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Barb Taub is one of the wittiest writers I know, and her latest book – Do Not Wash Hands in Plates – did not disappoint. My smile muscles hurt by the time I finished it. This is a travelogue with a twist, a repeat adventure of three friends (Americans Barb and Janine and an Indian, Jaya) of one they had taken four decades before. Only this time instead of the relatively small country of Belgium, they chose to meet in India, where Jaya lives. After overcoming as many obstacles as the board game of that name, they managed to find each other at the Ahmedabad Airport without the use of digital devices and spent their first days at Jaya’s house – where their itinerary was “1. Eat. 2. Rest up from eating. 3. Eat more. 4. Go into jetlag coma.” The first part of their vacation was spent on a train, where they all were relegated to upper bunks. Arriving in Agra, they discovered the Taj Mahal was closed because of President Obama’s visit, but they found some lesser but equally impressive monuments to visit and spent a lot of the time eating. In fact, eating was one of their main forms of entertainment and torture. The reader is treated to instructions on how to shop in India, to queue, to haggle down the price of a souvenir, to navigate without a GPS (ask anyone), and to cross a road safely. The three friends found Delhi and Kerala were similarly closed, but a steam bath, a massage, and a swim were viable substitutes. Plus more food. Along their tour, they saw dancing, monkeys, elephants with parking places, and Barb got Delhi belly. She ended up in a hospital, where she was given sufficient pharmaceuticals to recover and begin eating again. The book is described as the story of three women eating their way across India in search of adventure, elephants, temples, palaces, western toilets, monkeys, the perfect paratha…and find the kindness of Indian strangers. Perfect! I highly recommend it. Excerpt: Despite blizzards, canceled flights, de-icing delays, and an adjacent passenger who had made unfortunate food choices resulting in alarming gastrointestinal events, I arrived in India. The theory was that I would fly in from my home in Scotland, Janine would come from Washington DC, and Jaya would meet up with us at the airport. Nobody who knows any of us thought for a second that this could really occur. Actual conversation at Passport Control, Mumbai: Janine: “Well no, I don’t have my friend’s address or phone number. But she’s going to pick me up at the airport. She lives in Gujarat. That’s in India.” Passport Control: [SO not impressed I arrived before Janine. As far as I could tell, the Ahmedabad Airport was staffed by the entire Indian army, each soldier carrying a honking huge gun. I grabbed my suitcase and exited baggage control into India. Noise. Chaos. People, dogs, honking horns, more people. More soldiers. More guns. Dozens of sincere men who called me “Sister” and suggested they could take me anywhere on the planet I might want to go. No Janine. No Jaya. And, apparently, no way to get back into the airport. After several failed attempts at international texts, I realized I could (at heart-stopping expense) send email to Jaya, who soon confirmed that she was on her way and that it was 3:00AM so I should go back inside. Except there were signs everywhere saying you couldn’t go back in. “No problem.” Jaya explained that rules in India are more like guidelines. “People in India are very kind. Just ask.” I’ve been living in the UK where rules are inviolate and graven in stone, so I didn’t believe a word of it. But the soldier at the door listened to my plea and waved his AK-Humongo to usher me back inside. There I found Janine attempting to send email or text. I reminded her neither option was likely for two technologically-challenged, jet-lagged, middle-aged ladies in a foreign country at 3:00AM. In the end, we wandered over to the door and to our mutual amazement found Jaya waiting for us along with a hired driver and a van. Apparently lightning does strike again, because just like thirty-five years earlier, the three of us actually managed to meet up in another continent. What could possibly go wrong from here? About the author: From Goodreads In halcyon days BC (before children), Barb Taub wrote a humor column for several Midwest newspapers. With the arrival of Child #4, she veered toward the dark side and an HR career. Following a daring daytime escape to England, she’s lived in a medieval castle and a hobbit house with her prince-of-a-guy and the World’s Most Spoiled AussieDog. Now all her days are Saturdays, and she spends them consulting with her occasional co-author/daughter Hannah on Marvel heroes, Null City, and translating from British to American. You can find Barb at:  barbtaub.com Her blog is: BARB TAUB – Writing & Coffee. Especially coffee.  And her books at: http://www.amazon.com/Barb-Taub/e/B00EZP9BS8/ref=dp_byline_cont_ebooks_1 0 0

  While I was deep underground, slaving away on my third book, I tried to sandwich in the reading of a number of books which I had promised Rosie Amber and several others I would review. Just to warn all y’all (the plural of y’all), there will be several upcoming: Britannia III – The Warlords, by Richard Denham and T.J. Trow The Code for Killing by William Savage Do Not Wash Hands in Plates by Barb Taub I thank Rosie and the authors for their patience! 0 0

Love in the Time of Murder is book three in The Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives series by this author. I will confess I haven’t read the first two, but I didn’t have any trouble getting into the story and understanding the relationships of the characters. I understand this is the last book in the series, and the previous two are also stand-alones. This is a fun romp of a cozy. Delilah, or Dee as she is known to her friends, is the granddaughter of a group of elderly ladies who get together to knit and solve crimes. Her life is in a bit of a mess. Her husband Brock has become abusive for an unknown reason. Dee finally manages to leave him and move out on her own, but this means moving in with her grandmother, who raised her, with her attendant knitting and busy-body posse. Soon after, Brock shows up to take Dee back, and things get ugly before he finally leaves. For me, this was the most immediate and emotionally tense part of the story. While Dee is trying to figure out how to handle the situation – the Gray-Haired Knitting Detectives insist she get a restraining order – Brock is found murdered and Dee is suspect number one. Dee’s problems don’t end there, since the ladies see the perfect opportunity to find Dee a new man and put their matchmaking skills to use. Dee is having none of it, except for the fact the man they select – Tommy, introduced in the previous book – is handsome and makes her heart sing. At the same time, the ladies dive into finding the real killer, in order to save Dee. The grannies are at once nosey, frustrating, overbearing and irritating. I myself got irritated with them, along with Dee’s moving back and forth from her new apartment to her grandmother’s. I think the relationship between Dee’s gay employer and his boyfriend is a little too blatant for my taste – they seem to be snogging in public at every opportunity (really?) – and some of the humor didn’t reach my funny bone. Equally frustrating is Dee’s reluctance to overrule her grandmother and the posse, despite being constantly ambushed by people with the best of intentions but oblivious to her mental distress. I wonder whether this is because the book is told in first person, which means the reader sees and feels everything through Dee’s eyes. Third person would allow the reader to view the characters in a less biased way. Having said that, the mystery is a good one. The revelations about Brock keep you wondering just who he actually was, and overall, the book is a good story. Some of the wit and sarcasm I liked and there were some one-liners that made me laugh; I just wish the other relationships hadn’t fogged the sleuthing so much. About the author: D. E. Haggerty grew up reading everything she could get her my hands on, penning poems, writing songs, or drafting stories. After college and a stint in the U.S. Army, she entered the field of law, but after a few years in, became fed up and quit to become a writer. Her first manuscript she hid in the attic and returned to the law, then became a B&B owner. She managed a writing career by shutting the B&B during the week and in the off-season.  Several books later she moved to Istanbul to write full-time. 0 0

Katherine Pitts, of the wonderful blog site I wish I Lived in a Library, asked me to do a guest post. I wrote it before I went underground to finish my book and am just now acknowledging her. Mea culpa, Katherine. Katherine is a stay at home Mom with four (yes, four) children. She was previously a Systems Analyst dealing with computer security. In addition to reviewing books, she loves food and you’ll frequently find recipes on her blog along with movie and TV reviews. I encourage you to visit her blog – it’s always interesting and never, ever dull. Now, with regard to my post. It’s about what life was like on the Mayflower for the passengers. I think you’ll agree, once you’ve perused it, that we might not be able to handle the voyage. I, for one, might have jumped overboard at some point. Check it out at: http://iwishilivedinalibrary.blogspot.com/2016/02/guest-post-life-on-mayflower-from.html?showComment=1456243022572#c7042015503300567875 0 0

  Elijah Moon is doing his darndest to keep  me from finishing my last rewrite before the book goes to the editor! What I do when the eyes burn and I can’t manage to look at one more sentence in the book!     0 0

The author described her book as a cozy, chick lit mystery, and it does indeed fulfill all of those descriptors. Amy Wagner, a busy administrative assistant working in Houston, returns home to Seattle for her younger sister Gina’s funeral. Gina died in a fire in her apartment, and from the beginning, Amy believes the fire was not an accident. For one thing, the fire was apparently caused by Gina’s soap making, and Amy knows that Gina never cooked or baked anything that didn’t come from a box, let alone do something crafty like making soap. When Amy learns the laboratory where Gina worked burned down the week before her death, her suspicions deepen. Amy can’t convince her parents Gina may have been murdered, because although they divorced many years earlier, they are too busy sniping at each other and at Amy to pay attention. Gina was supposed to be a bridesmaid at her friend Sabrina ‘s wedding, and Amy makes an effort to get to know Sabrina and the other bridesmaids as a way to learn more about Gina and what she’d been doing prior to the wedding. Instead, she gets roped into replacing Gina in the wedding party. Amy also meets Dr. Trent Steinbeck, the head of Gina’s lab. Although initially put off by Trent’s social quirks, Amy discovers he also wants answers and comes to find him endearing during their search for the truth. The author does a commendable job detailing Trent’s research, and I was impressed at her knowledge of the various factors figuring into bringing a drug to market and the economic forces working against it. There are good red herrings along the way, and before the mystery can be solved, Trent may need to put his own life in danger. I thoroughly enjoyed the sarcasm and snark of the parents’ interactions and the travails of the bridesmaids as they dealt with a bridezilla. Ms. Bradeen writes with a good sense of humor. There is not a lot to complain about with this mystery, other than three characters who were a little over the top: Amy’s mother, Wendy, was a bit cartoonish in her desire to make Trent her daughter’s boyfriend and plying him with cookies – as if that would seal the relationship; Sabrina, as an extreme bridezilla, made the reader want to slap her; and I wondered whether, after so many years, Amy’s father would continue to verbally abuse her as a second class citizen in comparison to Gina and her scientific career. The author leads the reader on a merry chase from one suspect to the other, and all in all, this is a satisfying mystery in the classic cozy mode. 4 out of five stars. About the author (from her website): Marla Bradeen was born in 1977 and lives in Las Vegas, Nevada (USA). She previously worked as a software consultant and analyst. In 2012, she gave up a traditional job for no other reason than to have more time to pursue personal interests, such as sleeping in late and taking naps. Although she misses seeing regular deposits into her bank account, she hasn’t once regretted that decision. She didn’t initially intend to begin writing novels, but after several weeks of doing nothing, she realized sleeping all day isn’t as easy or enjoyable as her cats led her to believe. Over the ensuing months, she wrote Lethal Injection, which she self-published in 2013. Marla finished her first (and, before 2013, only) novel in 2004 and spent the next two years unsuccessfully querying literary agents. That experience combined with the advancement of self-publishing over the past few years drove her decision to pursue the self-publishing path. She has published several other chick lit mysteries: The Amicable Divorce, Lethal Injection, Lost Witness, Murder in White Sands You can find Marla at: marlabradeen@gmail.com Twitter (@marlabradeen) http://www.marlabradeen.com and Fatal Fire on Amazon:  http://www.amazon.com/Marla-Bradeen/e/B00C3PAW3K 0 0

I am into the major overhaul of my third book, getting fat in the rear from all the sitting! My time to read blog posts is limited and my energy is drained by the end of the day, despite gallons of coffee. So please forgive my absence, but do look for some book reviews!   0 0

Time to recognize a group of people who have kindly chosen to follow my blog. Perhaps you will find some kindred souls among them! victoryarch at https://followingthegoldenquill.wordpress.com/ – This is a blog with book reviews, recipes and baking (I was suckered in by the macaroons) and poetry, in other words sort of like my blog! Lori Carlson – Promptly Written – at https://ionanerissa.wordpress.com/  Lori is multitalented, posting short stories, horror, poetry, flash fiction – all of it good and interesting. Her latest is Oh Goth! How I Miss You – intriguing. Rock Emmanuel at https://christian286.wordpress.com/  This is a blog about Christian marriage, with good advice for everyone. One recent topic was about whether couples should run a joint banking account – something I’ve discussed with my daughter. Cally  – Some Special People – at https://somespecialpeople.wordpress.com/  Cally’s aim is to help make more people aware of people with special needs so they can be motivated and successful. She recently posted on the power of a smile! forsyria at https://forsyriaa.wordpress.com/2016/01/29/please-watch-and-video-sharing-support-to-syria-4/  This blog posts videos of what is happening in Syria, especially with the children. Greer at https://greercn.wordpress.com/ – For all of you movie lovers, this is the blog for you. The most recent post was about the movie Spotlight, and I hope you’ve all seen it. The story is true – about pedophelia in the Catholic Church in Boston – and the acting superb. Pam Wight at https://roughwighting.net/ Pam is one of my favorite people. She’s a prolific author and loves to post about the joy of writing. She also does reviews and recently posted on her early career: A Towering Tongue Twisting Career Turn. If that doesn’t draw you in, I don’t know what will! https://theuseofhormone.wordpress.com/about/ I unfortunately can’t read this but believe is it about hormones found in food and cosmetics Genel at https://newvideos31.wordpress.com  Genel is a quirky blogger with a charitable streak . Check out her Crazy Babies video – and she has personally made donations of a thousand books, to encourage reading. Rachael Richey at http://rachaelritchey.com/  Her blog site is The Chronicles of the Twelve Realms, a series of young adult (YA) fantasy fiction – . magical realism set in a medieval-type era. She recently published The Beauty Thief and she also hosts a blog battle – accepting stories from followers on which her followers vote each week.  Check her out! siddhidiksha at https://example636.wordpress.com/ – She is a thoughtful, lyrical and wonderful writer! Mark at https://fonzandcancer.wordpress.com/2016/01/24/ – Mark is fighting Hodgkin’s lymphoma and writes and incredibly inspirational blog. You need to visit him and give him your support. Fawad Hassan at https://fawadhassank.wordpress.com  Check out his Post What Is LIfe? and his stories of life in Pakistan. Another great writer! Blynng 15 at http://ego-silencer.com She is a cancer survivor and writes about loving to learn and sharing everything about how to live happy and healthy by meditating. You will need your Word Press password to access her site. Suzanne at http://apuginthekitchen.com. She writes about food, shares her recipes (see a recent on on pepper and pencetta toriglioni, which will make your drool. Also guest posts on food  – one recent one was by another favorite blogger of mine, Teagan Genevieve. The name of her post is from her pet pugs, who have passed over the rainbow bridge but live in her heart. https://getajewellery.wordpress.com/ This blog is all about jewelry with pictures to make you drool. One recent post was on Elizabeth Taylor’s collection.   Some or all of these wonderful bloggers might interest you – check them out! 0 0

In August of 2014 I was asked to write a guest blog for A Woman’s Wisdom. I thought about what I might write and figured I’d be on safe ground talking about mysteries — my genre and my favorite books to read.  But I also like food; in fact I’m rather a gourmand. No, not a gourmet – I just like food.  It can be comforting, like a good mystery. It’s a wonder I don’t weigh 500 pounds. We are grilling a chicken this weekend, so the gourmand naturally thought of this post. Hope you don’t mind looking at it again! A good mystery begins with a whodunit, but one that should wrap around at least one other story, and maybe two. A good mystery, as Winston Churchill once said about Russia, “…is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma; but perhaps there is a key.” It sort of reminds me of a turducken, a deboned chicken into a deboned duck, which is in turn stuffed into a deboned turkey.  Hence turducken.  It was introduced to the world by football commentator and former coach John Madden, during a National Football League broadcast. Did I mention I like football, too? While announcing a game, he displayed the turducken and started to carve it up.  In the United Kingdom, the Pure Meat Company offered a five-bird roast (a goose, a turkey, a chicken, a pheasant, and a pigeon, stuffed with sausage in 1989. Now that’s a royal roast!       So what makes a good mystery? There are a plethora of to-do lists on the internet about writing mysteries, but here are some of mine. 1. An interesting locale. The locale itself can be a character in your story. 2. A compelling main character. This person can be you, if you wish, but bring in parts of other people to make him or her interesting and give them depth. 3. A hook to catch the reader. This is usually the first sentence, the first paragraph, or first chapter of the book, although occasionally a prologue does the trick. Think of the beginning of P.D. James’ Unnatural Causes, in which a famous crime writer’s body found handless and floating in a local vicar’s boat. 4. A strong main plot = the turkey. Hopefully not a turkey.  I find inspiration for this in news stories and personal experiences. Make sure it involves a murder and a body – I know this should be obvious – but no one is going to want to read an entire book about a stolen watch. 5. A subplot = the duck. The subplot does not necessarily have to tie into the plot except through the main character, although it is nice if you can weave them together. A third subplot = the chicken. You are not limited in number with regard to subplots – so you can go for the five bird roast – but with too many the book becomes confusing.  The flavors are lost! In my first book, Death in a Red Canvas Chair, the main plot concerns finding the killer of a young woman. The subplot involves college student prostitutes. Another subplot, although minor, was the purloining and selling of untreated body parts for transplantation. These tie to one another and ultimately to the young woman in the canvas chair.  My protagonist’s marriage has a life of its own through the book, and it continues as a subplot in the second book, Death in a Dacron Sail. Being a gourmand, I had to have food running through both books; one reader told me I made him hungry! 6. Be sure that each subplot is populated by one or more distinct characters, whose personalities are well-drawn, likable or not. Tension is created by the unlikable. Sometimes it’s hard to create a nasty character, but once you’ve done it, you’ll find it’s fun! 7. The story needs to be believable. This might seem a bit obvious, but I’ve read some mysteries in which the plot is too fantastic or the protagonist superhuman. I like Clive Cussler’s books, for example – they’re entertaining beach reads, but the stories are wild and the main characters are, well, too perfect. 8. Research! For every scene in which something procedural takes place or there is a known locale, you need to do your research. This can be really enjoyable; I’ve met some incredible people with stories of their own to tell.  I even spent a week in Maine in February to get a feel for winter there, as background for Death in a Dacron Sail. Experiencing temperatures below zero and amazing images of what feet of snow can do to the landscape made it an adventure. You might want to research where to find a turducken. 9. Read!  Mystery is one of my favorite genres, so maybe that’s why I decided to write one or two or three… You learn a lot about what works and what doesn’t by reading other mystery writers. 10. Write! You need to write every day, even if it is only for your blog. If you don’t want to write a mystery, write what is comfortable for you. What’s your favorite genre? Maybe that’s where to start. Many thanks to A Woman’s Wisdom for the opportunity to write a guest pos! In case you’re wondering what I am doing for  the A-Z Challenge, this year my subject(s) will be people and places from my books, including the third (Death by Pumpkin, out in April). 0 0

A recent post from Sue Vincent reminded me of how much I like spiders’ webs: their patterns, their beauty when limned with frost or dew, the delicacy with which they are spun. So I decided to learn about where them come from; here is what I found: Spider webs are made of proteinaceous silk extruded from the spider’s spinnerets. These glands are located on the tip of the spider’s abdomen. Many spiders have three pairs of spinnerets, each producing a silk thread with a different purpose: trailed safety lines, sticky silk for trapping and fine silk for wrapping their prey. Some spider can produce up to eight different kinds of silk threads. Spider webs have been around for a long time – at least 100 million years age—because they discovered in early Cretaceous amber in France, Burma and England. When spiders moved from water to the land in the Early Devonian period, their silk evolved initially to protect their bodies and eggs, then for hunting purposes. The silk threads were used as guide lines, then in webs on the ground and eventually as aerial webs. Spiders can be classified by the webs they weave: Spiral orb webs                  Funnel web     Tubular webs which run up the bases of trees or along the ground           Sheet webs             People have found some uses for webs, too. Years ago, webs were packed into wounds to stop bleeding. They have been used as fishing line in Polynesia, were made into nets for transporting objects, and some tribes in New Guinea have used the webs as rain hats. During World War II, the threads of the black widow were used in their telescopic gun sights. Isn’t life amazing!? I have a healthy respect for spiders and generally leave them alone. If I find one inside, I trap it and dump it outside; if I encounter them in the pool, I scoop them out. I like what Pablo Picasso had to say about artists and spider webs. “The artist is a receptacle for the emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from theearth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider’s web.”   0 0