Welcome New BWL Author Roberta Grieve

BWL: Where are you from? Tell us a bit about yourself and your history.

RG: I grew up in Kent, known as the Garden of England and some of my books are set there. I have lived in Sussex for more than forty years. I have done many different jobs but mainly in local newspapers and the public library service.

BWL: How long have you been writing and in what genres? 

RG: I have been writing for most of my life but it was only when I took early retirement that I started to aim for publication. I write mainly write historical romances but I have written short stories, magazine articles and a couple of film scripts for the local film makers club. 

BWL: Where you do get your inspiration?

 

RG: My inspiration comes mainly from my interest in history, particularly the Victorian period and the two world wars.  I love visiting stately homes, especially touring the kitchens and servants’ quarters. I also frequently visit the Weald and Downland Open Air museum near my home. It is a collection of buildings from various periods that have been rescued from demolition and re-erected on the site and provides a wonderful insight into life in days gone by. 

BWL: Tell us about your book(s).

 

RG: My first published novel was ‘Abigail’s Secret’ and is set during the Second World War in my home town of Chichester, Sussex. It is the first and only time I have used a real place in my books and I really enjoyed the research. Since then I have used real settings but fictionalised them so that I can use my imagination more. 

My other novels have covered the First World War, World War Two, and the period between. These were periods of real change for women and allowed me to create strong heroines who were not afraid to go against the conventions of their time. 

My favourite so far is ‘On Wings of Song’ about a society girl who moonlights as a music hall singer. The research was fascinating and I grew to love Arabella, my heroine.

BWL: What about your next book?  Will it be part of a series or a standalone?  Can you give us a taste to whet our appetites?

RG:  All my books are stand alone although I am toying with the idea of writing a sequel to ‘On Wings of Song’. However, my next book is to be called ‘Song of Memories’ about an orphaned English girl who has gone to live with her family in 1930s Russia. Her family are arrested in the Stalin purges but she escapes to England not knowing if her lover is dead or alive.

BWL: What are your hobbies and interests?

 

RG:  As you may have guessed my main interest in history and I try to indulge it as much as possible with visits to historical places and talks on local history. My son is involved in a medieval re-enactment group and that has sparked my interest in the period so who knows – a medieval romance might be in the pipeline.

I am secretary of the Chichester Writers’ Circle whose aim is to encourage and nurture beginner writers and I also belong to Chichester Literary Society. We enjoy talks on famous and not so famous writers, as well as literary walks and outings to places such as Kipling’s and Jane Austen’s houses.

BWL: What does the future hold for you?

 

RG: More books of course. 

Look for Roberta's books coming soon from Books We Love.

 

It Didn't End There: The Nun's Story and Sister Luke's Post-convent Years by Karla Stover

     When Gabrielle Van Der Mal, the former Sister Luke, walks out of a Belgium convent after the death of her father in World War II, she enters the last half of her life: a young Belgium woman for the first 21 years, a nun for the next 18, a nurse for two, and the partner of author Katherine Hulme for the last 40.

     Miss Van Der Mal was really Marie-Louise Habets, born in 1905 in West Flanders, Belgium. At age 21, she joined the Sisters of Charity of Jesus and Mary becoming Sister Xaverine. As in the movie, she did serve in the Congo and did return to Belgium after getting tuberculosis. The Holy See’s dispensation of her vows was highly unusual for the time.  Habets’s convent was Uccle in Brussels. From there she made her way to Antwerp, which the Allied forces liberated a few weeks later, after which German forces bombarded the city “killing and maiming some ten thousand civilians, and soldiers wounded in the Battle of the Bulge.”  There, she joined a British First Aid unit and nursed the soldiers. When the war in Europe ended, Habets was sent to Wildflecken, a displaced persons camp in Germany. That is where she met Kathryn Hulme, the camp’s director.

      In 1951, Hulme sponsored Habets and the two sailed to America. First the couple settled in Arizona where Habets worked in a hospital nursing the Navahos. From there, they moved to California. Her income freed up Hulme giving her time to write. Habets also acted as consultant to actress Audrey Hepburn who was preparing to make The Nun’s Story. The two became good friends and Habets nursed Hepburn after she (Hepburn) was badly injured while filming The Unforgiven in Durango, Mexico.

      In 1960, Habets and Hulme moved to Kauai and lived the ex-pat’s life—raising fruit, breeding dogs, riding horses, socializing, and traveling. Hulme also continued to write. She died in 1986 and Habets died five years later.

     The following is a google quote:  “Having inherited Hulme’s literary estate, Habets, in her own will, shared it out among members of her own family, members of Hulme’s family, and six Sisters, who cannot be traced. The resultant confusion makes it unclear who owns the rights, and who can give permissions. This is probably why The Nun’s Story, along with Hulme’s other books, remains out of print.”

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     The movie undoubtedly ended at the perfect place.

Enjoy Joan Hall-Hovey's suspense trailer.  Love this one


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wOFddR5pYyA     

Traditional Recipes for when the Chill is in the air

It's September, and time to start thinking about slow cooker recipes and the kind of traditional foods that make you feel all warm inside.  My husband, John has a book called Gifts from the Grandmothers, and I've tried some of those recipes. They are excellent reminders of the days when soups and stews sat all day on the back of the cook stove waiting for the hungry workers and children to sit up to the table.

Here are a few you might like to try

(If you don't have buffalo, beef will do just fine)

Buffalo Oven Stew

2 lbs. of buffalo meat, cut into 1 inch cubes

1 T. fat
1-1/2 T. salt
1 tsp. pepper
1/2 tsp. paprika
1/4 cup flour
1 large onion, chopped
1 can stewed tomatoes
4 carrots, chopped
2 stalks of celery, chopped
4 potatoes, chopped

Brown buffalo cubes and onion in fat on high heat. Reduce to simmer. Mix flour, salt, pepper and paprika sprinkle over browned meat; stir and gradually add water to form gravy. Place mixture in casserole dish. Add tomatoes, carrots, celery and potatoes and sufficient water to cover (leave room in the dish for the biscuit topping to be inside the rim of the dish). Place into baking dish, bake at 350 for 30 minutes. Cover with biscuit topping and return to 425 oven to brown topping.

Biscuit Topping

1-3/4 cups flour 4 tsp. baking powder

1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 cup shortening
1 egg
2/3 cup milk

Sift dry ingredients. Cut in shortening to consistency of cornmeal. Beat egg with milk. Make a well in the center of dry ingredients. Pour in milk mixture. Stir until dough binds together. Place on floured board. Pat into circle, place on top of Buffalo Stew fit to edges of pan until snug. Bake at 425 for 15 – 20 minutes or until top is lightly browned.

Roundhouse Pea Soup

1/2 cup dried split peas, 4 cups water

1 lb. Ham shank or 2 hocks

1 cup grated carrot

1 tsp. salt

1 onion, minced

10 peppercorns, 1 bay leaf

1 cup milk

2 T. flour

Wash peas and soak overnight in water. Place ham shank in slow cooker, add peas and
water in which they were soaked, add salt and seasonings, set to high, and allow to

cook several hours. If cooking in stew pot, bring to boil, reduce to simmer and allow to cook several hours.

 

 

Moosejaw Chili

4 lbs. Course ground lean beef/venison/moose

2 cloves garlic, minced

8 T. Chili powder

8 T. Flour

4 tsp. Salt

2 T. Cumin (comino)

1/2 cup beef suet

1/4 lb. Butter

2 cups onion, diced

2 quarts hot water

1 pint tomato puree

3 cups cooked beans (optional)

Season meat with garlic, chili powder, flour, salt and cumin, using your hands to work into meat. Heat suet and butter in heavy kettle and sauté onions until soft but not brown. Stir in meat mixture and cook 20 minutes, stirring often. Add water and tomato puree. Simmer 1 hour, stirring often. Stir in beans and cook 30 minutes longer. Make 1-1/2 gallons of chili.

Sourdough Starter

2 cups warm water into container

1 pkg. active yeast or 1 level T. dried yeast

1 cup white flour

Mix ingredients to form smooth paste, cover loosely with lid. Place container in warm place, leave for 24 hours. Sourdough starter can be kept in refrigerator for several weeks.

Each time you use starter, pour off 1 cup of starter and set it aside as a starter for the next baking. Replenish by adding flour and warm water, nothing else. The mixture improves with time and once fermentation is under way, this cup of starter will be sufficient to sour the flour overnight.

White Sourdough Bread or Rolls

Put 1 cup of starter into mixing bowl

Add 2 1/2 cup of flour and stir lightly

Add 2 cup warm water

Mix thoroughly. Cover with plastic wrap.

Place in warm spot overnight (12 hours)

In the morning add:

1 cup water, warm

1 pkg. yeast (1 T.)

2 T. butter

1-1/2 T. sugar

2 tsp. salt

4 cups white flour

1/4 tsp. baking soda

Add yeast and sugar to warm water. Stir until yeast is broken down (about 10 min.). Add to starter in your mixing bowl, liquid alternating with flour, stirring and adding until too stiff to mix with spoon. Turn out on floured board, kneading with hands, and adding more flour if needed to make soft dough. Briefly knead dough. Place kneaded dough in greased mixing bowl. Cover with plastic wrap, and let rise until double in bulk. Knead briefly. Divide dough into pieces to fill bread pans, fold into the shape of a loaf, place in warm greased pans, and brush with melted butter. Put in warm place, and let rise until double in bulk. Preheat oven to 425. Bake loaves for 5 min. Reduce oven to 350 and bake for 20 to 25 min. until bread is loose on sides of pans. For rolls follow above steps, but add 1 T. shortening and 1 T. sugar and shape into rolls. Place on greased baking pan. Bake for 20 min. At 400 degrees.

I hope you enjoy these.  John and my mom (Lillian) spent many hours updating some of these recipes so that they would work for today's cooks. 

And, if while you're waiting for those soups and stew to cook you have some reading time, I'd love for you to get a copy of the new mystery Jamie Hill and I have just finished.  It's called "New Directions" and it takes my Kelly McWinter PI characters from the Deadly series in an entirely  new and exciting direction.

Order from Amazon

Pre-order now from Amazon. Released on September 13th,

Yikes

I thought I was pretty strong in my beliefs regarding nature until I met an acquaintance. This isn't a person that calls occasionally for a friendly chit chat. Nope, this person lives close by. A couple houses away. I am sometimes honoured with face to face chats with her.

We live in the country. We get critters and lots of them. Deer, wild turkeys, lots of birds, squirrels, chipmunks, you get the idea. Her love of critters can be a bit extreme. Now, don't get me wrong, raccoons have a beautiful face, but, they can be destructive. So can skunks. Given the fact my dog loves the great outdoors even though she sleeps beside our bed, I really don't want either racoons or skunks nosing around on my property.

This acquaintance encourages both racoons and skunks to set up house around her deck. I'm serious. Yes, their deck is attached to their house. When I complain about the broken bird feeders, she tells me to stop feeding my birds. Apparently her feeders don't attracts the critters. 

"If there isn't any bird feed, they won't go there." 

Ugh. I refuse to argue with that. I'm not going to stop feeding my birds. Not going to happen. 

She came over a few weeks ago, as spring was ever so slowly springing. In late April, I still expected cold nights and the potential for frost. She had put her hummingbird feeder out and wanted me to put mine out. Not trusting mother nature, it was too early. 

"But the humming bird needs food," she informed me. "I don't want him to go hungry. I've had him at my feeder."

"How do you know that? Have you actually seen him?" I asked. 
"No. But there is poop on my deck. It's so small, it must be his."
I've never fought as hard to restrain from laughing in my life. OMG.  Send for Bird Poop Analysis. As I relayed the story to my husband, it dawned on me. I think our property value just decreased. 

Heather Greenis is the author of The Natasha Saga 

Empowerment shatters traditions and lives. Greed and pride have devastating consequences. Sacrifices must be made. Written on multiple levels, the saga deals with hope, relationships, and giving, set against a background of conflicting values. Through a series of dreams, modern day couple Keeghan and William follow the triumphs and tragedies of multiple generations of the Donovan family. A chance encounter changes Natasha’s life, forever. In her diary, Natasha writes of her dream, and her hope to escape a horrid dictated future. Will Natasha's legacy survive an uncertain future?

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School Days, School Days...by Gail Roughton

"School days, school days, dear old Golden Rule Days....". Well, the country's school kids are back in school now, most of them a lot earlier than those of us of a certain generation ever walked back down those long hall. Doesn't Fall take you back? The smell of school has to be one of the most distinctive smells in the world, even if chalk doesn't really feature in the medley of aromas anymore, having given way to to dry erase markers and computer screens.

But no matter the technology employed, those heroes and heroines of the classrooms we call teachers still strive to shape and form the minds of the next generation. And where would we be without them? I was lucky. Looking back, I don't think I ever had a bad teacher in my life, but I think everyone has one or two teachers they'll never forget, teachers without whom they wouldn't be the individuals they are today. 

I had Miss Louise Parker. Yes, Miss.  Not Ms. See, back in the dark ages when I was in grammar school, Ms. hadn't been thought of yet.  Ladies were either Miss or Mrs., and in a child's pronunciation, there wasn't a lot of difference in sound between the two, but Miss Parker was truly a Miss. She'd never been married and she lived with her sister in an old house in a little town about thirty miles away from the school. A former college English professor, she chose to leave the politics and drama of college behind and teach seventh grade at a little rural grammar school named Florence Bernd Elementary, back in the days when grammar school was first through seventh grade and Junior High started with the eighth grade. And no, I never did know the story behind that decision.  

I don't, in fact, even have any idea how old she was at the time I walked through the doors of her Seventh Grade classroom. She was an institution herself at the time. She'd taught seventh grade at Florence Bernd for years, she'd always looked exactly the same, from her straight skirt, white blouse and sensible shoes to her short gray hair and black rimmed glasses. Most of the kids were petrified of her, even back in the day when school authority was absolute, a teacher was judge, jury and executioner and woe, woe unto you if you were sentenced to the principal's office. But for some reason, Miss Parker never scared me, and I was probably one of the few kids who actually wanted the start of school roll call to assign me to Miss Parker's room.  

Because of Miss Parker, I never learned another bit of English grammar after the seventh grade, not even in college, because I didn't need to.  And let me tell you something, folks, a noun does not name. A noun is a word that names a person, place, object or thing.  Likewise, a verb does not denote action or state of being.  A verb is a word that denotes action or state of being.  If I close my eyes, I can hear her voice now, and no, patient's not the word I'd use to describe it, repeating the litany that was so driven into my brain I did it with all three of my kids during homework help and I'm doing it now with my grandson.  A noun (or verb or pronoun or adjective or adverb or whatever part of speech) does not do anything. Because it's a word that does--whatever part of speech that word is does.  


Miss Parker taught for several years after I left her classroom for the halls of higher education, but as I recall, she did retire relatively soon thereafter. I hope she knew how much impact she had on all the generations of children she taught, and I really, really wish she could have read my books. Here's to you, Miss Parker, and to all the Miss, Mrs., Ms. and Mr. Parkers in all school rooms everywhere. I like to think you'd be proud, especially of this one...

 My name be Cain...

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Writin' With Southern Stylin'

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