Catherine Lind's Blog, page 5

It’s finally out!

Christmas Magic, the first book in a series called The Ultimate Christmas Handbook, is finally out. It’s for sale on Amazon for $4.99 and you can also find it in the Kindle lending library.This is a book about Christmas traditions, how we form them and how they influence us. The book has over two dozen holiday recipes, all beautifully illustrated with large full-color photographs and step-by-step instructions.There are also a series of short stories; some of them will tell you different things about Christmas, others are Christmas inspired stories about our Christmas traditions and how they evolved into what they are today. Hopefully you will enjoy reading Christmas Magic as much as I have enjoyed writing it. 

Tags: Christmas magicChristmas Handbook

Let me show you my Christmas

I have always missed a certain kind of Christmas book, the type of book where you find a mix of stories, recipes and facts about Christmas. That’s why I decided to write The Ultimate Christmas Handbook series.

At least for me, recipes are closely connected to memories and that is the foundation that this book series sits on. The order of recipes are logical to me, they are not divided into food, cookies and candy. Instead I start with a story and add the recipes that are important to me because of that story. I hope you will like them and enjoy them as much as I do.

Tags: Christmas magicChristmas Handbook

The last grill of the year.

One more picture from my new cookbook that will be out the week before Thanksgiving. The weather is getting cold, but that didn’t stop me from doing a nice barbeque yesterday and of course I need a picture.

My husband claims that most food we eat right now goes cold before we can dig into it, since it has to be photographed. I don’t like food to go to waste so we have eaten everything I made for Christmas Magic, though sometimes a little colder that intended.

It’s not easy to take pictures of food, especially when it smells delicious and the smell spreads out into the house. If you’re not hungry before, you will be after a few minutes starring at a plate through a camera.

Tags: Christmas magicfoodChristmas Handbook

I'm baking and decorating

Today I spent the entire day baking Christmas cookies, one of my favorite things to do. It’s for the Christmas Magic cookbook. Even if it’s recipes I used for many years, I want to make them one extra time, just to be sure that they work as they should. Then of course my husband likes to take pictures of them, there is nothing as dull as a cookbook without pictures.

It’s so relaxing to just sit down at the kitchen table, bring our all the different sprinkles, chocolate and other cookie decorations and just go to town and decorate, decorate and decorate.

Tags: Christmas magiccookiesChristmas Handbook

Our dinner

Right know I’m working on a Christmas cook book, the first book in a new series called “The Ultimate Christmas Handbook.” This is just a small sneak peek at one of the pictures in the book. This is what we ate for dinner tonight, a fried beef with cranberry jelly on a salad. Delicious if I may say so myself.

Tags: Christmas magicfood

Does the tavern exist?

I got a mail from Alexa in Maryland, she writes: I googled the island, you made it sound beautiful. I saw the harbor and houses, it’s so real. So do Kostas and the tavern exist?

I think I can answer this without giving away any spoilers. The answer is actually both yes and no. The tavern exists, I have spent many evenings there sitting on the patio and looking out over the old harbor. 

Kostas and Agafi is a different story, they are a fiction of my imagination. The inspiration though actually comes from an old couple that I met on another island in Greece. We were staying at their hotel and they had such an interesting dynamic between them, a very philosophical look on life, especially late in the evening when they sat down in the tavern with their ouzo and started to talk to the remaining guests. So when I started to write Unexpected Journeys, I didn’t think that much about it. When Agafi and Kostas started to take shape I suddenly recognized them. So I guess the resemblance were accidental.

Tags: Unexpected JourneysSpetses

Thank you for reviews

First of all, I want to say a big Thank You for your nice reviews on Goodreads. It’s a very special feeling reading them and find out what you like about Unexpected Journeys.

This is my first novel, and I realized a few things while writing it. Things that are self-explanatory for me as an author might not be that for another reader. For instance, in Unexpected Journeys, the shortest way from the hotel to the bakery is through the garden gate.  I didn’t even think about it when I let Greg walk through it. I have used that gate so many times. For me, it was the most natural thing in the world until my editor asked about it.  She thought it needed some explanation to be visible for someone who hadn’t been there. Hopefully she caught most of these little issues, but we all have different perspectives and that fascinates me.

That’s what I like about reading your reviews. I like to know what you see in the book, what’s important to you. If you happen to stumble on one of those things that might not be so self-explanatory, I like to know that as well.

I have a question box on my Goodreads author profile, and I’ll be very happy to answer questions either there or here in my blog.

So once again a big Thank You and I hope you enjoyed your reading.

Blackpool Illuminations

“Booklover” from Huston send me the following question.

I never been to UK, but when I read about the illuminations it sounds crazy, are they really that crazy? Why did you choose Blackpool?

Believe me, they are. My husband and I had a long weekend in Blackpool some years ago and let’s just say that Blackpool makes Las Vegas feel stylish and elegant. And like Las Vegas it has an Eiffel tower in miniature size.

Here you can see some pictures. The first one is the welcome sign at night, with the spaceship and the green aliens. Then we have a daytime photo with a strange display of farm animals. Believe me; they don’t look better at night.  The displays hang over the street, from the light posts, and then there are side areas with tableaux displaying different stories, and “other” things.

When Unexpected Journeys went to the editor, she told me to elaborate on the illumination passage since the “spaceship” made her lose focus. I can understand that, so I did.

Why did I choose Blackpool? It’s difficult to give an answer without spoilers, so this might sound cryptic. I needed a place where Greg could have lost control and do things out of the ordinary. It couldn’t be London or Oxford, since that was his home. It had to be a place where he normally wouldn’t go to and the settings had to be crazy. Since it had to be in the UK I thought about Blackpool, I don’t believe that you can find a more hilarious place in England. That’s why I choose Blackpool.

Tags: Unexpected JourneysQ&A

Lights and ships...

“Booklover” from Huston send me the following question.

I never been to UK, but when I read about the illuminations it sounds crazy. Are they really that crazy? Why did you choose Blackpool?

Believe me, they are. My husband and I had a long weekend in Blackpool some years ago and let’s just say that Blackpool makes Las Vegas feel stylish and elegant. And like Las Vegas it has an Eiffel tower in miniature size.

Here you can see some pictures. The first one is the welcome sign at night, with the spaceship and the green aliens. Then we have a daytime photo with a strange display of farm animals. Believe me; they don’t look better at night.  The displays hang over the street, from the light posts, and then there are side areas with tableaux displaying different stories, and “other” things.

When Unexpected Journeys went to the editor, she told me to elaborate on the illumination passage since the “spaceship” made her lose focus. I can understand that, so I did.

Why did I choose Blackpool? It’s difficult to give an answer without spoilers, so this might sound cryptic. I needed a place where Greg could have lost control and do things out of the ordinary. It couldn’t be London or Oxford, since that was his home. It had to be a place where he normally wouldn’t go to and the settings had to be crazy. Since it had to be in the UK I thought about Blackpool, I don’t believe that you can find a more hilarious place in England. That’s why I choose Blackpool.

Tags: Unexpected JourneysQ&A

Unexpected Journeys Finally released

We are finally there. It took some time but my first novel, Unexpected Journeys is finally out. You can find it on Amazon.

It’s a story about two people, trying to find out who they are and what they want from the future. They both arrive to the Greek island of Spetses.

She is a widow with a small child, trying to figure out how they can start to live again. He is lost between two cultures, two lifestyles. He searches for his roots, in an attempt to figure out who he is so he can be a better father for his little girl. Fate takes them on an unexpected journey.

If you want to try it out, you can read the first three chapters under books.

Tags: bookUnexpected Journeys