In Which We Feast Like Hobbits

I've been planning to write this post for months, now, and I just kept forgetting or getting sidetracked by other, more timely, posts.

But, here were are, finally, where I got to talk about the wonderful terribleness that is a HOBBIT FEAST.

What's a Hobbit Feast, you ask?

A Hobbit Feast is where you eat all the typical meals of a hobbit (First Breakfast, Second Breakfast, Elevenses, Luncheon, Afternoon Tea, Dinner, Supper, Dessert)(period appropriate food, too, of course) while watching a marathon of the extended LoTR movies.

My brave family and I decided to give this a try, and what better time and place to do so than winter, up at our cabin!

We split up the meals, so no one had to do too much cooking. The recipes all came from a middle earth database of middle earth dishes. And here is photo documentation of all of the food that was consumed.

FIRST BREAKFAST: Beorn's Honeynut Cake--made by Twin




The cake was okay. We felt with Twin's baking skills, she could have made something better

SECOND BREAKFAST: Strawberry French toast, Bangers and Bacon--made by my dad




Delicious. Also of note, the banger sausages were made by myself, Twin and Brother, since we have a killer banger recipe

ELEVENSES: Lembas Bread and Merry's Mulled Cider--made by Twin




The Lembas bread really had no flavor, though the texture was good. Another one we thought we could do better ourselves

LUNCHEON: Po-tay-to Soup--made by my mom



Really frickin good. One of the best courses

AFTERNOON TEA: Bilbo's Tea Cake, Lemon Muffin, Tea--made by Twin and myself



Another disappointment of baked goods. Especially since we have a killer lemon muffin recipe

DINNER: Balin's Spiced Beef--Made by my brother

Delicious. You can't really go wrong with a roast beef

SUPPER: Mrs. Maggot's Cottage Pie--made by me

Also delicious. Like the roast beef, you can't really go wrong with a shepherd's pie

DESSERT: Ten Cup Ranger Cookies--made by my brother.

Not bad, but again, we have better cookie recipes we could have gone with

Pretty much every two hours you eat another meal. They're really just tasting portions, so you're not eating a lot with each meal.

Honestly, the hardest part was sitting there, watching the movies all day long. It's a long marathon. By then end we were exhausted and we decided that if we would do the feast again, that we would allow activities while the movies are playing (i.e., board games or something). Overall, the entire feast and movies lasted 11 hours and 45 minutes.

The meals themselves were hit and miss. Any sort of baked goods were pretty much a failure and if we were to go it again in the future we would follow our own, much better, recipes. But the other meals were good.

Now, whether or not we'll do this again this winter, I don't know. I'm sure distance will make us grow fond again, but I suppose we'll have to wait and see.

In Which I Win The Arcade And Cross An Item Off The Bucket List

Remember when you were a kid and you'd go to the arcade? (and, I guess this is assuming you're roughly the same age as me, but regardless, if you can't rely on your memories, then use your imagination)

And so you'd play games and some of those games would reward you with tickets when you played well (or maybe not so well). And you'd be so excited and you'd go up to the counter to see what you could get for your tickets?

And it was always something disappointing. Like some taffy. Or a plastic ring, or, like, maybe a slinky if you were real lucky. And behind the counter they would have the high value prize, that would take thousands of tickets. And you'd look at them and wonder what it would take to get one of those most awesome prizes.

Well, I have the answer. It takes you being an adult, your two siblings, a bit of disposable income and about a month of Saturdays.

And if you do that, you too, my friends, can finally cash in enough tickets (though it's all digital now) and get yourself one of those super prizes.

Like a PS4, worth 52,000 tickets.

BLAMMO!

 

In Which I'm At The Minnesota State Fair

No real post today, pals. It's Labor Day which means it's my last day to hit up the MN State Fair.

It is a delicious time of year.

deep fried cheese curds

 



Bingo!

 

 

ham and cheese savory scone

 



This happened

Chicken fried bacon

 

 

Brother, Twin, Me

Corn Dog!!!

 

In Which We Talk Swears

*there will be swearing in this post. Look away if you do not approve

Like the title says, let's have a damn chat about swears (see what I did there?)

Specifically I want to talk about swears in fantasy (or sci-fi, or maybe even dystopian) novels.
If you're writing contemporary, or even paranormal or anything where your setting is the "here and now", well, your swears are already created for you. They're the ones we use every day (well, that some of us use every day *furtive eyes*)

BUT, what if you're writing a novel that doesn't take place here? What if it's 300 years in the future, or a fantasy world or wherever?
Fuck is probably not going to cut it.





It's important to remember, though, when making up swears, that you don't just make up any word to replace Fuck.
I mean, you can substitute Frem, or whatever, but it will hold a lot more believability if you pick a word that has actual meaning in the world.


Example.
When writing Glimpse, I needed some swears. Sure, I could have used fuck and shit (and there are some damns and hells) but it would have been a little lazy of me. My story is not on earth as we know it.
Pier, the main character, lives on an island and their whole culture is based around the sea. So, though shit may still be able to work, would a sea-related curse be even more believable?
The short answer is Yes. Also, creating world specific swears is a quick and easy way to fill out your world-building.

So, for Glimpse, I brainstormed with Twin and Brother and Also Hannah and Teebore, and the two main swears I came up with were:

Rot
Bilge

Both of them are related to the sea, or ships or whatever. They're believable and they work.
Also, if you plan to use any form of God as an expletive, it's important to take into consideration whether or not God even plays a part in your milieu.
In Glimpse, Pier's culture worships a sea goddess called Mear.
So instead of God-Damn, we have Mear Damn You.

Here's another example. In Anne McCaffrey's Pern series, the MCs are typically dragon riders (holy HELL I want to read those again RIGHT NOW). Even if they aren't dragon riders, all their lives revolve around dragons and fire lizards.
The swears they use?

Shells
Shards


In Across the Universe, the swear used on the ship is Frex, which seems like a no-nonsense word, until you find out that the letters FRX appear on certain areas of the ship. If you spend generations looking at those letters, it's completely believable that Frex could rise out of that.


Of course, all of this is relative to whether or not your character would even use swears. Pier most definitely would.
Kiersten White's Evie does, but in an adorable, believable, way: Bleep.

You should first and foremost do what is right for your character, even if it goes against your own beliefs. If you force a character to conform against their nature, then the character will read false and weak. And that's something we all want to avoid.

So, give me your damn thoughts. What are some of the swears you've used?

In Which We Discuss Critiques Pt. 1

How was everyone's weekend? Was it fun? Did you win the lottery? Can I have some of your winnings?

No?

Jerk.

Anyway, for all you people who didn't win the lottery, I hope your weekend was full of fun and also of sleeping in.

Today, and for the next post, I want to talk about critiques and some of the weird things that can come about and some of the rage emotions which can sneak up on us during a critique of our work.

For today's post I want to discuss the "hit and miss" critiquer. That is, a person who gives you both a good and a bad critique.

And by "good and bad" I mean "useful/constructive" and "not useful/not constructive"

I'll start with my own example. I had a critique recently from a person I don't know. It was on an online critique... club I guess we'll call it? So the crit was solicited, but I've never met this person, not even in the Internet sort of way we've all "met"

We'll call her Jane (because I'm not super creative right now. Also Jane is easier to type than Shamalamadingdong, which is the first name that came to mind)

So Shama Jane writes a lengthy critique and I would say a good 50% of it is useful. Places she had troubles visualizing. World building questions. Helpful things that I was looking for in a crit.

But, for the remaining 50%, the crit was just crap. Crap to the point where I got really angry. To be fair, I'm quick to anger and quick to cool off (especially if I have no clue who you are and you're giving me a bad crit). Also, some of it was the tone she used (also, to be fair, she had stated straight up that she could be blunt in her crits and she didn't mean anything by it) but here's an example.

Pier hits someone in the face and I make note that the punch hurts his hand.

Her response is "Have you ever hit someone before? It doesn't just hurt your hand, it hurts your whole arm"

So right there, I'm annoyed. Of course I've hit someone before. Actually, Twin, Brother and I smack each other around quite a bit. Alone, I would ignore it. But it continues on in this vein for quite a bit more.

Later I make mention that Pier is a free diver and that he can hold his breath for five minutes after spending months working at it.

Her comments is along the lines of "That's completely unbelievable. No human can hold their breath that long. You've completely lost me as a reader"

(This is when I freaked out in my head.)




It frustrates me, as a writer, that she just assumed I was pulling this out of my ass, that I hadn't done the research on free diving (clearly she didn't even know what free divining was. Otherwise she would know that 5 minutes is pretty average and that the world record free-dive is somewhere around 12 minutes)

So, my question for you is, how do you handle someone who has, what you think are, fair crits and then has a junkload of crits you can't even begin to respect?

Obviously the answer here is to take what you want and discard the rest, but it's hard to separate the good from the bad when the bad makes you question the validity of the good.

Thoughts? Opinions? Stories about horrible crits you'd like to share? Please do so in the comments!

Wednesday will be part 2 of this critique blog post series (Critiques when you least expect them/didn't ask for them)

In Which The Siblings Provide Me With Some Art

So a few weeks ago, when Hannah, Teebore and I had a NaNo write in at the Libary (I actually know someone who pronounces library like that. It's weird because he's well educated and smart, but apparently he doesn't know "library" has two "R"s) Twin and Brother came along to do some drawing.

Brother decided he would draw a cover for my novel. Back in the day he wrote a comic strip for his school newspaper. It was really good and Twin and I keep harping on him to make a webcomic, but so far, no dice.

Anyway, back to his "cover" - this was before I won the cover for 30 Covers 30 Days. Keep in mind he didn't know anything much about the story beyond "A boy and his sea serpent".

Here is his work of genius:

The text, in case you can't read it says:

"You gotta believe!"
- a touching story about a boy and his sea serpent friend and their rage-filled fight against the world
Written by Sarah Ahiers
Illustrated by Sir Patrick Ahiers

Apparently at some point Brother was knighted.


Twin also drew a (more serious) picture for the WIP. Here's the colored pencil version, though I have high hopes she will color it with her awesome art tablet on the computer (hint hint)

I'm a particular fan of the fish.

So what about you? Do you have any art created for your WIPs?

In Which The Holiday Is Over

Well, here we are, back to Monday.

Yippee.

I actually forgot what I was originally going to post about today. So here's a fun conversation I had this weekend with Twin and Brother while driving over to our parents' to nom on some delicious turkey.

Bro: Look, a hawk in that tree. Where do hawks go in the winter?
Me: Some of them migrate. Some just stay here.
Bro: What do they eat?
Twin: Not all rodents hibernate. Squirrels.
Me: Voles
Twin: Mice
Bro: Well certainly the animal living in my ceiling doesn't hibernate.
Twin: We should get a ferret. That would take care of the problem
Me: Yeah but then we'd have a ferret in the wall, and that would be worse
Bro: Then we could stick a fox in the walls to get the ferret
Me: And we know where to get one
Bro: Then we'd have to put a cougar in the walls to get the fox
Me: No, we're not putting a cougar in the wall. I believe the correct step after fox is foxhound
Twin: Well, a foxhound doesn't actually kill the fox
Bro: Yeah we'd have to get some fox hunters and put them in the walls.
Me: Then we'd hear the fox hunters at all hours and their bugles (side note here, when Brother makes a bugle sound, it drives Tula crazy)
Bro: But then the hunting commissioner would get in the walls to tell the fox hunters that it's not the right season. All we'd hear is "What's this now? The season is over, jolly good and all that"
Me: Then the fox hunters would come out of the wall and tell us they'll be back next season. And we'd still have a fox in our wall

And that's how we spent our time on our drive over.




How was your Thanksgiving?

In Which October Is An Important Month

Taking a short break from my usual silly fun stuff to let you know that October is Adopt a Shelter Dog Month.

This is a month that is near and dear to my heart. Let me tell you a little story why.


It was January 2007. Our family Sheepdog, Bess, had just died unexpectedly on my youngest sister's 16th birthday. My parents were dogless. Twin, Brother and I were living together and had my frenchie George, who was a year old, to heap love upon.

Then, one night, I received a text message from Twin (who works at the shelter).

This was the text message:





I texted her back - "What is it?" even though I was pretty sure I knew.

"A fawn pied frenchie puppy. 11 weeks old."

I tried not to be excited. I always told myself when I got another frenchie, I wanted a fawn pied girl. But I didn't want another dog for 5 years or so.

Twin texted me another message and pic:

"Her owner bought her at a pet store as an impulse buy. She didn't realize how much work a puppy would be. And also she lives in an apartment and the puppy, Boo, cries and barks a lot."




I didn't want a puppy. George was still a puppy, technically, and two puppies at a time was a lot of work.

Twin texted our parents, to see if they were interested. They said it was too soon for them to get a dog again. But they wanted someone to have that puppy, so they'd pay for half of her adoption fee.

This was an unexpected crack in the wall I was trying to build around my heart. Twin and I agreed she'd bring Boo home the next night to employee foster.

I spent the whole next day trying to come up with better names than Boo. Something to match George's "Georgie Porgie Pudding Pie" nursery rhyme name. I already knew, unless it was a complete failure as a match, that she wouldn't be going back to the shelter.

When Twin brought her home from the shelter, she had pooped in her crate and rolled in it (many puppy mill puppies (puppies from pet stores) don't have a concept of staying clean from their waste).

The first time I saw her in person she stank, she was covered in shit, and I already loved her. Brother suggested we call her Evie after V for Vendetta but Twin and I changed it to Yvie, short for Yvette.

There is not a moment of my life where she doesn't fill my heart with love and adoration. Every time I see her, every time I even think of her, I'm filled with joy.

She didn't need to be rescued by us. She would have been adopted in less than a day at the shelter. But we selfishly snatched her up and every day she lights up our lives.

So, now you know why Adopt A Shelter Dog Month is so important. My family surrounds ourselves with dogs, and Yvie stands out. She was less than 300 dollars and worth a thousand, a million times that. There are so many wonderful dogs out there that are willing to share their lives with someone, all they need is a home, a chance, to show you how they can enrich your lives.

In Which We Wrap Up The Season

For my MN Renfest posts regarding food, costumes and animals, see the posts from earlier this week.

Besides people watching and eating, there are also plenty of activities one can partake in at the Renfest. There's jousting, plenty of shows and every day has a different theme so you can enjoy wine tasting, beer tasting, chocolate and romance and pirate fun.

We tend to skip the shows for fun activities like shopping!

Things I bought this year:

A giant bell wind chime.

it sounds like soft church bells

Steampunk bandoleer

gah this is such a bad picture

And a crapload of incense.

There are also many games that can be played.

Every year Brother likes to fight the Pirate Queen

He typically hits that balloon right in her heart

WINNER! Of a plastic dagger. Or a plastic bug

Twin tried some archery

If you feel like getting insulted, you can throw tomatoes at this guy

Ever ridden a giant rocking horse?

Every weekend brother plays the hammer game

If you can hit the bell all 5 times, you get invited to the strong man competition in the evening for a chance to win a pirate booty t-shirt.

You can stand by the hammer game and watch all these crazy strong-looking, buff guys miss that bell every single time.

Brother gets invited every weekend to the strong man competition, but we've yet to stay late enough for him to give it a shot

The giant puppets are awesome. But don't get too close, they're often drunk

Fancy a trip through the hobbit hole?

Or how about a humiliating spin at the stocks?

one of the many, delicious, food courts

the entrance

And after a whole season of renaissancey fun, all that's left to do is walk back to the car.

We'll be back next year Renfest. Oh yes we will.

In Which We Find Awesome Costumes

Today I continue with my MN Renfest posts. For the post regarding all the delicious food, check out yesterday's post

The MN and the TX Renfests are the biggest in the nation. One has the most land and one has the most attendance. I forget which one has which. Either way, both are awesomely huge.

One of the best things about the MN Renaissance Festival are the myriad of awesome costumes you can find. I personally own three different costumes, and Twin and Brother each own two.

Typically we just wear our current favorites and use the others to lend to friends who want to go dressed up. Dressing up is awesome because you don't get hassled for "modern clothing" and junk. Also it's fun.

Here we are with our current costumes:

Me, Twin, Brother

I'm always jealous of Twin's ability to look good in hats, and therefore her ability to buy awesome hats.

Twin says "how dares you take a photo of me..."

But she says she gets jealous of my ability to buy awesome hair pieces.

The key to looking really authentic (blending in with those who work there) are the little pieces. For example, here's what I carry on my belt:

my pouch

fox tail

wooden bowl with wooden spoon/fork

wooden mug

flask

here's a close up of the inlay

Here are some pics of street performers and the occasional visitor with fun costumes.

mug shot

the best pickle guy

I rushed over to take a pic of this baby since I love babies in period accurate costumes, and then when I got over there I realized I knew this guy. Hannah, Teebore and I used to work with him at Barnes and Noble. Awkward...

This little girl was too adorable not to take a picture of her

Greenman

This fairy (one of many...) blows bubbles with her fingers

The king got married this year. This was before the ceremony (held at the renfest, of course)

nose flautist

Brother's eyes look freakishly pale in this pic.

I LOVE this faun!


she really gets into character. But not in a creepy way like some people. More like an adorable way


she (Twig) gets into character in a creepy way. Does she look familiar to you? She should. She's my drunken muse, just sober. To be fair, the kids love her


mud girl


she made it hard to take pictures of her


Beer harpist


Jesus


Buddy Christ


Buddy death?


The Queen Marm














If you pay this guy $1, he'll kick himself in the back of the head

It's as amazing as it sounds

That's all for now - tomorrow, the myriad animals that can be found