A blog tour

I'm particpating in a little blog tour about what my book is about. Here are the questions I answered for my next release, due out at the end of this month. 

1. What is the working title of your book or story? A Reckoning for Alisha
2. What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book? A mother seeks justice for her daughter's death.
3. Where did the idea for the book come from? Not sure. It just popped into my head.
4. What genre does your book fall under? Suspense.
5. Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? The Heroine would be Angelina Jolie 
6. Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? Self-published. I'm a Indie.
7. How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript? An embarrassing 9 months. 
8. What other books would you compare this story to, within your genre? Can't think of any right now. I guess its original.
9. Who or what inspired you to write this book? I was just compelled to write the book. My inspiration usually just comes out of nowhere.
10. What else about your book might pique the reader's interest? My heroine is a Interpol agent who is from Northern California's lost coast area. She is also from a band of very reclusive Gypsies, who don't encourage their young women to leave home and pursue careers. This puts my heroine at odds with her clan and her family for the choices she's made in her life.

Check out www.jilljameswrites.com as I pass these questions on to her.

Light beef Stew

This recipe is taken from a common French Stew, Boeuf Bourguignon. It's very light, and easy to make and it's very tasty and my take on it. French cooking is actually very easy if you stick to the rustic country dishes.It's not the prettiest dish, but it is tasty.

You can use large cut of beef or beef stew meat. 

1lb beef or more depending on how many people you are serving
5 sprigs of thyme
3 sprigs of rosemary
6 gloves of garlic
1/2 yellow onion (slice)
1/2 red bell pepper (slice)
1/2 cup of sliced mushrooms
1 cup of baby carrots
3/4 cup of red wine
1/2 cup of water
flour
salt and pepper to taste

Keep meat in large pieces and dredge in flour and brown in olive oil, like common stews. 
In the bottom of crock pot or Dutch oven, lay down the sprigs, rosemary, and garlic. Lay meat over the top. Lay sliced onion and peppers over the top of the meat. Pour wine and water over the top. Cook on high in Crock pot all day or at least 5hrs. In Dutch oven heat over to 275 degrees for 3hrs. The last hour of crock pot add the carrots and mushrooms. The last 1/2hr of dutch oven add carrots and mushrooms. 

If preparing in a crock pot in the morning, cook on low heat for all day. 

When you serve this dish, don't thicken the juices. This is a thin stew. Serve with bread for dipping in juices. The meat should fall apart with a fork.

Week Three: Disturbance in the force

Week three of my diet turned out not to be as much of a challenge as I thought. The reason I say this is because this is the traditional week of failure for dieters. It’s the week we often stall in weight loss. In the first week we’ll drop from 5 to 6 pounds easily, it slows the second week and by week 3, it’s a struggle. All of this happens while sticking to the diet and exercise. It’s the nature of the beast of our bodies. The first weight most likely is water, the second week the body is figuring out what you’re trying to do, and will burn fat, the third week the body maybe having a little protest over what you want it to do. It takes it up to a month for your body to get into the rhythm of weight loss and exercise and to cooperate with fat burning. The key is patience with ourselves and adjust exercise and diet. 

While watching the Biggest Loser, the first week the contestants are happy and excited with massive weight loss. Some will lose up to 40lbs, but the next week not a single pound. That can get them eliminated from the show. Then the weight loss slows to 5 or 6lbs. It’s no different in the real world of diet and exercise.

This is where we give up. 1lb a week is healthy weight loss. It’s not fast, but easy to keep off. It’s not as noticeable as 5 or 6lbs in our mind's eye. Remember, losing 5 to 6 pounds a week can be gained back really quickly, and with extra weight. We’ve all heard the stories of those who lost weight very quickly looked great, and then gained it all back or doubled the weight gain. Be happy with 1lb a week. It’s a good thing.

This week was both difficult and easy for me. I lost 3lbs, but I was sick with the stomach flu. I spent three days literally running from the couch to the toilet. I’m slowly recovering. I can keep light food down. To keep at least 1lb of the weight loss, I’ll have to count calories and be careful with anything high in sugar. I was very dehydrated. I was losing everything as soon as it went in. I’m sure this is part of my weight loss. Today I’m eating very light, sipping water and chewing ice to rehydrate my body.

Next week will tell ,the true tale when I can exercise again and can hold food down.   

Stew Recipe

My God-mother was born in Naples Italy and immigrated to the US as a small child, and grew up in  Al Capone's Chicago. What she has passed on to me, was a very earthy rustic recipe for a unique stew. The veggies are drenched in balsamic vinegar and then roasted for 30 mins. It gives the stew a tangy sweet taste that takes it away from the norm.

For the recipe go to the side bar under recipes and click on God Mother's Italian stew. I know you'll enjoy it.

Follow me through a 2 1/2 day of a juice and broth fast

I'm fasting this weekend on juice and broth. This is a difficult fast, that really flushes out the body of toxins. Why now right before the big "T" day? To prepare for all those foods that I don't normally eat. I'll fast again in the following week after Thanksgiving, and probably twice during the Christmas holiday. I eat foods I normally don't eat during this time. Especially the high sugary ones, and more alcohol then normal, that includes a lot of mixed high sugar drinks.

First I prepared myself both mentally and physically for this fast at least four days prior to the dates I decided to fast. A fast should never be any longer then 3 days.

I eliminated from my diet this week the following:

1. Red meats. 
2. Alcohol.
3. Dairy
4. Highly processed foods, such as sodas and canned goods.  (Rarely eat or drink these anyways.)
5. No Caffeine. I switched to decaf.   
6. No sugary foods.
7. No fried foods. 
8. I don't eat fast food, but if you do it needs to be eliminated during this process.
9. No deserts. (I'm not a desert eater, so this was another easy one.)
10. Drink lots of water.
11. Eat lots vegetables and fruits. 
12. What proteins I ate, was chicken and fish. 
13. Everyday I ate less and less carbs in the form of breads, pasta, grains and rice. 
14. Hang up my bike and running shoes. No exercising until Monday. 

It seems like a lot to give up and all at once and honestly it is. Which is why I gave up a couple of things a day, not all at once as my fast date approached. I suggest if you've never done a complete cleansing fast, you prepare at least two weeks in advance. You may lose weight in the prep process. During the actual fast weight lose is normal. But it is only temporary.

Fasting isn't for the faint of heart. This process needs to be planned out in order to be successful. I've picked this particular weekend, because it's going to be cold and rainy. I can't ride my bike or run. It's the quietest weekend I'll have prior to the holidays. I don't have any distractions. I can hunker down, juice and drink vegetable broth and write.

I'll do regular updates on my Facebook, Lee Lopez author, on what I'm doing and how I'm feeling.  
 

 

NANO

NANO has proven to be a great tool for me to start and finish my resent works. I finished one manuscript and started a new one while editing the first one. So far I've written a total of 18K words. The goal of course is 50K at the end of the month, by the November 15th I should hit 25K.

This new work is a sequel to She Cried Wolf, and I'm really excited about getting it started. I've had so many request to write a sequel it's been very surprising. Irene Carlotti and Rio DeJesus are coming back to solve yet another case. This one is a cold case that has haunted Rio since his retirement from the FBI. It was the one that always kept him a wake at night. Now it is again. So thanks to NANO it should be out early next year. Fingers crossed.

I just need to write like I'm NANO all the time. To all you NANO writers keep writing.

Argo, a movie review

In 1979 when the Iranian hostage crisis hit, I was a young mother, with three small children. As a history major, I had a good sense of Iran’s past, but knew little about where it was in those turbulent days. What was in the news was the Shaw of Iran, Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī, escape by the skin of his teeth to the U.S. Who it was rumored had solid gold toilets, while his people suffered in horrible poverty. Situations like that are breeding grounds for anarchy, think the French revolution. This is all I cared to know about Iran back in the 70’s. To be interested in it any further than that was too time consuming, after all I was knee deep in two sets of diapers. I didn’t give the Islamic cleric, who took over the country a second thought. Of course years later, it is a big concern for all of us.

When I went to see Argo it was a step back in time. The memories of news clips jarred me back into a time when I was so much younger and very naïve. I couldn’t imagine anything happening to us like 911.

Ben Afleck did a remarkable job, bringing the times back to life. His portrayal of Tony Mendez, a down on his luck CIA agent was remarkable. I feel the character on the brink of falling apart like his personal life. The crisis he found himself in the middle of, gave him true purpose. He wasn’t the hero type, but knew his job and what it meant if he was caught trying to help six Americans hiding in the Canadian embassy. To create a movie script and company to bring those six out, was nothing short of genius, and destine to fail.

Every moment the hostages were on the screen it was filled with tension. They dripped with terror. The consequences of what could happen to them if found out, was beyond imagination. As Mendez said, “If caught they’ll die horribly.” Public executions were common place during the time period. They lived in that horror day after day, and it only escalated with the appearance of Mendez, playing the role of a movie producer. To convince the hostage what he was about to do only instilled more fear. They had to become actors and learn their lines and roles overnight.

Right to the end I was on the edge of my seat. I knew the outcome or thought I did. Like the rest of the world, I gave the Canadians a round of applause for getting the American’s out, back in 1979. No one until 1997 knew the true story and how they really escaped to safety. The movie was so well done I questioned my memory up to end, trying to recall if indeed they did make it out.

This is a must see. If you remember the crisis it was a cool to have memories ignited by the film footage. Afleck I think will be an Oscar contender. Walking out of the theater with my hubs, we talked on and off for days about those times, and how if there were cell phones and fast computers Mendez would have never been able to pull it off. Thank goodness for the lack of technology.

Ghost, Spirits and Hauntings. Do you believe?

Do you believe in the other side and that those who have passed before us can communicate?

There is a keen interest in the occult, paranormal, and ghost hunting appearing on television and in movies. With modern equipment, cameras, ways to read electro waves and images appearing on the internet. We have a closer relationship with the other side. It’s right in our faces, making it real. This of course is nothing new. It’s just become more modern the way we approach the possibility of seeing a ghost, communicating with those who have passed, and experiencing hauntings.  

Misty images appearing in photographs, is as old as photography. Those who’ve seen those dark mists moving across a room, is as old as storytellers. Families have their stories of Aunt Sally seeing grandma standing in the hall, waving right after she had passed. Every society has their ghost stories, and names for those who continue to cling to old places they once occupied in life.

In my life, I’ve had several experiences that have shaped my life and beliefs in the afterlife. As a child when my grandmother passed unexpectedly when I was ten, for a year afterwards, I could smell her around a large overstuffed chair where she would sit and knit. After a serious injury, I incurred while working in Law enforcement, (I was under the influence of very strong painkillers) I saw my other grandmother who had passed a few years prior. She stood over me examining my injury. Over twenty-five years later, I can still recall how she looked as if it happened yesterday. Her image still clings to my memory, as she smiled in a mauve colored rain coat with a plastic old lady rain cap on her head. Her glasses were spotted with rain drops. There had been a bad storm the night I was injured. She then said as clear as if she was in the room, “You’re going to be fine.” I was, although, during those frightening first hours after the incident, I wondered, as did my surgeon, who put me back together. Obviously, I am fine. 

My mother passed from life six years ago. I wasn’t with her when she passed, but knew the moment she did. I had the most incredible moment of internal peace. Two minutes later my sister called to tell me she was gone. Since then, I’ve had more than just a few incidents where I either saw my mother in a room or strongly felt her presence.

I had an incredible incident recently. My father’s behavior since my mother’s death, has been erratic and often childlike. We’ve had many difficulties with him due to his attitude towards us. I mentioned in a blog a few weeks ago, he’s making me crazy.

It all centers around a lady friend he moved into his house. Our concern, she brought nothing into the relationship of value. No property and no money. Apparently, her children are in the same situation.

One day, I had the strangest sensation. Someone whispered in my ear, when there was no one around me. I was in the middle of a conversation with my husband and turned away from him towards the voice. He said I had the strangest look on my face. The voice sounded like this odd hissing noise, as if someone was trying to communicate words through the tuning of a old radio. I felt this buzzing right on the ear. There was a moment of very light dizziness. My mother instantly came to mine. Later, I was told that my dad had bought his lady friend a ring that very afternoon right at that time. What I felt was like a rumbling in my universe. The emotional lines that connect me to my father vibrated as if strummed like a out of tune guitar. This situation is hard to put into words. That is all that comes to mind. This was like there was a disturbance in the force.

It didn't end there. The next day I was having brunch with a group of friends. I had tried to describe what had happened. It was so hard. When I left them I had my hands full, a favorite muffin for my hubs, I got into the car and I noticed my phone was dialing. It was calling my dad! I tired to stop the call, but my phone wouldn't cooperate. So I let it continue until my dad's answering machine picked up. I left a message for my dad telling him I loved him, and hoped he would come for Thanksgiving. He had been refusing, because of the influence of his girlfriend. She doesn't like him to be around us. This situation has been very heartbreaking and consuming. Before I left the house that day, I had asked my mother to leave me a sign as to what to do. To tell me something I'd recognize. I guess she decided I needed to call him. 

I’m a true believer that those who have left us stay connected. Although, there is no solid scientific proof, I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had an experience of some sort.

Are you a believer and what was your experience?

Blogging about the Golden Heart and Rita's

I'm over at www.twoindieladies.wordpress.com on the Golden Heart and Rita. Stop by.

The Diet, Stress and Little Insanity for flavor

Stress is probably one of the biggest diet killers along with that bottle of honey Jack in the cupboard. If anything can throw you off track from bothering to weigh food, watching every fucking calorie that goes done the gullet, and gives the biggest excuse to miss the Zumba class because of emotional exhaustion, it’s STRESS. Yes, stress will take a perfectly good diet and exercise day, and just trash it right into the gutter. It does for me, because I’m a stress eater.

When I’m under stress, nothing that even resembles food, wither I like it or not, will go in my mouth. I’m like a teething two year old. It all goes to one place, in the pie hole, including a piece of pie. And I don’t eat sweets.

Right before I went on vacation with my friends to beautiful Mendocino, I was slammed with over the top family drama. My dad is 90 something years old, (there is a whole story behind why we don’t have an exact age) and seems to think his new job in his golden years is to make his kids crazy. He should get a raise because he does a damn good job of it. It just might be pay back for our teen years. I’m beginning to really believe it.

The problem is more dad’s live in girlfriend, than him. On his own he’s pretty good. His girlfriend, who has been with him for only two years, is a mean nasty thing. Twice we’ve called Adult Protective Services on her. The first time she called her son to come and get her, because of this bodacious insult. The son refused, doesn’t want mom under his roof making him miserable. What my dad saw in her, I don’t know. She’s vicious enough to end up as the villain in a book. Yep, never piss off an author, ya might end up in an Indie book, which stays up on Amazon for fucking ever and ever, one more ever to grind in the point. Actually the whole shebang goes in the will, along with the image of being a really repulsively ugly bad guy, with the very well worded imagery.

What this whole situation has done, is completely throw me off my diet. While in Mendocino, I actually did pretty well, because my friends all eat healthy. It was the wine that was the killer, but it was so beautiful, having a glass of wine on the front porch with ocean view, can ya blame me. We hiked every morning and spent hours exploring the area, so I burned off every calorie that passed my lips. I even managed to lose a couple of pounds while I was there. In between stress and walking, I'm sure that did it. I would never prescribe this as a diet. Stress will kill ya, or your 90 something year old dad.

I had to make a run to dad’s when I got home and confront the girlfriend and her bad behavior and lies. It was ugly and once more, my diet went further south, due to the stress, and because I was eating out. I didn’t want to eat there, I was afraid she’d poison me. APS was there, again, and things were straightened out, again. We're getting to know the social worker well, maybe we'll invite her to Thanksgiving. Oh the girlfriend would love that, maybe so much she'll leave for the day. We just have to get one of the girlfriend's six kids to take her. Damn, maybe I can pay them to take their mother. Buy She Cried Wolf, so I can bribe this woman's kids into taking her away. Please. It's only $1.99. This whole situation has slowed my writing progress way down, to a near stop.

So now I’m fighting to regain my diet footing. I rode my bike like the wind yesterday. Today, nothing, I had a migraine. Tomorrow, I plan on taking a nice long ride. My diet is slowly going back to normal. I’m eating a lot of veggies, juicing and adding more fruit, trying to get more sleep, that’s a challenge, since my dad makes me fucking crazy, (he won’t kick the girlfriend out because he feels sorry for her). I don’t, I’ll do it.

This is turning into the further adventures of Lee and her diet. Stay tuned for more disruptions. The one thing, that is helping with my stress and physical exhaustion, is Kale juice. I drink it everyday. I swear by it. Kale juice helps with detoxing the liver. The liver stores energy. The better functioning it is, the more energy there will be for the body to burn.  This nasty little veggie is one of the healthiest things you can put in your body, especially for women. Try different recipes to get use to it. I swear this dark green veggie is keeping me sane right now.

If you have a juicer it's very easy, 2 bunches of cleaned kale, with two apples. When I drink it, because it is nasty, almost as nasty as the girlfriend, but not quit, I squeeze one lemon in it. It helps to cut the bitterness.

The pictures I took while in Mendocino. It's such a spectacular area. My muse did manage to wake out of a deep slumber a couple of times.  
 

Struggling to blog about anything. Okay, my grandkids make me fat

I’ve been struggling to find subject matter to blog about. I can put up recipes. I can talk dieting when I hate to diet. I can talk about bike riding, which I love and am addicted too. I can complain I haven’t lost much weight, and seem to be all over the scale, which drives me to drink wine, which causes me to gain weight. I can talk all that, but it just doesn’t seem very interesting. I heard a well-known blogger say, “Don’t blog about writing. Everybody does it and it’s boring.” That’s true it’s a bit boring and there is only so much I can say about my writing, and writing habits, and along with the wine, it makes me fat.

What else makes me fat is my grandkids. I’ve gotten better about eating out with them. If we go to MacDonald’s, I’ll get a salad without meat. They charge you less, and it deletes more than half the calories from the meal. A Southwest salad with grilled meat is about 320 calories, without meat, 140 calories.You eliminate 180 calories. Besides, I don’t want to know where their meat comes from. I swear wherever it is, it never actually lived.

Regardless, I do have a weakness for the fish fillet sandwich. I’m still not sure it actually hit the water. I’m pretty sure it never swam in the sea, ocean or outside a tank of some sort. Now I feel sorry for the fish. I’ll never eat another one! Okay, I’ll occasionally have a mental meltdown over all this dieting and have one so I can go through a period of self-loathing. Did you know they actually have more calories than a regular hamburger? Ya, know the little one, that I’m sure the meat was never a living creature hamburger. They are about 400 calories just for the sandwich. I think it’s the sauce. If you have the whole crazy meal thing, forget, you’ll really hate yourself. I like the chicken nugget things or use too. I had a trainer tell me once that chickens don’t have nuggets. A real chicken had legs, thighs, wings and breasts. He put emphasis on the breasts. Okay, I was convinced, like a sinner in church to praise the lord, I had been saved, but not exactly on the fish sandwich issue.

The other bad habit, I finally have broken is not to pick at my grandkids left overs. I use to do that with my kids, but then I weighed about 40lbs less and had a metabolism that actually did its job. The other day I made the grandkids mac & cheese (theirs and mines favorite) but didn’t eat any. I was doing the Snoopy happy dance at my sudden ability to say no to myself. I didn’t pick at their left overs, because there wasn’t any. I did have to take a taste test though, just a little one, because after all I was making it. If I had eaten any, like three bowl fulls, I would have thrown in the towel, celebrated my new self-indulgence with a  bottle of wine to really bring on the moment of ‘why bother’.

This weekend I’m going to spend on the coast with friends. It will be fun and so very relaxing. The great thing about it, we’ll be cooking all our own meals, with eating out maybe once at a local seafood restaurant. I’ll bring all my healthy stuff, and pretend I’m really working at dieting, or try to convince myself I can do this and watch the waves crash on the rocky shoreline. The beauty of living in Northern California, bathing suits aren't the main attire on the beaches. If you see someone sunbathing, you know they're on drugs, because it's fucking cold all year round. You can freeze your ass off in no time, as the fog frizzes your hair. We're a lot more into being warm then looking good in a tan. Thank God for that, I would not want to scare off all the tourist with this body.

I'm still struggling with a sprained ankle and torn tendon. It’s a real pain not just in my ankle, but in the ass. I’m hating it right about now. So hiking is out of the question. I plan on riding my bike like a maniac the days prior to going to try to make up for it, because we love our wine. 

On my boring writing life, this retreat will give me the opportunity to finish my latest WIP. I have opportunities all the time to work on it, I'm at the point of avoiding it. A whole other subject matter, I'm pretty sure is boring to blog about, other then my grandkids make me fat. It's nice to have someone to blame for over indulgences in life. I think we all need that, for just a second or two, until reality hits you upside the idiot head.