Some fabulous news to share!!! Over My Dead Body has published my latest short story: Top Secret.

I’m thrilled! This is my first mystery sale that has no speculative (i.e. fantasy) element. The mystery market is a tough market. There are very few short story magazines just for mystery. Many of the markets are noir…and I don’t happen to read or write noir! So it’s a very big thrill to be a part of Over My Dead Body!

(It’s also a bargain: It’s a free read online!)

We have our first saffron dish!  I collected recipes (thanks to all of you who emailed them to me), read through them and…instead of picking one, I combined ingredients and techniques from several!  I didn’t want to start with the recipes that involved too much expensive fish.  That way, if I blew the recipe completely, it wouldn’t be quite so expensive.

As you can see from the picture, I settled on Chicken Saffron Rice with Sea Scallops and Asparagus.

I took advice from Lucile from Glandeves; (after all she grows, picks, dries and sells the saffron).  I soaked about 4 strands of saffron in cream for several hours before I began the dish.

Another friend of mine sent me a recipe that advised making the rice with chicken broth–the homemade kind.  While this may seem like a lot of trouble, saffron is not cheap.  Might as well get the most out of the ingredients to really bring out the dish.  I marinated two chicken thighs/legs in honey and soy sauce and then baked.  I removed the chicken from the bones and boiled the bones with one cube chicken bullion, thyme and celery.   Yum!

I cooked 1.5 cups of rice, minced onions, 3 cups of the broth and about 1/4 cup of the saffron cream.   When it was almost done  cooking, I sauteed garlic in grapeseed oil (high smoking point) and then sauteed scallops.  Using the leftover garlic and oil, I sauteed asparagus.  When the rice was done, I added the last of the cream/saffron (about 2 tablespoons).   I then mixed in the diced chicken.

When the rice was done…wow.  What a subtle, yet beautiful aroma.  I’ve never had saffron, and I can say that it is a truly unique smell.  Definite flowers.  The only other way I can describe it is to compare the smell to a walk in the mountains.  A very clean, fresh scent that is so subtle, you wouldn’t even know to ask the cook about it. The saffron doesn’t overwhelm the dish; it compliments the chicken and the scallops quite well.  It went extremely well with the tart/slight bitterness of asparagus.

I think I may try it another saffron rice disk with wild salmon next. I really did enjoy the scallops as part of the dish. Lucile also mentioned a dish using saffron soaked in white wine. After soaking for several hours, she suggested boiling mussels in the wine and then serving over rice. Doesn’t that sound good???

Oh–one of the things that I learned from my studies: when a saffron dish is very yellow? It’s often because instead of just saffron, tumeric or annato is used to give the impression that a lot of saffron is in the dish! Both those ingredients are cheaper than saffron threads, yet neither one imparts the taste–and in fact if overused can make the dish bitter.

So.  Yesterday, Junior caught his first bird.  Well, it’s the first bird we saw him…gnawing on that hadn’t been brought to him by Scamp (these days she isn’t inclined to share her catches with him.  We know she catches them.  The evidence…is scattered in the yard.  Last catch was a blue jay, if you must know.  Blue feathers.)

Junior…appeared quite pleased with himself, even though his humans were grossed out.  I mean, we feed him.  He has food all the time so it isn’t as though he was hungry.   Remember how I told you he sat under the hummingbird feeder, watching, waiting and jumping?  Well, apparently he jumped high enough.  One less finch in the world.

The good news is that he was selfish.  Thankfully, he did not bring it inside to “share.”

Ish.

No, picture is not of them bird catching.  That is just them after playing.  Scamp has been coming in for about an hour a day, running around the dining room.  She loves the little soft balls.  She bats them around, carries them in her mouth and generally has a good time in-between a bite of food and drink of water.  This morning, Junior got up from nap and helped her play.

She’s getting there.  She still runs away much too quickly, but she’s sort of accepting us.  In a feral way.

Ooooh, la-la! Today’s mailbag brought a very special treat. Saffron. From the French Alps. I’m not talking about powder either–these are the actual saffron threads. Rich, dark maroon with the elusive smell like that of a fine wine. A sweet flowery scent that you can almost taste.

You know I had to try saffron. I talked about trying to grow it myself, but the bulbs are very hard to procure (the ones that produce the cooking saffron, not the decorative plant.) But Lucile, from Glandeves, helped resolve my curiosity. She not only sent the wonderful French Alp saffron, she included some rare, wild grown saffron from the Himalayan region of Tibet and a great looking tea from Tibet as well. The tea is a mix of saffron and top-grade white peony. It’s a “white” tea–I can’t wait to try it. With the perfume of saffron, it is bound to be a luxury. I’m also very partial to natural teas.

Glandeves has some other pretty unique saffron products–a syrup, a liquor, and even saffron meringues. The site is in French and English.

Lucile–THANK YOU!!!

If anyone has any favorite saffron recipes, send them my way. I’m going to be trying my hand at paella, I think, but I may need to start with something a little easier, perhaps a cream sauce over rice with fish. Yum!!

Update: I tried the tea. It is quite wonderful. It is a little like the fine Japanese teas that I had in Japan. It is smoother than most green teas, however. Definitely hints of sunshine in an open field of grass and flowers.

I’m frugal. I’m always looking for coupons. I want 5 percent back, not 2, not 1. So when I book expensive things–like a cruise, I tend to check all my credit cards, scouring for the best cash back or the best deal. Enter ShopDiscover.

5% Cashback Bonus

Cruise to Alaska, the Caribbean, Europe, Bermuda and more—there are no blackout dates!

* Offer is based on the cruise fare at the time of departure; lowest available fare guaranteed at the time of booking
* May be used in conjunction with other offers such as: Past Passenger promotions, senior rates, etc.; confirm offer eligibility at the time of booking
* Space is limited to cruise line availability
* Offer not valid on shipping, taxes or other service fees
* Must link to the Cruise and Vacation Desk site from the ShopDiscover Web page found at Discovercard.com and use your Discover Card; must book cruise through Cruise and Vacation Desk
* Offer is subject to change, including termination, without notice
* The promotional Cashback Bonus will be applied to your account within 8 weeks
* View complete ShopDiscover terms and disclosure

By booking through my Discover card, I get 5 percent back. Not chump change.

Add to that, Discover has a contest for bloggers (that would be me). Talk about ShopDiscover–and I might win 50 dollars to put towards that cruise. I’ve used the ShopDiscover before and been pleased with the results. You simply log onto your Discover account, pick the partner and shop. Anything you buy–5 percent back.

Cruises aren’t cheap. Give me five percent back and I’m pretty happy.

Update: Discover Card rules!  Not only did I get the 5 percent back–I got the 50 dollar gift certificate too!  Time to go a’shoppin!!!  Thanks Discover! 

One of the great things about a cat is how, on occasion, they are excited to see you even when you don’t have food. They come running over, they greet you with their little nose, rub against your leg and say, “What’re we gonna do now???” Then you walk down the hall and they say, “COOL! We’re goin’ down the hallway!” They run ahead, wait, make sure you’re coming, run behind your legs and then between them, trying to either kill you or commit suicide; it’s never really clear. Then when you arrive at the end of the hall, they sniff around. “We’re here!! Isn’t this great??? What next????” They look up at you with such expectations.

In the end, you really aren’t doing a darn thing but walking to the bathroom to put away the toilet paper you just bought, but they don’t care. They’re happy little creatures, glad to see you, happy to be alive. That’s the crux of it. They are just thrilled to be alive. It’s what pets do. They remind you to be happy to be alive. They just know that great things are to come.

Of course, to a cat, a chicken liver is the greatest thing in the world. It’s the simple joys. The very simple ones, like a happy cat.

Check out my review of Criminal Tendencies over at BSCreview. For every copy sold, one dollar (or one pound) goes to breast cancer research. Criminal Tendencies is available from all fine bookstores and also from Amazon.

I’ll mostly likely repost the full review here eventually, but not until BSCreview has had some time to enjoy some exclusive coverage.

Contest!
I’m thinking about doing a free book giveaway. As you probably know from my singing praises, I loved Kaye C. Hill’s first book, Dead Woman’s Shoes. As books will sometimes do, they continue–her latest, The Fall Girl is available for pre-order (yeah, I don’t love the cover either. That won’t stop me from ordering and reading it.) Anyway, with the new book coming out around August 15, 2009, I’m thinking of giving away a brand-spanking new copy of Dead Woman’s Shoes. For someone that hasn’t started the series, this is the perfect chance to get a copy. I plan on setting up a special email address. Anyone who wants to enter can send me an email. You can include your snail address, in which case, if you’re the winner, I’ll send it off. If you don’t want to include your snail address and your name is picked, I’ll send you an email after you win. You’ll have one week to respond with your snail. If you don’t respond in that time, I’ll move on to the next on the list. Simple! Any suggestions? Should I ask the winner to blog about the book? Should I ask the winner to pass the book along to their local library? Should I not put any restrictions whatsoever??? Let me know what you like and don’t like about other contests and we’ll see how well I can do.

Currently Reading: The Front Porch Prophet
by Raymond Atkins. This book reminds me of John Grisham’s Bleachers only I think it’s got more humor. Kind of morbid humor, but realistic. It’s a book dealing with real life, memories, aging and…yeah, death, but it manages to pull the humor and good times to the front. There’s a mystery thread woven through it too, although since I haven’t finished, I don’t know how important it will be to the overall story.

You may recall that I’ve been heavily researching for an upcoming cruise that includes Rome, France and Spain. The ship ends the trip in this little place along the Spanish coast called Malaga. I perused many a Spain guide and found little to nothing helpful. Oh sure, the main guides listed Malaga along with a place or two for eating and sleeping, but details were pretty scant. Since the cruise ends in Malaga, I wanted to spend a couple of days there so that dad had a better chance to experience Spain (one side of his family came from Spain long, long ago.) There are bigger cities we could travel to with much better known monuments, museums and sights, but there’s really nothing like being able to settle in one place and explore.

Enter:
Footsteps Guides: Footsteps Through the City of Malaga

Wow, what a nice little guide. It’s full color, coated paper with plenty of pictures. It covers not just the main highlights, but little gardens, smaller museums and some interesting local history. There’s nice instructions for walking through what sounds like a delightful and quaint city. No, it doesn’t tell you the five best places to stay or eat–rather it gives you enough information to help you decide how long you might be happy exploring the city, what there is to see and how to go about seeing it. It’s not a huge guide (60 brochure style pages), but it seems to cover the territory well. There’s a nice section towards the end that discusses a local cemetery, a 1900 shipwreck and some info on famous people of the Malaga area.

This is exactly the type of guide I love. It allows me to explore the city before I arrive so that I can decide what I want to see. It ensures that I know where to go when I want a quiet hour or so at a park or garden. And with a guide like this, I won’t feel that I missed anything!

Because restaurants and hotels are ever changing, the publisher opted to let other guides cover that. I cheated though. I wrote to the email address at the website and got some very helpful hints! Maybe in the future, Footsteps will consider having a forum where people can talk about restaurants or hotels that worked out well.

I’ll update this post or post again after the trip to let you know how the guide worked out with actual use in the city. I have high expectations.

The guide is also available at: Bookdespository.com

When the Kindle first came out, my reaction was, “meh” yet another e-reader. Another expensive e-reader. I do read e-books, but I just read them on my laptop. But I keep hearing about this Kindle thing. I see reviews–all of them good. I started thinking about how cool it would be to have a Kindle for travel–instead of taking two to five books..I’d just need the Kindle, preloaded. But then there’s the whole price–not only of the Kindle itself, but the books. 9.99 may be cheap compared to a hardback, but I don’t buy hardbacks, unless they are used and cost somewhere in the 5 dollar neighborhood (including shipping.)

Then lately I noticed there were a number of Kindle books for…2 dollars. 3 dollars and 5 dollars. My price range. And the price of the Kindle came down too. Oh, not enough to make me rush out and buy one–but it got my attention.

Then I found this Blog that is All About Kindle. Hmm, interesting stuff.

I’m watching. I admit it. I’m interested.

Update: August 2009 — I made two of my books available on Kindle.

Catch an Honest Thief (A Haven Mystery) is available for download to Kindles, iPhone or iPOD touch.

If you enjoy cozy mysteries, check it out:

Alexia is determined to protect her city, and if that means wearing the cloak of thievery, well, who better than she–a practiced observer of human behavior and a pretty good sneak thief as well?

Alexia steals the crystals that power Haven to prove that it can be done. Her plan to improve security works perfectly–until a real thief goes after the crystals. Unfortunately, if she admits what she knows, she’ll be blamed for all the attempts at the crystals. With no easy choices, she enters a dangerous game of cat and mouse against both the security chief and the real thieves.

The competition is likely to cost her everything she holds dear—but she’ll do what she has to in order to stop the insiders that are determined to take the crystals and end the game for good.

Young adults may also enjoy this cozy mystery with a romantic subplot.

Pages: ~260 or 3900 locations (Kindle terminology).
Price: $1.99.

Sage: Tales from a Magical Kingdom – Now available for download to your Kindle, iPhone or iPod-touch via Amazon.

Sword and Sorcery meets Agatha Christie. Three novellas introduce the Kingdom of Sage and those who protect its boundaries. Join Demetria and her husband Ward in their adventures as they protect Sage from evil: Rats, Snakes and perpetrators from within.

Sometimes it takes a more experienced hand to save an entire Kingdom.

The first of these stories, Toil, Trouble and Rot, was published in Coyote Wild Magazine; the other two are all new, original stories. In Dungeons and Decay find out just how far a mother will go when her child is in danger–and how much magic it takes to keep him safe. In Call to Arms, its a family affair; every hand is needed when a ghost invades the kingdom demanding old wrongs be righted.

Kindle Locations: 1312
Pages: 150
Price: $1.00

The Dragons of Hazlett by Michelle Scott is a good debut. This is a beach read; nothing complex, a nice read for a quiet afternoon. I read it as an e-book, which is particularly good for stories that don’t require a lot of concentration. (I don’t own a fancy e-reader, I read on my laptop, which probably lacks the sophisticated features that make reading online easier.)

It took me a while to get used to the premise because it’s a little unusual: mechanical items are taboo and considered occult. What’s funny is that in real history, mechanical items were often thought evil, yet in fantasy, it’s almost always magic that is the occult. So I’m reading along with certain expectations and finding myself in a bit of a different place. Not a bad thing, but I found myself thinking, “Hey! Everyone knows that mechanical items are just…” Some of the examples of “mechanical” could have made the concept easier to accept. There’s one scene where the protag doesn’t really know what an arrow is…that brought me up short because it took my mind a while to wrap around the concept that in any world an arrow wouldn’t be common place (why waste magic when something as simple as an arrow would do?)

This is a murder mystery at heart and a good one. Romana’s granduncle has been murdered and though she didn’t know him, she is determined to find his killer. Even though it means accepting some unpleasant truths about his life and going to an unknown city where she has no friends or other family she takes on the duty with determination.

There were two POVs to the story, but the author kept it nicely simple. The character development was strong enough that I didn’t mind the two POVs—I cared about both characters enough to like both segments and not get annoyed at moving back and forth. That said, the character motivations were very simple. I’d have enjoyed a bit more complexity in motivations from both the main POVs and the other characters in the story. The characters are not one-dimensional, but they are simply stated rather than having hidden facets.

The actual plot is where the dimensions of the story is fleshed out. Just when things look simple, there’s a bit of a twist or at least an alleyway. Nicely done—right up until the end battle. It was a nice ending, had great tension, but then it dropped it suddenly. After some of the setup shown earlier in the story (which I can’t reveal as it would be a spoiler) the climax needed to deal with the issue as the true battle it was. Instead, it was packaged neatly and dispensed with. There were certainly other plot elements that were handled with the complexity they deserved so the ending felt a little like the author had a word limit.

Despite the rushed ending, this is a good story and a pleasant way to spend the afternoon. It’s easily worth the e-book price (about 5 dollars) and for those that don’t do e-books, it’s also available as Trade Paperback (click on the title links in this post to go to Amazon). Though it’s not labeled YA and probably rightly so because it isn’t a perfect fit, The Dragons of Hazlett would be good reading for that category as well as adult–I’d call it a cozy/fantasy/mystery.

(Cover Art by Skyla Dawn Cameron)

And then there’s the produce you grow and wonder…so, just what IS this??? When I bought a melon from the store a couple years ago, I saved the seeds from what the grocery told me was a “sprite melon.” The strange thing is that this yellow thing that grew in my garden…looks nothing like the melon we ate. It looks nothing like the melon on the web that says it is a sprite melon. It looks more like a Korean melon. Only…it doesn’t really look exactly like that either. It wasn’t sweet either and both the Korean and the Sprite melon are supposed to be sweet.

Of course, I may have picked it early. It started out green, turned beige and then bright, Easter Egg Yellow. So I figured it must be ready. Most fruits and veggies don’t go through too many color changes before they are ready. One color change is fairly normal–from green to ripe color.

I’ll let the next one on the vine go longer. And there are many on the vine. It’s looking as though it will be the high producer in the garden as far as melons go. I sure hope they get sweeter tasting. This first one tasted kind of like a pear. But not very sweet. It was good mixed in with the very small cantaloupe you see in the picture (the mug is for size perspective.) The good news is that the cantaloupe was exceptionally sweet, every bit as good as last year.

So the melons are coming in. Even ones we can’t really identify.

Juuuust, when the rain barrels have started to pay for themselves, I get the brilliant idea that I need a water pump to get the water out faster. The pump wasn’t that expensive–only about 30 dollars, on sale. Which is probably about how much I save in water bills in three months (if it rains.) That might be pushing the savings. It might take more like…4 months. It depends on the month. I water at different rates depending on the weather, how much is in the garden and so on.

Thirty dollars, not so bad, right? Except we needed hose end parts, power cords, and more quick release connectors…and suddenly it was another 30 dollars in the hole. So…for this year, the water barrels are going to be lucky to get back to even.

I didn’t mind watering by hand (moving the hose from plant to plant) in the spring. Yes, it takes at least a half hour, but when the weather is nice and the plants are relatively small, moving around the garden, inspecting the plants and just being outside is fine with me. But when it’s 80 degrees first thing in the morning, with humidity that slaps you hard in the face when you step outside…not so great. Moving around the plants to water each one is a lot harder also. The leaves pick at you, the bugs pick at you, the hose is harder to move around…the water barrels don’t provide enough flow for me to hook up the leaker hoses. There simply isn’t enough pressure. Thus my brilliant idea to get a pump…

And so the project goes. Or grows.

Now that I have a water pump, maybe I can handle more barrels??? You think?

Is it just me or are there an extraordinary amount of ads on Craigslist lately trying to sell pictures and knick-knacks? Let’s face it, I am not driving across town or even down the street for a dust collector. Paintings? I’m guessing most people buy them on the spur of the moment (impulse buy) when they get a new house and think they need to spend an inordinate amount of money covering the wall. Sure, I have things on my walls. But…I did not spend 500 dollars on any of them. And even if I did…do people really think you can resell them in the secondary market for even half that?

Apparently they do because for the last three months, I have seen a huge increase in the number of ads featuring non-essentials such as paintings, vases, mismatched angel collections, pig collections, tea cups, ceramic dogs, cats, children and so on. But seriously. How are you going to talk someone into getting into the car and driving to a location…for an overpriced dust collector? These types of things used to sell in garage sales for 50 cents. They were sold to kids or grandmas that thought they were “cute.”

Maybe I’m wrong, but it seems to me that people are trying to sell these items to get back some cold hard cash. The problem is that in this economy people are not spending money on frivolous items, and certainly not overpriced frivolous items. When sellers finally decide to sell more practical items–such as plasma tvs–they want what they paid six months or a year ago. The secondary market has never worked that way, even if your ad says you’re selling the item to pay the rent. The other problem is that what you paid six months ago…is no longer the price of the item new. The prices have dropped every six months for the last two years for electronics. Maybe not by much, but why would anyone drive to see a single tv at a not-so-great-price when they can go to a showroom and see lots of them???

Oh, there’s still the bargain or two to be had. But at the moment there’s also a lot of clutter as people try to declutter their lives–and raise cash.