Remember when I had a nibble from that UK publisher?
I finally had my Zoom meeting (cameras off) with the guy. He likes my writing style but says he likes his books to be around 35K rather than the 90K I’ve got now. My dictionary says 35K is a novella not a novel, but whatever, right? Now I have to retool the novels to see if I can get something down around that level instead of the normal sized novels I have written out now. Must remember to toss in more conflict, too. If I’m going small, I have to go tense.
My alter ego still has had no luck with the anthologies, but she’s plugging away at them. Working on a gay-friendly theme now called “It Can Only Get Better” about the (fictional) future of the LBGT culture — or a fictional account of an alien society with one. Sounds perfect for the velyr, no? And a couple of anthologies are judging this month and should send word out in early March.
What are your experiences with publishers (or agents)? Good? Bad? Indifferent?
This was one of the original chapters from Kirkham’s POV – ditched it because nothing exciting happens to poor Stone unless he’s with the lads.
Lieutenant Johnson kept up a solid stream of curses for the entire time it took the Pacific Express to clear the rock cut. His squad had dismantled the barricade in only fifteen minutes, but it took another fifteen to thread the train through the side of the mountain. The boom of the trestle exploding behind them didn’t improve the lieutenant’s mood any.
Agent Reginald Kirkham paid no attention to Johnson, except to frown when the volume grew annoying. An educated man had no need to resort to such language, and he thought it spoke poorly of the man’s self control. Kirkham busied himself readying the gelding for travel. He had to catch up with those two reprobates before they disappeared again. The Bureau still hadn’t managed to figure out how they did it, but following each robbery, Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid just faded into the background. Obviously, they either had either an impenetrable hideout, or alter egos that could stand scrutiny. He planned to find out which.
The army squad had complained at the presence of the horse within their boxcar. They’d changed their tune now that the payroll was likely halfway across the mountain range. Suddenly, every man wanted a horse, and every man wanted to go haring off after the outlaws. Kirkham had bought the mustang before they loaded the train. The animal was purported to be an excellent trail horse. He’d need a sure-footed horse if those two had taken to the mountains — and if they were half as good as they were supposed to be, they’d taken to the mountains.
His assignment was to trail the outlaws to whatever hideout they were using, and to approach them if possible. Kirkham thought little of the latter idea. Some desk-bound bureaucrat back at the Capitol figured one special agent could easily overpower two of the worst the West had to offer, even somewhere back of beyond with two to one odds. Kirkham had no great hankering to get shot, so he planned a lengthy period of observation instead.
The train had pulled clear of the cut and stopped, per Kirkham’s orders. He slid the door to the boxcar open. Lieutenant Johnson slammed a fist against the wall of the car.
“Blast it, Kirkham! I ought to appropriate that animal in the name of the army. We can track down those two hooligans faster than any Washington city slicker.” His scowl darkened as Kirkham pretended he’d heard nothing and led the horse down the ramp to the tracks.
Johnson leaped down in front of the horse, causing it to shy back against the boxcar. That was entirely too much! Kirkham took two steps and shoved a finger underneath the man’s nose. He had a difficult time making it a finger instead of a fist.
“You had this entire plan explained to you by the governor himself, Johnson. I don’t care what you think, but you’ll get out of my way or you’ll find yourself in irons.”
The lieutenant did raise a fist, and then thought better of it, and stepped back. Kirkham didn’t spare him a second glance, but mounted up and urged the horse into a canter. It’d be useless back-tracking to the trestle — or what was left of it. He knew pretty much where the outlaws had lain in wait. What he needed to figure out was where they were headed. To that end, he needed to pick up their trail on the dry riverbed.
He took a deep breath as he left the train behind. The crisp mountain air cooled off his temper some. Sure, he could have used a few extra riflemen as backup, but he’d prefer men who were better at creative thinking than at following orders. Maybe he’d gotten spoiled working in Washington, surrounded by the cream of the Bureau. It had taken them nearly a year to track the outlaws this far. He’d hate to imagine how long it would have taken if he’d had Johnson and his squad helping instead of his pick of the Bureau statistics team.
Perhaps his boss had been right; perhaps he did need to get out in the field and see how the world really worked. Although if that army squad was any indication, most people in the “real world” were about as observant as a lump of coal. If any one of those men had paid attention during the robbery, instead of shouting empty threats and useless curses, they’d have been able to successfully creep up on whichever one of the two had holed up in the rocks. Kirkham had figured out early on that the other outlaw was actually underneath the trestle: the bottle of nitroglycerin so pointedly mentioned had been positioned at the bottom of the explosive bundle, not at the top. Once he’d noticed that, he’d watched the shadows at the bottom of the ravine. He’d spotted the arm reaching out to haul the payroll box between a couple of crossbars, and felt a grudging respect for their ingenuity.
Kirkham thought about it as the horse picked its way down the side of the mountain. He’d requested this assignment because of that grudging respect, and he was about to learn whether he was as good an agent as he actually thought he was. Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid were the best at what they did. Even though Kirkham abhorred the idea of breaking the law, he admitted that fact, and admitted that they had to possess significant intelligence to be the best. The two outlaws had managed to outwit banks, trains, and stage lines for over ten years. Bankers who bragged of their impenetrable defenses unlocked their doors to find the safe emptied. Railroad presidents who’d plotted supposedly top-secret deliveries found their trains diverted and robbed.
Welcome to the Summer Blog Hop! Put on your flip-flops and bathing suits, slather on the sunscreen, and get ready for a great summer of reading. Thanks to Cody Gary of Avon Romance for starting this round robin blog hop. My hostess is Meg Mims– author of Double or Nothing and Double Crossing.
Each author answers five questions about his or her latest release and current WIP. They also post a recipe… hopefully pertaining to their work. Then each author invites five more authors to participate and links them all together.
- When writing, are you a snacker? If so, sweet or salty? I usually don’t snack while writing unless you count the omnipresent latte or Mexican Coca-Cola. When I do snack, it’s usually something salty like peanuts or cheese.
- Are you an outliner or someone who writes by the seat of your pants? And are they real pants or jammies? I like a rough outline, but then I just start writing and see what comes out. Once I get some good bones on my story, I like to return to the outline and make sure I include all pertinent information so I don’t forget that Kye has his pistol at the end of Chapter Three, or that Emily has an Aunt Susie. I’d say I spend about half the time writing in jammies, depending on whether I have the whole day off or have to run errands.
- When cooking, do you follow a recipe or wing it? I use a recipe the first few times, but then I wing it, changing things around to see what tastes best. This can produce some spectacular successes or failures, depending.
- What is next for you after this book? I’m working on a novel featuring the same characters as my anthology. Devon Day and the Sweetwater Kid have realized all of their goals, and are at the top of their game. They have it all – until Federal Agent Stone Kirkham tracks them down. He makes them an offer: go to jail or go to work for his new government agency, solving cases that can’t be solved by strictly legal means. It’s a mystery story set in late 1800’s San Francisco, and features another new character as well: Emily Sharp, eccentric spinster and best friend to our lads.
- Last question … on a level of one being slightly naughty and ten being whoo-hoo steamy, how would you rate your book? The anthology is pretty mild, as it’s written to appeal to both teens and adults, but the novel will have some sexy scenes for the older audience. Nothing X-rated, however
Want to keep hopping? Check out the following websites:
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And now for the recipe – this is from Pioneer Handbooks and you can download it along with a lot of other useful historical information.
How to Make Ice Cream
By John Miller
(Copyright 8/13/1886)
“This book will give full directions in detail how to make Ice Cream, you will have no loss or disappointments, it will tell you how to avoid getting bad Eggs in your Cream, it will tell you which kind are the best Freezers, it will tell you how to make your Custard and how to freeze it, how to keep it frozen, and how to dish it up to the advantage and satisfaction of all concerned.”
To 1 gallon of sweet, fresh milk take 1 dozen of chicken-eggs, 1 ½ pounds clean white sugar, and 1 tablespoon of good white flour. When breaking the eggs, do not break them over the bowl in which they are to be beaten, but break them separately into a tumbler, to avoid getting bad eggs into the bowl. Add a tablespoon or two of the sugar to the eggs, and beat them rigidly until they are thoroughly fine and foam up high. Next dissolve the tablespoon of flour with a little of the milk. Now, after everything is prepared, place the milk over the fire, stir into it the well-beaten eggs, and when the milk is hot add the dissolved flour and the sugar. Stir the milk constantly with a long-handled stout spoon from the bottom up, to keep it from scorching, for if it is allowed to scorch it will be ruined. The custard must remain on the fire until it almost comes to a boil, and begins to get thick and ropy, then remove it from the fire. As soon as the custard is done, in order to free it from all impurities that might have been in the milk or sugar, it is well to strain it through a thin piece of domestic, such as is used for small meal sacks. If in no hurry to freeze the custard, place the vessel containing it into cold water, and allow it to cool first. If the custard should be frozen at once, pour it into the freezer, place the freezer into the tub, and put broken ice around it. Clean off well the cover of the freezer, then remove it, and stir up the custard with a paddle until it is thoroughly cold. Now the custard is ready to be flavored, which may be done with any good flavoring-extract as Lemon, Vanilla or Strawberry, according to taste. To make red, or pink Ice Cream, purchase coloring in the shape of paste, dissolve as much of it as the size of a nutmeg in a little cold water, and strain it through a thin cloth. Stir the coloring well into the custard, the same as the flavoring, after it is thoroughly cold. Cover up well the freezer again. Take out the stopper just over the bottom of the tub, and draw off the water, then replace the stopper again tightly, and cover the ice which remains in the tub with a layer of salt, then put in a layer of ice and salt again, and continue so to put in layers of ice and salt alternately until you reach the top of the can. Turn the can gently around until the ice sinks below the cover, then take a whisk-broom and carefully sweep all ice and salt from the top and sides of the cover and the tub, wipe it also clean with a cloth, now raise the cover partially, and sweep, and wipe again before removeing (sic) it altogether. After the cover is removed, take the wooden paddle, and scrape the frozen cream down from the sided of the can, and stir it up well from the bottom. At first the can will stand tight in the ice packing, but after a while it will become loose, so that it can be turned with the paddle; continue thus scraping, and stirring the cream, and turning the can until the cream is well frozen. Scrape the cream that adheres to the paddle back into the freezer, and cover it up tightly again. Draw off the water again, which has formed by melting ice and salt, and then stop up tightly to prevent any leakage. Fill up the tub again with alternate layers of broken ice and salt, then raise the freezer in the tub from about 2 to 5 inches, according to the size of the freezer, to permit some of the ice to fall under the freezer. Now fill up again with ice and salt, as much as the tub will hold, useing(sic) for the top layer finer broken ice. The freezer is now ready to be wrapped. This must be done well, otherwise the cream cannot be kept well frozen. Proceed in the following manner: Take as many sacks as will be necessary to make a roll thick enough to tightly fill out the space between the can and the tub, rip them open, and place them on the floor in the following manner: The first sack place before you, so as to form the shape of a diamond, with the corners pointing one towards you, one from you, one to the right, and one to the left. The second sack place upon the first one in the same manner, but draw it a little towards you, so that the corner pointing towards you overlaps the corner of the bottom sack about 3 inches. In the same way, put down all the sacks, always letting the upper sack overlap the lower one. Then begin at the corner pointing towards you, and roll up the sacks as tight as possible. This coil of sacks place around the can as soon as the ice has melted down a little, and wedge it into the tub with a broad, wooden wedge and a mallet. Let one end of the coil, the inner one, stick out a little, so as to afford a hold in removing the coil again. This renders the tub airtight, the can stands firm, the tub may be rolled or turned over without any danger, and can be handled with perfect safety while transporting it. The outside of the tub may also be wrapped with a few sacks; it is well to do so in hot weather. To do this fold the sacks to a width corresponding to the higth(sic) of the tub, wrap them around the tub smoothly, and tie securely with a stout string. Cream packed in this manner, will freeze perfectly hard, and will remain well frozen for nearly 24 hours.