Friday Fun

Hey guys, life has gotten pretty hectic for me, and not in a good or fun way. Times like this I always get the desire to create something, anything.

Sure, writing is creating, but I'm talking about artisan crafts or cooking. I want to make something visual or tangible to get that instant gratification. I dabble in so many different mediums, I've lost count.

It's the first day of Spring, so I should do something in honor of that. Instead, I'll share with you my cheating and lazy person's guide to Nutella Stuffed Cookies.

They are delicious and terrible for you, which is probably why they're so good. You can search the internet and there are thousands of recipes for Nutella Stuffed Cookies, but they all mention making the dough from scratch.

I have two problems with that, 1) it's time consuming and I have a ton of other things I want to do and 2) I'm not a big baker/cooker. It's a rare urge I get - mainly because I loathe to do the dishes - so when I bake things, I like to find a simple way to do it.

I should note, I loved baking with my roommates. It was fun, we'd try new recipes, and we'd split the dish washing. Not to mention I wasn't alone in eating the creations. We'd make a Friday or Saturday night out of it, marathoning Criminal Minds or some other TV shows, and we'd make food. But I don't like baking or cooking for myself. I'm just that lazy sometimes.

So without further ado, the quick and easy Nutella Stuffed Cookies with estimations from someone who doesn't bake often:

Ingredients and necessities:

Nutella (or peanut butter or chocolate spread that Reese's or other companies have come out with)
Cookie Dough Roll (it can be sugar, chocolate chip, what have you). I used Pillsbury Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough.
Flour
Spoon (one you normally eat off of)
Wax Paper
Cookie Tray/Pan
Freezer
Oven

1)The first step is to put wax paper on a tray or plate. It will be the place you put the Nutella/Peanut Butter.

2) Spoon out your spread into dollops/mounds, I'd say about tablespoon sized. Keep them spaced apart. You may have to use your finger or another spoon to get the Nutella onto the tray.

3) Once you have the desired amount, put it in the freezer. This was always a hard part in my apartment as we had a tiny freezer for five people.

4) Wait about a half-hour to forty-five minutes for your Nutella mounds to harden. It may take more or less time depending on how cold your freezer is and the circulation in there (things get frosty if you cram a ton of food in your freezer).

5) Prepare a cookie tray and open your cookie dough.

6) Put some flour on a working space or on a plate for your hands.

7) Once you're sure the Nutella mounds are hard enough to work with, remove them from the freezer.

8) Put flour on your hands.

9)Rip off (or cut) a piece of the cookie dough roll and make it semi-flat in your hand. It doesn't have to be perfect. If you're a Nutella lover, it will be perfect already.

10) Put a mound of Nutella in the center of the flattened cookie dough and roll the sides up around the cookie.

11) Roll the cookie dough/Nutella formation into a sphere. Remember this from grade school?

12) Repeat steps 8-11 as many times as necessary until you have a tray full of cookie balls. You may need to stick the Nutella mounds back into the freezer if they start to thaw. The flour helps the cookie dough from sticking to you, but not the Nutella.

13)  Turn your oven to the temperature dictated on the cookie dough wrapper. I don't know what cookie dough your using, so cooking times may be different.

14) Once up to temperature, put the cookies in for the time designated on the cookie dough wrapper.

15) Wait and drool over the smell coming from your oven.

16) Remove the cookies when the time is up (with an oven mitt, cause the tray will be hot).

17) Let the cookies cool off enough so you can enjoy them without burning yourself, and enjoy. You earned it.

And that my friends is the lazy person's recipe for Nutella Stuffed Cookies. (I should write a cookbook, right? The Lazy Person's Guide to Decent Food.)

Thursday Travels

Maybe it should be called Thursday Inspiration or something. Of course, then it wouldn't be an alliteration.

I love reading Historical Fiction, especially about ancient or pristine civilizations. I've always loved learning about ancient civilizations from anywhere in the world, but never really had a chance to study them as much as I'd like.

One of my favorite Historical Fiction authors is Michelle Moran. I often find myself thinking about The Heretic Queen or Cleopatra's Daughter. She recently came out with a new book, The Rebel Queen, which I bought and put on the short list of "To Reads".

So, through my daily RSS feed reading of articles, mainly comprised of business articles, I came across this Archaeology Magazine article: Why did Teotihuacan Collapse? (Tay-oh-tea-wa-kahn. At least that's how my Latin American History professor said it).

It's a very short article, but it's enough to let your imagination go. It'd be awesome if someone would write a historical fiction novel about this. We know, generally, why the civilization collapsed, but what else drove it? What characters?

If you're inspired, feel free to write it. While I said I love historical fiction, I don't know if I'd be the best voice for it. I have about 9 novel ideas left to write before I would even consider writing this. Of course I'd love for you to let me know about it (and autograph my copy. I collect autographs of my favorite (living) authors).

Anyway, are there American (North or South American) historical fiction novels prior to 1492? Once colonization hit North America, I lose interest quickly. :)

Writing Wednesday

Hey! It's been a week since I (officially) started this blog journey. It's been pretty good.

So, the topic for this Wednesday is editing your writing. I actually get paid to edit business documents and the funny thing is, I was terrible at grammar (still am if I review these posts).

In school, I would never want to learn how to diagram a sentence, finding all the names for the parts of speech tedious. It wasn't until I wanted to write for the fun of it that I actually wanted to learn grammar.

But what to do?

Reading was one choice for me. The more you see it correctly done, the easier it becomes for your to write "correctly" (whatever that really means). Novel writing has some peculiarities compared to grammar and punctuation of normal writing. In addition, the odds are the stuff you learned in grade school has been changed.

The other thing I did? Research. That seems to be one of my strong suits. I searched "how to edit a novel" or common editing mistakes for beginning novelists. There is a ton of information out there (or should I say terabytes of information out there???) I'm not going to reinvent the wheel, listing the advice for everyone when it is already out there, and written pretty well too.

Here are some sites I liked and thought I would share:

Grammar Book- for your grammar needs. This is for everyone. Not just fiction writers.

Novel Writing Help - for punctuating dialogue. One blog, run by editors I believe, stated one cue that the novel was written by a beginner was the incorrectly formatted dialogue. This should help fix that.

Of course, after I write that, I find the blog I mentioned: The Editor's Blog. This links directly to their segment about dialogue.

Here are some more tips that I am still working on: Warrior Writers

Well, that's all for now!

Tuesday Tech

For the video game lovers, both hardcore and casual, I saw a big announcement that broke today in Japan:

Nintendo is going to be making smartphone games!

This means characters like Mario, Bowser, Link, Zelda, and Samus could be coming to smartphones (like I didn't already have a problem with my battery).

Nintendo is partnering with DeNA, a mobile gaming company, to make this possible. What I really liked is that DeNA uses a "freenium" model. That means it's free to play, but to get enhancements like extra lives or power-ups, you have to pay.

This article (I've seen two so far) mentions a fear that Nintendo might steer into the "pay for power-ups" model for their console games. I personally don't see why they would bother. Their model works now (especially with this amiibo craze).

Now someone is going to need to invent an indestructible phone or padding for people. Have you seen photos of what happened to people's handheld consoles when Super Smash Bros came out? Phones won't be able to handle the fury.

Monday Musings

When the going gets tough, the tough get Mad Men.

Now, I have never actually watched Mad Men, but I know it's popular. Many places I turn talk about or reference the show, proving just how big it is in pop culture.

Why the post though?

Well, this morning I read an article on Business Insider saying "Every studio passed on 'Mad Men' at first; here's the epic story of how it finally got on air." It's a long article, but it details not just the process of getting a network to pick up the series, but how agents and actors/writers parted ways because of negative opinions.

In an industry full of form rejections, it's nice not to just read about best sellers that had stacks of rejections, but hearing that novel writers are not alone in the mine field of rejections is refreshing.

I am in the midst of rejections, and I am sure that I will be seeing many more in my future. But, if I give up now, not only will I disappoint myself and my characters, but (yes, you need to be a little cocky to say this) I'll disappoint the world.

A key take away from the article? Persistence. It's important to not to give up on something, but sometimes that something needs a break. The timing may not be right. As many novelists have hears, Dystopian and Paranormal Romances are tough sells right now. But that doesn't mean you shouldn't write that Dystopian Paranormal Romance. Who knows, you might be the exception to the saturated market.

For those who are not familiar with the publishing industry, Dystopian and Paranormal Romances may be hot now (or dying down in my opinion), but publishers are looking about two years into the future. Two years from now, we may read one or two dystopians, but not many. We'll be crazy over Sci-fi cozies or something.

Well, that's my shiny penny on the topic.

Remember, shoulders square, chin up, and get your work done!

Friday Fun

The inaugural Friday post needs to be dedicated to one of my favorite comics I saw in the newspaper years ago from For Better or For Worse:

I love rabbits, what can I say?

Thursday Travels

My blog is travel themed in the sense of background, so in honor of that, and that my series I am working on is adventure, I thought it would be good to share some travel/archeology related things.

I am a huge fan of archaeology, especially ancient civilizations. And I don't travel too much, though I'll highlight some cool places I see on the internet (of actual places to visit). I hope something will be interesting or inspiring for someone.

One of the articles I read was New tomb discovered in Luxor, Egypt. The link goes out to Archaeology magazine's article.


If you don't read the article, I really recommend looking at the picture. A lot of the images I've seen of Ancient Egyptian tombs have been pretty damaged in one way or another. But the image of this new tomb shows pretty much what the paint was like when it was applied. Really vibrant!