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The wind has been blowing hard today, keeping me inside but distracting me from getting much done.  Not that it takes much to distract me these days!  Colder nights remind me of home made soup, including pumpkin, vegetable, and various concoctions with lots of hot green chile.  The base ingredient for all of these is a nice chicken broth.

Trader Joe’s has good chicken broth in a box, and for that matter they have some really yummy soups in a box.  But when you’re nearly thirty miles from the nearest TJ’s you need to think about making your own.  Especially with holiday cooking right around the corner.

The Barefoot Contessa did a knock your socks off chicken broth, starting with whole chickens, carrots, parsnips and half the garden.  I tried making that once and it was WOW but really?  Whole chickens to make broth for your own use?  Wouldn’t you rather be eating some of that chicken first?  Which is why I came up with chicken broth for we who just don’t have enough time no matter how hard we try to plan, and who really appreciate the simpler things in life.

It starts with those great rotisserie chickens we’re all using on rough days (and a lot of other days!) I’ll mash up some cauliflower the first night, maybe do lettuce wraps the second night, and pick off it for one more day.  Then there’s still a lot of meat left but I’m hungrier for fresh cooked, whether I do it myself or grab another one while I’m in the store.  So the rest of that carcass goes into the freezer.  When I have three or four, I grab my stock pot, some celery, onions, garlic maybe parsley. Pretty much whatever strikes my fancy and is in the refrigerator when I get started.  All of it goes into the pot, chopped or broken up, comes to a boil, cooks for a while.  Strain off the broth, cool the chicken so you can pick off any extra meat, and decide if you want to keep the veggies or not.

Cool some, pour into those nifty semi disposable plastic containers, freeze.  And you’ll have chicken broth whenever you need it.  Next I’ll be sharing some of my favorite soups made from this broth.  Yum.

That shouldn’t be a question.  The blog is an author’s link to readers, above and beyond their books.  I’m sure some writers will get by just fine without blogging, but I don’t want to be relying on word of mouth for books published by a small press.  Do you?

Right.  So, what should we blog about?  From what I remember the original definition of “Blog” was a Web Log, or on line journal.  Obviously it has expanded since then, into everything from a step by step reveal of some people’s lives to dissertations on how to do anything and everything.  For the purpose of a writer’s blog, you want to think about what you’re going to put on the page before you begin.

If you are guest blogging, you will need to follow the parameters of your host.  Some request a blog based on the writing craft, some a blog with no promotion.  For example, the “cost of admission” to blog with Mona is a recipe. Unless you are a certified expert, you don’t want to be writing a “how to” blog.  If you notice, what I’m doing is sharing what I’ve learned, along with the links I’ve found to be helpful.

It only seems like we’re lost

For instance, there’s Kristen Lamb’s book “Are You There Blog, It’s Me Writer,” an excellent primer in social media.  And I found a knock out website recently: For Bloggers By Bloggers with articles such as “Your Blog is Boring Because You Suck At It.”  How inspiring does that sound??  And one more resource, Author Media, which has even more information on establishing your author platform, sooner rather than later.

If you have an other great links or resources please share.  Orange County Chapter of RWA has a great slogan “On Hand Reaching Forward, One Hand Reaching Back,” illustrating how much further we all will go when we work together.

We are NOT alone.

Gwynyfyr inspects the nearly finished job

On Fridays, I’m going to be sharing photos and ramblings of living in New Mexico, and also of pulling my life together.  It’s coming into Winter so I have to move on getting the snow fence up to keep snow back from the house this year.  I started with Tom’s brother Larry helping to set the posts, then I got the wire up. Now I’ve added snow fencing and some barricades along the bottom so I’ll have areas to plant behind the wind break.  What’s left now is securing the snow fencing so it’s not so saggy, and adding a narrow gate down the long side.  I’m trying to use found material wherever possible.

Kinda saggy but getting there

marigold half opened

I planted late season marigolds in the old horse feeder and have enjoyed watching them grow from much closer than before.  This is a marigold just before it opens.  Pretty neat, huh?

Mmmm recipe day.  My excuse to come up with nifty new ways to enjoy my food without derailing my weight loss.  Today it’s Green Chile Stew, which can be made with pretty much any meat but I prefer pork, and since I like the comfort of slow cooking smells in the house, I hunted up this recipe: http://denimanddots.com/2011/04/07/low-carb-slow-cooker-new-mexican-green-chile-stew/ which gives the guidelines for chicken, beef, or pork.  And it’s a good recipe, especially if you’re stewing for a group.

I wanted something for one person, or for me and my guinea pigs friends who help with taste testing.  Plus I was dealing with buying dilemmas.  Pork roasts are available in LARGE sizes, and no matter how much I enjoy green chile stew I don’t want to be eating the same recipe all winter.  Plus I have issues with the “tender for YOU” pork I find in the grocery stores.  If I wanted to inject my pork with salt and other questionable ingredients, I have the syringe, I can do it myself.  So instead of a pork shoulder roast, huge at a low price, I picked up the thin sliced pork shoulder steaks, slightly higher price but a more reasonable quantity.  MUCH easier to cut up.

To this I added onions, garlic, coriander, chopped frozen green chiles and chicken broth. Simple ingredients; I chose

In the frozen aisle if you’re lucky

fresh coriander over cumin on a whim, and I’m glad I tried it. I make up the broth myself from leftover carcasses, which will make a great future recipe blog.  As for quantities, can I just say “some?”  My goal was more of a soup than a stew, so about two cups of the broth, 2-3 pounds of pork, a largish onion, a couple cloves of garlic, about half a bunch of coriander, and a couple huge spoonfuls of hot Bueno frozen green chiles.  If you’re not as worried as I am about carbs you can add in some chopped potatoes and maybe a can of white beans.

Cut the pork up into bite size pieces.  Brown the pork in your fat of choice (bacon grease will work obviously) set that to one side, cut the onion into wedges,brown it a bit.  Chop the coriander up a bit.  Put everything into a crock pot on high for four hours, or on low for six.  If you want, after your first cooking, you can strain the broth from the solids, chill both of them, and remove the extra fat from the chilled broth.  Then put it back into the crock pot.  This extends the cooking time but makes my house smell really nice.  And it means I can do the first cooking, chill everything, and set it up to eat the next night.  A dollop of sour cream makes it extra yummy.

If you can’t get the frozen green chiles you’ll have to use canned. You might see if your grocery will carry them in mild to hot since there is an increasing demand for them.  Naturally the grocery stores in New Mexico carry frozen and canned chile year round. as well as a bank of various jarred salsas and four rows of mustard. I kid you not, FOUR rows.  In season you can get the fresh green chiles in boxes or bags and have them roasted on site, then take them home to package up for your freezer.  Somehow I missed this year, so I’m stuck with frozen.

Now as far as experimenting. I was discussing this with a friend, who asked why chicken broth.  Ummm.  Hmmm. Good point.  So the next cooking will be with pork country ribs, which come with bones.  So I’ll get some without the tenderizing additives, chop the meat off those bones, brown everything, and toss it into the crock since those bones will give me extra flavor.  I’ll let you know how that turns out.

“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration, the rest of us just get up and go to work.”

Stephen King

Way back when, careers were built by attracting readers to the “essence” of a writer.  As In “I’d buy anything from Suzi Writer” or “If (***’s) name is on the cover, my money’s on the counter.”  These people established a reputation for a certain style of writing, or their publisher established it for them.  Those days are a memory now, the value of a “platform” is still there, more important than ever. It’s just that now, we build our own.  But we don’t have to do it by ourselves.

The tools and guidelines to building a platform are abundantly available on line, even more now than when I took myself seriously enough as a writer to send a story off to Black Opal Books And the first piece of advice I didn’t pay enough attention to is:

DON’T WAIT UNTIL YOUR BOOK IS OUT TO ESTABLISH YOUR PLATFORM

Which is one of those statement that needs to be inscribed on the mug you use to convey your magic elixir of choice into your bloodstream.  That platform needs to go up long before the book release celebration and it needs to be strong enough to lift you up, plus all of your fellow writers.  The more we help each other the stronger we become individually.

WE ARE NOT ALONE (WANA) is the catch phrase of Kristen Lamb , whose blog not only inspires, it also chastises and drives us to perfection. If you’re not already reading her blog, I strongly suggest you start.

Also take a close look at Marketing For Romance Writers . If you don’t write romance you can still use the amazing information and support system.   They are open minded about any writing as long as you’re willing to share the love (support.)

In a nutshell, the suggested progression of platform building is: Establish a social media presence: Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.  Create your website and blog, which can be one and the same.  Link the blog to Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest.  Sign up to Triberr, join tribes.  When these building blocks for your platform are in place, your main effort beyond writing more wonderful books will be to regularly write a blog.  Yes, it is that easy.  And wouldn’t that be so much better than spending your precious writing time shoving books in people’s (virtual) faces?

I’m pretty sure you’re nodding in agreement.

I won’t be leaving you with just a few links to peruse.  We’ll be tackling those building blocks one at a time.  This week’s suggestion is to set up your writer Facebook presence, and your blog.  If you have anything you’d like to share on what’s working well for you, please feel free…if you’re blogging about platform building, let us all know so we can dash over to your blog.

Happy writing.

I’ve been told there was once a time when all writers had to do was write, and everything else was taken care of for them.  Well, once they were published anyway.  I have my doubts about that particular story but maybe it’s true, at least for some authors.  Those authors whose books fell into the dreaded mid list slot might have felt not much was done for them and it’s very likely not much was done for them and they sank slowly into obscurity in spite of prolific writing and excellent stories.

Shedding Some Light

Thus the history of writing.  Come to current events, where the publishing world has been set on its ear by authors who tired of banging their heads against the door of acceptance and chose to self publish; and the proliferation of small presses.  The Digital Age, some have called it.  Where for only a small fee you too can be a published author.  And you too can suffer the ignominy of being ignored by a large percentage of the reading public.

Sounds cynical?  Or maybe a bit depressing?  Let’s go for reality.  Even in the days of big publishing houses, promotional budgets were rarely spent on mid list authors.  They were expected to sink or swim on their own, and the one advantage was automatic shelving in book stores where the hope was a few new readers would find them and word of mouth would get the book out.  Used book stores were often the first place an author was discovered.  Once that discovery happened enough times said author might come at least to the top of the mid list.  And maybe one of their books would be the “break out” every author dreams of writing.  So they kept writing.

And we keep writing today.  The advantage, if one can call it that, is those published with smaller presses, or those who self publish, have no expectations of publishing house support.  The ball is firmly placed in their own court to give wings to their books, or to let them fall to the earth.  And honestly there’s not a lot of difference for those published by major companies, unless again you are one of the lucky few.

What do we do to drag ourselves up from obscurity?  Self Promotion.  Done correctly, it can bring your book to the notice of a cast of thousands.  Done incorrectly it can alienate you from readers and friends.  As one promo novice to another, it can be pretty darned scary.   Not to mention overwhelming.

So I’ve decided to approach it the way I approached training horses, and break it down into small components.  Which I’ll share each Monday, in bite sized pieces, because I’ve found sharing knowledge the best way to learn for myself. And I’m hoping you’ll come along for the ride, and share what’s confusing for you.

On Mary Keith’s wonderful business blog, today I’m selling out talking about the young people in my life. In particular my scary brilliant nieces and nephews, and the young writers I’ve met this past couple years.  The link is Mary Keith’s blog and if you happen to be coming to this late, it will be the blog for September 26, 2012.  Thanks Mary!

I’m thinking about a contest for the greatest time sucker of all. I thought it was Facebook, then Twitter.  But I find I was sooo wrong.  I’d been looking for some photos I took long ago to use on Pinterest to show some of the inspirations behind my books.  Lo and behold, I found them while taking those baby steps I need to help rework my life.  And I dropped in to Mona’s Pinterest Pages for “just a few minutes.”  As if that would ever be enough.  So my eyes are bloodshot and I’m mainlining Komodo Dragon Starbucks, but the pages are started. Drop on over if you get a minute.

And if you wondering if those photos were worth the time I spent looking, here’s a small hint.  I met this man many years ago and was honestly impressed by his intelligence and kindness as well as the more obvious attributes.

And when you’re done inpecting this inspiration, there’s some great writer advice going on at Kristen Lamb’s Blog

You remember those multi generation reproductions you’d get in the mail?? Send something to the name at the top of

Jason, just ’cause it’s a cool picture. By L Trenholm

the list, add your name to the bottom of the list, and in only 90 days you would be inundated with recipes/poems/dollar bills.  Uh-huh.  Well Greta van der Rol,  of the amazing space operas tagged me in a blog challenge. The idea is to find the first instance of the word ‘look’ in your current WIP and post the surrounding paragraphs.  She has an excerpt from her new book, paranormal instead of space, which centers around tigers.  I am definitely looking forward to that read! Just so happens I was working on the “vengeance or redemption” story when that challenge came in, and doggonit if “look” wasn’t right there in the first page.

***At first glance there wasn’t much change to the town itself.  Maybe a new stop light or two but still on street slanted parking.  What had been quaint or charming when she had first arrived years ago as a confused young orphan was now just tired.  A closer LOOK showed peeling paint, potholed streets and too many shops with blank windows.    Willow Springs was a city on the downhill slide.  If ever a town needed an economic boost, she was driving down that street.***

Hmmm, and looking now I found the part that was bothering me so I could drop in a quick edit.  Thanks, Greta!  So now I’ll tag a few victims of my own, and give people an opportunity to meet some exciting new writers.

Jami Gray

Jennifer Moss

Zrinka Jelic

Alyssa Lyons

Piper Shelly

Are Mixed Breed Dogs Healthier Than Purebreds?.

Jess Ruffner Booth turns out another fabulous blog on taking a reality check.