monkeys and ponies

It's that time again! Or rather, it's past the usual time, but Worldcon was delayed for Obvious Reasons, so Hugo voting isn't until this fall. Which is good, because between work and Mystery Hunt planning, I haven't had a ton of brain for recreational reading.

Anyway, my thoughts on this year's nominees (with no surprises if you follow me on Goodreads): ( after the cut )

I didn't do this meme last year, because I wrote one (1) fic in 2019, uggggh. But this year I have seven! It's a 2020 miracle!

( the year in fic, after the cut )

We normally have three friends over to share dinner with us. This year, of course, that didn't happen, which was pretty depressing, but also didn't stop me from cooking enough food for five people. (Actually, that's not entirely true: there was enough capon for five, even though only three of us are meat-eaters; leftovers have been split into chicken salad and Sunday's gumbo.)

Anyway, the menu, just for my own records, if nothing else:

• Just enough chopped liver on buttered toast for two, since our picky cats won't eat giblets, WTF


• Capon roasted with the gochujang glaze from this recipe


• Mashed potatoes with caramelized onions (and two bags of caramelized onions frozen for future deliciousness, go me)


• Roasted brussels sprouts with cotija and this roasted jalapeño vinaigrette (some minor mods here, like all orange juice so I didn't have to slice up a lime for such a small amount of juice; parsley instead of cilantro to accommodate my spouse's defective cilantro gene; and a touch of simple syrup instead of agave nectar)


• The usual cranberry-tangerine conserve


• Pecan pie

The sprouts and vinaigrette in particular are a real keeper of a recipe. We have some of both left over, so I think I'm going to roast some carrot chunks and toss them in on the grounds that pretty much anything will taste good with the vinaigrette.

Anyway, I hope you all had a good holiday, or at least as good of one as it's possible to have in this benighted year. May we all have a better one next year.

With six novels to read, I figured I'd be lucky to get the four major fiction categories done before the July 15 voting deadline. But it's June 22, and I'm done! Onwards to graphic novels after this.

( the reviews and ranking )

It took seven weeks for me to get through all the Hugo novels, what with not having read any of them – but I finished the Hugo novella reading in three days, because I'd read three of them already. A WINNER IS ME. (And what a relief it is to know I'll have read everything in the four main fiction categories well before the deadline.)

Anyway, all but one of these reviews already appeared on Goodreads, but the Ted Chiang one only appears here, because the novella was part of his Exhalation collection and not trackable separately. (I'll be making my way through the rest of Exhalation after Hugo season is over, though, that's for sure.)

( the reviews and ranking )

We were running low on cookies, which my spouse would live on if he could, and with the next store trip planned for Wednesday, I decided to make brownies. I wanted something different than a typical brownie recipe, though, so I pulled out a copy of a book I hadn't looked at in a while – the Rosie's Bakery Chocolate-Packed, Jam-Filled, Butter-Rich, No-Holds-Barred Cookie Book – and lo and behold, there were bourbon brownies. What could be better? But the spouse took one look at them and said, you know, if you made a mint frosting instead of the ganache the recipe calls for, we could have mint julep brownies. So I did. And they are gooooood. So I'm sharing. 

( recipe, after the cut )

Title: Fragment of a Fragment
Characters/Pairing(s): Eleventh Doctor, the TARDIS
Rating: All ages
Word count: 436
Spoilers: none
Summary: A quiet moment between a Time Lord and his most faithful companion.

Author's Notes: For nostalgia, who wanted Doctor/TARDIS for her birthday. Happy birthday, Nos!

::xposted to dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3

( fic, after the cut )

Title: The Cold Curve of the Moon
Characters/Pairing(s): Tenth Doctor/Reinette
Rating: Teen
Word count: 200
Summary: Reinette never tells the Doctor that when she stepped into his mind, she saw more than just his past.

Author's Notes: I rewatched Girl in the Fireplace the other day as part of #LockdownWho, and I just had to write a little bit more about Reinette. Double drabble.

:: archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3
( fic, after the cut )

Title: Round the Back Way
Characters/Pairing(s): Thirteenth Doctor/Dhawan!Master
Rating: Adult
Word count: 2,450
Spoilers: through Spyfall part 2
Summary: “I’ve just had the most infuriating 77 years of my life,” the Master says. “Have you any idea how hard it is to live through the twentieth century? The places I’ve escaped from ...”

Author's Notes: Thanks as always to platypus for the beta. And really and truly, that joke in there that sounds vaguely familiar was written five days before "Orphan 55" aired.

::xposted to dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3

( fic, after the cut )

Title: Catch Me If You Can
Characters/Pairing(s): River Song/River Song
Rating: Adult
Word count: 1,489
Spoilers: none
Contains: light bondage (gagging)
Summary: "Funny," River said, "all that time-travelling, and this is the first time I've met myself."

Author's Notes: Many thanks to platypus for the incredibly last-minute beta of my one and only fic this year. I got it in just under the wire, YESSSSS.

::xposted to dwfiction and dwfiction, and archived at A Teaspoon And An Open Mind and AO3

( fic, after the cut )