Sun and Clouds

Today is the first day of my month-long editing marathon. Woo! The compulsion to jump all over the book is fairly staggering, but I've resisted successfully, and begun with the Prologue.

The prologue is, rather uniquely, considering the non-linear way I tend to come up with stories, the true starting point of the book. It was a short story I wrote in reaction to some really obnoxiously predictable character/narrative development in (siiiiiigh) the Privateer Press fluff for Warmachine. I wanted to make it mo' bettah--and I wanted to make it have gay sex in it, because, hey, why not? (In all seriousness, erotic fiction is a standpoint from which a lot of my ideas come. I think sex is more key to understanding ourselves and our world than more literature is willing to display) I was also concepting an RPG setting at the time with the ludicrous working title of Special Forces. Then Sun and Clouds came out really good, and was the longest thing I'd ever really created. It was also a big enough departure (written intentionally with very few setting-specific details) that when I started building a larger story around it, I decided to "put my hands together" as it were. Soon, A Barber of Great Renown The Wide and Burning World was born.

All that was left to do here, editing-wise, was to remove a few niggling sentences and the very last vestiges of the original reason I wrote the story. There was nothing crucial to take out, the details being blown out enough that they were neither story-important nor not my own, but I knew there were a few word choices and phrases that I just didn't want as they were. All fixed. No major additions.

The best nugget to come out of the edit: When we were alone together, he shared his lore with me, taught me the ballads, the sagas and songs, and limned the necessity of quiet thought in the grim thrill of war.

I'm nervous about my next chapter, though. Find out why and what I do about it tomorrow!

Brews for the Brew-god

Okay, okay. Instead of fussing with the very long post I've been working up about Chaos Space Marines (yes, I purchased a book from the Game Novelizations section of Powell's), I'll post something short-n-tasty that I wrote this week. It's sort of a work in progress, but I just know it's going to yield some great results. Snort. So, along with my first comics and my first novel, this is my first homebrew recipe, after my 5th batch of beer and 2nd batch of mead (which is winding down now. I predict July bottling). In the words of the late-great Heath Ledger, Here... we... go.

[Strawberry Blonde]
7 lbs. dry light malt extract
2 lbs. 14oz orange-blossom honey
1 lb milled crystal malt (something sweet!)
2 oz Hallertauer hops (pellets)
1 tsp Irish moss powder
3+ lbs whole frozen strawberries
11.5 g packet of dry ale yeast (your choice, I'm experimenting with Safale S-04)

1. Sanitize all your gear: brewing pot, thermometer, ferm. lock and stopper, mesh strainer, funnel, plastic bucket and lid. Normally I sparge right into my glass carboy, but not this time because...
2. In your bucket, combine the frozen strawberries and 2 gallons of water (try fitting a whole strawberry down the neck of a carboy. Yeah... now try getting it back out again! Bucket is bettah). During the time it takes to brew your wort, they'll thaw out somewhat and basically make strawberry ice water.
3. Bring 3 gallons of water to a boil in your big brewer's pot. Once it's hot, add the crystal malt. Steep for 30 minutes, keeping an eye on it (mine got foamy, nothing major, but still). Fish out as much as you reasonably can with your mesh strainer and discard the spent grains.
4. Add the malt extract, the honey (I put a little hot water in the near-empty jar and shook it, so I could get out all the honey-goodness) and 1.5 oz of the hops. Boil for 60 minutes.
5. With 15 minutes to go in your boiling time, add the Irish moss powder.
6. With 5 minutes to go in your boiling time, add the remaining hops.
7. Put the lid on and sparge through your strainer-and-funnel into your bucket. 
8. Pitch your yeast when cool. I did mine at 70F. Put on your fermentation lock.

Note: I was beer-prenticed under someone with a broken hydrometer, so I (ahem) often neglect to take OG readings. Lazy is the word for it.

Here's where we get into the theoretical part. I pitched the afternoon after I sparged. The night after I pitched, the yeast was fermenting away. Hooray, it's going to be beer! But, that was only yesterday, so who knows what kind of shenanigans will arise? I'm planning to rack into my glass carboy after a week, and bottle after (at least) a week in my secondary fermenter. I'll update this if there's some cataclysm and that doesn't happen. I always bottle with 1.5 cups of malt extract dissolved in a pint of hot water, and rest after capping for about 10 days.

I name all the beers I make, and in nerd-honor of the book I was supposed to be writing about, I think I'll pick a WH40k-themed moniker, this go-round. I've heard nothing but mockery of a Warmachine theme drink list. Apparently blue curacao featured prominently and the recipes were for chick-drinks, all. Nuts to that! A frosty homebrew is the beverage of choice in my meta. What could be more macho than beer, right? Well, maybe beer without strawberries in it... Drink up, Night Lords, it's always summer somewhere.