Spring is here! My daffodils said so!

Finished reading Old Man’s War by John Scalzi and really enjoyed it. I added him to favorite authors under science fiction–the first time I’ve had a need for the category since I don’t like very much science fiction!

www.ClonePod.org has accepted Haunting Clues!!! I’ve been told that the talented Leslie Ann Moore will be reading it. I can’t wait. It’s tentatively scheduled for about 3 months from now.

I’m in the middle of listening to The Poisoned Chalice by Brian Stableford. I was really pleased to see this story out there because I’d often thought about reading Fantasy Gone Wrong edited by Martin H. Greenberg and Brittiany A. Koren. The Poisoned Chalice appeared in that anthology a while back and now, thanks to Clone Pod, I get to try a story for free!

Anyone that knows me or that reads my blog now and then may figure out that I don’t make my living from writing. That doesn’t mean I’m not interested in money matters or how much writers make or even money management; in fact quite the opposite. There’s a reason I link to www.BearMountainBull.com, my husband’s investment blog (and where I contribute).

When I started writing, hanging out at the occasional conference and talking to other writers, I noticed pretty quickly that very few writers had a business plan. Money management? Taxes? Not high on the conversation list.

Today I ran across a couple of posts that discuss money and what writers get paid. One such article is on Jim Hines blog–he’s a successful writer–three books published with a major publisher, many published short stories, and more books on the way–but Jim Hines doesn’t make his living writing. Another is John Scalzi–an even more successful writer, at least by writing income standards. And do note that he makes money writing fiction and non-fiction. He’s been freelancing for a lot of years. He has a plan; he’s a professional.

Hines’ article is very interesting because you’ll learn what a lot of authors may make when they have three books out. John Scalzi’s article covers not only basic finance, but has some info that is specific to writers. It should be required reading–and not just for writers.

Here’s a small sample of Scalzi at the top of one rant:

But you want that 42-inch 1080p TV! I understand; I want it too. What you do is save for it. When you save for something, it’s like you’re making a payment on it, except that you don’t have an evil credit card company charging you 19% for the privilege. I realize it’s condescending to put it that way, but, look: If people actually knew this, they wouldn’t have thousands in credit card debt, now, would they? And yes, it’s true that while you’re saving for that HDTV (or whatever), you don’t have it, and we as a nation are no longer used to the idea of not having what we want now now now now now. Well, get used to it, you insolvent jackass. Otherwise some bank owns your ass well into the next life. Really, that’s all I have to say about that.

Garden
All the tomatoes are out there. If it freezes…well, let’s not think about that. We’ve got some nights in the high 30s coming along, but it’s getting towards mid-Feb. A freeze could happen, but it gets less likely each day. The tomato plants look very small out there, nothing like a plant that can support a half pound tomato.

I put the zuchini, cantaloupe and cucumber seeds in pots indoors. Something kept eating the seeds I tried outside. No doubt some nasty worm that is now fat. Hopefully the plants will be up soon. I’ve had pretty low germination luck with a number of the seed packets that I purchased this year. That’s the first time it’s happened. The Siberian tomato seeds took about 12 seeds before I got two to come up.

Reading
I finished reading Clues, Haunts and Mystical Madness! For the most part, excellent stories. I enjoyed “Computer Virus” by Melissa Mead–it works well in an anthology like this. A light story thrown in there between some of the more intense works. But it is a ghost story so it’s not too light. I think my favorite finds were Martha Well’s works. Very tense, well-paced page-turners. The Chatterslee Circle by Jaine Fenn had some great characterization. I loved the geeks in this story and was reading with great glee. I’m not sure the story actually went anywhere though. It reminded me of when I send an email to people I know about people they know. Fenn writes so that I felt like I knew these guys–but I’m not sure anything really important happened. “And Justice for Doll” by Will Ludwigsen was kind of like that too–an email to family and friends. It’s the type of story you expect to find in Reader’s Digest–cute.

All in all, I was very pleased with my picks. One of the things that I liked about it was that I mixed shorter shorts with longer picks so it made for really easy reading–I could read a quick one or a longer one. All of them were good enough to keep me turning the pages. If I had to build this anthology over again, there would probably be three or four stories I wouldn’t include, but mostly that’s because they weren’t my style or they were perhaps just a little darker than I would have liked. I’ve been out to www.AnthologyBuilder.com since I built this little gem and I already know of at least 5 stories I could include instead.

Garden:

Okay, I put three tomato plants out there. Yes, it could freeze. One groundhog said more winter, one said, “No way, spring is here!” So I only put those out where I had doubles. I still have a backup plant of each of the three inside!

Couple more snow peas/snap peas have poked up. Not a whisper of a leaf on cucumber, zuchini or cantaloupe. I’m hoping with the days in the 70s that they’ll be up in the next couple of days. If not, by about Wednesday, I’ll probably replant.

Impatient? Me???

On the story front, I’m about halfway through “my anthology” I’m really, really enjoying most of the stories. So far there has been only one that I disliked, but it’s a style thing, not that the story is poorly written. There’s been a couple that were “meh” take it or leave it, but the rest–keeping me completely enthralled. The quality of the stories is just really good. Predictably, Jim Hines “Blade of the Bunny” is a favorite and Nancy Fulda’s “Pastry Run” was a very good adventure. Both lots of fun.

“Wolf Night” by Martha Wells–excellent, excellent page turner. “The Thrall” by Mike Shultz– just a fabulous, magic-wielding, page-turning adventure.

As I said, I’m about halfway through. I’d rearrange a couple of them now that I’ve read the stories–put some of the lighter stuff after some of the more intense stories, but it’s hard to know that before you read them…

Oh also on the reading front: Check out Aberrant Dreams latest issue. I haven’t read all the stories, but I very much enjoyed “A Very Minor Demon” by P.M. Griffin. Yeah, it’s corny, but it’s fun reading. The other one I liked a lot, and completely different was, “The Shogun and the Scientist” by Thomas L. Martin. Good adventure.

BMB (www.BearMountainBull.com) is visiting the blog today to post about his latest coffee roasting methods:

After 9-10 years of roasting via the hot air method, with both the Hearthware Precision (no longer in production) and the Fresh Roast Plus-8, I decided to take a stab at an even cruder roast-it-yourself method: roasting on the stovetop with a hand-cranked popcorn popper.

Why would I bother? Two reasons. First, when I was ‘between’ roasters, and my Precision roasters started to give me problems, I wanted a reliable backup in case of a breakdown of my primary roaster. I eventually decided on the Fresh Roast as an inexpensive, no-brainer, backup (now primary!) roaster. But…eventually it too might wear out, so I kept studying the options. The second issue I wanted to solve was that I’ve always wanted a way to roast bigger batches. With both the Precision and the Fresh Roast, it takes around 3 batches to roast a half-pound of beans. For my everyday espresso needs, those three batches last a little over a week, and then it’s back to the roaster for another three. I thought it would be really nice to be able to roast at least a half-pound in one shot, either for my own use or when roasting up coffee as a gift.

So, one day not too long ago I was roaming around Sweet Maria’s site for god-knows-what (coffee probably), and stumbled onto the ‘Stovetop Popper method’ page. The light went on - “that’s it!!” It’s cheap, it’s reliable (all you need is the popper and a stove), and it roasts a half-pound at a time. Score!

The next question to be answered was: which popper to get? Of course, there wasn’t much doubt that I would go with one of Sweet Maria’s recommendations, and the slightly heftier stainless steel model from Back to Basics sounded like a good idea. So I did a little poking around on the web, checking prices on the B-to-B Stainless Steel popper. After much searching, the best deal (though minus the sampler coffee pack offered by Sweet Maria’s) was at WalMart.com. They’ve got the popper for the cheapest price that I could find, AND they’ll ship it to a store near you for free. Done.

Back to Sweet Maria’s for the stovetop popper method ‘tip sheet’. Might as well get advice from those that have done this before.

The ‘tips’ had some good ideas, one of which I was going to do anyway, and that was the ‘dry run’ - put the green beans in the popper, without heat, and see how the paddle pushed them around. So I measured out some beans. Three ounces of beans turned out to be just less than a quarter-cup, so I tossed in about three times that amount. The tips sheet recommended between 6-9 ounces, and that put me right up at the top of that range.

Pushing the beans around with the crank/paddle, I saw that some beans might get pushed up against the edge of the bottom of the pan, and that the paddle tended to keep some of the same beans bunched up against it as it turned. To counteract those tendencies, I decided to stop the paddle, maybe even reversing it slightly, and shake the pan to mix things back up.

With the range hood exhaust fan (which vents to the outside - important!) on ‘High’, I preheated the pan as directed. That only took a few minutes on my gas stove, with the burner at a medium-low setting. In order to check the ‘air’ temperature inside the pan, I dangled a candy thermometer inside. Once the air temp reached around 400° F, I tossed the beans in, closed the lid and started cranking, stopping to shake things around now and then.

The smell of roasting coffee beans was evident shortly thereafter, and just as the ‘tips’ said, first crack started around 6 or 7 minutes in. I reduced the heat slightly, then kept roasting until I heard the snaps of second crack for a while - I was roasting up my espresso blend, which I usually roast a minute or two into second.

One problem that I noticed - I like to judge the degree of roast by the color of the beans, but down inside the pan, the color and/or oils on the beans were pretty hard to see. A small drawback–I’ll have to judge more by sound.

Once I decided the beans were done enough, it was time to dump them into the metal colander for cooling (we’ve got a nice hefty metal colander - perfect for the job). But be careful, because the beans are hot, and the colander will get hot too. You might want to have something under the colander. Not only will it get rather warm, but remember there is no chaff collection mechanism in the ‘popper’ method, so all of the chaff is still in the ‘roaster’ and will pour out into the colander with the beans. Some will slip through the holes. If you’ve roasted coffee before, you know how that chaff can fly around.

I took the colander outside (with oven mitts), and tossed the beans around to cool them, blowing chaff away in the process. I think a better idea would be to have a fan ready and waiting. Let the fan blow over and through the colander as you toss the beans around, and it will help to cool the beans and blow away the chaff.

Once the beans were cooled, they looked and smelled great. My first ’stovetop roasting’ effort was a success.

Next time, I think I’ll have that fan ready to help cool the beans, and I might set up another fan in the kitchen window to help with the ‘exhaust’ effort - the kitchen smelled like coffee for an entire day afterward. But that didn’t bother me much…

So if you want a roasting method that should prove to be quite reliable over the years, and also produces a bigger batch, consider giving the ’stovetop popper’ a shot. It’s cheap, it’s kinda fun, and it works!

Oh wait, there’s one last problem: I’m not sure that you’ll want to use that popper for popcorn after roasting coffee in it.