Brussel sprout stroganoff and fried grasshoppers... by Sheila Claydon

Is it me or a late onset problem with my wooden spoon, or are recipes just becoming more  complicated and less authentic?

I've eaten meals in many different countries, both in restaurants and in private homes, and because I enjoy trying new foods I have always paid attention to how people from different cultures cook and present their food. I ask questions too, and when I return home I sometimes try to replicate the recipes or incorporate a new technique into my cooking. This means that I can attempt many dishes from around the world as well as regional specialities from across the UK, and if I've been shown how or asked the right questions, I can usually produce something that is both recognisable and edible.

This is not the case with many modern recipes though. Rarely do the pictures match the final result and sometimes the list of ingredients are just plain off!  Much as I like vegetables I'm never going to find spaghetti tossed in a kale and spinach sauce and topped with a fillet of white fish appealing, and the same goes for a Brussel sprout stroganoff! Why even call it a stroganoff when it doesn't have a single authentic ingredient?

Nowadays magazines and newspapers compete with one another to print recipes and there are all those food blogs out there too, many of them supposedly to save us time. The selling point is that if we follow their method we can cook supper in a jiffy without having to wonder what we can produce out of the mix of ingredients in our larder and refrigerator. Sometimes this works but more often it doesn't, either because the ingredient list is too varied and exotic or because the mix of foods is too outlandish. Cauliflower pizza anyone?

Then there are the recipes sent in by the general public. The apple cake I tried because the writer said it was a firm family favourite, where I discovered that the only authentic word was firm because it came out of the oven squat and heavy and only suitable for a doorstop. And the meatloaf turned fish loaf recipe. I couldn't even try that.

Having tried the proliferation of recipes in all forms of the media for a long time, frequently unsuccessfully, I've decided it's my own fault. I have a kitchen shelf full of perfectly good cookbooks whose recipes have been tried and tested over the years, plus the knowledge that comes with preparing family meals day after day after day for what seems like forever, so why do I even read recipes that will never see the light of day in my kitchen. I guess it's because I like food and I'm always up for trying new flavours. After all I didn't expect the fried grasshoppers I ate in China to taste so good, nor the lassi yoghurt drink and the cauliflower curry in India, or the 4 hour cooked Christmas cabbage and rollmop herrings in Denmark. In Germany it was the weisswurst which is Avery unappetising looking but delicious white sausage, in France snails, in Australia alligator, in Scotland haggis and in Wales lava bread which is a special seaweed.  There have been many more but because they are culturally authentic dishes and snacks, lovingly prepared, they have all tasted good. Not so the many recipes that are now out there. Some of them work of course, but so many of them don't, so now I'm going back to basics. After all what is nicer than lemon and garlic chicken, a mushroom risotto or good old spaghetti bolognaise...and there is always steak and fries of course!

There are references to food in many of my books, and in a couple of cases actual recipes, but these are all things I've eaten and enjoyed, not suggestions plucked from a magazine, and when I wrote about them it took me right back to the pleasure of eating them. There is the cake my grandmother always made in Remembering Rose, the wonderful meal I ate in a tiny taverna at the top of a mountain in Italy in Mending Jodie's Heart and then there's the very simple early morning breakfast in a boat off Dolphin Key in Reluctant Date. Visit http://bwlpublishing.ca/authors/claydon-sheila-romance/ to find out more if, like me, you are a hopeful foodie.

                    

You can also find me at Sheila Claydon on facebook

Women Actually Took Part in the Klondike Gold Rush by Joan Donaldson-Yarmey

I had been to the Yukon twice and hiked the Chilkoot Trail in 1997, the hundredth anniversary of the Klondike Gold Rush, so I knew some history of the area before I started my research for my novel Romancing the Klondike. But I didn’t know anything about the north prior to gold being discovered on Rabbit Creek. When I began my reading I learned that there were good sized towns such as Circle City in Alaska and Fortymile in the Northwest Territories (the Yukon Territory was not formed until 1898) with theatres, libraries, schools, stores, and medical doctors. One little known fact, though, was that while most of the residents in the north before the gold rush era were men, there were also many women who lived there with their prospector husbands or who came as nurses, teachers, cooks, dance hall girls, and ladies of the evening.

       One such woman was Ethel Berry who made the trek from California as a newlywed with her husband, Clarence, in 1896. When they heard about gold being found on Rabbit Creek (later named Bonanza Creek) Clarence staked a claim on Eldorado Creek, a tributary, and the couple set up camp in a 12X16 foot long cabin. There was only a dirt floor and a window that was covered with a flour sack. The winter was cold and Ethel spent her time keeping the wood stove going and cooking and cleaning. Clarence’s claim proved to be one of the richest claims in the Klondike and when they returned to Seattle with two hundred thousand dollar’s worth of gold in the summer of 1897, Ethel was dubbed the Bride of the Klondike by the newspapers. In 1898, they crossed over the Chilkoot Pass with thousands of hopeful millionaires and went back to their claim again.

       Another woman who struck it rich in the Klondike was Belinda Mulrooney. She was raised in Pennsylvania and left home at twenty-one. She worked in Chicago and then San Francisco before heading to Juneau, Alaska, in 1896. When she heard about the gold strike in the Klondike she decided to go there. She bought the necessities she would need but she also thought ahead and purchased silk underwear, bolts of cotton cloth, and hot water bottles. These she carried with her over the Chilkoot Pass in the winter of 1896.

       When the ice melted on the Lindeman and Bennett lakes and Yukon River she floated down the river to the new town of Dawson City, reaching in it June of 1987. According to Belinda Mulrooney herself, when she finally reached Dawson and the gold fields after many months of hardship, she tossed a 25-cent piece, her very last coin, into the Yukon River for luck. She was 26 years old and full of confidence. And rightly so for she sold her silk underwear, bolts of cloth, and hot water bottles for six times what she had paid for them.

       With this success, Belinda turned her attention to the prospectors in gold fields. She set up a lunch counter to feed the single men and then added a bunkhouse for those who didn’t have a cabin to stay in. Eventually she built the two story Grand Forks Hotel and Restaurant, with multiple bunk beds on the second floor, at the junction of the Eldorado and Bonanza creeks. The hotel also acted as a trading post, a gold storage, and sometimes as a church. In the back were kennels for the husky dogs used to pull the sleds which were the main transportation in the winter.

       Being the smart woman that she was, Belinda had the floor swept every evening and those sweepings run through a sluice box. This earned her as much as $100 a day from the gold dust that fell from miner’s pockets and clothing. And she began to delve into the gold claims themselves, owning or co-owning fiving mining claims by the end of 1897.

       Belinda turned her entrepreneurial skills to Dawson and bought a lot on the corner of Princess Street and First Avenue. She sold Grand Forks for $24,000 and used her profits to construct the three-story high Fair View Hotel which opened to enthusiastic and impressive reviews on July 27, 1898. This was the most impressive building in Dawson and held thirty guest rooms and a restaurant.

       Impressed by her strong business sense, a local bank asked Belinda to pull the Gold Run Mining Company out of the red. She had the company in the black in 18 months.

       Belinda married and divorced and eventually moved to eastern Washington State and built herself a castle. She and her siblings lived there until her fortune ran out and she began to rent out the castle. She died in Seattle in 1967 at the age of 95.

        These are just two examples of the many women who lived in the north, who took part in the Klondike gold rush, and who are not included in most of the books written.

http://bookswelove.net/authors/donaldson-yarmey-joan/

 

Walking The Lakes with Wordsworth

For more information about Susan Calder's books, or to purchase visit her Books We Love Author Page. 

I've wanted to visit England's Lake District since my university days, when I took a course in Romantic Poetry. The Lake Poets, my professor said, turned to nature as a reaction against the country's industrialization, not unlike the hippies of our time. No poet was more associated with the bucolic lakes than William Wordsworth, who was born in the region, travelled away for awhile and returned to marry and live the rest of his long life. Last spring I learned why he loved The Lake District so much when I spent a week there.   

A walk near Grasmere - in The Lake District everywhere you look is a picture

On one of those fine days, my husband and I visited two of Wordsworth's homes in the village of Grasmere. We arrived early at Dove Cottage, William's starter house when he married, and got a private tour before a busload of tourists crowded the small rooms. The guide pointed out the poet's favourite artifacts, which included a cuckoo clock that made William and his sister Dorothy laugh hysterically each time the bird popped out. Life was simpler then.   

Dove Cottage, where we learned that during his lifetime Wordsworth was always referred to by his first name

William's funny cuckoo clock

 

William built a terrace in the garden behind Dove Cottage to get a view of the lake, now obscured by houses and trees. 

William earned some money from poetry and worked as a Distributor of Stamps, but much of his income was inherited from his father and an acquaintance who died young and left the poet money to support his talent. From Dove Cottage, we walked a 40 minute path to Rydal Mount House & Gardens, William's more upscale home, where he lived from 1813 until his death in 1850. Here he wrote and revised many of his poems and published his most famous one, 'Daffodils.' The Wordsworths rented the house until his wife's death in 1859. Their great great granddaughter later bought the property, opened it to the public in 1970 and still uses it for family gatherings. 

Rydal Mount

I liked that the living room looks lived-in

Rydal Mount grounds

Rydal Mount's huge garden looks much as it did in William's time. William often said the grounds were more his 'writing room' than his office in the house. He was known to recite his poems aloud while revising them and often did this on his solitary walks through the countryside. William was born before the invention of trains and wasn't rich enough to own a horse and carriage. He thought nothing of walking five hours to the northern Lake District town of Keswick, to visit his friend and fellow Romantic poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. 

Writing, walking, wandering through gardens. What a wonderful lifestyle.   

Willam's and his wife's grave in Grasmere lies next to that of his sister Dorothy, who lived with them and inspired many of his poems. Dorothy's diaries reveal that she could almost be credited with composing the first draft of 'Daffodils.'    

We were too late in the season for William's daffodils, but we walked past fields of bluebells. 

   

Walk With Me in the Rain

Visit Barbara Baldwin’s BWL Author Page to view and purchase her books

WALK WITH ME IN THE RAIN

           I write when the house is quiet; when even the dogs lie at my feet in slumber and there is nothing to interrupt the flow of my words. Then I create a world only I can see.  Sometimes, I don’t understand the emotional entanglement that occurs when I become immersed in that creative process. I ache for my characters; cry for their heartbreaks and laugh with their joys.

            And I walk with them in the rain.

            I close my eyes and visualize a world quite different from the concrete one in which I live. As I shuffle beneath an autumn canopy, bursting with crimson, mustard yellow and dusty brown, I long to sit down among the crackling leaves and listen as the wind echoes through the branches. I write the words to help me remember this day -- the gentle caress of the breeze, the call of a bird, distant laughter.

            I look above me but I don’t see trees. I see a young sapling or a towering oak; or an orchard rich with fragrant blossoms. For when others read what I have written, I hope they become part of the world that I created especially for them.

            I hope they walk with me in the rain.

            I drive down the road, wanting to capture the feel of furnace blasts of heat which throw tumbleweeds across the path to make the trip less tedious. I need other words for “hot” because my story takes place in summer and it is hot.  I take hints from the wilted fields; brown pastures which should have remained green another month.  Is it sweltering?  Torrid?  Bone melting hot?

            Before I can decide, the summer heat is drowned by the rain -- an earthshaking thunderstorm, lightning ricocheting across the sky before it turns into a warm, soft, summer rain. Rain is a deluge, a torrential downpour, a miracle, a disaster, a respite.  It is the angel of life for barren fields during a drought, or it can wash away a lifetime of hopes and dreams in an instant.

            Can you recall riding through a puddle on your bike as though it were a great sailing ship, lifting your feet high but getting soaked anyway? Do you smell the clean earth and feel the mud squish up between your toes?

            Are you ready to walk with me in the rain?

Have you ever visited a town where no one lives but where the ghosts will speak if only you will listen? Will you dress up in old fashioned clothes and pretend to be an outlaw’s girlfriend, getting a tintype taken in an old time saloon?

            This is how I write; caught up in dreams of another time.  There is an insatiable need within me to create worlds in which I know I can’t belong, but to which I am allowed a visit--for another hour; for ten more pages; for tonight. 

           

Do you underline book titles? by Rita Karnopp



In my book, Kidnapped, I found myself drawing on the fact my husband and I were strugging to have a child.  So Laura became a character I truly related to. I cried while writing the final courtroom scene.  My husband stopped at my desk and asked, "Are you okay ... what's wrong?"  I answered, "It's so sad."  I truly believe if we the writer are brought to tears by the words we type ... then our reader with most likely cry when they read them.

 

Laura and Aaron Palmer’s marriage is over, but they have newly adopted daughter, Amie, to consider. If they split up now, young Amie could be taken away from them both forever.

 

Life is complicated, but it takes a turn for the worse when Laura finds Amie’s picture listed in an ad for missing and abducted children. But are the people who claim to be Amie’s biological parents really what they seem, or is something more sinister at play?   

 

Alienated emotionally from each other, and paralyzed with fear, can Laura and Aaron find a way to save their marriage and protect their adopted daughter? This story entwines your heart with the bonding love of a child.

    4 Nymphs ~ This is a truly engrossing tale for anyone who has ever wondered about the stories behind those faces on the milk cartons. Author Karnopp does a great job revealing the stress of a couple unable to conceive. Her characters are all well developed and understandable, even the supporting cast. The story tugs at your heartstrings, without being saccharine or maudlin. I enjoyed it. ~Sphinx Minx

    4 Star Thriller…Kidnapped by Rita Karnopp is a thriller. The characters have their own distinct voice. You could see the flaws in Aaron and Laura, and as the story progresses you see them mature and grow. This is a plot that could easily be ripped from the headlines. Kidnapped is an entertaining read. ~ Debra Gaynor for ReviewYourBook.com

Do You Underline Book Titles?

I’ll bet each of us has paused when we’re ready to write/type the title of a book … back in the day all book titles were Underlined … and then later they were all CAPITALIZED or italicized … but things have changed. 

 

How do you handle book titles?  Put them in “quotes?”  The truth of the matter is … whether it be a book, online, a newspaper, a proposal, or a magazine article, the writing of titles are handled in so many ways.  But, which one is correct?

The answer is: probably all of them.  Today how you handle book titles is a style choice not governed by grammarian law.

 

According to the Chicago Manual of Style and the Modern Language Association, titles of books (and other complete works, such as newspapers and magazines), should be italicized. 

 

Opposite, the AP Stylebook suggests that you use quotation marks around the names of books (with the exceptions of the Bible and catalogs of reference material, such as dictionaries and almanacs, which should not be styled in any way). 

 

Some publications also follow their own style guides.  Just so you know, an editor will edit your story to fit her/his style preferences anyway. 

 

So, what does that mean to you and me? It means: Don’t worry about it too much. Just pick one style and stick with it for consistency purposes.   

 

Writing Historical Romantic Suspense by June Gadsby

 

Visit June Gadsby's BWL Author Page for Information and to Purchase  her books

I never thought I would ever do this. History was not my best subject at school. I had no interest in it at all. However, I was very interested in writing sagas set in the 19^th and 20^th centuries and this took me into researching the times and places where my characters lived. At first, it was hard – still is at times. I inevitably end up with a fat file of research notes bigger than the finished novel.

Fascination, however, soon took over. I am now hooked on historic research and often get ideas and inspiration from real life events that happened in the past.

Take Voices of the Morning, set in the thirties in north-east England [my home counties] at the time of the Jarrow Crusades and the miners’ strikes. Coming from a long line of mining folk there was an added incentive to write about my kind of people, but with a story of high-level suspense woven in and around actual historic fact.

For me, the story is the most important thing, with characters that draw the reader in, make them turn the pages, holding their breath and getting involved with protagonists that aren’t particularly glamorous – just ordinary souls that get caught up in dangerous, frightening situations, such as murder and rape and anything else I can dredge up from my imagination – sometimes autobiographic details that give the story a touch of reality.

The ‘blurb’ is always the most difficult thing to write, because how can you squeeze into a few words the true essence of the whole novel. But here it is for Voices of the Morning:

The last thing Patrick Flynn wants is another mouth to feed, so he does his best to ensure that Billy does not survive. But survive he does, with the help of a warm-hearted prostitute and Laura Caldwell, the daughter of a wealthy local family. Patrick deserts his family and Billy struggles to eke out a meagre living, all the while looking after his alcoholic mother. As he matures, so does his obsession with Laura. One day, he dreams, he will win her heart, but Laura has other ideas, and it is with Bridget, the prostitute’s daughter that Billy joins the Jarrow crusaders marching to London to demonstrate against unemployment. Neither of them, however, is prepared for the reappearance of the evil Patrick Flynn…

This is not the only 5-star review Voices of the Morning received, but what author could ask for better?

***** Loved it! WOW! Talk about being on the edge of your seat. This book was amazing. I had no idea what was coming next. [by BOOKLOVER64]

And getting a write-up in the local press was a great bonus too. [1]

In the book, the hero, because of his short stature, got the nick-name of Billy Big Boots because the hand-me-down boots from his brothers were far too big for him. One lady, who had bought the book as a birthday present for her husband, was a teddy-bear maker and she made a teddy-bear and sent it to me. He wears a medallion around his neck with his name on it. [2] How nice is that! I love my furry Billy Big Boots and no child will ever get it – not because I’m mean, but because this lady uses lead shot to fill the bears with [husband was a game-keeper and the lead shot was spare!]

October New Releases from BWL Publishing

Don't miss these great reads. Click the covers for purchase and author information...

BWL OCTOBER RELEASES

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When the World is Your Stage by André K. Baby

Visit André K. Baby's BWL Author Page for information and Purchase Links to your favorite bookstore.

 Hi everyone,

As a newcomer to this group, I would like to share with you few thoughts on the “métier” of writing thrillers.

One of the first challenges a thriller writer faces when putting down the foundations of his/her story is choosing the size and type of stage on which to set the story.  Will it take place in a room, on a ship, a train, in a town, or will the action take place in many locations?  Each scenario has advantages and disadvantages, while having its own set of opportunities and restrictions.  The one-location thriller will be perfect for the exploring of personal relationships and the intensifying of conflict between the characters.  Added tension is provided by the constricting aspect of the limited dimensions of a room, plane, train (aka “Murder on the Orient Express”), submarine (“Hunt for Red October”), etc.…

Alternatively, the story tension in the multi-venue thriller will be provided in part by the external stimuli offered by the various locations. The reader is transported to the locale, and will enjoy, tolerate, or suffer the physical characteristics of that locale along with the protagonist/antagonist. He’ll freeze in an Alpine mountain shelter, sweat and be thirsty in the Libyan Desert, enjoy the turquoise waters of the Caribbean, etc… Well developed, settings virtually become characters in the story.

Having been a longtime reader and admirer of the likes of Sidney Sheldon, Graham Greene, Ian Fleming, Len Deighton, Robert Ludlum, John Le Carré, Ken Follett and others, the multi-venue stage has always held a particular attraction for me.

In “The Chimera Sanction” (and its stand-alone prequel “Dead Bishops Don’t lie”), I like to think I’ve brought the reader to out- of- the ordinary locations, thrusting my protagonist Dulac into the throes of conflicts  at these  sites.  Having the action take place at the Vatican, on the searing sand dunes of the Libyan Desert, then in the middle of a storm in the Mediterranean offers reader stimuli unavailable in a single-venue story. These settings offer unique opportunities for tension, without the loss of focus on the story. Another benefit of the multi-location thriller is that it allows the author to develop parallel story lines, which funnel down into one towards the end of the story.

In my latest thriller “Jaws of the Tiger” published by BWL, I thought I would try the other option, the one locale setting in the form of a hijacked cruise ship where the action story develops, and combine it with the follow-up investigation of the crime. One might say it’s a cross-genre, combination action thriller and whodunit, and I hope it will appeal to readers of both groups.

Comments anyone?

Cheers,

André K. Baby