Beach season hasn't officially started yet (dang it) but I'll be heading to the shore with some fellow New Jersey authors on March 1. It's part of the Girlfriends' Getaway Weekend in charming Ocean Grove, New Jersey, a location that plays a prominent role in Murder and Marinara, and one of my favorite towns along the shore.
If you're in the area, stop by and see us!
My current reading list is a smorgasbord of genres--mystery, contemporary romance, and fantasy. While very different books, each shares an important February theme: love.
I'm just wrapping up Where Memories Lie, Book #12 in Deborah Crombie's popular series featuring Duncan Kincaid and Gemma James. I've been a fan of this series almost since its inception in 1993, and Crombie's in fine form in this entry. Gemma's involvement in a cold case leads her to one that Duncan is handling, and the connection of the two across generations is believable and fascinating. I adore Duncan and Gemma as a couple, and this book provides an oh-so-satisfying surprise at the end.
I'm about to start The Perfect Match, a contemporary romance 
by none other than the reigning queen of the genre, Kristan Higgins. Just selected by the NY Times as one of the best romances of 2013, the story features a whole bunch of my favorite romance tropes: an endearingly flawed heroine, a marriage of convenience, and a hero with a British accent. Can't wait to curl up with this one!
Neil Gaiman's Stardust is very much a fairy tale for adults--and a mildly spicy one at that! Young Tristran Thorn goes out on a seemingly impossible quest: capture a fallen star for the beautiful object of his desire. When his journey takes him beyond the high walls of his quiet village into a land of enchantment, he finds unexpected surprises, including the real meaning of love.
Happy Reading, everyone! 
A fourteen year old me, flanked by the formidable Marys
My stories all seem to feature grandmothers. In my Italian Kitchen series, the character of Nonna is a composite of the two women in the photo above. Given that they were so strong a presence in my own life, I think it's my way of keeping them with me. Both my grandmothers were named Mary, but two more different women you could not imagine. One Mary was tall, big-boned, the kind of woman people termed "handsome." She started going gray in her thirties, but never dyed her hair. No matter what drama was enfolding around her, she kept her counsel and her cool. She suffered the losses of her husband and oldest son with a strength and grace I've never seen in another person.
My maternal grandmother as a young woman
Because she came to this country as a baby, she grew up without an accent, and Americanized herself with great success. I spent the first year of my life under her roof, and growing up, I felt extremely close to her. I have fond memories of trips to the five and dime store and the Grand Union, and I remember her endless patience as she attempted (unsuccessfully) to teach me to knit. When I got my first job, I used to go to her house on a weekly basis to do my laundry and have dinner with her. She's been gone for nearly two decades now, and I'm grateful that she lived long enough to know my oldest son.
My other Mary was pretty, petite, and unapologetically vain about her appearance--a trait I seemed to have inherited, along with her facial structure. Sharp-witted and sharp-tongued, she was unafraid to speak her mind. She was also a gifted seamstress. If you can get past the polyester, take a close look at the dress she's wearing in the top photo. Note the cute collar and the unusual seaming--her design, as were all her clothes. She made me every dance costume I ever wore, and mine were always the envy of the other girls! In many ways, I think she was a woman out of her time. She worked her whole married life, and once confessed to my aunt that she had always wanted to learn fashion design, but never had the money to go to school. It was from her I learned to sew, as well as to appreciate good tailoring. She retained her accent, her hair color, and her sassy attitude until the day she died--at the age of 102, by the way. I hope I've inherited her longevity as well. When I look at that picture above, I get a pretty good sense of what I'll look like in about 15 years. I could do worse.
My paternal grandmother at about 20
I feel that Nature has played a cruel trick on me. As a middle-aged woman myself, I've come to appreciate my grandmothers in ways I never did as a young girl. I have so many questions I'll never be able to ask them, and so much to tell them in return. In the meantime, I'll give my characters their nonnas. But I'll never stop missing my own.
♥ ♥ ♥
It's clear from the photo what I'm about today:
My favorite part of the holiday--Christmas baking. I associate holiday baking with my childhood, my boys' childhood (though the days of decorating gingerbread boys have long gone), and most significantly, time spent in my grandmothers' kitchens. Each year I looked forward to Mema C's spritz cookies and Mema G's sesame biscotti, so I shouldn't wonder that my own sons have their own favorites from my kitchen. Magic bars--a cookie so easy and sugar laden that it comes with its own Eagle brand of guilt--are a must, for example:
That's some sweetened condensed paradise right there.
The other cookie we can't do without are Italian ricotta cookies flavored with anise.Tender little pillows that aren't biscotti, they're soft and sweet. These cookies are featured in The Wedding Soup Murder, which will also include the recipe. The secret is the anise; that gorgeous licorice smell permeates the house when I make these. (Bet you can't eat just one.)
But what I enjoy most is giving the cookies away. Actually, that's a lie. What I enjoy most is eating them.
Have a wonderful holiday and the happiest of New Years!
♥ ♥ ♥
October is my favorite month of the year (followed closely by June, July, and August) and I can't let it slip away without celebrating its joys. What do you love about this glorious, golden month?
1. Pumpkins--carved or whole, orange or white and lit with a candle. On the front porch, or in muffins, pies, bread, or cake. But not the ones chewed by squirrels.
2. Color. Color. Color.
4. Sweaters and scarves.
5. The harvest moon.
6. Sleeping with the windows cracked.
7. And speaking of sleeping, flannel PJs.
8. Walks in the woods.
9. The start of winter cooking: soups, stews, and slow-cooked roasts.
10. Halloween, when we're kids again. And when a few of us make ourselves sick on candy corn.
This week we had to say good-bye to our faithful friend and true member of the family, "the ill-behaved fix terrier" who appears in my author bio. Rather than talk about her loss, I thought I'd repeat an earlier post celebrating her presence in our lives. We'll miss you, girl.
I am not a dog person. I never was. As a child I was deathly afraid of them, and I dragged my feet for years when my boys begged for one. When the last kid was finally toilet trained, I had run out of excuses. (I had stipulated that I would not be cleaning up dog poop and the human variety. At which point my then four year-old handed me his pack of Pull-Ups, declaring he no longer had need of them.)
Because I detest dog hair and one of my sons has asthma, we looked for a non-shedding breed. The day we went puppy shopping, I had my eye on a quiet little gray schnauzer. My boys had other ideas. The minute we opened her crate, our future dog, a wire-haired fox terrier, bounded out to meet us by grabbing my son’s shoelace in her little puppy teeth and dancing around his feet.
“That’s our dog!” my youngest exclaimed.
I eyed her dubiously. “She seems a little crazy.”
Avoiding a direct response, my husband said, “Look, she’s the same breed as Asta. You love the Thin Man movies. Don’t you want your own little Asta?”
So I caved like a house of cards.
And she was—and still is, even thirteen years later— completely and utterly precious. Primarily white, she has black and brown markings, luminous brown eyes, and a perfect little nose that appears to be made out of black licorice. She was so affectionate the day we met her, we named her “Baci,” which is Italian for “kisses.”
And then reality set in. She was hideously difficult to train, and still goes in the house when the mood strikes her. Because she jumps and barks so much, she upsets her stomach to the point of vomiting; her favorite spot for this activity is behind my kitchen table. And no matter how many times I scrub that floor, on a warm day when the windows are open and the wind is just right, the faint odor of dog vomit still wafts across my kitchen. She nips at people’s ankles and goes berserk when the doorbell rings. The day after I spent a fortune on a DKNY coverlet and shams, she made her way into my room and left her “mark” (read dog pee) on it. I have had to replace bedding, rugs, people’s torn clothing, and the odd French door. And despite frequent grooming, she still ends up smelling like an old sock.
There were moments I fervently wished she would run away and never come back. And yet, after a recent scare when we thought she had doggie cancer, I cried for two days. It turned out to be a highly curable (and very expensive) infection.
My boys and my husband adore her. And truth be told, so do I. I look into those big brown eyes and see a kind of love. I like to believe it’s directed at me, and not the toast crusts I drop at her feet every morning.
Today I was saddened to hear of the passing of Barbara Mertz, who wrote under the pseudonyms of Elizabeth Peters and Barbara Michaels. A trained Egyptologist, as Elizabeth Peters, Mertz wrote the well-known Amelia Peabody mystery series. But it's her romantic suspense novels as Barbara Michaels that I adore.
I discovered them right after college, when I'd already read and re-read all of Mary Stewart. I devoured them all (in chronological order, natch) and then waited breathlessly for the next ones to appear. Like Stewart's stories, they feature plucky heroines, mysterious old houses, restless ghosts, and quirky yet attractive male characters who serve as the love interest.
The Barbara Michaels stories are just good old-fashioned reads for a rainy night. And I think it's time to work my way through them again. Back in May, I attended the Malice Domestic mystery conference. Mertz was in attendance, but I was too shy and overawed to seek her out. Now I'm sorry I wasn't a bit braver.
These words appear on her website today: "At 85, Elizabeth Peters (aka Barbara Michaels) is enjoying her cats, her garden, lots of chocolate, and not nearly enough gin."
A life well-lived, and books well-written. She'll be greatly missed.
Asbury Park holds a place in my heart like no other. Growing up in the 60s in a family of limited means, our "vacation" each summer was a day in Asbury. We started in the morning with a trip to the Monte Carlo pool, with its cheerfully painted Adirondack chairs. We stored our stuff in a locker room that sported a sign with a 40s style bathing beauty in a red swimsuit. After a morning swim, we walked through the cool underground tunnel that led straight to the beach, where we spent the afternoon until it was time for dinner at the Homestead Restaurant.
Sometimes we took a ride in the swan boats on Wesley Lake, but we always ended up on the boardwalk, riding the carousel, eating Kohr's custard and taffy from Criterion, always stopping to sit on the reversible benches--where you could either watch the people or the ocean. I always chose the ocean.
As you can see from the photo, going to Asbury is a tradition in my family, one that started during World War II. Most of the men in the family were away, so my grandmother, my mom and two uncles, as well as a number of assorted great aunts would spend a week in one of the more modest boarding houses. It was a women and children's vacation during the week, and on the weekends, the men who were either too young or too old to serve would come down and visit. After the war, the tradition continued into the early 50s.
On the rides down during our day trips, my mom would tell me stories of Asbury's heyday. My favorite was her description of dances held around the Monte Carlo pool, where a band played out on a floating platform in the middle of the water. It was easy to imagine the ladies in their 40s updos, dancing with their soldier husbands and boyfriends to Big Band music.
But the Monte Carlo pool, like many of Asbury's landmarks, is long gone. My heart broke when the carousel was dismantled, when Convention Hall and the Paramount fell into disrepair, and when the Palace Amusement building was demolished. But after years of economic decline, recent revitalization efforts in Asbury are revealing hopeful glimmers of its glory days (to quote its most famous champion, The Boss). And while Asbury is no longer the dream resort of my youth, it's a place I'll always love--even in all its shabby splendor.
A recent trip the library found me laden with a stack of mysteries, most of which were historicals. I've started with Nicola Upson's Fear in the Sunlight, the fourth book in her series in which Golden Age mystery writer Josephine Tey is featured as not-so-amateur sleuth.
As Tey is one of my favorite mystery writers, I was drawn to this series immediately. What's fun about this entry is the appearance of Alfred Hitchcock and his wife Alma, who play pivotal roles in the story. Upson skillfully captures the setting of England between the wars, and has nailed Hitchcock, both as a man and a director. Though the murder scenes are a bit graphic for my taste, I love the complexity of Upson's work. And how cool is that cover?
Next up is G. M. Malliet's Wicked Autumn, the first entry in her Max Tudor series. Max is a former MI-5 agent-turned-vicar in a small English village. When the universally unpopular Wanda Batton-Smythe ends up dead, Max finds himself involved. I'm a fan of Malliet's Inspector St. Just mysteries, and I'm excited to dive into Max's adventures in quaint Nether Monkslip. I'm also hoping Malliet has a love interest lined up for the attractive vicar! Malliet's work hearkens back to Golden Age writers like Christie and Sayers--perfect comfort reads.
Finally, Jacqueline Winspear's latest Maisie Dobbs mystery, Leaving Everything Most Loved, features private investigator Dobbs looking into the disappearance of an Indian woman in 1930s London. I'm intrigued to see how Winspear handles the issues of class and race, and if she resolves Maisie's complicated love life. (Can I say here that I don't love James Compton as a partner for Maisie? Is there not an attractive Scotland Yard inspector out there for her?)
As one who harbors a secret wish to write historical mysteries, these writers serve as real inspiration--and a great distraction from my deadline!
My summer reading often involves re-reading favorite works that help me clear my head for my own writing. In the case of Agatha Christie, I get the added benefit of learning from a master of the genre while I read.
I just loaded a bunch of Christie on my Kindle, and discovered to my delight that there was a Miss Marple I'd somehow missed: 4:50 to Paddington. The "4:50" of the title is a time, and refers to a train on which a murder occurs, witnessed by an elderly lady from a passing train on the opposite tracks. The authorities, of course, chalk it up to her age and an overactive imagination, but her friend Miss Jane Marple believes her, and sets out to solve the case.
Jane Marple, like Christie's other famous detective, Hercule Poirot, is an amateur sleuth. Both tend to be one step ahead of the police, and both have a way of getting witnesses to talk to them. But here's what Christie understood so well about her two characters: they were outsiders, and as outsiders occupied a unique position--that of observer.
Among the English upper crust, Poirot is a foreigner. His slicked-back hair and waxed mustache are a joke, as is his accent. Those around him--including the various murderers he foils--don't perceive him as a threat. He's not one of them, so they ignore him. They don't reckon on the fact that nothing escapes his notice.
I'm a Miss Marple fan, but I wasn't always. As a young reader of Christie, I had no interest in an elderly lady who sits in a corner knitting, and therein lies her power. Then, as now, elderly ladies are all but invisible in society; they usually hold little power, and they are easily dismissed by others (as is the case of the woman in the book I'm reading now). But they sure as hell pay attention, something I appreciate much more as I get older. Miss Marple, with little to do except watch people, has an understanding of human behavior beyond that of the various Scotland Yard inspectors she foils.
When I set out to create an amateur sleuth of my own, I made her a mystery writer. (In fact, Victoria's main character, Bernardo Vitali, might be considered the Italian version of Poirot.) As a writer, Vic is also an observer. She takes in the small details of physical appearance and personality that others might miss. And as a writer of mysteries, she's conversant with the why and how of murder. But unlike Poirot and Miss Marple, she makes her share of mistakes.
As does her creator. . .
