Stephanie Burgis - Magical Books for Ages Ten to Fifteen

Chocolate ecstasy

August 26, 2010, 1.34 pm

Here's the problem with not having enough time to blog regularly this week: I have SO MANY things I want to talk about, and not nearly enough space in one entry for all of them! Luckily, after this morning's trip into town, my top priority is obvious:

I have discovered a whole new reason to love life, and it is the Hot Chocolate Milano served at Caffé Nero.

As you guys know, I am a hot chocolate addict, and since our Caffé Nero is amazingly child-friendly (they offer special free drinks - "babaccinos" - for toddlers and even keep a collection of toys for them to play with in-store), I've been drinking my hot chocolates at Caffé Nero at least once a week for the last couple of months. This time, though, for the first time, I noticed a second kind of hot chocolate on the menu, one that was described as "extra-rich".

Ooh. Extra rich. Of course, I ordered it.

The baristo (is the job title baristo when it's a man serving the drinks? or is it still barista?) said, "Ah. Ahem. So have you ordered the Milano before?"

"No," I said.

"Ah," he said. "Well, it's a...well, it's very intense. A lot of people don't like it. It's basically melted Belgian chocolate, you know."

"Ooh," I said. "Sounds good."

He sighed, looking worried. "How about this," he said. "I'll make it for you, but if you don't like it, just tell me, okay? And I'll make you an ordinary hot chocolate for free. Because a lot of people...well, I like it, personally, every once in a while, but it is very intense."

"Okay," I said. As Patrick pointed out later, when I told him this story, the barista/o had NO IDEA what effect he was having on me with this description. He thought he was warning me off. Little did he know...

It looked incredible, served in a tall glass with whipped cream on top. Pure chocolate bliss. I told myself not to have too-high expectations, though, even as I lifted it up to my lips. It couldn't really be that intense, that chocolatey...

OMG. It really was. It was incredible.

I drank every drop. I would have licked the dregs if I could have reached them at the bottom of the glass.

Hot Chocolate Milano. Hot Chocolate Milano. Hot Chocolate Milano...

I can't wait to order another one. I wonder if they would think I was too weird if I got it again tomorrow...

What about you guys? What are your favorite, most decadent café treats?

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Because I have the best friends in the world...

August 22, 2010, 1.02 pm

This arrived in the mail this week:

(You can click on the photo to see the larger version.)

The handmade chocolate truffles are divine. The picture on the champagne label comes straight from my beautiful UK cover, and it reads: A MOST IMPROPER CHAMPAGNE. DRINK ME!

Just like Alice in Wonderland, I followed orders.

I really, really love my friends. :)

Sadly, I have to warn everybody that - believe it or not - in this coming week, I am going to be even WORSE and even MORE slow at replying to emails and other messages than usual (beating even my previous terrible record!), because we've just started a period of 10 days without any childcare at all. (Curse those August holidays!)

I'm fighting hard to find the time and energy for fiction-writing...but personal emails may just not happen at all in the next week or so. :( I feel really guilty every time I look at my inbox and see so many messages I need and want to respond to...but between exhaustion, CFS, and sheer lack of typing time, it's just not happening at the moment.

My hope is that if I can keep on posting here fairly regularly, at least all my friends will know a bit of what I'm up to...and I promise to try to make up for my email lame-ness once life goes back to normal!

In the meantime, though, I'm having lots of awesome adventures with roaring dinosaurs, tigers, horses, and other animals, both inside our house and at our local park. In the evenings, Patrick and I have been watching Season 4 of Gilmore Girls (our joint anniversary present to each other this year - so great to have a long-running show we both completely enjoy!). And every so often, I manage to find time for my dragon novel, which makes me very, very happy. :)

How are you guys doing? And what's the coolest gift you've either gotten or given in recent times?

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The scary side of parenting

August 19, 2010, 12.02 pm

Wow. There is NOTHING like taking your child to a big, crowded children's play house to bring back all your own childhood insecurities and fears - amplified by a thousandfold as you watch the usual bad stuff happen to your own child. Nothing major, obviously - just the kind of casual nastiness from a couple of the bigger kids, which feels SO much worse when you're watching it happen to your baby.

And of course, as the parent, you have to look cheerful and unconcerned by the whole thing, to help your child stay calm and make sure they have a good time even if they have just been casually punched or kicked by a much bigger kid who really should have known better...

And then there's The Big Playhouse Issue, the one I'd forgotten might even come up (possibly because I'd worked so hard to blank it out of my memory?) after all these years away: rope bridges.

I really, really hate ropes courses. And when I say "hate", I mean "pathetically fear". I mean, I used to be the little kid crying and shivering with panic at the head of the bridge, the one who nearly threw up afterward if she ever did manage to cross them.

You know how people always say to kids that once they go ahead and DO that scary thing, they'll enjoy it? I never, ever enjoyed it. Not once. When I was 21, I nearly quit a job I'd just taken - a good job, a job I needed badly - when I found out that as a "bonding" thing, we had to have a day out at a ropes course. Because I was an adult, I didn't cry where anyone else could see me, and I managed to force my way through the day with muscles and teeth gritted to hold back my real reactions, while everyone around me seemed to be having fun.

Then afterward, when no one else could see me, I cried and shook with decompression, because I am so physically petrified of those things.

It's irrational. It's stupid. It's deeply humiliating. I hate this weakness I have, which no one else I know has ever shared. It makes me feel small and really dumb.

Today, I had to encourage my tiny son to cross those ropes, because it was important for him and I really, really don't want to pass on my panic to him. Today, to help him, I had to cross those ropes. Twice. I kept a smile on my face. I kept my voice chirpy. After the second time across, though, I had to call Patrick to pick us up, half an hour earlier than planned. I kept my voice chirpy the whole way back to the house, and waited until Patrick and MrD left for their own trip out.

Then I walked inside the house and cried and shook. Because not only had I had to cross those rope bridges, but the stupid, irrational panic was multiplied a thousand times as I watched - and helped! - my son cross them, too. I know in my head that they're perfectly safe, but my body refuses to accept that, and the feeling of watching my son put himself in mortal danger (untrue though I know that scenario to be) is just lethal.

I hate that I'm still so scared of something so babyish, at the age of 33. I am baffled by the fact that this morning, which should have been fun, turned out to be one of the hardest mornings I've ever spent as a parent (outside of a medical situation).

I came very close to not posting this entry, because I am so humiliated by my fears. But I think - I hope - that there must be other people out there who have "childish" fears that they're embarrassed by, who might be willing to share them here or at least be glad to see that someone else has them, too.

Do you guys have any fears you haven't outgrown, even if you think you should have? Or: if you're parents, what are the hardest things you've had to do to help your kids?

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Today I am actually...

August 17, 2010, 9.37 pm

...at the blog of the fabulous Heather Vogel Frederick (author of Spy Mice, The Mother Daughter Book Club, and many more. Heather interviewed me as part of her "Pie of the Month" club, and I ended up sharing not only my Thanksgiving recipe for pecan pie (yum!), but also my number one most embarrassing moment as a writer. Here's a quick snippet:

When I was first starting to send short stories out to magazines, I got a really nice rejection from one of my very favorite magazines. The editor said all sorts of great things about my writing style, and said how close the story had come to being published, but she still turned it down. Well, I was feeling sick with a cold and very sorry for myself that day, and...(oh, I still cringe when I remember this)...

Read the whole story, and pick up the pie recipe, on Heather's blog!

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Pre-Writing, Music, and Weekend

August 15, 2010, 3.40 pm

It's definitely THAT time of year again: the novel-wrestling time, when I've already written the fun, easy opening of my novel and it's time to do the hard work of figuring out how the main story of the book is really going to work. Which direction to go, which points to head for, what it's Really All About...

This is surprisingly frazzling. The first few chapters are always so easy! They're just for fun, I just see what happens...and then we hit this bit, where I need to actually make important decisions. Oops.

So it's good timing to be reading Russell T. Davies's The Writer's Tale: The Final Chapter (recommended by Sara Ryan), which is turning out to be the funniest and smartest book on writing that I've read in a long, long time. I keep wishing that I had post-it notes on hand to stick on every page where a moment or observation flies out at me and wants to be saved...sadly, this is a library book, so I'll have to wait until I buy a copy of my own (soon!) before I get to mark it up.

Here's one bit, though, that was most appropriate for the stage I'm in right now with my dragon novel. He's talking about the struggle to come up with the main ideas for a Doctor Who Christmas episode, and all the inevitable "buts" that come flying up in an internal cloud of skepticism whenever a possible new idea first occurs to him:

But why not...? Why would...? Why do...?...But that sort of thing shouldn't stop me. Let it ride. I mustn't bore myself with reasons with reasons why not. There are always a million dull reasons why not. Go for the images, the feel of it, the potential, the dynamic. Details come later.

I read that paragraph and thought, YES. It was exactly what I needed to read. The important thing is to focus first on the FUN of the idea, focus on how it could be the MOST fun, and deal with all the rational logistics of it later.

Because I'm me, the main external work I'm doing right now (while I work out all the big questions inside my head) is collaging the novel and going on a big musical hunt for songs that might work as a playlist. So far, the "dragon playlist" on my computer has a Pink Martini song ("Tuca Tuca"), the movie soundtrack from Pride and Prejudice (I don't really like that adaptation, but the soundtrack is just perfect), and some lovely, haunting Maggie Stiefvater songs that I downloaded from her website. I keep the playlist playing in my ears at least half of every day, helping to focus my mind as I work out the different characters and their arcs.

And the whole time, of course, I feel desperately restless and itchy and irritable, because I want to get down to it and just WRITE! But if I skip this pre-writing stage, I will pay for it, because my subconscious needs the time to simmer. That's a lesson I've learned before, all too painfully. Sigh.

Anyway! That's what my writer-side has been up to this weekend, while the rest of me has been mommying. MrD and I had a lovely café trip yesterday, visited the owls, and stopped in at Waterstones. A perfect Saturday! Today has been much quieter, but Maya and I went to the park, and later I'll be skyping with my family back home in Michigan, so it's a good weekend overall.

What about you guys? How are your weekends going? And if you're a writer, what kind of pre-writing work do you usually need to do?

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