An Author's Cookbook by Vanessa C. Hawkins

 

Vanessa C. Hawkins Author Page

In the context of stories, it is often the case that a dash of ingenuity and a pinch of drive, combined with a healthy dose of creativity seasoned with levity and charm, can create a wonderful snack on a rainy pandemic day. The great thing about stories, is that no matter how much you indulge, you will never get fat, or feel bad about doing so. 

Unless you're an author in need of an oven light. Or whose cupboards are bare of ingredients...

Darn... out of inspiration again.

It happens to us all. Like wrinkles. Even very young authors—and I use the term young in reference to career and not to one's duration within the universe—who start out fresh and full of paragraphs will eventually find themselves struggling to mix up something that sates their palate. It is perhaps the eternal struggle for scribes everywhere, and without a Gordon Ramsay to hurl abuse at us until we write better, what is one to do? 

Cry? Yes. That's fine. A good dose of sorrow is always good seasoning for a hearty tale. 

Punch something? Perhaps. Though over kneading can result in broken fingers and poor handwriting. 

Marinate for days in one's own insecurities and self hate? Author's love to do this, however it rarely improves the flavor of their stories. Avoid if at all possible. 

Carry a notebook for on the spot inspirations? Yes! You never know when you'll think of a new recipe.

Go for a walk, or listen to music or read or improve one's own world vision through others? Absolutely! Then write about what you know!

Though of course, it is always easier said than done, and until someone invents a Ducolax for writer's block, we may all feel up *%&# creek without a paddle sometimes. 

How the heck do I pass this?!

My solution was to add another cook to the kitchen, because after having a baby, going back to work, caring for  the needs of my husband on top of all the other great and no-so-great things that goes along with being alive, I found myself too busy to deal with the enormous block that had been shoved up my tookus. 

But—pun intended—I was lucky to have a secret weapon up my arsenal. 

A good friend who I had been writing with for years, and who seemed inclined to write about dragons and romance and loose vampire police women in the 1920's prohibition era. 

Sound spicy? We like to call it Urban Fantasy Fusion. 

Not really, but I'm trying to keep with the cooking theme, so just go with it. Scarlet Fortune and Shad O'Rahin: two individuals embroiled up to their fangs in bootlegging shenanigans, monster hunters and strange affections. Coming to you piping hot September 2021, and lovingly prepared by word culinarian Tara Woodworth and Executive Chef Vanessa C. Hawkins!  

We don't have the cover art done yet...

Of course, what worked for me may not work for everyone. In the grand scheme of things, whether one decides to include another in their endeavors, scribble words on a page until they make sense, or cry in darkness of your room at night while second guessing everything you've ever done or written... an author's cookbook is defined by the author itself. Do what you need to do to keep serving up delights.

Poe cried a lot and he
became famous... after he died...

Fatten your readers with smut and romance, sadden them with drama and fright! Serve them up something disturbing, leave them feeling full and complete! It is impossible to satisfy every taste, but write for yourself first. And figure out who may like Urban Fantasy Fusion later. 

Did I mention it comes out in September? Yeah? 

Okay... just making sure.  

Weird things happen after death by J.S. Marlo

 

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

I'm currently working on a sweet Christmas story. So far I haven't had to worry about time of death as no fresh body has landed in the snow around my heroine's country house. While I do not plan to kill anyone in my current work-in-progress, the same couldn't be said about my previous stories.

In an investigation, it helps to determine the time and cause of death. We've all heard the terms algor mortis, livor mortis, or rigor mortis, but what do they mean, and mostly importantly how and why do they occur?

Sooner or later, preferably later, we all die, but what  happens to our physical body between the time we die and the time we become dust or ashes?

 By nature, I'm a very curious person and I ask lots of questions. Sometimes, too many. If I'd pursued my degree in science instead of switching to accounting, I would have become a pathologist/medical examiner/coroner, so when I stumbled on an article about the weird things that happen after you die, I couldn't resist reading--and sharing.

- Your cells burst open

The process of decomposition starts just minutes after death. When the heart stops beating, we experience algor mortis, or death chill, when the temperature of the body falls about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit an hour until it reaches room temperature. Almost immediately, the blood becomes more acidic as carbon dioxide builds up. This causes cells to split open, emptying enzymes into the tissues, which start to digest themselves from within.

- You turn white — and purple

Gravity makes its mark on the human body in the first moments after death. While the rest of your body turns deathly pale, heavy red blood cells move to the parts of your body that are closest to the ground. This is because circulation has stopped. The results are purple splotches over your lower parts known as livor mortis. By studying the markings of livor mortis, the coroner can determine when the victim die and if the body was moved.

- Calcium makes your muscles contract

Rigor mortis is when a dead body becomes stiff and hard to move. Rigor mortis generally sets in about three to four hours after death, peaks at 12 hours, and dissipates after 48 hours. It is caused by the pumps in the membranes of our muscle cells that regulate calcium. When the pumps stop working in death, calcium floods the cells, causing the muscles to contract and stiffen.

- Your organs will digest themselves

Putrefaction follows rigor mortis. This phase is delayed by the embalming process, but eventually the body will succumb. Enzymes in the pancreas make the organ begin to digest itself. Microbes will tag-team these enzymes, turning the body green from the belly onwards. As this bacterium breaks us down, it releases putrescine and cadaverine, the compounds that make the human body smell in death.

- You may be covered in a wax

After putrefaction, decay moves quickly to turn the body into a skeleton. However, some bodies take an interesting turn on the way. If a body comes into contact with cold soil or water, it may develop adipocere, a fatty, waxy material formed from the bacteria breaking down tissue. Adipocere works as a natural preservative on the inner organs. It can mislead investigators into thinking a body died much sooner than it actually did.

- You will probably move

This last one sounds strange, and creepy, but apparently a body doesn't just twitch as it goes through the process of decomposition, it can move quite a lot...

Now, this was everything you probably didn't want to know about what happens after you die.

Happy Reading & Stay Safe

JS

Reference: Treehugger.com

 

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

Spring and Saint Patrick's Day!

 

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Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

Winters in New England are cold, snowy, and long. So when spring shows signs of arriving some of us New Englanders get positively giddy. I am one such New Englander. While the Vernal Equinox isn't until March 20th, meteorologica spring started on March 1st and that's good enough for me. On March 1st anything in my house that has the feel of winter has been put away and the spring decor appears.

Because New England likes to start winter early and hang on to it as long as it can, I was rather confused as a child about certain holidays. My family went to my maternal grandparents' home in Bennington, Vermont for Thanksgiving. It was cold and there was usually snow on the ground. According to the calendar it was still autumn, but it sure looked and felt like winter. We went to my paternal grandparents' home in Vergennes, Vermont every Easter. It was spring, but it was cold and there was snow on the ground. Yup, to this little kid, both of those holidays occured in the winter.

However, in between came something even more confusing - Saint Patrick's Day. We didn't go anywhere, but my half-Irish mother, who decorated the house for every holiday (and I mean EVERY holiday), was sure to have plenty of images of the green fields of Ireland, lads and lasses in traditional dress dancing jigs, and shamrocks all over the house. It may not have looked like spring outside, but it certainly looked like it inside.

To this day, I think of Saint Patrick's Day as being in the spring. According to the calendar it's at the very end of the winter, but I'm going with meteoroligical spring. All that green can't be winter!

If you're in the mood for something Irish check out my books: Kelegeen is set in Ireland in the 1840s during the Great Hunger (aka Irish Potato Famine). The sequel, Erin's Children, set in the 1850s follows the lives of Irish immigrants who settled in Worcester, Massachusetts.

         Erin Go Bragh and happy Saint Patrick's Day! 

Click here for purchase information

BWL Publishing Inc. Newest Releases - March 2021

Download the free copy of our March book of the month, Murder and Mint Tea, Book 1 in Janet Lane Walters' delightful mystery series, Mrs. Miller Mysteries.  Free for our readers as a PDF download.  Just visit the site and click the book cover to download.  https://bookswelove.net  

Our Newest Releases March 2021

Visit our website at https://bookswelove.net for details 

 

 

Food and Drink in 14th Century England by Rosemary Morris

 

Click on the cover to learn more about Rosemary Morris.

My novel, Grace, Lady of Cassio, begins in 1331 during the reign of Edward III. It will be published in August 2022.

At heart I am a historian. My novels are rich in historical detail that requires intensive research, some of which I am sharing in this blog.

Food and Drink in 14^th Century England

In the Great Hall.  A lord, his lady and guests sat at a table on a dais at one end of the great hall. A white linen tablecloth covered the table. The best food was placed before him on a long, narrow coloured strip of fabric. Everyone else sat on benches at trestle tables at right angles to the dais. They ate food appropriate for their rank the lowest ate pottage.

Restrictions. The Church forbade consumption of meat on Wednesdays, Fridays Saturdays, and during Advent. In Lent eggs were not allowed. Fish replaced the prohibited food.

Breakfast. Noble households. The lord and his lady, if he was married, their most important guests and senior officials broke their fast with bread, cheese, ale or buttermilk. In accordance with the belief that servants became lazy if they ate too much so they were not served breakfast.

Dinner. This opulent main meal was served between approximately between 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. After the priest said prayers, fresh fruit stimulated the appetite. Two people shared food on a stale bread trencher that soaked up juice and sauce. First, the lord helped himself first to food. After he sampled the dishes, they were passed to his guests.

     The first course numbered a variety of meat dishes; to name a few, meat pottage flavoured with herbs, spices, and wine, or one containing, for example, savoury chicken, pheasant or swan with boiled meat, and venison seethed in almond milk and other ingredients. Some dishes were a combination of sweet and savoury. Four courses followed. The second with a variety of roasted, expertly carved, exotic meats, among others stork, peacock, heron, and larks. The next with small birds and cooked fruit, maybe baked, stewed in wine, or cooked in sugar syrup etc. A last course of fruit, nuts, cheese, and sweet and savoury wafers accompanied by spiced red wine ended the meal.

     On days when eating meat was prohibited, they ate four fish courses of fish cooked in different ways, for example, fresh fish, smoked fish, shellfish pickled in brine, salt fish and stewed fish.

     Vegetables were incorporated in pottages and other recipes.

      Large and small sweet and savoury pies, some called coffins because of their shape.

    Supper. Served at sunset, at the castle or manor for those seated on the dais supper was a light meal, Usually with one main dish, maybe white bread, side dishes and cheese. After supper sometimes they danced, or professional entertainers such as acrobats, jongleurs, minstrels and storytellers performed. If not a knight or the lord’s lady might recite a story. Sometimes a squire played an instrument and sang.

 

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

 

http://bookswelove.net/authors/morris-rosemary

The Notorious Story of Early London

 

Buy Here

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London Bridge in its hay-day

Precarious location
but folks could fish from the lower level

This is a notorious story of early London, humorous if not a little sad. I used a portion of this in my novel Highwayman which produced a snicker or two from my readers.

IN the 12th century, John Overs rented ferries that traversed the River Thames. He was as stingy as they came, except he allowed his daughter a fine education which must have drawn heavy coins from his purse. 

 John rivaled the richest Alderman of London/Southwark when it came to his income, yet what he wore and where he lived were deemed quite miserable. He refused to provide a dowry for his daughter when she came of age, even as a handsome fellow wooed her and was successful in gaining her adoration. All this took place behind John Overs’ back. 

 

Southwark Side of London Bridge

 He constructed a unique way to save money, even as his daughter balked at the plan. But being a good daughter, she went along with it.

John Overs’ unique plan devised his own death. He reckoned his servants would fast for 24 hours and pray over him during this time, thus saving food and ale in his larder. 

Unexpectedly, his servants raided his stores and struck up the lute. They partied, gobbled up his food, all the while sang and danced. Only a servant girl—here’s where the story gets muddled. Some say a maid, others a young man—stood near the body, watching for a specter to rise, which she would tend to with an iron wrought skillet. 

More of London Bridge in its prime

John Overs listened to this until he was rigid with anger. “Stirring and struggling in his sheet, like a ghost with a candle in each hand, he rose up to berate them for their boldness, but when the maid saw this, she thought the devil rose in her master’s likeness.” She took the skillet in hand—here’s another anomaly. The below source states a young man grabbed hole of an oar, but why would John Overs have an oar in his bedroom?—and bashed poor John Overs over the head, “actually struck out his brains.”

John Overs fell back onto the bed, dead as a knob, his face showing surprise at the outcome of his own parsimonious.

“The estate then became that of his daughter, and her lover, on hearing of this, hastened up from the country, but on hurrying to lay his hands on the fortune, rode too speedily; his horse stumbled, and he broke his neck on the highway.”

Downtrodden by two successive deaths Mary Overs handed over a goodly sum of money to have her father interred in a nearby church, but being excommunicated from the church for his extortion and usury, the Abbot did not allow this. His body was dug up and flung onto an ass, which “proceeded with a gentle and solemn pace through Kent street and along the highway to the small pond once called Thomas-a-Waterings, at that time the common place of execution, and shook the Ferryman’s body off, directly under the gibbet, where it was put into the ground without any kind of ceremony.”

Mary Overs could not overcome these troubles and went into a nunnery, donating a majority of her father’s wealth to build a church, St. Mary Overy’s. Shortly after this, she died and was buried in the church her father’s penury produced.

 

The end.

 

~*~*~*~*~*~

Many thanks to: The Gruesome History of Old London Bridge by Geoffrey Abbot. Eric Dobby Publishing Ltd, 2008, Kent, UK.

Going Off Script (Part 2) by Diane Bator

 

Introducing: 

All That Shines

Book 2 in Glitter Bay Mysteries

Sage Miller is knee deep in fashion designers—whether she wants them in her new vintage boutique or not.

One winds up dead.

Another isn’t what he seems.

A third is treasure hunting.

Sage is stuck in the middle trying to solve a murder before the grand opening of Vintage Sage, which involves a fashion show she’d rather not be part of.

Join in the fun! Buy links are on my BWL Publishing page: http://bookswelove.net/bator-diane/

More of Going Off Script...

This year has been a busy one for me! Not only do I have a beautiful new novel to add to my list, but I've been taking a playwriting course. The great thing with taking a sidestep from novel writing to playwriting, is that I enjoy writing dialogue to help propel the story along.

My first playwriting class was more of a basic overview of scripts. One thing I learned was that actors and directors don't like to be told what to do, so keep stage direction to a minimum. As part of a play I'm currently working on, I'm reading The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams. The stage directions make up nearly half the script! I was surprised.

After the first class, we had to write a 1-2 page scene. I had fun with that and got great feedback. I'd share, but I plan to work on it and create a whole new play from it. Okay, maybe a teeny bit. So far it doesn't have a title:

 

Frank:            Did you hear those kids? For god sake, they’re more worried about some fancy wedding than the fact she isn’t even listening to a word he says.

Carrie:           What did you say, dear?

Frank:            Really? I’m two feet away from you and you didn’t hear a word I said.

Carrie:           That’s not true. I heard you ask if I heard those kids. That’s when I tuned you out.

Frank:            And why did you tune me out?

Carrie:           Because I saw cheesecake on the menu and started to daydream about eating it only I realized I should just end up rubbing it on my stomach and thighs since that’s where it would end up anyway.

Frank:            You’re right. That does sound much better than what I was saying. Please, go on.

I have to admit, it was a bit weird hearing and seeing other people read my words for the first time. It was a fun experience and I was absolutely giddy hearing their feedback. What a great boost for the heart and soul!

While I love writing books, mysteries in particular, writing for stage is a whole different beast. With books, writers can add the details they envision. Each movement or look, the color and placement of the furniture, the things they want the audience to see. Plays are staged at the discretion of the director and performers and can be open to interpretation.

Week two, we were asked to submit 4-5 pages that were the beginning of a play. I took a deep breath and submitted the one I’ve been toying with since January 2020 called Secrets That Haunt Them. A murder mystery complete with a ghost.

Week 3, they read my few pages of my play. I heard lots of great feedback. The only concern was there were a lot of characters. Anything more than 5 or 6 characters becomes an expensive production. Mine has 7. It was fun to hear it brought to life though! At the end of class, we were invited to submit a monologue. I didn't send one. Instead, I started on a whole new play...

After Week 4, my confidence was up there a little. While I haven't received critique from my instructor, I did get feeback from the Artistic Director of the theatre where I work. I have some work to do - after all, it is my first play ever! - but overall he loved it. The concept of having too many characters came up again so the next step is to clean it up and submit it back to him so we can set up a workshop. 

Workshopping a play is lining up some great actors to read the lines while the playwright sits back and makes edits like crazy if they hear lines are too tough to follow or say, take out things that aren't funny, or even add in ideas from the director or actors as the playwright thinks will benefit the performance. We sort of did that in Week 2 & 3 with the lines I wrote above. I have to admit it was both cool and nerve-wracking to hear people read my writing aloud. 

Hopefully, we'll be able to perform it on stage one day. For now, I'm enjoying the launch of All That Shines and will get to my edits for the play soon.

This may be the start of a whole new path along my writing journey!

Have a fabulous day!

Diane Bator