author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

Hello! Happy New Year! Happy new blog post! [Insert ritual self-deprecating quip about not having posted in seventh months, assume appropriate New Year's resolution as read.]

Things I did in 2023:

• Had two new poems published in Eternal Haunted Summer: "Fiat Nox" and "The Curious Incident of the Black Dog of the Night"
• Had a previously published poem designated a Rhysling Award Finalist (but not, ultimately, winner)
• Skated a hell of a lot of roller derby with the BCRD's "Flatirons Phoenixes" (A team) and "Boulder Bolters" (B team)
• Also skated in a mix-up bout in Salt Lake City and was awarded MVP Blocker
• Learned how to cook biryani
• Completed two solo LibriVox audiobooks: Lud-in-the-Mist (Hope Mirrlees), What Dreams May Come (Gertrude Atherton)
• Uploaded a whole bunch of Friday Fictionettes (but not, alas, as many as I should - I'm still behind schedule)

Things I would like to do in 2024:

• All of the above, only moreso; where applicable, on time
• Attend my 30-year high school reunion
• Attend WorldCon in Glasgow
• Blog! Here! Regularly!
• (Maybe make this blog look more attractive? Ye Gods, this post looks like ass)

To those ends, I will:

• Renew my intention to get up on time, that being 7:00, every weekday (thanks, Focusmate!)
• Renew my intention to write every day (and not just my daily freewriting and fictionette work either)
• Renew my passport

That's it. That's the blog post.

There should be another tomorrow. Stay tuned.

Right. Blogging. Wow I'm tired, and it's laaaaaate. But I am trying to get back to this Blogging Every Day thing, so.

As I expected yesterday, today's antigen test came up negative. That makes two tests spaced about 48 hours apart--plus no symptoms for like four days running--which means I'm free to roam about the county. And I did, by golly!

I may have in fact overdone it a little. I feel great, no trouble breathing, no persistent coughing, nothing like that, but... Wow. Tired.

So. What did I do on my first day out and about post-covid? Well...

A bunch of writing! Which, happily, didn't differentiate today from the latter half of my isolation period. As soon as I felt well enough to be upright and do productive things, I did get back into attending one or two co-writing sessions most days, and that resulted in getting a whole bunch of words down on paper and in pixels. Which, if one can swing it (which I can't always, but sometimes I can), is a great comfort and a triumph when one is sick and housebound and demoralized and only able to breathe freely because pseudoephedrine exists.

I mentioned Cat Rambo's writer community yesterday--of all the perks listed there, the co-writing sessions have been what I've found to have the greatest benefit to me personally. They start at particular scheduled times, even the unmoderated ones, and so there is an hour at which I need to be not only in front of my keyboard and working but also in front of my webcam saying hi to other people doing the same. Accountability! It's been very good for me.

(It also resulted in some very nice social time at WorldCon. I got to go have dinner with a co-writing regular one night. Because of all our hours spent together on Zoom, I kept forgetting that this was actually my first time hanging out with her in person.)

So today started at 9 AM with the usual morning co-writing session, and I hit some of my daily tasks there. I managed a bit of another task over lunch, too. And here I am blogging! So I'm feeling pretty virtuous about it all.

I finally had that date with myself at Waffle House, thus fulfilling that weird craving I'd developed during my housebound time. I don't think I've ever had a craving for Waffle House before, not once in my entire life. But something about the combination of this Twitter thread and knowing I wasn't allowed to go created a fierce longing for hashbrowns and coffee. Well, for lunch today, I damn well went to Waffle House #1072, and I had hashbrowns (with sausage and cheese) and coffee. And the waitress was exceedingly friendly and welcoming and complimented me on my facemask bling. And, like I said, I even got a little writing done despite there being neither A/C outlets nor power.

I went to not one but TWO craft group meet-ups. At 11:30 AM there was Casual Crochet in the Park with Andee Graves, an event associated with the Longmont Yarn Shoppe. It will inevitably move back out of the park and into the shop as we move into winter. Not yet, though. The weather today was absolutely gorgeous. Then, at 4:00 PM, there was Wine & Wool Wednesdays at Maverick Fiber Arts in Lafayette. (The "wine" part involves a visit to the bar at the Brewing Market next door. It's not absolutely required. No one will scoff if you get a coffee drink instead. I tend to get this beer.)

I don't think I've ever attended both groups in a single day before, but I was going to do everything, darn it, and see all the people, and work on something like four different projects spread out over three different fiber crafts, and...

Well, no wonder I'm tired. Which is why...

I had a nap! And it was glorious. But then I woke up and realized I hadn't blogged yet, and I wanted to blog, so I figured, let's see if there's just a little more words-on-paper-and-pixels left in me. And there was! Huzzah.

I was going to go on with this blog post and describe all the different knit, crochet, and tatting projects I've got going, but once again, this post is long enough already, so I might as well save it for tomorrow.

You know, at some point, I should make a post that's substantively about actually writing. As opposed to posts like this one, which only mention writing in a glancing sort of way. But, hey, I've got a lot of catching up to do, and there is more in my life, it turns out, than just writing. Hence posts like this one.

Hi again! So it's vaguely more tomorrow-like than otherwise. Not a heck of a lot of writing happened yesterday because of two things that loomed disproportionately large on my radar, both of which I hinted at the other day.

Thing the first: I had to get Space Invader (my Alienware M15 laptop) ready to ship off to Dell's repair depot. AGAIN. Not because their previous repairs didn't hold up beautifully. They did! There have been no unexpected crashes, no soundcard problems, everything's been great. But. The other day, seemingly out of nowhere, the monitor just sort of self-destructed.

Seriously. I was was adjusting the angle of the monitor, lowering it so that it wouldn't dominate my vision during a conversation, when the thing hit an internal obstruction and went CRUNCH and John said "Stop, stop!" and I said "I know!" and I let go of the thing. The frame of the monitor had sprung open in the lower-left corner, and when we shone a flashlight in it, we saw a bunch of screws and a bit of broken-off hardware rolling around loose in the gap.

So this will probably fall under my Accidental Damage Warranty (which can only be invoked once a year), rather than the Premium Service Warranty (which can be invoked any time shit goes wrong) because I think the Dell techs don't quite believe the machine would do this without provocation. Like, dropping it several times (I swear I didn't!) or being less than gentle with my backpack when it's inside (I mean, maybe?). "We don't have a record of such issues with this model," my Dell Support contact said. The techs at the depot will take a look, decide which warranty to charge, and then they'll fix it. And I'll get it back. And hopefully I'll finish out my first year of owning the thing without further incident.

I gotta talk up Dell Support, though. I had finally finished all the backups and data transfers and the deletion of sensitive material, and I was ready to put it in the box (Note: Dell sends you a box with appropriate protective packaging material inside; Asus, last time I checked, does not), when I read the instructions and realized they conflicted with what my Dell Support contact had told me. So I emailed a question in and just hoped he'd get back to me sooner rather than later. In fact, he called me up not five minutes later.

My question was this: "You said I should include the power cable, but the instructions say don't. Which is it?"

His initial answer was as follows: "It's really up to you, but if your laptop's battery is out of juice when the techs need to turn it on, it would be handy to have a compatible cable right there."

I had second thoughts. "OK, but should I include a note that says, 'The visible, cosmetic damage to the power cable is not what I'm invoking my Accidental Damage Warranty about'? Or will they just include that replacement along with the repairs to the monitor as a single invocation of the warranty for this year?"

"Hmm. In that case, don't include the power cable. Let's not confuse anyone. However, when your computer is returned to you, email me requesting a call back, and we'll see whether I can get a replacement power cable approved as a one-time exception."

Well, that would be splendid. See, the plastic sheathing at the end of the cable that plugs into the computer, where it bends a lot, started sort of disintegrating after only about three months. Again, only cosmetic, but a little demoralizing every time I looked at it. If I get a replacement cable out of this, that would be totally sweet.

Thing the second: ...you know what? This post is hella-wow long already. Let's save the Second Thing for tomorrow's blog post, along with the February Fictionette Round-up.

In any case, after doing the two big-but-not-really things and then walking the package over to the nearby drug store for FedEx pickup, I walked a half block further to take myself out to My Ramen & Izakaya for a late lunch of ridiculously self-indulgent proportions. Then I took my overfull belly home to be pleasantly worthless for the rest of the afternoon and evening.

And that's why you're getting this post now rather than yesterday. Ta-da!

Today's special: The December 2021 Friday Fictionette Round-up (meant to have it up last week, but, y'know, see below) and some ill-advised cookery! But first: the state of Chez LeBoeuf-Little.

I posted the full saga to my Patreon, in the free-for-everyone Monday Muse posts that serve as a sort of extra blogging vehicle, but here's the tl;dr gist: I got well and truly exposed to COVID. For reals, yo. The closest people in the chain of contagion to me were all responsible, careful people, but the world is full of people who are irresponsible and careless and also environments where one has no individual control over who breathes breaths with you. Also the world is full of bad luck and shitty circumstances that affect the careful and the careless alike. So I am passing no negative judgment whatsoever upon anyone involved when I say that, for certain, I was in close contact with someone who tested positive shortly thereafter.

I lucked out--all my subsequent tests came up negative. I'm willing to draw the cautious conclusions from this that 1. masks help a lot (I was masked and so were they), and 2. so do vaccines ("Vaccination does significantly reduce transmission from vaccinated breakthrough cases but does not completely eliminate it." -Tara C. Smith, Kent State University epidemiologist) So mask yo'self and get jabbed, why don't you?!

Also: Appropriate COVID testing gives the info needed to make informed choices! I am even more pissed at someone who wasn't involved, that being the person who used to be in one of my social circles, who flounced out of said circle, declaring that she would never get vaccinated, never wear a mask, and never let anyone "stick a swab up [her] nose" (!!!) so it follows that if she'd been the one who came to our gathering infected, none of the rest of us would have known in anywhere near as timely a manner because of her virulent (indeed) anti-testing stance. Anti-TESTING! I just can't even. (She's a parent! Presumably she's had her kids tested for strep throat once or twice! That too involves sticking swabs in orifices! And the swab goes farther down your throat for strep, gag hack arrgh, than it goes up your nostrils for COVID tests! We are past the era of swabbing the frontal lobe via the nostril! I've been tested four times now, and they barely ever reached the bridge of my nose!) But, y'know, that selfish jerk self-selected out of that social circle, so she wasn't there to infect us and obstruct our attempts at contact tracing. So I guess I gotta be grateful to her for being forthright and honest about her anti-social views.

And because the person who came down with symptoms was not a selfish jerk with anti-social views, they 1. got tested and 2. let the rest of us know. (And 3. they had been vaxxed to the max, which--see above--probably helped prevent their passing it along, and certainly helped keep them home and out of the hospital. And they tell me they're recovering well.) John and I got the alert and made the choice to quasi-isolate until PCR tests 5 days after exposure came back negative. So I am grateful for caring, responsible friends, for free-and-easy drive-up PCR testing, that both John and I work from home, and that the various people I had to inform on a last-minute basis that "I can't come in and do the thing, I've been exposed to COVID" were extremely understanding.

Honestly, that it took this long for me to get a confirmed exposure is a glaring neon sign that I'm 1. lucky as hell, and 2. privileged like woah. I am surrounded by responsible people, I can work from home, I do have access to good, free testing and good, affordable masks (McGuckin, y'all - just picked up a couple N95s. Size small). I'm grateful, and I realize things could have gone very, very differently, especially if any of the above weren't true.

Nevertheless, good fortune notwithstanding, there was some aggravation and emotional toll which delayed a few things on the writing front. But yes, at this time, I have released all of the December 2021 Friday Fictionettes. They are as follows:

December 3: "Burning Bright" (ebook, audio) In which supernatural security methods find their failure state, but also get debugged. There are borders for a reason.

December 10: "Symbiosis" (ebook, audio) In which we need each other, though we may not know it. The Field of Gears was off-limits, especially to a sickly half-grown like Laurel.

December 17: "Incognito" (ebook, audio) In which some play-testing happens. "It is said that the Goddess of Mercy walks among us in humble guise, the better to judge the hearts of Her people. Beware, lest She judge you harshly."

December 24: "Across Great Distances" (ebook, audio) In which a secret is betrayed and another is vouchsafed. Mehtai shouldn't have answered. She knew it even then.

The Fictionette Freebie for December 2021 is "Across Great Distances." You can download it if you so choose without any need to part with fiat currency. But if you like it well enough that you'd like to read or listen to something of its general length and weirdness, and by me, every week, and the existing freebie archives going back to August 2015 just aren't enough for you, or maybe you just wanna be one of the cool kids who gets to read/listen the very moment a new fictionette drops--which is darn well gonna be every first-through-fourth Friday from now on, just like it says on the tin, because I'm about to get ALL CAUGHT UP this week--the how-to-do-that info awaits you over here.

Now, at the top of this post I promised you some ill-advised cookery action, and ill-advised cookery action you are gonna get. Because as soon as I got that last negative test result back, I went the hell to McGuckin and I bought a whole bunch of bits and bobs that various home fix-it projects were waiting on. A new multicooker was not on my shopping list, but I've been needing a new multicooker for a while, so when I saw the 8-quart Instant Pot Duo on the end-cap on my way from, oh, split rings and snap hooks, I think it was, to where they keep the acetone... well, reader, I bought it.

And I had this recipe for Dal Makhani waiting for me patiently in a saved browser session, and I hadn't made myself dal of any stripe since the Fagor LUX Multicooker stopped working, so I was super hype for dal. Only I didn't have any whole black gram in the house. All I had was red lentils. So I swapped in red lentils. And, reader, that was a mistake, because black gram takes more time to cook than red lentils do, as I should have figured from seeing it thrown into the same pressure cooker session with red kidney beans. By the time my red beans were soft enough, my lentils were beyond mushy. They had become the broth.

Which, as it turns out, was perfectly tasty and I would do it again. (Although probably not it exactly. Probably I'd let the kidney beans pressure-cook alone for half an hour, then add the red lentils for an additional pressure-cook session.) But before I did it again, I'd try laying in the actual ingredients as called for in the recipe, and actually following the recipe as written. It's not like I can't get all the right ingredients. It's not like India's Grocery isn't right there. I might be heading there this very Friday, actually, because at some point I acquired a packet of frozen shaved beef (thanks, Wild Pastures!) and I know exactly what to do with it.

Oh hey how is it the 30th already? Welp.

No regrets, though. The month has gone more or less to plan. Well, other than my weekends having a tendency to disappear in a puff of roller derby. In my defense, it wasn't just regular practice but also holiday parties and trail skating and all the activities associated with moving into our new practice facility. This past week, we put down the Sport Court and then we taped a track outline and then we were all like, "Well, we know we said no practice Tuesday night because of Thanksgiving but hey, let's skate Tuesday night anyway because NEW FLOOR WHO DIS?" And yes, Tuesday is not a weekend day. What's your point?

Anyways, some writing time was lost here and there, and I am slightly behind on my big ambitious Friday Fictionette Catch-up Project upload schedule. But only a little! There is one, count it, (1) short-short story-like object that should have gone out by now that has not. That is an entirely surmountable bit of slippage. I can soak that. It'll go up and be released this Friday along with the other two that ought to be, and everything will be back on track for a December 17 ALL CAUGHT UP celebration. (A private celebration. That takes place in my head.) And there should be an October 2021 Friday Fictionette Round-up post next week. JUST YOU WAIT.

What else? Well, tonight I am in Steamboat Springs, doing about the same thing I do with all my days except less roller derby, more writing, and a different subset of the Rocky Mountains out my window. To be entirely specific, I am currently sitting at a table in WildPlum Grocer (and coffee shop, and bar, and liquor store) enjoying the writing-at-a-cafe sensation I have so rarely experienced since March of last year. It's also nice to get out of the hotel room. It's mostly comfy and has a nice view, but my poor feet got sick of dangling. The only table or desk set-up in that place is sort of bar-stool, and I am a short person who can't even reach those tall chairs' support bars. And I needed a slight change of scenery from my change of scenery, I guess.

("What are you going to do in Steamboat?" we get asked. "Enjoying the opening week of skiing?" No, we don't ski. "Then... um... what exactly are you doing?" BEING HERE. Shut up.)

More news of note: Before we left Boulder for this little vacation-like activity, I bought a whole bunch of dried fruit and nuts. FRUITCAKE WILL HAPPEN THIS YEAR. And now you know.

Hullo! This blog is not dead. Furthermore, actual writing happened today. On a Wednesday, even! UNHEARD OF. Generally my Tuesdays are epic and my Wednesdays are nonexistent. But this week both Tuesday and Wednesday were productive--and on a human scale, which is much more sustainable.

I've been experimenting with different scheduling brain-hacks, trying to see how best to trick my brain into behaving itself. Today's experiment involved a "done by" rather than "start at" check-list. "Let's see. Task one is my Morning Pages, which I'm in the middle of now" (Morning Pages tends to be where I figure out the shape of my day) "and I should be done by 1:00 PM. Next I have to record the Wednesday show for AINC, which I ought to be able to get done by 3:00 PM. Then the daily freewriting--that usually takes 25 minutes, but let's say done by 4:00 PM..." And so forth.

The unexpected benefit of all this was, although I had an idea that one task's "done by" was really just code for the next task's "start by," if I missed that start-by time by a few minutes, I didn't suddenly feel like I'M LATE I MISSED THE START TIME WHAT'S THE POINT ANYMORE. I knew I could get it done by whatever done-by time I'd intended. If I got it done early, I could futz around with clicky-games for a bit. Or I could futz around with clicky-games while I did the task, so long as I still got it done by the done-by time.

So, basically, we're talking about One Weird Trick to lessen the pressure and anxiety miasma surrounding certain writing tasks. It reminded me of Havi Brooks's "code words" strategy, although perhaps not at the same level of mental role play as the example she gives in the linked blog post. Today it worked. Who knows if it'll work tomorrow--tomorrow I may have a very different brain on--but I'll try it and see.

So, having gotten all my work (give or take a checklist item) done by a reasonable time of the afternoon, I had time to make salsa.

It has been a good year for tomatoes. A very, very good year. Every week, 63rd St. Farm has been sending me home with some five to eight slicing tomatoes and a selection of heirloom tomatoes, saucing tomatoes, and cherry tomatoes. It sort of piles up. And then there's a bit on one of the really pretty heirloom tomatoes that's starting to look iffy if not downright moldy, and that's how you know it's high time to do something with these tomatoes, y'all.

The Conservatory Kitchen Presents: Improv Tomato-culling Salsa

1. Starting with the oldest, worst-looking tomato in the bunch and moving up from there, cut off the bad bits and see what's left. (The aforementioned heirloom with the moldy spot cleaned up surprisingly well!) Put the good bits on the kitchen scale until the kitchen scale says 2 lbs or thereabouts. Take these accumulated good bits, dice 'em and chop 'em and mangle 'em, and stick 'em in a big bowl. (Bigger than that. You need room to stir, OK?)
2. To this add about a quarter pound of diced onion--yeah, that half-an-onion that's sitting around in the crisper drawer (dear Gods, organic yellow onions are HUGE these days), that'll do--and maybe three green onions and five nice-sized garlic cloves and oh, hey, something hot. Five serrano peppers sounds about right. (Serrano peppers are another veggie I've been accumulating.)
3. Spices. Very simple. About a teaspoon dried oregano and about a half teaspoon ground cumin. Fresh ground peppercorns of all colors: black, white, pink. More than that. KEEP GRINDING. Maybe a teaspoon of salt? More? I dunno, the chips you're gonna dip in this mess are gonna be salty already, aren't they?
4. Stir stir stir. Taste. What do you think? Did I forget anything? No, I left out the cilantro on purpose. Can't stand the stuff. More for you, right? Hm. Maybe parsley. Maybe a diced peach if one's rolling around the fruit bowl.
5. Let sit in the fridge until party time. If no parties are in the offing, throw one for yourself. Show yourself a good time. You deserve it.

And there you go. Salsa. By the time I was done, I only had about 15 tomatoes left in the house and maybe 10 serrano peppers. SHUT UP, THAT'S PROGRESS.

Today is the happy day! My story, "Survival, After", is now live on the website of Apex Magazine. The issue it's in debuted some weeks ago for subscribers to read in its entirety, but today my story became available for all and sundry, subscriber or not. You can read it here.

You can also listen to it at that link, too! Or via the page for Apex Podcast Episode #80. I'm thrilled beyond words not only for KT Bryski's brilliant production of the episode, but also for her giving me the opportunity to read the story. This is my first time doing fiction narration outside of my own Friday Fictionette Project--reading fiction on someone else's podcast, how about that?!--and I'm so grateful to be given the chance.

In other writing news, my most-reprinted story and first professional sale, "First Breath," will be reprinted again! But not for a little while yet. I've signed the contract, but the magazine has a lead time of a good handful of episodes. I'll give you more details as we get closer to release date.

And in writing process news.... this week is weird. Last week was weirder. The week before last sucked. Over the years, I have constructed this huge, detail-oriented edifice of rituals and routines in the service of Getting The Work Done, and it has, for the most part, worked--but sometimes, depending on how much avoidance and/or executive dysfunction I'm suffering, that edifice turns into a barrier. Like, "Oh, shit, it's almost 10 AM. I should be writing. But I'm going to have to do nothing BUT write, no distractions, for twenty-five minutes at a time, which sounds like an AWFUL act of penance. And also I need to set up my timesheet, and also before I can get to the Overdue Thing I have to do the Daily Things That Come First, with all the rest of the rigmarole and hoops to jump through, and--hey, how about I just play this stupid clicky game for another half hour? And another half hour after that..." And that's how the whole day goes, for days at a time. And that's what week before last was like.

Don't get me wrong--like I said, the edifice of routine and ritual usually works. It's structure, and I need structure. Without structure, my day tends to float away from me. But sometimes structure is itself the thing that avoidance accretes to, like barnacles on a sunken ship's hull. And when that happens, I can do one of two things: I can try to muscle through somehow, or I can say "to hell with timesheets! To hell with the daily order of operations!" and just, y'know, open the file of the Overdue Thing and start doing it, self-discipline optional.

So my timesheet is still on timeout. The order of operations has returned, sort of, but it's an informal checklist rather than a clock-scheduled list of tasks. And I'm allowed to just drift between the task at hand and the stupid clicky game if I want. Look, when some of the avoidance arises, stupid as it sounds, from "oh, no, getting started on the next writing task means putting away the mindless clicky game for twenty-five whole minutes," it's amazing how much of that avoidance simply evaporates if I give myself permission to keep messing with the mindless clicky game while doing the writing task. Write a few sentences, click a few things, write a few sentences more. Like that.

Like as not, the way it turns out, once I start the writing task, the writing accrues sufficient momentum of its own to make me totally forget about the mindless clicky game after all.

Brains! How do they even brain?! I dun geddit, y'all. But whatever. We work with what we've got, or we don't work at all. And the work has to get done somehow. So here we are.

And now it's time for another bowl of the crock-pot posole that's been happily simmering away since noon, and that has been on my mind ever since tonight's roller derby practice started. I tell you what, you want that happy warm emotional hug of "Somebody loves me!" when you walk in the door after a long and tiring day, you want to get yourself a crock-pot and a recipe for something long-simmering and hearty. It's a really lovely feeling.

If there is a theme to this food-bloggity post, it is Creative Ways to Use Up Foodstuffs That Need Using Up. For instance, I'm a member of the 63rd St. Farm CSA, and I bought the chicken and pork add-ons to add on to my half-share of veggies. And by some accident I cannot account for, I signed up for the large pork add-on rather than the small. And now our household is the site of a perpetual battle to preserve and/or reclaim space in the freezer. And just when I'm getting ahead of things, this week Thursday is the date of the second meat pick-up. And it's not like I naturally cook meat meals every day! I'm 1. married to a vegetarian, and 2. lazy! This sort of thing requires planning!

So. Ways to use up frozen meat. Also other random leftovers cluttering up the kitchen and nearing the end of their shelf-life. CREATIVE THINKING.

The other day I saw the twitter thread about Grape jelly meatballs, which sounded... pretty good, actually. But then I thought, "Hey, what if I used instead that basalmic onion jam in the weird jar that worked so well with that Martha Stewart recipe for filled chicken breasts last month?"

So last night went something like this:

Sweet and Sour Meatballs a la Braswells, with Sambal Oelek

First, because using frozen meatballs bought special for the occasion would have defeated the entire purpose, which was to use up two pounds of ground meat product that was taking up precious space in the freezer, I made some meatballs. I followed this recipe more or less, making the following substitutions:

• The pound of ground pork was actually breakfast sausage, that being what I had.
• The breadcrumbs were plain, not Italian-style.
• I left out the Italian seasoning and Parmesan cheese.
• I added three garlic scapes, about a teaspoon minced fresh ginger, and all but the last couple inches of two green onions.

48 meatballs, 400 degrees, 18 minutes. Go.

Next, I made some sauce. Vaguely inspired by the recipe featured in the Twitter thread linked above, I pulled out my ginormous heirloom cast iron gumbo pot, which does double duty as a dutch oven, and dumped into it...

• 1 can (15 oz.) tomato sauce
• A generous pour (2 tbls?) sambal oelek
• A less generous splash (1 tbl, maybe) of Chinese cooking wine
• And that 11 oz. jar of Braswell's onion jam.

Stir gently to break up the chunks of jam. Medium-high heat on the stovetop until bubbly, then reduce to a simmer. (Why not the crock-pot? Because I was hungry and did not want to wait 3-4 hours.)

Right about now, the meatballs were done in the oven. I pulled them out, dumped them into the sauce, put the lid on, and set a 25-minute timer. With 10 minutes left on the clock, I took a look and decided the sauce was too soupy, so I took the lid off and raised the heat in hopes of it cooking down/thickening up. And added another 10 minutes to the timer.

Around 3 minutes left to go I gave it a stir and discovered the meatballs were sticking to the bottom of the pan and getting charcoal edges, so I took them off the heat and gently stirred everything free and called it done.

They're really good. The sambal oelek made them pretty darn spicy; you could use less if you wanted. The jam made them sweet and sour. The meatballs held their shape well, but they were very soft and tender. I served a heaping helping of them hot with the sauce over some leftover mixed rice, chopping up those last couple inches of green onions for garnish.

Today I had about six of the leftover meatballs, cold and broken up into chunks, on top of the bibim-naengmyeon (cold Korean noodle bowl) I'd already been planning on making, what with needing to use up those pears left over from an attempt at Korean short ribs the other week, and having brought a couple cucumbers home from the grocery to facilitate this. It's all about using up the leftovers.

And that is how you do it, if you're me.

Food content in today's blog post is going to be minimal because I'm in the middle of revisions, and revisions are hard, and I'm going to whine about that.

Also there isn't much to say about the food, beyond that 1. if you're going to substitute oysters for shrimp in this recipe, you probably need to account for the oysters being rather smaller than your average prawn to begin with and then shrinking as you fry them. Which is not to say they weren't delicious. I would happily eat a meal of nothing but those oysters in that fry prep and sauce, noodles optional. But that would be rather labor intensive what with the shucking and all, and I have kimchi plans for the rest of these oysters.

AND ALSO 2. if you are going to put the oyster brine into the dish, you have to subtract an equivalent amount of liquid from the recipe, or else you get a slightly soupier result. Unless you just cook it longer, in which case you might end up with overcooked noodles. One or the other. (Next time I think I'd sub the brine for the 2 tbl water in the cornstarch slurry.)

It was tasty, though. I ate it all. And that's all I have to say about that.

So. Revisions! I'm simultaneously revising two things, a poem and a short story, both of which I want to submit to Nightmare Magazine before their current open submission window closes on Sunday. And the work is going remarkably slowly.

In the case of the poem, it's mainly that I've got an image I am telling a very short story about in verse... and that's pretty much all I know. The rest is the problem of UNLIMITED CHOICE, and I'm having the darndest time deciding anything concrete. So I keep throwing words and phrases at the page, hoping that something will stick. There's a lot of uncertainty here. Today's session felt a bit more successful to the extent that I reduced the amount of uncertainty more than in previous sessions. Hooray. But sometimes poems come easily and sometimes they just suck, and this poem is definitely not an example of the former.

As for the story--ye gods, this story. It's got a major pacing problem. The tension tightens and tightens like a good horror story do, and then all of a sudden we end up at the end without having hit the anticipated turning-point-of-no-return. I've suspected it will take a new scene to fix it, but without any clue what that scene will look like or where it should go. So I've been putting that decision off, or, to put it more generously, laying the groundwork for making that decision, by doing line-level edits to the rest of the story. And it's working! I have a much better idea of what the new scene will look like! It will look like several new scenes.

Did I mention this thing needs to be submitted by Sunday? Argh.

I console myself with the indisputable fact that I have managed to find time and energy for revision sessions four whole days in a row. Four! And each of those sessions has brought non-trivial improvements to the story. So while it's easy to think I've spent all this week circling around the real problem without actually landing--because I'm a writer, right, and writers are by and large very good at talking smack about ourselves, and devaluing our own accomplishments, and catastrophizing about what we perceive as our failures--in truth, I really have been making progress.

But progress is happening so slowly.

Look, I'm going to submit something by Sunday, OK? One poem, one story. But I might keep revising them afterward, right? Because odds are they're going to get rejected so I can submit them again. That's not self-smack-talk! That's just sheer numeric probability, given how prestigious the market is, how few open slots they've got, and the skill and talent and artistry of the authors competing for those slots. Hell, even if I am fortunate enough to make a sale here, there will likely be a revisions phase. So basically, what I'm saying is, deadlines happen but the work continues.

For how long? Until I've decided it's enough, dang it. At which point, back to the reprint rewrite. Woo.

Writing content in this blog post will be minimal. THE OYSTERS HAVE ARRIVED and I'm a little obsessed.

You remember, right? The mail-order oysters I mentioned splurging on? Yeah. They showed up today. And I have successfully shucked and eaten a few of them. Hooray!

There was a little anxiety at first, because I had no idea how to read a timestrip. The Real Oyster Cult FAQ says that if the temp sensor hasn't turned blue, you're cool. Great! So I open up the package, I pull out the two baggies of live oysters (Truro Pearls and Irish Point, 20 each), I find the temp sensor strip at the bottom of the box, I flip it open, and it is all blue. Oh shit! Panic! Needlessly. I was looking at the completely cosmetic faceplate color, rather than the actual temp sensor window--which was still empty and white, indicating that the oysters had spent no appreciable time above 50 degrees. To be fair, making the faceplate the same color as the temperature sensor dye was definitely a choice. Anyway, an email to ROC with a photo of the thing cleared up the whole misunderstanding without delaying my dinner one bit.

And I had been very good. I had put in my time and my wordcount by then. I'd got the beginnings of a new poem, a decent start on the February 19 Friday Fictionette (still a month overdue, but still uploading a new one every Friday or as soon afterward as possible), and real progress on revising the story I intend to submitting to Nightmare Magazine this week. (I've got until Sunday to submit it, so everything's fine.) I'd even done my bunny chores--I gave Holland his daily fresh veg, tidied up his habitat, refilled his various hay containers, and gave him treats.

I'd done my homework, is what I'm saying, so I was free to play with oysters.

They were a lot easier to shuck than I remember from when Dad taught me several years ago. But then they were a lot smaller than gulf south oysters and also a bit pointier around the hinge. I made myself up a lovely little plate with a half dozen on the half-shell, each with a dollop of that fantastic caramelized shallot spread on top, and then a couple pieces of crawfish bread. Crawfish bread is not as effective as plain French bread for sopping up oyster brine, being already fairly sopping with cheese and spices and crawfish tails, but that's OK. It's tastier. And I am not above tilting the plate up to my mouth and simply drinking whatever's left.

As I mentioned before, this splurge was in celebration of a rather special huge big deal of a story sale, so when I placed the order, I left myself a little gift message commemorating that. It sounds hokey, and it is hokey, but I still got such a happy thrill when I opened up the shipping box and found a hand-written gift card inside saying, "Dear Niki: Congratulations on your first sale of fiction to Apex! Love, Niki."

So now I have a very hard choice to make. Do I commit the sin of drowning the delicate briny flavor of these maritime gems in kimchi? Or do I give myself the joy of homemade kimchi flavored with fresh delicious oysters? That's a trick question, of course. The answer is yes, and also yes. Besides, I'm only going to make half the recipe anyway, so there will still be a few oysters left to do other things with. (I'm thinking of subbing a few in for the shrimp in this dragon & phoenix recipe.)

So that's the story. It's Tuesday, I'm feeling accomplished, and life is delicious. I hope things are going just as well for you, whoever you are and wherever you may be.