Shelley Workinger's Blog, page 33

Happy 4-Year Blogiversary to BWATE?!

So happy on this Friday the 13th to celebrate another year of delicious reads!

This year I dug into:

The Here and Now – Ann Brashares
Enclave – Ann Aguirre
Divergent – Veronica Roth
Jinx – Sage Blackwood
The Night Circus – Erin Morgenstern

Much More:
http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/03/...

Please Welcome Katrina Cope, Author of The Sanctum Series

When you have a group of street kids rescued from the streets, how do you fill their starving stomachs — with a bowl of slop and a slice of bread? Maybe if you were a soup kitchen on a very limited budget, but Avando, a rich grandfather figure, rescued these kids and bad food is not an option.

These kids are not in for a free ride. In between spying, building high-tech equipment and operating surrogate robots, they are expected to learn basic survival and chores. He has them taught to grow their own food at his eco-friendly boarding school camouflaged in the mountains. This produce is then cooked up by the students under the watchful eyes of Ms. Helen, the cook for this mysterious place.

More:

http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/03/...

Please Welcome Diane Dunning, Author of Greta Smart Figures It Out

There’s a whole lot of eating and drinking in my contemporary-romance novel, Greta Smart Figures It Out.
The story opens inside a Manhattan restaurant, where the main character, Greta, finds herself being served this morsel while on a nightmare blind date:
“You’re not beautiful,” he said. “Your profile said ‘beautiful.’ You kind of overreached on that one.” He smirked and sipped his dirty martini.

Most women would lose their appetites at this point, flip the table and stuff the guy into the nearest buffet drawer before storming out.

More:

http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/02/...

Please Welcome Grier Cooper, Author of WISH

Say the words “ballet dancer” and most people think one of two things: either “What do I have to do to look like that?” or “Aren't all ballet dancers anorexic?” The truth is the body is a dancer's most important tool–their livelihood depends on it–so every dancer works to keep that instrument finely-tuned and healthy. When I wrote WISH, I wanted to share the world of ballet and the sort of decisions dancers face, particularly when it comes to taking care of themselves and staying at the top of their game. For instance, my main character, Indigo, has to say no to bagels (even though all of her friends are devouring them in front of her) because she has an audition coming up. While it's true that there is an expectation for dancers to stay thin they have to eat because ballet is physically demanding–so demanding that headliner Steve McLendon of the Pittsburgh Steelers says, “ballet is harder than anything else I do.”

More:
http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/02/...

Please Welcome Stephen Douglass, Author of Kerri's War

Many thanks to Shelley Workinger for inviting me to contribute a post in connection with my novel, Kerri’s War, to her wonderful blog: But What are They Eating? I was honored and thrilled that she had given me an opportunity to expose Volume Three of The King Trilogy to readers in a very unique fashion. I accepted the invitation without hesitation.

Even though my post would chronicle an event close to the end of the third volume of an epic trilogy, the invitation still struck me as a fascinating idea. “Everybody eats,” I said to myself. “Surely it must follow that readers would be interested in what the main characters of their chosen novels are eating,” I further concluded that Shelley was way ahead of the curve when she initiated her blog. Clearly, she was thinking outside the box. Her timing was perfect. I had just finished reading an historical fiction novel, set in the sixteenth century, in which the Spanish conquistadors, determined to relieve the Central American natives of their gold, were perpetually preoccupied with finding sufficient food to remain alive. There were no grocery stores or restaurants, conveniences we take for granted today.

More:

http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/02/...

Please Welcome Joshua Done, Author of The Exile Empire

A few days ago I received a pleasant surprise in the form of a Goodreads message from Shelley. She wanted to know if I would be willing to talk about the food in my story and the significance and story behind it. Immediately I thought of one meal that stands out in The Exile Empire. It took an invasion, thousands of lives, and the formation of an entirely new economy for the new recipe to exist.

One of the primary components in The Exile Empire is obviously the fact that humans have been dispersed from their old area of space. The problem with such diaspora in the vastness of interstellar space filled with hostile enemies is the relative lack of resources, and chief among them food! This had become more than an inconvenience by the time the major events of the story began to unfold and the human exiles were getting quite desperate.

More:
http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/01/...

FOODFIC Look at Dust Girl

Callie LeRoux knows dust. And that’s about it, really, since everything she thought she knew just blew away like, well, dust. In a dust storm. That’s literal, by the way.

You see, this “dust girl” of Dust-Bowl era Kansas lives with her mother in the Imperial Hotel which her grandparents started back when there were people passing through and money to be made. The “black blizzards” and the Depression have driven away both, as well as all but a handful of townsfolk. Really, the doctor should’ve taken the town sign with him as he pulled out hours before the story-changing storm blew in.

So, in the pre-storm hours of that fateful day in April, Callie knew 3 things:


More:
http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/01/...

Please Welcome Michael Draper, Author of Three Strikes and You're Dead

Restaurants and food have an important part in Three Strikes and You're Dead. I believe that a good book should appeal to the various senses – to see, as in well prepared food; to smell, where the aroma of food gets the stomach juiced flowing; and to taste, which is the icing on the food palate.

More:

http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/01/...

Please Welcome Cindy Cromer, Author of Desperate Deceptions

I had quite a bit of fun preparing for this post, especially since cooking isn't my forte. My favorite recipes are nuke it, deliver it, or drive through. I don't enjoy cooking but do feed my characters very well. In my first mystery/suspense novel Desperate Measures, the main characters dined on lobster in the Caribbean Island of St. Kitts. Oops! There was a meal none of the characters should have ingested and I promise I didn't cook it! One delectable seafood dish had become poisoned by the unknown villain on a rampage of destruction and revenge.

More:

http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/01/...

Please Welcome Amy Grech, Author of Blanket of White

Food and drink play a pivotal role in several of the 14 dark tales contained within my collection, Blanket of White:

In the title story, husband and wife drink coffee in their kitchen, wrapping their hands around the mugs for comfort, as they discuss their wheelchair-bound daughter Suzy; there are snow angels in her future…

“Raven’s Revenge”: Steaming mugs of hot chocolate warm up Jackie Crawford and her boyfriend, Jeff Dutton, on a bone-chilling winter’s night.

“Perishables”: After a nuclear attack, Placido Sanchez sits hunkered down in his basement surrounded by empty, dented cans of baked beans. He eats his wife Julia’s remains, flawlessly persevered in a walk-in freezer. His wife's thighs contained the sweetest meat he ever tasted.

More:
http://bookfare.blogspot.com/2015/01/...