Only In The Summer!

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: For those of you broiling in other parts of the US, you’ll be surprised to hear we’ve been having a cold summer in Maine so far. Yes, there was the infernal heat dome last week, and we’ve managed a few days when the temperatures have gotten into the 80s, but otherwise it’s hardly been the kind of weather that inspires lingering over icy drinks on the deck or patio or grilling for guests.

 

Which is why I was delighted the other day when it hit the perfect point of heat (i.e. “Yay, it’s summer,” instead of “65 and drizzling” or “Satan’s bowels.”) It finally felt right to have my first Pimms cup of the summer. To me, it’s the quintessential seasonal drink - I mean, the bottle’s not going anywhere, but I don’t touch it between September and May.

 

There are a lot of foods tied to the calendar and the weather because, well, that’s when they taste best. Strawberries, corn on the cob, home-grown tomatoes. But there are other foods and beverages we could have at any point of the year but… we don’t.

 

An example for me: the grilled hamburger. I like hamburgers! I’ll occasionally order one in a restaurant (there are some great grass-fed-beef places in Portland; hit me up for recommendations if you’re traveling here.) But the ONLY time I make them at home is between June and August, outdoors, and it has to be hot enough that I’m a little uncomfortable standing over the grill (I have the old-fashioned, charcoal briquette kind.) 

 

Or potato salad. I literally make the exact same potato salad summer and winter, but the former gets a mustard-mayo dressing and hard-boiled eggs and the latter gets a bacon-vinegar dressing and no eggs. Why one and not the other? I don’t know! I could serve the vinaigrette cold and the mayo warm, but after 40 years of making this (and more years eating - these recipes come from my mother) they remain strictly, rigorously separated by the time of year and the temperature outside.

 

How about you, Reds? What are your “strictly-seasonal-although-they-don’t-have-to-be” drinks and dinners?

 

HALLIE EPHRON: My favorite seasonal dish is a salad main dish. A corn and basil and Fetah cheese salad. Corn (fresh, boiled and cut off the cob (NOT frozen or canned))  with season’s best cut up tomatoes, a generous handful (or two) of chopped fresh basil, and plenty of crumbled fetah cheese — dressed with a vinaigrette (⅔ olive oil, ⅓ a good balsamic vinegar, S&P). 

 

I confess, messing with the charcoal grill holds no allure for me these days. Though my favorite summer thing used to be a whole turkey roasted over coals. You season the bird as if you were roasting it in the oven. No stuffing. Get a full load of coals hot and push them to the edges so you can put the turkey on a rack with coals NOT directly under it. Let it roast with the lid down. Baste  occasionally with olive oil or butter.

Takes about what it takes to roast it in the oven (use a meat thermometer to test for doneness) and it tastes smokey and sensational and can be eaten hot or warm or cold. 

 

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, tomatoes! I cannot wait, CANNOT WAIT! For the good summer tomatoes. A tomato sandwich with white toast and mayo and arugula and tomatoes and crazy salt and I am transported. So delicious.

I also love sungold tiny tomatoes cut in half with a tiny slice of mozzarella and topped with fresh pesto.

Or–tomatoes again–capresed with exquisite balsamic drizzle and mozzarella.

Hamburgers cooked outside–yes! We have briquets, too, it is SO much better. 

And salmon grilled outside too, with grilled corn. 

Now I am absolutely drooling.

And you know–I always forget about watermelon. But it is so yummy!

 

RHYS BOWEN:  Summer to me means the farmers market. All that local produce, especially ripe peaches, plums, apricots. Oh, and strawberries. I am not married to a barbecue expert so we only use it if the kids come over but I do love barbecued chicken and shrimp. But a special treat is to pack a sandwich and fruit and take my lunch to a local beach. 

 

LUCY BURDETTE: What the others said–fresh corn on the cob from our favorite local farmer (I never buy grocery store corn out of season), fresh tomatoes, and blueberries. Later in the summer, the Connecticut peaches come in and I buy bushels of them. Here’s one more: a root beer float with sweet cream ice cream from Ashley’s. Oh yum, glad the grandkids will be here so I have a good excuse for that!

 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: This past week we’ve gone from “Oh, yay, I can grill,” to “Oh my God, somebody shoot me if I have to go back outside and it’s still ninety degrees at eight o’clock. That said, I will still grill. I make fabulous burgers with grass fed local beef from our town butcher shop. They also sell the most scrumptious chewy, dark molasses buns from a local bakery.  Tomatoes, however, in spite of the abundance at the farmer’s market, have been disappointing. 

 

But peaches and blueberries are in season here and they have been fabulous. The one thing that absolutely says SUMMER, though? Watermelon! I cart a quarter melon home from the market every Saturday!

JENN McKINLAY: Cherries and peaches mean summer to me. I recently found the absolute best cobbler recipe I have ever had so there’s been a lot of cobbler kicking off this summer season! It’s so hot here in AZ that we try to avoid using the oven and do most of the cooking outside (by we I mean the Hub), so it’s a lot of grilling or crockpotting until the temperatures drop. 

JULIA: What are your fave seasonal foods, dear readers? And are there any, like potato salad and Pimms, you ONLY have during the summertime?

 

 

Debs' June Garden Round Up

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We started our summer with a bang on Memorial Day. A huge storm in the early hours of the morning brought down two limbs on our old elm, one on the power lines, one on our very old and decrepit fence. We spent the day without power, ugh. The humidity was close to 100%!

If we had been on the fence (sorry, couldn't help myself there) about replacing our old fence, that certainly decided us. We now have 206 linear feet of brand new cedar fence, and it's a good thing I wasn't planning a trip to London because I wouldn't have been able to afford it! 

You'd better believe I admire that fence every time I step out the back door! In spite of the heat, the garden is a little oasis, a tiny bastion against the ills of the world, and I do my best to remind myself of it daily.

Every day there is something beautiful. This morning I went out to find a lovely surprise, the first bloom on our perennial star hibiscus. 

So pretty!

Things are in full bloom in the front as well, although I'm sad that the coneflowers will be finished soon. The nice thing about a perennial garden, however, is that that means something else will be coming along to add some brightness--in this case, black-eyed Susans, flame acanthus, and Turk's cap, all the things the hummingbirds adore, and all those will last until autumn, when the native asters will bloom.

That's my David Austin Heathcliff rose adding a splash of red in the center!

Photos never convey how pretty this is.

We've had more things going on in the back, too. We have struggled mightily with grass here over the years, mostly due to the roots of the big trees, but last year we replaced some of it with zoysia and it did really well, so this year we've put down more in a couple of bare spots. (This means I am out watering sod twice a day.)

This is the grass we put in last year (photo bombed by dog.)

Here's one new section. Fingers crossed it does well, too. That's the big elm with a gap now in its center, and you can admire part of the new fence!

It's been too windy to put up the patio umbrella, but the pots on the patio are so cheerful.

We have tomatoes. too.

And our fig tree is covered with baby green figs. I check it every day, hoping to beat the birds and squirrels to them when they begin to ripen.

I love our outdoor mantel.

And I love this view of one of the front perennial beds through the gate.

Thank you, dear Reds, for indulging me, but it's cheered me up just to write about the garden and share the photos. 

Where do you find little bits of joy in your day?

How to Chill in a Heat Wave

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Before we get started I have a

REDS ALERT!

Our next Reds & Readers LIVE event will be July 30th, 5 p.m. EST, celebrating the launch of Rhys's MRS. ENDICOTT'S SPLENDID ADVENTURE August 5th and Lucy's THE MANGO MURDERS August 12th! Mark your calendars now and be sure to join us!

And now back to our regular programming!

I have been watching all the forecasts for extreme heat across parts of the country and worrying about everyone in places where air conditioning is not the norm. (Map courtesy of the National Weather Service.)

Yikes! So check in, dear Reds and readers, and tell us what's happening where you are, and what you're doing to stay cool.

It is hot here in north Texas, but it isn't anything we're not accustomed to as we approach July. We had a very wet and cool spring--we didn't even set out plants until almost the end of April, which is very late for us--so I suppose we shouldn't be complaining now.

Meanwhile, I suggest a cool drink, a good book, and your favorite summer relaxation. It's cool on our shady patio in the mornings, so when I've finished the morning round of watering, I've been allowing myself a few minutes in the hammock.

This is what I see when I look up.

This is only a fraction of the huge old native pecan tree that grows right up against the back of our house. For the last couple of months I've been hearing a Great Crested Flycatcher (thank you, Merlin!) but I have yet to see it. I thought if I just took a few minutes every day to look, I might get lucky. Alas, not a glimpse so far, but this has reminded me how much I've always loved looking up into the trees, and why I have the hammock! 

I watch the leaves moving in the wind and the sun glinting through them, and I try to empty my mind of all the busy-ness--my to-do list and my chores and the daily awfulness of the news--and just be for that few minutes. It's amazingly settling, and now I find I'm looking forward to that small break in my day.

Dear Reds, what are you doing to stay cool, and what summer pastime would you like to revive?

Meet Gerard Doyle, the Voice Behind the Books

DEBORAH CROMBIE: What a treat it is today to introduce you to Gerard Doyle, who has narrated most of my Duncan Kincaid/Gemma James books since the very beginning of the series! Here's the audio cover of A SHARE IN DEATH, Kincaid/James #1. (Due to contractual obligations, Gerard read the early books as Michael Deehy, but it's still Gerard!)

As you can see, we've been friends for a long time, and I love the way Gerard reads my characters, especially Gemma. She sounds just the way I imagine when I'm writing her!

I thought it would be fun to ask Gerard to give us the scoop on what it's like to narrate audio books, and he very kindly obliged. Welcome, Gerard!

DEBS: Hi Gerard! Thanks so much for agreeing to vist with us. We have so many big audiobook fans here on the blog, and every day there are more new converts.

Can you tell us how you got started narrating books?

GERARD: I sort of fell into it. I completely blew my first audition but, 3 years later, I auditioned for the same producer (who didn’t remember me, thank goodness), and I was offered my first audiobook. I received an “Earphones” award from AudioFile magazine for that book and the ball started rolling from there. My background experience as an actor has been invaluable during my years as an audiobook narrator.

 

DEBS: Do you record at home or do you have to go into a studio?

GERARD: I’ve been recording at home and self-directing for about 20 years. I have a soundproof recording booth in my basement.

 

DEBS: I love seeing that. Now I will imagine you recording.

Do you have a regular producer you work with, or is it different for every book?

GERARD: I rarely meet the producer who offers me a book to record. I record for all the leading publishers and several independent ones, but they are not involved in the recording process. The only time I work with a director is when I’m recording Christopher Paolini’s fantasy series, “The Inheritance Cycle (The World of Eragon)”, which are sweeping, epic stories about a young warrior and his dragon, and the complexity is such that two heads are better than one during the recording process.

 

DEBS: How do you prepare for reading a book? Do you have any special tricks for getting into the characters? And how do you remember the characters in a series from book to book?

GERARD: Prepping a book is a very pleasurable experience for me. Ideally, I like to sit in a chair on the beach, under an umbrella (with some liquid refreshment to hand!) and immerse myself in the exploration of a new project.

Of course, one has to read the entire book before beginning to record! People are often surprised by this, but the narrator needs to be as familiar as possible with the overall story, as well as the journey through it of each individual character.

I make note of everything the author reveals about each character’s background and relationships in the narrative, as well as what others say about them and what they say about themselves. I then try to create a voice that would truly reflect each character as I perceive them.

When recording a book in a series, I refer to my archived manuscripts and I can cross refer from the text to my archived audio files to access previous character voices, in order to maintain consistency.

 

DEBS: That sounds like a lot to keep up with. Can you walk us through your actual recording process?

GERARD: I’d be happy to answer specific questions about that. 

 

DEBS: I will bug you in the comments for some of those process things. Meanwhile, do you have a favorite accent? What about favorite genre?

GERARD: I love murder mysteries and have been fortunate enough to record many of them over the years, including Deborah’s Kincaid and James mysteries.

I very much enjoy having a stab at various accents, particularly the broad spectrum of accents still prevalent in the UK and Ireland. My background is Irish so, although my everyday accent is a sort of bland English, I’m lucky enough to have an Irish accent to drop into without it sounding fake.

I was once recording a book in a Manhattan studio and the producer pinpointed my Irish accent to the very town that my family came from. (He had just returned from there a few days previously.) I wasn’t using the accent for the book I was recording, I just happened to curse in that accent because I kept repeating the same mistake. He pinpointed the accent from those two single-syllable words of Anglo Saxon!  I was absolutely gobsmacked!

 

DEBS: That is amazing! 

I know some of your authors like to give you really difficult to pronounce passages just for fun. What’s the hardest thing you’ve ever had to read? (I gave Gerard a lot of Scottish accents in NOW MAY YOU WEEP  and it’s still one of my favorites to listen to. And I love his Irish accent reading Fergus O'Reilly in A BITTER FEAST.)  

GERARD: Don’t you start getting any ideas, madam!

In a recent book a mischievous Irish author, who shall remain nameless (Adrian McKinty), gave me chunks of Greek, Latin and Icelandic to articulate! I can navigate Latin but the Greek and Icelandic were very tricky. He, of course, was absolutely useless with all three languages (he and I are on very friendly terms, so I can say that (and worse!) about him) so I had to be very resourceful; contacting a Greek Orthodox priest, as well as the Greek and Icelandic consulates in DC. I eventually got the Icelandic through a chance referral to an Icelandic person in New Zealand, resulting in a midnight Zoom meeting, with me recording her speaking the Icelandic phrases and repeating them back to her until she was satisfied with my accuracy. I finally recorded and sent those pronunciation clips to the audio editor three weeks after I had submitted the rest of the finished audio for the book. Such fun! Over the years, in the process of pronunciation research, I’ve had some incredible luck and spoken to many wonderful and helpful people.

DEBS: Can you tell us what you’re working on now?

GERARD: I’ve just finished recording “Clown Town”, book nine of British author Mick Herron’s wonderful “Slow Horses” series (on which the Apple TV series is based). I’m recording some final corrections (I don’t always get it right first time!) on a delightful book called “The Last Hummingbird West of Chile”, a book my recording engineer son, Adin, and I have produced for Canadian author Nicholas Ruddock and I’m about to begin character research for a new and exciting children’s book, “The Society of Incredible Stories”, by British author, Mike Oakley. After that, I’m contributing to an audiobook of short stories by Alexander McCall Smith and Charles Todd. All while dealing with our newly acquired, rambunctious labradoodle puppy!

 

DEBS: That is Josie. Isn't she adorable??? I don't know how you get anything done, Gerard. Thanks so much for taking the time to answer my questions, and I hope you'll hang out and chat with our readers a bit this morning!

You can check out Gerard's Audible catalogue here. It runs to nearly a dozen pages and that's not including books read as Michael Deehy! There are terrific choices including crime fiction, fantasy, history, children's books, and classics. (I've added his narration of James Joyce's Dubliners to my list.) Among my favorites are his narration of Adrian McKinty's Sean Duffy novels, and of course Mick Herron's Slow Horses books. I can't wait to listen to Clown Town!

(I'm thinking I should put in something challenging for Gerard in the book-in-progress. Hmm. Any suggestions?)

P.S. If you're interested in a fictional portrayal of an audiobook narrator, I have a couple of suggestions. THANK YOU FOR LISTENING by Julia Whelan, narrated by Julia Whelan, is one of my favorite audiobooks AND one of my favorite novels. Whelan is probably my favorite female narrator. She, along with Kristen DiMercurio, narrates ATMOSPHERE: A LOVE STORY, the new novel from Taylor Jenkins Reid, and it will knock your socks off.

Also fun is HIDEAWAY by Nora Roberts, narrated by January LaVoy, another top-notch voice talent.

 

Terry Shames--Deep Dive

DEBORAH CROMBIE: We are always tickled to have our Jungle Red pal Terry Shames on the blog, and here she is with a terrific new book (and an absolutely stunning cover!)

Isn't that gorgeous? I'd dive right in!

Here's Terry!

TERRY SHAMES:  I’m so thrilled to be with the “Reds” again. It’s always engaging. Today I want to talk about serendipity and the amazing way it works for me as a writer.

Serendipity: the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way:

Several years ago when my husband and I were sailing in the Bahamas on our beloved Black Pearl catamaran, we had a side-adventure that had us riding in a dinghy, lost and fighting winds and currents. And oh yeah, the dinghy had a faulty motor that kept cutting out. Eventually things worked out, but that fraught adventure stayed with me. Not long after, I read an article about pirates in the vicinity of St. Vincent in the southern part of the Caribbean. Travelers were advised not to go there after the pirates murdered a couple in a particular heinous way in order to steal their boat. Add one more thing to the mix: I loved snorkeling, but a few years earlier had gotten certified as a diver—and discovered that I was terrified of diving.

Serendipity put all those things together. I wrote Perilous Waters, featuring a fearless, impulsive young woman, Jessie Madison, a dive instructor in the Bahamas. She gets into bad trouble when pirates board a boat that she is on with a casual date. The action starts from there and never lets up. Did I model Jessie on myself? Goodness no! I’m the opposite of fearless, and like I said I’m terrified of diving.

In order to understand why Jessie was in the Bahamas on short-term basis, I decided to make her a victim of her own impulsiveness. Almost done with FBI training, she made a big mistake and was kicked out. She went to the Bahamas to take stock of her life. Later, this lead to another convergence of events—serendipity. Keep reading!

At the time, I thought the Bahama book was a standalone. My agent, Kimberley, had a different take on it: “Oh, no, this is a series.”

What do you do when your agent says, “Write another one,” and you have no idea what to write? Jessie. Diver. Bahamas. No, I didn’t want her to stay in the Bahamas. Diver. Diver. Wait. Kicked out of FBI training? Hmm.

As serendipity would have it, about that time I ran across an article about the FBI dive team. Who knew there was even such a thing? USERT—the FBI’s Underwater Search and Evidence Response Team. A team sent all over the world to investigate evidence found underwater. This specialized FBI team gets called in for the most difficult underwater recovery cases.

As MORE serendipity would have it, I also read about Project Recover, a private team of divers that works with the U.S. military and families to recover bodies of missing American service members. One of their special projects is finding WWII airplanes and returning remains to families for burial.

So…what if USERT had been called in because divers with Project Recover found something strange when they were on a routine dive? Sounded like an interesting story. Now, all I had to do was figure out a way to get Jessie Madison on that USERT dive team. And because of coincidence or serendipity or magic—whatever you want to call it--the groundwork turns out to have been laid in the first book. Jessie had almost been ready to be inducted as an FBI agent. This being fiction, I managed to weasel her onto the team.

Now, I had the who and what (Jessie and the USERT team and an old WWII airplane) now all I had to do was think of the where the book would be set. I wanted it to be in a difficult dive area. Again, serendipity struck: On that same catamaran, in addition to the Bahamas, we had explored the Aeolian Islands, a string of small, volcanic islands north of Sicily. I looked up diving there and found that there is a spot that is considered such a difficult dive that very little information is given out about it to the public. They don’t want casual divers. PERFECT. That meant I could make up stuff about the area.

Once I had Jessie on site, I had to get into the details of what the diving would be like in such a difficult area. Oh, serendipity you amazing, free-floating genius! One of my friends is an experienced diver. She has been diving in volcanic areas, and could tell me all the perils of those dives—including the presence of deadly currents! But of course serendipity wasn’t about to let me end there! I found out that another friend whom I didn’t even know was a diver was a member of a body recovery dive team. These two people helped me make the underwater world come alive.

One more piece of serendipity? In the Bahamas, I had snorkeled at the site of a small plane that went down in the shallow waters off one of the islands. Even though I knew the pilot had gotten out safely, snorkeling over that underwater airplane was one of the spookiest things I’d ever seen. So describing Jessie’s emotions on seeing the downed World War II airplane in deep water was easy.

I’d love to hear from Red writers how serendipity has helped you make up stories and informed your writing. I think readers would love to know about that part of the “sausage-making.”

Terry Shames writes the Samuel Craddock small-town police procedural series and the Jessie Madison thriller series. She has won the Macavity Award, an RT Critics award, and has been short-listed for numerous other awards, including the Strand Critics Award. Terry lives in Los Angeles with her husband, her dog Monty, and Max the Cat. Their current boat is a 34-foot Catalina called Andiamo—“let’s go!” in Italian.

DEBS: Terry, I love that you are writing about a diver and are terrified of diving! Writing gets us out of our comfort zones, at least on the page.

I've had some wonderful serendipitous magic happen in the writing process, but I'd say the thing to remember, when the idea of making a whole novel out of nothing seems completely daunting, is that you have to start with one thing. Sort of a fictional "If you build it, they will come." What do you think, fellow Reds?