I now have a title and have ordered the cover. That’s going to take several weeks. Not too long ago, it took a few days or a week. I don’t know yet how long copyediting will take.

At this moment, I’m planning an e-book release, followed by a POD release through Amazon. The title I’ve landed on for the trilogy is SONS OF TEXAS. And the title for the first book is THE TYCOON. The second book will be called THE COWBOY and the third will be called THE HORSEMAN. The setting is Fort Worth and rural Texas.

The book titles are fairly self-explanatory, but here’s the trilogy arc:

“The three grown children of an old wealthy but dysfunctional Texas ranching family find love in unexpected places in spite of their quarreling parents. Crisis and near tragedy ultimately reunite the parents who have been the root of the family’s breakdown and harmony that has been missing for many years returns to the Double Barrel Ranch.”

And here’s the blurb for THE TYCOON:

“When successful, wealthy Fort Worth businessman, DRAKE LOCKHART, encounters a beautiful redhead at a fancy charity ball, the last thing he expects is a tryst he can’t forget with a woman who disappears. With her continuing to haunt him, he’s driven to search for her. Once he finds her and persuades her to spend time with him, he recognizes that his bachelor days are over. But she has no trust in love or in him and erects barriers between them. Just when he thinks he’s winning her over, without his knowledge, an associate in his powerful company goes head to head with her in a business deal involving real estate she desperately wants. Restoring her faith in him is a challenge Drake must face and win if he’s ever to be happy.

Presented with the opportunity to spend time with one of the most successful businessmen in Fort Worth and one of Texas Monthly’s most eligible bachelors, SHANNON PIPER, smart, successful real estate broker in the small town of Camden, Texas, cannot deny her wilder side. Falling in love with a man she doesn’t trust isn’t on her agenda, yet she can’t ignore his attention or her own attraction to him. Her solution is to confine their relationship to “just sex.” After he claims to love her, his treachery in a business deal proves her original fears well-founded. She can’t easily be convinced she can ever trust him. Her unexpected pregnancy forces both of them to stop playing games and embrace their true feelings.”

As always, Hugh Jackman is my mental image for Drake, but I haven’t yet found one for Shannon. Sometimes I think of Julia Roberts, but with green eyes. Suffice to say Shannon’s beautiful and smart because all of my heroines are beautiful and smart. This book will be a typical steamy Anna Jeffrey drama.

Shannon

I had hoped to get it out the door by the end of February, but that isn’t going to happen. So now I’m pushing for the end of March. <sigh> I’m nothing if not flexible.

I welcome your comments.

And I made the best chile verde I’ve ever made. In fact, it was so awesome I ate two bowls.

I lost my original recipe, so I went searching on the food network and found several. I ended up using a little of theirs and a little of mine, partly because I couldn’t find everything they called for. I had to use what I could get.

So here’s how it went.

First, I put 8 tomatillos into the oven to roast (350-degrees for about 30 minutes.) While that was going on, I moved to the chopping and cutting.

Tomatillos

I cut a 2-1/2 lb. pork loin roast into 1” squares. (Personally, I don’t like stews and chiles made with junky meat.) Then I liberally salted and peppered them. I used 2 tsp. salt and 1 tsp. pepper. Then I dredged them in about 1/2 cup of flour. Next, I browned the pork cubes on all sides in 1/4 cup of cooking oil.

While the pork browned, I went at cutting into 1” squares, 2 green bell peppers, 2 poblano chiles and 2 yellow onions. Depending on how much heat you like, you could add a couple of jalapeno peppers.

After the pork cubes browned, I removed them from the skillet and added the peppers and onions to the same skillet. While they sweated, I minced 3 garlic cloves and chopped the roasted tomatillos into 1″ squares. I also chopped 1 bunch of cilantro.

Pork Roast

I put the pork cubes and the peppers and onions into the Crockpot, added 2 tsp. dried oregano and 2 tsp. ground cumin, then covered it with a bottle of LaSabrozita Verde sauce and mixed it up.

Next I added 2 bay leaves and the chopped tomatillos and the garlic and cilantro.

I let the whole thing cook for 4 hours on HIGH.

I made cornbread, too. Cornbread isn’t Mexican food, but it goes really well with it. My husband, being from the Far North, doesn’t appreciate cornbread as much as we Texans do, so I seldom make it. And when I do, I have to eat all of it by myself. (It’s no wonder I’m fat. )  So I halved a square of cornbread and put it in the bottom of a bowl, covered it with a generous serving of the chile verde and topped it with a dollop of sour cream.

I’m not saying this is a perfect chile verde recipe, but what I ended up with was larrupping. You couldn’t tell it was a recipe that I had literally thrown together. My husband thought it was too hot, but with the cornbread and sour cream, I thought it was just right.

I love Mexican cuisine. I grew up with it and it’s as common in Texas as chicken-fried steak and cream gravy. In Mexican restaurants, just like food served in all restaurants, sometimes it’s good and sometimes it isn’t. But one thing I’ve noticed about good, authentic Mexican food cooked from scratch. It’s labor-intensive. It calls for sooo much preparation before you can even get started on the cooking. But if you stick with it, when you finish, it’s usually worth it.

I know of many Hispanic women who make tamales. I’ve attempted tamales only once. Too hard.

I also have a Hispanic friend who makes her own chorizo from scratch. What you buy in the grocery store pales in comparison to hers. I badgered her for weeks to share her recipe with me, but like many scratch cooks, she uses a little of this and a little of that, so she had to think about what to write. But she finally did give me a recipe on paper. I know it’s delicious because I’ve eaten hers, but I haven’t yet made it myself. It doesn’t intimidate me nearly like tamales do. When I make it, I’ll give you a full report. My taste buds are already on alert for some chroizo and scrambled eggs. Hmmm!

What about you? Do you have favorite food you like to cook, one that brings raves from your friends and family?

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Here’s a little history. When the marketing department at our publisher, Avon, (an offshoot of Harper-Collins) decided that the public was no longer interested in Debbie Sue Overstreet and Edwina Perkins-Martin, my sister and I more-or-less threw in the towel. The books were getting harder and harder to write anyway and as long as they were being marketed as they were, they really didn’t have a chance to reach their true audience. They were getting to be an exercise in futility.

Our editor at Avon wanted us to come up with new characters and take Dixie Cash in a new direction. We made a stab at that, but after seven books, we were sort of  wedded to Debbie Sue and Ed and their zaniness. After all, we knew them better than we knew our kids.

Our agent believed Debbie Sue and Edwina were not dead. She wanted us to take them to a new publishing house, but at the time, my sister was changing jobs (her *real* job) and neither of our heads was in the right place to give it our all. Still, we made a stab at that, too. We came up with a couple of ideas we thought were good ones, but our agent believed they weren’t “strong “enough.

Through that whole process, I’m asking myself, what was so *strong* about the books we had already written? “Strong” is one of those words you hear bandied about by the New York crowd a lot. I never have known exactly what it means. “Funny” seemed like the word we should have been looking for, since laughter was what we had always wanted.

We have always believed the books should have been marketed at mass market paperbacks, as SINCE YOU’RE LEAVING ANYWAY, TAKE OUT THE TRASH was. TRASH hit the USA Today list and stayed on Walmart’s shelves for a month. And here’s an irony for you. At about the time we were going into contract on a second book, I attended a writers’ conference and sat in a lecture given by a well-known and highly respected New York agent who talked about what a mistake it is to take an author into hardback before a broad fan base had been established.

So what happened? A couple of weeks later, lo and behold, Avon decided to publish MY HEART MAY BE BROKEN, BUT MY HAIR STILL LOOKS GREAT and I GAVE YOU MY HEART, BUT YOU SOLD IT ONLINE, in hardback. My sister and I squalled like mashed cats. We whined to our agent , but she was giddy from the dollar signs swimming in her head. The books went on the market at somewhere around $25. What my sister and I wanted and hoped for were mass market paperbacks in the neighborhood of $5. Volume, you see.

But it was not to be. It goes without saying, the sales on the 2 hardbacks tanked. Avon came out a year later with the same 2 books in trade paperback, but it was too late. The bloom was off the rose.

Unfortunately, Avon didn’t, and still doesn’t,  really have a paperback line in which the Dixie books fit. Avon is, after all, a romance house and the Dixie books aren’t romances. Avon tried to market them in trade paperback as Southern humor, which they love for some reason. But they don’t fit that category either.  And the trade paperback books still had to be sold for $15.

For the most part, the only place they were for sale was in book stores. I don’t know about you, but I know very few people who travel to book stores to buy books. The people I know buy them where they can get them the cheapest, which isn’t book stores. So the Dixie books in trade paperback never did show up regularly in a venue where the largest number of people could even see them, much less buy them. Occasionally, one would show up in Sam’s or Costco or even Target, but that wasn’t a regular thing. They *never* showed up in Walmart stores or in grocery stores. Consequently, the marketing department determined readers must be tired of Debbie Sue and Ed.

I’ve written before about what happens when you sell a book in New York. It can be like finding a pot of gold, i.e., Harry Potter or he “Twilight” series. Or it can be like slipping and falling into a water slide head first.

For a struggling  author, you see, unless you’re Nora Roberts or John Grisham, every day brings a surprise if not a shock. One of the surprises came in the form of a lengthy conference call with a Hollywood producer who pitched a sit-com idea to one of the networks, using Debbie Sue and Edwina as characters. We crossed our fingers on that one, but it was a huge long shot. Beyond that, Avon flew Pam and me all over the South, to book signings, book fairs and festivals, which only went to show that those events don’t do much for sales in the final analysis. We did entertain a lot of people and we had a lot of fun.

So now we’re at it again. Pam and I decided to go ahead and write one of the stories we proposed that our agent rejected. And we’re going to self-publish it. We *do* believe it’s *strong.* It doesn’t have a name yet, but we’ve started. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Keep your fingers crossed for us. Because this time, we’re on our own. And if we screw it up, we’ve got no one to blame but ourselves. Yikes!

Image via Wikipedia

I found the movie enjoyable. It held my interest all the way through it, which is unusual. With most movies, I only stick with them up to the half-way point.

It’s set in the near future. A long time ago, I was a sci-fi fan and I enjoyed stories set in the future.

So here it is: Boxing and ring fighting with mere humans has become too tame. Human athletes have been replaced by giant robots. Hugh Jackman plays Charlie, an ex-boxer who missed his shot at the title because of robot developers and promoters taking over fighting.

Charlie has made all the wrong choices and is down on his luck in a big way. He’s struggling to make it by piecing together robots from scrap metal and junk heaps to make a little money in the underground robot fighting. Somewhere back in time, about 11 years ago to be precise, he left behind a son. The boy’s mother dies unexpectedly, leaving him without a parent.

Enter, Charlie the Father.

The deceased mother’s sister is married to a wealthy older man and she wants custody of her nephew. But the court is about to hand over custody to his father, Charlie. Before the wealthy husband will let that happen, he steps forward and in a private meeting, offers to buy the boy from Charlie.

Charlie has no relationship with his son and he can’t resist the money. He agrees to the sale, but since the soon-to-be-new parents of the boy are set to take a trip to Europe, they ask Charlie to watch out for him for the summer.

HUGH JACKMAN, also Dalton Parker

The kid is familiar with robots and video games, so he gets into the robots in a big way. He follows Charlie on an adventure into the underworld of robot fighting. Charlie spends the money he got for selling his son on a super-duper robot that’s supposed to defeat all comers. But it was built in Japan and only understands Japanese. They try to re-program it to understand English, but as you might expect, everything goes haywire in the first fight, the languages get crossed up and the expensive robot that Charlie spent all of his money on is destroyed.

Charlie is ready to throw in the towel, but the movie doesn’t make clear what throwing in the towel means from his perspective. Meanwhile, his son finds a discarded robot in a refuse heap of old robots and persuades Charlie to help him bring it back to life. And the rest is history. The rag-tag robot becomes a big winner of an important fight against a supposedly un-beatable opponent. Charlie establishes a relationship with his son.

And at that point, I kind of hated to see it end. I wanted more robot fights. 

It’s actually an underdog story we’ve seen or read a thousand times. Think Rocky Balboa. Hugh Jackman does a good job portraying Charlie. But then, as far as I’m concerned, this man can’t play a bad role, so I’m a little biased. I didn’t know the child actor’s name, but he was good, too. All-in-all, it was a better movie than you might expect it to be.

Reviewers gave it only 3 stars and I don’t know why. I’ve seen some of those Academy Award winners that I thought were worse. They were some of the ones I abandoned at the half-way point. 

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“What’s in a name,” we ask. Well, if you’re writing books or songs, the answer is, “A lot.”

I always stick some kind of name on whatever I’m writing. But that doesn’t mean that’s what I will finally call it. But you have to have a way to identify the file, if nothing else.

I sold my first book in a 3-book contract. I had titled it “For the Love of a Cowboy.” I had this notion that the title should perhaps reflect something about the book. Since the book was Dahlia’s story (the heroine), I wanted it to say what she did because she fell in love with a cowboy.

Well, it took only about 30 seconds for the editor to inform me that for marketing reasons, they had changed the title to THE LOVE OF A COWBOY. I did not know at the time that the marketing department has almost as much sway as the editors.   …..  Granted, they hadn’t changed it much.  So, I said, “Fine.” Because I didn’t really care what they called it.  …..  Nobody in publishing tells you much. You sort of have to ferret out information on your own or learn it by accident. So it took me 3 books to learn that most of what happens with books is decided by committee, of which the marketing department is a large part.

I titled my next book “Out of Ashes.” The story had a fatal fire in it, which played into my thoughts at the time. But I also thought about Doug and Alex, the hero and heroine building a relationship out of the ashes of their troubled lives. Melodramatic, huh?  …..  I did not know at the time that a book about Saddam Hussein had the same title.    …..  Although, thinking back, I don’t know if that would have mattered.

At that point, I had a new editor who didn’t like the story or the characters and who was a bit more heavy-handed than the editor who bought me originally. She and my agent got together and renamed the book, THE LOVE OF A STRANGER. Again, I didn’t care. But I learned something.

I didn’t even put a title on the 3rd book. I just called it Book #3 and waited for them to name it. And they did. They called it THE LOVE OF A LAWMAN.

In the end, all 3 of the books were appropriately named, I thought, though they were not titles I chose. All 3 of the stories are set in the same small town in Idaho, and the play on the phrase, “The Love of,” seemed like a good marketing idea.

My next experience was with SWEET WATER. My title for that book was “The Mayor of Agua Dulce.” The book is set in the West Texas desert and a well for drinking water was an important item. Marisa (the heroine) is the de facto mayor and agua dulce is Spanish for “sweet water.” The marketing department thought the title was too long and too many people wouldn’t know what it meant, so they changed it….I liked *my* title, but again, I just moved on.

I had absolutely no idea what to call what finally became SALVATION, TEXAS, but I knew they would come up with something. Imagine my surprise when they decided to call the book the name of the town in the book.

When SWEET RETURN rolled around, my editor was about to leave on her 2nd maternity leave and just wanted to get a title on the book. She asked me for some ideas (shock) and I sent a long list. They decided on one that wasn’t even on my list. I think they took it from a sentence toward the end of the book. I protested slightly because of already having a book out called SWEET WATER and I even whined to my agent. But the editor said, “Look, do you really want to wait a week or two for a title and have my assistant go through another meeting on this?”  ….   I didn’t, so I acquiesced.

With LONE STAR WOMAN, I was hoping for the title to say “Texas” loud and clear. I asked for that and they worked with it. It was the 1st of what was supposed to be a 3-book series, all set in the same small town in the Texas Panhandle. MAN OF THE WEST followed, which seemed logical, although that’s also the title of an old Gary Cooper western movie. But hey, I could be in worse company than Gary Cooper.

Those 2 books were written as Sadie Callahan, which is another long, boring publishing story. I’ve got the rights back now to “Lone Star Woman.” Suffice to say, this book will be re-issued by me as an ANNA JEFFREY book.

The same applies to “Man of the West,” although I don’t know when, if ever, I will get the copyright back. If and when that happens, I will probably re-write the ending, as a lot of readers have hated the ending. I wasn’t fond of it myself, but I ran out of time and space.

Obviously, the 3rd book, Cable’s story, never got written and I have no idea what the title would be. I might write it yet and self-publish it. Then I’ll have to start the title search all over again.

So that’s how it works with titles. I don’t know if everyone in the publishing house committee gets to vote on it or what. But since an author no longer owns the book once it’s sold to a publisher, it’s purely a courtesy if an editor uses a title an author wants or likes. My sister had a great title idea for a Dixie Cash book, we thought, but it was completely ignored for several books and never did see the light of day.

Is it any wonder that indie authors are enjoying this new-found independence?

Although book content is copyrighted, the titles are not. Nor are the titles to songs. That’s why you see titles repeated. If one sold particularly well, then the publishers have no qualms about using it over and over again, whether it relates to the story or not. It’s all about sales and money, you see.

Now, for the first time, I’m dithering over the title to my new series and it’s going to be solely my decision. I’ve had a dozen ideas float through my head, all of which I’ve rejected up to now. Maybe I need that committee.

So far, I’m settled on  THE LOCKHARTS OF TEXAS – DRAKE  for Book #1. Sort of like Linda Lael Miller has named her McKettrick and Creed series. But by the time I’m ready to publish it, I might come up with something I like better.

It’s one of my typical Anna Jeffrey mainstream angsty romances. Sort of. But I’m trying to make it a little meatier. You recall the TV show, Dallas? It has that flavor. Big, old, rich, Texas dysfunctional family and their trials and tribulations.

If you have any title ideas, folks, by all means, throw them out there. I consider *everything.*  ….. In fact, I believe one of you gave me the name of this blog.    And I thank you.

It has been my experience that the New York publishers allow authors little or no opinions or suggestions on cover designs. Nor do they allow authors to have the cover art once a book has gone out of print. They own the cover art, you see.

Consequently, if an author self-publishes an out-of-print book in this brave new world of publishing, he/she has to come up with new cover art. So here’s the game. Below are the books I’ve self-published. I’m showing the original covers done by the art department of one of the Big 6 in New York, alongside the new covers I’ve designed or had designed by a cover artist. And I’m asking what you think.

This is an important question. The cover is one of the most important marketing tools for books. The object is for it to be so appealing, a reader will feel compelled to grab it off a book store’s shelf and look it over. Here goes…..

The first one is SWEET WATER. The cover on the left was designed by my former publisher’s very fine art department. The one on the right was designed by this wonderful cover artist I found. The art is great in both of them, but the question is, which would be more apt to make you buy this book?

The second one is SALVATION, TEXAS. The one on the left was done by the publisher’s art department. The one on the right was actually done by me, if you can believe that, in Photoshop. Same question. Which one would make you most likely to buy the book?

And here’s the third one, THE LOVE OF A STRANGER.

And I’m saving the best for last. I have not yet uploaded THE LOVE OF A COWBOY to Amazon for Kindle and Barnes & Noble for Nook, but I have the new cover. And I’m unveiling it today, right here, right now, for the first time. I personally think it’s fabulous, fantastic and just downright beautiful. I’m so in love with it, I can hear orchestra music in the background when I look at it.   …..  Let me know what *you* think. Again, the one on the left was done by the publisher’s art department and the one of the right was done by the wonderful new graphic artist I found.

Don’t be bashful. I need your honest opinions. I have books to publish and books to write in the future and I need to know how to dress them up.

Thanks, folks.

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Last week I wrote about the revolution in reading. But the changes don’t begin or end with reading. Every facet of publishing, bookselling and writing is being affected by consumers’ discovery of digital readers that they soon grow to love.

Just last night, I took advantage of one change myself. Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend who recommended a new author to me, someone I hadn’t read. This author is published by one of the major New York houses. So I came home from lunch with the idea that I would order one of her books to read on my new Vizio tablet.

I found all of her books on Amazon all right, but her publisher had priced all of her e-books at at least $7.99.  …..  So what did I do? Cheapskate that I am, I searched through blurbs on Amazon’s $2.99 e-books until I found one that sounded like a good read. It was written by an indie author I had never read or even heard of. And that’s the one I bought. If I get into it and don’t like it, I haven’t lost a lot if I don’t finish it. I’ll just delete it from my reader.  …..  I would still like to read the author recommended by my friend. But not at $7.99.

Traditional publishing doesn’t yet get it. Nor do e-publishers. Authors are empowered. They no longer need to be hamstrung by a publisher arbitrarily pricing their books at numbers that will inhibit sales. They no longer need a blessing bestowed on them from the ivory towers in New York. They no longer have to accept 8% royalty and hope the publisher is generous enough to buy them some space in a bookstore or do something else to help a reader find their work. On their own, authors can literally reach hundreds of millions of people in a global marketplace.

Amazon now lists well over a million e-books for sale. Cyberspace is full of pretty damn good books for under $5.00, a fact that is helping readers find many new authors whose books would have never seen the light of day without the Internet and digital reading. And what’s happening now is only the beginning. The debate still rages over the ideal price for an e-book, but it’s my own opinion that it must be less than $5.00 to compete.

There was a time when I was willing to pay $20, or more, for a book by an author I liked. Or $5.99 or $6.99 for a paperback. If I wanted to read fiction and couldn’t make it to a library, I had little other choice. That’s no longer true. I still might like the same author, but I don’t feel such an urgency to read him or her that I’m willing to pay $20 for entertainment that I could get for $2.99 or even 99-cents. And unless something changes, I’m definitely not willing to pay $7.99 for an e-book.

I suspect there are many readers like me out there in the ether. Are you one of them?

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As some of you know, my real job is with a major retailer. For most of the holiday season, I worked in the electronics department. The number of iPads, iPods, KindleFires, Nooks and other tablet-like devices that were sold was astonishing. Amazon is already claiming sales of more than a million KindleFires.

Cover via Amazon

And what can we do on each and every one of these electronic devices besides play games, email and surf the Net? WE CAN READ BOOKS!

Even though I wrote back in October about reading on an e-reader as opposed to having a printed book in your hands, I see the handwriting on the wall.

Image via CrunchBase

Mid-list authors like me have already found a home on the Internet with Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Smashwords, which distributes e-books to e-retailers like Sony, Kobo, Diesel, Apple and others. Amazon and Barnes & Noble are paying nine times the royalty rates for e-books as the Big 6 in New York. I have a friend who has self-published 17 of her backlist books and has now sold more than a million e-books. She would never have seen the day in traditional publishing when she would be as well-paid as she is in e-publishing.

Amazon already has an apparatus in place where mid-listers can self-publish in print if they so desire. Mid-listers also now have access to editing, copyediting, cover design and even reviewing by a major reviewer. A writer who dreams of seeing his great American novel in print is no longer stymied and denigrated by the gatekeepers.

Of course, none of this is free. Authors will have an outlay of cash to make this happen. The author with business savvy will put together his or her own little organization that functions in a professional way, which will benefit both author and reader.

Image via Wikipedia

It’s only a matter of time before one of the major bestselling authors will take a close look at his or her royalty statement and recognize how much money he or she is sacrificing by not being independent. And when that happens, I believe it will be like opening the floodgates. All bets are off when it comes to the future of New York print publishing and to existing online e-publishers. The ball is now in the court of authors and readers, where it should have been all along.

Like all change, on the surface, it seems as if this cataclysm has occurred overnight, but that isn’t the case. It has been evolving for at least 2 years. What will now make the difference, though, is that so many people now own e-reading devices and will now be able to buy e-books cheaper than they ever could buy new print books. So each and every one of them can fill up his e-reader with as many as 3,000 books. Even school books will be e-books.

So if you didn’t get an e-reader for Christmas, you might consider it. You can soon pay for the e-reader with what you’ll save buying books.

This is an awesome development and I’m so glad it has happened in my lifetime.

I’d love to hear your comments.

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Lying around from somewhere was an old book of poetry and prose. From that tome, I read many of the Victorian classics, including the one I’m sharing with you below. CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE WORKHOUSE by George R. Sims. This is a melodramatic offering in the same vein as “The Face on the Barroom Floor” by Hugh Antoine d’Arcy and The Raven by Edgar Allen Poe. It paints a vivid slice-of-life picture of Victorian England and reminds us why so many found their way to America.

CHRISTMAS DAY IN THE WORKHOUSE

It is Christmas Day in the workhouse,

And the cold, bare walls are bright

With garlands of green and holly,

And the place is a pleasant sight;

For with clean-washed hands and faces,

In a long and hungry line

The paupers sit at the table,

For this is the hour they dine.

And the guardians and their ladies,

Although the wind is east,

Have come in their furs and wrappers,

To watch their charges feast;

To smile and be condescending,

Put pudding on pauper plates.

To be hosts at the workhouse banquet

They’ve paid for — with the rates.

Oh, the paupers are meek and lowly

With their “Thank’ee kindly, mum’s!’”

So long as they fill their stomachs,

What matter it whence it comes!

But one of the old men mutters,

And pushes his plate aside:

“Great God!” he cries, “but it chokes me!

For this is the day she died!”

The guardians gazed in horror,

The master’s face went white;

“Did a pauper refuse the pudding?”

“Could their ears believe aright?”

Then the ladies clutched their husbands,

Thinking the man would die,

Struck by a bolt, or something,

By the outraged One on high.

But the pauper sat for a moment,

Then rose ‘mid silence grim,

For the others had ceased to chatter

And trembled in every limb.

He looked at the guardians’ ladies,

Then, eyeing their lords, he said,

“I eat not the food of villains

Whose hands are foul and red:

“Whose victims cry for vengeance

From their dark, unhallowed graves.”

“He’s drunk!” said the workhouse master,

“Or else he’s mad and raves.”

“Not drunk or mad,” cried the pauper,

“But only a haunted beast,

Who, torn by the hounds and mangled,

Declines the vulture’s feast.

“I care not a curse for the guardians,

And I won’t be dragged away;

Just let me have the fit out,

It’s only on Christmas Day

That the black past comes to goad me,

And prey on my burning brain;

I’ll tell you the rest in a whisper —

I swear I won’t shout again.

“Keep your hands off me, curse you!

Hear me right out to the end.

You come here to see how paupers

The season of Christmas spend;.

You come here to watch us feeding,

As they watched the captured beast.

Here’s why a penniless pauper

Spits on your paltry feast.

“Do you think I will take your bounty,

And let you smile and think

You’re doing a noble action

With the parish’s meat and drink?

Where is my wife, you traitors —

The poor old wife you slew?

Yes, by the God above me,

My Nance was killed by you!

‘Last winter my wife lay dying,

Starved in a filthy den;

I had never been to the parish —

I came to the parish then.

I swallowed my pride in coming,

For ere the ruin came,

I held up my head as a trader,

And I bore a spotless name.

“I came to the parish, craving

Bread for a starving wife,

Bread for the woman who’d loved me

Through fifty years of life;

And what do you think they told me,

Mocking my awful grief,

That ‘the House’ was open to us,

But they wouldn’t give ‘out relief’.

“I slunk to the filthy alley —

‘Twas a cold, raw Christmas Eve —

And the bakers’ shops were open,

Tempting a man to thieve;

But I clenched my fists together,

Holding my head awry,

So I came to her empty-handed

And mournfully told her why.

“Then I told her the house was open;

She had heard of the ways of that,

For her bloodless cheeks went crimson,

And up in her rags she sat,

Crying, ‘Bide the Christmas here, John,

We’ve never had one apart;

I think I can bear the hunger —

The other would break my heart.’

“All through that eve I watched her,

Holding her hand in mine,

Praying the Lord and weeping,

Till my lips were salt as brine;

I asked her once if she hungered,

And as she answered ‘No’ ,

T’he moon shone in at the window,

Set in a wreath of snow.

“Then the room was bathed in glory,

And I saw in my darling’s eyes

The faraway look of wonder

That comes when the spirit flies;

And her lips were parched and parted,

And her reason came and went.

For she raved of our home in Devon,

Where our happiest years were spent.

“And the accents, long forgotten,

Came back to the tongue once more.

For she talked like the country lassie

I woo’d by the Devon shore;

Then she rose to her feet and trembled,

And fell on the rags and moaned,

And, ‘Give me a crust — I’m famished —

For the love of God!’ she groaned.

“I rushed from the room like a madman

And flew to the workhouse gate,

Crying, ‘Food for a dying woman!’

And the answer came, ‘Too late.’

They drove me away with curses;

Then I fought with a dog in the street

And tore from the mongrel’s clutches

A crust he was trying to eat.

“Back through the filthy byways!

Back through the trampled slush!

Up to the crazy garret,

Wrapped in an awful hush;

My heart sank down at the threshold,

And I paused with a sudden thrill.

For there, in the silv’ry moonlight,

My Nance lay, cold and still.

“Up to the blackened ceiling,

The sunken eyes were cast —

I knew on those lips, all bloodless,

My name had been the last;

She called for her absent husband —

O God! had I but known! —

Had called in vain, and, in anguish,

Had died in that den — alone.

“Yes, there, in a land of plenty,

Lay a loving woman dead,

Cruelly starved and murdered

For a loaf of the parish bread;

At yonder gate, last Christmas,

I craved for a human life,

You, who would feed us paupers,

What of my murdered wife!”

‘There, get ye gone to your dinners,

Don’t mind me in the least,

Think of the happy paupers

Eating your Christmas feast;

And when you recount their blessings

In your smug parochial way,

Say what you did for me, too,

Only last Christmas Day.”

I also did a little baking. I made one of my favorite cookies and loaded them up with white chocolate chips, dried cherries and fresh pecans. I thought that sounded festive. They turned out fine.   …..  The price of dried cherries and this year’s fresh pecans just about left me gasping, but then you’ve heard me whine about the price of food before. I calculate those cookies must have cost more than 50-cents apiece to make. And they aren’t very big cookies, either. 

After that, I took a recipe for one of Emeril’s cakes off the Food Channel website and made it. It’s called Chocolate Swirl Bundt Cake with Nutty Topping. It’s a fluffy marble cake accented with praline liqueur and fresh pecans pieces. I haven’t tried a piece of it yet, but the recipe sounded so good, I know it will be larruping. Emeril’s receipe called for walnuts and walnut liqueur, but I had fresh pecans on hand rather than walnuts, so I rushed to the liquor store and bought the praline liqueur  stuff. If you want the recipe, you can go here:  http://www.foodnetwork.com/search/delegate.do?fnSearchString=bundt+cakes&fnSearchType=site

If you make it with the walnut liqueur as he recommends, let me know how it turns out.

(On a side note, that praline liqueur is very good on ice cream.)

(On another side note, I read somewhere that chocolate is going to nearly double in price in 2012! That is pure evil!)

I will probably make more cookies. I always do. So how about you? What are you baking for the holidays?

****

When my daughter comes to visit, we always make things. This year she brought a recipe called Chocolate Eclair Icebox Dessert. Believe it or not, this is kind of low-cal. And it’s so light, delicious and easy, you don’t feel guilty if you have more than one piece. Guilt-free. That’s the ticket. So here’s the recipe.

CHOCOLATE ECLAIR ICEBOX DESSERT

22-1/2 sheets low-fat honey graham crackers (enough to make 2 or 3 layers in a 9×13 pan), 3 cups fat-free milk, 2 (3.4 oz.) packages vanilla or cheesecake instant pudding mix, 1 (8-oz.) pkg. reduced fat cream cheese at room temperature, 1 (8-oz.) tub frozen light cook whip, thawed

Arrange graham cracker sheets to cover the bottom of 13×9 pan coated with cooking spray. In a large bowl, combine 3 cups milk, pudding mix and cream cheese and beat at low speed 1 minute, or until thick. Fold in shipped topping. Spread half the pudding mixture over graham crackers and top with another layer of graham cracker sheets. Repeat with the remaining pudding mixture and another layer of graham crackers. (You can cut out the middle layer of graham crackers if you like.)

TOPPING

1/4 cup fat-free milk, 2 tbsp. margarine or butter, softened, 2 tbsp. honey, 2 oz. unsweetened chocolate, melted, 1-1/2 cups powdered sugar (We doubled the topping.)

Combine 1/4 cup milk, softened butter, honey and melted chocolate in medium bowl. Beat well with mixer. Gradually add powdered sugar and beat well. Spread chocolate over graham crackers. Cover dessert and chill 4 hours. Make sure your cover doesn’t touch the chocolate topping. It’s okay to leave it uncovered if necessary.

There you go. Let me know how you like it.

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