Progress

I hope you're having a peaceful week. Here at Casa Leone, there's lots going on. Mowing, weeding, wood stacking, writing and even--surprise!--cooking. I know, I know, cooking doesn't seem like a big deal but believe me, my getting back into the kitchen is a huge accomplishment. My husband and I cooked together all the time, and now that he's gone the kitchen is just a sad place.

But it seems that with each passing day, the sadness dims a bit. Which is really good, considering I've been living on frozen dinners for weeks!

So, I ventured in with the pots and pans yesterday. The result? A comfort food dish. Nothing extraordinary. Just plain, old mac and cheese.

It was great! Who knows? Eating from-scratch food just might grow on me.

What about you? Any fun in the kitchen you'd care to share? Recipes? I'm open to suggestions!

I hope you have a lovely weekend.

Bee-ing Busy

Sharing some summer sweetness with you. I put a jar in my Etsy shop today, just to see how it goes. Maybe I'll get a nibble. Get it? A nibble?

Sorry! Bad jokes aside, I hope you've had a peaceful Friday.

Me? Busy here on the farm. Weeds to pull, jam to preserve, laundry to fold. Nothing earth-shattering or newsworthy, but enough to keep me moving. I did linger in the orchard, watching the bees buzzing amongst the fruit trees. Amazing!

Now I'm off to find a bowl of ice cream. A big bowl. Really big. With sprinkles, maybe. And whipped cream, definitely.

Wishing you a happy evening!

Sunny Florida

I am basking in the sun here in sunny Florida. Florida has inspired two of my novels and might yet inspire even more!
We writers do know that all writing is eighty percent perspiration and twenty inspiration - or do we? Sometimes its hard to write a single word but you press on. At least that is my experience.
Inspiration plays a large part though, especially a location. But do you have to know it? Well you have to know how things work, what the climate is like.
I have written a couple of novels set in Spain, I've never been to Spain. That's going to remedied this year. However, I am worried will real Spain (which is where I'm going rather than coastal Spain) be a step into reality too far? Will I be disappointed. It can happen. I am just a tad afraid that what I will see will spoil my romantic view, ah well we will see.
But back to Florida - coming here every year I am quite at home. I know and love the countryside. I love the wildness. Not wild you say? Well no, not if you are visiting Orlando, but slip onto a back road, you will see wildness aplenty. Deer, foxes, wonderful birds. Oh yes, they are all here just a step or two away. Even where my son lives the deer creep out of the woods at night and eat the sweet grass on his lawn. They drink from the lake too, watchful of the alligator that lives there...oh yes, Florida has an abundance of wildlife. I might not have known this had I not been given the opportunity to come many times. Perhaps Spain will throw up some surprises too - I hope so!

From the Farm

Busy days here on the farm. Canning. Flower planting. Watering. Weeding. Mowing. Weed pulling.

Also, butterfly watching.

What about you? What's going on in your corner of the world?

Strawberry Dreaming

It's strawberry time here. The strawberry beds are filled with plump berries and I'm picking them faster than I can eat 'em.

I've decided to do what we have done in years past with this berry abundance. I'm going to make jam. My husband I and I always made jam together and while I know it won't be the same now I'm going to give it a go.

My feeling is the jam will be bittersweet this year. Still, I'm getting out my canning pots and sterilizing the jars. Move over berries, I'm coming in!

So, that's the plan for my Saturday. What about you? Anything up your sleeve?

Wecome to John Lindermuth

I visisted with my friend and fellow writer, John Lindermuth, and he has an exciting new book out at the moment. It is a book that is different from his normal excellent thriller/historicals so I invited him to tell us all about it.

As the 19th century winds to a close, Sheriff Sylvester Tilghman of the small Pennsylvania town of Arahpot ponders his biggest problems: finding a new deputy and convincing his true love, Lydia, to marry him. But an early autumn day finds Arahpot’s usual tranquility shaken when a stranger is fatally stabbed.

Upon seeing the victim, Tilghman recalls witnessing a strained encounter between him and Valentine Deibert, an obese man with a wife half his age who had recently moved to Arahpot. The sheriff questions Deibert who denies knowing the victim.

Tilghman is unconvinced, but lacks a connection until the widow arrives in Arahpot. Suddenly Sylvester is plunged into investigating two murders. As he works through an abundance of motivated suspects, Tilghman finds himself in danger. And worse -- Lydia is pushing her obnoxious cousin as a candidate for deputy.

Review: (Use as much or little as you see fit, but please credit Doug)
***** J. R. Lindermuth’s Best Book Yet. Highly Recommended. Review by Douglas Quinn, The Webb Sawyer Mysteries, The Ellis Family Thrillers, Cornelius The Orphan, Historical Fiction/Adventure, and Children’s Chapter Books.http://www.douglasquinn.com).“I was weaned on the great fin de siécle 19th century mysteries of Edgar Allan Poe and Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle. Then Caleb Carr gave me the moody and exciting The Alienist and its sequel Angel of Darkness. All of these (even accounting for Sherlock Holmes forays into the moors and English countryside) were urban based. In contrast to the frenetic time-is-of-the-essence rush by these author’s protagonists to solve the crime, in Fallen From Grace, Lindermuth offers up a delicious, slow-paced murder mystery set in a small, rural Pennsylvania town called Arahpot.

“When the sheriff declares that the telegraph is the greatest invention ever for a sheriff, this gives you an idea of the pacing of the story. But this is a good thing, because it allows Lindermuth to spend time developing all of the interesting characters in this interesting and intriguing tale. What I enjoy about Lindermuth’s writing style is that he feels no need to spend time with detailed physical descriptions. Instead, as the characters are introduced and progress through the story, I had a perfect image in my mind of their physical appearance, who they were and what they were all about. This is the mark of an expert writer and I applaud Lindermuth for this skill.

“Sylvester Tilghman, Syl to his friends, is a bachelor who doesn’t do so well in the cooking-for-himself department and is always on the lookout for an invitation to a meal, be it breakfast lunch or dinner. His favorite targets are his girlfriend, Lydia, and her parents, and his neighbors, Dr. Mariner and his family. “That brings me to the other thing I like about Lindermuth’s writing, that being all the little side stories and character interactions he weaves throughout the tale, the most interesting being the relationship between Sylvester and Lydia. Lydia, who Sylvester wants to marry, clearly cares for him. However, she has been putting off his request for some time. The reader is left to speculate her reasons and, at the end of the book, while other town romances resolve themselves, he isn’t able to solve his dilemma with Lydia. During it all, Lydia is foisting her annoying cousin, Cyrus, upon Sylvester to fill a deputy sheriff’s position. There are other distractions, some related to the crimes, some not, that occupy Sylvester’s attention. These diversions add richness to the setting, the characters and the story.”

Buy links:
http://www.oaktreebooks.com/Shop%20OTP.htm


http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/161009011X/ref=s9_simh_gw_p14_d0_i1?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=0S00MQ9KF41Q6E6XHF25&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Fallen-from-Grace/John-Lindermuth/e/9781610090117/?itm=3&USRI=lindermuth
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Fallen From Grace (March 2011), Wild Oak
Being Someone Else (July 2010), Whiskey Creek Press
http://jrlindermuth.com

Author Central

I've been procrastinating on creating an author page at Amazon. But finally I did it and it was embarassingly easy.

Just go to Amazon Author Central and log in. You can use your existing password and then select the books that are yours and add a profile. Bingo it's done. I have a name that's not distinctive so it was good to pull my books together. Once I spoke at a workshop and the gentleman who introduced me read off all the books he thought I'd written -- a book on economics, a biography of a German philosopher. All books by Kathleen O'Connor but they aren't mine.

Here is my page http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KCTKEO Have you created yours?