electric mist

cold...

2010-01-04T20:34:00.000-08:00

I don't remember how long ago it's been since it's been this cold here. Tonight it will be 25 (F) and by this weekend, the nightly low is expected to be 16 (F). That's just insane, for the deep south.

But as cold as it was, it wasn't cold enough for a certain 2-year-old granddaughter to want to play outside:

catching up

2009-12-17T12:48:00.000-08:00

I have been running around with family stuff, and keep forgetting to update here.

For a couple of funny posts I have up elsewhere, see my "When In Doubt, Throw Hard Candy (aka, The Santa from Hell story)" up at www.popculturedivas.com

and

My very tongue-in-cheek "An Author's 12 Days of Christmas (with apologies to cover artists everywhere)" up at Murderati.com.

I hope you all are having a great holiday season.

Lafayette tonight!

2009-10-06T06:20:00.000-07:00

I had this on my schedule and meant to blog about it last week -- I'm going to be speaking to the wonderful Lafayette Friends of the Library tonight at 6:30. The event -- which includes dinner -- is at the Petroleum Club:

Petroleum Club 111 Heymann Blvd, Lafayette, LA

I'm very much looking forward to tonight! If you're in the area, I think they have a few seats left.

Confidence

2009-09-10T13:18:00.000-07:00

[originally posted on Murderati]

Confidence.

You see it in some athletes. They walk out onto a field and in spite of being in front of a huge crowd, they’ll look like they belong there. They’ve put in the practice, they have the skills. They give the impression that they are formidable, that they came to win.

You see it in some performers. They take the stage, grab the mic or step into the role and whoosh, you believe in them. Just like that. Snap.

You see it in some professionals. The doctor under pressure in a life-threatening situation. The attorney arguing a case. The SWAT team running into a building with a hostage situation. You know they are going to do the job they came to do.

You see it in some writers. They start the story with an evocative sentence, something that pulls you in, that says, “Yes, you want to be here, reading this, right now.”

As a kid, I didn’t have a lot of confidence... until one day, I did. And the only thing that shifted was a fundamental understanding of what confidence was. See, for a long time, I kept thinking, “One day, I’m going to feelconfident, and when I feel it, I’ll know I’m good enough to be confident.” It was as if I were waiting for a cosmic permission slip to believe in myself. Like at some point, whatever it was I had accomplished was going to ding ding ding on some giant meter and I would get my Certification of Confidence from the Universe. (The Universe, by the way? Doesn’t give a rat’s ass.)

The problem, of course, was that there really never was going to be any giant certification from the Universe. Rationally, I knew that all along, but I kept thinking that with the next accomplishment, I would feel it. With thenext “A” on an exam, or the next strike-out on my softball team or the nextaward, I was gonna know. And because I was waiting, there was a hesitancy. I didn’t quite realize there was a hesitancy. If you’d asked me at the time, I couldn’t have explained it, but everything—particularly my writing—felt tentative.

I was thinking about the nature of confidence one day as I happened to be on a long drive, and I punched around the radio stations, craving background music. Unfortunately, I was between decent stations and I ended up on a talk-radio show I hadn’t heard of, some psychologist talking about something entirely different than what I was thinking about. I barely heard the first half of the story she told, annoyed that it wasn’t music, and then suddenly, I was in that story. It likely won’t mean the same to you, because it was a specific moment in time, me cocooned in that car on a long, hot drive in the deep south one Sunday afternoon. It was classic... and it wasn't something new to me, but it had a profound life-changing effect.

The story was about a woman who bites her nails. She’d gone to a doctor for a consultation and as they sat there, him in a chair near hers, she explained how she was desperate for help. Her hands were nearly ruined, and she held them up for him to see, and sure enough, bloody, horribly bitten nails. She told him she’d do any sort of program he’d want her to do, and she had been all over creation trying to get help, but nothing had worked thus far. As she told him the story, she started chewing on a nail and the doctor reached over, pushed her hand down and said, “Stop biting your nails.”

“But that’s what I’m here for,” she cried. “I need to stop and I don’t know how. I have tried…” and she listed off a number of programs, and as she went into detail, she started chewing on another nail.

The doctor reached over, pushed her hand down and said, “Stop biting your nails.”

“That’s what I need help with!” she said, clearly exasperated. “I don’t understand what’s causing this need. I’ve been tested for…” and she listed off a string of tests various institutions had run and as she talked, again the hand went to her mouth.

The doctor pushed her hand down again and said, “Stop biting your nails.”

“Are you crazy?” she asked. “That’s what I’m HERE FOR. I don’t understand why—“

“You don’t need to understand why to change the behavior,” he said. “Quit putting your hand to your mouth. Choose. We can always explore the why later. But make the choice. And keep making it.”

That’s when I heard the ding ding ding. (The Universe is SLOW. I’m just sayin’.)

Because I happened to be thinking about the nature of confidence, I realized that a lot of people don’t have confidence because they’re successful… they’re successful because they choose to have confidence. Now maybe that got reinforced somehow when they were kids, or maybe they were just more predispositioned toward confidence. And maybe this is a concept every single other person on the planet got by the time they were two. (I doubt that. We all have insecurities.) The thing is, confidence isn’t borne out of a surety of success. Confidence is choosing to believe that the outcome will eventually warrant the faith and then acting on it by practicing for that eventual success.

Confidence is choosing. Practicing for the outcome we’d like to have.

I looked at my writing, then. Saw the hesitancy. Sure, there was skill there, but it lacked faith. When I recognized that, my approach to writing changed. Voice rang a bell and showed up to the game.

The thing is, in sports, you can’t play someone else’s game. You might practice as many hours, with all the same coaches, but no two people are going to play exactly the same. As long as you know the rules (and how to break them), if you try to play just like someone else, that’s all you’ll be: a copy of someone else. You might even win some, but you won’t be the best you.

But true confidence… true voice… is playing your game. It’s taking all of that practice, all of those hours and weeks and years of dedication and tackling the problem with faith that you have the skills and you can have the eventual outcome that you desire.

True success is rarely without practice. It is almost never without failure. Maybe even many failures. Failure is just an opportunity to learn and improve. It is nothing else. It is not personal. It is not a value judgment on you as a person. It is a circumstance, and most successes are successful because they’ve learned and grown and had faith that the practice they put in was going to be worth it.

Also? They competed. Performers put themselves out there for jobs, doctors compete for grades, athletes compete for position, SWAT teams practice relentlessly. Sometimes life isn’t fair and they failed, but they keep going.

So practice.

Play your game.

Choose confidence.

And keep choosing it.

I put that lesson squarely in the “better late than never” category. How about you? What did you finally learn to do (can be anything) that changed your life?

email...

2009-08-18T18:45:00.000-07:00

If you wrote me in the last couple of weeks, I swear, I am not ignoring you. I just saw a slew of items that my email software had apparently decided goes over there (random folder I did not remember creating) instead of over here (inbox) (you know, the logical place for oh, say, new mail).

I am going to try really hard to get caught up this weekend, so if you're checking here some time after the weekend (8/23) and you have not heard back, please re-send. I may not have seen it.

Also, I have a few letters to Bobbie Faye and she is answering them and I will try to get those posted soon. As soon as I pay her bail. Again. That woman is going to be the death of me, yet.

Y'all take care.

Julie, Julia & Me (and a raccoon)...

2009-08-14T15:47:00.000-07:00

(blogged this over on www.popculturedivas.com)...

I feel I ought to step up to a microphone somewhere and look bashfully out at the audience and say, "Hi, my name is Toni. And I love cooking competition shows."

My particular faves are Top Chef (though Top Chef Masters is kinda boring), Iron Chef and even Hell's Kitchen (though I squirm through half of that show, and sometimes wish someone would just give Ramsay a hug).

I love how, on Top Chef, the contestants are forced to create something in like two nanoseconds using cardboard, mustard and a piece of celery and feed 300. It amazes me how they are thrown these challenges where they could not possibly know what to do, and yet, thirty minutes later (for the Quick Fire challenges), they have something that generally looks not

only edible, but quite pretty and tasty. This would never happen at my home, if you were asking me to create something, and I am granting that you would give me a full pantry and an entire stocked refrigerator / freezer. When I open that pantry, I am immediately stumped. There are soup cans in there (I recognize those), and some cereal I'm familiar with, but all of that other stuff? A mystery. (My husband, on the other hand, knows what that stuff is and how to use it. I, very wisely and at a young age, realized that this was the thing he loved and it was to my advantage to stay out of the way.)

It's funny how people [particularly people in the south] look at a woman and expect her to be able to cook well. I used to amass dinners that didn't kill the children. I'm fairly certain that there was a point somewhere back in the Pleistocene era when I concocted meals that were tasty. Uh. Edible (Let's not throw that bar up there too high.) But when the writing took over my brain sometime back when the kids were in elementary school, whatever part of my brain which felt competitive about cooking just... went AWOL. It stopped caring about amount of ingredients or ratio of spices or little minor details like, oh, say, cooking time, aka setting the house on fire.

One time, I madejambalya from a mix. Now, Zatarain's has a really great mix, very authentic flavor (said by the woman whose house was a stop-over for firemen district-wide)... And whenever I was deep in writing mode and didn't want to order pizza (they had my order memorized), I would pull out the Zatarain's box and know that the kids were getting something that they liked, which wasn't horribly unhealthy.

I cooked the jambalya, dished up portions for the boys, and had turned to go back to work when my oldest spat it out and my youngest started making gagging noises. I tried it and sure, I had somehow managed to go slightly off recipe, but it really wasn't that bad. Boys, however, can heap on the guilt factor and make you think they will DIE if they are forced to eat something that is not pizza or cookies, and I was so deep into whatever it was I was writing, it wasn't worth the argument. I gave the dish to the dog and went about ordering something deliverable.

The dog, finicky eater, wouldn't touch it. (She was always difficult about that. Weird dog.) I gathered it up to throw it out in the garbage (I did not have a disposal), and then I remembered the raccoons. Since they'll eat anything--they were tearing through our trash on a regular basis--I figured it would just be wise if I left the bowl out there, let them have at it, and then wash the bowl later. No strewn trash, happy everyone.

We sat outside to watch the raccoons since they came up to the house about the same time every evening. The biggest Cat-Daddy of all raccoons sauntered up. I swear, if there was a barroom for raccoons, this guy would've been the bouncer. The kids were fascinated to watch him, so at least my cooking provided a little entertainment. That raccoon reached into the bowl, scooped up a big handful of jambalaya...

...and spit it out. Spit it out and ran away. Raccoons will eat garbage.

I think that may have been the last day I attempted anything that could be reasonably called "cooking" at my house.

But I am fascinated with cooking shows. I love how they know so much about their field, how much they have to believe in themselves, in their own vision, and how almost every single one of them battles fatigue and self-doubts to push through the competition.

Which is a very long way around to talking about the new movie, Julie & Julia which I saw on Sunday.

I think the device of using the blog written by Julie Powell to delve into the movie works, because honestly, I'm not sure that anyone would really go to a movie if they thought it was just a biography ofJulia Child. The film, however, is so much more than that, more than the quasi-reverent look at Child from Powell's hungry gaze, and the film really does well in showing where women stand with each other, how the current culture perceives who we are and defines us frequently by outside standards--what we've achieved, where we rank, what new ground have we broken, and how to be true to ourselves. How to find ourselves in the midst of the hustle.

Both Julie and Julia faced searching for their dream, each in their own way, and it's amazing to realize that Julia Child faced down her own inner desire to "do something" back in the late fifties--nearly sixty years ago--when options for women were so slim and no one believed she had a smidge of a chance to do what she did.

Meryl Streep is amazing as Julia Child. For her performance alone, I'd rate this a "definite go-to" film.

So how about you? Do you watch cooking shows? Have a great relationship with your oven or have your served it divorce papers? If you like to cook, what is your favorite thing to cook? And if you are like Julia in the movie, who "loves to eat" -- tell me what your favorite thing in the world would be.

covers

2009-08-11T07:05:00.000-07:00

There is an occasional letter asking me why I changed the covers on the books from the crawfish trade paperback covers to the new ones. Mostly I explain that the covers are a choice of the publisher, but I do love the new covers.

I do want people to realize that CHARMED AND DANGEROUS and GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE GUNS are re-releases of the first two trade versions of the books. I had that on the front page, and then the splash page this summer made that not quite as prominent (and I am sorry for the confusion).

In the mean time, several people have asked how the new covers came about, and I had blogged this over on AccessRomance, but thought I would put this up here for those of you who are cruising by and may have missed it over there:

titled: Covers

I love make-over stories. I have to admit I am a total sucker for those before / after shows, whether it’s house porn over on HGTV or it’s Stacey and Clinton ranting about What Not To Wear. It’s encouraging when something old (as in a house) finds its new potential—when it’s updated, and yet, honors the original design or era of the house. I also love it when Stacey and Clinton help a woman focus not on what the media or public think is “good” or “skinny” or “beautiful,” but instead, help that person focus on what’s good about their body, where they are in life right then. That’s the earmark of a successful make-over: not only showing hidden potential, but doing it for the right reason. I tend to record a lot of these shows and watch them—they’re inspiring.

I just never dreamed I’d be smack in the middle of one myself. Or, rather, that my book would be.

This is the story of a make-over.

Waaaay back in the Pleistocene era before there was an Internet and before I was published in fiction, I picked up books and looked at the covers and secretly wondered what crack the author had been smoking to pick that cover out. And sometimes, I’d assume that their bad taste in covers reflected their skills as a writer—because surely if they thought that cover was appropriate / interesting / not boring, then they probably didn’t have any real discernment about what was appropriate / interesting / not boring and I’d be turned off. Most times, I hate to say, I put the book down.

I kinda sucked, didn’t I?

What’s worse was that as I started to learn more and more about the business, I’d still have a hard time ignoring a bad cover, or a blah one. Even when I learned that the author rarely had cover approval and, honestly would be lucky if she even had input into what went onto the cover. Even when she was a New York Times bestselling author.

And really, it’s difficult to get past the outer package sometimes, when we only have a few seconds to make a snap judgment. Anyone who’s tried on something and thought it looked decent, only to see a photo of the outfit later and that’s when they realized that it sort of rode up that way that it did or, instead of hiding that bulge, might as well have pointed neon arrows at it knows the feeling. We only have to look at the sheer volume of people who posted about Susan Boyle’s bushy eyebrows and choice of dresses to know that even being well-groomed isn’t always enough.

The thing is, the outer package says something about what’s inside, whether we want it to or not. It’ll tell us if that person is stylish, up on the latest fashions, or if they’re stuck back in the eighties. We also get a glimpse about what they want to project to the world—whether that projection is intentional or not.

Now, when it comes to book covers, that cover has to do a lot of work simultaneously. It has to draw your attention away from all of the other books around it (so it wants to be different), and it’s got to communicate what type of book it is (so it needs to have some element that’s familiar so the reader immediately understands the category of book). It needs to tantalize you (so it needs to raise some question in your mind, some element of tension that induces the reader to flip over to the back cover to learn more), and yet, it’s got to feel satisfying (some design element speaks to you, makes you want to pick up that book). That’s quite a lot for a book cover to do.

Then, if the book crosses genres? The job is ten times harder for a book cover.

I didn’t fully appreciate this until I’d sold the Bobbie Faye series. Titled “Bobbie Faye’s Very (very very very) Bad Day,” it was purchased with the intent on shelving it in general fiction as a trade paperback original. The series sold on proposal, three sample chapters and a synopsis, and in my mind, it was always a combination of romance and action/adventure. In fact, I pitched as a “southern fried Romancing the Stone.” It’s full-speed adrenaline and sexy bad guys and yet, Bobbie Faye is so take-no-prisoners herself, so tenacious and determined to save her brother or maim everyone trying, that we slammed up against a conundrum of how to convey this.

It is especially hard to figure out how to communicate that to the art department. There is no way an art department could read every book that they have to create a cover for—there’s just not enough time in the day. They work off our attempts to give them enough word-clues that will help generate some sort of mental image about what direction to go in. I love the people at St. Martin’s – and the art department has been very very good to me, willing to listen and work with me and seriously? That’s pretty amazing. So it’s with their permission that I post some of these first attempts that just didn’t work.

Here’s the very first cover that showed up in the catalog.

My editor immediately rejected that one—she didn’t like the tone or the girl hanging out of the truck (though there is a truck that figures into the action). And she wasn’t really fond of the next two attempts (for which I will forever be thankful):

I’m not really sure where the winking theme came from. Bobbie Faye doesn’t wink. She’s pretty damned sarcastic and self-deprecating, and she doesn’t wear hardly any make-up. I could not get past the purple eyes (and neither could my editor). I understand what the art department was going for: fun and yet, dangerous. The TNT there being the “dangerous” part, although that eye shadow gave me a heart attack, so that was pretty dangerous, too. The second example was from the same attempt—how do we communicate sexy, fun and dangerous? Well, we WINK at people… while a truck explodes.

However, one of the reasons I love St. Martin’s is because they weren’t happy with it either, and they tossed all of that out and started from scratch again. That’s a lot of work for an art department to do.

This next design was a result of hiring a model and styling her. The photos actually included a gun in her left hand, but that was cropped for reasons I’m not entirely sure about. I thought the cover was beautiful. This is one of those times where you’ll wear something out that is your absolutely favorite dress, ever, and only a very dear friend who loves you will take you aside and say, “Honey? That thing makes you look fat. Quit wearing it.”

I still like this cover. However, Barnes & Noble (or maybe it was Borders? My memory is failing me here) was essentially that good friend. They looked at the cover copy for the book, looked at the cover and said, “No. This cover does not fit the genre. This looks like a Young Adult novel.”

Well, holy cats, they had a point. None of us saw that aspect of it, but when you hear that comment and then look at the cover again, it does lend itself to a sort of young adult feel, especially with the gun cropped out. Now, if the best friend was with you while you were getting dressed and they didn’t say anything about your dress, but waited ‘til the party and then commented, then that would be very bad and heartbreaking, because there’s not a damned thing you can do about it then. But if they tell you while you’re getting dressed (or even better, when you were first going to buy the dress), then you really appreciate the honesty. It might hurt a little, but you appreciate it.

So we went back to the drawing board, and we all (me included) tried to figure out the direction to go. We all started thinking that maybe some sort of “icon” could work—something that would be on every book and identify it as a “Bobbie Faye” novel. That sounds good, doesn’t it?

That is how the crawfish came to be on the cover. (Yes, it is a crawfish. Not a lobster. Or, as one of my friends put it, a “crawster” – because yes, it is too fat to be a crawfish. But when it was drawn skinnier, it looked like a spider from a distance, and spiders on books are not supposed to be good for sales. I don’t know if that’s myth or not, but I wasn’t going to argue.)

Now, I love crawfish. I love the danger sign. I love the quote from Harley Jane Kozak, who is an awesome writer. Mostly, I loved that I got to keep the original title. Loved loved loved that part. I fought for that title. I fought for those verys in the parentheses to be lower case. (My publisher loved the title. Even when he was agreeing that we were going to have to change it for the mass market release, he still lamented that fact, because he thought it conveyed an essence of the story: dangerous and fun.)

That book was released as a trade paperback original, and then the second one came out last year. It did well, and I’ve been mostly lucky in the reviews I’ve gotten, one thing we all realized was that the books had a lot of romance in them—but the covers did not “say” romance. They really weren’t saying “action” or “adventure” either. And because St. Martin’s Press is so cool, they said, “Let’s take the mass market release as an opportunity to address that.”

How cool is that?

We realized there was no way to shrink that original cover down to mass market size and the words still be readable, really. By the time you put that long title plus my name on a smaller format, it was going to start looking jumbled. Most people don’t really like to parse out something jumbled when they have a hundred other simpler things to look at, so I was completely on board with this change.

Plus, my biggest desire? For people who looked at this to get, immediately, that there was romance in here. There is a lot of heat—and that heat grows through the series. While there is a lot of danger and action and high-wire, high-octane adventure, there is a deepening romance, a threat to that romance, and there is sex. Hot. Fun. Sex.

That crawfish just did not say “sexy,” did it?

So when I got the new covers (and new titles) for the series, I was in love. Love love love. All of a sudden, I could see what the other covers lacked, because this one finally had it. I never even really realized what was missing, ‘til now:

book one is out June 2nd

book two is out June 30th

book three is out August 4th

I love the taglines (courtesy of my editor), love the couple’s playfulness and Bobbie Faye’s humor, but the gun and the titles imply the danger and action inside. I think the colors will pop in a lineup of books, and the titles are fun. (I will always love my first title, but I can see how the shorter titles work so much better.)

Right now, I feel like the “after” in a Stacey and Clinton make-over. I want to keep twirling in front of a mirror, because I’m so thrilled with the outcome.

There are a tremendous amount of amazing books out this summer—and the authors on this site have several coming out that I am champing at the bit to buy. I hope, though, that if you’ve bought all of theirs and you have one more book to purchase, that you’ll consider trying out the Bobbie Faye series. Check here for the back cover copy and the first chapter of the book. There’s also a free (hot and sexy) new short story up on that same page.

All the summery and make-over best to you all,

-toni

Contest WINNERS!

2009-07-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

Wow, thank you so much to everyone who entered and tweeted / retweeted! You guys rock--and it was so cool to see so many entries.

Winners of the books+gift certificate combo -- please contact me via email toni [dot] causey [at] gmail [dot] com -- and tell me an email address for the gift card and a snail mail address for the books.

Winners of the gift card -- send me your email where you want to receive the card!

Okay, here are the winners of Allison's first two books in the FBI series (SUDDEN DEATH and FATAL SECRETS) and my first two books (CHARMED AND DANGEROUS and GIRLS JUST WANNT HAVE GUNS) -- plus a $10 gift card (tell me your preference between B&N and Amazon):

blakesmomma (entered on RT board)

Aimee (entered from blog)

Crystal GB (entered from blog)

mad4rombks (entered from twitter)

Brooke (entered from blog)

Robin (entered from RT)

Has_Bookpushers (entered from twitter)

Judi (entered from RT)

Margie (entered from blog)

GLMorrison (entered from twitter)

Winners of the $10 gift card:

Ainsley (entered from RT)

SarahLovesBooks (entered from RT)

Asphaltcowgirl (entered from twitter)

Mgbraden (entered from twitter)

SiNn (entered from blog)

Again, thank you all! There were so many entries... I wish I could send books to everyone!

CONTEST

2009-07-29T07:42:00.000-07:00

Have you ever had a really great day and you just want to do something fun for people? Well, I'm having one of those days, today. And since Allison so very kindly celebrated my books over here a few weeks ago, I wanted to do the same, plus a giveaway of my backlist and a gift card. Her newest book CUTTING EDGE is out TODAY (July 28th) and I am thrilled for her--I love her books. (She scares the crap outta me, they are so tense, but wow, they are page turners and keep me up all night.) (I do *not* recommend reading them while alone at a vacation cabin because you *will not sleep* and your husband will get tired of you jumping and shrieking every time an owl hoots.)

Here's what you get:

1) 10 readers will get SUDDEN DEATH -- the first in this latest and terrific FBI trilogy.

FATAL SECRETS -- Allison's second in that series.

CHARMED AND DANGEROUS -- the first in my caper trilogy featuring Bobbie Faye. (My books are humor/action-adventure.)

GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE GUNS -- the second in my series.

A $10 gift card to B&N or Amazon.

2) Five readers who do not receive the above will each get $10 gift card to B&N or Amazon

What you have to do: reply to me or twitter reply to me (twitter = @ToniMcGeeCausey ) by midnight central time on THURSDAY, July 30th. If I receive more than 15 entrants, I'll draw names from a hat. All cards have to be sent by email (which will not be shared, used, donated, or obligate you to give a kidney).

Meanwhile, if you haven't checked out Allison's work, I highly recommend CUTTING EDGE. And if you like funny, crazy, action-adventure, my newest one is out next week titled WHEN A MAN LOVES A WEAPON.

banana nutbread recipe

2009-06-27T19:32:00.000-07:00

I gave this recipe out to a friend, who loved it. *We* love it, too, and my mom gave me permission to post it here.

Jerry McGee's* banana nut bread recipe:

2 c. sugar
1/2 c butter (or oleo)
2 eggs
2 c. flour
1 and 1/2 tsp. baking soda (put soda into milk & stir well)
1/2 c butter milk (I use regular milk and add about 1 tsp. vinegar, stir well & let sit a minute or two before I add the soda to it)
1 c. chopped pecans (I usually use Bergeron pecans, don't know if it matters)
3 ripe bananas (very ripe, soft but not too mushy - skin spotty brown)
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 or 1 tsp cinnamon

Soften or melt butter in microwave, add sugar & mix til sugar is absorbed, then add eggs, mix well, add flour & milk (with baking soda in it), stir. Mash bananas thoroughly, add bananas, pecans, vanilla & cinnamon to other mixture, mix just until blended together.

Spray pans with Pam, bake at 325 degrees, approximately 1 hr.

This makes 6 of the breads the size I gave you (I use the silicone pan you gave me one year, has six pans in it with a rack included)
Fill pans about 1/3 to 1/2 full - divide batter evenly between the six pans.

If you use the individual small pans, I put them all on a baking sheet so it's easier to take them in & out of the oven.

Can put all the batter in a bundt pan to make a cake. Or you can put it in 2 regular loaf pans.

Of course the smaller the pan, the faster it cooks, For small pans should start checking it in about 45 minutes. Can take it out of the oven & stick a toothpick in the thickest parts to see if it's done. If the toothpick comes out sticky, needs to cook longer!

Good luck!

*She added that she'd found a recipe in a cookbook somewhere and altered it to suit her tastes. That's been years ago, so if someone comes across the original somewhere, let me know.

Charmed and Dangerous is out...

2009-06-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

...and in the stores now. But if you're looking for other great summer reads, I highly recommend all three of these:

See descriptions below!

Atlantis Unleashed:

Poseidon’s warriors swore an oath eleven thousand years ago to protect humanity from those who stalked the night. Now those powerful forces are uniting. So are two souls who are all that stand between justice and the eternal darkness…

A warrior prince…Lord Justice made the ultimate sacrifice for his brother and paid for it with an unimaginable torture. Now he’s back, rescued from death, his sanity shaken, and his mission inescapable—the search for the lost Star of Artemis. But the beautiful human female whom he has sworn to protect is shadowed by an evil that could destroy them both…

A woman of science…The archaeological artifacts of Atlantis speak to Dr. Keely McDermott, sharing visions of life long ago. The ancient revelations have cast her into a world between past and present, between reality and illusion—and, when she meets the fierce Atlantean warrior assigned to guard her, between terror and temptation. Now as their two worlds collide, so too will danger and desire…

A quest for a lost star…Atlantis is unleashed.

KISS AND HELL:

Delaney Markham doesn’t just see dead people, she hears them too. And FYI—communicating with tortured souls all day can really wreak havoc on your love life. Sans boyfriend, Delaney makes the best of her gift by holding séances to make ends meet—that is until one incredibly annoying ghost just won’t go away.

Besides being sinfully hot—in a college professor sort of way—all signs point to Clyde Atwell being much more than the ordinary spirit. In fact, he’s a newbie demon whose first assignment is to take Delaney back down to hell with him. Yeah, like that’s going to happen on the first date. Order Kiss & Hell and visit Dakota’s website.

BLACK AND WHITE:

It’s the ultimate battle of good versus good.

They were best friends at an elite academy for superheroes in training, but now Callie Bradford, code name Iridium, and Joannie Greene, code name Jet, are mortal enemies. Jet is a by-the-book hero, using her Shadow power to protect the citizens of New Chicago. Iridium, with her mastery of light, runs the city’s underworld. For the past five years the two have played an elaborate, and frustrating, game of cat and mouse.

But now playtime’s over. Separately Jet and Iridium uncover clues that point to a looming evil, one that is entwined within the Academy. As Jet works with Bruce Hunter—a normal man with an extraordinary ability to make her weak in the knees—she becomes convinced that Iridium is involved in a scheme that will level the power structure of America itself. And Iridium, teaming with the mysterious vigilante called Taser, uncovers an insidious plot that’s been a decade in the making…a plot in which Jet is key.

They’re both right. And they’re both wrong. Because nothing is as simple as Black and White. Order Black and Whiteand visit Jackie Kessler’s website and visit Caitlin Kittredge’s website

I am just about...

2009-05-25T18:03:00.000-07:00

the world's worst at posting over here. Yeesh.

I post four times a month -- every other Sunday at Murderati (www.murderati.com) and every other Thursday at Murder She Writes (www.murdershewrites.com). I tend to send random stuff to Twitter (because hey, 140 characters, I can manage to do that fairly frequently).

Other than that, I am writing like crazy on the new book. Which means, I am *very* happy.

stand by me

2009-03-09T09:31:00.000-07:00

Totally swiped this cool YouTube from Max.

test-screening

2009-03-02T10:38:00.000-08:00

We had a test-screening Friday night of the film, LA 308 that I helped to produce. (I am listed as producer, but we all split the duties.)

The screening went great. It was a wonderful small crowd, just the right size. Their responses were incredibly positive (and the score cards were very high!).

gut-check

2009-02-26T13:47:00.001-08:00

I blog about following our gut instincts (and a whole lot of example from TOP CHEF)... go HERE and come on by and comment.

the tao of publishing

2009-01-29T07:37:00.001-08:00

Everything you really need to know about publishing can be learned from a garage sale. Crazy, I know.

I've blogged about it HERE

History

2009-01-20T12:44:00.001-08:00

A great day, a beautiful speech, a new beginning. A lot of work to do. Here's to hope.

over on Murder She Writes

2009-01-15T09:09:00.000-08:00

I have blogged about willpower and distractions:

Go here.

Not Dead Yet

2009-01-13T22:53:00.000-08:00

Well, hi there. I know, I know, I kinda suck at this whole "show up to your own blog" thing. I am going to try something new here. New for me. Short, quickie blogs, random things going on in the day, with links to the longer subjects over on Murderati or Murder She Writes as they go up.

So, yeah. My big observation for today? It is extremely cool to get something in the mail that you weren't expecting but had wanted:

An ARC for Allison Brennan's SUDDEN DEATH.

Ha! I wanted to run tell the internet NEENER NEENER NEENER. Because I am so cool and mature. I cannot wait to read it.

Bite the Vote!

2008-11-04T06:00:00.000-08:00

I hope all of you, no matter who you're gonna vote for, that you go VOTE TODAY.

And then, when you're done, go to Michele Bardsley's site and BITE THE VOTE for a great contest and her very funny book!

BITE THE VOTE...

…ON SUPERNATURAL TUESDAY

Tired of the same old bloodsuckers? Cost of medical insurance so high, you wish you were immortal? Between death and taxes, you're leaning toward death?

Whether you're human or not, everyone has a voice in Broken Heart, Oklahoma. YOU can Bite the Vote and choose the candidates that have forever to keep their promises. Unlike *other* elections, voters who cast their online ballots will be entered to win an awesome prize package with goodies from Michele Bardsley, Dakota Cassidy, Renee George, Molly Harper, Mark Henry, Jackie Kessler, Richelle Mead, Jaye Wells, Toni McGee Causey and MORE! (Complete listing at voting site. One winner will be chosen.)

Bite the Vote at:

http://www.BrokenHeartOK.com

And don't forget to check out the newest novel in Michele Bardsley's Broken Heart vampire series: WAIT TILL YOUR VAMPIRE GETS HOME.

Read Chapter One:

http://tinyurl.com/58nzdq

Pre-Order:

http://tinyurl.com/5q4u6m

where I am...

2008-10-09T09:54:00.000-07:00

Oops, keep forgetting to update over here.

Today, I am blogging over here at Murder She Writes -- Allison Brennan and I will be sharing Thursdays at MSW and Sundays at Murderati. Today's blog is a confession... and one of the best writing tools a writer can use. It's my first official day at MSW, so come on over and say 'hi' whydoncha?

I am also currently staying here:

That's the view from the window where I'm working. And just to the left of me is this view:
I know! I am suffering the hardships here, let me tell you. Meanwhile, I have about a billion people in my house right now doing stuff, (work stuff), so it's nice to have the quiet while I'm editing book 3. (I am actually working. You know, in between staring out the window, hiking around the place to take photos, sitting in front of the fireplace...)

updating Gustav #5

2008-09-01T16:07:00.000-07:00

The front tree that luckily fell away from the house.

Limbs in the yard. As you can see, no flooding.

That's our driveway.

That's the tree that broke in half in the back yard, falling on the neighbor's fence.

Still without electricity, but still have the computer and the router on the generator and, surprisingly, still have the DSL.

Gustav #4

2008-09-01T12:15:00.000-07:00

Two trees broken in half, both fell away from the house. Neighbor's tree fell on his, on the corner of his house, but we couldn't see that corner well (watched the tree fall, hit and roll, so it may not have gone through the roof). Still gusting, big limp just missed Carl's truck.

Nothing on the house so far, so am feeling very lucky.

Gustav #3

2008-09-01T11:14:00.000-07:00

Lost electricity--Carl got the power and the router running on the generator. There are gusts of wind up to about 80 mph, and we have a few limbs down, but so far, nothing bad.