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Conserve-ation

11 Sep 2012 by KRAG

What do you do with forty pounds of plums? You experiment.

In an attempt to capitalize on this year’s bumper crop of Italian prune plums, I have been trying several new recipes, like the clafouti I tried a week or so ago. Last night, I tried a couple of conserve recipes, but I’m only going to share one of them.

Italian plums are tricky when it comes to judging ripeness. Even the ones that fall from the tree still have green-colored flesh under the dark, dusty purple skins, but occasionally one goes yellow on the inside, but those are not especially sweet. However, if you cook these little guys, they make up for their tart edge with an especially “plummy” taste, so I’ll forgive them. Besides, a little bite never hurt.

Continue Reading »

Posted in Food, Gardening, Recipes | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

The Drought Breaks

10 Sep 2012 by KRAG

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiI was torn.

It was 3AM, and I was torn between sleep and listening to an old friend. We hadn’t talked, hadn’t seen each other for 50 days, and for us, that’s a long time. Usually, hardly a week goes by without at least a chat. Sometimes we’ll lose track of the days and, especially in the summer, a month will pass us both, but soon, we always meet up. We might meet on the street, or when I’m out in the gardens, or, like today, I look out the window and realize my friend is out there. Continue Reading »

Posted in Gardening, Seattle | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Righting a Wrong

09 Sep 2012 by KRAG

Obey the Kitty!Now hear this!

In the past, people have asked me: Do you get to pick your own title for your books?

  • Short answer: Yes.
  • Longer answer: Yes, but the publisher can override my choice.

Such was the case for two of my books, and I now have the chance to fix at least one of them.

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Judging a Book

07 Sep 2012 by KRAG

Kurt R.A. GiambastianiI heard back from Fairwood Press, yesterday. As publisher of Dreams of the Desert Wind (my genre-mashup of speculative fiction, thriller, and corporate espionage), I wanted to give them the “right of first refusal” on the new FC:V. The good news is that Fairwood is doing very well; the bad news is that their docket is filled for 2013, and they couldn’t entertain this title until 2014.

That’s too long a wait. So, I’m moving ahead; Beneath a Wounded Sky will be published by Mouse Road Press (i.e., me) as part of a full, five-book release of The Fallen Cloud Saga.

Which means that everything is now on my plate. Including cover art.

I have an advantage here. I don’t care if this project makes money. In fact, I assume it won’t. So, if I have covers that don’t tick all the boxes on the marketing strategy checklist, no worries. But I do want to have good-looking covers.

However, I do not want to have the standard-style, heavy-detail, photo-realistic cover of men and machines that you see on almost every alternate history title on the shelf. I want something different.

I’m thinking: minimalist.

There’s a new meme out there. Do a Google search on “minimalist movie poster” and you’ll see what I mean. These are evocative but very stylized images. Most of them play on a previous knowledge of the movie, but they needn’t. They’re eye-catching, they’re clean and easy to understand, and they tell a little story all on their own.

So, I’m reaching out to some of my friends who have graphic art experience, to get their input on the process. I already have concept art for each of the five covers. Three of them are pretty much final product, in fact (yes, I was working on this ahead of time, having predicted the Fairwood response).

These covers will be unusual, setting them apart from the standard cover art for the genre. They will have a uniform “look and feel” to them, identifying them as a set. And since I won’t have to use any stock photo images (bonus), they will also be completely free of royalty costs.

I’m not an artist—I’m saving that learning curve for my retirement—but I understand the basics of design. With some educated guidance, I hope I can come up with a set of covers that will do my series proud.

k

Posted in Fallen Cloud Saga, Low Tech, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment »

The Yellow Brick Road

06 Sep 2012 by KRAG

The goal of almost every writer is to be published by a big publishing firm. These big publishing houses pretty much had a lock on the whole shebang until about 20 years ago, when small and on-demand presses started popping up. Then, when e-publishing started to take off, authors had even more options open to them.

But, for most of us, the Yellow Brick Road still leads to Oz, and all those other venues are just waypoints for which we must “settle” if we can’t get all the way to the Big Publishing House.

I’ve hit pretty much every stop on the Yellow Brick Road. Under normal circumstances, I’d be taking my new novel down as far down that road as possible, but FC:V is a bit of an edge case. Continue Reading »

Posted in Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments »

Ready, Set, Fail

06 Sep 2012 by KRAG

Obey the Kitty!I’ve spent some time on this blog bemoaning the flaws and poor implementations of Agile methodologies so, to be fair, this isn’t about that. I cannot blame Agile for the problems currently weighing on me at my Monkey-Boy-Day-Job. These problems go much deeper. It doesn’t matter what methodology you’re using; you can’t fix stupid.

Like most people, I want to succeed at my job. I want to do well and contribute to good outcomes. I really hate being set up to fail. But management-types don’t seem to grok that concept. So they do things like this:

  1. Create a situation wherein you need to do six months of work in six weeks.
  2. Ensure that the situation requires something you haven’t done before.
  3. Set people to work on it, but
    • Don’t give them details about what it is you want.
    • Pick people who don’t know the systems involved.
  4. Once underway, dribble in new and changed requirements.
  5. See what happens.

To quote Jayne Cobb, ” Where’s that get fun?”

k

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On, You Huskies!

05 Sep 2012 by KRAG

First Reader has come back with comments on Beneath a Wounded Sky (FC:V).

Overall, response was very good. Really good. “I miss them already,” was the comment after the last page.

But, there was room for improvement. Here’s the sort of thing First Reader found:

  • The first major action sequence, written back when I was approaching getting back into a groove, was unclear. I know that I didn’t follow my own advice on writing action sequences, so this is not a surprise.
  • Sequences that referred back to one of the previous books needed more detail. This is because I had re-read FC:I-IV before re-starting my work, but First Reader (intentionally) did not. Since most readers won’t re-read the first four, this was very good feedback.
  • A few of the more complicated sections were unclear as to motivation; why did so-n-so do thus-n-such? Again, great feedback because to be honest, I hadn’t thought it out. I’d cheated, and tap-danced my way through a section to get to a good part. Bad writer! No biscuit! I’d written some action without considering the “why,” and it showed.
  • The denouement seemed rushed. This is a common response, and one I always suspect I’m going to get. With the finish line in sight, I will dash ahead and finish the book, wanting to (a) get it done, and (b) get it to First Reader. It’s nothing tragic; it just needs a little more attention.
  • Throughout the entire novel, only four typos. A record for me.

Now, all the changes have been considered and fixed. The new version is off to a select group of Second Readers. I expect to hear back from them in a couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, I get to think about what to do next? Agent/Publisher (which could take—literally—years)? Self-publication (which would reap little, monetarily)?

k

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