Robbie Cheadle's Blog, page 58

A BOOKISH ANNOUNCEMENT! DEATH AMONG US: WHEN, WHY AND HOW

Death Among Us: An Anthology of Murder Mystery Short Stories by Stephen Bentley, Greg Alldredge, Kelly Artieri, Brenda Mohammed, L. Lee Kane, Michael Spinelli, Sansriti Johri, Robbie Cheadle, Kay Castaneda, Justin Bauer, Aly Locatelli
Published by Hendry Publishing on July 7, 2019 
Pages: 220 
Goodreads

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Who knew death could be so eclectic? Relish this mesmerizing murder mystery mash-up of short stories.

The stories include the 2019 SIA Award-Winning Murder Mystery Short Story ‘The Rose Slayer.’

Murder and mystery have been the staple of literature and films for years. This anthology of short stories will thrill and entertain you. Some will also make you laugh out loud. Others will stop and make you think.

Think of this murder mystery short story anthology as a book version of appetizers or starters, hors d’oeuvre, meze, or antipasti. It can be read as fillers between books or, as is the case in some countries, as a bookish meze – in its own right.

These stories come from an international cast of authors; some with bestselling books, others are emerging or new talents. Their roots, cultures, and life experiences are as diverse as their writing styles.

But one thing binds them together: they know how to tell a story.

There’s murder mystery styles and locations to suit all tastes: detective fiction, serial killers, scifi, histfic, Paris, LA, England, the Caribbean, The Great Lakes, and more in an exquisite exposition of the art of short story telling.

The eleven authors who have contributed to the anthology are:

Stephen BentleyGreg AlldredgeKelly ArtieriBrenda MohammedL. Lee KaneMichael SpinelliSansriti JohriRobbie CheadleKay CastanedaJustin BauerAly Locatelli

Each author introduces his or her stories and the theme that lies behind them.By the time you finish the book, you will agree the result is a mesmerizing murder mystery mash-up.

Get it now.

Wonderlings! You may or may not have heard the super exciting, dream-making, soul-filling news that my short story THE NEIGHBOURS is being published in a fantastic murder mystery anthology!

*pterodactyl screech*

Carry on reading here:
https://ofwonderland.com/2019/05/02/a-bookish-announcement-death-among-us-when-why-and-how/

Indie Author Interview – Robbie Cheadle

South African-born author Robbie Cheadle started writing books to encourage her son with reading and writing, but her journey as an author has moved from cookbooks to horror…

What inspired the Sir Chocolate and Lady Sweet books?

Chocolate Land and all the characters that live there were the brain child of my son, Michael. He was six years old when he came up with this idea as part of an initiative by me to get him to practice his reading and writing. Michael has an auditory processing learning barrier, so it was more difficult to teach him these skills than for my older son, Gregory.

Michael has a vivid imagination and thought the idea of a little man who lived in a world where you could eat everything and who had lots of fun adventures helping his friends with their problems was wonderful. Together we made up the rhyming verse stories and Michael wrote them out into books. Initially, Michael illustrated the books himself but then we had the idea of making the figurines and characters from fondant which is a hobby of mine. Both my boys were keen to join in fondant making at that time and so the Sir Chocolate picture books were born.

I always baked with my boys and with my nephews and nieces and they enjoyed the fondant making, story and baking activities so much that I decided to roll them all up together into the book series and make it a first story and cookbook.

I also have a website with a blog where I share recipes and bits and pieces of information about my children’s books called BakeandWrite as well as another blog, robbiesinspiration, where I share posts about what is happening in my life, flash fiction, poetry and book reviews.

Read the rest of this post here:
https://colingarrow.org/2019/03/23/indie-author-interview-robbie-cheadle/

Have children? Here are two great books

Jacqui Murray is the author of some terrific books, including two pre-historical novels. She is also the author/editor of over a hundred books on integrating tech into education, adjunct professor of technology in education, an Amazon Vine Voice, a columnist for TeachHUB and NEA Today, and a freelance journalist on tech ed topics.  You can learn more about Jacqui Murray and read her reviews and other interesting articles on reading and writing here:
https://worddreams.wordpress.com/

Jacqui has written a lovely post about two children’s books, Amazing Matilda and Michael and my new children’s book, Sir Chocolate and the Fondant Five story and cookbook. Thank you Jacqui, for sharing your thoughts on these two books.

I’m always looking for children’s books for my students and friends. I’m excited to say I’ve found two I think you’ll like:

Amazing Matilda  — A coming of age of a monarch butterfly; delightful Sir Chocolate and the Fondant Five story and cookbook







Amazing Matilda

by Bette Stevens

5/5

Bette Stevens Amazing Matilda: The Tale of a Monarch Butterfly (CreateSpace 2012) is the story of tiny Matilda, a round white creature born from an egg in Nature’s garden with a burning desire to fly.  Without wings, though, she knows that can’t happen. Matilda has no idea that in her life, she will morph from the crawly leaf-bound creature to a gorgeous monarch butterfly. She tells her animal friends about her passion to fly and they offer their stories of growing up as well as sage advice any parent would be envious of. For example, her friend Sparrow suggests:“Just have patience and follow your instincts, my dear…” 

Another friend suggests:“I could do anything that I wanted to if I only tried long enough and hard enough.”

She is frustrated by this good-natured advice because she has no idea how to do what they suggest:

“Sparrow said that I must have patience and that I must follow my instincts. Now, you say I must have wings. Where can I find all of those things?”

As Matilda grows, she changes from a larva to pupa to a gorgeous winged adult. Each stage in Matilda’s amazing journey is accompanied with wonderful drawings that show her progress, who she meets, and how she changes.

As a result, readers are not just entertained by the story but happily learn about the development of a butterfly. There are lots of cute lines, such as:

“Matilda crunched and munched and lunched, leaf after leaf, day after day.”

If you loved P.D. Eastman’s incomparable book, Are You My Mother, about a baby bird’s search for its mother, you must read this book. If Charlotte’s Web is one of your childhood favorites, I say, Move over Charlotte. Matilda is now here!

This is a short book. In fact. This review is almost longer than the story!

Sir Chocolate and the Fondant Five story and cookbook

by Robbie Cheadle

5/5

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Robbie Cheadle’s Sir Chocolate and the Fondant Five story and cookbook (2019) is the next in the author’s delightful series of books that blend children’s stories with themed original recipes. This one is a clever story poem about the disappearance of zoo animals and how Sir Chocolate must figure out what happened.

“One day Sir Chocolate arrived, and not a sound could hear, he called long and loud, but no animals did appear. The animals had vanished, the zoo was empty and still,”

“The monkey is naughty, he likes to have fun, he plays tricks on the others, then away he does run.”

You can read the rest of this post and see more pictures here:
https://worddreams.wordpress.com/2019/04/19/children-books/

How reading encourages diverse thinking

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We all want our children to grow up to an environment free from bias and discrimination. We want them to have opportunities to achieve their dreams and to believe they can accomplish anything. We also want our children to feel included and loved in all situations, from school, to home to religious institutions.

The best way to achieve this is to weave diversity into the fabric of our children’s lives. We can do this in many ways, one of which is by providing our children with a selection of multicultural books which allow them to imagine experiencing life in a different way and from a different perspective.

When you read multicultural books you are transported to a different culture and are exposed to new ideas about housing, food, schooling, transport and religion. I always remember when I read the books written by Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë as a teenage girl. These books were my first real exposure to the poor treatment of children and women during the Victoria era. I was horrified by the terrible conditions the orphaned girls experienced at Lowood School and the terrible illnesses that ravaged the learners. Later on in my life I read books about the lives of several female Victorian writers and I came to realise just how restricted their lives were. Female’s were not considered to have the intelligence or seriousness necessary to write novels. My own mother experienced discrimination as a young girl when her father refused to buy her a school uniform when she won a scholarship to attend a local grammar school. He didn’t believe in educating girls.

Read the rest of this post here:
https://kayelynnebooth.wordpress.com/2019/04/10/how-reading-encourages-diverse-thinking/?fbclid=IwAR0jH-kxOwzaD1_BKZ-Sjpv4bPVelVKpcWvCkEzROKH74b9j2YZeZ08m554

#Newreview – Sir Chocolate and the Fondant Five

Thank you to Jacqui Murray from Vine Voice for her wonderful review of Sir Chocolate and the Fondant Five story and cookbook.

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THE PROCESS OF WRITING A HISTORICAL BOOK BY ROBBIE CHEADLE

Thank you Jennifer S Alderson for inviting me over to your lovely blog to talk about how I approached writing a historical book for children.

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I am happy to welcome author Robbie Cheadle back to my blog. She’s here to talk about her foray into historical fiction writing. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t as ‘easy’ as she’d expected! Take a moment to read about Robbie’s fascinating process of turning her mother’s earliest memories into a captivating memoir.

The process of writing a historical book

When I embarked on the journey of turning my mom’s early years into a book, I didn’t have a plan. She had told my siblings and me all sorts of tales about her early life while we were growing up and it seemed a simple thing to get her to jot down her memories and for me to turn them into a continuous story about her childhood. My mother grew up during WWII but that didn’t faze me at all. Even though I knew she was only seven years old when the war ended, it didn’t occur to me how much research would be required to get her story to hang together in a believable and factually accurate way.

We started off with her writing down her memories of various events during her life and I typed them up into a fictionalized account of her reality. Already, research was required. I had to learn an awful lot about everyday events during the period 1939 to 1945 such as what kind of swimming costumes were available during the war, what food could be grown and bought, how did the rationing of food work in practice, how did a dairy farmer sterilize the milk bottles and how was milk delivered. My mom could remember all sorts of oddments of information about her life and family, but this sort of detail was not available from her memories. Another issue I encountered early on during our writing process was the fact that my mom did not necessarily have her memories in order or in the correct timeframes.

You can read the rest of this post here:
http://jennifersalderson.com/2019/04/02/the-process-of-writing-a-historical-book-by-robbie-cheadle/?fbclid=IwAR2wR0IJ8HztDbZ0enb2NUlO3QY_Bhn2zYIqWYdbubZpmJp0Na2-cgopxbI

Sir Chocolate visits Smorgasbord blog magazine

Sally’s Cafe and Bookstore – New Book on the Shelves – #Children’s – Sir Chocolate and the Fondant Five Story and Cookbook by Robbie and Michael Cheadle.

Delighted to showcase the 6th book in the Sir Chocolate series of stories and cookbooks by Robbie and Michael Cheadle.

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About the story

Number 6 in the Sir Chocolate series: Five zoo animals go missing and Sir Chocolate needs to find them. Includes five lovely new recipes. Not only a storybook but a wonderful opportunity for parents and children to create wonderful recipes together.

Head over and buy the book: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PVKZ851

And on Amazon UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Chocolate-Fondant-Five-Story-Cookbook-ebook/dp/B07PVKZ851

Read the rest of this post here:
https://smorgasbordinvitation.wordpress.com/2019/03/30/sallys-cafe-and-bookstore-new-book-on-the-shelves-childrens-sir-chocolate-and-the-fondant-five-story-and-cookbook-by-robbie-and-michael-cheadle/

German spice loaf

I had a lovely long weekend. Thursday was a public holiday in South Africa and I only worked half day on Friday. This gave the boys and I plenty of time for baking.

My mother asked me to make her a German spice loaf for our family tea on Sunday. We were happy to oblige. This delicious and spicy cake is best served sliced and spread with a bit of butter.

Ingredients

2 cups self raising flour, 160 ml castor sugar, 160 ml golden syrup, 125 grams butter, 80 ml boiling water, 1 egg, 150 ml thick yogurt, 5 ml ground cinnamon, 5 ml ground ginger, 3 ml ground cloves, 3 ml ground nutmeg, 3 ml ground black pepper.

Method

Preheat the oven to 180 degrees Celsius. Grease a loaf tin.

Add all the dry ingredients to a large mixing bowl. Heat butter, syrup and water together in a pot until melted. Beat egg and yogurt in a small bowl. Add the syrup mixture to the dry ingredients and mix. Add the egg and yogurt mixture. Mix thoroughly.

Scoop this thick mixture into the loaf tin and bake for between 35 and 40 minutes or until a cake tester comes out clean.

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The Fondant Five on #Lisa Burton Radio

Don’t touch that dial! You’ve landed on Lisa Burton Radio, the only show that brings you characters from the books you love. Today might be one of the sweetest shows we’ve ever had, and I mean that literally. “Please give a warm welcome to my special guest, the fondant lion.”

“Thank you, Lisa, I am so happy to be here, I feel a roar coming on. RRRROOOOAAAARRRR!”

“I know you are famous for your thick mane. Is it thicker because you live in the zoo?”

“Yes, that is likely. I don’t live in just any zoo, I live in the Chocolate Land zoo and it is a special place. All the fondant animals that live here are very happy and we receive excellent care from Sir Chocolate and his helpers. One of our favourite meals is Sir Chocolate’s famous custard. He makes it for us in an enormous pot. I can assure you it does not last long once it is made.

“I have lots of friends in the zoo and they treat me with respect. I am the King of the Jungle in the wild and the animals here all recognize that and let me take the lead on decisions regarding the zoo. I am better off than my brother who lives in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. He doesn’t always get as well fed as I do and sometimes, he has to fight other animals to defend his pride of fifteen other lions. It can be a hard life living in the wild especially when there are wild fires or droughts that destroy the vegetation. Finding food and water can be difficult at those times.

You can continue reading this interview here: https://coldhandboyack.wordpress.com/2019/03/14/the-fondant-five-on-lisaburtonradio/

#Newreviews – Sir Chocolate and the Sugar Crystal Cave story and cookbook

Two lovely new reviews for Sir Chocolate and the Sugar Crystal Caves story and cookbook

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