My Thanksgiving Post

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving.  Most of us will be having dinner with family and/or friends.  I hope you are looking forward to it.  I am.

Everybody’s Thanksgiving expectations and experiences are different—yet the same.  I was looking at this Norman Rockwell painting and wondering how many of us have ever had such a Thanksgiving.  Thinking about how odd it was that even though that painting does not resemble any of my Thanksgivings, it still produced a twinge of nostalgia in me. 

At the same time, it made me feel like a voyeur peering in at some vaguely alien scene: Who are these people?  What are they thinking?  Is that really a turkey, or the last dodo?

It got me to wondering what other people’s Thanksgivings are like, which made me think that you might be wondering the same thing.  If so, here’s a preview of what my tomorrow will look like. 

(Warning:  This might be one of my most boring posts ever!)

Mary and I will be driving through a (probable) snowstorm to my cousin Bill’s house.  He and his wife, Sherrie, have volunteered to host the Hautman Thanksgiving celebration this year.  There will be about forty of us—three or four survivors from the eldest generation, maybe two dozen of us baby boomers, a few younger adults, a few teens.  No babies or toddlers this year—my parents' generation was notoriously fecund, we baby boomers have been more circumspect, and the young ones have yet to breed.

There will be nearly as many dishes as there are people.  Our Thanksgiving is a loosely organized potluck.  There will be turkey, of course.  Possibly two.  There will be venison and ham and maybe a few ducks (we have several hunters in the family).  There will be sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and “dressing.”  There will be cranberry something, assorted salads (including Charlie's broccoli salad), appetizers, at least one green bean dish, a mystery dish (Put some on your plate, taste it, turn to the person next to you and ask, “What am I eating?”), and plenty of beverages—cousin Tom will bring his award-winning home-vinted apple wine, and there will be a dozen or more assorted bottles of commercial wines—everything from proseco to reisling to pinot to cabernet—some plonky, some divine, depending on who brought it.  There will be beer and soft drinks.  There will be coffee.

The food will be excellent.  Some dishes will be fantastic.  There are several talented, adventuresome cooks in the family, and the quality of the viands improves every year.  But our Thanksgiving is not really about the food. 

It’s not about saying thank you, either.  There will be no invocations, no toasts, no prayers.  That practice disappeared when my generation reached adulthood back in the 1970s, and my parents and aunts and uncles realized that ninety percent of their offspring had no interest whatsoever in organized religion.  It might be more like ninety-five percent—I’m not sure.

With so many people involved, there is no way this can be a “traditional” sit-down dinner—no carefully planned courses, no wine pairings, and no beautiful table setting.  It will be a scattered and disorganized buffet, with people sitting wherever they can find a space—a card table, the sofa, the floor.

Although the food will be good, most of it will hardly be tasted, because everybody will be talking between (and during) mouthfuls.  Our Thanksgiving is about seeing each other, catching up, making contact.  I will see relatives I haven’t seen since last Thanksgiving, and I might meet an "orphan" or two—cousins' friends who happen to be in town.

What do we talk about?  It would be easier to say what we don’t talk about.  We don’t talk about politics much.  Or religion.  Not because we actively avoid those topics, but because most of us simply aren't that interested.  In all the Hautman Thanksgivings I’ve been to, I don’t recall any serious arguments.  No shouting, no fistfights, no shocking revelations.  When I hear stories about other peoples' pyrotechnic Thanksgiving dinners I feel somewhat drama-deprived.  Perhaps we have a dark, seething, river of decay running just beneath the surface, and our apparent civility is a desperate form of denial.  There are indications of such pestilence, certainly—we have our share of family secrets, feuds, and embarrassments—but for some reason these things do not, thankfully, come up at Thanksgiving.

There will be a few serious conversations fitted between the jokes and laughter, but most interactions will be brief and superficial.  That’s a good thing.  I have just as many flat-out irritating relatives as anybody else.  I may be one of the more irritating ones.  Still I enjoy seeing them all.

Do I love Thanksgiving?  As much as I look forward to it, I’m always relieved when it’s over.  We’ll get there mid-afternoon, talk and drink a bit, start eating around five, and by six I’ll have talked to everybody for a moment or two, at least, and I’ll be working on my exit plan.

That’s it.  Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Blank Confession: In Stores This Week

On Saturday, November 20, at 1:00 p.m. I'll be signing books at Once Upon a Crime in Minneapolis. If you can't make it, give them a call (612-870-3785) and have them set aside a signed and personalized copy for you. Once Upon a Crime is one of the Midwest's premier booksellers - they'll be here long after the last B&N has closed its doors.  Especially if you give them your business.

Saturday, December 4th, at 2:00 p.m. I will be at The Loft Literary Center for a reading from the new book.  It's free, and there will be snacks.  This is part of the fabulous Second Story Reading Series curated by Swati Avasthi and Heather Bouwman.  Each reading features two readers, one "established" YA or MG author (that would be me), and one "rising star."  In this case, the rising star is Steve Brezenoff, who has written a YA novel with the excellent title The Absolute Value of -1. Last chance to get signed copies for the holidays!

One more thing - on Saturday, January 22, at 2:00 p.m., I'll be at The Red Balloon in St. Paul to talk and sign copies of both Blank Confession and The Big Crunch.  

CRUNCH VIDEO - the Redactor's Cut

Okay, so I made a book trailer for THE BIG CRUNCH and posted it on YouTube, and put it here on my blog and on Facebook. And I spammed everybody in my address book, and a whole bunch of you watched the video. Thank you!

But then I got a kind note from a middle school teacher (my BFF Dana), who said nice things about the video, but said that she would not be able to share the trailer with her students because it contained the acronym "WTF."

I was embarrassed, to say the least. In an effort to blame my own lack of judgment on Mary Logue, I said, “How come when I showed you the video you didn’t tell me to take out the WTF?” 

She replied, completely serious, “What does WTF mean?”

Huh. 

Anyway, I guess I'd been thinking that “WTF” fell into the same category as “LMAO,” or “Jeez." I was wrong, and should have known.  The last thing I want is to make a video that teachers are not comfortable sharing with teens. So what to do?

MAKE A NEW WTF-FREE VERSION OF THE VIDEO!

That’s right. Here it is, the “Middle School Approved” version of the THE BIG CRUNCH book trailer. I think it’s actually a little better.

(Some of you might be wondering if this is a "censorship issue."  It is not.  It's about creating an invitation - an advertisement, really - that works.  My use of the WTF acronym had nothing to do with the book.  It was just me trying to be amusing.)

Hey! I Made Another Video!

This one is to promote THE BIG CRUNCH.  I promise, this time there will be no singing.

YARN Interview

The Young Adult Review Network (YARN) recently posted an interview with me. They had some good questions. You can read it here.

Boys and Girls

In a recent interview I was asked how I am able to write in the voice of a teenage girl, as I did in How to Steal a Car, Sweetblood, and my soon-to-be-released love story (from both the boy's and the girl's perspective), The Big Crunch.  I said something like this:  "I start with the assumption that boys and girls have almost everything in common.  Boys and girls are not really that different from each other."

To expand on that thought, consider this: An alien life form arrives on Earth.  This alien is a silicon-based crystalline intelligence about the size of a mustard seed.  It derives energy from magnetic fields and communicates by means of UHF waves. 

The alien observes both a mouse and a stalk of corn, and determines that the two creatures are identical:  Both are enormous, grotesque, carbon-based entities that feed upon each other.  The differences between the two—one is motile, the other is not, one contains a higher level of silicon, one squeaks while the other rustles, etcetera—are of no importance to the alien, who leaves the planet believing that Earth offers only a single life form of little or no interest.

The DNA of chimpanzees and humans is 96% identical.  The fact that we regard chimps as being vastly different from ourselves has to do with the relative importance we place on a few minor variations having to do with body shape, hairiness, climbing ability, and so forth.

So it is with boys and girls.  We all eat, sleep, love, cover ourselves with fabrics, feel pleasure and pain…the list of similarities is nearly endless.  Those differences upon which we place so much importance—slight variations in communication techniques, body shape, reproductive equipment, and taste in movies—are relatively minor.  But those minor differences are, subjectively, major.

When writing from the point-of-view of a female character I rely upon a lifetime of close observation, in-depth studies of scholarly texts and laboratory experiments, reading chicklit, and extensive interviews with a variety of female simians.  Then I show my work to Mary Logue and she tells me where I went wrong.

Perfect Hash Browns

The classic American breakfast, eaten millions of times every morning in cafes and restaurants across the U.S., most often includes eggs, hash browns, and toast. The hash browns are the iffiest part of the meal. Just about any breakfast joint can turn out a decent version of eggs-over-easy, but good hash browns are another story.  Still, they are always worth ordering, because when hash browns are done right, they are fantastic: crispy brown on the outside, and soft and yielding on the inside – without being gooey.  The shreds of potato should retain their shape without being completely separate from each other – that is, you do not want a homogenous mass of smooshed potato, and you do not want matchstick potatoes – or worse yet, something that looks like a forkful of pale worms.  When you find a café that makes proper hash browns, all is right with the world.

My early attempts to make hash browns at home were disasters.  After dozens of unsuccessful efforts, I came to the conclusion that restaurants used Secret Ingredients or Special Equipment or Advanced Techniques or Black Magic to achieve that crispy-creamy hash brown magic.  So I did what most sane people do when confronted with the unattainable.  I gave up.  I turned to grits, to oatmeal, to pancakes, to scrapple…

But what I really wanted with my eggs was some fantastic hash browns.  Sigh.

A couple of years ago I bought a cheap Japanese slicer and went crazy for a while slicing everything edible.  Also, my fingers.  I decided to take another run at the Holy Grail that is Perfect Hash Browns.

I am pleased to report that I have had some success.

Perfect Hash Browns (for one*)

What you need:

• A medium-size potato**

• A nonstick skillet (any size) with a cover

• 1 tablespoon butter

• Salt (to taste)

Excellent hash browns can be made from any potato variety, but for perfect hash browns, I recommend a mature russet.  In other words, a “baking" potato. 

Step One: Peel and shred the potato.  I use a Benriner slicer, but you could use a cheese grater, the shredding disk on a food processor, or a knife (tedious).  How fine or coarse the shred is up to you - there are many versions of "perfect." 

Whatever tool you choose (Secret Technique coming), shred the potato into a big bowl of water.  Stir it around a bit.  See how milky the water becomes?  That starchy stuff coming off the potato is (ahem) potato starch, and will turn your hash browns into a gluey mess if you let it. You can leave the potatoes in the water for a few seconds, or for hours. 

11111Pour the shredded, soaked potatoes into a strainer.  Rinse them under running water to get rid of most of the starch. Now (here comes the Black Magic) dump the wet shredded potatoes onto a clean dish towel, gather the corners of the towel together, and twist the towel to wring the water from the potatoes. Give it a good twist. Lots of water will come out.

Put a tablespoon or so of butter in your a nonstick skillet. (You could use a combination of butter and oil, but do not eliminate all the butter – that’s what gets you that nice hash brown color.)  Heat skillet.  When the butter has melted but is not yet brown, sprinkle the shredded, semi-dry potatoes into the pan. Spread them evenly. Neaten up the edges if you wish, but DO NOT press the potatoes down with the spatula – you want hash browns, not a potato hockey puck. Loose is good. Those air spaces allow the heat and steam from the pan to wend its way up through the shredded potato. Add salt. Sometimes I throw in a pinch of white pepper, but that’s just me.

Turn the heat down to medium-low and cover pan.  Let it cook for about eight minutes, then take a look.  If the potatoes are brown around the edges, they are ready to turn.  If they aren’t getting brown, turn up the heat a bit and give it a couple more minutes.  If the edges are black, you had the heat too high.  Start over.

Shake the pan to make sure the potatoes aren’t sticking, then flip.  You won’t need a spatula. Or maybe you will.

Cook for another five to ten minutes. Leave the skillet uncovered for this stage – you want the top of the hash browns to stay nice and crispy.

Slide onto a plate. Perfect!

Even better!

*To make hash browns for several people, use a bigger pan, but keep the depth of the potato layer about the same. Flipping can be tricky. Good luck.

**This basic technique also works with other vegetables: zucchini, sweet potato, winter squash, beets, parsnip, etc. 

Pumpkin Update

Just back from two days of library visits in Columbus, Ohio. The squirrels have been busy.

Columbus was great.  I got to spend hours with librarian (and soon-to-be-published novelist) Julie Scordato, visit six libraries, and eat ice cream at Jeni's.  As usual, I forgot to take any pictures.  Oh well.

While I was there, I did a video interview with Doug Dangler for Writers Talk.  You can view it here.

Or not!  I guess my interview isn't posted yet.  Check back in couple of weeks.  In the meantime, you can watch John Green's interview instead.

Halloween Horror

Yesterday there was a beautiful five pound pumpkin sitting proudly on our front steps.  Today?  The squirrels had a feast.

Duck Stamp!

The winner of the 2010 Federal Duck Stamp Contest has just been announced.  Two of my brothers entered this year – Bob and Jim.  Out of 236 entries, their paintings were numbers one and two.  Woo-hoo! 

First place went to Jim for his painting of a pair of white-fronted geese.

Second place went to Bob for his painting of a single white-fronted goose.

Third place?  To quote from the movie A Serious Man, “Who cares?”

My brothers are so amazing cool I can hardly stand it.  Mary isn’t home at the moment, so I’m going to go jump up and down with Rene and Jacques (the poodles) now.  Jacques knows something is going on – he’s giving me the stink eye.


Late-breaking news:  Jim finished in a tie with brother Bob after three rounds. Jim's entry won the tie-breaker.

Ten Reasons Why Not

There are a lot of writers - both published and unpublished - who want to write novels for teens, better known as "YA" novels. Having worked with several such writers, I've noticed that in many cases their motivations are often not exactly, shall we say, useful. Or realistic.

Herewith, the Ten Worst Reasons to Write a YA Novel:

1. For fame

2. For fortune

3. To tell teens how they should act

4. To tell teens what it was like when you were a kid

5. To gain the respect and admiration of your peers

6. To gain the respect and admiration of your children

7. Because you think it will be easier than writing an adult novel

8. Because you think it doesn't have to be as good as an adult novel

9. To relive your teenage years

10. To revise your teenage years

The best reasons? I'll leave that up to you.

Doing Good Work

Author Swati Avasthi (Split) is conducting an online auction of books, manuscript critiques, and other good stuff to support the Family Violence Prevention Fund. Among the many items up for auction is includes a set of "The Bloodwater Mysteries" written by me and Mary Logue, and manuscript critiques by several well-known authors, agents, and editors.

Check it out! This is a great way to help out a fine organization, and maybe score something good for yourself, too!

The Fly Agaric

This morning I came across a patch of about fifty of these beauties (Amanita muscaria). Some people have been known to eat them for the hallucinogenic effects. I've never met anyone who wanted to try it twice.

Mushroom Soup

It has been a great fall for mushroom hunters here (Minnesota and Wisconsin). Here's a "hen of the woods" (Grifola frondosa), also known as a maitake. I've found several of them this year. This specimen weighed about seven pounds, which translates to a big pot of intensely flavorful mushroom soup.

Hen Soup

2 pounds fresh hen-of-the-woods (maitake)

¼ cup finely minced shallot (or onion)

2 tablespoons butter

1 quart water plus 1 quart homemade chicken stock (you could use all water)

1 teaspoon fresh thyme (or ¼ teaspoon dried thyme)

¼ teaspoon pepper

1 cup milk or (gasp!) cream (optional)

1-2 tablespoons olive oil

Salt

Garnish

Cut up the mushroom, dividing it into two piles. Pile One should include all the raggedy bits. Pile Two should consist of the nicer bits—small whole “caps,” nicely diced pieces, etc. Things you want to see in your spoon when you eat the soup.

In a medium-size pot (a three or four quart pan with high sides) sauté the shallots and mushrooms (Pile One only) in butter. Don’t be afraid to let the mushrooms brown. Brown is good!

Add the thyme, pepper, and stock. Bring to a simmer and cook for thirty minutes.

Pour the whole mess into a blender and pulverize it. Give it a good sixty seconds. You want to get it to the point where it will pour through a strainer. Return the mixture to the pot. (Don’t bother with the straining—you pulverized it sufficiently, no?)

Heat a sauté pan REALLY HOT. Add olive oil. It should start smoking almost immediately. Throw in Pile Two (the nicer mushroom pieces) and let them cook for a few minutes without stirring—you want them a little crispy on the bottom. Turn off heat and add a ladle or two of the blended mixture. Stir it around to deglaze the sauté pan, then pour it all back into the pot with the rest of the blended mixture. Simmer for about ten minutes.

Add milk or cream, if using. Salt to taste, then cook on low heat just long enough to bring it up to serving temperature.

Serve, with garnish.

The garnish is mostly to tell your guests that you have been paying attention, and to interrupt the unrelenting brownness of the soup. A little chopped parsley is sufficient. Maybe some crumbled bacon. If you want to get fancy, a dollop of crème fraîche is sure to impress.

Blank Confession Video: The Final Chapter

I had a lot of fun making these three short videos. I learned a lot about what works, and even more about what doesn't work. I also learned about the painful reality of working within a budget. Like most authors, I'm paying for my own book trailer. Of course, I have no idea whether it will make anybody buy a book, and I probably never will know. Good thing it was fun to do!

If you haven't seen the first two parts, either scroll down a few posts, or click here and here.

I'm working now on a different sort of book trailer for The Big Crunch, which is coming out in January. It's going to have animations, clips, more stupid jokes, and best of all, I am NOT going be on screen.

One more thing - I want to thank Max Selim, who organized, directed, and edited the Blank Confession videos, and Nick Grady, who did the camera work. Max has some cool shorts posted on his YouTube channel. Check him out!

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Here are my two favorite "one star" reviews of my book INVISIBLE from Amazon.com. I love the internet!

HORRIBLE, July 13, 2010 By Lisa - See all my reviews Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Invisible (Paperback) HORRIBLE PACKAGING! The book was jammed in this small box! the pages are bent and curled, the cover is crumbled and creased! it was awful!

Invisible, March 5, 2010 By Barbara A. Ibarra-scurr - See all my reviews Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?) This review is from: Invisible (Paperback) This is a review about the company in Colorado that sold me the book. I have been ordering books for years on line and this was the first time that it took over 15 days to get to me when it usually takes less than five. I will not order from them ever again and want my comments noted.

Blank Confession Video - Part Deux

The battle to bring BC2 to the tiny screen has been fierce and long. We had do deal with actor meltdowns, the gaffer strike, a missing Best Boy, uncooperative aspect ratios, insanely complex bit rate issues, and an epic legal battle with a lawbot named Bork over miniseries rights. In order to get our PG13 rating, we had to edit out the vampire sex and overdub certain off color remarks made by one of the characters. We also took out the Quran burning and the Marlboro Lights product placement. Censorship. Bah!

If you have not viewed "Blank Confession Part One," please do so now lest you miss the heavily nuanced elements in Part Two.

"Blank Confession Part Three" is coming soon, whether you want it to or not!

Like Hate Love

The new trade edition of Sweetblood went on sale last week, triggering conflicting pleasure/pain receptors in my hippocampus which, you should know, has nothing to do with higher education for semiaquatic ungulates. The cover of the new edition features candy-colored lips and pointy teeth against a deep purple background. It looks delicious. I like it. I hate it. I like it. I hate it. I like it. Somebody stop me, please!

Thank you!

Some history: The first edition of Sweetblood,

way back in 2003 when there were only a gajillion vampire novels (as opposed to today's kahunkabazillion), was a graphic designy image of a twenty-something woman with tasteful blood spatters across the cover and the tagline "A Vampire Novel." It was an okay cover, although I thought the tagline to be slightly deceptive inasmuch as there are no "real" vampires to be found in the book. Still, it was about vampires. Sort of.

Anyway, I figured as long as the cover encouraged more people to look at the book, it was okay. I liked it. I sort of didn't like it. It was a book cover. Whatever.

A couple of years later, the book was issued in small format paperback, and the designers took a different tack: this time, they used a photograph of a young model who perfectly represented the character I had in mind when I wrote the book. It suggested a goth-like, vampire-ish story about a character, and I loved it, I loved it, I loved it, despite the clunky typography. How often does that happen? Hardly ever.

Back to the new cover and the love/hate thing. From an author's point of view, there are three things a book cover should do:

1. It should look good.

2. It should sell the book.

3. It should be true to the book.

The new Sweetblood cover, IMHO, easily meets condition #1. It looks stupendously lickable. I think it will accomplish #2 as well - at least I hope so. As for #3...I dunno. I think most people who buy the book based on the cover will be expecting fangs and blood. Some of them will be disappointed.

I think the neck-biting promise made by the cover takes away from the story. Imagine yourself sitting down to watch, say, "Eat Pray Love" after being told it was a movie about carnivorous alien invaders. The whole time, you'd be looking for flying saucers and waiting for Javier Bardem's lips to peel back and reveal an extra set of jaws. Kind of distracting.

On the other hand, being told that "Eat Pray Love" was about an alien invasion is probably the only way I'd ever pay to see it.

Like. Hate. Love.

It's Heeeeere...

After months of rigorous casting and set-building, hundreds of rewrites, filming under the most treacherous conditions imaginable, and a lengthy negotiation with Pixar over the use of proprietary CGI effects, "Blank Confession: The First Sequence" is now available for viewing. Parts Two and Three will be released over the next few weeks. The 3-D version will be released in selected theaters only in Botswana and the Falkland Islands. An extended Director's Cut is in the works, and we have sent promotional packages to select members of the Academy.

Suitable for viewing with or without popcorn.

Blank Confession (the novel) will be published on November 16, 2010, by Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.

The Egg and I

I am delighted to report that my fifteen seconds of internet fame have nearly expired. My part in the Humble, Texas affair is mostly over, and I hereby return this blog to its weirdly eclectic mix of food, mushrooms, writing, and other distantly-related topics.

Many years ago, when I was in my twenties, a friend of mine told me he was looking for a mentor—an older, more experienced man who would help him in his career and in other aspects of his life. I asked him how he planned to find such a person.

He said, “It’s easy. These old dudes, when they get into their fifties and sixties, they realize that they have learned a lot of stuff over the years, and that they might be dead soon. It’s like a biological imperative—they don’t want their knowledge to die with them, so they look for a younger guy to share it with.”

I thought that was an odd way to look at it. But now that I am well into my fifties, I find myself experiencing that urge to share. Therefore, tomorrow, I am going to tell everyone who visits this blog how to properly poach a freaking egg. Stay tuned!

Speaking of eggs, Part One of my “Blank Confession” video will be posted here very soon—I'm aiming for a week from Monday.