Kate Collins's Blog, page 313

Rewarding Reviewers

We know you don't have to post reviews, but you do. You share your feelings about books, translating your passion into words.
You might not think a review on Amazon or a Facebook post makes a difference, but it really does. Readers influence other readers. Word of mouth becomes the most powerful promotional tool in the literary world, but it's a constant struggle for an author to figure out how to create word-of-mouth buzz.
Many loyal readers of this blog have helped out us by posting reviews and to reward you, I'm going to mail TEN reviewers A Deadly Cliche treat bags containing a seaside-themed cookie cutter (starfish, lighthouse, or seashell), a summer notepad, bookmarks, and more.
If you have post a review any time in the next week on any of the Cozy Chicks' latest releases and let us know where you did it (Amazon, bn.com, Goodreads, Facebook, your personal blog) then you qualify.
Good luck and thank you!

Our February Gift Card Winner!

posted by Leann Sweeney

Shushan (Susan) is our winner this month of a $10 electronic gift card, so please send your email address to leann_sweeney@hotmail.com. If you have recently won, let me know so I can choose a different winner, but CONGRATS and thanks for being a loyal reader.

Pluck it, wax it, or better yet...

"She asks me whyI'm just a hairy guyI'm hairy noon and night"~ from Hair
If we don't have it, we want it. If we have it, we do everything possible to get rid of it. Here's me getting my eyebrows threaded.

Every 6 weeks, my friends and I gather at one of our houses for flavored coffee and deliciously sinful treats, and we wait our turn to get a threading treatment from Jagruti. She's amazing to watch. With a long strand of cotton thread woven through her fingers, she pulls out rows of unwanted hair. It takes about five minutes. The pain is minimal, because as soon as I decide it hurts, she's moved on to a different place. She yanks those puppies out by the roots, so they don't grow back right away.

Last time, she said to me. "Should I do your upper lip?" That's when I realized for the first time that I'm growing a mustache! Oh no. Yes, get those, too. Where else am I growing hair where it never appeared before? That's a rhetorical question. No need to answer.

Let's move on to my husband. Who seems to have lost most of his head hair and acquired a whole lot in his ears and nostrils. I asked Jagruti if she works on men. She said yes, she'd be happy to rip out all that beastly overgrowth. Now I have to think of a way to include him in our next appointment. If I can just get him in the door...

p.s. if you live in the Milwaukee area, visit Jagruti's website for more information.

Who Doesn't Love Lemon?

by Lucy ArlingtonLast week it was my turn to host our weekly art group. I'm a novice at painting, but am enjoying it immensely, partially because I'm tapping into another creative outlet (one can't write all the time!), and partially because of the camaraderie within the group. We are a fun bunch of women who spend two and a half hours every week painting, drawing, and socializing. We also drink coffee and eat goodies. Now, I'm the type of person who feels compelled to provide only home-baked goods to my guests. So I pored through my recipes, trying to decide what to serve. My family's favorite oatmeal-cranberry cookies? Almond-apricot biscotti? Cream cheese brownies?

I finally made my choice, mainly because the more sweet recipes I perused, the stronger became my cravings for two things: a buttery cakey texture and the tartness of lemon. Thus, the evening before our meeting, I creamed butter and sugar, whisked flour with poppy seeds, zested and squeezed lemons and baked my favorite lemon poppy-seed loaf.

Of course it was a big hit, and aided our artistic inspiration considerably. The key to the loaf's tartness and moistness is the glaze that I brush on while it's still hot--sugar dissolved in lemon juice that soaks through the loaf--so that what you end up getting is a buttery cake with the tart sweetness of lemon. Who could resist that oxymoron?

LEMON POPPY SEED LOAF

½ cup butter, softened

1 cup granulated sugar

2 eggs

1½ cups flour

3 Tbsp poppy seeds

1 Tbsp grated lemon rind

1 tsp baking powder

1/4 tsp salt

½ cup milk

1. Preheat oven to 325° F. Grease an 8- X 4-inch loaf pan.

2. Beat butter with sugar until light and fluffy; beat in eggs, 1 at a time, beating well after each addition.

3. In a separate bowl, whisk together flour, poppy seeds, lemon rind, baking powder and salt; stir into butter mixture alternately with milk, making 3 additions of flour mixture and 2 of milk. Spread into loaf pan.

4. Bake in centre of 325° oven for 1 hour or until cake tester inserted in centre comes out clean. Place pan on cooling rack.

5. LEMON SYRUP: In saucepan warm together sugar and lemon rind and juice until sugar dissolves. With skewer, pierce hot loaf in 12 places right to bottom; pour lemon syrup over loaf.

SCENT OF A LOVER

by Kate Collins

Have you ever read about the experiments done with newborns to see if they could accurately identify their mothers by their scents? Turned out that they could, although I could have predicted as much. I'm very sensitive to scents. I knew what my babies smelled like. I knew my mother's scent – Red in later years, Tabu in her earlier years. I knew my husband's scent. His was a mix of powdery deodorant, traces of Drakkar Noir, and his own personal chemistry. Totally unique and it drew me like a magnet.

I bring this up because I detect his scent a lot these days. I know he's reminding me that he's still with me. It will suddenly fill my nostrils after I've been sitting at the computer for too long, as if to remind me to get up and stretch, have a cup of tea. I'll get a burst of that scent when I see something that reminds me of him and start to feel blue. Sometimes I'll open the laundry room door to put in a load of clothing, and detect his scent. It's comforting to know he's with me.

I've also been awakened to the scent of coffee brewing, just as I used to be when my husband was still with me. Usually it'll happen if I oversleep, a gentle reminder to get up and get going. Sometimes I need that a lot.

Scent ties in so closely with my memories, too. If I get a whiff of Noxema, I'm instantly transported back to my grandmother's house, where I'm five years old again, bouncing on her bed while she puts her hair in pincurls and covers it with a hairnet. How many of you are old enough to remember hairnets?

Cinnamon buns baking in the oven will also take me back to my childhoo d. My mom used to use leftover pie crust to make tiny little cinnamon and sugar pie shells in empty aluminum pot pie pans. One for all three of us kids. It was a special treat.

Do you have a favorite childhood memory that is triggered by a scent? Any certain food or perfume that reminds you of someone who has passed?

Do I Have a Dollar Sign on My Forehead?

by Leann Sweeney

As you know if you read this blog regularly, I have a few health issues. Fortunately I have great insurance, but the co-pays do add up. So do the supplements that I take to help me stay as healthy as possible. It is difficult to find good practitioners who know a lot about Lyme and fibro and chronic fatigue. By good, I mean knowledgeable, compassionate providers. I have found several who take care of me.

But this past week, after a treatment for my shoulder, I was told as I checked out that there was no record that I had paid for 4 appointments. Nonsense. I paid and I knew I could prove it. But, thanks to some family stresses right now, that was the straw that broke my emotional back. I was in tears by the time I got home. I immediately printed out the receipts for the dates in question, but I was thinking, "Why is this my responsibility? Why aren't they checking with my insurance company or combing through their records to find the answers. After all, there is never one time when I have left that office without paying--and they know it.

Still, that was not all that was going on. Way back when I was an eighteen-year-old kid in Catholic nursing school, I was called into the head nun's office at the end of my first year. If you know anything about nuns back in the day, that's scary! Sister Mary Sheila proceeded to tell me that my parents, after paying the initial tuition that had to be paid before I could get into my dorm rooml, had never paid another penny. Not for my books, not for the second semester, not for my meals, not for anything. I knew nothing about this, but I really shouldn't have been surprised. (And five years later they did the same thing to my sister.) That's the way they were. But I was mortified and humiliated. The tears began and wouldn't stop. Sister Mary Sheila was very nice, very helpful and we started the paperwork to get my bills paid through other means--grants, loans and a scholarship.

That experience scarred me, and the same feelings of humiliation popped up this past week when this billing issue came up. I was that eighteen-year-old kid again, mortified and confused. I felt reduced to a dollar sign. The upside? I was able to make that connection to "old business." I took the receipts to the doctor's office. Only then did they tell me that in doing their books with a new person in charge of billing, they found many, many mistakes involving many, many patients. But I paid a higher price than any amount of money could rectify that day.

How about you? Are there times when you feel like you have a scarlet dollar sign on your forehead?

So pretty on my counter . . .

by Lorna Barrett / Lorraine Bartlett

One of my favorite Star Trek The Next Generation episodes is "Cause and Effect," where the Enterprise is caught in a time loop.  (I just love those kinds of stories.) In it, Beverly Crusher clips the dead blossoms off her orchid.  A very BIG orchid with lots and lots of flowers.

They used orchids a lot on Star Trek, probably because they look so strange to most of us.  Strange because people on budgets just don't plop down nearly $40 on a plant.

Several years ago my mother started buying orchids.  Hey, I even bought two of them for her. (On sale for $20 and $17.)

Two years ago, I watched "Cause and Effect" about four times in a couple of months and decided, "Hey, I want an orchid."  Do you think any went on sale anywhere?  I had to wait until Christmas 2010.  I was in the grocery store, picking up a few items and checked out the sale rack and, hello! they had a bunch of mini orchids for sale.  I'd bought one for my mother for $7 the previous Christmas (oops, almost forgot about that one), and they had them on sale for $2.  Hey, just my price range.

It had two flowers.  One dropped off almost immediately, but the other lasted for two weeks.  Then it was bare for about a month.  I was sad, and I figured it would take a LONG time before it blossomed again.

Happily, I was wrong.  Almost immediately it started to grow more and soon there were FIVE buds.  Weeee!  But then I forgot to water it for a couple of days and two of the buds shriveled up.  Boo-hoo-hoo!  But three have survived.  One has bloomed and I hope another will soon.  (I don't think that third one will.)

But isn't it pretty?

Now I want MORE orchids.  I want different ones.  I want pink ones and yellow ones and striped ones and spotted ones.  I like that the blooms sometimes last for months.  I like that they're so delicate and yet so strong.  I like them because they're strange and beautiful.

I just like them!

What plant brings you the most pleasure?

The One Surprise Rule

by Sara Rosett

I was on my way to pick up my daughter from school a few days ago and got behind a slow-turner. You know what I'm talking about. Someone who began braking way too early—about a quarter of a block away—and then executed the turn in a hesitant, rolling yield fashion. Since I couldn't pass, I had to wait it out, creeping along behind Slow-Turner while traffic backed up behind me. In my rear view mirror, I could see the expression of the business-suited man in the car behind me and he wasn't any taking it any better than I was.

On the whole, I'd say I'm a fairly patient and understanding person, but there are certain things that do drive me absolutely batty. Slow Turners are high on my list of pet peeves. Another thing that I can't stand is when someone eats all the cereal or energy bars and leaves the empty box in the pantry. How hard is it to toss the box in the recycling? That way I don't have my heart set on a Strawberry Poptart only to be disappointed when I pick up the empty box. And then there's the ultimate in rudeness, people who are always on the phone. I've heard women carrying on phone conversations in restroom stalls—that's just too much information for me!

Since I'm a writer it's probably not surprising that I have some strong opinions about books and writing. I hate it when a book's cover has absolutely nothing to do with the story. I lose patience with authors who tease readers with possible resolutions (to love triangles or backstories), but never provide any satisfaction. I think that my all time book-related pet peeve is quirky characters who are too quirky. There's nothing wrong with colorful characters. They enliven books and can be a great source of comic relief. They're also a great foil for the main character, who is usually more tame than the quirky character. Quirky character may be just what an author needs to nudge her protagonist into the action. Or, perhaps Quirky character runs into danger and the protagonist has to follow to save Quirky and, thus, the protagonist is in a situation that he or she would never willingly enter—the protagonist has been dragged into it and the story revs up. But it seems that sometimes authors layer so many quirks and peculiarities onto one character that I think, no one could ever be that strange.

I was very aware of this fine line when I created the characters for MINT JULEPS, MAYHEM, AND MURDER. Ellie, a military spouse and professional organizer, is hosting the annual family reunion for her in-law's family, the Averys, a quirky southern family. (In publishing, southern equals quirky. I know there are tons of normal, run-of-the-mill families who live in the south that don't have peculiarities, but this is fiction and readers what a few quintessentially quirky characters if the book has a southern setting.)

So…how to create a family that had a few interesting, eccentric members, but didn't cross over the line into unbelievably? I started with a cast of characters—normal people who have hopes and desires as well as joy and pain in their lives and then added what one speaker at my first writer's conference called The Surprise. A character always needs a surprise. Not fifteen surprises. One is usually enough. The speaker said that people in real life are always surprising us and I realized how true her words were. As I get to know people, I always find out something that intrigues me or that I wouldn't have guessed.

I applied the One Surprise Rule to the Avery clan. I started with the patriarch, Grandpa Franklin, a man with white hair, a stooped gait, and a sharp gaze. He loves to read westerns, histories, and biographies. The surprise: he likes to tell tall tales. He can spin a yarn—even about a trip to the store—and draw in his listeners, convincing them that every word is absolute truth. Next up, was his daughter Christine. A never-married, retired kindergarten teacher, she is sweet and nurturing. She is the one in the family who keeps an eye on Grandpa Franklin, running him to his doctor appointments and the store. She checks on him everyday. The surprise: she's dating the local pharmacist, who has introduced her to treasure hunting. She and her beau have state-of-the-art metal detectors and spend weekends looking for civil war bullets and coins. Christine's sister, Nanette, is a starchy, no-nonsense kind of woman who worked for years as the office manager of Gardner's concrete, never tolerating slacking off, swearing, or anything else she deemed unseemly. The surprise: she's an Anglophile. She has a great interest all things English from Medieval history to the current royal family. She drives a Mini Cooper emblazoned with the British flag. Probably my favorite character turned out to be Bud, the tough, older brother of the family. He's a wealthy real estate broker who has always lived in a double wide. He has a phoenix tattoo on his forearm and wears flannel shirts, jeans, and baseball caps, regardless of the weather. The surprise: he's an anonymous philanthropist, supporting kid sports teams in his town.

I introduced these characters in MINT JULEPS, MAYHEM, AND MURDER, then was able to explore them in more depth in the next book, MIMOSAS, MISCHIEF, AND MURDER, when Ellie goes to visit her in-laws in Alabama. I like the way the One Surprise Rule worked out in those two books. I'd love to hear about your favorite quirky characters. Is there a limit to how strange a character can get before you can't suspend your disbelief?

--

Sara Rosett is the author of the Ellie Avery mysteries. MINT JULEPS, MAYHEM, AND MURDER, will be available in paperback on March 1, 2011. You can learn more about Sara and her books at http://www.SaraRosett.com.

Can A Book Cure the Blues?

I say yes.
Last week was particularly challenging and, as those of you who are my Facebook friends already know, my little boy (he's seven) has been diagnosed with a potpourri of learning disabilities. There's no easy fix and we will have ot make major life adjustments to ensure that he gets the help he needs.
In times of uncertainty, I like to head to my bookshelves and just touch the spines of some of my old favorites. I find this tactile experience most comforting. I glanced at the pictures in one of my favorite childcare's books, Sylvester and the Magic Pebble, read a few chapters fromThe Secret Garden, examined one of J.R.R. Tolkien's wonderful maps, and lovingly ran my fingertips over the handset type of William Morris's Defense of Guinevere. I also have this super cool Victorian book that shows what people's facial features and head shape reveals about their personality. How I'd love to show it to you!
The smell of the pages, the feel of the covers in my hands, and the words of these familiar friends were an instant boon. How I love books! Everything about them brings contentment.
What book do you reach for when you're feeling blue?

Lead Me Not Into Temptation

by Deb Baker
Meet Izzy. She's a micro potbelly pig living in Fish Creek, Wisconsin at Trendy Tails where she greets customers.
At one time, my four-person family had twelve sled dogs, two border collies, and two cats. All at one time. Since then, the kids moved out and my husband and I are reduced to taking care of each other and one aging cat. We're enjoying our freedom. No more cold noses in the middle of the night, nudging us awake for a run outside. No more dogs in the yard howling at coyotes in the distance. We miss them. And we don't.

My strategy for resisting is simple. I avoid puppies and kittens. And now micro potbelly pigs.

Isn't she adorable? Izzy wags her tail like crazy when someone new comes into her pet store. She doesn't really like the top of her head stroked, but rub under her chin and she's your best friend for life. Izzy is very clean and uses a litter box like a cat. She is easy to train like a dog. She walks on a leash, sits for treats, and can shake hands. Here's a picture of me asking Izzy to sit.



Izzy has spent her life around dogs, so she is pretty sure she's one, too. When her buddies come into the store, they play chase. She's faster than any of them. And when she isn't playing, she's hanging with people because she's a social animal.

Yes, all I have to do is avoid temptation. This time temptation found me. But after 24 hours I came to my senses. I'm just not sure what to do about my husband.