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Spiced Nectarine Jam

August 10, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as , , ,

Everyone I know is going to get a jar of Spiced Nectarine Jam for Christmas this year. Again. They have for past four years.

We have a dwarf white nectarine tree in our backyard. About four years ago it started going crazy producing fruit. One year my husband, who prepares and freezes the fruit for my jam making (bless him!) saved all the pits. He had harvested FOUR HUNDRED nectarines!

Even total strangers have received the gift of Spiced Nectarine Jam. Last year I filled 25 jars; I’ll do that and more this year. Three more batches to go!

The nectarines are positively, absolutely Organic. No spray. No fertilizer. Hardly any extra water. (My husband isn’t exactly fond of gardening.)

Since it’s hard to send jam via the internet, I thought you might like the recipe. The jam’s really yummy.

Spiced Nectarine Jam

4 Cups prepared fruit
7 ½ Cups sugar
1/4 Cup lemon juice
1 tsp each of cinnamon, cloves & allspice
1 packet of Certo

Combine fruit, sugar, lemon juice, cinnamon, cloves and allspice in a large pan. Bring to a rolling boil for 1 minute, stirring constantly. Remove from heat. Add packet of Certo. Stir to cool and skim foam for 5 minutes. Pour into jars. Use either self-sealing jars or cover with melted household wax. (This recipe can be used for Spiced Peach Jam.)

Happy jam making….

What do you preserve from your garden?

Char……

Montana Love Letter, Love Inspired, 10/2012
Home to Montana, Love Inspired, 3/2013

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My Creativity is Currently in the Warehouse (13)

August 9, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as , , , , , ,

I’m on a Warehouse 13 marathon right now. Even though we’re watching episodes we’ve seen, starting at Season 1, Episode 1, I still love it. That’s the great thing about stories you love. You can enjoy them over and over again.
The other thing about stories you love is that they inspire creativity. Watching episode after episode of Pete and Myka grousing at each other, competing with each other, and always having each other’s back presses all my creative buttons. When Pete asked Myka if she was afraid they were the Red Shirts, and she said yes, John and I laughed out loud when Pete replied, “First, we aren’t going to die. Second, I’m so pumped you know what that means.” [paraphrased]
Over the last 20 episodes, I’ve gone from just enjoying the show for its own sake to thinking about my work and how I can make it funnier, more interesting, tense without being over-serious, adding death and destruction if necessary without a Law & Order feel.  All the artifacts and the things that they do make me think about what I can add to my stories, whether fantastical stories or “regular” ones.
One of the “ah-ha” moments in creating my current romantic comedy series, Strays of Loon Lake (Love at the Fluff and Fold, book one in the series, will be out later this year), was when I decided that a local dog was the frisky father of a lot of puppies in town. Suddenly I had this funny element that I could play up.
In addition to a lot of TV watching, I’ve upped my hours of reading lately. It feels soooo much better to be reading more, like I’m eating healthier or something. I’m reading a lot of nonfiction on writing, self-publishing, and neuroscience. But I’m also reading a lot more fiction than I have in the last year or so. I’ve been reading inspirational, historical and contemporary romance, young adult books, paranormal and urban fantasy books and short stories, some horror, and some suspense. (Trying to track it all on Goodreads, but forgetting to add every book.)
Now here’s a chicken-and-egg thought: in the midst of this burst of desire to pull creative stories IN, I’ve also been writing more, getting creative stories OUT. Did the extra reading inspire me to write more? Or did the deadlines for the two anthologies I’m in push me to gobble up more stories for inspiration? My answer is YES.
Add to all that, my jump from wanting to know more about how the brain works to finding books explaining it to me, and I’ve added yeast to the bread mix. I mean that in terms of rising and growing, not in terms of becoming gaseous and fermenting. Though the fermenting part is making me think of wine, which reminds me of living in Australia, which reminds me of some of the unexpectedly creative pieces I wrote in uni. (Now that I have Australia-brain, my brain is using Australian terms. “Uni” is short for university, i.e., my master’s in creative writing program.) And using Aussie vocabulary reminds me of my friends whom I miss terribly, which reminds me I was going to call Verizon this week and get that international calling plan, which makes me think about having some international characters in my superhero novels, which makes me think of the Cowboy character I created for a short story that went nowhere. Now I just need to figure out how to get an Australian superhero named Cowboy, and his super horse, across the ocean to Michigan where my superheroes are living.
And THAT is how creativity so often works. It’s a bunch of very quick, sometimes illogical jumps in the synapses of the brain that lead from one idea to another. The more you allow and train your brain to make these jumps, the more creative you can be. Sometimes you can even get more creative more quickly.
Many writers have named the part of their unconscious that does this work. Jennifer Crusie calls her unconscious “the girls in the basement” I believe. Anne Lamott says in Bird by Bird that her friend Carpenter says there is a little boy in the cellar handing up characters through the cellar door.
I get this “down below consciousness” idea, but I’ve rarely, if ever, been in a basement that made me feel happier than any other room in the building (even the very cool basement of the State Library of New South Wales isn’t as awesome as the Shakespeare Room there; that’s a room I could be locked in forever!), and I’ve never been in a cellar that I wanted to stay in for hours. (Not even a wine cellar.)
I had problems being nice to that creative part of myself. I found myself whipping it to give me more, faster. It didn’t produce much, so I whipped it more. Then I read and really got the idea that you needed to be nice for the unconscious to flow. But basements and cellars didn’t seem that nice to me.
So I created a character named Katie, a little girl about 10 or 12 who plays in the sunroom or in the huge beautifully well-kept backyard. (I live in a small apartment.) Katie loves to read and watch TV and movies that make her laugh or make her a little scared but that always end well. She likes to pretend after the movie or book ends that she is the hero who vanquished the enemy and tamed (rather than killed) the dragon. Or she is the heroine who helps the hero save the day and they live together happily ever after.
I like Katie. I like her so much that I like to play with her even though she’s a little girl and I’m a grown woman. She’s fun. And when she’s making me laugh or making me wonder what will happen next in her one-girl backyard plays, I find myself writing more words with more joy than ever before.
As it turns out, both Katie and I love watching Warehouse 13, and mostly for the same reasons. Katie is giving me ideas about “artifact”-like things I can put in our stories. She wants me to put in more pop culture references like Red Shirts to make people who get the jokes laugh. I tell Katie this is too much work, I’d have to do more research, keep better notes, and I remind her that I too often lose my notes-on-napkins anyway so really–
Katie interrupts me with some cute begging and funny faces and tells me that surely these touches will make me really famous and make me heaps of money and (she knows this is the coup de grace) I’ll make people laugh.
I think about it and then consider the alternative. But what if I don’t make people laugh, Katie? What if they think it’s dumb?
And in her properly outraged 10-year-old voice, she shouts, “Then they’re dumb!”
I laugh and shake my head and agree to try harder to be cute and funny like her. And then I start writing and…well, Katie and I like the results.
What about you? Where does your creativity come from?

Kitty Bucholtz decided to combine her undergraduate degree in business, her years of experience in accounting and finance, and her graduate degree in creative writing to become a writer-turned-independent-publisher. Her first novel, Little Miss Lovesick, was released in September 2011 as an ebook and will be available soon in print format. Kitty has also written magazine articles, devotionals, and worked as a magazine editor. She is the co-founder of Routines for Writers where she blogs every Monday. Her next novel, Love at the Fluff N Fold, will be released in late 2012.
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WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO NOW?

August 2, 2012 by in category Archives

by Jann Audiss

As the excitement of the 2012 RWA National Conference starts to wane, I pose this question to conference attendees who pitched: what are you going to do now?
The buzz going around at the conference from individuals who pitched was that the editors and agents were voracious. They wanted everything from partials to fulls. On the other hand, we also have heard editors and agents say that they only receive about ten percent of the manuscripts they request.
You took the first step by gathering the courage to pitch. Are you ready to take the next and send it?

 

The next 30 days are so important. It may require you to be selfish with your time. Ask for support and understanding from your family. Let them handle some of those pesky day to day chores and events (dinner, laundry, social engagements) so you can carve out the necessary time to edit and polish your pages. Put your critique group or whoever reads your manuscripts on notice that you might need an emergency read session or emotional support. This is what you’ve longed for – to have an editor or agent read your manuscript. Then send the darn thing!  Don’t let this moment pass you by. 

 

If you have a WIP but were not in a position to pitch, I’m going to assume that your goal at conference was to go to as many workshops as possible to hone your craft, to see how to raise the stakes in your plot, fix that sagging middle, add more sexual tension, etc. The conference workshop schedule had something for everyone. So, I’m going to ask you the same question – what are you going to do now?  

 

Take what you gathered from conference and apply it to your manuscript. Put a plan in motion, do whatever it takes to get that WIP completed, because in just eight months you’ll have the opportunity to attend the SoCal Chapters 2013 Conference in Santa Ana and pitch to editors and agents. 
Don’t let grass grow under your feet and miss this opportunity that will be in your own backyard March 15-17, 2013. Stay tuned for conference update.
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August Online Class

July 26, 2012 by in category Archives tagged as , , ,

“Make ‘em Laugh: Tools and Techniques for Writing Humor”
with Charlotte Lobb w/a Charlotte Carter
August 13 – September 9, 2012
Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassAugust12.html
COST: $20 for OCCRWA members, $30 for non-members
If you have specific questions, email occrwaonlineclass@yahoo.com
ABOUT THE CLASS:
Learn from the mistress of humor and a much-published author.  This workshop will take a look at the difference between male and female humor, the basic types of humor and how to use the tools that will bring the reader a smile and add a spark to your writing.  Some of these tools include the use of contrasting main characters, adding humor through secondary characters, dialogue, deep point of view and employing funny words.  The elements of romantic comedy will also be covered as well as setting up a running joke and using props to create humor. 
Exercises will encourage participants to identify what’s funny in the works of other authors and practice using the tools of humor in their own projects with feedback provided by the instructor.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR:

Charlotte Carter has authored fifty-six books under various pseudonyms for Harlequin American, Love & Laughter and Duets as well as Dorchester.  She is currently writing for Love Inspired and Guideposts Books.  Noted for her light-hearted touch, she is a frequent workshop presenter and has taught an online Joke Writing class.
Her honors include Best Harlequin American and Career Achievement awards from Romantic Times and the National Readers’ Choice Award.  In her spare time Charlotte performs standup comedy——G-Rated Humor for Grownups.

Enrollment Information
Enrollment Information at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclassAugust12.html
COST: $20 for OCCRWA members, $30 for non-members
Coming in September 2012
Deep Story Structure: What Does Nora Roberts Know That You Don’t?
with Carol Hughes
Would You Like to Reach the Same Level in Your Own Writing Career as Nora Roberts or Stephen King?  Then Come Learn How to Unlock the Simple Secrets Behind Every Best Seller Novel and Blockbuster Film. 
Check out our full list of workshop at http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.html
Want to be notified personally two weeks before each class? Be sure you’re signed up for our Online Class Notices Yahoo Group! Sign up at the bottom of http://www.occrwa.org/onlineclasses.htmlor send a blank email to OCCRWAOnlineClassNotices-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
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The Burden of Specialness

July 24, 2012 by in category Archives

Did you catch the David McCullough Jr (son of) “You are not special” graduation speech?
In some follow up interviews he speaks about his goals in taking his position that resonated with me:  the burden of specialness.
Watching friends who—perhaps compensating for the lack of desired adulation from their own parents—lavish their offspring with encouragement and praise, and are resentful towards anyone (teachers, employers, friends) who are critical.
Their goal is to inspire and empower their children.  But these aspirational goals, this barrage of belief their progeny’s exceptionalness, is a heavy burden.
It can make every success a failure, because it can never be remarkable enough.  If there ever is something exceptional, then really, it’s just what is expected—nothing remarkable about that!  It makes failure unacceptable, a betrayal of their parent’s faith, something to hide, to be ashamed of.  Not good.
For all those who were dumped on and discouraged in their formative years, rethink your resentments.  If you were strong enough, motivated enough to defy assumptions, to fight for  your own dreams, than every step was a triumph.  The desire to “show” others how wrong they were about you may have lead you to excell in remarkable ways.  Your victories are your own, fought for and won in the teeth of opposition.
Perhaps it is logical to think that it would be easier to achieve success if those barriers were eliminated, but the barriers are what buids and ensures the strength and the motivation to succeed. The challenges we face and overcome in the race to win are the cause of our success. Not what prevents success.
Consider it in physical terms—no one trains successfully to win a race by having their coach move the finish line closer to the start. 
The word “burden” reminds me of Pilgrim’s Progress, read many years ago.  Our burdens can indeed sink us into the Slough of Despond.  And a positive burden can be just as heavy as a negative one.
Let them go and find your own path….
Isabel Swift (somewhat special—in her own special way)
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