Killer Pancakes and a Cozy Mystery

To be perfectly honest, the only thing "killer" about these pancakes is the calorie count. On the other hand, six of them provide enough fuel for a day's hike up North Pack Monadnock Mountain in southern New Hampshire--one and a half miles trailhead to summit, with a net elevation gain of 1000 feet. 

This recipe is based on one found in Maple Syrup Cookbook by Ken Haedrich.

Killer Pancakes (serves 2 generously, 3-4 lightly)

Ingredients

1/2 cup cornmeal

1/2 cup whole wheat flour

1/4 cup rye flour (whole wheat or all-purpose may be substituted)

1 1/2 tsp. baking powder

2 eggs

3/4 cup milk plus a little extra

1 Tbsp molasses or honey

2 Tbsp oil or melted butter, plus some for the skillet

Extras: chopped nuts, seeds (chia, sunflower, sesame), chopped dried fruit, shredded coconut, small fresh fruit (berries, sliced bananas, chopped apples)

Stir together the dry ingredients and make a well in them.

In a different bowl, beat the eggs well, stir in the milk and oil.

Pour the egg mixture and the sweetener into the dry ingredients. Stir just until the batter is smooth; do not beat. Beating makes the pancakes tough. If the batter is thick, stir in a little more milk.

Heat the griddle or skillet (I prefer my electric griddle set at 375 degrees; yours may vary) and add the oil. 

Drop about 2 Tbsp of batter onto the griddle for each pancake; top each with one or two "extras." I like to use one crunchy and one sweet, for example coconut with banana or walnuts with dried cranberries. Cook about 1 minute on each side, just until golden. Serve hot with softened butter and warm syrup.

Excerpt from Framed, coming soon from The Wild Rose Press.

“Were they lovers?” Jenna asked, wide-eyed. “You always hear that about artists and their models.” Then she blushed.

“Oh, no! Jerry never had any interest in Abby as a woman,” Ginny answered.

“But they died,” Jenna prompted, absorbed in the story.

Ginny nodded. “Ten years ago last winter. They went missing during a snowstorm. The police went nuts trying to find them. At first, everyone assumed they had just run off together, but it wasn’t like that. Mike, her husband, really stirred things up, insisting something had happened. He forced the cops to look into it. 

“It took the authorities about three weeks to find them. A hunter came across them in the snow.” She looked rather sick. “The coyotes had been at the bodies, but it looked like he killed her and then himself. Mike moved out west and never came back.”

She sighed and returned to the present. “All of which means this painting may be a gold mine, Jenna. Let us clean it up, verify it is what I think it is. There may even be a signature under all the grease and smoke. Would you feel better if we came up with an agreement about what happens then?”

Sue and Elsie excused themselves and went to the workshop down the stairs from the gallery. “I’d forgotten he killed himself,” Sue said. 

“Don’t you believe it,” Elsie replied. “Jerry wouldn’t hurt a fly. That was no murder/suicide. It was a double murder.”

The Day After

On the day after Thanksgiving, I'm grateful for the Thanksgiving I celebrated yesterday. It was small--just my husband, our son, and me--quiet and low-key. Restful. We ate well but moderately, did the dishes and then, enjoying the effects of tryptophan, watched couple Doctor Who retrospectives. After all the upheavals of the last year, it was good to have a day like that.

I've been caught up in the fiftieth anniversary hoopla this month. How could I not be? I lived through those terrible days of November, 1963. Days that destroyed forever any hope I secretly harbored that life might ever return to normal.

It's funny how we keep returning to the traumas of our youth. I was thirteen in 1963, already hit with the double whammy of unprepared-for puberty and my family's move from New Jersey to Pennsylvania. I feel great empathy for immigrants, because I know how hard such moves are. Everything about my new home felt alien. In fact, I never called it home. I didn't feel at home again until I created my own years later.

The assassination was the final installment of a searing trilogy that year. I remember watching the sky as I walked home from school, expecting Russian bombers any minute. I remember my father's almighty cursing, for once unrestrained, at the killing of Oswald, and my dim understanding of his sense of helplessness was perhaps the most terrifying aspect of that long weekend.

As the nation struggled to piece itself back together on the day before Thanksgiving, my mother timed her labor pains while basting the turkey she knew she wouldn't be home to serve. That night I put my four siblings to bed and slept uneasily on the couch until my dad came home sometime before dawn. When my mother called to tell me I had a new brother--who now lives in Dallas--my only response was to ask how to cook sweet potatoes. At thirteen, in a bewildering new body, in a house I hated and a world gone mad, I made Thanksgiving dinner for the first time.

So a Thanksgiving like yesterday was a blessing. Sure, there were forty-nine others in between, some memorable, most blending into a haze of faces, voices, laughter, changes, traditions. But I think yesterday will stand out in my memory for its sheer sense of ordinariness. No dramas, no alarms. I even had time to relax with a new knitting pattern.

I wish I could borrow a Tardis and reassure the young girl I was. But what would I tell her? That she would be all right? She wasn't, not for a long time. That the world would settle down? It never has and it never will. Maybe just this: There will be ordinary days. Good days. Savor them.

Jessie Salisbury: Orchard Hill

Please welcome my friend and guest, Jessie Salisbury. Jessie is a member of Talespinners, a women's writing group that meets bi-monthly in a tiny but charming New Hampshire library. She is a long-time reporter for several local newspapers, a gifted poet, a font of local historical information, and a lover of great coffee. She lives in an antique farm house complete with a well, lovely gardens, and a ghostly visitor or two.


Give us a glimpse into Orchard Hill. What genre, time period?

It’s a romance, told as a flashback, set in New Hampshire in 1969. The heroine has gone back to the family orchard to recover from a nasty divorce and falls for one of the migrant apple pickers.





Deserted by her husband, Jocelyn fled home to the family orchard to recover and wait for her divorce to be settled. It is harvest time, and among the Nova Scotian apple pickers is Yvon, handsome, virile, devil-may-care, and more than willing to help Jocelyn forget her unfaithful spouse. 

But:
There is also Adrian, her caring long-time friend and attorney. He could not speak of his love for her while she was married, but now she is free and he is ready to bring her back where she belongs. And willing to combat Yvon for her affections.

New England is full of derelict orchards, from a time when cider was a necessity of life. Our region is blessed with several large and beautiful ones that have survived the changes in product and demand. How did your story come about? Did you base it on any life experiences? What research did you do?

I worked in a similar place in the 1960's, packing apples for a commercial grower. The pickers at that time were French Canadian, as the hero is. I did the same sort of work as described in the book.

Wow, that's hard physical labor. It must have worn you out every day. Talk about your writing process. Are you a pantser or a plotter? Do you work on a novel every day?

I generally start with a situation or a problem and usually  know how the story ends. I work toward that end, sometimes with a vague outline, sometimes not. I tend to write for a few hours every morning, doing my newspaper work first.

I should be so disciplined. I always seem to get caught up in the deadline of the moment. How do you revise? How long did it take to write your book? Do you have any rituals, such as selecting music, when you write?

I revise as I go along then do a general rewrite when I have finished the first draft. I wrote Orchard Hill originally about 1970 and redid it a couple of times. I tried once to move it the present but it was impossible because methods of apple packing have totally changed and are now mainly mechanized. And today’s migrant pickers are Jamaican.

Who are your favorite authors, and why? How do they influence your work?

I read a wide variety of stories, from science fiction (Ann McCafferty and, of course, Tolkien) and a lot of historical fiction  (Ellis Peters’ Brother Cadfael, Dudley Pope’s Ramage series) and Tony Hillerman’s Navajo stories. I follow several cozy murder series. I like good writing whatever the genre.

I often see you at  local town meetings, and you have a great reputation as a reporter. Tell us a little about your day job.

            I’m a correspondent for a couple of newspapers, writing both news and features and have been               a journalist since 1968. I also write a regular history column for the Nashua Telegraph.

Many authors work for years to find someone interested their work, and I know how frustrating it can be to receive rejections. How did you find your publisher?

            In an on-line newsletter. Soul Mate Publishing was the second place I sent Orchard Hill.

What inspires you? How do you keep the writing fresh?

I guess my stories just come out of the blue, so to speak. I rarely have a particular theme in mind. With poetry I wait to be inspired.

And you find inspiration in the most wonderful places, like bird feeders, pear trees, and columbines. Does where you live influence your work? If you could set a novel anywhere in the world, where would it be?

Most of my contemporary stories are set here in my neighborhood. That’s what I know best. My science fiction is another time and place entirely.

I've read some of your sci-fi and dearly hope you find a home for it soon. In the meantime, where can readers find Orchard Hill?

It is available here as a e-book from Amazon.

Jessie, thank you so much for visiting today. I've had fun asking you questions instead of the other way around. I wish you the best of luck with Orchard Hill.

Know your limits--but don't limit yourself

"It's a mile and half!" wailed the woman next to me at the trailhead kiosk. I found the dismay in her voice nearly comical, since I'm several decades older than she was and I had no qualms about hiking to the top of North Pack Monadnock.

On the flat, I can walk a mile and a half in about forty-five minutes, but North Pack isn't flat. It rises about a thousand feet in that mile and a half, though the actual climb is more because of dips in the landscape. My best time ever for the trail is an hour, on a day when I was impelled by some pretty dire stress. On average, I figure it will take me ninety minutes or a little more.

I don't know what limits that young woman had. Maybe not enough time; maybe not enough water. Certainly her footwear was inadequate for the rocky, root-snagged trail. I hope she looked at the contour map and judged herself not yet fit for the climb, and I hope she embarked on a shape-up plan. I hope I'll see her on the summit next year. 

Most of all, I hope she didn't just give up on hiking.

In the woods, knowing your limits is a survival skill. Reaching your destination without the time or energy to return can kill you. Many's the time I've stopped short of my goal because of fatigue or bad weather or because I overestimated my fitness level or underestimated the challenge. Many hikers are faster than me. I step aside with a smile and let them pass.

Some limits are immutable (I can't fly) and some change over time (I'm slower than I used to be). The neat thing about most limits, though, is they're not rigid. I can improve my fitness, return another day, get better boots. I can choose another trail to the top. 

The one thing I can't do is stay off the trails. If I stop hiking entirely because one mountain defeats me, I limit myself. And that's one thing I refuse to do. I accept that I'm aging, but the rocking chair can wait. It'll feel good after I come down off North Pack. 

Endings...Beginnings

Forget January; my new years start in the fall. After the languid days of summer, I’m ready for the renewed energy of autumn. I break out the more substantial clothing, hoard my garden’s bounty, and turn inward. If I regret summer’s freedom, I welcome autumn’s focus.

This year the ends of things are more prominent than usual. My grandson is leaving toddlerhood and becoming a preschooler. The salmon restoration project I’ve worked on for years has shut down. I lost a dear friend and my publisher in July.

Likewise, the beginnings are prominent. Toddlers are great, but preschoolers are real people. The salmon project will raise eels and shad. No one can replace my friend, but I’ve found a new publisher.

When Linda Houle of L&L Dreamspell passed away this summer, the publishing world lost a bright star and many of us lost a warm, caring friend. The company closed and all rights reverted to the authors. Lisa Smith, Linda’s partner, moved quickly to give us all as much opportunity as possible to re-issue our books. One of the things I loved best about being a Dreamspell author was the community Linda and Lisa built, and I feared it was lost forever. But Lisa, despite her own deep grief, kept our Yahoo! group alive so we could support each other. I will miss Linda forever; I hope I will work with Lisa again in the future; and I’m delighted I can still be in touch with a group of authors I’ve come to treasure.

In another generous gesture, Lisa arranged for Dreamspellers to submit their books to The Wild Rose Press for re-release, and TWRP graciously offered to fast-track those that suited their line. My cozy mystery, Framed, has found a new home, and I’m excited to be working with a new team of professionals. Their energy has even reinvigorated my rewrites of the sequel, A Thousand Words.

To cite a truism, every ending is also a beginning. Janus, the two-faced god of doorways and changes, may claim January, but the prime number seven, September, wins my devotion.

Update on Pirates--How to find an ISP

Last week I talked a bit about online piracy and the help you can get using the DMCA. Some people were interested in learning how to figure out which ISP  hosts the offending website. Here is a link that may help. The National Professional Photographers Assn. has many of the same concerns we writers do in this regard. The NPPA suggests searching for the provider through a website such as http://www.whois.net, or using a DNS lookup like http://www.domaintools.com/research/dns/. 

(Now you're all going to think I know a lot about this stuff, since I'm tossing around terms like DNS. So not true. One can use a phrase appropriately without understanding what it means, as I learned a long time ago in a cafe in Aix-en-Provence. A pair of French university students taught me a "very useful saying," but when I repeated it aloud, the couple at the next table left in high dudgeon.) 

Pirates and the DMCA

Nancy Means Wright, on Get It Write, posts about pirates real and virtual. (See her excellent post here.) How sad is it that we have to waste our precious time tracking down villains instead of creating them? Yet the brave new online world has more than a few snakes in the grass. If someone is stealing my furniture, I call the cops. If they're stealing my intellectual property by offering free downloads of my books without my permission, I call the feds. 

The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) provides a way to stop the piracy. Alas, it is only reactive. It does nothing to prevent piracy, but once it starts you can do something about it. Below I've pasted a take-down letter, courtesy of the wonderful folks at Champagne Books, that you can customize to suit your situation. Reports from authors who've sent the letter show the pirated materials are removed within a few days, sometimes hours. If you'd like more information, you can find several sites devoted to online privacy. Here's one I've used: http://brainz.org/dmca-takedown-101/

It pays to keep a watch for piracy of your books. Set up a Google alert and/or search weekly for your pen name free books. Use as many search engines as you can think of. If you find an unauthorized use, send the letter and let everyone know you've done so. Follow up if you have to; the law is on your side.

Here's the letter:

Re: Copyright Claim

To: the ISP Hosting Company/company name

I am the copyright owner of the eBooks being infringed at:

http://www.freeebooks.com/MyGreatNovel.htm 

This letter is official notification under the provisions of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") to effect removal of the above-reported infringements. I request that you immediately issue a cancellation message as specified in RFC 1036 for the specified postings and prevent the infringer, who is identified by its Web address, from posting the infringing material to your servers in the future. Please be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to "expeditiously remove or disable access to" the infringing material upon receiving this notice. Noncompliance may result in a loss of immunity for liability under the DMCA.

I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of here is not authorized by me, the copyright holder, or the law. The information provided here is accurate to the best of my knowledge. I swear under penalty of perjury that I am the copyright holder.

Please send me at the address noted below a prompt response indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter.

Sincerely,

your name

Email: your email address