The Midnight Mouse Goodreads Give-away!

Goodreads Book Giveaway

The Midnight Mouse

by Cindy Vine

Giveaway ends June 25, 2013.

See the giveaway details at Goodreads.

Enter to win

Book Trailer for C U @ 8

Check out the 1 minute book trailer I made for C U @ 8.  You can buy the book on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and the Apple iStore.
Cindy Vine is also the author of Not Telling and Defective.

Winning Recipes

After reading and writing, my next big love is cooking.  I enjoy spending up in the kitchen concocting all kinds of tasty dishes but I seldom work from recipes as I experiment with what I find in my grocery cupboard.  Nothing is carefully measured but somehow it all works.  So when people ask me for my recipes I really have to give it a lot of thought and consciously try and remember what I've put in,  Recently, I've been asked for my sweet and sour pork and butternut soup recipes, so here we go!
Sweet and Sour Pork (have used this with peeled prawns/shrimps and chicken)
Sauce
3 tablespoons soy sauce
1 and 1/3 cup stock (water with a stock cube in)
2 tablespoons sesame oil
3 tablespoons vinegar
3 tablespoons sugar
4 tablespoons tomato sauce/ketchup
1 finely chopped onion
1 carrot sliced into julienne strips
a half a green or red capsicum or mixture of both, chopped into small blocks
ginger and garlic to taste
a dash of chilli
4 teaspoons cornstarch mixed to a thin paste with a little water
Put everything in a pot except the cornstarch paste, and bring to the boil stirring constantly.  Reduce heat to a simmer and add the cornstarch paste.  Keep stirring until it has the desired thickness.
Batter
4 eggs
1 cup apple cider
2 cups flour
salt and pepper to taste
Mix all the ingredients together, as easy as that.  I put some cornstarch in a container with a lid, drop the meat pieces in that first and shake it so they meat is coated with cornstarch, before I dip the meat in the batter.  I use chopsticks to hold the meat when dipping into the batter.
Preparing the meat
If using shrimps keep them whole.  Chicken or pork dice into bite-sized cubes.  I marinate them for a little bit in a mixture of 2 tablespoons apple cider, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, 1 tablespoon sesame oil and a pinch of ginger, garlic and chilli.
Fry the batter dipped meat cubes, cover with some sweet and sour sauce and serve on a bed of rice.

 

Butternut Soup

Ingredients

1 finely chopped onion

4 cloves of garlic finely chopped

2 teaspons finely grated ginger or ginger powder

1 finely chopped chilli

Oil to coat bottom of pot

4 medium-sized butternut squash, peeled de-pipped and cubed

1 tablespoon sugar

2 cups stock (vegetable or chicken)

1/2 cup orange juice

1 cup plain yoghurt

Salt and coarse black pepper to taste

1 tablespoon curry powder

1/2 teaspoon nutmeg

1 teaspoon thyme

Method

Coat bottom of pot with oil and saute onion, garlic, ginger, chilli and butternut.  Sprinkle on the sugar and caramelise.  Add the stock and simmer for about half an hour until the butternut is soft.  Puree the butternut/stock mixture in a blender.  Put the puree back into the pot and add the orange juice, yoghurt, curry powder, nutmeg, thyme, salt and pepper.  Bring back to the boil.  Reduce heat and serve.  Enjoy!

Cindy Vine is the author of Defective, C U @ 8 and the children's picture book The Midnight Mouse.  All books are available as paperbacks or on Kindle.

Procrastinating Packer

After four years at the foot of Kilimanjaro I am moving on.  The time has come and now once again I have to pack up my life.  Easier said than done.  For I am the ultimate procrastinator, the person who says "I'll do it next weekend."  Unfortunately I am starting to run out of weekends.  The movers have dropped off the boxes which are stacked against the lounge wall staring at me, willing me to assemble them.
But as I am about to start I decide it's very necessary for me to check my email first, see what friends are doing on Facebook, maybe have a shower and wash my hair.  Procrastination.  It's my worst enemy.
It's not like I don't want to leave, I do.  I am over power cuts, slow internet, ants, geckos, barking dogs and all the other things that wear me down.  But it's the people who are hard to leave behind, friends and co-workers and the mountain which looked so beautiful yesterday evening as the sun's last rays turned the snowy top pink.  Four years is quite a long time, you make connections and leaving them behind is never easy.  This however, is the lot of the international school teacher.  It's a transient world with people coming and going all the time.  Something you never get used to.  Some connections you'll keep for a lifetime and others you'll make empty promises about keeping in touch.  But of course this has nothing really to do with the packing and sorting I should be doing now.  Best to get started I guess.

My new children's book

The idea for The Midnight Mouse came up about two years ago.  I had just had my second mastectomy and was staying with my parents while I was recovering from the surgery.  My stepdad came into the kitchen and asked who'd been eating all the cheese as there was none left.  That night when I went to the bathroom in the middle of the night, there was my stepdad in the kitchen having a midnight feast.  He was unaware of my presence and seemed to be sleep-eating as opposed to sleep-walking.  It seemed he was the culprit who was eating all the food!  My eldest daughter Kerri and I began calling him the midnight mouse.
As I have young nephews and a niece, I thought there had to be some way that I could incorporate them in the story.
My idea was to use actual photos for the illustrations, but change them into watercolors using Photoshop.  This proved to be more difficult than I could have imagined.  I google-searched many tutorials on how to do it.  I followed the instructions step-by-step.  I never liked the results and the steps were so complicated.  I figured there had to be an easier way.  Fiddling around with Photoshop wasted about a year of my time.  I shelved the idea and focused on my medical problems.
Last Wednesday was a public holiday and I decided if I did nothing else, I was going to get the illustrations for The Midnight Mouse sorted.  Once again I started worked my way through Photoshop watercolor tutorials.  And once again I got completely frustrated.  At some point bad words probably even flowed liberally past my lips.  Another search on Google and then I discovered BeFunky.com.  This is a great website that takes your photos and turns them into cartoon-type illustrations.  Just what I needed!

Here is an example of a photo turned into a cartoon with BeFunky.com.  So easy and user-friendly, I highly recommend Be.Funky.com.  It makes me want to write more children's books!
Modern technology is really amazing.  You can illustrate your own books, upload them onto Createspace and get them published all within a day!
The Midnight Mouse is available for purchase as a paperback or kindle book on Amazon.com.  It is a free giveaway from Sunday 5th May through to Tuesday 7th May.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CMVT6VO

Don't let life pass you by!

You never know when your life might change.  It can be all good and in one instant everything bad that can happen happens.  There are many things that we plan on doing in the future when we have time and finally get around to it.  They are sometimes things we shouldn't put off but sometimes our priorities are out of whack.  I'm not suggesting live for today and forget about tomorrow, but what I am suggesting is that we need to achieve a balance.  Prioritize your life and do some of the things you have put off for the future.  You don't want life to pass you by and regret not having done some of the things on the bucket list.
This was brought home to me when my Mom took sick last week.
Mom, here's to you recovering and getting to do all the things on your bucket list! 

Love you, Mom!

 

Medical woes

At the moment I have so many different meds in me I rattle when I walk.  I'm almost at the stage of opening up my own pharmacy.
Wrongdiagnosis,com should pay me.  I could be rich my now.
On the 7th January I had lipofilling injected into my left breast.  That should be where the story ends.  One week back in Tanzania I had a large abscess and very swollen lymph nodes in my left armpit.  I dutifully went to see the GP down the road.  This was his last chance after cocking up so badly the previous year, that I ended up going into septic shock and lost my breast implant.  He said it wasn't an abscess but folliculitis and that I should squeeze it morning and night to get the gunk out.  He also said I didn't need antibiotics for folliculitis.  I asked him if he was sure as my lipofilling surgery had just been three weeks previously.  He said definitely no antibiotics needed.  He's the doctor, what do I know?
My left breast began to feel hot and had a faint red rash on it.  It seemed to be getting harder, but I was so busy at work I had no time to take notice of what was happening with my breast.
Then one night acute pain in my breast made me think I'd pulled a muscle or something while trying to swim a couple of lengths of breaststroke.  Frantically swallowing painkillers turned me into a zombie for a day and a half.  I blamed it on over-exercising while trying to strengthen my right shoulder.
How wrong I was.
The breast grew slowly, sneakily, trying to avoid being noticed.  Then I got large boils on the side of the breast.

Typical, by the time I realised how big, hot and hard it was, was when I was camping in the middle of the bush with 27 children.  The pain was intense.  I was uncomfortable, could hardly move.  The campsite managers took pity on me and let me sleep in a new luxury tent overlooking the lake.
A friend phoned my surgeon in Cape Town, he prescribed a seriously strong antibiotic, I managed to get the school driver to pick it up from a pharmacy and bring it to the campsite.
Nausea.
This was not good.
I decided to go back to the local GP when I got back from the camp.  He took one look at my breast and said, "Classic case of chronic mastitis."
Seriously?  Are you kidding me?  I had a mastectomy 2 years ago.  I have no breast tissue, I can't get mastitis.  Even my healthy right breast doesn't have breast tissue.  Two bouts with breast cancer, two mastectomies.
"Then it must be a large breast abscess," he continued undeterred.  "I'm going to send you to a radiology friend of mine.  If there's fluid I'm going to get a local surgeon to cut open the breast and drain the fluid."
"Do you think this is related to the abscess I had a month ago?"
"Definitely not," he said trying to convince himself.  "It's just a coincidence."
The radiologist had a small office down a dark alley.  He felt my breast without washing his hands or wearing gloves.  This did not sit well with my soul.
He was amazed at the amount of fluid.  My heart sank.  That meant a local surgeon would have to cut my breast open like a can of baked beans.  "Oh my God!" he shouted nearly falling over with excitement.  I strained my neck to try and get a closer look at the computer monitor to see if there was a large tumor or something.  "I have no more paper!  I can't print the pictures!"
Seriously?  You have to be kidding me.
But at least he was a creative thinker.  He got his receptionist to dig through the waste bins to find a small piece of paper that could take three pictures.
There was no way I was going to let a local surgeon touch my breast.  That was settled when the local radiologist printed the pictures on paper from the waste bin.
My friend managed to stalk my surgeon in Cape Town and get his mobile number.  He called me at 11pm last Friday night and told me to get on the next flight to Cape Town.
I did.
They aspirated 300ml of fluid and gave me more antibiotics.  The breast is still not right, more doctors' visits next week.  Apparently, both surgeons who saw me stated that they were 110% sure my breast went bad because I wasn't put on antibiotics for the abscess.
What can you do?  You trust medical professionals, but they are human just like us.  They make mistakes.  Nobody is perfect.
Cindy Vine, a breast cancer survivor, is the author of Not Telling, Defective and C U @ 8.