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New year's eve

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

It's that time of year again—the very last time of the year. In less than 24 hours, 2018 will be in the rear view mirror, and we'll all have a bright, shiny new year to play with.

So how am I spending this last little bit of 2018? The same way I usually spend December 31—trying to convince myself that it's neither possible nor necessary to finish every single project I wanted to have finished this year.

There's an old superstition that it's bad luck to clean on New Year's Day. That if you clean that day you'll sweep all the luck out of the house. That if you do laundry, you'll wash a year of good fortune down the drain. Then there's the superstition that the way you start the year is the way the year will go. And I'd really like to have a clean, well-organized house for 2019. You can see the inherent contradiction. I can't possibly start the year with a clean, well-organized house unless I do a more cleaning and organizing today than is really possible in 24 hours. More like 14 by now.

I also want to have a complete, detailed outline for the book I'm about to start writing. And I want to have all my bills paid (and in the mail for those few I still pay by check) and my checkbook balanced and all the receipts for 2018 deductible expenses logged. I want to have all my filing done. And my email inbox at zero. The paper inbox, too. The last few presents, for friends I will see soon, wrapped. The apple crisp and the pumpkin pie made for family celebrations.

If I'd done a better job at 2018, I'd have sold or donated all the stuff I've decided to sell or donate. I'd have already finished updating my website so the designer can start the long-overdue revamp. I'd have planted all those bulbs that will now probably have to go into pots for the time being, unless the ground is still unfrozen. Haven't even had time to check. And the pruning and yard tidying would be done and--

You get the picture. Much undone that I wish were done.

So maybe it's time to forgive myself for what I didn't get done in 2018 and focus on what I did accomplish, and set some reasonable goals for the new year.

Note that I said goals—not resolutions,. The problem with resolutions is that we think of making and breaking them—and once they're broken, they're not bright and shiny and pristine, and there's a tendency to decide to say “I'll try again next year,” or at least, “I'll give myself a break until February 1.” And then March 1, and April 1. If I want anything done, I don't make a resolution—I set a goal.

Unlike a resolution, goals don't get broken. They just hang up there, leading you on, sometimes seeming almost unattainable—except that you know if you keep plugging away, maybe you'll get there. Probably you'll get there. Almost certainly, if you set reasonable goals and then nibble away at them, breaking them down into small, doable tasks, and then doing those tasks, day after day, until you reach the goal.

It's how I write books. I don't set out every day to write a book. I set out to write the number of words I've set for myself to write that day. I know if I keep doing that day after day, eventually I'll have a book.

So instead of fretting that the whole house isn't yet perfectly tidy and organized, I'll put in a down payment on a clean house with an hour or two of work. And while I do it, I'll get in some thinking. About 2018. The good parts. The bad parts. How to have more of the former in 2019.

(In case you haven't noticed, this is a pep talk. To me, as much as anyone else.)

So how are you spending New Year's Eve? What do you want to leave behind from 2018? What are you looking forward to in 2019?

The pictures in this blog are all ones I took during 2018 and used in my 2019 calendar. I'll be giving away copies of the calendar--to win a copy, leave a comment here or on Facebook about how you're spending your new year's eve, and I'll draw three winners at random!

 

 

 

 

My New Year's Resolution

By Elaine Viets of the Femmes Fatales.

For 2019, I'm not going to try to lose weight. I'm through with the same old boring New Year's resolutions.
But I do have one resolution – an important one.
I resolve to see my friends.

I lost two good friends in 2018, and I miss them both. Nearly every day, I think about things I want to email Dick – the corny jokes, the awful puns we both enjoyed. I didn't see him nearly as much as I wanted to. I had work to do.
Ditto for my friend Valerie. Not a day goes by that I don't think about her.
But I was busy with work, and didn't see them as often as I wanted. I regret that. Every day.
So this year, when a friend asks, "Want to meet me for lunch?" the answer is yes. I'm not hiding behind deadlines.

Life is short. We all know that. But this year, I realized it.
I'll get the work done somehow.
This new year, friendship comes first.
I've learned the hard way that death is forever.
But so is friendship.

Happy 2019!

 

Yet Another New Beginning

My first official blog post here as a Femmes was Tuesday, October 16^th and I talked about learning to be better at accepting and rolling with changes. Of course, I meant changes *I* was choosing. The very next day, Llewellyn announces the plans to shutter the imprint publishing my series. This was a change I was decidedly not choosing. It wasn’t just me not choosing this either. Other authors, ones who’d debuted with me during the Winter 2018 catalog, longstanding Midnight Ink authors, people who’d just signed new contracts, and even worse, the people who make … made Midnight Ink what it is - an incredibly diverse line of award-winning books that have received critical acclaim.

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans. Many people know this quote as from a John Lennon song, ‘Beautiful Boy’ but it’s really attributable to a cartoonist named Allen Saunders. I’m sure Allen Saunders never expected the phrase he put in his comic strip Steve Roper in 1957 to be used in a song by one of the most famous musicians in the world (thanks to the website Quote Investigator for the information) twenty three years later.

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.

It seems like such a sneaky trick. Life, the Universe, whatever you call it, seems to delight it knocking us all down a peg … or a dozen. Just when we think we’ve got it all figured out, we slip on that banana peel and down we go. We’re all Charlie Brown trusting the ball will be there only to have Lucy pull it away at the last minute.

My second book launches exactly four weeks from today. I’m not as nervous as I was when the first debuted last year. There is such a build-up when you’re a debut author. Decidedly less when you were a debut author. Less pressure. We even get a special name for it - the sophomore slump. We’re ALLOWED to suck the second time.

Sadly, there is less excitement this time around too because DARK STREETS COLD SUBURBS will be my last book with Midnight Ink. They are stopping production with the Spring-Summer 2019 books. So, the third book I was contracted to write will not be coming out with them in January 2020.

The funny part is that I had been worrying about whether they would offer me a contract for more books since I was coming up on the due date for book three, planning out what I wanted to do if they didn’t.

Regardless of having the football yanked out from in front of me, I still have a book to launch. In a stunningly display of communion with my heroine, who it seems is perpetually Charlie Brown, my relationships are what help me back up and limp along. See, the owner of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu dojo where my husband takes classes has been offering to hold a signing or a launch so we thought, why the heck not?

You read that correctly. I’m hosting a book launch at a dojo. And a friend who is the only female black belt at the dojo is going to do a demonstration. Which works out nicely because the opening of my book is a fight scene.

Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.

But we can’t stop making plans. We just have to zig a little to the left, zag a little to the right, and hope that the football will still be there for us to kick. And if not, pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and make a new plan. And get by with a little help from our friends. (You didn’t think I’d be able to bring this back around to The Beatles again, did you?)

   
About DARK STREETS COLD SUBURBS:

Sometimes home is the most dangerous place of all.

In a heart-pounding mystery featuring apprentice PI Willa Pennington, a long-standing cold case turns hot in a hurry.

People move to the suburbs for a better life—nice houses, good schools, safe communities. But there's no place you can go that's completely safe from danger. Willa Pennington knows this all too well after her first PI case almost got her killed. Helping her old mentor review a decades-old cold case seems much safer. Then she reaches out to a teenager in trouble, and suddenly a new case rips into Willa's life in a way she could never have predicted. It seems menace is always lying in wait behind someone's door. Especially on the dark streets of the cold suburbs.

Praise for What Doesn't Kill You, Book 1 of the Willa Pennington, PI Mystery Series:

"Tight plotting, edge-of-your-seat suspense, and a protagonist in PI Willa Pennington you'll want to read about again and again. I couldn't put this book down."—Maggie Barbieri, author of Once Upon a Lie

"A debut that saddles tough-girl noir with the heart of a cozy."—Kirkus Reviews

"This is a solid beginning to a character and setting that could go on to very good things."—RT Book Reviews

"Aimee Hix is an up-and-coming author everyone should watch."—Crimespree Magazine

"The book has plenty of twists and surprises, but what stands out is the tight writing and fast narrative of the author's debut novel."—Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine

DARK STREETS COLD SUBURBS is available for pre-order in ebook and paperback and releases January 8, 2019.

Currently, WHAT DOESN'T KILL YOU, the first book in the Willa Pennington, PI series is available in ebook and paperback. The Kindle version is on sale for $.99 as of this posting.

Facing a fear, and finding a book

by LynDee Walker of the Femmes Fatales.

“Where do you get your ideas?” 

It’s a question most of the writers I know hear often. And usually, my answers about my Nichelle Clarke crime thrillers involve some amalgamation of events I covered as a reporter, headlines I’ve read, and my almost-never-silent imagination.

I have a new book—the first in a new series—out today. And this one is different.

This is the book that scares me. 

Funny thing: when you spend years working around and writing about the worst indulged impulses of humanity, then you leave that behind for motherhood, nobody warns you that the tiny baby you cradle close and smother with kisses and protect with the heart of a whole pride of lionesses will grow up. Nobody mentions that she will go to school and make friends and eventually will be headed for high school and cars and complicated relationships and secrets and achieving and failing on a bigger scale than it’s possible for mom to help with. 

Suddenly when I stared at the ceiling fan at 3 a.m., the things cluttering my brain weren’t auction baskets and bake sales and basketball practice, but all the twisted minds and horrible crime scene photos I thought I left behind a decade and a half ago. 

When I got tired of not sleeping, I got my laptop and started writing. 

This story started with a woman who has a perfect life. Her name is Erica Andre, and her world is ordered, controlled, correct, down to fractions of seconds and specks of dust. New yoga pose that sends the whole class careening onto their faces? Erica can outlast the instructor. Missing chairs for the governor’s dinner party? Erica’s got them, they’ll be there by three.

Until her assistant patches through a call from her daughter’s school on a random Tuesday, and a Texas Ranger is waiting in the office to tell her that her child isn’t coming home and her perfect world shatters into a zillion sharp, painful little pieces. 

Enter Faith McClellan. She wasn’t supposed to be the main character in this book. This was Erica’s story. Or, Erica’s and her daughter’s. It was a standalone, not a new series. Faith was there to help them, find them an answer, not drive the narrative. 

But the more I wrote, the more of the story became Faith’s—following her investigation, tracking down clues, figuring out why she worked for better than a decade to become one of fewer than 20 female field officers in the history of the Texas Rangers. 

I felt horrible for Erica, but I wouldn't want to be friends with her. Faith, I liked. She was interesting. Tough. Driven. But also kind, with an unfailing moral compass and a good heart. Somewhere in the middle of the rough draft, she nudged Erica out of the driver’s seat and I didn’t even realize it. 

I sent the book to my agent and commenced chewing my nails. I loved this book and wanted it to work. 

My agent called. He loved it, too. He’s not an overly effusive guy, but I might even say he gushed. 

His one concern was that Erica was too stifling, too depressing, and made the story too fragmented. 

His gushing came mostly when he talked about Faith. “This cop is a great character. A franchise character. As a reader, I want to know more about her, to be inside her head and know how she sees the world, how she figures things out.” He also spoke highly of the scenes I had written from inside the killer's mind.

I opened the file back up with fresh eyes and saw that he was right. I cut Erica’s point of view way back. Then I cut it entirely. Tenley’s, too. I reworked the whole book, first line to “the end.” I took Faith from third person to first, and wound the mystery around clues she now had to find on her own because Erica and Tenley weren’t there to tell the reader things anymore. The heart of this book was Texas Ranger Faith McClellan vs. a clever killer. I made that shine and removed anything that might distract from it.

And when I was done, I had a better book and a new imaginary friend who I hope sticks around for a long while. 

Faith is scary smart, loyal, and tenacious. The kind of woman who sees an injustice or a question, and makes it right or finds the answer simply because it’s the right thing to do.

She helps me sleep at night. 

About the book:

Fear No Truth, 348p. Trade paperback, ebook (click here to shop)

Two dead girls. One determined Texas Ranger. Three horrifying truths.

After a series of murders, newly-minted Texas Ranger Faith McClellan races to unmask a killer lurking in one of Austin's most sacred institutions.  But the insidious truth at the heart of this case is darker and more dangerous than she ever imagined.

"Terrific. Surprisingly edgy and with a twist around every corner, the skilled and talented LynDee Walker sets the reader on an unstoppable ride. Authentic, witty and compelling—I could not put it down."

—Hank Phillippi Ryan, Nationally Bestselling Author of Trust Me

Lessons Learned While Editing a Cookbook and Creating a Coloring Book

For the Femmes Fatales by Joanna Campbell Slan

Months ago, one of my Coloring Club members asked me, “Could we do a cookbook?” And I thought, “Hmmm. I’ve never done a cookbook. That should be interesting.” So away we went. (Check out the Coloring Club here https://www.facebook.com/groups/1913215222271455/)

LESSONS LEARNED

Twenty of us contributed recipes. I edited them, formatting them so they were all alike, and asking questions when necessary. Here's what I learned:

1. Establish a style and stick with it. For example, I decided to have headers that said INGREDIENTS and DIRECTIONS on every recipe. This became important when there were multiple items to make, such as INGREDIENTS for the CAKE and INGREDIENTS for the TOPPING.
2. Choose a style of abbreviations and stick with them. I decided cup would be C., teaspoon would be tsp., and so on.
3. Whenever possible, describe sizes in ounces, rather than "small can" or "large can."
4. Include notations that are important for success. For example, one contributor turned an upside-down cake onto an antique cake stand--and the stand broke!
5. Put the directions in the order that they occur. It's silly to say "Preheat oven" at the end of the recipe!

I designed and did the cover myself. Usually that's a big no-no, but I followed a design from Canva, so I think it looks okay.

THE JOY OF RESEARCH

Then, because I am who I am, I did a little research to fill in where we had half-empty pages. That was fun! Did you know that the same tree gives us both nutmeg and mace? Did you know that we have Napoleon to thank for canned foods? Do you know what a drupe is? Or that an avocado is a big seed? Or that there is no such thing as a “bundt” cake? Can you explain the difference between a crumble, a crisp, a buckle, and streusel? I had many happy hours of digging up obscure facts about food.

HOW TO MAKE A COLORING BOOK, TOO

Of course, I couldn’t publish The Coloring Club Cookbook without any pages to color. Here, too, I got a little carried away. First, I bought the rights to photos that depicted food. Then, I found an artist who turned the photos into line drawings. He and I went back and forth about the amount of detail. In the end, I think we got it just right. I also submitted to him a couple of photos I’d taken, and one of me. After adding a title—The Food Lover’s Coloring Book—I created a cover, assembled the coloring book, and loaded it into BookFunnel. Now anyone who buys the cookbook can access the coloring book and print out the coloring pages.

 

THE RESULT

The pre-sale period for The Coloring Club Cookbook ended on the 11^th. We made a little more than $200. I had promised to buy an animal from Heifer International, but when I go to their website, I realized that for a little more money we could send a girl to school for a year. That seemed like a brilliant idea, because no one can ever take an education away.

Do you have a favorite dish you always cook for the holidays? Do you like to buy cookbooks as gifts? I hope you’ll consider buying a copy of The Coloring Club Cookbook. Here’s a link to the paper version -- https://amzn.to/2UHSjQE and a link to the digital version https://amzn.to/2UFyEkm

And of course, I can't end this post without a coloring page. Do you recognize the woman in the picture? It's me! 

 

 

I Cannot Tell a Lie

Our guest today is Victoria Thompson, author of the bestselling Gaslight Mystery Series. Her new book, City of Secrets, is the second in her new Counterfeit Lady Series. The first book in that series, City of Lies, is now out in paperback. She’s thrilled to have this opportunity to tell you all about the new series. I cannot tell a lie -- I love this series. I even blurbed it. -- Elaine Viets

By Victoria Thompson for the Femmes Fatales.

Everyone knows it’s wrong to lie. It’s even one of the Ten Commandments. Except… Well, let’s face it, we all lie, at least a little. We lie to avoid hurting people’s feelings (Does this make me look fat?). We lie to save ourselves (We can’t have Thanksgiving at your house. We already promised to take the kids to DisneyWorld.). We lie because we feel guilty (I’d love to help you stuff those envelopes.). Everybody lies, as Dr. House used to say every week on his TV show. So why did I create a character who does not lie?

Obviously, because I’m insane. When I started my Gaslight Mystery Series back in 1999, I gave one of the characters a quirk that proved troublesome, so I decided not to do that in the Counterfeit Lady Series. Then Gideon Bates announced (quite without my permission) that he never lies.

Gideon is the son of a suffragist whom my heroine, Elizabeth Miles, met when she was accidentally imprisoned with a group of Women’s Suffrage demonstrators while running for her life from a con gone bad. Never telling a lie seemed like a really neat quirk for Gideon to have because he falls in love with a con artist who hardly ever tells the truth. But do you know how difficult it is to write a character who never lies? Who tells people they look fat and that he just doesn’t want to suffer through Thanksgiving at your house, and who simply refuses to help stuff the envelopes? How can we even like him? This became especially troublesome when Gideon is forced to help Elizabeth with a con.

Of course Elizabeth only does cons now to help those in need of justice, but even a con done for a good cause requires a certain amount of lying. Gideon absolutely can’t help with that, because even if he tried, he’d be terrible at it. Does this cause friction between Gideon and Elizabeth? You bet it does. Does it even come between them and threaten their relationship? Does it actually cause them to break their engagement? Well, probably.

So how does an honest man reconcile himself to life with a professional liar? That’s only one of the questions I deal with in City of Secrets. I also cover blackmail and the sad state of women’s rights in 1918. Please let me know what you think—and you can lie to spare my feelings!

*******

Elizabeth Miles knows that honesty isn’t always the best policy when it comes to finding justice. 

    Elizabeth has discovered that navigating the rules of high society is the biggest con of all. She knows she can play the game, but so far, her only success is Priscilla Knight, a dedicated young suffragist recently widowed for the second time. Her beloved first husband died in a tragic accident and left her with two young daughters — and a sizable fortune.   While she was lost in grief, her pastor convinced her she needed a man to look after her and engineered a whirlwind courtship and hasty marriage to fellow parishioner Endicott Knight.  Now, less than nine months later, Endicott is dead in what appears to be another terrible accident. 

    Everyone is whispering, but Priscilla confides to Elizabeth that’s the least of her troubles.  She’d believed Endicott was wealthy, too, , but her banker is telling her she has no money left and that her house has been mortgaged. He’s also hinted at a terrible scandal and refuses to help.  Priscilla doesn't know where to turn.

   Priscilla stands to lose everything and Elizabeth is determined not to let that happen; but as always, Elizabeth walks a fine line between using her unusual talents and revealing her own scandalous past.  Elizabeth soon discovers that Endicott’s death was anything but accidental and that revealing the truth could threaten much more than Priscilla’s finances.   To save her new friend’s future   - and possibly her own — Elizabeth, along with her honest-to-a fault beau Gideon -- delve into the sinister secrets someone would kill to keep.

Booklist magazine says:

This is a suspenseful and twisty story guaranteed to bate breaths and engage readers until the wee hours. Fans …will welcome the addition of another strong woman to the ranks of early-twentieth-century crime solvers.”

Victoria Thompson is the Edgar® and Agatha Nominated author who  writes the Gaslight Mystery Series, set in turn-of-the-century New York City and featuring midwife Sarah Brandt. Her latest is Murder on Union Square. City of Lies was the first book in her new Counterfeit Lady Series and City of Secrets is the second. Victoria also contributed to the award- winning writing textbook Many Genres/One Craft. Victoria teaches in the Seton Hill University master's program in writing popular fiction. She lives in Illinois with her husband and a very spoiled little dog.

Warning! Librarians proceed at own risk by Catriona

I got a wonderful present this autumn, My dad (helped by my husband) built some bookshelves in my bedroom:

You see that "some bookshelves" is a bit of an understatement. (Sidebar: I've just started following Very British Problems on Twitter, for their pinpoint accurate take on British understatement. An example is "British Anger: miffed, dischuffed, cross, seething, fuming, tsk-ing, silence." Tee-hee!)

Back to the main story. This new bedroom bookcase contains the bitter end of the alphabetic general fiction run (Anne Tyler to Gabrielle Zevin), the nonfiction overflow, children's books, two TBR shelves and  . . . capacity!  Look at that capacity.

There's so much of it that I'm tempted to do a house-wide overhaul. Semi-tempted anyway.

At the moment, the general fiction from Chinua Achebe to Mark Twain stretches from "the big bookcase" in the living room through two other bookcases in the bedroom:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

except for A: Persephone editions, which are on the divine bookcase, so-called because of the Ps in it and the three Graces and holy cow on it, where they have room to grow as I buy more. (I can't explain why that "room" has got some random other fiction in it currently).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And also apart from B. beautiful first editions, beautiful vintage editions of things like Erle Stanley Gardener and signed-by-the-author treasures, which are behind glass also in my bedroom:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My nephew, Callum, once said "Man, it's going to take ages to clear your house when you've popped your clogs, Auntie Catriona. We'll have to check every single last book to see if it's signed, instead of just hoying it all into a skip." He didn't foresee being prostrate with grief.

That's it for fiction apart from crime fiction, which is in my office:

 

 

 

including a very specialised collection of crime novels, with a few anthologies, and a couple of examples of non-fiction:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That leaves non-fiction. There's a bookcase just inside the front door that was once travel, poetry and plays and still sort of is. Sort of:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

and a bookcase in the living room that used to be biography and still sort of is. Sort of.

 

 

 

 

 

and a very organised, sensible collection of cookery and gardening books in the kitchen.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Except, even as I write that, I wonder why the gardening books are in there. 

So . . . what would you do with this collection and this capacity? What do you do, with your own books? An inquiring mind - truly wondering whether its books are in a shambles or are remarkably well-arranged - wants to know.

Snow day magic

by LynDee Walker of the Femmes Fatales.

There’s something magical about snow.

I grew up in north central Texas, so snow days were about as common as pajamas at a holiday ball. Here in the Richmond area, we usually get one or two decent snowstorms a year, and I adore sledding and snowball fights every bit as much as my littles. Bundling up, building forts, making snow angels—I love it all. Once I’ve been to the grocery store and we have no place to go, I’m squarely in the “let it snow” camp. Bring it on.

But our snow days are usually in January and February—until yesterday, I’d never seen more than a dusting on the lawn in December. 

We measured 14 inches on our deck last night—officially the biggest December snow in Richmond in 100 years, and one inch shy of the record set in 1908. 

Y’all. What a perfect day. My littles agree that big snow at the holidays makes it even more wondrous, and we’re pretty die hard snow fans here, so thats saying something. 

My high schooler engineered a sledding hill out of our front steps once it was about six inches deep, and rounds of squealing and laughter and hot chocolate (coffee for mom) and warming up by the fire ensued. Littlest little helped me make sugar cookie dough we’re going to cut out and bake today (because fourteen inches of snow in Richmond means no school for a while. My money’s on Thursday for the first day back this week), we made chili and watched football (holy Manolos, that overtime catch! Way to have your hands ready, Amari Cooper), and then we pulled all the gear back on and went out for some nighttime sledding by Christmas lights. The brightly colored bulbs glowing through the snow is one of the prettiest things I’ve ever seen.

It was the sort of day where I stayed up until well after midnight because I didn’t want it to end. I tried to work (really, I did, the new Nichelle book is due…well, last Friday, but I’m reading one more time before I send it) but mostly got distracted by the view from my window and counting my blessings. 

How about you, Femmes? What’s your favorite thing about a snow day?

Exploring home

by Kris Neri, with the Femmes Fatales

One of the best parts of moving to a new locale is that everything is…well, new. You live with a constantly changing panorama of discoveries.

The most luscious of the new discoveries after any big move has to be finding new favorite restaurants. A decided percentage of them here in New Mexico, where we moved in late June, are Mexican, my favorite. One thing you can always count on in New Mexico is that Mexican or New Mexican cuisine will usually be hot. As in spicy, not that they just came out of the oven. It’s not for nothing that New Mexico is known as the chile capital of the world.

One of New Mexico’s three standard license plates features both red and green chiles, along with the words, “Chile Capital of the World,” All three plates also contain the words, “New Mexico USA.” Despite our country’s exalted educational system, a sizable number of Americans do not know that New Mexico is a US state. I’ve actually had people tell me it’s part of Mexico, or merely a US territory. No kidding. Hence, the USA on the license plate, so US citizens won’t worry about having left their passports at home when they happen to wander across the state line. 

But I digress…

To get back to chiles…I love, love, love hot food. I didn’t always. I used to be a total food wuss. The first time we visited Santa Fe, a friend predicted I would die from the heat of the food I would find there. But he underestimated my spirit of adventure. I dove into the hottest dish I could find, carne adovada. Carne Adovada isn’t hot because it’s swimming in some spicy sauce, but because the meat is baked in whole, pulverized chiles. One bite and the top of my head melted off. But the taste was wonderful. And hey, has anyone mentioned that eating spicy food stimulates the production of endorphins big-time. You really do feel wonderful afterwards.

I also snagged a Fine Cooking magazine credit for sharing the unexpected experience of my developing a love for hot food, in a piece called “Trial by Fire.” I was freelancing magazine articles at the time, and as credits go, there is nothing shabby about Fine Cooking, especially since I didn’t really cook well enough then to snag an actual cooking credit in a gourmet magazine. I don’t cook that well now, either, for that matter.

So, yes, we’ve been finding new favorite restaurants. 

And for people who love the outdoors, the southwestern part of New Mexico is amazing. There are a staggering number of hiking trails, including many that cover parts of the Continental Divide Trail. The CDT is a hiking trail that runs 3,100 miles, from Mexico to Canada, and through all the western states in between. I wish I could say we’d hiked all the trails here, but we have been busy remodeling a house. Anyway, there’s nothing wrong with leaving a few new discoveries for the coming months.

The most glorious new outdoor discovery we’ve made in our new home is the Gila Wilderness Cliff Dwellings. Having lived for years in Arizona, we’re not new to prehistoric Native ruins, since there are many throughout the Southwest, and most are remarkably well preserved. But the Gila Wilderness Cliff Dwellings are special. Not only are they better preserved than most prehistoric ruins I’ve seen, but visitors can actually climb into those ancient homes and stay for as long as they wish. Standing in those ancient dwellings, walking where early humans walked and cooked and rested, was like being transported back 800-1000 years. Amazing! I can’t wait to see the area in other seasons. 

And we have great wildlife here. On the way to the Cliff Dwellings, we saw a golden eagle in flight. A first for me. I once saw a bald eagle in Arizona, on a train trip through a bald eagle preserve, but never a golden. And those were the only two eagles I’ve ever seen outside of captivity. Magnificent birds. I know lots of people live were eagles are common, but I never have, so I treasure the sightings I’ve had.

And coming home from the Cliff Dwellings, just a short distance beyond the Silver City limits, a black bear ran right in front of my car, crossing the road, before scurrying up a hill on the other side. I was driving, while Joe dozed in the passenger seat. To make sure he didn’t miss it, I shouted frantically, “Bear! Bear! Bear.” Yes, I am a writer, so I really am that articulate. 

Supposedly, there were bears living not far from where we lived in both Southern California and Arizona, but we never caught sight of one. That’s a mixed blessing, actually. While I’m grateful to have seen a bear in nature, I’m also glad I was safely tucked into a moving vehicle, with my foot firmly pressed to the accelerator. 

So, those are just a few of the discoveries we’ve made about our new home. In a future post, I’ll share more about the artistic discoveries we’ve made here. For now, it’s good food, good hiking, good history…and, yes, a bear. There’s a lot to be said about moving to a new locale. 

 

 

 

 

Holidays and Homicides

It's that time of year again, when mystery readers start thinking about murder during the holidays... What is it about family get-togethers that make people want to kill? Whatever it is, it provides entertainment for mystery readers. My own recent book, Six Cats A Slayin', is set at Christmastime, and fellow Femme Donna Andrews recently published her fifth Christmas mystery, Lark! the Herald Angels Sing. My good friend Carolyn Haines, an occasional Femmes contributor, published her first Christmas mystery recently as well, A Gift of Bones. Holiday-themed mysteries have long been popular, going at least as far back as Dame Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot's Christmas. One of my particular Golden Age holiday mysteries is Georgette Heyer's Envious Casca, recently re-released as A Christmas Party. Over the years there have been many holiday-themed mysteries. Orania Papazoglou, writing as Jane Haddam, started her terrific Gregor Demarkian series (29 titles as of 2014) with a number of them. The first of them was Not a Creature Was Stirring in 1990.

In addition to all the great titles just mentioned, here are some other of my favorite holiday mysteries:

1. Rest You Merry by Charlotte MacLeod (probably my all-time favorite)
2. Murder Goes Mumming by Alisa Craig (aka Charlotte MacLeod)
3. Alan Bradley I Am Half-Sick of Shadows
4. Carolyn Hart Sugar Plum Dead
5. Margaret Maron Corpus Christmas
6. Ngaio Marsh Tied Up in Tinsel

I know there are others that I'm missing. What are some of your favorite holiday-themed tales of murder?