Best Kitchen Toy Ever!
- At October 07, 2017
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Life, Roxanne Writes On
- 2
The best kitchen toy ever… is how we survived a major home renovation… and stayed married!
It’s the Year of Renovations, at Casa Snopek. Phase 1 was creating a small guest suite, complete with bathroom and kitchenette (sink/bar fridge/counter), which is where we’re living while the rest gets done.The rest, meaning the kitchen, bathrooms, flooring, carpets, paint… really, it would have been easier to move.
Anyway. It all began in late July and won’t be done until early December. Hopefully. Maybe. Don’t really know.
That’s a long time to be without a kitchen, folks. At first, it was fun eating take-out and fast food and checking out the local restaurants. But that’s a) expensive b) dangerous for the waistline and c) tiring.
So I bought us an Instant Pot DUO60 6 Qt 7-in-1 Multi-Use Programmable Pressure Cooker, Slow Cooker, Rice Cooker, Steamer, Sauté, Yogurt Maker and Warmer. I’m not exaggerating when I say that it’s the best kitchen device I’ve ever had.
I LOVE this baby! The first day I made chicken soup – awesome – and rice pudding – the best I’ve ever made. This, my friends, is the way to survive a live-in home renovation project. Do you have yours yet?
Here’s the .com link and the .ca link, for my Canadian friends.
!
Handbags and Drama
Handbags and Drama
Anyone else here addicted to handbags… and drama?
We recently visited with friends who have a very large, beautiful house, with the best walk-in closet and laundry room I’ve ever seen. I confess, I had storage-envy after seeing their place.
And I immediately recognized another bag-lover. Not only does my friend has a long shelf in her closet devoted to her handbags, but she also has another floor-to-ceiling cupboard in their laundry room to house those shoes and bags she uses less often. I LOVE it!
Recently, after having my credit card compromised, I’ve become a fan of Travelon Anti-Theft bags, with RFID protection. I’ve got one in red, and I love it. We hope to do more traveling in the coming years, and security is kind of a big deal for me. Also, since I just finished writing another book, I figure I deserve a bit of bag-shopping as a reward. Right?
I wear a lot of black, so red often works. But not always. I’m currently looking for a similar bag, but in a different color. This one, maybe? I love purple and I like the water bottle pockets. Not sure about the front compartment though.
For years, I was hooked on Derek Alexander bags. They’re an entirely different kind of bag, leather, elegantly designed, and fairly pricey, so I can’t indulge myself much on these. But this is one of the best organizer bags I’ve ever had. I find I need more room now, though.
Sometimes I wish I had a cute little bag for when you’re going out and you only need to bring keys, a credit card, tissues and lip balm. A friend of mine has an adorable Kate Spade mini-bag that looks something like this:
Isn’t this so pretty?
Right now, I’m leaning towards this one. All the Travelon security of my red bag, in color that will work with my blue-green-checked winter coat. What do you think? What’s your favorite bag?
PS: I almost forgot the family drama! I read this New York Times bestseller The Breakdown Lane by Jacqueline Mitchard years ago and loved it. Jodi Picoult says, “Reading just doesn’t get any better than this.” Publisher’s Weekly calls it a “no-holds-barred family drama.” It’s available in digital format now, and I’m getting it to reread on my Kindle. Anyone else remember this book?
PPS: the book I just finished writing is called The Chocolate Cure part of the Love at the Chocolate Shop series. There’s family drama here, too, though it’s the kind that makes you smile, not the kind that makes you want to stab yourself in the eye. In case you’re interested, it’s available January 4, 2017.
Rock Stars
- At November 30, 2015
- By Roxanne Snopek
- In Life, Roxanne Writes On
- 0
Rock Stars
I’ve been publishing novels in the women’s fiction, aka romance, genre since 2012. And that makes me a rock star. That’s right, romance authors are rock stars. Don’t believe me? Read on, gentle reader!
From MACLEANS, April 26, 2015, by Emma Teitel:
When American filmmaker Laurie Kahn set out to make Love Between the Covers, a documentary about the women who read and write romance novels, she was struck by how often she heard the same story. It wasn’t a tale of beefy bodice rippers or love at first sight; it was a story about snobs.
“I can’t tell you how many people I interviewed,” says Kahn, “who told me that people will walk up to them on a beach and say, ‘Why do you read that trash?’”
Apparently, where lovers of romance novels go, contempt follows. Sometimes it’s subtle contempt—a raised eyebrow from a colleague, or a snarky comment from a friend (usually the kind of person who claims to read Harper’son a beach vacation). Other times it’s more overt, even potentially damaging.
When Mary Bly (pen name Eloisa James), an academic and New York Times bestselling author, began writing romance, she was advised to keep her fiction writing secret or risk not making tenure at the university where she worked.
For some reason, argues Kahn, perhaps because its subjects are female, romance novels are perceived as fundamentally silly, when other popular “genre fiction”—namely, fiction by and for men—is not.
“Nobody,” she says, would walk up to “a man reading Stephen King, or a mystery or sci-fi novel” and scoff. And she’s right: Stephen King is a prodigious talent… right up there with romance novelist Nora Roberts. Yet Roberts has been the butt of jokes—a universal default example of “bad writing,”—while male contemporaries with far less talent get a free pass.
Perhaps, as the graphic says, it’s a woman thing. If the majority of these books are written by women and read by women, and the majority of people knocking these books haven’t read them… maybe it’s not about the books.
Maybe trashing romance novels is more about trashing women.
Read the full article at: Why romance novelists are the rock stars of the literary world.
Check out the video here.