The Light Side of the Moon Recipe: Cheese Stuffed Olives

Here is another of several recipes inspired by the food of The Light Side of the Moon. Though on this blog, I posted Anne Blacksmith’s Beef and Veg Pie. Let me know if you use any of them. I’d love to know what you think!

Excerpt: 

The Talliers’ butler entered with a tray full of aperitif—Raspberry Armagnac liquor for the adults, raspberry juice for the two younger boys along with almonds and cheese-filled olives. Andre ignored his juice and kept showing Ian pictures. Ham smiled at Ian and set the boy’s juice on a nearby table.

Since I used Kalamata olives and have red plates, I put a few chopped chives on mine as a final garnish

Cheese Stuffed Olives:
These are an easy make ahead no cook appetizer for a party
Ingredients

• 225 grams / 1 1/2 cups pitted large green or Kalamata olives
• 43 grams / 1/2 cup toasted almonds sliced
• 55 grams /1/2 cup of brie
• 36 ml / 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 4 large cloves garlic
• pinch dried hot pepper flakes or a dash of pepper oil
• dash of chives (optional)

Olives:
If olives are canned or from a jar, rinse and drain well. Check for pits and remove, if necessary.

Stuffing:
I tend to buy precut nuts, but if you didn’t, chop them into slivers or small pieces.
Remove rind from brie. Put brie in warmed bowl and stir in almonds.

Stuff the olives with the almond and brie mixture

Thinly sliced garlic and combine with oil and red pepper flakes.

Marinate the olives in mixture overnight, in refrigerator, stirring occasionally. The almonds will soften after a few hours.

Serve chilled with a dash of chives on the plate for color if you wish

Spokane: I’m going to Auntie’s Bookstore!

Looking for something to do in Spokane Tuesday Night?

I will be reading my next heart-wrenching, dystopian science fiction novel, The Light Side of the Moon, on Tuesday Night, August 18 2015 at Auntie’s Books which is located at 402 W Main Ave, Spokane, WA 99201.

The Light Side of the Moon is the second novel in the Other Systems Universe, but it is not a sequel. Fans familiar with the series know that Other Systems followed immigrants to the utopian planet, Kipos. The Light Side of the Moon is the story of those who stayed behind on Earth.

Science fiction has a long history of social commentary as humanity’s technology has advanced. Our imagination–or lack of it–can bring progress or missteps to the future of our species. The poverty shown in The Light Side of the Moon is dire, but it is also a story of redemption. And if that’s too serious…don’t worry we’ll have cookies!

Meet Rosalind: A Secondary Protagonist of The Light Side of the Moon

Rosalind

Age Unknown

(EC 302) Manufactured in India/Programmed in France

Expert Compatible Android (Accountant)

Personality: She loves deeply, she does not want to be stuck on Earth. She is a leader, but can aggressively pull for dreams.

 

Description Excerpt

She zoomed her optics from the nebula to Earth. The enlargement algorithms resized the sky as her crafted compound lens flipped to a smaller aperture to allow in less light. Her world shifted into millions of colored pixels. Images smoothed. She could see.

Ceramic tiles had continued to fall through the rotting, scorched wood in the ceiling, but the tenement was the same as it had been the last time her consciousness was on Earth. She rolled to her side and pushed strands of dirty blond hair out of her scarred face. A pigeon clapped its wings; its tiny claws scratched her aging silicone flesh as the bird bounced onto the dirt floor.

She rubbed her corroded knee joints. Using the doorframe, she lifted herself to her full height and held back screaming as she broke through the oxidation. Gazing upon her brothers who still dreamt toward the nebula, she could not remember her name, or her brothers’ names, but serial number EC 302 was embossed with black ink on her left bicep. Her brothers looked the same: inactive burnt flesh, visible indo-skeletons, absent limbs, and each one missing an optic. They were built to be imposing sentinels of this place, but their injuries exposed their weakness. S467’s legs were nothing more than scorched stumps.

S455 had a pigeon nesting between his unmoving chest and arm. She almost pushed it away until she saw the eggs. She let the pigeon be.

The Light Side of the Moon is here!

It’s here! It’s here! If you want you can picture me jumping up and down with excitement. 

The Light Side of the Moon is the second novel in the Other Systems Universe, but it is not a sequel. Fans familiar with the series know that Other Systems followed immigrants to the utopian planet, Kipos. The Light Side of the Moon is the story of those who stayed behind on Earth.

Due to lack of natural resources, no public education, and a surplus of political bickering, Earth is an over-populated cesspool and our solar system’s colonies have failed. Encouraged by the conquest of Kipos, idealistic dreamers look beyond Earth to build a utopia from the abandoned Lunar Colony Serenitatis. Despite intense uncertainty and physical hardship, the impoverished Ella Sethdottier follows rumors of plentiful jobs on the moon. On roads fraught with danger, she discovers Earth is a bigger place than she ever imagined, but Serenitatis is little more than a prison colony. Ella forges unlikely friendships with corrupted androids and the quixotic prison doctor, Ian Whitlatch, who champions equality and rights for inmates. Amid
corruption and nobility, tragedy and victory, the fate of the colony hangs in the balance.

You can read an excerpt here!

And I am having a release party at Barnes & Noble Pacific Place August 1st, 2 – 4 pm. Hope to see you there.

Sales Links Below

Amazon

Paperbacks: http://www.amazon.com/Light-Side-Moon-Elizabeth-Guizzetti/dp/193754642X/

Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/Light-Side-Moon-Elizabeth-Guizzetti-ebook/dp/B011EWJHTC 

Barnes&Noble http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-light-side-of-the-moon-elizabeth-guizzetti/1122388290?ean=2940150853218

iBooks https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-light-side-of-the-moon/id1018607604?ls=1&mt=11

48Fourteen: https://48fourteen.com/catalog/the-light-side-of-the-moon/

Kobo: https://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/the-light-side-of-the-moon-1

Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25891512-the-light-side-of-the-moon

Why all the politics in The Light Side of the Moon? Because we can’t escape ourselves

FYI: this is the answer to an early reader question that I received for my FAQ so this is up at the Other Systems Website too.

The Light Side of the Moon deals with serious issues that the world must decide is right or wrong.  I feel as a species, we are on a precipice of change as our electronic creations become sentient. We can choose to evolve our morals with technology or not. I look at The Light Side of the Moon as a cautionary tale if humanity chooses not to evolve. If we continue to allow adolescent greed or anger rule how we interact with people.

As the internet grows and expands, we have discovered other inventive ways to hurt eachother: trolling, swatting, revenge porn.

The internet is not the problem: we are.

Okay back to The Light Side of the Moon: some of the events that happen in the novel actually occurred when Europe sent prisoners to Australia and the Americas. (For example: women and girls attaching themselves to Correctional Officers for protection.) One might think that these events still don’t occur, but sadly they do.

Some say the adult content in the book is the sex and vulgar language, but in my opinion, the true adult content is that the world in the novel allows children to starve, refuses to pay workers a living wage, and humans still have atrocities such as child betrothal and marriage, economic slavery, and an unjust correctional system. We can go to colonize the moon, we can go to other planets, but until we face the problems we have now, they will always be with us.

That being said, even in the darkest places, there is hope for humanity, because good people exist. In my opinion, that is the story I wrote in The Light Side of the Moon. 

The World of The Light Side of the Moon – the new ten commandments

On June 11, 3062  the Kiposians land on Earth, Other Systems is the story of those who immigrate to Kipos, The Light Side of the Moon is about those who were left behind. It is always been my goal to create worlds that the reader can feel they can step into. The dystopian world of The Light Side of the Moon is hopefully a complex one. There are no easy answers to the abject poverty that 40% of the 17 billon people on Earth.

Humans and their intelligent creations once stretched towards the stars. By the late twenty-second century, they colonized Luna, Mars, Europa and Ganymede and Triton. They explored deeper into the cosmos with interstellar colonist ships. However, when humans realized they’d squandered Earth’s resources, it became too expensive to send people into space. Fossil fuels ran out, icecaps melted, and oceans became cemeteries of dead organisms. In the twenty-fourth century, the colonies of Triton, Europa, and Ganymede collapsed as people flooded back to the inner solar system, fearing they would be without regular supply ships. Mars perished when the borosilicate domes failed. People abandoned Luna when the titanium ran dry.

In the twenty-seventh century, human intellegent androids were marooned with humans on Earth when the Evolved AI whose minds stretched beyond understanding—refused to remain on the overcrowded Earth with such limited creatures.

Humanity sought sanctuary and answers in the old religions. Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, Hinduism, and The Children of Isaac and Ishmael delighted in this groundswell of interest and declared it a time of renewal. The religions were not about to make the same mistakes that made them almost extinct.  In a world of seventeen billion people, they elevated cleanliness to a virtue, and rewrote the sanitation laws. They changed unpopular social doctrine to fit the new world where all three genders were equal, and people weren’t defined by the composition of their skin—whether born of flesh or manufactured from silicone. They served sixty percent of the population well.

The Ten Commandments for a New Age

From the Testament of Pope Jon Francis, 2645

Canonized by The United Church in 2793

1. Love your God, above all others.

2. Remember your Sabbath and keep it holy.

3. Live with respect to your neighbor’s beliefs. I am infinite; they only worship another face of Me.

4. Show charity to your neighbor whether they be biological or silicone, man, pangender, or woman. All are equal in the eyes of God.

5. Keep a clean body and home to prevent the spread of disease.

6. Respect your parents, show kindness to your siblings and children.

7. Do not waste the resources I have given you, these are finite.

8. Do not let your thoughts be violent, lest they cause slander, strife, or murder.

9. Do not covet your neighbor’s life, your spouse and children were given to you to be your joy.

10. Do not mingle with those who sully themselves, lest they  be your downfall.

The Light Side of the Moon will be published by 48Fourteen this summer!

It is available in Paperback (ISBN: 978-1-937546-42-7)

and ebook (ISBN:

from Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Kobo, Ibooks and wherever else you like to buy books!

Meet Ellie Sethdottier: Protagonist of The Light Side of the Moon

Who wants to see the character dossier of Ellie Sethdottier: Protagonist of The Light Side of the Moon?

Ellie at age 11, Digital painting by me, Elizabeth Guizzetti. All Rights Reserved.

Ella (Ellie) Settdottier was four-years-old when the Kiposians came. While she and her brothers were too young to immigrate to Kipos and witnessed a violent argument between her parents, which ended with her mother battered. She never saw her father again. She does not know if he abandoned them for opportunities on Kipos or was possibly killed at the gates. She doesn’t want to know.

Parents: Jia Rao and Seth Keithson

Two Brothers: Daniel (+4 years) and James (+3 years)

Virtues: Though her life has been hard, she was protected from the worst of their poverty by her older brothers, thus she is strong-willed and hopeful things will get better. (Her brothers have long given up on life.) She loves to read and collect knowledge.

Vices: She has grown up so fast, she does not listen to reason. She is slow to trust.

Helpful Vice: She is a risktaker, but terrified of “getting in trouble” in an unforgivable way. She doesn’t really understand what is unforgivable, but has an idea that she needs to not get pregnant or catch an uncurable STI, so during her teen years she stays away from boys and drugs.

Age in novel: 4 – 18

Description excerpts

Age 4

More harshly than was wise, Alexander snapped, “She’s four and lost her father. Who said, ‘Suffer the little children…’ ”

With the hope Ella would settle down and Sister Diego might witness the vision of an innocent in pain, he pulled her onto his lap. After all, a four-year-old has no designs except to be loved, fed, safe, and warm. When she wasn’t screaming, Ella was as sweet looking as Jia had been at four: large round brown eyes, soft lengths of black hair escaping from two messy braids. Sister Diego could see her in her brothers’ hand-me-down green sweater and old patched trousers. No sign of sinful disease.

Both for his own comfort and hers, Alexander rocked her. Ella calmed as she snuggled into his shoulder, but Sister Diego’s face remained without compassion.

*

Age 11

[Alexander] considered as the afternoon sun bounced off Ella’s black hair how much she resembled Jia at that age, but her normally bronzed skin, looked grayish. Daniel and Jamie looked worse, covered in flour. The girl was on some invisible tether, bouncing with childish energy, but matching her brothers’ sluggish pace. Neither boy should be broken in adolescence.

 The Light Side of the Moon will be available on paperback and ebook for Kindle, Nook, Kobo, and IBooks.

Meet Ian Whitlatch: Secondary Protagonist of The Light Side of the Moon

Ian at graduation. Digital Painting by me.

Ian Marcus Weaver Whitlatch is the only child of a doctor and the manager of a charity soup kitchen in Salisbury. Dad helps everyone whether they can pay or not. Mum doesn’t take a salary for her work instead donates her time to feed the impoverished.At the beginning of the novel, his parents employ two domestics: Ian’s tutor Mr. McKay and Ms. Blacksmith the housekeeper and cook.

Note: For the Other System’s Universe, they are upper middle class, however, their lifestyle for the average family in today’s world, they would be lower-middle class.
For example: like most people on Earth at this time, they don’t own a car. Since Dad’s clinic and Mum’s Soup Kitchen is across the back garden, they also generally have no need of one.

Virtues: Respects every person, doesn’t believe in violence, hard worker, kind-hearted

Virtue that hurts him: Unfaltering idealism which presents as pretentiousness

Vices: Judges by outer beauty, doesn’t always get along with his parents, can be self-absorbed

Parents: Grace Alice Teague. Weaver, Royce Xavier Langly Whitlatch  No Siblings.

Education: Home Tutor until age fifteen, then Oxford undergraduate studies and Oxford Medical School

Description Excerpt

Age 13

Ian yanked off his apron and washed his hands. The cut was deep, but not bad enough to show Dad. Pressing a handkerchief to the wound, he scrutinized himself in the mirror and tucked in his shirt. An angry pimple had formed between his nostril and cheek. Ugh. Even when his skin was clear, his nose was too big. Mum always said he had Dad’s handsome looks. That was unfortunate for them both.

*

Age 21

Ellie jumped for it. Knowing momentum might carry her in medium gravity, she forced herself to fall and hit the decking. Her legs burned as she skidded the last four meters, but the luggage stopped moving. She pressed her lips together and blinked back tears. 

“Vous allez bien, mademoiselle?”

Light created a halo from his straight hair, but when her eyes cleared, she looked past his nose into his deep green eyes, filled with concern.

Without thinking she answered back in English. “Yes, thank you, sir.”

He wore an officer’s uniform, but she recoiled from the soft, delicate hand that reached for her. He was probably going to yell at her like everyone else did.

“You’re an Englishwoman?” he asked helping her to her feet. 

“I speak English. I’m from Seattle. My name is Ellie Sethdottier. How do you do?” She curtsied though she wore pants.

“I’m Dr. Ian Whitlatch, and I’m just fine, but that looked like a nasty spill you took.”

Coming this Summer

Cover Reveal: The Light Side of the Moon!

Coming Soon from 48Fourteen in paperback and e-book! 

I am pleased to show the cover for The Light Side of the Moon! This stand-alone book focuses on what happened on Earth after the Kiposians came. I was fortunate to have the opportunity to do the cover illustration, while Lyndsay Johnson did the wonderful lettering design.

Summary:

Due to overpopulation, lack of natural resources, no public education, and a surplus of political bickering, Earth is a cesspool and our solar system’s colonies have failed. Nevertheless, outside our solar system, exploration has thrived.

Encouraged by the conquest of Kipos, idealistic dreamers look beyond Earth to build a utopia from the abandoned Lunar Colony Serenitatis. Industrialists reconstruct the colony, but struggle to turn a profit while encouraging scientific discovery.

Brimming with hope despite intense uncertainty and physical hardship, the impoverished Ella Sethdottier follows rumors of plentiful jobs on the moon. On roads fraught with danger, she discovers Earth is a bigger place than she ever imagined, but Serenitatis is little more than a prison colony. Ella forges unlikely friendships with corrupted androids and the quixotic prison doctor, Ian Whitlatch, who champions equality and rights for inmates. Amid corruption and nobility, tragedy and victory, the fate of the colony hangs precariously in the balance.

Update on The Light Side of the Moon

As you can see from the title, this post is just to give folks a The Light Side of the Moon update.

I know people are curious–I just received another Facebook message from a fan.

So last week, my publisher and I began speaking about a release date and this morning, I awoke to a message in my email with my edited manuscript!

I went over the edits of the first 5 chapters. Mostly, I like her suggestions and have started to work on them. In the three editing passes of Other Systems, I was told over and over again to add more detail, I think this time, I might’ve added a bit too much. As I like to say, “On to new and better mistakes.” Maybe my next book will be just right. 🙂

While I can’t tell anyone exactly when the book is coming out yet, I received one question I can answer: The Light Side of the Moon will be released in multiple E-book formats and paperback.