D.R. Erickson's Blog

Cara Membuat Rainbow Cake pertama-tama Panaskan oven hingga 180C/160C fan / gas 4. Grease 2 x 20cm bulat kaleng roti dan garis dasar dengan baking paper. Tip semua bahan spons, terlepas dari pewarna makanan, ke dalam mangkuk pencampuran, kemudian aduk dengan listrik cepat sampai halus.

Bekerja dengan cepat, menimbang adonan ke mangkuk lain untuk bekerja di luar berat total, kemudian menimbang persis setengah campuran kembali ke mangkuk. Pilih 2 warna Anda dan aduk sedikit ke campuran masing-masing. Terus sampai Anda puas dengan warna - warna adonan sekarang akan sangat mirip dengan kue selesai, jadi berani! Mengikis adonan yang berbeda ke dalam kaleng, mencoba untuk menyebarkan dan menghaluskan sebanyak mungkin - tapi cobalah untuk tidak membuang setetes adonan - spatula karet akan membantu Anda. Panggang di oven rak yang sama selama 12 menit sampai tusuk sate menusuk ke tengah keluar bersih.

Putar perlahan kue keluar ke rak kawat untuk mendinginkan Resep Rainbow Cake Cuci kaleng dan mangkuk menyeluruh, dan mulai lagi dari langkah 1
- Kali ini menggunakan 2 warna lain. Kecuali Anda membuat lapisan merah muda opsional, ulangi sekali lagi untuk mendapatkan 6 spons, semua warna yang berbeda. Tinggalkan mereka semua untuk mendinginkan.

Untuk membuat icing, sangat singkat mengalahkan vanili dan krim keju mascarpone atau dengan listrik cepat sampai halus. Ayak dalam gula icing dan lembut lipat dengan spatula. Hati-hati - semakin Anda bekerja, semakin runnier akan mendapatkan, meningkatkan kesempatan membelah.

Smear icing sedikit pada berdiri kue atau piring - hanya splodge untuk tetap spons pertama. Mulailah dengan merah, kemudian menyebar dengan beberapa hak icing ke tepi. Ulangi, mengapit di atas oranye, kuning, hijau, biru spons dan akhirnya ungu. Menyebarkan icing tersisa tebal seluruh sisi dan atas kue. Untuk lebih tips dan saran ahli tentang cara membuat kue pelangi sempurna, memeriksa tips kami, di bawah ini.
Cara Membuat Rainbow Cake Enak

Cara memakai jilbab dapat dipakai dalam banyak cara Trendy atau Tradisional, di sini saya akan mencoba untuk menampilkan beberapa favorit saya dengan harapan untuk menambahkan lebih banyak insya Allah dalam waktu dekat. Saya akan menampilkan Syal, scarf Square & Amira jilbab.
Cara Memakai Jilbab Mulailah dengan menempatkan underscarf penuh di kepala Anda sebagai gaya ini membutuhkan cakupan leher. Atau Anda dapat menggunakan underscarf teratur dan memakai turtleneck
Tempatkan selendang di kepala Anda dengan ujung lebih lama dari yang lain
Pin selendang ke underscarf di kedua sisi kepala Anda dekat di mana garis alis Anda berakhir
Bawa akhir lama selendang longgar di bawah dagu Anda dan membungkusnya di sekitar di atas kepala Anda dan penggunaan kembali pin yang sama untuk mengamankan di tempat


Mulailah dengan memakai underscarf
Tempat selendang di kepala Anda dengan kedua ujungnya sama panjang dan dasi di belakang leher Anda sekali atau dua kali
Tempatkan scarf tipis di kepala Anda dan dasi di belakang leher Anda di bawah selendang seperti ditunjukkan pada gambar # 2
Menjalin syal tipis aksen dengan selendang dan dasi dengan ikat kepala dari scrunchie dalam warna senada.
Ini adalah salah satu favorit saya dan saya pribadi mendapatkan pujian saat mengenakannya.
Catatan: Hal ini tentu saja dikenakan dengan turtleneck atau jika Anda lebih suka memulai gaya dengan menggunakan underscarf penuh dan tidak ada turtleneck dan Anda mencapai tampilan yang sama. Lanjutkan membaca Cara Memakai Jilbab

Book 2 of the Poe Files Mysteries, A Midnight Dreary, is now available! Lots of ghoulish goings-on in this one--just in time for Halloween.

Thanks to everyone who has read the first one, My Clockwork Muse. I hope you enjoy A Midnight Dreary!

Here's the new book cover for A Midnight Dreary along with the first draft of the blurb. Let me know what you think!
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April 14, 1865
     Edgar Allan Poe and Olimpia have pursued Dr. Coppelius into the future. But it is a future unlike any they could have imagined.      The mad doctor's trail has led them to Washington D.C. On their first night in town, innocently taking in a play at Ford's Theater, the pair witness a scene that will forever change the course of history: the assassination of a president.     But not just any president—a clockwork president. Coppelius's handiwork has been uncovered, a Clockwork Conspiracy to bring down the government exposed, and the assassin, John Wilkes Booth, has become the hero of the day.      It is a tumultuous time for the country. Slavery has been abolished, but rancor seethes in the old south. Multiple attempts have been made on the president's life and a mysterious disease—known as The Red Death—is sweeping the city. Called upon by Abraham Lincoln himself, Edgar Allan Poe will assist a grudging Detective Allan Pinkerton in protecting the president. Together, they must uncover the source of the unrest and its links, if any, to the dreaded Red Death and the fugitive Dr. Coppelius.      The team quickly learns that Booth is, perhaps, not all the hero that he seems. Poe and Olimpia soon find themselves embroiled in a conspiracy that leads them to the infamous mesmerist, Professor Nicolai Constantine, whose powers have captivated the city, including the occupants of the White House itself—and to a certain strange clock tower whose clangorous bells toll only at midnight.     A Midnight Dreary is the second book of the opening trilogy in the Poe Files Mysteries begun in My Clockwork Muse.

     I'm halfway done with A Midnight Dreary—the next book in The Poe Files Mysteries trilogy—but I'm taking a little time off right now. It's been a year since I began my indie publishing venture and I feel like I'm still no closer to understanding the indie market than I was when I started.      The Blood Gate, which until my Poe books, I had considered my best work, languished for 9 months in utter obscurity until I entered it in Amazon's Select Program. In case you don't know, this program, among other things, allows you to make your books available for free for a few days every 3 months. Having nothing to lose, I did this with The Blood Gate, and the results were spectacular. 7000 downloads in 2 days, followed by 300 sales over the next 72 hours. This for a novel that had sold all of 50 copies over the preceding nine months.       The program also worked with The War God's Men. This novel had always been an easier sell than the superior Blood Gate. This, I suppose, is due to its narrow focus and easily defined genre. Although it only got 700 free downloads, it garnered more than 300 sales over the next 2 months, an excellent download-to-sales ratio.       The Poe Files Mysteries pose an especial problem for me in that they are so hard to categorize. Are the books Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, Mystery? When I put My Clockwork Muse into Amazon's freebie grinder, it was downloaded 700 times, but only made 20+ post-free sales. Even worse, after the dust had settled I found that one of the books in MCM's "What Other Books Do Customer's Buy After Viewing This Page" list was The Quilts of Lancaster County. Clearly, I had failed to find the market I was looking for here.      So what have I learned from all this? Hard to say, exactly. A few points leap out at me, I guess. There are more free downloaders of Epic Fantasy novels than Roman War Novels and Historical Mystery novels (where I had first categorized MCM). Overall, as an indie, I would say it's probably easier to sell novels that appeal to younger readers. Also, visibility is the single most important factor in book sales. The Blood Gate benefited from being on some very popular books' Also-Bought lists, if only for a couple of days. Ditto The War God's Men (thank you Bob Mayer and the rest of the gang on the "War & Military" list). My Clockwork Muse never made it onto any good Also-Bought lists. I'll need to pay closer attention to category next time, as I don't think Poe is all that big a draw in the Amish quilting world.      So where do I go from here? As tempting as it is to start cranking out fantasy novels (no more 160,000-word Blood Gate epics, however, I can promise you that), I'm going to finish my Poe trilogy before I begin to think too deeply about the future. That should take me to the end of 2012 at least. And who knows how the world will have changed by then?

     Back in the day, I used to read lots of horror anthologies. Few stories stayed with me like E.T.A. Hoffmann's The Sand-Man (1816). It's a weird, complex story (as are all of Hoffmann's fantastic tales) featuring a character named Coppelius. The man is an evil presence in the young hero of the story's life, being involved in some kind of mysterious alchemical experiments with the boy's father. Ultimately, Coppelius is responsible for the death of the father and the boy comes to associate the ugly man with the nursery fables of the Sand-man.
     At one point, the boy's nurse describes the Sand-man to young Nathaniel.

"Oh! he's a wicked man, who comes to little children when they won't go to bed and throws handfuls of sand in their eyes, so that they jump out  of their heads all bloody; and he puts them into a bag and takes them to the half-moon as food for his little ones; and they sit there in the nest and have hooked beaks like owls, and they pick naughty little boys' and girls' eyes out with them."

     Nathaniel's run-in with Coppelius goes like this:

"Eyes here! Eyes here!" cried Coppelius, in a hollow sepulchral voice. My blood ran cold with horror; I screamed and tumbled out of my hiding place onto the floor. Coppelius immediately seized me. "You little brute! You little brute!" he bleated, grinding his teeth. Then, snatching me up, he threw me on the hearth, so that the flames began to singe my hair. "Now we've got eyes--eyes--a beautiful pair of children's eyes," he whispered and, thrusting his hands into the flames he took out some red-hot grains and was about to throw them into my eyes.

[image error] (E.T.A. Hoffman's sketch of Coppelius)   
     The inspiration for My Clockwork Muse springs as much from Hoffmann as Poe. The connection is not altogether casual. You can clearly hear Poe in the passage above and Poe was often accused of merely mimicking the German Romance writers, of whom Hoffmann was the preeminent exemplar. These accusations, which were intended to minimize Poe, prompted the writer to respond: "Terror is not of Germany, but of the soul."
     My use of Coppelius in My Clockwork Muse is my homage to Hoffmann--which is what one writer always says when he steals from another. I don't think E.T.A. would have minded. I have treated Coppelius well, perhaps even in a way Hoffmann would have approved.
     As one of the characters in My Clockwork Muse says of Coppelius: "Where Coppelius has been, you'll find some strange shit." (Just so you know, in the context of my novel, that phrasing is not as anachronistic as it seems. You'll just have to trust me on that.)
     While Hoffmann agrees, he puts it a different way:

"The fearful and hideous thought arose in my mind that he [Coppelius] must be the Sand-man; but I no longer conceived of the Sand-man as the bugbear in the old nurse's fable ... but as an ugly spectre-like fiend bringing trouble and misery and ruin ... everywhere he appeared."

     Yeah, just what I was saying: Strange shit, indeed.
     There are more connections between Poe and Hoffmann, but I'll save that for another day.

     That's me over at Sift Book Reviews today. I'm part of their "Best of Sift" celebration in which they are featuring writers whose books have received 5-star reviews from them.  My novel, The Blood Gate, was one such back in June. I believe there are 8 of us altogether.
     The bookcase behind me is in my den. What is that I see behind my overlarge cranium? The first title that catches my eye is the Peloponnesian War by Donald Kagan. A little dry. Overall, disappointing.
     I also see The Battle that Shook Europe, the Americanized title for a book subtitled "Poltava and the Birth of the Russian Empire." This is an excellent battle book for anybody interested in the Swedish king crazy Charles XII. The Swedes had a helluvan army in those days.
      Following that are two from Robert Massie -- Nicholas and Alexandra (good, not great) and Peter the Great (one of the best books I've ever read). Wow, this must be my Russian shelf.
     Just peeking over the top of my head is another of my favorites: Conquest by Hugh Thomas. This one covers Cortez's conquest of Mexico in exquisite detail. An extremely dense book, but worth every ginormously long Spanish name of it.
     So, run on over to Sift for my thoughts on a couple of matters. Oh, and pick up a copy of The Blood Gate while you're at it.

     Poe is everyone's first literary love. Kids are born with a fascination for the macabre and are naturally drawn to Poe's lurid tales. From my own youth, I recall fondly the movies, books and artwork inspired by Poe. None is more firmly etched in my mind than a book entitled simply Tales of Poe, from Reader's Digest's "Best Loved Books For Young Readers" series, first published in 1967. What I remember most about this book are the illustrations, one of which I have reproduced below.





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     This drawing is used to illustrate The Cask of Amontillado. Here, a rather devilish-looking Montresor guides a befuddled Fortunato through the catacombs. "We had passed through walls of piled bones, with casks and puncheons intermingling, into the inmost recesses of the catacombs. I paused again, and this time I made bold to seize Fortunato by the arm." Of course, Fortunato wouldn't be leaving anytime soon. And neither would I. With this tale, Poe fettered me to his literary wall no less than Montresor had to the wall of granite the hapless Fortunato. For half a century, no mortal has disturbed either of us.
     But it wasn't just the stories that entranced me. It was also the lyricism of his poetry. Look, if you can get a kid to read poetry--at all!--you've accomplished something. Admittedly, I never got further than The Raven with perhaps smatterings of Annabel Lee and The Bells (the latter just for the sheer comic novelty of it). But I committed the first couple stanzas of The Raven to memory, and I still get goosebumps reading it. Not too many poets can lay claim to a 12-year-old's attention the way Poe can.
     Poe's poetry in general is peppered with memorable lines. These are from Lenore:

"Come! Let the burial rite be read--the funeral song be sung!--
An anthem for the queenliest dead that ever died so young--
A dirge for her the doubly dead in that she died so young."
     Some things are just fun to say. "A dirge for her the doubly dead." Go ahead, try it. That might be my favorite line of all.
     Here's another from The Bells.

"And the people—ah, the people—
They that dwell up in the steeple,
All alone,
And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
In that muffled monotone,
Feel a glory in so rolling
On the human heart a stone—
They are neither man nor woman—
They are neither brute nor human—
They are Ghouls:
And their king it is who tolls."
     And Annabel Lee:

"It was many and many a year ago,
In a kingdom by the sea,
That a maiden there lived whom you may know
By the name of Annabel Lee;
And this maiden she lived with no other thought
    Than to love and be loved by me."
     The Haunted Palace:

"While, like a ghastly rapid river,
Through the pale door
A hideous throng rush out forever
And laugh--but smile no more."
     One more. The Conqueror Worm:

"But see, amid the mimic rout
A crawling shape intrude!
A blood-red thing that writhes from out
The scenic solitude!
It writhes!--it writhes!--with mortal pangs
The mimes become its food,
And the angels sob at vermin fangs
In human gore imbued."
     He had me at "blood-red thing that writhes" and sealed the deal with "human gore imbued". The fact that this writhing thing eats mimes is just a bonus.
     The real tragedy is that Poe died at the tender age of 39 when most writers are just starting to become read-worthy. Yet he was already producing stuff like this. Can you imagine what he might have written had he lived another 20 or 30 years? Alas!

"A dirge for him the doubly dead in that he died so young."

I've been away from a while, but now I'm back. You might have noticed. Where have I been? Well, I've been writing and my new book, My Clockwork Muse, is now available.

It's my curse to be always most excited about whatever project I'm currently working on. So while I should be breathlessly promoting My Clockwork Muse, I find my mind focused on my current project, the sequel to Clockwork, A Midnight Dreary. Anyone who has read Clockwork will not be surprised to know that the new one finds Edgar Allan Poe and Abraham Lincoln in the same room at the same time. Hard not to be excited about that.

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According to history, Lincoln was a fan of Poe's, having been obsessed for a time with Poe's famous poem, The Raven. Who wasn't? Despite the rather fanciful plots of these novels (they can be classified as science fiction, I guess--although the actual genre continues to elude me: it's a combo historical mystery/scifi/steampunk/fantasy. Try to find that on Amazon. Woe is me!) I try to include lots of historical accuracy in these books. For example, Poe's associates in Clockwork, Charles Briggs and William Burton, are taken from history and many of their comments--especially as they relate to their opinions of Poe--are taken from their letters. Yes, Burton did write a nasty review (anonymously) of Poe's Narrative of A. Gordon Pym and once advised him to increase his exercise as a means of combating his melancholy; and Poe really did write a review of a book entitled Treatise on Corns, Bunions, the Diseases of Nails, and the General Management of the Feet. (Incidentally, Poe wrote that this book "cannot fail but do a great deal of good" -- just in case you were looking for a useful foot book.)

In addition, I've peppered the story with lots and lots of allusions to Poe's writing, which I think will make for fun reading for Poe aficionados. For example, at one point in Chapter 8, Poe thinks:

"All my life, I had felt haunted by ill angels only, but now in the embrace of an angel of the divine, I felt that I at last knew what happiness was."

Excellent news for Poe--and for readers of My Clockwork Muse. You might have recognized Poe's poem Dream-Land here:

By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where Eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
Etc.

I just happen to love the way "ill angels only" slips off the tongue. Anyway, there's plenty here for Poe's fans to sink their teeth into (and E.T.A. Hoffmann fans, too, for that matter).

But even if you're not some kind of Poe scholar, you'll still enjoy My Clockwork Muse, if not for the literary and historical content, then for the murder mystery, the horror and the excitement level of the action. It's not as one of the pro reviewers of my novel The Blood Gate wrote: "I don't know that this is a book that would appeal to everyone, but I really enjoyed it." On the contrary, My Clockwork Muse will appeal to everyone (dang it!)--and I think you'll really enjoy it, too.

Kim at "The Caffeinated Diva" has reviewed both The War God's Men and The Blood Gate today. Looks like each got 4 cups of Joe.

Of The Blood Gate, she says:

The world the author created for this book was extraordinary ... The action and the intrigue was kept at a great pace that kept the rather long novel from ever becoming stale and kept me turning the pages ...  It has a lot of depth and character and really draws you in.  Fantasy or not, it has a very historical feel to it, thanks to an incredibly well-created world. 

And The War God's Men:

The author clearly knows his history and it showed in the details of the campaigns, the characters, the events, the logistics, and the politics of the time ... This is definitely a book that would be enjoyed by anyone who is into ancient history.

See the full reviews here: War God's Men  Blood Gate

My thanks to Kim Deister at The Caffeinated Diva.