Writing with Flavor - IWSG July 2019

It's IWSG Day. The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. IWSG is the brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader. The awesome co-hosts for July are Erika Beebe, Natalie Aguirre, Jennifer Lane, MJ Fifield, Lisa Buie-Collard, and Ellen @ The Cynical Sailor! To find a list of other contributors, click here. 

This month’s optional question: What personal traits have you written into your characters?

I like to cook  and settings with food play a large part in my stories. In my novel THIS SIDE OF HERE, the characters spend a lot of time in a market, one of the main meeting places in their small town. They purchase ingredients there and make meals like seared salmon, grilled bluefish, gazpacho, vegetable rice and a salad made with zucchini ribbons. They buy artisanal cheeses for a picnic, and attend an Irish heritage festival where they eat pasties, a turnover filled with potatoes and vegetables.

In my most recent novel, THE BENEFICIARY for which I’ll soon begin the query process, the action centers around a New England seaside farm-to-table diner. Think lobster salad sandwiches dressed with garlic and tarragon aioli on brioche, or a striped bass pulled right out of the water, cooked with blackened spice. Add in pancakes and French toast of course, with syrup served at the table warm, and a gentleman who prefers his scrambled eggs with mustard. The characters dig clams and turn them into chowder. At the end of the story, they stack driftwood, heat stones, fill wet canvas bags with clams, lobsters, corn and potatoes.They steam the whole thing in a massive lobster bake. Getting hungry anyone?

All this, and the closest thing in my past to working professionally with food was a job I held at an  cheese/gourmet food shop for a year-and-a-half, and the two summers I waitressed at a country inn when I was a teenager. But, as someone who reads cookbooks, online recipes and restaurant menus for fun, I know food, which makes it easy to incorporate it into my stories. I’m intrigued with how ingredients go together and am pretty game to try most things as long as they aren’t totally repulsive. I’m the one who trained myself to like oysters, (slime balls that they are) just because I wanted to like them. Recently, I ate octopus because it was on my bucket list to do so. Even the jellyfish I ate while on a business trip to Japan years ago had, well, shall we say a piquant crunch?

While a bit more mainstream, so far in my newest project there’s a farmer’s market, where one of the MC’s sells the cakes, breads and muffins she creates to use up her  brother's excess garden veggies—the usual zucchini bread sure, but a dense and decadent chocolate cake made with beets, too. So yes, it appears my real life does creep in to my writing because my sister made one of those years ago. It was five-star delicious. 

Wishing all my readers from the US a happy and safe July 4th. There's a lobster-fest in my immediate future. What are your plans?

Who? Me? IWSG July

It's IWSG Day.  The goal of this blog hop is to share and encourage. Writers can express doubts and concerns without fear of appearing foolish or weak. Those who have been through the fire can offer assistance and guidance. It’s a safe haven for insecure writers of all kinds. The brainchild of Alex Cavanaugh, our brilliant ninja leader, please visit his co-hosts this month: Yolanda Renee, Tyrean Martinson, Madeline Mora-Summonte, LK Hill, Rachna Chhrabia, and JA Scott.

 To find other contributors, go here.

This month we have a theme question: What is the best thing anyone has said about your writing?

I write freelance for a publishing company that produces various local lifestyle magazines.  They gave me a start about six years ago, offering me the opportunity to write about food-related subjects in free blog posts for one of their online publications.  Once I proved myself, they began giving me feature articles in their magazines, and often, my picture appears on the contributors’ page.  Honestly, people who read my blog probably know more about the articles I write than the people in my day-to- day life. I mean, if people ask, I tell them what I’ve written lately, but they don't ask much, and I don’t run around announcing every piece. It is enough for me that the editors pass my name along to each other and every couple of months or so, I receive an email asking me to write a feature story.  The topics are fun, and they pay. I get a lot of enjoyment out of the whole business.

So, last week, my husband and I stopped at the library together. While we don’t know the names of the librarians, they're familiar faces, and as I checked out my books one of the them said to me, “You're the writer, right?”

Eyes widening, I nodded.  “I am.”

She gave me a big grin.  “I carry a subscription to South Shore Living, and I always look forward to seeing your articles.” She said.  “And I read The Globe.  I saw your recent story there too!”

Walking out of the library, honestly, I giggled.  “Did you hear that?” I asked my husband.

“I did,” he said.  “Look at you. You have a fan.”

Then, this past Friday, something added to the fun.  My husband and I went out for an early supper at a modest waterfront restaurant we get to occasionally.  After we finished, I waited on the sidewalk outside while he visited the facilities.  Even though I'd just seen it, I perused the menu stapled on a glass covered bulletin board before beginning to read a wooden-framed notice beneath it.  It was a review, it started off witty, and I gathered myself ready for a fun read.  One paragraph into it, the thing started to sound...familiar?  I checked the byline and started laughing.  Five years later, I'm kind of tickled with myself.  The thing was good and yep, I wrote it.

The best thing anyone has said about my writing?  The compliment some invisible employee bestowed when he or she framed my review and placed it on a bulletin board facing a well-traveled sidewalk on a busy road.

Kind of feels like I have a little "street cred."

Spring Cleaning

In the middle of a crisis in faith in regard to writing, I was offered an article from a local magazine I contribute to whenever they ask.  The topic of this piece was signature seafood dishes from area restaurants.  I never say no, even when the deadline is tight, and this one was.  I still said yes a few days later when the editor emailed to tell me she had to move things up a week.  Woo wee.  Time to get cracking.

The thing is, I’ve been in pondering mode for so long now with regard to the current novel in progress, writing the article felt like someone had opened a door to my brain and allowed the clean scent of spring to waft through.  Suddenly, the writer in me felt fresh and alive again.  A thousand-words I didn’t have to agonize over?  Now, that’s what I’m talkin’ about.  The topic involved eight restaurants, three that were new to me.  What can I say? To write knowledgeably, of course I had to sample…

So, it was research when I spent Friday night with my husband in a street-front grille, slurping Nova Scotia oysters and enjoying a yummy fried-oyster slider.  Saturday, we worked in the yard all day. Then, since a nursery was offering a deal on a product we needed, and it happened to be located close to one of the other eateries I had yet to experience, after we finished our errand, we stopped in. More research meant a few more oysters for me and a deconstructed scallop and bacon appetizer we split that hands down, featured the best scallops I have ever eaten. 

 

Monday was a holiday in Massachusetts, and I still had one restaurant to investigate.  Discovering my dilemma, my husband's 83-year-old mother said, "Let’s go out to lunch."  Folks, lets just say I’m a nothing but a dutiful daughter-in-law. 

  

Licking my lips in memory, I finished up the article with days to spare.  The only bad news?   No expense budget came with this gig.  Such is a poor writer’s life. Tasty as it was, all that “research” sure munched into my profit.