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A New World of Food: #Thanksgiving Traditions

November 23, 2018 by Linda McLaughlin in category The Romance Journey by Linda Mclaughlin tagged as history, holidays, Thanksgiving

Roasted Turkey On Harvest Table – c. evgenyb

I hope you had a good Thanksgiving yesterday. This holiday has always been one of my favorites, if only for the wonderful food. I do love a Thanksgiving dinner with turkey and all the trimmings, but turkey is a lot of work and yields a lot of leftovers, esp. when you only have four people at dinner. So this year we opted for beef roast with some of the trimmings: mashed potatoes, gravy, green bean casserole, garlic bread, and sauteed asparagus. Plus pumpkin pie, of course. It’s my theory that if the Pilgrims had had beef, there would have been no turkey dinner. They were English, after all!

And as a history freak, I love that so much of the traditional Thanksgiving food are native to the Americas.

The food supply expanded when Europeans “discovered” the New World. Prior to Columbus’s first voyage, there were no turkeys, potatoes, yams and sweet potatoes, tomatoes, pumpkins, cranberries or maize, i.e. Indian corn, in the Middle Ages. There was a cereal grain called corn, but it’s more like wheat, not like the ears of corn we’re used to. Halloween Jack o’ Lanterns were originally made with turnips!

And there was no chocolate. Chocolate is native to the Americas, so the Spaniards were the first Europeans to encounter it. It became popular at court after the Spanish added sugar or honey to sweeten the natural bitterness. From there, chocolate spread through Europe in the 1600’s and grew into the international obsession is has become today.

Can you imagine a world without chocolate? I really wouldn’t like that at all!

What’s your favorite Thanksgiving treat?

Linda McLaughlin

Note: This is normally the day I blog about OCC/RWA online classes, but we will be dark in Dec. and Jan. Class blogs will resume in January.

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BOOK REVIEW: SEVERED RELATIONS BY REBECCA FORSTER – A REVIEW BY VERONICA JORGE

November 22, 2018 by Veronica Jorge in category Book Reviews by Veronica Jorge, Write From the Heart by Veronica Jorge tagged as book review, Rebecca Forster, Severed Relations, Veronica Jorge, Write from the heart

Severed Relations (The Finn O’Brien Thriller Series Book 1) by Rebecca Forster

Create Space 2016 ISBN 9781533275516

It’s Thanksgiving. You know what to do: eat, get stuffed like the Turkey, zone out. If you want to get the adrenaline pumping and the juices flowing again, yours not the birds’, our own Rebecca Forster has the tryptophan antidote: Severed Relations, Book 1 of her Finn O’Brien Thriller Series.

Every day is great, until it’s not. And one often boasts of their nice neighbors and safe neighborhood…until something happens.

The Barnetts, a well-to-do family on upscale Fremont Place are living the dream: great house, successful husband, stay-at-home mom, two lovely daughters, and a live-in nanny. One happy family of five.

Enter Detective Finn O’Brien to investigate the triple murder that turns their dream into a nightmare. As one of the characters in the story says, “this falls on the far of side of hell.”

Ostracized by his fellow officers for violating the blue code when he killed one of their own: a bad cop, Finn is forced to track down the killer, or killers, on his own. And he can’t count on back-up if things get rough.

Detective Cori Anderson, with ‘feelings’ of her own toward Finn, agrees to partner with him on the case. Together, they attempt to unravel the hideous mystery. Nothing stolen. No apparent enemies. Unlikely targets. It wasn’t the butler, they don’t even have one.

In Severed Relations, Rebecca Forster leads us on a page-turning, suspense-filled, unnerving journey into the h Write from the Heart | Veronica Jorge | A Slice of Orange eart of darkness that reflects real life. Feelings can sometimes blind and mislead you, and events and people are not always what they seem.

See you next time on December 22^nd.

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Geralyn Corcillo Featured Author

November 21, 2018 by A Slice of Orange in category Apples & Oranges by Marianne H. Donley, Featured Author of the Month tagged as Featured author, Geralyn Corcillo, romantic comedy

Geralyn Corcillo Featured Author | A Slice of Orange

Geralyn Corcillo Featured Author

When she was a kid in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Geralyn Vivian Ruane Corcillo dreamed of one day becoming the superhero Dyna Girl. So, she did her best and grew up to constantly pick up litter and rescue animals. At home, she loves watching B&W movies, British mysteries, and the NY Giants. Corcillo lives in a drafty old house in Hollywood with her husband Ron, a guy who’s even cooler than Kip Dynamite.

Geralyn is not only an author of romantic comedy and women’s fiction novels, novellas, and short stories, she is also an avid and eclectic reader. You can read her book reviews here on A Slice of Orange, in her monthly column Things That Make Me Go Mmmrrh . She loves to connect with readers on Facebook and Twitter—drop her a line or leave a comment here.

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Searching For My Writing Juju

November 20, 2018 by Meriam Wilhelm in category A Bit of Magic by Meriam Wilhelm tagged as goals, muse, writing

It was Sunday night before I knew it and I still hadn’t finished rewriting the next chapter of my book, nor my blog for a Slice of Orange. I was stuck, the clock was ticking and I had no one to blame but myself. I’d made too many alternate life choices this month when I should have been writing!
You might have seen my blog last month (Please Don’t Make Me Have To Learn How To Ride A Camel) where I shared with you that I’m turning sixty-five in a few months and I’ve set all these goals for myself. My conscience is killing me as I check back in with you.

Over the past month, not only have I not spent enough time writing, I’ve sadly made no noticeable downward movement on the bathroom scale. I have been walking as you can see from the attached picture. And walking on the beach requires a lot more hard work, although my FitBit refuses to take that into consideration. Traitor!

Tonight I discovered that one of the goals I’d made turned out to be a bit wonky. And although I could use it as a time consuming excuse for not writing… I won’t. I have to admit that I got swept up by the title of a book and made a big assumption. I thought that it sounded like a motivational piece that might help me to focus on personal self-improvement strategies. I said I was going to read Paul Arden’s best seller – It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To Be. And I did and I liked it. Only it wasn’t what I thought it would be. It was designed for readers who want to improve their status in the workplace. I’m retired.

But wait, having read it once – it’s short – I returned and read it a second time searching for nuggets of guidance that might prove helpful… and I found some.
Keying on Arden’s last truth – “Ambition trumps talent”, I humbly got back to work, ambitiously typing away on the keyboard to write this blog. I even finished editing the next chapter of my book tonight, pleased that I’d re-found a bit of my writing JuJu in a most unexpected place.

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31+ Flavors of Story

November 19, 2018 by Jenny Jensen in category On writing . . . by Jenny Jensen tagged as categories, flavors, genre

31 Flavors | Jenny Jensen | A Slice of Orange Genre. Ugh. The subject gets more coverage than alien abduction, and it probably always will. The Internet is full of advice urging writers to pick a genre and then write to it; this before the opening sentence gets any thought. Writing to a genre gives the author a clear marketing path. There are warnings against cross genre work because it is hard to market, and then there are the arguments about what exactly, qualifies a story as belonging to a particular genre. Makes the head spin so I surprise myself, but I want to advocate a new genre.

I appreciate that genre categories help readers find a book – readers know what kind of story they like. I use those categories when I’m looking for a fresh read. It’s the best tool for digital browsing. Problem is, the categories are often restrictive. Amazon has denied several of my clients publishing their work in the genre category they’ve chosen. And they don’t explain what factors the decision was based on. Does that mean if your Regency era tale of love involves Aunt Middie, the humble poor relation whose secretive potions are powerful and move the plot along, you have a Romance – or a fantasy? You could publish in both categories but it would still be unseen by readers who didn’t check both those boxes.

Can a gripping good story feature a sexy vampire who steals the crown jewels, thwarts a terrorist plot, redeems the fallen countess as he exposes government corruption and solves the murder, all while meeting and winning his one true love? Of course it can. To me, the best books always have possibilities beyond what the author may have intended. I love genre-blending books, the mixed bag plots that weave in a load of improbable possibles and make it all work because the world building and plotting are strong enough for the necessary suspension of belief.

It’s a given that genre categories are necessary. I accept it and am glad that the categories themselves have expanded to include more contemporary fictional worlds such as Dystopia and Magical Realism. Still, that doesn’t cover those books that defy categorization by mixing literary elements. A.F. Scudiere, whose Nightshade series involves werewolves, the FBI, forensics, action and adventure and a developing love story is Amazon-ranked in thriller, suspense, fantasy, occult and mystery. That’s a pretty wide reach and each category fits in some way but I have to wonder how many readers browse all of them.

Ashley C. Gillis’s Detach & Target is a military thriller and a romance and neither element trips the other up. She is on Amazon under romance, war & military, and war. I wonder how many readers missed this exciting and well written book because the genre categories don’t exactly fit. I think a lot of readers may be missing a really gritty and realistic story of a special Marine unit’s action and interaction. If we had a genre category that spread a wider net, including any mix of literary devises in a cohesive, well written whole, it would be a great place to browse when a reader is hungry to taste something outside the conventional.

I propose calling this genre Salmagundi. It’s not just a salad anymore, it’s a new literary flavor.

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