biancadarc.com Blog

Toadstools for Your Garden

Spring is well on its way in my part of the country. The daffodils are everywhere, along with some hyacinths and even a few tulips! So it’s time to start cleaning the garden up a bit and get it ready for the new planting and growing season. I like a garden to have a bit of whimsy, so here’s a little crafty tidbit passed down in my family. Gnomes and fairies are said to inhabit fairy rings of toadstools. There’s something particularly magical about the poisonous red toadstools with white dots.

If you want those magical ‘shrooms in your garden, but don’t actually want the danger of poisonous fungus, here’s a way to make your own garden statuary mushrooms!

You’ll need a couple of bowls of varying depths and sizes, some plastic wrap, old newspaper red and white paint, cement and a few sturdy dowels or sticks. Here’s how you do it:

- Line the inside of the bowls with plastic wrap so that the edges hang over and you have something to pull on when you want to remove your newly-formed toadstools.

- Then line that with a layer of old newspaper to help soak up some of the liquid from the cement.

- Mix your cement and pour it into your “molds” – the paper and plastic lined bowls. Make some shallow and some deep to vary what your toadstools will look like when done.

- Poke a hole in the bottom of each one where the dowel or stick will sit when it’s dry. You can even leave the sticks/dowels in while they dry. Push them deep enough so that they have a good grip on the toadstool, but not so deep that they will poke out of the top.

- Let them set. Probably overnight.

- When they’re hard, pop them out of the molds and remove the plastic and paper. Let them dry fully.

- Paint them red. I use acryllic craft paint available in most stores. The outdoor kind is better, but all acryllic paint is waterproof after it’s dry, so the cheap stuff works fine too. Let the red coat dry. Reapply if you need to make them redder or cover any bald spots. Let them dry completely.

- Paint white dots over the red. Let dry.

- Position them in your garden. Little clumps of them with a gnome in front is precious!

Rescue at Sea

God Bless Comander Castellano and his men aboard the USS Bainbridge and their heroic actions in rescuing Captain Phillilps. I’ve been following this story with a heavy heart, worrying that our new, more liberal government wasn’t going to allow action – even against clear wrongdoers. Pirates! For heaven’s sake! I don’t think the situation could be any more clear. Piracy, by definition, DEMANDS a military response and if you can’t see that, then bless your misguided soul.

But I digress.

I don’t really care if you think my beliefs are controversial. I tend to hold my peace here, because I know a lot of you may feel differently and I don’t like getting into political discussions when we should be talking about books. However, this situation is unique. It’s not political – or at least it shouldn’t be. It’s about a man, a fellow citizen. Someone who could have easily been your father or your brother or your friend. A hero who lives by an ancient code that few have the courage to follow today.

I firmly believe what Captain Phillips did – trading himself for the safety of his crew – is something heroic and honorable in the extreme. He is a great man, if for nothing else than his actions under fire. When the chips were down, he behaved in a way few others would, displaying true courage.

I worried for him as this dragged on and on… and on. I worried that the Navy’s hands were tied. I worried that the politicians would let this man die at the hand of pirates rather than use the military might of the United States to go in there and just GET him! For cripes sake! It’s not a hard question. Four pirates. One hostage. A lifeboat vs. a big, honking US Navy warship. Take the shot and get it over with already! There’s nothing to negotiate here. There’s no question but that the pirates were guilty as sin. No need to examine evidence or hold a trial. They were caught in the act! Still committing the act and possibly about to commit murder.

But then the days dragged on some more and the President didn’t say anything. Hillary’s response was to laugh about piracy. LAUGH! (If you don’t believe me, watch her do it on Youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ii_c3B5AasI) Captain Phillips wasn’t laughing. How DARE she??? What kind of leader LAUGHS when one of their citizens is being held hostage? And where were the words of concern for him or his family?

Again, I digress…

But then we got our Easter miracle. The Navy acted and the man of honor was freed from those who had none. God bless those sailors who acted to save one of their own – a fellow seaman who had made such a dangerous sacrifice for his men.

Some of you know that my dad was a young sailor on the Pacific during WWII, but the history of maritime officers runs long and strong in my family. I couldn’t be more thrilled to see that the tradition of honor and courage among those who go out to the sea in ships continues to this very day. Kudos to the men of the Bainbridge. They, and Captain Phillips, are my heroes.

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!

Sale! Grady’s Awakening to Samhain!

I’m pleased to announce that book 4 in my Resonance Mates series, Grady’s Awakening, has been contracted by Samhain Publishing for release later this year in ebook and sometime next year in print. More news as it becomes available!

Winner!

First, I’d like to thank you all for your insightful responses. I learned a lot! And now, without further ado, the Lucky Seven winners are…

1. Maggie J
2. Connie Barkowski
3. Annalisa
4. Sandie
5. VenetiaJane
6. michelle in colorado
7. Valerie Oakley

Congratulations! Please email me at biancadarc at live.com with your mailing address so I can send you your packages. I’ll do my best to get them out before RT, but if you don’t send me your address in time, it’ll have to be mailed out after RT. Just FYI.

Thanks for playing!  

Wallpaper Wednesdays

1600×1200 – 1280×1024 – 1024×768 – 800×600

Click on the size you want, then right click and “save as background” on most systems.

Contest Time!

I know quite a few of you won’t be able to make it to RT in Florida this year so I’m having a little pre-conference contest. At the conference, I’ll be giving away a few different kinds of goody bags, so I thought I’d do the same here.

My goodie bags include the traditional bookmarks and other printed promo materials, plus fun trinkets. I may even have some new books, T-shirts, tote bags, and other authors’ promo items in my stash, given to me at conferences, that I can throw in to sweeten the pot. I’ll have to see what I’ve got in the back corner of my office.

So the prizes will be grab bags of fun “romance novel stuff” - sort of what you’d get if you were to attend a conference, plus more! Sound good?

To enter, all you have to do is comment on this post and tell me your favorite sub-genre(s) of romance and why. As an example, do you like paranormals? If so, why? Do you like futuristics, heavy duty sci fi space opera, westerns, contemporaries? Do you like military heroes, cowboys, space pirates, spies, etc? Tell me what you like best about the kind of romance you enjoy the most.

The contest will run until midnight on Wednesday and the winners will be announced on Thursday. Good luck!

Update

Lots going on in Bianca-land. My house has been turned upside down by preparations for RT (Romantic Times Conference in FL this year). I’m stuffing bags – hundreds of them – for prizes and giveaways at the conference. This is why April has been, for the past three years, the most stressful month of the year for me. After this, Christmas is a breeze! LOL

So my house is a mess. I have a toothache and need to see the dentist on top of all my other stress. (Boo!) And I’m writing a new dragon book. There are a multitude of little things getting in my way, but I’m determined to not let anything get me down.

I’ve got a new book in print and a new ebook release! Thankfully, both are doing well and I have to thank my readers, once again, for their enthusiasm and good wishes. FireDrake is doing rather well on the Amazon lists for a trade paperback and Phantom Desires is climbing up the MBAM Best Seller list, for which I am SO grateful!

Come back here tomorrow for a little contest designed for those who can’t be at RT this year. I’ve got lots of goodies to give away!

Editing Woes

What happens when you write a good book — a damned good book, if you say so yourself — but then come to find you’ve used some throwaway word like “but” or “that” excessively in the opinion of your editor? (And really, how many is too many? Is there some magic number? If there is, please tell me and I’ll count as I write next time!)

Here’s the sad truth. You go in and destroy every sentence you wrote in your damned good book, deconstructing the language, ripping it apart and turning it into something a third grader would be ashamed to write.

Then you’re supposed to go through and reconstruct it back together again.

Right.

I’m at the point where I’m about to cry. I’m half way through murdering my damned good book and I just don’t see how it’s going to be even half what it once was after this process is done. Will my readers think I’m illiterate? Will they be so turned off by the disjointed sentences I’m force to create that they’ll give up on me?

For the record, I HATE this.

Rarely have I had issues with editing. In over a dozen novels, I only once I had an editor disagree with the entire backstory I’d given my character - because it touched a nerve from her own life. I tried to do it her way, but ended up fighting for and keeping 90% of my backstory. You know what? The book is one of my most successful and I’ve had many readers tell me that character’s backstory really meant something to them. In that case, I’m glad I stuck to my guns (after going through weeks of hell, agonizing over my decision to “fight” with my editor).

In this case, I know it’s just stupid grammar garbage. 99% of the time, grammar garbage just doesn’t get to me. I was a chemistry major. I could care less about commas or dangling participles. (The English majors may commence throwing rotten tomatoes in my general direction now.)

But this particular book is giving me fits. First, there is the issue of commas – which normally don’t bother me at all. Suddenly, there are about 3 million commas being inserted before the word “and.” After the first hundred or so, it really started to get on my nerves, but I accepted them all, hoping my readers would not notice.

Then the overused word issue came into play and that’s where I stand now. Working through a 97,000 word manuscript taking out every possible extra word I can and ripping apart compound sentences with abandon. I hope readers like short, confusing sentences! That’s all you’re getting at this point.

If I have any sanity left, I’ll let you know how this all turns out. :-O

New Interview

My friend and fellow author, Susan Hanniford Crowley, interviewed me on her blog. Check it out BY CLICKING HERE.