Category Archive

This is the only cookie recipe I’ve ever committed to memory. These are pretty much the best rolled cookies on the planet. Just ask Barkis.

• 1-1/2 cups pure unsalted butter at room temp
• 1-1/2 cups confectioners sugar
• 1 egg
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 3 cups flour

(You can add optional flavorings like lavender, almond oil, lemon extract, etc.)

Cream the butter together with the sugar until light and fluffy. Add vanilla, then salt and flour. Roll and cut. Don’t make these too thin, because they’re very tender and will break (see above). Make them nice and thick. Lay on ungreased baking sheets and bake at 325F for about 10 minutes, just until they start turning brown at the edges.

Icing: Make a glaze of confectioners sugar mixed with an egg white. Sprinkle on colored sugar.

Snowfall at Willow Lake is available in unabridged and abridged audio format from Brilliance. You can even download a copy here. Where do you listen to books on audio? In the car? On the treadmills? While walking the dog? Gardening? Shoveling snow?

The abridged edition doesn’t have the recipes, so here’s a quick peek at one:

Gougeres

These delicate puff pastries originated in France, and are traditionally served this time of year, with champagne–dry, not brut.

• 1 cup water
• 1 stick unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 cup flour
• 4 large eggs
• 1 1/2 cups coarsely grated Gruyere cheese

Preheat oven to 375 degrees F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the water, butter and salt in a saucepan and bring to a boil, then reduce heat to moderate. Add flour all at once and beat with a wooden spoon until the mixture pulls away from side of pan.

Transfer mixture–known as pate a choux–to a bowl and use an electric mixer to beat in the eggs, one at a time. If the batter is too stiff, add another egg.

Stir the Gruyere into the pate a choux and drop by tablespoons about one inch apart on the baking sheet. Bake for about twenty-five minutes, or until golden brown. Serve warm.

From the Wiggs family right-brained recipe file. No cookie cutters required!

Christmas Morning Plum Bread

2 c. self-rising flour

I have a tart pan! I love that I have a tart pan! Here’s a recipe I adapted from Real Simple Magazine.  

1/2 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 cup sugar

1 egg

1 cup flour
2 Bosc pears, peeled and sliced

1 1/2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

1-1/2 tablespoons demerara or turbinado sugar (plain white will work, too)
1/2 cup apricot jam
1 tablespoon lemon juice

Heat oven to 350° F. Spray a fluted tart pan with nonstick spray. Cream the butter and 1/2 cup sugar Add the egg, and beat until incorporated. Gradually add the flour and baking powder until fully incorporated. Press the dough into the pan with floured fingers to form an even crust. Arrange the pear halves, top to bottom, cut-side down. Combine cinnamon and demerara (coarse-grained) sugar and sprinkle over tart. Bake until the crust is golden brown, about 45 minutes. While the tart is cooling, warm the apricot jam and lemon juice in a small saucepan over low heat until melted. Brush gently over the entire tart. Serve at room temperature.

Hooray for Jenny Majesky and the Sky River Bakery! The star of The Winter Lodge is celebrating today. This book just made the Publishers Weekly list of “Best Books of the Year.”

“Complicated, flesh-and-blood characters inhabit Wiggs’s idyllic but identifiable Lakeshore Chronicles, weaving a refreshingly honest smalltown tapestry of romance, domestic drama, mystery and generations-old Polish recipes.” (November 5, 2007)

In celebration, I think I’ll bake something. These cookies only use one pan, and you don’t even have to get out the mixer. I am raising my cup of tea in the direction of Manhattan today. Thanks, PW!

No Brainer Cookies:
2 tablespoons butter
2 eggs
1 1/2 cups brown sugar
5 Tablespoons flour
1/8 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 cup chopped nuts
confectioners sugar

Melt butter in square baking pan over low heat. Beat eggs slightly. Combine sugar, flour, soda and nuts. Stir into beaten eggs and vanilla. Pour mixture over butter. Do not stir. Bake at 350 degrees for 20 minutes or until center is set. Invert pan onto rack. Cut into squares and dust with confectioners sugar.

(optional - stir in things you like, such as chocolate, white chocolate or butterscotch chips, dried fruit, toffee chips or M&Ms)

For a long time now I have tried simply to write the best I can. Sometimes I have good luck and write better than I can.

–Ernest Hemingway

I nearly forgot a career milestone this month. It’s the tenth anniversary of my first book with Mira Books, my current publisher. The Lightkeeper was a seaswept, Beauty-and-the-Beast-style romantic epic that takes place on the Washington coast in the 1870s. The setting is literally the ends of the earth, on the Long Beach peninsula at the mouth of the Columbia River, an area notorious for raging seas and terrible shipwrecks. The original title of this book was The Edge of Forever, a title I still love (and a tribute to the Star Trek episode “City on the Edge of Forever”), but The Lightkeeper is probably stronger and definitely more straightforward.

The Cape Disappointment lighthouse still stands. When we visit this area, we love to stay at the dog-friendly Lighthouse (where else?) or the Klipsan Beach Cottages. A walk through Oysterville is a trip back through time. Every time I go there, I feel like writing stories misted in spindrift. It’s a place where I find myself writing better than I can.

This book has one blooper that I know of–there’s no way the characters can be drinking marionberry cordial, since marionberries weren’t introduced until the 1950s. Thanks to alert readers, that will be corrected in future reprints.

Happy 10-year anniversary to me and Mira Books!

Last January, I got to spend a weekend with one of my favorite people, author Dorothy Allison. Other than getting the guest house all freshened up for her, I had only light duties, which included fixing Shrimp & Grits for a girls’ dinner party. Dorothy is from South Carolina (remember, her watershed novel is BASTARD OUT OF CAROLINA), so I wanted to make something from her home state. Now, I had never even heard of Shrimp & Grits until last November, when I visited another much-beloved Southern author, Mary Alice Monroe, and her RWA chapter, for a writing retreat. They gave me Shrimp & Grits to eat and I haven’t been the same since. I even brought home some authentic stone-ground Southern-grown hominy grits.

My other duty: Write an introduction for Dorothy and her talk. I didn’t know where to start. Love this woman. Love her books. Her writing speaks for itself:

“I wear my skin as thinly as I have to, armor myself only as much as seems absolutely necessary. I try to live naked in the world, unashamed even under attack, unafraid even though I know how much there is to fear….I tell myself that life is the long struggle to understand and love fully. That to keep faith with those who have literally saved my life and made it possible for me to imagine more than survival, I have to try constantly to understand more, love more fully, go more naked in order to make others as safe as I myself want to be. I want to live past my own death, as my mother does, in what I have made possible for others–my sisters, my son, my lover, my community–the people I believe in absolutely, men and women whom death does not stop, who honor the truth of each other’s stories.” –An excerpt from Skin: Talking about Sex, Class and Literature by Dorothy Allison

Could she be any more honest and brave? Dorothy’s lecture topic for Field’s End was “Scaring the Horses: Writing Those Big Mean Stories.”

Dorothy’s bio reads like one of her novels, only with a happier ending. Born to a fifteen-year-old unwed mother who quit the seventh grade to work as a waitress, Dorothy learned the power and perils of storytelling at a young age. She recalls “hiding out under the porch” and listening to her aunts tell stories, and entering a library or bookstore “with a sense of desperate passion.” Books were her escape from the world. She told Salon Magazine, “To find a way out of the world as I saw it, I read science fiction. To sustain my rage and hope, I read poetry and mainstream novels with female heroines. And I read books by Southerners for ammunition to use against Yankees who would treat me mean.”

The library has long been important to Dorothy. “My most profound library memory was the shock I got after we moved to central Florida and I went to the school library there. I was thirteen and had gotten used to the South Carolina school libraries which were pitiful—full of biographies of generals and judges but not much else. The central Florida Library was enormous and had a world of books I could borrow—novels, poetry and theologies, history books, and my favorite section of the Dewey Decimal system—with all those books on the occult. I tried to check out everything—which earned me a quick note from the librarian to my mama asking if she knew what I was reading. ‘Did I have permission to read those books?’ ‘Let her read anything she wants,’ my mama told the lady. But it took a signed letter to get me the access I wanted.

“I think I scared most librarians – because I wanted to read the books they thought I should not read—the grown-up fiction and those plays by Tennessee Williams and Carson McCullers. But the librarian I worked for when I was in my junior and senior years was a marvel. Mrs. James was fearless and just assumed all young women were like her and wanted to read everything. She was the one who told me about inter-library loan. Suddenly I wasn’t just stuck with what was in the Maynard Evans High School Library. I could request books from other High Schools or even the main library downtown.

“By the time I got to the eleventh grade, I had pretty much exhausted the new books, but Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty got me an after-school job at the school library where I got to record and accession all the new books. That meant I got to read them first. I am still grateful to Lyndon Johnson, and always will be. He may be known to everyone else for his role in the Viet Nam war, but to me he will always be the man who helped me save money for college and made it possible for me to first read the collected poems of Muriel Rukyeser.”

For Dorothy, the library was “the secret world where I could go hide and fall out of this world and into that other one where anything was possible. It had solid wooden tables, sturdy chairs, carpets and air conditioning. If I could have, I would have moved in and lived there. As it was, it was my home away from home—a refuge and a promise. I used to sit on the floor and lean against the bookcases, lean back and dream about having my own place some day—a place where books would be stacked just as high—novels and anthologies and blank books in which I could write my own poems. The library made me think all that was possible, and it was.

“I think the best thing about the library is and was how it always felt to me—not just that it was the repository of what I loved—books themselves—but that it was a place in which a reverence for the word was implicit. Libraries have always seemed to me temples of wisdom—places where study and quiet concentration were honored, and where wanting to read was admired, not held in contempt. I was the child of a truck driver and a waitress, a girl who lived in a claustrophobic house where both the television and the radio were playing loud all the time. The only books in our house—other than the few that were my own—were the big illustrated Bible and my mama’s collection of Mickey Spillane and Ross MacDonald. It worried my family that I tended to hide in a corner and read so much. I was constantly being told to ‘put down that book and go out and play’. But at the library, no one interrupted me, or if they did, they did it softly and with respect. At the library, reading was holy—which is how it felt to me, how it still feels to me.

“In my house now, I limit my son’s access to computer and video games, but the house rule on books is simple. If he wants to read it, we will try to find it. And we not only go to the library frequently, we donate books to our local libraries all the time. I want the children in my county to have what I always wanted—new novels on the shelves waiting to be read. It’s just lucky that now publishers actually send me many of them, so that I, in turn, can pass them on.”

The Greenville, South Carolina native describes herself as a Southern novelist, feminist, confirmed flirt, femme, expatriate rebel, and born-again Californian. In a 1999 Salon interview, Dorothy says, “I was born to a very poor, violent family where most of my focus was purely on survival, and my sense of self as a lesbian grew along with my sense of myself as a raped child, a poor white Southerner and an embattled female. I was Violet Leduc’s Le Batard much more than I was Le Amazon, that creation of upper-class Natalie Barney. People tell me that class is no longer the defining factor it was when I was a girl, but I find that impossible to fully accept. Class is always a defining factor when you are the child one step down from everyone else.”

At the age of thirteen, she “…was always calculating how to not kill myself or how not to let myself be killed. That tends to stringently shape one’s imagination. I did not plan to fill up a hope chest and marry some good old boy and make babies….I was a smart, desperate teenage girl trying to figure out how to not be dismissed out of hand for who I was. I wanted to go to college, not become another waitress or factory worker or laundry person or counter-help woman like all the other women I knew. Everywhere I looked I saw a world that held people like me in contempt.”

After winning a National Merit Scholarship, Allison attended college and went on to study anthropology at the New School for Social Research. But storytelling was in her bones, and that, combined with an awakening feminist spirit, informs and inspires her award-winning work. For Dorothy, feminism “…was like opening your eyes under water. It hurt, but suddenly everything that had been dark and mysterious became visible and open to change.” The author believes her first book, The Women Who Hate Me, (1983) “wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t gotten over my own prejudices, and started talking to my mother and sisters again.”

Her literary influences are surprising. One was Flannery O’Connor — “that astonishing, brave visionary who told hard truths in a human voice — an outsider holding a whole society up to a polished mirror. She was as ruthless as one of her own characters, and I loved her with my whole heart…If I set aside Flannery O’Connor, I would have to say that science fiction made me who I am today. I spent my childhood buried in those books. Every science-fiction novel I fell into as a child…widened my imagination about what was possible for me in the world. There were those perfectly horrible/wonderful stories about barbarian swordswomen who were always falling in love with demons, and there were the Telzey stories and the Witch World books and countless brave and wonderful novels told from inside the imaginations of ‘special’ young girls….On another world, in a strange time and place, all categories were reshuffled and made over.”

Dorothy’s novel, Bastard Out of Carolina (1992), skyrocketed her to fame, boosted by a full page in the New York Times Book Review which proclaimed the novel “as close to flawless as any reader could ask for,” lauding the author’s “perfect ear for speech and its natural rhythms.” The Boston Globe her “one of the finest writers of her generation.” The novel rose to the top of national best seller lists and has been translated into more than a dozen languages. It was adapted and made into an award-winning and controversial movie, directed by Angelica Huston.

“In my family,” Allison says, “…we all commit some unforgivable sin and then spend the rest of our lives trying to redeem it in some fashion. And the romance of self-destruction: I truly do not know why some of us can resist it and some of us can’t, why some of us kill our children and some of us try to send them whole into the world.”

Dorothy serves on the boards of PEN International, the National Coalition Against Censorship and Feminists for Free Expression, and the advisory board of the James Tiptree Jr. Memorial Award, presented annually to a science fiction or fantasy work that explores and expands on contemporary ideas of gender.

Her advice to writers is succinct: “You learn to live with uncertainty and poverty if you are going to be a writer. I’m still very blunt: If you want to be a writer, get a day job. The fact that I have actually been able to make a living at it is astonishing. I know so many great writers who can’t and, oh, it is not about justice. I am trying to carry it off with grace and a sense of humor.

“Understand me,” she writes. “What I am here for is to tell you stories you may not want to hear….And to scare hell out of you now and then. I was raised Baptist, I know how to do that.”

Some of Dorothy Allison’s Favorite Books

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown.

Sula by Toni Morrison – “I remember…how this great grinding noise went through my brain. Of course, I thought.”

Member of the Wedding by Carson McCullers.

My Antonia by Willa Cather.

The Persian Boy, Fire From Heaven and The Friendly Young Ladies by Mary Renault.

Odd Girl Out and Beebo Brinker by Ann Bannon.

Patience and Sarah by Isabel Miller.

The Female Man by Joanna Russ.

The Life of Poetry by Muriel Rukyeser.

I’ve been harvesting them for weeks! It’s always a feat in this part of the world to get them to ripen after Labor Day. This year I used plants from the farmer’s market, bred for the Northwest.

Here’s what to do with too many tomatoes. Put them all in a deep pan. You can cut them up or keep them whole. No need to peel. Saute them in olive oil with some garlic, salt, pepper and fresh herbs like basil, oregano, thyme and parsley. Put a tight-fitting lid on the pot and cook them very slowly until they’re soft. Let the whole mess cool and put into small freezer containers or zip lock bags and freeze. And there you go. Fresh tomatoes to use in soups and sauces all winter long. Enjoy!

…Make LEMONADE CAKE.*

I put two recipes on my web site this summer, along with the promo for my August book, Dockside:

The small Catskills town of Avalon, New York, on the shores of Willow Lake, is what I think of as a “Velveteen Rabbit” of a place. It has become real because we love it there. Thanks to everyone who has visited my fictional town in the Lakeshore Chronicles. Dockside is a story for everyone who’s ever dreamed of making a life at an idyllic lakeside inn. Researching this book, I met so many innkeepers who shared not only their passion for hospitality, but some pretty amazing innkeeping secrets as well.

Each section of the book is introduced by a snippet about the Inn at Willow Lake, followed by a hospitality hint from a working innkeeper. They’re little grace notes, the sort that make a guest’s stay just a little sweeter. But the real sweetness comes from the unexpected romance of single dad Greg Bellamy, and the town’s former mayor, Nina Romano. In fact, expecting the unexpected is a major theme in this book.

News

• Thanks to all for asking about Just Breathe, originally scheduled to be published in 2006. It is now tentatively slated for September 2008, and I promise, it is worth the wait!
• By popular request, I’ve added a link to the recipes from my books. Finally! Click here: http://www.susanwiggs.com/recipes.shtml
• As always, you’re invited to join in at the message board. If you have a question, ask it there, and I promise to respond right away. Since it’s a public forum, pride compels me to be prompt so I don’t look like a slacker.
• Also, please check out “The View From Here” (Themed photo shows, including   Barkis the Wonder Puppy, at www.susanwiggs.shutterfly.com).
• My local bookstore, Eagle Harbor Book Company, will send autographed copies of my books anywhere you want, personalized however you like. Check it out here: Eagle Harbor Book Company.
• You can get a Printable List of my books, which includes related books and series by clicking this link: Printable List.
• You can also subscribe to my occasional newsletter by sending a blank e-mail to Words4Women-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.
• Check out the most mysterious site on the Web at www.purpleamoeba.com.
• And below, the promised recipes. Enjoy!

Happy Reading,

Susan Wiggs

*Note: I couldn’t make up my mind which recipe to post here, so I’m giving you two. Please, try them both. They’re unbelievably delicious:

LEMONADE CAKE

• 6 oz. can frozen lemonade concentrate
• 1 pkg. lemon cake mix, without pudding
• 3/4 c. sugar
• Small package lemon-flavored instant pudding
• 3/4 c. water
• 4 eggs
• 3/4 c. cooking oil

Mix lemonade concentrate with sugar and stir well. Mix the remaining ingredients and beat with electric mixer for 3 minutes. Bake in greased and floured 9×13 pan for about 35 minutes or until done when tested. While cake is still hot poke holes all over cake with large fork and pour lemonade glaze (1T lemon juice + 1 cup powdered sugar) over top. Leave in pan until cool. Dust with powdered sugar. If you’re feeling artistic, lay a stencil on the cake and then dust with the sugar to make a pattern.

ICEBOX LEMONADE CAKE

• 1 prepared angel food cake
• 1 quart vanilla ice cream
• 1 6-ounce can frozen lemonade (keep this semi-frozen–slushy)
• 1 small carton Cool Whip, flavored with ½ tsp. lemon extract
• grated lemon peel, for garnish

Slice cake cross-ways into three even layers. Soften ice cream just enough to thoroughly fold in the lemonade. Spread the bottom layer of the cake with ice cream. Add the second layer, spread with the remaining ice cream. Add third layer and spread entire cake with the Cool Whip. Freeze cake in the freezer. Take cake out of the freezer about half an hour before serving time. Garnish with grated lemon peel.

“Wiggs’s uncomplicated stories are rich with life lessons, nod-along moments and characters with whom readers can easily relate. Delightful and wise, Wiggs’s latest shines.”

–Publishers Weekly review of Dockside

Everyone on our beach sets off fireworks for the 4th. See a slide show of the festivities here. Also by request, here’s the cake I made for the potluck. It’s semi-original, adapted from something I saw on the Food Network.

Rosemary Olive Oil Cake

• 3 eggs
  2 cups sugar
  1-1/2 cups extra-virgin olive oil 
  1-1/2 cups milk
  1/4 cup triple sec, Cointreau or Grand Marnier
  1/4 cup frozen orange juice concentrate
  3 teaspoons lemon zest
  2 cups flour
  1/2 teaspoon baking soda
  1/2 teaspoon baking powder
  1 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 cup orange or lemon marmalade
  Rosemary sprigs and powdered sugar, for garnish
  Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Oil and flour a bundt pan.
  Beat the eggs, sugar, olive oil, milk, liqueur, orange juice, and lemon zest. Add the dry ingredients, including 1-2 teaspoons chopped rosemary, and beat well. Pour  into bundt pan. Bake for 50 minutes to 1 hour, until it tests done. Place on a rack to cool. Run a knife around the edges and invert on a plate. Warm the marmalade in the microwave and drizzle over the cake. Garnish with rosemary sprigs, sprinkle with powdered sugar.

Top ten reasons I’ve been married for 27 years:

Tall enough to change any lightbulb

Cleans up real good

Beloved by his father-in-law

Likes kids and dogs

Raises money for breast cancer

Good at sports

Comfortable with tools and heavy equipment

When sent to the jeweler’s to pick up a repair, he comes home with a bonus:

Oh, yeah, and he cooks, too:

Recipe: “Tonno al aglio”

Combine one can of good-quality tuna with 3 Tablespoons olive oil, 1 Tablespoon lemon juice, 2 Tablespoons capers and a pinch of red pepper flakes. Serve on endive leaves, garnished with roasted red pepper. Even better if you serve it on Italian pottery.

I have a banner ad! Go look–it’s a first for me. Thanks to my publisher and to Authorbuzz for this very cool gizmo on my web site.

Writing is a solitary pursuit, so it’s important to remember to take time to celebrate. I’m blessed with the best writing buddies in the world, and we’re really good at recognizing the good things when they come along–a first sale, an award, a placement on the bestseller list. Here’s a slide show of the fun side of writing and publishing.

And here’s one of my favorite cakes–an olive oil cake, also known as Ladi Tourta. Bon appetit!

What are the things you celebrate? What cements the good memories in your heart? Chocolate, flowers, champagne, wearing funny clothes, a spa day, shopping for new books, calling your friends and screaming, doing the Snoopy Dance with your sister? I’m always open to new ideas in this department.

I made a fresh peach pie the other day. Most of my pies turn into fruit soup, but the tapioca saved me. Here’s the recipe:                               

Fresh Peach Pie                                                                         

• 4-6 sliced peeled peaches                                          
• 3/4 cup sugar + 1/4 cup brown sugar
• 1/4 cup Minute Tapioca
• 1 Tbsp. lemon juice
• 1 pkg. (15 oz.) ready-to-use refrigerated pie crusts (2 crusts)
• beaten egg white or apricot glaze
• 1 Tbsp. butter or margarine
• milk and coarse sugar to brush on the top

Preheat oven to 400°F. Mix peaches, sugar, tapioca and lemon juice. Let stand 15 minutes.

Lay the bottom crust in a pie plate and brush with beaten egg white or apricot glaze. This will keep the bottom crust from getting soggy. Fill with peaches; dot with butter. Cover with remaining pie crust, brush with milk and sprinkle with coarse sugar; seal and flute edges. Cut slits in top crust to allow steam to escape.

Place a cookie sheet under the pie in the oven to drips. 45 to 50 minutes or until juices form bubbles that burst slowly. Cool and serve plain or with vanilla ice cream.

So I promised the folks on my message board that when the registered members there reached 300, I would post something special, just for them. We hit the magic number on my birthday, so here it is–everything you need to have a fabulous summer: a beach (or a lawn chair will do), a drink, a snack, and my can’t-miss, something-for-everyone list of suggested beach reads, old and new, fiction, nonfiction and food. Enjoy!  

Greetings from the Island

 If once you have slept on an island, you’ll never be quite the same;

You may look as you looked and go by the same old nameYou may hustle about in street and shop you may sit at home and sew,But you’ll see blue water and wheeling gulls wherever your feet may go,You may chat with neighbors of this and that and close to the fire keep,

But you’ll hear ship whistle and lighthouse bell and tides beat through your sleep,

And you won’t know why and you can’t say how such a change upon you came,

But once you have slept on an island you’ll never be quite the same!

–Rachel Field

www.susanwiggs.com

I made a donation to Brenda’s auction. The winning bidder gets a weekend stay in my guest house, where you’ll see I’m not exaggerating about “The View From Here.” I’ll even make you cranberry-orange muffins for breakfast and take you for a boat ride, weather permitting. You can hide away and work on your novel, take a walk on the beach to the day spa or just hang out and do nothing, which is way underrated, if you ask me. So take a look at Brenda’s auction and make a bid on this or other fabulous items. Why? Because she’s raising money to find a cure for juvenile diabetes. I learned quite a bit about Type 2 diabetes (the auction is for Type 1 but everyone can benefit) while writing Lakeside Cottage; the disease touches so many lives. I can’t begin to tell you how important this is, so I’ll let Brenda tell you herself:

Help Brenda Novak make a difference to her son and others suffering from diabetes—shop at her 3^rd Annual On-line Auction, May 1 – May 31^st at www.brendanovak.com where you can bid on over 600 items, many of which can’t be found anywhere else. It’s easy (works like E-Bay), it’s fun, and all the money goes to research. As an added incentive, the person who places the most bids over all will win a $1500 prize package that includes a brand new laptop computer and a digital camera. So bid early and bid often! Here’s just a sample of what you’ll find:

*R/T Airfare for two to Seattle (from any city Alaska Air flies), hotel stay in downtown Bellevue, $100 to spend at the mall, a trip to the day spa and an invitation to Jane Porter’s launch party for her new book, ODD MOM OUT

*Trips and stays to many places, including a two-night stay in NYTimes Bestselling Author Susan Wiggs’s Guest Cottage in the beautiful Pacific Northwest

*Lunch in NYC at the posh Five Points Restaurant with historical romance author Kristina Cook and her agent, Marcy Posner of Sterling Lord Literistic

*The opportunity to be swept away in a limo at the RWA National Conference in Dallas this summer to have dinner at an elegant restaurant with Brava Author Diane Whiteside

*A handmade quilt featuring the autographs of many NYTimes Bestselling authors, including, Meg Cabot, Susan Elizabeth Phillips, Janet Evanovich, Julie Garwood, Jayne Ann Krentz, and Suzanne Brockmann

*Elegant High Tea for Six with NYTimes Bestselling Author Debbie Macomber at the landmark Victorian Rose Tea Room in Port Orchard, WA

*A gourmet dinner with NYTimes Bestselling Author Christine Feehan served in the home of Brenda Novak.

*A Web Site design of up to five pages, including a Flash header element from Stonecreek Media

*A Month’s Worth of Mentoring for any aspiring writer from Bestselling Author Roxanne St. Claire*A Limo Wine Tour for Five with NYTimes Bestselling Romantic Suspense Author Allison Brennan (Napa Valley)

*A designer bookbag stuffed with so many goodies it’s worth nearly $400 from talented author Dianna Love Snell

*Hundreds of gift baskets

*Hundreds of Autographed books

*Critiques and/or lunch/breakfast/tea with agents, editors and multi-published authors

 

*Much, much more!

This week, I fielded the most unusual permission request of my career. My agent called to say a reader has inquired about permission to use a line from The Winter Lodge–on a headstone. Every once in awhile, my publisher gets a request to use text from a book for the usual reasons–to use in a class or excerpt. This request, of course, is a first.

The text? It’s the epitaph from the grave Jenny visits at a key moment in the story: “Step softly. A dream lies buried here.” Ironically, it’s not original so the permission wasn’t needed. I don’t remember where I saw the phrase. Probably wandering around a cemetery, reading headstones, which is not something I do often, but every once in awhile, I find myself in such a place. It’s one of those things that stays in your mind, brief and powerful, so you don’t even have to write it down in order to remember it.

The writer in me is like that, a magpie picking up bright, shiny things that catch her attention, and collecting them. A lot of the “kitchen wisdom” in Jenny’s recipes from THE WINTER LODGE came about in the same way. Wise women–my grandmothers, mother, aunts, friends–all contributed in their way.

Today I’ll think about this reader, who lost someone precious and found a few words to express her sorrow in such an unlikely place.

I love this time of year, because my Inner Irish Girl gets to come out and play. She looks out her window and sees this:

She gets to wear a sweater in the worst shade of green. She eats food in colors not found in nature, drinks beer to match and paints shamrocks on her fingernails. She bakes Skillet Irish Soda Bread, listens to music by the Young Dubliners and invites her friends over to watch Waking Ned Devine and The Commitments.

Also, my Inner Irish Girl gets to tell you about one of her favorite writers and people– Malachy McCourt. I’ve been to many, many writers’ conferences and sat through many a keynote speech. Most of these have been excellent–these are writers, after all. But there’s one talk that stands out in my mind. It was an address to a huge ballroom full of people, mostly restless, socially-awkward writers hungry to hone their craft. It was a speech about the power of story and the deep well inside the writer, the place you go to again and again, seeking those hidden springs, where everything comes from. It was the kind of talk that makes you jump up out of your seat and rush to find a quiet spot, because you can’t wait to get going on your writing. This talk was given at the Maui Writers Conference by Malachy McCourt.

Of all the writers I know (and you’ll meet many of them on this blog, so stay tuned), Malachy has the most unique and varied bio. He’s been everything, including but not limited to: bestselling writer, film actor, columnist, theater actor and the Green Party’s candidate for Governor of New York.

 Malachy is the special luncheon speaker for the one-day, one-of-a-kind conference, “Writing in the Garden of the Gods,” on April 28. Take it from a jaded been-there-done-that writing conference veteran–you don’t want to miss this. And if that doesn’t convince you, just ask your own Inner Irish Girl or Irishman. It’s no blarney.

Pardon me, I have to insert a quick kvell. Just had the nicest 3-way. On the phone, you guys, on the phone. My editor and agent called to let me know The Winter Lodge made it for a third week on the New York Times list and has even climbed several notches. Plus while we were on the phone, my agent (in Manhattan) spied a naked man out her window. Life is good.

I want to go to Istria.

Also Puerto Escondido and someplace in the Bohemian forest where there are castles. And Nantucket. I’m afraid my literary agent will divorce me if I don’t get to Nantucket one of these days. Decisions, decisions.

But here’s the thing. I live in the best place on earth. It’s easy to settle into a comfy inertia and not go anywhere.

Then I remind myself of what happens when you travel–the things you see and the things that happen to you, the surprises you can’t plan for and the experiences you’ll never forget–when you step out into the world.  So okay. I’m up for it.

 How do you choose where you want to travel?

So until I plan that trip to Istria, here’s a recipe for a cake from the region:

Okrugli Vrsak
      Yield: 1 cake

1 1/2 c  butter
      1 lb confectioner’s sugar
      6    eggs
    1/8 tsp salt
      1 tsp vanilla
      1 tsp almond flavor
      1    lemon peel, grated
      4 c  flour
      1 tsp baking powder
           a handful of dried fruits and nuts
 
  Cream butter and sugar; add eggs, one at a time.  Add all  the flavorings and salt.  Add flour and baking powder. Mix only long enough to make it creamy. Add the dried fruits and nuts.  Bake in greased and floured tube pan or loaf pan for 1 hour and 15-25 minutes, or until done, at 325 F.
 
  Source: Mary Aziz
  “Our Favorite Recipes” St. Anthony Croatian Catholic Church
  Typed for you by Karen Mintzias

It’s always an unsettled time when a book I’ve written goes out into the world. Here is this project I’ve created, fussed and fumed over, revised, worried about and wept over–and then, in the months since turning it in to my publisher, virtually forgotten about.

Now, suddenly, this thing I’ve created is back in my face, like an adult child who left home and then boomeranged. I see it when I pass the books section of the grocery or drugstore. I see it featured in USA Today, my Costco circular and, oddly, in a Wal-Mart ad on the same page as meat. I hear it mentioned in a radio ad.

And the reviews! I would love to take the high road and say, “I never read reviews.” In my opinion, any writer who tells you that is lying. How can you not read a review when someone took the time to read your book and actually write something about it? That seems almost rude. (I’ll post later about my theory on bad reviews.) One thing I can tell you is, I don’t go looking for reviews. Because here is Susan’s Secret Sauce of Sanity– When it comes to reviews, your friends will take care of you. If they are truly your friends, they will stay mum if they’ve seen a snarky review, and if they see a good one, they’ll tell you. They’ll send you the link or the clipping or sometimes even the whole magazine.

So far (and remember, this novel is still an infant in the marketplace), reviews have been good. A starred review from Publisher’s Weekly and a Top Pick from RT Book Reviews. I’m a happy camper. I’m not going to go trolling for more.

Ultimately, the book will take on a life of its own. While I was writing it, revising it, endlessly discussing it with my writers’ group, my husband, my girlfriends, my borrowed Doberman, the book wholly belonged to me. Now it’s been released into the wild and it doesn’t belong to me at all anymore. Which is as it should be.

And now, a word from my publisher. They’ve done a way cool thing. They created this dollar-off coupon you can print off and take to the store, so now instead of being $7.99, it’ll only set you back $6.99. You can’t beat that! The one catch is, the coupon is valid for one week only, from January 30 to February 4.

Here’s a link to the coupon. Feel free to pass it on.

http://www.susanwiggs.com/Winter_Lodge_Coupon.pdf