NANOWRIMO: Busy Mom Edition

With an exciting new array of duties at home, I know I won't succeed at writing a traditional nanowrimo piece this year. I thought I would try something a little different: writing a short story, novella, or novel just for my readers. This means I need you to inspire, influence, and encourage me. The more interaction I get from my readers, the longer and more interesting the tale will become. I will read your posts and respond by writing something inspired by your thoughts, comments, or weirdness, so post themes or ideas for me in the comments below and let's get this story started.

My writings will start on the 1st of November, assuming I don't end up sleeping through my potential writing time.

[REVIEW] [RECIPE] Mask Game

Mask Game started out wanting to be a novel but never got quite enough attention. Even in its incomplete state, it evoked the promised feelings of horror.

A blended family puts aside their complicated family relationships in order to celebrate Halloween. Part of the festivities included a game brought by a mysterious cousin. Her game involved delicate handcrafted masks and shafts of moonlight. As the game unfolded, the participants realized that the game might prove a little too revealing. 

The masks brought the worst of the family secrets out into the moonlight. They also had other interesting effects, but you'll have to read it to find out more. I guess John Shirley wanted to leave our imaginations free to weave our own terrifying tales about what skeletons might be revealed if we placed these masks over our own faces.

Masked Peanut Butter Cookies

1 cup peanut butter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
1/2 cup toffee bits

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
2. Cream together peanut butter, sugar, and egg.
3. Add toffee bits.
4. Scoop out into a dozen big spoonfuls on an ungreased cookie sheet.
5. Bake for 10 to 12 minutes.
6. Allow to cool for a couple of minutes before transferring to cooling rack until they cool completely.
7. Top with chocolate glaze:

Chocolate Glaze

4 tbsp butter
1 tbsp unsweetened cocoa powder
1 cup confectioner's sugar
1 tbsp cream soda (or milk)

1. Melt butter over medium high heat.
2. Add cocoa and stir until smooth.
3. Remove from heat.
4. Add confectioner's sugar and cream soda and stir until smooth. Add the cream soda slowly. You may need a little more or a little less to get it to the right thickness. I made mine just thin enough to pour and spread. The glaze hardened over time, but the cookies should be stored in a single layer. (Putting them in the fridge might help, but mine didn't last long enough to test that.)

[REVIEW] Three Tales of Terror

As I snuck in a few moments of spine-tingling reading over the past week, my mind noticed what seemed like an interesting similarity between three of the short pieces that I read. I should observe at this moment that my anthology contains poems and memoirs as well as short stories. It gives me s chance to explore that quote about reality being stranger than fiction, so I like it. The "My Favorite Halloween Memory" word art denotes the third story as one of these.

The first story focuses on the potential for terror that results from visiting Whitby, which apparently played home to Bram Stoker when he worked on his most famous tome. A romantic evening turns into something else as the heroine of this tale remembers that this night is mischief night. Constant rapping on the doors of her apartment remind her of this fact while she prepares for a quiet dinner at home with her husband.  As pranksters continue to plague her and her plans go awry, she comes closer and closer to addressing a fear she never realized she had. (This was my favorite of these three tales, but that shouldn't affect your opinion.)

This story follows the Halloween happenings of a man who finds his life in turmoil and returns to his hometown seeking peace. Despite his attempts to bury himself in his sorrows, an opportunity presents itself that gives him a chance to look back on Halloween past. He reflects on the joy he once felt creating the perfect costume in preparation for the big evening. Somehow his remunerations bring him face to face with his past in an unexpected way.

The writer of this snippet of memoir, reflects on the joy he once felt at piecing together a costume to go out seeking sugary treasure. He sadly recounts how that enthusiasm faded as the years passed and he grew too old for trick-or-treating. Even still, one Halloween found him making a costume from the cast-off remains of others he had once worn with more relish. In so doing, he somehow found a costume that haunts him still. Or is he haunted by something buried deeper in his subconscious?

For my treat, I decided to go quick and simple. I whipped up a batch of cookies following the directions on the bag of chocolate chips (Nestle, of course, and they are welcome to contact me about sending me free samples ;)). Then I decided to add a twist inspired by my reflections on tricks and treats. I flattened out a cookie dough ball and placed a chunk of peanut butter cup on top. I covered that with another smooshed cookie. Then I baked them for 13 minutes in honor of the mysticism surrounding that particular number.  If you feel like making treats to wow Harry Potter, you could tuck something less desirable into your cookies (boogers, wasabi peas, a slice of carrot, a chunk of beef jerky, vomit, any flavor bean you want) and make your cookie more of a trick than a treat, but I'll stick with my cookie-appropriate sweet stuffing.

[BOOK] [RECIPE] The Black Pumpkin/Cookies

A dear friend invited me to participate in a spooky cookie bookie event. The idea is that we read a book a week, make a cookie that somehow goes along with the major theme of that piece, and share with the group. Recent events have convinced me that I will not be able to read a whole book each week and may barely be able to slap together a whole batch of cookies without becoming distracted. However, I can't resist the doing my best to join the fun. Since my reading backlog contains an anthology of spooky short stories, I decided to read at least one a week and find or create a recipe that loosely relates to the reading material.

Dean Koontz's The Black Pumpkin got me started on the path of reading and yum. Having read other works by this author, I know his writing to be solid though I am still wary of what content he might slip into the pages. I once read one of his novels that addressed disturbing topics that my innocent young mind still doesn't want to completely understand. While this short story also disturbed me, it featured the normal "bump in the night" kind of creepy as opposed to "mental illness" disturbing that still has me shuddering.

As this was a short story, I fear giving away too much. Thus I offer a few cryptic statements.  I would describe this piece as an allegory of the rottenness of a soul finally showing through the outer shell. It could also be called a cautionary tale about buying carved pumpkins from someone else instead of carving your own. Intrigued enough to give it a read?

Feel free to make some cookies to sweeten your reading as you dive in:



Blackened Pumpkin Sandwich Cookies

These were supposed to be spritz cookies (those uniform little shaped cookies that you whip out with a cookie press), but I had to take a break to feed my little pumpkin and putting the dough in the fridge made it uncooperative, so I altered my method slightly. It gave the cookies more of a terrifying misshapen look that goes well with the story.

1 cup butter, softened
1/2 cup granulated sugar
1 1/2 teaspoons pumpkin pie spice
1/3 cup canned pumpkin
1 large egg
1 teaspoon vanilla
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/4 cup whole wheat flour
cocoa
Nutella

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees. 
2. Cream butter in mixer for about three minutes.
3. Add sugar and pumpkin pie spice. Scrape sides of bowl a couple of times to fully incorporate the spices into the butter.
4. Add pumpkin, egg, and vanilla and mix until fully blended.
5. Add flour and mix until dough forms.
6. This is where you can pop the dough into your cookie press and press out your perfectly shaped cookies onto an ungreased cookie sheet. I scooped out 1 inch balls of dough and pressed them flat with a fork dipped in cocoa powder (just like you do to make traditional peanut butter cookies).
7. Bake the cookies for 6 to 8 minutes.
8. Allow to cool and fill two cookies with Nutella to make a yummy, dark-souled sandwich.