Soft Launch and Meatloaves (with Recipe!)

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I’ve got a book coming out today. Did you know about this? Possibly not; I made very little fanfare about it.

I just took a webinar on Book Marketing, too. It was a good webinar; I learned some valuable material. But one of the things the presenter said was that book marketing should start way, way before the release date—like months before. And I thought to myself, well, I missed that boat with The Garden of Good Things.

But then—that was pretty much intentional. The fact of the matter is that I didn’t want to make a big deal of this book release. I have done so in the past; Seventh Son, on its first release, got all the fanfare I could throw at it. I even baked it a cake, and I splashed the book around on all the social media I was on at the time, brought print copies to real life events, etc etc.

You see, Seventh Son was a much, much bigger deal for me. It was the first book I ever wrote, the first book I learned self-publishing on, the first time I had made a real novel.

With Garden of Good Things, I just wrote it for fun one NaNoWriMo; and then after leaving it to languish in a drawer for about ten years I polished it up (with the help of my friend-and-editor Louise Bates, of course), packaged it into a novel, and put it online. And now you can read it and have fun with it, too. Not that big a deal.

It reminds me of the time an older, very accomplished friend of mine proudly announced on Facebook that he had just made a meatloaf, for the first time ever.

Full disclosure, I did have a small inward chuckle at his announcement. His first meatloaf, ever? I’ve been making meatloaf* for decades. Ditto for loaves of bread, jars of jam or canned peaches, cakes of any description, pots of stew, knitted socks, and so on. Announcing them on Facebook would get rather monotonous – they’re just not a big deal to me anymore.

There are other things that are a big deal to me at the moment—they make me so nervous they keep me up at night for weeks beforehand, even though they probably make you chuckle quietly to yourself and say “What’s the big deal?” Selling my ceramics at markets and in shops is one of them for me right now—eeep, yikes, look what I did!

But as for meatloaves and jams and socks, no big deal.

The thing is that they’re just ordinary, everyday, commonplace meatloaves and jams and socks. We eat them or wear them, and sometimes they’re a little burnt or there’s a missed stitch—last year’s apricot jam has bits of an apricot pit in it that accidentally got beaten up with the pulp. Less than perfect, but perfectly alright for everyday.

That’s all I want for my meatloaves and jams and socks. I don’t intend to sell them, and I don’t want to win prizes with them; they don’t need fanfare, they just need to fulfil their purpose.

In the case of hand-knitted socks, that’s especially pertinent. Because for me, the point of making socks is to make them. I enjoy knitting; having something to wear at the end is a beneficial byproduct.

That’s kind of what happened with The Garden of Good Things, too. I wrote it for the fun of writing it, and then I had a book, so I thought I might as well publish it. But I don’t want to make a big deal of it, because it’s not a big-deal kind of book.

But that’s just me and this particular book (and a few others like it that I have on the back burner). I don’t mean to say that writing a book is not a big deal (good grief, no!). But not every book needs to have a big fanfare blown for it. There’s room for the everyday kind of books, too, just for fun.

My friend’s meatloaf was a big deal because it was his first one. Other people’s meatloaves might be a big deal because they’re gourmet, the pinnacle of meatloafness; or because selling meatloaves is this person’s business. My meatloaves, tasty though they are, are kind of ordinary and, as such, no big deal.

Some books of mine are a big deal for one reason or another, and hopefully there’ll be more of those in the future. Other people’s books are a big deal, for them and for their readers, not least because they might aim to make money on them. And those big-deal books, like some meatloaves, deserve all the fanfares and advertising campaigns. But you don’t have to blow the fanfare for every one of them.

So as for The Garden of Good Things, it’s getting a soft launch. This is me, just quietly saying “I made a book, wanna read it?” You might enjoy it, and just like handknitted socks warm your toes and meatloaves warm your belly, I hope it warms your soul.

And that’s Life, the Universe, a Soft Launch and Meatloaves. Go here or contact me for the The Garden of Good Things, and keep reading for the meatloaf recipe.

Photo credit: Benreis, CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

PS: So you can make your very own meatloaf to eat while you read the book, here’s my recipe:

*GERMAN MEATLOAF by Angelika

1-2 lbs/500-800g of ground beef (or pork or chicken)
1 stale (day-old) Kaiser bun, or the equivalent amount of sliced bread (I save the heel of loaves and let them dry out in the back of the breadbox especially for this purpose)
1 egg
1 small onion
1 tsp salt (or less, according to taste)
1/4 tsp pepper or a few grinds of the pepper mill
1 tsp dried parsley, or 2 Tbsp chopped fresh
1/2 tsp dried oregano (or chopped fresh)
1/4 tsp ground paprika

-finely mince the onion. Sauté it in a bit of oil until translucent.
-soak the dry bread in water, then squeeze it out like a wet dishcloth.
-put all ingredients together in a medium-sized bowl.
-squish everything together with your hands until well combined. If that’s too icky for you, mix it with a spoon or potato masher, but hands work best.
-put it in a 5×9” loaf pan, or form into a round loaf shape and put in a larger pan or cookie sheet with high rim. Poke 3-4 holes in the middle (optional, makes it cook more evenly).
–bake at 350° for 1 hr.
-let stand for five minutes or so, then slice and serve! We like it with gravy, rice or mashed potatoes, and a salad.
Note: If there’s any left over, it’s really good cold, sliced thinly on sandwiches. Also, this mixture makes great hamburgers or meatballs (fry in a pan, or bake or broil for 20 minutes).
Guten Appetit!

The Garden of Good Things

A brand-new book, available on March 18th at an online bookstore near you!

Some people inherit houses. Nina inherited a mystery.

When a stranger leaves her a country cottage, Nina drives out to investigate—and promptly locks herself out of her car, her phone and purse trapped inside. All she has is the cottage key.
The place looks abandoned, swallowed by weeds. But inside, the house is strangely spotless, and the garden is full of treasures: strawberries, tomatoes, a handsome man in a lumberjacket…
Charlie appears and disappears without warning. And all of Nina’s attempts to get to town are thwarted by a big black bear who won’t let her leave.
Nina’s new priorities are simple: avoid the bear, find a cup of coffee, get some answers out of Charlie—and, most of all, don’t lose her heart…

Clay Palooza and Imposter Syndrome

“Hi!” came a cheerful email from our local arts centre. “Would you be interested in being on a discussion panel of potters during Clay Palooza? Bob Kingsmill is going to be on the panel. And we have a few competitions to participate in, too, would you like to do one of those?”
Gulp.
Me? On a discussion panel? With Bob Kingsmill?

Let me explain.
First of all, Clay Palooza: it’s a fun day full of clay events in the context of the local Winter Carnival. I missed it last year, the first time it was held, but I was looking forward to attending it this year. I was just going to go as a visitor, watch other potters – you know, real potters – do fun stuff such as compete in challenges like “blindfolded throwing” or “who can throw the biggest bowl”.
Then, Bob Kingsmill. He’s a local master potter. I found out about him a couple of years ago, when a friend gave me a beautiful little ramen bowl of his for my birthday; and then last summer, I saw some of his pieces at the Vancouver Art Gallery. That’s the kind of potter he is.
And I was being asked to be on a panel with him.

“Yikes,” I told the organizer, “that’s scary. How many others are going to be on that panel?” Maybe I could hide behind some of them.
“Oh,” she said, “we’re aiming to have four or five potters of varying levels.”
Varying levels? That was okay then! I could provide the bottom level.
Actually, once I thought of it, I realized that it was the perfect opportunity to get on my bandwagon: Pottery is for Everyone! You don’t have to be a master to make perfectly useful, functional, beautiful work! I still use one of the first bowls I handbuilt when I was thirteen as my everyday fruit bowl.

So I said yes, shaking in my boots.
And I signed up for one of the challenges, too – “Handbuild a Mug in 15 Minutes”. I practiced, to make sure I could hold my own with all those other amazing ceramicists that would be there strutting their stuff.

Turns out I wasn’t the only one shaking in their boots about having been asked to be on the panel. I didn’t find someone to hide behind, but I found someone for mutual propping up. It was good to have another person to share trepidations with – “Oh no, we’re on! What do we do? Where do we sit?”
And it turned out really great.

I brought along some of my pieces – tiny ones, because that’s what I do, and they’re very portable. A couple of Tiny Gnomes, a little vignette with a tiny table and mug and book, a Cheesymouse. I sat them in front of me on the panel table.
“My goodness,” Bob Kingsmill said when he saw them, “let me see your hands!” Well, yes, I do make tiny stuff. With my fingers (and some tools, like discarded dental tools). I was flattered to get that kind of attention from the master. Who is a lovely, hilarious, kind person, and I was so glad to meet him.

The panel discussion was so interesting. We answered questions such as “How long have you been working with clay?” (apparently Bob opened his first studio the year I was born. That’s… a long time ago), and “What’s a mistake you still make?” I learned so much from everyone else! And one of the biggest thing I learned is humility. The people who’ve done this for decades still say they “don’t know anything”. Which is, of course, not true – they know and can do so much! – but it was hugely encouraging to hear that even after all that time, they still feel like that.

And then Bob almost made me cry.
“What still inspires you to work with clay?” was one of the panel questions.
With tears in his eyes, Bob brought up the horrific tragedy of the school shooting that happened in Northern BC last week. And he said (I can’t remember his exact words, but this is the gist of it) that art is one of the ways people can cope. He gestured to my little gnomes, and he said, “This is the sort of thing that counters the awful stuff in the world.”
Oh my word.
My Tiny Gnomes. Little mice sitting on cheeses.
A counterpoint to the big, awful, overwhelmingness of the world.
That is so much what I want to do with my art – both clay and words. Set little pinpricks of joy that help us to keep living.

It didn’t matter anymore that I’m not a master, that even the invitation to this panel triggered a roaring case of Imposter Syndrome.
I’m not good at throwing straight pots on the wheel. I don’t sell a lot of my pieces. My sculptures are not terribly innovative and artistic. I make tiny gnomes, not high art. But those tiny gnomes are art. They’re the kind of thing that can bring tiny moments of joy in the midst of the world’s darkness.
It was such an incredible validation of what I’m trying to do.
Small art for small people. Art is for Everyone.

And then I went on to the “Handbuild a Mug in 15 Minutes” challenge, and my mug-on-a-mug missed getting first place by half a point (but I got a prize anyway!). And at the last minute I’d signed up for the “Team-Build a Trophy” challenge, and in that one my team did get first place (also by half a point), and we had so much fun. No strutting was involved, we just all enjoyed ourselves. Because the pottery community is like that.

I’ll probably not ever get rid of Imposter Syndrome where my ceramics and my writing is concerned. But it doesn’t matter. What matters is that my work, even my very small work, can be a part of the light that counteracts the darkness.

Life, the Universe, and Small Art. Even a Tiny Gnome can play a part.

(Photo credits of events: Emma Kopp)

It’s Another Book!

Exciting news: the new edition of Cat and Mouse is here!

I wrote the book in 2012, and first published it in 2015. Much like Seventh Son, it needed a makeover, but in this case, the biggest change is the cover. The text of the story hasn’t changed much—just a few edits at the sentence level, and one or two little scenes added. It’s still the same story with the same characters! Even the mice are still all there.

Cat and Mouse starts immediately after Seventh Son—literally the next morning. How is Cat going to cope with her new life in her new world? And why are there mice everywhere?

A silent young boy, a man like a rat, and a plague of mice—Cat has her work cut out for her.
It’s hard enough for Catriona, an ordinary modern woman, to get used to living in a magical medieval world, even without having mice pop up at every turn. Good thing Cat isn’t as squeamish about them as her friend Nicky, who has her own issues to cope with back in the regular world. What does the man with the twitchy nose want with Nicky’s ward Ben? And does the mouse plague back in Ruph have anything to do with the new apprentice Cat’s husband has taken on—the boy who won’t speak?

If you haven’t read Cat and Mouse yet, hie thee to an online bookstore and get a copy! Or if you want a signed paperback, send me a note and we’ll see what we can do.

Life, the Universe, and another New Old Book! Will Cat solve all those mysteries?

Apple Bowl Cottage, or: The Comfort of Story

It is a dark and gloomy day… inside and out. The news is bad, friends are going through tough times, the weather is screwed up, and everything is playing merry hell with my moods. As is usual for late January, there is a cloud over the Valley that feels like a giant hand clapped a lid on and is pressing down tight.

I come downstairs in the dark, and I light a candle on the coffee table. Then I light another one—the little tea light that’s inside the fairy house sitting next to the candle. “Apple Bowl Cottage” has been to a couple of art shows this winter, but it didn’t find a new home yet. Maybe that’s just as well; I needed it today.

I sip my coffee, enjoying the soft glow of the candlelight, then I turn on the big light and write in my journal for a while. By now, there is daylight outside, such as it is. Not much of it (did I mention Lid-on-the-Valley weather?). But it’s time for breakfast, so I blow out the candle.

And in those two seconds that I watch the smoke curl out of the chimney of the fairy house, I have a sudden flash of Story.

The fairies turned off their lights, I think, and they’re off to work. No, actually, they don’t go to work outside of home; the fairy that lives in this house is getting ready for her day of cooking and washing and making apple pies. She turned off the light because it’s bright enough outside now she doesn’t need the lamp. I wonder what she’s going to do today? I think after she’s turned the apples in the bowl into a pie, she might be looking forward to reading her book; she just got to the best part yesterday.

And just like that, the world has become brighter. Warmer. Safer.

I don’t know her name, the little fairy that lives in the tiny ceramic cottage on my coffee table today. But the light shining from her little home, and the warm smoke curling from the chimney, has cheered my day. There is still a Lid on the Valley and bad things in the news, but I’ve been reminded of joy and warmth and comfort and whimsy and brightness.

And those are as real as anything else.

Life, the Universe, and Apple Bowl Cottage. The comfort of Story.

(Apple Bowl Cottage with a quarter to show scale. Also, that’d be a heck of a lot of money, by comparison! A coin as big as your table top…)

PS: Yes, Apple Bowl Cottage is for sale, and I think the fairy would be very happy to move to your house (and I’d be happy to share her)! If you’re interested send me a message, here.

Happy Belated Birthday, Jane Austen!

This is THE portrait of Jane Austen, the one and only – a watercolour sketch done by her sister Cassandra. I took this photo at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2017; last time I was there the Austen portrait wasn’t on display any more.

I missed it: it was Jane Austen’s 250th birthday in December, on the 16th. Darn it, it would have been such a perfect opportunity to celebrate with tea and scones and an Austen movie marathon. (I think with all the DVDs I have, I could probably make it a full 24-hr one.)

Yes, I have at least one movie version of each of the books. Not all of the movies made, but most of them. I have things to say about them… some other time.

The copies of the books I have are the annotated editions I got for my grad school research, more than ten years ago (I took a couple of directed studies courses on Austen, and my prof recommended those Broadview editions). I do somewhere have a really pretty matching illustrated set with gold edging, but, I mean, the text is the same, and the pretty copies have rather small print.

So then, thinking of grad school, I just went back to my research blog, quill and qwerty, and took a look at some of my ramblings there. If you want to check them out, the Austen posts are right here: https://quillandqwerty.wordpress.com/category/jane-austen/ They’re actually quite interesting, even if I say so myself. It’s been long enough since I wrote them that I forgot most of what I said there. Good points, past self!

And, hehe, some of the links I posted to other sites are still active. Like this one to the mashup of the Beauty & the Beast trailer with footage of the 2005 Pride and Prejudice movie. It still cracks me up every time I see it – it just works!

So, apologies, Miss Austen, for having missed your birthday. I would have liked to have celebrated with you.

Life, the Universe, and a Quarter-Millennium of Austen. Happy Belated Birthday!

Dreams I Didn’t Know I Had

Me & a Gnome, Digital Illustration (Procreate)

Sometimes, you get to fulfil a dream you didn’t know you had.

Writing novels was one such dream for me. I always loved books, but I didn’t know that writing them was something that was within my reach. I’ve told you about that before, more than once: I didn’t know that novel-writing was a dream I could have until I did it. (It was the blue bowl that started it all…)

Another such fulfilled dream just showed up in my mailbox yesterday: I got a certificate from Art School. A real, live, honest-to-goodness, serious ART SCHOOL! And in Illustration, no less!

It all started during Covid. No, actually, it started much longer ago, just after I came to Canada (I was young…). I met a 50-something lady who was in the process of getting her Bachelor of Fine Arts.

“So you must be really good at drawing and painting, to be able to go to art school, right?” I said.

“Oh no,” she serenely replied. “That’s what you go to art school for, to learn it!”

WHAT??? You can learn to be an artist???

Being able to paint was a dream of mine. But I always thought that was something one “just knew how to do”, because back in school, there were people who could do it, and others (like me) who, well, not really.

(Tiny little side rant: letter grades in any creative field should be forbidden, abolished, banned, and fed-through-the-shredder. If it hadn’t been for those C’s in art class in high school, I might have become an artist much sooner. Because obviously, if a teacher tells you in writing you’re no better than “adequate”, you might as well give it up. Pfffffft…)

Anyway! After that revelation, when a local artist started offering art classes, I took the chance – and I learned to draw, and to paint watercolours (among other things, because said art teacher, unlike my high school one, had the attitude that anyone can learn to paint, and she was amazingly encouraging. I’m forever grateful to her). It was a wonderful hobby, and I loved it – but it was still just a hobby. I mean, the likes of me wouldn’t be able to go to art school…

But then, I was doing university studies by distance ed. This was back in the days, last century, when – hold onto your hat – distance ed meant doing things BY SNAIL MAIL. My university offered a handful of 100-level Fine Arts courses that were a collaboration between BC Open University and what was then called Emily Carr Academy, the premier art school in Western Canada. And I thought, hey, I can get credits towards my degree by taking art courses? Sure, why not? Among other things, I wanted to see if I could hold my own with real art school students (come to think of it, that desire to see if I could play with the big kids has been a rather significant motivator in my life…). So I signed up for FINA 110, Colour Theory. The supplies came with the course, and, oh my, getting the box in the mail was like Christmas. Oil paints, brushes, palette knives, ginormous sheets of paper… Too much fun.

So I learned colour theory, painting swatches on those big pieces of paper, mailing them back and forth with my instructor in Vancouver (I recall one of the assignments was to replicate the colours of a piece of fruit or vegetable. I’d meant to do an apple or orange, but my kids ate all my models before I got to them, so in the end I had to do a potato. My instructor loved it). I took all the Fine Arts courses on offer at BCOU, applied the credits to my BA, and that was that.

How to Make a Cup of Coffee in Ten Easy Steps. Ink & Watercolour Illustration of a simple set of instructions. Because everyone needs to know how to make a cup of coffee.

So. Fast-forward some twenty years to a world pandemic (bleh). For some reason, I started thinking about those distance ed art courses, and I got to wondering if Emily Carr still offered them; you know, just curious.

Oh my. This was 2021 – the world had learned to Zoom.Not only did Emily Carr (which is now called Emily Carr University of Art + Design) have a few-odd courses, their Continuing Studies department had whole online certificates available. One of those certificates was in Illustration.

Violet the Fairy Punkmother. 9×12″, Watercolour and Ink Illustration of a mythological character. I wanted my Fairy Godmother to be as un-Disney-like as I could make her. And that’s a prince, not a princess. Just sayin’.

Now, illustration, storytelling in pictures, is something I’d admired for a long time – but again, not something I had the chops for, I figured. However, just on spec, and for fun, I signed up for the “Introductory Illustration” course – you know, just seeing if I could hold my own (etc etc). And again, I lucked out with a teacher who was fantastically enthusiastic and encouraging. “Sure you have what it takes!” she told me. Really? I mean, really?

Spot Illustration to go with The Fairy Punkmother.

Still, I wasn’t going to sign up for the certificate – but I’d just, you know, take another course, because it was so interesting. And another one, and… I learned so much. Illustration techniques. Industry standards. Digital illustration. So much fun (yes, stressful, too – deadlines are always pressure – but overall, fun). And then, I’d gone so far, I figured I might as well keep going. I was even able to apply a couple of those from-the-dark-ages undergrad courses to my certificate – no need to paint another potato – and then took the last few required classes on professional practices for creatives, and – and – and… I WAS DONE!

Sweet Porridge (Der süße Brei), Mixed Media Illustration of a fairy tale (Grimms’ KHM 103). Ink, wash, and porridge (yes, actual porridge) on paper.

I got an Illustration Certificate, from Emily Carr University of Art + Design. A credential from a real art school. I have the piece of paper to prove it! I reached a goal I didn’t even know I had, fulfilled a dream that I didn’t know was mine to dream.

I even learned how to make my own book covers. I learned Procreate, Photoshop, a smattering of graphic design and typography… So here we are, the cover for the new edition of Seventh Son, my first own book, made all by me myself: a blend of both those dreams-that-I-didn’t-know-I-had, but fulfilled nonetheless. I became a writer, and I became an illustrator.

Full wrap-around book cover for SEVENTH SON, digital (Procreate, Photoshop)

Now, one more thing: none of this is meant as a brag – I know full well that in all of those skills, I’m still a beginner, the Queen of 101. But that’s okay. What I mean to say by all of this is that sometimes, we have dreams that we don’t even know are ours to dream. Goals that seem so far out of reach it doesn’t even occur to us to aim for them.

But what if they actually are much more attainable than we think?

What do you think – might there be something that you’ve not even thought to dream of that is actually quite within your reach…? I guess you won’t know until you reach out and find it in your grasp – that’s what happened to me.

Life, the Universe, and Dreams Fulfilled That I Didn’t Know I had. Start reaching, I’d say.

Jill of All Trades: a Self-Portrait. Pen and Ink and Watercolour.