Gardening and Writing

Gardening

Oops, someone forgot to pick the veggies for a while. Sigh. But I did manage to harvest almost 2 quarts of garlic (2 qts of cleaned garlic cloves, to be exact) and a whole BUNCH of zucchini. As you can see in the background, I ended up using a lot of it for pickles. Then I took some more and made flour-less zucchini muffins.

I'm very pleased with the pickles. We are trying to cut out sugar and this particular recipe has no sugar at all in it. It's a spicy pickle with hot pepper flakes and garlic and we've already eaten one jar. What makes it even better is that you don't have to go through that long hot water bath canning process. You clean the jars (fill with boiling water until ready to use), prepare the zucchini and while you're doing that, boil the vinegar with the spices for 5 minutes. Then fill the jars and pour in the boiling vinegar. Of course you have to store them in the refrigerator, but that's okay with us. I got the recipe from Eatsy at this link.

 For the zucchinis I did not use for pickles (I made 12 pints of pickles) I made zucchini bread with almond flour. Okay, actually, I turned this into zucchini muffins because we like them for breakfast.

I got the recipe for that from comfybelly.com at this link. Of course, I modified it just a wee bit to add a little more spice because we really like our spices, but the basic recipe was from comfybelly.

So, if you are overrun with zucchini or squash, you might look into making either pickles or bread. My sister likes to make zucchini cake, but as I mentioned, we are trying to cut down on sugar and gluten, so we're not doing the cake thing. However, if you make those muffins, they are like mini carrot cakes and are absolutely wonderful for breakfast with a dollop of cream cheese. In fact, I almost prefer them to most cakes at this point.

Writing

I've been working extra hard on my writing lately and for those who are interested, I'm still taking my net proceeds from The Vital Principle and donating them to the Red Cross for the tornado victims. I haven't earned as much as I would like (I'd at least like to give $500) but every little bit helps.

For my fans, the second Prudence Barnard/Knighton Gaunt mystery, The Dead Man's View, is in the final stages and should be out in August. Pru and Knighton were first introduced to readers in The Vital Principle, and I hope folks will enjoy their continuing adventures. In The Dead Man's View, Pru discovers she has a second cousin and goes to visit him, only to have him die within a week of her arrival. The coroner believes her cousin committed suicide, but Pru finds clues that lead her to believe otherwise and she writes to Knighton to gain his assistance in proving her cousin was murdered. 

The wonderful cover artist, Amber Shah, is working on the cover for The Dead Man's View and has even done a new one for The Vital Principle to give it a "make over." Here is a "proof" of the newly redesigned cover for The Vital Principle. It is not final yet, but it will give you an idea and show her wonderful work.

I'm torn at the moment between two of her designs for The Dead Man's View, but hopefully I'll have a new cover to show folks soon!

Next year, I hope there will be a third Pru and Knighton mystery as they are going to go on a trip to Europe and once more, they are going to stumble upon a dead body during their travels...

In the meantime, the Second Sons Inquiry Agency is getting a new detective and I'm writing chapter five even as we speak. It's tentatively called: The Illusion of Desire and like The Vital Principle, it deals with some difficult topics but there are dashes of black humor that I hope readers will enjoy.

For readers of my contemporary mystery, Whacked!, I'm editing a second manuscript (I don't have a title yet) in preparation to sending it to my editor at Five Star. The new one is also set in the small town of Peyton, NC, and features Kelly Harmony. Kelly is suspected of killing her roommate and then torching the apartment to cover up the crime and it doesn't help matters when she finds a stranger's dead body in her new home. This is the first of what will be several mysteries featuring the Harmony family in Peyton, so cross your fingers that my editor likes it.

On the novella front, I wrote a sweet Regency novella last spring and submitted it to my editor at Highland Press, as well as my first sweet Western romance novella. I hope she likes at least one of them and decides to include it in one of the upcoming Highland Press anthologies.

Finally, my paranormal romance, A Fall of Silver, is on sale for one more week at $.99 so if you are interested, you might want to jump on it now before it goes back to its normal price.

That's all the news and I hope to write another blog soon on the craft of writing, as well as keeping up better on my progress with the art of writing.

Enjoy the summer!

Step One of The Dream

The First Day

As of Jan 1, 2013, I'm a full-time writer, and it's only taken almost 36 years to reach this point. To celebrate, I got up before dawn to take a photo of this grand occasion, and here it is.

Well, okay, that was actually later in the morning, after I realized that the rain wasn't going to stop and my real picture of what should have been dawn looked more like the one here (which is, incidentally, of dawn on 1/1/2013).

It's rained for the last three days, every morning, so I still don't have my beautiful sunrise on the first morning of the rest of my life, but whatever.

Did I mention that I also had the flu and had to go to the emergency room around midnight? That was fun. Dehydrated from being unable to keep anything down and feverish, my husband carted me off to the ER. They tested me and pronounced the dreaded flu (despite the fact I had a flu shot) and they decided to replenish the fluids via IV. That was fun, too. I kept feeling them swabbing my arm and when I finally glanced over to see what they were doing, well, it looked like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in 3-D. Blood spurting everywhere. But they finally got the IV in and after a few injections of drugs and a bag of fluid, I was ready to go home.

That's the point at which the nurse said to the lady handing me a fistful of prescriptions, "Can you get the other nurse? I can't get the IV out."

Really? You can't get the IV out? Really?

Another episode of Texas Chainsaw Massacre. A few glorious waterfalls of blood later, I was discharged into my husband's care.

So finally, here it is 1/3/2013 and I'm working on being a full time writer, at last!

All hoopla aside, my contemporary mystery, Whacked!, was also released by Five Star as a hardcover. I'm so glad to see it available now. I have every hope I can pull my next mystery into shape and send it on to Five Star for another stab at the big time!

Best wishes to everyone for 2013!

The Next Big Thing

Release Day -- Almost!

On December 19, my first hardcover cozy mystery, Whacked!, will be released! Now, I just need to finish editing the next book to submit it to Five Star. If you have time for confession: I think I keep delaying my editing because I’m afraid they won’t like the next one. Nonetheless, I need to buck up and get it done and submitted.

Whacked! is a contemporary mystery set in North Carolina featuring a woman close to a nervous breakdown who takes a much needed vacation only to get involved in a murder. When her uncle is suspected of killing the body guard for a local man with more money than sense, she steps in to make sure he isn't railroaded  into a false confession by the authorities.

There’s a touch of humor, a dash of romance and a soupcon of murder, just in time for the holidays, so if you’re looking for a gift for the mystery lover in your family, give it a shot! It's available for pre-order from Barnes & Noble.

If you’d rather read a Gothic romance set in the 19^th century and complete with a gloomy manor house and dashing hero, check out Christmas Spirit. After finding his host dead, our hero tries to prevent some refugees from a Christmas storm from staying in a manor obviously home to a murderer, but he finds himself protecting three women while he solves the mystery of murder at the manor.

This is a shorter book and is available at the bargain price of $1.99, so grab a copy and enjoy!

Last but certainly not least (and in fact, quite popular) is the Regency romance, Escaping Notice. This is the latest in the immensely popular Archer family series and this time, Helen Archer is caught up in a masquerade as she pretends to be a servant in order to search for a missing—and perhaps cursed—emerald necklace. She meets up with a lost boy and man searching for the person who tried to kill him and together, the three of them discover adventure and love in Regency England.

I hope everyone has a joyous holiday season and obtains what their heart desires. My family is grateful to have adopted an energetic Jack Russell Terrier, Daisy. It makes me laugh to watch her get a “wild hare” and go dashing around the yard with her ears flapping in the wind and a big grin on her face. She is such a joy and likes nothing better than to sit in my lap while I work. I’m convinced that in a few weeks, she’ll be ready to take over the keyboard and do some writing of her own. I just hope she’ll be merciful if she mentions the rest of us in her memoirs, Diary of a Mad Jack Russell.

Best wishes and enjoy the holiday season!

Happy Holidays!