Background Research

We got up early to write this morning, having arrived at Starbucks by 6:15. I’ve written 500 words done in two and a half hours, which is slow, but I’ve had to do several searches on Google in the process. I searched mostly on the nutrition status of several wild greens. I’m happy to say that garlic mustard is high in Vitamin C, so after shipping and imports in the US have broken down, people will still be able to get Vitamin C by eating weeds.

I’m writing about the collapse of the United States, after all. How does one prepare for that? Self-sufficiency (which is impossible, it turns out) and barter arrangements. If one anticipates the worst, one can prepare. A collective with a high number of educated individuals can anticipate, so this is not the tension in the group. Instead, they struggle with the fact that they will weather the catastrophic failure of the economy. Their battle is whether to share with others vs hide within themselves. With preternatural entities and a miraculous garden, this is not a trivial matter. A value conflict, with a side of fear.

I have had to do a lot of searches to write this book. Everything Barn Swallows’ Dance does to adapt to a calamitous change, I have to research. Questions like ‘How much wheat do 65 people eat in a year?’, ‘Dry-wash media for biodiesel’, ‘Nutrition in garlic mustard’, and ‘How much tannerite needed to collapse a building?’. (The latter question is one of those that writers have nightmares about, fearing the FBI will show up on the doorstep.)

It took the Internet to entice me to write. Before, I had the same questions to answer, but no way to do it quickly. Whose Hearts are Mountains was a story I started in graduate school, but never finished because I didn’t know what life in a desert was like. Once the Internet matured to the point where I could ask questions, I could write.

I need to go back to writing, but first, I need to find a recipe for garlic mustard pesto.

A Good Day and a Shameless Plug

I finally got 1200 words on the work-in-progress written today at home. It doesn’t hurt that l got a venti flat white Door Dashed in the morning. I also listened to good writing music. The most important thing is that I had an idea of what needed to happen in the story.

I should point out that I am self-published and relatively unknown. The big thing for me is the writing; although I really want people to read my writing, I have not mastered marketing the books.

If you want to read some, there’s the fluffy Christmas romances and the more serious fantasy stories. And all of them can be found Right Here.

Road Warrior Go!

I write better at Starbucks. It’s official. I’m at Bux and I’ve written 500 words without a lot of effort. Yesterday’s writing looks better. Apparently, it takes a hot lavender latte for me to get writing done.

Or maybe it’s the split mind thing. Part of my mind is paying attention to the activities around me. Two of my acquaintances are talking at a table to my left; a group of women my age or a little older are chatting behind me. To my right, the baristas are puttering around behind the counter. There’s some innocuous background music playing. While all this is happening, I am picking words and writing this. It’s so much easier when there’s noise in the background than it is in my silent home.

Or maybe it’s because I’m writing on my road warrior gear. This consists of an iPod Pro, a Logi keyboard and mouse setup, and a cable to plug in for power. (All in lavender). The keyboard feels springier than my laptop keyboard, and the colors are more stimulating. And my setup can go just about anywhere (with the exception being someplace without a table).

I have to fix my home space to make it easier to write. I said this yesterday, but today it’s obvious that I write better out in public. Or at least at Starbucks.

My Go-Kit

As a writer, I want to be prepared for writing wherever I go, because who knows when I’m going to have an hour or two to work. I write my works on computers unless I have to interrogate (interview) my characters; then it’s pen and ink. So I have to have a keyboard with me at all times.

The problem with that is that my laptop is powerful, which means it’s big. Heavy. It has to be, because it’s the computer I do my graphics work on. Graphics to me is layout for book covers and not actual drawings or renderings, but I still feel like I need muscle in my laptop.

That means that I need a lighter computer for on-the-go. Thus, my go-kit.

My go-kit is centered on an iPad with an M1 chip and 256 MB storage at just over 1 lb weight. It’s quite useful for information gathering, word processing, and most of what I need to do to produce a book. (I understand it uses Photoshop as well, but I have some trouble accessing the materials I need on here.)

To make this a computer substitute, I need input devices. Rather than get one of Apple’s expensive magic keyboards, I am content with a matching Logi keyboard and mouse, which together cost $50. They match the protector case on the iPad as well, all in what Logi calls “Lavender Lemonade”. See above.)

All this, including the cable, fits in a small computer bag (also lavender) that goes with me almost everywhere, hence the name. I have yet to utilize it fully, however, because I have trouble using the Apple Pencil without glitches. If I can get that taken care of, I wouldn’t even need the pen and ink.

So here’s my solution to not wanting to haul a heavy computer around so I can write when I’m inspired.

Trouble in Paradise

Trouble with coffee

We’re having trouble with coffee in the household. A coffee crisis, one may say.

Our daily coffee brewing (using an electric vacuum pot, which is hard to find these days) has disintegrated into a pot of coffee that is half good. In other words, the first 1-2 cups are perfect and the rest is either weak or sour.

We’ve been playing with grind size, which is why we go from weak or sour. We’re probably not on the right grind size, or so my husband hypothesizes.

I think there’s something wrong with the heating element of the pot myself. Which is a shame, because KitchenAid no longer makes that coffee maker, and I’m not sure anyone else makes an electric vacuum pot either. It may be time to go back to a French press pot or a pourover or an non-electric vacuum pot or something else low-tech. Something that requires a little more work for this lazy household.

Were you expecting some other type of trouble?

Heavens, I hope not! Things at the household are actually going pretty smoothly, other than my blahs, and I’m about to go into counseling about that. I’ve suffered an identity crisis over the past seven years, because life now isn’t like life before bipolar meds. So I’m seeking some help over that. No trouble at all.

Coffee

Waiting

Summer is a fine time for waiting

I always feel like summer is the time for waiting. Ordinary time in the church calendar, the hot days fading into each other under the relentless sun, the school year in the distance and nothing at the moment needing done. Time to relax and wait.

If only I was better at waiting

I an very poor at waiting.

This is the current season of my life, where I am waiting for many things — my beta readers to get back to me, answers to queries and submissions. I’m waiting for some feedback. Where to go from here. How to go forward. I want to go forward, not just sit here and wait. What am I called to do? Nothing, at the moment, and I hate it.

Waiting in this moment

At this moment, I am waiting in the Westport Coffee House in Kansas City. I am supposed to be writing, and I am writing this but getting very agitated with the notion of waiting.

I need to find a way to be comfortable with waiting.

Home Roasting Coffee

My husband and I love our coffee, to the point that we actually roast our own. It takes an outlay of equipment and expertise, but for people who like good coffee, it’s cheaper than store-bought gourmet beans and a lot cheaper than a daily Starbucks or Nespresso.

We started with the gateway drug — whole beans and a grinder — and then I found out that one could roast their own beans with an air popper. It’s true; one can roast a pot’s worth of green coffee beans with an air-fired popcorn popper, although there are a couple specs on the air popper that need to be noted. Because it’s tedious to lift the hot lid of an air popper and stick a spoon down the chamber to fish out a bean to see if the beans are done, I bought a simple cylindrical roaster (which isn’t made any more; it was a cheaper version of this). It still only did one batch at a time, but it was a little more convenient.

Both the air popper and the Fresh Roast are what are known as fluid bed roasters. This means that the beans float on a fluid bed (usually air) to allow them to roast easily and not develop hot spots. Fluid bed roasters for the home user usually roast smaller batches (taking a half pound of beans at most) and don’t have much versatility if one wants to experiment with the depth of the roast (light, medium, or dark roast).

Photo by Chevanon Photography on Pexels.com

Eventually, as we drink home-roasted coffee daily, we invested in a Behmor 1600 (as they were phasing in the 2000s, it was half the price of the new model) and we roast a pound of green coffee beans a week. The Behmor will roast 1/2 lb-2 lb coffee at a time and uses a drum to move the beans for even roasting. Richard is our roaster now, because one of the important ways to determine roast strength is listening for the cracking of the coffee bean, and my hearing doesn’t allow for that anymore.

Where does one get unroasted beans? We use a source called Sweet Maria’s Coffee, a mail-order outfit with a great variety of beans ever changing with growing seasons in its various sources. We tend toward adventurousness in our beans, reading flavor notes in the reviews and choosing by those. Then when we’re drinking our morning cup, we rate the coffees on a four-point scale:

I wouldn’t give Grandma this coffee
Grandma drinks this coffee
Grandma should be drinking this coffee
Grandma called: she wants a dime bag to go with this coffee.

We like coffee in the 3-4 range (I’m old enough to be a grandma).

Even with the outlay of the roaster (again, we got it on deep discount because we shopped for sales), we pay a lot less than Starbucks, somewhat less than we would for gourmet beans at the store, and a little less than generic canned coffee, and we get a premium product that’s almost like wine in its complexity.

It’s worth the learning curve.

Coffee (an oldie but goodie)

Hope and Coffee

Sunday morning, and there is not enough coffee to wake me up.

After the past couple days, some good friends on Facebook, and my decision to try self-publishing if I don’t succeed in the traditional route, I feel much better. I am researching self-publishing methods, concerns, etc., right now.

I will have an author’s website (not chatty like this, but to promote writing, events, etc.). I should have one anyway, even if I’m traditionally published.

So I will prepare for the possibility, and even if I get taken in on the traditional route, I will have prepared things that will be needed for that route.

This is what hope does to me. It comes to me in the midst of defeat and illuminates my path — but only for the next few steps. I never know where I’m going past two steps ahead.

But I still desperately need coffee.