Wintery, Wordless Wednesday

 

Giveaway Time!

In celebration of successfully reformatting all five of my books for wider distribution, I am giving away three paperback copies of Mayfly Requiem. The contest is open to readers in the US, Great Britain, Australia, and Canada. Click on the links below and enter to win!

 
 

    Goodreads Book Giveaway
 

   

       
   

   

     

          Mayfly Requiem
     
     

          by Courtney M. Privett
     

     

         
            Giveaway ends March 13, 2013.
         
         
            See the giveaway details
            at Goodreads.
         
     
   
   

      Enter to win

Smashing!

It took me four days, but I finally have reformatted all five books and uploaded them onto Smashwords. I've been meaning to do this ever since my KDP Select expired, but ran into a string of illnesses and a lack of energy. The books are currently pending review for the premium catalog, so hopefully they'll pass all the formatting requirements and be available at other retailers soon. For now, you can buy the ebooks at either Amazon or Smashwords and the print copies at either Amazon or CreateSpace.

Ebooks on Amazon:

Mayfly Requiem

The Abyssal Night

Shards of Chaos

The Shattered Veil
Shadows of Absolution

Ebooks on Smashwords:
Mayfly Requiem

The Abyssal Night
Shards of Chaos
The Shattered Veil
Shadows of Absolution

So, what's next? Well, a couple of things. I ordered a couple paperback copies of one of the books to run another Goodreads giveaway. It starts on the 19th, so  watch out for that. I also made up some nice little business cards to hand to all the random people I speak to in random places about my books. Those should be in my hands soon. Mostly, though, I just need to get over this infernal cold so I can finish writing Sand into Glass. I hope it doesn't break my laptop again. I also have been working on my vegan cooking blog a bit.

Time-Lost

My cat enjoys being time-lost far more than I do. She also enjoys sleeping on my partially-finished quilt top.

The dream-time of narcolepsy... a month passes in an instant and I am left wondering where I've been. My creativity goes into overdrive but I can't find the energy to utilize it. I spend my nights semi-sleep, and my days semi-awake. There is not always a clear division between dreams and reality and I differentiate what I have really done and what I have dreamed. Spiders drip from rippling walls, disembodied heads float above my bed -- these are the paralytic hypnogogic hallucinations that spring forth in the darkness when I am caught in the asleep-awake threshold. I occasionally have hypnopompic hallucinations as well, but those are rarer.

I lose time. I live it, I function within it, and I remember most of it, but time undulates in an irregular pattern that sometimes leaves me frustrated. During these periods, which usually last several months, I become hypercreative in visual endeavors instead of literary. All the while, I remain frustrated that I can't focus my fatigued mind enough to write. I don't often recognize I am time-lost until dissatisfaction over my writing failures peaks. Eventually, time flips over and the visual is eclipsed by the cerebral as my focus returns and I slip into a less aggravating phase of my disorder.

Time-Lost

I'm adrift between awake and asleep,
Halfway to nowhere, regrettably languid.
Worlds and stars spin around retrograde idioms,
Askew, and dripping microseconds into annihilation.
I careen to avoid another day, another nebulous morning,
Where the time-lost slip into Lethe and drown,
Forgetting the hours, the days, the purpose,
An abeyance of everything, continuance of nothing.
Find me if you can, capricious Time,
For I am caught in the maze of the narcoleptic void.
Awake, asleep, and egregiously haunted
By the fickle visions of an effulgent stupor.
Arise from the shade, little muse, little whim,
And recover my lucidity from meandering seasons,
Unbind my perception from sidereal rambling,
And spin my balance away from dream-time.

Dust

Those who dwell in the snake plant hide behind sun rays and dance upon starlight. On the backs of cardinals, they ride to battle against the dust sprites who lurk under the pothos. The lords of the purple passion plant look on from the mantle, amused but uninvolved. The tiny denizens of the herb seedlings on the countertop count the weeks until their training is complete and they can step forward to end the scourge of dust and mystery debris the humans wake to every morning. Their plan is dependent on the seedlings reaching maturity. This event seems unlikely, given the black thumbs of the humans who reside in the home realm. Frailty means certain death. The herb seedlings will perish, and along with them the tiny denizens. The creatures of the pothos and snake plant will live on, resilient, and the dust will continue to plague the home realm.

Housekeeping

I've been doing some maintenance on my blog today because I found some errors. A couple of the pages weren't working so I fixed them. When I fixed Published Novels the other broken pages seemed to right themselves, which was convenient. If someone can click through the page links below the blog title and ensure me they are all working, I'd be greatly appreciative.

I also fixed the link to my Malora Pinterest board. I changed the name of the board a while back but didn't think to change the link on the Social Media page above.

And now for something fun...

So I don't clutter up this blog with the vegan recipes I've been writing, I created an offshoot blog called Twigs, Leaves, and Grass. Yes, I am still obsessed with the Oxford comma. The new blog is a work in progress so its look will be changing as I figure out how I want it. My recipe writing is a totally different thought path than my fantasy writing, so I thought it deserved its own realm. If you scroll all the way down to the first post, you will find the three original recipes I created for my family's dinner tonight.

Oat Flour Banana Bread

I'm trying to get into the habit of writing down my recipes so I can transfer them into a little vegan cookbook. This banana bread recipe is soy-free, egg-free, dairy-free, nut-free, and wheat-free.  It is also flax-free to avoid an allergy in my extended family and almond milk-free because my daughter may have an almond allergy. That's a lot of free, but I assure you it is still tasty.

Oat Flour Banana Bread

1/3 cup coconut oil
1/2 cup sugar
2 ripe bananas
2 cups oat flour (or oatmeal run through a food processor until very fine)
1 1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 cup coconut milk (the beverage kind, not the canned. I used coconut nog that was left over from the holidays)
1 tsp vanilla extract
cinnamon and brown sugar for sprinkling

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Using a hand-held mixer, cream the coconut oil, sugar, and bananas in a mixing bowl. Mix in the oat flour, baking soda, and baking powder, and then add the coconut milk and vanilla and mix well. Pour batter into an oiled 8 1/2 x 4 1/2 bread pan. Smooth the top of the batter, then sprinkle with a little cinnamon and brown sugar. Bake for 40-50 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted into the center comes out dry.