New Year, New Look

We are currently under refurbishment here at Novelchick. This includes a banner change, new graphics, lists and snark. So forgive any bizarre and distracting things that are laying around on the page at the moment. All will be functional and orderly when finished. You will enjoy the comforts of Novelchicks On-Line abode more then ever. Just keep your panties on until then.

For Only $587 a night you can BE Cinderella

Let me say that I'm a huge fan of Disney. Our trip was a fabulous time and our daughter is still talking about it all the time. We all enjoyed ourselves. At the time this rumor was circulating. So here's the facts:


A Castle Suite Fit for a PrincessFor everyone who has ever dreamed of becoming fairy-tale royalty and dwelling in an enchanted castle -- even if only for a night -- the Magic Kingdom Park at Walt Disney World Resort is about to become a bit more magical. Those prince and princess dreams will come true -- for one lucky family every night throughout Year of a Million Dreams*. An exquisite fairy-tale suite is being prepared inside Cinderella Castle at the heart of the Magic Kingdom Park. What will lucky winners of a night in the castle find inside? The Insider wanted to find out, so we went to the source, Imagineer Stephen Silvestri, who has been working night and day (quite literally!) to help create a suite that's truly the stuff dreams are made of. Stephen gave us a quick verbal tour through the suite, which has been designed as though the Guest were an honored visitor spending the night as a Guest of Cinderella. Everything captures the flavor of late 17th-Century French palace life -- this is the period when the original story of Cinderella was written by Charles Perrault, and also the period in which Disney's "Cinderella" was set. "You go through a concierge area off the breezeway, with tapestries and a French desk. Then you enter the elevator, which is very 21st Century! But we looked at Cinderella's carriage from the film, and we thought that this was the carriage for the Guest to enter the suite. We took some of the design themes from the carriage -- the crest from the carriage is on the floor in a mosaic, and some pillowing on the walls. "That carries you up to the suite, which opens and then you find yourself in a lobby space. There once again we captured the time period of the late 1600s. We have all of these beautiful wooden walls with some nice mosaics or scenes from the film worked in. On the floor there's a full mosaic showing Cinderella's carriage. We went for the feeling of a chateau, more than a Gothic castle. We've got some wonderful display items there -- Cinderella's glass slipper. "Then it's time to enter the suite! When you open the door, the first thing you see is the beautiful fireplace and some of the stained-glass windows, and the parlor in the distance. "We extended some of the castle stonework into the bedchamber, because we still wanted you to feel like you're in our castle. But not on all of the walls, because stone everywhere would be a very cold experience. So some of the walls are paneled with wood, with some mirroring. That helps extend the space and is very appropriate to the era." Stephen explains that the goal was to remain true to the feel of the classic film, and to Cinderella Castle itself, while creating a luxurious contemporary suite that makes a 21st Century visitor feel utterly pampered. This took some creative thinking -- for instance, the suite contains two flatscreen TVs. To blend in with the décor, these have been made to look like mirrors when not in use, and one can also display a portrait of Cinderella herself. Other spectacular touches include stained-glass windows overlooking Liberty Square on one side and Fantasyland on the other. Guests will also be stunned by the beautiful hand-assembled mosaics throughout the suite. As one might imagine, putting together this beautiful retreat is a major undertaking -- teams of artisans, designers, and specialists are working around the clock in the Castle. And because the elevator needed to be removed and replaced with a much larger one, for much of the construction period, all the people and supplies have had to reach the suite the old-fashioned way: by climbing eight long flights of stairs. "We want to make sure the Guest experience is as seamless as possible -- that when they come to the Park they see what they came to see," Stephen assures us. The suite is scheduled to be completed by the beginning of 2007 -- the whole project has come together in only around six months. "We put this together quite quickly. Fortunately we had a team that was so well-versed in Disney history and the Castle's history, and Cinderella!" Stephen explains. "It's something that has been proposed before but never came to pass, so we researched what already existed and had been done." Stephen adds, "We have an incredible team, and I believe Guests are going to have quite the experience." We have no doubt that next year, some lucky Guests are going to have a Disney experience unlike any before -- one that is truly a dream come true.

*NO PURCHASE NECESSARY to enter or win the Disney Dreams Giveaway. A purchase will not increase your chances of winning. Open only to legal residents of 50 U.S., D.C., Puerto Rico, Canada, Mexico & UK. Void elsewhere and where prohibited. Giveaway runs October 1, 2006 -- December 31, 2007 (mail in entries postmarked starting September 18, 2006 & received by January 14, 2008, on 3.5x5 postcard with complete name, address, daytime phone #, birth date and proper postage sent to PO Box 8629, Elmhurst, IL 60126 USA). UK residents only mail to 483 Green Lanes, London N13 4BS. Castle Suite stay will be awarded most days starting January 25, 2007. It will likely be awarded early in the day for a stay that night and is only available to eligible participants at the Parks and Downtown Disney® area in Florida. Mail-in winners of Castle Suite stay and DREAM FASTPASS badge will receive a prize of comparable value. Approximate retail value of prizes advertised: Castle Suite stay US $587. Prizes range in value from US $3.83 to US $83,701. All prize awards are subject to verification. Odds of winning on a given day depend on the number of eligible participants at a selected location or within the mail-in entry pool for the time or date (as applicable) selected. Subject to Official Rules (see disneyparks.com/rules). Sponsor: Magic Kingdom Productions, Inc., PO Box 10000, Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830.For residents of Canada, a mathematical skill-testing question must be correctly answered to win any prize.

Dirt Devils, Charades and Velour Jogging Suits

My husband last night asked me to write a short blurb on gift giving.

I had been dogging him for weeks to please make a list on Amazon.com for all to view. Last year he received many a gift that have happily found new homes via garage sales. We're not ungrateful for said items and we know it's the thought that counts. But as cheap people ourselves we do not want to see people wasting money on things we will never use. Wouldn't the world be a spectacular place if we all just made a list of stuff we'd like. Not to be materialistic mind you. My own list contains 12 items and the prices top out at $49.00 I think. But just so people can go, hey, did you know that crushed teal velvet walking suit we're thinking of isn't on there but for $12.00 we can get her a DVD she truly desires?

I'm at a point in my life where I neither need or desire much 'stuff''. I like clothes that I will wear regularly (jeans, t-shirts, jackets). I like to take trips and would rather get a guide book to my next destination. I like CDs and DVDs that I enjoy. I'd love coupons for oil changes. I like dishes that complete my wedding china. A gift certificate for a cleaning service would be great.

What I don't want are things I need to dust. Things my 2 year old will break. I don't wear jewelry except a pair of earrings and my wedding ring. I'm lousy with indoor plants. I really don't need to eat more candy.

So I encourage all of you to make a list somewhere that others can view and put some things (in all price points and easily buyable) that you really want which saves you from either returning it, wearing/displaying it when the gift giver comes over or explaining why you are not wearing/displaying it.

Really, if you want a Roomba, a subscription to Aquarist Monthly or the Homeland Security Quote A Day desk calendar, you need to speak up. Otherwise, it's velour jogging suit for you. With matching socks.

Me, the meat and the loaf

Is meatloaf dressy enough for Christmas dinner?

Some years ago I figured out why I had such a repulsion to Thanksgiving and Christmas meals. I hate the 'traditional' foods. Like who set this menu? I assure you that no one on Plymouth Rock voted on greenbean casserole. Or if they did they were probably sent back to England.

So as I hosted these meals in my home I sat down and took a good hard look at what was expected: A complete turkey, giblet gravy, greenbean casserole, crescent rolls, mashed potatoes, stuffing, dressing, a crudite platter, cranberry stuff and pumpkin pie. I estimated that I ate one section of turkey (the breast) and for some unknown reason the turkey did not arrive at the table until cold. I'm not much of a saucer anyway but the idea of making a gravy out of the waste filtering organs of like the nasty bird on Earth turned me off. Greenbean casserole is...scary looking and I don't like those weird fried things on top. Crescent rolls? I like bread. I LOVE bread. But rolls that pop out of a can like those gag tins of snakes weren't doing it for me especially since I usually had to supplement my meal with them and ended up consuming like nine of them and usually they're cooked oddly and end up mushy in the center and burned on the bottom. Mashed potatoes. Again, I like them. I do not like them when they've been creamed into a glue like substance that I could spackle up the nail holes in my bedroom with. No amount of butter, salt, pepper or wine will fix that. Dressing and stuffing. Okay, I get stuffing if you actually stuffed the bird. And I know a lot of people are still debating over the Stuffing Scare of the 1980's when we were all told that stuffing the bird pre-cooking would lead to like a food poisoning so bad that our intestines would actually melt. But I don't understand why people just shove a big wad of white bread and powdered sage in the bird. And what is dressing? Isn't that stuffing cooked outside the bird? Do we need more carbs with this meal? And why does it look like road kill? I hate crudite. Seriously. I think shoving a platter of baby pickles, raw carrots and celery and some dip at people is wrong no matter if you did put it on a big platter with a few lettuce leafs tucked about. It cheapens the effort of your meal. Antipasto I'm down with, a nice frommage platter, some nice apps that involve hot crab or puff pastry. The mysterious cranberry gel that comes out of the can and many people leave in one strange round glop that threatens to actually roll off the table if prodded wrong with the can ring marks still on it? No. And pumpkin pie. I am so all about pie it hurts. I love pie. It's hard to screw up pie. Except for pumpkin which a lot of times has an unbaked bottom crust and has a pool of canned pumpkin goo in the middle like a tar pit. Plus many a hostess has actually arrived at the table bearing a tub of Cool-Whip and a spoon to toss some on there for you. Not that this will stop me from scraping off the cooked portion and eating it. So after looking at this I decided enough was enough and that this menu was not allowed in the Novelchick Household. Actually maybe I'm less turned off by the food than the serving styles? If you're going to invite like a hundred people who don't really like each other anyway, at least put some candles on the table or take the time to invest in some decent sized cloth napkins (I'm a napkin snob and I prefer something more like a tablecloth sized swatch for myself). Or put the brussel sprouts in a bowl instead of just letting people try and get them out of the pot with a big slotted spoon.

So the very next year I trotted out a hot spinach dip appetizer with wassail for apps, filet mignon, stuffed potatoes and an amazing sweet potato confection that was basically all the oranges, cinnamon and whipping cream in the world stuck together with a potato. There was fresh rosemary bread. Corn souffle. Crisp salad with homemade dressing. Three desserts, pumpkin, chocolate and ice cream. And people ate until they all looked nine months pregnant. One year my husband made a first course in freakin' wine glasses with a horseradish mousse thing and jumbo shrimp big enough to ride. Our guests are sometimes put off by our radical attempts to serve food that people enjoy. They do not wear relaxed fit pants which we encourage. I thought my mother might have to be taken to the hospital the first time I produced a bottle of Riesling (she's Baptist). We've also served Turducken, salmon and a damn fine turkey breast stuffed with andoullie and dirty rice. I've made corn muffins. I've experimented with dressing so good a recipe that should have served sixteen ended up barely covering six of us. I've baked pies in homemade praline crusts, made mini-bundt cakes and created a chocolate espresso sauce that kept people up for three days straight. There has been brisket. Basically, I have blown the lid off of the traditional holiday menu with increasing success. But this year?

Would meatloaf be wrong? Not just any meatloaf mind you but THIS MEATLOAF Bare Foot Contessa's Meatloaf. I personally used to despise meatloaf having always thought of it as a soggy pile of meat that was robbed of being a decent burger but this meatloaf? It is the stuff of dreams. And maybe some good bread and like garlic mashed potatoes or a sweet potato for my husband? And a huge heffalumping cake for dessert? Would it be selfish of me NOT to want to spend days in the kitchen? To eat a meal and not worry about four hundred pans of Calphalon that must be hand scrubbed?

Will Christ be offended if I serve turkey meatloaf? And maybe make some homeade cranberry sauce out of actual cranberries? I'll pray about it.

I don't need anything! Don't Buy Me A Thing!

I hate these words.

Well, now that we've all navigated our way through Thanksgiving or as I like to call it "Dysfunctional Dinner Of Weird Menu Items and a Chance To Make Snarky Remarks To Other Family Members" and come out the other side, it's time to do the shopping to honor the birth of Christ.

What is this about? Seriously. If you've ever read Laura I. Wilder (and if you haven't, get thee to Amazon and order the boxed sets), those kids were thrilled with oranges. Where did we go wrong? The last three years or so my shopping strategy has been simple: Stay the hell out of retail stores. If it didn't come by UPS last year, it was not given. This way my family has managed to stay healthy during the holidays and I don't have to resist the urge to rev the Corolla up to top speed (70) and ram it into the back of Suburban Momster's Yukon who bought an SUV for no reason and can't park it worth a crap and then added insult to injury by stealing the parking place I have patiently been waiting on for ten minutes with my blinker on. You don't get road rage on the internet. And I can shop in my jams at two in the morning should I so desire. And often, I do. Although questionable gift choices have arisen from such a practice in the past.

So after years of finally honing my skills here is what not to give the "Don't Buy Me A Thing" Person, who will passive agressively remind you every chance they get until one of you is DEAD (and might possibly mention it in their will) that you indeed, did not buy them ANYTHING, per their request.

A Year of anything.
This includes but is not limited to:
Fruit
Flowers
Books
Chocolate
Steaks
Any sort of dairy or meat product such as the likes of which come from Hillshire Farm or whatever and this includes free range turkeys from Williams Sonoma.

I tried this once and it was just a big freakin' disaster with the fruit recpients practically setting up a rogue fruitstand on the side of I-285 to get rid of excess citrus. See who they come crying to when they get scurvy.

Clothes. Just don't bother. They won't wear them but will feel guilty about giving them to Goodwill and eventually five years later when they forget who gave them to them in the first place, will ask you if you want them. This is my mother's forte. I can not tell you how many nice, flattering clothes I have bought her in the past that I find a) hidden still in original wrappings in storage cloests in the basement or b) hanging in the closet with tags still on. It's not worth the heartbreak of sifting through the Coldwater Creek or Chico's catalog for like three days and trying to get an opinion out of your spouse as to whether your godmother would like a Tuscan Beaded Pashmina or a Citron Cashmere Sweater. If you MUST go this route? Buy something you'll like to wear next year.

Anything you looked at and said "She'll/He'll LOVE it!" with glee and enthusiasm. No they won't. If you think it's the perfect gift, they'll wonder what the hell you were thinking. It's the Murphy's Law of Gift Giving. And the older the giftee the less likely they are to try and cover up their disdain for said gift. The best stratagem is buy what you really, really don't want. Often this takes the form of a cardigan sweater with sleigh bells and a Rudolph sewn on it with a nose that actually lights up and the matchy earrings that look like gingerbread houses. Seriously. Try something with gold lame when all else fails like those gold bedroom slippers at Wal-Mart that havbe been a staple in old lady households for like 40 years.

Anything "so beautiful". If this is your opinion then it's probably too nice. Let's face it, there are "savers" in this world who will go to their death bed never having lit the $32 aromatic candle from France that you had to sneak through customs in your bra because it had some weird French Tallow in it that was banned in America in 1992 that is their all time favorite fragrance and has sat on the mantle for 19 plus years because they were waiting for a special occasion to use it. I'm not sure what "special occasion" consists of. Weddings? Funerals? Births? Parties? What is special enough to flick the Bick and fire that bad boy up? So nice candles, Venetian glass, Austrian tablecloths, Godiva candy, lovely beaded handbags, aprons from France, cookware from Italy, jewelry purchased in any foreign country or that comes in a sky blue box and gourmet coffee or a good bottle of wine? Probably will revert back to you when grandma passes on and you clean out the house. Occasionally you get a person like those here at Novelchick HQ who are all joi d'vie and will rip right into these things figuring there are more out there somewhere should we use this one up and wish to acquire another, but we're a rare breed here.

This whole matter is complicated by people who really do have every damn thing in the world. I've been known to write the name of potential gifts and toss them all in a hat and pull them out at random buying things in that order for those on my list in that order which can create confusion and lead to questions about certain family members sexual orientation, leave a few catalogs lying about and see what the cats yack on first (Engraved cheese molds? Excellent choice!) and calling L.L. Bean and telling the customer service rep to "surprise" me. And to that I say...gift card. Movies, Cracker Barrel, Borders, Red Lobster, Target, Home Depot. Whatever their baliwick may be. Don't worry about the fact that they then KNOW how much you spent. At least it won't go to waste when they can give it back to you next year for your birthday.

Thanks for asking

Many of you have emailed me and asked if I am dead.
No, I'm not.
Thanks for asking though. But I have glimpsed death and its name is Food Poisoning+Disney. Don't ask the details but the two do not mix. We had a lovely trip anyway and my daughter is now princess obsessed. It doesn't matter which one or even if it actually is a princess just that she have on a large fluffy dress of some kind. I'm princessed out. Last night my husband and daughter returned from Target with Disney Princess underwear (for her not him).

Anywhoodles, I let the GH go. With much regret I will add, but it just wasn't possible and...that's that. But to hell with it anyway. Until they get a women's fiction cat what's the point? Instead, I believe I will treat myself to an end of the year agent blizzard blow-out of query letters. Why not? I may even shoot it off to Harlequin for one of their lines or another. All though it's damn near impossible to keep track of which ones are still being published and which ones are folding. It's like Deal or No Deal over there. Which line will we kill off next? If you sell it to this line, we may close it and you'll be in the dust OR we may not. Let's call the banker and see what he says? I still remember the year that they closed the book on their "lighthearted romantic comedy" line right in the middle of the national RWA conference and there were many a tear shed in the halls along with general wide eyed panic as the authors under contract or in mid-publish were shocked and understandably confused.

Sad news, heartbreaking news. I'm losing my job. Well, not like FIRED but my company is closing and...the end. I'm so sad about it. And now I'm not sure what to do with myself. I realize of course that it's really not a bad thing and that one shouldn't work somewhere forever. And that imagining the new possibilities is the brave thing. I just can't think of any at the moment. Any thoughts? Let me know.

On the good news front, my friend C.J. Lyons has a fabulous opportunity to write a new series which she is starting on ASAP. I wish her great success and no writer's block.

So...I guess I'm copying the first so and so pages of my manuscript and tossing it in the mail/email soon. Maybe this week while I'm feeling sad and need something to take my mind off of it. I'll let you know.