Picky, picky, picky...

 

HALLIE EPHRON: It’s nearly impossible to find a decent bagel in New England. I say this as someone who grew up in California within striking distance of fabulous, authentic Jewish delicatessens (Nate ‘n Al’s, Linney’s…) and then in Manhattan (Zabar’s, H&H, Russ and Daughters, Katz’s, Barney Greengrass…)

My ideal bagel is small (think hockey puck, NOT frisbee). Yeasty, with a shiny, crackly crust and a dense interior. Chewy! Close your eyes and you’d never imagine you were eating a muffin or a cookie or a piece of cake or the heel of a french bread.

I confess I’m addicted to the New York Times WIRECUTTER feature where they compare brands of everything from bed sheets to fever thermometers to… bagels. So that’s where I went hunting for a frozen bagel (no, there will never be good locally made bagels here, sad to say) readily available in my supermarket.

Sure enough, their #1 recommendation which I found at my local Stop ‘n’ Shop, delivers the goods. Ray’s New York Bagels! The quest for them took me to the BREAKFAST foods in the freezer section. (Did you know you can buy frozen scrambled eggs? Bleh.)

Thawed and toasted with some good cream cheese! It’s the closest thing to the taste of my childhood.

What’s a taste from your past that you haven’t found in any of your local food stores?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: The quest for a good bagel is SO important! And I am thrilled to hear about Ray’s, thank you.

My grandmother made delicious chopped liver, and that’s impossible to find. I remember Teaberry gum, oh, and Juicy Fruit, but I think those went away. We used to go to a deli called Shapiro's–isn't that a coincidence?--for corned beef sandwiches, and not only the corned beef but the rye bread used to be better. (But Indianapolis is not New York, I know.)

Hmm. Cokes used to be better, didn’t they?. And Fritos.

JENN McKINLAY: I went to school in New Haven and there simply is no pizza on Earth like New Haven brick oven pizza.

I’ll put Wooster Square’s Sally’s Apizza and Pepe’s Pizzeria up against anyone anywhere anytime. I’ve never found a pizza I love as much as the white clam pie at Pepe’s, cut into squares as God intended. Wait, maybe the squares are Sally’s. Lucy, do you recall which is which?

LUCY BURDETTE: You’re right Jenn, the squares are Pepe’s and their white clam is outstanding. I like the crispy pepperoni even better!

From my childhood, my sibs and I all yearn for a sausage and pepper sub that came from a deli downtown. Have never found exactly that sandwich again. As for bagels, we are very lucky to have a good bagel shop in both CT and Key West. I’ll take you to the Key West shop next winter Hallie!

HALLIE: I'm in!!

I know you already have world class doughnuts in Key West, plus every possible iteration of Key Lime Pie, including my favorite with a graham cracker crust and whipped cream on top.

RHYS BOWEN: When I go back to England I always have to have childhood food treats: good fish and chips, sticky buns, Crunchie bars.

Luckily they still all exist. But the snack called Twiglets that I used to love is now made differently and doesn’t taste right.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Maybe this is why I've never been crazy about bagels–maybe I've never had a really good one! I do love bagels and corned beef–salt beef in Britain–from the famous shop in the East End called Beigel Bake. As for childhood things, I've never had a Snickerdoodle cookie that tasted as good as my grandmother's.

I'm with Rhys on the British things that America doesn't get right. Fish and chips, sticky toffee pudding, and especially chocolate. Cadbury's US doesn't taste like Cadbury's UK. Nor do American KitKats taste the British ones. Those are my secret vice whenever I go to England, so maybe that is a good thing…

HALLIE: So what about you? What's a taste from your past that you long for, or is something miraculously still available, just as good as you remember it??

What We're Writing: Jenn's in Copyedit Mode

 JENN McKINLAY: One of my favorite phases of book producing is the copy edits. Hopefully when the edits arrive, enough time has passed that I've forgotten the book and can now look at it with fresh eyes. I am currently working on the edits for WITCHES OF QUESTIONABLE INTENT and I just got the cover art, which is absolutely stunning but I can't share the whole cover yet. 

I can, however, share an itty bitty piece of it and I'll share a snippet of the story so you know what the glimpse of cover refers to. 

Here's the bit of the cover:

 

So, who/what is this little fella? Here's the snippet from a scene where the protagonist Zoe is visiting a magical midnight market: 

     I glanced around Marvello’s trove of items. There were clocks, mirrors, sets of dishes, maps, lanterns and books…so many books. It was easy to see why Tariq loved Marv’s booth the most. I began to sort through the titles of books, looking for items of interest. I was reaching for a volume on a nearby shelf when a tiny flicker of flame shot out at my fingers followed by a puff of smoke.

     “Ouch!” The flame had grazed my finger but hadn’t burned me. “Marv, I don’t want to alarm you. but I think there’s a fire in your books!”

     “Oh, no!” Marv and Tariq hurried over to the shelf.

     “Right there!” I pointed. Sure enough another little lick of flame appeared.

     Marv laughed and said, “Oh, don’t worry that’s a bookwyrm hatchling.”

    Tariq noted my confusion and explained, “A baby dragon.”

    I clapped my hand against the side of my head a few times as if I was trying to dislodge water. “I’m sorry, could you repeat that because it sounded like you said a baby dragon?”

     “I did.” Tariq gestured to where Marv was moving aside books and reaching into the shelf.

     I felt my jaw drop when Marv pulled his hand out of the opening and pinched between his thumb and forefinger by the scruff of its neck was a tiny black dragon, no bigger than a baseball.

     “That’s not…you’re pranking me,” I said.

     “Hold out your hand,” Marv said. “This little fellow is named Titus. He won’t hurt you.”
     My hand shook a little bit but I held it palm up and Marv dropped the bookwyrm hatchling into it. The little fellow stretched his neck, sniffing the air between us. He was stupid cute and I desperately wanted to pet him or squeeze him, but I didn’t want to terrorize him as he was so tiny, so I didn’t do anything.

     He circled my palm, his tail twitching and his tiny leathery wings flapping, like a dog trying to settle into the best position for a nap. Once he settled, he folded up his wings and tucked in his tail. A puff of smoke came out of his tiny nose and he closed his eyes. I would have thought I was hallucinating but I could feel the pin pricks of his tiny talons on my palm, his steady heartbeat, and his slow inhale and exhale.

     “But…I don’t…isn’t it dangerous to have a little guy who emits fire near all of your books?” I asked.

     “Oh, he’s not the only one,” Marv said. “I have five bookwyrms. They eat mold and dust, and they’re fire is like witch fire where it doesn’t burn but it does clean the books quite nicely.”

This is one of those moments where I desperately wish that what I write could be real. Wouldn't it be cool to have a bookwyrm, maybe two to keep each other company, on your bookcase? 

Reds and Readers, what/who/where is something you've read in a book that you wish was real?

WITCHES OF QUESTIONABLE INTENT comes out Nov 10th. It was originally Oct 27th, so who knows if it will move again, but it'll be this autumn either way. Here's a more detailed description: 

A librarian witch must use her bookish knowledge to track down a dangerous, magical tome, in this enchanting novel from New York Times bestselling author Jenn McKinlay.

Thanks to her training as a librarian and her newfound magical abilities, Zoe Ziakas thinks she has a handle on her job at the Museum of Literature safeguarding the secret collection of enchanted tomes known as the Books of Dubious Origin. But when Jasper Griffin—the colleague she’s been crushing on—reports that their most volatile acquisition, The Book of Shadows, has been stolen, Zoe’s carefully cataloged world unravels.

This isn’t just any magical text. It carries unquestionable power, twisting truth into illusion and turning allies into enemies. Once its power is unleashed, no one can trust what they see or who they are.

To track down the book, Zoe, Jasper, and the rest of the BODO team plunge into a perilous hunt that takes them from shadowy midnight markets to demon-infested streets, all while wrangling an unpredictable hellhound puppy. But when the thief begins to invoke the book’s darkest spells, Zoe faces an impossible challenge: How does she stop a curse that can rewrite reality itself?

If she can’t separate fact from fiction, the story won’t just end—it will be erased.

What We're Writing Week: Julia is Catching Up and Checking Out

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Don't be alarmed by the title; I'm not checking out of hotels or my day to day activities. I used the phrase because I love me some alliteration, and the writing I've been doing lately is all of a sort - reaching out to readers.

 

I have to admit, when I was pouring over issues of WRITERS DIGEST and reading mystery novels to learn the craft, I never expected the life of the author to involve so much, well, communication. Ironically, many of us are well suited as writers because we love to sit in a small room by ourselves and not have to talk to anyone. We're not misanthropes - a visit to any mystery conference will disabuse you of that idea - but we all like spending a lot of interior time. I suppose if we didn't turn to the written word, a lot of us would do well as contemplative monks (although Jenn and Hank and Rhys would be HIGHLY energetic ascetics.)

 

But I began my career at the dawn of the social media age. The first change was the author website, which enabled readers, for the first time, to connect to their favorite writers without showing up at a bookstore or library. As more and more people got online, we switched from physical newsletters (yes! I had one, done by a lovely local printing business!) to email newsletters. 

 

Then came the social media sites that are now part of our day-to-day lives. I can't recall if anyone was using MySpace professionally (anyone remember how big MySpace was for about five minutes?) but once Facebook stopped being just for college students, the whole world joined up, and authors came in droves as well. Then, for a while, the novelty of YouTube meant Book Trailers - a whole business popped up around producing them! Facebook stayed, and grew, but YouTube was quickly colonized by content producers putting out stuff that was, let's face it, much more entertaining than book trailers, so authors migrated to the cool new world of Instagram.

 

You also had to be on Goodreads, and LibraryThing, and everyone became bloggers, and it was about then when you'd start to hear writers huddled together at conferences asking each other how much social media was the right amount, and how did everyone manage to get any actual, you know, writing done while also posting and mailing and Tweeting and commenting.

 

Don't even get me started on Tik Tok. No. Not gonna go there.

 

Most of us have settled down to a few, reliable ways to connect with our readers, in part because EVERYONE has gotten a bit tired and jaded with the social media world. Quality, not quantity, has become the new standard. Which leads me to my catching up - on FB comments and writers' emails, and checking out - other authors' newsletters, because I'm restarting my own NEWS FROM THE KILL and I want to make sure it's up to date; ie, giving readers what they want and nothing they don't.

 

So, dear readers, tell me: what sites online do you find gives you the best value when interacting with writers? And, if you subscribe to any, what do you like to see in author newsletters?