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The Mulsus Cocktail: Two Recipes

April 25, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

If you haven’t yet read The Realm Below, book 2 in the Space Between series, then you probably don’t know that at the end of the book there’s a little pilón, as my mother used to call it. That’s a Spanish word that in Mexico means “something extra.” The pilón in this case is a short appendix offering two original cocktail recipes that The Daughter came up with after the release of The Space Between. They’re inspired by the descriptions of mulsus (a favorite drink of my faery characters) in the books.

I’m writing this a few days before Glen and I are scheduled to go out of town to visit Katie—and The (best) Son-in-Law (in the world), Wesley—and if all goes as planned, by the time you read it we should have been back home for a couple of days. But since we’ll still be trying to get caught up after our return, the appendix will be part of today’s post.
Both mulsus versions below are exceptional, but then, Katie’s cocktails are always worth sharing. In fact, she has started recording cocktail-making videos that she posts at intervals on her YouTube channel, Take Your Time Gaming (the channel mostly features Katie and Wesley, separately and together, in hilariously snarky gaming episodes). The cocktail videos are entertaining and informative (especially fun when viewed on a TV), and each time I watch one I resolve to shake things up a bit (ha!) to make the cocktail hour more interesting. And oh, how I envy her technique with a cocktail shaker! My so-called technique makes me look like I’m caught in a cement mixer.

These drinks have pronounced, assertive flavors, so if you feel the need of accompanying nibblies, I recommend something fairly bland that won’t compete for your taste buds’ attention. Macadamias, for instance, or sesame sticks.

And now, here is the appendix:

Readers,

I didn’t want to leave you without this little extra something: two sophisticated recipes for mulsus that my daughter Katie, a skilled and enthusiastic crafter of cocktails, has created especially for the Space Between series.

The mulsus imbibed in the books is not a cocktail, being more of a honey-sweetened liqueur or cordial made from the fermented needles of the yew trees growing on the grounds of the Keep. It’s an acquired taste and even small amounts are poisonous for non-faeries. The Daughter’s versions, however, are quite delicious, while still hinting at the aromatic, resinous quality mulsus is known to have.

You won’t need to drink these cocktails from tiny, dark-tinted glasses like the Penitents do. Neither one looks anything like pond scum, thank heavens. Though Adrian tells Mellis in The Space Between, “We like to drink it, but we try not to look at it,” Katie decided that in our world, we can do without cocktails that look disgusting, so there is no food coloring in the recipes. You can easily find online the method for making clover honey syrup.

The first recipe is a little closer to what I envision the taste of faery mulsus to be. The bitters are an essential component, making this version taste like a very pricy cocktail served at an elegant restaurant. The second recipe is polished and urbane, but a little more accessible.

Enjoy!

Mulsus #1

1.5 oz London Dry Gin
1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.35 oz Bärenjäger
.35 oz 1:1 clover honey syrup
.25 oz Green Chartreuse
.25 oz Yellow Chartreuse
4 drops Prohibitters

Shaken and strained into a chilled coupe.

Mulsus #2:

1.5 oz London Dry Gin
1 oz fresh-squeezed lemon juice
.45 oz 1:1 clover honey syrup
.35 oz Bärenjäger
.25 oz Green Chartreuse
.25 oz Yellow Chartreuse
.25 oz Luxardo Maraschino Liqueur
1 dash Orange Bitters

Shaken and strained into a chilled coupe.

Blog, Cocktails, family, Featured Post, Recipes, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writing

The Empty Nest Cat

April 11, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

6 Comments

Sunday morning I got up much too early—before 4 A.M. I’ve never been a very sound sleeper (maybe that’s due to sleeping with my eyes open *snort*), but for the past ten years it’s been worse. And for the cause, I can point with a reasonable degree of certainty to this:

That’s Phoebe. Part Maine Coon. Part dominatrix. And guess who’s 10 years old? Uh-huh. Coincidence? I think not.

Ever since Glen and I adopted her from the Austin animal shelter when she was about 8 weeks old,

Phoebe (aka Tatonka, Jabba the Catt, Queen of All She Surveys and Tons o’ Fun [or Squirt, as Katie calls her]) has ruled the household with her incessant demands. And many of her demands interfere with my sleep.

Sunday morning, for instance, she demanded that I arise at 3:50 A.M. and entertain her. I wasn’t done sleeping, but that didn’t stop Phoebe from chewing the bedside lamp cord, chewing the bedside table leg, chewing my flipflops (bedside) . . . chewing anything she could fit in her mouth. (Also a lifelong pattern, in case you couldn’t tell by looking at her.) All just to make noise and get me out of bed.

Does she ever go to Glen’s side of the bed and try to wake him up? Don’t be silly. She knows he’d never hear her. A good thing she doesn’t, too. She’d probably fry herself chewing on his lamp cord. And Lucy’s hopeless; she’s the soundest sleeper in the house.

The situation is now so bad that I’ve taken to sleeping with a spray bottle full of water within grabbing distance. One good spritz will keep Phoebe at bay for two or three nights. Only rarely do I get to use it, though. As soon as I rise up on one elbow and reach for it, she scampers off (okay, galumphs off) into the darkness making gleeful little trills and chirps. At that point she’s too far away to spray and I’m too awake to go back to sleep. So I get up. And that explains Sunday morning.

The Daughter, on the other hand, is mother to the consummate companion cat: a 14-year-old Tonkinese named Tsuki. Less than half Phoebe’s size, Tsuki is oozy, clingy and adorable, and as limber as a Chinese acrobat.

Katie needs a warm furry neck scarf? Tsuki is there.

An advisor at the card table? Tsuki will oblige.

How about a rip-roaring game of hide-and-seek (daylight hours only)? A decorative centerpiece? A cat-in-a-blanket?

Tsuki’s available for all of it, always loving and perfectly behaved, never making unreasonable demands. (Well . . . maybe occasionally. She’s still a cat.) This has made Katie smug. She is fond of telling us that Phoebe is our “empty nest cat” and that as a consequence, “mistakes were made.” Meaning we made them. Oh, swell. How does that help us now?

But she’s right, of course, and it’s Glen’s fault. Mostly. It all started when Phoebe was still a kitten and he encouraged her to drink water from the faucet at his bathroom sink. She’s always had a bowl of fresh water available to her, but from her very first taste she preferred the cool water flowing from the tap. So much that multiple times each day I’d hear her meowing from the master bathroom, demanding (there’s that word again, but no other will really do) that someone (i.e., me) come at once and turn the water on. It didn’t take her long to realize that she was really thirsty at night, too. (Did Glen get up for those nighttime waterings? What do you think? Even though each time Phoebe leaped up to the sink, she thumped the cabinet loudly enough to wake the dead. But Glen slept on.) Tap water was at the top of the slippery slope, and from there it was just one misstep after another.

The last straw for Katie came one morning when she walked into the kitchen and saw something I’d sworn I would never allow: Phoebe stretched out on the kitchen table while I ate breakfast. (Yes, Tsuki has been on Katie’s table many times, but apparently not during meals. So how is this different?)

Now that Phoebe’s 10, diabetic and spherical, the bathroom sink is beyond her leaping capability. Thankfully, drinking from the water bowl on the floor doesn’t cause nearly as much commotion. But she continues to wake me in the wee hours, perhaps even more often now to compensate for what she can’t do anymore. And after she’s had her fun toying with me, she gets to sleep all day—a win-win for any cat.

But despite her shortcomings (and how I felt about her Sunday morning), Glen and I wouldn’t trade our empty nest cat for anything. Even Katie thinks she’s pretty special. We’ve never had another cat like her. Unflappable, not fussed by strangers, loud noises or dogs. If someone comes into the house, she doesn’t hide. She goes to greet them and investigate what they’re up to, and, if possible, sit smack in the middle of it. (Right, Gerard?) No, we wouldn’t change a thing. As far as we’re concerned, the mold was broken when Phoebe was made.

Probably because she sat on it.

Blog, family, Featured Post, memoir

The Versatile Blogger Award!

March 28, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

16 Comments

Last week I was wrapping up the day’s Twitter biz when I came across my name in someone’s tweet. The context was surprising, but most gratifying. Ashley, the blogger who sent the tweet, had nominated me and fourteen others for The Versatile Blogger Award! (Read more about the award here.)

Thank you, Ashley at Lellalee, for the nomination! You can find Ashley’s fun post about the award here on her blog, including who nominated her and the rest of her nominees. I also recommend exploring her other great content and luminous photographs. You might want to subscribe, as I did. Lellalee is a gorgeous, professional site.

To say I was gobsmacked by Ashley’s nomination is an understatement. We bloggers often feel as if we’re performing onstage, and only the people in the first row of seats are visible to us because we’re blinded by the stage lights. For all we know, the rest of the theater could be empty. But this just goes to show that you can never tell who’s been paying attention and what fun surprises might result from it.

THE VERSATILE BLOGGER AWARD RULES:

1. Thank the person who nominated you and include a link to their blog. (Thank you again, Ashley and Lellalee! Woot!)
2. Tell your nominator and readers 7 things about you.
3. Choose up to 15 bloggers whom you admire for their content (writing and/or images) and creativity. Nominate them in turn.
4. Inform your nominees.

MY NOMINEES, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER (each writes wonderful, unique content):

• Salina B. Baker
• Diana Conces
• Tonja Drecker
• Cynthia Hamilton
• Carie Juettner
• Amy Elizabeth Miller
• Mindy Reed
• Julia Schmeelk

Congratulations to everybody—to be nominated is to win! Now you can pass on the love to others (and post a cool badge like this one on your websites).

And readers, be sure to have a look at their sites. You’ll find all sorts of interesting work there!

7 THINGS ABOUT ME:

1. If you’ve been with me awhile, you know I enjoy cooking and cocktails, and devising new recipes for both. But . . . I can’t make chocolate meringue pie, which is Glen’s favorite pie. I’ve tried several recipes over our 35 years together, and always failed dismally. [Amy, if you’re reading this, the pigsticker between the eyes/ER visit failure still trumps these.] The chocolate pudding is too runny, the meringue is too wet, the pie crust is ruined because of both of the above . . . By now I’m thinking it must be a mental block, because how hard can it possibly be?? So readers, if you have a FOOLPROOF recipe for chocolate meringue pie, could you share it with me in the comments? I’d love to learn how to make it before our 40th anniversary. (I hope 5 years gives me enough time.) One caveat: The chocolate pudding has to be scratch-made, please.
2. In high school, I earned my varsity sports letter on the rifle team. Interestingly, there was an indoor shooting range in the basement of one of the school buildings.
3. I’ve never seen Titanic or Forrest Gump. And don’t intend to.
4. However, I love The Horse Whisperer. We saw it when it was first released in 1998; Katie was 10 years old. That film caused some serious family discussions about moving to Montana, and we came very close to doing it. After considering it for months, we finally decided against the idea. You’d think snow would have been at the top of our reasons to vote no, but it was because we wanted Katie to marry a Texan. And she did! (You’re welcome Katie. And Wesley.)
5. When I was a teenager first living on my own and going to college, I sold my plasma for grocery and gas money. Ground beef was only $0.33 per lb. and students’ cars weren’t allowed on campus, so a weekly visit to the plasma center went a surprisingly long way.
6. I have a loathing for clowns and mimes. The worst part of a Cirque du Soleil performance is seeing the clown make his way among the audience before the show, coming ever closer to me as he warms up the crowd. I swear he can smell fear. On a visit to New Orleans, a street mime pursued our group of six a block down a street in the French Quarter, haranguing me (and only me) for not stopping to ooh and ahh over his performance. Mimes had not been on my fear and loathing list until that moment.
7. If it’s not already obvious, I personally care nothing about chocolate meringue pie. If I did, I would have figured out how to make it a long time ago. (Sorry, Glen.) And I know such selfishness makes me a miserable excuse for a human being. But I just pulled these out of the oven, and that has to count for something. He’s going to love them.

Baking, Blog, family, Featured Post, memoir, Movies, Writing

Surprises from the Past

March 14, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

12 Comments

Do you ever hear from someone in your distant past? Someone you haven’t seen or heard from since childhood and were certain you never would again?

This probably happens more often than it used to, thanks in large part to social media. Before that, the options for tracing people boiled down to, what? Private detectives, the Salvation Army and newspaper ads in the Personals section? (Are there still such things as Personals ads? I used to read them for fun. Sometimes I’d come across messages so cryptic that I was sure they were connected to drug deals, extramarital assignations or murder-for-hire schemes. ) Well, once in a great while, someone from the remote (as in decades-old) past will track me down and get in touch. It’s happened several times over the past five years, but one of the most recent was especially surprising.

About a year-and-a-half ago, a woman reached me by using the contact form on my website. I remembered her at once. We’d known each other for a brief time in childhood; she was a few years older than I. Our mothers were good friends. When I read her name, I had a vivid mental image of her as a girl: an intense and level gaze, beautiful skin, long brunette hair that was impossibly thick and healthy, often worn in a braid as big around as a man’s fist.

It developed that she was going through her late mother’s effects and found some family photos that my mother had given her. She wanted to send them to me. We exchanged a few lovely, cordial emails, and then, after not hearing from her for months, I forgot about the whole thing. So imagine my surprise when, a few afternoons ago, I opened my post office box to find a manila envelope bearing her return address.

Did I rip it open as soon as I got home? No. God, no. As I’ve written before (“Too Close to Home”), there are sizeable chunks of my past that are painful to look back on, and to do so can make me physically ill. The good memories, oddly, are more painful than the bad.

Instead, I put the envelope on the coffee table and watched it from the corner of my eye for several hours. But it stayed put, didn’t explode, didn’t lift its flap and begin speaking with the voices of the dead. Finally, I opened it. And, to my surprise, enjoyed viewing the contents. Kind of.

The photos were largely lighthearted and harmless: a badly faded, spotty record of a handful of people, most of whom are now buried, and some of whom dressed on at least one occasion in matching outfits.

For reasons best known (I’m sure) to my mother. My grandmother and I just put on what she told us to wear. The envelope contained nothing incendiary or toxic (but since when was I ever allowed to stand on the furniture?),

which was a big relief.

But still . . . No matter how pleasant the results, it’s such an unsettling feeling when a long finger reaches out from my history and taps me on the shoulder. A few weeks before the above photos arrived, there had been another tap. That time, the long finger was my own.

I had decided to reread a book I’d purchased and greatly enjoyed soon after its release in 1986: Perfume, by Patrick Süskind. But before I dove in, I lingered for a couple of minutes in pleasant anticipation (do you do that with books you’re really looking forward to reading?), studying the cover image, a detail from the Watteau painting, Nymphe et Satyre.

At last I opened the book. And this fell out.

I might have screamed just a little, but luckily I soon recognized myself. Thank heavens. Otherwise, I would’ve wondered who the dead person was. (But why did I stash the photo in that particular book? As a jokey contrast with the nymph on the cover?)

As I examined the photo, the circumstances came back to me. Early in our relationship, Glen had tried to tell me that I slept with my eyes open. That was so clearly preposterous that I refused to believe him. So he decided to prove it to me. I don’t recall how many nights he waited, listening to me snore, but finally he caught me in the act and snapped this Polaroid. Somehow I slept through the camera’s mechanical wheezing and clackety ratcheting. Not to mention the flash.

He told me I scared the daylights out of him the first time he woke up and found my corpse beside him. After seeing the evidence, I couldn’t blame him. And eventually, I even forgave him for taking the picture.

*GLEN: STOP READING NOW*

Or at least, that’s what I wanted him to think. Actually, I’m just biding my time until the night I rise up in the bed and bend over him, watching him with my creepy dead eyes . . .

Blog, childhood, family, Featured Post, memoir

Coming Soon: Music Boxes, by Tonja Drecker!

February 28, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

No Comments

“I only desire your talent…”

Twelve-year-old Lindsey McKay’s biggest dream is to be a famous ballerina. But after moving to New York, she ends up at the Community Center with a teacher who’s a burly bear in tights.
When she meets Madame Destinée, the teacher of a top dance school who offers her classes for free, Lindsey can’t believe her luck. In exchange, she must perform in the school’s exclusive midnight shows, ones sure to make her a star. But something’s not right…
One by one, the other dancers disappear. Each time they do, a music box with a figurine just like the missing ballerina joins Madame Destinée’s growing collection. If Lindsey doesn’t discover the truth about the dance school, she might end up a tiny figurine herself.

Greetings, Readers! What you just read is the blurb for a very entertaining Middle Grade fantasy. Its author, Tonja Drecker, is a writer friend whom I met in late 2017 while The Space Between was making the rounds of a virtual book tour. She enjoyed TSB, writing the most thorough and thoughtful review of the tour, and has since then written a marvelous review of The Realm Below. A few months ago, when her own book was approaching publication, I jumped at the chance to read and review an advance copy. Music Boxes is her first novel, and I hope she doesn’t make us wait too long to read her next one. (To see why, be sure to read my review at the end.)

Here’s Tonja:

Don’t be deceived. Behind that sweet smile lurks a wicked imagination. Her bio tells us:

“Tonja Drecker is a writer, blogger, children’s book reviewer and freelance translator. After spending years in Germany exploring forgotten castles, she currently resides in the Ozarks with her family of six. When she’s not tending her chickens and cows, she’s discovering new adventures, nibbling chocolate and sipping a cup of tea.”

You can visit her author website and her review blog to learn more. She’s also on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, and you can follow her on Goodreads.

To launch Music Boxes, Tonja is offering various goodies, and one lucky person will score a music box. Here are the details she provides:

Early Order/Pre-order Special
Pre-order/order your book (ecopy or print) before midnight (EST) on Friday night, March 8th, send a copy of your proof of purchase to tonjadrecker@gmail.com along with an US mailing address, and you will receive an envelope with exclusive swag (bookmark, sticker, etc.).

Giveaway
The giveaway will run from midnight (EST) on the night of February 21st, 2019 until midnight (EST) on the night of March 15th, 2019. Entries will be made through the Rafflecopter. One winner will receive a music box ( the one found in the book video) with the author’s golden signature on the bottom as well as swag (US addresses only). The second winner will receive an Amazon GC of $10 (US). The second winner must be in possession of a qualifying US Amazon account.

The contest is open to U.S. residents only, ages eighteen and over. No purchase is required for entry. All winners must claim their prize 48 hours after notification. Winners will be announced on www.tonjadrecker.blogspot.com on Saturday, March 16th 2019 by 10:00am (EST). All addresses and personal information will be used only for prize allocation. Sponsor, Tonja Drecker, assumes no responsibility or liability of any kind. Please email all questions to tonjadrecker@gmail.com.

Okay, it’s me again. You can order Music Boxes from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or Kobo. I urge you to pick up a copy, especially if you have children or grandchildren ranging from around ages 8 to 12. Before you hand it over to them, though, be sure to read it yourself. It’s a lot of fun!

Here’s my 5-star review:

Highly imaginative and more than a little creepy, Tonja Drecker’s Music Boxes is a novel to get lost in. It tells the story of twelve-year-old Lindsey, who is uprooted from her comfortable life in Nebraska when her eight-year-old sister Bridget, a violinist of enormous talent, snags a coveted spot at Juilliard. As the story opens, the girls’ parents have moved the family to New York for Bridget’s schooling. Lindsey, though she loves her parents and sister dearly, can’t help resenting that her dreams of ballerina stardom are being neglected in favor of her little sister’s brilliant future. She is in this vulnerable emotional state when she meets Madame Destinée, a charismatic dance teacher who has it in her power to make Lindsey a star. But Madame Destinée, it appears, may have powers that extend much further than that.

Drecker writes the story from Lindsey’s point of view, bringing her to vivid life as a believable twelve-year-old with all the fears, self-doubts and misapprehensions normal for her age. Lindsey tries hard not to feel sorry for herself and to adapt to her new life in New York, struggles I was firmly invested in. Small wonder that when Madame Destinée tempts her with free dance classes and promises of glory, Lindsey wants badly to believe. First, however, she must ask herself how much of what she sees at the dance school is real. Can she trust the evidence of her own eyes?

A delicious sense of atmospheric foreboding pervades much of the book. There are moments that made my skin crawl and a jarring shock that made me gasp aloud. The intensity increases when, in an unnerving twist, Lindsey discovers that much more than her own future is at stake. As her courage and strength assert themselves, I was drawn irresistibly forward, turning the pages and rooting for a satisfying conclusion. The author’s deft pacing keeps the story moving along, while her skillful descriptions of the characters and the vibrant New York City winter setting add depth and richness. Music Boxes is a wonderful, engaging book that holds appeal for readers well beyond its intended Middle Grade age group. I loved it and look forward to reading more from Tonja Drecker in the future.

Blog, Featured Post, Publishing, Reviews, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writing

Fretting. Fixing. And a Happy Ending.

February 14, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

8 Comments

Last week I had a terrible epiphany. Well, it probably wouldn’t have seemed terrible to most people, but it hit me like a concrete block. Lying awake one night, it dawned on me that nowhere on the cover or within the pages of The Realm Below does it tell the curious reader that it’s the second book in the Space Between series. Nowhere. How in the world did that slip by me?

Even worse, if it weren’t for one thing, I probably still wouldn’t have noticed the omission. What one thing? A really terrible review. It came from a reader who didn’t seem to know she was reading the second book in a series and who clearly had not read the first. The Realm Below left her so lost that she said she couldn’t get through it. Which, in my unbiased opinion, was a tad harsh.

The reason I know all this is not because I read her review. I didn’t. I don’t read my reviews at all unless I know in advance how they turn out. Instead, I got the tactfully edited highlights from people who did read it.

There didn’t seem to be anything I could do about it. Amazon is notoriously insensitive to an author’s cries of pain over bad reviews. Heck, they’ll even delete the good reviews for no apparent reason. (But please keep sending those to Amazon anyway!) So I spent a couple of wakeful nights, stewing over it and asking myself if it was too late to revisit a decades-old impulse to pursue archaeology instead of writing. (In case you’re wondering, I gave up on that idea long ago after deciding I wasn’t cut out to do the field work. I like my creature comforts. Two, in particular: flush toilets and blow-dryers.) It was during this angst-y period that I had the aforesaid epiphany and realized the series information must be added to both books. Immediately.

To the rescue came my editor/publicist and all-around Wonder Woman, Danielle Hartman Acee of The Authors’ Assistant. I’ve told you about her many talents before. She swiftly made changes in the books’ descriptive texts at various websites, starting with Amazon, and enlisted my terrific artist, Heidi Dorey, to add a line to both book covers. Now it would be obvious which was which. But what about the two dozen print copies of The Realm Below already in my possession, most destined for local bookstores? Danielle designed a sticker to apply to the cover. Here’s one in action:

While I was waiting for the stickers to arrive, I wrote to my wonderful advance review authors, five very gifted women: Diana Conces, Salina B. Baker, Tonja Drecker, Maureen Turner and Amy Elizabeth Miller. Each had read the book prior to publication and written a smashing review that I could use for blurbs and promotional purposes. As a thank-you, I had promised to mail them each a print copy of The Realm Below, but I wasn’t going to send the books out sticker-less. So I wrote and explained the reason for the delay. Terrible review and all.

And then, Dear Readers, something miraculous happened. Amy, you’ll remember, is the Oklahoma writer who devised the fun, out-of-the-box interview questions that I shared in my previous blog post. She’s an unstoppable force, a grab-the-bull-by-the-horns sort of person. (Which I, obviously, am not.) And God bless her, she saved the day. Within minutes of receiving my email, Amy went to Amazon to see the review with her own eyes. And she realized at once that it was never intended for my book at all. She then did a little further sleuthing and discovered which book the review was meant for. The one the reviewer had actually read and given the rating of a single, lonesome star. Amy emailed her findings to me immediately. And, long story short, a few days later the ghastly review was removed from my Amazon page.

This has been an extreme couple of weeks; lows and highs can both be exhausting. In this case, the low that kicked it all off led to an important lesson about marketing books that are part of a series. I’ll never make that mistake again (though I’m sure there will be many others). The high that capped it was a huge relief. I hadn’t realized how heavily that one star was weighing on me. The relief is still tainted with uncertainty, though. I’ll never know how many people may have glanced at that star and decided to pass on my book. And heaven forbid, if Amy hadn’t dug a little deeper, it might have stayed on my page forever. Thank you, Amy, for saving me from my wimpy self! Of course if I had read the review when I first came across it, instead of covering my eyes and exiting Amazon as quickly as possible, I probably would have realized it wasn’t meant for me and avoided the subsequent days of anguish. But . . . I didn’t. Fact-facing isn’t my strong suit. I’m just lucky there was a happy ending.

Now that the dust has settled, it’s back to writing book 3, so I’ll see you here at the end of February. But before I go, Happy Valentine’s Day! Glen and I are celebrating our 35th wedding anniversary today. To mark this milestone, I think we’ll open a bottle of nice champagne and raise a glass to 35 more. Cheers and love to all!

Blog, Featured Post, Publishing, Reviews, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writing

An Interview with the ahem Author 😊

January 31, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

6 Comments

Before the end of last year, my Twitter friend, fellow author Amy Elizabeth Miller (find her website here), messaged me to ask if I’d be interested in doing an author interview as part of a series she’d planned for her blog. Amy has an amazing work ethic. She’s a talented artist. She blogs about subjects I wouldn’t have the nerve to touch with such depth and passion it often takes my breath away (I’ve been a subscriber for some time). She writes The Endeavor Series: captivating, imaginative fantasy novels that feature a host of magical creatures and endearing (or hissable!) characters (find them on Amazon here). As if all that weren’t enough, she homeschools her four kids! That alone is sufficient to inspire my stunned admiration. (Don’t take this the wrong way, Katie, but after teaching you how to read, I was tapped out.) We’d never met in person, but I knew from reading Amy’s words that she’s the best kind of friend to have: generous, kind and supportive, and when she tells you she’s going to do something, you can take it to the bank. So of course I told her, “Yes, please, I’d be honored to do an interview!”

As most of you have probably deduced over the past 105 (!) posts, I’m a gabby person by nature, and I really enjoy gabbing about writing and the way I do it. Even more, I love reading interviews with other writers about how they do it. (Especially their writing schedules. Probably because I can never stick to one.) Every writer’s process is different and to me, they’re all fascinating. But Amy had something a little out of the ordinary in mind. She sent me a list of twenty-five questions, and only five had anything to do with my writing. Answering them, I found myself laughing as well as tearing up. And it was a blast.

Below is Amy’s interview. For space reasons, it’s only the Q. & A. To read the whole thing, which includes her wonderful intro and review of The Realm Below, see the full post here.

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR: SUSAN ROOKE

1. Introduce yourself. Name. Nickname.
A. Susan Rooke. No middle name. I’ve had several nicknames over the years (“Rookie,” “Monkey Arms”), but my favorite is still the one my older brother (by 8 years) came up with when I was just a little girl. He called me “Bug,” because I was an annoying little sister; I bugged him. And it stuck. In time I became “Aunt Bug” to his kids.

2. If your Wi-Fi name was a reflection of you, what would it be?
A. WhenIGetAroundToIt. I’m an awful procrastinator.

3. What personality trait has gotten you into the most trouble?
A. Probably the mistaken notion that I’m going to last forever, so what’s the rush?

4. What genre (of collection) do you write in and why?
A. I write all sorts of poetry, but the fiction I write (short stories and novels) is always speculative. I don’t know why, though, because I read in any genre.

5. Who is important to you?
A. My family and friends. Plus our animals: Australian Shepherd Lucy; our part Maine Coon Phoebe, aka Tatonka or Jabba the Catt [oh lord, here she comes now. It must be time to feed her again]; and our dear grandcat, Tsuki.

6. Where do you call home?
A. Central Texas.

7. What books are/have you written?
A. The Space Between: The Prophecy of Faeries, and The Realm Below: The Rise of Tanipestis (which is brand new, even as we speak). I’ve just started writing the third book in the series.

8. If you are having a rotten day, what do you do to conquer that?
A. If it’s not something that I’ll probably find humor in eventually, I just try to soldier through. Then that evening, I’ll pour myself a stiff highball and turn to my husband Glen for solace. Poor man! (He gets a stiff highball too.)

9. If you were invisible for a day, what would you do?
A. I’d walk our property trying to get some incredible, close-up nature photographs without nature being any the wiser.

10. Your life is made into a musical. What is the title of at least one of the songs?
A. “Better Late Than Never”

11. What are your sleeping habits?
A. Nonhabitual. The lack of consistent sleep is annoying. And fatigue makes my lazy eye skew a bit, which is weird.

12. What would you name your boat?
A. The Slithy Tove

13. What’s your biggest kitchen disaster?
A. At bedtime one night I was prepping a 14 lb. brisket for Glen to put in the smoker at 5A.M. the next morning. I had the brisket in the kitchen sink and was hauling it out of its vacuum-wrap using a pigsticker: a sharp steel skewer with the pointy end curlicued like a pig’s tail. I was tired and not paying close enough attention. The pointy end wasn’t all the way in the meat. It ripped loose and flew up and hit me in the forehead, right above the bridge of my nose. This was followed by a trip to the ER, a tetanus shot and some glue to close the wound. I was lucky not to lose an eye.

14. Tell me about one of your characters. Would you get along in real life?
A. I can’t pick just one to tell you about. When I tried, they all came crowding into my head, wanting to have their say. I’m grateful to have their trust, and it’s an honor to be able to record their stories. (Don’t tell any of them, but Lugo is my favorite and we would get on famously!)

15. If you were arrested with no explanation, what would your friends and family assume you had done?
A. They would assume it was a case of mistaken identity. I haven’t even had a speeding ticket since 1984.

16. What are your favorite clothes to wear?
A. Around the house, T-shirts and knee-length yoga pants, or fleecy long pants and long-sleeved henleys in cooler weather. Running errands, jeans and linen blouses.

17. If someone asked to be your apprentice and learn all that you know, what would they end up learning?
A. They’d learn how to put off until tomorrow what they could have easily done today. And then how to freak out over it. There’d also be some cooking, baking, cocktailing and playing Cards Against Humanity.

18. What are your future writing plans?
A. There will be at least a third book in the Space Between series. As for a fourth, I don’t know. I’m not a fast writer, and the books are somewhat intricate, requiring my careful thought and close attention because of their interweaving storylines and timelines. I’ll continue to write poems and short stories/flash fiction. And there’s always the possibility that there’ll be another book that’s not in the series.

19. What’s one thing you absolutely adore in life?
A. Leaving aside beloved people and pets, I absolutely adore Glen’s barbecue pit. It’s a combination grill and smoker. After much research, he designed and built it in his shop, working late several nights a week for months. With this contraption and his mad pitmaster skills, he makes the best Texas-style barbecued brisket and pork ribs I’ve ever tasted. No barbecue sauces, no fancy dry rubs. Just salt and pepper, heat, time and smoke.

20. What is one of your pet peeves?
A. Hearing people end their sentences with “at.” “Where are you at?”

21. You’re in the middle of a wizarding duel. What animal do you transfigure into?
A. Why be an animal when you can be a cosmic entity? Cthulhu, of course!

22. Would you survive if you were a character in your own books?
A. Maybe. If I got too gabby, the author might kill me off just to shut me up.

23. You are putting on a dinner party. What do you serve and who do you invite?
A. The weather would be mild, low 70s, with just enough cloud cover as the sun sinks, and a soft breeze. We’d be eating outside on the patio, digging in to Glen’s brisket and pork ribs, or, for the pescatarians, grilled swordfish with lemon juice, olive oil, garlic and capers, prepared on the grill side of the pit. There would be sides: a gratin of potatoes, a cucumber-cherry tomato-kalamata olive salad and feather-light yeasty rolls. A selection of cocktails and beers/wines. Coffee macadamia brickle ice cream for dessert. And everyone we love would be there. Including a handful who can’t be there under any circumstances anymore.

24. Would you rather relive the same day for 365 days or lose a year of your life?
A. I can’t relive the same day for 365 days. I wouldn’t be here at the end of that time anyway, so I might as well pick the other option.

25. You are transported to one of your favorite books. Where are you?
A. I’m in T.H. White’s The Sword in the Stone. Learning, as the Wart did, how to live as different creatures under the instruction of Merlyn and his owl, Archimedes.

Thank you for everything, Amy! This was fun!

Blog, Featured Post, Interviews, Publishing, The Realm Below, The Space Between, Writers, Writing

Macadamia-White Chocolate Shortbreads: A Cookie Recipe

January 3, 2019

Posted by Susan Rooke

6 Comments

Happy 2019, Dear Readers! I hope you all had a wonderful holiday! It’s been a rainy, grey start to the new year here, but I’m holding out hope that someday we’ll enjoy sunshine again. In the meantime, cookies will do nicely.

Do you make New Year’s resolutions? I used to, when I was young and naïve. Despite years of evidence to the contrary, when each new January rolled around I thought that would be the time I’d actually make resolutions and stick to them. Until one year I’d finally had enough of that. I decided that instead of trying to impose puritanical self-improvements, I would begin each January with an easy intention: to make something delicious on New Year’s Day, and then to continue having fun in the kitchen often in the next 364 days. No hard and fast rules. No unrealistic expectations. Finally. I’d found a plan I could stick to! *

I made these cookies this January 1st for the 2019 intention. They were inspired by Alison Roman’s “Salted Butter Chocolate Chunk Shortbread,” a recipe that my dear friend Claire M. shared with me and urged me to make. I’m so glad she did. As usual, I was incapable of following the recipe to the letter, starting with the salted butter part, but doing it my way still turned out some very wonderful cookies. I made them again a couple of weeks later, and then decided to reimagine the recipe for New Year’s Day fun. And they were delicious.

First, however, a confession of bone-headedness: These cookies never spread much. You’ll see in the pictures that this batch did, though, due to the fact that I forgot the essential step of sprinkling them with flakes of sea salt just before popping them in the 350° oven. I remembered three minutes later and yanked the cookie sheets out of the oven in a panic. And there the cookies sat, heating and spreading on the hot pans while I fiddled with sea salt for an interminable time. Plus the oven cooled a bit every time I had to open the door. But hey, it was New Year’s. Not only a day of good intentions, but also a day of facing facts—even the warty ones.

MACADAMIA-WHITE CHOCOLATE SHORTBREADS Makes about 24-28 cookies

For the dough:

2 sticks plus 2 Tbs. unsalted butter (9oz.), softened
½ c. sugar
¼ c. (packed) dark brown sugar (see Notes below)
1 tsp. good vanilla
2 ¼ c. all-purpose flour (I use unbleached)
4 oz. white chocolate, chopped into chunks
3 oz. macadamias, rough-chopped (I use the Costco dry-roasted, sea-salted Kirkland brand)

For rolling and slicing (just before baking):

1 egg, lightly beaten, OR a couple of Tbs. of heavy cream
2 Tbs. sugar mixed with 1 generous packed Tbs. dark brown sugar
Sea salt flakes to sprinkle on top (Maldon is awesome)

To mix the dough:

1. In a large bowl, cream the butter, the brown and white sugars and the vanilla until fluffy. (I like the stand mixer for this.) Scrape down the bowl sides as needed. You know the drill.
2. Add the flour and mix. It will look crumbly. But as the butter warms in the bowl, the dough will start to come together.
3. At that point, add the macadamias and the white chocolate and mix a bit more. Don’t overbeat, but it should be smooth enough to form into logs.

To form logs:

1. Divide the dough into two equal parts and roll each into a log about 7-7 ½” long. The logs should be about 2” in diameter, or a bit larger. Good luck getting them exactly even. I never can.

2. Wrap each log tightly in plastic wrap and refrigerate (a couple of hours, at least) until thoroughly chilled. This is important to help keep the cookies from spreading in the oven, since the warmth from your hands as you roll the logs in sugar and then slice them, etc., will definitely hasten the spreading if they aren’t totally firm. (You can also keep the logs several days in the refrigerator, OR, if well-wrapped [first in plastic wrap, then in foil, followed by enclosure in a plastic zipper bag with the air squeezed out of it], the logs can be frozen almost indefinitely. If you can resist baking them off and eating them “indefinitely,” that is.)

To bake:

1. Preheat the oven to 350° and line one or two half-sheet pans with parchment paper (see Notes below).
2. Unwrap the chilled logs and place them on a sheet of waxed or parchment paper. Brush them all over with the lightly beaten egg or heavy cream, then spoon the white and brown sugar mixture evenly over the logs and roll them in it to coat.
3. Cut the logs into ½” slices carefully, with a serrated knife. These cookies are cold and loaded with chunks, so don’t force the cutting. Let the sharpness of the blade do the work. If they’re tending to break apart on you, squeeze them gently so they hold their shape.
4. Arrange them on the cookie sheet(s) about an inch apart.
5. Sprinkle each cookie with a few flakes of coarse sea salt.
6. Bake a total of 12 to 15 minutes (my oven takes 15) until the edges are browning, and see Notes about turning cookie sheet(s) during baking.
7. Leave them to cool on the pan for 5 minutes, then transfer to a rack to finish cooling. Or pop them in your mouth.

Notes:

• I like dark brown sugar because of the deeper flavor it has than light brown. But light brown works fine.
• No need to toast the macadamias before adding them in. If they’re roasted and salted, they’ll be great.
• You’ll notice the dough has no added salt other than what’s on the macadamias. This is the point. Then the sprinkling of Maldon flakes on top adds just the right touch of salt, hitting the palate all at once, making a heavenly contrast to the white chocolate and nuts, and the creamy, bland sweetness of the dough.
• Do try to cut ½” slices. At that thickness they’re more likely to hold their round shape without spreading. I’ve never been very good at cutting exact slices.
• I buy only extra-large eggs, and hate to waste a whole one to brush on the cookie logs. So I switched to brushing on heavy cream. It works well and it’s also a lot less . . . slippery . . .
• As an impatient person, I use two half-sheet pans so that I can bake the whole batch of cookies at once. But then during the baking, I have to reverse the pans back-to-front and change the places of the top pan with the bottom one. It may be faster, but it’s not the way to make identical-looking cookies. To do that, bake them in two batches, one sheet pan at a time, reversing the pan back-to-front when they’ve been in about 9 or 10 minutes, then finishing the rest of the baking period.

Have a blessed 2019, filled with sweet rewards!

*Actually, there was one hard and fast resolution I made that I managed to keep: I vowed never to drink orange juice again unless it was in a mimosa. Easiest resolution ever. Cheers!

Baking, Blog, Cooking, Featured Post, Holidays, Recipes

Home for Christmas

December 20, 2018

Posted by Susan Rooke

10 Comments

Just a short one today . . .

I want to wish you all the most joyous of holiday seasons, and the hope that your year concludes with many blessings and hearts full of love. I’m going to be kicking back and having fun for the rest of the year, because . . . The Daughter’s home! And The Son-in-Law will be joining us soon!

It’s been seven years since Glen and I have had the chance to spend Christmas with Katie and Wesley. The last time they weren’t married yet. Or even engaged. So we’re taking full advantage of this opportunity. There will be days of delicious food, fabulous cocktails, abounding snarkiness, clever puns and uproarious laughter over raucous games of Cards Against Humanity (“A party game for horrible people”).

The one thing I’ll do during this time that counts as work will be reading The Realm Below. In paperback, because the proof copies arrived Monday!

This is the fifth or sixth time I’ve read it, but it has to be done. And no skimming allowed. I’m on page 150 (out of 453) and I’ve already found two errors that slipped past me before. (This is in addition to two others that one of my wonderful advance readers, author Diana Conces, found.) So, all cocktails aside, I have to be paying attention when I’m reading.

Later this month, most of you will probably receive a brief newsletter from me announcing that print copies of The Realm Below are available for pre-order from Amazon. (Not sure of the date yet for that. If you don’t receive the newsletter, you can subscribe by going to the right sidebar here where it says “Subscribe and Download Chapter One.”)

You can already pre-order the e-books, though, and some of you have done so. Thank you! The release date is only a month away: January 22, 2019.

And to everyone who has taken the time to read The Space Between and tell me how much they enjoyed it (a new person just reached out to me on Facebook as I was writing this!), I’m always, always thrilled and grateful to hear from you. And thank you for your reviews!

Happy Holidays, Dear Readers! See you in 2019!

Blog, Christmas, family, Featured Post, Holidays, Publishing, Reading, The Realm Below, The Space Between

Bringing It Home. Forever.

December 6, 2018

Posted by Susan Rooke

10 Comments

This past Saturday I witnessed something that was I was starting to think might never happen. (When I could stand to watch the drama, that is. There were a few moments that I thought Glen would wind up as a grease spot on the driveway.) This was a milestone in our relocation to the country 3 years and 5 months ago. Yes, yes, we moved into the “forever home” in that time, and that was huge, of course. But this event marked the culmination of everything Glen has been working toward thus far in making us comfortable here.

Okay, in making me comfortable. He still has to finish relocating his welding shop and all of his equipment out here. But as far as I’m concerned, the pinnacle of his many achievements has reached its own forever home. “Forever” because he swears he’s never moving it again.

That’s right. Glen brought the smoker home.

And the day after that, he fired it up.

Here’s what I wrote about it in last year’s Thanksgiving post, “A List of Small Gratitudes, 2017”:

• That, on the smoker he designed and built, Glen makes the best Texas-style brisket and pork ribs I’ve tasted. EVER.
• For the day when Glen will finally move said smoker from his warehouse to our forever home so that we can enjoy his best-ever brisket and spare ribs at least one more time before the zombie apocalypse

He’d aimed to have it here by this Thanksgiving, but due to a driver who didn’t show up to transport it, he missed that goal by about 10 days. But that’s okay. It was worth waiting a little longer for.

It’s hard to get an idea of the scale of this thing in photographs. It’s 8’ tall from the base to the top of the smokestack and about 4’ wide. It weighs 3800 lbs., as much as my mid-size SUV. Every hinge and every handle is custom, fabricated by Glen and his friend Gene, also a welder.

The grilling side is on the left. This is the counterweight at the rear of the grill lid:

It weighs 300 lbs. It’s filled with lead. Without the counterweight, you wouldn’t be able to lift the heavy grill lid to check on your ribeyes or your swordfish. In the smoker, there are four racks that spin, making it easy to load and retrieve your sixteen sides of ribs or twelve briskets or twenty turkey breasts. There’s a thermometer built into the exterior smoker wall to keep track of the interior temperature.

As you might imagine, this thing took a long time to build. Glen (and usually Gene, too) worked late most nights every week for four or five months. Before he could even begin the cutting and welding, there had to be a thorough cleaning, because the smoker side is made of leftover drill casing pipe. There were practical design issues to figure out, like how to make the curved smoker door fit snugly to the curve of the smoker walls. Drill casing pipe is seamed like a toilet paper roll, and that caused a conundrum with the door which took days to solve. (Glen tried to explain it to me at the time, but I just nodded and smiled.) Sometimes, when he came dragging in exhausted on yet another late night, I thought he’d never spend his evenings at home again. More than once he wondered why he’d thought such an ambitious project was a great idea. But when it was finished, it added so much pleasure to our lives and opened up delicious new ways to entertain. And after doing without it for the last three-and-a-half years, I missed it terribly.

Finally Glen was ready to have it hauled out here to its new home, but with something this massive, the feat requires planning. He first hired a flatbed tow truck to bring the smoker out, and a few days later the tow truck returned with a SkyTrak, a type of small crane, which is needed to correctly lift and position the smoker on the ground. Here’s a screenshot of a SkyTrak from the Briggs Equipment website.

It’s a serious undertaking and tricky to do. Including Glen and the SkyTrak driver, there were four men outside the day it was moved into place. I didn’t take pictures because I was inside by the windows, peeking between my fingers. I was afraid I’d see someone smashed flat when the smoker tipped too far to one side. And when it finally touched down, exactly level on the concrete tiles where it will probably stay for the rest of our lives, I thought I was going to cry.

The next evening we enjoyed the result of Glen’s labors.

Please forgive the lack of artistry evident in the plating. It was all I could do to restrain myself long enough to take the picture, and you can tell I’m hovering too close to the food. Those ribs are bare not for their photo op, but because I’m a purist: no barbecue sauce. And no fancy rubs applied before they’re smoked. Just salt and lots of finely ground black pepper.
One bite told me: Glen still makes the best ribs I’ve ever tasted. And this home of ours? Now it’s forever.

Blog, Cooking, country living, family, Featured Post, Food, Forever Home, Holidays, memoir, Thanksgiving