Proofs

Well yay for getting the proofs done! Now you can have chocolate and champagne.

From what I hear, a lot of writers do that — write books they want to read. I know that’s what *I* do. Even with the scenes where you have to close your eyes while writing them. Makes proofreading difficult, but…

(I noticed the bats!) I imagine it must be quite hard to keep from pulling one’s hair out after reading a manuscript fourteen hundred and eleven times. I think I honestly might throw it to the ground screaming, “NO! NOT AGAIN! JUST LEAVE IT HOW IT WAS!” and then upon reading it after publication wince at every mistake I missed. Do you ever feel like that?

really duck-billed platypuses should also fly; sort of the James Bond car of the animal world.

I love this sentence. I love this mental image. Oh, yes I do. :)

OUTLAWS is still my bleakest book in terms of world view–despite everything Sunshine says about her world. And the final face off with Guy of Gisbourne is right up there with the confrontation with Bo.

As I think I said once before, I don’t read that bit of Outlaws on my re-reads. Not because it wasn’t good–but rather because it was too wrenchingly, tearingly good. I hadn’t thought of the parallel, bleakwise, between it and Sunshine, that’s interesting… this could be because I read Sunshine once, loaned it to someone, and while I remember her returning it eventually (I think) it’s gone missing. I’d hoped it might surface in the Great Bookpile Disaster previously mentioned–which is now recounted on my blog, fyi–but it didn’t. Drat. Well, when it turns up I’ll rate it on a bleak-scale of 1-5, with 5 being Outlaws and 1 being Peter Rabbit, and let you know the results…

You know, it’s funny that you think you have such a bleak world view, because I always find your books soothing. I don’t mean soothing as in “boy this is nice to be reading as I drift off to sleep”… I mean soothing as in when I have the worst day on the planet and the world is against me and I am in a nasty nasty funk, I can go and grab Sunshine or Beauty or Water and dive in and come up feeling infinitely better and capable of surviving the day. I think Hero single handedly got me through the horror of 6th grade. Currently Hetta saves the day for me; every time she manages to escape the humdrum droning of “real life”, I do too. It always makes me feel better.

Maybe that’s the point – that despite a world that is falling apart, you still have moments that brighten and make it worthwhile? You still have cinnamon rolls and roses. I don’t think that’s a bleak view at all.

Ok, putting away the English major hat now….

As I put down Sunshine last night I said to myself, I really want to know more of Mel’s story (is he a sorcerer?) … and what about those Blaises ? How could such a fantastic grandmother have produced what was apparently a dud of a dad? Could he have really been so awful if Sadie was willing to give up everything for him?

How did Rae’s grandmother know what was going on, and how did she slip into Rae’s mind (is she really dead?)? Did she have past dealings with/ knowledge of Constantine?

I’d like to know more about Yolande. How was she able to be so cool about Sunshine’s vampire visitor? Shouldn’t she have called the cops at the first sign? I keep wondering if she just came to live near New Arcadia by chance or whether perhaps the Blaises arranged to have her there to take Rae in and to offer her the added protection of living with a Wardskeeper?

You’ve made me so curious, that I really hope that a sequel is creeping up on you. What you had to say tonight gives me hope. Maybe if you tried writing a short story about Mel it would just kind of start growing?

ooo! please, please, pleaseeeeeeee write a sunshine2 *big puppy eyes*

i have wanted a sequel ever since it first came out. and i am constantly pimping it to gothy friends because for some reason it flies under their radar.

i’d also say that katie mcallister’s tuff might give you a run for hard. a friend passed along one of hers to me, and my eyes and mind blinked a bit.

sunshine is a favourite of my to read and re-read. the cooking bits are an added bonus to this ‘foodie’

Gosh, it doesn’t seem like five years since Sunshine came out (well, it probably does to you . . .) Maybe because I’ve read it several times since then!

YES about Mel–and also about Sunshine’s grandmother, whom I also found an especially intriguing loose end, and I have to say Yolande interested me a lot too. But it makes for a real world, doesn’t it, when you don’t know everything about everyone and you probably never will.

I agree with you about the world view in Outlaws. (Probably as much because of those dead hounds of Tuck’s as because of the damage to the human characters.) If you write an honest book about growing up into a difficult world, you can’t really avoid the fact that your happy endings are apt to come at some cost and even then may be compromised. But the door’s not shut on a better outcome, so the bleakness is tempered. I have a problem reading fiction that ends badly for every character with no hope of improvement. Annie Proulx just had a story in the New Yorker that worked out that way; she’s a good writer, and it was a good story, but I’d never want to read it again.

And Huzzah! Congratulations!! for finishing the proofs–:: raises a toast ::–how wonderful to have THAT off your shoulders!

I worked in desktop publishing for three years with an editor. I totally sympathize with the whole rereading versions until even common words start to look weird and you pass big glaring things with an “okay to go.”

Of course, this was in the semiconductor industry, so most of the material was outside of my four years of liberal art college expertise. I used to infuriate some of my boyfriends by saying physics was a nice collection of fairy tales by scientists who were trying to describe the world around them.

But yes, we’d team up in my department to edit papers, newsletters, and presentations because everyone missed *something*. It’s too bad you can’t have your own editing team to help. I never knew that each edition for a book would require a new round of proofs but that makes sense. Hang in there!

Dear Robin
This is a bit big for a comment and not on topic anyway, but perhaps you can use it as a blog.
Anette, the Great Dane
NON-DAIRY ICE-CREAM 101
If you freeze a cup of still, pure water, you get a big, hard ice cube, and the purpose of making ice-cream is actually to break that cube into something edible. Flavor is usually added as well, but that is not the main purpose (see Medieval Ice-cream).
In a household kitchen the breaking is normally done by adding fat, sugar, alcohol, fibers, or air. Commercial ice-cream makers have a few extra options, but let us stick to food and leave chemistry out of the kitchen.
Fat in ice-cream usually means cream, but egg yolks can serve the same purpose (see Sabayon Ice-cream). Oils are best used only for greasing any moulds used to shape the ice-cream, and while I have tried making ice-cream involving avocado, the result frankly wasn’t good enough for me to post a recipe. Coconut cream is a possibility, if you like the flavor, but I think it works more because of the fibers than because of the fat (see Coconut Ice-cream with Lime syrup).
Sugar of some kind is added to most ice-creams, but if you have an especially nice honey or maple syrup, it is entirely possible to make a sorbet just with this. The proportions are about 1 part sweet-stuff to 4 or 5 parts water (volume and weight comes out about the same), but taste before adding all the water, and remember that it becomes less sweet when frozen. If you are one of us barbarians, who occasionally add things to wine, then a dollop of Rose-Honey Ice-cream isn’t bad in a glass of slightly sour wine.
Alcohol is very useful in any non-dairy ice-cream not intended for children. Cordials are the obvious choice, and I tend to use them in approximately the same proportions as the sweet-stuff above (see Coffee Ice-cream/Granita and Chocolate Ice-cream). The strong, non-sweet alcohols I tend to use only in the shape of a splash of brandy in a Strawberry Ice-cream or rum in Peach Ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), but Vodka Sorbet works well in both mixed drinks and in cold tomato soup. The once so popular Champagne or Red Wine sorbets have never worked very well for me, but try taking a look at the recipe for Punch Ice.
Fiber in the shape of a fruit pulp makes what is probably the best base for non-dairy ice-cream (see Fruit Ice-cream), and I cannot think of any fruit that would not work. Tofu must be the silk type, and – while I’ve never been quite satisfied with my results – it isn’t bad in the Tiramisu-mousse Ice-cream. Coconut I have already mentioned, but chestnut puree works as well – I just don’t like is very much.
Air is what you add to your ice-cream by churning it while it freezes, and you can enhance the effect by adding stiffly beaten egg whites to your ice-cream mix (see Punch Ice-cream, a.o.). It is, however, also possible to use beaten egg whites to make ice-cream without churning (see Chocolate Chinchilla Ice-cream a.o.).

MEDIEVAL ICE-CREAM:
In a way it’s silly to make so much work out of serving people, what is basically a cup of water, but it does look pretty, and if your guests have various allergies or diets, it’s a fairly useful dessert.
Ice-cold or even frozen whole fruits used to be considered a luxury (the ice-swans filled with fruit on buffets are a remnant of that), and from that there’s only a brief step to re-freeze shaved ice in the shape of fruits.
Ingredients:
Boiled water,
Egg white (optional),
Syrup, essence or cordial.
Start by chilling the boiled water, and prepare as many individuals moulds as you want by either greasing them with almond oil or lining them with kitchen film/saran wrap. Be careful to get the film smooth on the mould, so it doesn’t get frozen into the ice. Churn the water in an ice-cream maker, spoon the slush into the moulds, and freeze. If your guests don’t include vegans or people allergic to egg, you can get a softer set by adding a stiffly beaten egg white per pint (2 cups/500 ml) to the water before churning. When serving remove the moulds and drip a few drops or spoonfuls of your chosen flavor to the centre of your ice, from where it’ll spread through the shape and puddle around the base. I’m partial to Cherry Cordial, but Crème de Menthe (Mint Cordial) or Limoncello (Italian Lemon Cordial) are nice too.

SABAYON ICE-CREAM
I don’t know if everybody is familiar with the Italian dessert, Sabayon, which is made by whipping egg yolks, sugar and wine or fortified wine together over a low heat until you have something resembling a very fluffy custard. You can freeze a normal Sabayon to an ice-cream without any churning, but I think the result is better with churning and a few tweaks to the recipe. It’s also less work, because with churning it becomes unnecessary to heat the mix.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
4 tablespoon sugar,
Ca. 150-250 ml (0.5 – 1 cup) marsala (sweet fortified wine), sherry, white wine, rum, etc.
Beat the egg yolks with the sugar until they are thick and almost white. Add the liquid, beat again, and taste to see if it needs more, then freeze while churning. This is a fairly small amount of ice-cream, and if you serve it on its own you might want to double the recipe for four persons. It is, however, a very intense ice-cream, and I usually serve it along with fruit. The marsala version is good with grapes in wine jelly, the rum with baked banana, etc.

COCONUT ICE-CREAM WITH LIME SYRUP
Coconut cream/milk varies a lot from brand to brand, and you might want to dilute it with 0.5 – 1 can of water.
Ingredients:
1 can of coconut cream or milk,
Sugar,
Water,
2 limes,
0.5 vanilla pod.
Pour the coconut cream/milk into a bowl, and sweeten it to taste – you need to stir until the sugar is completely dissolved – then freeze while churning.
While the ice-cream is churning grate the zest of the limes, and squeeze out the juice. In a small pot mix the juice and zest with approximately the same amount of water and at least 4 tablespoons of sugar – you might want a lot more sugar – then heat gently while stirring. It should take only a few minutes at a low simmer before this small amount thickens and becomes syrupy.
Serve the Coconut Ice-cream with the Lime Syrup dripped on top and perhaps a sprinkling of chopped chocolate.

ROSE-HONEY ICE-CREAM
Ingredients:
Honey,
Water,
Fresh leaves of fragrant roses or rose water,
A clove or a few whole cardamom pods (optional).
Gently heat the honey with twice its volume in water and the whole spices. Remove from the heat, and dilute with more water until you have the sweetness you want (again remember that freezing “steals” some sweetness). Add the roseleaves (I like the color that dark red ones gives the ice), and let it steep all day or overnight. Sieve and freeze while churning.
I plan to try this with edible gold or silver added after the sieving

VODKA SORBET
Pure vodka doesn’t normally freeze, so you’ll need to dilute it. Water will do the trick, but I find the recipe below more useful.
Ingredients:
1 part vodka,
4 parts 7-up (stirred to remove some of the fizz),
Lemon juice to taste.
Mix and freeze while churning. Serve in a glass and pour over for example orange juice, spicy tomato juice, Blue Curacao, Crème de Cassis, Ginger ale or Dry Martini.

All the ice-cream recipes so far have been of the sorbet/sherbet type, but where sorbets are supposed to be smooth and with ice crystals as fine as possible, a granita consists of coarse crystals of flavored ice and cannot be made in an ice-cream maker.
How to make Granita:
Pour your flavored liquid into a shallow, lidded freezing container and freeze for about one hour. Stir the ice along the sides into the liquid in the middle with a coarse fork and freeze again. Repeat 3 or 4 times until it’s all frozen. The granita is now ready to serve, but if you need to keep it frozen for a while, you can just scrape it up in free crystals again when serving.

COFFEE ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
This is basically just frozen very strong and sweet coffee with – or without – a big splash of coffee cordial, but it’s very good as both sorbet and granita.
Ingredients:
8 tablespoon grinded coffee,
4 tablespoon sugar,
2 pints (4 cups) boiling water,
Coffee cordial to taste.
Let water, coffee and sugar simmer together for 30 min, then cool, sieve, add the cordial, and freeze.

TEA ICE-CREAM/GRANITA WITH LIMONCELLO
Just as with the coffee this works equally well as a sorbet and as a granite.
Ingredients:
3 bag of your favorite tea,
1.5 pints (3 cups) boiling water,
0.5 cup sugar,
Limoncello to taste.
Pour the hot water over the tea, and let it steep for 5 min before removing the bags and adding the sugar. Stir until the sugar has dissolved, and let it cool. Add the cordial, and freeze.
If you prefer it, you can use other fruit cordials such as peach or apple instead of the Limoncello or you can just omit it.

LEMON ICE-CREAM/GRANITA
I find this a bit boring on its own, but very nice in a glass of ice-tea.
Ingredients:
150 ml (ca. 0.75 cup) lemon juice,
The grated zest of a lemon,
150 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml boiling water.
Dissolve the sugar in the water, add the other ingredients, cool, and freeze either as a sorbet or a granite.

FRUIT ICE-CREAM
You can sieve a mush of for example strawberries or passion fruit and make a granita, but fruits still with their fibers are also ideal for sorbet.
Here’s a series of different fruit ice-creams all intended for sorbets:

Peach:
1 can of peaches with liquid.
Blitz in a blender or food processor until smooth, then freeze while churning.
This is the easiest of all ice-creams, and other canned fruits such as apricots and pineapple can be treated the same way.

Passion fruit:
The pulp of 8 or more ripe (wrinkled) passion fruits,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and stir to dissolve the sugar, and let it steep for 1 hour. Sieve and freeze while churning.

Watermelon:
1.5 pound watermelon meat without pips,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Juice of half a lemon,
250 ml (1 cup) cold water.
Mix and blitz together in a blender or food processor until smooth. Freeze while churning.
Other ripe melons can be treated the same way, as can pineapple.

Strawberry:
I am so fortunate as to have a very superior old type of strawberries growing in my garden. Most of the crop is eaten fresh and straight from the plants, but in bumper-crop years I sometimes want to preserve some for later as an ice-cream. Commercially grown strawberries are types where things like stiff stalks, high yields, and tough skin are more important than flavor, so I really think you need different recipes for different types of strawberries.
Ingredients I:
1 pound full-flavored strawberries,
2 tablespoons of sugar.
Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.

Ingredients II:
1 pound fresh strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
100-150 g (0.5 cup sugar),
75 ml (0.25 cup) water.
Boil the water and sugar together for a few minutes to dissolve the sugar, and let it cool. Blitz and sieve the strawberries, add the other ingredients, taste, and freeze.

Ingredients III:
1 pound frozen strawberries,
1-2 tablesp. fresh orange or lemon juice,
0.5 split vanilla pod,
150-200 g (ca. 0.75 cup) sugar,
Mix all the ingredients in a pot, and let it stand until the strawberries have thawed and produced some liquid. Boil together at low heat, and let it cool. Blitz, taste, sieve, and freeze.

TIRAMISU- MOUSSE ICE-CREAM
Just replacing mascarpone with tofu in a Tiramisu doesn’t work unless you adjust the other ingredients. Once that is done, it’s actually better frozen, and if you are going to freeze it anyway you don’t really need the tofu to dilute the taste.
Ingredients:
4 egg yolks,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
1 packet silk tofu (that’s 125-150 g (5-6 oz)) (optional),
4 egg whites,
60 g (0.25 cup) sugar,
Instant espresso or coffee powder,
4 tablespoon dark rum,
Good quality dark chocolate.
Beat the egg yolks very thick and pale with the first portion of sugar. Cream the tofu until smooth. Whip the egg whites to a stiff meringue with the second portion of sugar. Dissolve enough coffee in the rum to get a pronounced coffee flavor. Chop the chocolate. If you want to make this in an ice-cream maker, mix everything except the chocolate, which should be sprinkled over after freezing. If you have a very cold freezer, there’s no need for churning, and you just mix everything and freeze it in a container. Serve with cookies, but try finding some more interesting than Lady Fingers. I like Cat Tongues and Florentines.

PUNCH ICE
It quite possible to make an ice-cream just by freezing ordinary punch (lemon, sugar, rum and water), but this recipe started life as a Jewish version of the Victorian party-dessert Ice-Punch. The texture is supposed to be very slushy, so that you can almost drink it.
Ingredients:
0.5 bottle of champagne or sweet white wine,
Juice and grated zest of 1 lemon and 2 oranges,
75 g (0.33 cup) cane sugar,
4 tablespoon rum,
4 egg whites,
150-200 g (ca. 1.5 cup) powdered/confectioner sugar.
Mix wine, juice, zest, cane sugar and rum, and let it stand until the sugar has dissolved (over-night is fine). Freeze while churning until you have a thick slush. This you can store in the freezer for a few hours, but if you leave it longer, you’ll probably need to break it up with an electric whisk. Shortly before serving beat the egg whites to a meringue with the powdered sugar, and fold this into the slush ice. Serve immediately in glasses or small bowls.

CHOCOLATE ICE-CREAM
It is entirely possible to make a non-dairy chocolate ice-cream. The simplest ways are:
Version 1: Replace the wine in the Sabayon Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial.
Version 2: Replace the vodka in the Vodka Ice-cream with Cocoa cordial and the lemon with vanilla extract.
Version 3: Replace the coffee in the Tiramisu with good pure cocoa (not the sweet instant) powder, but add it to the eggs as it might lump in the cold liquid.

My favorite non-dairy chocolate ice is however something entirely different:
FROZEN CHOCOLATE CHINCHILLA
Now, before anyone start accusing me of covering small animals with chocolate, I better explain that a chinchilla can be both – though not normally at the same time – a small fur-bearing animal and a soft cake made almost entirely of beaten egg whites.
Ingredients:
6 egg whites,
125 g (5 oz) grated dark chocolate or 4 tablespoons pure cocoa and 5 tablespoons sugar,
2 tablespoons chopped nuts,
3 teaspoons ground cinnamon or coffee powder (not instant).
Beat the egg whites very stiff, fold in the other ingredients, and bake (medium heat) or steam for about 1 hour. A chinchilla is normally eaten warm or tepid, but I like to eat it slightly frozen/partly thawed.

Anette, the Great Dane

That’s funny . . . I generally read Sunshine all in one go and have a headache afterwards. I’d imagine it is like eating an entire cheesecake at one sitting.

I always wondered about Mel; felt a bit sorry for the bloke, actually. The Blaises are quite fascinating–a bit like the mafia, I think, if it is anything like the Italian mob over here. Only with a purpose. Or maybe not. And magic and vampires and zebra cakes.

Never mind.

>will be to do something with Mel
Sounds good to me. *What do all those tattoos mean….?* ;)

>I also want to find out more about what the Blaises are up to.
Yes. Are they saving the world? Are they just biding their time?? Hmmmmmm

>I get to the end of Part Three, ……and . . . I want to stop and go do something else.
LOL. It’s all the downhill run from then on for me. Definitely at the “can’t put down stage” !

>anything they take back to their bed with them and appear to eat, they merely render into crumbs and leave all over the floor of the crate.
LOL. Sounds like they need a nice fat rabbit. Belle loves taking such gourmet delights into her kennel to eat in privacy. The bedding doesn’t appreciate it much though. ;p

Come to think of it, OUTLAWS is the one book you have written that I am, um, sort of neutral on (rather than slavering “oh, goody!!!”). Bleak, that’s what it was…… but we are all wondering about Mel, and thank you for having written Sunshine and provided such enormous pleasure to us all. And investing the daily hours blogging to us.

Hello,
I have decided to delurk.
I have some questions for you and I hope the first ones not to stupid. What is the difference between the new page proofs and the old ones? When do we get to see the new cover? I can’t wait to see it even though I love the first one. It’s part of the reason I picked up the book in the first place. So glad I did. Now you have become one of my favorite authors.
Will you ever give Sunshine’s cinnamon rolls recipe? That would be so cool!!!
By the way I don’t understand why you are worried about to many calories. From pictures I have seen you look perfectly fine.
Sorry this is so long.
Oh, yeah my name is Marie since I know that you like to have a user name.

I also think platypi should fly. I had a terrible dream a couple of nights ago about Riley Finn (Buffy, season five?) being attacked by a pack of long-haired miniature dachshund-type platypi. His ankles were TOAST. I can’t even begin to describe what the things looked like, either.

And congratulations! Have some chocolate!

I must admit to usually re-reading DEERSKIN by starting at the cabin and going forward from there. Sometimes even the cabin in spring, not winter. But at least once every three years I go back and re-read the whole thing.

I am actually approaching the decade anniversary of one of those don’t-wanna-re-read-it life moments. My Sunshine-and-table-knife moment. (By the way, you got the post-traumatic-thingummy and how you feel retelling those moments *perfectly*. Spot on.) I never tried writing it – just verbalizing. Maybe I’ll try wriing it down….

I’ve just seen the cover for the new release of Sunshine (and I took a look at Chalice as well) and I think they’re both quite lovely. Huzzah!

Love the covers. I don’t know which cover of Sunshine I like better. Drat. Now I want them both.

Question for you: how much input do you get on covers and so forth? Do you get to say I want this style by this illustrator, with THIS particular scene? Or does the publisher just say, Oh by the way, here’s the new cover. Hope you like it.

I have very fond memories of the elegance of Beauty’s original cover. I don’t like the cover of the edition I have half as well, although at the time I was just ecstatic to have finally found a copy.

I was just thinking on my way to work yesterday that of all the intriguing unknowns in Sunshine, the one I absolutely most want to know more about is Mel.