Nuance Chocolate Factory Tour!

 

Hello, dear chocolate-lovers!

Last week, I got a fascinating, personal chocolate factory tour, led by Toby Gadd, chocolate-maker extraordinaire and owner of Nuance Chocolate in Fort Collins.  His chocolate factory is located in Old Town, just a few blocks away from his storefront/cafe.  This latest adventure was part of my on-going research for my next middle-grade novel, which has a LOT of chocolate in it. 

 

You might have read about my interview with him a few months ago here (and if you haven't, you should, because it complements this post!)  He kindly offered to give me a follow-up tour of the factory itself.  Technicolor visions of chocolate paradise swam in my head.... 

Alas, there was no chocolate river to fall into, but there was chocolate-tasting....

... and there was no slightly-creepy Gene Wilder or Johnny Depp in a velvet top hat, but there was super-friendly and knowledgeable Toby in his dapper hairnet...

And now, chocolate-loving friends, I'll take you on the tour...

Welcome inside, to the cool 62 degree interior of the factory, which is a collection of small-ish rooms a bit larger than the ground floor of my house (maybe about 1000 sq ft?) We began by de-linting ourselves and putting on hairnets. 

First, Toby brought us ("us" refers to me and a journalism major and cameraman from CSU) to the room of large, orange metal barrels where he stores the beans once they arrive. As you can see, they're labeled with date and country of origin.  Nuance sources their beans from ethical and sustainable growers and cooperatives, most of which are small, and they only use one kind of bean in each chocolate bar.  They can specially tailor the process to bring out the best of each bean, which makes the flavor rich and complex and fascinating, like fine wine.   

At this stage, the beans smell sour and acidic from the fermentation process.  Each cultivar of beans-- trinitario, forestero, and criollo-- has a different smell.  The fermentation process helps to develop over 600 flavor compounds, which is essential to the final taste of the chocolate, although the palette is further modified at every stage... as you shall see!

Can I just take a moment to say how lucky I feel to live just a ten-minute walk from his shop and factory?! Nuance has ***the widest range of single-origin chocolate IN THE WORLD!***

Okay, back to the tour... The cacao beans are harvested and fermented onsite in Latin America and Africa, then shipped here in giant sacs.  Toby and his wife Alix and their few employees then put the beans in the barrels, keeping them carefully separated.  In order to avoid any icky chemicals, they use natural dry ice to prevent any insect infestations during this stage.

They are also continually getting in new shipments of sample beans from potential growers to work with.... they come in wee batches (see above).  Toby and Alix make a small, test batch (1-5 lbs) of chocolate with the beans to see if they're good enough to order in bigger quantities to use in the chocolate they sell.  Only 15-20% of the beans they try out pass this test... the bar is high!

So, next, the cacao beans are roasted at 250 to 350 degrees for 20-40 minutes, which further develops the hundreds of flavor compounds. Toby and Alix spend lots of time experimenting with the best temp and length of roasting for each kind of bean they use.  If they over-roast, the chocolate becomes bitter, for example.

I can't show you pictures of the roasting process, because it involves some *top secret stuff* and I am sworn to secrecy.  (I couldn't help thinking of those spies in Willie Wonka's factory when Toby was swearing us to secrecy. ;-)

Okay, so next, the cooled, now-brittle beans are cracked into nibs and separated from the husks.  Toby is also a self-taught inventor and creative collaborator of sorts-- important skills for small-batch chocolate makers.  With the help of resources online, he came up with a cool, hand-made machine to do the cracking and winnowing.... involving a Champion juicer, a specialty vacuum, and a blade device custom made on his 3-D printer (all approved by the FDA and the CO health dep't!) The core component of this winnower was designed and made by John Nanci (the godfather of small batch chocolate).  Toby's modifications included the additional 3-D printed parts and other parts.

Much of his equipment are cool inventions using re-purposed equipment. And this is necessary because small-batch single-origin chocolate production is such a new and creative endeavor-- a blend of art and science lovingly done by just a handful of small, often family-owned, businesses. I felt so inspired learning how these folks re-envision uses for machines and equipment, to make them fit their own purposes.

Moving right along... so, the husk by-products are then stored in plastic white buckets (see above), which can be used for tea, body scrubs, brewing beer, etc.... Toby and Alix often pass these husks along to breweries or other local small businesses they work with. It's so heartening to see how these small, artisenal and hand-crafting companies work together creatively and promote each other's products. (At Nuance's recent birthday party at a local brewery, I had the most amazing, deep, rich chocolate beer.)

(Time lapse-- I just have to tell you that I took a little break from writing this blog post to make myself a cup of hot chocolate, which I am now enjoying.  *Sigh.* I knew something was missing...)

Okay, moving right along.... So, the cute little nibs go into the grinder next, and come out with the texture and consistency of peanut butter-- this is called chocolate liquor (and has nothing to do with alcohol, incidentally.) The machine Toby uses is the red cube above, whose original purpose was supposed to be a nut grinder, but which Toby uses exclusively for nib-grinding.

Next phase of the journey-- the melanger! This is a French verb meaning "to mix." This machine has a granite stone bottom disc and vertical granite wheels.  Interestingly, it was originally supposed to be an Indian spice grinder. Again, creative re-purposing to the rescue! 

The chocolate liquor and sugar are poured into the melanger (see below) for between 60 and 90 hours, depending on the particular kind of bean.  For days, the particles of cacao and sugar are ground down to between 20-30 microns (itty-bitty), so that the chocolate feels silky-smooth on your tongue. This process also helps release the volatile compounds and aromatics, while aerating and oxygenating the chocolate.  Note the chocolate's temperature here-- just pleasantly warm, a touch above room temp, but not hot.

Toby let us do a taste test here (!!!)-- we tasted chocolate from one melanger that was only done half of its final 90 hour timeline.  We noticed that it tasted kind of fruity and bright-- it still tasted of some compounds that interfered with the intended final, smooth, rich taste. It also still had a slightly gritty texture.

We tasted chocolate from another melanger (there were several in the room), which had completed about 75 hours already.  That was much smoother-- all silk-- and tasted heavenly. Toby said he was going to stop that one soon.... if you mix it for too long-- over 100 hours, for example, then it could taste flat, losing its fruity brightness altogether.  It's a lot of trial and error, art and science. Toby and Alix work hard to figure out the perfect process for each bean to maximize its delicious potential. 

If Toby's making milk chocolate, this melanger stage is where he adds the powdered whole milk, specially ordered from Europe. You can see it's lighter in color than the pure dark chocolate above.

So next, they pour the smooth, sweet, warm chocolate out of the melanger machine, and let it dry and cool into hard chunks.  Since the chocolate is still untempered, it looks mottled white and deep brown and striated. The chunks are stored in carefully labeled plastic bags until the next step.

This is the final step-- tempering, which means the controlled melting and cooling of the chocolate.  Here are the tempering units, with extremely precise temperature controls. The chocolate can stay in here for about an hour, or, can be set on overnight mode.

Check out this one-- the EZ Temper.  It was invented by a research doctor turned chocolate maker who re-purposed incubator equipment for tempering.... very creative, no?

So now that the chocolate has the right gloss, snap, melting point.... and feels like paradise on your tongue... it's ready to be poured into the molds! They make the molds using 3-D printer-- Toby also has a design background-- he created the Nuance logo and other design elements himself. These sweet little stars are used for the tasting flights Nuance offers in their shop. They also make chocolate bars, hot chocolate mix, and truffles (using extra ingredients like spices and fine liquor from other local food-crafters.) They also make some killer hot chocolate that you can sip and savor in their cafe-- perfect on a winter's day.  

Alix and Toby aren't doing wholesale at this time, which means you need to go to their shop to procure and enjoy their chocolate.  This means that they can be as experimental and creative as they want, and continually try out new processes and recipes, like true scientist-artists.

Nuance shop/cafe is located at 214 Pine St, in Old Town Fort Collins, CO. Toby, Alix, and their awesome employees are always happy to talk with you about their chocolate- making process.  It's SO much fun to do the taster flight of chocolate-- it's like wine-tasting, but yummier, and more kid-friendly.  You learn to distinguish among the complex notes and flavors that vary from bean to bean.  This is a super-fun activity to do on a date, with friends, with kids, when family is in town, or by yourself for a treat.

If you haven't read my first chocolate research post, please check it out here so that you can get the FULL chocolate-making experience....

In case you're curious, I've got my chocolate book outline done in delicious detail, and I've written and revised about half of it.  The novel is partly set in a small, family-owned chocolate shop in a small mountain town in Colorado, and partly set in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador. I can't wait to finish it and share it with you! Thank you for swinging by....

xo,

Laura  

Just another day of research... at the chocolate shop!

 

Hey all,

So I've had the grueling task of researching the goings-ons of a chocolate shop ....

 

I spent a glorious morning at Nuance on Pine Street in Old Town, Fort Collins.  One of the settings in my novel-in-progress is a chocolate shop, and I felt the need to spend some quality time inside of one.  The owners are Alix and Toby, a married couple who put their hearts into running this business.  I was so grateful to Toby, who took time out of his morning (2 and a 1/2 hours!) to enthusiastically answer my many interview questions.



Toby and Alix became enchanted with chocolate-making after a trip to Costa Rica. They started making it in their home kitchen, and soon their equipment had taken over....  Their hobby bloomed into something bigger, and they decided to open a gorgeous chocolate shop!



I thought I'd give you a taste of what I learned...

The cacao pods grow on the tree trunks!

The organically-grown cacao pods are harvested at one of the small-scale, environmentally and socially respectful co-ops that they work with in Latin America or Africa. Alix and Toby try to cut out as many middlemen as possible, so that the maximum amount of money possible can go directly to the community of growers.  The plantations aren't necessarily formal rectangles of land-- they can be in the middle of the jungle, which is best because the cacao plants love a good tree canopy.

There, onsite, people crack open the nerf-football sized pod and take out the beans coated with goopy stuff (mucilage) and let them sit for a few days, covered in leaves and fermenting.

 
This fermentation stage is essential to developing the chocolate's complex flavors and notes.

 

 Then, after it's spread out and dried in the sunshine, the cacao is shipped in burlap or plastic or hemp sacks by boat and then by truck to Nuance, where it's roasted in Toby and Alix's own little chocolate factory here in Old Town, Fort Collins.

The beans are roasted at between 240 and 350 degrees Farenheight for about 15 to 40 minutes, in small batches.  Some people use convection ovens or coffee roasters, but Nuance has their own top-secret roasting technique.... so mysterious!

Toby and Alix love experimenting with different techniques and flavors... an intriguing mix of art and science.

Machines crack the cacao beans and vacuum and winnow off the husks.  So you get these cute little cacao nibs....

The cacao is then ground into chocolate that has the consistency of peanut butter.  This is called chocolate liquor or cocoa mass, and it's not alcoholic, but it is thick and greasy.  With exposure to air, it turns into hard chocolate chunks.  This process releases aromatic and volatile compounds. 

Next it goes into the melanger machine.  Melanger is French for "mix."  It's a big stainless steel drum, whose base and wheels are granite.  For 80 hours, the stone grinds, granite against granite, mixing the cocoa mass with sugar.  There's a noisy rumble as the machines mix, four of them mixing 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  The goal is to get the particle size to 20 microns or less so that your tongue feels only a super-smooth texture.  (Note that this is not melting with heat, but actual grinding.)  In this stage the volatile acids and compounds are blown off and dissipate with exposure to air.
 
If the chocolate is destined to become milk chocolate, they'll add high-quality whole fat dried milk to the melanger.



Refining is the process of reducing the particle size, and conching is the process of releasing volatile compounds by stirring.  So by the time the mixing is done, the sharp acidity is reduced and the flavor is more mellow.

You're left with giant chunks of chocolate, which are part of the "geology phase" of chocolate making.  You can see the mottling and striated patterns in the chocolate chunk, a result of the "blooming" process.  This happens because the cocoa butter parts of the chocolate crystallize at room temperature.

Then they temper the chocolate-- this is a process of controlled melting and cooling to get the structure to Beta 5, which means the cocoa butter is smoothly integrated.

To make white chocolate, they use the cocoa butter with high quality Madagascar vanilla and whole fat dried milk.

We also talked quite a bit about the horrible chemical processes that big chocolate companies use in making chocolate.  It's awful, and I won't get into it here, but trust me, what the giant, soul-less businesses do to chocolate is an atrocity, and once you learn about it, you'll never want to eat cheapo, mass-produced chocolate again! Single source, bean to bar chocolate is definitely the way to go, though there are just a handful of small companies in the U.S. that produce chocolate this way. (I might tell you about all that in another post, if you're curious...)

So after Toby and Alix and their several employees make the chocolate, they form it into bars, from different countries, with different concentrations of cacao, and different cultivars of cacao (forestero, criollo, or trinitario)...

 

They also use some of the chocolate for hand-rolled truffles.  They have fun inventing different truffle recipes, using local and artisanal ingredients from the Fort Collins area.



I was thrilled when Toby offered me this beautiful flight of chocolate after our interview!

He instructed me to eat a piece of chocolate (all in a particular order designed to maximize the tasting experience.)  I was supposed to chew it a little, but also let it melt in my mouth and move it around to different parts of my mouth.  After I finished each chocolate sample, I drank some water and chewed a water cracker.  This process was not only delicious, and endorphin-releasing, but lots of fun!

I loved reading Toby's descriptions of each kind of chocolate and seeing if I could notice those flavors in the chocolate as I tasted.  Because I love words, especially words describing taste, I'll share with you some terms used to evoke chocolate flavors:  floral, fruity, nutty, metallic, earthy, woody, vanilla, oaky, coffee, strawberries, acidity/brightness, herbal, minty, astringent, tobacco...

I tasted chocolate made with beans from Ghana (rich, deep, notes of vanilla, cherries, and honey), Ecuador (earthy, mysterious, subtle), Nicaragua (smooth and creamy with notes of tobacco leaf, nuts, molasses), Venezuela (beautifully balanced, notes of cashews and dairy cream), and Madagascar (fascinating, sophisticated layers of flavor like plum and apricot.)  Not surprisingly, Toby  has a creative writing background. :-)

Also not surprisingly, he has a design background.... which leads me to the decor of Nuance... gorgeous! Their retail space is owned by my dear creator friend Les Sunde, who put a lot of effort into making it architecturally beautiful, and then, Toby and Alix beautified it further...

I really love what they did with this antique skylight, to filter the bright sunlight....

And that wraps up my blissful morning of chocolate research! Thanks for coming by...

xo,

Laura

Interview on Writing the Notebooks Series

Hey guys,

I've been getting such amazing reader mail lately (thank you!)-- some of it has been from people who read my books years ago, and they got in touch to let me know that the stories have stayed with them over time.  This makes me SO happy!

Jihane is one of these wonderful readers (and I just found out that her native language is French, so she has a special connection to The Ruby Notebook!)  She asked me some great interview questions about the Notebooks series as part of a school project.  I thought I'd post some of her questions and my responses here, in case you're curious, too.

 

1st in the series

Is there a message in your novels that you wanted readers to grasp?

I don’t usually set out to give a particular message in a novel—I basically start writing a story to explore some issues (or people or places or scenarios) that fascinate me.  Once I’m well into a rough draft, I start seeing some themes/ideas pop up in the story.  When I’m revising the story (usually at least 10 revisions), I try to bring these themes into relief and weave them throughout the story.  These are often things that I’ve struggled with in my own life at some point in time, and writing about them is a way to explore and resolve them to some extent.  It makes me happy when readers can relate to these struggles in some way too, and maybe glean some wisdom or useful message in the story. 

With the Notebooks series as a whole, I did hope that the books would inspire readers to travel, to want to learn more about other cultures and languages, to approach the world with an adventurous spirit and curiosity.  I also remember thinking that I wished I’d been introduced to Rumi as a teen, and I thought it was a kind of cool added bonus that I could introduce his poetry to readers via one of the characters, Layla.

The way I see it, in each of the three books, a different main theme/message emerged.  (But of course, every reader is going to have a different interpretation of the messages, and that’s exactly how it should be! I love that readers bring their own perspectives and experiences to my books—essentially, we’re co-creating the story.)

For The Indigo Notebook, it would be something along the lines of:  We don’t always want what we think we want—there may be something better and deeper and more meaningful in store for us!  Or we might learn to appreciate what we do have in a whole new way.

For The Ruby Notebook, I think the theme involves the complexities of love over time, and the idea that the hard moments are just part of the bigger journey.

For The Jade Notebook, something like: Life is beautiful, but messy, and that’s okay—embrace it all!

 

2nd in the series

What were the challenges (research, literary, psychological, and logistical) in bringing it to life?

Well, the research part is great!  It mostly involves me wandering around gorgeous settings with my antennae up for cool stories.  The Ecuadorian Andes and southern France and coastal Oaxaca are all bits of paradise, if you ask me.  That said, one challenge in writing the second two books was that we’d just adopted our 9-month-old baby (from Guatemala), which was a dream come true… but I was just plopped right in the middle of motherhood. All of a sudden, I had this very active, demanding, (and thoroughly adorable) little guy crawling (and soon toddling) around while I was wondering how on earth I’d meet my tight deadlines for books 2 and 3 of the series.

 

 Working on The Jade Notebook in its setting in Mazunte, Oaxaca, Mexico

If you had to do it all over again, would you change anything about any aspects of the books? 

You know, I’ve learned more about the marketing aspects of the publishing industry over the years.  I think that since most readers are more familiar with (and enamored with!) France than Ecuador, I might have begun the series in southern France, so that a wider audience would’ve initially picked up the book.  And then, I could’ve set the second book in Ecuador, assuming that the readers would continue with the series once they’d gotten into the characters and their world. But of course, there are still hardcore adventurous readers like you, who for one reason or another, felt drawn to the Ecuadorian setting.  (Thank you!)

 

3rd and final in the series

Do you recall how your interest in writing originated?

I absolutely loved having books read to me (mostly by my mom) when I was a little kid.  And once I learned to read, I devoured books on my own (but my mom continued reading to me at  bedtime through middle school.)  As a young kid, I found that I loved writing my own little magical stories.  I’d write them on notebook paper and illustrate them and staple them together.  I got such a huge thrill from the act of creating stories and sharing them.  It made me feel so ALIVE!

Cabana where I stayed in Mazunte, where The Jade Notebook is set

How did you develop the notion of Zeeta's wandering life as part of her background? (Living in a different country every year, etc.)

I taught ESL (English as a Second Language) for two years in Oaxaca, Mexico, and did some traveling around Central America and Mexico at that time.  I had the chance to meet lots of fascinating people who had chosen to live a wandering, nomadic lifestyle, moving to a new country every year or so.  I felt very seduced by this idea—there’s something incredibly stimulating about being in a new culture, speaking a new language… everything feels sparkly and exciting.  Part of me wanted to head to South America next and teach ESL there.  But there was part of me that craved a long-term home and community… a garden, a house, furniture, etc. In the Notebooks series, Zeeta represented the homebody part of me, and Layla the part of me with wanderlust. (I let them duke it out!)

Street performers in Aix-en-Provence, France, who inspired characters in The Ruby Notebook

6. How much of the books you wrote came from your own experiences?

Quite a bit was inspired by real experiences that happened to me or stories people told me.  I love meeting interesting people on my travels and letting them spark new character ideas.  For example, during my research in Aix-en-Provence for The Ruby Notebook, there was an old man who loved pigeons and hung out with them by the fountain, an old woman who watched the activities in the main square from her second floor window, and a dazzling troupe of young musicians and dancers who performed in the streets.

To flesh out the settings, also I make good use of the little detailed observations that I record in my own notebooks as I travel. For example, while in Ecuador, my friend’s mom warned me that their shower would give me an electric shock if I didn’t use a washcloth to turn off the faucet—I stuck detail that into The Indigo Notebook.  There are hundreds of  examples of bits of real-life inspiration for my books—too many to list here! I like to combine real life with a touch of magic and my imagination to create something new.

 The Andes mountains of Ecuador, the setting for The Indigo Notebook

These books are filled with in-depth descriptions of Zeeta's surroundings such as the cafes in the streets of Paris and the beach of Punta Cometa, and really seems to give the reader in insight into the world she is currently experiencing. Were the descriptions based off what you were actually seeing when you visited these places? How did they affect the imagery and vibe you wanted to give off?

Yes! I take lots of photos to get the visuals right, but I also bring my spiral notebooks with me everywhere I travel, and I spend time recording the smells, tastes, sounds, and sensations I’m experiencing.  I really love weaving all the senses into descriptions, and playing with poetic imagery, too. I want to transport my readers to these incredible places, both as a form of blissful escape, and to inspire them to travel.

Would you say Zeeta's personality mirror yours at all?

I do have a lot in common with her, personality-wise.  Obviously, we both carry notebooks around everywhere!  We’re also both fascinated by the people we meet on our travels, and try to glean wisdom from their experiences.  We both find elderly people to be valuable sources of wisdom and stories, and tend to create meaningful bonds with them on our travels.

Aix-en-Provence, France, the setting of The Ruby Notebook

How long did it take you to write each book?

Probably on average, two years… but there was overlap. So, for example, I might have been revising Indigo while doing a rough draft of Ruby while brainstorming ideas for Jade.  (It’s all a blur to me now!)

Out of the three books, The Indigo Notebook, The Ruby Notebook, and the Jade Notebook...which is your favorite. Why?

That’s hard to say.  I think the main characters’ emotional dynamics and relationships were my favorite in Indigo.  I was getting ready to adopt my son as I wrote that book, so a lot of the psychological research I was doing on adoption issues for the book was also relevant to my personal life.  My favorite one in terms of magical elements was probably Ruby, since I was always enchanted by the fountains and springs and ancient history of Aix, even back when I was a college student there.  And as far as the setting where I’d most like to be right now (in the middle of winter), Jade wins on that count!  The Oaxacan coast is paradise to me.

 ***

Speaking of travel, I have some wildly exciting travel coming up soon... and I promise I'll tell you all about when I get back.  Hope you're having a happy winter so far...

Love,

Laura

Interview with Wild Mama Carrie Visintainer!

Hey everyone!

As part of a writer's blog chain, I've chosen to interview my good friend Carrie Visintainer.  We've been friends for over a decade now, and it's been thrilling to watch her writing career and travel passions bloom.  I was lucky enough to read early drafts of her upcoming book, Wild Mama, and I can say you're in for a treat.  It's everything I look for in a memoir-- moving, funny, smart, relatable, and most of all, inspiring! I know so many women (myself included) who have struggled to maintain their identities (of adventurer/traveler/creator/etc) while mothering young kids. Carrie has been a big inspiration to me, personally, as I've watched her navigate this terrain. (Our sons are the same age-- nearly 8 years old now.)  In her debut book, Carrie recounts her own struggles, adventures, and misadventures on her journey to embracing the role of "Wild Mama."

Here's where Carrie did a revision of her manuscript... this treehouse-like place in Yelapa, Mexico, 
where she spends two months of the year with her family in tow!

Here's the official book summary:

Wild Mama

Coming Summer 2015 from Thought Catalog

When Visintainer became a mother at the age of 33, she worried it was all over, that her adventurous life was done. World travel? Adios. Solo explorations in the mountains? Ciao. Creative outlets? She wondered, Are diapers my new white canvas? Immersed in a whirlwind of sleeplessness and spit-up, she was madly in love with her new baby, but also felt her adventurous spirit and core identity crumbling.

So she laced up her boots and set out on a soul-searching journey, with revelations near and far. Inside a local Walmart, she realized that new motherhood is like traveling to a foreign country, with a new vocabulary, unknowable customs and extreme jetlag. Lying in a yurt in the Colorado National Forest, she came to terms with her postpartum depression. While sailing on a gullet off the coast of Turkey, she examined feelings of guilt about leaving her child in pursuit of adventure. And then, while perched in a handsome stranger’s motorcycle sidecar in the Mexican jungle, she found herself face-to-face with her central quandary: Domesticity vs. Wanderlust. Finally she discovered she could—and should—have both.

Here's her little writing shed in the back yard of her old farmhouse at the foothills of the Rockies.  She and her husband worked hard to create this with recycled materials. Check out the antique wood-burning stove in the corner! *Swoon!*

Okay, without further ado, here's Carrie...

1. What are you currently working on?

Right now I'm working on my second book, which is a choose-your-own adventure for new parents called Have Kids, Will Travel. It's a follow-up to my first book, Wild Mama, a travel memoir that's being released in September. I also freelance, so I'm always working on various articles, essays, and blog posts. 

2. How does your work differ from others of its genre? 

Some of my work focuses on solo travel or family travel, which are topics that haven't been written about extensively. 

3. Why do you write what I write?

I do a lot of traveling, from short adventures in the mountains to extended international trips. Sometimes I go solo, and sometimes my husband and young kids join me. When I get out of my routine and comfort zone, I find lots of inspiration, which fuels my various projects.  

Yelapa, Mexico is Carrie's home-away-from-home-- accessible only by boat-- so beautiful! 

And what an amazing (and *inexpensive*) place for the whole family to spend the two worst months of Colorado winter...

4. How does your individual writing process work? 

This depends on the specific project, but I'm at a point where I always have something to work on, so I've become pretty disciplined. Three days a week, I begin writing right away in the morning before I get online, and I put in a couple of hours on my literary projects. Then I transition to freelance projects and internet work. In terms of craft, I tend to work from the outside in, starting with a sketch and then filling in details as I revise. 

I like working in simple, uncluttered spaces. My writing shed in my backyard is ideal, as is the desk I use in remote Mexico for two months each winter. 

***

Me again!  I highly recommend reading some of Carrie's articles to whet your appetite-- you can find links to many of them (from the Huffington Post, Outside, 5280, Fort Collins Magazine, The Coloradoan, and more) on her website. 

Thanks for swinging by!  And I'm always curious to hear about the creative ways that other adventurous parents maintain and develop their own wild spirits while their kids are young. If you want to share your experiences (struggles and triumphs, both), please leave a comment!  You can read about my own experiences traveling solo (while a mom) here and here... and my experiences traveling *with* my precious Lil Dude here and here.

xo,

Laura

Gratitude and Goals

Hi guys,

So it's that time of year, when I take stock of the goals I made twelve months ago, and feel grateful for the ones I managed to complete.

 

I usually set about five creative goals for myself every January, and this year, I'm happy to report that I made four out of five happen.  One of them was to get my trailer back in use... which she finally is (and all decked out for the holidays.)  She's been providing us with nice doses of coziness and delight this fall...

Another goal was to get a contract for The Impossible Caravan... and although this goal was somewhat out of my control (after all, I could just do the best I could and then leave it to my agent and the mysterious workings of the universe), it has been realized!  And I'll tell you, the book has a new name now, which my editor, Andrea Davis Pinkney, and I just decided on last week.  I don't think I can divulge the name yet, since it's not completely official... but stay tuned!

  

Another goal was to sew at least three things with the sewing machine we bought last Christmas.  I sewed a bunch of pillows and bunting for my trailer, along with some easy napkins and Valentine's Day cards for Lil Dude's 25 classmates (which was actually the easiest project of all).

Another goal was to finish a solid draft of a YA speculative fiction manuscript that I'm really excited about.  I finished it up this summer and got some great feedback from writer friends.  I'm planning on delving into a revision soon.

Another goal was to translate Star in the Forest into Spanish... which my dear friend, Gloria Garcia Diaz, and I just finished!  We're just going over the copy-edits now.  This was a labor of love, and I'm so thankful to Gloria for doing such a gorgeous job with it.  We don't have a Spanish language publisher for it yet... but that's a goal for early next year!

And my last goal was to revise what my friends and I lovingly refer to as The %&$!#$ Chocolate Book.  I've been working on it for years now-- it's YA and very intricate and sprawling and just a doozy of a manuscript to deal with...  but I do believe that some incarnation of this book will see the light of day at some point in the future.

As for my goals for this year, I just talked about them with my writing group... and I'll let you know next December which ones I got done!

If you embark on creative adventures of any sort, I encourage you to choose a few straightforward goals for the year, preferably ones that are within your power to achieve.  I print mine out in large font and tape them to my computer monitor so they're staring me in the face every day.  I can't ignore them! And at any given time, I'm forced to assess whether my current activity is bringing me closer to my goals or not...

Thank you, dear reader, for swinging by and for reading my books and making my life that much happier!

May your holidays be wonder-filled and magical...

xo,
Laura

My Sweet Lil Fifties Rig, Reborn!

Hello dearest readers!

 Thank you to everyone who inquires about the health and happiness of my little vintage trailer studio.  A couple years ago she got water damage, poor thing... it was my fault-- I neglected her during a stressful house renovation we were doing.  And then, with new space in our house, I moved my writing studio inside, where it's cooler in summer and warmer in winter, and the desk set-up is more ergonomic for my high-maintenance neck and shoulders. (All the stuff that used to be in the trailer is now inside the studio in my house.)

 

But it pained me to see my sweet little rig sitting out in the driveway abandoned.  So, last year, as a goal for 2014, I wrote that I wanted to get her back in use.  It was quite a process-- everything in the trailer required specialized attention! Last October, I'd serendipitously found April, a vintage trailer specialist, who I wrote about in another post, but she was in high demand, so I had to be patient. 

I found some cool folks at Ace Hardware who were willing to do the unusual re-screening for the door and some windows.  Some more cool folks at Black's Glass custom-made a replacement window for one that was missing.  Some more cool folks at RV Land sealed up all the leaky seams in the aluminum shell and got the brake light wiring in order.  After April repaired the interior wood damage, I repainted the interior (at least the parts that had already been painted-- I left the beautiful birch intact.)

And then my man, Ian, put in new flooring.  He is truly a handy man (he paid his way through college with construction work, tile and linoleum installation work, and "rubber dam bladder" work, but that's another story... oh, and he played with Legos fairly obsessively as a kid, which was a solid foundation for his future handyman endeavors.  We have some of his correspondence with the Lego company, dated 1982, on his office wall, actually.) But I digress! 

So, Ian installed this marmoleum flooring (which is very similar to original, old-fashioned linoleum-- super-soft on your feet, all-natural, made with real linseed oil and natural fibers.) We had scraps left over from our house's kitchen and bathroom flooring-- "relaxing lagoon" is the color's name.  We pieced it together and barely had enough to cover the tiny floor plan, but it worked!  This stuff is notoriously hard to work with, even on straightforward jobs in large spaces in houses.... and Ian was working with this teeny, odd floor plan inside my trailer.  But it turned out incredible!  I love it so much (and Ian so much).

So let's see, then I put some wallpaper swatches on the fridge and pipe (from Spoonflower, which has quirky, artsy, indie designs in wallpaper and fabric).  I sewed some bunting and pillows, and gathered up some old quilts from my grandmother.  I cut curtains from vintage tea towels and tablecloths that I'd collected from flea markets over the years.  I found a couple 1950s and 60s sconce lights on Etsy that we hung on the walls. Ian did some wiring to make them work (and still has a little more wiring to do.) 

 There were already narrow black racking stripe decals on the exterior, but they were peeling off.  We put on a new turquoise stripe on one side, and plan to put one on the other side, too.  I'm going to string those old pink lights on the outside for the holidays and make it look festive. 

 

This side still needs some razzamatazz!

 

 I also have some more decorating things I want to do here and there... which will be an ongoing project.

 

 The trailer's new life is our family's tech-free creative space.  Lil Dude and I read books together on the bed at night, and it is SO INSANELY COZY!  Sometimes we eat family dinners at the trailer table and then for dessert, have marshmallows roasted over the little fire pit in our back yard.  And I'm starting to invite friends over for tea and book-conversing.  (Writer friend Todd Mitchell just came over to my trailer the other day, and we talked about his amazing new work-in-progress.)

We're also going to use it for art projects... we're now on a junk-robot kick, and have just spray-painted 25 Altoid tins (from our stash of, like, 100, in the basement.)  Soon they will be re-birthed as robots (inspired by good wabi-sabi friend Les Sunde, who I wrote about here)... I'll do a post on our robots soon.

And I'm getting ready to go over copy-edits for The Impossible Caravan in here... which is fitting, since English-speakers outside the US usually refer to camper-trailers as "caravans." :-)

Would you like to see some icky before pictures?  Brace yourself!

 If you haven't yet seen pics of the before-before pics, meaning how it looked when it was my full-time writing studio, before the water damage, there's a tour here.  I wrote several of my books in this set-up:  Star in the Forest, The Indigo Notebook, and The Ruby Notebook.  Here's what it used to look like:

I hope you enjoyed seeing these trailer transformations!  In a future post, I'll show you nighttime pics of our bedtime story reading so you can experience the INSANE COZINESS for yourself!  Also, I'm deciding on my sweet lil rig's official name... so once I decide and put the decal on the side, I'll share it with you.

xo,
Laura