Musings & more….
I’m a little ashamed that your cupcakes always look so much prettier than mine, Gertie!!
It is foggy in Vancouver this morning, and the olive trees just outside my kitchen window are covered in spider webs that look like crystal lace. There is some metaphor in this that I probably should be exploring, but I simply found it beautiful to behold.
FYI, you can see the web more clearly if you click the picture.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
So guess who is turning forty tomorrow? Me! Yes, I’m celebrating with a liberal amount of chocolate and a visit to the spa, but I also thought it might be fun to have a giveaway and $0.99 book sale!
MASSIVE BOOK SALE
I will be reducing all my ebooks to $0.99 for October 11, 2013 only. (Though chances are you might be able to grab one or two on the 10th or the 12th because it often takes up to 24 hours for changes to go into effect.)
Excepting Spirit Binder, none of these books have ever been offered at this sale price before!!
After The Virus
Cupcakes, Trinkets & Other Deadly Magic (Dowser #1)
Spirit Binder
Time Walker
Please grab any of the books you’re missing, share the sale with your friends and family, and enjoy the reads!!
If you’re so inclined, a review on the book seller site would be a fabulous birthday gift! Merci beacoup!
ENTER GIVEAWAY
I’m giving away eight paperbacks via the blog here and one Cupcakes (Etc) paperback via Goodreads just for extra fun.
Head on over to goodreads, if you wish to enter for Cupcakes, then comment below to win one of the other eight.
Tell me:
Yup, it’s that easy. Contest open INTERNATIONALLY. I’ll select winners by random number generator after 12noon PST on Monday, October 14, 2013.
Bonus entries?? Do the above and add any or all of the following:
Are you already following me on any or all of the above platforms or mailing lists? Thank you!! Just remind me in your comment so I remember to give you the extra entries!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!!!
Hmm, now how many different treats do you think can I fit into one day?
Okay, drive by update. I’m over halfway through the second draft of Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic, so if I keep up this pace – and the edit isn’t too atrocious – I’ll hopefully be hitting publish on this sequel in October.
I’d like to say that it has taken me over a week to accumulate those paper wrappers, but that would be a bald faced lie. And I’m about to add two more to the pile … then recycle the evidence.
Jade made me do it.
Okay … I can’t even lie convincingly by blog.
As of Friday I’m six chapters into the 2nd draft of Trinkets, Treasures, and Other Bloody Magic – aka Dowser #2 – which means the novel is approximately a third done. I wanted to treat you to a bit of Jade by sharing my favourite bits so far. Warning, while these might be deemed as gems by myself, they have not been vetted by the editor, or betas, or proofed at all.
Chapter One:
“I’d known him for three months now and it still freaked me out when he looked at me too closely. Usually I pretended he was wearing some human expression when he did this stare, no talk thing. This time I imagined him frowning — I doodled it in my mind with a black marker over his —”
Chapter Two:
“Great, now with the running. The running always led places I really didn’t want to go. Like into blood and mayhem. Well, I guess I had just walked into the last batch of those …”
“Then I got hit by a bear.”
Chapter Three:
“Still, no trace of Kandy or Kett. No other magical glimmers, either. I was utterly useless. And utterly lost. Thank God my chocolate bar hadn’t completely washed away. Yes, I checked. I’m aware that reflects badly on me.”
“Desmond was absolutely gorgeous and dangerous in cat form. But, as a man, he was hard – almost overly muscled – and exceedingly difficult.
And completely naked.
Okay, Jesus. Of course, he was naked.
And now I was staring.”
Chapter Four:
“I put the SUV in park and loosened my seat belt thinking Desmond would want to drive, but after scowling at me for a beat, he simply crossed around to the door behind me. I checked out his backside in my side view mirror. What? I hadn’t seen him naked from behind.”
Chapter Five:
“I was haunted from within — from everything my sister did, and everything I didn’t stop her from doing.”
“You have remained silent for three minutes, Dowser,” Kett said. “I believe that may be a record of some sort.” Great, the vampire was attempting a joke. I was fairly certain that was one of the signs of the apocalypse.
“I was so going to run out of chocolate before Britannia Beach. No wonder Kandy stayed in wolf form. This way she had a major excuse for not participating in what masqueraded as a conversation, but was really just a sausage swing and measure.”
Chapter Six:
“A necromancer was sitting on my front stoop. Okay, I didn’t have a front stoop. A necromancer was sitting on the front steps of my apartment. A fledgling necromancer to be more exact.”
“Mort sided up to me, placing me between her and Kandy. The werewolf noticed and offered another spine-tingling grin. “Don’t let the blondness fool you, fledgling. The witch stabbed a 900-pound grizzly in the ass today. She just keeps her claws better hidden and painted pink.”
“My cat Lester loved marshmallows, even untoasted,” I said to Mort as I reached out to the magic surrounding the door, walls, and windows of my home. “If you accidentally left the bag out he’d totally molest it.”
“What?”
“Your magic tastes like toasted marshmallows.”
“And, so? Your cat is going to molest me?”
P.S. You can still win a Cupcakes (Etc) signed paperback through Goodreads this week. 800 people have signed up so far.
I’m not too sure that I want to share Gertie’s cupcake photo, because her version of Charm in a Cup looks so much better than mine ever do. Nice frosting job, Gertie!
Gertie just emailed this photo and note a few minutes ago and I couldn’t wait to share it. She wrote, “I made sure to eat two, the second one was yours. Let’s just say I was your cupcake-eating proxy, shall we?”
Hmmm, they look rather yummy, not sure I’m all over the proxy idea!
I’m beginning to really, really need to bake more cupcakes all for myself … I’m thinking about some Rapture in a Cup. I’m also getting a feeling there might be some reader payback going on around here … not sure I need the encouragement to bake more than I already do.
On Saturday, after Michelle H had grabbed a copy of Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic, she emailed to let me know she had baked to help me celebrate my new release. I baked Love in the Cup (see post below). I was so stoked, not only that Michelle had bought my book and let me know about it, but also that she’d taken the time to share her baking with me. Actually, I was blown away. And – on top of all of that – she, and her assistant bakers, Noah and Jesse, designated this plate just for ME!!
Those, Michelle informs me, are Pink Lemonade Cupcakes and Orange Dreamsicle Cookie bars. And I’m totally all over that one in the middle with the PILE of chocolate icing!!
Thanks so much to Michelle, Noah, and Jesse for sharing your creations with me. You made my evening.
Rumour has it that a bunch of readers have felt compelled to bake (or, at minimum, indulge) while reading, and Michelle suggested that I put together a blog scrapbook of the results. I think this is a great idea.
So, if you bake, or buy, or get someone else to bake for you, while reading Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic I would love to see and post your pictures!! You can email me at info [at] madebymeghan.ca
I find myself all out of cupcakes … and I only ate two of the Love in a Cups!! I shall have to whip up another batch myself.
Updated recipe: April 18, 2016
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Original post:
Heather from Doubleshot Reviews requested the recipe for the “dark chocolate cupcakes with dark chocolate cream cheese icing” AKA Lust in a Cup from my new novel, Cupcakes, Trinkets, and Other Deadly Magic. These cupcakes are also known as Jade’s – the lead character – favourite cupcake.
Since Heather demanded my immediate compliance asked so nicely, I decided to share the recipe with you, my lovely blogger readers, as well. Now it is true that Heather just gave Cupcakes, Trinkets & Other Deadly Magic a five star review, but she requested the recipe AFTER she posted her rating on Goodreads, so I swear there was no bribery going on!! Ahem. Diverting attention to the recipe >>>>>>
Official release day tomorrow! I’m baking some Love in a Cup to celebrate. I’ll promise to post pictures!!
Amazon flexed its algorithms last night and this was in my inbox this morning … here’s hoping Amazon decides it likes pimping After The Virus for me, and this appears in many other inboxes!!
It all started with a chocolate bunny. Okay, it all started with a tea date with my friend, Janine, who brought the dark chocolate bunny. No, wait it goes further back than that … it was just the chocolate bunny – a Purdy’s dark ‘Hopkins’ – that triggered it all. Some time in 1995 – I told you we were going WAY back – we got ’email’ through the University. I place the word email in quotes because I am not sure that it was actually email, maybe it was just some sort of messaging system that connected Canadian or other Universities? Anyway, an old friend, Richard, and I some how connected through this system, and he sent me a cookie recipe – yes, my reputation for baking cookies was firmly cemented even then. The recipe had some story attached to it that I have mostly forgotten, something about a woman eating these cookies at Neiman Marcus and then getting charged $500 ($5000?) dollars for it, and the store refusing to reverse the charge so the woman was now deliberately sharing the recipe with the entire world …
This story, even hastily sketched out here, sounds suspect, but the cookies sounded delicious. I wrote the recipe in my book and made the cookies … looking at my notes, I omitted the nuts (as I always do) but didn’t change anything else back in 1995. Someone – I’m not sure that is my printing – has written the note, ‘good!’ in pencil (see below) beside the ingredients, so I guess they were good, but, ultimately, too time consuming for me to bake often.
Back to the bunny. Yes, the bunny made me want to make these cookies again, but of course, I can’t ever follow a recipe, so I modified it to taste.
First batch – tasting notes – hand rolled, baked for 12 minutes and allowed to cool on the rack for 10 minutes. They were a little too dry for my tastes, and maybe I didn’t use enough chocolate chunks? So:
Second batch – tasting notes – dropped by mounded tablespoons, baked for 10 minutes. Allowed to cool for 5 minutes. Better.
Third batch – chilled the dough for 24 hours. Ate fresh from the oven, dipped in milk – YUM!
Fourth batch – chilled another 24 hours (48 total). I do think these do get better with extra refrigeration.
So, all in all, this was a fun and tasty experiment. I’m about to dropped off the final batch to the neighbours across the street, as I need to get them out of the house. Did I mention the recipe yields DOZENS of cookies? Too many dozens!! These don’t rank in the top five of my all time favourites – they are still too much work – but they are super tasty and a good use of a chocolate bunny.
You can find a PDF of the recipe & notes here: shaved chocolate chunk cookies recipe, if you are at all interested.