Blog Posts
Jell-O Shot Cupcakes
The vodka-soaked gummy bears are a little messier and need to be set aside for the adult-only cupcakes. But they do add a special touch. You can also use plain ol’ virgin gummy bears.
Jell-O Shot Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 eggs
- 2 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1-1/2 cups cake flour
- 1 3/4 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 cup warm Jell-O (any flavor) and vodka, mixed
- 1/4 cup colored sprinkles
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add paper liners to large and/or small cupcake tins.
In a middle bowl, cream sugar and butter. Add eggs and extract and mix thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the milk and vodka mixture. Stir in colored sprinkles.
Pour into prepared tins.
Bake for 25-30 minutes for large cupcakes and 15-20 minutes for mini cupcakes. Let cool then poke wide holes in the top with a skewer. Pour a full 1 cup of Jell-O and vodka mixture in the holes. Once the juice has settled, frost with Cream Cheese Frosting.
Cream Cheese Frosting
1 cup butter, softened
1 8 oz. bar of cream cheese, softened
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3 c. confectioners’ sugar
3-4 Tb. of cream (for consistency)
Beat all ingredients together, adding cream to create the proper spreading consistency. Frost cooled cupcakes and add a single vodka-soaked or plain gummy bear. Sprinkle with multi-colored sugars.
Fuzzy Navel Cupcakes
This sweet cupcake ended up being my favorite from the Boozy Cupcake collection. It was perfectly tart and sweet with a crunch of granulated sugar on top.
Fuzzy Navel Cupcakes
Ingredients
- 1 cup white sugar
- 1/2 cup butter
- 2 eggs
- 1 tsp. lemon or orange extract
- 1 tsp. vanilla extract
- 1-1/2 cups cake flour
- 1 3/4 tsp. baking powder
- 1/2 cup milk
- 1/2 orange juice and Peach Schanpps, mixed
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Add paper liners to large and/or small cupcake tins.
In a middle bowl, cream sugar and butter. Add eggs and vanilla and mix thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients, alternating with the milk and Schnapps mixture.
Pour into prepared tins.
Bake for 25-30 minutes for large cupcakes and 15-20 minutes for mini cupcakes. Let cool. Poke holes in the top of the cooled cupcakes with skewer and brush on Peach Schnapps. A 1/4 cup of Schnapps will “drench” the whole batch. Then frost with Fuzzy Navel Frosting.
Fuzzy Navel Frosting
1 cup butter, softened
1 tsp. lemon or orange extract
3 c. confectioners’ sugar
1/4 c. orange juice and Peach Schnapps mixture
1-2 Tb. of cream (for consistency)
Beat all ingredients together, adding cream to create the proper spreading consistency. Frost cooled cupcakes using a wide tip.
Add decorative pick and granulated colored sugars.
Cupcake Wars
Recently I went to war.
Whenever I get the chance, I take whatever writing class the lovely Katrina Kittle is offering here in Dayton, Ohio. This winter she offered a Writing Jumpstart class which was equal part inspirational and instructional. My class met on Wednesdays while another class met on Tuesdays.
The first meeting was one day after my monthly book club. And I always bake cupcakes for my BookLink girls. So I brought the leftovers to Katrina’s class.
The next week, the Tuesday night class brought brownies so Katrina wouldn’t favor our class over theirs.
And the war was on…
For the month of January and February, we each brought decadent treats to our respective classes, attempting to bribe Katrina into declaring our class her favorite. Being the sweet-toothed deviant she is, Katrina pitted us against each other via Facebook and the Cupcake Wars accelerated. (Of course, none of us are complaining as we all got to eat cupcakes, cookies, brownies and treats for two months.)
But my class ended two weeks before the Tuesday night class. So I had one last campaign to win the Cupcake Wars. It didn’t take long to marry the idea of booze with cupcakes–two favorites of many writers.
I slaved to create and bake five batches of drunken cupcake. I succeeded in creating five amazing recipes:
- Fuzzy Navel Cupcakes
- Kahula and Cream Cupcakes
- Strawberry Daiquiri Cupcakes
- Jell-O Shot Cupcakes
- Rum and Coke Cupcakes
I’ll be adding the recipes here along with photos. Because I knew we’d want to taste test each cupcake, I made several mini cupcakes and only a handful of the larger sized cupcakes. Just adjust your baking time for the different sizes.
Wave the White Flag
Before leaving for work on my last Wednesday class, I posted photos of the boozy cupcakes on my Facebook page. I barely had time to grab the cupcakes and run to class after work. When I arrived, everyone ooohed and aaaahed over the presentation and started eating. All of the sudden, I noticed a few dear friends at the door, waving tiny white flags.
Some representatives from the Tuesday night class–including my awesome friends Erin Gross and Rick Flynn–came all the way across town to concede the Cupcake Wars. They waved little white flags and named me the Cupcake Queen. I was flattered, humbled and laughing at their unique approach to a good-natured war. Only writers could take such a little prompt and create such fun drama.
So I’ll put a win in my column for my baking skills. But I give all credit to my “rivals” for creating a story from air.
Wait Times
“Our next available operator will be with you shortly. Your wait time is less than four minutes.
”
I love the automated messages that tell me how long I have to wait. I don’t even mind if they say I have to wait ten minutes. At least I know.
No one likes to wait without a prescribed time limit. Yet, again and again, we find ourselves learning the same lesson from a new facet.
Writing is made up of waiting sessions
As a writer, I should be well-practiced at waiting. Just one book features dozens of waiting sessions:
- Waiting for the plot to set up like Jell-o, no longer sloshing over the sides but sitting firmly in its place.
- Waiting for your word count to accumulate past 500 words, 5,000 words, 50,000 words.
- Waiting to reread your work, knowing it is both far better and far worse than you remember.
- Waiting for the perfect revelation to spackle that plot hole or properly motive your flim-flam antagonist.
- Waiting for your beta readers to let you know what they thought.
- Waiting to gulp down the bitter syrup of truth and apply the plentiful changes your partners suggested.
- Waiting to hear from the agent—hoping for the best but resolved to gain useful knowledge either way.
- Waiting to find out if this book is the “one” or if you need to start back at square one.
Waiting is a symptom of life
But some waits are harder than others. Some waits cement you to the minute, refusing let time tick by in its proper clippity-clop manner. It screeches and drags like an anchor scrapping across gravel. These waits seem longer, harder, crueler.
- Waiting to see your baby’s fingers and toes in real life and hear that blessed scream, indicating that everything will be okay.
Waiting to hear that your loved one has finally left this world, shrugging off the worldly pain like a wool coat.
Waiting to hear if you got the job out of state.
Waiting to see if your house sells or if you should investigate bankruptcy paperwork instead.
Waiting to hear if the biopsy is clear.
There is a lesson in each wait. And it is seldom the same lesson each time. I like to delude myself into thinking that if I puzzle out the lesson fast enough, the wait will end—the cheesy treat at the end of the maze. But the wait can’t be shortcut, condensed, boiled down or quartered. It takes up the space it was allotted and we either move around it, carrying on with the rest of our non-waiting lives or we sit down and stare at the wait.
Either way we wait…
And wait…
And wait…
What are you waiting on?
The Cool Kid’s Table
If you attend any sort of writer’s conference or workshop, you can consider yourself wildly successful if you walk away with one or two new friends. These fellow writers can become cherished critique partners, a sounding board, a cheerleader or a best friend over time, as you share works in progress.
When I attended the Midwest Writer’s Workshop in July of 2011 at Ball State, I hit the jackpot. I already brought my fabulous local critique partner, Jeanne Estridge, with me. We made networking one of our top goals, along with our agent pitches and full roster of classes. Within a few hours of the first day, we had assembled a nice size group of quirky friends to go out for drinks.
(Twitter was instrumental in finding other tech-savvy writers in a crowded conference. Check out #mww11 for our witty running commentary of the conference.)
As we proceeded through the weekend, we added a few other oddball friends and a few fell away. In the end, we pushed two tables together for the ending banquet and immediately created a private Facebook group of about 12 of us called the Cool Kids Table.
A free-writing exercise Jeanne wrote spurred the name and we all agreed we felt lucky to have found so many simpatico writers in a mass of strangers. Our personalities and writing styles were varied, as were our locations. One writes steam punk, another surreal short stories. One won a poetry contest while most of us got manuscript requests.
Since leaving the conference, we have all logged onto our Facebook group, for critique swaps, writing advice and pep talks. We console each other when the agent passes on the manuscript and light a fire under the butt of the stragglers. But mainly, we keep writing.
I look forward to sitting at the Cool Kid’s Table as long as they’ll have me. And if you ever attend the Midwest Writer’s Workshop, you should see us there. We’ll be the ones getting rowdy and practicing our autographs.
I’m a big fan of private groups on Facebook and belong to quite a few. Do you use Facebook groups for anything interesting?
Currently: Month of May
I stole this meme from A Peek at Karen’s World, a great writing blog. I love how we share many of the same answers. Here’s what I’m into for May:
Current Book
Stuff that Christians Like by Jon Acuff (again) for BookLinks
My own book, Dismantling Spider Webs, on my Nook, before I hand it over to the BookLink girls
Left Neglected by Lisa Genova (I loved Still Alice!)
Current Album
Sigh No More, Mumford & Sons
Current Shame-Inducing Guilty Pleasure
The Stumble button. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Current Drink
Current Songs
“Dog Days are Over”, Florence and the Machine
“Hannah”, Freelance Whales
Current Wish-List
Confidence that I am supposed to be writing and that my work is not drivel.
Current Needs
Sun therapy
A decision
Current Triumph
I finished Zone Trippers on Monday and I am handing out Dismantling Spider Webs at the end of this month. Sharing my work is a big hurdle for me! So is typing “The End.”
Current Favorite Film
I saw Water for Elephants in the theater opening weekend. Gorgeous! I am still trying to see Inception and The Social Network. I am so behind the times.
Current TV Show
Big Bang Theory, which I always love. Better With You is one of my new favorites.
Current Celebrity Crush
Nathan Fillion, who needs to play the lead in my current book, so my friend Laurel can meet and marry him. (Isn’t this
t-shirt awesome?)
Current Indulgence
Copious amounts of Jelly Belly jelly beans, especially pomegranate and honey ones.
Current Outfit
Gardening pants, t-shirt and cardigan sweater. I can’t wait for sundress days!
Current Banes of My Existence
Osteoarthritis and a torn rotator cuff. Oh joy!
Current Excitement
The sun is currently shining! First time in weeks and the only day for the foreseeable future.
Current Mood
Still firmly mired in winter depression, so I am going outside to play!
Current Picture
Family portraits and new head shots are being taken next week by my awesome friend, Dawn Alicea. The awesome part about having friends who are photographers is that my kids are always their models. And almost all of my friends are photographers!
So what are you currently into?
A to Z Recap
I heard about the A to Z Blogging Challenge about a week before it launched. It was the worst time for me to participate because:
- I was finishing large scale revisions to my work in progress, Zone Trippers
- I had to buy a new car which required research, spreadsheets and boat loads of money
- I had to put on an elaborate Harry Potter birthday party for my son, and
- My knuckles were swollen 3x their normal size
But I jumped in with both feet and didn’t miss a day!
What I Learned
- The key to success for me is public motivation. I never would have blogged 26 times in a month if I hadn’t publicly promised.
- I am capable of writing 500-600 words of copy a day ready for immediate consumption.
- I don’t have that much to say.
- My most popular blog posts were: Must Reads, Editing, Sexy, Cry and Doubt.
- I didn’t get to visit every one of the 1,200+ blogs that participated. But I did add several new blogs to my RSS feed.
- Finding something to say in the Comments section is harder than I thought. I don’t blame anyone who doesn’t comment.
- I will never give up my RSS feed. Mostly I followed the #atozchallenge hashtag on Twitter but I would conservatively guess that only 1/10th of the bloggers used Twitter regularly.
- Once again, I wish people understood that readability is important. Use headers, subheads, bullet points, etc. Large blocks of text are hard to read.
- My Mom read every day and often called me to see what the blog post was going to be about.
Takeaway
Gimmicks are my thing. NaNoWriMo, A to Z Blogging Challenge, the 3 Day Novel…. these things surround me with cheerleaders and accountability, which guarantees I will succeed.
I learned a lot and found some new friends. I still have a hard time seeing the automatic connection between blogging and growing a platform for a fiction book. So many bloggers write about the process of writing, which is interesting to me.. as a writer.
But as a reader, I just want to know more about the author’s world, their insight or occasionally their process. I am unsure how or if blogging will fit into my fiction writing.
What do you like to read in a blog written by a fiction writer?
Z is for Zone Trippers
Novel Synopsis
Owen MacIntyre’s daughter is missing but he can’t just file a missing person’s report—Eve is a first generation zone tripper. While her body is safe at home, host to a revolving door of other zone trippers; her soul skips into other infected trippers all over the world.
Or at least, her soul had been tripping. Now it’s complete radio silence. There has been no word from Eve since she tripped out of a dying woman who was only a train stop away from her waiting father. And the odds are falling fast. Suicide rates are sky high for zone trippers, a tasteless reality show debases victims on international television and a zone tripping serial killer calls himself the Infinity Killer.
Is a father’s love enough to achieve the impossible? Or is he too late?
I typically discover a new novel idea in August, which gives me three months of incubation before I write the first draft in November. In those few months, I become intimate with my characters, I plan a complete outline and I refine the story.
In 2010, I was in the middle of outlining the story I planned to write when I went to dinner with one of my NaNo friends. I shared an inkling of an idea I had with Amy, bemoaning the fact that it had an element of science fiction–which is not my style.
Amy, who does enjoy science fiction, encouraged me to ponder the idea a bit more. After our dinner, I did think about the plot–and overnight it all clicked into place. The whole world existed in my mind in an instant. With one domino tipped, I had to create all the benefits and consequences for my new disease.
It’s my favorite part of the writing process–the moment I discover the story I am telling myself.
The first draft was rougher than usual because I was still outlining as I was writing. But I also lost in the story.
This week I will complete a big revision round, moving the book one step closer to finished. I feel anxious to finish because 1.) I am pitching the novel in July at a conference and 2.) I expect my next novel idea to appear in August.
How do your novel ideas come to you?
Y is for YouTube
For this second to last day of the A to Z Challenge, I have created my Top 5 Favorite YouTube Videos. Enjoy!
Total Eclipse of the Heart -Literal Version
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lj-x9ygQEGAThis song will always remind me of middle school slow dances and its accompanying drama. I do remember seeing the video back then but since videos were new to us, it just seemed odd–not particularly over the top. This play-by-play literal version always brings tears to my eyes from laughter.
Mullet with Headlights…
Common Craft’s Zombies In Plain English
Common Craft’s In Plain English series is brilliant. With a white board and paper cut outs, they can describe any technological term with humor and ease. Their Zombie instructional was off their usual topic but utterly brilliant. Since I don’t live near a Costco, I am doomed.
Buffy and Edward
I love Buffy. And I understand the appeal of Twilight, even if its is horribly written. But it was obvious that if Buffy and Edward met, Buffy would certainly have the upper hand. This mashup is brilliant in its juxtaposition of the two series. Buffy win!
Two Dick Pianists
I saw this joke performed at a talent show with one boy. The fact that two men play the piano with their…ummmm… maleness, makes it even funnier.
Equality Now
Joss is my favorite writer of all time and in this video, he accepted an award at Equality Now, his charity for equal rights. Once you get past Meryl, Joss gives a brilliant speech about why he writes strong women characters.
Bonus Video: Evoluti0n of Dance
An oldie but a goodie, this is what YouTube is meant for. I still smile every time I see this video.
What’s your favorite video?
X is for uXorious
I got a Word a Day calendar in 1995, my first year in a corporate office. On August 23rd, I turned to a word I had never heard.
Uxorious, adjective: excessively devoted to your wife
On February 19th, 1994, it turned out I had married a man who can only be described as uxorious.
As soon as I meet one of Mark’s co-workers or golfing buddies, I am always told, “Wow! Your husband really loves you. I have never heard him say a bad thing about you.”
His friends pick on him because he always answers the phone, “Hey gorgeous.” This has been embarrassing the handful of times that it wasn’t actually me on the phone, but instead one of his bosses, who has a similar phone number.
Saint Mark
In the 17 years we have been married, he has been a wonderful provider, an amazing father, an avid supporter of my writing career and a source of security. He is ethical to a fault and over the top romantic, with a bone dry sense of humor. He is also the only person in the world who could STAY married to me.
Of course, he has his flaws. He is human after all, even though most of our family calls him “Saint Mark.” But just as he doesn’t catalog my faults and flaws to his associates, I don’t share his. Pointing out each others shortcomings in a public forum doesn’t inspire one to change…or to feel loved. But being bolstered by both public and private adoration has certainly inspired me to try to be a wife worth of his affections.
I wonder what the word is for “excessively devoted to one’s husband”?