I must be still really tired because the novella’s edit just drained me to nothing. I stopped cooking and cleaning. I just edited for like 2 weeks straight and my brain feels like it’s just done. So in an effort to focus on the positives, behold my list of Yays.
- Novella has gone out to the beta readers. Yay.
- Septic tank has been pumped. Yay.
- Kid 1 ordered a cleaning service for Friday. Yay.
- End of edits celebration dinner accomplished yesterday. Yay.
- I woke up with a horrible headache, but Ibuprofen and Excedrin are working. Yay.
- Exterminator is coming tomorrow to spray for bugs and scorpions. Yay.
- Kid 2 sent another chunk of her project. Yay.
- I am going to take another mental day off today. Yay.
Some yays require further explanations.
The so called novella is now even longer, almost 45,000 words. ::stares at the offensive novella:: Why are you so long?
The official length for fiction works are as follows:
- Short story: under 7,500
- Novelette: between 7,500 and 17,500
- Novella: between 17,500 and 40,000
- Novel: over 40,000
So this novella is 7,000 words longer than The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. Joy.
We tried to cut things. But most of the editorial feedback was “put more things in.” We did. Oh well.
Septic tank yay. It is amazing how much peace of mind pumping the septic tank can bring you. The second house we ever lived in had a sewage issue. It came up into the yard. It came up into the house. We had no money to fix it and Gordon’s mother who owned the house either wasn’t able to or didn’t want to admit the problem existed. I am forever traumatized by sewage. We’re good for at least a couple of years. Hopefully.
Celebration dinner. Before you ask, it was soft tacos/fajitas with mango pico de gallo and cantaloupe cucumber salad. Kid 1 made her trademark guacamole. We used shredded Mexican Cheese mix for the fajitas.
For meat, we had steak and chicken. Steak was marinated in a mix of lime juice, a bit of taco sauce, chopped cilantro, salt and HEB Beef fajita spices. Chicken was 4 chicken breasts, marinated in Urban Accents Chili Taco Simmer Sauce, cilantro, and HEB Chicken fajita spices with a splash of lime juice. HEB should pay me for product placement.
The simmer sauce can also be bought from Urban Accents website. I found it lacks acidity to be very effective as marinade, so adding about a lime’s worth of lime juice does the trick. I am planning on making my own chili sauce with a bit more sweetness. I found a recipe online and I will report back on results.
Both chicken and steak can be grilled. Chicken can also be baked in the oven at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes. Yes, I know recommended time is 20, but I like to be thorough. When I bake this particular recipe, I rest the chicken breasts on a wire rack set in the pan and I think it adds to cooking time. Steak can be broiled. Don’t forget to wrap the soft taco size tortillas in foil and stick them in the oven while the chicken is baking. They will come out nice and warm.
Pico de gallo is traditionally made with serrano peppers, but we skip them in our family because Gordon prefers mild foods and the chicken is relatively spicy already. Every Texas family has their own spin on salsa and pico de gallo. For mango pico de gallo House Andrews style, you will need ripe tomatoes, sweet onion, mango, salt, lime, and cilantro. Chop everything up, salt, squeeze a lime into it, and mix. If the meat is less spicy than chili chicken, I sometimes add a dash of chili powder to pico de gallo to add a bit of heat.
We do it by volume: 2 parts tomato, one part onion, one part mango. So if you chopped up a cup of tomatoes, you will need half a cup of onion, half a cup of mango, and enough cilantro to make it look pretty. I normally buy one bunch of cilantro and use half. Sometimes I use more. Cilantro is like garlic. Everyone has their own tolerance.
You can also put peach into pico de gallo instead of mango. But it needs to be firm.
I like these assemble-your-own style of meals because everyone gets what they want. Fajitas and tacos are my favorite.
Now I am going to go outside and mow the back yard with electric mower while Gordon mows the front. I love the electric mower so much. No fumes, no gas, no weirdness.
We got an electric snow blower, you’re right, they are so much nicer…
I made our salsa Saturday and still have some left, so we’re doing tacos tonight. My recipe is tomatoes (heirloom unless I can get summer garden tomatoes) and sweet onion in roughly equal amounts. Jalapeno (or sometimes Anaheims) and freshly-chopped cilantro to the point the green ingredients roughly match the amount of red and white. Then fresh-squeezed lime juice (2-3 limes depending on size and juiciness) and salt to taste. Simple and delicious. We do have to whirl it in the food processor a bit, because hand chopped will break all but the thickest chips and I like them thinner.
Mmm… now I’m hungry, but won’t start cooking for an hour yet! =)
I’m so excited for this large novella, I hope you don’t catch any flack with the publishers, but it sounds wonderfully long.
Important question though… if you were to add TAQUITOS to that yummy TexMex meal, would they be soft and made with flour tortillas or fried crispy in corn tortillas? Asking for someone who has argued with multiple Whataburgers that their taquito is not a real taquito.
taquitos are usually the very small corn tortillas and are either rolled or folded and fried. I’ve never seen flour ones but I’m limited to Texas in making that statement.
Whataburger refers to their breakfast tacos as taquitos and they are always soft flour. I don’t know of anyone else who calls a breakfast taco a taquito. Just Whataburger.
I get the feeling, that you need a hug! So please feel hugged!!!
Might be, because I might need one, too, and I just read romantic novel, that made me cry twice ( I reread Catalinas and Dinas books before that, so don‘t be too mad!), so I am in THE MOOD FOR HUGS!
I love the recipes, because my son and I like chicken wraps, so I might take ideas from those ????! Reminds me of the Baylor kitchen!
Day after tomorrow Switzerland will be almost back to „before Corona“ and all our Casino customers will be back on their most weird behaviour! Wish us luck!
I know it‘s weird that your readers hang on every word you drop ( Like the Golden Calf ????), but you give hope and a kind of grounding to everyone.
Thank you for beeing here and letting us in!
Greets from Switzerland!
Inga
Yay for you, taking a mental health day!
Yay for us, getting more of your words in the novella/novel!
Everything sounded great until the cilantro ???? ????. It doesn’t taste right to me at all. Eh, I am not a fan of spicy ???? stuff either or god forbid guacamole! The gene apparently skipped me. My Latina card is at the point of being revoked ????????♀️ I like what I like.
CONGRATULATIONS on all of the YAYS!!!
Our albatross is water. First house the street, garage, yard and cars flooded. Turned out we were the low spot in the neighborhood and when paved parking lots went in up the street SPLASH! Second house we are down to the yard and occasionally street and very very rarely the garage flooding. We are moving UP. hee hee hee
I love novels!
I don’t have a lawn mower or lawn orphans, we have more of a lawn mowing boy band, but I do have an electric snow blower and electric chain saw. It’s my badass lady saw ????♀️
Your celebratory menu sounds tasty. I like pineapple pico de gallo, it’s great with chicken fajitas. <3
What brand electric mower? ????
Last year, we were struggling with an old, very noisy, gas lawn mower and decided to go battery operated, cordless… got an EGO at Home Depot and we LOVE it! We have about a quarter acre, so not a big lawn, but one charge is good for 2+ times and the mower even folds up so it can be against the wall and not take as much space. We also love the Dyson cordless vacuum cleaner… it used to be a pain with cords and bags, plus it is lighter so it is much better in many ways!
New novel. Yay!! My yays are mowed both back and front and didn’t quite melt. Went boating on the lake today and there was a breeze!!
Hope you get more down time than two days, one of which you spent out in the heat!
Thanks!!
You had me until “cilantro”.
I saw the picture and thought you were making pineapple salsa. It’s awesome with teriyaki salmon.
It sounds like you had a fun time.
Keep up the good work!
Hopefully, the “novella” will show up in preorders soon. I hope to throw money at it as soon as I can.
Thank you for the updates and the recipes.
So the novella turned into a novel. Oh well, we’ll wrestle through it ????
Would it not work as two novellas instead of one too long one?
I’m proud of you for focusing on the positives! Yay 7,000 more words and maybe admitting that the novella identifies as a novel.
Love the food tips!
Yay for the wins! Can you share the brand of electric lawnmower that you use? I’ve been trying to look for tools that don’t require a pull cord because I can’t pull those darn things to save my life.
Yay congrats~\^^/~
I celebrate my yays this week with lots of snack-tasting and satisfying my sweet tooth. Black sakura macchiato is best drink so far 🙂
Ah, septic systems. Have lived mostly in houses that had septic systems without much trouble. But we had a big celebration party, had a big tent, caterer and on the invitations specifically requested “no children.” But two couples that were invited on the in law’s request, between them also brought 5 uninvited adults (without asking). They also brought 3 kids. We provided fancy portable toilets to take the burden off the septic system. BUT the kids discovered that if they kept flushing the toilet upstairs and downstairs at the same time they would overflow the lower toilet. Adults were outside. Why was part of my backyard turning into a swamp? Where were the kids? I walked into water flowing over my bathroom, hall, into the kitchen and dripping through the floor to the basement.. I frogmarched the kids out to their parents. We had the septic system pumped. And pumped again. They damn near destroyed the system, never mind the floors. The only saving grace was that it was pretty much clean water flowing around indoors. One mom’s response, “Oh, just throw some detergent in it. You should have had something for kids to do.” I figure I was due good karma for about 20 years just for not killing anyone.
You should be nominated for sainthood for not suing the party-crashing parents for the destruction their children caused. I have lived with a septic system for 35 years here, it’s been pumped out a few times, but it’s never really been a problem since the original leech beds were extended because the bank wouldn’t lend a mortgage on a house with small ones. We had to buy a second lot to put them on, but we wanted the land, anyway, so we did that. I can’t imagine how a septic system could be flooding the back yard over the course of a few hours because destructive children kept flushing toilets.
It is, by the way, incumbent upon the parents to monitor their children while at a party in a private home, and to keep them out of the house when the party is outside. The host is not a babysitter, even if children had been invited in the first place.
As you probably guessed, it was an old system. We didn’t expect it to hold up to a large party . That’s why we brought in the party potties. We did a few years later put in a whole new septic system. Wow. That was expensive, but not as much, I bet, as having to buy land to put it on. Yikes.
Not sure why, but all of a sudden I’m starving after reading this post……must go buy the ingredients for fajitas..
If you’re traumatized by sewage watch Drain Addict on YouTube. He’s an Australian plumber with a rubber rat as a mascot. Fascinating and truly gross.
Congrats on finishing the edit. Always appreciate a longer story.
Cheers
Please, don’t get angry at novella for being long! Just charge us more for it. I would love to read a long novella!!
We have septic also. Standard maintenance is every 4 to 5 years but if more people in the house, it needs to happen more frequently
My friend waited 6 years and had stuff come up in the bathroom yuck
We are pretty diligent. 🙂
Don’t let the word count rule this story. It’s not that much over the limit. I trust you’ve been doing this long enough to have a feel for what needs to stay in to make the story work best. As others have said, just charge us a little more for a longer version.
And hooray for all the “yay!” moments you’ve had.
How exactly does an electric lawn mower function (I guess batteries)? How long does it stay charged? I’m assuming there isn’t a cord plugged in somewhere while you mow…
We also have a septic. It gives me great relief when it is pumped, like there is a worry in the back of my head as the tank slowly fills up and it only gets relieved as the pumping truck pulls away. And the company is called The Honeydippers so that makes me giggle.
About the “novella” size – um, it seems like the story is telling you the size it needs to be? Maybe?
Your menu sounds delicious. Yay for your yays!
Counting your blessings almost always helps.
My husband also has a sewage trauma, although his was just one incident. It’s very common in this part of Europe to have an apprenticeship along with and instead of a high school. Only certain high schools, usually for the rich, are college prep schools. Others are a cross between high school and vocational training, where year one is mostly in the classroom and year four is mostly in the field.
My husband’s first apprenticeship was in construction. Until halfway through his first semester, he and his classmates were sent out to a building where they (the construction company & school) were told a water pipe had burst and they had to drain, clean, assess and repair.
When they got there, they found a sewage pipe had burst, and my husband spent the day in sewage up to his thighs. He went home that night and told his parents he wasn’t continuing in this apprenticeship. He ended up in IT instead.
To this day, his father says he isn’t in construction because “one time he got a little dirty.”
O_O I have worked some truly grubby jobs, including occasional facefuls of various ruminant manures, but human sewage is a whole other category.
Exactly, right?
\o/
If that was me the novella would end up at like 100,000 words,I like dialog too much!
I like battery powered tools ( I just love my drills). The problem I have had is the rated charge life is not what they say. For example my wife is like many of you,she doesn’t like gas powered tools,so I bought her a battery powered leaf blower w 2 batteries. In usage it is great for quick cleanup but for fall and spring cleanup it lasts 10 min on full charge,so I get about 20 mins, which is paltry.
My yard is about 1/3 acre and a lot of it now is not grass, it tends to be tough grass. I borrowed a friend’s 40v battery mower and it was able to do the front yard. I figure once my Honda gas mower ( it is the best engine I have seen, easy to start, not finicky) dies they should be perfect for what I need.
As far as being tired,I kind of wonder if that is still a lingering effect of the vaccine , my wife and I have been feeling a lot more tired ( note,it could be other things, and it is not a reason not to get vaccinated if it is). Then again given the fact you guys remind me of Harpo Marx in one of their movies,where Groucho tells him he can’t burn the candle at both ends and Harpo grins and takes out a candle burning on both ends, that is you guys, it w you it seems like 3 ends….lol
Being tired is not a side effect of the vaccines. It’s a side effect of not being able to do anything normal and going insane trying to find a way through staying home for a year while the pandemic raged. The minute you start doing what’s normal for you instead of worrying about the pandemic, you’ll stop being depressed, which causes you to feel tired. I hope that day comes soon for all of us. Be happy. Take joy in the small things and let the big things wait.
In a previous career I was a septic system inspector for the health dept., I recommend that systems were pumped every two years. Pick a easily remembered day, such as July 4, and then every other years get the tank pumped.
Hope that helps
I firmly suggest a good massage at a spa, along with all the other pampering you need to ease the headaches and exhaustion of sitting and editing for so long. After all the trials of the new house for your daughter, after the trials of the scorpions and the septic system, after the hours of not doing anything “normal” for so long, it’s time to take a real break and get some pampering. BIG thanks to your daughter for getting the cleaning service in to stop you from trying to catch up to it. You need to get out of the house and relax where you can’t do any work at all, no matter what you feel needs to be done. Find a place where everyone is vaccinated, wear the face mask, anyway, and get pampered. Get a manicure and a pedicure. Sit and let your mind drift to a vacation you either remember or dream about. Let go of the edits that are done. For heaven’s sake and for your own sake, let go of it all, and relax!
For our sake, thank you for doing all that work so diligently. I look forward to finding out what has had you tied in knots for so long.
I always do better with a ‘Yay’ list, than a to-do list. I still have a to-do list, I just call it my ‘wish list’. It may sound silly, but I find more things get done on my Wish List as it feels more positive and upbeat, if that makes sense? It feels like it drains less energy and gives me back a sense of accomplishment and adventure. Words and descriptions make a difference in how I choose to view the world. (Although I guess I’m still vulnerable to peer pressure as I remember I need to mow lawn…) ????
Didn’t Blood Heir start out as a novella and grow into a novel? That turned out super great!!
I have another few questions for innkeeper questions part 2.
We know the inns are sort of empathic and can take action on their own when they believe it will benefit their innkeeper (the inn independently made a covered porch for Dina so she wouldn’t continue to get sunburned). So….will the inn try to form a link to Dayson so that Dina can open a door to see her sister and niece and arland whenever she wants? The Inn loved Helen….i could see the Inn trying to forge that connection so that it’s easy for them to visit a lot…..so…will it happen??
Second question: will we find out more about Sebastian North in the upcoming novella?? I love that cat…especially his name and am dying to know more!!!!!!
Third question: Will we get more George, Gaston and Jack in the Novella?? I finally read the edge series, so then I had to reread innkeeper and I love those characters!!!!!
Thanks for answering my question about maud and klaus’s biological father….i thought there might be a good story there….but i guess not….good to have that settled for me though….:)
Thanks so much!! Love all your stuff, but Innkeeper is definitely my favorite…it’s my comfort food when i just want a really good cozy read.
I MUST be in the Kate Daniels group of the BDH. I read this and thought,”OOOH there’s going to be a novella/novel Yea!. Oh look food”
lol..,me too!!
Drooling over the food!!!!!!!!!!
If it’s any comfort, I have often wished that The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe was longer.
Yay ????! ????????
ain’t life livable, oh heck it’s downright grand, when the next step peels another dreck off your list …
mental health, the peace of arranging your space
g’wan wit yo electric mower gyrl
ya kno, yo zen is arriving when ya start contemplating mowing in a pattern … psst
ya kno ya done lost yo mind when ya do ????
Mental health day yay! My boss/organization is good about needing to take mental health days as needed. And there are times it is NEEDED. Others can be planned ahead. Reading is my goto for recovery.
Loving the Yay’s!
Bwah ha ha ha. Thank you, Ilona Andrews, for the post.
I Love my electric lawnmower and even better electric chainsaw. I had replaced pull twice. So now I just motor generator to where I need chainsaw, plug in, dress in safety gear and proceed. So much easier. Same for mowing grass. Generator was originally for keeping well house functioning in frozen winter for livestock. But I mobilized it onto a grounded platform that I can move with tractor or manually. Much less noise too. ????
Thanks for cold food dinner suggestions. It’s been hot and I just don’t feel like cooking.
So it’s a novel. It will sell. My fellow BDH will see to that. We like well written books.
Was this the inspiration for Catalina’s mango salsa?
What’s taco sauce?
Yay for all of your yays ! Can’t wait for the novella, however it’s marketed!
OMG Just thought the same thing! I know this is Tex-Mex but the native Mexican in me got stuck on: “What in tarnation is taco sauce?
The food sounds wonderful! Bought my husband an electric riding mower. He loves it and it so quiet.
Feel your pain about the septic system. When we were first married in 1982, we had a lovely 100 year old farm house. He was VP of Manufacturing and we were having a rep from Japan over for a Bar B Que. Of course the spectic backed up in the bathrooms that morning and being a weekend could not get anyone out then. Fun times, not. Love being on the sewer system.
Love your Blog and love your books!
Just catching up (it’s been one of THOSE days) but I had to take a quick second to say those taco/fajita recipes sound amazing! And now I know what we can have for dinner this weekend…thanks for sharing!! >>drools all over phone!!<<
What, no lawn orphans?
Loretta Laroche (expert on humoring your way out of stress) says you should shout, “TA DA!” and maybe put on a toy crown or tiara or Viking helmet when you accomplish these sorts of things. By all means celebrate the wins.
I am personally happy to have extra words in this “novel-la” because that means it will be just a little longer from the time I start reading it to the time I am desperately waiting for your next book release.
I love my electric mower too! I can mow early in the morning when it’s cooler in Florida and not worry about being a bad neighbor because it is very quiet. Not that my neighbors worry about disturbing me but I still hold myself to my own standard.
I like all of your yays, particularly the delicious food. Your tacos sound yummy.
Being selfish, I am also thrilled that the novella is now book-length, though I’ll be delighted to read it no matter the published length.
We still have a gas-powered lawnmower but it is self-propelled, so much easier to mow with. I have never considered an electric one since we have a fairly large yard.
I love the marital sharing of the lawn-mowing chore. Well done!
Have a question. I buy canned jarred salsa, local farm private brand, and want to turn a jar or two into a jam. These are fruit salsas (strawberry, pineapple, raspberry). I plan on running it through the blender to get rid of chunks but not sure how much pectin to use.
Does anyone on here use Pomona’s pectin? They use calcium (provided) to activate the pectin so multiple cups of sugar are not needed. Yes, I did contact the company but no reply as of yet.
thanks for the tease on your coming novel. but i think everybody wants to know, what world will it be set in? is it a Magic book, or one of the other series?