Sunday Quote releases a new book in 2 days
Read More“Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you’ll be criticized anyway.”
~Eleanor Roosevelt
Breath of Earth: Creating a new map of 1906 San Francisco
This post is part of a series on the research and worldbuilding for my new book Breath of Earth. The first part, on actual film footage of San Francisco before and after the quake, can be viewed here.
Countdown to Breath of Earth‘s release: FIVE DAYS.
When modifying a map, it’s sure nice to have a template as a base. Many historical maps are available online, but it can be quite a challenge to find ones that are high res. I was lucky when it came to my research on the city of San Francisco. It was such a large, famous city–and there is so much interest around it before and after the earthquake–that I was able to find a fantastic high res map at a genealogy website.
Breath of Earth is alt history, but I still want it as accurate as possible. That meant I also wanted cable car lines to drive down the correct streets. I found maps to depict that as well.
I took my base map and printed it across six sheets of paper. I mounted those together on a poster board and had it laminated at Fed Ex Kinkos. The lamination gave me a surface on which I could use dry erase markers.
This is when my brain almost broke.
See, my base map is at a very weird angle. It actually views San Francisco from the southeast–and the streets aren’t at the correct angles, either. ARGH. I had to try to combine these two maps while not giving myself a migraine. I also referenced Google Maps quite often to help me orient myself.
Once that was done, I had to figure out where to place other landmarks in the book like the Cordilleran Auxiliary, Cy and Fenris’s workshop, and the houses of important characters like Ingrid and Mr. Sakaguchi, Warden Calhoun, and Warden Thornton. Again, Google Maps–especially Street View–were essential here, and as I edited as well. If Ingrid was described as walking uphill, I wanted to make sure she was actually walking uphill! I also added an important element of my book world: airship mooring masts. I blocked off important neighborhoods like Chinatown, Nob Hill, Russian Hill, and the Barbary Coast.
This map has adorned my office for over three years now.
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Bready or Not: Maple Apple Pie
This pie is my own original creation. I hacked together three existing recipes and amped up the maple to make something totally new. When I told my husband about how I melded everything, he said, “Oh, so it’s a Voltron pie.” That’s now our nickname for this Maple Apple Pie.
Maple sugar is the key ingredient in every step, but it’s just enough to embody the flavor without it going overkill. I highly recommend buying a big ol’ container of maple sugar–trust me, if you want to follow along with my recipes, you’ll go through it eventually. This is the brand I use:
The most amazing thing about this? The filling sauce. I borrowed and modified it from a pear galette recipe (which I’ll feature this fall) from the cookbook Maple. It’s really more like a paste in texture, grainy and strong with a lovely combo of maple and lemon. You’ll want to lick the bowl.
This pie smells glorious. It’s like autumn, Thanksgiving, Christmas. And the taste… well. My husband adores my Caramel Apple Pie and considers it his all-time favorite.
Or it was, until he had Voltron Pie.
That’s right. This maple-filled pie is the new champion in the Cato household.
Bready or Not: Maple Apple Pie
Ingredients
Crust:
- 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
- 1 Tablespoon maple sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 4 Tablespoons unsalted butter 1/2 cube, cold
- 2 Tablespoons avocado oil or canola oil
- 3 - 5 Tablespoons ice water
Filling:
- 4 - 5 Granny Smith apples
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract or a vanilla bean, scraped
- 1 Tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 Tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 1/2 cup maple sugar
Crumb topping:
- 2/3 cup all-purpose flour
- 1/4 cup white sugar
- 1/4 cup maple sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
- 1/2 cup unsalted butter 1 stick , cold
Instructions
- Combine crust ingredients. Work in butter until it is just pea-sized, and use only as much water as needed to make the dough cohesive. Wrap well in plastic wrap and refrigerate for a few hours or a few days.
- Roll out dough to equal thickness and place in pie dish. Cover with plastic wrap and freeze while preparing the filling, or freeze for several days.
- Preheat oven at 375-degrees. Peel and core apples and slice to 1/8s or smaller. Toss them in a light dusting of flour to prevent sticking. Place apples in pie crust on a cookie sheet.
- In a small bowl, whisk together the vanilla extract, lemon juice, flour, and maple sugar; it'll form a thick maple paste. Set aside.
- In another small bowl, combine the topping ingredients. Use a fork and knife to reduce the butter to pea-sized chunks.
- Return to the maple sauce. Give it a good stir, and drizzle thick syrup all over apples. Cover evenly with crumb topping.
- Bake for 40-45 minutes, or until the apples are tender when stabbed with a fork.
- OM NOM NOM!
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WorldCon Schedule 2016 – plus free breakfast at Central Library on Saturday!
I’ll be at WorldCon in Kansas City, Missouri from August 17th to 21st. I have a whole bunch of panels lined up, so if you are there, come find me! As long as I’m not in a crazy rush or in the bathroom, I’m okay with pausing to sign books most anytime, too.
Also, big news: I’m doing a release event for Breath of Earth on Saturday the 20th and my publisher is hosting a free continental breakfast! It’ll be at 10:30 AM at the Central Library, just a few blocks north of the convention center and hotels. I’ll talk books with Becky Chambers, author of the wonderfully cozy The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet (seriously, this is one of my favorite scifi reads in recent years). This will be the first time that Breath of Earth will be up for sale!
Thursday Aug 18, 2016
- SFWA Autographing: Beth Cato
- Kansas City Convention Center – SFWA Table
- Don’t believe the ‘official schedule’ saying this is just 50 minutes. I’ll be at this table for 2 hours. Drop by and chat!
Friday Aug 19, 2016
- Is Steampunk Alternate History?
- Kansas City Convention Center – 3501H
- Dialog 1 hour
3:00 PM – 3:30 PM
- Reading: S.B. Divya and Beth Cato
- Kansas City Convention Center, 2202
- Reading 30 minutes
- THERE WILL BE COOKIES
- The Future of Food
- Kansas City Convention Center – 3501F
- Panel 1 hour
- ‘It Takes a Pack to Raise a Child’ Families and Friends in Steampunk
- Kansas City Convention Center – 2503B
- Panel 1 hour
Saturday Aug 20, 2016
10:30 AM
- Meet & Eat with Authors Beth Cato and Becky Chambers
- Central Library, a few blocks north of the convention center and hotels
- ain’t over ’til it’s over
- Other Others in Urban Fantasy
- Kansas City Convention Center – 2206
- Panel 1 hour
- Magazine Group Reading: Flash Fiction Online
- Kansas City Convention Center – 2202 (Readings)
- Group Reading 1 hour
#SFWAPro
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Brooke Johnson guest post: “Why I Love the Heroines of Victorian Steampunk”
I’m happy to welcome fellow Harper Voyager steampunk author Brooke Johnson today! Her newest novel, The Guild Conspiracy, came out this past Tuesday, and continues her Chroniker City series.
“Why I Love the Heroines of Victorian Steampunk”
When people think of steampunk, they usually think of the Victorian Era—bustles, corsets, rose-tinted glasses, gas lamps, parasols, and da Vinci-esque contraptions made of clockwork and steam—and for good reason. The romantic flair of nineteenth century Victorian Britain is the steampunk genre’s bread and butter.
Most modern steampunk is set in the prim and proper sociopolitical atmosphere of the Victorian British Empire, with daring heroines who face all manner of dark creatures and machines within the pages of their respective books. There’s a certain romantic quality to a strong-minded woman trying to make her way in man’s world, with sensibilities more fitting for the modern world than the straight-laced rigors of nineteenth century society—and yet, still relevant in the oppressive patriarchal society of today.
Here are women far braver and cleverer than those of us reading their stories. They inspire us to do better, to be better, because for all our troubles as women in the world today, the heroines of Victorian fiction have much greater obstacles to face—and that’s not counting the vampires, werewolves, governments, and conspiracies they take down along the way. Their problems are the same as ours: the trivialization of all things feminine, the disregard for women’s rights, the inequality between genders, the expectations of beauty, and the apparent necessity to appeal to the male gaze. For all our “social progress” since the 1800s, these same problems are relevant today, and seeing these steampunk heroines act against the injustices of their time, however small their actions may seem, or how insignificant their accomplishments are in the grand scheme of things, they refuse to sit by and let things continue as they are. They seek to change the world, to carve a place for themselves in a world where they are looked upon as the inferior sex.
It’s inspiring to read about their journeys, to see a part of ourselves in those characters and connect with them through their trials. Through them, we can dare to dream, dare to hope, dare to aspire to greater things.
That was my goal when I wrote The Brass Giant, the first book in the Chroniker City series. The main character of The Brass Giant and The Guild Conspiracy is a young female engineer who is forbidden to join the Guild—an exclusive brotherhood of engineering elite—for the sole reason that she is a girl. Despite that, she tries anyway, going so far as to risk treason to get one step closer to seeing her dreams realized. In a world where all the odds are stacked against her, she doesn’t give up, even when she fails, and to me, that’s admirable—even if it does get her into loads of trouble.
So, why do I love the heroines of Victorian steampunk? Because they are stronger, braver, and cleverer than me. They inspire me to be a better person, to stand up to the injustices of the world and make this world, this time-period, a better place for the generations to come—even if all I ever do is put pen to paper. I can only hope that my words inspire a young girl to dare to follow her dreams, to be unafraid of what the world may throw at her, and to show her that she deserves a place in the world just as much as any man.
Where to buy The Guild Conspiracy:
SOCIAL MEDIA LINKS:
BIO:
Brooke Johnson is a stay-at-home mom and tea-loving author. As the jack-of-all-trades bard of the family, she journeys through life with her husband, daughter, and dog. She currently resides in Northwest Arkansas but hopes one day to live somewhere a bit more mountainous.
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