Agatha Nominees from Malice Domestic

Some of my friends listed here, good writers all. The Agatha awards are for "traditional" mysteries, which means whodunnit. Most are so-called cozies, is the spirit of Agatha Christie. The best definition of a cozy mystery that I have ever heard is "a story where more tea is spilled than blood." You get the idea. Of course some stories are edgier than others. This type of novel does not tend to be nominated for the Edgar awards by the MWA. See previous post.

Your assignment is to buy or borrow the books, read them, and determine your favorites. There will be a test.


AGATHA AWARDSNamed in Honor of Agatha Christie
2008 Agatha Nominees

Best Novel:

Six Geese A-Slaying by Donna Andrews (Minotaur Books)
A Royal Pain by Rhys Bowen (Penguin Group)
The Cruelest Month by Louise Penny (Minotaur Books)
Buckingham Palace Gardens by Anne Perry (Random House)
I Shall Not Want by Julia Spencer-Fleming (Minotaur Books)

Best First Novel:

Through a Glass, Deadly by Sarah Atwell (Berkley Trade)
The Diva Runs Out of Thyme by Krista Davis (Penguin Group)
Pushing Up Daisies by Rosemary Harris (Minotaur Books)
Death of a Cozy Writer by G.M. Malliet (Midnight Ink
Paper, Scissors, Death by Joanna Campbell Slan (Midnight Ink)

Best Non-fiction:

African American Mystery Writers: A Historical & Thematic Study by Frankie Y. Bailey (McFarland & Co.)
How to Write Killer Historical Mysteries by Kathy Lynn Emerson (Perseverance Press)
Anthony Boucher, A Bibliography by Jeff Marks (McFarland & Co.)
Edgar Allan Poe: An Illustrated Companion to His Tell-Tale Stories by Dr. Harry Lee
Poe (Metro Books)
The Suspicions of Mr. Whitcher by Kate Summerscale (Walker & Co.)

Best Short Story:

"The Night Things Changed" by Dana Cameron, Wolfsbane & Mistletoe (Penguin Group)
"Killing Time" by Jane Cleland, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine - November 2008
"Dangerous Crossing" by Carla Coupe, Chesapeake Crimes 3 (Wildside Press)
"Skull & Cross-Examinations" by Toni L.P. Kelner, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - February 2008"
A Nice Old Guy" by Nancy Pickard, Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine - August 2008

Best Children's/Young Adult:

Into the Dark by Peter Abrahams (Harper Collins)
A Thief in the Theater (A Kit Mystery) by Sarah Masters Buckey (American Girl Publishers)
The Crossroads by Chris Grabenstein (Random House Children's Books)
The Great Circus Train Robbery by Nancy Means Wright (Hilliard & Harris)

Got the Blogging Blahs

Yes, even bloggers get the blahs. When none of your topics seems, well, topical. The photo is a chocolate pecan pie I made yesterday. Started out to make cookies, with the requirement being that all the ingredients needed to be on hand. Somehow I landed on the pie. Even the crust is chocolate. The pie is so rich one only needs a mini-slice. Make that a micro-slice.

We're trying to get ready for a European jaunt and I check off four items from the "to do" list and add six more. The cats are a problem, with Thisbe (the shy one) needing insulin twice a day and Annie needing heart meds twice a day. Color them expensive. And you always have to keep the mental health of your cats foremost in mind.

Cats hate change. They love routine. They hate being boarded. They treasure the comforts of home. We took them BOTH to the vet this week. For once, no great traumas getting them into the carriers. At the vet, Thisbe, who is usually nervous Nellie, was pretty calm, and Annie, who is Miss Congeniality was a spitting, growling she-dragon. Go figure.

Little known fact: even indoor cats need rabies shots, in case rabid bats move into your house. It's the law.

I've been spending too much time on Facebook. Just happened. Dunno why. The isolation of winter, although today looks pretty good, and we have been getting out to shop and exercise and tonight we're trekking to Jordan Hall to hear the Baroque Grand Tour.

In Flight, my novel in process is coming along. Big scene in Miami. All this Florida stuff means I'll have to do a soupcon more research next June, which is the month in which the book takes place. All my books are set in the summer, my favorite season. Interesting, no?

We walked around the Patriot Place shops and restaurants last weekend. Couldn't find the wine bar. The burger restaurant was the busy place, crowded with beef lovers, but the seafood restaurant (Skipjack's) also had a decent crowd. Not meal time but mid-afternoon. Stores were empty. Not a good sign.

With the exception of groceries and household products, it's amazing how long was can actually go without buying stuff. Of course socks and underwear, even pajamas do wear out. I just "saved" $11.00 by washing 2 sweaters instead of dry cleaning them. Even the tailor said her business was slow. Logic would dictate (actually, does logic ever dictate?) that people would pay for alterations instead of new clothes. Maybe not. Or maybe because it was the week AFTER school vacations and nobody brought in clothes the previous week.

I am thinking about writing and money and wondering why I never got an advanced degree when so many friends and classmates did. The other thing I've been pondering about if whether so many years of computer programming changed my brain. Please don't laugh. This is serious stuff.

Back to the omnipresent "to do" list. It's time for that most hated activity, the tax workbook that the accountant sends out. Thank heavens MONEY keeps impeccable records. Actually, I keep the records, money just records everything. And produces nice reports. Once a detail-oriented geek, always a dog. Hmmm good. Detail Oriented Geek. DOG.

I'm wondering if I should write more adventure tales of my robot fish. Or maybe even a screen play.

Always wondering,

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2009 Edgar Nominees - Mystery Writers of America

Ta da! Here are the nominations for best crime novels of 2009. The people on the nominating committees do a terrific job. It's a huge time suck and we can be grateful, because now we can focus on reading some interesting new books.

Best Novel

Missing by Karin Alvtegen (Felony & Mayhem Press)
Blue Heaven by C.J. Box (St. Martin’s Minotaur)
Sins of the Assassin by Robert Ferrigno (Simon & Schuster - Scribner)
The Price of Blood by Declan Hughes (HarperCollins – William Morrow)
The Night Following by Morag Joss (Random House – Delacorte Press)
Curse of the Spellmans by Lisa Lutz (Simon & Schuster)

Best First Novel

The Kind One by Tom Epperson (Five Star, div of Cengage)
Sweetsmoke by David Fuller (Hyperion)
The Foreigner by Francie Lin (Picador)
Calumet City by Charlie Newton (Simon & Schuster - Touchstone)
A Cure for Night by Justin Peacock (Random House - Doubleday)

Best Paperback Original

The Prince of Bagram Prison by Alex Carr (Random House Trade)
Money Shot by Christa Faust (Hard Case Crime)
Enemy Combatant by Ed Gaffney (Random House - Dell)
China Lake by Meg Gardiner (New American Library – Obsidian Mysteries)
The Cold Spot by Tom Piccirilli (Random House - Bantam)

There are also categories for non-fiction, screenplays, children's books, and lots of other interesting reading possibilities. Go to the MWA web site for a complete list of nominees.

www.mysterywriters.org

In Samuel Becket's Words

I "discovered" Samuel Becket as an undergraduate, and recall driving to the University of Houston from the Rice campus to see "Krapp's Last Tape" and "Waiting for Godot." In the intervening years, we saw Beckett produced at the ART in Cambridge, a controversial performance that outraged Beckett. Water over the dam.

This morning, still feeling the sting of the last rejection of Festival Madness, I was trolling through the New York Times Book Review and in the ending essay found Geoff Nicholson's musings on being prolific. That would not be me, since I write at the rate of a book every three years, an unpublished book. They keep accumulating.

This is what Samuel Becket said:
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try Again. Fail again. Fail better."

Fail better. I like that.

Happy Sunday. I just made a pot of curried cauliflower soup and tonight we're celebrating the Chinese New Year belatedly with chicken and vegetables in lettuce cups. Sounds good. Ethnic food rocks.

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Sucking It Up Yet Again

In January and February I was a submitting dervish--novels, short stories, memoir, agents, editors. So many envelopes trundled off to the P.O. Hope is always rampant (maybe that should be my motto or crest or whatever: hope rampant) that this will be the year, the month, the week, that something good happens.

Well, not yet. The first bad news is that the agent who had the whole novel and nothing but the novel did not accept it. I didn't even get a personal letter or any feedback. Major aggro.

There's still the OTHER novel, the Amazon contest (I fear I didn't double space) and the various short story submissions, and all the dumb born writing I sent into the world.

I read some of The Shadow Warriors today and wondered if that wasn't the best book yet. Sad, mad, bad thought. The writing contains a lot of energy, zaniness. Can you write your heart out and then everything that follows is just empty words? Dunno.

So I'm still trundling along with In Flight, and the plot seems to me to have a hole big enough to shoot a bazooka through and still not touch anything. It's kind of stopped talking to me. The sagging middle. Send in a man with a gun. Oh yeah. Good idea.

Grapeshot, who made her delicous poppy seed lemon cake this morning and wonders if she missed her calling as a cook.

Blow the Man Down

As a young woman, and especially as a young wife and mother, who wanted to do everything just right, I pored over Amy Vanderbilt's etiquette book for hours.

Some of the etiquette seemed set in a world I would never visit, but I studied it nonethless. A few gems were of practical use, such as the fact that asparagus could be eaten with one's fingers, and that crisp bacon could, too. Chicken with BONES is never served at a formal meal. Restaurants take note.

Something that never came up, because it was so far beyond the etiquette pale, was blowing one's nose into one's napkin. I have seen otherwise well-bred people do this. One of my author friends has a very starchy old matron doing it. God, I think they were even cloth napkins.

Now I would not be one of the finger pointers if someone gave their nose a discreet wipe at the end of the meal, post-hand wipe, so to speak. But to give a big honk into one's napkin strikes me as the acme of crudity and boorishness. I mean, really.

We watched La Dolce Vita last night, after a long absence. I think of the movie because of its portrayal of all the bored Italian aristocrats who may or may not have had good manners during their shennigans. The word debauched comes to mind. Is there still debauchery or have so-called celebrities brought even debauchery low. I hope not. Debauchery still interests me, in an, alas, academic sort of way. Anita Ekberg and Marcel Maistroianni (spelling?) were superb. I had forgotten some of the scenes, but they all came back.

No one, I am pleased to report, no mattter how drunk or debauched, blew his or her nose into the napkin. Hooray for Amy Vanderbilt. Pass the asparagus!

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Hash Brown Brunch Casserole

I took this dish to a potluck brunch Sunday, hoping to have plenty to take home. The remains were scanty, and we scarfed them down with an unseemly eagerness. The French Fried onions make the dish, imho, so no substitute. I followed the lazy path with pre-shredded cheese which was fortuitously on sale.

This would also work for any evening meal where a large piece of meat is present. Don't add salt. The cheese and onions are salty enough. On the website, there are 247 comment about this dish, most of them totally positive. Someone carped about the fat. Oh well, there's always spoil sports. The nutrition nazis are such a bore.

Yowsa! Hash Brown Brunch Casserole

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Hash-Brown-Brunch-Casserole-886

Grapeshot, who is still licking her chops

Tijuana Taxi

Driving back from DC, we played some of the CD's we brought. One was Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. Takes one back a spell, a long spell.

Tijuana Taxi made me think of Tijuana, of course. For a while my parents lived in San Diego, and when we visited them, along with Sea World, La Jolla, the Zoo, Cabrillo Point and all the good places, we would take a drive to Tijuana. There was a slum outside of town that was so bad you really knew Mexico was a third world country.

We ate at the place where Caesar Salad originated. Visited the Race Track and actually won.
Bought a couple of decent souvenirs. When we walked down the street together, guys (always guys) would come sauntering up and ask if anyone needed dental work or new seat covers for the car. If S.O. was up ahead and I hung back to look into shop windows, they would ask if he wanted women or men or boys of what have you. I think somebody also inquired about abortions. Maybe drugs.

In other words, maybe you could get everything you wanted at Alice's Restaurant, but you could get absolutely everything is Tijuana.

My parents always bought Mexican vanilla and bar laundry soap. Man, that soap had enough nitrates in it to clean through to China. I still have a couple bars which may become part of my estate.

Returning to the U.S. through customs, there was frequently a long wait. When the inspector asked S.O. if he had anything to declare, he would answer, "a bottle of booze." What he never said was that it was a GALLON bottle of booze. Rum, I guess.

In later years, seniors would go to Mexico for RX drugs. I haven't been to Tijuana for years. Still trying to get to the tip of the Baja. The road wasn't finished back then.

Hola!

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Chocolate Panna Cotta

So good and deeply chocolately, but the port wine ice cream didn't freeze solid. Too much alcohol, I guess. Excellent flavor, more of a sauce. I haven't checked it this morning to see if a night in the freezer did the trick.

No one is complaining--steak toothsome and perfectly cooked, potatoes with fresh chives, sour cream, whipped butter AND home made bacon bits to die for. Broccoli and salad healthful. What more, then?

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Fudge Brownies

From King Arthur Flour. Yummo!

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/PrintRecipe?RID=4&radio=1

Chocolate Panna Cotta + Port Wine Ice Cream

I don't normally make fancy desserts. Cookies and fruit salad are the norm in our household if there even is dessert. But the intense chocolate whatever-it-was with the port wine ice cream that we ate at Poste in DC inspired me. And S.O.'s birthday needed a proper dessert. Usually I make a marble cake if there's time, but one huge cake and three people equals over-indulgence. So we have instead eight helping of panna cotta instead of 20 helpings of cake. And the ice cream will keep and I hope we don't go whole hog (in this case an apt description) and gobble it all down. I'll do photos when the dessert is served. Tonight.

We also have rib eye steaks, baked potatoes with ALL the trimmings, broccoli, and mesclun salad with cherry tomatoes and avocado on the menu. I did this in lieu of all three of us going to a fancy place or a steak house for dinner. These days, that would have been the better part of $200, and instead we are doing it for under $50, and that includes a decent bottle of port which we can savor into the future for a long time. So . . .

Now back to my speech about how I wrote The Shadow Warriors. I hope it is of some interest to the group of administrative assistant professionals who will be the audience. It's always hard to know how interested people are in writing. You wonder. Do they read? What do they read? Do they give two whoops and a holler? I'm redoing a speech I gave years ago and now I realize that speech wasn't very good. Of course hardly anyone heard it because the venue was a downscale suburb and nobody showed up except the librarian and some of my friends. One of those evenings a writer would just as soon forget. Whatever.

Toastmasters is a wonderful organization and has improved my speaking skills greatly, but I still have a ways to go. Goals are good. Self-improvement is good. Promoting one's book is good.

Time to get out of my jammy's. Seems like Saturday.

This morning we had a flicker on the main suet feeder for the first time. Man, that bird is big. Lots of bird business today, and I think I saw a goldfinch, but on the suet not the thistle seed. Is that possible? We have five feeders and it's a job to keep them all full, especially suet in the winter which is soooo popular. I got two big containers from the Audubon society.

When Life Imitates Fiction

My first long-ago never-to-see-the-light-of-day mystery began with a crime in a parking garage. I used the area where I worked, naturally, and parked in that garage day and night without much thought to safety. After all, it was a hop, skip and a jump from the office, well-lighted, yada, yada. Imagine my surprise, nay, horror, when a real crime hit the garage, and someone actually tried to kidnap a woman in broad daylight. It gave me pause.

My next book, The Shadow Warriors, dealth with an info war which has only broken out in minor skirmishes in real life, but that seems destined to happen. Maybe the book will take off when it does, but I really wouldn't hope for such an event, book sales or no.

Wisconsin book, Promiscuous Mode, has not sold, but there have been several mass murders in that neck of the woods. Gives one pause.

Burning Man Book, Festival Madness. So far no murders connected to festivals, at least to my knowledge. Whew!

Current book: In Flight. I picked a physical heroine out of my daily life--someone I knew but not well. Took her profession, too. The real person of course was nothing like my heroine who had had genuinely awful things in her life. Until yesterday, when the model told me of a huge tragedy which had befallen her. I felt almost guily. The issue has been building for years, long before the book was a gleam in my eye, but still . . . One charmed life, no longer.

Fiction and life are in a deadly embrace. That's why it's so tempting to fictionalize a memoir. Don't.

Another post soon. I just put chocolate panna cotta in the fridge to gel, and now I'm off to make the port wine ice cream. Yowza! Like God in France.

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I Knew Her When. . . Sort of

Meg Whitman of Ebay fame is running for governor of California. According to Tina Brown's blog, Meg is an arch conservative. Well, not my zebra, not my zoo.

I actually worked at the same company as Meg many moons ago. She was a divisional president and I was an IT dweeb, so we didn't interact. The company was forever trying to keep a human face (those days are gone forever) and one of the things it did was ask executives (maybe even the rank and file--I don't recall) to bring photos of themselves as a child. Meg's photo was her girlish self with a whopping big fish she had just landed. Cool kid. Cool photo.

One of my colleagues who did interact reported that she had a fantastic stragetic mind. Someone else reported that she was a revolving door for secretaries. Gee. Remember secretaries? How quaint. Maybe she was demanding, as one would expect.

Meg left to work for an internet florist, where she obviously learned a whole lot about net business. The next person to occupy her office had an Oriental rug and a white leather sofa which I promply put into a novel. This divisional president had a hissy fit when we cooked broccoli in the IT microwave. It did stink and we were on the same floor. I never cooked any, but some did. Actually fish in the microwave at lunch time is worse.

Speaking of food, and aren't we always, this week I made Chicken Piccata from Cook's Illustrated and it was a winner. The wonderful chocolate/mocca cookies are gone.

S.O. has a birthday and #2 son is arriving, so we're having a pork roast with creamed spinach, mashed potatoes and gravy, applesauce and for dessert- ta da! Chocolate panna cotta with portwine ice cream.

We ate tiny scoops of port wine ice cream in DC at Poste, and it was incredible. I found a recipe on the web. The ice cream tasted to divine with the dark chocolate. Haven't made panna cotta in ages. So we are in for a feast, and then the leftover pork will naturally be Roast Pork Fried Rice. We're doing all this in lieu of going out.

Have you seen the commercial that asks why spent $40 on a family dinner out when you can eat pizza on the cheap? My question is: where except a fast food establishment can you have a family dinner for $40? Certainly not with wine and tax and tip. Hell, you can barely eat lunch for that.

I submitted a memoir piece to an ezine and have one more submission to make, then everything I've written in the last five years will be out looking for a home. How cool is that?

Off to put the clothes in the dryer. The mundane always calls.

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The 4 Day Vacation - continued

Representations of habitations that will weather naturally at the Museum of the American Indian in Washington, D.C. This is a relatively new museum, and what a great one. I'll have more photos in upcoming days. And we just loved the cafeteria featuring native ingredients.

Our Saturday night meal was at Poste, in the Hotel Monaco right in the heart of town by the hockey stadium and a gazillion restaurants. Poste Moderne Brasserie is the complete name. I shared Steak Tartare with S.O. So yummy. Live dangerously, I say. My entree was calves liver with onions three ways, and a crisp slice of bacon. S.O. had a fab. bouef bourgignon and we shared a chocolate dessert that was pure dark chocolate with tiny little scoops of port wine ice cream, carrying delicious to a new height. The menu contained many entrees that sounded tempting. Don't you love it when what to order is the biggest decision you have to make all day? I do.

Back into Monday mode, with all that entails. Had to watch Damages last night to get caught up. Always some new betrayal or conflict. Good.

Now I need to pay some attention to my novel.

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The 4 Day Vacation

Off to DC on Thursday morning with lunch and snacks in the cooler. The lunch was meatloaf sandwiches on whole grain bread, super-delicious with home made cookies, smoothies and Cape Cod potato chips, better than any fast food. Colder than a well digger's ass when we left, or 7 degrees. A cold drive, but sunny. We tore through New Jersey, only a little put out that the last of our Garden State Parkway token had expired last month. Whatchagonnado?

Cool hotel. One of those internet bargains. Right above the Metro, with two bars and a decent restaurant, and plenty of choices in the subway. We did breakfast in the hotel lobby at Starbucks.

We saw the Vietnam Memorial (very moving), Lincoln Memorial, Washington (hard to miss) and the World War II memorial. We spent a morning at the American Indian Museum, totally wonderful, and saw the artist Fritz Scholder's exhibit. We had a long familiarity with Scholder from the late lamented Elaine Horwich Gallery in Scottsdale. Great Stuff.

The also trekked to the National Gallery, a first for us, and it knocked our socks off. Everyone should really hie themselves to Washington and see what's there. You will be amazed. The Indian Museum had native foods in the cafeteria. I had buffalo chili on fry bread with lettuce, tomato and peppers, and it was superb. Used to eat buffalo chili at the Pepper Pod outside of Denver in Hudson, Colorado.

Walked our legs off and then walked some more. Weather totally decent yesterday and not bad on Friday.

So go. It's a great city. We rode the subway to dinner Saturday night. Found a wonderful bistro with great food and wine. Drove home today, with more good weather. How divine to have a break from our obstreperous winter. And cooking. Even blogging. Yup.

The Washington Mseums are free. How about them apples? Photos anon.

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The Snow is General All Over Ireland and New England, Too

As Joyce said, "The snow is general. . . "

The view from the living room window. That is a sculpture, not a real raccoon on the deck railing. The snow plows woke us at midnight. What a racket, with all the backing up and beeping.

The "diet" rice pudding was pretty tasty. I had some for breakfast.

We also enjoyed a Russian cabbage and saurkraut soup with an unpronouncable name. Shchi. It warms the inner woman. For such a peasant dish, it's not cheap to make. All the broth (2 quarts) short ribs, cabbage, saurkraut, herbs and sour cream come with a hefty price tag. If the garden were involved and I made the broth from scratch, the price would have come down. But it's February. Whatcha gonna do?

I'm posting a photo. It's eaten with chopped dill and parsley and of course, some sour cream. Quite delicious and surprisingly filling, considering there is meat (short ribs cooked to death and removed from the bones) only as flavoring. You can find the recipe at www.bigoven.com.

Don't you love the web for the recipes? There's almost nothing you can't find. Is that a double negative? For shame!

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Amazon's Contest, Authonomy, and the Fish Story

Yesterday morning I got my entry up on Amazon's novel contest. Not only did one need the actual book but a pitch, photo, anecdote (mine was pretty anemic) and all that jazz. It was like---work. https://www.createspace.com/abna

I put another book up on Authonomy, but haven't had a chance to participate in the web site. You read my book, I'll read yours, we'll blurb each other and may the best writer win. We'll see.

Finished the robot fish story. Love that fish. It's it crazy how one comes to love one's little characters, even a robot fish. He seems very real to me.

Now it's back to the novel. Poor old Maxine. She hasn't been given her due lately. It's always hard to get back once you leave a manuscript. Speaking of leaving, we taking a few days of R and R in Washington DC. So far no dinner invitation from the Obama's. Hell, I would even make my to die for pork shoulder tacos.

Yesterday I made cookies, and they're incredibly tasty and not too sweet. Recipes have lately become over-laden with sugar and even the cranberry sauce recipe changed the sugar recommendation from one cup (already on the sweetish side) to 1 1/2 cups. Yucko. I bet the grocery stores who are labelling "healthy foods" will not skip the sweet stuff. Overdosing on sugar is not healthy. The low-fat freaks took out the fat and added sugar and salt. What sense does that make?

I lost my favorite glove at Walmart this morning. Already lost a nice red leather pair this winter, and my good fleece baseball cap. So far it's a bad winter for losing clothing. My warm up jacket is also among the missing. Where does all this stuff go?

Up to the kitchen to make some low-cal rice pudding. What could be better on a snowy winter day? High-cal rice pudding, that's what.

Yeah, it's snowing. Again. We put more suet out for the birdies. Writing group cancelled last night. About 13 people, now and we still have to cancel all the time. Major bummer. All this stuff about hardy New Englanders is bull. Other myths: up North they really know how to drive in bad weather, and up North they keep the roads plowed. I am here to witness that neither is true. Sometime I will make a list of lies. Around here at least, the ground hog saw his shadow and I never remember a spring coming in March no matter what. Yet another lie.

Bah humbug.

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