Ashlee Scheuerman, author
The Two Brothers is the brand new companion novella to Nina’s debut novel, Ruin. This story gives us an insight into intriguing characters met in the world established by Ruin. The Two Brothers is available now! Check the official website for more details.
Click here for The Two Brothers, part of the Ruin series.
Katy-Rose Hötker has another of her flash fiction pieces in print, now available in the Daily Frights 2012: 366 Days of Dark Flash Fiction (Leap Year Edition) collection.
~A
The rules of the Versatile Blogger Award state that I must:
Thank the person who gave it to me and link back to them in my blog.
Share seven things about myself.
Pass this award on to 5 other recently discovered blogs and let them know.
Look at that! One of those blog award dealies!
My thanks:
I was unexpectedly awarded the Versatile Blogger by my awesome friend, Natasha McNeely. We’ve been in contact for just a few months, but she is a super lady with some excellent ideas and perspective. It’s always great to talk to you, Natasha. Thank you for the award!
Seven things:
How do I decide the seven interesting tidbits to share? I don’t know. Let’s babble and see what comes out?
1. All my life, I’ve found I get along better with men in general. Yet by a vast majority, my blogging buddies and writer friends are women. In this fascinating instance, I relate incredibly well with these select ladies who share their thoughts and experiences.
2. I don’t like tomatoes, capsicum, or celery. I enjoy eating most vegetables, and if pressed, I will still eat those three in other dishes, but I don’t choose them for myself.
3. I own four Tarot decks (and a Goddess Oracle card set). They are a generic Rider-Waite clone which was my introductory Tarot deck many years ago, the Morgan-Greer deck, a Manga deck, and the gorgeous Shadowscapes Tarot made by Stephanie Pui-Mun Law. I have my eye on several other decks, for both appreciation and collection purposes.
4. Getting my tattoo didn’t hurt much at all. It felt mostly like being mauled by an angry cat for a while, and I’ve been subject to that experience plenty of times before. Nevertheless, just when the needle went directly over my veins (on the inside of my wrist), that pain shot up my arm and made me cringe.
5. I was a figure ice skater for seven years, and a ballet dancer for four years. These activities helped make me as self-confident as I am today, but caused me joint problems (especially in my knees), which I will have for the rest of my life.
6. At its longest, my hair was around three foot long. I got it all chopped off in one go, and still have the plait of hair. I’m going to donate the whole thing to Locks of Love.
7. I really like calendars, and usually have at least one in every room of my house. I have a lot of difficulty with judging the passage of time, so having calendars readily available enables me to be aware of the date, and day of the week.
Five blogs:
Woohoo, the fun part! I chose these lovely people because I enjoy their blogs a lot, and because there’s a good possibility they haven’t already received this award! Sharing the love, people.
Write Your Own Story from Nina Martinez
Written Not With Ink from Barb Reily
Spiritual Strudel from Shelby Eaton
Stuff from Sherry Stanfa-Stanley
And because I’m a rebel (or can’t count), Katy-Rose Hötker AND Joseph D’Lacey
Awesome!
~A
Isn’t it amazing how you can get an absurd amount of things done, yet still feel completely unaccomplished? Welcome to my week. I can’t even tell you what I did, I don’t remember most of the specifics! All I know is I’ve been very busy, lots has happened, and family have been thoroughly visited, though we haven’t wrapped up those activities just yet.
Somewhere in the last few days, I’m assured a Sunday occurred and I missed blogging. I doubt anyone else noticed any more than I did at the time, since we’re all being drawn away from the usual internetly duties. Christmas break, when will you be relaxing? As usual, I need time off from my holidays.
At least with the change of pace, I can’t really get bored. That’s not to say I’m ever especially without things to do; I might get bored every now and then, but I’ve always got a new project, or something exciting to research if nothing else! But there’s something to be said for being dragged into unusual activities and being less of a hermit than I am for the rest of the year. That may or may not be a good thing.
As much as I love cooking, I don’t normally spend nearly as much time as I’d like baking tasty treats, but Christmas brings out the best in cooking delights. You better believe I am chief taste-tester, too. Mmm. Then there’s always the double batches; some for gifts and sharing, some for home. The fridge is full of snacks. It is very delicious.
I also enjoy visiting with family and friends who don’t live locally. They all troop into the greater Perth area to see us and other extended family, and it’s just pleasant to catch up. Some of them are folks we won’t see again until next Christmas, so making the most of the time they’re in town is important!
And I’ve always loved wrapping gifts, and the excitement of seeing people open the presents and find their surprise inside! I’m sometimes a bit sneaky with wrapping; if I don’t want the recipient to guess what’s inside, I’ll often hide the present in a deceptive cover first. Towels, bubblewrap, and oversized boxes are only some of the “normal” ways I’ve disguised the real gift. There have been the odd occasions of cobbling together mismatched boxes to make a very odd shape, or using an interesting basket or even a small suitcase before Christmas wrapping is applied. Hey, I have to keep myself entertained.
Of course, on the subject of skipping blog days, blogging will also be cut back this week with Christmas day falling on Sunday! But don’t worry, I’ll still be around, even if my brain is too fried to remember to comment! After surviving the rest of this week, things should return to normal, somewhat.
~A
It’s one of those words, isn’t it? Responsibility? Even we who are well into adulthood and are already used to taking care of things tend to baulk at life’s requirements every now and then. Not least when we have conflicting responsibilities!
I’m probably going to miss my self-imposed deadline for finishing TDM by the end of the year. The sheer amount of things I have left to do in preparation for Christmas is certainly enough to keep me busy, and then there are always other obligations and vital activities to attend. Yesterday, I helped a relative move house. Today, I finished a number of Christmas gifts. Tomorrow, I need to do more. When will I fit in writing, or editing? When will my mind slow down enough to let me dedicate my thought to the deep processes necessary for critical editing?
I like Christmastime, but man, is it busy.
I’ve considered a daily schedule of sorts, to try and fit in all my projects, but I know how I am. If I’m on a roll, or making something specific, I prefer to finish what I’m doing before moving on, not just stop at a designated time and come back to it later. This is the same for all my work. I’m not very good at schedules, regardless of how flexible I make them.
Writing is usually relegated to the “lesser responsibility” pile, unfortunately. Grocery shopping is more important, cooking meals is more important, sleep is sometimes more important. Finishing Christmas gifts is getting more important, as I need to send a number of them overseas ASAP, then going to the post office to wait in line for half an hour will proceed to become more important than my editing time. And while I might be able to write snippets while standing in line, or in the car (as I’m always the passenger), I most certainly cannot edit in those garnered moments.
If nothing else, I will try and put aside an hour every day, whether it be first thing in the morning, or last thing at night, or any other time I can be reasonably assured of few interruptions, and actually stick to editing a little each day. I know how much progress you can truly make as long as you keep chipping at something daily. I’ve used that technique to great success before! So it’s just a matter of being responsible to myself and my passion, as well as everything else I’ve taken on. My story is definitely that important.
~A
Step one: Make snacks.
In this instance, I cooked up one of my staple foods, the ever-delicious tuna, avocado and cucumber sushi! Surprisingly, sushi is one of those foods which seems like a chore, but turns out to be ridiculously easy to make, tastes extra fresh and you can tweak it to your own subtle flavours so easily. To illustrate this point, here’s my “recipe” for sushi. Keep in mind, you will need some kind of bamboo rolling mat, or similar, to shape the sushi into the nice rolls.
1 cup of sushi rice
2 sheets of nori/seaweed
1 cup of water (I actually use a LITTLE over a cup)
1 tablespoon of sushi vinegar
1 small can of tuna, around 90grams (in olive oil, from preference)
1 tablespoon of mayonnaise (whole egg, again preference)
1 Lebanese cucumber (or part of a continental cucumber)
Half an avocado
Rinse the rice in a strainer/colander until the water runs clear. Put the rice into a medium pot with the cup of water, turn your stove on high until boiling; cover and reduce heat to the lowest setting/simmer for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes is up, remove from heat and leave resting for a further 15 minutes. IMPORTANT: Do not lift the lid from your pot until after the full 25 minutes has elapsed! The steam that’s going on inside the pot is cooking your rice to perfection!
While the rice is cooking, drain the tuna and mix well with the mayonnaise. It will form a slightly sticky mixture and be very delicious. Slice your avocado, and cucumber into long strips; remove the seeds from the cucumber. Some people will scoop/scrap the seeds out with a spoon, but I simply cut the cucumber length-ways into quarters, then run the knife at an angle to cut away the seeds, then cut the cucumber to my desired thickness.
When the rice is all done, empty it out of the saucepan into a heavy bowl. I use a ceramic mixing bowl, but it would be traditional to use a specially shaped bamboo bowl; anything will do, really. Sprinkle the sushi vinegar over the rice, and using a bamboo or wooden spoon, turn the vinegar through using a folding and cutting motion. This keeps the rice grains from breaking up. You’ll want the rice to cool down; I usually just toss it into the fridge for a couple of minutes and fold it again, or use a hand-fan to cool while mixing.
The instructions for actually “building” the sushi roll are far better explained through image or instructional video. I won’t go into length about the hows of it, but simply put, nori, rice, fillings, roll! I set the whole sushi roll aside in the fridge (while I make the others, usually), because the nori softens and seals the roll when resting, and as the rice gets colder, it sticks together firmer and that makes it easier to cut.
I’m no expect on sushi, but my “technique” is quick, easy, and then I get to nom a whole pile of sushi. Which brings me to step two of having an excellent day!
Step two: Take snacks, visit friend, enjoy!
~A
I am super lucky to have some of the best friends anyone could hope for. They appreciate my sense of humour! Who would have thought that was possible! It swings from the wildly exaggerated, to completely dead-pan (though that’s hard to translate to text), and while I certainly amuse myself, I don’t usually consider myself a funny person.
The husband is outrageously proficient in humour, and expressing it through multiple mediums. He honestly makes me laugh every day. It makes for some very interesting conversations about my writing work, though. I will express an idea or a concern I have, and he will usually recommend disarming the entire situation with something humourous. I rarely take his advice, but if we ever co-author a book like we have discussed, it will definitely feel the presence of my comedian husband.
In the meantime, we’re working on other projects together. Youtube videos and comic strips are in their respective stages of planning. Though I can’t give too many details, we also have an independent video game in production with a programmer friend, and that has a significant dose of our joint humour. It’s usually a good sign that, after our brainstorming sessions and I’ve written up all our notes, we both still find it funny later (and our programmer also gets a good laugh!).
When I read through my writing, I often come across moments of character interaction that make me grin and chuckle. Some characters are intentionally humourous, while some just have flashes of wit. The interesting part is trying to give them diverse thoughts and behaviours, and making sure that carries through well. Making a character express a sense of humour which I don’t necessarily share becomes a very interesting experience.
The single way to find out if I’ve succeeded in these endevours is to share my work with others and receive feedback on those characters. There are certain things a person just can’t judge on their own, and the presentation of the varied types of humour is definitely one of them. While I may or may not be a funny person, some of my characters definitely need to be!
~A
The Fane 