Saturday morning I made carrot muffins. (This was when I was still kidding myself that I’d be writing thousands of words over the weekend and just needed to fuel up.) They were awesome. Lots of shredded carrot, and cinnamon and ginger for spice. I don’t use a recipe, since muffins are so forgiving. You just top up flour or milk to get the right consistency. Then through the rest of Saturday I ate far too many and re-read Terry Pratchett’s Unseen Academicals. He really is a writing god.

Sunday was sunshiny and lovely. Vitamin D was acquired, i.e. I sat around in the sun doing nothing. I made chicken stock, simmering for 4 hours, which is only something I do when I’m not doing anything else. I don’t know why stock (which looks after itself) strikes me as something I have to keep an eye on. Maybe one day I’ll get over it.

Toby, the golden retriever, got brushed and generously shared his fur. In retrospect, black sweatpants were not the wisest clothing choice on my part. But Toby looked lovely at the end of the process.

I checked the progress of my daikon–still looking like weeds. And how the tomatoes were ripening–really well, given that this is winter.

Can you pick the theme? I basically lazed away the weekend, and it was the best decision I’ve made in ages. As committed as I am to my word goals for the month (don’t ask! they’re insane), a break to renew my energy was a great idea.

And now, off to write! I hope you had a lovely weekend, too

Grevillea obtusifolia

Winter in Western Australia is definitely not without colour. The birds are loving the current grevillea flowering.

I’ve hit the winter sales and am now all shopped out. I have limited shopping zen, especially when it comes to shoe shopping, so it’s nice to have that done.

The Romance Writers of Australia conference is happening in two months. Eek! Somehow I don’t think I’m going to get a second novel written and ready to pitch in that time — which is a relief. Ssshh. Don’t tell anyone how cowardly I am, but actually going to my first writers’ conference will be stressful enough without adding pitching to editors and agents to my To Do List.

I’ve decided to attend the conference “Nautical or Nice” themed cocktail party as a pirate. That’s pretty daring for me…and helped along by the fact that I found the perfect pirate shirt. I’ll be the short, shy pirate in the corner.

I sub’d a short story to Asimov’s SF magazine. Aiming high! I mentioned it on Twitter, but forgot to do so, here. This is the story which mixed Neanderthals and quantum computing, not to mention multi-dimensional travel.

I can’t keep calling Brodie and Sophie’s story “Brodie and Sophie’s story”, so it’s working title is now “Hero Duty”. Here’s a snippet from the intro:

The dogs had stopped barking, but she still wanted to cut and run.

If she ran now, she’d never stop.

“Sergeant Carlton?” she asked quietly.

I hope the photo shows you the astonishing green colour of the carnations, but I have a feeling it bleached out. Oh well, you’ll just have to trust me. It’s an astonishing colour, so I’ve snipped off the bottom of the carnation stems and I’m hoping to strike the cuttings.

And since I was in the garden taking photos, here are my daikon. They look scarily like weeds.

The tomatoes are going well, though the fruit doesn’t want to ripen. You can just see the blurry orange colour through the leaves.

You’d think the disaster with the okra would have taught me not to try to grow things out of season, but no. Here is my new Chinese gooseberry plant.

I started Brodie and Sophie’s story — the one that is going to be a full length novel. Eek! — but realised I’d been too nice to them again; i.e. not enough conflict. So I’ve thrown out the false start, sat down and brainstormed some heart breaking life events for my poor couple, and I’m all ready to go, go, go … tomorrow!

The other day I walked in to buy a couple of things and discovered potato flour on the shelf. So of course I bought it, even though I have no idea what to do with it. I’ll probably google for recipes — although if anyone has a cool recipe for potato flour or a link to one, please share in the comments. As it is, I did a quick, plain mix yesterday just to try it out.

Recipe: A few spoonfuls of potato flour, pinch of salt, one egg and a dash of cold water.

This mixed up into a weird yellow-custard looking thing. I dropped teaspoonfuls onto a baking tray and stuck in a hot oven for almost ten minutes. I had really low expectations since the mix lay on the tray like pathetic pikelets.

But in cooking, they did puff up a bit, even curving in a way that you could pile cream cheese and toppings on them (hmm, ideas!). They had a really hard outer shell, but were kind of chewy. Definitely bland with an eggy smell.

My big finding is that potato flour doesn’t bake well by itself, but I may try frying in butter as pikelets or I’m thinking that it would be an interesting addition to a muffin mix.

Heston Blumenthol I’m not, but I quite enjoy small food experiments — even if they generally have weird results.

Perth storm clouds

but then the clouds cleared (for a while) and I had an absolutely lovely lunch with some writer friends. Honest to goodness, authors! I think we scared the waiter

I know one creature unfazed by the promised wild weather …

On the positive side, the storms are bringing much needed rain. Toby, my dog, would however like to point out that rain without thunder is possible and would be much preferred. So you have your orders, weather gods!

I’ve been writing. My steampunk romance short story, “Befogged”, is sub’d to Ticonderoga Press’s Kisses by Clockwork anthology. After struggling for inspiration on this one (aiming at an emotionally satisfying romance in 3,000 words is tough), I ended up going for something less heavy on the romance and angst, and much heavier on gadget fun and some tongue-in-cheek history and fictional references. However, that fun inspired an idea for a full length novel. Aaargh! I do NOT have time to write a steampunk novel this year … unless I clone myself. I’m considering it!

My SF story is proving ridiculously difficult to write. I say “ridiculously” because the issue is that its world has become all too real to me. So I’m struggling to make the characters behave and allow me to pull the many tangled threads together for the surprise-twist ending that is the point of the story. But this is a good problem to have — characters living, breathing and tantruming.

Then with all decks cleared, I want to write Brodie’s story as fast as I possibly can. I’ve been thinking of this story for months, so I can’t wait to dive in. I’m determined that this time I will crack the  50,000 word barrier that is haunting me. I can write longer length, and I will!