I wrote this for a story challenge on a sci-fi blog called The World in a Satin Bag. The story challenge is as follows: write "A steampunk culinary cat mystery involving manga in 300 words or less."

I'm quite happy with the results, I think. (I hope.)





Amuse-gueule


The woman walked out of the steam billowing over the dirigible platform. Cradling an exotic shorthair cat in her muscular arms, she looked down after shyly meeting my gaze. The edges of her angularly-cut hair slid over her face in perfumed curtains.

Twin swords were laced into her striped corset. Her skirts looked more like petticoats than proper wear for a young lady. By God, she was half-naked, her legs and feet bare. I couldn’t stop looking.

She was perfect, my own personal manga heroine come to life.

I cleared my throat. "You know why you are here?" I asked.

She raised her eyebrow and the cat yawned. "It’s no mystery to me," she said.

"You’ll do it? Kill my wife?" I said, smoothing my cravat nervously, unable to quell my hands. "You do realize how evil she is?"

The assassin pulled out a lacquered keypad. Tiny puffs of steam huffed out of the device as she tapped the ivory keys. She held out the keypad and a stylus. "Please sign the screen," she said, biting her lip, for all the world as if anticipating some pleasure she wasn’t sure that she would receive.

I signed with a flourish. She grabbed my arm in a fierce pinch, dragging me up into the dirigible’s stateroom. "I say, my dear girl—" My words jammed in my soft palate.

I was facing my wife. She was, incongruously, carrying a spoon.

"I’m not sure I need to watch—" I said. The swords came down upon my skull, slicing my scalp, leaving my brain intact, if exposed.

"He consented?" my wife hissed.

"He signed the contract."

"Excellent. A willing victim increases the salutary effects for zombies such as ourselves."

My wife’s spoon dipped into my brains. She fed the assassin’s cat first.

I thought I should write something in here; it's been such a long time. I had a fantastic trip to New York in January, and I'm totally working on changing my life. I'm still grinding away at my novel, although the writing has slowed down--a lot. I now have two story ideas and another novel idea. I have a cold that is hanging on the edges, not enough to make me miserable or anything, but just enough to dampen my will to do much.

I've been pouring everything into my workouts at bootcamp and into my nutrition. I actuallyhave muscles that I can see, even when they are not flexed! W00t! I'm hoping to be fit by summer. Other than that, I feel like I'm a bit in stasis; not sure what to do with the huge stretch of time once I get home from work. Of course, I should be writing and kniting, but I'm not. I've been going to a punk rock choir on Thursdays, and that's a blast. I should get back to my knitting group too.

I think I'll start the dating thing once summer hits. I think this will be my year to do dragon boating, too.

Of course, gardening will start up soon. I am going to start some seeds, and build up the rest of my beds and put up a makeshift cold frame or greenhouse so that I can keep the seedlings warm and protected.

Well best soup to me anyway. I just discovered my new favourite vegetable--the white turnip. I had received them in my organic box last week and this week so I had four of them kicking around. My Gawd what am I going to do with these things? I thought that like the other items in my box that I don't relate to, it would go bad in the fridge and then I'd throw it out. But no! Last night, I conquered the turnip, and my bad luck with soups.

My problem with soups is that I try to make them too healthy, too low fat, and too many herbs, and I boil the sh*t out of them. They are very healthy, very gross and very indigestible. But this, this! is a soup of pretty damn goodness.

Emily's white turnip soup

1 white onion (the kind with the white skin)
4 or 5 turnips
A thumb sized piece of fresh ginger, chopped (man thumb, not princess thumb)
Half of a tiny hot yellow chilli pepper, seeds removed and chopped up fine. (Don't put your tongue on the seeds to test if it is a hot pepper, like I did.)
1/2 TB of turbanado sugar (or light brown sugar. I just happen to have the other kind)
3 or 4 TB of butter (4 TB was a bit much, I will kick it back to 3TB next time to see how that works)
Chicken (1 breast or two thighs. I used two thighs. I shredded it up in the fry pan after it cooked because it's easier than chopping it raw)
Chicken stock (I used about a third to half of a box)
generous 1/8 cup (approx) of apple cider vinegar
dollop of maple syrup
dollop of soy sauce
1/4 teaspoon of sea salt
fresh cilantro (optional)
bok choy or spinach or green of choice (optional; I didn't put it in this time but it would be good)

melt the butter in medium-sized pot while you chop up the onion. Add onion to the butter. Add sugar and stir, sauteeing slowish. Chop up ginger finely and throw it all in, stirring it. Chop turnip into one inch cubes and throw them into the onions and stir. Continue sauteeing mixture while you cook the chicken, about ten to fifteen minutes?

In a frying pan on highest heat, fill with water to the halfway point and poach the chicken until it's cooked. Well, poaching is a kind word for what I did to it. What can I say? I'm impatient. A minute or two before the chicken is finished, go to the pot with the sauteeing veggies and add the cider vinegar, salt, maple syrup and soy sauce, stirring it into the butter. Once the chicken is finished, dump it and the reserve water into the pot, along with the chicken stock until you get the amount of broth that you like. Turn up heat until you get a gentle simmery bubbling, then turn down the heat and cover. Don't boil quickly! Don't even think the word boil at all! Cook until the turnips are completely soft, but not breaking apart at all. They should keep their shape, without pieces in the broth. Or, like me, decide after ten minutes that you really want bread with it, realize you don't have any bread in the house, turn off the soup because you're worried that if you leave it on low your apartment will burn down, and walk down to the store for bread, come back and devour the soup, and bread.

If you want green leafy veggies, add them maybe two, three minutes before you serve, so that they're soft, but not soggy.

Or, like me, you could go sans leafy. I served, and then added chopped fresh cilantro to the bowl.

Enjoy!

Chapter Five almost derailed me. I started to listen to that little voice from my creative writing days at UVic. I was filling in some back story for one of my characters, who had just completely changed in a way I was quite happy with, when that little voice moaned, "Show don't tell, never tell anything, whooooooowhooooooo" and it shook little clanking chains of doubt at me.

I've discovered that on a first draft telling is good. Without telling, I wouldn't know were the hell I was going when I take a left turn away from my outline, especially since I'm using the type of plotting found in a spy thriller and applying it to urban fantasy. I tried to write some scenes for this bit of backstory, but it really wasn't working. Something that sounds cool in passing is not always cool when you linger on it. When I relaxed and gave up on the show don't tell b.s., I loosened up and got a reasonably decent sixth chapter, and my seventh chapter is ticking along nicely.

If I wasn't doing NaNoWrimo, I'd just throw out 95% of Chapter Five right now. But I just can't bring myself to set myself back by over 2000 words. There's always December 1st! I can't wait to start second draft. I love the tinkering. It's always been getting the words on the page that has been challenging.

I will never take a take an evening off and then procrastinate for a day during NaNoWrimo again. The catch up is brutal. I had to write 4849 words to catch up to what my word count should be by the end of day today. I managed 4623 words, which I didn't think was possible, especially since I went to brunch with radiantfracture and inlandsea and then went to a NaNoWriMo get together in the afternoon. I've been writing solid since 5 p.m.

Favourite typo to date:

"She had survived another audience with Cedric without her temper betraying her proclitivity."

Because you shouldn't wave your proclitivity about for just anyone to see. Proclivity. Proocliiivity. Gawd.

My count is now 10,154! I've broken the 10,000 word mark!

I finished Chapter Four today, and started on Chapter Five only because I needed to bump up my word count to keep up to my targets. Plus, one of my characters just took two turns into completely new territory, and has tied up everything nicely in a bow for me. She took one turn in Chapter Four, which led to a good piece of dialogue and a plot twist, and she took another turn in Chapter Five to add another layer to my world-building and another plot twist/character development element. I am quite pleased.

Getting down to writing was tough tonight because yesterday was a slog and I was worried that the plot strings were going to fall apart. I'm glad I persevered. Oh spelling error, but you know what I mean. It seems like I write better dialogue when I'm in terror of everything falling apart, writing-wise.

Now I'm going to do some heavy-duty yoga. It's too rainy out, and I'm feeling wimpy. But I'm also feeling my waistband tighten. Ewwww. I just realized that the quinoa I put on to cook before I started writing is still cooking two and a half hours later. It was nasty and totally unsalvageable. I need a nanowrimo wusband.

Haha! We have dialogue. I wrote the scene between Sofia and George before finishing Chapter Two, and it's much stronger on character development. Yay! Characters who are actually funny and witty. I love Sofia. May she drink scotch and smoke cigars forever! I want to go back and describe Sofia's bar/immortal casino more, but I must forge on! I wrote 2803 words today. Huzzah!

My current NaNoWriMo total is 6941 words.

As it turns out, the name for my main character, George, just popped into my head a month ago. I didn't really like the name, and I was going to change it until I looked it up and the name means "farmer". At the beginning of the novel, George is leaving his life as a farmer. Well I can't fight serendipity, so George he remains.

Chapter Two has arrived! I think I'm going to need to add more dialogue to this chapter on a future re-write. I made the decision to unlock the novel posts. The whole universe is telling me to put myself out there and to start trusting people. So I was going to jump off the deep end here and shout this out into the void. But after talking to B., I kind of had more confidence in the concept, so I'm going to hold it back and send it out when I've done a couple of drafts on it. I had actually just posted the first three chapters, but now I'm going to turn this into my NaNoWriMo diary. If anyone is interested, I would love to have some readers look it over. I have one already, but more eyes are always welcome.

This is the first fiction I've written since university, and my first NaNoWrimo posting. It's over 2260 words. My plan is to write like the devil for the rest of the holiday to jump the gun and get ahead of the word count so that if I get bogged down I have some leeway. At the moment it's flowing pretty well. I frantically outlined fifteen chapters yesterday, and thought up names for my characters (except for my main character. His name just popped into my head. Weird.

I just signed up for this year's nanowrimo. (Big gulp!) I'm pretty happy with the world I've been playing about with over the past month. Yesterday I wrote some rough notes, and the next day I don't hate it. I'm busting my guts on an outline, so that I'll be ready. I'm just going to write and not worry about it, which will be good for me. I'm deliberately not going to try to make it publishable, which will take the pressure off. I'm going to post what I write on this blog, if I can, for the contest. As I play and outline,characters are coming. This is a great sign! Usually I get an idea I like, but no characters or scenes occur to me. Characters and scenes are popping into my head right and left. OK, I've got to run and walk the dog.