Murder is Everywhere

When Pots--and Plots--get Root-Bound

noreply@blogger.com (Ovidia Yu) — Tue, 21 Apr 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

One of my bamboo plants was starting to look unwell. A few leaves here and there turning yellow and dropping--nothing dramatic, but enough to signal that something wasn’t right, because my bamboo have always been among the healthiest of my plants!

And what was really odd was that this bamboo was in front of a big window with two other pot plants—another bamboo and a bonsai fig tree—and they all get the same amount of sunlight and water and the other two seem fine. So what was wrong with this poor bamboo?

So--after a very full week (including some Aunty Lee excitement now that the series is now out there) I finally took my poor bamboo plant out onto the patio for some investigative procedures...

My poor bamboo was completely root-bound!

When I finally managed to loosen the sides enough to get it out of its pot I saw its roots had taken over completely. They were a dense, tightly packed mass in the exact shape of the pot!

And there was almost no soil left. Water must have been running straight down the sides and out again without ever reaching the poor roots at the centre.

In fact, though I'd not realised it, my poor plant was dying of thirst and malnutrition, not to mention stress from overcrowding.

All from being severely root-bound.

And I realised that was pretty much the state my manuscript has been getting into recently. Everything inside it came about naturally and kind of works, but there's just too much stuff and it's all packed too tightly.

It's easier to tackle a poor root-bound plant. Or rather, there's a simple and slightly brutal method that usually works: loosen the roots as much as possible, remove compacted soil and dead roots and trim some of the roots before repotting them in fresh mix.

But that's where the difficult part comes in--I wasn't just trimming dead roots but some of the living, healthy ones too. Because there just isn't enough room for everything.

In my WIP the scenes I’m looking at are good scenes, funny exchanges and observations that I love. And all these fine roots/ threads/ themes have potential to grow into exciting developments.

The problem is, they all have HUGE potential, and given unlimited space, time and energy, I would keep and grow them all!

But I don’t have unlimited space, whether on my bathroom window ledge or on my calendar.

My bamboo might be happier flourishing in the wild with pandas, but in this dimension it's part of the green modesty screen in my bathroom that I enjoy tending to and that makes me happy every time I look at it.

Like for my WIP, my material is crying out for epic space but I'm working to fit it into a book somewhere between 75,000 and 80,000 words.

Even this post has to fit the space it’s given--so something has to give.

I trimmed my bamboo plant--stalks and roots both. I tried to be selective, but still—every cut hurt.

And when I've finished this, I'll head back to do the same with my manuscript.

I'm finally beginning to see that culling, cutting and editing isn’t about removing what’s bad or that doesn't work. It's just acknowledging that there isn't enough space for everything.

Too many roots, too many ideas...

It's not a bad thing. It's a wonderful problem because it means my bamboo was/ is healthy enough to expand to its limits.

My bamboo is recovering.

It's already looking much better!

Now I'll go trim and repot my WIP and hope it survives and recovers too and that both book and bamboo go on to flourish!

Happy Birthday, Karen Blixen

noreply@blogger.com (Annamaria Alfieri) — Mon, 20 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Annamaria in Three Days Late

I apologize for going AWOL for a couple of weeks. To be honest, I found myself with little time for writing anything at all, and I chose to devote what I had to finishing my work in progress, which was pouring into my head. I am past 61K words now, and I see the ending coming, so though real life remains quite busy, I am happy to say that I am here with this tribute to Karen Blixe aka Isak Dinese. I first fell for her as a Lit major when I was assigned to read her short stories in Seven Gotic Tales published under her pen name.

Her name came up because I have an ancient copy of this handy way to keep track of friend and family birthdays. I've had it since 1984, hence the clearly visible Scotch tape holding it together.

The entry at the top clued me in that it was time that I give Karen some attention.

Most American's know her as the person played by Meryl Street in the movie Out of Africa. When her memoire of the same name first launched, it carried her pen name, already well known at the time. (Karen took the pen name, as many women did in the those days because books written by women were not considered important and mostly could't get published.)

Nowadays, if you search Seven Gothic Tales the answer you get may very well say "A book by Karen Blixen." Only if the answer shows the book will it show the author as Isak Dinesen. Either way, it is a masterpiece.

Eventually the area of Nairobi where she lived was named Karen in her honor.

Here below are some souvenir shots from my first time visit to Karen Blixen's house

"...at the foot of the gong hills."

Lucy, my guide, and a portrait of Karen

Karen's house, now a museum.

The Karen museum is one of the most popular tourist destinations in Kenya. I'm not sure if it sells books, but I am certain that if you want fame, it helps if Meryl Streep pays you in a movie, especially of Robert Redford plays the love interest, and if the film is also a masterpiece.

My Granddaughter Rachel's Big Day

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Siger) — Sat, 18 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Jeff–Saturday

Today is the Bat Mitzvah of my youngest granddaughter, Rachel Ida McLaughlin, and I couldn’t be prouder of her! She’s an accomplished actress, musician, vocalist, martial artist, and scholar. And this weekend her family and friends join in celebrating this hard-earned, well-deserved milestone event in her life!

For those of you who many wonder what is a Bat Mitzvah (pronounced Baht Mitts-vah), the simplest explanation is that it’s the coming of age religious ritual for a Jewish girl, as the Bar Mitzvah ritual is for a Jewish boy. For a girl the age is generally above twelve, and for a boy it’s thirteen.

The history of the Bar Mitzvah actually dates back to a fifth century reference in a religious text to a blessing recited by a father thanking God for freeing him from responsibility for the deeds of his son, based upon his son attaining an age that made him accountable for his own actions.

How many fathers of all faiths still pray for similar debt relief. :)

The Bat Mitzvah celebration has its roots in 19^th century European tradition but did not make its way to the United States until 1922. It now flourishes in many communities as a revered family occasion of great joy.

And that’s precisely what Rachel brings to all blessed to know her…great joy.

As her Zayde (grandfather), this day brings the promise of special joy to me, for perhaps now her parents will think of her as old enough to read her Zayde’s books!

Yiayia and I love you Rachel. We all do. Mazel Tov.

The entire crew of grandkids--12 years ago

–Zayde

Signing My Life Away

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata in Baltimore, MD) — Fri, 17 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Sujata Massey

Stacks of books, sharpie pens, a microphone. A sea of empty folding chairs—and a slight rush of nervous energy.

This scene is a cliché for any author who’s been fortunate enough to have a bookseller invite you sign books.

I count myself very lucky to see whatever number of seats the bookseller has set out filled with people. But a bookseller friend said to me that publicists for mega-selling authors sometimes require a bookseller to be able to offer seating for 200 or more. Hence, the Instagram reel of the 1500--person audience in Brooklyn Center, MN for Abby Jimenez, a popular romance author with a new book, The Night We Met. What I could see of the event was more akin to what I hear about Taylor Swift concerts, and I am going to bet the fans received books that had been signed in advance. How else could it be done? Three cheers for any author who can get that many people to assemble for a book launch!

The first book signing I remember attending was back in elementary school—probably fifth or sixth grade. Susan Cooper, the seminal British author who wrote fantasy novels for children from the 1960s onward, was speaking at the College of St. Catherine in St. Paul during her national tour for one of her books—my likeliest guess is it was The Dark is Rising, her most famous book in the series that is still captivating readers today. During my childhood, Susan Cooper was my dream author, a woman from my birthplace of Great Britain who used legends and lore from Wales and King Arthur to develop her haunting series. We were reading this Newberry Award winning novel while under the age of 12, although I notice that her books are now classified as 'young adult.' In the crowd at the college, I recall only adults being there. I felt wise beyond my years and still am grateful to my elementary school librarian who thought I might like to go and asked the parents of me, and a few other friends,

In the twenty-first century, faculty members are no longer allowed to take students in their own vehicle to off-campus events. But in the 1970s, people ha more freedom. And while I regret that the kind librarian's name is forgotten, I still remember her and am grateful for this early experience meeting a literary superstar. Susan Cooper, who was around forty at the time, spoke quite warmly to us. I don’t remember if we bought any books—probably not, because my paperback copy of the book (which I’ve carried to my adult home, after all these years!) is dog-eared and unsigned. We children didn’t know what a special opportunity this was—to have a signed book by a writer we loved, and who at the age of 90, is still a perennial in bookstores.

My next experience with a fiction author came about ten years later. I studied as an undergraduate in the Johns Hopkins University writing seminars, a department different from English in that we Writing Sems majors did read novels, but we were also expected to learn from working authors of all sorts—poets, science writers, journalists, and yes, novelists. Martha Grimes, the celebrated American author based in Washington DC, came to the campus for as a visiting professor for the spring semesters of both my junior and senior year.

Martha Grimes looked like this during my college years

Every Thursday afternoon, nine other students and I sat around a long table, not quite realizing she was on the New York Times bestseller list, right at that moment, and probably had a lot of choices of what to do with her time. learning from one of the masters. And at the end of the semester, she presented each of us with her latest book, signing it herself with a personal message. “I hope you get across the effing lake” she wrote to me, a reference to the implausible-sounding plot point in my mystery story submission that she critiqued for the class. Now I think how generous she was to sign and gift her reader copies with us. I treasure this signed book almost as much as what she taught me about the feasibility of crime fiction as a bona fide career.

When I began struggling with the craft of my own mystery writing a decade later, one of the first signings that I recall was that of the late M.C. Beaton, when she visited Mystery Loves Company Books in Baltimore in the 1990s. Beaton is another British writer well known for her humorous Agatha Raisin and Hamish Macbeth series, as well as more than 100 romance novels, most of them under her real name, Marion Chesney. I attended with my friend and mystery maven (heck! she designed this website!) Susanne Trowbridge, who was close fwith the store owners, Paige Rose and Kathy Harig, who sadly are both deceased. I remember feeling shy at the event, but knowing that because I was an adult, I must say something to this author who had amazed me with her deft, humorous hand. It was a small but enthusiastic turnout, typical for the tiny store, one of those places where books are piled up everywhere and cats wind their way through your legs. Ms. Beaton was quite agreeable, and I remember thinking, I can’t fathom ever finishing my own manuscript-in-progress, selling it, and having people hear enough about it that they'd take the time to meet me.

“You’ll have your first signing here,” both Kathy and Paige promised me, separately, so I knew it would be true--if Ionly I could finish and sell my book. I kept going to book signings, I joined Sisters in Crime, and I kept writing. In 1996, I signed a contract for my first mystery, The Salaryman’s Wife. Kathy Harig read the galley that HarperCollins sent the store and told me it was good. What a relief it was—and from that point on, I was in the book signing world, receiving invites from stores I'd never heard of, and badgering the publicists to ask after ones in big cities, like New York and San Francisco, that I dreamed about. Fortunately, the 1990s was a time when female-centric mystery was booming, the economy was good, and tours were a possibility for writers once their books were coming out in hardcover editions. Yet for many years I would go on tour, sitting in my economy seat on the plane with my throat closed, thinking the whole journey was unknown and could very well be disappointing. Who was I to have a signing when there were Martha Grimes and Susan Coopers in the world? These fears have subsided as I've built two series, and audiences also show up because booksellers themselves are increasingly sending email newsletters to their readers about upcoming events.

Not all signings take place at independent bookstores. Sometimes events are scheduled in place where there’s a large captive audience. This includes mystery fiction conventions and conferences like the Association of Writers and Writing Programs, a giant writing extraganza where I was featured with my longtime mystery writer friend Laura Lippman, with our interview conducted by our new friend, the suspense novelist Angie Kim.

During this last tour, I’ve spoken at stores with crowds as small as four and large as sixty-plus. I know that the store that might not get a lot of audience for me one night might simply choose to ask you to sign as many books as if there had been dozens--thus ensuring the books stay at the store, until they are sold, something quite generous to do in a business where profit margins are very tight. There are also a few stores that have voracious readers out of state who want signed books mailed to them. As I see it, each store visit is an incredible opportunity for a writer to connect with a reader—and if readers don’t show, you can demonstrate to the bookstore that you're a well-tempered and kind individual who appreciates their efforts.

I’ve grown to feel I’m holding a serious responsibility at a signing. I’m not there to be promotional, despite a tour being a form of book promotion. Being a wee bit nervous can be helpful: it pushes me to remain sharper and more aware of what I hope to communicate. But truly--there's no need for a witty or profound speech. If I read a bit of the ew book, it allows people to know if they might want to read it. The coup de grace is to allot plenty of time to receive questions. The most typical questions I hear are: why did you make your protagonist a Parsi, what’s your writing process, how do you do your research, and will any of your books ever be made into a movie? I hope is to satisfy the queries candidly without revealing spoilers. I also aim to share my particular experience of becoming (and staying) a writer, because I know that amongst the folding chairs, there always sits an individual who is quietly working away at their own manuscript.

And isn't it wonderful they--the readers, writers, and the curious--have a place to come? The act of bookstores opening themselves to hosting events is akin to creating a literary picnic gathering in a town green. Whether or not an attendee buys a book, they're taking part in an impromptu community meeting that is about . . . imagination.A writer's, and their own.

I came to Laurie R King's book signing in California

When I moved to Minneapolis in 2005, I was lonely the first few years. I really missed my friends from Maryland, DC, Virginia and Pennsylvania. I had felt so connected--and now I was living in a city that was so different from my childhood experience. The only solution to my social boredom that I came up with was visiting the city’s famed mystery bookstore, Once Upon a Crime and introduced myself to its owners at the time, Pat Frovarp and Gary Shulze. They already had my books on the shelf and became fast friends. I kept shopping at the store and attending events they hosted like the monthly Twin Cities chapter of Sisters in Crime meetings. My circle slowly widened, and I became part of a writing group (hello, Stan Trollip, one of the members!)

I also attended signings for out-of-state authors coming to sign their latest books. Cara Black and Libby Hellman are both mystery authors who I didn’t know very well during my early Baltimore years--but I went to their signing to hear them talk about their work, and to buy their books to ensure Pat and Gary made some money that night. The bookstore seats were completely filled, making the authors happy. Cara and Libby then invited me to join them for dinner at a nearby pub, and the three of us formed an ongoing creative and supportive relationship that endures. After I moved away from Minnesota and transformed back into a Maryland author, Minnesota became a very important book tour stop. So in 2019, when I toured to St. Paul, the great mystery novelist William Kent Krueger showed up to 'welcome me back to St. Paul.' Things had come full circle.

William Kent Krueger's St. Paul welcome

Speaking of writer friends, it's now becoming a bookstore strategy. Many booksellers like to promote signings in which one writer (a local fixture who's not on tour) interviews an author who is on tour. This tandem work takes away the pressure of a tired writer repeating a stump speech, but rather answering surprising questions and going on spontaneous tangents with their interviewer. Readers are thrilled by natural conversations featuring real, unscripted moments between people. When I'm in this role, I read the book ahead of time, prep questions, and ask the writer if there’s anything in particular they love to talk about. During The Star From Calcutta book tour, I was quite grateful for the interlocution assistance from writers Vera Kurian in Washington, DC, Dan Fesperman in Baltimore and Ritu Mukherjee in San Francisco. Doing it all by myself, every night, when my day typically started with an early morning flight can be wearying. The antidote is knowing one's night has been organized by the interviewer, and all I have to do is answer questions.

Readers at the Raven Book Store in Kansas

Barbara Peters, owner of Poisoned Pen, and Naomi Hirahara

It seems a shame, but inevitable, that most publishers are curtailing authors book tours. I understand that sending authors to places that involve plane travel, road transportation and hotels is quite expensive, and the return on that investment is uncertain. I am so grateful that my publisher, Soho Press, listened to me when I spoke about the importance of Minnesota and Wisconsin, and the West Coast, as well as all the spots I can easily drive to in my area. And during this last tour—as I grasped the hands of customers who had demonstrated a real sense of caring about the characters in my books-I also felt their care for me as a person.

Although we'd never met before, they knew me.

And that is quite a gift for someone whose best friends in childhood were her books.

Sujata has a few U.S. signings left for The Star From Calcutta. She'll share the stage with author Amin Ahmad on Saturday, May 9 at 11 a.m. at McIntyre's Books in Fearrington Village, NC. After that, she'll appear alongside author Kate Hilton in a discussion at the Gaithersburg Book Festival in Maryland at 1:15 p.m. on May 16.

Are you Scripturient?

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Odden) — Thu, 16 Apr 2026 12:30:00 +0000

Karen Odden – every other Thursday

Like everyone, I get all kinds of random fun-fact stuff in my in box every day. Today in History. Mastering French Phrases. O&H Kringle of the Day. (Almond will always be my favorite. Raspberry a close second.) Some of this email traffic I glance over, and if I’m busy, I don’t always look at it.

But if I have a moment, I do like to look at the Word of the Day. This word caught me. I know I’m a bibliophile; but recently, I discovered I’m scripturient. Who knew?

Then again, maybe we all are scripturient. We write constantly – especially if we consider typing on our keyboards writing. Think about your day. Which of these have you written recently? Emails, blogposts, to-do lists, social media posts, entries on a paper calendar (yes, I still keep one, in addition to the one on my phone), scribbles in notebooks, marginal notes in the books you’re reading, novels, short stories, poetry, a recipe for a friend, a birthday card, lists of things to pack for a weekend trip, itinerary for a conference, a signature on the credit card pad at the store, a quick text, a Post-it reminder note, a shopping list.

It’s interesting to take a moment to consider how deeply embedded writing is in our lives, and how many kinds there are. How it’s part of our day, instinctive, almost unconscious, in a way that blinking or breathing is, and also how many different ways there are, physically, to produce written texts, from Egyptian hieroglyphics to Braille to feather quill pens to Bics to keyboards. Think how quickly our fingers move on our phones when we're texting. Perhaps there, especially, our rates of speaking and writing approach each other.

"Creative writing" is, to my mind, somewhat of an artificial category. Perhaps a shopping list isn't creative writing ... but a birthday card? I'd say it is. I mean, I choose my words for the extra words I add to the message inside -- because each person is different, and I have different kinds of relationships with different people. I'll make a joke to one person that I might not make with another; I know my audience, and I write to them, with awareness of my voice and what message it's carrying. Is that so very different from choosing my words for starting a chapter?

I think we all do more creative writing than we realize. Just something to consider.

I’m going to leave you with a few famous quotes on writing because I like these quotes better than anything else I could say on the topic. These mostly apply to creative writing ... but also to writing generally, in some cases. Sometimes it's fun to read what brilliant, famous people have to say about writing.

“Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.” — Natalie Goldberg

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.” – Anais Nin

“You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children.” — Madeleine L'Engle

“The best way to become acquainted with a subject is to write about it.” – Benjamin Disraeli

“There is no greater power on this earth than story.” – Libba Bray

“As for ‘Write what you know,’ I was regularly told this as a beginner. I think it’s a very good rule and have always obeyed it. I write about imaginary countries, alien societies on other planets, dragons, wizards, the Napa Valley in 22002. I know these things. I know them better than anybody else possibly could, so it’s my duty to testify about them.” — Ursula K. Le Guin [photo]

“If I waited for perfection, I would never write a word.” — Margaret Atwood

“I am not at all in a humor for writing; I must write on until I am.” — Jane Austen

“I just give myself permission to suck. I delete about 90 percent of my first drafts, so it doesn’t really matter much if on a particular day I write beautiful and brilliant prose that will stick in the minds of my readers forever, because there’s a 90 percent chance I’m just going to delete whatever I write anyway. I find this hugely liberating.” — John Green

“On first drafts: It is completely raw, the sort of thing I feel free to do with the door shut — it’s the story undressed, standing up in nothing but its socks and undershorts.” — Stephen King

Between Hills and Pilgrims: Oviedo's quiet geography

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Sears (of Michael Stanley)) — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 20:38:00 +0000

Kwei - Alternate Wednesdays

Oviedo doesn’t announce its geography. You notice it gradually—on foot, looking up. The city feels contained, but not confined.

Routes around Monte Naranco—
where local trails intersect with the Camino Primitivo

To the north rises Monte Naranco, less a mountain than a long, steady ridge. It frames the city without enclosing it, shaping both skyline and movement.

Spring fields below Monte Naranco—
green, open, and deceptively gentle

Oviedo sits in a shallow basin rather than a true valley. The land rolls instead of dropping away. There are no steep walls—just continuous green slopes that soften distance and scale.

Cristo del Naranco watches over the ridge
—visible from almost anywhere below

These paths are not just local trails. They form part of the Camino Primitivo, one of the oldest routes to Santiago. For centuries, pilgrims have crossed this same terrain—walking the same gradients, reading the same skyline.

Layered greens—
Oviedo’s terrain never quite settles into flat.

Walking here means constant adjustment—small ascents, gradual descents. The terrain never disappears; it stays in the body.

The result is subtle but distinct. Oviedo feels held by its landscape, not trapped by it.

Technically a pilgrim—just the short-form version

One feels friendly, open skies.

Back to where it all began, in several ways

noreply@blogger.com (Kiwicraig) — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 02:59:00 +0000

I've organised 125+ library events in New Zealand; recently I got
to attend my second-ever, in person, at 'Miscreants in Motueka'

Craig on some Tuesdays

Kia ora and gidday everyone,

I hope that you’ve all enjoyed a lovely Easter holidays - for those that got them - and are having a good start to Spring, for those in the northern hemisphere, or Autumn, for those in the Southern Hemisphere. For me, I'm kinda getting to experience both, as I've spent the past two and a half weeks 'back home' in Aotearoa New Zealand, visiting with family and friends and packing in as much as possible on several fronts, during a long-overdue visit.

Flying back to London tonight, all too soon. But very grateful for the time here.

I don't know about you, but I've often found there's something pleasantly grounding or resetting about visiting my hometown and surrounding region, even though I haven't lived there full-time for decades. Life can seem so hectic and in flux, going from project to project (many of them fun and challenging in good ways, don't get me wrong) alongside various life events good and tough - not to mention all the added global uncertainties and upheavals - that its really wonderful to reconnect with something that has deeper roots in my own life story, and people who've known me for decades (or places I've known/experienced decades ago), often across and through various things, rather than solely because of a single shared activity, passion, or workplace, etc.

I realise not everyone had a good or great childhood, so revisiting old haunts and long-term friends won't be the same largely positive (while at times jarring) thing for some others as it is for me, but for me it's always been a bit of a 'battery recharger' on several fronts, especially when I've been based abroad.

It's all too rare that I'm in New Zealand to nab print copies of the papers
and magazines I contribute to, so it was lovely to yesterday get a copy
of the latest NZ Listener, completed with my April thrillers roundup

We've been visiting national parks, wildlife preserves, and scenic areas, gone wading and swimming at local beaches even though it's autumn (some nice sunny days and mild weather, the recent tropical cyclone aside), had lots of catch-ups with family and some old friends, eaten lots of steak and cheese pies and boysenberry ice cream, visited local artisans (from Höglund Art Glass to the makers of the Lord of the Rings ring), and had all sorts of of fun.

Plus a few bookish things thrown in for good measure.

To kickstart April, I even got to participate in an author panel at the Motueka Library, as part of the nationwide Mystery in the Library series of free/koha library events. I helped kickstart that series in 2015, and have been organising it from afar in London the past decade plus. We've now held 125+ events at 50 libraries across Aotearoa New Zealand, featuring 200+ different Kiwi storytellers, over the past decade or so. Crazy how wee ideas can grow into rather big things when people care and give their time. Thanks to amazing librarians, authors, chairs, and thousands of local readers, Mystery in the Library has become a fixture in the New Zealand literary calendar.

With science teacher and film/TV actor
Doug Brooks, a high school pal - we used to
do Shakespeare competitions as teenagers

It has been a bit of a strange thing, if I'm honest, organising so many events that I never get to attend myself, but I have enjoyed the ongoing connection to my home country and the local books community there, and my parents raised me to serve and give back, so I've felt good about that too. At a distance. But there was something a wee bit special getting to attend 'Miscreants in Motueka' on 1 April - with my mother, daughter, and old schoolteacher and a couple of other mates in the audience, along with plenty of people I didn't know or hadn't met yet. It was the first time too that I've had a New Zealand event where some of my own books (the Dark Deeds Down Under anthologies) were onsale. I got to sign some copies for readers who bought them, plus some old friends. Which was cool.

It was a nice, rather tangible reminder of what we've built with the Ngaio Marsh Awards and Mystery in the Library, but also where it all started, with my parents and schoolteachers cultivating and encouraging my love of reading, and how local libraries were a cool part of my Nelson-Tasman childhood, alongside local sports fields, outdoors areas, and friends houses.

While there have been plenty of bumps, and some tough twists and turns, overall I think I've been a fairly lucky guy, in terms of some pretty cool chapters I've had in my life, and the great people I've got to meet and spend time with - a little or a lot - along the way.

Given this was a very family-focused trip, I didn't get to catch up with as many Kiwi authors as I often do when I'm back home, but on top of the Miscreants in Motueka event and going for a dawn walk around the Auckland harbour with Maori filmmaker and award-winning crime writer Michael Bennett (Better the Blood, etc) this morning - a very nice way to kickstart my final day in Aotearoa for this trip - I've popped into a few bookshops and libraries while here, and been very pleased to see some good stocking and spotlighting of an array of cool Kiwi crime novels and true crime books. in most places We've come a long way since we started the Ngaio Marsh Awards in 2010.

Ngaio Marsh Award winning authors Michael Bennett and Claire Baylis
on a spotlight shelf at the Papatoetoe Library in South Auckland

Over the weekend I even popped into the Papatoetoe Library, just up the road from where we've been staying in Auckland for the final days of our visit. As some people know, that's a key location in terms of modern New Zealand crime writing and the Ngaio Marsh Awards, even though we've never held a Mystery in the Library event there.

In October 2008 - nearly 18 years ago! - I stopped by the Papatoetoe Library in South Auckland, having just returned to New Zealand from a yearlong OE backpacking through Latin America, North America, and Europe.

I'd loved mystery books my whole life - though had slowed down reading them while at law school and as a young lawyer at a large corporate law firm - but while travelling on that OE trip I'd read lots of crime/thrillers during 24 hr bus roads across Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, and even spontaneously attended a Crime Writers of Canada event at Vancouver Public Library in April 2008, chatting to Canadian crime writers like legendary lawyer and award-winning author William Deverell, along with Mark Zuehlke and the late, great Lou Allin (a Vice-President of Crime Writers Canada who'd later become one of our inaugural Ngaio Marsh Awards judges in 2010).

While sorting old boxes at my Mum's house
on this trip, I came across lots of old articles
I wrote 15+ years ago, including this
feature on Neil Cross in early 2009

On a post event stroll to the bus stop, Bill Deverell had asked me about New Zealand crime writing, but outside of Ngaio Marsh, Paul Thomas, and a few one-off books from the 2000s from the likes of Simon Snow, Michael Laws, and Nigel Latta, I sadly couldn't really tell him that much in terms of recommendations.

Later that year, browsing the Papatoetoe Library shelves in October 2008, I stumbled across CEMETERY LAKE by Paul Cleave and THE RINGMASTER by Vanda Symon not just Kiwi crime novels, but the third and second books from each author!

By chance - a lawyer not getting a book review in on time for the legal magazine I started working at, so my editor needed me to quickly fill the pages before we went to the printers - I ended up reviewing Paul and Vanda's books for NZLawyer magazine. Further reviews then author interviews followed of other Kiwi mystery writers, and international ones... fast forward to late 2010, and the first-ever Ngaio Marsh Award was won - delayed after the earthquakes cancelled the Christchurch Writers Festival that year by 'Alix Bosco' for CUT & RUN.

And that was just the beginning. 17 years of the Ngaio Marsh Awards. More than a decade of Mystery in the Library. Rotorua Noir in 2019, the first-ever New Zealand crime and thriller festival. Kiwi crime and thriller authors appearing semi-regularly nowadays at international festivals. Would it have happened without spontaneous visits to libraries in Vancouver and Papatoetoe in 2008? Months apart, more than 7,000 miles apart... both planting seeds.

Life eh? What can you do but be grateful?

Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight:

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'll be ending my fortnightly posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

Nāu te rourou, nāku te rourou, ka ora ai te iwi

(With your food basket and my food basket the people will thrive, ie everybody has something to offer, and by working together we can all flourish.)

Dozens of crime writers from New Zealand, Australia, and internationally coming
together at a local marae to celebrate storytelling at Rotorua Noir in 2019.

How Can It Be that Last Sunday was Easter--But So Is Tomorrow?

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Siger) — Sat, 11 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Jeff--Saturday

There are two explanations for that phenomenon. One easy, one not––but neither being that it's the movie "Groundhog Day" come to life.

The simple answer is that Greeks and others of the Eastern Orthodox faith calculate their Easter based upon the Julian calendar while Protestants and catholics use the modern Gregorian calendar. If you want to know precisely how wth date is determined, the explanation starrs to sound strangely reminiscent of some I've herad touted these days about where our world is headed:

“The determination of the date of Easter is governed by a computation based on the vernal equinox (the point at which the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator, the sun having a northerly motion) and the phase of the moon. According to the ruling of the First Ecumenical Synod in 325, Easter Sunday should fall on the Sunday which follows the first full moon after the vernal equinox. If the full moon happens to fall on a Sunday, Easter is observed the following Sunday. The day taken to be the invariable date of the vernal equinox is March 21.”

I think it best we just say that Greek Easter follows the Julian calendar (though both can be on the same date) and leave it at that.

But no matter how the date is determined, Easter is by far the main event in Eastern Orthodoxy. It is preceded by more than a week of significant religious and cultural observations. And on Mykonos, Easter literally brings the island back to life.

Mykonos in Springtime

In the winter, Mykonos is a sleepy island village with virtually no tourists, no business, few open bars, fewer restaurants, and no clubs. But come Easter Week everything changes. Red and yellow springtime poppies burst to life all over the island’s hillsides, and those and still more varieties of flowers embroider the blanket of green covering the nearby holy island of Delos. There are Church services every day of Holy Week, as well as daily preparations for the feast to come at the end. Breads and cookies are readied on Monday and Tuesday, baking is done on Wednesday, and eggs are dyed red on Thursday, the day Christ was put up on the Cross.

Tsoureki Easter bread

By Thursday, Mykonos is filled with mainland Greeks flocking to their vacation homes and others looking to participate in a perfect example of spiritual and temporal coexistence: Easter church rituals strictly observed during the day, followed by the island’s as nearly hallowed party traditions through the night. But that taste of the coming mid-summer craziness is short lived, for if you don’t catch the action that weekend come by in June, because Mykonos is back in hibernation come Tuesday.

An Epitaphios in procession on Mykonos

Evening services on Good Friday start at seven in the old town’s three main churches, Kiriake, Metropolis, and Panachra. At precisely nine, each church’s clergy and worshipers leave their church in separate processions carrying their church’s epitaphios (the painted or embroidered cloth representation of Christ on a bier elaborately adorned in spring flowers and symbolizing his tomb) along a prearranged route, winding past the other two churches before ending up back at their own to complete the service. It represents the funeral of Christ, and Mykonians and visitors line the route, some standing on balconies and sprinkling the participants below with a mixture of rose water and perfumes, the rodhonoro used on Christ’s body when taken down from the cross.

The same three churches serve as the scene of the following night’s Holy Saturday services. Most generally start heading off to church around ten, but for certain everyone is there by midnight. For that is the high point of Easter, when church bells ring out across Greece and even total strangers exchange the traditional Christos Anesti and Alithos Anesti greetings that Christ has risen, kiss each other, and light each other’s candles to share the light and joy of the occasion—a light brought to Greece for just this purpose from the Holy Flame of Christ’s nativity cave in Jerusalem. Worshipers carry the light back into their homes or their favorite restaurants, except for the hearty souls who remain in church for the balance of a service that lasts hours more into the morning.

Midnight in Mykonos

Mayiritsa soup

Now it is time to challenge each other with the customary one-to-one smacking of those dyed-red eggs for good luck to the winner (mine always cracks first) and devour the traditional mayiritsa soup (made from parts of a lamb you may ask me about if you really want to know), fluffy tsoureki easter bread, and salads to break the forty-day fast leading up to Easter.

But the big feast, the one everyone looks forward to, comes on Sunday. That’s when all the work of the week and all the spring lambs find their purpose. There is church, too, of course, but this day is more about celebrating with family and friends. And eating.

The star of a Greek Easter Sunday (center)

Dieting starts Monday. Kalo Paska

--Jeff

Conservation and tech

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Sears (of Michael Stanley)) — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 08:22:00 +0000

Michael - Every other Thursday

In a world where modern computer technology is becoming regarded as a threat, it’s interesting to see AI, drones, and photo recognition being put to purposes we can all agree are worthwhile and useful. What’s more, a lot of the research being done for these applications is happening here in South Africa.

We’ve become used to the idea that drones carry bombs – often aimed at civilians; AI is out to take jobs and steal books, and perhaps suck up all the electricity; and automated photo recognition is designed to spy out sites to destroy and follow people who may be troublesome to authoritarian governments.

The thing about AI is the emphasis is on it doing things humans can do well (e.g. writing mysteries) rather than on focusing on things humans can’t do.

However, a recent article in South Africa’s online newspaper, The Daily Maverick, shows how these are tools that have some very valuable roles to play. Since my own research interests were in image processing and remote sensing, I was intrigued (and a little skeptical) and so I had a more detailed look. I concluded that although it’s early days, all these technologies have promise to assist with wild life management and conservation.

A drone picture of an elephant helping himself to Sisal plants at night.
The picture is in the thermal infrared showing the animal
very clearly against the background.
Picture courtesy Conservation Through Tourism

For example, take elephants in areas where borders are lines on maps and fences are designed to keep in cattle. Probably more than lions, they are a danger to people and so indirectly to themselves. Elephants are smart and know that it’s best to break into crop lands at night while people are asleep, and a herd of 100 elephants can do an enormous amount of damage in a few hours. Electric fences with alarms are well and good. So you know you have 100 elephants in your crops. Now what?

A herd wonders through the bush - easily identified in the TIR
Photo courtesy Conservation Through Tourism

A group called Conservation through Tourism has been experimenting with drone and remote sensing technologies. The drones have cameras that take high resolution images but also thermal images. One can see the elephants clearly against the vegetation even on a dark night and through trees. Even better, the elephants don’t like these drones. They make a noise and can buzz you, so you move off. A couple of them can actually herd you. They know where you are, they know where they want you to go and not to go, and there’s not much you can do about them as long as they keep their distance. Once you start to move off, it’s just a matter of steering you back home. That can be done by a human watching a computer screen in a Land Rover, or, even better, by an artificial intelligence system analyzing the scene using GPS location information.

Another potentially valuable application is remotely counting species populations in conservation areas. This has been done for many years by people in the Kruger park area at least once a year. The technique is to use helicopters with human spotters counting everything they see. By having multiple counters on the aircraft, the data can be averaged and then a clever model predicts what’s been missed species by species. If you saw 10 Impala, you probably missed 2.3 and so on.

Gaia drone. Not one of the toy variety...
Photo courtesy Daily Maverick

How about if the whole thing could be done automatically at a much lower cost? Once again you need a drone outfitted with a high resolution camera that takes multispectral images. That means its photographs are at different wave lengths of light (some that we can’t see in the infrared) so that the AI system that afterwards analyses the images can distinguish not only between different individuals but also between different species. Because of the different wavelengths, animals could be recognized even under cover. Of course, there will still be individuals missed, but now the spotter is always the same so there’s consistency. Absolute numbers are usually less important than trends in wildlife conservation. (I’ve been one of these aerial counters, and it’s really hard to be consistent.)

Herd of buffalo drinking.
They have to be correctly separated from the hippos
Photo courtesy Timbavati Nature Reserve

That is just what Project Gaia is. In a recent survey to the West of the Kruger National Park, the drone flew 20,000km (12,500 miles) and took nearly 3 million photographs. No way humans could even imagine analyzing that, but a specially trained AI system can – first identifying the animal species and then adding it to the count.

One of the appealing advantages is that the drones fly quietly at 100 meters’ height and don’t disturb the animals. Helicopters are noisy and often scare animals. Apart from the distress that may cause, it may also result in the animals running far enough to be counted twice…

Of course, these are niche applications. It’s the military and the big tech companies that have the money. Regrettably, the AI, drone, and aerial survey companies will follow the money. At least other applications can pick up the scraps.

I Don't Like New Things

noreply@blogger.com (Ovidia Yu) — Tue, 07 Apr 2026 12:26:00 +0000

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

I like the idea of them and I admire (and envy) people who embrace them and plunge in (Thank you, Stan!) But when it comes to actually stepping into something unfamiliar—like this new Substack—I find myself hesitating, resisting, wanting figure it all out before I begin.

And no, I don’t like this about myself. And I don’t like things changing.

These were my darling doglets, Princess and Hermione ten years ago.

They’re gone now. For a long time I was sure I could never have another dog because no other dog could replace them. And I didn’t want to let them be replaced.

I felt that way before— When I was in primary school and they started clearing jungle and moving people out of the hillside farms in what I’d thought of as wilderness behind our home.

In those days the ‘jungle catchment area’ extended all the way across to Bukit Timah Hill. It felt like the green on granite heart at the centre of Singapore island had always been there and would always be there. It was full of jungle chickens, monkeys, snakes, and the occasional wild pig. There were treks worn to the wild durian and chempadak trees and children would compete with monkeys for ripe mangoes, bananas and rambutans. When the construction began, we used to climb up the slope and walk along the levelled earth, not understanding what it was becoming and assuming it would soon go back to ‘normal’.

Today, that stretch is part of the Pan Island Expressway.

There are no more jungle chickens and no way (for people or pangolins) to cross over on foot.

And when they opened up that stretch of the expressway I remember realising that things would never go back to ‘normal’. And that what I’d thought of as ‘normal’ was just how I’d seen things from my limited (in place and time) POV.

I’m also thinking about letting things go because we’ve just had the sea burial—

Burial urns being released into the elements.

Another reminder that we have to let things go.

Writing is also particularly challenging now because I’m trying something new there too. I can’t talk about it because of I want to figure out what I think of it on the page. I’ve got to where I have a kind of structure I like but am clearing out stuff that’s no longer useful or relevant given how the story turned out (for now) and I need to cut a lot of stuff--which always hurts.

At about 30,000 words now, possibly less tomorrow depending on how much gets culled.

I started writing for theatre and now, when shaping a book, I feel like I’m trying to be the director, scene, set and lighting designer, manage the sound system as well as act all the parts.

And now, trying to step into Substack, I feel like I’m walking into a new space with a producer I’m not familiar with.

It’s like trying to figure out characters (especially the unpleasant ones whose nonsense has to make sense to them) while hosting a complicated gathering and figuring out who gets invited into the VIP room (because Sponsors) and will they be happy with Prosecco and dim sum and how to make sure those who come because they love you (and are quietly hoping there won’t be anything too activist, alternative or otherwise alarming) are comfortable with what they find within your pages.

And I always feel I’m not ready yet.

The problem is, the expressway gets built whether you’re ready or not. The wilderness changes and the story moves forwards.

Singapore is always changing and remaking itself because we are so short of land. It’s like living in a Minecraft scenario where the landscape is always changing.

And yet the past never quite disappears either.

And maybe my discomfort and resistance to change is part of the whole process.

When Princess and Hermione died it felt wrong to even consider another dog. But now we have Sophia.

She’s not Princess or Hermione but entirely herself—but with echoes of them both.

Our Scruffy Sleepy Sophia.

And I’m coming to understand what I didn’t when I watched the roads being carved through our jungle spaces: things don’t come back, but new things come as you let go and move on.

One Thin Dime

noreply@blogger.com (Sara Johnson) — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 13:30:00 +0000

Sara E. Johnson, 1st Sunday

I mentioned in a previous post that I enjoy teaching my Exploring Mysteries class. One session is on the history of mysteries, and in researching that wide and deep topic, I learned about dime novels and how they caught on like a California wildfire and broke ground for many of the genres we enjoy today.

Dime novels debuted in the United States during the Civil War era. Named for their cheap price, they began as lurid Westerns, and later branched to romances, adventures, and detective stories. Their straightforward plots combined sentimentality with violence and introduced readers to new vistas much like books set in a foreign locale do for me.

The first known dime novel, Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter by Ann S. Stephens, was published by Irwin and Erasmus Beadle and Robert Adams in 1860. It’s a tale of an interracial romance between a white hunter and Malaeska, a Mohawk woman. Their son is raised in the white culture. When the son learns of his parentage, his reaction is melodramatic, a common element of dime novels. Here’s the section when the son learns of his parentage: "Great God!" he almost shrieked, dashing his hand against his forehead. “No, no ! it can not — I, an Indian? a halfblood? the grandson of my father’s murderer? Woman, speak the truth; word for word, give me the accursed history of my disgrace.”

(No surprise: dime novels perpetuated racist stereotypes of Native Americans, Blacks and Asians.) Stephens was paid $250 for Malaeska. It reportedly sold over 300,000 copies. You can read it in its entirety; it is in the public domain.

Civil War soldiers tackled the boredom of camp life by reading and trading dime novels. According to one book historian, dime novels were “sent to the army in the field by cords, like unsawed firewood.”

Prior to the Civil War, reading was an upper class or upper-middle class pastime. Books were expensive. In the 1850s, the average book cost $1 to $1.50. The creation of dime novels slashed those prices so that virtually anyone could afford to have their nose in a book while, at the same time, literacy rates were growing.

Dime novels were mass produced on cheap paper. They averaged one hundred pages and were small: 6.5 x 4.5 inches, perfect to fit in a pocket or pocketbook. To keep costs low, the books were printed on paper similar to newsprint. Any dime novel you come across in an antique store is likely to have brittle or crumbling pages. The print was often fuzzy and with odd space breaks.

Updated shipping methods – though no comparison to Amazon’s next-day delivery – brought the dimes to almost every newsstand or dry good store. People – largely of the working class – went crazy for them. In the five years following Malaeska, the Indian Wife of the White Hunter, Beadle and Adams published more than five million dime novels. ‘Books for the millions’ was proclaimed on the covers. Dartmouth Libraries said, “Enormously popular and critically maligned, the dime novel was one of the first forms of mass culture in the United States.”

Detective stories soon replaced Westerns. One of the earliest was The Two Detectives; or, The Fortunes of a Bowery Girl. This was actually a nickel novel because it was short. The Bowery Detective series focused on gritty city crime. A funny aside: Typical dime novel detectives were old. Their names often reflected their advanced ages: Old Bull’s Eye, Old Sleuth, Old Neverfail, and Old Spicer.

Women became writers and readers of dime novels. The plots that attracted them dealt with romance and marriage. Many readers were ‘working girls,’ so a repeated story line was a love between a working class girl and a noble. (Sound familiar?) All for Love of a Fair Face, The Story of a Wedding Ring, The Unseen Bridegroom, and The Charity Girl are titles of dime novels marketed for women.

The dime novel’s counterpart in the United Kingdom was the penny dreadful. Subjects were Gothic – hence the name – and included tales about vampires, highwaymen, murderers, and ghosts. They were also know as penny bloods, penny awfuls or simply ‘bloods.’

The years 1870 to 1900 were the dime novel’s heyday. Not many dime novels were printed after World War I. Pulp fiction magazines nudged them aside and going to the ‘motion pictures’ was more exciting and cheaper than one thin dime.

Dime novels are a thing of the past. Today, mass-market paperbacks face a similar extinction. Remember how you could pick up a copy of Jaws or Carrie at the airport or drug store for a cheap price, and slip into your pocket? Mass-market paperbacks, like dime novels, were touted as making reading accessible for the masses, including me. Trade paperbacks, hard covers, Ebooks, audio books, and Netflix are dancing on their graves.

Which mass-market paperbacks do you have yellowing in your book case? Happy reading and I'll see you next month.

Sara Johnson, 1st Sunday

Thirteen Years Ago Today, 'Here's Looking At You, Babe' Played Out for Real.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Siger) — Sat, 04 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Saturday - Jeff

Thirteen Years ago today I wrote a post for MIE detailing a seminal occurrence in my life--the birth of a grandchild. As my family prepares to celebrate today's thirteenth anniversary with reminiscences of the years of wonder and joy we've reaped from that miraculous event, I thought it appropriate to reflect back on memories of that day---at least as I recall it---by republishing my time-line scribblings as the reporter on the scene:

It was a 5:00AM Thursday morning. Ugh, what an ungodly hour for an alarm to go off. But if we hadn’t driven in last night from my farm in western New Jersey it would have been a 3AM wakeup. Hmm, a quick check of the emails—what else does one do first thing in the morning? It’s from a friend on Mykonos: “Call me. It’s important.” My guess is it’s in response to my request for information about an esoteric Greek funeral practice tied into my new Andreas Kaldis novel.

I reply, “Am on way to the hospital. Will call later.”

There’s another message from the same friend. “Call me after the baby is born.”

After the baby is born. Wow. Seeing the phrase in black and white (pixels) makes an impact. My baby girl is having her own baby this morning. Her first. It’s set for 7:30AM.

I’ve been so busy this week cutting away the remaining trees downed by hurricane Sandy that I haven’t had time to work on my post for Saturday. And I know that I won’t be able to focus on a “Greek piece” this week. But come to think of it, with all the time Greeks spend obsessed with the “fixins” for babies, perhaps it might be a refreshing change to focus on the back end of the courting process. My sort of in real time existential take on “Waiting for Baby.”

5:45AM. We’re headed north to Huntington Hospital. It’s close by the Long Island Sound, not far from where we’re staying just south of the Long Island Expressway. Officially the LIE is Interstate 495, Long Island’s commuter backbone, known affectionately to those whose lives are tethered to it as “the Long Island Distressway” or “The World’s Longest Parking Lot.” I remember living out this way in the early 70s. Beautiful place, offering a wonderful life…if you don’t mind rush hour commutes into NYC.

6:00 AM. Made it to the hospital and found the Labor and Delivery Waiting Room. Impressive name. Too bad the green carpeting and mismatched green-brown furniture doesn’t cut it. But who cares about the décor—which probably is why it’s as bad as it is—I just hope we get to see Karen before she goes into surgery. She’s having a Caesarian delivery. Strange name. I always heard it came from the way Julius Caesar entered the world, but according to all-knowing Wikipedia (thank God the waiting room has wireless), that theory’s been debunked. It’s now thought to derive from the verb caedere … to cut…as in to cut through the abdominal wall to deliver the baby.

It’s so much easier being a man.

I’m not worried. Nor is my daughter. At least she wasn’t when we spoke last night before she went to sleep. Honest, I’m not worried.

6:15AM. Karen’s mother, Judy, and Judy’s husband, Joe, arrive in the waiting room. Three strangers also are in there and have been since before Barbara and I got there. They’re the quiet type. Haven’t said a word to anyone. But they won’t remain that way for long. Judy—that’s my ex-wife—is naturally gregarious, capable of drawing monks vowed to silence into animated conversation. She pulls out a photo of Karen taken less than an hour after she was born. My handwritten note on the back gives the details. I was anal then. I was a lawyer.

6:45AM. Karen’s husband, Terry, pops into the waiting room to say we can see Karen. We follow him through a maze of turns and doorways, complete with one wrong turn attributable to an anxious pappy moment. There’s the room and inside is Karen, all smiles and calm amid monitors and an IV hookup. I can hear the baby’s heartbeat: loud, strong, and ready to take on the world.

7:15AM. Terry’s mom and dad arrive. Three sets of grandparents hovering and waiting for the big moment. I sure hope the new kid is into hugging. Terry says it’s our last chance to toss out name suggestions. I’ll spare you that, but believe me when I say it’s easier to title a new book.

7:30AM. Nurse comes in to prepare Karen and says we have to leave. We head down to the cafeteria for coffee. I think I’ll write. Not a chance. Judy has new photographs of our son’s children to share.

8:00AM. Terry shows up in the cafeteria. Things are delayed. A woman who’s been in labor all night now needs an emergency C-section, so Karen’s time has been pushed back a bit. The nurse told Terry to get something to eat and Karen to rest. We tease him about his “deer in the headlights” look…a natural segue considering his up close and personal SUV run in with a Long Island Bambi the day before yesterday.

8:15AM. Terry gets a call from Karen. Everyone’s listening as he says, “Wow.”

He hangs up to a chorus of “What’s ‘Wow’?”

Answer: “Doctor said that since Karen isn’t in distress and other women are facing more difficult situations, her delivery is now pushed back to at least noon, maybe as late as 2PM. But Karen has to rest, and we have the choice of hanging around in the waiting room or cafeteria until then or leaving the hospital and coming back later.

Barbara and I vote for going back to sleep.

9:00AM. Back at the hotel I receive a SMS from Terry. He suggests we wait to hear from him before returning to the hospital because the doctor said there are likely to be more delays. I try calling my friend in Greece. No answer. I send a SMS on the situation to my son and brother. I fall asleep.

11:00AM. Message from Terry: Looks like she’ll go in at 2.

12:30 PM. I never realized how many Dunkin’ Donut shops there are on Long Island. Maybe it’s just how many times we’ve driven past the same one in the last twelve hours, but there does happen to be one right next door to the baby store we’re looking for. Barbara suspects it has the “perfect” stuffed animal. In exchange for her promise that we can go to Dunkin’ Donuts for coffee “after,” I join her in the hunt for bunny rabbit. It’s decision time: Do I prefer the pink, blue, beige, or white one? I try feigning nonchalance: “Whichever one shows the least dirt.” That’s how I choose my cars these days, so why shouldn’t it work for bunny rabbits?

I know, it’s pink for girls and blue for boys, but that requires you know the sex and we don’t. Karen doesn’t want to know the ending before she finishes the story. Sounds like a mystery writer’s daughter to me.

2 PM. Back in the Labor and Delivery Waiting Room. It’s just the six of us on baby watch, plus a receptionist. No one wants to talk about anything serious…even baseball’s off limits. It’s just old memories retold, recast, reminisced. Funny isn’t it how life’s genuinely significant events are so often surrounded by mindless waiting.

A television mounted on the far wall is running a (badly written) soap opera. I’m sure the last time I knowingly sat in one place for so long with a soap opera playing on television was in some Greek hospital’s waiting room, but that show would have made more sense. The only person watching it is the receptionist. Perhaps it’s “General Hospital” and she considers it part of a work-study program.

2:15 PM. Another couple comes in. Now it’s eight people plus the receptionist and she’s still the only one watching TV. Two are reading newspapers, one a magazine, another a Kindle, two are on iPads, and one is just staring off into the middle distance. I’m typing away on my Macbook Air.

A Reese’s mini-pieces commercial comes on the TV. I look up. Finally, something on TV I can sink my teeth into.

More waiting.

2:30PM. Terry stops in to say Karen is now in the delivery room. Everyone’s quiet. We know it’s time. He leaves.

2:55 PM. An SMS from Terry. “In for epidural.”

3:15PM. The hospital’s PA system breaks the silence with Brahms’ Lullaby. We’re told it’s played throughout the hospital every time there’s a new baby born.

My heart jumps. Could it be ours? I’m really excited, almost in tears. “Oh my gosh,” says Terry’s mother, Joyce, to her husband, Tom. Judy’s husband starts taking photos of everyone. I try imagining my daughter’s face at that moment. Six very excited people are now waiting for confirmatory news.

3:30PM. No one’s told us anything yet. Terry’s mom walks down to the nursery. Comes back with no news.

3:55PM. Still no word. Where’s Terry? Where’s an SMS? The mothers are getting worried, the fathers are acting as if they’re not.

4:00PM. Tensions are rising. Talk is now onto politics. If the baby doesn’t show up soon we might need to switch the TV to the World Wide Wresting channel to properly reflect the changing mood in the room.

4:05PM. Right on cue Terry shows up in the doorway. His mother cries and hugs him. He says to come with him to see Karen and the baby. “So what is it?” we ask. He says they want to tell us the details together. Dramatists both.

It seems a long walk, but Terry knows the way perfectly this time and it’s only a couple of minutes before we’re standing in front of a large wooden door marked “recovery room.” Terry knocks, we wait for someone to let us in, and six of us herd in behind him. Karen is on a bed off in the corner covered in a blanket and wearing some sort of scarf. I look closer. It isn’t a scarf. It’s a snuggly wrapped baby. Her baby!

Terry goes to the far side of the bed to stand beside his wife and child as my theater trained daughter announces, “Baby was born precisely at 3:00PM, weighs five pounds, ten ounces, is eighteen inches long, and is a” … drumroll please … “She.”

No longer an “it” but a she! A babe! A moll! A lassie! And a genuine beauty if I may say so myself.

We only have time to get in a quick peek at her before the nurse starts shooing us out of the room saying we’ll get to spend more time with baby and mom in about an hour.

As I’m leaving the room Karen calls out, “Dad.”

“Yes.”

“Come back, please.”

I walk over to her bed and lean down. “Yes, honey?”

She whispers, “I watched your face when I told you about my baby.”

I smile. “I was crying.”

“I know.” And my baby cries as she squeezes my hand.

God bless you, my beautiful baby granddaughter, your Mommy, and your Daddy.

–Jeff

The Writer's Nap

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata in Baltimore, MD) — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Sujata Massey

Frederick Leighton's Flaming June

Napping after lunch is a tradition with adherents worldwide, especially in warm seasons and places. We had 87-degree weather yesterday in Baltimore—the second hot day in a row. Cherry trees are bursting into pink heaven outside my bedroom window. As I lie down over rather than underneath the sheet because of my street clothes, guilt snuggles alongside me, an unwelcome companion whispering that I didn’t make my morning writing quota.

My sigh back at her turns into a yawn. There’s a curtain of fog inside my head, perhaps induced by the budding trees themselves. Brain fog prevents me from getting into flow whenever I want. I know from experience that sentences are most sprightly in the morning, but unfortunately this morning I dashed out for an appointment. And so, at 1:15 pm—right after lunch—I throw myself onto my bed with relief.

I know I’m not the only person who indulges; and I imagine how many people are napping in my neighborhood. Thirty-five miles away, the White House lies, and I have a brief image of Donald Trump napping that I quickly shove away.

Better to think about people in my lane: writers. The authors Vladimir Nabakov and Thomas Mann were habitual nappers who managed to also write classic novels. Patricia Highsmith napped, but usually at 6 p.m., setting herself up after a day of writing to soldier on into the night.

Patricia Highsmith

The Internet search calls up many more male writers as self-avowed nappers than it does female. I suppose women writers have often felt that stealing time to be able to write was a great privilege not to be squandered. As the mother of a one-year-old, when my baby napped, I wrote frantically—it was my only chance. I play out this idea to realize that in the 19^thand much of the 20^th century, women worked hard in the house, caring for children, and if someone got a moment to herself, and was working on a book—there was the focus. I bet that daytime sleeping was a privilege reserved for the elders among them—and was a sign of necessity for their health. Apparently, the legendary nurse Florence Nightingale made the discovery that rest was needed for recovery—though she typically spent less than five hours on sleep herself!

Florence Nightingale

Things are slowly changing. Tricia Hersey is a poet, nonfiction writer and activist famous for her books Rest is Resistance and We Will Rest in which she explains her practice of resting as an act of self-care and protest against the unrelenting, capitalistic grind. I’ve read about scientists proving that a fatigued brain has more trouble finding answers and creative solutions than a rested one. Though it’s not just sleep that does it—walking in nature works, say if you’re in a workplace or at school and don’t have a cozy bed in which to retreat.

Brain power also increases after taking a walk in nature.

My pattern used to be to regularly stroll with my dog after my own lunch. I did it because I know that if I move vigorously after lunch, my blood sugar curve doesn’t look like Mount Olympus. Blood sugar that’s too high is itself a reason for sudden fatigue.

There are plenty of ways to spend one’s time when not writing. I will continue to practice both walking and napping. I may have dreamed up a way to combine both. And this looks like sinking into a chair on my upstairs porch, or on a bench in the park, and letting my eyes ever-so-gently fall closed.

Setting my alarm now for 25 minutes.

Vincent Van Gogh’s Bedroom in Arles

An exclusive excerpt of AN ARTFUL DODGE & thoughts on "historical truth" versus "verisimilitude"

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Odden) — Thu, 02 Apr 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Karen Odden - every other Thursday

I'm thrilled to be able to share the sneak preview, first three chapters of my new book! There's a link at the bottom to read them for free!

But before you do ... I want to say a few words about writing about the Victorian period and the tension between historical truth and verisimilitude.

One of my favorite anecdotes that illustrates this tension comes from my friend Susan Elia MacNeal, who writes the Maggie Hope series, which begins during WWII, with Maggie serving as a secretary in Churchill's office. For her research, Susan went to the War Rooms, where she read facsimiles of Churchill's letters in his handwriting. In his letters, he uses the abbreviation "OMG." If you think about it, it makes sense -- it's the age of the telegram, when abbreviations saved money.

Now, if Susan were to put that detail in one of her books, she would be sustaining historical truth but destroying verisimilitude -- which we could define as what the reader believes to be true about the period. Imagine the outcry! I can hear the chuckling Goodreads reviews now ... "What's Churchill going to write next? LMAO?"

None of us writers want to push the reader's "disbelief" button. When it comes to including elements that pull readers out of the story -- well, we have to pick our battles. Sometimes we hit that button inadvertently.

For example, a few years ago, a reviewer wrote something along the lines of, "I love your books, and they're pretty accurate, except you have Inspector Corravan drinking coffee, when Victorians drank tea."

I've been explicitly warned not to engage on social media platforms over reviews. But had I engaged, I would have replied, "Yes, Victorians drank a lot of tea, and the image of women drinking tea has been widely documented both in words and images (such as this painting, above). But in the 1870s, there were still 7 million tons of coffee being imported annually into England, most of it arriving through the London docks. Elaborate silver coffee services (that you can still see in museums) were still being produced."

That said, even though it's historical truth, I might not have had Corravan drink coffee had I realized it was going to hit the "disbelief" button.

However, there are elements that I'm willing to hit the "disbelief" button to include. The most important is giving my Victorian heroines agency.

Sometimes, I receive comments along the lines of, "I just don't believe [your heroine Annabel or Nell or whoever] could go running around London the way she does. Weren't Victorian women confined to their homes?"

It's a valid question. TV shows and movies show Victorian women indoors, at balls, drinking tea, languishing in chaises, reading novels, riding in closed carriages. Books by Victorian writers including Anthony Trollope and Wilkie Collins and Mrs. Henry Wood often show women in somewhat stifling surroundings.

But keep in mind two things. First, these characters are mostly unmarried, upper-class women who are going on the marriage market. They need to be watched and guarded lest their honor be lost and they become unmarriageable. That was a real, historical risk for women of a certain class -- but not for all classes. Second, these characters are fictional! Writers (for TV or of novels) gain a lot of plot advantages by constraining their female characters in particular ways -- in making certain acts impossible. It creates tension, anxiety, stress, frustration -- all good plot drivers and conflict-generators.

I don't believe in giving women characters undue amounts of agency and justifying it by calling them "spunky." I try hard to be accurate, and that includes showing my heroines behaving plausibly within the strictures and mores of the time.

However, one of the ways I work around the conventional constraints in fiction and give my heroines legitimate agency is by having them be members of the lower and middle classes, or orphans with no father or older brother to oversee their actions. In real-life Victorian England, who's watching these women? Virtually no one! Their honor and virtue and morality didn't need to be so desperately protected. Their goal wasn't necessarily to marry. Working women walked all over London alone, without chaperones. They went to shops, they bought breakfast from street vendors, they visited galleries and museums and the Crystal Palace in 1851. They worked in hospitals, in wealthy families' homes, in dressmaking shops, in bakeries, in music halls, in shops, and in brothels.

And in AN ARTFUL DODGE, they work as thieves. Kit Jimeson is a member of an all-women thieving gang operating out of the Elephant & Castle area of Southwark (above), south of the Thames. My fictional gang is based on the historical (real) gang of women thieves who were working out of E&C beginning in the 1870s. In later years, especially in the 1920s, they'd become known as the Forty Elephants, and they were active into the 1930s. Scotland Yard tried repeatedly to shut them down. To read more about the real Forty Elephants, you might look up Brian McDonald's excellent book Alice Diamond and the Forty Elephants: Britain's First Female Crime Syndicate.

To read the first three chapters of AN ARTFUL DODGE and to meet Kit and her friends for yourself, click here: https://bit.ly/4uoYSIN

"Son, take a good look around"

noreply@blogger.com (Kiwicraig) — Tue, 31 Mar 2026 07:49:00 +0000

Me and Miss M joining some locals for the second-ever
Motueka Beach Reserve parkrun to kickstart Saturday morning

Craig every second Tuesday

Kia ora and gidday everyone,

Greetings from New Zealand! For the first time in far too long (a shade over three years), I'm back in the home country, sending you all best wishes and bookish goodness from the Tasman District in the Top of the South Island.

I've lived and travelled around many places in the world, but for me this place will always be 'home'.

I wasn't born here, but moved to Richmond in the Tasman District as a four-year-old, and did all of my schooling locally before moving away for university. My love for books and mystery fiction began here, at my primary school and local public library, along with the bookshelves full of fascinating tales at our home. Since then (yikes, coming towards 30 years ago), I've returned almost every year, often multiple times a year, and sometimes for weeks or months at a time, until fairly recently when things got disrupted by COVID then other life events.

Without meaning to, I've only been back three times in the past six plus years; that's after having never in memory (since I was pre-4) had any calendar year without some time in the Top of the South, until 2020.

So, yeah, it's great to be back. Miss M and I have been loving catching up with family and old friends and enjoying autumn weather that's been far sunnier/warmer than London's Spring. In a a few days we've managed to visit parts of the Abel Tasman, Nelson Lakes, and Kahurangi National Parks, along with The Brook Waimarama Sanctuary, the famous 'Pupu Springs' (for much of my life considered the clearest waters in the world), artisans and creatives like the world-famous Höglund Art Glass and Jens Hansen jewellers (creators of 'the One Ring' from the Lord of the Rings films), and much more, without feeling like we're tearing around or trying to pack too much into our days.

Here's a wee bit of a photo essay, for those who aren't so familiar with the Top of the South:

Miss M holding one of the oversized 'One Ring
to Rule them All' crafted for the LOTR films

The sacred Te Waikoropupū Springs (Pupu Springs) in Golden Bay, the largest
freshwater spring in the Southern Hemisphere, among clearest waters in the world

A tuatara at Brook Sanctuary: an ancient reptile that predates
dinosaurs, and has been around for 200 million years

The shipwreck of the Janie Seddon, which served during both
world wars, before being abandoned in the Motueka mudflats

The underside of the Kaponga plant, aka 'Silver Fern', on an Abel Tasman
National Park track - rather familiar for many sports-lovers out there...

Enjoying an autumnal swim at Tata Beach in Golden Bay

Rainbows and waterfalls (Wainui Falls)
in Abel Tasman National Park

Witnessing the expert artisans craft beautiful
pieces at world-famous Höglund Art Glass

No Nelson visit would be complete without some medal-winning
Penguino gelato; since 1996, a rotating array of 350+ flavours

Riuwaka Resurgence, or 'source of the Riwaka' where a river emerges from
a clear spring, filtered for years through marble/limestone of Takaka Hill

That's just a wee snapshot, and we only had a few days in the Top of the South so far.

Tomorrow we'll visit Mapua, and I've also got a crime fiction author event at the renovated Motueka Library; for the first time since the very first Mystery in the Library event in Takapuna in 2015, I'll be involved onstage for part of our annual series, which now numbers more than 125 events at 50 different libraries in New Zealand (as well as a few overseas). I'm chairing a panel with past Ngaios Best Firast Novel winner Chris Stuart, actor, writer, and director Douglas Brooks (who went to Waimea College with me back in the day), and Motueka policeman, filmmaker, and thriller writer Stef Harris, for a discussion on how they craft or perform gripping tales full of memorable characters and events.

It should be lots of fun, and it's a cool treat for me to be involved in person, after having organised more than 125 free/koha library events in New Zealand over the past decade without getting to attend them. It was really nice too to spy a fair bit of in-library publicity for tomorrow night's panel, when Miss M and I popped in on Saturday after completing the second-ever Motueka Beach Reserve parkrun nearby.

As much as I appreciate all we can do nowadays from afar, for work or leisure, thanks to technological advances, there's still something special about in-person events and tangible media, I believe. For instance, I've seen plenty of pics or online comments from people about our Dark Deeds Down Under anthologies, but it was still pretty cool to see the first edition in the Motueka Library the other day, part of the same regional library system (Tasman District Libraries) where I did lots of my early crime and thriller reading/borrowing, from Agatha Christie's Poirot tales to the thrillers of Alistair Maclean, etc.

Full circle moment? Not sure, but fun and feels cool, nonetheless. I'm grateful for this weird and wonderful life, despite all its tough times, twists, and challenges.

Until next time. Ka kite anō.

Whakataukī of the fortnight:

Inspired by Zoe and her 'word of the week', I'm ending all my MIE posts by sharing a whakataukī (Māori proverb), a pithy and poetic thought to mull on as we go through life.

"Ehara taku toa i te toa takitahi, engari he toa takitini"

(My success should not be bestowed onto me alone, as it was not individual success but success of a collective)

Our 2026 Mystery in the Library season kicked off on Thursday night in Karori,
with 2x Ngaios winner Jennifer Lane, NZ Booklovers Awards shortlistee Rodney Strong,
2025 Ngaios winner James Hollings, and past finalist Helen Vivienne Fletcher

Writers Who Cook

noreply@blogger.com (Annamaria Alfieri) — Sun, 29 Mar 2026 21:23:00 +0000

Annamaria on Monday

Some of my friends and I have joined together in a group we have labeled WWC. We meet up for long-standing, intermittently scheduled gatherings of authors and sometimes their spouses. In a couple of cases, both are authors. We are twelve in number, but because of busy lives we are hardly ever all together at once. This past Saturday, we were just six, including five writers.

WWC began after a conversation at an MWA-NY event when my friend Gary Cahill and I were chatting about cooking and began wondering why so many writers like to cook. The best answers we came up with then, and since over the years, concern the fact that both writing and cooking are nourishing - in one case of the body and another of the soul or the intellect. Or perhaps it's because writing is done alone and the result is shared but only after much time has passed and when the author is not present. Whereas with cooking, consumption often follows quickly and the cook is there to share in and see the satisfaction. My contribution to this discussion, which gets laughs, but I maintain is not entirely silly, is that you do it standing up.

Our meetings always begin with a first course we call the amuse bouche: pizza prepared by Gary, who according my very picky tastebuds, is the best pizzaiolo on this planet. Here is the first pizza for this recent event as it was going into the oven.

And before we took the first bites.

There are always at least two pizzas, but, as usual, once we started munching, we were too distracted by deliciousness to take many pictures.

When it comes to writing, Gary is also a splendid short story author of literary merit.

Our next course was an appetizer of gravlax, perfectly prepared by Jeff Markowitz. Exquisite!

Jeff's mystery stories are equally great. Some that are hilarious. Man others deep and moving. His latest is a historical, with a look at societal issues that resonate today,

Jeff's Wife Carol Markowitz also writes historical fiction, with a backdrop of WWII. Just now, she has a story in the 2025 anthology of The Military Writers Society of America.

For the main course, I made sea scallops in a brandy sauce served over rice, with asparagus.

The last writer this time was Richie Narvaez, who writes wonderful New York , both novels and short stories. His latest is in an anthology of crime fiction having to do with climate change.

Lucky us, Richie's wife Denise is a pastry chef, who this time brought us cookies of her own making, designed in a mystery theme! Yum!!

Happy Reading and Buon Appetito!

A Bit of Greek Humor to Help Us Get By.

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Siger) — Sat, 28 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Jeff—Saturday

There really isn’t much uplifting news to report these days, aside of course from this Weekend's Sweet Sixteen NCAA Basketball games. But there remains humor to be found ... at least for Greeks.

So, rather than droning on about what confronts us on so many fronts, permit me to share with you a bit of uniquely Greek humor. Unique I say, because it brings Greek gods into play in jokes I lifted directly from jokes4us.com.

What game did the Greek Gods play?

Hydra and go seek.

What did the Ancient Greeks wear on their feet?

Tennis Zeus.

How do Greek women get ready for a toga party?

With A Hera appointment.

Have you seen the movies about Greek Mythology?

No? Well you odyssey them.

What do you call a musician petrified by Medusa?

A rockstar.

Why doesn't Aphrodite date tennis players?

Because love means nothing to them.

What did Poseidon say to the sea monster?

What's Kraken?

Why does Ares only have a Sony Playstation?

Because he is the "God Of War."

Who did Artemis invite to her birthday party?

Her nearest and deer-est friends.

What breed of horse was the Trojan horse?

A nightmare.

What do you call the Arnold Schwarzenegger action movie about the Greek Bailouts?

The Last Action Gyro.

And punny you should ask, but yes, now you know why I have such an affinity for Greece. :)

—Jeff

The Little Five

noreply@blogger.com (Michael Sears (of Michael Stanley)) — Thu, 26 Mar 2026 10:38:00 +0000

Michael - Alternate Thursdays

Most people know about South Africa’s Big Five. These are the iconic Bushveld animals that people come halfway around the world to see in their natural environment. They are the Lion, Leopard, Elephant, Rhinoceros, and Buffalo. So then what are the Little Five? They are also fascinating creatures, just a lot smaller. And their namesakes are the Big Five. Let’s take a look at them (in reverse order):

The Red-billed Buffalo Weaver

Red-billed Buffalo Weaver

Masked weaver putting the finishing touches to his beautifully woven nest

Although these birds are part of the Weaver group, they are not at all in the class of the charming masked weavers that build intricately woven nests. With masked weavers, the males will offer the females several options, and she may reject them all. If she does, the male will completely demolish the nests and start again.

Thorny dead acacia branches seem a favorite construction material

Buffalo weavers, on the other hand, build large communal nest that are anything but elegantly woven. They are built from twigs and sticks arranged in an apparently haphazard fashion but producing “lodges” containing several nest chambers. The males persuade as many females as they can to take up residence and then they defend them from other males. They flap around noisily announcing their sovereignty. Probably they aspire to having their likenesses on gold coins. Occasionally, the whole construction becomes so unstable that it collapses. Then the whole flock will move on to another location and repeat the whole chaotic process.

Very proud of himself

They are large (for weavers) and quite handsome in their way, but not very bright. I once saw a predatory hawk make its way around the communal nest reaching in and grabbing chicks while the weavers carried on no end but did very little. Eventually, some (much smaller) birds took matters into their own hands (so to speak) and chased the hawk away with aerial acrobatics and dive bombing. Afterwards, the buffalo weavers went on with their business as though nothing had happened.

The name Buffalo Weaver comes from their habit of following buffalo herds to feed on the insects the large beasts disturb as the move through the bush.

The African Rhinoceros Beetle

Okay, so no prizes for guessing how they got their name.

They are appealing creatures, and don’t sting or bite, but unfortunately can do damage to groves of palm trees. Still, nobody’s perfect. They are large for beetles and popular pets in some parts of the world. The horn seems to be for arguments with other males.

The Elephant Shrew

Eastern Rock Elephant Shrew

Elephants shrews are almost ridiculously cute. They use their long noses to search around for insects, which they then flick into their mouths. In fact, they are not actually shrews or even rodents, but have their own order.

We had the pleasure of seeing several living on a large rock outside our cabin at the Mountain Zebra National Park. Their antics were much more entertaining than those of most of the larger animals.

The Leopard Tortoise

Leopard tortoise. No rush...

The Leopard can’t change its spots and neither can the leopard tortoise, although the pattern may fade as they get older. They are the fourth largest species of tortoise and may reach two feet in length. In common with other large tortoise species they are long lived and my reach 100 years old.

I once had a (nearly) crushing experience with a large one. Driving a Land Rover, looking for larger animals, I suddenly realized there was one in the road in front of me. I slammed on the brakes and the vehicle stopped, but the road was downhill and it slid forward some way. When we examined the situation, we realized that the front wheel was actually jammed on the tortoise's shell. The animal had followed Tortoise 101 and disappeared into its shell. The shell wasn't cracked or damaged, but it was firmly held with the tire pressing on one side of the shell. I wanted to reverse the vehicle, but feared that the Land Rover might roll another few inches forward when I released the break before the reverse gear took. That could be disastrous. So we spent some time jamming and hammering large stones in front of the other wheels first. The operation was a success, and in due course the tortoise emerged, took a good look around, and then moved sedately into the bush. Apparently hyenas sometimes get through those shells, but nothing else has much of a chance, not even Land Rovers.

The AntLion

One is grateful that these are very small...

Each hole has a minimonster hiding at the bottom

Alone of all the Little Five, Antlions aren’t restricted to Africa. Uncommon among insects, it’s the larval stage that is the more interesting with their neat sand traps to catch ants and other small insects. Burying themselves in loose sand, the wait at the bottom of their conical pit traps for something to slip in. Then they'll grab it with their fearsome (for ants) jaws and enjoy a good meal. They have a slow metabolism so can take their time between meals. It may take a year to reach the stage where they pupate and change into adults.

The adults are rather lovely creatures, making one think of diaphanous dragon flies, but they live only a few weeks. Finding a mate and laying eggs is about it.

One of the remarkable and enjoyable things about the African bush is the enormous variety of life. Maybe one isn’t always blown away by sightings of the Big Five, but there are always other creatures with interesting lives, behaviors, and pedigrees to enjoy. It is truly a gift.

Notes from the Saggy Middle

noreply@blogger.com (Ovidia Yu) — Tue, 24 Mar 2026 06:00:00 +0000

Ovidia--every other Tuesday

I suspect all writers (and too many readers) are aware of the 'saggy middle' stretch where nothing much seems to be happening.

It kind of feels like that's where we're at in Singapore right now. Everyone's recovering from the crush of major festivals: Christmas- Chinese New Year- Hari Raya Aidilfitri and there's just a little time to breathe now that it's Lent and Easter doesn't come till April 5 this year.

I was thinking that I had nothing to write about this week--not because nothing has happened, but because so many small but good things have.

The best of these is, I have a new office assistant:

I can't believe we didn't realise how smart Sophia is--she just didn't understand our expectations. Now she not only walks on a leash, as soon as she sees me unhooking her harness she lies on her tummy and lifts her two front paws to slide them into the correct loops.
I might be biased, but isn't that dog level genius? She also responds to 'Sit' and 'Stay' even when other dogs are around and holds the current record for digging out treats hidden in egg cartons or wedged into toilet rolls.
Best of all maybe, she's come to understand the yoga mat in my exercise room isn't a second toilet!

Now she sleeps in the corner while I put my daily time in.

But I'm glad I'll be going to yoga and pilates classes again soon. We'll be having the sea burial ceremony (ashes in an approved sea burial pot) for my dad in law this coming Saturday and then the official mourning period will be over.

I've also really enjoyed the first German class we attended. It's been a long time since I've got to study something according to schedule and I realise I've always approached things by plunging in and going full immersion. But I'm seeing how my fellow students work in structured systems, making vocabulary lists and so on.

So I'm taking this as a chance to learn about learning instead of relying on excitement and momentum!

I've also got to a point where I feel like I know (for now at least) where the next book is going. I can feel it taking shape, bones and organs forming and I'm hoping to get a rough draft down by the end of next month.

And through all this I'm very aware how lucky we are to have quiet moments and safe spaces here, with eveything that's going on in the rest of the world.

Solace

noreply@blogger.com (Annamaria Alfieri) — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 21:05:00 +0000

Annamaria on Monday

From my 1970 Webster's Unbridged

I am tempted to explain why I need solace right now. Such complaining would very likely elicit sympathy from the kind people who make up the partners and the fans of Murder is Everywhere. But I will not force my misery-loves-company on you.

As is always the case in my life, it is music that I find most helpful at a time like this. So rather than describing my difficulties, I give you my road to a more hopeful and positive outlook: three songs. Perhaps they will do for you what they are doing for me.

The first one - the beginning of Shostakovich's Piano concerto #2 - starts out a bit sad and quiet, but when the piano comes in the sheer beauty of melody begins to turn me around.

Shostakovich Piano Concerto #2

And now some more gorgeous Shostakovich

And now SOLACE by Scott Joplin

I have proof that this works for me: The tribulations of creating this blog would ordinarily make me want to scream. And I have hardly uttered a groan.

Freedom or Death: A Greek Battle Cry

noreply@blogger.com (Jeffrey Siger) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 04:00:00 +0000

Jeff–Saturday

MANTO MAVROGENOUS

March 25^th is fast approaching. It's a two-for-one holiday in Greece: Annunciation and Greek Independence Day. The former celebrates Mary learning from Archangel Gabriel that she was with child, and the later marks the day in 1821 when Greek Orthodox Bishop Germanos of Patras raised the Greek flag at the Monastery of Agia Lavra in Greece’s Peloponnese and inspired a more than eight-year struggle (1821-1829) to throw off nearly 400 years of Ottoman rule.

Bishop Germanos raising the flag (Theordore Vryzakis)

In towns and villages across Greece, school children proudly parade the country’s blue and white flag. Aflutter, the flag is reminiscent of Greek seas but it holds a deeper meaning. The white cross honors the contribution of the church to the country’s enduring battle for freedom and its nine blue and white bars honor the nine syllable rallying call shouted across the land during Greece’s struggle for Independence: Eleftheria i Thanatos—Freedom or Death. (Though some say they represent the nine letters of ελευθερια in the Greek word for freedom, the idea is the same.).

Petros Mavromichalis

Greece’s larger cities also hold military parades, and Greek communities around the world join in celebration with parades of their own. But this is not about any of those events, or for that matter whether the Revolution actually began a week earlier in another part of the Peloponnese when the ruler of its Mani region, Petros Mavromichalis, raised his war flag in Mani’s capital city of Areopoli and marched his troops off against the Turks.

No, this is about a small Cycladic island’s personal War of Independence heroine, Manto Mavrogenous (1796-1848). Her statue stands at the foot of the main square on Mykonos’ harbor, and soon it will be surrounded by palm fronds—an ancient symbol of triumph, victory, and the sacred sign of Apollo—in honor of a life truly worthy of an epic film. Or a tragic opera.

Manto Mavrogenous Square, Mykonos

Born in Trieste to a wealthy, aristocratic Greek merchant family, Manto Mavrogenous studied philosophy and history, was fluent in several languages, and drew her fire for Greek independence from her father, a member of Filiki Eteria, the secret society dedicated to freeing Greece from Ottoman rule.

She was thirteen when her family returned to its roots in the Cycladic islands, first to Paros and after her father’s death to Tinos. War broke out when she was twenty-five and she left for Mykonos, the place of her family’s origins, to convince its leaders to join in the Revolution. But what she offered Mykonos and indeed all of Greece was far more than words. When Ottomans attempted to land on Mykonos, she commanded the forces that repelled them. She used her fortune to outfit ships and crews that battled pirates and the Ottoman fleet, and to send soldiers to fight for freedom on mainland Greece, as well as to support the families of those who fought.

Manto even sold her jewelry to support the fight and pressed the world to allow Greece to be free. This is from her letter to The Women of Paris: “The Greeks, born to be liberal, will owe their independence only to themselves. So I don’t ask your intervention to force your compatriots to help us. But only to change the idea of sending help to our enemies.”

Demetrius Ypsilantis

In the early years of the war she met Demetrius Ypsilantis, a well-educated son of a prominent family, brother of the leader of Filiki Eteria, and a politically connected war hero. (Yes, that city in Michigan was named after him, a town perhaps better known today for “the world’s most phallic building,” the Ypsilanti Water Tower.) They became engaged and Mavrogenous’ beauty, bravery, and selfless commitment to Greek independence brought her fame across Europe.

Bust of Demetrius erected in foreground of "The Brick Dick" of Ypsilanti.

It seemed a fairy tale, but that was not to be.

During their engagement Mavrogenous’ home was totally destroyed by fire and her fortune stolen. She moved in with Ypsilanti but in time he broke off the engagement. Deeply depressed and virtually penniless, she never recovered.

Her memoirs were written on Mykonos but she spent most of the balance of her life amid poverty in Greece’s first modern capital, Nafplio, before finally moving to Paros where she died penurious and in oblivion at fifty-four.

The great debts owed to her for financing so much of Greece’s Revolution were never repaid. Unless you count the palms, thanks, and honors bestowed each March 25.

The back of a Greek coin worth less than a penny

Freedom or Death.

––Jeff

The Star From Calcutta, Here At Last!

noreply@blogger.com (Sujata in Baltimore, MD) — Fri, 20 Mar 2026 15:53:00 +0000

Sujata Massey

At long last, THE STAR FROM CALCUTTA has arrived!

Three busy years of writing, editing and marketing have brought the wisps of my old film fantasies to life as the fifth Perveen Mistry historical mystery novel. Here’s my elevator pitch:

Perveen Mistry, Bombay’s first woman lawyer, gets her most glamorous client yet: Subhas Ghoshal, the director and founder of Champa Films, a silent film studio that features his wife, the beautiful daredevil actress Rochana, as headliner. The couple is threatened by a rival film company in Calcutta as well as the omnipresent British government censors.

Perveen brings her best friend, Alice Hobson-Jones, to a preview party for the studio’s next film. Amid the drunken revelry, arguments and liaisons develop. The morning after brings death, a disappearance, and much more of a legal challenge for Perveen, especially since Alice seems to be holding secrets from her. Sailing, a menagerie of performing animals, romance and international intrigue mark the novel. It's onsale in the USA now, and the Indian edition will appear in all South Asian territories in the last week in March. Here's what the Penguin India edition will appear:

One of the challenges in writing about film was locating old Indian films to study and inspire the fictional film (a story within a story) that I dreamed up for Rochana and others from Champa Films. Due to the fragile nature of old film rolls, much of it is gone, although I found some clips online. It looks like many films were about women, and I found myself wondering quite often about the female-centric plots for films like Barrister's Wife.

One film you can easily find on YouTube is Karma, an Indo-German-British production from 1933 starring Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani, the Bengali filmmaking couple that inspired my fictional characters of Subhas and Rochana Ghoshal. Karma is a fascinating film that features a 4-minute kissing scene, which served as the longest lip-lock world-wide for many decades.

I adored learning about old studios in India and traveled to Bombay, where I visited the very old Mehboob Film Studios and the vacant Imperial Theater as well as the National Museum of Indian Cinema, a fantastic group of buildings that house artifacts of many eras and screen old films as well.

The old Imperial Cinema

In Mumbai with historians Amrit Gangar and Sifra Lentin

The museum’s founding curator, Amrit Gangar, graciously met with me and answered my obscure questions. One of the most interesting things I learned was that early Indian film audiences were crazy for action heroines whose physicality expressed rebellion against authority. These films showed stars like Durga Khote and The Fearless Nadia racing cars, swimming rivers and fighting with swords were very popular in the 1920s and ‘30s. Many actresses were of mixed South Asian-European ancestry or came from families who had immigrated from the Middle East, including those of Jewish heritage.

The nation of Germany also plays a surprising role in the book. One of Bombay’s greatest studios, Bombay Talkies, had both a German director and a cinematographer, colleagues that Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani met at Emelka Films in Germany during the 20s and 30s. Being German in British-controlled India between the two wars was a discreet operation due to lingering resentments and suspicion. I had fun talking with Sneha Mathan, narrator of the audiobook, as we worked out what the novel’s character Hans Becker might have sounded like. I myself am Indo-German, so it was very heartwarming for me to bring this aspect into the novel.

You can’t make a film without a team; and I certainly found the same was true in writing a book about film. I close with resounding applause to the off-camera real life crew and of course, my beloved fictional characters and old Bombay locations who will continue in upcoming Perveen Mistry productions.

Royal Bombay Yacht Club bar

Sujata has upcoming events to celebrate and sign The Star From Calcutta. Coming up soon are appearances at The Ivy Bookshop in Baltimore on 3/18; Politics and Prose in Washington DC on 3/22; Queen Takes Book in Columbia, MD on 3/27, and Backwater Books in Ellicott City on 4/10; and McIntryres Books, Pittsboro, NC, on 5/9.

5 things that New Zealand does really, really well

noreply@blogger.com (Karen Odden) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 17:00:00 +0000

Karen Odden - every other Thursday

My husband and I were supposed to visit New Zealand in March 2020 for our 30th anniversary. Needless to say, that didn't happen.

So for our 35th, we decided to reboot the itinerary and the adventure, and now we are smack in the middle of our trip to New Zealand. (Our Sara isn't here at the moment, alas!! But she did give me some pointers.)

From Auckland, we went north up to the Bay of Islands, then we went south and east to Coromandel Peninsula, and then we headed south, through Rotorua, Lake Taupo, and Cape Kidnappers (where the blue line ends); eventually we will make it to Wellington and then to the South Island. Every day, from my passenger seat (on the left side of the car), I'm astounded by how beautiful this country is, how there are delights at every turn. OK ... I have to share Jack-Jack the leering goat! And an Atticus Finch sighting!

No one wants to see all my pictures or read some long travelogue of mine ... but I do want to share 5 things that these New Zealanders do very, very well.

1. Pastries. Omg, I had no idea. The first morning, we had a pastry in the Britomart area of Auckland that was as flaky as any croissant I've ever had in Paris, with a decadent maple almond paste inside like I've never tasted anywhere. It is NOT SHOWN here because I ate it before I remembered to take a picture.

Another highlight, the next morning, a raspberry pastry (shown, as I managed to take a picture before I gobbled it). A few days later, there was a blackberry and white chocolate muffin at the Hahei Cafe. Truly, if I had to pick only five foods to take to an island to live for eternity, one might be that maple almond pastry. Coffee is excellent as well, and the cafes are ubiquitous.

2. Lotions and body wash and honey and wine! We are moving from place to place, but at every stop there are yet more exquisite natural products. I wish I could bring them all home. I'd need another suitcase. Or two.

3. Rocks. I have never seen so many gorgeous rocks amidst water and in the landscape. This is Cathedral Cove, in Coromandel Peninsula. We hiked down to it along the coast, and the tide was just coming in. Breathtaking, honestly.

4. Vistas. Inland, there are miles and miles of vistas -- green pastures and farmland and rolling hills and sheep and cows and horses and corn and hay -- and along the coast, there is water. I'm going to tuck in the vistas you see on the ferries from Auckland because they need to be in my list somewhere. We visited the island of Waiheke, walked on the pristine pale sand beach (vista, yes), and then went up to the Mudbrick Winery for a tasting and still MORE vistas.

5. I've saved the best and most important for last. I'm absolutely wowed by the way that the native Maori culture is celebrated, linguistically present, and part of the fabric of daily life for all New Zealanders and visitors. Many signs show the Maori words first, and the English translation below. Towns have retained their original names. A high point was visiting a living Maori village in Rotorua, where the guide walked us through and explained their alphabet and the history of their spoken and written language, how they used the geothermal land where they live, and the history of how they have kept their culture thriving. (Below, he is explaining the way the body is mapped onto their meeting house.) It was utterly fascinating. I kept thinking to myself, "I am so so glad I didn't miss this."

And now I'll stop.

If you've been to New Zealand, please feel free to share YOUR favorite things.

Walking in Oviedo: How a Compact, Walkable City Improves Health, Mood, and Community

noreply@blogger.com (Kwei Quartey) — Wed, 18 Mar 2026 16:24:00 +0000

Introduction

When I relocated from Los Angeles to Oviedo, I expected a cultural shift. What I didn’t expect was a physiological one. The simple act of walking—built into daily life here—has altered my blood pressure, mood, and sense of connection to others.

Oviedo is not a large city, roughly comparable in footprint to Richmond, Virginia, but without skyscrapers—these are largely prohibited in the historic urban core. The result is a compact, human-scale environment where daily needs are embedded within walking distance.

Grand buildings, but no skyscrapers

Why Walking in Oviedo Works So Well

Oviedo is structured for movement on foot. From my home, nearly everything I need is within a 5–40-minute walk—groceries, pharmacies, cafés, parks, and medical care.

Pedestrian-only streets

When needed, walking is supplemented by:

A reliable and punctual bus system
Readily available taxis
Pedestrian-friendly streets and plazas

Urban researchers consistently show that compact cities encourage daily physical activity because walking becomes the easiest option rather than a planned exercise activity.¹

Evidence-Based Benefits of Walking—and My Experience in Oviedo

1. Reduced Blood Pressure

(Image: AI)

Regular walking has been shown to significantly reduce blood pressure. A meta-analysis of walking interventions found reductions in both systolic and diastolic blood pressure among participants who incorporated walking into daily routines.²

My observation:
Since living in Oviedo and walking daily, my blood pressure has dropped enough that I require less medication.

2. Improved Mood and Reduced Depression

Walking and moderate aerobic activity stimulate endorphin release and improve neurotransmitter balance. Large studies show that regular walking can reduce symptoms of depression and improve overall psychological well-being.³

My observation:
My baseline mood has improved noticeably since walking became a daily part of life rather than something scheduled. One medication down, one more to go!

3. Lower Chronic Stress

Research shows that walking—especially in pleasant urban environments—reduces cortisol levels and sympathetic nervous system activity.⁴

My observation:
The constant low-level tension I experienced while living in Los Angeles—traffic, noise, scheduling every movement—has largely disappeared.

4. Increased Social Connection

Walkable environments foster incidental social interactions, which are strongly linked to improved mental health and reduced loneliness.⁵

My observation:
Walking in Oviedo creates small but meaningful interactions—eye contact, greetings, shared sidewalks.

Contrast that with freeway driving: thousands of people in proximity, yet complete isolation.

5. A Stronger Sense of Community

Urban studies show that pedestrian environments increase social trust and civic engagement.⁶

My observation:
There is a palpable sense that people watch out for one another. I’ve seen this during real emergencies on the street. In my own case, the example was small but revealing. One afternoon, I was on the sidewalk struggling to get my backpack on. Without being asked, a passerby stepped behind me and said, “¿Te ayudo?”—“Can I help you?”—and adjusted the straps. That kind of warm, spontaneous assistance is difficult to imagine when everyone is sealed inside cars.

From Car Culture to Walking Culture

Driving in Los Angeles often felt paradoxical: surrounded by thousands, yet entirely alone.

Walking in Oviedo produces the opposite effect:

You become part of the street
You repeatedly encounter the same spaces and people
The city becomes familiar rather than anonymous

Over time, walking creates belonging.

Urban Design Matters

Oviedo’s walkability is not accidental. Key features include:

Human-scale urban density
Mixed residential and commercial neighborhoods
Wide sidewalks and pedestrian streets
Public services within short distances

Urban planners describe these environments as “15-minute cities,” where daily needs are accessible within a short walk or transit ride.⁷

Oviedo effectively functions this way.

Conclusion

Walking in Oviedo is not exercise in the traditional sense—it is infrastructure.

The city makes movement on foot the most logical way to live. The health benefits follow naturally: lower blood pressure, improved mood, and reduced stress.

But beyond physiology, there is something less measurable and equally important—a restoration of trust in the people around you.

References

1. Sallis JF et al. “Role of Built Environments in Physical Activity.” The Lancet, 2016.

2. Murphy MH et al. “Walking for Health.” British Journal of Sports Medicine, 2007.

3. Mammen G, Faulkner G. “Physical Activity and Depression.” American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 2013.

4. Hunter MR et al. “Urban Green Space and Stress Reduction.” Frontiers in Psychology, 2019.

5. Leyden KM. “Social Capital and the Built Environment.” American Journal of Public Health, 2003.

6. Wood L et al. “Neighborhood Design and Social Interaction.” Health & Place, 2010.

7. Moreno C. “The 15-Minute City.” Smart Cities Journal, 2021.

Italian Food for Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Annamaria Alfieri) — Sun, 15 Mar 2026 19:17:00 +0000

Annamaria on Monday

This coming Tuesday is my Birthday. I have been in tech hell since I returned back to to my beloved NYC after being away for two and half months, hiding out from the storied but this year ICY sidewalks of New York. I will not grumble about the computer difficulties. I am blessed to be where I am and how I am as I reach 85 years on this splendid planet. I am deeply grateful for all the blessings of my life. Here below is a post from some years ago about one of those blessings - I grew up learning how to cook and always enjoying "every body's favorite food."

The playwright Neil Simon famously observed that there are only two laws in the universe: the Law of Gravity and Everyone Loves Italian Food. American supermarket shelves have more Italian food items than any other kind—far more than those of any other ethnic group. The average American eats Italian food of some sort at least once a week.

It has not always been this way.

Each of the 2.7 million Italians who poured into the US between 1890 and 1910 brought with him an average of $12.67. They had left starving areas of what they came call the Old Country. When they arrived in the US (90% through Ellis Island), they found a land of plenty, but what they wanted to eat was their traditional food, a Mediterranean cuisine of vegetables, grains, and fruits. They longed for olive oil, fresh figs, pasta, good bread—none of these easy to find at first.

The United States officially expected them to become American and to demonstrate that they were doing so by adopting the American culture lock, stock, and barrel. The Federal government employed squads of social workers to make sure this happened. An important measure of their success at Americanization was converting Italians to an American diet. I am delighted to report that this effort was a dismal failure.

Despite the difficulties of finding the ingredients they wanted for their own dishes, Italians refused to accept what America wanted to feed them. One Federal social researcher lamented about a family in her study: “Not assimilated, yet. Still eating Italian food.” What recalcitrance! A 1907 report on Wage Earners’ Budgets in New York complained about Italian immigrants’ stubbornness in this regard: “The Italian believes that the commercial method of canning removes all the goodness from food and that a minimum of processes should intervene between harvest and consumption.” Insisting food should be fresh? What a concept!

Italians persisted in replicating their Old Country diet, often with a vengeance. For instance, because there were no figs for sale nearby, my grandfather Gennaro had a fig tree. One cannot grow figs in the climate of New Jersey without a lot of trouble. Each fall, before the first frost, my father and my Uncle Joe, supervised by Gennaro, dug up the tree by the roots, lay it down in a trench, covered it with soil, then with straw, and a khaki tarpaulin. When spring came, they dug it up, stood it upright, and replanted it. Then, the whole family waited for the first green shoots to prove it had survived its winter slumber.

Like all immigrant groups, Italians opened restaurants. It was in those establishments that Italian cooking took an American turn. True Italian meals were a hundred years ago and still are served in courses, the first of which is often a pasta dish. So an Italian might make meatballs (polpette) in tomato sauce, put a little of the sauce and some grated cheese on pasta, serve that and then, as second course, serve the polpette, likely with a vegetable side dish. But American customers in those early Italian eateries weren't used to courses. So to accommodate the cultural difference, restauranteurs invented a New World riff on their cuisine. They combined the the first and the second and Tah-DAH--meatballs and spaghetti!

The current state of Italian restaurants in the US seems to depend on whether or not there is an actual Italian in the kitchen. Many places with Italian names and self-described as Italian serve things far removed from true Italian cuisine. My personal beefs (!) about this are mainly two. First of all, the amount of sauce on the pasta. Authentic Italian pasta might be served with a variety of different sauces, but it is not drowned in Bolognese or carbonara. Much of the time, in US restaurants, there is three or five times the amount of sauce on the pasta as I would serve at home or one would find in a restaurant in Italy. It spoils the dish for me.

Worst of all is the insane about of garlic and hot peppers. Starting with Artusi in 1891, real Italian food experts advise using garlic con parsimonio, parsimoniously. Here is how I learned as a child to saute vegetables: Heat olive oil in a saute pan. Peel and halve (NOT mince) a clove a fresh garlic. NOTE: I said ONE clove. Gently saute the garlic until it softens. (NEVER brown it. If you accidentally brown it, you have to throw the effort away, wash the pan and start over.) With a fork, remove the garlic from the oil and throw it away. Then, add and toss the vegetable in the oil. Delicious! The flavor of the vegetable subtly enhanced by the hint (HINT!!) of garlic.

There are a few regional recipes that call for more garlic - like the Piedmontese favorite Bagna Cauda. But they are the exception, not the rule.

Pepperoncini (hot peppers) go into certain Italian dishes, mostly they are Calabrian recipes. There is NO place for hot peppers in Bolognese sauce. Or Marinara. Or--God Forbid--ossobucco or fiori di zucca.

Why in the name that all that is holy, would anyone want to cook these
delicate blossoms and then pour garlicky pesto over them

If you like, you can overwhelm the flavor of everything you eat with tons of garlic and drown it in hot pepper sauce. I won't stop you. BUT PLEASE, don't call it Italian. In fact, I respectfully request that you NOT give such a dish a name the sounds Italian.

My nonno Gennaro, my guardian angel in the picture above, told me when I was about that age that heavy spices were things chefs put on food if the ingredients are under par or on the verge of spoiling. Don't eat such dishes, he warned me. If you are going to put a food inside your body, it must be the best thing you can find.

I learned very young and have practiced all my life the art of Italian cooking. I think the tradition is about more than gastronomic pleasure. In addition to their recipes and a taste for peaches picked ripe from the tree, Italians carried a family-centric culture with them when they crossed the ocean. Good food was and is the enduring value learned by their descendants. Cooking well to give pleasure in addition to nourishment is a deep expression of the Italian maternal instinct. Those newly arrived women fed their children really good food not only to help them grow up healthy and strong but to spoil them with affection. Family meals were rituals, not only on holidays, but even on an ordinary Tuesday. People didn’t eat out; they gathered around the family table.

At the table is where children learned manners, family lore and values, their sense of belonging to something bigger and stronger than they. When they visited family and friends, meals were always the central activity. I never ate in a restaurant other than a pizzeria before I went away to college. When I became a wife and mother, I never gave it second thought: I cooked. My daughter’s classmates at Swarthmore were astonished to find out that she ate a proper sit-down dinner with her parents every evening.

Italians prepare wonderful food not as an end in itself, but as a means. The end is to get everyone to sit down together and unite in mutual tolerance and support. When an Italian calls out "Tutti a tavola" (Everyone to the table), it is the pleasure of the food that draws the family. Togetherness is the real goal.

Family members all pitching in to create a meal they can enjoy together, trading jokes and tales of their day’s triumphs and tribulations--that’s the Italian way with food. That’s amore.