2 CUPS WHITE FLOUR, PLUS EXTRA FOR ROLLING
1¾ CUPS WHOLE-WHEAT FLOUR
1 TABLESPOON BAKING POWDER
¼ TEASPOON SALT
1½ CUPS BUTTER (3 STICKS), CHILLED
1½ CUPS SOUR CREAM, CHILLED (LOWFAT OKAY)
Pulse dry ingredients in a food processor until mixed, about 10 seconds. Cut butter into 24 pieces and poke into flour; pulse until the flour looks evenly sandy. Empty mixture into a large bowl. Mix in sour cream (first with a spoon, then with your hands). Knead several times into a large lump. Roll into a log, then cut into 12 equal pieces. On a well-floured board, roll each piece into a circle about 6 inches across. Stack for later. (This can be done while the filling is cooking.)
FILLING
1 SLICE BREAD
2 TABLESPOONS WATER OR WHITE WINE
1 POUND GROUND BEEF, PREFERABLY CHUCK
¾ TEASPOON SALT
¾ TEASPOON FRESH GROUND PEPPER
Pulse bread and water or wine in a food processor. Add beef, salt, and pepper and process to combine.
1 TABLESPOON OLIVE OIL
2 ONIONS, DICED
4 CLOVES GARLIC, MINCED OR PRESSED
1 TEASPOON GROUND CUMIN
¼ TEASPOON CAYENNE PEPPER
¼ TEASPOON GROUND CLOVES
½ CUP CILANTRO, CHOPPED
½ CUP RAISINS, CHOPPED
⅓ CUP GREEN OLIVES, PITTED AND CHOPPED
1 TABLESPOON CIDER VINEGAR
SALT AND PEPPER
Sauté onions in a large skillet until translucent. Add garlic, cumin, cayenne pepper, and cloves; sauté for 1 minute. Add beef, and sauté until beef is cooked through, breaking up large clumps. Spoon out extra fat, but don't get crazy about it. Peel and chop the two hard-boiled eggs. Stir in cilantro, hard-boiled eggs, raisins, and olives. Season to taste with vinegar, salt, and pepper. Spread the filling evenly across the bowl. Using a spatula or table knife, separate the filling into 12 sections.
POCHES CLÉÈBRES
⅓ CUP OLIVE OIL
Preheat oven to 425° F. Set two rimmed cookie sheets in the oven to preheat. Put one rolled disk on a dinner plate. (Avoid the floured surface; water + flour = paste.) Scoop on of the filling (it won't look like enough, but it is). With your fingers or a pastry brush, dab the edge of the dough with water. Fold the disk in half, then crimp with a fork to seal the two edges together. Set aside and make eleven more. I also trim the forked edge with a knife or pastry roller because my edges always look horrible.
Divide ⅓ cup of olive oil between the two hot cookie sheets. Arrange six poches célèbres on each sheet, and brush their tops with the hot oil. Bake 25—30 minutes, switching the cookie sheets' position halfway through, until poches célèbres are well browned. They can be served warm or at room temperature.
Recipe for Pumpkin Pudding >
Recipe for Poches Celebres >
More Bonus Material >
Bonus Recipe: Pumpkin Pudding
First, a note on ramekins. Ramekins (from an obsolete Flemish term for toasted bread; go figure) are little individual baking dishes, usually white ceramic with ridged sides. They come in all sizes, from thimble to casserole, but the 6 ounce is standard. I had a wedding-gift set that I hadn't used once until this recipe; now I use them almost weekly. You can also make this pudding in a 2 quart casserole dish and bake in a water bath for 45—50 minutes. But ramekins are way cooler.
PUMPKIN BREAKFAST PUDDING >
If you don't have canned pumpkin, you can make your own puree with a pie pumpkin (not the jack-o'-lantern kind! They're for carving, not eating). Bake the whole pumpkin on a tray in a 375°F oven until it's pooped, scoop out the guts, throw away the seeds, and strain the guts through a food mill.
6 CUPS WATER
Preheat oven to 400°F. Boil the water. Arrange twelve 6 ounce unbuttered ramekins in a large roasting pan.
½ ('¼ CUP) BUTTER, MELTED
4 EGGS
2½ CUPS BUTTERMILK (FAT-FREE OKAY)
2 CUPS OR ONE 15 OZ CAN PURéED PUMPKIN
¾ CUP BROWN SUGAR
½ TEASPOON SALT
In a large bowl, barely microwave the butter. Whisk in the eggs, then stir in buttermilk and pumpkin purée. Stir in sugar and salt to dissolve.
¾ CUP WHOLE WHEAT FLOUR
¾ CUP CORNMEAL
1½ TEASPOONS. BAKING POWDER
1½ TEASPOONS. BAKING SODA
1 TABLESPOON CINNAMON
1 TEASPOON GRATED NUTMEG
½ TEASPOON GROUND GINGER
¼ TEASPOON ALLSPICE
Combine the dry ingredients in a separate bowl. Add to the wet ingredients and stir well.
2 CUPS FRESH CRANBERRIES, CUT IN HALF, OR 8 OZ FROZEN CRANBERRIES (CAN BE ADDED FROZEN)
Stir fruit into pumpkin mixture. Distribute batter between the twelve ramekins.
¼ CUP SUGAR
1 TABLESPOON CINNAMON
Combine cinnamon and sugar; liberally sprinkle on each ramekin. Pour up to 6 cups boiled water into the roasting pan so that the ramekins rest in a water bath. Slide pan into oven. Bake until tops are golden brown and firm, 25—35 minutes. Serve warm or room temp. Ramekins last several days in the fridge and can be microwaved as needed.
Recipe for Cuthbert en croûte >
Recipe for Poches Celebres >
More Bonus Material >
> Wisdom's Kiss Pitch Letter with Author Commentary
I've never had much patience for pitch letters. You know, the whole "you must say_using_examples in_paragraphs to sell your manuscript." I say: focus on the book. If it's good, it will sell; if it's not, a one-page letter ain't gonna help. Sorry. That said, one does have an obligation to offer one's work to potential buyers. Below is the original Wisdom's Kiss pitch letter that I sent to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Since Margaret, my editor, had worked on (i.e., improved/honed/made readable...) my four previous books, we have a comfortable working relationship, and the letter has a chumminess not found in first-time correspondence. I tend—surprise, surprise—to be pretty informal in all my writing, though, and I don't think it's inappropriate for "business" prose to reflect the personality of the writer. Just don't overdo it.
***
25 September 2009
Hi Margaret!
You may have heard rumors that I'm working on a new book—I've been using it as an excuse for tour-prep negligence—so I suppose I should fess up and admit it outright. It's still in the larval stage, with a working title of "Fortitude, Wisdom and Tips," and I'm very excited about it.
The book is a sort of sequel to Princess Ben—or, as I've dubbed it, a "consequence of Princess Ben," which is much more charming and PB-ish. It begins sixty years after Princess Ben ends as Ben is escorting her granddaughter to her wedding in neighboring Farina. There they discover they're pawns in a plot to take over Montagne, the granddaughter finds her true love in a circus acrobat, and they encounter a heartsick maidservant with the gift of prophesy, a Doppelschläferin cat, and the usual garnish of eccentrics and cads. Anyone who's read PB will get the inside jokes (such as when a teenager complains that old Grandmother Ben was doubtless perfect when she was young), but that book in no way determines this one, which is very much a standalone work.
The format is as important as plot and characters. I guess I'd call it an epistolary novel, which is to say I'm telling the story with diaries, memoirs, encyclopedia entries, letters, biographies, even a stage play (!), all woven together into a narrative. It is SO MUCH FUN TO WRITE, and my intent is that it will end up almost like a puzzle, where readers can either sift each entry for clues or just skim along enjoying the ride ... Kind of like Princess Ben, now that I think about it; younger readers devour the story, while older, more curious types look up definitions and savor the prose.
At the moment it's around 40, 000 words, and I'm very much looking forward to revising while I'm on tour. I've attached a first stab at flap copy, which as you know I compose for inspiration even if (as in this case) it's pretty
mediocre. Any port in a storm.
Cheers!
Catherine
***
"Fortitude, Wisdom and Tips"
Princess Wisdom, known as Dizzy, longs for a life of adventure far beyond the staid old kingdom of Montagne.
Tips, a soldier, longs to keep his true life secret from his family.
Fortitude, an orphaned maid, longs only for Tips.
These three passionate souls might just attain their dreams while preserving Montagne from certain destruction—if only they can tolerate each other long enough to come up with a plan. Tough to save the world when you can't even be in the same room together.
Magic, cunning, and one very special cat join forces in this hilarious, extraordinary tale by the author of Dairy Queen and Princess Ben.
More Bonus Material >
Bonus Material: Author Commentary on Characters
Trudy >
Tips >
Felis >
Teddy >
Roger and Hrothgar >
Dizzy >
Wilhelmina and Edwig >
Ben and Florian >
Modesty and Patience >
Escoffier >
Handsome >
Rüdiger >
Providence >
Pierre Stein >
Enhanced Materials Menu
Trudy
Author Commentary on Trudy, or Fortitude of Bacio ... her mother Mina ... Count Rudolph of Piccolo ... Faith ... Humor >
In the summer of 2009 I began outlining a story involving a girl with imperfect clairvoyance, the elderly queen of Montagne, and (somehow) a hot-air balloon.
The first flash of inspiration—well, one of the first flashes—was a dream I'd had (always it is with me and the dreams), a fragment involving a girl looking down a road and sensing or "seeing" the approach of danger. To be honest, this fragment was set at night, on a flat (not mountain) road, surrounded by forest, and the approaching danger involved horsemen galloping with the whole billowing black cape thing that horsemen in those sorts of situations always seem to do. Obviously, that didn't make it into the final draft of Wisdom's Kiss because it's rare that great ideas are also good ideas. So instead the approaching menace turns out to be a vomit-splattered carriage, and we're all the better for it. >
I also knew from a very, very early point that this female character would have red hair. When I was growing up in suburban Connecticut, there was a girl—JMcD, I'll call her—who had hair like you would not believe. Just last year my sister said to me wistfully, apropos of nothing, "Do you remember JMcD's hair?" Remember? I was writing a book about it! (It didn't help that I myself as a kid had hair with the texture and appeal of wet kelp.) JMcD's hair wasn't just red; it was red like the embers of a dying fire, and wavy and curly and long. Imagine Emma Stone, but with hair to her waist. In ringlets.
I need a minute to compose myself.
Red hair made sense for other reasons. It gave the character a clear physical identifier, which is always useful. That's a writing tip, by the way: don't spell out the character's lip shape and jaw line and pant size and weight; all we need is something simple but visual: "kind of scrawny" will suffice. In fact, "kind of scrawny" is perfect. The rest we'll fill in as we each see fit. In my novel Dairy Queen I describe the heroine as tall. For some readers that means six foot one, but for others it's five foot six, and saying six foot one would leave those readers totally freaked. Try not to freak your readers out. In Wisdom's Kiss, Ben is stout, Tips has long eyelashes, Wilhelmina looks down her nose, Felis twirls his goatee, Dizzy is scrawny (in her own eyes) but lithe (in others'), and Trudy has amazing red hair. Given that I wanted to include a hot-air balloon, I also appreciated that red hair is highly visible from a distance, which might serve well in a rescue situation ... and it did!
Beyond supernatural ability and conspicuous tresses, this character-who-would-become-Trudy had one other critical function: she needed to end up brokenhearted. I very much wanted to write a YA story where the girl doesn't—against all our hopes and expectations—get the guy, but at the conclusion to the book ends up better off and happy without him. Here's a tip to my younger fans: that fella you adore at the age of fifteen, much as you might wish otherwise, will in all likelihood not be your life partner. It's statistically proven. So fall in love, yes; adore him. But don't forget that "Happily Ever After" usually isn't.
A note on Trudy's family:
Mina, like all good fictional mothers, dies young; in this case on page six. (For more on this bitter truth, see my article "The Adventures of Mommy Buzzkill." ) While developing characters for Wisdom's Kiss, I sought out unusual names, particularly unusual virtues, and miraculously stumbled upon a www.cslib.org/nickname.htm%3ewebsite%3c/pararef website listing colonial names and nicknames. Wow. Allow me to say that America has produced some mighty cruel parents. "Mindwell" (actual nickname of Mina) is one of the more odious examples, but "Waitstill" ranks up there as well, and I loved the name so much that for a while Trudy had a long-lost aunt. But the story didn't otherwise need her, so out she went.
I named Trudy's husband Count Rudolph of Piccolo because the couple then would be known as Trudy and Rudy. (NO ONE will ever get this joke, though I do hope at least a few readers will pick up on the pumpkin reference to "Cinderella.") He is very sweet and devoted to his wife, though a bit tedious on the subject of squash. Their daughters Faith and Humor— more virtues! —will have a central role in any future Montagne stories, should such stories ever come to pass. I particularly like the notion of Humor hating her name, but I'm personally so fond of it that I can't get any further: why would anyone dislike humor? Perhaps I could tie it somehow into the four cardinal humors ... Shall have to ponder further, as well as pondering how and when exactly Humor helps Trudy write her memoirs. Whatever Humor is like as a teen, as a grownup she's akin to Rose Wilder Lane (a woman every American girl should know; write your next history paper on her).
Read more on the structure of Wisdom's Kiss, Tips and Trudy's role in Queen of All the Heavens
More Commentary on Characters >
Tips
Author's commentary on Tips, a.k.a. Tomas Müller >
Of all the characters in Wisdom's Kiss, Tips was probably the hardest to write. Not because he was a difficult personality—he's wonderful, if perhaps a bit perfect (handsome, kind, loving, brave, cute in tights ... Dizzy's statement that he's "modest AND confident" is about the most tantalizing description of a man that I can imagine). But he presented two major challenges: how to keep his true profession a secret for the first half of the book; and how to convey his ambivalence about Trudy—the truth that while he is devoted to her, he is not in love with her—so that their breakup, when it comes, is disappointing but not entirely unexpected. >
Luckily—I stumbled upon this solution only because I wanted a genre that differed from Trudy's memoir and Dizzy's diary—Tips's letters solved both of these problems. In writing to Trudy, Tips quite self-consciously chooses what to tell her and what to omit, omissions made even clearer with his crossed-out words and painstaking rephrasing. In keeping secrets from her, he's also keeping secrets from the reader, who doesn't learn until the end of Part II that Tips is in fact a circus acrobat, not the soldier he claimed to be. Reread his letters and you'll see how often he changes "I worked" to "I guarded," and "I walked" to "I marched"—all to appear more soldierly. (Soldierly—adjective, by the way. Cool.)
I wanted this secret for the drama, pure and simple. Think of it: Tips and Trudy reunited, stunned and hurt, before a massive audience as Trudy realizes he actually loves the princess whom she serves as lady-in-waiting ... It was no mean feat to write up the first meeting of Tips and Dizzy when he swings her through the air, though it helps that Ben, who relates the scene, doesn't know his name. (Nor does she when "the acrobat" charms her the next day; the "Master of Air" also merits an obscure aside in the Circus Primus encyclopedia entry, as well as a much less obscure role in the Queen of All the Heavens. That's probab
ly my favorite instant (versus my favorite entry) in all of Wisdom's Kiss, the moment when Dizzy extends her hand and Tips lifts her into his arms, whispering in her ear as they sail together, eyes locked, above the awed and silent spectators ... It still gives me goose bumps, every time I think of it.
Tips's confusion about his feelings for Trudy are similarly visible in his self-edits, such as when he mentions marriage and then hastily deletes it, or states "I love like care for you." He does care deeply about Trudy—she's almost family, and his oldest, dearest friend—but he can't muster the passion that she so clearly feels for him (or perhaps that she thinks she has for him; she's never let herself consider anyone else). He, with obvious misgivings, preserves this pretense of romance until he meets someone who knocks him off his feet—almost literally! Then he has to pick up the pieces, and Trudy (and we readers) learn the pain of a broken heart, and also a heart's mending.
Tips's magnificent battle with the evil gardener came very late in the writing process. Originally, I wanted Trudy and/or Dizzy to solve Montagne's problems, to show that girls can save countries, too. But Tips by that point was looking a bit like a third wheel with nothing to do except apologize to Trudy and moon at the princess, so I decided to give him something dramatic ... like fight a dragon. Unfortunately, that particular scene stunk and was promptly deleted. But it demonstrated that Tips needed to show what, exactly, he was capable of. He needed a guy scene. And, not coincidentally, the end of the book needed some oomph. At that point the "dramatic conclusion" was about as exciting as stale bread. Hence the sword fight; thank goodness Felis provided suitably thrilling narration.
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