Mindful Musings Book Blog

In the first book of the Tudor Trilogy , set in England in 1422, we find Owen Tudor, the Welsh servant who married a queen and founded the Tudor dynasty, in Windsor castle watching a royal banquet. A fanfare of trumpets is followed by a procession of liveried servants carrying silver platters piled high with choice meats, which they take to each guest in turn, waiting while they help themselves from each platter, picking out tasty morsels with their fingers, the sign of good manners. As well as cuts of beef, veal, pork, mutton and venison from Windsor Great Park, the guests are served with rare salmon, fresh river trout, eels and crayfish. The centrepiece of the banquet is a whole roasted peacock, served dressed in its own iridescent blue feathers, plucked and replaced after the bird had been cooked, its beak and feet gilded in gold leaf. Even the wine goblets used by the guests follow rules of protocol, with the queen and top table drinking from gold plate, the next most important u

Food is a vital part of Eve and Dom’s sensuous life in the South of France. The naïve translator and the worldly older man connect on an instinctive level that seems - at first - set apart from the bleak realities of the lives they are both trying to escape. They fall in love and move into a crumbling Provencal hamlet, set apart on a hillside, where they lose themselves in the heat and light, in music and the imagination – and the fruits of the landscape. Tha t summer the house and its surroundings became ours, a time reduced in my memory to separate images and impressions: mirabelles, the tart orange plums like incandescent bulbs strung in forest green leaves, a zinc-topped table under a vine canopy; the budding grapes; the basket on the table, a large bowl; tomatoes ribbed and plump as harem cushions.                                                                 Simplicity seems extraordinarily close to hedonism when you find deep red “harem cushion” tomatoes the size of two fists

So, I am both a traditionally and self-published Author. I write vampire romance and have dabbled in vampire erotica. Think I got a thing for vampires? I knew in high school that I wanted to write. I wrote for the school newspaper and yearbook. I constantly had one of those black and white composition books with me with a story I was working on. I was writing juvenile romance and was unhappy with it but didn’t know what to write about. In waltzes my college freshman friend. He handed me a book, The Vampire Lestat by Anne Rice (someone I’d never heard of but once or twice). After reading the book, I knew I had to go with the vampires I had come to love over the years. In 7 th grade, at a sleepover, the girls’ mom came in with the movie Lost Boys and this started my fascination and research involving vampires. I also loved the research aspect! If my book is set in a place I’ve never been, I thoroughly research the area, sights, people, clothes, food, etc. in order to give my readers a

Food is important to Kit. Not really the eating of it, but more the preparation, the cooking, and the reviews from her adoring diners. Her BFF, Val, is a regular recipient of Kit’s fantastic cuisine, but left to her own devices, she is just as happy with a bowl of Cheerios while watching TV in bed.       “Got time for a breakfast taco, Val?” Kit asked.      “With chorizo sausage?”      “Naturally.” In Lethal Property a serial killer is on the loose in Downers Grove. It begins with Val, a Realtor, showing a house to a mysterious man who seems to have more than the purchase of real estate on his mind. Even more alarming is the fact that the string of murders that ensue seem to implicate Val and threaten her safety. Not content with waiting for the police to solve the case, Val and Kit pursue their own list of suspects, which brings them to a local Greek restaurant. At first glance, this establishment does not even come close to Kit’s impossibly high epicurean standards, but she’s willi