Mindful Musings Book Blog

When Shelley invited me to guest post on her blog about Tattooed Teardrops , I told her that the book didn’t really mention much about food, and perhaps one of my other books would be a better choice. On sitting down and reviewing it, however, I identified a total of 23 scenes in which the characters were eating. No, not very many mentions of food at all… Although some of the later scenes may be a little more unusual (such as a public fight in a mall food court, the armed robbery of a convenience store for munchies, or feeding a portion of a cranberry-orange muffin to a kidnapped dog,) I wanted to pick an early scene to introduce the book to you. Tamara has just been released on parole after being in juvenile detention for three years. The transition is not an easy one, and she finds meals with her new foster family particularly stressful. She’s lived a very regimented life for the past three years, eating in the juvie cafeteria at strictly appointed times with rigid rules of behaviour

Hell Knoweth No Fury like a Hungry Gumshoe Vincent Zandri Jack “Keeper” Marconi, PI, is a tough man. He’s a gumshoe’s gumshoe who says what he means and means what he says, and he’s willing to back it all up with his fists if necessary. He is also a man who loves to eat and drink what he wants, when he wants. After all, his daily running/weight lifting regimen with his sidekick Blood, a 6’4” African American chunk of ebony granite, burns enough calories to keep him in tip top shape, even if he will never see 50 again. When a potential client walks into Keeper’s downtown Albany, second floor Sherman Street office, he or she might find the muscular private eye feasting on an Italian submarine constructed of fresh ham, salami, provolone cheese, lettuce, tomato and onion slices, plus black olives, green peppers, all stuffed tightly inside a full loaf of freshly baked Italian bread. While washing this feast down with a cold Pilsner beer is always an option, Keeper is known to enjoy it with

The road trip snacks of 85 North! Bobby Nash We all have them. If you work as a writer long enough, you will find yourself with a drawer (or in modern terms, a computer file folder) full of unused stories that, for one reason or another, never found a home to call their own. Sometimes it’s because of publisher or editor rejection; other times it happens because projects stall or publishers go out of business. It happens. Things do simply fall by the wayside. Whatever the reason, things happen, and some stories fall through the cracks. It’s a crazy business we’re in, isn’t it? 85 North is a collection of stories I wrote over the years that fell through the cracks, as it were. Every story in the book was contracted by a publisher at one time or another, but never made it to the published page for one reason or another. There are a couple of exceptions. When Falstaff Books asked about publishing this collection of stories, I added a couple of previously published pieces to round out the