Though my first published novel, Remnants of Fear, is out now and doing well, my head is in the stuff I’m working on now.

Namely, Water Circle Moon - my shapeshifter paranormal. It’s almost finished in first draft - well sort of first as I’m getting ongoing critique from my wonderful Jewels of the Treasure Valley - Amberly, Cheryl and Kyrsten - and they keep making it better! I highly recommend a critique partner or 2 for anyone lucky enough to be near fellow-minded writers. Even those working in a different genre - it’s all good. Feedback really helps, from the “Say I think her eyes were blue in the last chapter!” to “This plot thread is not working, how about adding a new villain?” or something totally out of the blue that gets the juices flowing.

And now, back to work!

My paranormal suspense/romance Remnants of Fear is available Nov 13/09 from The Wild Rose Press. E-book or print, you choose.

I have discovered the World’s Best Pizza Crust/Foccacia Bread! It’s so easy an alien could do it!

 

No-Knead Foccacia Bread

 

4 cups all-purpose or bread flour

1/4 tsp active dry yeast

1 1/2 tsp salt

olive oil

For pizza - you know what to do. (Sauce, meat, cheese etc.) For Foccacia - toppings such as sun-dried tomatoes, sesame or poppy seeds, pitted olives, thinly sliced tomatoes, herbs and seasonings such as smoked paprika, ground cumin, oregano, sea salt.

In a large bowl combine 3 cups of the flour, the yeast and salt. Add 1 2/3 cups warm water, stir till moistened. The mixture will be a soft, sticky dough. Cover and let it sit there on your kitchen counter, minding its own business, for 12 to 24 hours.

Oil a 9 x 13 pan. Stir in remaining flour, kneading a wee bit if necessary, then turn the dough into the oiled pan and spread it to fit. Cover and let rest for an hour or so till puffy.

Preheat oven to 400 F. Brush the dough lightly with olive oil, top as desired then bake for 30-35 minutes till golden, crusty and delicious.

I have just stumbled upon the yummiest little decadent snack ever - World Market’s Sea Salt Dark Chocolate! Yes, two of my must-have tastes in one - chocolate and salt! Who would have thought it? I’ve been allowing myself 2 or 3… possibly 4… little squares at a time, after I have done something to deserve it. Like, say, writing something.

It’s so hard to write in summer, isn’t it?

I’ve written several stories that began with a dream. Sometimes the dream was detailed, vivid and already science fictional. Other times just a vague impression of “something that needs to be said” gets left after I get out of bed, brush my teeth, slug down a coffee, etc. But if the impression nags hard enough I head to the computer and try to figure out how it would do as fiction.

The vivid, detailed dreams are (sort of) easy. Just hang on to the images left after waking (simple, right? Ha) and transform them into prose. Not all that easy.

Dreams rarely have internal logic, something that fiction, even fantasy, must have. I’ve found myself pulling the brightest threads of the dream imagery down and trying to tie them to a narrative, letting the crazy stuff from my subconscious whirl around and hopefully settle into place onto the web of structure I have tried to create.

The best luck I had, market wise, for a dream based story was a literary magazine… these magazines are often more open to surreal or slipstream type work and don’t demand the high level of “readibility” that genre mags do. You can be more experimental, less formula driven.

I’ve been told that pleasant dreams can be encouraged by having something swee-smelling in the bedroom… flowers, fresh fruit, what have you. How can a funky sci-fi dream be induced by smell, I wonder? Any ideas?

Why did gorgeous Gabe Keller have to be a cop? Echo Boady, raised on a hippie commune, can’t get him out of her mind. But Gabe’s obsession with mysterious Warwick Manor, high on a hill on Salt Spring Island, has roped her into his investigation. It’s one that will dig way too far into her past… a nightmare of drugs, savage dogs, and a devilish doctor who has set a trap to ensnare her soul. Fear has stalked Echo all her life…and now the man she yearns for might be part of that evil…