Shelley Workinger's Blog, page 25

Please Welcome Laurie Lewis, Author of Dark Sky at Dawn

Thanks for inviting me to share some of my culinary insights from research on my Free Men and Dreamers books. I popped into a gift shop in Williamsburg, Virginia in the early days of work on book one, Dark Sky at Dawn, and picked up a copy of a small, but priceless cookbook titled simply, The Williamsburg Cookbook. It was filled with primarily British recipes, most of which involved the ingredients of their day—cream, butter, meat and potatoes. Journal entries from actual colonial and pre-Civil War women helped me carve out the menus and beverages in DSAD and the other books in the series. These journals made it apparent that the planning, growing, harvesting, and preparing of food was a grueling, never-ending labor. I had a scene where the characters prepared chickens for cooking. Imagine chasing, catching, killing, draining, gutting, plucking, and burning off the pin-feathers of a bird, before you can even begin your recipe. Perfectly seasoned fried chicken is my weakness, and I’ll never take a fried chicken platter for granted again!

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/11...

Please Welcome Massimo Marino, Author of Daimones

When you’re confronted with the Apocalypse, food is a primary concern for the survivors. In the case of the Daimones Trilogy things are simpler and more complex at the same time.

The world changes abruptly for Dan Amenta and his family of wife Mary and daughter Annah. One day, they discover everything they gave for granted is no more. Not a nuclear catastrophe, something unimaginable has happened, and something nothing could have ever prepared them to deal with.

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Please Welcome Mark David Major, Author of The Persistence of Memory

Famine and Feast

My characters in The Persistence of Memory and Other Plays are gluttons for hypocrisy, arrogance, self-righteousness, and moral indignation; the last being “jealousy with a halo” according to H.G. Wells. Most everywhere, this nutrition is typical fare for youth. Most of these characters are young and live in a world of stark contrasts. They only see extremes: love/hate, want/need, poor/rich, self/other, insider/outsider, and so on. My characters suffer from an abundance of self-awareness about how alone they are in the world. They are indignant about this loneliness. Of course, wisdom comes with age. The stark black and white views of youth evolve into the vivid colors of age and experience, if we are fortunate enough to survive the preliminaries. Better sustenance would benefit my characters. Living is a feast of humility. It nurtures honesty, integrity, and wisdom in the best of us. The worst of us fail to learn, trapped in a vicious cycle to ‘rise and repeat’ until the final curtain.

Of course, people cannot subsist on emotions alone...

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https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/11...

Halloween FOODFIC!

Happy Spooky Book Season, Hungry Readers!

Instead of just filling you up with the details of what I've devoured this delicious month, I've decided to give you a menu from which you can make your own selections.

I can't tell you what foods you will encounter in each title, but rest assured that in every one of these works of horror, someone is eating...or being eaten. ;)

Feel free to add any tasting notes below! Shelley W.

TOP 10 HORROR BOOKS OF 2016*

1. Children of the Dark, Jonathan Janz
2. The Consultant, Bentley Little
3. The Doll-Master, Joyce Carol Oates

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https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/10...

Please Welcome Shannon Lawrence, Author of The Blue Mist

A retired miner living in the mountains, my character from The Blue Mist, Jim, isn't a connoisseur of fine foods. While there is no focus on food in the actual story—though Jim does toss back some whiskey when things get tough—one can hazard a guess as to what he might have eaten (when cleaning up after the mist didn't put him off his food, that is).

The Blue Mist is set in Rocky Mountain National Park, nestled in the Rocky Mountains and adjacent to Estes Park, Colorado. Jim is a holdover from the days of mining, settled in the park to get away from people. Locals don't believe that something is eating campers, no matter how vociferous Jim is, so they view him as a crazy man, referring to him as Prospector Jim.

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https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/10...

Please Welcome Tracey Lyons, Author of The Wedding Toast

Recovery takes on new meaning in my short novella, The Wedding Toast, when the Rose Chalet, wine, and weddings are in the picture. Heather Bowman finds herself in romantic San Francisco on an assignment that suddenly involves more than nursing. From the moment Heather sips the first glass of Denafrio estate wine she knows her palate and her life will never be the same again. The electricity of true love is sending currents through the air from the lush vineyards of Napa to the storied California Coast.

More:

https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/10...

Please Welcome J.E. Lowder, Author of War of Whispers

I love this idea! What a fun, creative and exciting way to talk about our books and characters! So let’s get going!

When I was in the early stages creating my War of Whispers fantasy series, I had to decide how much world building to delve into. Did I want to create a fantasy rich in detail (like GRR Martin) or something like The Hunger Games? I found (IMHO) a happy median and focused on topics that interested me. I’d much rather watch a cooking show than a political exposé on CNN, so food and dining ousted political/economic backstory. Plus, a meal (or lack thereof) will tell you more about a country or a character’s economic situation than a discourse on finances.

The next hurdle was this: what would my heroine, Elabea (pronounced “Ella-bay”) eat in her dystopian, medieval-like world?

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https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/10...

Please Welcome Neil Low, Author of Theater of the Crime

During the course of writing novels, I come to places in my stories where I need to share information with readers, adding historical background, context, character development, plotting details, and clues. The problem, I feel, is that the information should be revealed gradually, and it must also move the story along and help my readers solve the mystery before them. The caveat is that these new facts can’t be delivered in the form of an information dump, which might have odd sounding dialogue or appear as an unnatural topic of conversation.

As an example, all too often, when I’m watching a detective movie, I’ll see a protagonist and his secret informant meet inside a strip bar to share information, which strikes me as an overworked cliché—and in real life would be dangerous for the snitch...

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https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/09...

Please Welcome Russell James, Author of Q Island

Aiden Bailey has shredded wheat squares for breakfast. Every breakfast. At the same time each morning, the exact same amount, arranged the same way in his bowl. It’s part of what his mother Melanie calls the Routine. Aiden needs the Routine.

Aiden has autism, and is pretty far out on the spectrum, with severe communication issues. Having a rigid structure to his day gives him an anchor in the world, and that anchor gives him the internal peace to function.

But the outbreak of the paleovirus on Long Island, New York destroys his routines, and everyone else’s...

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https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/09...

FOODFIC Look at CHARMFALL

Charmfall finds 15-year-old Lily Parker picking through the pile in [her] palm, eating the raisins and the other dried fruit first to get them out of the way before moving on to the nuts and – last but not least – chocolate chips. As she says: There may not be an order to the world, but there was definitely an order to trail mix.

But her sentiment’s not quite accurate – her world does have an order. No, not the St. Sophia’s School for Girls in Chicago world; that one has classes and schedules, sure, but the social game there is a minefield of unmarked safezones and bombs that de- and re-activate at will. Oh, wait – that’s all high schools, actually.

Anyway, I think Lily was referring to her other world – the newly-discovered magical realm that she’s trying to navigate between trig quizzes. And that world definitely has an order.

More:
https://bookfare.blogspot.com/2016/09...