Howdy!
And good morning!
Well, I guess it was earlier this year when our wonderful blog creator, Pam Crooks, wrote to me to ask me if I might contribute a short story to their anthology. (I hope that’s the right word.)
Short stories have never been my niche. I tend to be “long winded” and need a little space in order to collect my thoughts. And, I love the freedom of setting up the story and having what seems to me to be lots of time to tell the story properly. But, I told Pam I’d try. The upshot of this was that I did write a short story, which is still in the anthology you can find here on the blog, and found it was a little easier to write than I had thought it would be.
My considerations on not writing short stories have been that every word counts (forgetting that this is true in a long novel, too). But, I do much, much research for my stories and so I have my mind full of true stories from the early days of the traders first coming into Blackfeet Country as told by James Willard Schultz. I tell these true stories to my grandchildren often when I pick them up from school, and, because they seem to like them (they often request a story from me), I thought that maybe I could use what I have learned from these early accounts to write a romantic fiction story, based on these tales from the early 1800’s.
Lo and behold, I found it to be fun…not the grind I had thought it would be.
Now, over the years, I’ve taken a few of the beginning parts of a couple of my stories (where the hero and heroine are children or teens) and have made them into little books of my own making for my grandchildren. With recent editing of these and getting two of them together for the book, I’ve now published a book of three Historical Native American Romance short stories for teens and young adults.
They are sweet stories of first love, but also tell of some of the real and true dangers the Indians encountered in our long ago past. And so, I’ve now published all three of these stories in a book entitled, THE COURTSHIP OF MEDICINE PAINT, using the pen name of Genny Cothern. They are stories from the early days in the wild west and the first story of Medicine Paint is based on two true stories, though highly fictionalized.
The other two stories are MOON WOLF AND MISS ALICE and RED HAWK AND THE MERMAID.
Here is the link: https://tinyurl.com/thecourtshipofmedicinepaint
Because this is a new venture for me, it sure would warm my heart if you’d go over and have a look. Soon, I hope to have the book in paperback, also.
Now, to other news — if you are on my newsletter list, you’ll know the the entire MEDICINE MAN Series is going on sale on the 12th (Thursday). But only for a few days.
Book #1, SHE STEALS MY BREATH will be on sale for $.99 cents — Book #1
SHE CAPTURES MY HEART will be on sale for $2.99 — Book #2
and my latest book, SHE PAINTS MY SOUL will be on sale for $3.99.
This is the link to the series page: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09X4V1HRT?tag=pettpist-20
And now for a recipe I promised to post to the blog in my newsletter today. For those of you who are not on my newsletter list, let me repeat a little segment from it:
This recipe comes from the book, COOKING WITH SPIRIT, North American INDIAN Food and Fact by Darcey Williamson and Lisa Railsback.
Plains Pemmican (Traditional)
“Dry long, thin strips of buffalo meat. Pound meat to a coarse powder. Cut raw fat into walnut-sized pieces and melt over slow fire. Pour fat over pounded meat and mix in some dried serviceberries. Mix it well and pack in parfleches.”
As many of you might know, when men were going to be going on the war trail or were going to make a long journey, they carried pemmican with them. It was a nourishing food and could sustain a warrior through many weeks of being away from home — depending upon how long he was going to be away and how much he was able to carry with him. Often, in my books, the hero of the story shares his pemmican or dried meat with the heroine.
I’ve never made pemmican, but I’ve mirrored it when I am going on a long car ride and then I use dried meat, butter or coconut oil and usually raisins or other dried fruit. It is not only delicious, it keeps one alert and very importantly…awake.
So I promised to share my own recipe for dried meat.
Here it is:
In the old days, they dried meat over a low fire or in a smoke house. Since I don’t have either of those, I marinade very thinly sliced beef in an equal combination of red wine and traditionally made soy sauce, covering the meat completely. (I use Ohsawa Nama Shoyu Unpasteurized Soy Sauce.) I marinade this in the refrigerator (because sometimes I forget about it.) Usually I marinade it for several days. Then I dehydrate it in a dehydrator until it cracks when you pick it up and tear it. (Dehydrating it until it cracks was an instruction my sister on the Blackfeet reservation gave me on when it is properly dried.) Don’t worry about the wine in the marinade. By the time the jerky — or dried meat — is done, the alcohol from the wine is gone. It usually takes 2-4 or more days to dry it.
Very easy to make (you can often get the meat already sliced thin) and very delicious, nourishing and very satisfying. It’s from this kind of dried meat that pemmican is made.
Well, that’s all for today. Hope you enjoyed the blog and hope you’ll go and check out the new short story book, THE COURTSHIP OF MEDICINE WOLF. Let me know what you think, and, as always, thank you so much for coming to the blog today and for commenting.
inches apart. Use a fork to crisscross the cookies.
