Mindful Musings Book Blog

I like crime reporter Britt Montero. Yes, I like her for all the usual reasons – she’s smart, tough, relatable and all that. But I also like that she can feel sympathy for a perp, even when she didn’t expect to; she learns the story of his childhood trauma and can see shades of gray. And I like that she prefers cocktails to beer. Really, how can a Coors Light compete with rum, coconut cream, pineapple, and orange juice? I very much like that she finds flirting long-distance much easier than in person. (And rightly so – when phone-romance-guy shows up at her door, her greeting is far from sexy.) And I most like that she leaves her conditioner on for 10 minutes versus the recommended 2. I do that sometimes, too, trying to believe that gives the product a little extra oomph, even though she and I both know it doesn’t. See, I find that it’s good to funnel all of your irrational thinking into meaningless outlets like that, so that you stay sharp when it actually counts. ;) There’s just one

Have you ever participated in one of those silent auctions? You know the ones, where a charity offers up themed gift baskets, tickets to a sporting event or a concert, or, possibly, a chef-prepared meal by one of the top chefs in the country. Well, that’s how Ivy Nash—the protagonist in my bestselling mystery-thriller series—happens to hit the food lottery in my latest novel, IN Doubt (due out on May 5). With her and her old / new flame, Saul, sitting at his kitchen table, they watch a famed chef personally cook them a meal that might normally cost north of five hundred dollars. They start with Texas gulf crab cakes, with tomatillo-poblano cream and jicama-tortilla slaw. And then they reach the main course: wood-grilled pork tenderloin, with jalapeno-charred corn, drizzled with Texas peach barbeque sauce. Ivy, a former CPS Special Investigator in Texas, has never had much money. In fact, food is usually not much of a priority because all of her energy is focused on helping troubled ki

In the near future; 100,000 light-years from Earth aboard the faster than light starship Marauder, Captain Neil Armstrong Andrews sat down for dinner to enjoy fresh vegetables from the hydroponics garden with vat grown artificial meat. After their narrow escape from the aliens that wanted to enslave them and near destruction of the Marauder, they were hiding doing repairs to the ship. I now present for your enjoyment, one scene in the story for you to get the flavor of dinner aboard the Marauder.           *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          *          * "Captain, what would you like for dinner?" asked the female assistant cook. "What are the crew having today?" "The main choices are stir fry with rice made with artificial meat with fresh vegetables from hydroponics. Or spaghetti made with artificial meat meatballs, a salad and fresh garlic bread." "I'll have a little of bot

In early February, just gone, I spent three days in Cairo researching my upcoming mystery novel, The Cairo Puzzle .   Cairo is an extraordinary city, the largest between Mexico city and India, far larger than any in Europe. Twenty million people in the metro area makes for a dense and bustling space, filled with beeping cars at all hours of the day and night. My main reason for going there was to get inside the Great Pyramid to visit the King’s Chamber, which I succeeded in doing. To see the small, claustrophobic main passage inside the pyramid in 360VR, possibly the first such view ever, click here. We stayed in the Rameses Hilton, a stone’s throw from the Nile and a little down the river from the Antiquities Museum, with its unmissable treasures of Tutankhamun. The giant self-service breakfast bar at the hotel served a tasty beef bacon substitute along with an array of almost every type of breakfast food you would find in any major hotel on any continent. There were lots of Middle Ea