H.B. Kurtzwilde's Blog

Around Christmas we got friends together for a Zoom cocktail party with a custom cocktail class with Tammy’s Tastings (I highly recommend her mix-at-home online cocktail classes. They are super fun and I’ve learned a ton from taking several over the course of this lockdown, now in our 11th month…)

The group was wondering what to do next, and we decided on a Zoom dinner party where we’d each make different courses and deliver them around, then heat them up and eat them together online.

The theme we chose was Alice in Wonderland, and when I saw after a month of sign-ups that no one had taken dessert, it seemed obvious to me I should grab it and naturally I had to make the Queen of Hearts’ Tarts. I don’t believe Lewis Carroll ever specified what kind of tarts the Knave stole from the Queen, but it’s winter, and I have been craving the ripe red summer fruits and berries. This is why we freeze as many strawberries as we can–for just such an occasion.

Next step, order heart-shaped mini tart pans! This turned out to be more difficult than usual because lots of places that sell them were sold out — not sure if that was because of Valentine’s Day or the pandemic, but I eventually found a place that could ship them to me in time.

Then I looked over a lot of different tart recipes. “Tart” seems to mean just about anything that can be called a pie, just smaller. Talking it over with some Pokemon Go playing friends who are into baking, one of them suggested the hip thing because of the Great British Baking show is “bakewells,” a kind of tart that includes a fruit jam and an almond frangiapane. You know how much I love the almond in the king cake, right? This seemed right up my alley.

I thought about trying to develop a bakewell version of my strawberry balsamic vinegar basil pie, but that is really a summer pie and our indoor herb garden doesn’t have that much basil in it right this second (yes, another pandemic project: indoor herb garden — if you think that’s a cliche, wait till you hear all three of us are learning Japanese and Jess taught herself the ukelele).

One of my favorite ways to elevate a recipe, though, is add flowers. Could I make a rose strawberry jam? Turns out that’s such a natural fit there are some great recipes out there for it. I ended up following the one at Completely Delicious fairly closely: “Strawberry and Rose Water Jame with Vanilla Bean” except I doubled the rose water and also put in some dried rose petals from the I have on hand from Aroma Tea Shop. Since I was using frozen strawberries I didn’t have to cut them or crush them because they start to fall apart once they thaw. I also didn’t use bottled lemon juice — I juice a lemon and saved the zest to use in the frangiapane. And I reduced it down for about 45 minutes instead of the 20-30 in the recipe.

For the tart crust, I went with the almond shortcrust in the recipe at The Elegant Econonmist for strawberry rose bakewell tart, but I didn’t use their frangiapane recipe or any other instructions, really.

The frangiapane came from the BBC Good Food website, which has several mini bakewells recipes, but I used one by snugglewuffin, which made just exactly the amount needed to top 16 mini heart-shaped tarts.

I held off decorating them until the next day. I kind of felt like royal icing was gilding the lily, and yet it makes them look quite nice since baked frangiapane looks kind of like the surface of the moon. And it’s traditional. Since the jam didn’t taste that strongly of rose — I might try quadrupling the rose water instead of merely doubling it next time — I thought I could put some rose flavor or scent in here, and so I brewed a rose tea to use instead of water.

As an accompaniment instead of a cocktail, I recommended a strong black tea. The bitter note in the tea cuts the intense sweetness of the tart and vice versa. I went with a high mountain Ceylon I got from Aroma Tea Shop in San Francisco (they mail order). I made a packet of tea leaves for each person.

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I have a writer friend who, when she’s learning what it feels like inside the head of her main character, will sometimes go clothes shopping as that character (but not actually buy anything).

I hate shopping malls. I spent too much time in them as a teenager in New Jersey. So when I take my characters shopping, I usually do it either at Good Will or through online retail. Now that the pandemic has kept me out of public contact for the most part, I’ve been sticking to online spaces. By far the most fun place to shop online–especially for character shopping–is eBay, since it’s not just clothes but other things one can look for, as well. Unlike Amazon, eBay has rabbit holes and cul-de-sacs that one can go down, from vintage baseball uniforms to collectible playing cards, from used kitchen equipment to “smart” jewelry.

I sometimes even let my characters shop for me. When I won the RT Award in 2013 for Slow Surrender, I had Ziggy, one of the main characters in Daron’s Guitar Chronicles, pick out my awards ceremony outfit for me. I was utterly dithering about what would be appropriate to wear, and he put together an outfit that absolutely rocked (including boots by Harley Davidson and a double-breasted corset-back tuxedo jacket off eBay that one never would have found in a regular retail site–and which isn’t still available now or I’d link to it).

Right now I’m writing an urban fantasy series where every character has to have a knife. So of course I started researching what knives people might have, both so I can describe them in the text and so I can figure out what style each character would carry.

Spyderco Q: The knife I would never have let the TSA take if I knew they were going for $200 to $350 on eBay now…!On eBay I discovered that several of the knives I personally own are now collectors items. In fact, I discovered that a knife I’d had since the 1990s–but which I didn’t think was expensive or hard to replace and so I let the TSA in Florida confiscate it–is now going for $200 and up on eBay. I’m talking about the “skeletonized” Spyderco Q. I own several Spyderco that are now rising in price. Apparently, Spyderco used to have all their blades made in Seki, Japan. The company was recently bought and moved all manufacturing to China, and blade connoisseurs are unhappy about this? And so the “classic” Seki Spydercos are going for premium prices now.

My search for a new skeletonized Q, though, eventually led me to GovDeals.com as well. This is a site where government agencies like the TSA (and state universities) sell off their surplus. You can buy pocket knives by the bucketful. I ended up picking up several nice police-issue Spydercos via GovDeals, which really made me wonder how that confiscation went down: was it a dick-sizing competition between the TSA officers and some police officer who thought they could get away with carrying a blade like that on an airplane?

I still haven’t found a Spyderco Q at a price I’m willing to pay. The one I lost had the spider-in-web cutout and serrated blade. I’ve decided which character will be carrying that knife.

I also researched knives so small they can be worn as a charm on a necklace. Spyderco has one called the “bug” (even smaller than their “honeybee” model) which fits the bill. I bought one of them off eBay to check that it would be as sharp and usable as the bigger ones: it is! It even comes with a hole for stringing the chain through. Research!

This eBay rabbit hole eventually led me down to ceramic “fruit knives,” which supposedly can’t be detected by X-ray machines. I picked up a few of them, too, on mega-sale via eBay ($15 for a set of four folding knives), and they are cute! They look like birds/fish, feel basically like plastic, but they are SHARP. I used them all summer to cut peaches to eat. When we are allowed to travel again (someday!) these will probably be my go-to travel knife.

A couple of eBay shopping tips:

SEARCH BAR: If you’re doing the pandemic thing of wanting ideas for home improvement, don’t just type “Home Improvement” into the search bar. You’ll get all items related to the TV show by that name, DVD sets, etc. If you search for “home improvement” and you set the search bar to search within the category of Home and Garden, on the other hand, you’ll find all the smart doorbells, fireplace accoutrements, door hinges, etc etc. Narrow your search if you aren’t finding what you want. On the other hand, sometimes you find some really interesting stuff if you look in unexpected places.

COUPONS AND DEALS: I did not know this until recently, but there are sites that search for online coupons and EBay is one of the sites that quite regularly has coupons. So now I know to check Slickdeals at https://slickdeals.net/coupons/ebay/ before I buy anything. The deals change so you have to go see what’s current on any given date. Right now I see a 15% off anything and a 10% off any new product.

DON’T GET SUCKED INTO AUCTIONS: If you want the best deal, sometimes it’s great when you bid on something with a really low starting bid. But if you get outbid, you really should look at what price you’d pay if you just flat out bought the item from a regular retail site. If you get into a bidding war with someone, the only way to “win” is to pay more money than the other bidder(s). More money does not sound like a bargain, now, does it?

So, I’ve ended up buying a bunch of knives. What about you? What have you found yourself buying during the pandemic?

Some family members of mine are currently roadtripping across the USA in an RV. So are a lot of folks, apparently. RV sales are “skyrocketing” and sites like RVShare reported a 1000% increase in business. That’s one-thousand-percent, not a typo.

Taking a cross-continent trip in an RV is a little outside my comfort zone, but there’s little that seems safer during the pandemic than driving somewhere scenic in the sealed box that is my trusty car? After months of going nowhere but on a weekly grocery run, what motivated me to finally go farther afield was a once-every-800-years event, the arrival of comet NEOWISE.

Having identified the state park at Mount Tom in western Massachusetts as the best place to try to view the comet, my family and I checked the weather for the weekend, identified Saturday as the best chance, packed a picnic dinner and snacks, as well as binoculars, bug spray, and camp chairs, and set out in the mid-afternoon. Mt. Tom has a nicely paved road with scenic views of the valley. Picnic areas, the Bray Tower, and scenic overlooks are all open, even though the visitors center is currently closed due to the pandemic.

We tailgated by our parked car until about a half-hour after sunset, and then hiked on foot up to the first overlook (the road is closed to vehicles at 8pm). From there we had a successful comet viewing. About a dozen others were there, and folks were friendly, but wearing masks and maintaining social distance. Around 10pm it started to cloud up, and we headed home.

The experience being quite positive, I started researching other road trips we could take that would allow us to get away from our work-from-home lives for a bit while still staying safe. The outdoors have particularly been deemed safe by medical experts, so an uncrowded beach, a nature trail in a wooded area, these seems like good destinations to plan.

I Googled “scenic drives in New England” and came up with numerous sites (like TripAdvisor, or the new-to-me MyScenicDrives.com) with lists of recommendations.

Next in the planning stage: making sure my car is ready for the drive. This is a crucial one, because with the car mostly sitting unused every since March, it might not seem like it needs maintenance. But actually it probably needs it more than ever. The dealer where I bought my car is kind of far from me, and their website said nothing about what precautions they’re taking during the pandemic. I found another dealer nearby, though, with details of their “contactless dropoff” that could be scheduled online. While looking up what other contactless maintenance might be available, and Google searching for tips about road-tripping during the pandemic, this page on RepairSmith.com seemed more than relevant: “How to Road Trip Safely During the Pandemic.” (RepairSmith basically comes to you and fixes your car where you are, like a house call veterinarian for cars.)

Their tips include the following: “To avoid gas stations, eliminate as many unnecessary stops as possible through pre-planning. Pack your own food and water and fill your tank at your neighborhood gas station. While using gas pumps, wear disposable gloves, and discard them before getting back in your vehicle.”

In addition to wearing my mask, I always bring a pack of disposable gloves and disinfecting wipes with me when I leave the house. Most transmission of the novel coronavirus seems to take place via the air, and being within breathable proximity or downwind of an infected human. This is why it’s crucial to avoid indoor spaces with other people, who can spread the virus before they show any symptoms. So no bars, restaurants, movie theaters, or other indoor destinations for me.

When we trekked to Mount Tom, I also packed our own toilet paper, wipes, extra ziplock bags, etc. so that we could avoid using public rest stops or rest areas. “Back to nature” is the name of the game!

The thing about asymptomatic transmission, though, is that if I’m really going to take a trip that will bring me into contact with other people, which will inevitably happen if I need groceries or assistance of any kind, or if I stay somewhere overnight, is that I should get tested before I go to make sure that *I* am not the one spreading the virus around. This is a point made clearly by the Lonely Planet list of “9 Expert Tips for Road Trip Safety During the Pandemic.” They also point out that it’s important to research where the virus is low and where it’s hyper-epidemic at a given time and recommend using the Johns Hopkins Tracker to see where the hotspots are and avoid them. New England is looking pretty good!

I’ll be getting my test this weekend, and probably hitting the Mohawk Trail toward the end of the month!

I’m not traveling right now, and those of you who know me know that’s just not usual. I typically have a summer filled with conventions and conferences, bookstore appearances, awards ceremonies, and author galas. Instead, the conferences are online, I haven’t had to buy a single stitch of new clothes, and I look longingly at my photos from Italy last February.

They say looking forward to something nice can help a person get through tough times, though, and I know when it’s safe to travel again, there’s going to be a boom in people going places.

When you’re self-employed, you have to figure out when to take a vacation. You work for the hardest boss in the world–yourself–and so you never give yourself a break. But you ought to. I know it’s the pandemic right now and so traveling to faraway places seems like it’s never going to happen again. But it will.

Let’s say I’m going to put away $2,500 for that vacation or convention in August 2021. I picked that as my target because that’s about what it cost me to attend RWA (Romance Writers of America) in San Diego in 2016, and about what I spent on a weeklong trip to Disney.

I’m using the SAVINGS GOAL CALCULATOR at Pigly (a non-profit financial planning site with lots of free calculators!) The calculator lets me set my goal at $2500, and enter my starting amount. I’m starting with fifty bucks in there. My local bank has a savings account with a 2% APY right now and a $10 minimum balance that I can open online without even going to the bank. Nice!

If I plug those numbers in, and say I want to make a weekly contribution for one year…

…it calculates for me how much I need to put away per week: $46.64.

In other words, the money I’m not spending at the local coffee shop, where I would easily spend $11-12 3-4 times a week… I can now put into my travel account. (I know I was spending between $33 and $48 per week in the local coffee shops because I also used Pigly’s BUDGET calculator and CASH FLOW calculator…)

If I really want to get ambitious, I should start planning not just one trip, but a travel budget for the whole year, including several conventions and at least one pleasure trip, and I should look for a savings account–or a CD–that would return a better interest rate. (Pigly has calculators that can take long term planning and other forms of investment into account, too.) But for now I’m just keeping my eye on that one goal, and putting that $47 into the account every week will remind me we’re getting closer, step by small step.

I’m fortunate that being a self-employed writer means my work hasn’t been very negatively impacted by the pandemic. (In fact, my ebook sales are up.) I’ve stayed healthy by staying home. But someday, hopefully in 2021, I’ll be taking that big trip somewhere!

Where are you going to go when it’s safe to travel again?

Somewhere familiar that you missed, or a bucket-list place?

Cassie Alexander, C.L. Polk, Shanna Swendson, Jeffe Kennedy, Yasmine Galenorn speaking at the virtual Nebula Awards conference

The Nebula Awards Conference is SFWA’s annual get-together not only to hand out the Nebula Awards in a gala ceremony but to hold networking and professional development workshops, panels, and events. This being 2020 and the Pandemic Era, its been moved online to be completely virtual. I just “attended” the panel Publishing SFF Romance: Pick a Seat, Not a Side, moderated by Jeffe Kennedy. It was a really fun discussion that touched on a lot of different issues related to writing material that either crosses over between SF/F and romance, or are adjacent to both romance and SF/F. (Because these authors are mostly in some form of fantasy, the discussion was mostly on the F portion of SF/F, not the SF.)

Jeffe Kennedy, was the moderator, and she’s written all over that map where the realms of romance and SF/F overlap, and included authors Cassie Alexander, C.L. Polk, Shanna Swendson, and Yasmine Galenorn. One of the first things they all addressed was the fact that traditional publishers very often struggle to categorize their works which have both fantasy elements (i.e. magical setting or paranormal characters) and a romantic relationship (even if that relationship isn’t the main focus). This means sometimes a book will land in YA, chick lit, romance, or fantasy, but that the very same book could have landed in a different category if the publisher had made a different decision or if a different publisher had acquired it.

Interestingly enough, Shanna Swendson had the experience of fantasy publishers telling her that her book was too “romance-y” even though the characters don’t even kiss in it. “They were telling me to go pitch it to romance publishers and I thought… but the romance publisher will be very disappointed by this!” She allowed that what she writes is “shipper bait,” where readers yearn for the characters to get together. (And they eventually do… several books into the series.)

That brought up the topic for me of the “slow burn” romance, so I tossed a question into the audience chat room. I feel you can’t really do a “slow burn” in any kind of contemporary romance because one book is not enough time for the burn to be slow. In an urban fantasy series, though, where the focus can be on saving the world or whatever, you can take several books to build up the relationship.

Shanna agreed: “That is one of the reasons I moved away from romance to fantasy is, at that time–again talking more than 15 years ago, so the world has changed a little–in traditional publishing, you really couldn’t do a slow burn romance. A romance novel had to have the ending in the book. The couple had to meet, work there things out, get together in one book. I always felt that was rushed… In fantasy is where I think you have the room to really play with that slow burn that you are dealing with all of these other situations, and the couple can gradually get to know each other. I took nine books to get these poor people married!”

Jeffe chimed in with this: “When we were shopping the forgotten Empire series, it was nice we got offers from several different publishers, and one of the publishers, which tends to be more of a romance focus, wanted to do the trilogy with a different pairing in each book. We went with St. Martins [instead] in part because my editor was like, ‘let’s do a slow burn romance over the trilogy of this pairing,’ which was something I really wanted to do. I wanted to take my time, because it is an enemies-to-lovers story. I wanted to take my time, instead of doing Insta-love, bringing them around to understanding each other.”

Seems like it’s only the publishers who have this discomfort or difficulty with books that have a mix of romance and fantasy. Readers have no problems with it at all, which is why so many of the urban fantasy writers, according to Yasmine Galenorn have not only gone indie, they’ve “taken over the urban fantasy genre.” Yasmine was traditionally published for nearly 20 years before going indie, and she’s been very happy in the indie world. Cassie Alexander also has made the switch to indie with a new series and loves that unlike a publisher who is focused on putting a book into a single category and on a single shelf in the bookstore, an indie author can and should hit all the market.

The idea of using “tags” like on the fanfiction Archive of Our Own (AO3) was brought up from the audience chat as a way to hit all the buttons and market to many different people. So if a reader was looking for slow burn, enemies-to-lovers, they’d be able to find it. Cassie said she and her co-author literally put “slow burn” into the subtitle for a series so people would know what they were in for, both to attract the folks who love that and also to give fair warning so readers who were expecting a happy ever after in every book in the series wouldn’t be so cranky. (“That still hasn’t stopped people from being cranky about the slow burn of it,” though, she said.)

C.L. Polk talked about using AO3-style tagging: “This was something I did with Witchmark early on. One of the things I did, specifically, as a coldhearted mercenary, marketing term was I made up my own set of tags, with the typical AO3 sense of humor in the tags, and I posted them on twitter. I was not the first, but I was the early adopter of this practice, and I stand by it.”

Another question from the audience was about how you know what level of language to use for sex words in your book if you don’t know if it’s going to be marketed and published as romance or as fantasy? Shanna and Chelsea could sidestep that since they don’t write explicit sex. “[I write] Just kissing,” Chelsea said. “I don’t have to talk about anybody’s love machine or anything like that.”

Yasmine: I am pretty blunt, pretty explicit.

Cassie: I also wrote a 75,000-word choose-your-own adventure in erotica. I actually err more toward the sexy clinical. It is interesting to see how words that you thought nobody likes anymore have come back into fashion, and sometimes the male protagonist saying them is like a power-play. The “C” word is what I go with. For a while, that was not allowed because it could possibly be derogatory toward women. Now, if you are an alpha guy, that is probably part of their vocabulary. Even if you say it in a sexy way. I think it is context, too. There are other words: not everything has to be flowers and things like that.

Jeffe: I think we are all going to be using love machine from now on!

Overall, a great panel that covered a wide range of experience and possibilities. What I have mentioned here is a small fraction of the hour-long conversation.

Links:

Jeffe Kennedy: https://jeffekennedy.com/

Cassie Alexander: http://cassiealexander.com/

C.L. Polk: https://clpolk.com/

Shanna Swendson: http://shannaswendson.com/

Yasmine Galenorn: https://galenorn.com/

Note: You must be a registered Nebula attendee to see the archived video or access the transcript. If you are a Nebulas attendee and missed the panel, you’ll find it here: https://events.sfwa.org/events/publishing-sff-romance-pick-a-seat-not-a-side/

Nothing beats talking about my specialties–sex, erotica, and science fiction, as well as Harry Potter and tea–with some true connoisseurs: Sunny Megatron and Ken Melvoin Berg, the hosts of the American Sex Podcast. They had me over (virtually of course) to chat about how I became the maven of erotic science fiction in the 1990s and what I’m up to now. Besides stress-baking my way through the pandemic, that is.

We talked about the olden days of Usenet, and how when I started writing and publishing people in publishing had this weird belief that you couldn’t put sex and science fiction together or, I dunno, the world would end or something. (It didn’t.) I think we also talked about my most recent Kickstarter, but that’s done with now, so just pretend you’re a time-traveler when you’re listening to that bit, all right?

The episode is available just about everywhere your favorite podcasts may be: iTunes, Google Play, Pandora, Stitcher, iHeartRadio, Spotify. You can find out more at http://americansexpodcast.com/

There’s also bonus content only available to subscribers to the American Sex Patreon: http://patreon.com/americansex In the bonus content I tell the story of how “research” into one of my erotica short stories in the 90s went all wrong and how I almost, but did not, go to the emergency room…

I’ll be sharing that bonus file with my own patrons as well, so if you’ve been thinking about backing me as an author on Patreon, now might be a good time for that? Now that the Daron’s Guitar Chroncles serial is over, my Patreon is a more general support place for those who believe in my mission of passionate fiction and never skipping the sex for the sake of “society.” Grin. (I’m going to share some sneak peeks of my current novel in progress soon, as well, now that it’s starting to gel a bit.) My patreon: http://patreon.com/ceciliatan

It’s no secret how much I love Harry Potter. Heck, for years I’ve been featured in many publications talking about my fandom and how after 15 years of being a professional fiction writer I started writing Harry Potter fanfic for fun. (Like this one or this podcast or this one, or this one…)

So when I heard my longtime literary agent and now publisher of Riverdale Avenue Books, Lori Perkins, was going to try to launch a line of books called The Binge Watcher’s Guides, and she was going to want to sign up many writers to each do their favorite TV and film series, I jumped on the chance to be the one to write the book on the Harry Potter movies!

To get the book and series off the ground, we’re running a Kickstarter, which will help to not only pay me a good rate, but raise the money needed for the kind of promotion and publicity necessary to compete in today’s book publishing market, which is tougher than ever. The campaign launched Wednesday, topped its first thousand dollars by Friday, and is well on the way to not only making the initial goal but hopefully reaching the all-important stretch goals, too!

Among the rewards, which of course include the book, I’m also offering some virtual tarot card readings, and some other really fun stuff, like recipe cards for foods and drinks to make and serve at your Harry Potter movie marathon party!

The book includes tons of research I did, including dozens of fascinating casting stories, film-making innovations, and analysis of the place of the film series as a force in modern pop culture.

I’ve also got tips for throwing a binge-watch party, and advice on how and when to introduce the films to children for the first time. And of course recaps of each film, and a section for film fans on things you might want to know from the books.

Among the things I had forgotten until I went and looked back at it was the fact that the first film debuted right after the September 11th attacks. I think we were all ready for a little escape into a magical world at that point…

And I think during the pandemic people are looking to escape again, only this time from the safety of our own living rooms. There’s never been a better time to do a binge watch of a series, really.

So if you’d like to re-live the magic of discovering the Harry Potter films for the first time, or if you ARE discovering the films for the first time, come along with me to Hogwarts and beyond!

All backers get a discount off the regular retail price of the book and/or ebook, as well as exclusive rewards that can only be gotten through the Kickstarter.

It has been a rollercoaster ride of emotions for me since December 23rd when the news broke that Courtney Milan was being censured by RWA, for reasons that were quickly revealed to be bullshit, opening a Pandora’s box of institutionalized racism, machiavellian social climbing, manipulative staffing, tails wagging the dogs, and so on. I pulled my book from the RITAs–but they later cancelled the awards and refunded all entry fees anyway. I then went to resign my membership, but realized it was up in February anyway. So I kept access to the forums and emails just in case things really turned around.

They haven’t. I was mostly happy to see the communique from the recently hired DEI consultant, Michelle Silverthorn of Inclusion Nation, but there is still so much to be done to regain my trust… I’m not sure the organization ever will at this point. And this is what I told them in my resignation letter, emailed today when a renewal notice popped up that said:

“Dear Cecilia, Thank you for another year as a member of Romance Writers of America. We know it has been a challenging one, and we appreciate you sticking with us. We have already begun building RWA 2.0, and in the year to come (and beyond) we are embracing a new chapter as an inclusive and equitable organization. We value your voice and your vision, and we hope you choose to remain a member to join us in this important work.”

I really want to believe those words. I do. But I feel burned by the ways that RWA has performed in the past.

I wrote:

Thanks for the reminder, but I’ve decided to resign my membership. I just can’t be a part of RWA any longer.

I didn’t join when I pivoted my career from erotic science fiction/fantasy into romance back in 2008-2009 because of all the garbage I had heard about racism, bigotry, and small-mindedness in the RWA. I had heard stories from other authors about how if I was writing anything erotic, kinky, queer, or featuring non-white characters (*all* of which I do) I could expect to be condescended to and that the information and contacts I would make would be of limited use. 

Then Sylvia Day was elected president. Sylvia was important to me for multiple reasons, including the fact she wrote kinky erotic romances and that she, like me, is half-white/half-Asian. Talking with her at a book conference and then reading some things she had written as president convinced me to stick my head into RWA National in 2011 and attend my local conference. Shortly after that Courtney Milan–who, like me, is an outspoken advocate for diversity on Twitter and also half-white/half-Asian–joined the board, and I was convinced that things were truly changing. I joined. I entered the RITAs. I taught workshops at RWA national and for various regional chapter conferences, even keynoting a few. At the most recent conference in New York, between the diversity represented by the incoming board members and the statement made by the 2019 RITA award ceremony, I really believed the needed changes were truly taking root and that RWA was an institution that I could be invested in for a long time. 

I don’t believe that anymore. That magical RITA night is forever tainted. It now feels like that ceremony used the voices of those trailblazers like Sandra Kitt and Radclyffe to paste a “politically correct” image onto a deeply racist, bigoted organization. And I don’t want to be used that way.

It’s going to take a lot to bring me back at this point. To borrow a phrase from Elizabeth Warren, it’s going to take “big, structural change.” RWA needs to be proactive on many fronts, not just regarding equity and inclusion within membership and its structure, but to be the powerful advocate for authors that it truly should be. RWA should be taking strong stances against delinquent publishers, against monopolistic practices by Amazon, against rights grabs by the Big 5, and many other issues facing romance authors today. I’ll be watching and hoping for that change to come. If it doesn’t, it’s not in the best interest of my career (or my mental health) to uphold a rotten status quo. 

Thanks for listening.

-Cecilia Tan, Writer & Editor

At long last, SILK THREADS, my romance project with Midori and Laura Antoniou (which we Kickstarted last year) is now available to the public widely for the first time! All three erotic romance novellas, one by each of us, can be bought either as one collected book under the title SILK THREADS, or you can buy the novella(s) separately.

The Bonds of Love

by Cecilia Tan

$2.99 ebook

22,789 words

ISBN 978-1-626015-31-9

Download the ebook from: Riverdale Ave | Amazon | B&N Nook | Kobo | Smashwords | and everywhere else ebooks are sold (Apple, etc)

Jiro‘s lineage once proudly served the nobility as samurai: protectors of royalty with a legacy of sword and rope. But though rich in tradition, in the modern age the family is penniless. And after cataclysmic events, Jiro has lost everything, including everyone he ever cared about and maybe even his mind. He is kept in a hospital amnesia ward, catatonic and unspeaking until a charity visit from the Crown Princess rouses him miraculously.

Ami is the sole heir of the Emperor, fresh out of Harvard and looking to both sow her wild oats and create real change for women in her role as a public figure. But her father and his head of security want her kept safe and sound: caged like a bird for her protection.

Ami will do anything to get out from under their control. Little does she know there are true dangers waiting for their chance to strike, a chance that comes when the princess slips away from her bodyguards and disappears in disguise into the underground world of sex clubs and rope bondage performers. Will the disguise be enough to keep her safe from the assassins on her trail? And what about this mysterious stranger, this Jiro, who seems fated to meet her again? What will she receive when she surrenders herself, bound and helpless, to his rope bondage: unbearable pleasure or ultimate pain?

Silk Threads: Three Tales of Passionate Japan

by Laura Antoniou, Midori, and Cecilia Tan

$6.99 ebook

ISBN ISBN: 9781626015296

Download Silk Threads from: Smashwords | Riverdale Ave | Amazon | Apple | and more!

Three authors, three erotic romance novellas.

Bound together by a common magical thread, each novella tells a story of romance and passion unlike any other, exploring both paranormal and BDSM themes. Set in a Japan of the mythic past, the paranormal present, and a cyberpunk future, the three novellas showcase the imaginations of three pioneers of sexuality in fiction.

Focusing on women’s erotic power and desires, each story features individual quests for love, intimacy and the discovery of far-reaching potential within the central protagonists. From the legendary creatures of traditional Japanese fables to an atomic age embodiment of existential anxiety and into a cultural paradigm shift, magical silk weaves each generational story into an exploration of romantic cravings.

It was truly fun to work on this project together, and the Kickstarter was a blast, but now it’s time to have the book in the capable hands of a publisher, who can put it into many stores and outlets that we couldn’t do ourselves. They’ve also put it onto NetGalley and are publicizing throughout the trade. The joy of having a publisher means they do so many things that an indie author would either have to do themselves or pay someone to do, but they pay us!

So if you missed the Kickstarter or have just been waiting for one of the novellas to be available as a separate piece, your moment is here! Enjoy!

Our thanksgiving-day extravaganza is done, and as usual I’m posting a blog entry for posterity and my own reference so I can find these things again if I need them. :-)

We’ve done “Asian fusion” many times–it’s kind of corwin and my culinary wheelhouse–but this is the first time we really incorporated more filipino flavors.

First, the menu:

2019 Duck Day: Tour of the Eastern Rim of the Pacific

(Tokyo, Shanghai, Manila, Palu)

“Sinigang” Amuse

Tomato Dashi & Sake (Kubota Hekijyu junmai daiginjo)

with a dehydrated mushroom chip

powdered shoyu

powdered tamarind

“Pu-Pu Platter” with Scorpion Bowl

Curry puff with curry mayo

Lumpia (traditional filipino fried spring rolls)

Chicken wings with candied ginger and orange

Pickles: honshimeji mushroom, yuzu-pickled napa

Assortment of dipping sauces

“Adobo” served with Sapporo Premium

duck confit adobo style (with soy, vinegar, garlic and ginger)

with a duck-fat crisped potato and

adobo-style vinaigrette tossed peas

topped with crispy garlic

Zhajiang Mian (fried sauce noodle)

homemade chewy wheat noodle with ground duck and bean paste sauce

With shochu oolong hi-ball

Duck a l’kalamansi (filipino bitter orange) with Trimbach Reserve Gewurtzraminer

Rice two ways

Steamed bok choy

and a caramel vinegar gastrique

Palate cleanser

Yuzu sorbet with finger lime caviar, served with Kikusui Perfect Snow unfiltered sake

Dessert

Saikyo miso ice cream

With almond brown butter Sablé cookies

Puffed rice

And hot chocolate

Tea, Coffee, and Mignardise

candied ginger

almond coconut mango-marmalade thumbprint cookies

almond brown-butter-chocolate cookies

Every year there ends up being something we forgot to serve. This year it was the matchstick carrots and cucumber that were supposed to garnish the zhajiang noodle! Ah well.

“Sinigang” Amuse

Tomato Dashi & Sake (Kubota Hekijyu junmai daiginjo)

with a dehydrated mushroom chip

powdered shoyu

powdered tamarind

This dish combines two things. One is the idea of sinigang, which is a filipino tamarind-flavored stew/soup that often has fish, tomato, and onion. The other is the technique of mixing sake with a hot, intense broth to delicious effect. We learned this trick one wet, cold rainy afternoon while out day drinking with a chef friend-of-a-friend in the Akabane area of Tokyo. One of the places he took us was an oden (stewed fishball & tofu) shop where you could buy a one-cup sake. When you drank half your sake, for ten yen you could get them to top up the glass with the oden broth.

corwin made the broth by starting with our home-canned smoked tomato water (already one of the most umami-intense things we have), simmering it with kombu and bonito flakes to make it tomato dashi, and then going over to a friend/s house to borrow his Spinzall (food centrifuge) to clarify it.

For the tamarind flavor we put tamarind powder on the plate for folks to rim their glasses with. We also gave them the soup and the sake separately to mix as they liked. And also some powdered soy sauce we got as a parting gift at one of the fancy restaurants we ate at in Kyoto: Shimogamo Saryo.

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Some of the delights of #duckday2019

A post shared by Regis (@rmd1023) on Nov 28, 2019 at 9:49pm PST

“Pu-Pu Platter” with Scorpion Bowl

Curry puff with curry mayo

Lumpia (traditional filipino fried spring rolls)

Chicken wings with candied ginger and orange

Pickles: honshimeji mushroom, yuzu-pickled napa

Assortment of dipping sauces

Curry Puff

corwin made the curry puff (karipap), startingwith making his own curry powder. He didn’t use the karipap recipe in Asian Dumplings but instead used his own biscuit dough recipe and it worked beautifully.

Lumpia

It was my first time making lumpia. Lumpia is one of those foods that was at every filipino party we went to when I was growing up, but my family was never the one that made them. (We brought the pancit or the dessert.) It was traditional for the aunties to complain about what a pain they are to make, though. Well, now I know what they mean, but it is SO WORTH IT.

This is by far the weirdest dumpling skin or wrapper I’ve made yet. Andrea Nguyen’s ASIAN DUMPLINGS is my go-to book–she hasn’t steered me wrong, yet. The technique for making these involved picking up the entire blob of wet dough in your hand and them blopping it onto a slightly hot pan, and the smear you leave on the pan IS THE LUMPIA WRAPPER.

What I learned is if the pan is too hot is that it just sears the ball of dough in your hand but it doesn’t stick to the pan. This is bad. And if the pan isn’t hot enough, then it doesn’t work either. So there is a very narrow window where it works. I had to turn the burner on and off between each one and also dribble a little extra water into the dough before each one. What would work is I would make one, and when the pan was the right heat, the wrapper would release, and this would mean it was now the right heat for the next one to be made. I would turn off the heat, make the next one, let it cool for a few seconds in the pan and then have to heat it back up again to release it and be ready for the next one.

Here’s Andrea Nguyen’s short video on how to do it:

The filling I used was similar to the recipe in Asian Dumplings, but I replaced the carrot and bean with water chestnuts (and the ground meat was duck). If I do it again I’ll probably use pork and up the intensity of the spices/salt/fish sauce. It could use dried shrimp in the sauce.

Chicken Wings with Candied Ginger and Orange

This was one of those ideas I had one day while we were out and I made a note in my phone months ago: what if instead of just having a chicken wing that was honey-glazed and chewy you could take that to the next level by having actual bits of candied ginger and candied orange rind in the glaze? I tested it last week and was very pleased with the results.

Although I candied my own ginger for the mignardise in this meal, I used some that I had bought at Cambridge Naturals for this recipe, and the candied orange rinds were some fancy artisanal ones corwin picked up at Formaggio. But I think Trader Joe’s or whatever would work just as well.

The first step is oven-frying the chicken wings as detailed by J. Kenji Lopez-Alt at Serious Eats (as in this recipe: https://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2015/01/hot-and-numbing-oven-fried-xian-chicken-wings-recipe.html)

I ran tests last week where I tried both spicing them with a technique as described in the Serious Eats article (toss the crispy wings in oil and then in a spice mix) and also by tossing them in a glaze. Turned out the way we liked them best was tossed in the spices and THEN dipped in the glaze separately. That was a little impractical for a large dinner party so I settled for brushing them with glaze and then sprinkling the chopped bits of candied ginger and orange rind on them. By not coating them completely in glaze, they retain more crispness.

Glaze:

1 cup orange juice

1 cup water

quarter to half cup yuzu marmalade or other citrus marmalade

quarter to half cup apple cider vinegar

1/8 to quarter cup brown sugar

powdered ginger

minced garlic

I am a little loose on the quantities in the glaze recipe because I think it really depends on how sweet the orange juice is and how sour the vinegar is — you just have to taste it to see if it’s what you want.

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Second course: “pu pu platter with scorpion bowl”. I reinvented the chicken wing for this, with candied ginger and orange rind. Curried duck puffs. And fried lumpia with ground duck and shrimp filling (Filipino spring rolls) which are the fiddliest thing I’ve ever made! But damn they came out great! #duckday2019

A post shared by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Nov 28, 2019 at 10:18pm PST

“Adobo” served with Sapporo Premium

duck confit adobo style (with soy, vinegar, garlic and ginger)

with a duck-fat crisped potato and

adobo-style vinaigrette tossed peas

topped with crispy garlic

Adobo is a filipino dish that has more variations than there are islands. The common element seems to be the combination of soy, vinegar, and garlic. Some have curry powder, some have ginger, etc. Some stew chicken and pork together, some are just chicken. My family’s adobo was usually chicken, potatoes, and green beans, stewed together in soy and vinegar with garlic (and served over white rice).

To deconstruct it, corwin confit’ed duck legs sous vide with soy-vinegar-garlic-ginger in the bags. Then he shredded the meat and crisped it in cast iron, and served it with an adobo-flavored reduction, topped with crispy garlic. I boiled the potatoes in advance, then crushed them slightly to give them crisp edges roasted in duck fat. The beans in the dish I replaced by making a mix of bias-cut fresh snap peas and fresh snow peas tossed in a soy-vinegar-ginger-garlic vinaigrette.

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Deconstructed Filipino adobo. Confit duck with a soy-vinegar reduction and crispy garlic, duck fat crisped potato, and fresh snap pea in adobo-style vinaigrette #duckday2019

A post shared by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Nov 28, 2019 at 10:21pm PST

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Poultry differently. #duckday2019

A post shared by Liz LaManche (@liz_lamanche) on Nov 29, 2019 at 10:55am PST

Zhajiang Mian (fried sauce noodle)

homemade chewy wheat noodle with ground duck and bean paste sauce

With shochu oolong hi-ball

Normally we do a lot of wine pairings, but a lot of wines just don’t pair with these strong and tangy flavors as well as other alcohols do.

For this one we made Chu-hi, which is the Japanese shochu high ball, using dark pearl oolong tea and a whiskey-like shochu called Gokoo that we first had at Momi Nonmi in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago. (It’s seriously great if you’re a whiskey drinker.)

For the wheat noodle we ended up borrowing a pasta extruding machine from our friends David and Diane. What was funny is when corwin ran our test, he made the dough way too dry, so the noodles came out very rough and odd-looking. But they were so tasty and the chewiness was really good, so we decided to just keep going and use them in the meal.

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Noodle extrusion experiment. I think the pasta is too dry….?

A post shared by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Nov 25, 2019 at 9:53pm PST

The sauce I sort of improvised on some zhajiang mian recipes but I wanted something somewhat spicier to highlight the duck. (Among the ones I looked at: Woks of Life, China Sichuan Food.)

Sauce:

1 lb. ground meat — let sit in 1 tablespoon corn starch, 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp white pepper, 1 tablespoon oil 15 minutes before starting

6 slices ginger, minced

6 cloves garlic, minced

6-10 fresh shiitake, chopped/minced

1/4 cup sweet bean paste

1/4 to 1/2 cup ground bean paste

1 tablespoon chili bean paste

1/3 cup dark soy sauce

1 cup water

Soften the ginger and garlic in the oil and then brown the meat. Add the mushrooms after a minute or two, and once the meat is no longer pink, add all the wet ingredients and stir together to combine. Let simmer 15 minutes. Then add 1/2 cup water with 1 TBS cornstarch dissolved in it to thicken. If still too thin, simmer 5 more minutes.

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Zhajiang “fried sauce” noodles – homemade thick wheat noodle with ground duck and bean paste sauce. So happy with how this came out! #duckday2019

A post shared by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Nov 28, 2019 at 10:24pm PST

This was the dish where I forgot the garnish! I have all these matchstick cut carrots and cucumber and I forgot entirely to put them on the plate! There’s always SOMETHING that gets left off.

Duck a l’kalamansi (filipino bitter orange) with Trimbach Reserve Gewurtzraminer

Rice two ways

Steamed bok choy

and a caramel vinegar gastrique

This is basically duck a l’orange, which we’ve never done in all these years of making duck. Typically this comes out too sweet because people use regular oranges instead of bitter oranges. corwin ordered a bunch of kalamansi (filipino bitter orange) online, though, when he was getting our now-nnual yuzu order. This is also when he picked up the finger limes for the palate cleanser.

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Duck a l’orange done Peking style with calamansi oranges for a Filipino touch. #duckday2019

A post shared by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Nov 28, 2019 at 10:25pm PST

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Yin yang rice. One of the elements of one of the courses. #duckday2019

A post shared by Cecilia Tan (@ctan_writer) on Nov 28, 2019 at 10:03pm PST

Palate cleanser

Yuzu sorbet with finger lime caviar, served with Kikusui Perfect Snow unfiltered sake

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Palate cleanser! Yuzu slush with Australian finger lime caviar! And an unfiltered sake