{"id":916,"date":"2013-09-07T16:23:38","date_gmt":"2013-09-07T20:23:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/?p=916"},"modified":"2013-09-07T16:23:38","modified_gmt":"2013-09-07T20:23:38","slug":"novel-additions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/2013\/09\/novel-additions\/","title":{"rendered":"Novel Additions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes. I know. It’s been a bit of a while. Since then, I have prepped four books to teach for this semester and begun teaching, and my daughter now says she’s writing a book about bears and water (she may seriously have a picture-book career.) I will just share a few things that are happening with my mystery story.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Both happily and sadly, my classroom is nothing like this one.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

1) I learned that a haberdasher is not, in fact, a hat-maker, but anyone associated with men’s clothing. Who knew? To be honest, I think I did. I think that every few years, I wonder, “Is a haberdasher a hat-maker?” and then look it up to find that it is not. Maybe next time, I will remember.<\/p>\n

\"\"

Okay, doesn’t this totally make you want to be a haberdasher? Maybe this blog post will start a new series: SYWTBAH<\/p><\/div>\n

2) I learned that the difference between Coronation and Investiture is that Coronation is religious and Investiture is for secular countries, like Holland, where Queen Beatrix, the 76-year-old monarch, recently abdicated so her son could have a hand at governing. Right on, Beatrix! And good luck present ruler, whose name I have forgotten and don’t think it would add much to include. It’s not Harald; that’s a Norwegian king of recent-ish rule, but I feel like it does add something to the proceedings to have Harold spelled with two a’s.<\/p>\n

\"\"

So THAT’s why the stores are full of royal blue! Duh! It’s in the name!<\/p><\/div>\n

3) Excitingly, I have made up a new food for the invented kingdom I’m writing about. The name popped into my head: a gruntlet. I quick-quick turned on the internet (because I was in a netless hour–holla, new discipline regime) and confirmed: a gruntlet does not already exist, so I could invent one.<\/p>\n

And what is a gruntlet? No spoilers here, but I will say that it’s like quiche, only delicious. (Couldn’t quiche so be improved upon? Couldn’t it be immeasurably better without that hard, flaky crust? Mini-quiches are often yummy, but when they go for bigger shells, they just end up tough and sad. A gruntlet, I feel certain, will be the way back into love for large-style egg-and-vegetable dishes.<\/p>\n

\"\"

It’s almost sad to have to look at this picture, but I want to inspire you to create your own gruntlet.<\/p><\/div>\n

4) So unrelatedly, I began watching “Orange is the New Black,” and after one okay pilot and two kind of terrible episodes, it suddenly became awesome. Which is a) awesome and b) a surprising and useful tale of how sometimes authors may lay out too much exposition but should really get into the meat of the story sooner. I mean, possibly it’s just me, but aren’t we all watching that show to see whether Piper and Alex will hop into a closet together? Episodes 4 through 7 get us closer to that, and they are harder to pull away from.<\/p>\n

Tell me: is there a quiche recipe I should know about? Does anyone want to test-pilot a gruntlet? And do you agree with me about Piper and Alex?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yes. I know. It’s been a bit of a while. Since then, I have prepped four books to teach for this semester and begun teaching, and my daughter now says she’s writing a book about bears and water (she may seriously have a picture-book career.) I will just share a few things that are happening […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[113,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-916","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gruntlets","category-writerly-monday"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=916"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":919,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/916\/revisions\/919"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=916"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=916"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=916"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}