NEW RELEASE!

Tags

cozy, Foodie, friendship, murder, mystery, new release, recipes

There are some people we trust no matter what. Judy Post/Judi Lynn, friend and fearless leader/mother hen of Summit City Scribes is someone you can rely on in every way. If she tells me to jump, I just do it. It’s a joy to get her notes and suggestions. I’m so pleased have her visit my lowly blog. She’s a great blogger. I am…meh.

Take it away Judi!

M.L. Rigdon/Julia Donner and I have been critique partners for years.  Which means I value her opinion, and I love her writing.  I couldn’t critique someone I didn’t admire and enjoy.  And I wouldn’t listen to someone’s opinion about book after book if I didn’t respect her as a writer.  And I love her writing.  I hope you take the time to check out some of her books:  Amazon.com : julia donner kindle books and https://www.amazon.com/s?k=M.L.+Rigdon&i=digital-text&crid=3JNVIDQCZ9U7O&sprefix=m.l.+rigdon%2Cdigital-text%2C68&ref=nb_sb_noss  

Mary Lou and I aren’t just critique partners, we’re best friends.  And I can tell you, she’s one heck of a baking queen.  I love to cook.  She loves to bake.  Between us, you’d get a meal you’d really enjoy😊  (Even though she’s ALMOST as good of a cook as I am😊  But I’m visiting her blog to promote my latest cozy mystery, and luckily for me, this is a culinary mystery, so I still get to talk about recipes and food.  (No desserts.  That’s Mary Lou’s specialty).

My second Karnie Cleaver mystery is THE STEAKS ARE HIGH.  I love mysteries.  And I love cooking.  So I smooshed the two together, and Karnie works in her family’s butcher shop.  Every Thursday, her dad asks for something in the meat counter to put on a special sale for the weekends.  And when Karnie decides on something, she prints recipes to help their customers know how to cook the cuts of meat on sale.  She also records a cooking show that goes live every Monday, featuring that meat.  When I sold my very first Jazzi and Ansel mystery to Kensington, I was surprised when my editor told me that I needed to send him a few recipes for things Jazzi had cooked in the novel. 

I’m not a chef.  Don’t even pretend to be anything more than a woman who loves to cook.  So having to come up with recipes worried me.  I collect recipes.  I have a huge plastic file box that’s full of them.  I have recipes for Soup, Salads, Main Dish Salads, Pasta and Italian, Chicken, Beef, Pork, Seafood, Chinese, Mexican, Side Dishes,  Brunch, Parties, and Vegetables.  I tear recipes out of magazines and stuff them in the files.  I DON’T CREATE MY OWN RECIPES.  And that worried me.  Then a chef on TV said that if you changed ONE ingredient in a recipe, it was now your own.  And I felt better.  I play and tweak with every recipe I have.

I still insist that I’m only a cook, someone who loves to feed people.  I don’t pretend to be anything more, but I love to have friends and family over for meals.  I’m one of those people who makes a menu for every week so that I buy all of the ingredients I need.  And Karnie’s more organized than I am.  In this book, she makes rolled pork loins stuffed with simple ingredients and then with fruits and nuts.  (I’ve made both and love them).  I include five recipes at the end of this book, and they’re ones I’ve used with success. 

I have to warn.  The clam chowder recipe I included this time is for people who are gluten and dairy free.  The Barefoot Contessa might not approve.  But I’m older now, and I have friends who have dietary restrictions.  My grandson is dating a girl who’s a vegetarian who only adds fish to her diet and she’s gluten free.  A tricky combination, so I came up with the chowder recipe. 

Anyway, if you like culinary cozy mysteries, THE STEAKS ARE HIGH might appeal to you.  And I’m happy to visit Mary Lou’s blog.  So, this was fun!  Thanks for having me, M.L. Rigdon/Julia Donner.

Judi’s Bio:   

Judi Lynn lives in Indiana with her husband, a bossy gray cat, and a noisy Chihuahua.  She loves to cook and owns more cookbooks than any mortal woman would ever need.  That’s why so much food sneaks into her stories.  She also loves her flower beds, but is a haphazard gardener, at best.   

My blog & webpage:  http://writingmusings.com/ 

My author Facebook page:  https://www.facebook.com/JudiLynnwrites/ 

Twitter: @judypost 

On BookBub at Judi Lynn with a link to Judith Post (for my urban fantasies):  https://www.bookbub.com/authors/judi-lynn 

How to Hide a Body

Tags

construction, cozy, decorating, dogs, flipping, Foodie, heartthrob, houses, murder, mystery, pug, Viking, writing

It’s a pleasure to have the wonderful Judi Lynn visit my blog. When we met (long ago), she was writing mystery, then urban fantasy, then was offered a contract with Kensington to write a series of romances, which she doubted she could do. Hah! For them, and us, she wrote a marvelous series about Mill Pond, peopled by characters so real you wanted them as your forever friends, characters so alive that they made you laugh and cry, allowed you worry about their problems and rejoice in their triumphs. And oye, the food! (Ms. Lynn’s a kitchen goddess after all.)

The Mill Pond series was followed by a request to write cozy mysteries, just what Judi loves. To look at her, one would never think that someone so jolly and generous could think up so many unique ways to murder people. But then, you’ve never seen the bathroom wall she painted with splotches of red paint. And in this new cozy mystery series, she gives us Ansel. (Insert sigh here.) I love Prosper from her urban fantasy works, but her quiet Norseman, oh my… You only have a few days left to wait to meet him and to find out how the corpse ended up in the attic. It’s on presale now!

You can find The Body in the Attic here:  http://www.kensingtonbooks.com/book.aspx/37036

Thank you, M. L. Rover, for inviting me to your blog.  I’m a huge fan of yours, when you write as Julia Donner or as M. L. Rigdon, so it’s an honor being here today.  Thanks for letting me talk about the first mystery I wrote for Lyrical Underground, THE BODY IN THE ATTIC.

1. Why mysteries?

I fell in love with mysteries when I discovered Agatha Christie in my high school years.  In between reading Jane Austen and English Lit assignments in college, I got hooked on Hercule Poirot and Jane Marple. I liked Sherlock Holmes, but not as much as Nancy Pickard’s Jenny Cain and Carolyn Hart’s Death on Demand series. Those led me to Martha Grimes, Elizabeth George, and many, many others.  In cozy mysteries, the gore is minimal, the characters are part of a tight knit community, and the killers always get their just rewards—one way or another.  Unlike real life, evil doesn’t go unpunished.  And it’s fun to match wits with the detective.  Can you catch the writer’s clues and distinguish them from the red herrings?  It’s like solving a jigsaw puzzle.  Lots of fun.

2. Why have your heroine be a fixer-upper?

When my husband and I got married, we bought a bungalow that had great bones, but everything in it was too small or dated.  We were young and had no idea how much work it would take to update everything.  When I turned on the faucet in the kitchen and John turned on a faucet in the bathroom to brush his teeth, the water got confused and stopped moving completely.  We had to replace lead pipes with copper ones.  When we invited my family over for supper and put the leaf in our table, we couldn’t open the refrigerator door until we all stood up and moved the table sideways to make room.  Eventually, we ended up adding on to the kitchen, adding a dormer for a second bedroom upstairs, and finishing the basement into a playroom for the kids. Little did we know when we bought the house.  But to this day, we love the place.   We still have a fondness for old houses and go on house walks in old neighborhoods. Not that we’d ever do this again. If we HAD to move for some reason, we’d buy something newer that was move-in ready.  But I wanted Jazzi and her cousin to restore old houses to make them beautiful again.  It hurts me to see a lovely old house that’s neglected.

3. What do you like to read besides mysteries?

I don’t like to read the same author or even the same kinds of books back to back.  Eventually, I need a change of pace.  So I might read two cozies and then read an urban fantasy. I wrote urban fantasies for a while as Judith Post and discovered Ilona Andrews and Patricia Briggs, among others. Then I might pick up a Regency romance—like you write as Julia Donner—and then a romantic suspense or something bracing like Mark Lawrence’s Jorg series.  I like to mix up the genres I read now and then.

4. Why are family and cooking so important in your books?

My family is small, but close.  And I love to cook and entertain.  I get bored cooking the same things over and over, so I subscribe to different cooking magazines and buy way too many cookbooks.  My sisters don’t like to cook, so it’s fun to invite them and my cousin over for supper.  They don’t like it if I get too fancy.  They like roasts and Italian sausage sandwiches.  When it gets chilly outside, two of their favorites are chili or beef and noodles.  My friends have more sophisticated palates, and I can experiment more.  I can make bouillabaisse or chowders, Thai noodle salads, and Chicken Seville.   It’s fun, and it keeps me out of trouble.

5. Is there a romantic interest in your books?

Be still my heart. Ansel Herstad is a contractor who works with Jazzi and her cousin, Jerod.  Jazzi calls him a Norseman.  He grew up on his family’s dairy farm in Wisconsin.  He’s six-five with blond hair and blue eyes and lots and lots of muscles. But he doesn’t realize what a hunk he is.  I wanted to people Jazzi’s world with lots of GOOD men.  My husband worked at a tiny hamburger drive-in all through high school, and to this day, he’s still friends with the guys he worked with.  When one of those men marries a woman, she becomes part of their group.  And after knowing them for years, these guys are the best.  My daughter’s single, and she swears it’s no walk in the park to meet a good guy these days, but they’re out there (probably already taken).  And I wanted them to part of Jazzi’s world.

 

Judi Lynn’s blog:  https://writingmusings.com/

Webpage:  https://www.judithpostswritingmusings.com/

Facebook author page: https://www.facebook.com/JudiLynnwrites/?eid=ARBEkp5jfrUGMBkV9_9i-tpSF_CQs0fg9igDATo5gwcN17HXalHG084-lLxN-mKrXptUaUHZz2EZ_w7X

Goodreads:  https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5023544.Judith_Post

BookBub:  https://www.bookbub.com/authors/judith-post

 

Thank you Judi Lynn/Judith Post for the interview! And here’s a link to some of her urban fantasy and myth genres:

https://www.amazon.com/Blood-Battles-Fallen-Angels-Book-ebook/dp/B00C3L8BNM/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1542027708&sr=1-4&keywords=Judith+Post

 

Return of Magic Shrooms

Tags

addictions, Foodie, morels, mushrooms, spring

Warning: Repeat posting because yesterday was glorious, almost seventy. The warmth evoked memories and a craving. This is a blog from last May.

It’s that time of year when weirdly addicted persons go grubbing through the forests and fields for the morchella. If you like them, the crave for this specific fungi takes hold with something like zombie overdrive, hands extended, staggering blindly through the undergrowth, chanting, “Must have morels.”

As a girl, I remember Dad driving us home from doing something at the Ferry Landing on the Mississippi. No one in the car made a comment about the man walking along the country road without his shirt and pants. He’d tied the trouser and sleeve cuffs into knots and stuffed them full of morels. The only thought on anyone’s mind who saw this was: where did he find them and are there any left?

Wisconsin born, I came into the world preprogrammed to need to feed on a morel by the end of April. Since I no longer live in WI, I drive to the only local place I know of that sells them. Some years ago, I stupidly clued in my grandkids about morels (dipped them in egg and cracker crumbs then fried them in butter). Now they hunt them and keep them for themselves. No morel-lover assigns blame for this kind of selfishness. It’s normal. Picking spots are handed down through families, guarded to the death. Go ahead. Ask somebody where they found theirs. Good luck with that.

Last year I broke the piggy bank and bought big. Two weeks ago, I almost wept with joy to find a frozen pouch in the back of the freezer. Yum. It saved me from the zombie resurrection stage. The tasty treat allowed me to drive with a semblance of normal behavior to the buying place and snatch up a bag of gorgeous ones (brought in from Wisconsin!!!) and they were a bargain at forty bucks a pound.

I scurried home with my cache, soaked them in salted water as my mother taught me, patted the lovelies dry, cast the wash water into the back yard (it NEVER goes down the drain), and began to fry them up in butter in my grandmother’s cast iron skillet. All the while standing there in pre-eating euphoria, I gleefully estimate that I have enough for freezing a bag, eating some, and saving the stems and juice for scrambled eggs the next day.

The first taste is sublime. Have to have one more. While moaning through the second and third, it comes to mind what my brother calls my potato salad: a controlled substance. There is no stopping. Potato chips have nothing on morels, especially when there’s an addict hovering over the frying pan.

So, yes, I ate the whole damn batch. And you know what? Hit me again. They’re still picking up north, so maybe I can find some more. I have no shame when it comes to morels. Love’em, or leave’em for me.

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)
Follow on Twitter @RigdonML
Blog: https://historyfanforever.wordpress.com/
Website http://www.MLRigdon.com
https://www.bookbub.com/authors/julia-donner
https://www.facebook.com/Julia-Donner-697165363688218/timeline

 

 

 

MAGIC SHROOMS

Tags

addict, craving, Foodie, morels

It’s that time of year when weirdly addicted persons go grubbing through the forests and fields for the morchella. If you like them, the crave for this specific fungi takes hold with something like zombie overdrive, hands extended, staggering blindly through the undergrowth, chanting, “Must have morels.”

As a girl, I remember Dad driving us home from doing something at the Ferry Landing on the Mississippi. No one in the car made a comment about the man walking along the country road without his shirt and pants. He’d tied the trouser and sleeve cuffs into knots and stuffed them full of morels. The only thought on anyone’s mind who saw this was: where did he find them and are there any left?

Wisconsin born, I came into the world preprogrammed to need to feed on a morel by the end of April. Since I no longer live in WI, I drive to the only local place I know of that sells them. Some years ago, I stupidly clued in my grandkids about morels (dipped them in egg and cracker crumbs then fried them in butter). Now they hunt them and keep them for themselves. No morel-lover assigns blame for this kind of selfishness. It’s normal. Picking spots are handed down through families, guarded to the death. Go ahead. Ask somebody where they found theirs. Good luck with that.

Last year I broke the piggy bank and bought big. Two weeks ago, I almost wept with joy to find a frozen pouch in the back of the freezer. Yum. It saved me from the zombie resurrection stage. The tasty treat allowed me to drive with a semblance of normal behavior to the buying place and snatch up a bag of gorgeous ones (brought in from Wisconsin!!!) and they were a bargain at forty bucks a pound.

I scurried home with my cache, soaked them in salted water as my mother taught me, patted the lovelies dry, cast the wash water into the back yard (it NEVER goes down the drain), and began to fry them up in butter in my grandmother’s cast iron skillet. All the while standing there in pre-eating euphoria, I gleefully estimate that I have enough for freezing a bag, eating some, and saving the stems and juice for scrambled eggs the next day.

The first taste is sublime. Have to have one more. While moaning through the second and third, it comes to mind what my brother calls my potato salad: a controlled substance. There is no stopping. Potato chips have nothing on morels, especially when there’s an addict hovering over the frying pan.

So, yes, I ate the whole damn batch. And you know what? Hit me again. They’re still picking up north, so maybe I can find some more. I have no shame when it comes to morels. Love’em, or leave’em for me.

Shameless Plug:

Because I have to do it or my critique partner (you know who you are, Judi Lynn) will thump me if I forget to tell you, the release date for An American for Agnes the 10^th book in my Regency Friendhip Series is available on pre-sale now for release on May 31st.

M.L Rigdon (aka Julia Donner)

Follow on Twitter @RigdonML

Blog: https://historyfanforever.wordpress.com/

Website http://www.MLRigdon.com