WAIT, WHAT?
In fact writing fiction surprised me, too. I am a history nerd. I never enjoyed writing much before this. But I’m not sure that I really ever tried it that much to have given it an honest try or a fair shake. Writing is no longer a chore. It takes effort, but everything does. And little else remains available for me to see, or feel, where I was. A record of a journey while my butt stays in place. It keeps life interesting at least.
So welcome to the blog behind Men Are Doomed, where I aim to kinda just have a diary space about the book, writing and the story. MAD is a labor of love. I started with it back in 2019 in the fall, October, just before Halloween. There’s a story and I’ll get to that later, but I just need to set-it-up for myself of what will come out and get posted here versus on the written page for publishing within a spine, physical or digital. There’s a good amount of material that doesn’t make it into a final chapter, but it can’t, or it won’t be used here. This blog won’t be a dumping ground for toxic parts from the story. Maybe entries on ideas of story, but I don’t think, I don’t plan to just litter it up with edits that didn’t make it in.
I do want to reach and state and maybe explain. I think it’s important that what I write stand on it’s own tow feet. But these are early days in what I hope to be the next step in my career, so I don’t have my sea legs quite yet, and this is me holding onto the rail for a moment.
Welcome, reader. Thanks for your interest. For anyone who doesn’t know my background, I’ve written before, but it was cookbooks. Or short essays on my website for my bakery, CakeLove, when I operated retail storefronts in the DC metro area. Those were great days, from 2002-2015. I changed the business model in the mid teens, from cupcakes and layer cakes to personal sized cake jars, and continue that under the brand Don’t Forget Cake. I added Spark Bites, a prebiotic energy snack in 2019. They’re both delicious, I’ll talk about them here, in detail, another time. Of course I encourage you to try them, they’re very distinct from one another. Cake jars—total decadent indulgence. Spark Bites—gut health saviors, that work like magic. The caffeinated flavors get me going in the morning; I don’t think any of these words would exist without them. I write before the birds start singing, the dead of night for some. I plug in the orange and pink string lights that lie on top of the two seater couch in my office, in the basement, where it’s quiet, and I’m energized.
Writing is not that dissimilar to baking. Baking cakes, writing new recipes from scratch, which is what I did and enjoyed enough to give up a job as a federal litigator for Health and Human Services to open CakeLove in the first storefront I operated at 1506 U St. NW on March 30, 2002. I like the detail of history. I like the detail of baking. I like rummaging through the details of story. It’s like, it’s the same to me as like when I played make believe with Hot Wheels and Matchbox cars in my room as a eight year old—I think that’s how old I was when I played with them. It’s the wonder of time alone creating a scene and letting the elements laid out come together. In the mixing bowl goes fats, carbs, proteins, and hydrates. Butter, sugar, flour, eggs, milk. Impart kinetic energy, then thermal. Let it rest. Partner it with more magic from the mixer—frostings or buttercreams or icings or ganache or glaze or soaking syrups spiked with liqueurs—one that cheats to or favors indulgences because that’s what a cake is about, indulgence that’s balanced just enough to not feel naughty.
I think I try to do that on the page. It’s, um, refreshing to stroll. To wander…here more than in the story, in the book. Oh—there are the birds. First chirps, right at first light.
Yeah, so indulge me a bit with these passages and as long as I am good about making time I’ll post here sidebars and thoughts from the sidelines while I share this other side of me.
Respect - WB