LeseLust & LeseLiebe

This was the 25th year my wife and I have hosted Christmas dinner for family and friends. My wife does all of the cooking, I do a lot of cleaning and even more eating. Our tiny house is filled with delicious smells of her dry-aged roast and a pumpkin dessert with yellow cake topping that has been dubbed “David’s dessert.” I always get a gentle hand-slap for trying to sneak away with it. That dinner is full of great memories. Food is an incredible tool for writers that readers can relate to. If you've read any of my novels, you probably wonder if I have an obsession for cake. While I don't eat cake three times a day (life goal) it’s certainly one of my most favorite comfort foods. Not only do I love the taste and texture, cake means party since it is often served at celebrations. Even if you don't like cake, you get the significance. In Clod Makes A Friend, Clod is bullied for being the only 9-year-old in his class without magic. More than anything he just wants a friend, s...

Laissez les bons temps rouler Whew! We certainly let the good times roll these past few weeks here in New Orleans. The struggle is most definitely real! Whoever thought that Daylight Savings time should be a thing should be killed (I want my hour back!). To make matters worse, us natives are just coming down from Mardi Gras: weeks of drinking, partying, parades, debauchery, and food. Food. I admit, when I was first asked to include something about a dish or food in my post I was a bit intimidated. I write about many things but food is NOT one of them. Then I thought about where I lived and all of the food. Food. Glorious Food. New Orleans has beautiful architecture (albeit, complicated street names) and a rich (yet haunted) history…both key reasons why I chose to make home as the setting for my Inheritance series and its surrounding world. But New Orleans wouldn’t be the mecca that is without the staple of its food. Delicious Cajun and creole food. If you are a health nut, New Orleans...

The Truth Club is not the kind of book where people go to lots of expensive restaurants or spiralise zucchini, they are far more preoccupied with trying to sort out their personal lives, which is why comfort food is frequently mentioned. Sally Adams, the main character, is a journalist and likes munching a biscuit, especially if it is covered in chocolate.  Some months after a rather grand wedding she has left her husband, Diarmuid, because their views of love and marriage seem so different. ( “I love sweet things, Diarmuid prefers savories.” As I say this I realise it pretty well sums up my marriage.   she reflects in Chapter Seven.) A carpentry teacher and biology student, Diarmuid has become somewhat obsessed with some mice he's keeping as part of his studies, and often lovingly gives them mature cheddar cheese.  Diarmuid himself has a fondness for Turkish Delight confectionery, and almond biscuits which Sally stocks up on for when he 'pops round'. (They are 'keepin...

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

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

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

Dark Age Dinners in Between Two Fires Thanks for having me here, Shelley! Today I’m blogging about the medieval meals that would’ve been enjoyed by the characters in my novel Between Two Fires . Set in Wales around the year 600 AD, there definitely were some culinary facts that I had to research and make sure to keep straight throughout my book. One of the most apparent aspects was that this was before the Age of Discovery, which meant no New World foods. That means Medieval Wales had no sugar, no tomatoes, no corn (maize), or anything else that originated in the Americas. Due to the limited international trade of the era, tea from the Far East and coffee from Arabia were also unknowns at this time in Western Europe. So what did they eat then? Plenty of meat and dairy for starters. In a country where the grass grows green and thick, it makes a lot of sense to raise sheep and cattle. That means milk and mutton for sure. But much of the landscape was still very rural and wild by our mode...