25!

Over the weekend, I finished the final draft of another novel.  This book I actually started over eight years ago, if you can believe, but what with one thing and another, I didn't finish it until just now.  It's a YA mainstream novel.  The big question is, will it sell?  We'll have to see.

This book makes 25 novels I've written in my writing career so far.  Whoa.  In case you're wondering, the other 24 are:

WRITING AS STEVEN PIZIKS

In the Company of Mind, Baen Books, 1998

Corporate Mentality, Baen Books, 1999

The Nanotech War (Star Trek: Voyager), Pocket Books, 2002

Identity (movie novelization), Pocket Books, 2002

The Exorcist: the Beginning (movie novelization), Pocket Books 2004

The Plague Room (The Ghost Whisperer), Pocket Books, December 2008

The Blacklist: The Beekeeper, Titan Books, November 2016

WRITING AS STEVEN HARPER

Danny, Book View Cafe, 2015

un/Fair, Book9 (Tantrum Books), 2016

The Clockwork Empire

The Doomsday Vault, ROC  Books, 2011

The Impossible Cube, ROC  Books, 2012

The Dragon Men, ROC Books, 2012

The Havoc Machine, ROC Books, 2013

The Silent Empire

Dreamer: a Novel of the Silent Empire, ROC Books, 2001

Nightmare: a Novel of the Silent Empire, ROC Books, 2002

Trickster: a Novel of the Silent Empire, ROC Books, 2003

Offispring: a Novel of the Silent Empire, ROC Books, 2004

The Books of Blood and Iron

Iron Axe, ROC Books, 2015

Blood Storm, ROC Books, 2015

Bone War, ROC Books, 2016

Science Fiction and Fantasy Novels

Dead Man on the Moon, Phobos Books, 2006

Unity: a Battlestar Galactica Novel, Tor Books, 2007

Reference Books

Writing the Paranormal Novel, Writers Digest Books, 2011

WRITING AS PENNY DRAKE

Trash Course, Carina Press (Harlequin), 2010

Four Burner Friday, with Oven

Today was a Difficult Day.  Fridays are difficult anyway because I do the weekly grocery shopping on the way home from work (mostly to get it out of the way for the weekend). This time, because of the Difficult Day, I was tired and in a bad mood.

So I splurged on the Friday menu and cooked a lot.  It became a Four Burner Friday, with Oven.

MENU
Garden Salad
Garlic Hoisin Baked Salmon
Paprika Cod
Sauteed Shrimp
Steamed Crab Legs
Mashed Sweet Potatoes
Braised Carrots
Cheese Plate

This required quite a lot of careful timing.  I had to figure out how to get everything done just as Darwin got home from work.  It wasn't out of any demands made by him, but merely that Darwin gets home from work late, and the rest of us are hungry, so we want to eat when he walks in through the door.  I cheat a little here and use the tracker on his cell phone (to see how close he is).  I set the salad and cheese to chilling in the fridge first, with the sweet potatoes boiling on the stove next, since they take longest to cook.  When Darwin was about twenty minutes away, both kinds of fish went into the oven and I set the carrots to simmering on the stove, then mashed the sweet potatoes and set them back on the stove.  Ten minutes out, I heated up the pan of olive oil for the shrimp and dropped the crab into bubbling salt water.  It was a four-burner job!



Darwin got home just as everything was finishing up.  Everything headed for the table and we had a tasty meal to defuse the Difficult Day.

And I should get a medal for the perfect timing.