Edith Maxwell's Blog, page 83
December 8, 2021
Dark Days — Favorites
Since the days of darkness are upon us, I was thinking about some of my favorite dark things? Which do you like Wickeds?
Dark Chocolate? Yay or nay?Black coffee or tea? Or do you have to doctor it?Dark leafy greens or give me some iceberg lettuce?Did you watch the soap opera Dark Shadows? Or pulease, I’m way too young for that!Jessie: 1-Yay. 2-Yay. 3- Both! 4-I am too young. I didn’t even realize it was a soap opera!
Edith/Maddie: Dark chocolate, the darker the better. Dark roast coffee with whole milk. Dark leafy greens, preferably from my garden. I’ve never followed a soap opera except the 1975 Gabriela (in Portuguese), with a young Sonia Braga, when I went back to visit my exchange family in southern Brazil – the whole country was watching it!
Julie: I’m not as big a fan of dark chocolate, though I prefer it in desserts. I drink black tea, but lately have become a London Fog drinker as a treat. Dark leafy greens for sure. I’m not a big lettuce fan. And I didn’t watch Dark Shadows–I was a wimp even then.
Barb: Not a fan of dark chocolate. Give me milk chocolate any day. I like my coffee with skim milk, cream on special occasions. (Sometimes “special occasions” means I was driving by a Dunkin Donuts.) I like my salads to have some crunch, so I mostly focus on leafy greens, but will throw in a wedge salad on special occasions. (In this case, special occasions means wedge salad is on offer and someone other than me is making it.) Like Edith, I have never watched daytime soap operas, (nighttime ones are a different story), but I did watch a telenovella every day when I was an exchange student in Colombia. It was called Simplemente Maria. The whole family gathered to see it including the maids. I can still hear the theme music.
Liz: Dark chocolate and black coffee for SURE! And dark leafy greens because I’ve always read that iceberg lettuce has no nutritional value to speak of (sorry for the nerd moment). As for soaps, I was a Days of our Lives gal from early on. I was never allowed to watch it though, so I would rush home from the bus and watch it standing up at the window so I could keep an eye out for my mother coming home from work. I barely ever got caught!
Sherry: Liz, that is so funny that you watched for your mother coming home while you watched Days. I’m more of a any kind of chocolate person. I usually drink tea plain, but it is delightful with a splash of milk and sugar. Dark, leafy greens except like Barb, when I’m out and there’s a wedge salad. I adored Dark Shadows and watched it every afternoon.
Readers: How about you?
December 7, 2021
What We’re Reading — Winter Edition
What’s everyone reading? This is the best time of year to snuggle in a throw and read a great book!
Liz: As usual, I have too many books started. On the fiction front, I am catching up on LynDee Walker’s Faith McClellan Series and just finished No Sin Unpunished (sooo good!). Now I’m diving into Stephen King’s Billy Summers. On the nonfiction front, I’m reading Luvvie Ajayi Jones’ latest, Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual and I just picked up Brene Brown’s latest, Atlas of the Heart.
Edith/Maddie: I just finished Tracy Chevalier’s A Single Thread, a beautiful historical novel (not crime fiction). Now I’m starting Death of an American Beauty by Mariah Fredericks, and can’t wait to pick up Lucy Burdette’s new thriller, Unsafe Haven and dive into that.
Barb: Unsafe Haven is high on my TBR pile, too! I am so glad you asked this question. I just finished a book that I loathed! I am not one to hate on another writer’s book, but my goodness I hated this. (And you can tell by its bestseller status and various accolades, the author has nothing to fear from my wrath.) I wouldn’t have finished it, except that I was reading it for a class I am taking in January. The title is The Plot: A Novel, and it’s about a writer who steals a plot from a dead student. (Not a spoiler.) I hated the protagonist, a failing writer who teaches in an MFA program, who is whiny, self-involved, and more to the point, Too Stupid to Live. Though I often love movies about writers (Stranger than Fiction, The Man Who Invented Christmas), I HATE books about writers, especially writers who teach in MFA programs. As a friend says, “Write what you know is the laziest, worst advice ever.” Writers lives are not nearly as interesting as some of us imagine them to be. The amazing plot twist the protagonist “steals” is not, in the least, amazing. And the twist on the twist at the end is telegraphed in one of the early chapters of the book and is not a surprise at all. I was at a dinner party last night (amazing in and of itself) with two other writers and our extremely well-read spouses. Two others had read The Plot and their reactions were much more “meh,” than “I loathed it,” so I might be alone in this opinion. If any of you out there have read it, I would love to hear your reactions.
Sherry: I’m reading two books which isn’t something I do very often. One is Damaging Secrets by Carolyn Ridder Aspenson. I saw it on a list somewhere and am so glad I picked it up. It’s a bit gritty, but so well written with a compelling protagonist with a lot of issues. I’m also reading an advance copy of a first in a new cozy series–Death by Bubble Tea by Jennifer J. Chow. It’s up for preorder and I love it!
Jessie: I always love this question, Sherry, as well as the opportunity to read everyone else’s answers! I am currently reading The Journey to the Mayflower by Stephen Tomkins. I just finished up Luncheon of the Boating Party by Susan Vreeland which I really enjoyed for its look at the creation of the famous painting by Renoir. Next on my list is Seafaring Women by David Cordingly for non-fiction and The Hidden Palace by Helene Wecker for fiction.
Julie: My TBR pile is overwhelming! I’m currently reading Wanda M. Morris’s All Her Little Secrets, which I’m loving. Next up in Yasmin Angoe’s Her Name is Knight and Alex Segura’s Secret Identity (which will be released in 2022). Liz and I should have a book club, Brene Brown’s latest, Atlas of the Heart is also on my pile.
Readers: What are you reading?
December 6, 2021
The Persistence of Memory by Sharon Dean
Hi. Barb back to introduce our guest Sharon Dean. Her new book is The Wicked Bible. Sharon writes about memory and how it affects us both as readers and writers.
Take it away, Sharon!The old adage “write what you know” might be better stated as “write what you remember.” I’ve lived in Oregon for ten years, by my novels are mostly set in the New England I remember. I remember the sound of spring peepers that I listened to in the predawn hours; the perfect head of broccoli in my summer garden that the woodchuck feasted on; the maple tree that cast a reddish glow into my parlor in the Fall; the quiet and sunshine after a snowstorm. I remember the taste of lobster and of steamed clams and of corn on the cob that’s difficult to grow in the drought-stricken West.
I’m surprised at the persistence of memory. By novel number 5, I realized I always have a scene in a cemetery, an image generated from my memories of putting flowers on the graves of my grandparents and, later, my parents. My novels often feature the hymns I grew up singing in a Protestant church even though one of my protagonists is an atheist. I incorporate scenes of bicycling, hiking, swimming, skiing, activities I used to be better at.
These are the larger patterns. Smaller things work their way into a scene, often coming as a surprise. I gloated when I gave a character the candy dish my sister inherited from our grandmother. I gloated again when I incorporated a photo of us as children that she hates, but I like. A high school teacher we called Swish because of the way her nylon stockings swished when she walked made an appearance. My cat Charlie with the different color eyes became Beethoven in my novel The Barn, which opens with an image of a barn I used to pass as a child that had a wooden cow’s head peeking from the rafters. The striped carpet that made us all dizzy when it appeared in my college library makes a cameo appearance in my latest novel, The Wicked Bible. I like to think that readers who know me might recognize the details I remember and that others remember about the cemeteries and churches and libraries of their childhood.
Memories shape how we write. They also shape how we read. Maybe someone loves a cemetery scene because she remembers reading gravestones. Someone else balks because he remembers watching his mother’s coffin being lowered into a grave. People might embrace the scene of a blizzard, remembering a week without power playing “the olden days” or might feel the terror of the day they were stranded in a storm on a highway.
Readers: Whether we read or write or do both, we are shaped by the persistence of memory. How much does memory persist in your writing or shape the way you read?
About Sharon
I came to writing mysteries from an academic world where I wrote scholarly books. The last one was an edition of letters written by the nineteenth-century novelist Constance Fenimore Woolson. I had to find those letters, find when she wrote them from where and to whom. It was a massive act of sleuthing. But it was good training for writing mysteries, for a scholar is a sleuth as much as Miss Marple or Perry Mason or all those teenage detective I loved in The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden.
Sharon L. Dean grew up in Massachusetts where she was immersed in the literature of New England. She lived and taught in New Hampshire before moving to Oregon. Her memories of the East persist in her three Susan Warner mysteries, her literary novel titled Leaving Freedom, and her new series featuring librarian and reluctant sleuth Deborah Strong.
About The Wicked BibleAfter a winter when she solved the cold case of a high school friend found dead in a barn, Deborah Strong needs a distraction. She joins a conference, “Libraries: Where Have We Been, Where Are We Going?” that will be useful for her work as a librarian in the small town of Shelby. The setting at a picturesque college in New Hampshire should also be healing.
Deborah’s project for the week plunges her into a mystery that would delight most researchers. What are the connections between a Bible dubbed “The Wicked Bible,” a woman called “The Wickedest Woman in New York,” a book written by a nineteenth-century author, and a letter penned to the author? As she slowly unravels the connections, Deborah confronts an event from her own past and anticipates a future that could be as brilliant as New Hampshire’s September foliage.
December 3, 2021
A Nod to Christmas’s Past and #giveaway by Darci Hannah
Hi! Barb here to welcome our guest Darci Hannah to the blog. Darci shares my love of Christmas and I so enjoyed her delightful post. Darci is giving away a copy of Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bake-Off, the third book in her Beacon Bakeshop Mystery series, to one lucky commenter below.
Take it away, Darci!
Wow! It’s so great to be a guest today on the lovely Wicked Authors Blog, especially since it’s December, and there’s no better month than December to share a little bit about my latest Beacon Bakeshop mystery, Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bake-Off. With a title that boasts Christmas cookies, you can bet that there are plenty of scrumptious cookies mentioned throughout the book, as well as recipes. (It wouldn’t be very nice of me to chat-up cookies for three hundred pages without giving you the means to try them too!) And talk about Christmas spirit! Let’s just say that the town of Beacon Harbor, Michigan has plenty to go around, that and a healthy dose of holiday inspired competition.
When I was given the opportunity to write a Christmas cozy mystery, I jumped at the chance. No hesitation here. I went in with both feet! That’s because deep down I’m the Clark Griswold of my family, (if the reference is unfamiliar, please see National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation!) a perpetually optimistic Christmas enthusiast to a fault.
You would think by now, having children in their mid-20s with oodles of Christmas’s under my belt, that I would have learned that striving to create the perfect Christmas experience for my family and friends is beyond the grasp of mere mortals like me. And yet (here’s where the optimism comes in handy), I keep trying. I keep trying because sometimes I get close, and the genuine delight on the faces of family and friends when they open an unexpected gift, or taste the fruits of my kitchen, keeps me reaching for more. Unfortunately, I bequeathed to my protagonist, Lindsey Bakewell, these sugarplum visions as well. Lucky Lindsey!
This love of Christmas for me goes way back to my childhood. I can’t help from being a touch nostalgic at the holidays, thinking of how I felt as a child at Christmas, of the magic and wonder of the season, and how my parents strived to create the perfect Christmas experience for their family and friends. The first time I saw Christmas Vacation, I fell in love with it because it was so relatable. I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago in the 1980’s, which is the setting of Christmas Vacation. Watching that movie somehow brings me back to that place and time.
Every year my parents would take us to Marshall Fields (remember that elegant department store?) to see the decorations, do a little shopping, and to have lunch beneath the giant tree. Somehow that store felt like Christmas—from the spectacularly decorated Christmas trees heavy with giant ornaments, to the hint of Chanel No5 (or whatever pricy perfume they were sampling that day), to the minty, chocolaty goodness of the complimentary Frango mint handed to you at the door. Every inch of the place was Christmastized to the gills, inspiring us, filling us with Christmas cheer, and making us believe that we could do the same in our own house.
Although our Christmas’s were wonderful, they were never quite perfect, but that’s what made them so memorable. Every year my parents hosted Christmas Eve, inviting all our relatives to our house for dinner. With visions of a Marshall Fields Christmas still swirling in their heads, they would strive to fill the house with pretty decorations too. Oh, they tried, but once they were given the large, plastic, gaudy Mrs. Claus, it all kind of went downhill from there.
Thanks to Mom and her gourmet lunch club (Yep, we had a gourmet lunch club in our town. I miss the 80s!) the food was always delicious. Her desserts were legendary too! (Baked Alaska with a brownie base, peppermint ice cream, covered with a dome of toasted meringue, and served with homemade hot fudge sauce!) Yet once the guests started to arrive, there was always a mishap or two in the kitchen (because everyone wanted to mill around in the kitchen when Mom was cooking!). Dad was put in charge of the drinks and shooing everyone back to the living room. He never could tell the difference between the spiked eggnog and the one for the kids.
My younger brother liked to tell inappropriate jokes to the adults. My older brother liked to capture it on video. The family dog liked to unwrapped gifts while we were eating. That’s when my dad discovered that Grandma had wrapped one of her presents in a Kotex box. When he confronted Grandma, she feigned ignorance then giggled. That’s when we knew she had done it for laughs… which set the bar pretty high for the next year.
Thanks to my parents, our Christmas’s were absolutely perfect. After all, as Clark Griswold teaches us, chaos is the catalyst for true Christmas spirit. Perpetuating the spirit of giving, embracing the meaning of Christmas, and passing on cherished family traditions to the next generation while making new ones of our own, I believe is a very worthy endeavor. Go ahead, channel a little Clark Griswold of your own this holiday season. Your Christmas may get a little chaotic, but it will also be perfect.
Readers: How about you? Are you still determined to capture the spirit of the holidays of your youth, or have you settled into a more sedate, and perhaps less chaotic, routine? Answer the question in the comments below or just say “hi” to be entered to receive a copy of Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bake-Off.
Wishing you all a very merry Christmas!
About DarciCozy mystery author, Darci Hannah, is a native of the Midwest and currently lives in a small town in Michigan. Darci is a lifelong lover of the Great Lakes, a natural wonder that inspires many of her stories. When Darci isn’t baking for family and friends, hiking with her furry pals, Ripley and Finn, or concocting her next cozy mystery, she can be found wandering around picturesque lakeside villages with her hubby, sampling baked goods and breaking for coffee more often than she should.
Purchase links for Murder at the Christmas Cookie Bake-OffWebsite: www.darcihannah.com
Indie Bound: https://www.indiebound.org/book/9781496731739
December 2, 2021
Seven Things I Didn’t Know Then
I can’t believe today is the seventh anniversary of the release of my first book Tagged for Death. There are so many things I’ve learned about being an author and the publishing world so I’m sharing seven of them today.
I remember so clearly how worried I was about bad reviews and trolls. That book was my baby with years of studying writing and writing (still unpublished novels) behind it. It felt like showing off your precious baby and then having someone criticize every aspect of her. However, most of those worries were for naught. People were kind and encouraging. I’ve mentioned this before but my daughter painted a saying for me in case I got bad reviews: You can have the sweetest, juiciest peach, but not everyone likes peaches. If you hear me muttering “not everyone likes peaches,” you know why.My editor, Gary Goldstein, supports me in a way not a lot of editors do these days. After The Gun Also Rises (the sixth Sarah Winston Garage Sale mystery) came out, Gary told me we should start thinking about another series. We batted around ideas until we finally landed on the Chloe Jackson Sea Glass Saloon mysteries.I also must give a shout out to everyone at Kensington. They’ve been amazing. From the artists who create the covers to the proofreader who noticed I’d written Crap Trap instead of Crab Trap in A Time to Swill. That would have been embarrassing especially since it’s an actual business in Destin, Florida! Larissa Ackerman works so hard for her multitude of authors to get the word out about our books.While I’d been part of the crime writing community via Sisters in Crime (thanks to Julie Hennrikus telling me to join) and from attending conferences, I had no idea how supportive and generous writers would be. Hank Phillipi Ryan and Sheila Connolly along with the Wickeds took time to read and blurb Tagged for Death. Authors shared the news and cheered me on. The Chesapeake Chapter of Sisters in Crime showed up in force to my first in person event and have continued to be supportive ever since.I had no idea there were so many bloggers and reviewers out there who read and review books and they don’t get paid! They spend an extraordinary amount of their valuable time to promote books for people they don’t even know. Thanks to each one of you!I also had no idea readers would take the time to write and say they loved a book. In the beginning when I’d get an email my husband would always ask, “Do you know them?” I think he was more surprised than I was when people took the time to write a note. Also, it was lovely meeting people at conferences who took the time to say they loved a book or a character or that the book made them almost cry or laugh out loud.I didn’t know there would be so many fun things to do as an author! After years of going to conferences and sitting in on panels, I got to be on panels. I loved being asked to attend fabulous smaller conferences like Murder by the Book in Bar Harbor, Maine, Murder and Mayhem in Chicago, Crime Scene in Pittsboro, North Carolina, and the Suffolk Mystery Authors Festival in Virginia. Getting to do a mini-book tour with The Wickeds and featured in the Boston Globe with The Wickeds are experiences I won’t forget.
To celebrate the seventh anniversary of Tagged for Death, I’m giving away a complete set of the Sarah Winston Garage Sale mysteries on my Facebook author page! Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/SherryHarrisauthor
Readers: Is there something you’ve learn in the last seven years that sticks with you?
December 1, 2021
Dark Days and a De-LIGHT-ful Release
December always makes me think of the longer hours of darkness. Thankfully this December we get to celebrate the release of Murder at the Lobstah Shack by Maddie Day aka Edith Maxwell. The book is set after Columbus Days when the hours of light rapidly shorten.
Here’s a bit about the book: When murder turns out to be the special of the day at her friend’s seafood restaurant, bicycle shop owner Mackenzie “Mac” Almeida and her fellow book club sleuths have to net a killer…
From clam chowdahs to oysters on the half-shell, Tulia Peters’ Lobstah Shack offers locals and tourists in Westham, Massachusetts, some of Cape Cod’s most amazing cuisine. But when the body of Annette DiCicero is discovered in the kitchen’s walk-in freezer—with a custom-made claw-handled lobster pick lodged in her neck—spoiled appetites are the least of Tulia’s worries.
After a heated public argument with Annette, Tulia is a person of interest in the police’s homicide investigation. To clear Tulia’s name, Mac and the Cozy Capers Book Group snoop into Annette’s personal life. Between her temperamental husband, his shady business partner, and two women tied to Annette’s past life as “Miss New Bedford”, there are now several suspects and multiple motives. And they’re getting crabby about Mac intruding on their affairs…
Wickeds, do you change your routine in the late fall/early winter?
Jessie: Super congratulations on the release, Edith! My routine shifts in details a bit but not really in the broad strokes. I prefer to walk with my dog, Sam, when it’s light out and perhaps not quite as cold. That requires me to move our morning walk a bit later and the afternoon one a bit earlier. I knit year round, but in the summer I work on small projects like socks or lace weight shawls. In the cooler months I turn my efforts to larger projects that warm my lap like sweaters.
Sherry: Congratulations, Edith! Another book out — woo-hoo! I tend to go to bed a bit earlier in December than I do the rest of the year. And when I’m sitting on the couch reading or watching TV, I’m snuggled in a throw of some sort. I also tend to start looking for recipes that lean to comfort food — usually updated healthy versions.
Julie: Congratulations, Edith! I’m not a fan of the cold, but find that once I’m out and moving it can be refreshing. It’s much easier to take a long walk than it is during the dog days of summer. Also, like Jessie, I knit larger projects, much to my cats’ delight.
Barb: Congratulations, Edith! I really hate it when it gets dark so early, (like right now) so I decorate for the holidays to ward off the blues. Then Bill and I head south for the worst of the winter. One of the best things about Key West is that it’s so much farther west in the eastern time zone, we get an hour more sunlight in the evening just by going there. However, once we get to Key West, our routine–writing, photography, home and friends–is entirely the same as up north. So you could say our routine changes completely–or not at all.
Edith/Maddie: Thank you, all! My routine changes in that my vegetable garden no longer needs my attention, and I can stop reminding Hugh to mow the lawn (we have different standards on that…). I also love wearing my Murder and Mayhem writing hoodie in the mornings and pulling on knee-high boots with a skirt or jeans for a dinner out. Plus it gets cool enough to bake bread and make soups and stews. Like Julie, I find brisk walks in cold air much more pleasant than when it’s hot out. And who knows, maybe I’ll take up knitting again!
Readers: Does your routine change?
November 30, 2021
It’s Release Day!
Edith/Maddie here, so excited to celebrate the release of Murder at the Lobstah Shack with all of you.
It’s the third Cozy Capers Book Group mystery. When I was casting about for an opening, I knew I wanted the body to be found in Tulia Peters’s Lobstah Shack restaurant. It’s a modest but popular business near protagonist Mac Almeida’s bike shop. Being a restaurant, it has a walk-in cooler. And Tulia is a member of the Cozy Capers book group.
The group is reading its way through cozy mysteries set in each state. So of course they’re reading Barb’s Fogged Inn, set in Maine.
I’ve always loved Barb’s first line in the book, which has restaurant owner Gus yelling upstairs: “Jule-YA! There’s a dead guy in the walk-in.”
Isn’t that just the best?
In my book, Tulia calls Mac in a panic one morning. Mac rushes over to find, yes, a body in the walk-in.
“It’s exactly like in the book, Mac,” Tulia whispered.
Our Cozy Capers group wasn’t going to discuss Annette’s death in a light-hearted banter about motive and suspects. In real life, right here, right now, there was definitely a dead person in Tulia’s walk-in.
As you can imagine, I had so much fun with this opening.
I also ate my first lobster roll a couple of months ago. I figured I needed to try one, since the new book includes Tulia making them after she can reopen her restaurant. When better to grab a lobster roll than out to lunch with Barb herself in Portland, Maine? Believe me, the lobster roll from DiMillos was delicious.
I hope you love Murder at the Lobstah Shack! I’ve sent in book four, Murder in a Cape Cottage, which will release next October, and I’m delighted to have signed a contract for three more books in the series. Book five will be Murder in a Cape Bookstore.
Readers: What’s your favorite way to eat lobster? Or would you just rather not?
Please join me and other authors tonight and tomorrow night in the following fun release events:
Tonight a few other cozy mystery authors and I appear in a Cozy Mystery Jamboree hosted by Fountain Bookstore at 6 pm EST! It costs $5, but gives you a $5 discount on books sold by the bookstore. Buy a ticket here.
I’ll be part of a Kensington Authors’ party on Facebook, also tonight, that I hope you can join us for. It runs from 7-10 pm EST and each author is offering giveaways.
Tomorrow, my good friend author Ellen Byron (aka Maria DiRico) and I are going to present the virtual Edith and Ellen show, hosted by Belmont Books at 7 pm EST, with chat, prizes, and lots of laughter. Please register for it!
See you there!
November 29, 2021
Amy Pershing / Maddie Day Mashup!
Edith/Maddie here, writing from north of Boston.
And smiling at what we bring you today.
Graphic by Jennifer McKeeWhen I realized the fabulous Amy Pershing had An Eggnog to Die For, her new Cape Cod Foodie mystery, coming out a few weeks before Murder at the Lobstah Shack, my third Cozy Capers Book Group mystery, I invited her onto the blog. I thought it would be fun to do a mash-up, to have her Samantha Barnes and my Mackenzie Almeida meet up on Cape Cod! She loved the idea. What follows is mostly her creation, with a bit of tweaking from me.
When Sam Met Mac: A Thanksgiving Tale
“I knew this was a bad idea,” I said to Grumpy. Grumpy is my much battered and, well, grumpy pickup truck. He is, however, a good listener. “I don’t like riding bikes.”
The truth was, bikes don’t like me. The last time I’d ridden one, I was on my way to meet a killer. That time I’d only fallen off once. Which might have been a personal best.
And yet here I was the Tuesday before Thanksgiving in front of Mac’s Bikes in Westham trying to wrestle my Aunt Ida’s bicycle out of the back of the truck for a “tune-up.” And all because when I’d asked my harbormaster boyfriend what he wanted to do for his birthday the Friday after Thanksgiving, he’d suggested a bike ride along the Cape Cod Rail Trail.
“If Mac can’t fix it,” my best friend Jenny had said, “then your next stop is the dump.” I was kind of hoping my next stop would be the dump.
But this Mac person had had other ideas. She’d wandered out of her shop when she’d spied me through the front window being bested by an inanimate object. She looked, with her head of short curly hair and friendly smile, like a very fit teenager, not the thirty-something owner of a successful business.
“Hi,” she said, “I’m Mac.”
I paused in my efforts. “Samantha Barnes,” I said. “Sam.”
“Samantha Barnes. I read about you on Wicked Local Cape Cod. Aren’t you the Cape Cod Foodie who solves murders?”
“Not at the moment, no,” I said, looking balefully at the bicycle dangling from Grumpy’s tailgate. Then I remembered something I’d read in the Cape Cod Clarion. Mac. Mackenzie Almeida.
“Aren’t you the Mac Almeida who solves murders?”
“Not at the moment, no,” she said with a laugh, and stepped over to the truck. “Here,” she said, “let me help.”
She deftly lifted the brute out of the back of the truck. “This is a classic,” she said, “What’s the problem?”
“I’ve got to go on a bike ride on Friday,” I said. Okay, whined. “But it’s pretty wobbly. Here, I’ll show you.”
And without further ado, I climbed aboard Aunt Ida’s bicycle and wove a half block down the sidewalk. At which point the front wheel promptly fell off. Followed by Yours Truly.
*****
“Feeling better?” Mac asked as she poured me a cup of coffee inside the shop, which was stocked with new bikes, repair supplies, stretchy neon outfits, helmets, and more, with a workroom visible beyond.
“Much,” I said. “Nothing really bruised except my pride.”
“Good. I can fix that front wheel easily.”
“I can’t believe I’m going to have to ride that thing on Friday,” I said. Okay, whined.
“I take it you’re not one of those get-back-up-on-the-horse types,” Mac said.
“Not that horse.” I grimaced. “I wish I could look like I’m riding a bike, but that somebody else would actually take the reins, so to speak.”
“Yeah.” She nodded. “That’s the way I feel about Thanksgiving.”
“You don’t like Thanksgiving?” I was horrified. “Thanksgiving is all about food. What’s not to like?”
“I love Thanksgiving,” she said. “It’s the ‘you can bring a pie for dessert’ part I don’t like. The last time I tried to make a pie, it looked like your bike after the wheel came off.”
That made me laugh. “Not good,” I agreed.
“Why do they ask me to bring a pie for Thanksgiving?” Mac asked. Okay, whined. “You know how store-bought always looks, well, store-bought. And I refuse to ask Tim, my baker boyfriend. He’s already bringing two pies.”
“I’m not a good baker either,” I said. “But my friend Jillian covers for me. That’s why, before I came here, I stopped to pick up a couple of her fantastic pecan pies.”
And then we looked at each other like the great detectives we were.
Which is how it happened that Mac Almeida walked out of her shop that day with one of Jillian’s homemade pecan pies and I walked out with a gift certificate for the rental of a tandem bicycle.
And a Happy Thanksgiving was had by all.
Readers: Share a bicycling adventure – or mishap – you have had. Amy and I will each give away a copy of our new books!
Christmas is coming to Cape Cod, but when Sam Barnes finds a very dead Santa in a very hip restaurant, it’s up to her to sift out suspects who have been naughty vs. nice…
Professional foodie Samantha Barnes has a simple Christmas list: a quiet holiday at home with her dog and a certain handsome harbormaster; no embarrassing viral videos; and no finding dead bodies. Unfortunately she’s got family visiting, she’s spending a lot of time in front of the camera, and she’s just stumbled over the lifeless body of the town’s Santa Claus.
Plus, Sam’s plans for Christmas Eve are getting complicated. There’s the great eggnog debate among her very opinionated guests. There’s the “all edible” Christmas tree to decorate. And there’s her Feast of the Five Fishes to prepare. Nonetheless, Sam finds herself once again in the role of sleuth. She needs to find out who slayed this Santa—but can she pull off a perfect feast and nab a killer?
Buy links: Amazon: https://amzn.to/3g9T414 Barnes & Noble: https://bit.ly/3A3KCYk IndieBound: https://bit.ly/39WGuPm bookshop.org: https://bit.ly/3oxltn3
Amy Pershing, who spent every summer of her childhood on Cape Cod, was an editor, a restaurant reviewer and a journalist before sitting down to write the Cape Cod Foodie Mystery series, including A Side of Murder — which Elizabeth Gilbert called “the freshest, funniest mystery I have ever read” — and An Eggnog to Die For — which Kirkus Reviews gave a starred review, saying, “A delightful sleuth, a complex mystery, and lovingly described cuisine: a winner for both foodies and mystery mavens.” The third book in the series, Murder Is No Picnic, will be published in the summer of 2022.
Follow Amy on her website: AmyPershingAuthor.com,
November 26, 2021
Guest Winnie Archer, plus #giveaway
Edith/Maddie here, still digesting Thanksgiving north of Boston!
I’m so happy to welcome author Melissa Bourbon, aka Winnie Archer, who has a new holiday book out and a giveaway – after you read her delightful post about her annual tamale-making party.
Here’s the blurb for A Murder Yule Regret:
Freelance photographer and Yeast of Eden bakery assistant Ivy Culpepper has just scored the job of a lifetime shooting the Dickensian dress-up X-mas party thrown by It Girl film actress Eliza Fox…until an unwanted guest appears.
A holiday costume party in the sleepy coastal town of Santa Sofia could be just the boost Ivy needs for her fledgling photography business. At the party, Ivy enters a Victorian fantasy come to life, all courtesy of the fabulous Ms. Fox. Ivy gets to play shutterbug while hanging with Scrooge, Marley, the Cratchits, and more classic Dickens characters. But what begins as the best of times turns out to be the very worst for one of the party guests—a tabloid journalist with more enemies than Ebenezer himself.
When the man’s body is found sprawled across the jagged rocks below the house, the fingers begin pointing at Eliza. Meanwhile, Ivy gets roped into helping prove the starlet’s innocence. Her festive photos are now official evidence—and the Ghosts of Christmas Present could mean the party for Eliza is over, once and for all.
Our Tamalada
Everyone has their favorite holiday and season. My favorite season has always been winter. I’m much more of a sweater/jacket/blanket/boots/slippers girl than I am a swimsuit/shorts/flip flops person.
I got married on December 30th, because I wanted my wedding to be during the winter.
This love of winter naturally lends itself to loving the Christmas season. It’s less about the day, and more about the activities surrounding the holiday.
As a family, our happiest tradition is our annual tamalada. This is a tamale-making party. We gather together at our home with friends and family and make dozens upon dozens of tamales. My daughter used to joke, saying, “Do your friends know they’re coming to this party to work?”
It’s true. It’s a work party. We make masa. We make the fillings. My husband even says that the way I make everything now is better than how his mom makes it. That is a high compliment since he tells it like it is, and his mom is an excellent cook.
We’ve added our own types of tamales to the mix. Where my husband, Carlos, grew up with just the traditional pork tamales, we now make chicken mole, bean and cheese, and sometimes other unique specialities.
Our friends come and learn about our family’s tradition, partake in the making, eat the tamales once they’re cooked (and the pozole and other goodies), and everyone leaves with a dozen or two tamales to take home.
Because of my love to the season, writing a holiday-themed mystery was SO much fun! I got to tap into my love of Dickens and A Christmas Carol, the brisk winter on the California coast, and the magic of the season (minus the murder, of course).
In my next holiday mystery, I’ll bring in our tamalada tradition!
Happy holidays, and happy reading!
Readers: Have you ever had tamales? Do you have a favorite flavor? What is one of your holiday traditions? Winnie/Melissa will send one commenter a copy – print or digital – of Murder in Devil’s Cove, the first Book Magic mystery.
Melissa Bourbon is the national bestselling author of more than twenty-five mystery books, including the Book Magic mysteries, the Lola Cruz Mysteries, A Magical Dressmaking Mystery series, and the Bread Shop Mysteries, written as Winnie Archer. She is a former middle school English teacher who gave up the classroom in order to live in her imagination full time. Melissa lives in North Carolina with her educator husband, Carlos, and their two dogs, a pug, Bean, and a chug, Dobby. She is beyond fortunate to be living the life of her dreams. Learn more about Melissa at her website, www.melissabourbon.com, on Facebook @MelissaBourbon/Winnie ArcherBooks, and on Instagram @bookishly_cozy.
November 25, 2021
Happy Thanksgiving!
From all the Wicked Authors to all of you, may you feast with loved ones and be safe and warm, with a good book to curl up with at the end of the day!
From The ideal Cook Book by Annie R. Gregory (1902). Public domain image.
