Irony is the Shackles of Youth

I like afternoon teas. I like afternoon teas so much that my wife and I regularly go to an Afternoon Tea in different cities whenever we travel. I'm also curious about old menu/recipe books (like from the late 1800's to early 1900's). Sometimes I find absolute gems like the old church cookbook from the 1910's where every desert recipes contained copious amounts of alcohol. I mean copious. Brandy, sherry, and bourbon were measured in cups.

I think I have found another gem.

I present to you, from the early 1900's, a book full of "Every Day Menus" which includes a menu and place settings for what they are calling a "Russian Tea." The very first thing it says on the menu? Vodka. Obviously you are supposed to put a decanter of vodka on the table and pour everyone a glass of it (oh sorry, the gentleman get a glass of vodka while the ladies get a cup of vodka). No silverware. Everything is eaten with your fingers.

This sounds like it would be an amazingly fun tea.

Man, I love it when I'm up out of bed for less than five minutes and my digestive track decides that it needs to evacuate everything I've eaten in the last 48 hrs in 4.8 seconds. I couldn't even call into work because I had a meeting that I had already rescheduled twice and trying to find another time that worked with everyone's schedule was more than I could deal with.

Dammit.

In the good news category, my book is now released.

Miome has had to go on a special diet for medical reasons, and can't eat preservatives. Guess what is chock full of preservatives? Bread. Luckily, I enjoy baking bread and am good at it. So today is going to be split between finishing edits and baking bread.

I was going to use one of my go-to recipes (Walter Sands' Basic white bread if you were wondering) but I am out of dry milk. I wound up doing the this recipe instead. I much prefer Walter's recipe because I can use honey instead of sugar. I usually use buckwheat honey, which is very strong, so it gives it a more complex flavor that ye old sandwich bread. It's still not my absolute favorite recipe, but I honestly didn't feel like dealing with soaking oats or making two loaves instead of one today. Besides Miome wanted white bread.

Work was super, super busy all this week so I have not had the brain for anything else. I've hit a wall on writing the worse thing I have ever written. I was expecting that. I was not expecting to get 58,000 words done on it before I hit that wall though. I am impressed with myself.

I have reviewed the cover and blurb for a book that got accepted last year. Need to review the author's bio, a few other things, and then get the edits done. May 1st is the drop date for it. I'm still a bit in disbelief that it's happening.

I mentioned going through my Kindle and pulling funniest of the typos and comments I've made on it. People seemed to be really into that, so I'll do that this weekend.

Until then, I have got to share this gem.I'm reading a story (whose author and title will remain unnamed) with werewolves in it.

A shock, I know.

I didn't actually pay for this book. I checked it out for free because I'm an Amazon Prime member. You can only check out one book per month. When trying to decide what book to check out, I look at both the summary and the reviews. There was a grammar mistake in the summary (which I should know better than to ignore, because if the author can't be bother to spell/grammar check the 3-4 paragraphs that make up the summary, they sure as hell are not going to spell check their entire novel). However, there were 22 reviews as well and the average stars was around 4.5. So I figured I'd given it a try.

Maybe this author had 22 friends or something. Because this book? Sucks. Like a damn Hoover vacuum. How bad does this book suck? There is a werewolf in the book named Heath. Twice now, the author has typo-ed his name and called him "Health.' Yes folks, we have Health the werewolf.

I am less than 15% through it according to my Kindle, this guy is not even a main character, and the author cannot spell his name right. We won't even talk about some of the other problems (15 characters introduced in the first 10 pages, 3 clauses put together with no subject to make a sentence, jumping around in time/space with no explanation or context, etc.). Because it can all be boiled down to "Health the Werewolf."

I somehow don't think I'll be finishing this one.

At one point I found a e-book on Amazon where the pairing was between a male vampire and a male bunny-shifter. I cannot find this book again to save my life. I don't know whether to be disappointed that I can't share this with you all, or relieved that now I'm not tempted to buy it.

EDIT: I guess I should also mention that the cover is a guy with no sure staring blissfully down at the white rabbit sitting in his arms. I cannot make this shit up.

EDIT2: We have a winner! starparty knew what book it was. Casey's Love Bite by Charlie Richards. Be sure to check out the awesomely photoshopped cover. And as several people have pointed out, there are multiple romance books with were-rabbits. Obviously this is a niche of which I was previously unaware.

I have discovered that the difference between good, well written stories that I occasionally stumble across and the majority crap I usually find to read on my Kindle, that the the well written stuff actually breeds plot bunnies while the crap just fills me with incoherent rage or indifference.

So if you have Kindle recommendations (besides maderr's stuff because at this point I've probably thrown enough of my salary at her to have funded Less Than Three Press for a couple of months), send them my way. I do ask that they be $5 or less, because I honestly go through books so quickly that paying more would bankrupt me. It is not unusual for me to finish up 5-10 books a week on my commute.

Dear author,

If you insist on calling a guy's dick "his man thing" I will insist on laughing hysterically every time you do. It's the only way I'm getting through this damn story anyway.

No love,
Tsaiko

I need to get Amazon Prime or something, because downloading free books from Amazon is quickly teaching me that free = no money to pay an editor.

Then again, I downloaded some bonus books from big time publishers that were being offered free, and one of the main characters names changed in the middle of the book and then changed back. So I'm not even sure publishers are even using editors some times.

Then again, I have found some gems among the dross. My favorite being Summer's Crossing. Alas, it appears the rest in the series is young adult, which means it probably does not end how I want it to (threesome, dammit, THREESOME). Definitely need to throw money at this author when I finally get my raise.

Why would you name your book Chairman of the Whored? Why?

Although when I was telling miome about this, she thought I said Chairman of the Horde. Of course, I immediately pictured this dragon laying atop this huge oak desk in the corner office on the top floor of a skyscraper, with gold and papers spilling out of the drawers, and yelling into his phone that someone is late for the meeting and is going to get flamed as a result. That sounds like my kind of book.

I have slowly been working on the Nightmares story, including realizing I changed Draug's name half way through what I'd written ^_^;. Oops. I am up to 9-10 pages, and slowly adding the scene a scene where all the major characters that are going to be involved in this thing meet each other.

Miome and I did manage to paint one of the walls in the hallway. The color is very similar to what the color originally was (pale yellow in flat paint). However, the color we chose is a little grayer, a little browner, and NOT FLAT PAINT. I am thinking that my goal is to get rid of every inch of flat, pale yellow paint in this house. I am seriously thinking of repainting the closets (yes, they painted the insides of the closets). I could just use flat white. As long as it's not yellow.

Finally, I'm reading about rationing during WWII as told in a report that is geared more toward the supermarket/food chain side of the equation. It's really nifty. And once again, I find myself contemplating a Captain America fic, although I don't really have an idea from this book. Maybe it'll wind up being a one off sentence about living with rationing. Hrm. There is one idea in particular I want to write, but it needs to wait a few months for reasons I cannot discuss. Soon I should be able to get this out of my system. I cannot wait.

Otherwise life goes on. And now I've got to go get dressed so I can help shovel the walk. Darn snow.

Describing your novel as "Contains tastefully enormous penises" does make me curious, but does not make me feel like paying money to read your novel.

Good thing this sucker is free. :D

Browsing through Google Books, I stumbled across a pyschology book for the Armed Services from 1945 which contains a chapter on homosexuality. Fair warning: because of the time period this book was written, it does not have the most enlightened view on homosexuality or even sexuality in general.

I just need to keep repeating the following: I will not write Captain America fic inspired by this chapter. I will not write Captain America fic inspired by this chapter. I will not write Captain America fic inspired by this chapter.I will not...

Bonus: I love the fact that this book has a chapter titled "The Fighting Man's Sexual Problem." If I were to write a story about Captain America based on this book, which I am not I swear, I would totally title it that.

Well, over the last few days I've read two books: Sunshine by Robin McKinley and The Black Gryphon by Mercedes Lackey (and Larry Dixon if the cover of my copy is to be believed). Sunshine was something I'd been meaning to read, but hadn't gotten around to. The Black Gryphon is an old favorite of mine that I've read so many times that the spine is broken. This takes quite a few readings to happen since I am extremely anal about not damaging my books.

I think The Black Gryphon is one of Lackey's better books, and I know I've talked about about Lackey's writing in other posts. So I'll concentrate on Sunshine for my commentary.

( Here there be Spoilers )

My reaction to the ending of Robin McKinley's Chalice?

I'm covered in BEES!

That being said, I did enjoy both the characterization, world building and writing of the book. And the dialogue between Mirasol and the Master? Absolutely brilliant. They really were so very awkward around each other.

But that ending...