The dreaded one-star review...

HALLIE EPHRON: We all get negative reviews, and my advice is always DON'T READ THEM! To fellow authors I say: Your book is finished, published, there's not a thing you can do about it so don't torture yourself. Besides, every book has its audience, and we've all had the experience of hating the occasional book foisted off on us by well-meaning friends.

I take perverse comfort in browsing one-star reviews of classics. Here are a few of my favorites -- you get to guess which review goes with which book.



1. A dreary, uninspiring book full of tired clichés: all whites in the Southern US are racist rednecks, all blacks are victims, all liberals are wonderful caring people. I detested having to read this guff at school and work with it as a teacher. Fortunately, most of my pupils felt the same way.

2. I found it was lacking in sympathetic characters, focus, meaning (aside from the very obvious, played-to-death 'everything is superficial' theme), and thoroughly unabsorbing. From the moment it started out, it rang false

3. I cannot fathom why anyone became famous, or wealthy, for writing this material... This book is one long, rambling, goofy, repetitive in the *extreme* diatribe...presented as an ode to Borderline Personality Disorder. It's like page after page after page...of absolutely nothing. And at the end of it all, there is no pay off.

4. The female characters are a bunch of air heads that are significantly over indulged and have nothing else to do but simper and fret. The male characters are not paragons of thought either.

5. This book, written by the king of bore himself, and 811 pages long has got to be the most pointless book I have ever had to read. It's just about some woman's extra-marital affair with some guy and these two newlyweds' life together. Honestly I could care less.

6. This book is all about some badly behaved brothers and their mean father and how they do nothing but shout and drink and threaten one another and are lewd and then, one of them anyway, goes to England, or at least he wants to. You call that a story?

Today's question: is there a classic you love Love LOVED, only to recommend it to a friend who hated it?

Seduce me with...

HALLIE EPHRON: ... fish.

Smoked fish to be precise.
I'm not a sweets person, though dark chocolate is nice, and I always have room for a really good macaron. But my favorite treat in the world is a great piece of smoked fish -- smoked salmon or trout or whitefish -- preferably with cream cheese on a piece of pumpernickel bread from Russ and Daughters in Manhattan.

For desert, a piece of chocolate babka please, like the ones my mother-in-law used to get in Flatbush -- there's a close match available at Arcade Bakery in lower Manhattan. Find an insider's guide to NYC babkas: The Best Chocolate Babka in NYC, 2015 Edition.

So what's your weakness? A creamy chocolate truffle? A glass of aged Zin? Icy fresh oysters? Seduce you with... what?

SUSAN ELIA MACNEAL: Oooh, I liked smoked fish, too, Hallie -- whitefish salad or smoked salmon, especially on a good New York bagel. Also love pate. And olives. And good cheese with fruit. (I'd rather have a cheese plate at a restaurant than dessert....) And a nice glass of wine and the occasional martini.

LUCY BURDETTE: Since I'm on a low-sodium, no alcohol diet right now (sigh), a lot of things look delicious! I love smoked trout, used to make an easy, elegant hors d'oeuvres by mixing dill and lemon zest into cream cheese, and then putting about a teaspoon of that on an endive leaf with a piece of smoked trout on top. Sadly, smoked trout packs 670 to 680 milligrams of sodium into a 2-ounce portion. Another favorite, hot pepper jelly cheese puffs.

But I did make a delicious low-sodium almond cake for Easter, and found some yummy homemade caramels at the Key West Artisan Market yesterday. For now, that will make me happy:).

RHYS BOWEN:  If you want to seduce me offer me a spread of oysters, crab claws, cold lobster and a glass of prosecco and I'm yours. I'm also not big on sweets. I do love Creme brûlée , and Cadburys chocolate before it was bought by Hersheys.

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: Oh, what a lovely question. Pizza. (Completely. Extra cheese and pepperoni.) Bluefish pate.  Steak with blue cheese. Prosecco, absolutely. Really great red wine.  If you offer me something sweet, it;s easy for me to pass. But guacamole on a  salty chip? Yes, indeedy.  How about a yummy crusty baguette with unsalted butter? AND red wine. Oh. I swoon. (And toast with peanut butter.)

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: Add me to the Prosecco-lovers' list. For me, the seduction factor is the combination of food and place.

Fish and chips is a tasty meal anywhere, but batter-fried haddock and hand-cut fries sitting on the deck of a seafood joint on the Maine coast - that's heaven. Ditto a traditional ploughman's lunch with sharp cheddar, crusty bread, softened butter and pickle chutney served in a dark London pub with a half cider on the side.

In New York City, it would be something cool and new in the Village, like Cuban-Carribbean fusion or authentic Korean, followed by a cab trip to midtown to catch a show. In the Bahamas, it would be conch, conch and more conch, served at a shady table planted in white sand, chased down by ridiculously fruity drinks. 

DEBORAH CROMBIE: Funny, there are no big sweet eaters here. And we all are very much on the same page. I love smoked fish. (I had the most fabulous smoked whitefish dip at a funky little restaurant in central Florida when I was touring with the Todds. We ate it at every meal.)

I love pate. (I dream of chicken liver pate from Carluccio's in London). Love English sharp cheddar cheese and pickle (chutney) sandwiches. Oh! Oysters and Prosecco! Yum. Crisp white wines and maybe, very occasionally, a small glass of really, really good red wine. Maybe with a good French baguette and Stilton. Charcuterie, with salami and prosciutto and olives.

And one last seduce-me-with-- fried oysters from Pappadeux (a family-owned Texas based chain) with their creole coleslaw and hot French baguettes. Yum...

HALLIE: It's very hard to put this blog to bed and go into my kitchen where I am making noodle pudding for dinner when now all I want is a dozen oysters, a glass of Prosecco, and an enormous white fish chub. 

What are you lusting after?

S. W. Hubbard on Recurring Themes: The Well that Keeps Gushing

HALLIE EPHRON: As I was reading today's blog post from S. W. (Susan) Hubbard about her terrific new novel, This Bitter Treasure,

she had me contemplating the themes that seem to show up unbidden and unexpectedly in my novels, too. Reminding me that we writers only think we're in the drivers seat.
 
S. W. HUBBARD: As I was finishing my most recent novel, This Bitter Treasure, and blabbing about it on Facebook, a reader responded, “Oh good—I hope it has another baby.”

That stopped me in my tracks. Uh, yeah—it DOES have a baby. How did you know?

And then I thought back over my seven books in two series and realized they all have babies, or kids, or some exploration of the parent-child relationship. In only one, The Lure, did I intentionally set out to write a novel about a baby (in that case, an illegal baby-selling scheme). But in every other novel, children managed to work their way in through a side door as subplots, motivational devices, or red herrings.

How did that happen?

This Bitter Treasure was supposed to be about the suburban heroin epidemic and a hapless home health aide who’s drawn into it. There wasn’t a baby in sight anywhere on the writing horizon. But as the pages piled up, a baby appeared. A baby who died before he was born.

The heroine and the home health aide and the old woman dying in a house filled with treasures are still in the novel. But soon this baby, along with his mother and grandmother and aunts and uncles, began elbowing his way to the front of the story. What’s an author to do? I can’t seem to repress my need to explore and re-explore the parent-child relationship. To me it holds so much more promise than fiction’s well-worn themes of cheating lovers and spouses with dark secrets.

Perhaps it’s because I find my own children so profoundly unknowable. Consider my daughter: at fourteen she declared herself a dumb blonde at math who wanted nothing more than a job that allowed her to wear cute clothes. Now, at twenty-two, she has a degree in engineering and a job with a clothing allowance…to buy the steel-toed boots she sometimes dons at work sites. I helped create her, yet she remains a mystery.

Every time I hear a parent utter the words, “I know my child. She would never…,” I see the plot for a novel appear.

I recently became an empty nester. Twenty-five years of in-the-trenches childrearing have ended. So maybe now I’ll be free to let some other subconscious theme creep into my work. Like the financial despair that leads a man to take hostages in his own home. Yes, yes! And then he becomes an escaped prisoner who terrorizes a small Adirondack town. Yeah, that’s the ticket!

But, wait. There’s this little girl…and her foster parents…and her biological mother….

Looks like that particular well hasn’t stopped producing just yet.

How about you? Have you noticed recurring themes, conscious or unconscious, in the books you write, or in the work of favorite authors? Do those themes attract you? Do you ever think “not this again!”?

HALLIE: I do! I do! Old women keep showing up in my novels -- an aging woman who is sharp as a tack and underestimated by other characters. Maybe it's my attempt wreak my own revenge and come to terms with getting older myself. 

To second Susan's questions: What seems to show up in the books you write or the ones you love to read?

S.W. Hubbard is the author of the Frank Bennett Adirondack Mystery series and the Palmyrton Estate Sale Mystery series. This Bitter Treasure, the third estate sale mystery, was released last month.  The first book in the series, Another Man’s Treasure, happens to be just $.99 for Kindle today through 4/10. You can read the first chapters of all her books at http://swhubbard.net. Follow her on Twitter or on Facebook.