What's in a Name?

I'm guest-blogging with the fabulous, prolific, and astonishingly energetic Emily Bryan today about choosing character names. It's one of my favorite occupations! Now, titles I'm not crazy about -- in fact, I don't usually have a title until a book is finished, if then -- but names are a lot of fun. To toss in your two cents worth, go here.

Kindle Author Interview

Found out this morning that I was interviewed last night. Twilight Zone music playing...

Every interviewer's questions are different! David Wisehart's were easy and fun to answer, and I like the look of his site -- clean and uncluttered -- and he has a lot of interesting interviews there. Thank you, David!

Things I Can't Do

Today I'm a guest at the Romance Bandits talking about how much fun it is writing about heroines who do things I can't. (Such as landscaping, fabric design, costume construction...) Fortunately, there are many, many more things I can't do, so I have fodder for plenty of stories. :)

Pop over there to see some examples of the work of Australian artist Dale Rollerson, whose fabric was the inspiration for the dress made by Rose, the heroine of Tastes of Love & Evil.

Tastes of Love and Evil - Release Day

Today is the release day for Tastes of Love and Evil. Yay!

To celebrate, I'm blogging over at Patricia's Vampire Notes on how paranormal characters take over and be whatever they want to be. :~))

Reading the Signs

No, I'm not talking about reading bones or I-Ching coins or anything remotely woo-woo, although that would probably be more appropriate, seeing as I write paranormal romance, and my characters have a whole slew of strange abilities. I'm talking about foreign languages. I love words--probably one of the reasons I write--and I love them in any language. Just recently, I visited Montreal...



To read the rest, go here. Elisabeth Naughton invited me to participate in the promo for her new release, Entwined, and let me blather on about sign-reading on her blog. She has a great contest going with prizes and all. My post is a ways down the page.

Writing and Reading Series

When I was invited to guest blog at Write in the Shadows, I asked my hostess, Suzanne Johnson (who has a very cool New Orleans urban fantasy series debuting next year) what I should write about. (This was laziness as much as politeness. It always kills me to come up with a topic.) She suggested that since the second book in my Bayou Gavotte series, Tastes of Love & Evil, is a September release, I might want to talk about some aspect of writing a series. I’m writing the third book now, and I’m contracted for a fourth. My deadlines are very reasonable, but still, I do feel the pressure.


Before I go further, I have to confess—as a reader, I’m not a huge series fan.

For the rest of the post, go here.

Matrimony Cake ???

I got this recipe from my mother, who I assume got it from her mother. I have NO idea why it's called Matrimony Cake. It's not like any wedding cake I've ever had. In fact, it's a variety of what is normally called date squares or date bars. Is it named for the institution of marriage? It has oats -- because hopefully all the wild oats have been sown and from now on there will only be domestic ones. It has dates -- lots and lots of dates, of which a happy marriage should have many. Sugar -- well, yeah. Cinammon and salt for spice. Okay, so I'm getting carried away and should stop, but if anyone knows the real reason for its name, please tell me!

Crust:
1/2 cup butter
1.5 cups rolled oats
1 cup flour (I use whole wheat pastry flour)
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 teaspoon soda

Mix together to a crumbly texture and spread half the mixture on the bottom of the pan. My recipe doesn't specify the pan size. I seem to remember my mother using a rectangular pan, but I used an 8"x8" pan and it worked fine.

Filling:
1 pound dates, pitted and chopped. I suggest using those very sweet lovely dark Mediterranean dates.The lighter-brown California dates just aren't as good, in my opinion.
1 cup water
Salt. The recipe doesn't specify; I used 1/2 teaspoon
Cinnamon. Again, the recipe doesn't specify. I used 1 teaspoon.

Cook filling until soft and spread over the bottom crust. Then spread the rest of the crumble on top.

Bake for 1/2 hour at 350 degrees. Cut into squares. They're great hot with ice cream or cold just by themselves.