Dreaming the Star-drake

Posted on February 21, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

One line in Rainbow’s Lodestone inspired Star-drake.

“The star-dragons and the wind sprites, her usual companions, could not visit her here.”

I wanted to know more about the star-dragons and the wind spirits with whom the rainbow played. Surely they would have missed her while she sojourned on the mountain, shut away from her native sky.

It felt like a story awaited me within that notion.

My concept of a wind spirit came from a snippet in Raggedy Ann Stories by Johnny Gruelle. Two little girls – sisters – lose their rag doll at the beach. He is rescued by the Tide Fairies who pass him to the Undertow Fairies and then on to the Roller Fairies and the Spray Fairies. At last the Wind Fairies carry him home to the little girls’ garden. A wonderful illustration depicts beautiful sea spirits surfing the whitecaps and tossing Freddy (the rag doll) into the sky. My wind spirits resembled them, I felt sure.

But what was a star-dragon?

I settled myself to meditate on the question, hoping for an answer. These are my notes: star-dragons are creatures of darkness who dwell in the blackness between the stars. They are emptiness. Shadow. Nothingness. They are the terror of these things, and they are the potential within these things. Nothingness has space for beginnings and newness.

The star-dragon in my story takes a terrible vengeance. He seeks out evil, strips it down to nothing, and re-creates it transformed: a newborn star-drake, destined to seek evil and transform it.

The final stone of Star-drake‘s story foundation lay with the travelers who engaged the rainbow near the end of Rainbow’s Lodestone.

Who were they? Where did they come from? I thought some more.

Emrys, the “ice-man,” was brother to the king of Tuisil-land, a small island kingdom far to the north. Emrys journeyed because he mourned and hoped to ease his grief in roaming.

Haral came from the Hammarleeding enclaves in the Fiordhammar mountains. He’d extended his wanderyar (the year of travel that most Hammarleeding boys take when they turn sixteen or seventeen) to continue studying duoja (magic) under the unusual tutelage of a Tromme-man, Paavo.

Paavo’s discipline of energetic shamanism is completely different from the Hammarleeding duoja, and Haral is fascinated by it.

The moors west of the Tahdenfiall mountains form part of Paavo’s regular ambit. He travels from settlement to settlement, much like a circuit judge, but he brings healing and insight rather than justice.

Tor and Lilli – grandson and grandmother – hail from Silmaren’s lowlands. They stumbled upon a worrying clue in their home hamlet and set off to track it down. I won’t say more here, because I envision a full trilogy stemming from their adventure!

Tallis I know the least about, possibly because she holds the most to know. She’s a salver, a healer, and is connected to Tor’s and Lilli’s quest. Yet she has her own problem to explore and resolve, one that will likely require the entire middle book of that trilogy.

With these elements – the winds, the star-drake, and the travelers – I was ready to begin, to move from dreaming to writing.

“Láidir couldn’t find her anywhere.”

On the chance that my dreaming has inspired you to read Star-drake,
I provide the links for the ebook.

Amazon I B&N I Diesel I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords I Sony

Gefnen hunts victory, but a darker victory hunts him.

For more about the writing experience, see:
Behind Troll-magic
Writing Sarvet
Writer’s Journey

Coconut Chocolates

Posted on February 15, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

chocolates on a bule willow plate With a little more foresight, I might have posted this before Valentine’s Day instead of after! Alas! But these are candies worth having in your fridge all year, because . . . they’re actually good for you. In moderation, of course! Don’t eat them every day. Gotta watch those carbs. (Grin!)

“How can candy be good for you?” you ask.

Well, the dehydrated cane juice and the honey aren’t, but everything else is just fine and some, downright essential. The coconut oil is especially beneficial.

Here’s three quick reasons why it’s so good:

• The fats in coconut oil are not stored in the body as fat.
They are quickly converted to energy

• People living in countries where coconut is an important part of their diet
have lower rates of heart disease and cancer

• The fats in coconut oil kill viruses and pathogenic bacteria
by stripping their protective outer layer

So how do you make coconut chocolates? It’s really easy, no real cooking involved. The only disadvantage? Washing the food processor afterward!

photos of making coconut chocolates

Ingredients

1/2 cup sprouted almonds
1/2 cup hazelnuts
1-1/2 cups coconut oil (unrefined)
3 tablespoons butter
2/3 cup dried, shredded coconut
5 tablespoons cocoa powder
1/4 cup raw honey
1 tablespoon dehydrated cane juice

One thought on ingredients: get sprouted almonds, if you can! All nuts have phytic acid in them, and phytic acid sweeps necessary minerals like calcium out of the body. Sprouting the nuts gets rid of the phytic acid and makes other nutrients more bio-available.

Directions

Grind the almonds and hazelnuts in a food processor. I try to grind them down to a nut butter. My family prefers “smooth” to “crunchy,” but keep your own preferences in mind when deciding how much to process the nuts.

Add the butter and coconut oil and process again. You can probably skip this step – just dump the rest of the ingredients in – but I like to get the “batter” silky smooth!

Now add the honey, evaporated cane juice, cocoa powder, and shredded coconut. Process until blended and smooth.

Next pour the “batter” into ice cube trays. If the weather is really cool, you might need to spoon it in. Coconut oil is liquid in Virginia’s summer, but solid in winter. The other thing you can do is warm the coconut oil before you add it to the processor. That keeps the “batter” pourable.

The other thing to consider is acquiring some trays designed for bottle-sized ice cubes. Helps to keep the chocolates bite sized.

Next the filled trays go into the freezer. If you have room, you can spread them out and avoid covering them with plastic wrap. (I prefer to avoid the stuff.)

Unfortunately, my freezer doesn’t truly have room. (Cheating a little on that photo!) I have to stack the trays, and I don’t want chocolate smeared all over their bottoms. So I wrap. You’ll see it in the photo where the chocolates come out of the freezer.

Once the chocolates are firm (several hours), take them out of the freezer and remove them from the trays. Cut them into bite-sized chunks. Store them in glass jars in the fridge. (You don’t want them melting, the way they might in a room-temp cupboard.)

Enjoy!

If you’d like to learn more about the benefits of coconut oil – there’s way more than the three points I listed above – I have a post!

But you knew I did, didn’t you?

:: smiling ::

A few more recipes:
Coconut Salmon
The Carrot Un-recipe
Sauerkraut
Eggplant Merveilleux

Radices and Arcs

Posted on February 7, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

I’ve written about the social fabric of magic in the North-lands, and about the difference between safe magic and perilous magic, but I haven’t described exactly how it works. I suspect you’ve picked up hints from my stories. At least one reader has said that “the magic is very well done and consistent,” so for her confusion does not reign. That’s good!

But magic is a fun topic, so I want to tell you more about the nuts and bolts, so to speak. Magic’s basis derives from the foundations of “reality” in my fantasy world. At its smallest and most essential, reality in the North-lands is vibration. The tiniest bits of matter are 2-dimensional loops that oscillate the way a rubberband might.

Does this sound familiar to you? Perhaps you’re saying: so that’s why she recommends a book about superstring theory on her blog. Huh! Well, yes. Or really, not exactly. It goes the other way round: I read The Elegant Universe 20 years ago, and the knowledge I gained informed my creative process as I explored my North-lands. I told you about the book, because I think it’s a great book. But it does connect in an oblique sort of way to my fiction.

Of course, in our mundane world, superstrings don’t lead to magic. But in my North-lands, they do! Here’s how.

At the foundations of existence are the oscillating strings. Contained and expressed within that oscillation is energy – energea – the energy of the world’s birth. That energy can be tapped by antiphoners, patterners, keyholders, and the like. The magical practitioner uses his or her own energy network – superstrings which make particles which make all matter and radices and their connecting arcs – to shape the world’s energea and create magical effects. The energea is drawn through the practitioner’s core radices and channeled along the arcs to the releasing radices at the hands or feet.

So, what are these radices?

They are energetic apertures within the physical body of a living organism. Humans possess 7 core radices at sites on the torso, neck, and head. Each palm features a radix at its center; each foot, one at the ball, as well as one at the base of each toe. Some disciplines consider the densities at the base of each finger to count as 8 additional radices, others categorize them as mere thickening of the arcs connecting the palm radix to the phalanges. The 7 core radices sit at the crown, brow, throat, heart, plexiform, belly, and root or fundus.

And what are the arcs?

They form the energetic roadways connecting the radices to one another and to the world around the living organism.

Different cultures have different names for these structures. In Silmaren, they speak of keys and spans or bridges. Among the Hammarleedings, it’s roots and branches. The Reindeer People say eyes and breezes. The Giralliyan terms – radices (singular radix) and arcs – are the most widespread simply because of the vast extent of the empire.

For more about magic, see Silmarish Magic and North-land Magic.

For more about the world of Troll-magic, see:
Who’s Who in Troll-magic
Families in Troll-magic
Bazinthiad’s Fashions
Bazinthiad, A Quick Tour of the City
Magic in the North-lands
Magic in Silmaren
Mandine’s Curse
The Suppressed Verses
Character Interview: Lorelin
The Accidental Herbalist
What Happened to Bazel?

Butter and Cream and Coconut, Oh My!

Posted on January 31, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

After reading Maffetone’s In Fitness and in Health and Fallon’s Nourishing Traditions, I sought out more myth-busting information. Hold onto your hats! I’m going to tell you what I discovered, and we’re in for a wild ride!

The notion that intrigued me was this: what if saturated fat were actually good for you? Fallon’s notes on butter from grass-fed cows hinted at this idea. Maffetone’s advice to cut carbs out of your diet for his 2-week test echoed it. And the improved health and slimness of acquaintances following a low-carb regime further piqued my curiosity.

cover image with coconut palm tree I purchased Eat Fat, Lose Fat by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig and devoured it in one evening.

Here was myth-busting with a vengeance!

The book includes a review of the basic chemistry of monounsaturated, polyunsaturated, and saturated fats. It also touches briefly on the influence of the food industry on governmental agencies and the culture at large in promulgating the belief that saturated fat is bad for us. (There are big bucks to be made from processed food, with hefty profit margins if inexpensive vegetable oils are used instead of pricey animals fats or coconut oil or palm oil.)

(I read Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories after, not before, reading Eat Fat. He describes the sea change from “starches make you fat” to “fat makes you fat” in griping detail. I highly recommend giving his book a read yourself, if you haven’t.)

Many items in Eat Fat, Lose Fat grabbed my attention.

The first was Fallon’s analysis of the research to date about fats. Some consists of studies of the diets of indigenous peoples. Some are studies performed in labs.

I learned that the Massai, who drank a gallon of milk every day and consumed meat and blood for the rest of their nourishment, simply didn’t suffer heart attacks at all.

Then there were the employees of the Indian railway system. The largely vegetarian workers of Madras experienced 7 times more incidence of heart disease than the meat-loving Punjabi who ate 10 to 20 times as much fat.

In the Framingham-Peurto Rico-Honolulu study conducted by NIH, the participants who suffered heart attacks were those who consumed the most polyunsaturated oil.

A workshop held at the National Heart, Blood, and Lung Institute and analyzing studies on women and cholesterol found that, for women, high blood cholesterol is protective. The longest lived among elderly women were those with the highest cholesterol. Further, the statin drugs proscribed to lower cholesterol offer no benefit to women in preventing heart disease.

There’s more; a lot more. But I’m not going to list every one of the 18 studies presented in chapter 2. Fallon is concise, but it’s still too much for a blog post. The take-away point? Most studies looked at saturated fats and trans fats as the same thing. Mary Enig is the researcher who first blew the whistle on trans fats, and now we all know that no level of trans fats is safe. But all those studies with bad outcomes for fat in the diet? It was the trans fats doing it. Saturated fats have been tarred with the same brush quite inaccurately. Trans fats cause heart disease, contribute to cancer, cause hormone synthesis to go awry. Saturated fats? Probably not.

Next stop on our tour is a short list of various organs and other body systems which possess an intrinsic and critical need for saturated fat.

The Brain

60% of the brain is composed of fat. And phospholipids – 50% saturated fat – are an important component of brain cell membranes. Without saturated fat being supplied to the brain by diet, brain chemistry may be compromised.

Cells

Saturated fats maintain cellular integrity everywhere in the body. Every cell membrane is ideally composed of 50% saturated fat. When polyunsaturated fat fills in on the job, the cells actually become somewhat “floppy” and cannot work properly.

Bones

Saturated fat is necessary for calcium to be incorporated into the structure of the bones. Osteoporosis, anyone?

Liver

Saturated fat protects the liver from certain toxins, such as those in acetaminophen.

Heart

Saturated fats are the heart’s preferred food, especially in times of stress.

Saturated fatty acids lower the blood substance Lp(a), a proven marker for heart disease.

Saturated fats lower C-Reactive Protein, an indicator of inflammation, which may cause many cases of heart disease.

Lungs

The lungs require a surfactant in order to work, and the fatty acids in that surfactant are 100% saturated fatty acids. When trans fats and polyunsaturated fats fill those slots, the lungs suffer.

Hormones

Hormones are the messengers connecting the brain, nervous system, and glands into a synchronous whole. Some critical hormones cannot be synthesized in the body without the vitamin A provided by fatty animal foods such as liver and shellfish. The wrong kinds of fats substituted into the equation lead to problems with glucose balance, mineral metabolism, and reproduction.

Again, there’s more, but I’ll move on to the next myth-busting tidbits.

Myth: Plants provide enough vitamin A.

Fact: Many vegetables and fruits contain carotenes, building blocks for vitamin A. Our bodies can convert these carotenes into vitamin A via a complex operation in the small intestine, but usually not enough vitamin A. And some bodies cannot do it at all, lacking the necessary enzymes: diabetics, thyroid patients, sufferers from certain digestive disorders, and babies and children.

Myth: Sunlight provides enough vitamin D.

Fact: Our bodies make vitamin D only in the presence of UV-B light. In temperate regions, this happens only when the sun is directly overhead. And exposing merely face and lower arms is not sufficient. How many of us can sunbathe for 30 minutes at noon every day wearing swim trunks or a bikini? That’s what it would take – in the summer. In winter, with the sun lower in the sky, we’re out of luck.

The bottom line: Not only are saturated fats healthy, they are necessary!

Enter the oil of the coconut, the nut of the coconut palm.

Fallon calls it the queen of saturated fats, because of its special properties, and it really is a marvelous substance. It’s almost tailor-made for losing weight, since metabolizing the lauric acid within coconut oil (coconut oil is 50% lauric acid) actually uses more energy than it provides.

Three key benefits of coconut oil:

• The fats in coconut oil are not stored in the body as fat. They are quickly converted to energy.

(I can personally attest to the subjective experience of this. For most of my life I suffered from physical fatigue and lethargy, worsening as I got older. Once I started eating coconut oil (and reduced my carb intake), that changed. The feeling of having a physical reserve I can draw upon is wonderful.)

• People living in countries where the coconut is an important part of their diet have lower rates of heart disease and cancer.

• The fats in coconut oil kill viruses and pathogenic bacteria by stripping their protective outer layer. (You’ll get sick less often, when you eat coconut oil frequently!)

Next comes a run through nutrient-dense foods such as pasture-fed eggs, butter and cream from pastured cows, liver (the sacred food of many cultures), raw cheeses, lacto-fermented beverages, bone broths, and Celtic sea salt. And then we’re on to the food plans and recipes, some simple like fried eggs, some more sophisticated like chicken with coconut peanut sauce, but all good, all good for you, and all helpful for those of us watching our weight!

This book, together with Nourishing Traditions, In Fitness and in Health, and Good Calories, Bad Calories, completed the process of turning my nutritional know-how upside down. I’m still adjusting my cooking habits, still learning how best to feed this unique body of mine, but my health is better, my weight is down, and I’m optimistic about my future.

I’ve blogged about each of these amazing reads over the past year. If you missed those posts, you can find them at the links below.

In Fitness and in Health

Nourishing Traditions

Good Calories, Bad Calories

Good health and good eating to you all! And if you want your very own copy of Eat Fat, Lose Fat, here are some links for that.

Eat Fat, Lose Fat at Amazon

Eat Fat, Lose Fat at B&N

For more on books important to continuing nutritional education, see:
Thinner and Healthier
Test first, then conclude!
Yogurt and Kefir and Koumiss, Oh My!
Why Seed Oils Are Dangerous

Notes on Chance

Posted on January 24, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

It started with a vivid snippet: the vision of an old, abandoned quarry overgrown by brambles and the certainty that a troll was involved.

Next came the entrance of Clary, an eleven-year-old girl, and her sister Elspeth. For a while I thought Elspeth was named after her great grandmother Jennifry nish Roanmothe. But she wasn’t. She was Elspeth, no question.

The troll seemed to be both good and evil, which was confusing until I understood there were two trolls. Aha! And then I discovered that kinship existed between the little girls and the trolls. Time to draw a family tree. I needed to know just what that kinship was.

Calcinides Roanmothe family tree

Before I received my revelation about the troll sisters, another intense vision swept through my mind’s eye: the shabby, disordered front room of Clary’s cottage. Her parents were weary, so weary they were neglectful. What made them so? I didn’t know, but I jotted notes for what would become an early scene in my story: dining table cluttered with last night’s supper, cloth hanging askew.

There I stopped for two weeks, letting the story lie fallow while I devoted myself to publisher tasks. I believe I worked on the print edition for Troll-magic.

When I returned to Perilous Chance, the image of a pegasus took me by storm; it was coal-black and shining, and bursting from the egg. With wings, are pegasi born from eggs? Or, with equine bodies, are they birthed live from their mothers? The answer still awaits me, because Clary’s encounter with a fabulous beast does not feature a pegasus after all. The scene from a future story had arrived, not to be incorporated into this one, but to spark a necessary idea.

No, Clary’s creature was not a pegasus, but I knew what it might be. I did some research: king of the beasts, king of the birds, powerful and majestic, symbol of divine power, and guardian of the divine. Yes! (But I’m not telling here. Too much of a spoiler!)

Once I had these pieces – two girls, enervated parents, two trolls, and a miracle-bearing beast – my story fell into place. I made a rough outline and started writing.

In three places I faltered.

The first was the simplest. How did Clary’s father make a living? He did not possess inherited wealth. He worked with his hands, but he was more than a simple craftsman. He didn’t fashion “bramble furniture” as I’d initially believed. Nor was he a businessman, supplying city households with the products of craftsmen under his organization. What did he do? He worked with his hands, but made decent money from it and received considerable respect.

If I ask myself a question with enough variations, I usually get an answer. It turned out that Tiber was a sculptor, and a renowned one at that. He designed the fountain in the main square of Auberon’s capital city and sculpted the horses cavorting under its play of water. He regularly receives commissions from the Morofane himself.

That settled, I wrote on. And reached a point of resolution. Was this the end? Events were resolved, but it didn’t feel like the end. I sought a first reader’s opinion. Was it finished? No, it was not. But no wonder I wanted it to be. In order to write the proper denouement, I needed to comprehend the judicial system of Auberon better than I did.

I set to work, researching a bit, brainstorming more. And I figured out enough to go forward. The current Rofane ni Calcinides is Justicar of the Peace. Local disputes and crimes are handled under his purview. Several wardens and a secretary, appointed by the royal judiciary, work under his leadership.

Writing the validation was easy after that. I knew where to place emphasis – Clary’s experience – and where to glide lightly – the visit to Arteme’s manor. And then I was done.

Excepting one problem: my opening wasn’t quite right.

I studied the openings written by my favorite authors. Why were they so effective? What was their underlying structure?

All About Emily by Connie Willis supplied me with the structure that would work for Perilous Chance. In Emily, Willis begins with a paragraph describing the protagonist’s predicament from much later in the story. That was what I wanted! And I knew exactly what piece I would use. Now my tale truly was complete.

cover image for Perilous Chance She was eleven, and she was hurt. Her leg lay under her, knee throbbing. Her arm ached, the broken bone within sickening in its pain. But worst of all, worst of all, a vast shadow loomed above her, dark wings spanning distances too great for the grotto enclosing them, razor-sharp talons sparking with the spitting blue fire of a strange power.

“No, please, no,” she whispered.

How had it come to this? Her day had started so ordinarily, getting breakfast for herself and her sister, because Mama could not. She cast her thoughts desperately back to the morning. I’m there. Not here. I’m there.

Something wondrous this way comes!
Amazon I B&N I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords

For more about the stories behind my stories, see:
Dreaming the Star-drake
Writing Sarvet
Behind Troll-magic

For more about Perilous Chance:
Justice in Auberon
Clary’s Cottage
Not Monday, But Lundy
Cover Creation: Perilous Chance

Troll-magic print edition!

Posted on January 18, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

The picture says it all, doesn’t it?

I’m delighted to announce that Troll-magic is here in a trade paperback edition!
And – am I allowed to say this? – it’s such a pretty book!

photo of paper books

Fighting against a nightmare pales beside fighting for a dream.

An accursed prince and her own longing for music challenge Lorelin to do both.

But tradition and a hidden foe stand squarely in her way. How do you make dreams real when vision fails, allies undermine you, and all roads toward hope twist awry?

Can courage, honor, and loyalty prevail against a troll-witch’s potent curse?

Set within the enchanted North-lands, this new take on an old Norse folk tale pits distorted malice against inner wisdom and grit.

Troll-magic is available as a trade paperback from Amazon.
You may also order it from your local bookstore!

ISBN-10: 0615702546
ISBN-13: 978-0615702544

Of course, the novel continues to be available as an ebook for e-reader aficionados.
Amazon I B&N I Diesel I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords I Sony

Courtship and Conspiracy, Mayhem and Magic

Posted on January 17, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

If you’ve never read any Bujold, A Civil Campaign is a great book to start with. Ditto Rose Daughter by Robin McKinley. The other two volumes in this list might hold up well under stand-alone reading, but they’re best following books one and two in their respective series.

Gregor and Laisa dance on their wedding day Ekaterin Vorsoisson has declared matrimony a no-go zone. Once was enough: the entire population of women in Vorbarr Sultana can have her share of eligible bachelors, thank you very much. But Miles Vorkosigan, count’s heir to his home district, hopes to persuade her otherwise.

Ivan, Miles’ cousin, decides settling your affections on a woman before you’ve even begun the courtship courts anything but a happy-ever-after. Time to dig up some rivals. Never mind that Miles plans to woo under camouflage, lest Ekaterin bounce him back before he starts. Some competition will do him good.

That’s where this “comedy of biology and manners” starts, but political cloak-and-dagger work, incompatible planetary sexual mores, an old Cetagandan scandal, and a bio-genetics experiment escaping the basement lab spin cunning strategies into a whirl of humorous confusion and conflict. With friends like this, who needs enemies? But Miles has those as well!

A Civil Campaign at Amazon
A Civil Campaign on Kindle

A Civil Campaign at B&N
A Civil Campaign on the Nook

Bren and Jago ride mechieti Huge differences create insurmountable barriers between alien societies, but resourceful individuals sometimes mediate the innate prejudices successfully. Bren Cameron, the paidhi from Mospheira, is one such individual. He stands between the human interlopers on the world of the atevi and the Western Association, the only governing body amongst the natives powerful enough to rule its diverse factions.

The Western Association under Tabini aiji engages in a breakneck space race, and Bren must supervise the program, translating the complex engineering diagrams needed to build a shuttle. The schedule is tight, the stress heavy, but as long as nobody starts shooting again, that counts as peaceful.

Troublemaker and patsy for a bigoted political group – Deanna Hanks – has been bundled back to the island of the human enclave. Jase Graham, intrepid rep for newly returned human spacefarers and potential friend, managed to drop safely to earth on an ancient petal-sail. Life is good.

Until illicit radio messages from across the strait impel the atevi elite to maneuver for advantage, and an unspoken dissatisfaction turns Jase morose and hostile. Bren declares a real vacation a necessity and turns to his ally Ilisidi, aiji dowager, for help. Ilisidi suggests Saduri, a fortress from medieval times for their destination. But Ilisidi possesses a hidden agenda for the trip, as does Jase Graham. Can Bren keep the precarious peace between species while his cohorts pursue competing goals?

Inheritor at Amazon

Inheritor at B&N

Heris Serano on horseback Space opera at its best, Winning Colors mixes interstellar mafia with a horse-mad 90-year-old, a cashiered ex-navy captain, and an assortment of spoiled young aristocrats to deliver up marvelous mayhem sprinkled with insightful exploration of the human spirit. Third in the Familias Regnant series with Heris Serano and Lady Cecelia.

Winning Colors at Amazon

Winning Colors at B&N

photo of pink roses against a blue sky Robin McKinley wrote Beauty, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast, as her debut novel and never dreamed she’d return to the story twenty years later. Uprooting herself to marry English writer Peter Dickinson, she waited to sell her lilac-covered cottage in Maine. Later, parting from her old home, severing one more tie to the land of her birth, proved surprisingly fraught. And her favorite fairy tale roared through her storyteller’s heart once more: Rose Daughter poured onto the page. Compelling and richly imagined, her new rendition of Beauty and the Beast conveys fresh perspective and insightful wisdom.

Rose Daughter at Amazon

Rose Daughter at B&N

For more of my favorite reads, check these posts:
Beauty, Charm, Cyril & Montmorency
Duplicity, Diplomacy, Secrets & Ciphers
Mistakes, Missteps, Shady Dealing & Synchronicity
Gods & Guilt, Scandals & Skeptics

Coconut Salmon

Posted on January 10, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

photos of making coconut salmon I love how crispy the coconut crust becomes and how beautifully it keeps the salmon moist. I have trouble hitting the sweet spot with salmon – not undercooked, but not over dry – and this recipe makes it easy!

1/4 cup butter
1 teaspoon Celtic sea salt
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/2 cup dried, shredded coconut
12 – 18 oz salmon filets

Preheat your oven to 375F.

Arrange the salmon in a buttered baking dish.

Mix the coconut, salt, and paprika in a small bowl.

Melt the butter.

Add the melted butter to the coconut mixture and stir until the butter is well diffused through the dry ingredients.

Spread the coconut-butter mixture on top of the salmon.

Place the salmon in the oven.

Bake 12 minutes, if salmon is thawed (or fresh). Bake 25 minutes if the salmon is frozen.

More Recipes
Baked Carrots
Sauerkraut
Sautéed Eggplant

Cover Creation: Perilous Chance

Posted on January 4, 2013 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

Clary is the great grand-daughter of a rofane of Auberon, and her papa is a renowned sculptor. The family could live more ostentatiously than they do, but their values are bohemian rather than those of status. Their cottage is merely roomy and comfortable. In my mind’s eye, I envision it looking a little like the photo below.

I found images that reminded me a little of Clary and her sister Elspeth, and I initially envisioned creating a cover featuring the girls and their home. (If the girl in the garden were Clary, her hair would need to be worn loose, and she’d soften her still “posing for a portrait” stance. But Elspeth’s double is very like her.)

Intuition counseled me to try a different tack. The magnificent and dangerous creature that is the heart of Perilous Chance summoned my focus, and I searched for images of fierce, winged, fantastical beasts.

The Dreamstime web site of stock photography features some amazing art (drawings and photos) available for very reasonable prices. I’ve used them to supply works for many of my covers, and they came through again this time.

Bas relief gryphon with background

I’d love to know the location where “Griffon 01” by Henner Damke was photographed. Is it beside the formidable gate to a medieval castle? Or gracing the edge of a Renaissance fresco? Damke does not say, and I can only guess. It’s described as a “reconstructed relief” and listed under the category of arts & architecture.

For my cover, I clipped the gryphon out from its plain backdrop.

Then I thought about suitable backgrounds. Roiling water? Stormy sky? Hmmm. What about a flower-strewn tapestry? The people of Auberon in my North-lands use tapestries extensively in the interiors of their homes. Something resembling the real world Hunt of the Unicorn would be perfect. I found something very nice, although I cannot place here the exact image I selected, because I did not (in the end) buy it and use it. Instead I’ll feature the Hunt of the Unicorn, which is similar.

As I hoped, the bas relief gryphon looked very nice against the dark tapestry. I flipped the image to follow the natural path of the human eye from left to right. After experimenting with title placement, I extended the gryphon’s top wing feather. And I turned the beast gold. Looking good!

I placed translucent shadows at the very top and bottom of the art to spotlight the gryphon and serve as a dark ground for the cover text elements. Then I typed in my title, the title tag line (something wondrous this way comes), my byline, and the author tag line. I liked it. But, but, but. Something wasn’t quite right. The cover was beautiful and evoked the right feeling, but it implied that the story was historical fiction, not fantasy. Perilous Chance is fantasy, and I needed a cover that read as fantasy.

Maybe white water would be more suitable. Or . . . no! My winged beast is a creature of the sky. The middle part of my brainstorming had generated the right choice. Time to go sky-hunting! A lightning bolt slicing orange clouds caught my attention, and I tried it. (Again, I can’t show you the cover with that precise image, but I can depict something very similar.)

Chance_cover_lrg_web But – yet again! – but, but, but!

That still was not right. Back to the search for the right image. This time I found it: lightning sizzling through a cobalt sky. Perfect! Especially since the cobalt-white streak of electrical energy mirrors the magical powers wielded by my fabulous creature. I hope you agree!

For readers whose interest was piqued by this sneak preview of Clary, Elspeth, and the magnificent creature they confront, Perilous Chance is available in electronic bookstores.

Amazon I B&N I Diesel I iTunes
Kobo I Smashwords

More posts about book covers:
Cover Copy Primer
Building Star-drake’s Cover
Choosing a Tagline Font

More about Perilous Chance:
Justice in Auberon
Clary’s Cottage
Notes on Chance
Not Monday, But Lundy

Building Star-drake’s Cover

Posted on December 27, 2012 by J.M. Ney-Grimm

Profile of a star-drake against a starry sky I adore the black and white line art drawn by Kay Nielsen in 1914. You can undoubtedly tell that from the images at the top of my blog. All gorgeous illustrations by Nielsen.

But Nielsen art can be difficult to track down. And I’m not sure he ever did any dragons. If he did, I haven’t seen them.

So when it was time to create a cover for Star-drake, I needed another solution. And I found a fabulous winged-and-clawed beast by Netfalls on the Dreamstime web site. Except . . . it was golden, not black. And flew through an inferno, not a star-spangled night sky. But the basic form was perfect . . . and some Photoshop work could fix the rest.

I purchased the right to use the art, turned it black and white, clipped away the inferno, and placed the creature in my cover file. The highlights were too bright, so I toned them down. The middle grays weren’t dark enough, so I deepened them. And the drake needed a little more vertical reach, so I lengthened his neck. There! The hard part was done.

Next came the night sky: another Dreamstime find, this one by Silvertiger. I tried popping the image straight into my file, but the brightest stars were unfortunately placed. I flipped the image, nudged it up and to one side, and that did it. But what about the drake’s eye? It alone should gleam, not with fire – this is an archetypal leviathan of darkness and mystery – but with intensity. I selected the eye and made it citron, glowing like a jewel.

I added a translucent shadow at the very top and the very bottom of the art, to give a nice dark field for my title and byline. I placed these as pale gray type, then ran them through Photoshp’s chrome filter to generate the wavy pattern within the letters. The tag lines called for the color of the drake’s eye. Who can resist that eye? Not me!

And there you have it: the cover for Star-drake.

But, wait, that’s not all! I have plans for this story that one reviewer was gracious enough to call wonderful. It is destined for a collection of six stories – ranging from short to novella – all featuring trolls among their casts of characters. The collection will release some time next year as both an e-book and a print edition. In the meantime, Star-drake is bundled with a bonus story (Rainbow’s Lodestone) as an e-book in all the usual places.

Amazon I B&N I Diesel I iTunes I Kobo I Smashwords

More posts about book covers:
Eyes Glaze Over? Never!
Cover Creation: Perilous Chance
Cover Makeovers