Guest Post from Mercedes M. Yardley: Find Your Literary Voice

I’m not the world’s best cook by any means. If given the option, to steal more time for writing I will order in or use prepackaged dinners. But there are things I make when I need that extra comfort that take-out or microwave meals won’t provide. It was no surprise that one of my favorite home-made meals made its way into my novel Chaos Wolf.

In that scene, Jordan is due to present herself to the alpha werewolf of the Black Oak Pack for one final test. Alpha Shane has made it clear that if she can’t prove that she is in control her shapeshifting, he will kill her. She has just confronted Montgomery, her vampire mentor, about information he has withheld from her. Her trust in him is shaken when she needs his support the most. She’s exhausted emotionally and physically and needs something she can look forward to beyond mere survival. So she cooks.

Jordan doesn’t toss something into the microwave that warms up in two minutes. She doesn’t reach for the take-out cartons from the dinner the night before. She chooses to make a meal that will take a half hour to prepare and ten hours to cook.

In an act of quiet defiance against all of those who think she’s going to fail, Jordan chooses to hope that she will be there to eat it when it’s done. In her mind, it’s not her last meal, but her next meal to look forward to when she returns home.

I have made crockpot short ribs many times. It’s a recipe my mother taught me, and now I make it for her. I can throw it in the slow cooker when I leave for work and it’s ready when I get home. Any crockpot with a low, medium, or high heat setting can be used. I make it when I know I’m going to have a rough day and want something comforting when I get home. While it won’t win any plating awards on cooking shows, it is a delicious and satisfying meal.

Crockpot Short Ribs

3.5 Lbs. Bone In Short Ribs
6 Russet Potatoes
1.5 lb. Carrots
2 large Yellow Onions
3 Tablespoons Garlic Salt
7 Quart Crockpot

1. Peel and slice half the potatoes into coins and cover the bottom of the crockpot.
2. Cut the carrots into chunks and layer over the potatoes. I cheat here by using bagged baby carrots.
3. Cut your yellow onion into eights and layer over the carrots.
4. Sprinkle 1 tablespoon of garlic salt on top.
5. Repeat with another layer of potatoes, carrots, onions and garlic salt.
6. Place the ribs on top of all the vegetables. Sprinkle with the rest of the garlic salt.
7. Cover with lid and cook on low heat for ten hours. If you want to do it the “fast” way and don’t mind tougher meat, cook on high for four to five hours.
8. By the end, the fat on the ribs should have melted and the potatoes and carrots will be tender. Remove the bones and serve in a bowl.

Does Jordan get to enjoy her meal? You’ll have to read the book to find out.

About the Author: Sheryl R. Hayes can be found untangling plot threads or the yarn her cats have been playing with. In addition to writing, she is a cosplayer focusing on knit and crochet costumes and works full time at a Bay Area water company. You can follow her at her blog, on Twitter, or on Facebook.

Here’s a sneak peek at Chaos Wolf:

Bitten by a werewolf. Taught by a vampire. At this rate, she’s going to start a war.
Literature major Jordan Abbey ordered a double mocha latte, but it wasn’t supposed to come with a side order bite by a love-sick werewolf. When a vampire comes to her rescue, gut instinct tells her he has questionable motives. But he’s the only one she can trust to help get in touch with her inner animal.

In the Northern California town of Rancho Robles where the children of the Wolf and the Bat share an uneasy coexistence, one woman makes an epic mess of the status quo.

Chaos Wolf Excerpt

He gestured toward the couch. “Would you like tea, coffee, or soda?”

“Soda, please.” Although she wasn’t thirsty, accepting what he offered seemed the polite thing to do. She sat down on the leather couch and rested her elbows on her knees. “Don’t you only drink”¦ um”””

“Blood?” Montgomery finished the question for her. “No.” He stepped into the kitchenette. “I can and do drink and eat other things. It’s kind of like eating junk food. There’s no nutritional value. I enjoy the flavors and textures. I don’t like to do it too often, though.”

Jordan tilted her head to one side. “Why not?”

His lip curled into a half smile. “I can’t digest matter like when I was mortal,” he explained. “I have to purge it in a different way.”

She blinked, puzzling it out. Understanding dawned on her face. “Oh”¦ Oh!”

One red-and-silver can in hand, Montgomery stepped out of the kitchenette. “When I last saw you, you were hightailing it out of here, never to return.” He gave her the soda and took a seat in the chair sitting at a right angle to the couch. “What happened?”

Jordan stared down at the soda and rubbed her thumb over the frosty top. “After I left, I went home. I didn’t tell anyone about you.” She gestured in Montgomery’s direction. “I went out to try to forget what happened. When I came back, I found out my roommate’s boyfriend had been mauled to death.”

Montgomery stiffened. “Did you see the werewolf?”

“No,” Jordan said. “I didn’t even think he was real until”¦” She paused and shivered, sloshing the soda in the can. “All I could think about was finding you.”

Montgomery’s lips moved to form a curse. “Did you come directly here?” He stood up and crossed the small space separating the chair and the couch. “Focus. It’s important. Do you think you were followed?”

“No. The police took me and Molly to the station. We’re not allowed to go back to our apartment until sometime tomorrow after the super gets someone in to”¦” Jordan’s voice broke. She swallowed. “Clean up. I spent two hours getting on and off buses to make sure I wasn’t followed.”

Montgomery sat down on the couch. “Good thinking. If the werewolf was following you by scent, that should have thrown him off your trail. If he was tracking you by sight, you would have spotted him. Or he would have broken in here by now. You’ve been lucky.”

“Lucky?” Jordan’s shoulders tightened and her fist clenched, denting the can inward. “I’m being stalked by something out of a horror film and you think I’m lucky?”

“Yes,” Montgomery countered. “If you had been there instead of your friend, the werewolf would have finished what he started.”

“Finished what he started?” Jordan put the soda on the table unopened. “You make it sound like he let me live.”

“He did,” Montgomery stated, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

She stared at him with an open mouth. All the movies and books she had seen taught that a werewolf would rip out her throat as soon as look at her. The female victim never survived the attack. “But why?”

“You haven’t figured it out yet?” Montgomery appeared nonplussed by her reaction. “He wasn’t trying to make a meal out of you, Jordan. He was claiming you as his mate.”

Universal Book Link

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.

My love of Arthurian lore definitely began with a trio of books my aunt lent me as a kid, Mary Stewart’s Merlin Trilogy, The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment. I knew only a little about King Arthur and Merlin and the rest, and the allusions to historical Roman Britain and the grounding of Merlin’s vaunted magic in science was revelatory to me at the time, though I admit I didn’t wind up pursuing the path of historicity myself, instead cleaving to the fairy story aspects. My Arthur isn’t the much-debated 6th century British chieftain, but the boy who drew a sword from a stone. My Merlin is all seeing, all knowing, and can appear in any forest by passing through the hedgerows planted by Queen Gloriana in the Garden of Joy.

Nevertheless, Stewart led me to John Boorman’s Excalibur, which led me to Sir Thomas Mallory and T.H. White. Years later a woman I worked with lent me The Mists of Avalon, and it was the clash between Christianity and paganism there that arrested me. After reading Bradley I rediscovered Mary Stewart in the unofficial sequel to the Merlin Trilogy, the Morded-centric standalone novel, The Wicked Day.

All of these ingredients went into the mix of my forthcoming novel The Knight With Two Swords, a retelling and expansion of The Tale of Sir Balin related in Le Morte D’Arthur.

The titular Balin is a temperamental, reactionary knight, the greatest of Arthur’s champions prior to the arrival in Camelot of Sir Lancelot. He and his twin brother Brulen are affected early on by the murder of their pagan mother at the hands of Christian fanatics, yet the two brothers come away from the experience with very different outlooks; Balin blames the pagan sisterhood of Avalon for corrupting his mother, whereas Brulen sets himself as an outlaw against all that is Christian.

This makes the court of Camelot, where both the Archbishop Dubricius and Merlin the Enchanter have a hold of King Arthur’s ears, a bewildering place for Balin. He seethes, torn between serving God’s chosen king and striking down what he perceives as the serpents in his shadow.
His personal conflict comes to a head when a mysterious woman girded with an enchanted sword visits the court, and no man but Balin can draw it. Yet, she warns him, though it will make him the greatest knight in the land, it will also doom him to kill the one he loves best”¦.

This woman is Nimue, a familiar face in Arthurian lore. Named as one of the three queens who, along with Morgan Le Fay and The Queen of Norgales (who I’ll talk a little about later) ultimately accompanies the body of Arthur on his funeral barge, she is invariably described throughout the lore as an enchantress, the temptress who traps Merlin in a tree, and The Lady of The Lake herself.

The names of The Lady of The Lake are almost legion. There is Lile (who Phyllis Ann Karr in her Arthurian Companion suggests only became an individual when someone mistranslated the French “˜l’ile d’Avilion’ as “˜Lile of Avalon’), Viviane, Nineve, and Sebill from the Vulgate Cycle, to name a few. As others have done before me, in Knight With Two Swords, they have all held the office of Lady of The Lake, and as the embodiment of Balin’s scorn for Avalon and its pagan mysteries, definitely have an impact on the tragic course of his life.

Other, less well known female characters from across Arthurian lore make appearances too, such as the mother of Merlin, Adhan, and his sister Gwendydd, who probably first appeared in Cyfoesi Myrddin a Gwenddydd ei Chwaer, a poem from the Red Book of Hergest attributed to a bard named Myrddin. In the old story, Gwendyyd’s son is killed in battle by her brother, and Myrddin goes mad when she disavows him. Geoffrey of Monmouth calls her Ganieda in his later Vita Merlini, where she cuckolds her husband Rhydderch Hael, and Myrddin tells on her. Geoffrey Latinized Myrddin into Merlin, possibly replacing the “˜d’ with an ‘i’ because “˜Merdin’ sounded too close to “˜Merde’ (“˜shit’ in French). In The Knight With Two Swords, Gwendydd is the bridge between Nimue and Merlin, who will tutor her in the magic arts she employs to direct Balin as a weapon of her own personal quest for vengeance.

In the course of Balin’s adventures, he encounters the Aspetta Ventura or, “˜Expected Fortune,’ a castle mentioned in the 14th century Italian take on Tristan, La Tavola Ritonda. The mysterious chatelaine of the castle is Lady Verdoana, known as The Leprous Lady, a woman covered head to toe who demands every maiden who visits her submit to a bizarre bleeding ritual. Cursed by a spurned sorcerer, she can only be cured by the blood of a royal virgin. Needless to say, this leads to shenanigans when Balin and his traveling companions find themselves houseguests.

For the ultimate antagonist of The Knight With Two Swords, I looked to the aforementioned Queen of Norgales. Like The King With A Hundred Knights, she goes unnamed in most stories, popping up now and again in Malory and the French Vulgate Cycle tormenting Lancelot and plotting with Morgan. She is described as one of the three most powerful sorceresses of Britian, behind Morgan Le Fay and The Lady of the Lake. In The Knight With Two Swords, she is a mysterious elderly dowager, always veiled, content to direct the actions of her armies and agents from afar. The widow of a wicked king named Agrippe who invaded the Grail Kingdom at the behest of the Devil, she plays a long game of wits with Merlin himself, whom she considers her grandson, as it was she who set the demon that begat him upon his mother Adhan in a failed attempt to bring forth the antichrist.

The Knight With Two Swords is available in print December 21st, and drops on Kindle on the 26th.

Edward M. Erdelac is the author of twelve novels including Andersonville and The Merkabah Rider series. His fiction has appeared in dozens of anthologies and periodicals including the Stoker award winning After Death and Star Wars Insider Magazine. Born in Indiana, educated in Chicago, he lives in the Los Angeles area with his wife, three kids, and three cats. News and excerpt from his works can be found at:
http://www.emerdelac.wordpress.com
https://www.facebook.com/Edward-M-Erdelac-112183918691
https://twitter.com/EdwardMErdelac

Enjoy this writing advice and want more content like it? Check out the classes Cat gives via the Rambo Academy for Wayward Writers, which offers both on-demand and live online writing classes for fantasy and science fiction writers from Cat and other authors, including Ann Leckie, Seanan McGuire, Fran Wilde and other talents! All classes include three free slots.

If you’re an author or other fantasy and science fiction creative, and want to do a guest blog post, please check out the guest blog post guidelines.