Saturday, December 25, 2010

Nook

Gwenna got a Nook for Christmas! (and several B&N giftcards to go with it!) It was a lovely Christmas day with some other wonderful prezzies as well.

Tomorrow, back to work on VN2. :)

Oh, and hot damn, the cover art FINALLY made it onto Barnes and Noble! Santa was good to me!

Saturday, December 18, 2010

DADT

Yeah, Don't Ask, Don't Tell was repealed today! It now awaits the President's signature to be the law of the land. (Now if we could just get McCain to shut the hell up, it would be perfect.) As a huge supporter of gays in the military, I couldn't be more thrilled.

Saturday, December 11, 2010

Good news for those of us who ePublish

NY Times- Lusty Tales and Hot Sales: Romance E-Books Thrive
This article came across a couple of lists I'm on, including Lyrical's, and it's worth noting here. Because yeah, I'm one of those who doesn't like to brag that I read romance novels every now and then. (And I certainly don't brag to the general public I write military romances featuring gay men.) eBook readers are getting more and more popular by the day and the eBook world is obviously growing by leaps and bounds. Romance and writers like myself have found a home that traditional publishers just weren't (and still aren't to some extent) ready to take on.

BTW- Gwenna is getting a Nook (The Barnes and Noble version of the Kindle) for Christmas. How thrilled am I?

Update on VN2- I cracked the 85K mark last night. Nate and Ian finally got their act together, in more ways than one. LOL. It only took me all damn day to write it. Geesh. You'd think I never wrote this stuff before. The good news is I can see daylight at the end of the tunnel and should be able to wrap this up with another 10k words. Maybe I'll actually have this finished by the end of the year. Maybe. Only two months past my personal deadline. Oy.

VN2 word count: 85,109K

Friday, December 10, 2010

recipes

Because Gwenna hasn't much of anything else to say these days but the word count on VN2, I thought I'd post some of my Christmas cookie recipes over the next couple of weeks. I'm all about the "easy" when it comes to baking because frankly, my time is short. So some of what you see will be super easy and not entirely from scratch.

Today's recipe- Razz-Ma-Tazz Bars is one of those I get requests for all the time. When I bring in a cookie platter to work, these are pretty much the first to go.

Razz-Ma-Tazz Bars

1/2 cup (1 stick) margarine
2 cups (12 ounce package) white morsels or chips
2 large eggs
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 cup all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon almond extract
1/2 teaspoon seedless raspberry jam (I've also used blueberry and strawberry)
1/4 cup toasted sliced almonds

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Grease and sugar 9 inch square baking pan. (I found glass works best)

Melt butter in medium, microwave-safe bowl on HIGH power for 1 minute; stir. Add 1 CUP morsels; let stand. Do not stir.

Beat eggs in large mixer bowl until foamy. add sugar; beat until light lemon color, about 5 minutes. Stir in morsel-butter mixture. add flour, salt and almond extract; mix at low speed until combined. Spread two-thirds of batter into prepared pan.

Bake for 15 to 17 minutes or until golden brown around edges. Remove from oven to wire rack.

Heat jam in small, microwave-safe bowl on HIGH power for 30 seconds: stir. Spread jam over warm crust. Stir remaining morsel into remaining batter. Drop spoonfuls of patter over jam. Sprinkle with almonds.

Bake for 25 to 30 minutes or until edges are browned. Cool completely in pan on wire rack. Cut into bars.