Weddings Gone Wrong By Jennifer J. Chow

 JENN McKINLAY: I am delighted to have our friend Jennifer J Chow back on Jungle Reds today! She pens one of my absolute favorite series and her latest STAR-CROSSED EGG TARTS looks to be another top-notch delightful mystery. If you're looking for a hint about the subject, check out the gorgeous picture below! 

(Yes, it's WEDDINGS)!

Now here's Jen to tell us more about it!

JEN J CHOW: You look forward to the special day when you get to marry your beloved…and then something goes awry. I’ve definitely had that happen. My musicians called me the wee hours before my wedding and told me they were still at the airport…on standby. All the time I was prepping, I wondered if they’d make it on time (yes, they did!). 

I also made trouble of my own at my cousin’s wedding. She’d failed to let me know she would be asking relatives to come up front and acknowledging them; as we took turns, I realized they were all giving her red envelopes. And I hadn’t brought any with me! 

Other mishaps at weddings I’ve attended have been minor: the bride and groom showing up super late to the reception because of photo taking, last-minute flowers needing to be swapped in for the originals, and people stepping on each other’s toes while dancing. 

A few atrocious cases I’ve read about online: a hostess carrying a cake, tripping, and falling face-first into it; a mother-of-the-bride saving money and doubling up on her daughter’s wedding, using it for vow renewals; and a very nervous groom vomiting all over his bride. 

But the worst I can think of? Finding a dead body at the wedding. Hidden under the cake table, because of murder. Which is exactly what happens to my protagonist in Star-Crossed Egg Tarts. 

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What’s the worst thing you know of that’s happened at a wedding? 

About the Book:

Felicity Jin returns in the second book in the heart-warming and deliciously mysterious Magical Fortune Cookie series from Lilian Jackson Braun Award-nominee Jennifer J. Chow.



Jin Bakery has been asked to cater the Lum-Wu outdoor wedding at Pixie Park. The day of the ceremony, Felicity is finishing the “cake” of tiered egg tarts as the wedding party arrives for the ceremony. When one of the groomsmen, Miles Wu, doesn’t arrive, Felicity’s best friend and local florist Kelvin generously steps in for him and the wedding goes smoothly―until cake cutting time.

That’s when Felicity finds Miles’ dead body beneath the table with her egg tarts display, stabbed by Kelvin’s gardening shears. 

With the detective’s sights on Kelvin, Felicity starts sleuthing away to prove his innocence, revealing dark secrets about all the wedding's attendants. They each had something to hide―and a reason to quiet Miles forever. To make matters worse, Felicity’s powers of prediction are on the fritz thanks to the emotional turmoil of a surprise visit from her estranged father.

When the groom gets poisoned at the send-off party and winds up in a coma, the stakes are even higher, not to mention Felicity’s feelings for Kelvin are beginning to feel more than friendly. Will Felicity’s magic return in time to catch the true culprit and rescue her budding relationship with Kelvin?

https://read.macmillan.com/lp/star-crossed-egg-tarts-9781250323255/

Author Links:

https://jenniferjchow.com/

https://www.facebook.com/JenJChow

https://www.instagram.com/jenjchow/

Bio:

JENNIFER J. CHOW writes cozies filled with hope and heritage. She has been a finalist for the Agatha, Anthony, Lefty, and Lilian Jackson Braun Memorial Award. The first book in her Magical Fortune Cookie series, Ill-Fated Fortune, was highlighted in Book Riot, Criminal Element, and Woman’s World. Jennifer is a past president of Sisters in Crime and an active member of Crime Writers of Color and Mystery Writers of America. She regularly blogs at chicksonthecase.com. Connect with her online and sign up for her newsletter at JenniferJChow.com.

You Pierced What? Welcome to Mid-Life!

 JENN McKINLAY: Well, hello, mid-life crisis!

Nose stud! Scale of pain from 1-10 with 1 being none, I'd say it was a 2.

I was on the phone the other day, catching up with my former college roommate, a person who has known adult me for almost 40 years. We talked about what was happening in our lives and when I finished, she said, “So, you’re writing fantasy novels, running 5Ks (see photo below), and now you have a nose stud (see photo above). Overall, how do you feel your mid-life crisis is going?”

Me and H2 - Rock and Roll 5K - it was 44 degrees!!!

I laughed and said, “This from a woman who is selling her house and traveling the country in an RV for the next few years to find her perfect retirement location?” She also laughed as we acknowledged we were both managing our middle years in different and surprising ways. (I have always loathed running and she never planned to leave CT).

Side note: neither of us have bought a sports car or traded in our husbands for a younger model. LOL.

My question to you, Reds, is what did your middle-age years look like, what did you do, or plan to do to embrace the next chapter?

HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN:  Middle years….When was that, again? Remind me?  (Wait, I just re-read your opening paragraph. You have a nose stud? Did I know that?)  Anyway, my middle years are long gone, and I got through them with a strange but inadvertent combination of ignoring them and embracing them. I’m not sure I ever thought of “mid-life crisis.”  I was unmarried and unattached between the ages of 21 and 40, and happily so.  Married at 40, working 24/7 and truly loving it. There was nothing else I wanted to do, and nowhere else I wanted to be. I just wanted to be better at what I was already dong.  Then, after a bit of turmoil,  married Jonathan when I was 46. 

Hmm. I may be the ONLY person, come to think of it, who traded in her husband for an OLDER model. :-) 

So was that before or after mid-life?

I loved my mid-years, and valued them. I’m better now than ever, but I see it as so much of a process.

DEBORAH CROMBIE: How did I not know about the nose stud, either? Is this since the last time we zoomed? I say, “good for you,” and “ouch!”

Middle years? Oh, I did the classic. Wrote a novel. Got a divorce. (For the first time in my life I had my own money! Oh, it was so incredibly liberating!) Married slightly younger model. Bought a sports car. Started making trips to England by myself. (Can you shout “liberating!!!)

The writing, the husband, and the solo trips have stuck. The red sports car, not, alas. I had to come to grips with reality when the warranty ran out. 

HALLIE EPHRON: Mine was a gradual shift. (I’ve always had a keep-one-foot-on-the-dock-and-one-on-the-boat approach to change.) 

The big thing was that I started to write fiction. I’d started a freelance writing business which gave me the flexibility to write stuff that, for quite a long time, I did not get paid for. Meanwhile my daughters were flying the coop and my Jerry was our anchor. I was also letting my hair go gray and Jerry and I were ticking travel destinations off our bucket list. And buying another new white Honda Civic every so often to replace a 14-year-old one. I’m not a big risk taker. 

RHYS BOWEN: It’s funny that my next stand-alone, MRS ENDICOTT’S SPLENDID ADVENTURE, has the theme of midlife crisis. Dumped by her husband after being the model wife she takes off for the south of France and forges a whole new life there. (Maybe a bit of a living vicariously write?) Anyway my fifties were much better than my forties when husband was laid off and I had three kids in college. Last kid went to college. We traveled and I took the risk of switching from a reliable income writing YA books to writing what I like to read. The first Constable Evans novel got a teeny advance and a print run of 2500. I think it’s worked out okay. If I hadn’t switched I’d never have made all these wonderful friends and been part of this amazing community. 

 

JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: I got my @$$ tattooed when I turned 36, does that count? Maybe I had an early start on the midlife "say yes to changes" thing, because that's around the time I started to write. 

 

In some ways, I agree with Rhys: my fifties were easier at times than my forties (I had a baby at 39, after all!) And my sixties (so far) are even better. I feel freer, more myself, and more willing to take risks than I was when I was younger. I can't see going in for a piercing, but I could definitely sign up for another tattoo... 

LUCY BURDETTE: whenever someone asks how I started writing, how I switched careers from clinical psychology to mystery writer, I say it was my midlife crisis. I don’t know how else to describe it that would make sense. It certainly wasn’t planned, but I’ve never taken the straight route to anything. The middle years were filled with angst, so I am really enjoying being settled with John and having lots of adventures writing and otherwise along the way.

JENN: In reading these answers, I am reminded of why I absolutely adore the Reds. We're all so different and so uniquely ourselves and there's no judgement just a lot of support. And the nose stud happened in December. Not planned - a totally spur of the moment - why not? - at the mall. LOL.

Your turn readers! What did/does/will mid-life look for you?

Victor Wakefield, 1926 - 2024

 JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: You may have missed the news in the comments section, but our own Celia Wakefield's beloved husband Victor died this past month, at home in bed, at the age of 98. He led an amazing and rich live in his almost-century, and this morning, instead of a recipe, Celia is sharing a few - there are so many! - Victor stories.

 

 

It's Julia's week which seems to say it’s Celia's Sunday. Julia suggested that while I had written so much about my own childhood perhaps it was time to tell some of Victor’s early tales. 

 

Where to start? Of course, how did we meet? I had recently joined IBM UK and was at the Data Processing Christmas Party held in the pub across the road from IBM UK HQ. (IBM was a dry company worldwide, in fact they were ahead of the current trend). I was feeling very nervous finding myself a part of a group around the managing director (UK speak - CEO). Someone came and stood between my friend Audrey and me. “Hello, Vic” said Audrey and introduced us. However, Victor told a different tale. He always insisted he had seen me from across the room and asked who I was. On being told I was a new secretary - "and I hadn't a boy friend," Victor like to add as he replied then, "Well she does now!" Knowing the person he had been speaking with I disagree. There are some things one didn’t discuss at work. But you be the judge as to which version seems most likely.

 

Victor grew up in circumstances very different from mine. He was a life-long asthmatic. This served him well as he turned eighteen in 1944. He was called up to fight in the Second World War, but due to his health was never sent to the front. Instead, he was placed in British counter intelligence. On testing he proved adept at foreign language, so was learning Japanese when the war ended. As he still had to complete his three years of national service, he was posted first to India, where the saying was, “Those who hold the Red Fort (large military complex in Delhi) hold India.” The transfer from British to self rule was, as Victor wrote, “A turbulent and terrible time.” The work involved retraining of thousands of jobs done by the British now to be done by the Indians. Victor spoke very little of his actual work. I would imagine he had to keep listening for possible sedition but I have no proof. 

 

The scanned version is scratched, alas...

Victor loved to talk about his seven sweeps of the scythe. Opportunities which might have ended in disaster but from which he was saved by unexpected help. Here is one that has disaster written all over it. After the monsoon season Victor heard of a remote hilly area where a profusion of spectacularly colored butterflies hatched only at that time of year. Riding on a narrow dirt road he veered too close to the edge over a deep drop into the ravine below. His motorbike swerved off the path and hung over the drop. He was stuck. The bike was army issue so losing it was out of the question, but it was heavy and there was no way to maneuver it back onto the path. Then his luck changed. 

Along the path came two Indian men who, seeing Victors predicament, ran to him and were able to lift the bike and pull Victor back to safety. 

 

The screen shot version is blurry!

From India Victor was posted to Nairobi, Kenya. Among his responsibilities was teaching the “Kenyan Askaris” to be smart and effective soldiers, which included learning how to ride motor-cycles. This involved a lot of merriment on the troops account. They referred to the motor-cycles as piki-piki, in Swahili from the motor-cycle sound. 

 

Victor had several adventures or Swipes in Kenya. I think this one scared him the most. One night he drove his jeep into the bush to look at the stars. Turning off his headlights to scan the heavens, he was horrified to find he was being watched by hundreds of pairs of eyes. Reversing quickly, headlights on again, he fled back to civilization.

 

Victor was a man of many talents and hobbies. He liked to tell friends that he had been active all his life from the early gift of a bicycle from a Canadian soldier. He rode miles over the South Downs above Brighton. He loved to play tennis and one friend wrote of his determination to win (though in a most gentleman like manner.) He had great pleasure trying to play with our grandson in 2021 even though it was hard to swoop around the court as he had in the past.

 

His retirement work centered around mechanical clock repair and rebuilding until he had his cataracts removed, which altered his shortsightedness. He was an avid gamer, researching century old games which he would build to play with kids. He was a clown. Yes, he went to clown school! He was a photographer and returned to the immediate pleasure it gave him through his iPad - instant gratification. He would take photos of breaking news on the TV. I think this helped him to cement the event as he knew his memory was failing. 

 

Victor and I bonded over my love of the Beatles whose lyrics he told me reminded him of Elizabethan madrigals. We loved music, particularly classical, and Victor studied and played an Alto recorder with our daughter Olivia, who played the soprano version before switching to flute. He was a founding member of the Recorder Group here at the senior college at USM. Looking back on our almost 60 years together I realize he has left me a gift. Time to spend now on pursuing some other interests of my own - though I know I shall still be cooking. In fact, I am finding that cooking for one isn’t as bad as I thought, so perhaps that will be my topic if Julia invites me next time. 

JULIA: Oh, you know there will be a next time! Dear readers, what are some of your stories about loved ones now passed?