News from the DZ
Posted on | December 20, 2006 | 4 Comments
I’m craving fruitcake. Can you believe that? I saw one in the lunch room yesterday and had flashbacks to the one my mother used to make when I was young. So I e-mailed my sister to get the recipe and I’m going to tackle it this weekend. Sucker takes three hours to bake and reportedly will last for 25 years in a sealed container. Yum!
I turned in my 24th News From the Dead Zone column to Cemetery Dance magazine, for issue #58. This one is a tad shorter than usual, only 4000 words. I always wait until the final moment of my deadline to submit it, because a lot usually comes up at the last minute. Check out the online version of the column for some of the stuff that came up in the last day or so, including a link to the first two chapters of King’s upcoming Bachman novel Blaze.
Now that the column’s out of the way, I want to take a look at my submission log to see what orphans I have that need to be sent out, then tackle the deadline list I have for upcoming anthologies. I definitely want to try my hand again at the MWA anthology, though I doubt that lightning will strike two years in a row.
Currently reading: Next by Michael Crichton. About 50 pages in and there’s still no discernable protagonist. State of Fear had that problem, but in a different way—the nominal protagonist in that book was wishy-washy, and served only as the listening post for the other characters to explain their theories to. In Next, there are several seemingly unrelated storylines all taking off in different directions simultaneously and I’m waiting for some unifying thread to come along. Hoping there will be one.
It’s still over 70° here. Rainy. Looks like autumn. I need to rake the lawn one of these days.
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About
Bev Vincent is the author of The Road to the Dark Tower, the Bram Stoker Award nominated companion to Stephen King's Dark Tower series, and The Stephen King Illustrated Companion, which was nominated for a 2010 Edgar® Award and a 2009 Bram Stoker Award.
His short fiction has appeared in places like Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, From the Borderlands and The Blue Religion. He is a contributing editor with Cemetery Dance magazine and a member of the Storytellers Unplugged blogging community. He also writes book reviews for Onyx Reviews.
December 20th, 2006 @ 8:21 pm
Mmmm … fresh fruitcake with rum ….
December 21st, 2006 @ 5:05 am
In the fruitcake…or just in a glass while you eat it?
The recipe I have has no alcohol in it.
December 21st, 2006 @ 9:36 am
On the fruitcake. Lazy way is, you put the baked cake in an appropriately-sized airtight container, pour a shot or two evenly over the top of the entire cake, put the lid on and leave it to soak in the fridge for a day or so, then enjoy. Another other way is you get enough cheesecloth to put a couple of layers around the cake, get it fairly damp with rum or brandy, wrap the cake in the cloth, then wrap the package in foil and let the cake soak for a day or two, then unwrap and enjoy.
December 21st, 2006 @ 1:42 pm
I think I could get into that. Thanks!
I was astonished to discover that the fruitcake recipe I have says it needs to bake for three hours. Three hours! I can bake a honkin’ big slab of meat in less time than that.