Hurricane relief auction post

 Copying this from my julian_griffith account for greater visibility. I don't usually do this, but it's in a good cause.

So I found out from laylah  that Piper Vaughn and MJ O'Shea of Babes in Boyland were hosting an original-fiction auction for Red Cross donations in Sandy's wake (the planning and setup post is here). I've volunteered to join the crew of authors who are participating -- I'm going to be offering 5k+ of romance in the setting of my (as yet unpublished novel) Love Continuance and Increasing, tailored to the winner's specifications. Any of the characters and pairings -- any of my three protagonists in pairs or all together, of course, but if you want to see some Marcus/Alexander, or Caroline and Julia's schoolgirl past, or some of Phoebe Craddock's colorful history, or things involving the more minor characters, now's your chance!

Not to mention, there are plenty of other writers to choose from. I've followed laylah since before she was published, and I keep a few of her fanfics on my hard drive to protect them from link rot, since they're among the hottest things I've ever read.

I'll let you know when the auction posts go live!

 

Today, in Questionable Use Of Time

 I'm not doing NaNoWriMo. Not really. Not by the rules. But I have a story I'm working on for the Speak Its Name Advent Calendar, and I have a number of other things I want to write (mostly for open calls, but also one short fanfic I got bunnied for last night) -- so I'm sort of wondering if I'll write 50,000 words this month. One of the open calls has a December 20 deadline, after all, and I think the story I have in mind for it might go long.

So what do I decide to do today?

Bake bread.

It's not JUST procrastinating. Or displacement. See, after I ate my lunch today, I was casting about for what to make for dinner, likeyado. And I was working under a couple of constraints: first, while the pantry isn't in dire shape, we did purposely eat down a lot of the perishables before the storm. So no frozen ravioli, no tofu with which to make stir-fry, and we're out of both sausage and buttermilk for pancakes. Second, it's a Thursday, which means the teenager is here, and the teenager doesn't like cottage pie or tacos, which are two things we DO have all the ingredients for.

So the answer looked to be Minestrone. Which is not a full meal to us unless there's bread.

Now, usually, I just get a loaf of Italian bread from the supermarket bakery. Which, in all honesty, is not very GOOD bread, but we like it. But I did not feel much like going out.

But I've been making pizza dough from scratch lately instead of ordering pizza. So, as it happened, we had plenty of flour and yeast. And I have a stand mixer.

Bake bread? Yup.

I did already get 738 words today. On a dedicated day, I can usually get double and often triple that. I wrote a 16K story in two weeks, when I wanted to meet an open call deadline. (Using UFYH 20/10s and liveblogging it on Tumblr the whole time.) And after dinner I might very well get more. The Advent calendar story is approaching done.

But.

Baking bread.

Proof

 
The bread.