I wanted to post earlier this week, but as you may have inferred from the title of this post, I had my gallbladder removed and really, it’s not wise to blog while hopped up on painkillers.

I am feeling much better now. I think being able to shower and dress myself (except for socks, we’re not up to socks yet, but the day WILL come) has gone a long way in helping out in that department. No matter what else happens during the day, I find myself stopping and saying, “But at least I’m wearing pants!” or “That sucks, but no matter, my hair is clean.”

In my blissful ignorance of what my life post-surgery would be like, I assumed I’d be lounging about all day and using those work-free hours to basically put my NaNoWriMo output to shame.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

OMG, my incisions hurt from laughing so hard.

You see, I don’t know about you, but my brain totally does not function while under the influence of medications. If you’d said, “Hey, I think your next book would be awesome if you changed your main character from a teenage girl to a grumpy, sex-starved unicorn with carbuncles,” I would have been like, “Oh yeah, that sounds awesome. I should totally do that!”

And then where would I be?

More importantly, where would my manuscript be? *cue the sparkly fairies and magic mushrooms*

So, I spent last week lazing about in bed, wishing I could roll onto my side, and mostly not thinking about my book. Which, given the amazing failures in logic I demonstrated related to the simplest things, was probably a good thing. Now that I’m feeling better (well, not better better, but no longer under the cloud of meds better) I am looking forward to tackling the last of my outlining.

In the end, the writing time I will gain from being off work will likely only balance out what I would have accomplished during my week of medically-induced bliss, BUT I will also be able to eat roast beef and Yorkshire pudding again.

And that, folks, is what this surgery was all about.

C.

While you’re there, you might want to check out my success story.

It’s posted here: http://querytracker.net/success/cheryl_angst.php

Hopefully it answers a few of the questions you’ve been asking yourself about what was up with me over the past few months. I’m going to devote a full (and likely long, so be prepared) post to explaining my radio silence, but it’s taking me some time to prepare (I’m not so comfortable with sharing, you know, feelings and such).

Until then, I hope you enjoy my QT Success Story and I hope to see yours up there soon as well!

C.

I believe you should set a goal whenever the time is right and you’re prepared to follow through (April 14th, 2011 worked really well for me AND my waistline).

That being said, a lot of people stand by the whole, “New Year, fresh start” thing and I’ve got to admit, my life seems to want to fit this mould in 2012. (I really hope the Mayans were wrong, as this is shaping up to be an awesome year…)

Here’s what’s up with me so far:

New house – we bought a fabulous home that’s absolutely perfect for our family (or, at least it will be once the renos are done)

New book – I finished my second YA novel, tentatively titled INTO DARKNESS PEERING late last year, which means taking it out on submission this year

New website (and updated blog) – I know I posted about it earlier, but I just gave the blog a facelift so it’s like everything is new again, dahling

And…

(Drum roll, please.)

New agent!

Yup, you read that right. I have a new agent. I signed the contract today to make it all official-like, so I can finally announce I am now represented by Becky Vinter at FinePrint Literary Management.

*SQUEE!*

Seriously, this is a super *squee* moment. Every time I think about it, my mouth splits into this ridiculous grin and my stomach does this fluttery thing that makes me wonder if I’m perhaps a little drunk. (I’m not.)

I don’t know about you, but I happen to think FinePrint is an absolutely stupendous agency, and I’ve got to say, Becky is one amazing agent! I know you think I’m biased because she said nice things about my book (which is very true, flattery will get you everywhere with me), but this wasn’t my first foray into the agent-hunting waters and I had some very specific agents/agencies in mind when I queried this time around.

Gee, Cheryl, could that last announcement really have come more out of the blue?

I suspect some of you are wondering how my writing blog went from, “OMG, we’re taking Nikko out on submission soon!” to, “ZOMG, I have a new agent and I’m all totally in lurve with the writing world again!” with a lovely interlude of chirping crickets, social events, and family baking.

Let’s just say stuff happened and leave it at that for now. I tried many times over the past couple of months to write a post explaining what was going on – this is my blog about my writing journey and I plan on staying true to that purpose – but each time I deleted it. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t tell you how I was feeling (and struggling with those feelings) while still in the middle of everything.

My journey isn’t over, not by a long shot.

Once I come down from my giggly, omg-i-have-an-agent high I’ll make another attempt at posting some of what I’ve been keeping in the dark. Please don’t come by expecting dirt or a rant. Nothing I have to say is unusual or unexpected in publishing, and I have no ill will toward anyone I’ve met or worked with so far; in fact, it’s just the opposite. The writing and publishing community is hugely wonderful and I’m so glad I stepped onto this path in 2009.

So, what happened is basically…

Things change.

Sometimes we aren’t expecting those changes.

We keep on keepin’ on and eventually new things happen.

Sometimes those new things are amazing.

C.

It. Snowed.

It snowed, as in, like, real frozen crystals of water that flutter from the sky and pile up in glorious mounds of white wonderfulness!

I live in a place where it rains most of the winter. (Okay, it rains most of fall and spring too, so yeah, RAIN SUCKS.) Snow is a freakishly awesome and rare phenomenon that only happens once or twice each winter. Thus, when it happens much rejoicing must occur.

Gotta fly, I think it’s my turn to make a snow angel!

C.

I promise an explanation – soon.

(It’s not a Hollywood, happy fairy tale ending, but it’s still pretty darn cool so you’ll want to hear about it.)

I warn you, the crescents are to die for. I will also warn you, they are a lot of work. This recipe is not for the faint of heart.

Ingredients:

1 lb butter

1 cup granulated sugar

4 cups flour

2 tsp vanilla

2 cups ground almonds

Directions:

Cream the butter, sugar, and vanilla.

Add the flour in small batches.

When all the flour is blended, add the ground almonds. I find this recipe works best if you take whole blanched almonds and toast them slightly before grinding.

Roll out the dough to roughly 1/8 inch thickness and cut into crescents.

Bake at 350 for 10-14 minutes (depending on your cookie sheet and oven). Shortbread shouldn’t be brown, so as soon as the tips of the crescents start to darken it’s time to pull the cookies from the oven.

Let the cookies firm up on the sheet for approximately 4 minutes then carefully lift them into a container suitable for sugaring.

Once the cookies have been sugared, allow them to cool fully on a wire rack.

We’ve learned from experience not to put one cookie tray into the oven immediately following the removal of the first. It takes time to sugar the cookies without breaking them, and if you put the next tray in it’ll be coming out before you have the first tray sugared.

Oh, by the way, this recipe makes about 8 dozen cookies…

Nom nom nom.

C.

Now before you get all excited about them, I need to confess something. I didn’t make the pastry from scratch this year. I cheated and bought frozen tart shells. If you cheat too you’ll find these treats ridiculously easy to make. (Especially if you have little hands who can count out raisins to put in each shell…)

If you’re the type who likes to bake pastry from scratch I’m sure you already have a dandy recipe and certainly aren’t lurking around my blog to learn how to do it. If you aren’t one of those people, then you likely plan on cheating like I did and don’t need a pastry recipe either.

Let’s get to the point now, shall we?

The filling… ooooo, the ooey gooey filling!

(The quantities below make enough filling for 12 regular tarts or roughly 24 small ones.)

1/2 cup brown sugar, lightly packed

1/2 cup corn syrup

1/4 cup melted butter

1 egg

1 tsp vanilla

1 mL salt

3/4 cup raisins

Combine all the ingredients except for the raisins.

Place the raisins in the bottom of the tart shells (I find 10-12 is good for regular tarts, and 6 is great for the small ones).

Fill each shell 2/3 full with the syrup mixture. Don’t over fill or it will bubble up and ooze all over your baking sheet or oven!

Bake at 425 (on the bottom rack) for 12-15 minutes or until just set.

Don’t over bake (under baking makes them runnier).

Trust me, you want them to ooze.

Enjoy!

C.

I saw a tweet about Nutella-filled sugar cookies and, being a sucker for hazelnuts and chocolate, decided to follow the link. Needless to say, the recipe sounded too good to pass up so my girls and I raced to the kitchen to whip up a batch.

I think the recipe was fine (but the website didn’t have actual quantities of anything so I had to improvise, using a different sugar cookie recipe), but the instructions for the amount of dough to use for each cookie were way off. Let’s just say the first samples were about the size and shape of a hairbrush head – and about as appetizing.

See? Not yummy at all.

For those of you who don’t know me, I’m a little stubborn. Rather than give up and toss everything in the trash, I did some Googling and formulated a new plan of attack. I’m pleased to say my attempt to rescue the cookies (well, not the baked monsters, those met an untimely demise under the kitchen sink) was a success!

Here’s what I did…

Pre-heat the oven to 350 and set the rack to the centre.

Filling:

1 tsp Nutella (as many of these as cookies – the recipe makes about 36) spooned on wax paper then frozen (about 15 min) so they look like little nuggets

Cookie Dough:

(I think this is a pretty standard sugar cookie recipe, but in the interest of being detailed I’ll list the one I followed from my recipe box.)

1 cup butter (softened)

1 1/2 cups sugar (white, not brown or icing)

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla extract (I used the super awesome stuff my BFF brought me back from Mexico)

Blend all of these ingredients together, then add the mixture to the dry ingredients below. Make sure you mix the dry stuff together BEFORE you add the wet though!

3 1/2 cups flour (all-purpose, not pastry, bread, or other)

1 tsp baking soda

1/2 tsp salt

Once the dough is all, well, doughy, scoop out 1 tbsp and roll it into a ball in your palms. It’s kind of like playing with Play-Doh because once you have a ball, you get to smush it until it’s flat (like 1/2 cm or 1/4 inch).

Once it’s flat, take a frozen Nutella nugget from the freezer and place it in the centre of your flattened dough. Wrap the Nutella in the dough, making sure to pinch the sides together to prevent the Nutella from running out all over the baking tray.

(Maybe it’s just me, or maybe my kitchen was too warm, or whatever, but I could only do about three cookies before the Nutella started to melt. I devised a system where I balled and flattened six bits of dough, filled three with Nutella, and then pinched and rolled those three while the Nutella re-froze for the other three.)

Speaking of baking trays, I lined mine with parchment paper because it does a great job of preventing your cookies from burning.

Coating:

I put 2/3 cup of sugar in a bowl for rolling the cookies in before baking.

Roll your cookies in the sugar before placing on the cookie sheet.

I baked my cookies for 10 minutes, let them sit on the tray for 5 minutes, then transferred them to a cooling rack.

From all reports, these were a success!

(If you try this recipe, please come back and leave me a comment as I’d love to hear about your adventures!)

Happy Holidays,

C.

We were twenty-three rows back and a little to the left, and the view was excellent. Even though we were near the back of the orchestra section in the theatre, twenty-three rows is twenty-three rows, and if Sting had been playing in Rogers Arena our seats would have been worth a small fortune.

I love the lights on the ceiling in the theatre! The sparkled like stars, and made the room feel almost magical as we waited for the band to take the stage.

Speaking of waiting… Holy moly, but some people are slow! I was shocked at how many people took their seats after the 8:00 pm start time. Maybe they didn’t want to see the entire show, but those of us who were already in our seats certainly did, and we didn’t appreciate having our views blocked by people going up and down the aisles and squeezing into the rows. There were so many latecomers, the theatre held the start of the performance by over fifteen minutes.

I know it’s hard to see, but the figure in the centre wearing the white t-shirt is Sting. Oh, and the shadow along the right side is just one of the many, many late people annoying those of us who arrived before the show started.

I loved the show. I got to hear a whole bunch of songs I’d never heard before – I’m totally hunting them down on iTunes. Of course he played some of is super popular songs – and those were amazing. The band did two encores, and Sting came on stage and sang Message in a Bottle with only an accoustic guitar as a third encore.

All in all, it was a phenomenal night.

Guess who was there?

Yeah, baby!

BC all the way!

Oh, and Nickelback during the half time show was pretty cool too…

Time to go wash my BC Lions Grey Cup Champions t-shirt so I can wear it to work tomorrow!