My One Square Inch of Alaska by Sharon Short

 LUCY BURDETTE: I find it hard to forget Sharon Short. Why? Because I have a magnetized set of cleaning tips from her Josie Toadfern mystery series stuck to my washing machine! But now she has a new book, just out today--a lovely story about a sister and brother and their dreams and hopes... How she came to write it is a wonderful story, too. She'll tell it much better than I can!
  

SHARON SHORT: After my cozy mystery series wrapped up, I wasn’t really planning the literary equivalent of a fashion makeover for my writing career.

Of course, that was before a Tim Gunn Bobblehead entered my life.

More on that in a moment…

Back to the days (weeks, months) after my cozy mystery series was, shall we say, all sewn up. Because I enjoy reading mysteries (and enjoyed writing them), the logical next project seemed to be another mystery. But… I couldn’t find an idea that clicked with my imagination.
Then, at a book club gathering, one of the women asked if anyone remembered the deeds to one square inch of Alaska that used to come in cereal boxes in the 1950s. (The question wasn’t related to the book we were discussing.) The 1950s were before I was born, but I was immediately taken with this compelling concept… the desire for a deed to one tiny bit of land in a vast frontier, and what that could symbolize. Almost immediately, the shadowy image of a young woman and her little brother, standing together and holding hands, appeared in my imagination. I couldn’t ‘see’ them yet in sharp detail, but I could ‘feel’ them saying, “tell our story.”

I had no idea what their story would or should be, but by the time I returned home, I’d written in my head one of the final scenes, which narrated itself in what would become the first person voice of my main character, Donna Lane. I went home, wrote down the scene in a journal, and then realized I had a lot of work ahead of me to discover the rest of her story.

I also realized fairly quickly that Donna’s story wasn’t a mystery. Frankly, this was unsettling at first. How could I plot without a mystery backbone?

But then I started thinking about all the novels I’ve loved reading that aren’t mysteries as well as the ones that are, and realized that in both cases, the best stories (and plots) emerge from character. And sure, mysteries focus on a protagonist solving a particular crime, but in a broader sense of the definition, don’t we all have a bit of mystery in our lives that we need to unravel? Pasts and relationships we need to understand, in order to come to an epiphany of some sort so that we can move on to stronger, wiser, healthier futures?

This is certainly the case for my characters Donna and Will, who leaved behind the strictures of their 1950s small Ohio town to go on the adventure of a lifetime, and in the process come to understand the power of embracing and following dreams.

Realizing this helped me make the transition from writing mysteries to writing my debut mainstream novel.

Well, that and my Tim Gunn Bobblehead.
You see, I’m a huge fan of Project Runway and Tim Gunn, and as it turns out my character Donna’s dream is to become a fashion designer. (This is because one of my childhood fantasies was to become a fashion designer.) During the Christmas after I’d started my novel, my family gave me a Tim Gunn Bobblehead, which quickly found a home on my desk. When I need a little writing encouragement, all I have to do is press the button to hear a recording of his voice saying his trademark lines, “Carry on!” “Make it Work!” “I can’t want you to succeed more than you do!” and “Fab-u-lous!”

And as for how I feel now about reading mysteries? “Fab-u-lous!”
Of course, I hope that’s how you feel if you get a chance to read MY ONE SQUARE INCH OF ALASKA. In any case, I’d love to hear from you!

LUCY: I loved this book and hope it takes off for you Sharon! JRW, Sharon will be stopping in all day to answer questions and comments. You can find out everything else you always wanted to know about Sharon, including how to buy her book, right here.

Me oh my, buttermilk pie!

HALLIE EPHRON: I love buttermilk. It's liquid sour cream without the guilt.

My first encounter with real buttermilk was at Yonah Schimmel's Knish Bakery on Houston Street in Manhattan. The place still there, though I don't know if their fabulous knishes and the buttermilk still come up from the basement in a dumb waiter.  The combination of that sweet/savory knish with the tang of buttermilk is unbeatable.

Low fat that tastes incredibly creamy and rich. On Sunday, there was an article in the New York Times all about Kate's, an outfit that produces butter from an operation in a garage in Orchard Beach, Maine. 

The article said: "Kate’s produces more than a million pounds of butter a year, all from the same tiny garage. And last year, the company became the first large-scale bottler of a dairy product that has almost disappeared from American tables: real buttermilk, the creamy liquid that remains in the churn after the butter comes together."

When I was going off on Facebook about how I love buttermilk and where oh where can I find Kate's buttermilk (turns out right around the corner at my local Shaw's), author Sharon Short, author of the wonderful forthcoming novel, "My One Square Inch of Alaska" (coming out in January; now available for pre-order in both print and as an e-book on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and IndieBound), piped up and asked if I wanted her buttermilk pie recipe.

She didn't have to ask twice. Here's Sharon:

SHARON SHORT: OK, here's the story behind the recipe. We used to have a grocery called "Woody's" in our area that also featured the Over the Road Restaurant. It was called that because it was literally built in a walkway over the road between the grocery's parking lot and the grocery, so one could have lunch/dinner and look through the big windows down on the traffic driving below.

The food was good-home-cooking--hot shots, meat loaf, friend chicken, and all manner of pies, including buttermilk. This was the first and only place I've ever seen buttermilk pie on the menu. Tried it, fell in love with it. (Sweet but tangy, like buttermilk... although I do not like buttermilk to drink!) Alas, the restaurant and grocery went out of business and were torn down.

I searched and searched for a buttermilk pie recipe (this was back in the mid-to-late 1990s before AllRecipes.com!) and I could find one, but I found some sugar pie and custard pie recipes, and experimented with modifying until I came up with the following buttermilk pie recipe. So, I guess we could call it Sharon's Buttermilk Pie. It's easy to make, so we could even call it Sharon's Short & Sweet Buttermilk Pie. (Ha!)

I am a lover of pie, especially diner pies, and Dot's Corner Cafe is a diner important to the story of MY ONE SQUARE INCH OF ALASKA.

Sharon's Short & Sweet Buttermilk Pie

1 unbaked pie shell
1 cup sugar
2 tablespoons flour
2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
2 eggs, beaten
2 tablespoons melted butter
Nutmeg

Combine sugar and flour. Add beaten eggs, buttermilk, melted butter, and vanilla extract. Beat together (by hand or with mixer) until smooth. Pour into pie crust. Sprinkle with nutmeg. Bake at 350-degrees (F) for 35 minutes, or until pie filling is firm like a pudding/creme pie. (Protect pie crust rim with aluminum foil near end if needed.) Let pie cool and set before slicing. Yummy as is or topped with blackberries, raspberries or strawberries.

HALLIE: Does that look easy or what? I'm off to Shaw's to buy real buttermilk, because all the rest of the ingredients I already have. And some little alpine strawberries from my garden. Mmmm.

Do you have a relationship with buttermilk or any other old-timey ingredient that's hard to get?