"When I'm not writing" with Steve Vernon + Giveaway

 

“So what do you do when you’re NOT writing?” Tynga asked.

“Well, I like to eat a lot,” I replied.

“Oh my gosh,” Tynga replied. “You’re an old fart, aren’t you?”

Well okay – so I am putting words in Tynga’s mouth – but that’s pretty well what we storytellers/writers do – isn’t it? We put words in people’s mouths. We sit down and imagine people wild and crazy and brave and lonely and bugged out of their freaking minds. We make up imaginary people and we make up words for them to say.

Well, let me tell you that my name is Steve Vernon and I am a writer and a storyteller. I’ve written enough words to give Noah Webster a permanent case of tongue-tie. I have hitchhiked from one end of the country to the other. I’ve made a living as a factory hand, house painter, field worker, tree planter, roustabout, woodworker, artist's model, fiddlehead picker, blueberry raker, woodchopper, warehouse worker, snow-shoveler, garden digger, waterfront palm reader, backroom Tarot card reader and a few professions I’ve forgotten along the way. Mostly, I have lived here in Nova Scotia long enough to grow barnacles on my butt.

And yes – I like to eat a lot.

And belt shopping. A whole lot of belt shopping – on account of my belt keeps shrinking, leather or not – on account of my liking to eat a lot.

In fact it was most likely my love of eating that fostered my love of cooking.

So let me share with you my recipe for something I call REFRIGERATOR SOUP.

First step is to open up the refrigerator.

I find two onions. EVERYTHING worth cooking starts with a couple of big fat onions. Peel them, chop them and throw them into the pan with a little olive oil.

Next I grab some chicken that happened to be on sale last weekend. Cut up the chicken and sizzled it with a little olive oil, garlic and butter in the bottom of my largest pot. Then I chopped a couple of good red potatoes, a yellow zucchini, and a turnip, and threw them in on top of the browning chicken. Then I dumped in a bag of baby carrots – which ACTUALLY are just regular carrots whittled down – and then I drain a can of chick peas and chucked them. I dump two cartons of broth on top. Sometimes I like to make my own broth but I was in a hurry today.

Cover the pan. Turn the heat down as low as it will go. Let the whole mess simmer. Go and watch a movie or read a book or write something or just stand by the window and practice looking serene.

Your family comes home and the entire house is going to smell so heavenly I bet you they set the table without being asked. If you don’t have a table they’ll build you one out of two-by-fours and chewing gum.

That’s what I call refrigerator soup.

I wrote the recipe while looking in my refrigerator.

I cook this again it will most likely be different.

But it still tastes good.

Serve it with wine or a good chewy beer and grin knowingly when they asked you how long it took to get ready. If you REALLY want to impress the heck out of anyone I’d recommend a batch of bannock to go with the soup.

Here's my bannock recipe - One cup flour, pinch of salt, pinch of baking powder, enough beer to make a nice squeezy batter, shmoosh it up and load fistsized nuggets of batter onto a baking sheet, 350 degrees, maybe ten fifteen minutes later smear the butter and pray that a couple of pieces get left over for jam.

You get done all this – you might want to go shopping for a brand new belt.

Yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

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Mixing genre is a little like refrigerator soup. You open the refrigerator, empty it into a pot, let it boil all day and you've got supper. It usually comes out good. It usually comes out the kind of good that people will say "Dang, I have got to get that recipe from you."

Hybrids, if written well, can be fun - and isn't that what we all are REALLY reading for? To have fun?

Let me tell you about this nifty little hybrid novella that I wrote.

I call it SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME and it is a story of vampires and hockey.

Pick up a copy today. I guarantee if you read it you are going to say that this is the BEST vampire-hockey novella that you have ever read!

It also comes with a bonus time travel hockey tale and a bonus hockey ghost story.

Best thing is – you don’t even have to be a hockey fan to enjoy the story.

 

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Thanks so much for visiting us, Steve!

For more, check out his website or follow him on Facebook or Twitter!

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Here's the scoop on SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME:

Meet Sprague Deacon - one of the toughest old-time hockey players who ever skated upon a rink of hand-poured ice. Sprague was born and raised and he expects to die here on the Northern Labrador coast. What he did not expect was a tour bus full of vampires - none of whom glitter in the least bit - to pull into his town and begin lowering the population level - one corpse at a time.

Sprague and his three best friends - an over-the-hill never-say quit bush league hockey team from Northern Labrador go toe-to-tooth with a tour bus full of vampires in an immortal-stakes showdown of street hockey? For the answer - throw Paul Newman's Slapshot into a blender with

Steven Niles 30 Days of Night and hit frappe!

Read an excerpt

Pre-order: Amazon | Amazon Canada

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Steve and Stark Raven Publishing will be giving away an entire (hamster-sized) coffin full of cool stuff including one signed paperback copy and three e-book copies of his vampire/hockey novella SUDDEN DEATH OVERTIME, a signed paperback copy of his middle grade novel – SINKING DEEPER – OR – MY QUESTIONABLE (POSSIBLY HEROIC) DECISION TO INVENT A SEA MONSTER!

Follow the Rafflecopter instructions to enter!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

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Do you guys have suggestions for who you’d like to see featured on the blog? If so, you can make your suggestions on this page. No guarantees that your favourite authors will be able to participate but we’ll try!

Authors, would you like to visit  us? Please email Jenn at jenn (at) tyngasreviews (dot) com and we’ll set it up!

Posted by Tynga at 01:24

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Tynga is a 32 years old mom of two, from Montreal, working as a lab technician in an hospital specialized in heart disease. In her free time, she enjoys reading all things Paranormal and photography.

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