Rachael

Ep. 016: Dana Kaye

September 22, 2016

Dana Kaye received her B.A. in Fiction Writing from Columbia College Chicago. After college, she worked as a freelance writer and book critic. This experience has been crucial to her publicity career: She is known for her innovative ideas and knowledge of current trends.

She frequently speaks on the topics of social media, branding, and publishing trends, and her commentary has been featured on websites like The Huffington Post, Little Pink Book, andNBC Chicago.

She is also the author of Your Book, Your Brand: A Step-By-Step Guide to Launching Your Book and Boosting Sales, available 9/20/16 from Diversion Books.

Craft tip – On revision: “I need someone to tell me that something isn’t working. THEN I can make it better.”

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Link to Scrivener mini-course mentioned HERE.

Catch Dana’s first standup act here!

Ep. 015: Chris Baty

September 15, 2016

Chris Baty accidentally founded National Novel Writing Month in 1999, and oversaw the event’s growth from 21 friends to more than 300,000 writers in 90 countries. Chris now serves as a Board Member Emeritus for NaNoWriMo, and spends his days teaching classes at Stanford University’s Writer’s Studio, giving talks about writing and creativity, helping companies with content strategy, and endlessly revising his own novels. He’s the author of No Plot? No Problem! and the co-author of Ready, Set, Novel. His quest for the perfect cup of coffee is ongoing, and will likely kill him someday.

Craft tip: “When I start a second draft, I don’t ever go back to that first draft that I wrote…I’m in a new draft. I don’t copy things over. It’s all fresh.”

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InstantPot Chicken Enchiladas

September 14, 2016

I read a bunch of enchilada recipes and then went off the road, and I want to make sure if I ever want to veer back this way, I can, because these are SO GOOD, yo.

In InstantPot (if you have one, otherwise just cook the chicken whatever way you want, it’s all good): Chop one onion, throw it in. Add in 6-7 boneless skinless chicken thighs. Drape 3 chipotle peppers artistically on top. Throw in some cumin (1tbsp?) and some salt. Close. Press Poultry button (15 min, medium). YES, I know there’s no liquid, no, the InstantPot won’t explode. The chicken makes plenty of liquid.

When cooked, preheat oven to 350. Remove chicken and peppers, shred both. Pour off liquid in pot, reserving the onions floating around. Add chicken/peppers to pot with onions, add can of corn.

Shred a 12oz block of pepper jack cheese. Add about a quarter of it to the hot chicken, along with a couple of great big dollops of sour cream. Mix. Taste and die a little with the wonder of it all.

Dredge corn tortillas (ours were still hot when I bought them earlier today) through green enchilada sauce. Fill with chicken mix. Roll and place in glass baking pan. When you’ve got as many as you can fit in your pan, pour the rest of the enchilada sauce over the top, and top the whole thing with the rest of the shredded cheese.

Bake uncovered for 30 min. Serve topped with more sour cream and cilantro, if you have it.

Ep. 014: Cat Rambo

September 8, 2016

Cat Rambo lives, writes, and edits in the Pacific Northwest. Her work has appeared in such places as Asimov’s, Weird Tales, and Strange Horizons. She was the fiction editor of award-winning Fantasy Magazine and appeared on the World Fantasy Award ballot in 2012 for that work. Her story “Five Ways to Fall in Love on Planet Porcelain” was a 2012 Nebula Award finalist. She has worked as a programmer-writer for Microsoft and a Tarot card reader, professions which, she claims, both involve a certain combination of technical knowledge and willingness to go with the flow. A graduate of the Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and Clarion West, she also works with Armageddon MUD, and writes gaming articles. A frequent volunteer with the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, she is currently its president.

Craft Tip: Think about being inside your POV character’s head. You can think about it in terms of a camera. You can have the camera back a few inches, watching (and that’s where you have things like “she thought”), as opposed to putting it right behind your character’s eyes. That’s one of the things you have control over, how deeply you’re immersed in your character’s head, and honestly, the more deeply you’re immersed, the better.

Subscribe to her newsletter to get first crack at her classes!

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In Which I Write a Lot

September 2, 2016

A while ago, I had the idea that I’d put together a little book—pulled from blog posts—about moving from the desire to write to being a writer. I hired a person to go through my fourteen years of blog posts (that’s a lot of posts, a great many of them full of angst about wanting to write more and not doing it).

I’m still going to do the book, because I think it’s a fun project, but I realized I hadn’t edited it yet because I’m too busy writing. Same thing with not blogging more.

I used to write about wanting to write.

Now I’m too busy writing.

And that’s so awesome!

There’s a lot of hustle in this self-employed game, I’ll tell you that much. I’m constantly plotting, both literally and figuratively. I’m writing a book that’s due in a month to Random House Australia (the third Songbird book!), and then I’m going to write a book (newish genre!) for my agent to sell, and then I’m going to write another Ballard Brother book, so the next six or seven months of fiction writing are occupied. (That’s the way I think about it. FULLY BOOKED. Like the hotel I used to work at, the shingle is out: No Occupancy. I get ideas and shuffle them into a file in Scrivener. No time for you now, come back later. Book your brain reservation early.)

writingquote1 (1) I’m happy with the side gig I’ve recently made for myself, formatting the interior of print books for self-publishers. It’s bringing in a little cash, and while Lala’s still unemployed, that’s welcome money. Another thing I really like about it is that it’s not creative. At all. I plug manuscripts in. I format them. I collect money for doing it. It’s like doing the budget: I put numbers in and move them around, and it feels good. My word brain rests.

It’s nice to rest the brain. I’m still very bad at relaxing, and it’s perhaps possible I’ve gotten worse at it, now that I feel that all my time at home should be Productive, but I’m working on it. Later today, I promise to spin a little bit. Spinning while watching TV is something that never fails to soothe my spirit and brain.

What will you do today to soothe your brain? (And thanks, as always, for reading. You’re the reason I do this. YOU.)

(Also! I’m trying to be more active on Pinterest. Turns out that it’s a good place for resting the brain, too. Come join me?)

Ep. 013: Clara Parkes

September 1, 2016

13245457_10207731000767168_825533419620555630_n-300x300 Over a decade ago, Clara Parkes abandoned San Francisco’s high-tech hubbub to build a quieter creative life on the coast of Maine. Since then, she has become a trusted voice in the knitting community. Her most recent book, Knitlandia, has taken a well-earned position on the New York Times bestseller list for Travel. “Clara Parkes is the MFK Fisher of knitting: unflinching, all-seeing, mysterious–and also kind,” writes Ann Shayne and Kay Gardiner of Mason-Dixon Knitting. She is also the publisher of KnittersReview.com, has appeared regularly on the PBS Television series “Knitting Daily TV,” and is a frequent contributor to Twist Collective. In her spare time, Clara loves to putter in the kitchen and is a huge fan of butter.

Craft tip: Read your own work aloud. It’s a very helpful way to hear your words in a different way than on paper.

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