The Joy of the Windfall, a guest blog by Amy Pershing

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Our guest today, Amy Pershing, knows about the thrill of the unexpected "get." When our own Deb Crombie read Amy's first Cape Cod Foodie Mystery, A SIDE OF MURDER, she sent an email out of the blue, saying, “LOVED it!! I literally walked around trying to clean my house with the book in my hand! I couldn’t put it down!” Now, that's a nice way to kick off your career as a published author (and consider that a recommendation, dear readers, because if Debs loves it, you know it's good.) 

But we all know the very BEST get is moolah. The green stuff. Bucks. Whether it's finding a forgotten twenty in your purse or receiving a lawyer's letter informing you you've inherited millions, there's nothing quite like the joy of the windfall, as Amy, and her heroine Samantha Barnes, know...

 

 

Photo by Patrick Fore on Unsplash

 Windfall: The term windfall originally referred to fruit that the wind blew down from a tree — no need for all that climbing of ladders, no need for any effort at all.  The word eventually came to mean any unexpected and easily won good fortune, typically one involving (yay!) money.

 

One of best gifts I ever got was a lottery card. It wasn’t for one of those humungous millionaire-type lotteries, just a nice little unassuming lottery. But I loved that lottery card. Not because I won the lottery. As if. But because of the endless possibilities I conjured up in my head before I didn’t win the lottery as to how I would spend the windfall if I did win the lottery. Because that’s the beauty of a windfall – you are expected to spend it.  Not save it for a rainy day. Not invest it wisely. Not to leave it to your kids in your will.  It is your obligation to spend it, to personally do your bit to jumpstart the economy. Imagine the possibilities. Maybe a trip to Bali… Maybe a new floor in the kitchen… Maybe buy every book that catches your fancy…

 

In my latest Cape Cod Foodie mystery, MURDER IS NO PICNIC, it appears that our heroine, Samantha Barnes, might be looking at a very nice windfall from a dusty old clock found in her Aunt Ida’s attic (actually a Massachusetts case-on-case shelf clock made by one Samuel Mulliken, which, if you should find one in your attic, will bring you a nice five figures at auction).  Almost immediately Sam is in fantasy land…

 

Photo by Nicholas Ng on Unsplash

Is there anything more fun than spending money you don’t actually have? The sheer unreality of it means you can be totally unrealistic. Flipping to a fresh page in the pad in front of me, I began to write.

1. Get someone to actually screen in “screened-in” porch

2. Buy new furniture for screened-in porch in time for Fourth of July picnic, including rattan peacock chair

(All my life I had wanted a rattan peacock chair. Because who hasn’t? I could picture myself, hands resting gracefully on the chair’s woven arms, its back rising in a great curve behind me like a throne.)

3. Hire roofer to replace flashing

(I didn’t actually know what flashing was, but Miles had told me that was what needed to be done to stop the roof from leaking, so who was I to argue?)

5. Replace crappy old electric stove with gas stove

(Which meant that I could cook with gas instead of electric, which made me so happy, I wanted to weep.)

6. Buy a red car

(I don’t know anything at all about cars except that I love red ones.)

 

By the time I’d finished my wish list and reviewed it, it occurred to me that the clock probably wasn’t going to cover everything on it. With a sigh, I carefully crossed out the rattan peacock chair. There. Fiscally conservative.

  

Red readers, to be entered in a drawing for Murder Is No Picnic, which just came out this Tuesday, tell us …  Have you ever had a windfall (i.e. a lottery winning (as if), an unexpected tax refund, a ten dollar bill lying on the sidewalk)? If so, how did you spend it? And for the rest of us: How would you spend a windfall should Fate choose to favor you with one?

 

 

When a celebrity chef is found dead, Samantha Barnes, the "Cape Cod Foodie," finds her search for the world's best blueberry buckle turning into a search for a killer…

 

The Fourth of July is coming, and for professional foodie Samantha Barnes, it’s all about the picnic. Okay, and the fireworks. And the parade. But mostly the picnic. What could be better than a DIY clambake followed by the best blueberry buckle in the world? Sam has finally found the perfect recipe in the kitchen of Clara Foster, famed cookbook author and retired restaurateur, and she’s thrilled when Clara agrees to a buckle baking lesson.

 But when Clara dies in a house fire blamed on carelessness in the kitchen, Sam doesn’t believe it.  Unfortunately, her doubts set in motion an investigation pointing to the new owner of Clara’s legendary restaurant—and a cousin of Sam’s harbormaster boyfriend.  So, in between researching the Cape’s best lobster rolls and planning her clambake, Sam needs to find Clara's killer before the fireworks really start... 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amy Pershing, who spent every summer of her childhood on Cape Cod, was an editor, a restaurant reviewer and a journalist before writing the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries, including A SIDE OF MURDER -- which Elizabeth Gilbert called “the freshest, funniest mystery I have ever read” -- and AN EGGNOG TO DIE FOR -- which Kirkus Reviews gave a starred review, saying, "A delightful sleuth, a complex mystery, and lovingly described cuisine: a winner for both foodies and mystery mavens." The third book in the series, MURDER IS NO PICNIC, is now (YAY!) available from Berkley Books.

Order MURDER IS NO PICNIC here

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Tracking Santa

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Since I was small, my idea of the perfect Christmas Eve has included stockings hung by the fire, with milk and cookies set out for the big guy in the red suit. As you get older, it only gets better, because YOU get to drink the milk and eat the cookies. (Although of course there were the "putting toys together in the wee hours years," when that glass of milk needed a tot of whiskey to see you through the Chinese instructions.) 

But as a child, oh, the excitement, the anticipation of it all, aided by watching Santa's flight across the globe on NORAD's Santa Tracker, which was kindly brought to you by your local TV station in the commercial breaks.

NORAD (the North American Aerospace Defense Command) has been tracking Santa since 1955, when a misprinted phone number in a Sears ad confused NORAD's number with Santa's workshop. A quick thinking Air Force colonel began offering updates on Santa's progress whenever a child called the number, and a tradition was born.

But since 2012, Google and NORAD have gone head-to-head with competing Santa Trackers, and they don't agree! If Google shows Santa in Thailand, why does NORAD say he's in Russia? Ditto on the number of gifts delivered! How can one site say millions of toys while the other says billions? (That's like government budget numbers... You can't wrap your brain around them.) 

 

Of course there are lots of complicated technological explanations, but it boils down to this: Santa is magic, and can therefore be in two places at once. How else would he deliver all those toys in twenty-four hours?

As for the difference in the number of gifts, I suspect it's because NORAD's radar can track very tiny objects, while Google's location data is not quite as accurate. That's what I'm going with anyway.  

But which tracker to use?

I'm leaning towards NORAD, for sentimental reasons. On the other hand, you can Chromecast the Google Santa Tracker from your phone to your TV, so maybe I'll give that a try. The wonders of modern technology!

Meanwhile, I'm going to curl up in front of that fire (or at least the idea of a fire, since we are unseasonably warm here) with my hot drink, and unless I can twist my husband's arm into watching LOVE ACTUALLY one more time, catch up on some of that Christmas reading I've been promising myself.

How about you, REDs and readers? What's your perfect Christmas Eve?

Kids Say the Darnedest Things @AmyPershing

LUCY BURDETTE: I loved our guest Amy Pershing's first book and we are delighted to welcome her back to tell us about #2. Take it away Amy!

AMY PERSHING: More years ago than I care to count, I began reading Martha Grimes’s Richard Jury mysteries and fell in love.  Not with New Scotland Yard Superintendent Richard Jury (sexy as he is) or his aristocratic friend Melrose Plant (adorable as he is) but with the children that Jury and Plant encounter during the course of their investigations.  There’s usually at least one clear-sighted youngster enlivening each book, and Ms. Grimes handling of Jury's and Melrose’s interactions with them is at once unsentimental and hilarious.

Which may be why in my Cape Cod Foodie series, I get such a kick out of writing about the relationship between my sleuth, Samantha Barnes, and her best friend’s little boys, also known as Thing One, Thing Two and Thing Three (ten, eight, and six years old, respectively). The boys do have names (Ethan, Eli, and Evan, respectively) though Sam often cannot remember them. In AN EGGNOG TO DIE FOR, being a holiday book, the boys make a number of appearances, which made me soooo happy. Here are just a few instances:

The Scene:  Santa Claus arrives in Town Cove by boat:

Coming around the curve from the narrow, reed-rimmed estuary that leads into Town Cove was the Harbor Patrol’s Grady White with Santa Claus standing in the bow, resplendent in his plush red suit and an enormous white polyester beard. As the boat nosed its way up to the dock, he waved one white-gloved hand and the kids in the crowd went wild. All except Evan Singleton.

I like this kid a lot. He is serious and thoughtful and seems much wiser than his six years. Also, he has no filter. He says whatever he is thinking. While his brothers rushed forward to catch one of the candy canes that Santa was now tossing to his adoring fans, Evan stepped back, surveying the scene solemnly. There was a temporary hush when Santa raised his hand for silence, presumably so the crowd could hear him ask the obligatory “Have you been good boys and girls?” But before he could say his line, Evan took the opportunity to pipe up, high and clear, “Santa Claus has a nose like a potato.” Awkward.

The Scene: Sam and Jenny take the Three Things bowling:

Just renting the shoes was an ordeal, as each boy had strong feelings about what color he wanted. Evan, who at six had already established a firm no-negotiation policy, wanted red shoes to match his hair. Eli, at eight a devoted follower of the International Candlepin Bowling Association, wanted black shoes like the current Hall of Fame champion. And Ethan, at ten the oldest of the three and therefore the coolest by law, said he “didn’t give a poop” as long as his shoes weren’t the same as either of his brothers’. Thank god for the red and blue model.

The Scene: The boys arrive to decorate holiday cookies:

At just that moment, an unholy din broke out in the driveway.

“That must be the little darlings now,” I said.

A volley of joyful barks joined the chorus outside, by which I gathered that Diogi was back from his walk.

Within minutes, the entire circus had invaded my kitchen.

“Auntie Sam! Auntie Sam!” Evan shouted. “There’s snow! Outside! Piles and piles of it!”

I don’t know when or how I became Auntie Sam to Evan. It made me feel about a hundred years old. But if my little friend wanted to call me his auntie, who was I to complain? If I was perfectly honest with myself (which I tend avoid at all costs), it made me feel, I don’t know, loved?

“And look what we’ve got,” Ethan announced, waving some kind of lime-green plastic contraption under my nose. I leaned away and on further inspection could see that the contraption was a semi-flexible plastic stick with a kind of cup on the end. Each boy had one, each in a different Day-Glo color.

“You’ve got toilet plungers?”

This was greeted with gales of laughter.

“Noooo!” Eli responded with all the disdain of an eight-year-old for the adult’s lack of technological knowledge. “It’s a snowball thrower.”

I looked at Jenny inquiringly.

“Early Christmas presents,” she explained. “The snow won’t last long. And, quite frankly, I’d give them a pony if it would give me an hour to myself.”

“I’d like a pony,” I said automatically. But I knew I would never get a pony, no matter who I asked.

“You can’t believe how much farther you can throw with these things,” Eli the Info Kid informed me solemnly. “It’s science.”

“I’m sure it is,” I replied equally solemnly. “Now why don’t you guys go out and show Diogi how they work.”

As the boys trooped out, Diogi leading the pack, I said to Jenny, “There. My contribution to your sanity.”

The Scene:  The results of the holiday cookie decorating:

Well, I can’t say the cookies were exactly beautiful, but they certainly were eye-catching. The boys’ overall approach seemed to be “more is more.” Red hots and silver balls elbowed each other for space on the same little angel. One frog appeared to be wearing solid gold lamé. Rainbow confetti encrusted Evan’s Diogi cookie.

The Scene: Christmas Eve’s Feast of the Five Fishes

My parents have an unaccountable fondness for the Three Things. It may date from the time we were all at the Singletons for dinner and Jenny had tried to convince Eli that the greens he was refusing to eat were “superfood,” and Eli had said flatly, “Well, I say it’s spinach, and I say the hell with it.” Hard not to love that kid.

How about you?  Do you find it hard not to love the kids in the books you write/read? Do you have favorites? (And there’s a copy of An Eggnog to Die For waiting for one lucky commenter!)

AN EGGNOG TO DIE FOR, coming November 9 and available for preorder now

Christmas is coming to Cape Cod, but when Sam Barnes finds a very dead Santa in a very hip restaurant, it’s up to her to sift out suspects who have been naughty vs. nice…

Professional foodie Samantha Barnes has a simple Christmas list: a quiet holiday at home with her dog and a certain handsome harbormaster; no embarrassing viral videos; and no finding dead bodies. Unfortunately she’s got family visiting, she’s spending a lot of time in front of the camera, and she’s just stumbled over the lifeless body of the town’s Santa Claus.

 

Plus, Sam’s plans for Christmas Eve are getting complicated.  There’s the great eggnog debate among her very opinionated guests.  There’s the “all edible” Christmas tree to decorate.  And there’s her Feast of the Five Fishes to prepare. Nonetheless, Sam finds herself once again in the role of sleuth. She needs to find out who slayed this Santa—but can she pull off a perfect feast and nab a killer?

About the author: Amy Pershing, who spent every summer of her childhood on Cape Cod, was an editor, a restaurant reviewer and a journalist before leading employee communications at a global bank. A few years ago she waved goodbye to Wall Street to write full time. An Eggnog to Die For is the second of the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries featuring Samantha Barnes, a disgraced but resilient ex-chef who retreats home to Cape Cod where she finds herself juggling a new job as the local paper’s “Cape Cod Foodie,” a complicated love life, a posse of just-slightly-odd friends, a falling-down house, a ginormous puppy and a propensity for falling over dead bodies. Kirkus Reviews gave An Eggnog to Die For a starred review, saying, "A delightful sleuth, a complex mystery, and lovingly described cuisine: a winner for both foodies and mystery mavens." A Side of Murder, the first of the Cape Cod Foodie mysteries, which Elizabeth Gilbert called “the freshest, funniest mystery I have ever read,” was the first book in the series.  The third, Murder Is No Picnic, will be published in May 2022.