have some cabbage filling, some mushroom filling, even sweet fillings like farmer's cheese or sour cherries.

And because we're only having an ordinary family night, we're just having borshch and pirozhki. If, however, I was serving up a proper feast, borshch would be a first course, followed by some kind of roast (meat or fish), with a vegetable, and a salad. Followed by a dessert.

Okay. That's enough. I'm hungry now.
But you know what? Ethnic cooking is pretty healthy. Look at all the good ingredients that go into borshch. And just ask the kids (and all the students of Russian who tried it over the years): it's tasty. Especially with pirozhki.

What's Your Favorite Scary Story?

The weekly newspaper at my husband's university asked the professors what their favorite scary story was. They skipped my husband, more's the pity, because he never gives run-of-the-mill answers to anything.

His pick was "It's a good life" by Jerome Bixby. I couldn't find an official online site, so I'll let you look for it yourself.

I went with the more classical La Vénus d'Ille by Prosper Mérimée. Here's a link to the original French text, and here's another one to a Wikipedia article.

Now I was thinking of classic horror stories. But there's one that chilled my childhood and still enchants me (although it doesn't give me nightmares anymore).

It is Nikolai Gogol's Viy. There is a link from the Wikipedia page to the Russian full text, for the brave souls who can tackle it.

From a science fiction author (It's a good life is also a Twilight Zone episode) to a Russian classic by way of a French classic. Yeah, that's our family. The only strange thing is that I'm not the one who picked the sci-fi author this time.

So what's your favorite scary read? Horror story? Good chilling tale?

As I remember, there were quite a few excellent Goosebumps tales worth reading at any age.

It's all in the story! Especially in the dark of night. And in the telling, of course.

A Fun Little Blog

... for your pleasure.

It's been a crazy month in a year of crazy months, and I'm growing superstitious about wishes and forecasts... so I'll make none.

Instead, I'll introduce a fun and irreverent little serial adventure blog:

The Vicky Diaries

Talking swords, clueless heroines... or not? The author is having so much fun with his world that you can't help giggle along with him.

Why Vicky? Why a talking sword? Let the author tell you all about it.

If you want to know who this Vicky figure is and why she should be posed, look here.

All Things Spooky and Supernatural

It's Halloween month and the publishers don't fail to celebrate it.

Join in the fun with The Wild Rose Press. And why shouldn't I toot my own horn? My stories are on sale!

The Joining is 10% off and it got 5 stars from a reviewer on site. Here's what she says:

Strap yourself in for a wild ride. Ms. Holl takes the reader flying through space with the skill of a seasoned pilot in THE JOINING. And delving into the pilot's psyche is equally enjoyable. ~Skhye

For that matter, The Brightest Heaven, a Song of the Muses story, is also on sale. It earned 4.5 books from The Long and Short of It. And here's what the reviewer had to say about it:

“The Brightest Heaven” is beautifully written and entirely unpredictable. Dialogue is snappy and believable. Modern life interweaves with mythological characters as if perfectly naturally; as if indeed, space and time wove them together.


If you're still hesitating, check out the trailers on this blog (look right in the margin) or go to my site for some excerpts.

Have fun this Supernatural month!

Perceptions

I gave a talk yesterday, and while my conviction that Ann Lamott's Bird by Bird is a great writing book and everybody should read it had been reinforced, I also realized that my favorite quote from that book could be interpreted in many different ways.

To paraphrase Ann Lamott, you should allow yourself to "write a shitty first draft."

I said that in the comments after my talk. I even said that you could submit it to your critique group. Which put my favorite critique coordinator on her high horse.

Why?

Because we have different ideas of what a "shitty first draft" is.

Hers includes grammatical mistakes, spelling errors, and other basic goofs of a version that I don't even call a "draft." It's a "rough", maybe. It's something between me and me. Not something for anyone to see. My concept of the "shitty first draft" is a grammatically clean version, checked for spelling, verified for as many basic errors of style as you can spot, but still not ready for the public.

In my opinion, the critique group is a very valuable commodity and should not be abused by off-hand submissions of unchecked pages. But the critique group is also not the (ordinary) public and can help sort through the mess of a first draft.

But back to the "shitty first draft." My perception, when I need to remind myself that it's okay, you can, and must write a shitty first draft, is to turn off the long-term editor and to let the movie reel play out.

Stay in the moment and forget the fine points of style and the elegance of narration. Just do it. Get in on the page. Get the images and the speeches and the actions of your characters out onto the paper (or the virtual paper of your computer screen).

It's not about writing badly, it's about just writing when something's holding you back and the story is pushing to get out.

I couldn't NOT check the spelling on my pages. Or switch a word for a better one on the fly if the substitution occurred to me. Because my mind would keep going back to THAT spot.

But I would make myself stop worrying about how I'll get myself out of that situation. How it will lead to the conclusion I vaguely foresee. How I will resolve the new conflict.

I just write.

And worry later.

The smoothness and perfection (such as it may be) will come later, after many, many revisions and interventions, and applications of sandpaper and buffing cloth.

Imagination

South Texas is not green. It's not cool, it's not fresh, and it's not a land of soft, rolling, verdant hills, or tall stately trees.

But then sometimes, after a few days of heavy rains, it does green up. And it revives in spectacular fashion. On a fall day like today, when the morning is cool (all things being relative, of course, after almost two months with highs around 100F), and the sky is a soft blue, and the grass begs to be cut, and the trees have some fresh growth that make seasons irrelevant, you could pretend to be just about anywhere.

Driving through my neighborhood, looking at the bushy trees lining the suburban streets, I can feel other places. The old forests of Europe with their 90-foot trees and trunks so thick you can't wrap your arms around them. The shade so deep that sunlight never pierces it and it's always sweater-cool while the meadows just yards away are burning hot in the summer. The sweet-tart red berries hiding under the tiny umbrellas of their lacy leaves. Or the carpets of knee-high bilberries you pick and eat on the spot.

All this from a five-minute ride through a South-Texas neighborhood. Just because the street turned and went up the hill, and trees bracketed the road and framed the pale-blue sky. And because I didn't have the air conditioning on in the car, just the fan, and I could smell the actual morning air.

And the music? The radio was playing "Black Magic Woman" by Santana. A song that's always been slick and urban to me, a nighttime song of city lights. Not just any city light -- big city lights, slick city lights. Paris, glitz, a night club. High fashion and expensive champagne. Wide avenues and old architecture. High society and old money rubbing elbows with new. Movie stars and financiers. Lust, greed, and cold, cold minds.

A Paris I never lived in, but one I saw and imagined easily enough. My Paris was a middle-class city, of schools and children and neighborhood stores. Of cafés and warm Sunday-morning croissants and hot, strong coffee. Good wine, good food, and large family gatherings.

All this from a quick drive to drop of my kid at school?

Well, yes. It's called imagination. That's how I can sit in a dark room, with a sweltering 100+F summer outside, and write my characters lost in a cold, northern winter. Because I'm wearing a T-shirt and the A/C is blowing on my bare arms.

On the other hand, maybe I'll write about a mysterious desert city next time. To commemorate the time when the A/C broke.

Or not. Some things don't need to be imagined.