I came across this yesterday. The work of a master.
This is Just to Say
I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox
and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast
Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold
Posted in Food, Writing | Tagged Food, Plums, Poetry, william carlos williams, work of a master | Leave a Comment »
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.
Posted in Food, Gardening, Recipes | Tagged cold plate test., conserve, cooking, fresh fruit, Italian plums, jam recipe, prune plums, Recipe | 1 Comment »
I 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 consecutive days without rain, creative writing, drought, gardening, rain, Seattle, weather, Writing | 2 Comments »
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.
Posted in Fallen Cloud Saga, Writing | Tagged books, Corporate America, creative writing, Fallen Cloud Saga, FC:V, novel writing, novels, publishing, self-publishing, Writing, writing tips | Leave a Comment »
I 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 amazon, Beneath a Wounded Sky, books, creative writing, ebooks, editing, Fallen Cloud Saga, FC:V, Kindle, low-tech solutions, novel writing, publishing, self-publishing, small business, Writing, writing tips | Leave a Comment »
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 amazon, Beneath a Wounded Sky, creative writing, ebooks, Fallen Cloud Saga, FC:V, Kindle, novel writing, novels, publishing, self-publishing, Writing, writing tips | 2 Comments »
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:
- Create a situation wherein you need to do six months of work in six weeks.
- Ensure that the situation requires something you haven’t done before.
- 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.
- Once underway, dribble in new and changed requirements.
- See what happens.
To quote Jayne Cobb, ” Where’s that get fun?”
k
Posted in Hi Tech | Tagged Agile, Corporate America, Firefly, IT, Jayne Cobb, methodology, project management | Leave a Comment »
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 