I’ve finished all the main stops, posted all the delightful pictures, complained about this and that…but what were the highlights?

Scavi Tour: This was the best tour and quite possibly made the Rome trip worth it all by itself. In retrospect, probably because we had the most time there, Rome, Italy was the best stop on the trip.

Glandeves Saffron: I actually obtained the saffron *before* the trip and planned to buy more while there. I also *planned* to stop in Entravaux, France, near where this saffron is grown/sold. As you know from the summary, we weren’t able to make the train there so I didn’t get to meet the delightful Lucile in person. However, we emailed back and forth, exchanged recipes–and she sent me saffron and a wonderful white tea to try. I highly recommend both the tea and the saffron. Despite several tries, I’m fairly certain we never ate saffron while in Europe, which was a shame. We also didn’t find it for sale, another shame. Luckily, I found Lucile and her shop on the internet or we would have missed that part of the experience. I just made saffron chicken rice yesterday–yum! Highly recommended. The saffron was, by far, my best souvenir from the trip!!!

If I return to Spain, I’ll try the northern areas (and pack emergency food just in case…)

In the past, I didn’t think I’d ever return to Nice, France. This time, I learned that I haven’t seen all the places worth seeing. I’d definitely head into the alps if I land there again. As for Italy, I’m glad I went, but with the hustle and bustle and the expense, I don’t see myself in a hurry to return to either Florence or Rome. Perhaps the Cinque Terre will call me out one day, but it better hurry. I’m not getting any younger!

For now, I think the mountains are calling me. Or maybe Hawaii. Yellowstone. The coast of California…so many places to dream about!!!

For all you B&N Nookies…Executive Lunch is now available over at the B&N site!!! Sadly…the cover is not the correct one. (One wonders about the pointers used in the database…How DOES This Happen???) At any rate, the cover that is showing isn’t a bad cover, it’s just not the one that really goes with the book…

Which cover do you like better???

Here’s the back blurb for Executive Lunch.

Sedona is given the opportunity of a lifetime: play an up-and-coming executive with all the trappings of wealth with someone else footing the bill. The catch: find out who is stealing company funds before the criminals find out that their program is being debugged.

Sedona runs into danger, the corporate glass ceiling, and an occasional chance at romance in her quest to figure out who is stealing money from Strandfrost.

Click for an excerpt.
(First chapter).

Executive Lunch is also available on Smashwords.com. You can download a format for your laptop (see here for information on downloading a free reader), for the Kindle, the Sony, the Nook and in other formats.

It’s not snowing here, but it is cold and very windy. We’re snug in our house with a ham and potatoes ready to go in the oven. I hope that you and yours are snug and have a wonderful celebration planned. I wish all of you good health, good friends and lots of love in your life. Merry Christmas!!!!

The kitties received their Christmas presents a little bit early. For them, they get not only the contents of the box, but the boxes too! Ever since the presents arrived, they have been chasing each other round and round the boxes–until one gets inside, digs a bit and then pounces on the other. Unless of course ‘the other’ jumps into the box as well.

Who could have guessed that two cats would be sooo happy with a box of leaves???

I get the leaves from various neighbors — mulch for the garden. The cats, well, so far as they know, someone very kindly put two great toys in the back yard. Junior is hilarious. He has always been a digger. He digs in the box, under the box; he jumps at the string on the one box and just goes crazy. Scamp is pretty mature about the whole thing until she is inside the box. Then it’s dig/spy, spy/dig…throw leaves in the air and bite at them!

The weather is supposed to be nice for the next three or four days. I wonder how long it will take before the kitties knock the tall box of leaves over and roll around in the ensuing mess???

For some reason, when participating in cozy mystery groups, I find that high cholesterol comes up a lot…hmm. Anyway, the topic has inspired me to write about how to eat more oatmeal or other whole grains–which should lower your cholesterol. I’ve found that it seems to work, but it can be boring to eat oatmeal for breakfast every day. Most of the oatmeal tricks I use involve grinding whole oats with a food processor. The oats are then almost as fine as flour.

1. Add ground oatmeal to things like meatloaf or meatballs in place of breadcrumbs. The meatballs will actually have a smoother texture and no change at all in taste!

2. Add ground oatmeal to stuffing. We’re having roast chicken tonight. I put in 3/4 cup ground oatmeal in place of some of the breadcrumbs. I did this for Thanksgiving as well. No one could tell the difference.

3. Mix oatmeal into any hot cereal. We eat Ralston’s, which is a whole grain cereal, but it’s hard to find. You can mix either ground oats or regular oats into cream of wheat or cream of rice. Note that the two “Cream of” cereals are not completely whole grain so your cholesterol can sneak by them.

4. Either buy oat flour or make your own and use in desserts. This doesn’t work all that well in every dessert. I tried my own ground oats in peanut butter cookies. Uh, no. I’ll have to hope the peanuts count as whole grain. However, the ground oats and regular oats work extremely well in chocolate chip cookies! They also work in oatmeal cookies, peanut butter bars and monster cookies.

5. Many of the ladies in the Cholesterol club make muffins with either oat flour or oats. I’m not much of a muffin eater, but I do put some ground oats in my pancake mix (about 1/4 cup in place of the pancake flour.)

Other whole grains:

I buy a lot of nuts and seeds: One favorite is unsalted, raw sunflower seeds, which I then roast on the stovetop. The roasting brings out the full flavor. Without salt, these little seeds are a great whole-grain, lower-your-cholesterol snack. They go great as a salad topping.

Walgreens has a number of unsalted nuts at reasonable prices. My favorites are the unsalted cashews–YUM. Their unsalted almonds are wonderful too. Most people eat almonds without salt so you won’t even notice the difference.

Pumpkin seeds–unsalted, again! You can find these in the grocery store or make your own. Either way, if they come raw–I advise roasting them lightly on the stovetop. Works well and brings out the full flavor.

If you want to eat your peanuts unsalted, I think the best kind are “Spanish” peanuts–the ones with the skins on. More flavor and you won’t notice that salt is missing.

Why no salt? Because with high cholesterol, there’s usually this little thing called high blood pressure…

And last but not least–dark chocolate!!! I highly recommend a good Scharffen Berger or Guittard Cocoa (any unsweetened cocoa will do). Mix one tablespoon cocoa to three or four tablespoons sugar. Mix using hot water so that everything dissolves. Top with 1/4 cup of warm milk or…if you cannot resist, a tablespoon or two of half and half! Cocoa is good for you. The sugar and cream…not so much, but we gotta have our treats!!!

So. As some of you may know, two of my titles (Sage and Thief) are available for the Nook over at Barnes and Noble. What most of you probably don’t know and what I did not know myself…is that they have been given new covers! Covers that bear titles that don’t belong to either book! Covers that…have mysterious tattoos and…well, the one does look like a garden setting, although that is attached to the “Thief” book rather than the “Sage” book. Switching them probably wouldn’t do any good either. That tattoo lady doesn’t look like an ‘honest’ thief at all…

Check it out. For a few hours? Days? I get to use different covers!

EDIT: As of 1:30 my time today–the correct covers were reloaded. Since I don’t know how the wrong ones appeared…I can’t say for certain the right ones will stay, but here’s hoping for the best!!!

New Covers at B&N

And what in the world will happen if these covers increase sales???

Goin’ international

My first international review: Mysteries in Paradise

Woot!

So I’m debating whether to do a top 2009 list. I think I read less books this year than in any year of my life save ages zero through 3. I think my mom read me more books at bedtime in the years of 3 to 6 than I read this year. What say you? Do you have a list? Need to see just what managed to grab and hold my attention during a year that saw a lot of non-fiction reading (prep for the Europe trip)? Have a good list to link to?

Let’s hope I can get my reading forecast closer than the weatherman was with his *wrong, completely wrong* forecast last night. Forty he said. Only he was off by 10 degrees and it *froze.* Not sure yet whether the beans made it. The tops definitely froze. They are under a nice, black blanket, collecting heat for the coming 25 degree weather tonight. Assuming sir weatherman isn’t off by 10 degrees *again.*

Anyway, I started reading Snake Jazz by Dave Baldwin. I’m reading it on Kindle Wireless Reading Device (6″ Display, U.S. Wireless) for PC, of course.

This paragraph caught my attention:

“I wrote Snake Jazz to demonstrate that motivation and hard work are much more important than genes and other kinds of luck in giving your autobiography a happy ending. Practice, practice, practice will not only get you to Carnegie Hall; it will get you to Yankee Stadium, the U.S. chess championships or just about anywhere else you care to go.”

I hope he is right. Sometimes in my various careers, practice was overruled by “who you know.” Sometimes it was overruled by the other guy’s very real talent. But those times when I did get a win…it was the hard work I put in ahead of time. So I guess he is partially right. And the book is pretty interesting so far. Poor kid can’t catch a baseball to save his life…

“The Aspiring Mangaka & Writer’s Club” has posted an interview/article about “Sage: Tales from a Magical Kingdom.” More importantly, there are some interesting articles and interviews with manga artists and other talented people.

I’m not a big reader of graphic novels, manga or comics (call them what you will; there are subtle differences between them, if only in the time/history of their publishing.) I would love to see one of my short stories converted to manga storytelling. Alas, I don’t have the drawing skills or will power to learn. I have seen a few manga advertised for Kindle and other e-readers, which I think is a perfect medium for such tales. I’d like to see more of them there because they attract younger readers. Our library has a manga club that is very popular.

The Town Drunk Magazine has closed its doors. The Town Drunk was the first magazine to ever accept one of my stories. They remained dear to my reading heart because they published funny stuff. There aren’t enough magazines like them. I liked almost every story, and I looked forward to seeing what would be next. Well, next is an archive for my stories and the others. I hope to take “Haunting Clues” and create an ebook of stories starring Max Killian, but we’ll have to see how sales go for my current anthology (Sage). So far I can’t complain, but it’s the number of sales over time that help make such decisions.

Unrelated to The Town Drunk specifically, but to magazine operations in general, this morning I came across a few discussions on paying authors for their work. (The Town Drunk did pay its authors.)

Author Jim Hines shared his thoughts on magazine pay. He linked to some additional magazine pay rate discussion provided by author John Scalzi. While I don’t agree with everything either of them said, I admit, my own submission guideline is that I don’t submit to non-paying markets. As I said in the comments trail on Scalzi’s blog, there isn’t much point.

Every author has to decide where to submit and what pay is acceptable, especially when starting out. There aren’t enough markets and there aren’t enough readers. I don’t begrudge anyone their decision. It took me years to find a paying market to accept one of my short stories. Nothing I’ve seen since has made me regret my decision to stick to paying markets. Would I have achieved publication faster? Maybe. Would it have made a difference in how quickly I published a second piece? I don’t think so. The bottom line: I don’t think that getting published by a non-paying or extremely low-paying market would have helped me in any way.

Malaga, Spain was the last stop on the tour. We planned to spend a couple of days here, thinking it would be a rather small, quaint town. For the record, it’s a very large city; not a picturesque coastal town. It took me ages to find a decent guidebook, but find one I did. I’ve talked about it before:

Footsteps Guide – Malaga Spain

If you will be stopping in Malaga, Spain for any reason, get this guide. As a walking guide, it needs more street names or more anchors so that walkers know for certain they are on the right path, but as a preparation guide–choosing what you want to see and do–it’s an absolute necessity. Once in Malaga, stop at a tourist kiosk and get a city map–the guide does not include one and a map of some kind will help you stay oriented.

If you are arriving on a cruise and the cruise ship says it will be in port at 5 a.m. be aware that they are not likely to let you off the cruise until 6 or well-after. Also be aware that when you do get off, the disembarking procedures are a bit on the chaotic side–do *not* schedule a flight out of Malaga in the morning. You aren’t likely to make the flight. There were a number of passengers frantically trying to get off the ship, find their luggage (you are not allowed to take your own luggage off–it gets put into a giant holding area where you get to hunt it down), find a taxi (there were not enough in port that early in the morning) and try to make the airport by 9. Not a good time.

We arrived in the dark–there went plans to stroll to breakfast. We got a taxi, which took us to our beautiful, reasonably price hotel, Hotel Villa Guadalupe, up on a hill overlooking parts of the city. No one was at the front desk at that early hour (7:30ish?) but the taxi driver very nicely called the number on the buzzer and the owner soon arrived. We got our luggage checked in, but our room had not yet been vacated/cleaned, so we sat in the lobby for a while (exhausted) and had coffee and rolls provided by the hotel. The hotel staff was splendid the entire trip. If you are able to walk steep inclines to reach the hotel from the bus stop (or willing to spend money on taxis) I *highly* recommend this hotel.

After our rest, we took a bus back into the main part of Malaga. The walk to the bus stop was about 1/3 to 1/4 of a mile *straight* downhill, through back streets. This was fine for me, but a bit of a difficult walk for mom and her bum knee. We managed. The bus was about 1.10 euro per person; you pay the driver when you get on. Make a careful note of the area–the bus did not stop exactly on the other side of the street from the bus stop (the stop was actually several yards earlier, thus making it a bit difficult to figure out.) The driver could not help us because the hotel is located in a neighborhood; it’s not a “main” location that a bus driver will know.

Well worth seeing was the Alcazaba, an 11the century castle built by the moors. It’s not expensive to tour (self-guided for a few euros) and there are a few museum pieces inside. The courtyards/buildings are very interesting and the whole tour is very pretty. As with most places we were at in Europe, there are few signs describing what you are looking at. In this case, the footsteps guide mentioned above provided nice background information on the building.

The Malaga Cathedral (one picture above) was a very nice church to visit–gorgeous from both the inside and outside; well-worth the small fee.

We wanted to see Flamenco dancing while in Spain–but unfortunately such dancing starts very late: 11:30 or so. We were told by one place that it started at 9:30–so we showed up for dinner at 9, but then found out *piano* music started at 9:30. The flamenco wasn’t until 11:30 or so. We didn’t stay. The food was awful, and we felt we had been misled when we asked at the establishment earlier in the day. My Spanish isn’t perfect, but “Flamenco” and “What time does it start?” is not really close to “Piano music.”

That brings us to the other huge disappointment in Malaga: Food. In my defense, let me say that I did my homework before going. I researched, got recommendations and even cooked paella for myself. In one case, a recommended place was not open on weekends, so we had to just pick a place nearby because siesta was nearing, and we knew a lot of places would be closing for a few hours. We supposedly ordered meatballs in tomato sauce, and chicken with fries. What we got was bread balls in tomato sauce, and chicken and fries sitting in an inch of oil. I won’t dwell on it, but if you go to Spain, plan on finding a grocery and getting snacks until you can get decent recommendations (which were generally in a much, much higher price range. For good food, it appeared you had to spend fifteen euros or more per person and even then there was no guarantee you’d like it–fried food was plentiful and veggies relatively uncommon.) We did order paella at a restaurant, but I don’t believe any saffron was used. Methinks that tourism has made restaurants a tad too eager to take advantage of tourists–tomato sauce with very fishy-fish was served on an outside patio that featured stray cats in the bushes and at least one beggar chased off by our waiter. Stray cats and beggars were quite common in the city.

I understand that “tapas” is the proper way to eat the evening meal–strolling around various establishments sampling snack-sized portions. My mother did order tapas for her dinner and it was of higher quality than the paella. With my parents not extremely mobile and me not being a late-night person, strolling for tapas held no appeal.

The second day, rather than fight the city crowds, we opted to hire a driver. The hotel helped us with this arrangement as I had not planned this in advance–they were wonderful, as was our driver. He took us to El Torcal, a couple of hours outside Malaga. We enjoyed the scenery on the way there and on the way back. He also picked a nice restaurant in the mountains where the food was reasonably priced and of higher quality (still a lot of fried things!) We enjoyed our day out in the countryside, but be aware that El Torcal is extremely crowded on the weekends. Hiking is more like strolling a sidewalk in a busy town–lots of people. The area is well-kept and pleasant. When we left the park, we sat in traffic for at least 40 minutes while people were trying to park alongside the road. The parking went on for at least a mile and there were buses trying to get in, cars, people walking, etc.

All in all, I wish that we had eaten at least once at our hotel. It was expensive, but I suspect the food would have been good. There were two or three museums mentioned in the guide that I would also have liked to see had there been more time. Some places were closed on weekends (the bull fighting museum) at that time of year. To see a bull fight, we could have hired a driver or caught a shuttle bus to a nearby town (there were none in Malaga while we were visiting.) I wasn’t particularly interested in bull fighting (read: Did *not* want to go under any circumstances) but the hotel would have helped us find a way to see one had we wanted to find one. The fights ran about 50 euros per person and generally included some flamenco dancing from what I understand.

“Top Secret” first published at Over My Dead Body is now available at Anthology Builder. Books ordered between now and Dec 5, 2009 are still 15 percent off.

This morning, Junior the Cat had the hiccups. Hilarious! I did not know cats could get the hiccups. He sat here, his little head bouncing just a tad every time he hiccuped!!!

Ad seen on Craigslist: “China Cabinet for Sale. Used Once.” O–kay.

Seen on a forum post: “I am anoid.” Hmm. Haven’t seen that spelling before. Probably shouldn’t have seen it this time…