I'm Scared!!!

 RHYS BOWEN: 

It’s Halloween today so what else can we talk about other than being scared? My kids used to love to dress up as scary things.. witches, ghosts, fangs, fake blood. My granddaughter just attended an awesome haunted house, with actors playing parts in every room. Aliens who grab you to suck out your brains, mad scientists doing experiments, ghosts and ghouls.  She loved it. You would not catch me going to it.

Some people love to be scared. My granddaughters will go on the most insane roller coasters that twist you around and plunge you down. My daughter Anne loves horror movies. Me?  I’m a great big chicken.

I won’t go on roller coasters.  I was tricked into going on Space Mountain once. My kids went on earlier in the day at Disneyland and Clare said “You’d love it. It was like gliding through space.”  She wanted to take me on but it was shown as out of service.  I should have known.  It came back on before we left so I agreed to ride it with her.  When we went up the second gradient I decided it was not going to be good. Then we plunged down. Pitch blackness, twisting, turning… and the child behind me kept saying, “Isn’t this fun dad, huh dad?”  I thought if I could let go of this rail I’d kill him.  We get to the bottom and Clare says, sweet smile on her face, “it went much faster tonight.”  So that was why it was taken out of service earlier… because it went too slowly. Grrr.

Never again.

I hate scary movies. I remember watching The Invasion of the Body Snatchers when I was young. It freaked me out for decades. One of my good friends directed a movie and invited me to a private screening, in George Lucas’s private screening room.  With George Lucas!  Big soft couches. Only a dozen people. The movie starts. It’s about a drug that can make soldiers aggressive. Only it goes wrong in the lab and makes the lab workers homicidal. They are trapped in this dystopian building. People come around corners and hands grab them. I want to leave but I can’t. It’s my friend’s movie. I want to scream, but I can’t. So I sit there with shut eyes for ninety minutes.

When I wrote YA novels I was asked to write a scary series…vampires, ghosts..  Kids love that stuff, the publisher said. You’d make a fortune. uh, no thank you.  I said “I’m sorry. I believe in that stuff too much.” I suppose it’s because I grew up in a big old house that I’m sure was haunted.  My brother and I had bedrooms on the top floor. Rugs flapped by themselves. Windows blew open. And I used to dream (?) about a procession of hooded figures coming up the stairs toward me. I once asked my brother, who was only a small child at the time, about the house. “Do you think Britomart was haunted?” I asked. He looked amused. “Of course it was,” he said.

So I’m afraid of the dark.  I have to sleep with enough light. I don’t like going downstairs in my perfectly modern house until the light down below is on.

I’m afraid of spiders. But I have to say that I’m very good about it.  If I find one in the bath I get a glass and a piece of paper and rescue it, dropping it outside. After the same one,( I swear) came back three times, I took it to the far end of our property before releasing it.  Find your way back from there! My worst spider incident happened in Australia. I was visiting my parents. We went to a state park. I went to the toilet. It had one of those door where you can see over the top.  As I closed the door with me inside a huge, hairy Huntsman spider crawled up and sat on top of the door. I mean huge… four or five inches of spider sitting just above the door latch.  My first thought was that I could never leave. I’d have to spend my life in this toilet because if I touched that door latch it would leap down on my hand. I stood there, watching it.  It watched me. I took a pen out of my purse and, centimeter at a time, I raised the latch. With my foot I inched the door open. The spider didn’t move. When It was open enough I ran. As I ran I pictured that Huntsman sitting on my back, laughing.

Strangely enough I was once in a loo in Northern Australia when a six foot lizard planted itself outside my door.  Not at all afraid of that.  Nor of snakes. Certainly not of lions and tigers.

I know it doesn’t make sense. So confession time. What scares you?

The Button Family

 RHYS BOWEN:

I’ve often wondered where creativity comes from. Why are some children curious, creative, inventive and others sit placidly while the word passes them? I suspect it has a lot to do with early childhood. We are told we get all the imagination we’ll ever have by the time we are five. These days so many kids have structured childhoods, play dates, activities, and no down time to create their own little worlds.

                I suspect that one of the reasons I became a writer was that I grew up amusing myself, inventing my own world.

I suppose I was lucky in a way. My early years were spent alone, only child, with my grandmother and great aunt. They told stories and joined in games of pretend with me. But I had an awful lot of time on my own when I had to amuse myself. One of my favorite toys was my grandmother’s box of buttons. She had removed the buttons from every worn out garment and kept them all in a big box. I played with them every day. One day I made a family of pearly buttons and they went shopping. One day I sat them in rows and they were a school. One day I took all the chipped and damaged buttons and put them in match boxes for a hospital. The white buttons were doctors and nurses caring for them. Or a bigger box became a bus and they went to the seaside.  Endless play.

                When I was five we moved to a big house with an acre of orchard. Again I had plenty of time alone and created my own world there. I built a treehouse (with a little help from my father) and played at being marooned on a desert island.  I made a trapeze on an apple tree and became Patsy of the circus. Plenty of time alone as we lived outside a village and the village kids were highly suspicious of me since my father ran the factory where their parents worked and my mother was the school principal.

                It’s amazing how inventive children will be if you let them. My own kids loved cardboard boxes. I made them forts and houses from the bigger ones. They pulled each other around in smaller ones as trains and cars. They had a dress up box full of odd items and were always pretending to be princesses or fairies. They put on plays. They painted and wrote stories. However I noticed when other kids came to our house they really didn’t know how to play. They could do what the rules on the box told them for the various toys. Make Lego structures, but then never have an imaginary family living in the Lego house.  I remember Anne coming to me when she was about two. She handed me a match box and said solemnly, “Open it very carefully because there is an elephant living inside.”

                So Reds: Do you think that your childhoods shaped the way you became writers? How about you, Reddies? Did your childhoods make you creative? Did you bring up your kids to be creative?

JULIA CHILD AND HER BATTLE PLAN FOR BAKING A CHOCOLATE CAKE

RHYS BOWEN:  I met Julia Child once, at an upscale eatery in San Francisco. My publishers had taken me there but when Julia and Paul sat at the next table they lost all interest in me, only fascinated by what she was going to eat next. I saw her as a tall, gawky, middle aged woman, one who dropped her chicken during her TV cooking classes. Loveable but clumsy.  Imagine then my surprise when my friend Diana Chambers told me she was writing a book about Julia as a WWII spy.

    "Are you crazy?" I said. But she shook her head. "It's all true. I've checked all the sources. She really was a spy in Asia during the war."

    Holy cow! What a scoop! What a story!  I gave Diana my input as she was writing it and cheered with her when it was finally sold. And now I'm happy to have her as my guest to tell you about the birth of THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD.

 RHYS: Welcome, dear Diana. Where did the idea for this book come from? Have you always been fascinated with Julia Child? How did you hear about her wartime adventures?

 DIANA: About ten years ago, I read that during World War Two, Julia Child had served in the OSS, America’s first espionage agency. I blinked and sat up straight. The Julia Child? The matronly TV chef?

But SPIES? And in India and China?! Something sparked inside me. I felt electrified. Somehow I KNEW...This was it...MY STORY...I had to investigate...but I knew...

However first, I’d have to get to know Julia McWilliams Child. I was not a Julia fangirl—and not a cook. In fact, I try to keep as far from the kitchen as possible! So I knew her mainly as this quirky woman with an upraised spoon, frumpy wardrobe, and problematic hairdo.

RHYS: How much of the story is fact? How much did you make up?

 DIANA: The wartime experiences of Julia McWilliams on the front lines of Asia is based closely on the available historical record. That was my scaffolding. Still, it wasn’t Julia who first drew me to the story, but its espionage setting in India and China—where I have long ties. At university, I studied India art and history. I first traveled there around 30, the same age Julia, as I would learn, arrived on a Navy troopship! At that time, I began an export business and have returned often over the years. I’ve also traveled around China and SE Asia. Penguin Random House India published my post-WWII novel, The Star of India, a few years ago. An honor that was especially meaningful when my Indian agent, editor, and several journalists told me they had to keep reminding themselves that I was a “foreigner.”

Even with this background, I had a LOT to learn! Fortunately I love research.

I read everything I could get my hands on...but especially for the day-to-day life, I had to fill in the gaps. By now I’d come to admire Julia—LOVE her—and wanted to tell a story I believed was honest to her truth. This is historical fiction, a product of my educated imagination.

One thing I can say is true: That twinkle in Julia’s eye you see on television? She had that twinkle her entire life! She’d always been bubblng with creativity, humor, and zest for life. As a girl, she directed, wrote and acted in plays she produced in her family’s Pasadena attic. Around this time, she confided to her diary and mother her goal of becoming a “famous woman writer.” But she was also tall, gawky, insecure. She had a lot to overcome.

RHYS:  Have you been to the places you write about? How hard is it to write about places you haven’t been? What sort of research did you do?

DIANA: As part of telling Julia’s story, I wanted to walk in her size 12A shoes, journeying through the touchstones of her life. I visited all of the locations in the book, except Chabua, the Indian airbase at the foot of the Himalayas...from which she flies a cargo plane “over the Hump” to China. But I’d been in Kashmir and the Karakoram mountains of China and Pakistan. So I had a good “feel” for the location. As far as my book research, I read wide and deep...biographies, memoirs, military, political, cultural accounts...Books on espionage and cryptography. Narratives from the local perspectives.

It’s also important to remember that much of the Office of Strategic Services’ archives were classified until the 21st C so scholars have had less time to study and write about them. Also Western eyes have been more focused on Europe/Pacific. No wonder it’s called, The Forgotten War in Asia.

 RHYS:  It’s been a complicated publishing journey to bring this book to birth. Tell us a little about it.

 DIANA: Very complicated...very long. It’s been hard work along the way, many heartbreaks. Agents have retired or disappointed me. Queries have been rejected—or ignored. Also there was work on The Star of India. But I had a deep belief in this novel—I knew readers would want to read Julia’s story.

 RHYS: And after all that struggle good things started finally happening. Tell us more.

After getting off the plane in Nashville for August’s Bouchercon, I opened an email to learn THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD was being featured in People magazine as a Best Book of the Fall, a Must Read! Everyones love Julia. 

 RHYS: What did Julia take from her wartime days that laid the groundwork for her later success?

DIANA:  That's a fascinating questions! Promoted to serve in India, Julia has sensory experiences she could have never imagined—sights, sounds, colors, smells...flavors that blast open her taste buds. Then she meets mapmaker Paul, a true foodie. She opens to the world. As she would say in later years, “The war made me.”  

Have you seen the YouTube clip of Julia’s oven door taped shut to protect her soufflé? Anyone who dares enter, she proclaims, will be COURTMARTIALED.

Then there’s the one of Julia and her BATTLE PLAN for baking a chocolate cake...her ingredients and implements lined-up on the counter...

During war, equipment must be deployed in a specific manner, like an order of battle in the field. Procedures matter—just like a written recipe. Remember, her dream of becoming a “famous woman writer”? Now, Julia set out to document France’s precious culinary traditions!

In the OSS, Julia learned to keep her ears open and head down…absorb info through her senses. In Paris, she worked hard chopping onions at the Cordon Bleu (as she had at the OSS), so she’d be respected enough to move up to next level. She was accepted into the local cooking community—now able to ferret out recipes, techniques, SECRETS of French cuisine.

RHYS: I know you'll all be absolutely fascinated by this book. I see MOVIE written all over it. It is now in stores. So feel free to ask Diana any questions. She will give away a signed copy of the book to one lucky commenter!

THE SECRET WAR OF JULIA CHILD

Coming Oct 22 from Sourcebooks Landmark!

A People Best Book Fall 2024–“Must-Read”

Stuff!

 RHYS BOWEN:  IN my early twenties I was working in BBC drama when I was invited to go to Australia to work for ABC. I leaped at the chance to do this. One of my fellow studio managers said, “You are so lucky to be going on such an adventure.”

                I replied, “You could do it too.”

                He shook his head. “Oh no. I couldn’t leave all my books. And I couldn’t bring them all with me.”

                (On a side note, that was Brian Farnham who went on to direct All Creatures Great and Small, so was probably wise to have stayed put)

                But it showed me how important possessions are to us. We like to be surrounded by THINGS. Our stuff. Some people collect useless objects: elephants or stuffed cats or spoons, just for the joy of collecting and owning. I confess to collecting paperweights. I have my collection of national dolls from childhood. I have photos everywhere. I suspect we all have much more than we need.  I’m thinking about this now, in my twilight years. We don’t need a six bedroom house. My husband says we can never downsize as we have too much stuff.  Hallie has just gone through the process of clearing out Jerry’s habit of collecting junk from garage sales. Our children say "don't you dare die and leave us with all this."

 Yesterday I found myself thinking about this subject as we had guests coming to lunch. As I got out the normal china I thought “I should use the good set”.  Then I thought “It’s only a lunch. We don’t want to be too fancy.” We have a set of Royal Doulton inherited from John’s parents, and we hardly ever use it. We have set a Dublin crystal in an ornate cabinet and we hardly ever use that. We have silver serving dishes and a silver tea set that we never use.  How stupid, really. We should get joy out of these things every day, shouldn’t we?  I suppose my generation was brought up to “save things for best”.  I have definitely thought that way about clothes. Jackets hang in the closet for special occasions and writer’s conferences. Why don’t I use them to meet friends for coffee? Because that voice in my head whispers “saving them for best.”

                And so I will go through life with a lot of lovely unused items that could have given me pleasure every day. I have suggested to John that we start using the China and crystal for everyday and he had a fit. It was his parents’ special China. They never used it and neither should we.  I suppose it was the mind set of the times.

This is one of the reasons why I love spending time at our house in Arizona. When we bought it my one stipulation was that nothing comes from our California house. Everything has to be purpose bought and new. So we have the minimum to be comfortable. Enough furniture, enough dishes, enough clothes. But no collections of stuffed elephants. No sets of good china for special occasions. Perfect. Easy to keep clean and tidy. We do have art work on the walls that brings me joy. I do have enough clothes but none that I don’t wear. 

I’d love to reduce the THINGS in our California house but how? Kids don’t want silver serving dishes or old fashioned vases or even my collection of national dolls. They like practical homes.

So how about you, Reds? Any suggestions? Are you surrounded by too many things?

LUCY BURDETTE: For sure, Rhys! We’ve been slowly trying to clean things out, but it’s hard to find the time and enthusiasm. I have used the good china and silver a few times this summer, but the glasses would have to be washed by hand. Hmmm, that stops me cold. But my main problem is books. The stacks grow and grow until I know I’ll never be able to read them all! But it’s very very hard to stop buying them because I love them so. I comfort myself by saying I could be collecting something much, much worse:). Oh, and ps, John mentioned to our visiting son this summer that we were attempting to get rid of unnecessary stuff. Next thing I know, I catch the two of them going through drawers of my stuff (kitchen things, really.) “Go start on your own drawers!” I said. And so they did…

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Oh, so, so many things in my house. And my barn. And the two (falling down) outbuildings. It doesn’t help that my already-full home has now taken on everything in Virginia’s apartment while she’s studying in Den Haag. 

I would love to de-clutter, but the problem is, what do I get rid of? I’m already good at donating books I don’t want to keep, which means the remaining 4,000 or so scattered between two floors and the attic are ones I do want to keep. Ditto for my four sets of fine china, all of which I use, and the special sets of glasses, like those engraved with equestrians in the 70s and etched with palm trees from the 30s. I have found an unexpected use for the 1960s’era Danish crystal double shot glasses: they’re perfect for the soju I serve on K-drama night! 

Do I think my kids will want any of this? No. Except for Virginia, and if she winds up settling in Europe, I doubt she’s going to pay to ship the Chinese export Medallion Rose service for 14 across the Atlantic.

Maybe I should take a leaf from Rhys’s book, and get a brand-new, empty house where I can practice minimalism. #lifegoals

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, too much stuff. Yes. I am about to tackle ALL THE DRAWERS.  I truly cannot wait. I am going to organize like mad, one drawer at a time, and toss the things that don’t belong  with other things, and  things that I thought I might need some day, and old pieces of gum, and outdated Advils, and  yellow stickies with one page left, and ball points that don’t work. Then I am going to put all the things that DO belong together in little separate plastic bags, I estimate I will have a billion rubber bands. I truly cannot wait.

I’m making Jonathan do it, too, I told him I was going to dump his dresser drawers on the bed and force him to organize them.

I use all my good elegant china and lovely glasses all the time, Royal Doulton and Havilland and whatever else, and it is so much fun. SO silly to leave it packed away. Why? It is meant to be used, its destiny and purpose is to be used.

JENN McKINLAY: I am the outlier. I loathe STUFF. I keep nothing. Decluttering and throwing things away for other people could be my job, I love it so much. I have one copy of each of my books on a bookcase in the back of the house. No collections, no tchotchkes, and I’ve switched to an e-frame for my photos (it’s in the main room, has over 2K photos on it that it changes every 5 seconds - so much better than an album no one ever looks at) so I’m tossing my photos as well. The only “things” in our house are the Hub’s guitars, his extensive book collection (I don’t keep more than a few shelves of books and purge frequently), pets, and houseplants (okay, yes, that is my weakness - I do have a lot of plants). I also have good china that I use a few times per year but that’s it and when I cease hosting, I’ll be happy to unload that as well. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Oh, stuff! I think accumulating stuff is fixed in our human DNA–well, excepting Jenn! I'll bet if we took a poll the majority of us would confess to too much of it. 

I was going to say that Jenn's minimalist approach is what we all aspire to, but I've been contemplating this as I look around our house. Yes, there are too many books, a cabinet of DVDs we'll never watch, too many dishes, etc., etc. The conclusion I came to was that, while I'd like a few less books and all of the cabinets and drawers better organized, I actually LIKE the stuff. It is all full of connections, and our big old rambling house would look as soulless as those staged for sale by realtors without it. (No offense to my realtor daughter here–potential buyers want to imagine THEIR stuff in those rooms.) So don't sic Marie Kondo on me quite yet.

RHYS: So who is like Jenn and abhors stuff? And who like the rest of the Reds with too much stuff around them? 

Hank's in the Dinner Doldrums

DON'T FORGET: The Reds LIVE on Facebook Monday October 28 at 5PM ET! Join us on the Reds and Readers page for chat and scoop and giveaways! 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Not that anybody’s actually counting, but the other day I did the math and calculated that Jonathan and I have been married for 27 years, it might be 28, but that’s not the point, and let’s just say I’ve made dinner 250 nights a year every year.

It’s probably more than that, because of Covid, but let’s just say it all works out.

So multiply with me: 250×27 years is 6750 dinners.

Six thousand seven hundred and fifty dinners. Can that be true? It can be true.

First of all, it’s kind of shocking that I really have only had three other disasters in all those dinners: twice, when I tried to make something with spaghetti squash and pretended it was pasta and not squash. Please do not do this.

Never forget, it is squash.

Once I used it as squash, it was fine. More than fine.

My other disaster was making Pasta Primavera, which I've done a billion times, and usually I can do in my sleep, but this one time I must’ve actually been asleep, because I… I can’t even begin to tell you how much I ruined it.

I did everything in the wrong order, and to make a roux, you can’t screw up. Excuse the language, but it is funnier when it rhymes.

Nevertheless, given that I have made 6,747 successful dinners during this part of my life it is also shocking that there are so many different combinations of chicken, chicken, chicken, chicken, and chicken. (As you may have noticed.)  And salmon.

But even that aside, when I say to Jonathan: what would you like for dinner?

He says you decide.

I say no no no no no. You decide.

So today, darling reds and readers, will you decide? Tell me a go-to dinner. You don’t even have to give the recipe if you don’t want to. Just… SOME idea.

Something. And it’s okay if it’s chicken. It’s okay even if it’s spaghetti squash. Even that. Just… Anything! 

The Scoop on Candy Corn! (You KNOW You WANT to Know!)

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: So here's one that that absolutely floored me. Did you know this? That if you stack candy corn like this, it becomes a cob of corn? 

This was jawdropping the first time I saw it--and continues to wow me. Amazing. I mean, someone thought of this, and designed the little candy corns to be ACTUAL candy corns. Remember, I am from Indiana, so this is not city-girl Hank being baffled by corn. (I am not fond of candy corn, but I love this every time.) Did you know this?

So who the heck would have thought to make candy corn? I mean, real corn is delicious, "corn-tastic" as a recent meme hilarious dubbed it, but it's not --well, I'm not sure it's the first "let's make candy out of it" item that comes to mind.

Wikipedia says: It was first invented in the 1880s by a Wunderle Candy Company employee, George Renninger. Wunderle Candy Company was the first to produce the candy in 1888. The Goelitz Confectionery Company, now called Jelly Belly, began manufacturing the product in 1898.

And the Cincinnati Enquirer says: Originally, candy corn was made by hand. The process involved pouring a sequence of passes of different colored fondant into kernel-shaped molds. Candy corn is made essentially the same way today with basically the same recipe, but the process is now machine-automated.

The Hillcrest Hospital website (I know, I just do the research, I dont judge)  says Goelitz originally marketed candy corn as "Chicken Feed" (as well as "butter cream" and "chicken corn")  since the candy resembled that of corn, according to National Geographic. And  back then,instead of being advertised as a Halloween candy, it was intended to appeal more to farmers and as a treat to be enjoyed year-round.

Can Dogs Eat Candy Corn? You might well ask. The pet poison helpline says:  One candy corn may not hurt your pup, but several pieces will. Candy corn, along with other types of candy, contains an artificial sweetener, called xylitol. Xylitol is a sugar substitute that is hazardous to dogs and their digestive system.

And this is SO vaulable to know: Should candy corn be refrigerated? Business Insider says:
Store your loose candy corn at room temperature in a covered candy dish away from direct sunlight and you can expect it to stay fresh for three to six months. If the packaging is still intact, it will likely last about nine months.

ed note: NINE MONTHS?

Anyway.

It is also regarded (multiple sources, who knows) as THE number one most disliked  of all Halloween candies, scoring lower (on the candy chart?)  than Hot Tamales and circus peanuts. (Circus peanuts are less a candy and more a travesty, IMO.)

And, finally, do you eat your candy corn one color at a time? I do. And that's fun, but know this: ALL THE COLORS TASTE THE SAME.

Aren't you glad you now know about this? Reds and readers, how do YOU feel about candy corn? And do you eat it one color at a time?

The Mystery of Lifelong Friends

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: This is such a tender subject.  And if you’ve never thought about it, it means you have lifelong friends. And I mean–lifelong, not just dear and relied on, or not just necessary for your very existence, or beloved, or remarkable. I mean: Lifelong.

And this is something the amazingly talented and truly wonderful Jessica Strawser–a dear and relied-on and beloved and remarkable friend, necessary for my very existence–and I have in common. See if you do, too.

The Mystery of Lifelong Friends

by Jessica Strawser

 

When I was a kid, my family relocated several times, zigzagging Pennsylvania as my dad navigated job transfers from one corporate region to another. At the time, I hated moving—so much, in fact, that any time my parents said we needed to talk, their faces serious, I’d cross my arms and demand to know right then: “We’re not moving again, are we?”

 

(The next time we moved, they actually broke the news by saying, “Um … it’s about that thing you’re always worried it’s about.” Oh, the surge of dread.)

 

Of course, I came to understand this upbringing had its upsides. It builds character to hold your head high and walk into a school where you don’t know a soul, to learn to make new friends quickly, and even to spend summer days curled up with a good book because you haven’t met the neighbors yet. It helped me grow into a person who wasn’t afraid to go after what I wanted, even when it meant striking out on my own to get it.

 

There was one big thing I missed out on, though.

 

I never kept a childhood friend close. I have wonderful friends I’ve known since high school or college, people I’ve stayed in touch with for decades … but not a single lifelong friend.

 

You know the kind I mean: The kind you bond with in kindergarten when you discover you have matching lunchboxes, and grow with through the awkward years of adolescence, sharing all the big firsts: first kiss, first heartbreak, first time away from home, first job, first love …

 

The kind who will stand next to you at weddings and baby showers and funerals and your own kids’ graduation parties, trading inside jokes about old bad haircuts no one else remembers anymore, and who will always, always be able to say she knew you way back when, at virtually every age.

 

So many of us are drawn to stories of that kind of friendship, and they’re some of my own favorites: I’ve cried over Beaches and Firefly Lane with the best of them. But for me, I think those kinds of characters have always held a bit of mystery, too.

 

What would it really be like, to have a friend who shares so much of your history?

 

 A friend who knows your secret hopes and dreams as well as her own … but might not share the same ones for herself (or even for you)?

 

When we say a friend is like a sister or a brother, do we really mean it? Or will there always be a difference? Will a friend always be, by definition, someone that—as circumstances change—one of you might walk away from, lose touch with, or otherwise leave behind?

 

Some people say to write what you know. I say to write what you wish you knew.

 

So maybe it was inevitable that I’d come to write my own story of lifelong best friends… and wrap them in a mystery. My seventh novel, Catch You Later, focuses on two women stuck in their dead-end Midwestern town who would do anything for each other—but who want very different things out of life.

 

Lark and Mikki work night shift at the interstate travel stop and make up their own rules for making the best of things in the middle of nowhere: 1) Say yes as much as possible, and 2) Keep your eyes open for a ride out. So when a stranger drops in heading to a destination beach wedding and spontaneously invites Mikki to be his plus one, it’s no real surprise to Lark when Mikki takes off her apron and gets in his car right then … that is, until she fails to return. And Lark’s worst, loneliest nightmare begins.

 

Eight years later, Lark is finally getting her life back together for the sake of her young daughter and Mikki’s lovably prickly grandma, who can no longer care for herself. But when the stranger who drove off with Mikki reappears looking for her, nobody knows what to believe—Lark most of all.

 

Structuring this book meant weaving together two very different best friends’ points of view across the miles and over the years: Readers get to ride along with Mikki as she gets in the car that fateful night, then flash forward to Lark searching for her in the aftermath. Many early readers have said that as much as they enjoyed unraveling the cold case of what really happened to Mikki, they loved feeling a part of their lifelong friendship more.

 

I dare say that when I came to writing it, I agree.

 

JESS and HANK : What about you, Reds and readers?  Do you have a favorite “best friends” story, whether a book, a movie, or from your own life? We’d love to hear about it. 

 

Jessica Strawser is editor-at-large at Writer’s Digest and the USA Today bestselling author of seven popular book club novels, including Almost Missed You; Not That I Could Tell (a Book of the Month pick); A Million Reasons Why; The Next Thing You Know (a People Magazine Pick), The Last Caretaker (an Amazon Editors First Reads selection), and Catch You Later, new October 22, 2024. She lives with her husband and two children in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she was awarded an Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Award for 2024. Find her on Instagram and Facebook @jessicastrawserauthor.

 

MORE ABOUT CATCH YOU LATER

 

One impulsive decision changes the lives of two best friends forever in a powerful novel of suspense by the USA Today bestselling author of The Last Caretaker.

If Lark and Mikki didn’t have each other, they’d have nothing in this miserable town. So the best friends stick together, working night shift at the highway travel stop, going nowhere fast. Until a stranger drops in, heading for Florida, and Mikki impulsively leaves with him, never to be seen again.

 

Eight years later, Lark is finally getting her life back together for the sake of her young daughter and Mikki’s lovably prickly grandma, who can no longer care for herself. People have almost stopped blaming Lark for Mikki’s disappearance, and she’s engaged to the nicest guy on highway patrol. But when the stranger who drove off with Mikki reappears looking for her, nobody knows what to believe.

 

As the search reignites, Lark fights to find out whether Mikki is really missing or doesn’t want to be found. But piecing together the chain of events set into motion that fateful night could threaten everything—and everyone—Lark has left.

 

“Strawser increases tension by telling both stories propulsively, leading readers hanging from one chapter to the next…Readers will flock to this fresh take on the missing-girl trope.” —Booklist (starred review)

Women Artists Erased from History

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Oh, dearest Reddies, I do not have to describe to you the joys of research.  And how always, always, you find not only what you were looking for, but always always something you never could have predicted.

Our our darling Gigi Pandian had that experience--and it will surprise you--and also leave you fuming  and furious.

The true history--women artists erased from history
    By  Gigi Pandian

Thanks for inviting me to be here today, Hank! I’m delighted to be celebrating having a new book out this month: THE ALCHEMIST OF BRUSHSTROKES AND BRIMSTONE, my 8th Accidental Alchemist novel. 

More than perhaps any of my other books, I went down a deep and winding rabbit hole of research for this one — so much so that my initial outline went entirely out the window! — so I thought I’d share one of the fascinating historical stories that blew my mind when I encountered it. 

One of my favorite things about writing is historical research — except that I need to remind myself to stop researching to write! My initial story plan had me  digging into the history of poisonous pigments and paints, which do feature prominently in the book, but then I got waylaid by the story of Judith Leyster.

Have you heard of Judith Leyster? She was a Dutch artist from the 1600s, widely acclaimed during her lifetime — until future historians wrote her out of history.

Though she was famous during her lifetime, after her death art historians attributed her work to either her husband (Jan Miense Molenaer) or renowned artist Frans Hals, whose paintings were somewhat similar in style to hers.

Thus, instead of becoming one of the artists we learn about in history books, for over 200 years she was written out of history. I dug deeper, and the story of her rediscovery is something straight out of fiction.

In 1892, a painting known as The Happy Couple was sold to a British art dealer. It bore the signature of Frans Hals. But on closer inspection, Hals’ signature looked suspicious. The painting was tested, revealing that a forged Hals signature had been added on top of Judith Leyster’s signature. Leyster signed her paintings with a distinctive monogram, and it was clearly one of her paintings. A court case followed. 

And here’s the wildest part of the court case: The art dealer who’d been tricked went to court not because of the forged signature itself, but rather, his argument was that the painting, by virtue of being by Franz Hals instead of Judith Leyster, was now worthless!

(ed note: and here it is from the Louvre from Wiki)

That so-called “worthless” painting? It now hangs in the Louvre.  

That historical wrong has been corrected, but there are many stories out there like it. So many that there’s a movement of art historians working to find other historical coverups, and to unearth artwork that’s buried in basements of museums because the works of art are by “unknown” women artists instead of famous painters in existing history books. 

After going down that rabbit hole, my planned plot didn’t go exactly as expected, but I’m thrilled with how it turned out. Pigments gardens and poisoned paints set the stage for an even deeper mystery than I’d first intended — with alchemist Zoe Faust solving a mystery that sets the historical record straight about a woman who’d been written out of history.

HANK and GIGI: What do you think? Do you have a favorite piece of little-known history? Or something you have a feeling we’ve yet to discover?

About THE ALCHEMIST OF BRUSHSTROKES AND BRIMSTONE

A stolen masterpiece. A brilliant woman written out of history. And a recipe for a lost color worth killing for.

In the spellbinding eighth installment of the Accidental Alchemist Mysteries, centuries-old alchemist Zoe Faust and living gargoyle Dorian Robert-Houdin face their most colorful case yet!

Zoe’s hard-won peaceful life is shattered when a devious thief targets her most prized possession—a vibrant portrait that’s her last connection to her long-dead brother. It’s a painting that also holds the secrets of a forgotten artist who created recipes for the most breathtaking colors ever seen.

When the canvas disappears and murder follows, Zoe must unravel a palette of deadly puzzles. With her quick-witted sidekick Dorian and their eclectic group of friends, Zoe races to catch a killer, evade a secret society, and recover her beloved painting. But the quest is bigger than solving a present-day crime. Can Zoe finally set the historical record straight for a gifted painter erased from the history of art?

Out now in paperback, ebook, and audiobook formats (the narrator of the audiobooks for the whole series is fantastic!). 

https://www.gigipandian.com/the-alchemist-of-brushstrokes-and-brimstone

About Gigi Pandian

Gigi Pandian is a USA Today bestselling and multi-award-winning mystery author, breast cancer survivor, and accidental almost-vegan. She’s been awarded Agatha, Anthony, Lefty, and Derringer awards, and been a finalist for the Edgar. Gigi writes the Accidental Alchemist mysteries (humorous mysteries with a touch of magic), Jaya Jones Treasure Hunt mysteries (lighthearted adventures steeped in history), and Secret Staircase mysteries (locked-room mysteries called “wildly entertaining” by the New York Times Book Review). She lives in Northern California with her husband and a gargoyle who watches over their backyard garden. For bookish fun, sign up for her email newsletter at gigipandian.com.