let’s get basic: part two, pesto edition

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!erin-eats

Talk pesto to me, baby. There are a few things that I always keep on hand, which I will cover in this ‘basics’ series. Pesto is one of them. You can put it on toast with eggs, add to pasta, eat with fresh bread or tomatoes, add it to a salad or quinoa bowl, toss it on roasted vegetables or poultry, use it as a pizza base–SO MANY OPTIONS! Make a large batch and it lasts a few weeks. It’s such a quick and easy way to add flavor to things you already eat.

Basic Pesto:
— basil (one large clamshell container or three smaller containers)
— 1/4 cup pine nuts
— 1/2 cup evoo
— 1/2 cup parmesan, freshly grated
— 6-8 cloves garlic, peeled
— salt & pepper, to taste

**equipment needed: food processor (optional but highly recommended), mason jar

  1. Are you ready for this? Throw everything in the food processor (literally don’t cut a thing) and puree until smoothish. Taste and season as necessary.

A few notes:

  • You can make this by hand but it involves a lot of chopping. Still worth it.
  • The garlic will taste a little sharp at first, give it time to sit and mellow out.
    • I like to roast my garlic in a pan with the evoo until browned for extra flavor. You can also roast the pine nuts in there as well.
  • Go nuts! You can substitute the pine nuts for pecans or walnuts or cashews. Just make sure they’re not already salted or else you end up with a very salty pesto!
  • Keep in mind that parmesan is very salty on its own when adding seasoning.
  • Throw the whole basil in there, don’t pick off the leaves. Eat them stems!
  • Add sundried tomatoes for a twist. Or jalapeno for a spicy kick.
  • Add more or less evoo for desired consistency. I prefer to leave mine more chunky since I use it primarily as a spread versus a sauce. That way I can add more evoo if I do use it as a sauce. You can always add more oil but you can’t take it away so I err on the side of chunky.

Same as with the vegetable stock, yes, you can buy pesto. But again, this has no preservatives, and you can control the sodium and quality of each ingredient.

Cheers,
Erin

little lucita, the sourdough starter that could

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!erin-eats

Recently, a coworker gifted us with some sourdough starter (‘Lucita’, named after the mother starter we got her from, who they called ‘Lucy’. Anyway…). Admittedly, I was daunted after looking up how to care for it, feed it, and just how McFreaking Long it took to make bread. Then, I figured out a system and it has been life-changing. I’m not a pastry pro so I’m going to link you to other recipes, but I want to talk about what I’ve learned and how I have incorporated this into my life in a low maintenance way because there’s a lot of info out there and frankly, who has the time for some of it??

First, I keep our sourdough starter in the fridge until Thursday night, when I pull Lucita out, remove any hooch (ick) that likely formed on top during the week, and add 1/4 cup flour (I like Bob’s Red Mill Artisan Bread Flour.) and 1/4 cup warm water. Stir into starter. I like to keep a rubber band around our Weck container so I can see how much it rises and falls. I also recommend the Weck container as the top fits loosely enough to allow air to escape as it ferments. I continue feeding my starter morning and night on Friday and Saturday to get the starter nice and active for my Sunday bake, which is my preferred day since I’m typically home all day and have the time to babysit dough for seven hours. (Yes, that’s how long it takes and yes, this is a ‘fast’ way of making bread, haha.) If your starter grows a lot, scoop some out and keep feeding. You can discard the excess or use it for pancakes/waffles or our favorite: pizza dough (pizza post coming soon).

Then, on Sunday, I make the bread using this recipe. A few tips:

  • Start early. Start to finish this takes 7 hours, but most of the time is just letting the dough sit and rise, so don’t be daunted!
  • Set timers on your phone.
  • HEAVILY oil the bowl you let your dough rise in, and generously oil your hands each time you handle the dough to avoid frustration.
  • For the first 3 hour rise, I set two timers for 1.5 hours, so I remember to fold the dough halfway through.
  • I use a cast-iron skillet because I don’t have a dutch oven. It works just fine.
  • I do the higher end of the bake time, 15 minutes with lid on and 15 minutes lid off. This gets just the right amount of crusty and prevents a doughy bottom.
  • The bread lasts about a week and a half (if you can resist eating it that long). There are no preservatives in there, so always cut it on a clean board and store it in a bag to prevent molding.

After making the bread dough, I feed the starter one last time and let it sit out for the afternoon to eat it all up before putting it back in the fridge to go (mostly) dormant until Thursday when I bring it back out and do it all over again! I’ve found that as my container gets super dirty (because starter is like glue it’s so sticky), it produces more hooch/alcohol. I clean/swap my container every 2-3 weeks, depending on how grimy it gets.

And that’s it!! It seems like a lot, but just take the plunge and it’ll become a part of your routine. I suggest asking a local bakery if you can have some of their starter, or you can purchase some from King Arthur Flour. Feeding takes 1-2 minutes for a few days, and you ignore it in the fridge for the rest of the days. Making the bread itself only takes a few minutes of effort, the majority of the time is just letting the dough rise. And in the end, you get fresh bread as a reward for your efforts!

Hopefully this is helpful! Bread can be daunting and there are lots of complicated ways to make it, but this is manageable for me. Drop a comment below with any helpful tips or questions! Happy baking!

Cheers,
Erin

Currently Reading: Wicked Saints

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CR - Wicked Saints

WICKED SAINTS by Emily Duncan was one of my most anticipated reads of the read and it did not disappoint. The story follows Nadya and Serefin, who are on opposite sides of a holy war. Nadya is the last cleric to whom the gods speak and imbibe with their powers. Serefin is the High Prince of the neighboring country that practices blood magic, which is considered heresy by Nadya’s peoples. After Serefin hunts down Nadya and she narrowly escapes, Nadya joins forces with the enigmatic, can-we-really-trust-him Malachaisz, a blood mage who defected from his home country and is now determined to kill the king. There are so many ways anything and everything can go wrong with this plan, and the will-they wont-they chemistry between born enemies Nadya and Malachiasz sucks you in and keeps you reading to the very end.

Pick up this book if you like: theology, enemies-to-lovers, goth af magic, LGBT reads, Polish/Russian-based fantasy settings. You won’t be disappointed.

chicken & dumpling soup

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!erin-eats

Last post we covered vegetable broth. Now, let’s dive into one of my favorite things to make using almost all the same ingredients! Because in this house, we love not wasting food. We also love soup. Also, I’m going to (parenthetically) throw in as many technical terms I possibly can because I had a request to do so, not because I want this to become anything pretentious.

This recipe is a hybrid of chicken & dumplings and chicken noodle soup and honestly, I wish I’d started making it years ago.

Chicken Noodle (Dumpling) Soup:
— 1ea whole roasted chicken
— 1/2 yellow onion, small dice (macedoine, for you knife cut fiends like me)
— 3 carrots, small dice (macedoine, again)
— 4 celery stalks, finely diced (brunoise); set aside celery leaves
— 5 mushrooms, finely diced (brunoise)
— 5 cloves garlic, finely minced
— 2 quarts vegetable stock
— 3-4 dried bay leaves
— 1/2 bunch thyme
— 1 can flaky biscuits
— 1 tbsp celery salt
— salt & pepper to taste

**equipment needed: one large stockpot, cheesecloth, butcher’s twine, roasting pan, rolling pin (or any rolling pin-shaped object, i.e. a wine bottle)

  1. The chicken. You can either A) buy a whole roasted chicken from the store or B) roast one yourself (highly recommend this recipe from Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat) and make this recipe from the leftovers. Both options turn out great, just depends how much time you have. Regardless, discard the skin, take all the meat off the bones and pull apart. Take the bones and put in the oven at 350 and let them get roasty while you prep everything else.
    • I suggest lining your roasting pan with aluminum foil as it will burn to the pan a little. Also makes capturing any juices released from the bones easier to toss into your pot later because: free, extra flavor. We love that.
  2. Make your mirepoix. This is your onion, celery, carrots, mushroom, and garlic. Toss about 2tbsp butter in your pan. Toss in your mirepoix minus the garlic. Garlic burns so quickly and every recipe adds it in far too early in my opinion. Now, this is going to seem like a lot of vegetables. You’re right. It is. But they’re good for you and they’re going to sweat down. Let everything caramelize a little and then add in the garlic.
    • There are a lot of recipes that literally throw everything into a pot of water and boil it all together. You can do that. It’s faster. But this way allows you to build so many layers of flavor and is going to taste exponentially better. Trust.
  3. Add your broth to the pot and bring to a simmer.
  4. By now your bones should be browned. (If not, throw them on broil but keep an eye on it.) Once they’re cool enough to handle, wrap the bones, bay leaves, and thyme/celery leaves in cheesecloth and tie with butcher’s twine. (A bouquet garni, if you will.) Now, you can just throw the bones/herbs in there, but you have to fish them back out later and I always miss one so this method prevents any surprises down the road when you’re just trying to enjoy some soup. Toss your cloth of goodness into the pot. Add celery salt, a healthy grind of black pepper, and any juices from your roasting pan. Let simmer one hour.
    • You can also chop up the celery leaves and toss them into the soup directly or use as a garnish. They have a lot of flavor and it would be a waste to just toss them out!
  5. Meanwhile, separate your biscuits, and split each biscuit roughly in half once more so they’re not as thick. Use lots of flour on your cutting board and rolling pin. Roll out each half biscuit until about 1/8-1/4″ thick. Cut into strips–choose your own width, I prefer 1″. Set aside until you have a massive mound of “noodles”.
  6. Taste your broth. Salt and pepper accordingly. Once satisfied with your broth, remove the sack-o-bones (bouquet garni). Add in your noodle-dumplings. Broth will not be clear due to all the flour and will thicken. If it gets too thick, add more broth or water. Let noodles cook, about 8 minutes. (Taste-testing encouraged.)
  7. Once noodles are cooked, add in chicken. Let everything simmer together for a few minutes, give it one last taste/season, and then feast!

Cheers,
Erin

let’s get basic: part one, vegetable broth edition

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!erin-eats

Why, yes, we are pretending I didn’t take a year-long gap of not posting. And what about it? In the past year and a half, the fiance and I moved from Chicago to the PNW, bought a house, switched jobs, and planned a wedding (that is 30 days from now). Also in the past year, I’ve been promising recipes to friends and haven’t posted them, so here goes:

Let’s talk vegetable stock/broth. I always keep some in the house. It makes rice, quinoa, soups, risotto, literally everything more flavorful and it’s so easy to make.

Vegetable Stock:
— two yellow onions
— three leeks, washed thoroughly
— 5-6 carrots, washed
— one head garlic, cut in half
— one bunch celery
— ten dried bay leaves
— two tbsp black peppercorns
— one bunch thyme
— salt to taste

**equipment needed: 2 large stockpots with lids, a fine-meshed strainer or cheesecloth, lots of tupperware or mason jars for storage

Give the onions, carrots, leeks, and celery a large dice, keeping everything around 2″. (Yes, a very large dice or else you end up with mush.) Doesn’t need to be perfect as you’re just extracting flavor, however, you do want everything similar in size so it cooks evenly. Divide everything between the two biggest pots you have and fill with water. Cover with lids and bring to a boil. Once boiling, reduce to a simmer and let it do its thing for about 2-3 hours. Taste to see if it needs any more salt and then strain and store in pint-sized containers. Freeze most of your containers, leave a few in the fridge so they’re ready to go when you need them!

A few tips: You don’t need to peel the onion, carrots or garlic, just make sure they’re clean. It’s all flavor so don’t toss it out! Additionally, you can save scraps from previous cooks in a bag in your freezer until you’re ready to make stock. So save the outer layer of your onions, those mushroom stems, and the last bit of herbs you didn’t need and repurpose them into a flavorful broth!

Sure, you can buy broth from the store, but it’s loaded with salt and preservatives. It’s also much more expensive than making it yourself. You can also turn this vegetable stock into chicken/beef/bone broth by saving bones from whatever meals you make, roasting them in the oven, and boiling them in the stock. I’ve been making my own broth for years and I use it for everything I possibly can and it’s definitely worth it.

You’re gonna like the way you cook, I guarantee it.
–me, just now

Cheers,
Erin

The Charlie Day Plot Murder Board: how this panster became a plotter

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Image result for charlie day pepe meme

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that an author in possession of a WIP must be in want of bitching about said WIP.
—me, right now

If there’s one thing all writers have in common, it’s that we love to complain about how hard writing is. For the longest time, my biggest complaint was how frequently I was stuck rewriting entire drafts after figuring out some plot point that shifted the entire book. This was due in part to my inability to plot. I found outlines constricting and thought they sucked the ‘discovery’ part out of my process. Five books in, and I’ve embraced the three-act structure. Here’s how it works for me:

  1. Read this article. I find most posts explaining plotting structures to be dry and vague and utterly unhelpful. This was the first time it *clicked* for me, and largely due to the fact that each scene is explained by aligning the three-act structure with Suzanne Collins’s The Hunger Games. The book follows the structure flawlessly. The part that stuck with me the most was how the “pinch points” were not the major twists I would have assumed, and were often times quieter twists, which helped me in plotting my own books. Not all twists have to be a major action scene or implosion.
  2. Index cards. This is the part where you go full Charlie Day. You will need 27 cards, one for each scene. At the top of each card, I write “Act One: Block One: Chapter One” and so on and so forth until I reach “Act Three: Block Nine: Chapter Twenty-Seven”. I also write a quick note under each title saying “plot twist #1”, “midpoint”, “darkest moment”, etc. as they pertain to each scene, to help me with controlling the flow of rising and falling action. More on that later. For now, arrange your index cards on a table or the floor. I arrange mine with each row being an act, and putting a gap of space between each of the three blocks within each act.
  3. Post-It notes. Next, I write down the plot points that I know. Extract all the scenes that have been swimming around in your head and write them on a post-it note. Stick it where you think it falls in the story. Is this the inciting incident? The midpoint? The plot twist? The final battle? Write down everything you know and stick it on your plot cards. Once you have it all down, see where your gaps are. Are you saving too much for the finale? Is the second act a big blank (this is usually my dilemma). Maybe you need to move around some scenes. Perhaps a battle could happen earlier. Or maybe it’s fine and you just need to brainstorm scenes. This is where rising/falling action comes into place. How can you fill that void to ramp up or wind down? Can you see a plot thread that hasn’t been mentioned in a while? Add that in. As a visual learner, being able to see the holes in my plot helps. Sometimes I don’t figure out the answer until I’m literally writing it–and that’s okay! That’s the ‘discovery’ part of writing. It can still exist while plotting. The rules outlines are more like guidelines, anyway.
  4. Plot Inception. Two optional steps, depending on your narrative and writing style.
    • Color Coding. I write multi-POV stories, so I color code my post-it notes with each character’s POV. It allows me to see when a POV has been silent for too long or perhaps I’m shoving too much on them within a certain block of the plot. The colors help me visualize their agency within the plot.
    • Dates. This can be literal dates like April 17th, or simply “Day One”. I like to keep track of how time passes within my stories. Are my characters flying across the realms with heretofore unseen quickness all of a sudden? This helps with travel times if a journey/quest is part of your story, or if your characters are simply accomplishing so much that they would need 72-hour day. (ie. epic fantasies spanning multiple books where only a month has passed? Yeah, sure Jan.) Within the actual words of my story, I try to keep mentions of time vague for continuity purposes, but it’s good information to have for you the writer.
  5. Scrivener. I absolutely swear by writing in Scrivener. If you don’t use it, you can still make it work in Word/whatever you use via the comment function/page breaks/etc, but this will be geared towards Scrivener.

    Under the ‘Manuscript’ in the Scrivener binder on the left side, I make nine blocks, titling them “Act One: Block One” all the way to “Act Three: Block Nine”. Within each block, three folders for each chapter. (You could make these scenes and not folders, but I tend to have multiple scenes per chapter, so this is my method, but YMMV.)

    Then, I add the scenes from each post-it note under the correlating chapter. (If you’re writing multi-POV, you can color code the scenes via the ‘Label’ function on the right-hand side. You can ‘Edit’ the labels to the names of your characters. “View > Use Label Color In > Binder” will color code each scene to correlate with character POV. I like my colors to relate to the post-it colors. Makes it easier when inevitably changes happen.)

    Once you have all your scenes, transcribe the blurb of what happens in each scene to the note card at the top right of the Scrivener screen. (If you’re working in word, you can add this info as a comment to the scene title.) I title each note card with the date, then put bullet points of what needs to happen, any snippets of dialogue I might have floating in my head, and notes to self of things I need to remember that might be happening off-page.

    You end up with something that looks like this:
    Plotting Post

  6. Write. I know. How dare I? But yes, now you have to actually write. You will discover things about your story and you can add more post-it notes or just jot down ideas into the Scrivener note cards, YMMV. But most importantly, just write. First drafts are for telling yourself the story. You won’t get it right the first time so go ahead and forgive yourself for that. And don’t forget to enjoy it. The world needs your stories.

How do you plot your stories? Or are you a panster? Any favorite functions in Scrivener that I’m woefully missing out on?

Cheers,
Erin

Bowlin’ (read: Ballin’)

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!erin-eats

The fiance and I are forever on the quest to eat healthily yet deliciously. Like most young adults, we work a lot, not leaving much time for cooking, which is why eating out or grabbing some unhealthy fast food thing is so tempting. We recently got a charcoal grill and have been smoking chicken and steaks in large quantities to save for leftovers, and keeping quick sides around the house (i.e.: black beans, green beans, spaghetti squash, etc.).

This week, we wanted to switch it up and try making quinoa bowls! I cannot eat mass amounts of the same thing over and over, which is why I usually try to keep leftovers to a minimum. I wanted a few different bowl options with cross-utilization of ingredients as not to have too much food on hand.

Pesto Bowl:
– Homemade Pesto (finely minced basil, garlic, cashews, parmesan, basil evoo, garlic salt, freshly ground pepper)
– Baby Greens (baby spinach, kale, arugula, romaine) [superfood+veggie power]
– Avocado [healthy fat]
– Roasted Cauliflower [for veggie power]
– Egg [hey, protein]
– Quinoa, of course [starch+protein+hella amino acids]

Fiesta Bowl:
– Sauteed Onions & Bell Peppers [for veggie power]
– Baby Greens [superfood+veggie power]
– Pulled, smoked chicken [protein goodness]
– Homemade Pico de Gallo (tomato, onion, cilantro, lime juice, jalapeno, s&p)
– Avocado [healthy fat]
– Black Beans [starch]
– Quinoa, of course [starch+protein+hella amino acids]

Summer Salad Bowl:
– Baby Greens [superfood+veggie power]
– Strawberries [fruit+vitamin goodness]
– Avocado [healthy fat]
– Cashews/Almonds [hella vitamins/minerals/antioxidents+quality protein+cronchy]
– Balsamic Vinegar [do it for the polyphenols, okay?]
– Quinoa, of course [starch+protein+hella amino acids]

To prepare for the week, I prepped all the ingredients ahead of time and stored them all separately so we can freestyle bowls as desired.

PREP IT UP:
– 1 cup quinoa yields about 4c quinoa. (TIP: Toast the quinoa in butter before cooking. I also used homemade veggie stock for flavor rather than just adding water. 2:1 liquid:quinoa is the magic ratio.)
– Pesto (The extra time allows the flavors to meld together and make it more yummy.)
– Salsa (See above.)
– Cook & Pull Chicken
– Dice Strawberries
– Julienne Onions & Peppers

As always, I don’t like to give measurements. I included my reasoning for the inclusion of each item in the bowl to show how to try and hit each food group and make a (mostly) balanced bowl. Add more or less according to your dietary needs. For example: the Fiesta bowl has two starches (beans and quinoa), just use less of each as not to make the bowl overly starchy.

Go forth and bowl out.

Cheers,
Erin

Looking Back

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I’ve been posting gratuitously about #ThursdayAesthetic on here, but last week’s theme was a really cool learning experience for me. The theme was “past project”, and I decided to go all the way back to the first manuscript I ever completed: OF MONSTERS & WOMEN.

Now, this isn’t the first thing I ever wrote, and it’s best that my early days of Harry Potter fanfiction are lost to antiquated fan forums and dead hard drives, but finishing a full manuscript was a big hurdle for me. I started writing when I was around 13/14, and didn’t finish an entire story until I was 21.

I used to write out of order, simply writing whatever scenes I felt inspired to write. This ended up with a lot of half-finished stories, because once I ‘discovered’ the ending of a story, I didn’t have much motivation to go back and finish the journey. OM&W was the first story were I wrote chronologically, and I think that’s why I actually managed to finish. I’ve continued to write chronologically ever since.

Anyway, as prep for this week’s aesthetic challenge, I went back and revisited this manuscript. I braced myself for the worst, and surprisingly, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Sure, there were lots of comma splices, run-on sentences, and paragraph-long dialogue tags. The fact that I could identfy these flaws, however, just shows how far I’ve come as writer since writing OM&W. The plot, however, was so much stronger than I remembered. The subplots were all necessary and subtly interwoven. There were far too many secondary characters, but I fell in love with the main characters all over again.

OF MONSTERS & WOMEN is about two girls:
Veronica: The dreamer. She hoped this was going to be a love story. Instead, she discovers she’s the last descendant in a long line of witches. As such, she is the only one who can break the curse placed on the pack of alpha wolves that now stalk her and her roommate.
Blake: The realist. With the werewolves go, hunters follow. Blake begins training with the hunters to protect herself and her roommate. When she stumbles upon lore of warrior women sworn to protect the witches, she realizes that her and Veronica’s fates might have been entwined all along–and it might be the very key to breaking the curse.
It’s a silly, tropey self-insert paranormal romance with more love insterests than you can shake a stick at, but it’s a fun read (if I may say so myself). I’d love to revisit/rewrite it one day and let these girls kick ass, take names, and get the guy in the end, too.

 

[AES] PAST PROJECT

top mid: veronica hale; bottom right: blake bennett

 

 

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HOW TO: Thursday Aesthetic

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Since I began participating in #ThursdayAesthetic, the wonderfully fun Twitter hashtag started by @literarilyjess, I’ve seen multiple posts on how to create moodboards via apps, but none for Photoshop (which is what I prefer).  Here’s a brief overview of my process. Feel free to ask questions if you have any!

  1. First, create a new project, 500 x 500 pixels.
  2. Create your squares using the Rectangle Tool on the left sidebar. You’ll need nine squares at 166.67 x 166.67 pixels. (One will be slightly smaller because math.)
  3. Each square will be its own layer. I put my squares in order from top left all the way to bottom right, and I change the layer name from ‘Rectangle #’ to the coordinating position on the board (i.e. Top Left, Top Mid, Top Right, Mid Left, etc…)
  4. By double-clicking on the squares, alternate their colors like this:
    [AES] BLANK 9
    I’ve seen tutorials suggesting three base colors, but I work more easily with two and find that I end up with a cleaner end product.
  5. Search Pinterest, Tumblr, whatever photo source you like for your photos. I prefer Pinterest, and my friend Claire has a great color-coded aesthetic page that I use often.
    * Search tip: Add the word ‘aesthetic’ to your searches. I.E. if you’re making a green-themed Legolas moodboard just search “Legolas aesthetic” and “green aesthetic”
  6. Gather your photos and arrange/crop them into the squares! For easy cropping, I use the Rectangular Marquee Tool to select the portion of the photo I want to use, right click on the selection > Layer Via Copy. Click the eye to make the original photo layer invisible. Or delete it. I tend to keep it until the very end so the original image is there if I need it.
  7. Once you have the nine photos you want, sharpen each one individually. I prefer the Smart Sharpen option.
  8. Don’t forget to color! There are lots of tutorials on this and I’m not the person to explain this, but it really helps bring your color scheme together.

Miscellaneous Tips:

  • I suggest gathering more than just nine photos because even though you’re going to find something AWESOME, it may not work with the set.
  • The color-coded blocks should be like-colored aesthetic photos. For me, the grey squares usually end up being photos with white backgrounds and the black squares end up being darker photos. I also try to pick one color that epitomizes the “mood” of the moodboard (get it?) and find photos that have that color. Not every square has to have it, but try to spread the photos with the color theme throughout the board.
  • Also, try to balance your photo choices. Space out your photos that are heavy on texture with minimalist ones. Text squares and pins/patches are great for de-cluttering your moodboard.
  • Have fun with it! When I get frustrated that a board isn’t turning out the way I want, just save it and come back later.

This week’s theme is “Beginnings”, so I’ll be back tomorrow with my board.

Cheers,
Erin Connor

currently writing 05.10.18

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!CW

Again, this header is a lie. But I wanted to share this week’s #ThursdayAesthetic. The theme was ‘future project’. I’ve had this idea bouncing around in my head for years, and I’m still not entirely confident that it’s done brewing.

TOUCHED is a wlw romance that’s PLEASANTVILLE x THE GIVER.

The Continent is a hyper-conservative land where physical touch and magic have been banned. Calleigh is a magical land of sexual freedom and expression. The two lands have coexisted for years, but Calleigh fears that The Continent is no longer content to let them be, and will soon attempt to overtake them, squashing out the love and magic that makes Calleigh great. To preserve their way of life, Calleigh spies infiltrate The Continent, but even the best-laid plans can go sideways.

Billie, the daughter of two Calleigh spies, quickly falls in love with Shiloh, the daughter of The Continent’s president. And Shiloh, who has only known the bland, colorless life of The Continent, is completely enamored with Billie and the freedom Calleigh offers. If discovered, their love could spark the tension between their two worlds and be the end of Calleigh. So they must fight, both for themselves and for their countries.

[AES] TA WIP