Judith Post's Blog, page 8

Money No Object

My sister, HH, and I went on a guided tour of the Bass House on Saturday as part of the holiday festivities. The Bass brothers started a business making wheels for trains and buggies, etc. in Fort Wayne in the late 1890s when trains were being built to connect most of the country. They made a lot of money. So much money that Mr. Bass bought 300 acres of land outside of the city limits (back then) to build a summer home. Money was no object. And the house could be featured in a Hercule Poirot mystery with its many stairs and bedrooms, its grandeur and opulence and third floor ballroom.

In my Jazzi and Ansel series, the couple and her cousin Jerod buy homes and properties to flip. They take a rundown building and turn it into a welcoming home in hopes of making a decent profit. They go high budget with top-of-the-line appliances and cupboards, but they’ve NEVER been able to go all out. How many of us can? And I wouldn’t have even been able to think of all of the glories we saw at the Bass House.

There was a fireplace in every room, and most of the materials for them came from outside the United States. Marble was imported from Africa for all but one of them. Every ceiling had a painted border with flowers and exquisite designs. Public rooms had painted murals on the walls or fabric wallpaper. My two favorite rooms were the parlor and ballroom. The parlor was made with curved walls and doors to give it an oval design, and a beautiful painting was centered on its ceiling. The flowered carpet was expensive and charming. Special blinds hung at the wall of windows with gorgeous cutouts at the bottoms before the fringes. I’ve never seen blinds like them. The ballroom on the third floor was surrounded by benches with red velvet seats. The center of the ceiling led to a cupola to let in more light and was painted by an artist that worked on the Capitol Building in Washington. Every bedroom had hand carved woodwork with intricate designs.

HH and I have gone to lots of house walks in town that took our breaths away, but never a building like this. It was magnificent. Jazzi, Ansel, and Jerod will renovate beautiful, wonderful homes, but they’ll never work on a property with materials and artists flown in from all over the world. And that’s okay. The Bass family was in a different stratosphere than most of us.

Too Bothered

I should have written a post yesterday or this morning, but the truth is, I was too shocked by a tragedy at the grocery store I go to a few times a week. This makes me a BIG chicken, but I’m so glad I wasn’t there when it happened. But when I heard about it, I was too upset to write.

At our local Kroger’s, one of the workers we talk to almost every time we go into the store was attacked and stabbed to death by a customer whom she wouldn’t sell alcohol to. Kroger’s has a policy that no matter what your age, you have to show your license when you buy alcohol. I know because I love wine, and I’m WAY past twenty-one and still have to show my license every time I buy a bottle of pinot grigio. And that’s okay with me. It takes the pressure off the check-out people to have to ask if you can prove you’re of legal age.

A man went through the self-checkout and got beeped because he was buying alcohol. The lady who always looks over those check-out machines told him that she couldn’t let him buy anything without seeing his license. He got mad at her, threatened the workers in the store, and stormed out to his car. BUT, he came back with a knife, grabbed our wonderful lady from behind, and stabbed her in the back of the neck, then knocked her to the floor and kept stabbing her until he ran out of the store. She died shortly after. The police arrested him later in the afternoon but not before our check-out lady was dead.

The whole episode floored me. I couldn’t understand why anyone would get so mad they’d come back to kill someone because she wasn’t allowed to sell him liquor. Then I got depressed because, even though we only knew each other from the store, I really LIKED the woman. And I just can’t seem to understand what’s driving people to kill anyone and everyone these days.

I know I’m older and maybe out of touch, and I write mysteries where I kill people on paper, but I JUST DON’T GET IT. In mysteries, murderers have a REASON to kill. It might not be logical to anyone else, but it drives them. I just can’t wrap my head around someone living so close to the edge, so angry, that he’d kill someone, anyone just because they didn’t drive fast enough on the freeway or accidentally cut in front of him, or because something, anything tripped his trigger. WHY are so many people so angry these days? The news is depressing almost every night anymore. What has happened to us as a society? I don’t have any answers, and I’m happy to see people leaving flowers and candles at the store where my nice acquaintance died, but this really threw me. I hope someday, soon, people start respecting each other again.

Kitchens

In the Jazzi and Ansel book I’m working on now, a caterer is killed in a professional rent-a-kitchen he uses to make food for parties. I’d never heard of a rent-a-kitchen before, but when I went to my long-standing hairstylist last spring, the building next to her shop was deep in renovations. “They’re making it into rent-a-kitchens,” Norma told me.

“What are those?” I asked.

“The Board of Health is really strict about where you cook to serve or sell food. Most peoples’ kitchens won’t pass their code, especially if they have pets. So, someone can sign up to use these kitchens that have been approved.”

A clever idea. It made me remember that years and years ago, when I was in my early thirties and the girls were in grade school, a close friend of mine worried that she had breast cancer. The tests hadn’t come back yet, and she told me that she’d always wanted to own a business. It was on her bucket list. It was close to December, and she wanted to start a cookie business. Would I help her? If it was a success, we could work together, or if all I wanted was to see if she could pull it off, she’d find someone else down the road and I could drop out. But she needed help to get it started.

I did some volunteer work back then but told her that I could give her two days a week. She put ads in the paper. Looking back, I think she might have been a little overly ambitious, but it was her dream, not mine. So she offered six different kinds of cookies on a big, holiday paper plate, wrapped in Saran Wrap with a ribbon to give as gifts or to enjoy yourself. Orders came in.

We needed a kitchen, so our church graciously let us use theirs. We got to that kitchen right after we dropped our kids off to school and baked for hours the days we worked together. We made candy cane style cookies that were a lot of work with sprinkles of smashed up candy canes over them, molasses cookies, M & M cookies with red and green M&Ms, Spritz cookies, sugar cookies with sprinkles, and chocolate crinkles. Chocolate crinkles are wonderful but messy to make. I’m making them this coming weekend to send a picture and recipe to Staci Troilo’s blog for her cookie post on Dec. 14. If your ears burn on Saturday, you can thank me. I often cuss while the holiday music is playing:) Once the dough gets warm, my hands are covered in chocolate.

The long and short of it is that people loved the cookies. My friend found out she did NOT have cancer and that baking cookies for her family was a lot more fun than baking cookies to sell, so after our December venture, she never wanted to do it again. Which was a relief for me. I love cooking for friends and family, but running a business is a whole different thing.

In THE BODY IN THE KITCHEN, Elspeth and Fazal become partners in a bakery, and they both love it. Jazzi, Ansel, and Jerod finish their work in the warehouse they’re converting into condos. And in every project they take on, kitchens are one of the most important parts of renovating a house. I go through lots of images on Pinterest to decide on what kind of kitchen they’re going to install for each house or condo. Kitchens, to me, are the heart of a home, so I give them special consideration.

Whether you’re cooking, baking, or carrying in lots of food this December, I hope you spend happy hours in your kitchen:)

Get Ready…here comes December!

Oh, boy! December is here.

This Friday, I’m going to a tea at a historical house in our city with my sister. It lasts from 2:00 to 4:00, and we’ll hear about the Swinney house and the prominent family who lived there while we enjoy our goodies. I’m really looking forward to it.

Next Tuesday, we meet longtime friends for supper on the north side of town. Then on Wednesday, HH, my sister, and I are going to a Winter Wonderland supper at my cousin’s nursing home–the chef goes all out. The food is wonderful. On Friday, we go back to St. Anne’s for their once-a-month birthday party with music and dancing. The party’s usually later in the month, but they moved it up because December always fills up.

The Wednesday after that, on the 13th, my writers’ group has its annual Christmas carry-in–all social, no work. So, the month has started with a bang. I try to write around all of the social activities, but I don’t pull out my hair if the words don’t pile up this time of year. Life is about more than word count. Friends and family count, too.

I don’t know what your December is like, but I hope it’s a wonderful month for you, full of festivities. I know holidays are hard for some people. My dad’s mom died on Christmas day, and Christmas was difficult for him for a while. And for some people, the strain and stress can be overwhelming. But I hope you find some inner peace and some inner joy.

I needed more cozy

I shared a twitter post I made that fits the crime in my WIP really well. In The Body in the Kitchen, Fazal’s chef friend, Jordan, is murdered in the rent-a-kitchen he uses to make food for parties he caters. Jordan gets a special request from a man whose wife is turning fifty, and to surprise her, he invites fifty people to her birthday party and asks Jordan to create fifty appetizers for it–a pretty overwhelming request, but he’s willing to pay extra for it. Jordan asks Fazal (we met him in the last Jazzi and Ansel story. He’s a baker and pastry chef) to make 20 desserts, and Jordan will do 30 finger foods. Fazal agrees and helps him serve the party buffet, then they’re going to meet in the rent-a-kitchen in the morning to evaluate everything and get their final payments. Except when Fazal goes to meet Jordan, he’s been shot and is lying dead on the kitchen floor.

The image I found looked like a perfect professional kitchen. I was happy with it. I was even pretty happy with the dead body image on Canva. And it will work as a twitter post, BUT, I can’t use any of it for a cover. It has the wrong FEEL. Covers give you a hint at what the book is about, but they have to let you know the TONE of the book. And this image doesn’t have one thing that says “This is a cozy mystery.”

When I picked covers for Posed In Death and FACING THE MUSIC, I purposely picked black backgrounds to remind readers that they don’t have a Jazzi or Karnie type vibe. They’re darker.

But Jazzi and Ansel are EVERYTHING cozy. So when I started thinking about a cover for The Body in the Kitchen, I needed something that had a feel-good mood. It will probably change eventually, but I came up with this. It’s a decent start. A party, appetizers, and George. What do you think?

Open Days

I don’t have to go anywhere until Friday. So I have four open days in a row. I told HH our suppers are going to be easy and simple, so I can spend most of my time writing. My sister was putting up her Christmas decorations today, but we’re not going to do that until the weekend, so we have a stretch of days with no commitments. We haven’t had that for a long time, and I’m looking forward to it. Keyboard, here I come!

Once we get to Friday, things start getting busy again, so I have to enjoy this while I can. Here’s hoping the last week of November is a nice one for all of you, too.

I’m about through with the first fourth of The Body in the Kitchen, so I’ve started thinking about covers. Even ones that don’t work help motivate me, so that I “see” a part of the story. I came up with this for a twitter post, and it inspired me. Hopefully, I’ll think of something better along the way. I miss having George somewhere on the cover.

Happy Thanksgiving!

There are too many things to be thankful for, so I can’t list them. At the top would be friends and family, then maybe health. I’m even thankful for my bossy, opinionated gray cat. I hope you have too many things to list, too. So I hope today is wonderful for you, full of love and fellowship even if you’re alone, feeding scraps to your dog but enjoying your day off. And if instead, you’re at a family get-together where everyone squabbles or you’re lonely and depressed, I wish you the best and hope things get better for you.

Family and Friends

Thanksgiving will be here soon. One of the things I enjoy about writing Jazzi and Ansel is the focus on family and friends. So many people now get together every Sunday for the family meal, everyone has to pitch in. At last count, it was 24. So many that Jazzi and Ansel had to buy lightweight fold-out tables to put next to the big farmer’s table in the eating area of their kitchen.

Jazzi and Ansel always cook the main entree and a starch. It’s expensive to cook for that many people, so people stick cash in a mason jar to help cover the costs. Here’s the breakdown of who comes:

Jerod (Jazzi’s cousin who flips houses with them), his wife Franny, and their 3 kids: Gunther. Lizzie, and Pete. Franny always brings a vegetable tray and dips.Jazzi’s mom and dad. They pick up Toby every Monday and spend the day with him. On Sundays, they bring the wine and beer.Jerod’s parents, Eli and Eleanore. They bring the soda and kids’ drinks.Jazzi’s sister, Olivia, and her husband, Thane. Olivia never cooked until she and Thane had their baby girl, Kate Now, she brings an appetizer every Sunday, and she’s trying to learn how to cook more..And of course, Jazzi, Ansel, and their new baby Toby. Ansel’s brother, Radley, and his wife, Elspeth with their baby Heath. Elspeth always brought desserts. Recently, she opened a bakery with Fazal in the warehouse Jazzi, Jerod, and Ansel are making into condos.Thane’s old friend, Walker, with his wife, Didi, their adopted son River, and their baby girl Noreen. Didi brings a salad or vegetable side dish every week.Gran and her Samantha. Both women are widows and moved in together. They raise chickens and always bring deviled eggs. Gran has the gift of the sight, but her visions are usually hard to interpret.

As you can see, family get-togethers involve a lot of people, and the adults have made sure there’s a room in each house to entertain the kids. The family loves kids.

I’m happy to say we don’t have that many people come for Thanksgiving any more. For a while, we had 20 people, but now, parents and aunts and uncles are no longer with us, and the families have gone their separate ways. Our kids and grandkids have moved out of town, and for the first time, we’ve decided to keep everything low-kay. We’re only getting together with my sister (in town) and my cousin (in town in a nursing center.) We let Jenny decide what she wanted to eat, and she said she gets so much turkey in November, she wants lasagna, garlic bread, a salad, and lemon meringue pie. So that’s exactly what we’re going to make.

We’re going small this year. Whatever you do, I hope it’s wonderful. Enjoy!

Children’s Books

I read a random twitter post this week, asking what was your favorite book when you were a child?

I have to admit, it’s been a LONG time since I was a kid, but I vividly remember loving the Golden Book THE SAGGY, BAGGY ELEPHANT. The little elephant didn’t like the way his skin fit, so he wanted to change himself. An alligator offered to nibble off some of his skin so that what was left would be tighter. Not a good solution. And finally, the little elephant met older, more wonderful elephants and saw that he was exactly what he was supposed to be.

Do any of us love who we are when we’re teens? When I was young, I watched and was in love with 77 Sunset Strip with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., Roger Smith, Richard Long, and Edd Byrnes. All fine actors, but I wanted to be Connie Stevens with her blond hair, blue eyes, and infectious personality. I was none of those things. I was tall and skinny with sandy-colored hair and brown eyes. And deadly serious. There was no infectious personality anywhere. My younger sister had the cute, fun personality and deadly wit. Her mind worked laser fast. When we were little, she loved to cuss. Her favorite thing to say was “Jesus Christ!” Made my mother furious. She told Patty that if she heard those words come out of her mouth one more time, she was washing her mouth out with soap. And my mother never made frivolous threats.

A few weeks later, Patty got frustrated about something and out popped, “Jesus Christ!” And we heard my mom coming. I looked at Patty and said, “You’re dead.” But Patty waited until Mom was almost in the room with us, knelt, folded her hands, and looked at the ceiling and said, “Amen.” Mom didn’t know what to do. She finally left and my sister smiled at me, triumphant. “Don’t try that again,” I told her. And she never did. When I read books with feisty, female characters, for years, I thought of my sister. And when I read Where the Wild Things Are, it made me think of her more.

My mother, for some reason, ended up with a baby duck in with the chicks when the box came in the mail with all of the new chickens, and she named him Elmar. I read the book The Story About Ping and loved it. Mom finally gave Elmar to a farmer with a pond who swore he’d never eat Elmar. And it wasn’t until I started reading Laura Ingall Wilders that I felt I could relate to a character in a book. Laura Ingall loved her family and was so sincere, I felt connected to her My favorite of all of those books, though, was Farmer Boy, with her husband’s story, Almanzo. He loved school. Loved learning. And loved food. I loved school. Loved my teachers. And my mom was a wonderful cook. When we were kids, Mom and Dad were always poor. They raised chickens, so we always had eggs for breakfast. I grew to hate eggs for a few years. I’d had so many, they almost made me gag. We had boiled eggs, scrambled eggs, and lots and lots of noodles. But once our finances got tight, Dad started killing hens, and Patty and I (since we had small hands) always had to gut them. A crappy job. And the smell of Mom boiling the chickens in hot water so that the feathers came out more easily still lingers in my mind. Yich.

Anway, we’d have fried chicken, roasted chicken, and finally chicken and noodles to stretch the chicken. And then my poor parents would have to go to the bank for a loan, and Patty and I rejoiced. (We were kids. We didn’t know any better). But that night, with some money in hand, my parents would take us to a drive-up restaurant in town., and we could order anything we wanted to. Hallelujah!

Our money got better, and life got easier. My third grade teacher read Charlotte’s Web to us, and I fell in love with a pig and a spider. I started reading books that were for older students and fell in love with James Fenimore Cooper. Then the Bronte sisters. Then Lost Horizons and Jane Austen. Then I discovered Sherlock Holmes and Agatha Christie. And I fell in love with mysteries. I’m still in love with mysteries.

Anyway, it was fun thinking about my reading progress over the years. In college, I took a lot of hours of English Literature and ended up a fan of Shakespeare. And the books I’ve read helped shape my life. I hope you have memories of wonderful books from your childhood on. If you have some favorites, share them.

Next week will probably be taken up by Thanksgiving. Hope you have a good one.

All At the Same Time

I don’t know how it happens, but it almost always does. I have friends who only write one book a year, friends who can whip out a book in four months, and friends who finish a book whenever life doesn’t interfere. But somehow, they all finish their books at about the same time.

Now, I’m not complaining, because I LOVE their writing. So when they give me a manuscript to critique, It’s more pleasure than work. My friend, Karen Lenfestey, gave me her manuscript for A SEASON OF CHANGE, women’s fiction. And it was wonderful! I’ve read all of her books (https://www.amazon.com/stores/Karen-Lenfestey/author/B004SBIK2M?ref=ap_rdr&store_ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true), and each one deals with a woman’s struggle with the challenges life throws at them. They’re all good, but I think this latest is my favorite. It’s happier than usual, and I adored the character of Blake. I don’t know when she’s going to publish it, but if you see it when it comes out, it’s worth giving it a chance.

A member of my writer’s group, Karissa Farina, gave me the manuscript for the first book she wrote in a series. I have no idea when or if she’s going to publish it. She’s young. She leads a busy life, and for now, writing’s something she does because she loves it. BUT, she’s a wonderful writer, so I consider it a compliment that she shares her work with us and shared her manuscript with me. I think she writes the strongest emotional scenes I’ve ever read. I’m not sure how she’d market it since it’s about a fourteen-year-old who gets pregnant and how devastating it is for her life. In book one (the one I read), Kari falls in love with Owen, they try to be responsible and buy condoms, and still get pregnant. Her Christian school asks her to leave. The people she babysits for fire her. Everything in her life goes downhill, but at the end of the book, she decides to keep the babies (yes, twins). Book two is about her pregnancy and relationship Owen. And she has more books planned in the series. It’s serious and poignant and wonderful. And someday, I hope she publishes.

For right now, though, my awesome critique partner, M.L. Rigdon/Julia Donner, gave me her latest Regency to critique. Hooray! Hooray! Hooray! I love her Regencies. I’m going to try my best to pester her into sharing something about OPHELIA’S MARRIAGE PLAN on my blog when she’s ready to publish it. I love my friend’s dry wit and naughty sense of humor. She creates such wonderful characters! I read at the end of my day, and I can’t wait to get back to her manuscript.

If I were you, reading this, I’d suspect that I’m biased because my friends wrote these books. But you’d be wrong. I’m usually harder and expect more from them than some random author I pick up. I’m a pretty forgiving reader IF I don’t know the person. I know how hard it is to write a book. I tend to be more generous than maybe I should be. BUT, I know how good my friends are, and my red pen is ever at the ready when I read their work. And happily, they do the same and expect good writing from me.

Anyway, once I finish this manuscript, it’s back to my Kindle, and I’m BEHIND on the Harbor Pointe series. D.L. Finn’s The Destination is next on my list. https://www.amazon.com/Destination-Harbor-Pointe-Book-ebook/dp/B0CCQB7X1S?ref_=ast_author_mpb This is an interesting series where each author in Story Empire writes a novella that features a lighthouse in Harbor Pointe. It will be interesting to see what she does with it.

Well, I’ve blabbed enough for this post. I hope you’ve found some wonderful reads lately. I have!