Last night Gordon had trouble falling asleep. Normally when that happens, he turns on TV, usually something like Ancient Aliens. We listen to the magic aliens who used a vimana to fly to Antarctica and build secret pyramids, and it puts us right to sleep. I swear, that show has never encountered an ancient civilization whose achievements they didn’t belittle.

Ancient Aliens wasn’t on the table because we have watched it ad nauseum, so Gordon put on a paranormal show. Something something, weird things caught on video. Normally it’s like, “Ooo, look at this blurry footage of a bear, I mean Bigfoot. Big scary Bigfoot.” Unfortunately, last night, it was the footage of a Chinese truck exploding. It was a massive explosion, way out of proportion to any normal load.

So they show the footage 5 times, and then they start theorize about what the truck could be hauling. It could be nitroglycerin. Let’s have our expert drip some nitroglycerin onto this little pad and hit it with a hammer. Oh, look, it went boom. Let’s examine the footage again. No, doesn’t look like nitroglycerin. It could be paint fumes. Let’s get some paint fumes into a jar and set that on fire.

I am a very sound sleeper, but I am a very light falling-asleeper. Every time I drifted off, they blew something else up.

So I woke up tired, overslept, went into the kitchen, and got stuck. I don’t know if it ever happens to you, but sometimes you go into the kitchen with a simple mission of starting bread in the bread machine and unfreezing and marinading some pork tenderloin, and then somehow you have done the dishes, and washed the sink, and made muffins.

I’ve made the gluten free, dairy-free, super healthy blueberry muffins for an acquaintance who might have Crohn’s disease, and they were a spectacular fail. They didn’t rise properly, but contrary to all expectations, they are very soft. They don’t taste bad, but they are not great either. They taste a little… gritty? I’m betting on the dairy-free yogurt as the culprit. I am going to try that again, not today, and this time with a bit of vinegar. This will take some fiddling.

Then I made the regular muffins, because when I asked Kid 1’s opinion regarding whether I should put blueberries or chocolate chips into vegan muffins, she said blueberries. My husband had apparently voiced his preference for chocolate chips with a brutal yell from the study, which I didn’t hear, and then he was sad, so I made a batch of regular muffins with chocolate chips.

Before you ask, the chocolate chip recipe came from here. I made one substitution. I had a little jar of sour cream that I needed to use before it went bad, so I mixed about 1/2 cup sour cream with milk to make roughly 1 cup of liquid, added a tablespoon of white vinegar, and used that instead of buttermilk.

The fail muffins came from here. As you can see, my results are questionable. Yours might be better.

I need caffeine in the worst way.

We received so many comments from you on Regina’s story. We are so glad you liked it.

Why was it cut?

Other than having a reason to bring Michael into the fight, is it necessary to have Regina’s family history in this scene with her cousin? Consider cutting this scene completely?

Editorial note

As you can see above, the scene just kind of sat there unattached to anything. I hesitated to discuss this. I’ve been trying to less of writing process posts, because as Grandma Frida says, nobody enjoys seeing how the sausage is made and I don’t want to ruin the joy of reading for anyone, but since we had many people ask us about it, here goes.

This scene is a subplot, meaning a minor story running parallel to the main story. Typically, subplots need to start in the first 1/3 or first 1/2 of the story, so they can be properly developed. This subplot just kind of popped up close to the finale. We would have to go back and artificially try to build to it somehow, and Ruby Fever has a very large cast already.

In addition, Regina has very firm boundaries. She doesn’t get involved in House Baylor business, and we needed to maintain that separation. We can’t draw lines in the sand and then hop over them when it’s convenient.

I love Regina and Michael to pieces and would love to write a novella about House Latimer at some point, so hopefully this is not a goodbye.

In general, if cutting a scene in a novel doesn’t force you to do drastic rewrites, that scene shouldn’t be there in the first place. We dropped that scene and basically nothing changed.

Will you ever release a collection of Hidden Legacy deleted scenes and the little extras from the website?

Eh. Well, first, the scenes were deleted for a reason.

Second, this is probably ill-advised, but I am sleep deprived, so here is what would happen if we released this hypothetical collection, even if it was at 99 cent price point. ::eyes Mod R to see if she is watching::

“I have followed these authors for years, but this is just an obvious money grab. These are not even complete stories, these are deleted scenes. They must really hard up for money that they would scam people this way. I know the description said that these were deleted scenes, but I didn’t read it because I was excited that a new book was available, and now I feel betrayed. I’ve lost all respect for them.”

And so on, and so on. At some point, Penguin Random House rereleased Kate Daniels novellas as e-specials, and we got so much hate because they were previously published in anthologies. It scarred me for life.

There is no way to make that collection available without writing a novella or some kind of new content to make it worthwhile, and right now, there is just no room in the schedule for it.

The post Muffins, Trucks, and Deleted Scenes first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.

If you beta read this book, please email me, because I can’t be trusted. We are trying to finish the copy edit, get the web designer all the stuff, answer some professional questions, all at the same time, and I don’t know which way is up.

Yesterday, I made my husband a chocolate cake. I can do many things. Decorating cakes is not one of them. My cakes taste good. They do not look good. This particular cake took 4 hours. It has three layers of chocolate cake, strawberry filling, and Swiss meringue chocolate buttercream. It looks like so. It barely fit under the cake hood and needed dowels for structural integrity, just in case.

Yeah. So I presented this cake to my husband. Later on I see him returning from the kitchen with a little bowl of cake and ice cream.

Me: Decided to try the cake?

He: Not exactly. There was some cake pieces on the side, so I took that.

Me: …

He: Why let it go to waste?

He found the bits I cut off the cake to level it and ate that instead. O_o

He did have some this morning and profanity was used in describing the deliciousness of the cake, so I consider this to be a home run.

Got to go. Email me.

The post So Much Stuff first appeared on ILONA ANDREWS.