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Tuesday Tea and the Social Brew

How about some tea, crumpets, and social brew?

The Tea

I have some guilty pleasures. Bottled fruit yerba maté is one of them.

So.

While I like many flavors, today I want to recommend this refresher by Guayakí: Pure Body Peach. The combination of peaches and yerba maté is smooth and absolutely perfect. It's my favorite of all the bottled teas they put out. Best served cool and guzzled in doses.


The Crumpets

Tried a new recipe this last week and I like it. We shall call it Blueberry Muffin Bread. The bread is dense and thick, so err on the side of too much water rather than too little.

  • a handful of frozen blueberries puréed in water
  • a handful of pecans
  • sweetener and salt to taste (err on the side of generous)
  • all-purpose flour mix
  • a pinch of baking powder

Pour the purée in a bowl and add the pecans and sweetener. Stir in flour until dough is very soupy and all flour is thoroughly mixed. Layer parchment paper two or three times over a baking dish, then carefully pour in dough. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes1 or until knife comes out clean. If it's almost clean, taste it: it might be done. Allow to set for 15–20 minutes. Enjoy!


The Social Brew

Manuscript Multiple Personality Disorder | on symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment

Diagnosis: Manuscript Multiple Personality Disorder. Often found in writers who are working on multiple projects in the same draft or stage of review, thus utilizing the same muse.

— posted in comments at Write a Book with Me

The Rules of Music | on study and creation

To study music, we must learn the rules. To create music, we must break them.

— Nadia Boulanger, tweeted by Finale Music
a thought which applies equally well to any creative endeavor

My Favorite Online Fiction | on reading

I try to never miss Kris Rusch’s Free Fiction Mondays, Melanie Edmond’s Starwalker, M.C.A. Hogarth’s Black Blossom, or new issues of Beneath Ceaseless Skies.

— posted in comments on Writer at Play

Passive Voice? | on grammar

I do agree that those are weak verbs in an action scene and should be excised, but this sentence is an example of a passive construction. Not all instances of those two verbs are passive, as this sentence is an example of an active construction.

— posted in comments on The New World of Publishing

Show 1 footnote

  1. The recipe is for high-altitude cooking. Adjust as necessary.
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Snippet: Storm

So on Write a Book with Me, Kirsten asked for snippets and shared an amazing one of her own. I went ahead and went out on a limb (for me, anyway) and shared the first bit of Storm, the new bit of the overhaul of my Vardin novelverse into The Rothnen Cycle.

I wasn't expecting much; I've been scared to really go where this book goes, but her response just about choked me up and told me I am finally doing this right. It's still scary, if I'm honest, but I hope that I can keep doing, reaching down into the real parts of this story that draw me and compel me and share them, no matter how much I worry that it's going to go down wrong.


She fell into sleep wearing her usual blonde braid and her long, flannel nightgown. She woke to a rocky beach with her golden hair loose and blowing in the softly singing winds and wearing a simple cream-colored dress under a dark cloak. He was there. He was always there, waiting for her. A little older than she was, maybe twelve or thirteen, and visibly too thin without his shirt. He liked to hang his bare legs in the water and let the water and wind ruffle his hair into unkempt auburn. He liked to sit just in front of her and grin when she wasn’t being serious.

But tonight—or day, the sun was glimmering softly over here through a haze of beautiful blue so intense, it seemed she could swirl her finger in it—she was serious as she settled her cloaked back against the large rock leading upward toward the cliffs. She was serious often enough to know he would not laugh or grin, but listen to her intently, like his life hung upon her words.

“What day is it?” she asked, softly, like speaking too loud would change his answer.

It was an old question between them, something worrisome and weary filling the gap between.

“The seventeenth,” he answered solemnly.

“What month is it?”

He waited a moment, dark eyes holding hers. “The second.”

The same day. She slept and awoke and it was all her own life. It bothered her.

He was all pent-up, restless energy and stepped up as if to go, but she caught his hand and held it tightly. He let her and sat beside her while she waited for the ache of confusion within her to leave her for the winds and drift away.

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