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Let's Hear It for Bunny Ears

By Elaine Viets of the Femmes Fatales.

Which part of the chocolate Easter bunny do you eat first?
I like the ears – especially the dark chocolate bunny ears.
Other people prefer starting with the bunny tails, but I like to start at the top.

Now there are treats designed for us bunny ear lovers. Harry & David has Mr. and Mrs. Ears – milk chocolate bunnies that are mostly ears.

Other chocolatiers are producing bunny ears only.

Dove chocolates and the Vermont Country Store both have bunny ears. So does my St. Louis hometown favorite, Bissinger's Handcrafted Chocolates. "The best part of the bunny," says Bissinger's catalogue.

Maybe – but disembodied bunny ears?
I'm not sure.
Eating just the ears takes away the thrill of the hunt. There's a ritual to eating chocolate bunnies. As a kid, I'd eat the ears first. By the time I got down to the head, I'd know for sure if it was a solid bunny – the best kind – or hollow chocolate, always a disappointment.
Then it was on to the extra treats – the candy eyes and sugar bow ties. All too soon, the chocolate rabbit had vanished.

Another thrill was swiping my little brother's chocolate bunny.
I'm not admitting that I stooped to actual infant decandification. I'm just saying the bunny was sitting there unattended and hopped into my hands, begging to be eaten.
So which part of the chocolate bunny do you start with, readers – ears or tail?

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Win the newly re-released e-book of An Uplifting Murder, Josie Marcus Mystery Shopper #6. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com

Happy book birthday, Nichelle!

by LynDee Walker of the Femmes Fatales.

Book birthdays are always special, but today holds a bit of extra significance for me. It’s been two and a half years, almost to the day, since the sixth book in my Nichelle Clarke series released. In the interim, I wrote the first book in a new series, signed with a new publisher, and avoided the realization of just how much I missed Nichelle—until I sat down and opened my laptop last summer, anyway. 

To say I’m thankful for the readers who missed her just as much is a vast understatement. Seriously, y’all: the number of cosmically well-timed sweet reader emails in the past couple of years that made me say “okay, maybe it’s not time to quit just yet,” would make the most steadfast skeptic believe…in fate and signs, at the very least, if not a higher power. 

DEADLY POLITICS is Nichelle’s biggest, highest-stakes adventure to date, and I had a blast writing it. I have written the entire series watching Nichelle grow and learn, and enjoying the heck out of the process of discovering new layers to not just Nichelle, but the people in her world. I think that’s the thing that struck me the most about this book, when all was said and done: I love the mystery in all its twisty-turny fun, but this book feels very character-driven to me. It’s about the definition of truth, about lies, friendship, and hard choices and lessons. I’m proud of the strong woman my relatively naive cops reporter has become over the course of seven novels, all while refusing to sacrifice her loyalty, her wit, her heart, or (of course) her shoes—and I loved learning more about her nearest and dearest in this story. Every writer will always tell you their newest book baby is their favorite, but for me, this book goes deeper than that: it’s the one I’m proudest of. And I hope those of you who’ve waited so long for it love it as much as I do. 

When a call girl is found dead in a popular governor's office, investigative reporter Nichelle Clarke must risk everything to uncover the dangerous truth behind the murder.

“I did not see the end coming…” 

Reporter Nichelle Clarke’s dream of covering a presidential speech is dashed when she finds herself intertwined in a high-profile murder investigation. While Nichelle is no stranger to facing dangerous situations in pursuit of the truth, the stakes in this story are higher than ever before.

Unsure of who she can trust, Nichelle must unravel a web of secrets behind an elaborate murder plot and dodge legal traps set by corrupt politicians. For if Nichelle can’t uncover the conspiracy in time, an unthinkable disaster will strike the nation.

What readers are saying about Deadly Politics:

★★★★★ “...masterfully written…” 

★★★★★ “One of the best writers I've ever read and this latest proves it.”

★★★★★ “Such a fantastic read..I couldn't finish it fast enough, and yet I didn't want it to end!”

★★★★★ “Every once in a while you read a book that is so unbelievably good that you can’t pick up another book for at least a week. Deadly Politics was one of those books for me.”

You can grab your copy here: http://bit.ly/DeadlyPolitics

What He Did for Lust...

By Joanna Campbell Slan for Femmes Fatales

 

On Monday, March 18, I released Second Chance at Faith: Book #4 in the Second Chance Series. Here's the basic premise: After agreeing to help with a charity auction, Cara Mia Delgatto finds herself accused of the theft of a priceless antiquity, a gold and coral rosary. In this excerpt, Cara and her friends discuss the history of the piece. Unfortunately, I ultimately had to cut most of this. It was too detailed and slowed down my story. But I still love the story of Elisabeth Farnese! She went on to rule Spain after her husband was pretty much an imbecile. -- Joanna

~*~

I read the description out loud, “One of two rosaries created for Elizabeth Farnese, as a wedding gift from her husband-to-be King Philip V of Spain. Found off the coast of Florida inside the wreckage of the Spanish Armada.”

Honora leaned over my shoulder and squinted at the photo. “Such a shame. That rosary would have been a wonderful piece to see in real life.”

“There’s quite a love story behind these treasures.” Skye sighed.

“I wouldn’t call it love.” Honora gave a ladylike hoot of laughter. “It was lust, pure and simple.”

“Philip V’s first wife, Maria Luisa of Savoy, died on February 14, 1714, when she was 26. Philip demanded his conjugal rights even as Maria Luisa was dying of tuberculosis,” Honora's daughter EveLynn explained primly. Her autistic tendencies cause her to have a prodigious memory.

“How odd,” Skye Blue said. “Maria Luisa of Savoy died on Valentine’s Day. Here it is, centuries later almost to the day, and we’re discussing her.”

Reading from her phone, Honora continued, “Philip showed his young wife a horrible lack of compassion. One author explains, 'Danger and fatigue and the exigencies of the most affectionate and least considerate of husbands had worn out a system naturally frail… In other words, Philip's ardor may have contributed to her death.” Honora signed and shook her head in sympathy as she kept reading. “The story is told that as Maria Luisa's remains were being carried to the Escurial, the procession passed near Philip and his hunt. He followed the funeral train with his eyes until it was out of sight, and then turned to pursue the chase.’ That’s from the book, Elisabeth Farnese, Termagant of Spain.”

Skye Blue stirred her tea and clucked her tongue. “Let me make sure I understand. Philip's young wife is dead. They are taking her body to be buried. But Philip could barely be bothered to notice. He paused while hunting. That was the limit of his grief. What a cold-hearted man.”

“Cold hearted and hot blooded,” Honora said with a chuckle. “After he lost his wife, King Philip V was keen to find a new wife. Quickly. Here’s what Wikipedia says, ‘The marriage was arranged much because of the sexual need of Philip V, as his religious scruples prevented him from having a sexual life outside of marriage.’”

“One sexual partner coming up.” I poured myself a second cup of coffee. The rich aroma of Kaldi's filled the air. "Loneliness, I can understand. But overwhelming lust? That's hard for me to wrap my head around. Especially without an object of that lust. Who was the lucky bride? Or sacrifice? Depending on your point of view.”

“Elisabeth Farnese, an illegitimate daughter in line to inherit the Duchy of Parma, and a relative of the Pope. Elisabeth had been raised in seclusion, and that made her politically desirable to certain members of the Spanish court. Notably, the Princess de Ursins, the Mistress of the Robes. De Ursins wielded tremendous influence over the king. She was confident she could boss the young queen around. Their marriage was arranged by a cardinal. Because Elisabeth was in Italy and Philip was in Spain, they were married by proxy,” Honora kept reading from her phone.

“I take it things did not go exactly as planned?” I couldn’t imagine a happy ending. Not entirely. I knew what it was like to be married to a selfish man.

“After leaving Italy, Elisabeth and her entourage were met at the border of Spain. The Princess de Ursins had been newly appointed Mistress of the Robes. She wished to quickly assert her dominance over the young bride. Instead, Elisabeth received de Ursins and asked to speak with her privately. Shortly after, the party could hear the sounds of a violent argument, after which de Ursins was arrested, fired, and immediately escorted over the border to France.”

“Boo-ya!” Skye offered me a fist bump.

“That’s all fascinating stuff, but how does all that figure into the missing rosary?” I wanted to get the point.

“Because Elisabeth was not only strong enough to rid herself of a powerful political adversary, when she met Philip, she stood up to him! She refused to consummate their marriage until he made her the most bejeweled woman in all of Europe.” Honora winked at us. "And that's where the gold and coral rosary comes in. It was one small piece of the Queen's Jewels, the gold and treasure that King Philip V was hoping to trade for sexual favors."

"The gold and treasure that went down with the fleet during a hurricane and is now scattered up and down the Treasure Coast," EveLynn said, pausing long enough to take the last bite from the last ginger scone.

~*~

Get your copy of Second Chance at Faith: Book #4 in the Second Chance Series by going here:

                                  Second Chance at Faith

The Big Reveal

Usually, the big reveal on a writers' blog would mean a cover but last month I promised you my new office would be revealed and so I deliver.

Unfortunately, it's not as finished as I'd have liked because a nagging problem with my left wrist began to nag much harder, prompting surgery.

I'm fine and well and recovering/healing nicely but that nagging problem and subsequent solution mean I'm not allowed to type with my left hand for, at least, another week. As such, this blog post will be of the A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words variety with my apologies.

April 16th's blog post will be all about my love of the Malice Domestic conference so you will be assured of many, many words next month.

And the reason for all the work and painting and peel-and-stick wallpaper and spray painting and sanding and patching and ... I think you get the picture. 

 

I'm Not Springing Forward This Spring

 

By Elaine Viets of the Femmes Fatales.

About the only ones happy with daylight-saving time in our household are our two cats, Harry and Mystery. They get fed an hour earlier.
Don and I are now five days into the time change and still stumbling around like a meteor hit our house. We can't quite wake up, we fall asleep in the afternoon and then can't sleep at usual time. We feel . . . off.

At least, we're not alone. The Los Angeles Times called for an end to daylight-saving time.
"There’s just no good reason to keep skipping back and forth in time every year," the paper says.
Amen.
Daylight-saving time is dangerous. "Multiple research studies have found a higher rate of car accidents on the Monday following the shift to daylight-saving time. The same association is not found with the Autumn time shift," says the American Sleep Association. The change disturbs our natural sleep cycle. It also causes an increase in heart attacks. "Judgment is affected, as are scholastic scores and losses on the stock market."
Experts say daylight-saving time is killing us. Our kids could flunk out of school. We could lose a bundle in the stock market – and that would definitely cause a heart attack.
So what are we doing about daylight-saving time?
The European Parliament is expected to outlaw it "later this month," according to the Times. California – always at the forefront – voted to start the process to move to year-round daylight-saving time as well. Only Hawaii and Arizona don't have daylight-saving time. About half the states want to get rid of it.

Too bad time change is a federal issue. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio has introduced a bill to make daylight-saving time permanent for the entire country.
If the US got rid of daylight-saving time, we'd have more daylight, even in the winter. A study by the California Energy Commission also said, "there might be small savings in energy usage by sticking with permanent daylight-saving time." So it's good for the planet.
Some people might object because it would be permanently dark in the morning, but I'm ready to stop the semiannual change.
So what do you think, readers – do you want to end daylight-saving time? Or do you hate getting up in the dark in the morning?
I think it's time for a change.

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Win AN UPLIFTING MYSTERY, my sixth Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper mystery. Click Contests at www.elaineviets.com

With a splinter of ice in my heart . . .

I've written twenty six novels. (Three of them aren't published yet, if anyone's counting.) And a handful of short stories. Two sitcom scripts that went into development and never came out again. More blog posts than there are weeds in my veg patch (and it's been a very wet spring). I'm not bragging. How could I, when I consider all the things I can't do? Cannot do for the life of me. Couldn't do with bucket of custard balanced above me. For instance: the four-legged-stick yoga pose; finding my way anywhere in a car until I've been there fifteen times; Mailchimp; and choux pastry.

In the middle of a seamless hour of down dog, up dog, plank, pigeon, happy baby and all the warriors, this is the one that separates me (after a year of yoga) from the women who've been practising since actual leotards. I cannot even begin to make my body do this. If I try, I go "oof", I land on my face and the teacher laughs. I console myself with how hard it is to make a yoga teacher laugh and how few of the others could manage that. I've got some yoga strengths: I can do cow and gatepost like a machine. Anything in the farmyard line? I'm your guru.

My poor sense of direction is even more irritating. I can find my way on foot, and I can make a stab at finding a place I've never been before, but making a journey I "should know" outwits me. It was worse when I couldn't use SatNav either. For years, I'd get lost and, if I turned on the GPS, I'd get lost and angry. I trained myself to follow that passive aggressive voice  - re-calculating - by keeping it on all the time even when I was driving from home to the shops. Now it's a godsend. And I know people much worse than me. I've got a friend who can't find her own car after cinema visits, even though she parks it in the same place every week and has lived in this town for six years. Once, she got lost driving down her own street. To be fair, it's got a corner in it. 

Mailchimp? Designed by Kafka, loved by masochists. I've got someone helping me get my newsletter up and running (thank you, blessed Erin Mitchell) because two months of logging on, using Help, and watching Youtube videos was just a flashback to early SatNav: still lost but now also seething. 

Choux pastry hurts. I can make nice bread, passable other pastry, edible cakes, delicious biscuits, shortbread that causes a feeding frenzy, cheeses straws to die for even if I say it myself, and toothsome meringues. And I've got friends who "knock out profiteroles because time was short". But whenever I've tried to make cream puffs what I end up with is an omelette. And not even a good one. 

But writing? Pshaw. Three books a year? Bring it. A short story by tomorrow? Why not yesterday. Writing is . . . I'm not going to say easy, but it's always possible. Writing is home.

Something occurred to me about writing just last weekend, on the beach at Carmel, when I was thinking about life the way you do alone on a beach. Here it is. In every daydream I have ever had - the one where I didn't muck about at school so much and I went to Cambridge and joined the Footlights; the one where I got upgraded and sat next to [XXX redacted reference to embarrassing nineties movie star rhymes with Schmeanu Leaves XXX] and married him; the one where I bought a farm, a penthouse, an island, a restaurant, a circus; the one where I began yoga at forty instead of fifty and never saw 200lbs . . .

. . . in every daydream, I'm a writer. It was quite a moment, there on the beach, to realise that it might have taken me till I was thirty five and it might be uncertain and terrifying at times, but I got one thing in this bewildering life dead right. Profiteroles be damned!

How about you? What do you take with you from your real life into your wildest dreams? (You don't have to name that movie star, by the way.)
 

 

Grateful, dammit

by Donna Andrews of the Femmes Fatales.

I know a couple of people who are doing the whole gratitude thing. Taking a few moments at the beginning or end of the day to think of three things they're grateful for. Posting a thing they're grateful for every day. Supposed to make you happier. Okay, right now I'm a little cranky, being in the last few days of working on the draft of a book—Owl Be Home for Christmas and thank you for asking—and could use some happy. So I thought I'd blog on a few things I'm grateful for.  (That's the cover at left. I'll put the Terns of Endearment cover a little farther down.)

I'll start with being grateful for deadlines. Yes, I know, I whine about them—we all whine about them. But it's nice, having a deadline. Before I had deadlines, I wasn't getting published. So first gratitude item: deadlines.

I'm working on a way to feel grateful for all the exciting life events that tried to derail me and made trying to hit that deadline so much harder. I'm sure I can find a way to reframe this. Um. Well, how about how having to focus so intently on my writing for the last month distracted me and gave spring a chance to sneak up on me. I finished a useful writing session yesterday, walked out of my house and eeek! There were daffodils in my yard. And snow drops. Who knew? Grateful for the nice surprise.

Okay, I thought of something I have no problem whatsoever being grateful for: that thanks to being involved in Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime I know a whole bunch of lovely people who can help me answer research questions. For this book, Mark Bergin helped me with a few cop questions, and Mark Pryor with some legal scoop from the prosecutor's angle. Margery Flax put me in touch with a lovely staff member at the Grand Hyatt, who answered some of my questions about hotel procedure. Sarah Byrne helped me make an Australian ornithologist more believable. I've leaving out others. Let's just be grateful I've remembered this much on a Monday morning.

Tim Berners-Lee! Definitely grateful to him, along with Vinton Cerf and Bob Kahn and everyone else who contributed to creating the Internet and the World Wide Web, because if I'd had to go to the library to look up everything I needed to look up I'd still be in chapter 3. On any given day I might be looking up black widow spiders, the symptoms of a heart attack, the Spanish word for “stolen,” a list of the most common Scandinavian last names, the record for snowfall in Richmond Virginia, what a Tawny Frogmouth eats, and what a Russian family would serve for Christmas. Grateful for the Internet. (Yes, I know sometimes it distracts me as much as it helps me. Don't bring that up right now. Working on grateful.)

I'm also grateful for Gorton's frozen flounder fillets, Coleman Natural chicken strips, and Frontera taco bowls. Do I have to say why? I've been on deadline.

And I'm grateful for electronic manuscript submission. Used to be I'd have to print the whole thing out—invariably running out of either paper or ink midway—pack it up, and trek down to the UPS store to pay a premium for overnighting my manuscript. Now, I just attach the manuscript to an email and whoosh! It's gone!

Heck, I'm even grateful for Daylight Savings Time right now. Lately I've been waking up at least an hour earlier than I needed to. This morning . . . right on time. Of course, this will work better when I've mastered the task of going to bed earlier, but let's stay on message here. Even freakin' grateful for Daylight Savings Time today.

I think that's about as much gratitude as I can muster today. I have to get back to killing people—only on paper, of course. But I'm open to suggestions about what else I can be grateful about if I manage to keep up this gratitude things two days in a row.

Basketball Mom Life

by LynDee Walker of the Femmes Fatales.

I never liked basketball until my littles started playing it. Growing up in football country, I’ve been a diehard Cowboys fan since Smith and Aikman and Irvin took the team to three Super Bowls way back when. My husband was a baseball player when we met, and taught me to enjoy going to games (I vastly prefer being in the stands to watching on TV to this day, though), but basketball made little sense to me and I never had any interest in watching. 

Four years ago, the idea that my whole life would be about this game from October to March would’ve sent me into fits of laughter. But then my ridiculously athletic baby boy asked Santa for a hoop for the driveway for Christmas, and a few months later the basketball coach at the middle school spotted my oldest in the hallway (it is admittedly difficult to miss a 6-foot blonde seventh grade girl), and a few short months after that, our world was a different place. Scan my social media bios and you’ll learn that I’m a writer before the end, but “Basketball Mom” is the title I claim first. There are few things in this world I love more than watching my littles play.

My oldest daughter is now 6’3, a freshman in high school, and just wrapped up a near-perfect season with her school’s JV team. The starting center on the varsity squad—a team that is perennially among the best in the state—will graduate in May, and my tallest little is digging into off season training already. 

My baby girl just wrapped up her first season of real games, her team finishing third in their league and littlest little coming away with the sportsmanship award for the season (I’m particularly proud there, since she also had the most steals—at least she’s kind about it). 

It’s my son and his team who have been the center of my world this weekend, though, and sitting here this morning I’m still struggling to find proper words for how proud I am of my baby and his friends and their coaches. 

My son played up with an older team in third grade, but last year when he was chosen for a fourth grade team, he found his home. Coached by two of his teachers and filled with friends, I was amazed how much the whole team grew and learned in a short few months last winter. They played an almost-perfect season, losing only one regular game (though there were more buzzer beaters in there than my blood pressure liked), but got knocked out in the semifinal round of the playoffs by a much tougher, more aggressive team.

I remember looking around at the other moms at that game going “where did these kids come from?”

In January, we found out. 

Because the boys did so well last year and we added a couple more talented players to our roster this winter, they were placed in the county’s “A” conference this year. Lordy, what a difference a letter makes. Starting out, every team they played was that same brand of fast and aggressive we saw in the semifinal last year, with quite a few players and coaches who seemed to have little regard for the rules (tackling isn’t supposed to be a thing in basketball, y’all), and an environment where winning was the only goal and it didn’t much matter how you got there.

Our boys lost the first four games, and I wondered after the fourth loss what they would take away from the season. I didn’t want to see my son and his friends adopt some of the behavior we were seeing at their games—at one, a fifth grader from an opposing team called one of our coaches a “bitch.” To her face. From the court. But apparently out of earshot of the ref.

These boys, y’all. They dug down and worked harder, my son and our point guard often getting up early to go out in the cold and shoot baskets in the driveway before school. They got faster. Smarter about their game. More confident in their abilities. They all learned to trust each other’s talents and play together as a unit. They kept playing their kind of playbook, rule-centered basketball, going on a nine-game winning streak that carried them through the playoffs and to the championship game on Saturday. 

We talked about little else last week, and my son was so nervous on Saturday morning I had to sit him down for some breathing exercises.

“Did you ever think, after your fourth loss this season, that you’d even be playing in this game today?” I asked. 

“No.” 

“So as long as you bring your A game, and you walk out of that gym today knowing you left everything you had on the court, then you win. No matter what the scoreboard says.”

And that’s exactly what they did. Every kid on his team got to play, not just the starting five, and every kid on his team played their heart out all the way to the final buzzer. At the end of the day, the score wasn’t in their favor, but I could not be prouder of their growth, their game, their class, and their season. It occurred to me, talking him through it Saturday night, that when coaches say sports can carry great life lessons, this is the sort of stuff they’re talking about—sometimes it’s better to finish second and be able to hold your head high walking off the court. I’m already looking forward to next year, but I hope every boy on this team remembers this special season as fondly as I always will. No matter which trophy they brought home Saturday, they’re all champions in my book.

Turns out you DO need your head

By Kris Neri, with the Femmes Fatales

As strange as it sounds, I apparently tried to get rid of my head recently. Joe and I were checking out at Walmart, when we noticed one of the soup cans we were buying was badly dented.

Don’t give me grief about shopping at Walmart. If you live in a small town, you shop at the Super Walmart. Many small town residents insist if something isn’t at Walmart, you don’t need it.

I won’t go that far. We’ve been fixing up our fixer-upper home since we arrived in New Mexico. That means we also spent lots of time and money at Ace Hardware as well. For a long time our cars drove on their own to Ace Hardware, especially if we hadn’t dropped any money there in…say, the last few hours.

That Ace Hardware stores are all independently owned, I believe it balances out that too much of our weekly shopping fattens the Walton family coffers. 

To get back to losing my head…

I rushed off to exchange the dented can for one without dents. Because I still haven’t committed the Walmart grocery section to memory, I was searching the grocery signs for the soup aisle. 

Since I was looking up and the in the distance, I didn’t notice that right in front of me was an empty clothing rack that someone had pushed into the main aisle.

Pow! I walked right into it.

It almost knocked my head off.

I gave up a dented can, but wound up with a dented head. 

I like to think that even if I was studying the higher-up signs, if the rack had been filled with clothing, I would have noticed it right in front of me. That would have made for a large visual block, rather than a thin metal line painted in a pale-colored paint. Even if I had walked into it, clothing would have padded that hard metal rack. I like to think so, but I do have a lifelong history of klutziness. I was also moving way too fast and paying too little attention to where I happened to be flying. Another lifelong trait.

Diagnosis: a minor head injury. I would have hated to get a serious injury, considering how much this one hurt. 

I suppose that was accurate, since I didn’t even get a black eye or any serious bruising, just some red marks and puffiness. And a monster headache. 

I kept worrying about more serious consequences occurring. Fortunately, none appeared. Yet. As of this writing, it's mostly healed. There's one little tender spot left, but it isn't even red anymore. Only I know it's there. Thankfully, shrinking, too. 

An injury of any kind invariably does provide a wake-up call, however, but it also raises fears, even if they seem unwarranted. And it makes you look at how much worse it could have been.

I have two take-aways from my walk into that metal rod:

One is that I really have a hard head. I’ve always suspected that, but now it’s been proven. Thank you, genes!

My other take-away is that while don’t think this accident was entirely my fault — after all, the rack was pushed too far out into he aisle and bare. Still, I was moving too fast and not paying enough surroundings to my immediate surroundings.

The sad truth is that this wasn’t the first time that’s been true. The universe has actually sent me numerous lessons of that sort, yet none have ever changed my behavior for long.

How many skinned knees or minor hear injuries do I need before I learn that going a few seconds slower might be better for my health and well being? 

Then again, maybe it was just a matter of a rogue rack out to claim as many victims as possible. 

Sure, that was it.

What lessons does life give you that you refuse to learn? 

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NEWS! My general fiction novel of self-acceptance, HOPSCOTCH LIFE, has been accepted for publication! Watch this space for more news on this new, quirky heroine. 

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Buying link: Magical Alienation on Kindle