Cold weather, a new toy, and homecoming—oh, homecoming

 

Shea, my new dog

You know how people says “it’s going around” meaning a stomach bug or a sore throat? I want to know if a laziness bug is going around, but I won’t be surprised if the answer is yes. The first cool, really cool morning (45 degrees here) does not inspire to energetic action. I did not want to get out of my cozy, comfortable bed this morning, despite the persistent poking of paws as Sophie tried to tell me it was time to get up and stay up! She’d been out half an hour before, but she sometimes just doesn’t want me to sleep. I think she wants company.

I have a new dog. His name is Shea, after one of the most memorable dogs in my life. When my ex and I moved to Texas, we brought with us a magnificent male mahogany tri-color collie (wish I had a picture) named Shea. Truly a beautiful dog and such a gentleman. A friend in Missouri was going on a year-long sabbatical in Europe and asked us to keep the dog. We readily agreed, and so did Shea—when the friend returned, Shea refused to stay at his house and kept coming back to us. As the time for our departure neared, we worried, but finally the owner came to us and said, “I’m hoping you’ll take him with you to Texas.” Huge sigh of relief.

My new Shea is a wooden pull toy made by the late folk artist Jim Clark. When I saw it in his studio, I knew I had to have it as a memory of Jim, a memory of Shea, and a wonderful object that I’ll enjoy having in the cottage. Thanks to Jean Walbridge for parting with it and with a pig-shaped cutting board that reminds me of one my mom had. I will put the cutting board to work in the kitchen—the one we sometimes use is glass, and I don’t think it’s good for the knife blades (which are already too dull).

Big doings this weekend—homecoming at Paschal High School. Unfortunately, Paschal did not win the game against Haltom City, but that didn’t dim any spirits for the dance as far as I could tell. Jacob escorted Violet, who had asked him to the Canwick dance. They dined with a group at a country club and danced, I suppose, somewhere on the TCU campus.

Morgan and her beau with their mums

Jordan and Christian had friends in for a potluck supper, and we were all sitting around the living room when in came this parade of five boys, each wearing a blue jacket and sporting a boutonniere. They made a beeline for Jacob’s room and soon marched back out, wordlessly, carrying athletic shoes and other things to “dress down” for the afterparty. Bunch of good-looking young men. It’s noon on Sunday as I write, so of course I haven’t had a report on how the evening went. I don’t have particularly happy memories of high school dances and the like, so I’m delighted to see Jacob having such a wonderful experience. It was also homecoming for the Tomball two, and here’s a picture of Morgan with her mum—haven’t gotten a report on that one either, but the pre-pictures were pretty handsome.

Kegan, ready for the dance

And my final bit of news is that I start a class tomorrow on writing the culinary mystery. My four Blue Plate Café mysteries sort of count as culinary—Kate Chambers runs her grandmother’s small-town café, serving chicken fried steak, fried chicken, fried catfish, and the like. The Irene in Chicago Culinary Mysteries are more clearly food writing, with a diva chef and her protégé—well at least Irene likes to think Henny is her protégé. I prefer to put Henny in charge.

Anyway I’m about to start a third Irene mystery, so what better time to take a class and sharpen my skills. The class is offered through the Guppy online chapter of Sisters in Crime. Who knows? At the end of two weeks, I may really have a handle on “Irene Saves the Day.”

It’s looking like a great week ahead. I hope for you also.

Blog dilemmas—what to write?

 

The first Kelly O'Connell Mystery
published in 2011; republished, 2016

No post last night because I had nothing to say, except maybe to jump into the political fray or the great mask hullabaloo which I generally avoid doing in the blog. I have strong feelings about masks, as you might suspect—I can sort of understand vaccine reluctance, though I pretty much view it as superstitious or stubborn—but I can’t understand all this crowing about masks and freedom. How did the two become intertwined? Your freedom ends at the point it intersects mine, or as someone put it, your freedom to swing your arm ends at the tip of my nose. There, that was more than I wished to say.

And Afghanistan: I feel strongly that the media is crucifying Biden when they should be praising him for managing the largest human evacuation in history—nearing 100,000 tonight. Yes, he and his administration made mistakes, but I am weary of Facebook experts who know just what he should have done. Truth is, even with all I’ve read, I don’t understand the complexity of the Middle East and couldn’t begin to discuss it intelligently. Questions about how many Americans are left in Afghanistan and how many Afghans we’ve been able to get out are all over the net, with a lot of accusations and misinformation. I shared a couple of informative articles on my Facebook wall. Check it out if you’re interested.

I was accused tonight of being a racist because I posted thoughts on the difficulty of getting Afghan citizens out of the country—I failed to mention women and the terrible fate that awaits them under the Taliban. Yes, I am heartsick about it, but that wasn’t what I was posting about. The subject was evacuation, and how my accuser went from that to claiming I only care about white women, never those of color, I will never understand. Here’s the funny part: I was so indignant when I read the criticism that only the first name registered, and I thought it came from someone I considered a friend. Turned out it was a stranger. Whew! Glad I didn’t jump my friend. But the huge problem of racism is not something I’ll tackle in my blog.

I did have a couple of successes today: after two days of fruitless effort, I managed to create a series page on Amazon for my eight Kelly O’Connell mysteries. Now I have to wait 72 hours to see if it really worked. But you know the satisfaction you get from figuring out a computer tech problem? That was me. And I registered a dispute with Discover over a pair of shoes for which I was charged but which never arrived. (Seriously, thirty minutes after I filed the dispute, the shoes arrived.)

I do have writing news that makes me happy—I’ve started editing the second Irene book, Irene in Danger, and I’ve reached out to editors, readers, and a designer, tentatively scheduling the publication for late October. With two books, Irene’s story is now a series, and I need a series title. You can help. My thought so far is to call each book “An Irene in Chicago culinary mystery.” That gets Irene and Chicago in there but leaves out Henny and Patrick. Still, it’s the best I can do without creating a title that is an entire paragraph on its own. Your thoughts? Comment below or write me at j.alter@tcu.edu.

I even had vague thoughts about a third book—Irene Saves the Day. Irene has been on the victim side in the first two books, so maybe it’s time for her to switch roles. And maybe Henny opens a restaurant—or becomes a chef in an upscale Chicago restaurant? I won’t get it written for over a year because I have two more major projects on my desk. But it took me that long to think about the second book, so who knows?

And those are all the things on my mind tonight. The writing and cooking parts make me happy because they are the only ones I can control. Know that feeling?

How to write a mystery

 

Now available in paperback, digital, and audio editions
You're bound to love Henny and laugh at Irene

The other night I started a blog on how to write a mystery, because I’d discovered a new and unorthodox method. Since it seems to be going well, I’ll try again and hope I don’t erase it. I well know that a whole bookstore could be stocked with nothing but “How to write books.” Too many would-be novelists read book after book as a way to dodge getting to the actual writing. But they need to search no more: I have come up with the formula.

The backstory: way before pandemic and quarantine, I idly started a mystery about a second-tier TV chef in Chicago. Just playing with ideas, I told the story from the viewpoint of her assistant or “gofer,” a young transplant from Texas. Chicago is my hometown, and Henny, the narrator, settled in the Hyde Park neighborhood, where I grew up. Lots of fun to revisit the scenes of my childhood, but also fun to research the many changes in the long years since. But after about twenty thousand words, I was distracted by nonfiction assignments that actually came with advance money. I labeled the fragment “Saving Irene,” and put it aside.

Fast forward a year to the middle of quarantine. I had finished my nonfiction assignments and was at loose ends, so I reread “Saving Irene.” To my surprise I liked the tone, the story, the way it was headed. Long story short, it was an indie publication in September 2020 and got really good reader comments.

More nonfiction and then loose ends again. Several people wanted more of Henny and Irene, and I had committed to name a character for someone who contributed to MysteryLovesGeorgia. So I started, “Irene in Danger.” This time, I quit at sixteen thousand words. An early reader liked it, but I wasn’t sure.

During all this for at least a year, I was delving into the life and cooking of Helen Corbitt, leading light of food service at Neiman Marcus stores. Her fascinates me because she came to prominence in the late fifties—after Poppy Cannon advocated for convenience foods but before both Julia Child and Betty Freidan who exerted polar opposite influences on American cooks. I had hoped my nonfiction publisher would be equally enthralled, but the new editor wrote that she didn’t think a cook in an upscale department store was worth a book. Her loss. I have now sent a formal proposal to an academic publisher and been assured they would give it careful consideration. Which means I’m back at loose ends until I hear from them, which may be a while.

I wrote profiles for the Handbook of Texas Online, the most recent of a husband-and-wife team who were instrumental in saving the history of Fort Worth’s Stockyards district from Disney-like commercialization. A light dawned: I could bring Kelly O’Connell, heroine of eight mysteries, back in a Stockyards setting. The first ten pages went well and after that, crickets. Sound familiar?

I went back to “Irene in Danger,” decided l like the tone, the story, the characters. And this time around the dialog flowed naturally. I’m back to writing it. I make no promises, because as you can see I’ve abandoned manuscripts before. But I’m trying my old formula of a thousand words a day. Slow but steady going. Still not quite to twenty thousand. We’ll see what happens.

I have once again been distracted, this time for page proofs of The Most Land, the Best Cattle: The Waggoners of Texas. Due in September.

Retirement is such fun!

 

 

Cooking and Writing

That’s the way my world goes in these quarantine days—cooking and writing, and I’m not sure which comes first. But this week I wrote six thousand words on a new mystery. There’s a backstory. Over a year ago, in one of my fits of “what shall I write about,” I started a mystery. I wanted to do something in the culinary tradition. For some unknown reason, I, who love to cook, had created in Kelly O’Connell a protagonist who didn’t know a frying pan from a toaster. Kate Chambers, of the Blue Plate Café Mysteries, was a bit better—a gourmet cook in her private life, but a short order one in the small-town café she inherited. And food was really secondary in the stories. So I wanted to do something with food front and center.

I wrote nineteen thousand words about a young woman who was assistant to a TV chef but whose ambition was to manage the food segments on the TODAY show. She lived in Chicago, in the neighborhood I grew up in. As soon as she met her neighbor, she decided he was a great guy but gay. No romance there. And someone was threatening the chef she worked for. There's the story.

I’m not sure but I think I put it aside when other projects called—principally nonfiction for the publisher who did my book, The Second Battle of the Alamo. I got involved and forgot about Henry Smith—yep, that was her name, short for Henrietta.

Now, with the pandemic and quarantine, I find myself again without a project. My publisher is on furlough, which means the editor hasn’t looked at the manuscript I sent that was due May 1. I have no clue if she’ll be back working May 1 or not. And I’ve had no word on the proposal for a third title I submitted. So here I am again—aimless.

On an impulse, I pulled up that unfinished mystery, read it, and thought, “This is isn’t half bad.” I liked the voice, and I found several plot threads. That discovery has energized me and propelled me through  days of quarantine. This week I wrote six thousand words on the novel, blogged every day but one, and produced a twenty-four page newsletter. I think that novel energized me. And I’m having fun. (Sorry, Elaine, it's not another Kelly mystery.)

On the cooking front, Christian and I collaborated on a terrific dinner tonight. Grilled salmon with an herb sauce, and tossed salad with a creamy blue cheese dressing. The herb sauce was a bit of a pain—chopping all those herbs—and next time, I would cut back on the oil and vinegar. It was a bit too runny, I thought. But oh so good. Picture is above.

Last night I dined in solitary splendor and resisted Jordan’s suggestion that I have my last salmon cake. I’ve been enjoying those with mayo on rye bread for lunch. So I baked an egg on top of layers of torn sourdough bread, chopped spinach, and grated sharp cheddar. After I cracked the egg on all that, I covered it with a thin layer of buttermilk to keep it from drying out, and baked it about twelve minutes at 350. I like my eggs runny--you may want to do it longer. It doesn’t show all that well, either fresh out of the oven or all mushed up, as I like it. But trust me, it was good.

Baked egg after smushing

Now I need to go doze, so I can figure out what happens to Henry in tomorrow’s installment.

Sweet dreams. Take care and stay quarantined. It’s too soon to open up the world, in my opinion. And don’t fall for false and crazy cure suggestions. We’re in this for the long haul, but we can stay safe if we self-isolate and wear masks and gloves. I’m appalled at the people who don’t take those simple precautiions.To say nothing of protestors.
Oops. Just discovered three gnats in my wine. It's that season again.

Too Much Food?

June 3, 2018

Cutest acolyte ever

His mom is pretty cute too

I was pleased as could be that my recent giveaway of Murder at the Blue Plate Café brought that title to 50 Amazon reviews (rated 4.5 stars) which is supposed to be a magic number for Amazon. We’ll see if they start advertising the book, but today I scrolled through those reviews to see if there were people I needed to thank personally (reviews, even two sentences, are so important to an author!). I found one review that said the reader had enjoyed the book, the plot was good, she liked the characters but there was too much about food. I wanted to holler that it’s a culinary mystery, for heaven’s sake. What does one expect?

It may be that there’s too much about food in this blog too, but that tells you something about my life, especially on weekends. Today I spent some time chopping for a fruit salad and a pasta salad with chicken for tomorrow (okay, Heather Hogan Holt, the secret is out). I thought it was fitting that I was chopping, since I’m just finishing a Diane Mott Davidson culinary novel titled Chopping Spree.

I tried to open a can of quartered artichoke hearts, the kind of can with a ring top to pull, and couldn’t do it, couldn’t pull that ring back. Threw me into depression as I decided that I have no strength in my hand, it was a sure sign of aging, and probably imminent death. Well, no, I didn’t go to that extreme, but I was pretty depressed about it. I called for a reinforcement in the shape of Jacob who came out, tried, and couldn’t pull that top either. He started to attack it with the best knife in my kitchen, but a quick shouted “No!” stopped that. He finally used a fork handle to pry the top halfway off. I was left to drain the can and then prize the artichokes out, butchering them in the process. But that was okay—I was going to chop them anyway.

The family had a catch-as-catch-can dinner in the cottage tonight. Christian brined and grilled some seasoned chicken Jordan had bought, along with oven roasted potatoes. I chose to eat leftover chili dip, and I fear Jacob filled up on that before his supper. It seemed like everyone was eating something different, and in the process, they used almost every dish in my kitchen. I now have them washed and in the draining basket.

We were all up extra early today since Jacob was an acolyte at the nine o’clock service—we usually attend eleven o’clock. He was of course adorable in the acolyte outfit. I am always grateful to be in the service and realize that I am part of this huge community of faith.

Another busy week coming up. Wish the heat would abate just a bit.