Halloween Tarot Giveaway

Win a set of Halloween Tarot cards and help support the debut novel Tarot: The Magician.

Book Blurb

When Kassandra Troy discovers an ancient tarot deck, her life takes a thrilling and frightening turn. She triggers The Magician card, and releases the mysterious and captivating Luke Rykell. He lifts Kassandra out of despair, dispelling the devastation she feels after her father’s death. But Luke has a dark secret. He wants the magical deck for himself. The only way Kassandra can save herself is to journey into the Tarot cards. But once inside, can she ever escape?

Irresistibly compelling and heart-wrenching, Tarot: The Magician is a superb fantasy tale that will haunt you long after you’ve read the last page.

Download the ebook from Midnight Frost Books as well as Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. Not sure? Read a free sample here. Or click on the fancy schmancy button below.

Tarot Book Trailer

I worked for over two months drawing and coloring the panels you see in this trailer. I wanted it to be as special as the book. However, I was daunted by the music. I’m no musician. However, if it were silent, or had canned music, that would undermine all the hard work I put into the animation. Bradley Coy came to my rescue. For the full story on how the theme for the book trailer was created, read A Theme Song for an ebook.

Book Reviews

Don’t trust me. Here are readers who have read and commented on the book.

“I especially enjoyed Kassandra’s journey through the cards as she tries to solve the problems she’s faced with and find her way out. And the ending gives me hope for a sequel (or a series?)” by Tara at Dividing by Zero

Giveaway Details

By helping me promote Tarot: The Magician, you get your own set of fabulously spooky tarot cards. I’ll mail them to the winner after Halloween. Click this LINK or anywhere on the image below to take you to enter the giveaway. Hurry, this event ends Friday, October 31st!

Smashing Pumpkins (The Puree Way)

Oct22

October means pumpkins, not just for carving, but gobbling up in soups, stews, pancakes, and pies. It all starts with a sugar pumpkin. I used to wonder what this was because they aren’t available at pumpkin patches. Search for pie pumpkins (or sugar pumpkins) at the grocery store.

Transforming a pumpkin into puree is not as hard as it looks. Most websites will tell you crank up the oven and toss the pumpkin inside and wait. Yeah, I tried that. One problem, was the waiting. It takes time for the oven to heat up and quite a while for the pumpkin to cook. Worse yet, when I tried this the first time, I decided to add water to the glass pan while it was in the oven (did I mention that it was glass). Yes, shards scattered everywhere: in the oven, on the floor.

I found a better way: Microwave. But let’s start with the slicing and dicing. Cut the pumpkin into quarters and then scoop out all the seeds and gook.

Make sure you place the pumpkin pieces into a microwave safe container. The secret here is the water. Just enough to come up to the pulpy part of the pumpkin. You’re basically steaming the pumpkin.

Cover up the bowl (allowing a little space for super heated air to vent) and microwave for 10-15 minutes. With this pumpkin, 15 minutes was the magic number. You know you’re done when a fork goes straight through.

Careful, when the pumpkin is cooked, it is crazy hot. Further proof that you’re on the right track is when the rind pulls easily away from the pulp.

Now it’s time to puree. If you don’t have a food processor, don’t sweat it. Get a potato masher and go to town. For the food processor, you may find that the pulp is too thick to spin. It just sits there like a slug. Try adding up to a half a cup of water.

You’ll only need two cups to make a pumpkin pie (recipe in the next post).

The rest you can save for pancakes, muffins, heck, I even added some to pasta sauce. It’s fall, go crazy.

Tim Kane

Living the Pumpkin Carving Life

Oct15

It’s October and I’m watching Halloween Wars. No, I don’t style myself on par with the expert pumpkin carvers, but I’ve created some pulpy ghouls over the years. One of the best tools I’ve seen (and one I need to buy) is the bent wire stylus used by clay sculptors. Currently, I use a strawberry corer to make detail work on the face of pumpkins. But I’m going too far. Most folk want to cut your classic pumpkin without all the hassle. I have a few tips.

Now, the pumpkin I worked with ended up being a monster. Seriously, this thing was at least an inch and a half thick. I could hardly cut it. That being said, ditch those orange plastic pumpkin carving tools they sell at the store. Totally useless. Here’s what you need:

A bread knife
A steak knife
An ice cream scoop
A bowl to hold all the pulp and seeds

Pumpkin Tools

The ice cream scoop is great because the spoon has sides that are vertical (unlike a flat spoon) which makes digging into a pumpkin through a small hole easy. If you have one with a release lever (like the one pictured) then you never get your fingers gunky (although you loose out on all the fun that way).

I typically use the bread knife to cut off the top because I’m going for power, not finesse. Once I get to the face, I switch to the steak knife. Serrated edges are the key. You want to saw through the pumpkin. Nothing is worse than punching in with a standard knife and have the blade trapped by the pumpkin. Literally, you can’t move that thing.

Cutting out the eye hole.

Don’t be afraid to over cut the holes. Generally, they don’t show. Toss everything in a bowl as you go to ease clean up. For the finished “classic” pumpkin, I use one of those battery-operated candles. These are great because you still get the flicker, but without any heat.

There are all these opinions on how to preserve a pumpkin. Mostly, I leave them out. They’re going to rot. Accept it. If I do want to keep one, I stash it in the fridge. This will only work for one pumpkin, and only then if you can make the room.

Carve away.