Shelley Workinger's Blog, page 14

Please Welcome Back Laurie Boris, Author of The Kitchen Brigade

If You Can’t Stand the Heat, Get Out of the Kitchen

Survival during wartime means doing without, but those who endure discover how to get what they need. For most of the characters in my dystopian novel The Kitchen Brigade, this revolves around food. Food is love. Food is culture. Food is community. For this group of women who have made cuisine their passion and their livelihoods, food is everything.

When we first meet Valerie, a former culinary student, she’s cooking with whatever she can scrounge in the mess hall of a refugee camp.

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/05...

Please Welcome Adam Barnett, Author of The Judas Goat

The Judas Goat: Guns and Sausage Gravy

I am really good at arguing with myself.  And I lose arguments with myself.  All the time.  When I’m thinking about a problem, I am my own irresistible force and immovable object all at once.

As an attorney, it has come in handy over the years.  I know the weaknesses in my case before I ever set foot in the courtroom.  I know what the other side is going to say, so I say it first.  I control the weakness.  I put it on display.  And because I’m prepared, I can explain with confidence exactly why that weakness simply does not matter.

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/05...

Please Welcome Barbara Scoblic, Author of Lost Without the River

Did you include the recipe for our mother’s Fruit Salad? One brother asks me. Her Baked Pheasant? Another brother chimes in. Her Strawberry Shortcake? That’s my sister.
No, no, and no. Sorry, guys.

Although food is at the heart of my memoir, Lost Without the River, I didn’t want it to be a cookbook. I didn’t want to tell how to prepare the food, but rather how it came to be on our table...

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/04...

Please Welcome Sweta Vikram, Author of Louisiana Catch

What’s in your multi-cultural plate?

Louisiana Catch traverses through three distinct places—New Delhi, New York, and New Orleans—revealing the foodie nooks and crannies in each city. The female protagonist in Louisiana Catch, Ahana, is a tea-drinking, pinot-noir-sipping health nut from New Delhi who is also a feminist and a foodie. While Ahana’s favorite Indian food is kebabsand chicken biryaniwith raita, a cucumber yogurt salad garnished with crushed mint; she equally enjoys a Cajun spread of shrimp po’boys, andouille gumbo, shrimp étouffée, jambalaya, and the overall Southern hospitality.Ahana hates to cook and is a specific person. She enjoys her green juice and green smoothies and yoga and running just as much as she appreciates a good French pinot.

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/04...

Please Welcome Janna Wong Healy, Author of Let's Get Lost

As all residents of Los Angeles know, there is no shortage of good food in our busy urban city.  If you’re a foodie and want four-star dining, it’s available at a high price (along with a hefty valet parking fee).  If you’re a food truck aficionado, there are nights in Venice and daily on campuses across the city where food trucks sit and wait for those who can’t live without their fusion bowls.  If you’re a fast food junkie, just take a drive down any street and you’ll be able to get whatever fat-filled burger you want (including an actual Fatburger!).

So, what does Libby, the heroine in my novel Let’s Get Lost, do in the opening scene?

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/04...

Happy 8-Year Blogiversary to Bookfare!

Another year, another list of delicious reads!

These fabulous authors stopped by to share their food for thought:

Laurie Boris
The Call: A Baseball Novel

Nick Cook
Cloud Riders

Richard Gazala
Blood of the Moon

Dana Griffin
Coerced

Connie Johnson Hambley
The Charity

Karen Ann Hopkins
Embers

Brooklyn James
Jolie Blonde

Nancy Lynn Jarvis
The Two-Faced Triplex: A Regan McHenry Real Esteate Mystery

Beverley Jones
Where She Went

Beth Kander
Original Syn

David J. Kirk
Stone Signs

Gwen Mayo
Strangely Funny

Alan McDermott
Run and Hide

Christopher Minori
Little Idiots

Rose Montague
Jade

Bobby Nash
85 North

Mark Noce
Between Two Fires

David Pedersen
Clod Makes a Friend

Katherine Roberts
Bone Music: The Legend of Genghis Khan

Deanna Lynn Sletten
Miss Etta: A Novel

Clayton Smith
Apocalypticon

Karen Rose Smith
Murder with Cinnamon Scones

Barbara Stark-Nemon
Hard Cider

Sheryl Steines
Black Market

Lori Ann Stephens
Some Act of Vision

Gabi Stevens
The Wish List

Jolene Stockman
The Jelly Bean Crisis

Mary Strand
Livin' La Vida Bennet

Mary Elizabeth Summer
Trust Me, I'm Lying

Ann Swann
Stutter Creek

Ashley Sweeney
Eliza Waite

John FD Taff
Little Black Spots

Cyndi Tefft
Between

Derek Thompson
STANDPOINT

Gayle Trent
Killer Wedding Cake

Gabriel Valjan
The Company Files: The Good Man

Francesca Varela
The Seas of Distant Stars

Ottilie Weber
Family Ties

S.K. Whiteside
Inheritance

Pam Workman
Tattooed Teardrops

Grace Wynne-Jones
The Truth Club

Vincent Zandri
Sins of the Sons: A Gripping Hard-Boiled Mystery


And I chewed up:

Chris Grabenstein
Tilt-a-Whirl

Jessica Knoll
Luckiest Girl Alive

Bonnye Stuart
Discovering Vintage New Orleans: A Guide to the City's Timeless Shops, Bars, Hotels & More


More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/04...

Please Welcome David J. Pedersen, Author of Clod Makes a Friend

This was the 25th year my wife and I have hosted Christmas dinner for family and friends. My wife does all of the cooking, I do a lot of cleaning and even more eating. Our tiny house is filled with delicious smells of her dry-aged roast and a pumpkin dessert with yellow cake topping that has been dubbed “David’s dessert.” I always get a gentle hand-slap for trying to sneak away with it. That dinner is full of great memories.

Food is an incredible tool for writers that readers can relate to. If you've read any of my novels, you probably wonder if I have an obsession for cake...

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/03...

Please Welcome S.K. Whiteside, Author of Inheritance

New Orleans has beautiful architecture (albeit, complicated street names) and a rich (yet haunted) history…both key reasons why I chose to make home as the setting for my Inheritance series and its surrounding world. But New Orleans wouldn’t be the mecca that is without the staple of its food. 

Delicious Cajun and creole food. If you are a health nut, New Orleans is not the place for you. New Orleans food is savory, rich, decadent, and smothered with things like sugar, liquor, sauces and gravies.

  
While many of my characters aren’t really pressed to eat the local cuisine (they prefer more metallic tasting nourishments), characters like Malachi engulfs it. A fallen angel, Malachi is not very sociable and can be a bit snarky as a means to keep others from getting too close. He made New Orleans his home over fifty years ago because it was the perfect place where he could be himself unabashed and be alone without anyone noticing him, or the fact that sometimes he talks to dead people. What he didn’t anticipate was falling in love with the city and even more so, the food. He prefers all things sweet and decadent (Bananas foster, Bread pudding and rum sauce, pecan candy) but his favorite?

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/03...

Please Welcome Grace Wynne-Jones, Author of The Truth Club

The Truth Club is not the kind of book where people go to lots of expensive restaurants or spiralise zucchini, they are far more preoccupied with trying to sort out their personal lives, which is why comfort food is frequently mentioned.

Sally Adams, the main character, is a journalist and likes munching a biscuit, especially if it is covered in chocolate.  Some months after a rather grand wedding she has left her husband, Diarmuid, because their views of love and marriage seem so different...

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/03...

Please Welcome P.D. Workman, Author of Tattooed Teardrops

When Shelley invited me to guest post on her blog about Tattooed Teardrops, I told her that the book didn’t really mention much about food, and perhaps one of my other books would be a better choice. On sitting down and reviewing it, however, I identified a total of 23 scenes in which the characters were eating. No, not very many mentions of food at all…

Although some of the later scenes may be a little more unusual (such as a public fight in a mall food court, the armed robbery of a convenience store for munchies, or feeding a portion of a cranberry-orange muffin to a kidnapped dog,) I wanted to pick an early scene to introduce the book to you.

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2019/02...