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Thursday, June 21, 2012

Food Porn Aficionado



I love food.

My friends love food.

Sometimes, for no reason at all, we’ll post a photo of food and pass it around in some mass exercise of giddy fantasy. Food becomes a topic of conversation often, and not just because I’m hawking my cookbooks.

I may get the ball rolling by posting dinner plans, questions regarding ingredients for the next food column, or as a response to the Twitter feed with links to easy and awfully alluring recipes for weekend chefs and brown bagging.

My friends will be the catalyst sometimes as they too post their dinner and dessert creations or particularly good restaurant far. In fact, we’ve been known to even host Food Porn Thursdays were we compulsively post deliriously tantalizing photographs to see who faints first.

More than a few times, one friend has mentioned that I need to be put in touch with another of their friends and I’ll joke that we could form a food porn club.

It happened again yesterday. It started because I decided to write a new food column about chicken livers. I posted the question, “Chicken livers: love them, hate them, no freaking way?” The ensuing conversation included favorite dishes and a mention of folks that ought to be brought together just to discuss food.

It was time to take the bull by the horns and I created Food Porn Aficionado. I added people from my friends’ list and gave them the option to remain or go, as they wish, but knowing that most would love a place to focus their passion for food.

Are we foodies? Gourmets? Some probably would answer to that. Some are home cooks. Some are enthusiastic and adventurous eaters. Some use their oven as storage area and have not boiled an egg in their lives.

What I really love is that we have an international roster of members to start and the discussions promise to be not only interesting but I am sure we are all likely to learn new tricks and expand our horizons, making our palates the happy recipients of the gift that truly keeps on giving.

It is an open group and will remain so for as long as I can manage it. Everyone will be approved. The only rule is to be civil to your fellow members and to enjoy the ride.

Our maiden voyage included a recipe for a beet and feta salad, two beautiful desserts, and dinner menus from both sides of the pond. Members identified their favorite cuisines and this promises to help us all new and exciting items to our repertoire.

I love food porn. If you do too, come join us!

Sunday, June 10, 2012

The Latest Addition


Kali, The Food Goddess: Vols. 1 & 2 is now available in e-book form. Like its print counterpart, it combines the first cookbook (A Compilation of Delightful Recipes and Memories of Food) with a selection of entries from the online column; and the second book, Fruits of the Family Tree. Also, a few new recipes have been added for this edition.

I linked and bookmarked the sections for easy maneuvering within the book. I was going to create a hyperlinked index but my level of sadomasochism was relatively low this week… But more importantly, this is hardly necessary given the search capabilities of most e-readers. It’s just not necessary.

Each version requires a different kind of formatting and I want to suggest to all those starting at this self-publishing thing never to do formatting when sleep-deprived. You tend to forget simple things and commit the same silly mistakes again and again.

The book is available at Smashwords, Amazon and Barnes and Noble. It will roll out to international online retailers in the next few weeks.

This ends the repurposing project and sets me free for new projects -- except for the damned press release. For some reason writing a press release for the cookbook seems like an impossible ordeal. I’m sure if I stop fretting about it some brilliant idea will occur to me.

~ * ~ * ~ * ~

In other news, I was inspired recently to add another story for Because She Was a Woman and there’s some cage dancing involved. It’s not what you think, though.

I have an end for The Scent of Honeysuckle so that I may have it ready by Halloween after all.

There is a project in the works to encourage memoirs writing and I will share details once that gets going.

The intro to the steampunk-inspired series is ready to go and I am not entirely sure what I am waiting for, except that I wanted to finish the other projects first. I also want to finish the first installment so that there is only a short wait between the intro and the first full length book.

As things tighten at my end, I hope the royalties increase, though that is still not the sole or even the most important goal in my experiment. Now I can concentrate on some promotion and editing, and ideas to conquer a few new genres I have not yet tackled. 

Monday, June 4, 2012

Tiki Tiki? Yeah, we got that!



“¡Voy p’al Tiki Tiki!”

That is just a fun thing to say.

Tiki tiki is Cuban slang that is used across the Spanish-speaking Caribbean and means talk, dish, the constant blah-blah-blah about everything and everybody, hands going a mile a minute to match the mouth…

Tiki Tiki Blog is an online production from Carrie Ferguson Weir and an amazing group of talented Latinas (some of whom, like me, have confusingly Anglo names just to prove the point that Latinas comes in all sizes, colors, and accents).

Starting today, Tiki Tiki is running a fun excerpt of the English/Spanish hybrid short story La Chancleta and you can read it here.

Saturday, June 2, 2012

News, News, News!


I have been running myself ragged!

Being a self-publisher is exhilarating, freeing, and a positive joy. It is also exhausting.

The last couple of weeks, I was feverishly reformatting books and repurposing titles to create paperback versions for the folks sans e-readers. I intended to do this and got side tracked in the myriad of projects I have going. I had started the process and completely forgot to follow through.

No sweat. The time is here!

The cookbooks have been bundled into one tome, and a few recipes have been added.

















Kali, The Food Goddess: Vols. 1 & 2


List Price: $5.99

6" x 9" (15.24 x 22.86 cm) 
Black & White on White paper
120 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1477555965 (CreateSpace) 
ISBN-10: 147755596X 
BISAC: Cooking / General



The mini-memoirs, and the two shorts based on true stories have been bundled into one tome each (one in Spanish and one in English—this one is still under review).















Remembrance of Dingbats

List Price: $5.99
5" x 8" (12.7 x 20.32 cm) 
Black & White on White paper
140 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1477566879 (CreateSpace) 
ISBN-10: 1477566872 
BISAC: Biography & Autobiography / General

https://www.createspace.com/3894047



 Cuentos y Recuerdos: La Colección Latina 



List Price: $4.99

5" x 8" (12.7 x 20.32 cm) 
Black & White on White paper
92 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1477554630 (CreateSpace)
ISBN-10: 1477554637 
BISAC: Biography & Autobiography / Cultural Heritage



The first novel that started this whole business is finally out in print. I thought of adding the tag line, “Because sometimes the boss has it coming…” but restrained myself.

Justified



List Price: $6.66

5" x 8" (12.7 x 20.32 cm) 
Black & White on White paper
194 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1461088813 (CreateSpace) 
ISBN-10: 146108881X 
BISAC: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / General


I did make the decision to publish through CreateSpace, which means the paperbacks will be available exclusively through Amazon.

The experiment just got switched into high gear! Of course, this also means that I have doubled my work because there is a ton of marketing to be done that I didn't account for because I forgot I was doing this and then I became obsessed with getting it done...  

Check out my personal blog at The Temple for more news about the new name for the enterprise (Amapola Press).