Month: March 2012

Previewing the portrait

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Crafting, Writing

There are a number of you who have already seen this picture through Facebook! But of course, for the rest, I’m happy to blog and show you the preview of my most excellent photo shoot last Friday. And yes, sate your curiosity about the hair colour I chose! What do you think?

This is, officially, me being an author. Here’s a larger version, too.

My photographer was simply amazing. Kylie showed what she wanted from me with clear direction and has a wonderful eye for location and setting. We tried a few places in the historical and scenic port town of Fremantle, though the best shots ended up down a random little alley in front of this awesome wooden loading door, complete with flaking paint and worn bricks behind me. I love the colours, texture, and lighting. We had so much fun!

If anyone is looking for a photographer in Perth, I give the highest recommendation for Kylie. You can find her through her website, Photography by Kylie, or the Facebook Page for her business.

~A

Dudes

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts, Writing

Greetings my dear internet buddies. Today has been a very long day. Between having my super awesome photo shoot this morning, and covering extra shifts at work tonight, I’m feeling like sleeping a whole lot is a solid plan. But I’m also at a really exciting point in my writing, so I’m pretty drawn to working on that, even though I might blather pretty badly being this spacey. That isn’t always a bad thing, funny enough. There have been occasions where my subconscious has been 100% in control and poured out great work.

I missed blogging on the appropriate days, and this is just a short one, today. I’m sorry if I haven’t been seen around your respective blogospaces. I have honestly, really, truly been flighty and distracted, and even if I’ve read your posts and updates, I haven’t known what to say most of the time. I will make the effort to catch up soon.

Aside from not blogging quite on time and not commenting as I normally would, I have probably avoided doing a whole lot of other things I might normally find myself enveloped with. The good news to come from that, though, is I’ve been chipping away at various writing projects and other important related goodness. Making accounts and updating websites for writing-related ventures, certainly. I’ve also been subjected to candid video recordings by the husband, who proceeds to make the weirdest things he can with the footage. Somehow, I am not concerned by this. It’s actually pretty awesome.

I’m going to set a countdown timer for half an hour or something. Then I shall sit and klackity away, then get myself some reading in before sleep finds me. I hope you lovely people have been busy with all your favourite things.

~A

Tasting desserts, for science!

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts

There’s a new brand of pre-packaged desserts available around these parts with one of those names which just challenges you to try them. Can they really be so delicious as to live up to their claims? Since they were on sale, and I have a sweet tooth today, I bought four different treats to try.

First up, I’ve got a berry cheesecake. The berry sauce over the top doesn’t even taste like berries, but there are seeds in it to prove at least once, this contained a blackberry or something similar. The cheesy part of this cheesecake proves to be pretty good. Nice lemony zest flavour going on, and a smooth texture. The cake crumbles for the base are pretty standard and boring, which is a shame because when the cake crumbles on a cheesecake are good, man, then they are my favourite part.

Conclusion: this cheesecake is acceptable, but does not live up to my expectations.

Now onto a tiramisu. I’m already biased here, because we have the best recipe for a homemade tiramisu, and I have only tasted one or two professionally made desserts which can match our own. This one seems to have a lump of chocolate cake, with the coffee cream cheese around it. The creamy mix is, in my opinion, too sweet and doesn’t have nearly enough coffee flavour. The cake is very dark, but doesn’t really taste like much at all.

Conclusion: it’s barely worth finishing this tiramisu, and I would avoid it next time.

Next, I’m getting into the profiteroles in a chocolate sauce. The sauce is super chocolatey and smooth, though not quite meeting the pure melted chocolate consistency you really want. The pastry from the profiterole is surprisingly dry. I’m having a hard time getting at the custard inside without having chocolate sauce all over it, but as near as I can tell, it’s a bland, vaguely vanilla custard. Taken all together, the elements don’t exactly work. Huh.

Conclusion: I’ve had far better profiteroles, but the sauce could be tasty on icecream.

And saving my favourite for last, a crème caramel. I think it’s fair to be a little afraid, considering the previous disappointments. It tastes decent, though the custard is a bit too firm and the caramel sauce is too thin. Nevertheless, the flavour is mostly right. And I’m picky about my crème caramels.

Conclusion: There are two other brands of premade crème caramel I can buy which are better.

Overall, it’s safe to say, there’s absolutely nothing omg! about these desserts, except that they are sad and not super tasty like one is led to believe. Maybe other people would like them plenty; I am particularly fussy about desserts (I’ll eat most, but it has to be something special for me to love it).

Science is disappointed. But I ate a lot of dessert!

~A

The face of an author

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts

Are you sitting down? Alright. Take a deep breath. I have to admit something.
I have bright purple hair. Like, proper bright purple.
I know. Shocking. It’s okay.

I’ve been rather consistently dyeing my hair for the better part of the last five years, usually leaning into the bright purple territory, with occasional deviations into autumnal red and orange combinations, blonde with hot pink, and the odd mix of those if I’m feeling feisty. This suits me just fine, and almost everyone who interacts with me on a very regular basis has commented at one time or another that I wouldn’t seem like “me” without the purple hair. When I’ve left my hair to its natural proclivities (a dark brown), plenty of folks have expressed that I was “back to normal” when I finally re-dyed to, yes, purple.

Needless to say, I have no problems with being myself. And yet…

In a week, I am scheduled to have nice professional portraits taken to use in all official authorly situations. Facebook and Twitter currently display one of my wedding photos, which, I will add, was before I cut off my three feet of natural brown hair. While I do love that photo, it doesn’t represent an accurate “me”, at least as far as current appearance goes. My short hair is just growing out of another pixie cut which is really bright purple.

Again, I’m very comfortable with myself. I’m certain you’ve all figured that one out by now! But the buffer between online-me, and offline-me is about to be blurred further. Of all people, I am well aware of what the instant visual judgement of a person can be like. That’s not to say anyone’s ever been particularly rude or mean about my hair colour, but some people need time to get used to it – and will they take that time to get to know me if it’s through an online medium when they see my photo? It’s all very fast. Click, click, click. Eyes dart to the photo, run over one sentence descriptions, make an assessment of this person in less time than it takes to have another sip of coffee.

What does the real me, the offline-me with purple hair, end up meaning to these nice folks online? I’m curious if offline-me and author-me can occupy the same space, or if they are better off having distinct portrayals. Either way, I have a week to decide if I need to freshen the purple, go over the colour with something more natural, or head straight for black and white photographs and invalidate this consideration entirely.

~A

Snowflaking

Posted on by Ashlee Scheuerman in Thoughts, Writing

The Snowflake Method is Randy Ingermanson’s brainchild of plotting out stories in very particular detail.

I would say I’m a Pantser, but I don’t think that fully covers the depth to which I imagine my stories before writing them. I percolate information for months leading up to most of the actual writing; scenes are imagined and noted, sub-plots are considered, the lives of the characters outside of the specified story are thought through.

But there’s a lot to be said for being a Plotter, too. I’m definitely not all Plotter, just because I don’t put it all down in nice, neat rows. But the idea is appealing. Some kind of romantic notion about having it all worked out beforehand, you know? Just watch me never do that in my life – but I’ll muse over it all the same.

This Snowflake Method seems promising, to a degree. For the sake of curiosity, I broke down a completed story into the pieces which Randy directs. The single line summary, the paragraph, the character explorations. It worked out alright, though I quit when it got to the longer steps simply because I’ve already written this novel, and if I’m spending that kind of time working, it’ll be on another edit.

What about other stories? I’m only halfway through writing the first draft of SL, and while I have a good idea of where it’s going, there are still scenes missing from my process, ones which I’ll make up on the fly. Could I break this one down and try Snowflaking it? I’m interested in giving it a try.

If I did use a method for these books, how would I then adapt it to suit the over-arcing story? Do I make a wider view Snowflake, encompassing the end plot? Or do I line up the individual notes, one after the other? Maybe by this stage, I won’t do any of the complicated layers for the existing works, and just try building the next few books with this kind of method in mind. It really does seem promising, and a good way to keep an even flow of a long-term series.

Better yet, I can more than easily do all the steps in my favourite novel writing software, yWriter. It appears set up in a pretty similar format, so the important parts should all slot in nicely.

I like the idea of order, I really do. I just live in a natural state of chaos.

~A