San Diego, here I come!

This weekend is the Southern California Writer's Conference in San Diego, and I'm going. It will be my, oh, two hundredth year of attending, and I'm as excited (and slightly nervous) as the first time.

SCWC has two conferences a year, one in September in Newport Beach and one over the President's Day weekend in San Diego. They've also had one in Palm Springs a few times, but it has turned out to be a difficult location, and the directors cannot do three conferences a year without suffering nervous breakdowns.

I'm only in charge of one Author's Luncheon, and I can feel their pain.

My first conference with them was in Palm Springs in 2006. I was told about the February conference in San Diego, but thought I'd skip that one - until I saw who was going to be teaching workshops. So I went in February, thinking I'd skip the September one - until I saw the workshops being taught. At some point, I resigned myself to two conferences a year because it might kill me to miss one.

I've posted before on what a great, working conference this is, but now I'm going to show you some examples. First, let's see a clip of the kind of speakers we get to hear, and what they have to say:



One of my favorite workshops is where you read your query or synopsis and Marla Miller identifies the problems with it. This is an online version of what she does at SCWC:



Lastly, the conference directors are dedicated to making this conference a good value for everyone's money, however, they are an irreverent crew and like to lighten things up. They've put out a series of videos highlighting the conference and the writer's life. Here's one of my favorites:



This conference began as a curiosity, but it is now my community. I know I can count on these people to give me strong feedback, critique, and advice on my writing, from creation through promotion.

Writers, artists, creative types - do you have a community, or are you a lone wolf?

Who do you love?

I know, I know, it's a completely commercial holiday. But who doesn't look for an excuse to have chocolate, wine, and roses?



(The video is snooze-worthy, but I love her voice.)

A very Happy Heart Day to my loves: my hubby Dale, our son Marcus, and yes, my four-legged lovelies, Duffy, Katy, Frostie and Snoopy. Will you be my (funny) Valentines?

What's a Midwestern girl to do?

When Marcus was a mere tadpole at KinderCare, he brought a flyer home one day. It was for "International Potluck Day." All his little schoolmates were to bring a dish that represented their cultural heritage, meaning all of the moms would be cooking, since who trusts a four-year old to light the oven?

So there I was, trying to figure out what "cultural heritage" I could whip up. I mean... look at me.

My cultural heritage is Welsh, Scottish, Irish, German, Dutch, and Swedish, with a slight smattering of Sioux and Cherokee. I try not to mention the Native American connection, because I'm reasonably sure only half of you believe me.

Dale's got the whole southern, Louisiana/Texas African American thing going, but I didn't know how many little kids like gumbo or red beans and rice. I can make a few of these meals, but they always taste like a pale, Midwestern girl had her hand in the mix. I've taken to calling my forays into other cultural tastes "Gringa" food. So I serve Gringa tacos, Gringa dirty rice, Gringa stir-fry, etc.

That year, I wimped out and made macaroni and cheese.

Years later, Marcus started bringing home flyers from his high school choir for their holiday potluck. Again, it would be the parents cooking - this time because our teenagers have too much homework. I decided I was going to push my little ethnic envelope and make something different. No Midwestern meat and potatoes, no mac 'n cheese, no fried chicken.

I found a recipe in the Southern Living Slow Cooker cookbook, called Loaded Jambalaya. There were a billion ingredients and it was really hard to do. I know, that sounds crazy. I mean, "slow cooker" and "difficult" should not be in the same breath. But it called for boned, skinned chicken and chopped onions and green peppers and celery and garlic and parsley and green onions.

The chopping! The chopping!

I rallied. I spent all morning prepping the damn thing. You gotta brown the chicken and saute the veggies - what the hell? What's the point of the whole "slow cooker" idea?

It turned out to taste okay, if a little bland, which is okay for a Gringa Jambalaya, as I had already christened it. But I made plans. If I cooked it again, there would be changes...

By the third time, I got the recipe where I wanted it. Spicier, and not as much chopping. My son pronounced it a winner. Here it is:

Gringa Jambalaya

Ingredients:
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken (use breasts, thighs, whatever looks good in the store and has already been boned & skinned), cut into pieces.
1 tsp salt
1/8 tsp black pepper
1/8 tsp red pepper
2 Tbsp veggie oil (you can use olive oil)
1 large onion, chopped
1 large bell pepper, chopped (use any color you want)
2 celery stalks, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
1 (14 1/2 oz) can diced tomatoes
1/2 to 1 pound andouille sausage (yes, must be andouille)
1 (14 oz) can chicken broth
1 pound medium-size shrimp
1 Tbsp hot sauce (Tabasco, Frank's, whatever you like)
2 cups cooked rice

Directions:
1. Toss chicken in salt & pepper.
2. Heat oil in skillet. Add chicken and cook until brown. Spoon chicken into slow cooker.
3. Add onion, green pepper, celery, garlic to skillet and saute until tender. Add to slow cooker.
4. Add tomatoes (Undrained), sausage, and broth to slow cooker.
5. Cover and cook on LOW 5 hours.
6. Cook rice and set aside.
7. Peel and de-vein shrimp, if necessary. Add shrimp, rice and hot sauce to slow cooker.
8. Turn cooker to HIGH and cook for 15 minutes or until shrimp turn pink.

Et, voila! La Gringa strikes again. I also make a mean mac 'n cheese.

If Amazon is steamrolling over you, why do you continue to let it?

Some weeks, I'm just chattier than others...

I should preface this post by saying that I only slightly care where Amazon ends up, as villain or hero. I own a Kindle and a Kindle Fire, so I'm hardly their worst critic. I'm only writing this post to provide some grounds for discussion.

There's been a lot of press about Amazon this week. Barnes & Noble won't stock their books because they don't play fair. Several states are suing them for back taxes, and they're fighting back. They might even win. They're taking over the world.

Waa, waa, waa.

Let's face it. Amazon is doing business from a business perspective. Making money is, at the very least, an amoral activity. It's not evil to want to make money. We need food and shelter and money can buy us that. But it's not altruistic to need to make enough of a profit from your goods and services in order to pay for your own room and board, not even if you keep your profits so low you have to live on five dollars a day.

If you want to keep Amazon from becoming the only game in town, what can you do? A couple of things, Ladies and Gents.

1. If you're a non-Kindle e-reader owner, buy more damn books. Some of you are already doing your part. I'm talking about the rest of you. Want authors to keep offering their books on Nook? Buy their books, help them make money, and make it lucrative to stay with Barnes & Noble. Want books available on iTunes? Buy them on iTunes, instead of getting the Kindle App for your iPad.

2. If you're a paper-book reader, buy your books from brick-and-mortar stores or non-Amazon e-tailers (Barnes & Noble, etc). No, B&N won't stock Amazon books, but they'll order them for you. If they order enough of them, they might change their tune about stocking...

3. If you're a big company, and YES, I'M TALKING TO YOU, BARNES & NOBLE, make friends with all authors and publishers. Give me an Author's page on your site where fans can come and see my latest trailer or hook up with my latest blog. Make it easy to find me. Give me some discussion boards to talk to people, not just for self-promotion, but to find out what everyone's reading and recommend other authors I think they'll enjoy.

4. If you're a big company who wants to institute a self-publishing service and YES, I'M TALKING TO YOU, APPLE, study Amazon's model, see what authors like (and don't like) and grow your model from there. Don't start out all hoity-toity with a bunch of exclusivity clauses. Amazon didn't start there, and its base model still isn't there. You have a choice, as an author, to be exclusive or not.

For consumers, merchants, authors, readers, Amazon will only take over the world if you lie down and let it. If you learn from it, you can give it a run for its money.

True confessions for February 1st

She's rude. She's nasty. She pushes so many boundaries, I think she's broken into another dimension. And she's my guilty pleasure.



Really, people, I'm a nice person. I try to understand other people's viewpoints. I try to be kind, to be uplifting. I'll always laugh at myself first, and loudest. I don't pick on others, even if I secretly think they're idiots.

But, damn, I think this woman's funny. SSHHHH, don't tell anybody, 'K?