Month: December 2016

Guys. You guys. This. Book. I adored this book. The Hating Game is Sally Thorne’s debut novel. It’s a steamy, sexy, hilarious look into the lives of two office enemies: Lucy and Josh(ua). After their respective publishing companies merged, they find themselves as executive assistants to the co-CEOs and working in close quarters. Five days a week they go round after round with each other in a series of workplace shenanigans. Each has their own agenda and the claws come out when a promotion opportunity is announced.

I loved the snarky and professionally self-assured main character Lucy. She managed to be a kick ass girl boss despite personal insecurities. The stoic Joshua is classic alpha male, which I found irritating at times, but forgivable given his other charms. Sparks fly as they compete for the same promotion while their feelings for one another blur the lines of love and hate. Do they love to hate or hate to love?

The only thing I had trouble buying into was Lucy’s lack of female friends. She devoted countless hours to her career, and lost her best friend when the merger downsized her job, but I think someone as caring as Lucy would have other friends. I would have  liked to see that side of her character developed more with a girlfriend dynamic.

Overall, I haven’t read anything this light and enjoyable for a while. After a stressful holiday season, this was exactly what I needed. If you’re in the market for a fun romantic comedy, this is the book for you.

There have been a lot of blog posts on writing and reading, but near enough on nonsense. So today, I present you with my first nonsense blog post!

I am a cookie aficionado. A connoisseur of sweets. A sugar savant. I just plain like baked goods.

Scrolling through my Facebook feed, I stumbled upon a quick-cut cooking demo for
Brown Butter Salted Caramel Snickerdoodles. They’re basically snickerdoodles with browned butter (which makes them more toffee like and brings out the nutty flavor of the butter) with a caramel candy center. They are divine!

I made them for a cookie exchange (one of the greatest and most enduring holiday traditions), and then again for my family, who were displeased with their initial cut of the first batch.

Having made them twice, I would say keep a close eye on your butter as you’re browning it. You want to keep it on the stove long enough to bring out the more subtle flavors, but not so long that it burns. This is a pretty fine line. The recipe called for a tbsp. of Greek yogurt. I ran out of it for the second batch and honestly couldn’t tell the difference.

For my next batch (there will be many more batches to come), I’ll probably experiment with not chilling the dough. Chilling it seemed to dry it out so much that it was difficult to work with. I ended up letting it come closer to room temperature before I started rolling the dough into balls. More pliable dough = easier to wrap around caramel candy square.

If your family is looking for a new treat to try this holiday season, I can’t recommend these gooey gems enough!

www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/brown-butter-salted-caramel-snickerdoodles

Last week, I participated in PitMad, a Twitter pitch event. It’s one of my favorite pitch events, and I am always blown away by the engaging, funny, and amazing tweets. I actually received three requests from my pitches. (I say actually because I was surprised and delighted that my Twitter pitches received interest.) Today, I received my first rejection from those requests. This is the first rejection I received for this manuscript. It hurts.

One of the worst things about writing is letting other people read your work. This sounds ridiculous because I wrote my book to be read, but allowing others to review/critique my work is painful. I don’t think this part will ever get easier or leave me feeling any less exposed. I’ve yet to figure out how to distance myself from something so personal in order to accept feedback and the inevitable rejections with grace.

I wish I knew the best way to dust myself off and keep going, but every “no” feels like the end. Logically, I know that rejections are part of the process and there will be more rejections to come. In my heart, I want to throw my laptop off the highest mountain I can climb. (I live in CO where a height of 14,000 ft. is achievable.) But, the only “no” that’s final is the one you don’t move forward from, and I’m not a quitter. For now, I retreat back to my happy place, the place that got me here in the first place: writing.