Luanne Rice's Blog, page 11

The Lemon Orchard – Spotify Playlist

Notes From Book Tour 2014

Written in the sky, flying to Phoenix, May 30, 2014

It’s been a busy first week for The Lemon Orchard book tour, with much excitement and joy along the way.  I haven’t been out on tour in a couple of years, so visiting every bookstore, seeing every reader, being on every radio show means so much to me.

Here are some highlights so far, a sort of sideways diary–not linear or organized, just an impressionistic view of the journey so far.  I am taking many of these posts and photos from my Facebook page, which I update frequently.

Yesterday writer David Handler and I met at the NPR studios in midtown Manhattan and got patched in to the Colin McEnroe show in Hartford CT.  We had a great time discussing books, writing, setting novels in Old Lyme CT, missing Dominick Dunne, and quite a lot more.  Here is the link to our conversation.

The day before I’d gone on WVIT, NBC Connecticut Channel 30, for an interview with the lovely Kerri-Lee Mayland.  The segment felt good, we had a fine discussion about where I get my inspiration, how The Lemon Orchard starts in Old Lyme CT and moves out to Malibu CA.

More Connecticut TV–On Tuesday May 27 I appeared on WTNH’s Connecticut Style with Teresa Dufour.  Newlywed (as of New Year’s) Teresa asked a lot about the love story in The Lemon Orchard, and she wanted to know whether Roberto was inspired by a real life person.  That is always hard to discuss in public, but much easier to write in an essay.

 

RJ Julia Booksellers was great as always, welcoming me and all readers with open arms.  We had a slight but wonderful glitch–the store was fully reserved but without enough books.  So on the way out of NYC I swung down to my publisher on Hudson Street, loaded up the trunk of the car old-school, and delivered a few cartons of The Lemon Orchard in time for the event.

Before it began I stopped across the street at Cafe Allegre to meet my dear friends and fellow St. Thomas Aquinas High School alums Paula Gilberto, Janice Tordanato, and Linda Kozikowski Lohmeyer.  They have come to Madison for my talks before, and I am incredibly touched that they do that.  It’s always good to have mini-reunion before meeting my readers.

We had a good talk with gentle yet intriguing questions to follow, talking about the novel and how a Connecticut native wound up in Malibu CA writing about a family of undocumented Mexican immigrants.  The answer is very simple–if it comes from the heart the writing is never hard, the stories flow, and inspiration and compassion are everywhere.

I felt a blast of energy coming from the loving crowd and gathered them around me at the podium and we attempted a series of Ellen-style selfies.  I thank Janice for being our photographer.  Many friends are in the shots, but some are Edyse Smith, Julia Vallati, Janice, Lisa from RJ Julia, and others.  Thank you all for making it so much fun.

 

An hour or so before the bookstore I went to Hubbard’s Point for a swim, then met my sister Maureen and brother-in-law Olivier.  We grabbed a bite at A.C Peterson Farms–formerly Hallmark–I always call it Paradise Ice Cream in my novels.  Here’s a photo of Maureen and me at one of the picnic tables, the Connecticut River and Old Saybrook in the distance.

Right now I am heading to Phoenix AZ for tomorrow’s signing–”Afternoon Tea with Luanne” at 2 pm Saturday 5/31 at the Poisoned Pen Bookstore in Scottsdale.

Sunday 6/1 at 3 pm I’ll be at Diesel: A Bookstore in Malibu California We’ll have snacks and lemony drinks catered by the Godmother of Malibu.

Hope to see you along the road.  I’ll report in along the way, but in case you want to join me, here is the Book Tour 2014 schedule.   If you can’t make it and would like a book signed, please just contact any of the stores I’m visiting and I will personalize it for you and they will send  it to you.

To Let Herself Dream

I was listening to music today and created a Spotify playlist to go with The Night Before.  (A short story I wrote, available for free through this link, for my readers.)  The Night Before connects two of my novels, old and new–Silver Bells and The Lemon Orchard–through characters, settings, and heart.

I had this quote from The Lemon Orchard in mind when I wrote the short story: “The memory was too beautiful to say out loud. It was her treasure, and she had to hold on to it, to let herself dream that she would smell the lemons again, stand at the foot of her fathers ladder while they talked and sang and he picked fruit from the tree.”

I hope you can read the story, listen to the music, smell the lemons, and travel back and forth between a lemon orchard in Mexico and a Christmas tree farm in Connecticut.  Love will take you there!

Here is the Spotify playlist, inspired by The Night Before.

 

 

 

The Night Before

Amazon • Kobo • Smashwords • 

From bestselling author Luanne Rice, a haunting and emotional short story, never-before released, and free to all readers.

On the eve of a wedding by the edge of the sea, a once-in-a-lifetime storm sweeps through a family Christmas tree farm on the Connecticut Shoreline and sets in motion the events of The Night Before.  New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice tells the powerful story of the young couple about to get married, a mother and daughter three thousand miles apart, and best friends who could never forget each other.

Lydia Madison, an artist with a carefully guarded secret, opens her home and her heart to Danny Byrne (last seen in Silver Bells) and Sara Castillo.  When the storm hits memories are cracked open, Lydia’s inspiration as an artist is revealed, and love and heartbreak intertwine.

This brand new short story returns to the setting of Rice’s beloved Black Hall and Hubbard’s Point series of novels, and poignantly reveals that when there is love this deep there’s no such thing as time or distance.  A rare treat from an acclaimed and treasured author.

 

Music from The Lemon Orchard

Amazon • Apple • Barnes & Noble • IndieBound

While writing THE LEMON ORCHARD I listened to music that inspired me.  These are songs of love, travel, connection, family, and crossing borders.  Because the music meant so much to me and the characters I was creating, I wove the songs into the novel.  They are songs of America, Mexico, and Ireland, by artists I have loved forever and others that were new to me.

I was introduced to some of the music by the man who inspired the character of Roberto.  He comes from a small town outside Puebla, Mexico, and now he lives in East LA. The story between Roberto and Julia is passionate, and the music is the soundtrack to their love.

Because I wanted you to hear the songs, I put them together in a Spotify playlist.  My own musical taste goes like this: if the song makes me feel something, goes into my heart, I’m there.  I react to music with emotion–it makes me feel, remember, ache.  Because this playlist says a lot about the novel, and because I wanted it to express my family’s Irish roots and “Roberto’s” Mexican roots, and because I wanted to include songs about immigration–ones I might not have heard before–I asked my friends Mark Lonergan and Becky Murray for suggestions.

Music and friendship are deeply linked.  Becky and Mark both gave me excellent ideas–Mark, also my guitar teacher, introduced me to Tim O’Brien’s music a while back–we went to see him perform at NYC’s The Cutting Room. Becky and her husband Ed suggested songs by Lady Gaga and Billy Walker.  Those artists are on the playlist along with Bruce Springsteen, Lila Downs, Ry Cooder, Los Tigres Del Norte, Tom Morello, Alison Moorer, Juan Gabriel, The Chieftains, Lola Beltrán, Luis Miguel, Linda Ronstadt, Emmylou Harris, and others.

 

Jodi Picoult quote for The Lemon Orchard

I feel incredibly honored to share this quote from Jodi Picoult:

“THE LEMON ORCHARD is a small, lovely miracle:  a story that humanizes the plight of undocumented immigrants; that takes the political and makes it deeply and painfully personal. This is a love story – not just between two characters from different worlds, but about what we humans owe each other in debts of kindness and respect.”  - Jodi Picoult, NYT bestselling author of THE STORYTELLER

Jodi writes brilliant novels.  She has such compassion and is always seeking deeper understanding of the world and everyone who lives here.  She’s a humanitarian who never shies away from the questions that scare many of us, and she writes about issues that need closer examination, justice, and human kindness.  I can’t wait to read her new novel, Leaving Time.  Her praise for The Lemon Orchard means so much to me.

Happy Mother’s Day

I miss my mother.  I think of her every day.  There are so many things I want to talk to her about.  She had a unique sense of humor and I’ll catch myself laughing at sights or phrases or stories that I know she’d so enjoy.  So much of what I love in life came from her: gardening, swimming in the ocean, cooking, poems, English literature, art.  I didn’t inherit her talent for drawing and painting (although both my sisters did,) but I do have her love of art galleries and museums.  So often I’ll see an exhibit and think of her, and wish she were there to see the artist’s work with me.

She loved the beach, and I’m sure that’s one reason I’m happiest with bare feet, walking along the tide line.  We would spend summer days building sandcastles, finding shells and sea glass, swimming to the raft, crabbing at the end of the beach.  Often she would sketch while my sisters and I played and swam; frequently we’d all be reading, covered with sunscreen, lost in our books.

When I grew up and moved to New York City, I’d take Amtrak to Old Saybrook CT nearly every weekend.  My mother would meet the train, no matter what time it was; Sundays came too soon, and I’d never want to leave.  The photo above (taken in 1988 or so) shows us at the train station, waiting for the train back to NY.  I read her expression and know she wasn’t ready for me to leave.  The picture brings back that moment and many emotions.

She died way too young, after a long illness.  After her death I was filled with memories of nurses and hospitals and the great sadness of losing her slowly.  But time has passed, and you know what?  I rarely think of her illness anymore.  The gift of time has been that I remember my mother being young and healthy, painting nearly every day, writing every night.  I remember watching Julia Child on Saturday afternoons, then cooking dinner together–sitting around the table at Hubbard’s Point, enjoying the meal with my sister and her family, laughing and talking and feeling that it would last forever, that our family would go on forever.

I wrote about her in an essay called “Midnight Typing.”  It appears in the collection What My Mother Gave Me, edited by Elizabeth Benedict.

And now it is May

 

And now it is May.

I grew up in Connecticut, and May was the month when everything turned green.  Small leaves appeared on the trees.  When “the leaves on the oak are the size of squirrels’ ears” shad would start to run in the rivers.  The first flowering trees were shadblum, also signifiers of shad, a fish that we ate one a year, more to celebrate spring and to have with young asparagus and buttered red potatoes than because we liked the taste.

We had many seasonal foods and traditions in our family, but right now I’m thinking of spring.  My mother didn’t like to cook, but she liked to watch Julia Child (she died before the Food Network came to be, but oh how she would have loved all the chefs and cooking shows.)  Mim, our grandmother who lived with us, baked but didn’t cook, the difference–as I see it–being that one strictly involved the oven and precise measurements, and the other requires slow burners, drifts of imagination, no certain regimen other than what is fresh, in season, and delicious.

You can probably tell I like to cook more than bake.

From the time I was fifteen I often cooked for my family.  My school had “mini-week” every January, and we could choose from a slew of interesting classes not usually offered.  My sophomore year I took French cooking.  Sister Denise taught it in the convent next door.  We made jambon persillade, coq au vin, blanquette de veau, and asperges au beure blanc.  I’d learn how to prepare the meal at school, then go home and cook it for my family, with a stop at Sussman’s market along the way.

Spring was a time to celebrate.  There is so much beauty in every season, but the changes in spring literally feel like rebirth, the earth coming back to life.  Many people speak of unbidden joy, a feeling of hope that wasn’t there before.  I feel a shadow.  Maybe it’s because my father died in April, or perhaps it’s just that I am an Irish existentialist at heart, and I know not to get attached to the beauty because it will not be here forever.  That’s the problem, isn’t it?  Things won’t be here forever.

But for now we have wisteria, tulips, new leaves, migrating warblers traveling the eastern flyway in great numbers, landing in our yards and parks to rest on their way north to the boreal forest.  Just yesterday Anders Peltomaa reported seventeen warbler species in Central Park including a Yellow warblers, a Yellow-throated warbler, Black-and-white warblers, a Palm warbler, a Chestnut warbler and a Canada warbler.  (Large numbers, the migration definitely in full swing, a “fall-out”–literally, many migrants dropping from the sky–because of the storms we have been having.)

In the woods we have elusive wildflowers such as bloodroot, trillium, Jack-in-the-pulpits.  In the streams we have shad.  They are swimming up the Connecticut River in their annual and mysterious migration.  They are plentiful, but hard to find in fish markets because they are the devil to bone.  Those who can properly filet a shad are few and far between; it’s a lost art.  The taste of shad is not for everyone: it reminds me of bluefish.  Enough said?  It’s an oily fish and, on the plus side, rich in Omega 3 fatty acids.

Some people, including Nero Wolfe, love shad roe.

So if you can find shad and if you like it, or if you dare, I share with you here my menu–cooked once a year, in May, when shad are running, when oak leaves are no bigger than squirrel’s ears.  Mim loved it, so I’ve named it for her.  Happy May!

Mim’s Baked Shad

1 shad filet per person

1 cup whole wheat bread crumbs, freshly crumbed in a Cuisinart or your favorite food mill-type apparatus.

olive oil

fresh lemon juice and zest

salt and pepper

Preheat oven to 350.  Dry shad filets with paper towel and lay skin-side down in baking dish.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper and a dash of fresh lemon juice.  Mix bread crumbs with olive oil, enough to moisten–do use whole wheat bread because it’s more full bodied and will work better with the strong flavor of shad.  Add a little more salt and pepper, and a half teaspoon or so of lemon zest to the bread crumbs, then divide the mixture among the shad filets, spreading it on top, not too thin, you don’t have to be artful, this is mainly seasoning.

Bake for 30 minutes or till cooked through and bread crumbs golden brown.  (Check while baking, and if the bread crumbs are getting too dark, you can cover loosely with a piece of tin foil.)

Asparagus

The asperges au beurre blanc recipe from Sister Denise involved hard-boiled eggs, which I don’t like.  But if you do, you can just peel and rice a hard-boiled egg and put it on top for garnish.

Bunch of asparagus

beurre blanc  (or olive oil)

 

Bring pot of water to boil.  Prepare asparagus by holding each stalk between two hands, bending till it breaks.  It will break in its natural spot, just throw away the tough inch-or-two from the bottom.  Add asparagus to boiling water.  (Salt the water if you like, I don’t think the asparagus needs it.)  Cook until the asparagus is bright green, easily pierced with the tip of a knife–5-8 minutes.

Now, you can serve the asparagus straight out of the pot if you want.  Or you can drizzle it with a small amount of olive oil.  Or if you are fifteen and want to impress your family and by the way feed them very well, you can serve it with beurre blanc.  Don’t forget to add the chopped hard boiled eggs IF and only if you like them.

Beurre blanc

1 shallot, chopped fine

4 ounces white wine

fresh juice of 1/2 lemon, strained

1 tablespoon heavy cream

12 ounces cold unsalted butter, 1/4 inch slices

salt and white pepper

Combine shallots, wine, and lemon juice in non-reactive saucepan and cook over high heat until simmered down to 2 tablespoons.   Add the cream and cook until the sauce  bubbles.  Add butter, 1 slice at a time, whisking over low heat.  Whisk continuously until all butter is added and sauce is emulsified.  Pour over asparagus.  This is where you garnish with hard boiled eggs if desired.

Red Potatoes á la Hubbard’s Point

This is my favorite part, a vehicle for the rest of the meal.  It’s a very casual and most delicious dish, and requires guests to participate, in that they’ll have to peel their own garlic at the end, when served.

A pound or two of the tiniest, reddest new potatoes you can find

olive oil

sea salt and freshly ground pepper

cloves of garlic–don’t bother peeling them

sprigs of fresh rosemary

Preheat oven to 400.  You want it hot.

Do not wash or peel potatoes.  If necessary clean them with a dry cloth or paper towel.  Cut in half or quarters, depending on how large.  You want them to be about the size of a walnut.  Spread olive oil on cookie sheet–don’t stint.  You’ll use a lot, but it won’t be absorbed, so you won’t be consuming that much–it’s for flavor and browning.

Place cut potatoes on cookie sheet, rolling in olive oil until well-covered.  Add unpeeled cloves of garlic.  Season with sea salt and freshly ground pepper.  Add a couple of springs of rosemary–in one piece, not broken up.

Insert sheet into oven.  As soon as you hear the oil starting to sizzle, after 10 minutes or so, remove pan and with a spatula turn the potatoes so they don’t stick to the pan and so they brown on all sides.  Do this a few times over about 30 minutes–cooking time depends on size of potatoes.  You want to cook them until they are crispy.

Serve with cloves of garlic straight from the pan, still in their jackets, and tell your guests to peel them themselves.  It will be fun for them, easier for you, and the garlic will taste delicious with the potatoes and shad, or even spread on slices of baguette.

#TheLemonOrchard Book Club Contest

The contest winner will receive an in-person book club visit from me. I am happy to travel anywhere within the United States to participate in a conversation with you about THE LEMON ORCHARD, my other books, your reading experiences, your favorite books and authors, and more.

Be as funny, artistic, creative, as you want … Anything goes! Hope everyone is enjoying the book – and can’t wait to see your photos and videos!

The winner will be announced on LuanneRice.com, @LuanneRice and on Facebook on a date to be announced. Stay tuned here for more!

Here’s how to enter!

Book club members and readers must Facebook post or Tweet stories, photos or videos of locations or landscapes that are important to them, or what they would do creatively with lemons, using #TheLemonOrchard to enter and qualify for the contest.

Here’s what you need to know before entering:

Ideas should  be family-friendly, but creativity is welcome
Share a story, photo, or video of a location or landscape that is significant to your life, or is where your family came from
Develop a recipe, craft/art piece or fashion design inspired by and using lemons
Simply take a photo of a lemon in a meaningful place
Share on Facebook or Twitter
#TheLemonOrchard MUST be included to enter

I also encourage all readers and book club members to share #TheLemonOrchard graphic from this page on their Pinterest boards, Facebook and Twitter channels as they read and discuss the book and share their thoughts.

You will also find here a book club kit with recipes for your next meeting or party and suggested discussion questions… plus suggested social media posts, and a special Storify playlist I created that reflects the book’s themes!

The Lemon Orchard Book Club Kit

I have just uploaded the wonderful new book club kit for The Lemon Orchard as a PDF. It includes an introduction to the book, some words from me, and some delicious Lemon cocktails. Here is one to get you started! –Luanne. 

LEMON DROP COCKTAIL

Ingredients:

• 1 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

• 2 thinly-sliced lemon wedges

• 1 ½ ounce vodka

• 2 springs fresh thyme

• 1 tablespoon agave syrup

Mix lemon juice, lemon wedges, and vodka over ice in cocktail shaker. Add thyme and agave syrup and shake vigorously. Strain into martini glass and serve with a spring of thyme and a lemon wedge. Serves one.