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"What a writer has to do is write what hasn't been written before or beat dead men at what they have done." ~ Ernest Hemingway

Last Thursday through Sunday, I challenged myself. I hopped on a plane. I flew a thousand miles. I socialized with people I never met before. I learned stuff about drafting, revising, outlining novels, and . I made several dozen new friends.

Yeah. was amazing.

I have really enjoyed attending writing conferences, but this workshop was so much more... intimate. Jay Lake discussed revising and his process. Ken Scholes and Camille Alexa took separate approaches to the development of short stories, while Mark Teppo went into great detail about outlining a novel in 90 minutes (and chapter 12 is a good place for the sex scene). Sure, I learned a lot while they spoke to all of us, but I spent hours hanging out with these people afterward, and learned even more through casual, small group conversations.

My critique group politely yet ruthlessly shredded apart one of my stories. I have connected with amazing resources to make my post-apocalyptic and computer-based fiction far more realistic.

We formed large groups and invaded the nearby restaurants to eat yummy food and laugh about stuff; oh , I wish you hadn't closed all your Arizona locations, because the people and food at that Vancouver location were awesome. I met one of my LiveJournal buddies, and her husband, and they were even kind enough to give me my own personal concert. She also immortalized the moment where I .

Good times.

The days passed far too fast, a blur of happiness, writer shop-talk, and insane amounts of sugary goodness. I left Portland with its sunny skies and 80-degree weather, and returned to Arizona to 80-degrees and torrential monsoon rain. I guess I'll give the state a C for effort.

If possible, I'll go to Cascade Writers next year. You should consider it, too. It doesn't matter if you've never been published or you have multiple novels to your name. Everyone is there to learn. And eat cake.

Today we make the pizza dough, using my new favorite pizza dough recipe from King Arthur Flour, and finish up using the rest of Pioneer Woman Ree Drummond's suggestions for carnitas pizza.



Remember the from a while back? This dough is similar. Mix it and let it sit for hours or days, but in this case you keep it in the fridge.

This dough is also mixed with semolina (or you can buy King Arthur's Flour's pizza dough flour). It adds a wonderfully light texture. However, that texture also comes from how it is cooked. I heated my stoneware in the oven for 30 minutes while my dough was shaped and waiting on parchment paper. When it was time to bake, I set the parchment and pizza right on the super-hot stones. This creates a crust that's remarkably like a pizza restaurant--soft and chewy and awesome.

Pizza Dough

Recipe from .

Ingredients

1 3/4 all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cups semolina flour
1 teaspoon instant yeast
1 1/4 teaspoons salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 cup + 2 tablespoons to 1 1/4 cups lukewarm water

Directions

1) To make with a mixer: Beat all of the ingredients at high speed of your electric mixer, using the beater blade, for 2 minutes. Switch to the dough hook, and knead for 7 minutes; the dough should be smooth and quite soft.

By bread machine: Use the dough cycle.

By hand: Mix the ingredients, then let the dough rest, covered, for about 30 minutes; this will give the flour a chance to absorb the water, which will make kneading easier.

2) Allow the dough to rise, lightly covered, for 45 minutes; then refrigerate it for 4 hours (or up to 36 hours); this step will develop the crust’s flavor. It'll continue to rise in the fridge, so make sure it's in a big enough bowl.

3) Divide the dough in half. (Or for thick, Sicilian-style pizza, leave the dough in one piece, and press it into a rimmed half-sheet pan (18" x 13").)

4) Put down pieces of parchment paper for each pizza and work the dough on there. Gently stretch each piece into a round. For thin-crust pizza, make a 12" round or oval. For thick-crust, make a 9" round.

5) Cover the dough with plastic wrap, and let it rest while you heat your oven to 450°F; place your stoneware or aluminum sheet in the oven to heat up. For thickest crust, let your pizza rest/rise for 60 minutes before baking.

6) Baking: After about 30 minutes, use the parchment paper to transfer the pizzas to your hot stone/sheet. Be careful!

7) Bake for 6 minutes (for a thinner, larger crust), or for up to 8 minutes for a smaller/thicker crust. Remove from the oven.

8) Top the pizza with your favorite toppings, return to an upper rack of the oven (not to the stone), and bake for an additional 8 minutes, or until the crust is golden brown and the filling bubbly.

Now, to return to the carnitas fixings from last week. After cooking the meat in the crock pot all day, I shredded the carnitas with two forks.

On the pizza dough, I used Mexican green sauce in a thin layer. Atop that I added mozzarella, sautéed green and red bell peppers, green onions, and loads of meat.

Can you say OM NOM NOM?

"We, and I think I'm speaking for many writers, don't know what it is that sometimes comes to make our books alive. All we can do is write dutifully and day after day, every day, giving our work the very best of what we are capable. I don't think that we can consciously put the magic in; it doesn't work that way. When the magic comes, it's a gift." ~ Madeleine L'Engle

This is a scheduled post. If everything has gone well, right now I'm settled into my hotel in Vancouver, Washington, preparing for a full day and weekend of immersive writer-miasma at I'll have a full report on the workshop next week, but in the meantime I'll be posting updates on Facebook and Twitter.

If everything has not gone well (i.e. my plane has gone down in a fiery ball/an escalator ate me/TSA decided to get frisky and I evoked a Chun Li move/etc), then hello (from beyond the grave/hospital intense care/federal prison)!

I haven't talked about it much on here, but I adore the Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond. Her blog has been an amazing resource for years, and I now love watching her TV show. She's such a down-to-earth person.

I was flipping through her latest cookbook The Pioneer Woman Cooks: Food from my Frontier when I found a recipe for carnitas pizza. "Carnitas" translates from Spanish as "little meats," but it in case, it looked more like piles of meat.

In other words, a perfect pizza for my husband.

However, I needed to customize. First of all, she cooked the roast in the oven all day long. I'm in Arizona. It's summer. My electricity bill will already be outrageous; I don't need to make my air conditioner run even harder. Therefore, I modified the recipe for the slow cooker.

The other thing is that I used a different pizza dough recipe. I recently tried and loved King Arthur Flour's pizza dough recipe, and I wanted that extra dough to make two pizzas so we would have meals for two nights. This made enough meat for two pizzas and a night of fajitas, too.

This week is all about the meat. I'm going to share the pizza dough recipe next week.



I'll be using it for pizza, but the flavoring on this is so mild you can do just about anything with it: tacos, quesadillas, salads, fajitas, sandwiches, etc. It's tender and tasty on a fork, without any extra fixings at all!

Crock Pot Carnitas

Recipe modified from page 150 of .

Ingredients
2 teaspoons chili powder
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon ground oregano
1 teaspoon kosher salt
One 3-4 pound chuck roast
Olive oil
2 cans pineapple, papaya, or mango juice (I used Numex mango)

Steps
Mix the dry ingredients and rub down both sides of the roast. Heat the oil in a pot or skillet, then brown both sides of the roast. This will take 2-3 minutes each side.

Place the roast in a slow cooker. Add the two cans of juice. Cook on high for 8 to 10 hours, or low for 4 to 6 hours.

Next week brings part 2: THE PIZZA.

OM NOM NOM!

"My advice is not to wait to be struck by an idea. If you're a writer, you sit down and damn well decide to have an idea. That's the way to get an idea." ~Andy Rooney

Next week is At this point I'm most nervous about flying by myself and navigating the airports, and yeah, I may have just spent 30 minutes browsing the restaurant selection at Portland Airport. (Speaking of which, I'm amazed at how many of these restaurants still don't have websites. Hello! Don't they realize obsessive-compulsive diners like me need to plan these things?!)

There are some things on my mind regarding the workshop, though. I've written up probably 200ish critiques for people online, but this will be my first time offering such criticism face to face. That's most definitely intimidating, and requires tact and a balance of criticism and support. At least, I hope what I have prepared is balanced.

There are going to be some amazingly cool writers there, like Jay Lake, Ken Scholes, Mark Teppo, and K.C. Ball. I've been a fan of Ken Scholes for a few years and have the currently-released books in his Psalms of Isaak series. The thing is, the second and third books were Advanced Reader Copies. I love ARCs and still find them cool in an early Christmas kind of way; however, I know some authors hate them. I figured that since these books are keepers for me, I should just upgrade my copies to have them signed. I was pleased to see that Amazon had them in hardcover at bargain prices, so I ordered.

To my shock, the third book, Antiphon, arrived already signed by Ken Scholes. Right there on the title page. The book looks brand new. My only guess is that he signed them at a warehouse or something.

So yeah. The book I bought to take to a booksigning is already signed. However, I'll still be bringing them along to the workshop to have them personalized, and I intend to ask about his mysterious, wandering signature.

Have you ever bought a book online and had it arrive already signed by the author?

I am going to say something that is considered outright blasphemous in some circles:

I don't like coffee.

There. I said it. For a lot of years I didn't like hot drinks at all, and it's only recently I've come to enjoy ciders and tea. I like the fresh smell of coffee, but the taste? Bitter. Even cold coffees with added milk or chocolate don't cut it for me.



However, I made these blondies and for the first time, I loved the taste of coffee. (That figures--add coffee to bread and sugar, problem solved!)

These bars are not only super easy to make, but they're gorgeous, too. I couldn't help but take a ton of photos of them. And the taste...! The coffee grants them a flavor I can only describe as "clean," if that makes sense, along with a gentle sugary taste. Plus, you have a wonderful combination of textures going on: the softness of the bar, the crunch of the almonds, the delicates ribbons of the glaze.

If your mouth isn't watering at that, you are a stronger person than I.

Another note here: the original recipe from Martha Stewart used whiskey in the glaze. Since I planned to send these along with my husband to work, the whiskey was a no-go (yeah, no one would get drunk off of glaze, but still, I'm not going to get anyone in trouble if they do drug testing that day). Instead, I did a mix of extract and water. Personally, I loved the extra punch of almond extract along with the almonds, but you could always use vanilla instead, or use all water to get the right consistency.




Irish Coffee Blondies

Originally found in Martha Stewart Living magazine and also

Ingredients

For the Blondies:
2 sticks unsalted butter, plus more for pan
2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
2 cups packed light-brown sugar
3 tablespoons freshly ground coffee
1 teaspoon salt
2 large eggs, room temperature
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1/2 cup sliced almonds, skin on

For the Glaze
1 tablespoon melted butter, warm
1 teaspoon almond extract (or vanilla)
1 teaspoon + water
3/4 cup confectioners' sugar, sifted

Directions

The blondies:

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Butter a 9-by-13-inch baking pan, and line with parchment so that it overhangs on all sides. Butter parchment. In a big bowl, whisk together flour, baking powder, and baking soda.

Melt butter, and pour into a mixing bowl with brown sugar, ground coffee, and salt. Stir to combine.


(See those dark specks? That's the coffee.)

Add eggs and vanilla extract. Stir in flour mixture until just combined. Pour batter into pan and even it out. Sprinkle with almonds.

Bake 27 to 30 minutes, depending on how chewy you like your blondies; they'll be harder and less chewy the longer they bake. Let cool completely.

The glaze:
Whisk together butter and extract. Gradually whisk in confectioners' sugar. Add teaspoons of water, as needed, until the glaze is thick but pourable. Using a pastry bag fitted with a plain round tip or a sandwich bag with a corner snipped off, drizzle glaze over blondies in a rough crosshatch pattern. Let glaze dry 1 hour. Cut blondies into 2-inch squares.

If you're stacking these for storage, I suggest using wax paper between the layers, especially if you live someplace warm.

OM NOM NOM.

"I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved." ~Barbara Kingsolver

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This is also publication day! My poem "Book Story" is up at This is one of my November Poem-a-Day works.

A cool thing, too: when I attended Phoenix Comic-con in May, I met one of the editors of MindFlights, Marcia Rockwell. It's the first time I met one of my editors, and she said it was the first time she had met one of her magazine authors!