erin – Page 21 – erin morgenstern

There will be a few favorite things of 2013 posts this month, saving books for last and doing NYC favorites next week and this is… other stuff. Mostly media and cocktails. Let’s just call it entertainment favorites, maybe.

{Insert obligatory marveling over how fast this year went by here.}

These will all be very much Things I Liked Most in 2013. I am not making any decrees about Bests. A lot of them will not be 2013-specific beyond the fact that they were new-to-me this year.

Let’s start with TV, which I don’t watch that much of and hardly ever live but I do occasionally get hooked on a show and I had a few this year but the two I ate up like candy were The Killing & Person of Interest. I am not caught up completely with either, only up to beginning season 3 for both so I’m not even going to look up proper links.

The Killing has the most interesting detective pairing I think I’ve seen, they’re compelling to watch even when the storyline hits lulls.

Person of Interest just gets better and better and better as it goes along and I would have started watching earlier had they called it “Psychic Batman” which is basically what it is. Also, Michael Emerson in fabulous suits. (I already had a crush on Michael Emerson from LOST and the suits make it so much worse. Swoon.)

Movies. I had a minimal movie year, I hardly saw anything in the theatre. I did, however, see most of the things I saw in in theatres in fancy theatres that serve wine which was a bonus. Favorite in-theatre movie was probably The World’s End, which I probably enjoyed even more than Shaun of the Dead & Hot Fuzz, though I love them both, too.

Favorite new-to-me, non-theatre movie was The Lady Vanishes, which is also quite possibly my new favorite Hitchcock. I’m a sucker for a train.

Music, recorded, new-to-me. Found a lot of good new music this year but my favorite new discovery was easily Houses. Especially since I literally only clicked on the album in iTunes because I liked the cover. I’d never heard of them, didn’t know what kind of music it would be and was unbelievably pleasantly surprised. So atmospheric and lovely.

Music, live. Not much live music for 2013, and Mumford & Sons would have been the best live show were it not for the really belligerent drunk guys next to us. But instead the favorite live music experience of 2013 happened completely unexpectedly at the McKittrick after having dinner at Gallow Green thanks to a wonderfully kind door guy who decided we were leaving too early and instead sent us down a dark hallway to watch Flight of the Conchords, who were brilliant, of course, and even more brilliant for being unexpected.

True confession time: 2013 is the year I admitted to myself I’ve turned into a gamer. I think it was somewhere around the time I was at my desk quoting the lemons speech from Portal 2 while sitting under this poster.

Very favorite out of lots of games for the year: Ni no Kuni which we picked up because Studio Ghibli was involved and it got good reviews and at first I wasn’t sure what I thought of it and then I got pretty much obsessed with it. Still not finished, though we’ve been playing pretty regularly for months. I’m going to miss it when it’s over.

(Also this year Adam & I played through all the two-player collaborative levels in Portal 2 together which was more fun than it had any right to be.)

Cocktail time.

So let’s start with components. Favorite new discovery has to go to Bluecoat Gin, which Chuck Wendig recommended & maybe two days after that I saw Daniel Handler recommend it in some cocktail-centric interview so I had to pick it up and it may very well be my new favorite gin. Also in new discoveries for 2013: Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur, which is so lovely & versatile & also comes in a beautiful bottle.

Proper cocktail favorite of the year is the very old but new to me The Last Word. Equal parts gin, lime, maraschino liqueur and green chartreuse. It’s lovely and balanced and interesting and it has a great name. I bought a bottle of green chartreuse so I could make them at home.

And that’s it for this round of 2013 things. Favorite new-to-me cocktail bar will, among other things, be covered in NYC favorites next week.

By erin, 11 years ago

flax-golden

flax-golden tales: seasons greetings from george the toad

seasons greetings from george the toad

He greets everyone warmly, old friends always even if you’ve only just met. If someone refers to him politely as Mister Toad he will chuckle and say that Mister Toad is his father and do please call him George.

George offers cocoa and tea and mugs of warm soup made with winter squash and cinnamon and sage. To take the chill off, he says, even as the snowflakes continue to fall on your hat and in your soup.

(But he is correct, it does remove the chill as gently as unravelling the scarf around your neck, though your scarf stays cozily in place.)

Mr. Toad hops about under your chair and fusses over the sparrows in their house to be certain they have biscuits with their tea, explaining that the biscuits with the sugar icing birds are their favorites, resulting in a flurry of twittering cannibal jokes from the sparrows.

George tells stories and shares recipes and rhapsodizes about this magical time of the year, going on at length about how delighted he is to have such lovely company.

“He used to be a prince,” someone whispers quietly to their neighbor.

“He still is,” comes the deft reply.

George himself says nothing about the matter, but he winks at you as he refills your tea.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, 11 yearsDecember 6, 2013 ago

writing

nanowrimo 2013 in review

November went and flew by like a flying autumnal whoosh of a thing and I am sitting here looking at December somewhat skeptically. But I did have a just-barely successful NaNoWriMo, and I am impressed with myself considering how long it’s been since I’ve participated and how many days I had to skip entirely.

I stayed more on-pace than any other NaNo I’ve done before, mostly because I just didn’t have time to get my standard head start. I had lofty goals of maybe doing more than 50k but I ended up right on target. This is a screencap of my day-to-day handy chart from the NaNo site:

I had planned at the outset to be all NaNo Rebel and work on two different projects but I didn’t really do it the way I intended. I spent the first half of the month working on a new thing and then thought about going back to the other novel-in-progress but decided to work on the new thing more instead.

I write out of order, which is good for me but not necessarily the tidiest way to approach a draft of something. So in the middle of all the bits and pieces I started some other pieces and I somehow ended up with about 15k worth of stuff that does not belong in this particular new thing. I think I accidentally wrote background mythology for an entirely different thing, but I don’t know what that different thing is yet. I like those bits, though, so I will keep them safe and fed and watered until I figure out what they want to be.

The rest of it is… not a novel. It’s not even a draft of a novel, it’s 35k of stuff that I might be able to polish into the beginning of something that could maybe someday be developed into a novel of some sort. It all needs a great deal of work. I haven’t re-read any of it yet but I’d guess that maybe half of it is useable. There are individual scenes and moments that I like a lot. I’m going to put it away and go back to the other novel and then when I have more time I’ll pull it back out and see what works and what doesn’t and figure out what I can play with further.

It was fun, overall, though I am out of practice and it was harder to get out of that self-critical headspace than it used to be, but at the same time I think I trust my instincts more. My favorite part was still there, too: the finding of things I wasn’t expecting, in that whirlwind of imagination exploration.

So, hurrah for NaNoWriMo, hurrah for those of you who participated and won, hurrah for those who participated at all no matter the result because you have more words than you might have otherwise, and hurrah for all the non-November words to come.

By erin, 11 years ago

flax-golden

flax-golden tales: steps

steps

Step 1 is not the hardest, though it has a reputation for being such.

(It has been worn more than all the others, by countless feet that have passed before you so it is softer and lower and easier to climb.)

Step 2 and Step 63 are the most difficult, for very different reasons.

There is no step 72, for superstitious reasons.

There are 59 different steps filled with doubt.

Step 99 will boost confidence, but only if stepped on with both feet.

On step 147 you will realize whether you should be going up or down.

(It will likely be opposite of the direction you had been traveling, but you will find new steps on the reverse trip.)

You may stop and rest whenever you need, revisit past steps or never look back.

The steps are what they are, for you to use as you decide.

About flax-golden tales. Photo by Carey Farrell. Text by Erin Morgenstern.

By erin, 11 yearsNovember 29, 2013 ago

miscellany

happy giving of thanks

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Hanukkah!

Holiday greetings from warm climes with cold wine and no turkey! Cornish game hens with lemon and rosemary and white wine and garlic instead. They were an experiment but came out surprisingly well.

I am Thankful for so many things this year. Too many to list. For those lovely souls who listened to me cry and held my hands and gave me moonshine, they know who they are. For old friends and new friends. For my family up in Massachusetts who are likely colder than me at the moment but I know they have plenty of cookies. For people who read books and write books and sell books and blog books and whatever the proper verb is for librarians and books. (“Lend” does not seem to cover the full scope of librarian ability.)

This has been a strange year. I think I am ready to wrap myself in the holiday season like a cinnamon-scented blanket and bid 2013 a slow farewell. If today was any indication, I am off to a delicious, cozy start with that.

(Though I was mildly disappointed that the Pekingese didn’t win Best in Show at the National Dog Show. It looked marvelously like something out of a Studio Ghibli film.)

For now I am going to pour espresso over toasted almond gelato and be filled with the sort of thanks that is difficult to put into words.

Wishing you all warm delicious cozy things.

By erin, 11 years ago