I made some long overdue changes on the backend. The most important changes are that heathercleary.net and heathercleary.com now:
You may notice that I am still using the same theme. I don’t care that it is old-fashioned. I love the simple layout and the header image of Edwin Land.
My mom sent me a scan of my [great] Aunt Gertrude’s bread recipe, probably based on the one she learned in in her high school home economics class (circa 1910s late 1920s in Taney County, Missouri.)
Most of the recipe is practical advice for technique. My grandma (Gertrude’s sister) never formally taught me (or my mom or my siblings) how to bake. Which was a crying shame because she was a damn fine cook! When Bertha let me observe her in the kitchen, her “lessons” consisted of a list of ingredients and “add enough X until Y happens.” She rarely referred to a cookbook. (That said, I still have her beat-up copy of Better Homes and Gardens.)
AN: transferred from livejournal – unfortunately it did not help me write more.
Maybe participating in this challenge will help me write more.
I’m very excited about getting the unwanted transformation square because it would have become my Wild Card – I’ve had two plot bunnies bouncing in my brain that are quite relevant. Continue reading
There is a new brou-ha-ha in the author blogging world. As often happens, I found out about it on John Scalzi’s Whatever blog. Basically there are accusations of a “YA Mafia” who have the power to prevent authors they don’t like from being published. Both Scalzi and Holly Black have written funny and scathing rebuttals. Basically, authors are too lazy to sabotage other people’s work. Even if they did, the agents and publishers would ignore those types of requests.
Alas, the publishing industry does not, and cannot, protect (online) reviewers from insecure authors.
I’ve seen authors post comments on negative goodreads reviews (and I don’t think I’ve ever seen this go well).
—comment by phoebenorth
WORD. A couple years of ago I defended a friend’s bad review on Goodreads. The author in question is very successful and writes books, screenplays, and comic books. Yet bad reviews seemed to shatter his world. I realized that the author had to be extremely insecure. And he had to have the last comment despite claiming that we were the ones who kept the thread alive. Continue reading
