T.J. BROWN BLOG

As many of you know, I have this bleeding heart change the world philosophy. I embrace the mindset that we can change the world by giving a leg up to one person at a time, or creating an organization that helps many. I wanted to take my proverbial hat off to  a few of the authors I know who are doing just this:

Heather Brewer ROCKS

I had the privilege to meet Auntie Heather at RT last year and got to sit and talk with her in a veritable circle of who’s who in the world of YA and Romance. (The bar got packed so we took it into the hall. Hotels are never prepared for romance authors). She spoke a bit about her upcoming Less Than Three conference. I really wanted to be a part of it, but got to her too late and she was completely booked with people. (And plus, you know, I’m pretty much a NO ONE compared to the rest of her attendees!) Circle of Three is an AH-MAZING anti-bullying conference that includes teens, authors, teachers and librarians and takes place this October. You want to go to this, you really do. Attendees include David Levithan, Susan Colsanti and Carrie Jones, among many other incredible authors.

Ellen Hopkins ROCKS!

Ellen Hopkins writes gritty hard hitting books out of gritty hard hitting poetry. I had the honor of seeing her in action at the Eugene public Library last year with a friend and was completely blown away by her honesty. Because of personal reasons, (Her daughter became involved in drugs and was lost to the family for many years), Ellen started Ventana Sierra Inc.  Ventana Sierra is a non-profit organization that helps give disadvantaged youth the skills they need to live independently including vocational training and resources. What do 18-year-old foster teens do when their foster families kick them out? Ventana Sierra provides these young adults with a two year program to help them get on their feet and build an independent life.

 John Green ROCKS!

John Green is not just a phenomenal writer—his brilliance expands into many other things including the Project for Awesome which is an opportunity to showcase nonprofits in a YouTube video and get financing for it via Kiva. He and his brother, Hank, also do a public service by creating videos that explain in layman’s terms things that we all want to know like climate change and current events. Also Crash Course, which explains many of the most important moments in history in an unforgettable way! Talk about decreasing worldwide suck by way of education!

These three amazing people make my efforts to change the world look puny! Do you know of any other young adult authors who are changing the world? Hit me up!

Who the hell are The Doubts and how did the get access to my brain? You know who I’m talking about, that malicious imp, Negative Mind Chatter (NMC) who starts talking every time you attempt something you’ve never done before— (Why are you even trying? You know you’re just gonna fail and fall flat on your face in front of everyone, right?).

Then there’s his sidekick, the Negative Re-Enforcer, (NRE).  After you’ve accomplish something that doesn’t quite turn out the way you hoped, he’s right there with a smug, “I told you so”

Then you have his wicked cousin, Night Shame (Completely unrelated to night sweats, though just as evil.) That’s when you lie there in bed and he parades every screw up you’ve ever made, every time you’ve hurt someone or behaved poorly, in front of your mind until your cheeks are flaming with unworthiness and shame.

Case in point, I was chosen to give a workshop at Wordstock on organizing your research called It’s All in the Details. The moment I was chosen, NMC was all like, “This is rich. A mess like you giving a class on being organized? Really?”  My desire was to really give the participants their money’s worth—that everyone in the class would walk out with something of value. I’d never given that particular workshop before and ran out of material about 25 minutes early. I rallied, held a question and answer period and asked them some questions in return. I thought it went pretty well… until NRE started in on me.  “Who do you think you are giving a workshop? Of course, you screwed up. It’s not like you have anything worth sharing. You don’t have an MFA, what makes you think you’re so smart?”

Last night after going  to bed, Night Shame snuck up on me to tell me everything I’d done wrong for the entire day. He was about to show me my entire lifetime of mistakes when I pulled the plug on him by crawling out of bed, finding my cat and listening to her purr until I fell asleep.

Not everyone has a cat so here are a few other tactics to use against the deadly triplets of self-doubt.

• Snuggle an animal or a person. There is something about physical contact with a living, breathing creature that NMC, NER and Night Shame, absolutely hates.
• Have a glass of wine—now a warning comes with this one– some people are more open to NMC and NRE after wine or other spirits. If you find this to be the case, be careful of self-medicating. On the upside, wine does completely shut down Night Shame because you go to sleep quicker. HA!
• Replace the negative with the positive. Forcefully replay your accomplishments in your head whenever The Doubts sneak up on you. If Night Shame tries to remind you of a bad review, think about that awesome email you got from your editor saying she loved the changes you made. It takes some effort, but it really works!
• Exercise. This gives rise to endorphins and a sense of achievement that shuts The Doubts right up.

Anyone else have any other tips on how to vanquish The Doubts?

Image courtesy of Stuart Miles and  Free Digital Photos

I Can Cook like a Mofo, Now What?

I’ve spent the last couple of years watching Food Network and teaching myself to cook. Like I’ve written in other posts, now that writing is my job, cooking is my creative outlet. I have tackled souffles, crepes, beef Bourguignon, polenta, risotto and other challenging recipes. I now cook confidently with wine, fresh herbs and spices and a host of ingredients I have never tried before. I often go off the grid and create my own recipes. Because of my love of cooking with fresh ingredients, I even put in my own garden last year.

I’m obsessed.

As many of you know, I was diagnosed with throat cancer and lost 45 pounds over the course of treatment. My taste buds died and it took a while for them to come back, but when they did, they returned with a vengeance. I have now officially gained all the weight I lost…which isn’t necessarily a good thing because I was about 30 pounds overweight to begin with!

So I have started working out and have resolved to concentrate my considerable culinary talents on healthy cooking. Not that I’ll be substituting cream and real butter with fakes… I just won’t be using them as often. More vegetables, less cheese. Use fresh food in season, that sort of thing. I’ve had cancer twice… eating right is pretty high on my priority list and besides, cooking  is my happy place.

So here’s tonight’s recipe only I plan on modifying it…I canned my own corn and my own tomatoes, so I’m using them instead of store bought. I’m also substituting one of the regular potatoes for a sweet potato to increase the nutritional content. I ‘ll be ditching the Gruyere cheese in favor of some Parmesan and just sprinkling some croutons on top. You can also view the original recipe on the Food Network.

Karen’s French Harvest Soup

Recipe courtesy Karen Katz

Prep Time:
20 min
Inactive Prep Time:
45 min
Cook Time:
10 min

1 baguette French bread
1/4 cup olive oil
1 clove garlic

Soup:

1 large yellow onion, peeled and quartered
1 large sweet red pepper
1 large green bell pepper
1 head garlic, halved though center
3 ears corn
1 large tomato
2 Yukon gold potatoes, peeled and halved
2 tablespoons olive oil
Salt and pepper
3 cups chicken stock
1 tablespoon adobo sauce, from canned chipotle in adobo sauce
1/2 pound Gruyere cheese, coarsely grated

Directions

For Croutons:

Preheat oven to broil. Slice baguette into twelve slices. Brush each side with olive oil. Broil croutons for one minute on each side until golden brown. Remove from oven and rub one side with garlic clove. Set aside.

Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees.

Place onion, peppers, garlic, corn, tomato, and potatoes on baking sheet. Toss with olive oil, salt and pepper. Roast for 40 to 45 minutes or until fork tender. Skin on peppers and tomatoes should be broken and slight charred. Cool. Peel peppers, tomatoes. Squeeze softened garlic from skin. Remove corn kernels from cob.

Chop vegetables into large chunks and place in large heavy bottom pot. Add enough chicken stock to almost cover vegetables. Add adobo sauce. Simmer until heated through. Strain vegetables from stock.

Heat oven temperature to 450 degrees.

Divide vegetables among crocks. Top with two croutons. Add enough broth to come to the top of crock. Cover top of crock with grated cheese.

Place crocks on baking sheet and bake for 12 to 15 minutes or until cheese is browned and bubbling.

Image courtesy of Simon Howden and freedigitalphotos.net

From Publishers Marketplace: Sold: “Teri Brown’s VELVET UNDERCOVER, about a young woman with a knack for codes and puzzles trying to find both her missing father and a shadowy spy amidst espionage and betrayal during World War One, again to Kristin Daly Rens at Balzer & Bray.”

YAY!!!!! Think La Femme Nikita or Sydney Bristow from Alias meets Mata Hari:)

I am SO excited for this book! I love my editor and Balzer+Bray does fabulous books!I could not be happier!

Remember when people wouldn’t talk about Premenstrual Syndrome because it had to do with lady bits and lady blood and that’s just disgusting? So years went by with women feeling suicidal or homicidal or physically ill and everyone just ignored it until doctors finally came out all shamefaced and said, okay, we admit it, this really is a thing? And remember how it was the same with Postpartum Depression? Because PPD had to do with childbirth and lady parts and the fact that a baby coming is supposed to by joy-making and if you aren’t joy-filled every damned second, something is wrong with you and no one wants anything to be wrong with them so women just kept their mouth shut? Remember that?

I think menopause is kinda like that.

Why? Because too many people, (usually men, but some women too), still get squicky over anything that even hints of female sexuality and reproduction. Because menopause has to do with lady parts and getting older and gasp, getting older might indicate you aren’t as young and sexy as the 24 year old next door and no one wants to admit that.

Especially if you write young adult fiction.

Because young adult authors are supposed to be young and attractive and vivacious and not, heaven forbid, in their forties or fifties and menopausal. I’m not sure if it’s our industry, all industries or our whole damn culture, but no one wants to be the crone at the swinging young adult author parties because teens don’t like “Old Women”

But SCREW THAT because I bet that SE Hinton, Judy Blume and Lois Duncan have all gone through menopause and they are some of the BEST WRITERS OF TEEN FICTION EVER. And SCREW THAT because teens are NOT that shallow and I can name at least a half dozen middle-aged authors who don’t meet society’s standards of traditional beauty and teens RUN to their tables for a signing,  FLOCK to the stores to buy their books and SEND them fan letters of love and adoration.

Because age has nothing to do with understanding and respecting the teen psyche. Age has nothing to do with writing books that reach out and evoke an emotional response from teens and other humans. PMS, PPD and menopause don’t hinder an author’s ability to write thought provoking, emotional  and entertaining literature, they enhances it, just the way that all life experiences enhance it.

And that being said, be jealous, because I am one enhanced MOFO and my writing  just keeps getting better.  HA!

As a child of the eighties (okay, the seventies and the eighties,) I never gave much thought to women’s lib even though I heard the term bandied about a lot on television. I suppose it just never occurred to me that I couldn’t do what I wanted to do. And what I wanted to do was wear acid washed jeans, perm my hair unto an inch of its life and go to prom. Seriously though, my mom worked, most moms I knew worked and feminist issues just weren’t discussed beyond equal pay for equal work.

As a young mother, my husband and I decided that I would stay home with our children. Day care was prohibitively expensive and I’d just started going to a church where such decisions were not only approved of, but preferred, though at that time I was still under the illusion that the church supported all women equally.

Naive much?

It wasn’t until my children were in fourth and fifth grade did I start to question my choices. Even though I was homeschooling my children, (for educational purposes not religious reasons and wow, what a difference that made!), I began writing almost full time with an eye on publication. I wrote both fiction and nonfiction and between that and the Internet, my world grew and grew.  I became aware, uncomfortably aware, that many women around the world didn’t enjoy the rights I had taken for granted or simply let slip away.

For suddenly, things were changing on my home front. As I grew and my writing became more successful, I could no longer be at the beck and call of my family.  While my kids quickly adapted, my marriage went through some growing pains and for the first time feminism became very, very personal.

Well, we survived, and both my husband I grew from the experience, though we did end up breaking with the church we’d been attending. But that was the moment when feminism reached up and slapped me in the face. I began reading on the topic, both fiction (Marilyn French!!!) and nonfiction and  journaling about women’s issues,  though it has rarely come to the forefront in my writing. (Except for Bloom in Winter, where one of my heroines is a suffragette) However, it has become very important to me that my characters grow as both women and human beings.

Writing expanded my world. As my own world expanded, I became more conscious of the issues women here and around the world face, issues such as economic empowerment, education, maternal mortality, sex trafficking, rape culture and gender based violence. I feel rather foolish now to realize how oblivious I was.  But out of the many gifts writing has given me, that is one of the most precious.

For more information on international feminist issues check out Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn. Life changing stuff.

*Image courtesy of Marcus / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

So as many of you know, I have all sorts of pretty damn good ideas rattling around in my head. Some of them are perfect for the brand I’m trying for, others are so far out there, they aren’t even in left field. But there are only so many hours in a day and I have this thing called a personal life that I’m trying to balance along with everything else.

It’s enough to make an author crazy.

Then you add in authors who are taking advantage of all the new opportunities afforded by our changing landscape and creating success out of nothing. There are authors who have made the leap into promotions, agenting, teaching, and book packaging. You have authors who are juggling indie publishing with traditional publishing and coming out on top.

Does this give you a complex? Cause I’m getting a damn complex.

I want to be one of those authors. I want to write four books in a year (check) run successful marketing campaigns and have a side business. I want to throw a cool conference or intensive, help others, change the world and make big money in the process.

(Right now, I have that stupid song stuck in my head: I can bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan, and never, ever let you forget you’re a man, cause I’m a woman…)

Sorry for the earworm.

I don’t want to jump on someone else’s bandwagon or hitch myself to their star… I want to have my own damn bandwagon…  I want to be my own damn star. The term hybrid author has been bandied about quite frequently and I guess that is what I am aiming for.

I want to do and have it all. Do you?

So what is keeping me from that? I need the big idea, for one thing. Nothing has quite gelled for me. (Business–wise, not book-wise) I also need to ditch that little inner imp inside that makes me feel as if I’m an imposter. That I don’t have any wisdom to offer. Why do so many smart women let that imp control us? I wrote about that here.

How about you? What do you want? What do you need to overcome to get it?