“You Will Live a Long and Prosperous Life . . . ” by Leslie Budewitz

 Jenn McKinlay: Good morning, Readers! I am delighted to invite our dear friend Leslie Budewitz to talk about her latest Spice Shop Mystery, of which I was lucky enough to get a sneak peek! Enjoy - I know I did!

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Leslie: My Spice Shop mysteries are set in Seattle’s Pike Place Market, where Pepper Reece runs a spice shop and solves crime. I love showing readers around—via page and screen—a place I’ve loved since I was a teenager. And the Market’s long, twisty history is the perfect series backdrop.

But I also like taking readers to other areas of the city. A few years ago, Mr. Right and I visited Seattle’s Wing Luke Museum, chronicling the history of the Asian community in the Pacific Northwest, and toured the Kong Yick Hotel, a community center and residential hotel dating back to the 1880s. Naturally I started to wonder: What if a body was found in the basement of an old hotel? What other secrets might linger in a building where so many people had lived and worked—and died? So I created the Gold Rush Hotel on what was, when I last saw it, a vacant lot in Seattle’s Chinatown-International District. 

The research was a book nerd’s dream. I pored over oral histories from early residents of the CID, as it’s called, along with maps and photos, and an intriguing account of the residential hotels, which were vital to the region's culture and economy. 

When I read a historian’s account of traveling with her father as a child in the early 1970s delivering fruits and vegetables, and his visits to the old Chinese hotels and restaurants, I felt one of those satisfying clicks writers live for. Community is key to immigrants, but especially to those who have faced extreme prejudice and legal exclusion. That, I realized, was why Francis Wu, my fictional hotelier, held on to the Gold Rush long after it closed. Why he was so determined that it stay in the family, despite his son’s indifference. 

And why he did not destroy the apothecary in the basement, despite what it had cost him. 

Part of the fun of writing the Spice Shop books is searching out the chapter epigraphs—spice lore, facts about Seattle and the Market, and other quirky tidbits. With Wok, I couldn’t resist the temptation to scatter in a few facts about fortune cookies, and even write a few fortunes of my own. 

Fortune cookies are an after-dinner ritual in Chinese restaurants across the U.S., but it turns out that their history is as tangled in fact and myth as any food in America. And theories of their origins abound, along with the claims to have been the first bakery to make them. 

One theory traces them to the Japanese tradition of tucking slips of paper with lines of poetry into “fortune crackers.” Just how that became the Chinese cookie spouting questionable bits of wisdom isn’t clear, but during the first half of the 20th century, their popularity grew. Some credit Japanese immigrants who ran many of the early Chinese restaurants in California. Others say it was a way of satisfying the Western love of something sweet at the end of a meal. 

Originally, the paper fortune was placed into a hot cookie and quickly folded with chopsticks before it cooled. An experienced baker could fold 13 cookies a minute. Machines came along in the 1960s—and now make as many as 8,000 fortune cookies an hour. 

The CID is still home to one last cookie and noodle factory, a century-old family-owned company whose original factory is now an art gallery, less than a block from where I built my Gold Rush Hotel—and I didn’t even know! 

Whatever the origins of the fortune cookie, they’re thoroughly American now, and no one can resist reading their fortune—and if all the cookie cutter wisdom does is make you laugh, that’s good luck, isn’t it?

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Leslie Budewitz writes the Spice Shop mysteries, set in Seattle, and Food Lovers’ Village mysteries, set in NW Montana where she lives. As Alicia Beckman, she writes moody suspense, including Bitterroot Lake and Blind Faith. The seventh Spice Shop mystery, Between a Wok and a Dead Place, will be out July 18. Find out more and links to buy the book at www.LeslieBudewitz.com. 

Here’s what Jenn said about Between a Wok and a Dead Place: 

“Leslie Budewitz delivers the goods again in her latest captivating cozy, Between a Wok and a Dead Place. A twisty-turny plot, seasoned just right with plentiful suspects and lots of culinary delights, this is one page turner of a mystery no reader should miss!”  

Between a Wok and a Dead Place

It's the Lunar New Year, and fortunes are about to change. 

 

Pepper Reece, owner of the Spice Shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market, loves a good festival, especially one serving up tasty treats. So what could be more fun than a food walk in the city's Chinatown–International District, celebrating the Year of the Rabbit?

 

But when her friend Roxanne stumbles across a man's body in the Gold Rush, a long-closed residential hotel, questions leap out. Who was he? What was he doing in the dust-encrusted herbal pharmacy in the hotel's basement? Why was the pharmacy closed up—and why are the owners so reluctant to talk? 

As Pepper begins to expose the long-concealed truth, the killer is on her tail, driven by hidden demons and desires. Can she uncover the secrets of the Gold Rush Hotel without being pushed from the wok into the fire?

Readers, do you have a favorite Chinatown memory or souvenir? A fortune you’ve saved? Writers, tell us about a “click” moment you’ve had. One lucky reader will have the good fortune of winning their choice of a Spice Shop mystery!