One Heart - Poem

One Heart

When you held me close and we said not a word,

The pounding of one heart is what I heard.

I could not decide if it was yours or mine,

It must have been our hearts combined.

- Grace R. Pringle

True Story.

Short Story: We Did.

This is a short story I wrote on the idea of growing up and losing the innocence of childhood.

We Did

“I want to go up there.” Kate told Jimmy who was lying on his back next to her in the grass.

“You can’t,” he informed her with a sigh “you need wings and it is very cold in the sky. The clouds are mushy and wet too.”

“I’ll ask for wings and a raincoat for Christmas.” was her even reply.

“How are you going to ask for those when you have no one to ask?”

“I don’t know, but I’ll think of some way.” Kate closed her eyes and drank in the sunlight that penetrated her eyelids,

“I’ll learn to fly and you will too.”

-----~*~-----

 “Jimmy,” Kate stood in the backyard, watching him throw a ball at the fence with all his might: BAM! Catching it again when it came back to him: THUNK.

“Jimmy,” Kate repeated “why are you doing that?”

“I’m mad.” He told her and threw the ball again. BAM!

“Why are you mad Jimmy?” THUNK. Jimmy caught the ball and gripped it until his knuckles turned white.

“I’m mad because I’m sad. Everyone is gone away and no one is coming back.” BAM! THUNK.

‘What about your brother and mother?”

“They’re gone.”

“And your father?”

“He can’t come back. He would want to if he could but they put him in the ground.” BAM! THUNK.

“Why did they do that Jimmy?”

“They won’t tell me,” BAM! THUNK “they tell me I’ll understand when I’m older but I want to understand NOW.” BAM! THUNK. BAM! THUNK. Kate put her small hand on his arm.

“It’s okay, Jimmy, I don’t understand it either. I’m not going to go though, I’ll stay here.”

“I know,” Jimmy dropped the ball at his feet and his shoulders sagged “But I don’t know how long you will be here before you go too.”

-----~*~-----

“Kate,” Jimmy tilted his head back to look up at the night sky above them “do you want to visit the stars with me one day?”

“Yes, Kate nodded “one day I would.”

“Why do the stars make me sad Kate?”

“Because they remember all the things we have forgotten.”

“What have we forgotten, Kate?”

“If I knew that, the stars wouldn’t be sad.”

“Do you think we will remember one day, Kate?”

“Maybe, but I think that every time we remembered what we forgot a star falls down. So, perhaps it is a good thing we forget, if we didn’t, there would be no stars.”

“If we visit the stars I am sure there are some things we will not help but remember. Do you still want to go with me, Kate?” Kate was quiet for a long moment and then she nodded and whispered,

“I will because it is worth the risk.”

-----~*~-----

 “Jimmy,” Kate was confused “Jimmy, Why can’t we? I don’t understand.”

“I have to go, Kate, I have to go away.”

“But why, Jimmy? You said we were going to visit the stars.” Jimmy shook his head.

“They are too far away, Kate.”

“But what about learning to fly and understanding all those things we don’t know?”

“Kate, no one can learn to fly, and I understand those things now. And Kate… I don’t want you to understand them. You need to stay the way you are. I WANT you to stay the way you are.”

“And what way is that, Jimmy?”

“Innocent, Kate, believing you can fly and that you can visit the stars.”

“We CAN do those things, Jimmy!” Jimmy closed his eyes and shook his head again.

“This is why I have to go, Kate. If I stay you’ll change, I’LL change you and I don’t want to. I love you the way you are, Kate, I don’t want you to become like me.”

“What is the matter with being like you, Jimmy?”

“You would not understand, Kate.” Kate’s voice dropped to a lower note,

“Because you won’t let me, Jimmy.”

“The Jimmy you know no longer exists, Kate.” Jimmy hung his head.

 “What are we, Jimmy?”

“I don’t know, Kate.”

“I know, Jimmy. We are halves, halves of a whole. So, you see it is you who do not understand. If you did you would understand you and you would understand me and you wouldn’t go.”

“If we are halves, Kate, who split us apart?”

“We did, Jimmy. We did.”

Chinese Curry Noodles

My husband and I live only a three minute walk away from a Chinese grocery store and so have found ourselves trying all kinds of new dishes. I have had a request for this recipe so I am posting it here for you!
The recipe is one I've come up with so there aren't definite measurements.

You will need:
-Chinese style instant noodles (the Wai Wai brand)

-Shrimp (the tails removed) or pieces of chicken.
-Butter
-Garlic cloves
-Sesame or Vegetable Oil
-Soy Sauce
-Red Pepper Flakes
-Honey/Brown Sugar
-Lemon Juice
-Chicken stock
-Vegetables (I like to use onions, carrots and celery but you can choose your own)
-Curry Powder
-Salt to taste

Add whatever else you would like. Egg and water chestnuts are good Chinese ingredients.

First, fill a medium sized bowl or pot with the hottest water from your tap. Take about half a package of noodles and let sit in water until needed.

-Put some butter in a frying pan on high. Cut the garlic and add to the melted butter. Add shrimp.

At this point you can add the sesame oil,  soy sauce, red pepper flakes, honey and lemon juice. However, these are not mandatory and you may skip out on them if you like.

Cook shrimp until liquid in pan has all but disappeared. Remove from heat and put in bowl.







-Put chopped up veggies and, in pan, fry with a minimal amount of oil. Add about 2 teaspoons of honey. Fry until onions are translucent or until veggies are JUST tender. Not too much or else they become too limp.

Add shrimp back into the pan of veggies.
-Pick noodles up from out of the water and hold above the sink until drained. Add the noodles to the pan along with the chicken stock, curry and salt. I like to put a lot of curry in but decide how much you want by tasting it. (if the spices don't mix in well with the noodles add water) Fry just long enough to heat noodles. Make sure the noddles are not too dry. Half a package of noodles will make enough for about five people.

Remove from the heat and enjoy!

Spinach Fritters

A writer has to be healthy, right? Well, I don't know about you but spinach isn't one of my favourite vitamin-packed foods. So I was pleasantly surprised when I tried this recipe - and actually liked it! It's slightly spicy (but not overly-so) and makes a fairly easy side-dish. I have my own small twist on the recipe.

Lentil Spinach Fritters

3/4 of a cup cooked lentils - drained (You can use a can of lentils if you want to make things easier)

3 1/2 cups spinach - chopped

3 Tablespoons water

2 Tablespoons green onions

1/2 teaspoon red pepper flakes

1 Tablespoon cilantro - chopped

3 Tablespoons Flour (or more)

1 teaspoon cumin

1/2 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon baking powder

1 garlic clove

Directions below.

1st you want to process the lentils in a food processor with about 3 tablespoons of water. I don't have one so I use a blender.

Chop the spinach into small bits and add it to the lentils.

 Next, add the  green onions, cilantro and other ingredients.

 

Now, this is where I add my own twist. In the original recipe you do not process the other ingredients, you just mix them with the lentils. I, however, found that the fritters did not cook as well when that was done. You can just mix the other ingredients in if you like but I prefer to blend them so the batter looks like this:

 Add extra flour or water until you are satisfied with the batter's consistency.

Next, add oil to a heated pan and fry the batter like pancakes until they are light brown.

I am sorry that this picture is so low quality, it makes the fritter look burnt, but it is actually dark green.

Serve them warm with sour cream. 

Enjoy!

If you opt for the un-processed spinach it'll look like this:

Editing, You Plague Me

*Gasps for breath* Well, I've been running a marathon! An editing one, that is.


Yesterday I realized, to my despair, that I had to do some major editing in certain areas of my book Silver Blood. Cutting, pasting, fitting, dissecting, ect. Or, as I told my husband "I am going to preform surgery!"


It is very difficult to completely remove an element from a book. In my case I had to remove a character (minor but scattered throughout the book) and move information from the middle of the book to the back.


Airith, one of my main characters, falls in love with X-Sayda, the wild daughter of an Outland chieftain. She encourages Airith but then betrays him by marrying someone else for power. After her husband is poisoned (suspicious, anyone?) she decides that she wants Airith after all. By then he has realized what sort of person she really is and refuses her. Though the Witch Queen encourages Airith to marry her to gain power and influence.
Originally X-Sayda is only met or mentioned a few times in the book, her and Airith's past relationship is only hinted at.

I decided: "I should add more of their relationship to the book." So I did.
Then I realized: "By adding all these extra parts I am making my word count higher than I want. And how am I supposed to make this all time-consistent?"
So I said: "I'll just take her out completely!" Then I realized she was involved intricately in a major part of the book. So....I made her a minor part again. Sigh.

Have you ever had to remove parts from your book/writing or add parts that gave you grief?

Ode to the Crow - Poem

This is one of my poems that I am pleased with. It's about how I feel when I hear a crow's call in the early morning. It's an eery sound and hauntingly beautiful feeling.

Ode to the Crow

by Grace Pringle

Ode to the crow in her sturdy nest,

Ode to the morning’s peace and rest.

Ye be a bird of dark intent,

You are the silence’s torment.

Yours is a lonely lament,

A call to shake, rip and rent,

The dawn’s slumbering calm.

Early light in the waking night,

The morning and darkness unite.

Stirring softly and glowing bright,

The peace takes flight,

Shattered by a harsh bird’s cry.

Ode to the crow, ode to the morn,

One cries out in scorn,

The other, to be born.

Nature Museum

Where does the inspiration that fuels your writing come from?
Movies? Other books? Dreams? Conversations?

Mine can come from all of those, inspiration seems to hit when you least expect it. Today I went somewhere I never thought to go for inspiration - a nature museum.
 In my family it used to be tradition on birthdays to go to the museums here in Ottawa (Science and Tecnology Museum, Nature Museum or the Aviation Museum) Of all of those my favourite was the Nature Museum or "The Castle Museum" as we liked to call it.

Can you guess why?

I, however, had not been there in years. So, I made a point to visit it since I now live in Ottawa. Today was National Museum day so my husband and I got to visit for free!

To put all your fears at rest, that was not a REAL dinosaur, despite what you may think...

At one point I was looking intently into a display case and saw some vesuvianite (the green crystal). I though my husband was standing behind me so I cried out excitedly: "I have some of that at home!" as I turned towards him. Then I realized that it was not my husband behind me as I had thought. It was a woman who ran off rather quickly O_O

They had some of my favourite kinds of birds; loons, falcons and hawks!
One of my characters is named Falcon :)

I also saw a kestrel for the first time and was imediately reminded of Lloyd Alexander's book: "The Kestrel."
He was a favorite author of mine when I was younger.
 

Have you ever visted somewhere and unexpectedly found inspiration? If so, where?