The Stars and the Cookie Jar

All right, who has a good flourless chocolate cake recipe? A tested one? Screw the Pesach menu from Gourmet, that gets weirder every year... I'll do a dacquoise, too, if I have to. Or meringue Napoleons. But I was hoping for something less evil and I am Not Serving Macaroons. Help!

The only reason I'm up this early is that I cannot breathe. A pox on plant life! (Well, not really, I hear oxygen is useful when you can get it.)

Following two separate intelligent discussions last night, I'm glad I decided to write Vilna stuff again, and not just because this book is the spine of my MFA and it would be beneficial, at some point in the sooniverse, to acquire that. I had not taken a look at the characters for four months, instead doing the straight research, and the thing is, I like these characters. They get inside my head and under my skin the way good characters are supposed to do.

I wish Raissa had written more of her diary in English, though her English is a fright to behold (she used it only for the Really Big Events, presumably the ones she didn't want the wrong parties to read, and sometimes it's English words in Yiddish broad script, though she had the best Roman hand one could expect from her time and place); and I wish I had good names to change everybody's name to, but other than that, it seems to be going all right. Out of last night's discussion I got seeds (my college writing instructor-cum-thesis-reader was forever nattering on about finding the seed) for two pieces, one with the story of Kruk's wife and why his hair is like that, and one with Raissa/Hirsh/Wittenberg/The Insinuation Monster.

It comes to my attention, by way of rymenhild and Sonya, that you can't write a Holocaust novel without it being somewhat violent.