Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Irish recipe and spotlight on Dark Brew by @DianaLRubino!

St. Patrick's Day comes a wee bit early on The Maze with Dark Brew by Diana Rubino and an Irish recipe! In Diana's words:

Dark Brew is set on modern-day Cape Cod, when Kylah isn’t traveling back in time to 1324 Ireland. I have a home on the Cape, and spend as much time there as I can when the weather cooperates. The Cape Cod Irish Village is a restaurant/pub/hotel where my husband and I have been going for many years. We have a traditional Irish dinner there and dance up a storm to the live Irish music they always have. I mention the Irish Village in DARK BREW and their great Irish cuisine.

Traditional Irish fare has been a long-standing theme at the Irish Village where Chef Chris Lynch has headed the kitchen for the better part of 16 years. New American cuisine with a slant on old Irish staples is how Chef Lynch would characterize the menu at the Irish Village. Having spent many years honing his craft in kitchens all across the Northeast, Chris realized that most of the guests who come to the Cape and have frequented the Irish Village for decades in some cases want to feel at home and his team tries to match the daily specials to their memories of meals taken at the tables of their own families. Simple and plentiful is a formula that has kept many repeat customers coming back to the Village year after year.

Here’s a recipe from Chris for “Breadan Eireann.”

This recipe serves 4 people

Preheat oven to 375 degrees
4 ea. – 6oz Salmon Fillet
4 ea. – Jumbo Shrimp
12 oz. – medium sea scallops
4 cups mashed potatoes
1 cup sauteed onions & mushrooms, sliced thin
6 oz. dry sherry
8 oz. clarified butter

DIRECTIONS

In a baking dish or in individual casserole dishes arrange salmon, scallops & shrimp closely together.  Pipe mashed potatoes around salmon and seafood encircling all of the fish.  Pour 1 ½ oz. of sherry and 2 oz. of butter over the fish and potatoes.  Bake in oven for approximately 20 minutes or until salmon flakes under the touch.  Remove and top with ¼ cup sautéed onions & mushrooms.  Return to oven for 2-3 minutes to finish browning the potatoes and to heat the onions & mushrooms.  Serve immediately.


Dark Brew
by Diana Rubino
Genre: Time Travel Romance

Accused of her husband’s murder, Kylah McKinley, a practicing Druid, travels back through time to her past life in 1324 Ireland and brings the true killer to justice.

Two months of hell change Kylah’s life forever. On her many past life regressions, she returns to 14th century Ireland as Alice Kyteler, a druid moneylender falsely accused of murdering her husband. Kylah’s life mirrors Alice’s in one tragic event after another—she finds her husband sprawled on the floor, cold, blue, with no pulse. Evidence points to her, and police arrest her for his murder. Kylah and Alice shared another twist of fate—they fell in love with the man who believed in them. As Kylah prepares for her trial and fights to maintain her innocence, she must learn from her past or forever be doomed to repeat it. 



Excerpt:

Kylah shut Ted’s den door. She couldn’t bear to look at the spot where he gasped his last breath. His presence, an imposing force, lingered. So did his scent, a blend of tobacco, pine aftershave and manly sweat. Each reminder ripped into her heart like a knife. Especially now with the funeral looming ahead, the eulogies, the mournful organ hymns, the tolling bells . . .

These ceremonies should bring closure, but they’d only prolong the agony of her grief. She wanted to remember him alive for a while longer, wishing she could delay these morbid customs until the hurt subsided.

Throughout the house, his essence echoed his personality: the wine stain on the carpet, the heap of dirty shirts, shorts and socks piled up in the laundry room, the spattered stove, his fingerprints on the microwave. But she couldn’t bring herself to clean any of it up. Painful as these remnants were, they offered a strange comfort. He still lived here.

“I’ll find that murderer, Teddy,” she promised him over and over, wandering from room to empty room, traces of him lurking in every corner. “I’ll do everything in my power to make sure justice is served. Another past life regression isn’t enough anymore. I know what I have to do now. And I promise, it will never, ever happen again—in any future life.”

She inhaled deeply and breathed him in. “Go take a shower, Teddy.” She chuckled through her tears as the doorbell rang. She cringed, breaking out in cold sweat when she saw the black sedan at the curb.

“Not again.” No sense in hiding, so she let the detectives in.

“Mrs. McKinley, we need your permission to do a search and take some of your husband’s possessions from the house,” Nolan said.

“What for?” She met his steely stare. “I looked everywhere and found nothing.”

“Mrs. McKinley, the cupboard door was open, four jars of herbs are missing, and the autopsy showed he died of herb poisoning. Those herbs,” Nolan added for emphasis, as if it had slipped her feeble mind. “Foxglove, mandrake, hemlock—and an as-yet unidentified one,” he read from a notebook. “The M.E. determined it was a lethal dose.”

Sherlock Holmes got nothin’ on him, she thought.

“Where’s this cupboard, ma’am?” Egan spoke up.

“Right there.” She pointed, its door gaping exactly the way she’d found it that night. Nolan went over to it and peered inside.

“Ma’am, it would be better if you left the house for a half hour or so. Please leave a number where you can be reached,” Egan ordered.

Nolan glanced down the hall. “Where is your bedroom?”

What could they want in the bedroom? “It’s at the top of the stairs on the right. But we didn’t sleep together,” she offered, as if that would faze them. It didn’t.

After giving him her cell number, she got into her car and drove to the beach.

An hour later, she let herself back in and looked around. They’d taken the computer, her case of CDs, her thumb drive, her remaining herb jars, Ted’s notebooks, and left her alone with one horrible fact: This was now a homicide case and she was the prime suspect.

Buy links: Kindle US | Amazon Paperback | Barnes & Noble | Wild Rose Press |


Contact Diana via Website | Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads |

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Thursday, February 9, 2017

February fancies from The Dawnflier of author @KimHeadlee #MFRWOrg #ASMSG

Valentine's Day Marriage Proposal,
(c)2011 by Subbotina, Depositphotos ID 10605111.

Happy Valentine's Day!

I selected this photo because my then-boyfriend proposed to me on Valentine's Day more than three decades ago. Since I wanted a June wedding—which was the only "traditional" aspect to our ceremony—we set a date for the following year, and we have been together ever since. It's been quite the ride. :)


Book news:

  • I’m hoping to land a BookBub feature of Liberty within the next 30 days; please keep your fingers crossed. Would you like to know when my next big sale will be? Follow me on BookBub so you don't miss out!
  • In spite of the fact that I’m smack in the middle of tax season—and trying to get a new computer up to speed with the latest accounting and tax software (and thank heaven I found my data backups)—I’m making progress on Angusel’s story in  Raging Sea. Part 1 (Raging Sea: Reckonings) and part 2 (Raging Sea: Enemies and Allies) are now on sale.

Upcoming:

  • I will be signing and selling my books all weekend at Farpoint (Timonium, MD), February 17–19. The dealers will be set up in a public area, so you do not have to register for the convention to visit my table!
  • I am slated as an author-guest at MystiCon (Roanoke, VA), February 24–26. My program participation includes: reading from Raging Sea: Reckonings (9:30 p.m. Friday), signing my books (2 p.m. Saturday), and panels about honor in science fiction/fantasy (11 a.m. Sat.), film adaptations (3 p.m. Sat.), fuzzy logic (4 p.m. Sat.), creating a system in fiction (9 a.m. Sun.), and collaborations (2 p.m. Sun.).
  • March 4th I will present part one of my Business of Writing workshop at the Wytheville Public Library, 11 a.m – 1 p.m. I have been given permission to sell my books before and after the event, so I plan to be at the library during the full run of their operating hours that day, 10 a.m. – 2 p.m. My presentation of part two is scheduled for March 18th.
Stay cozy; spring is coming!

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Wednesday, February 8, 2017

Book spotlight on The Ghost in Exile by Jamie Marchant #fantasy

Today I am pleased to introduce on The Maze an author I met at MarsCon 2017, Jamie Marchant, who has published several fantasy novels, including The Ghost in Exile!



The Ghost in Exile
by Jamie Marchant
Genre: High Fantasy

The Ghost is going to hell. Not even the goddess can forgive his sins: assassin, oath-breaker, traitor (an affair with the queen earned him that title). No one can ever learn the princess is his daughter. To keep this secret, he flees to the land that turned him from a simple stable groom into an infamous killer.

His mission now? To find evildoers and take them to hell with him. But when an impulsive act of heroism saddles him with a damsel who refuses to be distressed, her resilience forces him to questions why he really ran from his daughter.


Excerpt:

After what seemed like months, Ahearn felt the ship stop moving and heard the bustle of noise that told him they’d made port. Still, it was hours before anyone came for him. When they did, it was the same two men he’d always seen. One of them threw him a pile of clothes and finally spoke, “Get dressed.”

Ahearn did as ordered. They directed him up the ladder onto the deck. Ahearn blinked as his eyes adjusted to the light after so long in darkness. He was indeed in a harbor, one nearly three times the size of Murtaghan’s. Hundreds of ships were lined up on either side of his, flying flags of all nations, some Ahearn had never seen before. A huge city crawled up from the edge of the water into the surrounding hills. It gleamed white and pink in the late afternoon sun.

The men led him to the gangway where others were unloading the cargo. “You’re free to go,” one of them said. “Don’t come back.”

Ahearn started down the gangway, not quite believing he’d be allowed to simply walk away. He expected a knife in the back at any moment. But he reached the dock without incident, and when he looked back at the ship, he couldn’t see either of the two men. No one paid any attention to him as he blended with the people that thronged the busy harbor. Where am I? As he moved away from the docks, olive-skinned, thin-nosed people filled the city’s streets. He’d seen Saloynan ambassadors and envoys at the palace, so he knew what they looked like, but he knew next to nothing about the country.

His stomach rumbled, and he stopped abruptly as he came to fully realize his predicament. He couldn’t speak the language. He had no money, no food, nothing at all but the clothes he was wearing. Holy Sulis, what in the seven hells am I supposed to do now?


Buy link: Kindle US |


About the Author:
Jamie began writing stories about the man from Mars when she was six, and she never remembers wanting to be anything other than a writer. Everyone told her she needed a back up plan, so she pursued a Ph.D. in American literature, which she received in 1998. She started teaching writing and literature at Auburn University. One day in the midst of writing a piece of literary criticism, she realized she’d put her true passion on the backburner and neglected her muse. The literary article went into the trash, and she began the book that was to become The Goddess’s Choice, which was published in April 2012. Her other novels include The Soul Stone and The Ghost in Exile. In addition, she has published a novella, Demons in the Big Easy, and a collection of short stories, Blood Cursed and Other Tales of the Fantastic. Her short fiction has also appeared in the anthologies--Urban Fantasy and Of Dragons & Magic: Tales of the Lost Worlds—and in Bards & Sages, The World of Myth, A Writer’s Haven, and Short-story.me. She claims she writes about the fantastic . . . and the tortured soul. Her poor characters have hard lives. She lives in Auburn, Alabama, with her husband and four cats, which (or so she’s been told) officially makes her a cat lady. She still teaches writing and literature at Auburn University. She is the mother of a grown son.

Sign up for Jamie’s Newsletter!

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All this month, you are invited to…

— Follow Kim on Twitter
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— Leave a comment on any page of The Maze, especially if you have done the Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube follow

… and each action this month is good for one chance to win a copy of any of Kim's e-books.

Please enter often, and good luck!