Giftmas Guest Post by Tiffany Michelle Brown

Happy Giftmas! We here at Operation Awesome are excited to be participating again in Rhonda Parrish's Giftmas blog tour. This year the blog tour is benefitting the Edmonton Food Bank. Today's guest post is brought to you by Tiffany Michelle Brown!

A Place at the Table

By Tiffany Michelle Brown

My fiance has explained repeatedly that he comes from a food family, but I don’t think that fact truly sunk in until the coolers from California arrived. When Bryan and I moved in together a couple years ago, his parents scheduled a visit to Phoenix. We’d only been in the tri-level apartment a few days, so our lives were still tightly packed in cardboard boxes and our refrigerator contained around 50 styles of hot sauce, but very little food.

“Should we go grocery shopping?” I asked. “We don’t really have anything.”

“No, we won’t need to shop any time soon,” Bryan answered.

And he was right. Because moments after hugs and hellos were exchanged, Bryan’s mom started unloading two huge coolers of food that had traveled the nine-hour drive with them. Within minutes, our freezer and fridge were completely stocked with foods I’d never heard of before—mushroom balls, shao bing, bean curd skins, and scallion pancakes.

The next day, Bryan’s mom sat at a fold-out card table for nearly an hour hand-rolling spinach and tofu dumplings. When she’d filled two large cookie sheets, the little pockets of heaven were deposited in the freezer, but she said she still had dumpling wrappers and filling left over, so she’d continue the next day. It took us nearly a year to make our way through all of those dumplings, because her beautiful, cooking-weathered hands crafted so many of them.

When Bryan and I first started dating, a whole new world of food opened up to me. Since his father is Cantonese and his mother is Shanghainese (very important distinctions, by the way), I got a crash course in traditional Asian food and knew immediately that my days of eating Pei Wei and P.F. Chang’s were over. Honestly, now that I’ve been properly educated, those chain restaurants seem like imposters. If chicken feet or traditional ramen or fish sauce aren’t on the menu, I don’t want to eat there. (And yes, I’ve eaten chicken feet; there’s photographic proof.)

Now, when Bryan and I go to Ranch Market on the weekends to pick up jackfruit or Enoki mushroom or mochi, I’m excited, because odds are good that the lady who makes Taiwanese pancakes will be there, her cart steaming and giving off the aromas of pancake batter, coconut, vanilla custard, and red bean. I burn my mouth every single time on the hot filling, but it’s totally worth it.

On the birthdays of friends and family members, Bryan and I always make sure to eat noodles together, because noodles symbolize long life in Chinese culture. Recently, we’ve started bringing home noodles for our dogs, too, so they can partake in our birthday tradition.

And I love celebrating moon festivals, because there is always moon cake. And even more exciting than the prospect of buttery cake filled with pineapple or melon or mung bean are the ancient stories that accompany the tradition of eating moon cake.

One of my favorite stories is one that dates back to the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368 AD), a time of difficult, oppressive government and a resulting zeal for revolt. An uprising of the people was imminent, but it was difficult to pass messages between the resistance forces. Naturally, the Chinese came up with an ingenious solution…that involved food. Members of the resistance would hide messages in cakes, because what could possibly be threatening about a delivery of pastry? For added security, the rebels would read the messages by the light of the full moon, which is why full moons and new moons are celebrated in Chinese culture with—it all makes sense now!—moon cakes.

A couple years ago, I found out that Bryan hadn’t been home to Lancaster for Christmas in about six or seven years.

“It’s time,” I told him and we packed up our suitcases and drove out to California for 10 days.

I found out that we’d be enjoying a traditional hot pot for Christmas dinner. A hot pot is kind of like eating fondue—but way better. Vegetable, beef, or chicken broth simmers in a pot in the middle of the table and everyone adds meat, veggies, seafood, wontons, dumplings, and more. As your food cooks, it absorbs all of the flavors of what has been cooked before, plus the flavor of the broth. And there’s customized dipping sauce, too. It’s a hearty, satisfying, interactive umami explosion.

That Christmas, I went crazy over thinly-sliced Korean beef, which was both delicate and decadent. I tried pork kidney and didn’t completely hate it. I gorged myself on fresh vegetables. And my mouth was burning from the spicy dipping sauce I’d made myself.

But my favorite moment of dinner was something that Bryan’s dad said. Bryan’s parents—and Bryan, too, for that matter—are really happy that I’m an adventurous eater. They understand that I won’t necessarily like everything, but that I’m game to try it. And it goes a lot deeper than having a daring personality or an insatiable inner fat kid.

Bryan’s dad believes that if people from different cultures could share a meal together—without judgment, without sneering at cultural food differences, with an openness and respect for each other—the world would be a better place.

Yeah, I’m a girl who can recognize a moment, and that was most definitely a moment. Over the steam of the hot pot, Bryan’s dad was acknowledging that despite our different backgrounds, cultures, and views of the world, we were the same.

And I think he’s right about the global impact of sharing food. Can you imagine dignitaries and presidents and world leaders sharing a hot pot? Personally, I love that mental image. Because for me, food is love. It comforts you, fills you up, and though we all prepare it (or show it) a little differently, it nourishes both our bodies and our souls.

That Christmas, I’d been invited to the table—and it was covered not only with food, but love.
**********

Tiffany Michelle Brown is a writer, Aikido practitioner, lover of puns, and whisky enthusiast with degrees in English and Creative Writing from the University of Arizona. Her fiction has been featured by Electric Spec, Popcorn Press, Romance Magazine, and Shooter Literary Magazine. She is one of four authors of the upcoming Enchanted series, which will be released by Pen and Kink Publishing in 2017. Tiffany lives in San Diego with her ninja fiancé and two fur balls, Biscuit and Zen. Follow her adventures at tiffanymichellebrown.wordpress.com.


Give It Back: A Horror Short

Spin: A Novelette

Check out the rest of the stops on the tour for more great stories!

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The Kindness of Friends

Happy Giftmas! We here at Operation Awesome are excited to be participating again in Rhonda Parrish's Giftmas blog tour. This year the blog tour is benefitting the Edmonton Food Bank.

We were asked to write stories about our holiday memories associated with food, and here's mine:

My oldest child was born in between my first and second year of graduate school. We lived in a tiny one bedroom apartment in the University of Utah's married student housing complex. My husband worked as a paraprofessional at an elementary school, which covered most of our living expenses. The rest and my tuition were all covered by student loans.

Friends of ours offered to watch our son while we were at school and work for a ridiculously tiny amount of money. But in the middle of November, our arrangement fell apart. My husband decided to quit his job and stay home with our son until I finished school, which was great for our family life but terrible for our bank account.

One night, close to Christmas, we were ding-dong ditched. When we opened our door, we found an envelope with $100 on our doorstep. Later, we found out that someone from our church had given several hundred dollars to our bishop to give to anyone that needed it that Christmas. We were one of a few families chosen to receive some of that gift.

Most of that money went straight into our bank account, but we used some of it to splurge on steaks for our Christmas dinner. It was a welcome break from pasta and rice. Those steaks were probably the most delicious I've ever eaten, because they were seasoned with gratitude for someone who loved us and wanted us to be happy. We took a photo of our dinner, which we ate off our wedding china to make it even more fancy, and every time I come across it on my computer my heart swells with joy at the knowledge that there are good people in the world.

Check out the rest of the stops on the tour for more great stories! I'll have another one up tomorrow on Diamante's blog.

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Merry Giftmas 2016!

Happy Giftmas! We here at Operation Awesome are excited to be participating again in Rhonda Parrish's Giftmas blog tour. This year the blog tour is benefitting the Edmonton Food Bank.

We all have stories about food we associate with the holidays. The Giftmas bloggers will be sharing their stories all week as part of our fundraising efforts. But what if your holiday food story was that you didn't have any? The Edmonton Food Bank aims to make sure that no family has to do without food at any time of the year. During this holiday season, we ask that if you can, you make a donation in the spirit of helping others make their own holiday food memories.

Come back tomorrow for Kara's favorite holiday food memory, and check out the rest of the stops on the tour for more great stories!

There's also a giveaway for you readers! Woohoo!

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Giftmas Blog Tour Guest Post: On This Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me . . . by Eileen Wiedbrauk

Operation Awesome is participating in Rhonda Parrish's 2015 Giftmas Blog Tour. All the guest bloggers are welcome to write about anything they’d like so long as their post touched on a December holiday in some way, no matter how tangentially. The blog tour extends across many blogs as well, and you can find more on social media using the hashtag #GiftmasTour.

But wait! There’s more!

We’re also giving away a whole whack of prizes (check out the list here) which you can enter to win using the Rafflecoper code below. Whatever December holiday you celebrate (or don’t) winning a stack of books will make it better!

On This Day of Christmas, My True Love Gave to Me . . .

by Eileen Wiedbrauk

The first holiday romance anthology I ever read was The Christmas Cat. I was probably 13ish because I remember reading these on the bus coming home from middle school. My mother had been in the habit of buying me all sorts of animal stories like All Creatures Great and Small and Cat Stories by James Harriet. This was no James Harriet. Inside were indeed stories of cats. Cats who used their nine lives to bring together couples, either through traveling through time or reuniting lovers who shouldn’t have separated to begin with.

Cats and sex as it turned out. Holy hot Lord of Misrule!

I was hooked on holiday romances from then on. And not just the sexy ones either. But just about every made for TV Christmas movie. Have you heard the episode of Ask MeAnother where they give two contestants Christmas movie scenarios and try to get them to guess which are real and which are made up? The contestants failed miserably. Meanwhile, I was shouting at my radio, No, no, that one’s real! I’ve seen it! Twice!

So of course, as Editor-in-Chief of WorldWeaver Press, I wanted to put together an anthology of fantasy and paranormal winter romances!

In 2013 we came out with A Winter’sEnchantment, a three-novella anthology of winter magic and loves lost and regained. They included The Devil inMidwinter by Elise Forier Edie, a melding of Mexican and Central American folk and fairy tales with a modern Mexican American girl who’s being pursued by a demon and a boy who burns and burns. Both would have her for his own, but figuring out which, if either, would help save her will be her real challenge. It also featured a novella in the Fate of the Gods series by Amalia Dillin, which follows the many, many lives of Eve reincarnated. This one in Taming Fate takes plase in France in the Middle Ages, where Eve is facing down the plague while facing a new marriage that isn’t . . . well, just isn’t. And the third novella, Opal by Kristina Wojtaszek, is a gorgeous, lyrical melding of many fairy tales into a bright new story following the intersecting lives of a magical girl born as an owl and a boy trapped in a tower.

Then when we launched Red Moon Romance, our first imprint, focused on—you guessed it—romance, we of course had to come out with a sexier holiday anthology.

The Naughty List, edited by Cori Vidae and featuring Tiffany Reisz, Alexa Piper, Pumpkin Spice, Elizabeth Black, Doug Blakesee, and Wendy Sparrow, came out just last month. It’s a blast. The ghosts of Christmas past, Krampus, cowboys and bourbon desserts, a little holiday BDSM, and the son of Father Time put to the test on New Year’s Eve. The stories range from sexy to sweet and prove love is better on the Naughty List.

If you’re a writer looking to submit to a holiday anthology, there’s always a publisher out there looking to put together another bundle of holiday romances—I’m not the only reader who’s hooked!

The most important thing to keep in mind when submitting to a holiday anthology is timing. Many publishers put out a call for submissions in the early months of the year for holiday stories with a deadline as early as March, if they’re anthologies, or August, if they’re magazines. When editing A Winter’s Enchantment, I couldn’t stomach the thought of reading Christmas stories in the middle of a sweltering summer, so I purposefully set our reading period as December and January to create extra time before bringing out the anthology the following winter. It’s best to keep your eyes peeled as these calls pop up throughout the year and are usually only open for short windows since the publishers have much less date-of-publication flexibility as compared to other projects.

Another thing to keep in mind is that holiday romance anthologies are often filled by invitation. This means that writers whom the editor knows are solicited by the editor to send her a story. The best way to have a story solicited is to have worked with that editor before or to have enough work out that you become known to her. In both A Winter’s Enchantment and The Naughty List, the final table of contents was a mix of stories sent to us through regular submissions and stories from writers whom we specifically asked for work.

Why write a holiday novella or short story? If you usually write novels, a holiday story can be a great tie-in, a chance to expand on already established characters by showing them briefly in a short story. Jumping into an anthology or bundle can also be a means of gaining the attention of new readers who come to the anthology with the intent of reading another author in the anthology and then discover your work. It can also be a great chance to explore and showcase cultures, modern or historical seasonal traditions, and holidays that aren’t as well known. The holidays have the tendency to bring out the best and worst in people, and tension like that should not be overlooked in story writing.

Eileen Wiedbrauk (eileenwiedbrauk.com) is Editor-in-Chief of World Weaver Press and Red Moon Romance as well as a writer, blogger, coffee addict, cat herder, MFA graduate, fantasist-turned-fabalist-turned-urban-fantasy-junkie, Odyssey Workshop alumna, designer, tech geek, entrepreneur, kdrama devotee, avid reader, and a somewhat decent cook. She wears many hats, as the saying goes. Which is an odd saying in this case, as she rarely looks good in hats. She writes creepy fairy tales like this one and can be found on Twitter @eileenwiedbrauk.

Giftmas Blog Tour Guest Post: About Writing and Holidays and Gifts--oh my! by E.C. Bell

Operation Awesome is participating in Rhonda Parrish's 2015 Giftmas Blog Tour. All the guest bloggers are welcome to write about anything they’d like so long as their post touched on a December holiday in some way, no matter how tangentially. The blog tour extends across many blogs as well, and you can find more on social media using the hashtag #GiftmasTour.

But wait! There’s more!

We’re also giving away a whole whack of prizes (check out the list here) which you can enter to win using the Rafflecoper code below. Whatever December holiday you celebrate (or don’t) winning a stack of books will make it better!

About Writing and Holidays and Gifts--oh my! 

by E.C. Bell

I’m a writer. I’m also a mother and a wife and a daughter and a sister and a friend, and I spend a lot of time trying to find just the right Christmas gift for the special people in my life. Sometimes I hit a home run, and other times--well, at least I tried!

But I realized that I don’t often give good suggestions when those same people ask me what I’d like for Christmas. That made me wonder about all the other families of writers. Do they have the same problem as mine? Quite possibly.

So, here’s my Christmas gift to all you lovely people who are involved in the care and feeding of a writer. The five or so best gifts to get the writer in your life (in no particular order).

(And if you are a writer, just print off this list, circle the gift you want and give it to your loving family. They’ll appreciate it, trust me.)

A room of her own.

All right, now this seems like a big one, but having space to write is vital. So, if your writer doesn’t have an office, check everywhere and see if there is a spot that can be set up as a “room of her own.” I believe Stephen King wrote in a furnace room for a while--so, hey, that might be the place to start looking. Wherever the space is, though, make certain that the door (and there must be a door) can be closed, if not locked. Because as much as we love you, writers need a space where they can be alone to create. (Cats and dogs don’t count, of course. For one thing, it’s impossible to keep either a cat or a dog out of a room if they really want in, and besides--Aww! A puppy on your lap! How sweet is that?)

Time to herself.

This goes hand in hand with the “having a room” gift. As much as you want to show her the “real cool thing I found on the internet, it will only take a minute,” don’t. If the door is closed, leave her be. She’ll come out when she’s hungry--or when you’re hungry. (It’s funny how writers transform back into moms and/or wives when that door opens.) And as helpful as you think you are being, don’t knock on the door every ten minutes to ask “How’s it going?” She’ll tell you, later. But give her some time, so she can create.

“How can I give time as a Christmas gift?” you may ask. Well, remember way back in primary school, when you made “coupons” for your parents for father’s or mother’s day? “This coupon is worth one hug”, or “one joke,” or whatever? How about making a bunch of those for your writer? “I won’t bug you until 4 pm, every day.” “Don’t worry, I’ll make dinner.” Or the always wonderful, “You don’t have to do the laundry this week. I got it.” Costs you next to nothing, and believe me, your writer will love them!

A lot of the type of pens she likes.

All right, this might be just me, but I have a certain type of pen I prefer to write with. It’s not expensive, but I’m absolutely certain that someday--someday soon--that particular brand won’t be made anymore. So... I hoard them. Boxes of them. (I can’t be the only one!) So, find out what kind of writing instrument your writer likes and buy a box.

When she tells you the type, don’t say, “Oh, those are so cheap, why don’t you try this kind?” because you are not being helpful. Just get her a box of whatever she likes, slap a bow on it, and thank the gods of writing that she didn’t ask for a box of the S.T. Dupont James Bond Spectre Fountain pens (a thousand pounds each at Harrods, just so you know).

Paper -- preferably in legal sized pads. (Yellow IS the best, but whatever.)

I know. Paper. How passe. Here’s the thing, though. Writers sometimes need to physically write. On paper. So, find out the kind she likes, and get her a lot of it.  Personally, I like yellow legal sized pads of paper. Why yellow? Because it’s cheap and cheerful. (Not necessarily in that order) I buy them by the gross, so I always have them on hand. (There is nothing worse than having that “great idea” and having to scribble it down on the back of a to do list or a grocery store receipt. Seriously.)

A variation on the paper theme--Post It notes. Get them in various sizes, and in different colours. Most writers I know LOVE Post-It notes.

Writing clothes. (In other words, pajamas and sweaters)

All right, so maybe the pajama and sweater thing is just me (again). I remember when I first started writing seriously, I imagined myself sitting at a perfectly clean desk (ha!) and writing while wearing a flowing lace dress (HA!). The reality? Not so much. What I wear, always, are pajama pants and an ugly, baggy, sweater. (In the winter I wear thick socks, too, but they aren’t required year round, so I won’t add them as absolutely necessary.) So, find the ugliest, baggiest sweater you can--no, wait, that would be for me. For everyone else, ask your writer what she likes to wear when she’s writing, and then riff on that theme. (Honestly, though. The uglier and baggier, the better!)

What happened to alcohol? (Don’t all writers drink???)

You’ll notice I didn’t add any beverages to this list, but if none of the above suit your fancy, then beverages will have to do. Make sure you ask what your writer likes, though, because, trust me. If your writer has a favourite type of pen (for heaven’s sake), she is probably pretty picky about her choice of drink, too! (Just sayin’.)

What? No electronics?

Nope. Most  writers I know own every electronic gadget known to man already. They don’t need more gadgets. They need to write.

Hope this helps, and I hope you have a wonderful holiday season with your favourite writer!

Eileen (E.C.) Bell’s debut paranormal mystery novel Seeing the Light  (2014) won the BPAA award for Best Speculative Fiction Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Bony Blythe Award for Light Mystery. The second book in the series, Drowning in Amber, was released into the wild at the end of October, 2015. Her short fiction includes the Aurora Award winning Women of the Apocalypse and The Puzzle Box. When she’s not writing, she’s living a fine life in her round house with her husband and two dogs.

Website: www.eileenbell.com

Twitter: @apocalypsewoman

Facebook:www.facebook.com/eileen.bell.90

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